Thorn, Fred Saberhagen [bearly read books .txt] 📗

      There were church bells in my ears, when I knew that no bells rang. Angels swam round me in an alarming swarm; not, as modern legend has it, looking for the point of a pin to sit on, but rather to cluster before my eyes inside my steel helm, good and evil disputing for my soul.

      I understood vaguely that my helm was being lifted off, by gentle hands, but the knowledge made things no clearer. I saw the totentantz; and I saw, as on a stage, tableaux from the old French story in which three living men meet their three doppelgangers all wrapped in shrouds.

      “Is he dead, then, at last?” It was the voice of my dear wife Helen, and she was despairing almost utterly. “He is dead. I know that he is dead.”

      Someone else muttered something. If this was death, at least I did not fear it. The Angel of the Lord swooped near to me, dispersing the fog of lesser cherubs who were swarming in my eyes, and spoke to me. What the angel said to me then I may not yet reveal.

      “He is not dead,” said another, non-angelic voice.

      I was lying on my back inside a jousting pavilion of fine white cloth, lit gloriously from above by bright sunlight. My armor had all been stripped away, and my body, wrapped now in white linen almost like a shroud, was a mass of many hurts. I hurt no more, though, than was seemly for one who had been knocked off a horse by the brutal impact of a long, sharp-ended pole, and had probably been trampled on by horses’ hooves thereafter. Meanwhile the Angel of the Lord transformed himself into Helen, who sat at my side dabbing with cool perfumed water at a certain abominable lump upon my head.

      Presently I understood that this wretched lump was coextensive with my head itself.

      “I feared for you, oh my lord.” And Helen was weeping softly. Dab, dab, oh so gently. Her perfumed kerchief of fine Florentine cloth was mottled red.

      “That I was dead?”

      “Yes. Oh, Vlad, your face was pale and still.”

      “Know then that I am alive.” I raised an aching arm to catch Helen’s hand, whose dabbing ministrations had become more irritant than help; and, to provide a sweeter reason for the catch, I squeezed what I had caught, and brought it to my lips. “And, even if I had been dead, to have such an angel ministering to me would make me rise again.”

      A non-angelic face in the background coughed and grimaced at this remark. It was, I realized now, a friar standing by there. Doubtless he had come to anoint the dying.

      “I would not have you jest about such things,” said Helen. But I think what really bothered her was her perception that I was not jesting. This was in early 1469. By then we had been five years married, and had lived long enough as man and wife to begin to know each other well.

      “Your good wife speaks wisely, my son,” the friar chided me. “You have been near death today, but today it is God’s will that you live. You should consider that one day He must will otherwise. Death will come to us all, or soon or late.”

      I considered the friar’s long face, and liked it not. “Nay, father. Does it not say somewhere in the Scriptures, ‘we shall not all die, but we shall all be changed’?”

      The friar’s face said emphatically that mine was not a proper attitude; but what could one expect from these foreign soldiers who were the bane of Italy? “It saith also, that the devil may quote Scripture when he likes.” After that, sensing himself no longer quite welcome, the priest bowed out through the tent flap and took himself away.

      “Vlad, do not sit up yet. Rest yet a while, and I will tend to you.”

      “I will sit up.” For the moment, though, it was quite enough just to get my elbows under me and raise my shoulders. “And shortly I will rise, and walk. I want to see the progress of the tournament.” There was a large roar, of many excited voices, not far outside. The pavilions had been set up in rows quite near the stands and the lists. Now there came groans, and loud prayers of alarm; again some shrewd blow had been dealt. “Who unhorsed me? Who dealt me such a devil’s blow? I don’t remember.”

      “I do not think I saw who it was.”

      “Nay, Helen, it is only a game, is it not? Do you think I am going to go looking for revenge?”

      The great misbegotten lump that was my skull ached all the more mercilessly when I sat up. But evidently, despite all my interesting visions, I had not been unconscious for very long. The brightness and warmth of the sun shining through the pavilion top told me that the time was still near midday, and the crowd’s voice sounded as fresh and enthusiastic as ever.

      Again shouts of encouragement and triumph, mingled with those of disappointment, drifted in.

      “Who is winning?” I wondered aloud. And without letting myself think about the problems of movement, I got to my feet and began to dress myself.

      Helen sighed and let me have my way. “I do not know. They say the grand prize will be awarded to Lorenzo himself, whatever happens in the jousts. It is his wedding we are celebrating, after all, even if he is no warrior.”

      I grumbled reflexively at that. Not that I wished for myself the fame of winning. I did not want to be prominent in the public eye; I was still Signore Ladislao in Italy, because I was still theoretically, officially, imprisoned in Hungary by my brother-in-law, and would be for another seven years. His Majesty King Matthias was still wary, still uncertain of what reception I might be accorded were I to appear in a place of honor at his court; and he was, for somewhat different reasons,