This seemed like a simple question indeed to Dennis, but you may have noticed that all questions seem simple if you know the answers, and most horribly difficult if you don’t. That Dennis knew the answer to this one was a testament to his honesty and honor, although those traits were so deeply ingrained in his character that he would have been surprised if someone had told him this. He had taken money-Anders Peyna’s money, in fact from Ben Staad to make sure those napkins were delivered. Only a guilder, true, but money was money and pay was pay. He had felt honor-bound to make sure, from time to time, that the service was continuing.
He told Peyna about the big storeroom (Peyna was flabbergasted to hear of it) and how each Saturday night around seven o’clock, a maid took twenty-one napkins, shook them, ironed them, folded them, and set them in a stack on a small wheeled cart. This cart stood just inside the room’s doorway. Early on Sunday morning-at six o’ the clock, less than two hours from right now-a servant boy would pull the cart to the Plaza of the Needle. He would rap at the bolted door at the base of the ugly stone tower, and one of the Lesser Warders would pull the cart inside and place the napkins on a table, where they would be doled out, meal by meal, through the week.
Peyna had been satisfied.
Dennis now hurried forward, feeling inside his shirt for the note he had written at the farmhouse. He had a bad moment or two when he couldn’t find it, but then his fingers closed over it and he sighed with relief. It had only slipped a little to one side.
He lifted the Sunday breakfast napkin. Sunday lunch. For a moment he almost passed over Sunday supper as well, and if he had done that, my tale would have had a very different ending, better or worse I cannot say, but surely different. In the end, however, Dennis decided three napkins deep was safe enough. He had found a pin in a crack between two boards in the farmhouse living room and had nipped it into one shoulder strap of the rough linsey camisole he wore as underwear (and if he had been thinking a little better, he would have nipped the note to his underwear with it in the bargain, and spared himself that bad moment, but as I may have told you, Dennis’s brains were sometimes a little lacking). Now he retrieved the pin and carefully attached the note to an inner fold of the napkin.
“Let it find you, Peter,” he murmured in the ghostly silence of that storeroom, piled high with napkins made in another age. “Let it find you, my King.”
Dennis knew he must lie low now. The castle would be waking up soon; stableboys would be stumbling out to the barns, washerwomen would be moving to the laundries, cooks’ apprentices would be stumbling puffy-eyed and sleepy to their fires (thinking of the kitchens made Dennis’s belly rumble anew-by now even the hateful turnips would have tasted quite nice-but food, he reckoned, would have to wait).
He worked his way farther back into the big room. The stacks were so high, the ways so zigzagging and irregular, that it was like working his way into a maze. The napkins gave off a sweet, dry, cottony smell. He finally reached one of the far corners, and here he reckoned he would be safe. He overspilled a stack of the napkins, spread them out, and took another handful for a pillow.
It was by far the most luxurious mattress he had ever lain upon, and, hungry as he was, he needed sleep much more than food after his long walk and the frights of the night. He was asleep in no time at all, and he was troubled by no dreams. We will leave him now, with the first part of his job well and bravely accomplished. We will leave him turned upon his side, right hand curled under his right cheek, sleeping on a bed of royal napkins. And I would like to make a wish for you, Reader that your sleep this night be as sweet and as blameless as his was all that day.
94
On Saturday night, as Dennis was standing in the horror of that wolf’s howl and feeling the shade of Flagg’s thought pass over him, Ben Staad and Naomi Reechul were encamped in a snowy hollow thirty miles north of Peyna’s farm… or what had been Peyna’s farm before Dennis showed up with his story of a King who walked and talked in his sleep.
They had made the sort of rough camp people make when they mean to spend only a few hours and then push on. Naomi had seen to her beloved huskies while Ben put up a small tent and built a roaring fire.
Shortly, Naomi joined him at the fire and cooked deer meat. They ate in silence, and then Naomi went to check the dogs again. All were sleeping except for Frisky, her favorite. Frisky looked at her with almost human eyes, and licked her hand.
“A good pull today, m’dear,” Naomi said. “Sleep, now. Catch a moon rabbit.”
Frisky obediently put her head down on her paws. Naomi smiled and went back to the fire. Ben sat before it, his knees pulled up to his chest and his arms around them. His face was somber and thoughtful.
“Snow’s coming.”
“I can read the clouds as well as you, Ben Staad. And the fairies have made a ring around Prince Ailon’s head.”
Ben glanced at the moon and nodded. Then he looked back at the fire. “I’m worried. I’ve had dreams of… well, dreams of one it’s better not to name.”
She lit a cigar. She offered the little package, which was wrapped in muslin to prevent drying, to Ben, who shook his head.
“I’ve had the same dreams, I think,” she said. She tried to make her voice casual, but was betrayed by a slight tremor.
He stared around at her, eyes wide.
“Aye,” she said, as if he had asked. “In them, he looks into some bright glowing thing and speaks Peter’s name. I’ve never been one of your skittish little girls who screeches at the sight of a mouse or a spider in its web, but I wake from that dream wanting to scream aloud.”
She looked both ashamed and defiant.
“How many nights have you had it?”
“Two.”
“I’ve had it four a-running. Mine’s just the same as yours. And you needn’t look like I’m going to laugh at you or call you Little Nell Weeping at the Well. I also wake up wanting to scream.
“This bright thing… at the end of my dreams, he seems to blow it out. Is it a candle, do you think?”
“No. You know it’s not.”
She nodded.
Ben considered. “Something far more dangerous than a can-dle, I think… I’ll take that cigar you offered, if I may.”
She gave him one. He lit it from the fire. They sat a while in silence, watching the sparks rise toward the dark wind which trawled nets of powdery field snow through the sky. Like the light in the dream they’d shared, the sparks blew out. The night seemed very black. Ben could smell snow in that wind. A great deal of snow, he thought.
Naomi seemed to read his thought. “I think such a storm as the old folks tell about may be on the way. What do you think?”
“The same.”
With a hesitation utterly unlike her usual forthright manner, Naomi asked: “What does the dream mean, Ben?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell. Danger to Peter, that much is clear. If it means anything else-anything I can ken-it’s that we must hurry.” He looked at her with an urgent directness that made her heart speed up. “Can we reach Peyna’s farm tomorrow, do you think?”
“We should be able to. No one but the gods can say that a dog won’t break a leg or that a killer bear who can’t sleep his winter sleep won’t come out of the woods and kill us all, but aye… we should be able to. I exchanged all the dogs I used on the run up, except for Frisky, and Frisky’s almost tireless. If the snow comes early it’ll slow us down, but I think it will hold off… and off… and for every hour it does, it’ll be that much worse when it finally comes. Or so I think. But if it does hold off, and if we take turns jumping off the sledge and running alongside, I think we can make it. But what can we do except sit there, unless your friend the butler returns?”