Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (reading like a writer TXT) 📕

was over, he went back to the street door and opened it again. In a moment we were joined by a sleepy friar, just dismounted and scratching his backside. Ten or a dozen horses were gathered outside the door, and I could hear the low voices of other men; Lorenzo would never have come on such a mission in the dead of night without a good escort.

      The friar asked few questions and showed no surprise, being evidently experienced in matters of intrigue. As evidence of Medicean forethought he had come armed with all necessary holy dispensations, civil permits, writs, blessings and the like, enough spiritual and bureaucratic armament to have wed two Barbary apes on short notice had such a union appeared desirable. Only on one point was he in the least anxious, and I hastened to assure him that the formalities of my own conversion from the Eastern to the Roman Rite had been accomplished ere I left Hungary.

      The bearded apprentice had managed, somehow, somewhere, to gather an armful of flowers in the middle of the night, and came to present them to Helen. She appeared quite touched. The younger lad had at last found her a pair of respectable shoes that almost fit, for which I thanked him. Verrocchio did not seem to know quite what he ought to do about a wedding gift; if he would keep his mouth shut afterwards, I thought, that would be quite enough. In the end he gave each of us a gold ring, making sure Lorenzo saw the gesture. And so finally my bride and I were standing before the friar, the menials all dismissed, a worried Verrocchio as one witness, and Lorenzo-the-Magnificent-to-be, nodding benignly, as the other. Helen was taking it all quite well, I noted with cautiously increasing optimism. At least she spoke the required words in a firm, clear voice: “I, Helen Hunyadi, of the household and family of Matthias, King of Hungary-

      Then it was my turn. “I, Vlad, son of Vlad Drakulya and of his household, Prince of Wallachia—”

      I had surprised Helen one more time. Without taking my gaze from the priest I saw her face turn up to me.

Chapter Eleven

      “It’s very nice of you to help out,” said Mary Rogers, her blue eyes looking up trustfully at Thorn as he unlocked and opened for her the right-side door of his rented Blazer. Her strong legs in worn blue jeans swung her athletically up into the vehicle. “Robby had to take the Ford,” she added, when Thorn had gone round to his own doorway on the driver’s side and was climbing in.

      “I understand.” Thorn first secured his seat belt properly—his sometimes ferocious conflicts with machinery were never his fault—and then put the key into the ignition. Presently he was driving down the swooping ramp from the hotel garage, squinting through sunglasses as he pulled into the city street awash with the molten daylight of late afternoon. The sun itself, he had made sure, was safely behind some buildings. It would not be getting any higher today. Robinson Miller, whose more-or-less-gainful employment was with the local Public Defender’s office, was working late this evening, visiting on his own time with clients said to be in great need. And a couple of hours ago Mary had received a phone call from the Seabright house. A woman on the staff there, a Mrs. Dorlan, who Mary had apparently got to know during her residence at the mansion, had told her that her remaining belongings were ready to be picked up.

      “She sounded sort of in a hurry. Why they’re all of a sudden in such a hurry to get rid of the stuff, I don’t know. Cleaning house, I guess. But I feel more comfortable going over there if I have someone with me. And you did volunteer earlier.”

      “I assuredly did.” That of course had been before his first visit to the mansion, when he was still looking for an invitation of some kind, any kind, to let him cross the Seabright threshold. But now he welcomed any good reason to be alone with Mary.

      She said: “I suppose they’ll just have the stuff piled out on the porch. There isn’t very much.”

      Thorn snarled faintly at an errant Volkswagen. “I take it you have not yet told Helen’s mother of that strange telephone call?”

      “Stephanie’s not much of a mother. A nasty thing to say but it’s true. Anyway I don’t think she’d talk to me. I could write her a note about the call but she’d never believe it.”

      Thorn did not argue that. “Then I suppose you have not informed the police, either.”

      Mary was studying him. “No, we haven’t. You said something about an official connection that you have. I’d like to know what you found out through that.”

      “Not much. Confirmation of things you had already told me. No hint that Helen might be still alive.” The last sentence seemed to echo in his mind when he had spoken it. But he had settled that.

      “Damn.” She was obviously disappointed. And worried. “Well. Whoever it was, she didn’t sound like she was in any immediate danger. So if it was Helen, I guess she can call home for herself any time she wants to. If it wasn’t … I can’t imagine who it might have been. Or why they’d want to play such a trick.”

      The rest of the ride out to the wealthy suburbs passed for the most part in silence. This evening no one was manning the mansion’s great iron gates. But still the gates were locked.

      “I don’t understand. They knew I was coming out tonight.”

      Half a minute of intermittent horn-blowing at last produced a smallish man, in yardworker’s clothes, hurrying over the lawns from the direction of the tree-screened house.

      “Oh,” Mary said. “It’s Dorlan.” She waved to him through the gate.

      The little man, peering from inside, seemed to know Mary too, though he offered no real greeting. “Didn’t recognize the car,” he mumbled, and set about unlocking the