Let Us Tilt At The Dragons We Make

A short story

I did know Sir Donald and the Magus. I recall their arrival as if it happened yesterday. A herald showed up first. This was a good omen, for no one in our hapless town had seen a herald in five seasons. In fact, no one from outside Vallejon had visited our town in almost a year. No one except for beggars, that is.

There had been no contact at all from the throne for the last three years except for the tax collectors who showed up for our sullen queue before the crown coffers every autumn. Promises and projects did not interest us, for we had our own cathedral to finish. What did we care for royal highways? All they brought to our town was a crowd of beggars.

No one spent money anymore. The men in town with the heavy coffers had once met other men at the public square and haggled over papers and coins in the courtyards from sunup until twlight, but now they kept shorter and shorter hours all the time.

So when a stout gentleman in fine garb showed up at the Red Shield to spend the night, word spread quickly. No one had seen a stranger with money in so very long.

The man said that he was a herald and refused to deliver his message to anyone except the mayor. We offered him beer and pie while the mayor was summoned. By the time Mayor Andrews arrived — at a gallop, cane and buckles, but without his fine hat or his stick — the entire town knew that a nobleman’s standard had shown up in the hands of a herald, and such a crowd had gathered that a way through had to be opened for Old Andrews.

I was with my father and mother. Coming from across the stone bridge, we were too late to hear any of the conversation inside the inn. So many people were already at the open windows and door. The herald, we learned from whispers, had paid his keep at the inn with gold sovereigns, put a coffer in the keeping of a banker, and set a bag of coins in the hand of a coinmonger. A house was already being prepared for his nobleman’s arrival. A wonder, we thought.

The herald conferred with the mayor inside this very tavern under the flag of Vallejon — that one over the fireplace, there. The mayor received his copy of the announcement, marveled at the ancient seal, and broke the wax. The crowd hushed, waiting as he read in silence. Of course I did not see these things happen, but I was told about them after.

“A counter to the coup,” my father said. “Or something like.” My father was possessed of a conviction that the lineage of our young Prince Alba was suspect, and therefore he was due for bloody replacement at any minute.

Mother asked father: “Oh! Now, who do you suppose will rise up? That elder King who has gone out to pasture?” She was referring to the father of the Prince, who had abdicated in defeat. “It’s another war, somewhere far away.”

I was old enough to be conscripted. Mother had always hated the wars. So many young men had been marched off to defend the kingdom from the Satraps of the East! And now those young men returned to their native shores and wandered the cities, many wandering as far as our little town looking for scarce work. Peace was the prince’s policy, and mother approved of that, but she worried about those young men.

“There is no honest work for them,” she often declared. “They do nothing but march about with useless writs of discharge in hand. Nothing for them to do but mischief.”

War, my father held, was an excellent thing for the character of young men and nations, but bad for business. He dismissed her worries about war. We were of the burgher class, he reminded her, and I was therefore under no military obligations, for he had paid good coin to the realm for my release from them.

“Two hundred sovereigns,” he said. “I need his legs more than Alba needs a soldier.”

Mother had sent gifts of pie and cake and even a dress to the barber’s wife for his help securing my writs of incompatibility with the hardships of service. I wasn’t the only son in town with the same story to tell.

Our family’s fortunes had suffered along with everyone else’s. My father’s business was ailing; farmers planted less than they might; there was enough food, but there was precious little exchange of money. The reasons…I beg your pardon sir, but they were never quite clear to any of us, here.

The farmers of Vallejon blamed the bankers for calling in mortgages and denying credit.

The town bankers blamed the bankers in the capitol for closing off their credit.

The bankers in the capitol blamed an inexplicable crash of credit accounts.

With every man coiling around his every coin like a serpent, no one responded to bills of order anymore. It was coin on the barrel for whatever you wanted or the Devil have you.

My father tried hard to understand these things and explain them to me in detail. What I understood was that fewer men showed up at his mills with less grain than before, forcing him to make layoffs.

Father and mother stopped talking when the mayor emerged from the doors of this establishment into the square. There was a din of talk but it ceased the instant the herald rang his bell.

Such silence followed that from a distance of fifty paces, I still heard his throat clear.

“O yea, o yea, o yea!” He began. “Stout citizens of Ingenoco! Praise God, be it known that tomorrow evening shall bring the long-delayed return of Sir Donald, House Peronus, Hero of the Wars, General of Armies, Protector of Vallejon and Slayer of Dragons, to this esteemed town of his ancestors.”

Everyone was surprised. House Peronus was a noble family that had the title of our protector in its coat-of-arms. The last male descendant of that house had gone away on crusade twenty years before, winning great victories in our country’s glorious retreat from the eastern satrapies. The family keep was a ruin.

The herald continued reading. “All are invited to attend him as he informs the residents, in words most powerful and illuminating, of the latest intelligence of the hated wyrm, serpent of the Devil, winged scourge of fair and righteous peoples.”

A great sigh went up, a noise of discovery: Ahhh! For while few were versed in the details, everyone knew the title ‘Protector of Vallejon’ was a tradition having something to do with dragons.

Not that anyone had ever seen a dragon. A living one, I mean. Everyone knows they exist, of course, but they all live somewhere else, far away from here. We are not stupid enough to think they still live close to us.

You have ridden up the sharp pass into the hills, and seen the Quarry Beast. Everyone living in Vallejon has picnicked under it at least a few times and marvelled at its terrors. It is proof they lived here once, but now they are gone.

“Sir Donald of Peronus brings with him the famous Magus of Clarus-Muur,” the herald continued, “to explicate the mysteries of the noxious monster. The Magus brings wondrous spectacles to enlighten and entertain. Weather permitting, he will display them here, in the public square, on Wednesday evening, where all may witness the astounding truth about dragons.”

A cry of delight went up. For while none of us had heard of the office of a Magus or a place called Clarus-Muur, a spectacle was novel and welcome. No carnivals or festivals had been declared in more than a year, and the Harvest Feast had been a general disappointment, as no one spent a penny on leisure. Every man had held fast to his coin, so nobody gained a coin.

But now every resident of Ingenoco was eager for whatever spectacle the Magus of Clarus-Muur brought, and free admission was even better. An entertainment. We could clinch our coins and still enjoy the show.

The herald finished his reading with various etceteras and moved to nail up his notice on the public board. A press of men formed to read it. The literate read it to the letter-less. Latecomers ganged up for summaries.

My father made off at once to buttonhole the mayor.

“We don’t need dragons,” my mother complained. “We need more talk of money and wages, for we have not enough of either.”

But the arrival of such grand guests meant an income for the town, I said. Why, father was scheming a profit this very moment, wasn’t he?

But now the herald clapped my shoulder. My father had volunteered me to serve him.

“Lad!” The herald said. “Pass these about the town for me.” He handed me a stack of pressed copies of his message.

“I shall see your mother home,” father said. He leaned in to bend my ear. “Tell everyone you meet that town notes are good again,” he announced to me and everyone around us. “Tell them the mayor’s signing the notes, and bankers will be right here with their coffers open for inspection.”

When I had passed out all the copies I returned to the square. By then, tightfisted men of money were already arriving to the Red Shield with factors and boxes and books that normally shut well before noon in those days.

The town was a pot boiling over. Everywhere, bakers fired their ovens. Cooks boiled their soups. Butchers sharpened knives and innkeepers made their beds. Carpenters pounded and smiths hammered. Vallejon became noisy with trade before a single penny passed from hand to hand, simply because town notes were good once more.

The herald called me by name: “a fine job you’ve done. Here,” he said, pressing a gold sovereign into my palm. “Are you hungry?” I was weak with hunger, and in fact my stomach gurgled at the very mention of food. “They’ve made a big stew in the kitchen,” he said. “Have a bowl.”

The keeper’s daughter served me herself. She was delighted to make change from the sovereign I held, which was the first coin either of us had seen in days. And this strange thing I tell you, though you might think me an imbecile: when that sovereign turned into smaller coins that covered more of my hand, I actually felt the richer for the reduction of my wealth. Money is a strange thing that way.

The herald only hinted at the scale of De Peronus’s ambition and implied a cornucopia of blessings the Magus offered. What they proposed would very likely turn around the fortunes of Ingenoco forever, he said, and our gray-haired council of elders would see their names eternally praised for it.

Even the Monsignor nodded his enthusiasm. In the scripture, the dragon is symbol of all that is wrong with the world, he said, and the very origin of sin.

The project would emblazon the name of Ingenoco on the breasts of every God-fearing man and woman in the western world and strike fear into the Satraps of the East. For every man in the room, the herald had an appeal.

Father sent me back home again. On my way home, I saw faces that had only known worry. Now they were lifted. Lines that had worn deep were smoothed in relief. Everyone was happy.

Sir Donald of Peronus and the Magus had not even arrived, but already they had proven the perfect tonic for our malaise.