TWO
According to the story - a good one that he must remember to tell Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, when (and if) there was once more time for storytelling - Lady Oriza invited Gray Dick, a famous outlaw prince, to a vast dinner party in Waydon, her castle by the River Send. She wanted to forgive him for the murder of her father, she said, for she had accepted the Man Jesus into her heart and such was according to His teachings.
Ye'll get me there and kill me, be I stupid enough to come, said Gray Dick.
Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it. All weapons will be left outside the castle. And when we sit in the banqueting hall below, there will be only me, at one end of the table, and thee, at the other.
You'll conceal a dagger in your sleeve or a bola beneath your dress, said Gray Dick. And if you don't, I will.
Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it, for we shall both be naked.
At this Gray Dick was overcome with lust, for Lady Oriza was fair. It excited him to think of his prick getting hard at the sight of her bare br**sts and bush, and no breeches on him to conceal his excitement from her maiden's eye. And he thought he understood why she would make such a proposal. His haughty heart will undo him , Lady Oriza told her maid (whose name was Marian and who went on to have many fanciful adventures of her own).
The Lady was right. I've killed Lord Grenfall, wiliest lord in all the river baronies , Gray Dick told himself. And who is left to avenge him but one weak daughter" ? (Oh, but she was fair.) So she sues for peace. And maybe even for marriage, if she has audacity and imagnation as well as beauty.
So he accepted her offer. His men searched the banquet hall downstairs before he arrived and found no weapons - not on the table, not under the table, not behind the tapestries. What none of them could know was that for weeks before the banquet, Lady Oriza had practiced throwing a specially weighted dinner-plate. She did this for hours a day. She was athletically inclined to begin with, and her eyes were keen. Also, she hated Gray Dick with all her heart and had determined to make him pay no matter what the cost.
The dinner-plate wasn't just weighted; its rim had been sharpened. Dick's men overlooked this, as she and Marian had been sure they would. And so they banqueted, and what a strange banquet that must have been, with the laughing, handsome outlaw naked at one end of the table and the demurely smiling but exquisitely beautiful maiden thirty feet from him at the other end, equally naked. They toasted each other with Lord Grenfall's finest rough red. It infuriated the Lady to the point of madness to watch him slurp that exquisite country wine down as though it were water, scarlet drops rolling off his chin and splashing to his hairy chest, but she gave no sign; simply smiled coquettishly and sipped from her own glass. She could feel the weight of his eyes on her br**sts. It was like having unpleasant bugs lumbering to and fro on her skin.
How long did this charade go on? Some tale-tellers had her putting an end to Gray Dick after the second toast. (His: May your beauty ever increase . Hers: May your first day in hell last ten thousand years, and may it be the shortest.) Others - the sort of spinners who enjoyed drawing out the suspense - recounted a meal of a dozen courses before Lady Oriza gripped the special plate, looking Gray Dick in the eyes and smiling at him while she turned it, feeling for the dull place on the rim where it would be safe to grip.
No matter how long the tale, it always ended the same way, with Lady Oriza flinging the plate. Little fluted channels had been carved on its underside, beneath the sharpened rim, to help it fly true. As it did, humming weirdly as it went, casting its fleeting shadow on the roast pork and turkey, the heaping bowls of vegetables, the fresh fruit piled on crystal serving dishes.
A moment after she flung the plate on its slightly rising course - her arm was still outstretched, her first finger and cocked thumb pointing at her father's assassin - Gray Dick's head flew out through the open door and into the foyer behind him. For a moment longer Gray Dick's body stood there with its penis pointing at her like an accusing finger. Then the dick shriveled and the Dick behind it crashed forward onto a huge roast of beef and a mountain of herbed rice.
Lady Oriza, whom Roland would hear referred to as the Lady of the Plate in some of his wanderings, raised her glass of wine and toasted the body. She said
THREE
"May your first day in hell last ten thousand years," Roland murmured.