"Gordon R. Dickson - Dragon Knight 08 - The Dragon in Lyonesse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

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Chapter One

“My der frens,” Sir John Chandos had written to the Lord and Lady of Castle Malencontri; in a small,
crabbed hand, but at least also in plain English and without the flourishes of the scribes that usually made
such letters hard to puzzle out for Malencontri’s Lord, Baron Sir James Eckert. “I writ thys secretly yn
mine own band to tell ye that the crown warrants for arests for treson of ye and others ye knaw be now
at last witout noise in law witdrwn. So ye might knaw tbys and so be mor at eese. May Goddes blesing
be wit ye. Jon Cbandos, knight.”
 “It’s a little confused near the end, there,” said Sir James. He had passed the message to his Lady,
Angela Eckert, and was rereading it over her shoulder as she went through it. “But it seems plain enough.
Even though the Earl of Cumberland got the warrants signed by the King somehow, originally, now
they’ve been erased from whatever record might be kept-or something like that. Don’t you think? Well,
say something, Angie!”

Angie-the Lady Angela-moved a little closer to the window of the Solar, their Private apartment at the
top of Malencontri’s Tower, so that the light of the bright autumn morning could fall full on the unfolded
piece of thick, grayish paper.

“It’s very well written for someone of this fourteenth century, doing his own correspondence,” she said.
“Jim, do you recognize Chandos’s handwriting?”

“Well, no,” said Jim. “But then I’ve never had anything from him before that wasn’t scribe-written. But if
you stop and think what he does-being sort of unofficial head of whatever Intelligence Service the King
has-he’d naturally have had some practice writing his own private letters. Besides, who else in the
fourteenth century would send a letter just to stop us from worrying-or even stop to think we might be
worrying? I don’t think it’d even occur to Brian, good friend as he is. We’d better burn this letter,
though, to protect Chandos.”

“Not yet,” said Angie, carefully folding the parchment; and tucking it into one of the thin wooden boxes
attached to her accounts table, that was the closest the Castle’s carpenter had been able to come up
with, by way of a desk. “I’ll keep it safe; and as far as Sir Brian Neville-Smythe goes, he’s got worries
enough of his own lately, over that father of Geronde.”

Jim could hardly disagree. Brian-Lord of Smythe Castle, such as that run-down small holding was-knight
and champion jouster, had been betrothed to the Lady Geronde Isabel de Chancy of the well-off hold of
Malvern, since they had both been children. But Brian and Geronde had been unable to marry without
the official consent of her father. So Jim and Brian, earlier this same year, had finally located him in the
eastern lands, where he had gone adventuring some years before; and brought him home.

Their return should have been the beginning of a happy period. It had not been. As far back as when
Geronde had been only eleven, it developed, she had never seen eye to eye with her father-or he with
her.