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

      Incipient tears in the eyes of Mr. Thorn were stopped by harsh cries of alarm. Another sort of liquid, flung from behind, struck him on the shoulder, and scarlet droplets spattered past his ear to mar the cheek and hair of Magdalen.

      He turned with a snarl. The girl in unfashionable blue jeans was on her feet, holding in one hand a small plastic bag almost emptied but still drooling red on the expensive carpet. Vindictive triumph ruled her face. Closer at hand, Ellison Seabright had been incarnadined from head to foot, Rodrigo Borgia skinned alive, standing in stunned disbelief. His bodyguard, galvanized too late, came pushing forward in a fury. Men and women in uniform, springing from the walls and woodwork, were all around the triumphant girl, about to seize her. You are under arrest, they cried, and in a moment they would manacle her wrists.

Chapter Two

      Quite early in the game, long before our long marching column approached Buda, the chains of hand-wrought iron were unlocked and taken from my wrists. At the same time, my ankles were untied, and I was given a better horse to ride. To my thinking all this served as an early confirmation of my own good judgment in deciding to throw myself upon the mercy of King Matthias. Of course with the Turks close at my heels and the remnants of my own outnumbered army fast dissolving, there had been little real choice.

      The king, when he accepted my surrender, had been angry with me—mainly as a result of certain false accusations, lying letters planted by my enemies for him to intercept, a whole devious chain of circumstances that I do not mean to go into here. But evidently His Majesty soon realized the truth. I did not have another chance to talk to him during the march to Buda, but his officers must have been given orders to treat me well. When we reached Buda they put me into a cell high up in the fortress, a stone chamber better ventilated and cleaner than many of the free houses of the time.

      My food also was good, by the standards of the time and place, and plentiful enough. This was, you understand, more than twelve years before I fell under the treacherous swords of would-be murderers, stopped breathing, and acquired my present idiosyncrasies of diet. And when cold weather arrived I was allowed a fire. Guards took me out each day for exercise in a courtyard. There I sometimes walked under the noses of papal legates—I recognized Nicholas of Modrusa once—ambassadors from here and there, some other important men and curious ladies whom I could not identify. None of these ever spoke to me, but observed silently, from balconies where they usually chose to remain half concealed. Even then, you will understand, my reputation was under construction, by German enemies who employed Goebbelsian thoroughness in their attempted destruction of the truth. Now, for important folk visiting His Majesty at Buda, the in thing to do was evidently to ask to see the monster caged. Well, at the time I enjoyed my walks despite observers, and perhaps I should now think more kindly of them. Some were doubtless sympathetic to my cause, and they may have expressed their feelings to Matthias. Still, I spent a year in that first cell.

      From time to time I was given brief audience by the king, who limited himself for the most part to looking at me keenly and inquiring how I was. Matthias was then only twenty years of age, but had already spent four years on the throne of Hungary. He had come to power by what amounted to popular acclamation; and time had already begun to vindicate the confidence thus shown him by his people.

      At the end of a year I was suddenly moved about fifty kilometers up the Danube to Visegrad Palace, where Matthias was currently spending a good deal of his time. A good deal of money, also, which he extracted mercilessly from the wealthy landowners of his realm, and not all of it was going to feed and equip his formidable army. Scholars and artists from across Europe were beginning to assemble there at his invitation. Already they had started to put together the magnificent library that would be known as the Corvina, and only a few years later the palace would house the first printing press in all that region of Europe … but I am beginning to stray from my story.

      At the Palace of Visegrad I was again incarcerated. Just as the history books of the twentieth century will tell you—they do now and then get something right, at least—I was put into a cell in what was called the Tower of Solomon. My cell, or perhaps I should even call it a room, was even more comfortable than before, and the conditions of my confinement still more lenient. The thought of attempting to escape from Matthias had never struck me as a very good idea, and now even the faintest tendencies in that direction quite vanished from my mind. All signs tended to reassure me that my instinct to trust the king had been correct. Escape, even if it succeeded, could hardly get me anywhere, for I had literally nowhere to go. But patience would reveal what plans that wise, just prince was formulating, in which he meant me to play a role.

      I felt increasingly certain that the king’s plans, whatever they might be, must offer me something better than mere confinement, however mild its terms. I had never been more than technically Matthias’s foe; his anger at me was due more to the conniving of my enemies than to anything that I had really done. And, if I may say so myself, I was too good to be wasted. Sooner or later the king would determine the right place in which to use me, and when that happened I could not fail to be restored to