* * * *
When he opened them again, half the wedding guests were on their feet and shouting, “Bed them! Bed them!” They were making such an uproar than they woke Dunk from a pleasant dream involving Tanselle Too-Tall and the Red Widow. “Bed them! Bed them!” the calls rang out. Dunk sat up and rubbed his eyes.
Ser Franklyn Frey had the bride in his arms and was carrying her down the aisle, with men and boys swarming all around him. The ladies at the high table had surrounded Lord Butterwell. Lady Vyrwel had recovered from her grief and was trying to pull His Lordship from his chair, while one of his daughters unlaced his boots and some Frey woman pulled up his tunic. Butterwell was flailing at them ineffectually, and laughing. He was drunk, Dunk saw, and Ser Franklyn was a deal drunker ... so drunk, he almost dropped the bride. Before Dunk quite realized what was happening, John the Fiddler had dragged him to his feet. “Here!” he cried out. “Let the giant carry her!”
The next thing he knew, he was climbing a tower stair with the bride squirming in his arms. How he kept his feet was beyond him. The girl would not be still, and the men were all around them, making ribald japes about flouring her up and kneading her well whilst they pulled off her clothes. The dwarfs joined in as well. They swarmed around Dunk’s legs, shouting and laughing and smacking at his calves with their bladders. It was all he could do not to trip over them.
Dunk had no notion where Lord Butterwell’s bedchamber was to be found, but the other men pushed and prodded him until he got there, by which time the bride was red-faced, giggling, and nearly naked, save for the stocking on her left leg, which had somehow survived the climb. Dunk was crimson too, and not from exertion. His arousal would have been obvious if anyone had been looking, but fortunately all eyes were the bride. Lady Butterwell looked nothing like Tanselle, but having the one squirming half-naked in his arms had started Dunk thinking about the other. Tanselle Too-Tall, that was her name, but she was not too tall for me. He wondered if he would ever find her again. There had been some nights when he thought he must have dreamed her. No, lunk, you only dreamed she liked you.
Lord Butterwell’s bedchamber was large and lavish, once he found it. Myrish carpets covered the floors, a hundred scented candles burned in nooks and crannies, and a suit of plate inlaid with gold and gems stood beside the door. It even had its own privy set into a small stone alcove in the outer wall.
When Dunk finally plopped the bride onto her marriage bed, a dwarf leapt in beside her and seized one of her breasts for a bit of a fondle. The girl let out a squeal, the men roared with laughter, and Dunk seized the dwarf by his collar and hauled him kicking off m’lady. He was carrying the little man across the room to chuck him out the door when he saw the dragon’s egg.
Lord Butterwell had placed it on a black velvet cushion atop a marble plinth. It was much bigger than a hen’s egg, though not so big as he’d imagined. Fine red scales covered its surface, shining bright as jewels by the light of lamps and candles. Dunk dropped the dwarf and picked up the egg, just to feel it for a moment. It was heavier than he’d expected. You could smash a man’s head with this, and never crack the shell. The scales were smooth beneath his fingers, and the deep, rich red seemed to shimmer as he turned the egg in his hands. Blood and flame, he thought, but there were gold flecks in it as well, and whorls of midnight black.
“Here, you! What do you think you’re doing, ser?” A knight he did not know was glaring at him, a big man with a coal-black beard and boils, but it was the voice that made him blink; a deep voice, thick with anger. It was him, the man with Peake, Dunk realized, as the man said, “Put that down. I’ll thank you to keep your greasy fingers off His Lordship’s treasures, or by the Seven, you shall wish you had.”
The other knight was not near so drunk as Dunk, so it seemed wise to do as he said. He put the egg back on its pillow, very carefully, and wiped his fingers on his sleeve. “I meant no harm, ser.” Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall. Then he shoved past the man with the black beard and out the door.
There were noises in the stairwell, glad shouts and girlish laughter. The women were bringing Lord Butterwell to his bride. Dunk had no wish to encounter them, so he went up instead of down, and found himself on the tower roof beneath the stars, with the pale castle glimmering in the moonlight all around him.
He was feeling dizzy from the wine, so he leaned against a parapet. Am I going to be sick? Why did he go and touch the dragon’s egg? He remembered Tanselle’s puppet show, and the wooden dragon that had started all the trouble there at Ashford. The memory made Dunk feel guilty, as it always did. Three good men dead, to save a hedge knights foot. It made no sense, and never had. Take a lesson from that, lunk. It is not for the likes of you to mess about with dragons or their eggs.
“It almost looks as if it’s made of snow.”
Dunk turned. John the Fiddler stood behind him, smiling in his silk and cloth-of-gold. “What’s made of snow?”
“The castle. All that white stone in the moonlight. Have you ever been north of the Neck, Ser Duncan? I’m told it snows there even in the summer. Have you ever seen the Wall?”
“No, m’lord.” Why is he going on about the Wall? “That’s where we were going, Egg and me. Up north, to Winterfell.”
“Would that I could join you. You could show me the way.”
“The way?” Dunk frowned. “It’s right up the kingsroad. If you stay to the road and keep going north, you can’t miss it.”
The Fiddler laughed. “I suppose not ... though you might be surprised at what some men can miss.” He went to the parapet and looked out across the castle. “They say those northmen are a savage folk, and their woods are full of wolves.”
“M’lord? Why did you come up here?”
“Alyn was seeking for me, and I did not care to be found. He grows tiresome when he drinks, does Alyn. I saw you slip away from that bedchamber of horrors, and slipped out after you. I’ve had too much wine, I grant you, but not enough to face a naked Butterwell.” He gave Dunk an enigmatic smile. “I dreamed of you, Ser Duncan. Before I even met you. When I saw you on the road, I knew your face at once. It was as if we were old friends.”
Dunk had the strangest feeling then, as if he had lived this all before. I dreamed of you, he said. My dreams are not like yours, Ser Duncan. Mine are true. “You dreamed of me?” he said, in a voice made thick by wine. “What sort of dream?”
“Why,” the Fiddler said, “I dreamed that you were all in white from head to heel, with a long pale cloak flowing from those broad shoulders. You were a White Sword, ser, a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard, the greatest knight in all the Seven Kingdoms, and you lived for no other purpose but to guard and serve and please your king.” He put a hand on Dunk’s shoulder. “You have dreamed the same dream, I know you have.”
He had, it was true. The first time the old man let me hold his sword. “Every boy dreams of serving in the Kingsguard.”
“Only seven boys grow up to wear the white cloak, though. Would it please you to be one of them?”
“Me?” Dunk shrugged away the lordling’s hand, which had begun to knead his shoulder. “It might. Or not.” The knights of the Kingsguard served for life, and swore to take no wife and hold no lands. I might find Tanselle again someday. Why shouldn’t I have a wife, and sons? “It makes no matter what I dream. Only a king can make a Kingsguard knight.”
“I suppose that means I’ll have to take the throne, then. I would much rather be teaching you to fiddle.”
“You’re drunk.” And the crow once called the raven black.
“Wonderfully drunk. Wine makes all things possible, Ser Duncan. You’d look a god in white, I think, but if the color does not suit you, perhaps you would prefer to be a lord?”
Dunk laughed in his face. “No, I’d sooner sprout big blue wings and fly. One’s as likely as t’other.”
“Now you mock me. A true knight would never mock his king.” The Fiddler sounded hurt. “I hope you will put more faith in what I tell you when you see the dragon hatch.”
“A dragon will hatch? A living dragon? What, here?”
“I dreamed it. This pale white castle, you, a dragon bursting from an egg, I dreamed it all, just as I once dreamed of my brothers lying dead. They were twelve and I was only seven, so they laughed at me, and died. I am two-and-twenty now, and I trust my dreams.”
Dunk was remembering another tourney, remembering how he had walked through the soft spring rains with another princeling. I dreamed of you and a dead dragon, Egg’s brother Daeron said to him. A great beast, huge, with wings so large, they could cover this meadow. It had fallen on top of you, but you were alive and the dragon was dead. And so he was, poor Baelor. Dreams were a treacherous ground on which to build. “As you say, m’lord,” he told the Fiddler. “Pray excuse me.”
“Where are you going, ser?”
“To my bed, to sleep. I’m drunk as a dog.
“Be my dog, ser. The night’s alive with promise. We can howl together, and wake the very gods.”
“What do you want of me?”
“Your sword. I would make you mine own man, and raise you high. My dreams do not lie, Ser Duncan. You will have that white cloak, and I must have the dragon’s egg. I must, my dreams have made that plain. Perhaps the egg will hatch, or else—”
Behind them, the door banged open violently. “There he is, my lord.” A pair of men-at-arms stepped onto the roof. Lord Gormon Peake was just behind them.
“Gormy,” the Fiddler drawled. “Why, what are you doing in my bedchamber, my lord?”
“It is a roof, ser, and you have had too much wine.” Lord Gormon made a sharp gesture, and the guards moved forward. “Allow us to help you to that bed. You are jousting on the morrow, pray recall. Kirby Pimm can prove a dangerous foe.”
“I had hoped to joust with good Ser Duncan here.”
Peake gave Dunk an unsympathetic look. “Later, perhaps. For your first tilt, you have drawn Ser Kirby Pimm.”
“Then Pimm must fall! So must they all! The mystery knight prevails against all challengers, and wonder dances in his wake.” A guardsman took the Fiddler by the arm. “Ser Duncan, it seems that we must part,” he called as they helped him down the steps.
Only Lord Gormon remained upon the roof with Dunk. “Hedge knight,” he growled, “did your mother never teach you not to reach your hand into the dragon’s mouth?”
“I never knew any mother, m’lord.”
“That would explain it. What did he promise you?”
“A lordship. A white cloak. Big blue wings.”
“Here’s my promise: three feet of cold steel through your belly if you speak a word of what just happened.”
Dunk shook his head to clear his wits. It did not seem to help. He bent double at the waist, and retched.
Some of the vomit spattered Peake’s boots. The lord cursed. “Hedge knights,” he exclaimed in disgust. “You have no place here. No true knight would be so discourteous as to turn up uninvited, but you creatures of the hedge—”
“We are wanted nowhere and turn up everywhere, m’lord.” The wine had made Dunk bold, else he would have held his tongue. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Try and remember what I told you, ser. It will go ill for you if you do not.” Lord Peake shook the vomit off his boot. Then he was gone. Dunk leaned against the parapet again. He wondered who was madder, Lord Gormon or the Fiddler.
By the time he found his way back to the hall, only Maynard Plumm remained of his companions. “Was there any flour on her teats when you got the smallclothes off her?” he wanted to know.
Dunk shook his head, poured himself another cup of wine, tasted it, and decided that he had drunk enough.