The Mystery Knight

Mercifully, the Fiddler’s toast was the last. Lord Butterwell rose ponderously to thank them for coming and promise good jousting on the morrow. “Let the feast begin!”

Suckling pig was served at the high table, a peacock roasted in its plumage, a great pike crusted with crushed almonds. Not a bite of that made it down below the salt. Instead of suckling pig, they got salt pork, soaked in almond milk and peppered pleasantly. In place of peacock, they had capons, crisped up nice and brown and stuffed with onions, herbs, mushrooms, and roasted chestnuts. In place of pike, they ate chunks of flaky white cod in a pastry coffyn, with some sort of tasty brown sauce that Dunk could not quite place. There was pease porridge besides, buttered turnips, carrots drizzled with honey, and a ripe white cheese that smelled as strong as Bennis of the Brown Shield. Dunk ate well, but all the while wondered what Egg was getting in the yard. Just in case, he slipped half a capon into the pocket of his cloak, with some hunks of bread and a little of the smelly cheese.

As they ate, pipes and fiddles filled the air with spritely tunes, and the talk turned to the morrow’s jousting. “Ser Franklyn Frey is well regarded along the Green Fork,” said Uthor Underleaf, who seemed to know these local heroes well. “That’s him upon the dais, the uncle of the bride. Lucas Nayland is down from Flag’s Mire, he should not be discounted. Nor should Ser Mortimer Boggs, of Crackclaw Point. Elsewise, this should be a tourney of household knights and village heroes. Kirby Pimm and Galtry the Green are the best of those, though neither is a match for Lord Butterwell’s good-son, Black Tom Heddle. A nasty bit of business, that one. He won the hand of His Lordship’s eldest daughter by killing three of her other suitors, it’s said, and once unhorsed the Lord of Casterly Rock.”

“What, young Lord Tybolt?” asked Ser Maynard.

“No, the old Grey Lion, the one who died in the spring.” That was how men spoke of those who had perished during the Great Spring Sickness. He died in the spring. Tens of thousands had died in the spring, among them a king and two young princes.

“Do not slight Ser Buford Bulwer,” said Kyle the Cat. “The Old Ox slew forty men upon the Redgrass Field.”

“And every year his count grows higher,” said Ser Maynard. “Bulwer’s day is done. Look at him. Past sixty, soft and fat, and his right eye is good as blind.”

“Do not trouble to search the hall for the champion,” a voice behind Dunk said. “Here I stand, sers. Feast your eyes.”

Dunk turned to find Ser John the Fiddler looming over him, a half smile on his lips. His white silk doublet had lagged sleeves lined with red satin, so long their points drooped down past his knees. A heavy silver chain looped across his chest, studded with huge dark amethysts whose color matched his eyes. That chain is worth as much as everything I own, Dunk thought.

The wine had colored Ser Glendon’s cheeks and inflamed his pimples. “Who are you, to make such boasts?”

“They call me John the Fiddler.” “Are you a musician or a warrior?”

“I can make sweet song with either lance or resined bow, as it happens. Every wedding needs a singer, and every tourney needs a mystery knight. May I join you? Butterwell was good enough to place me on the dais, but I prefer the company of my fellow hedge knights to fat pink ladies and old men.” The Fiddler clapped Dunk upon the shoulder. “Be a good fellow and shove over, Ser Duncan.”

Dunk shoved over. “You are too late for food, ser.”

“No matter. I know where Butterwell’s kitchens are. There is still some wine, I trust?” The Fiddler smelled of oranges and limes, with a hint of some strange eastern spice beneath. Nutmeg, perhaps. Dunk could not have said. What did he know of nutmeg?

“Your boasting is unseemly,” Ser Glendon told the Fiddler.

“Truly? Then I must beg for your forgiveness, ser. I would never wish to give offense to any son of Fireball.”

That took the youth aback. “You know who I am?” “Your father’s son, I hope.”

“Look,” said Ser Kyle the Cat. “The wedding pie.”

Six kitchen boys were pushing it through the doors, upon a wide wheeled cart. The pie was brown and crusty and immense, and there were noises coming from inside it, squeaks and squawks and thumps. Lord and Lady Butterwell descended from the dais to meet it, sword in hand. When they cut it open, half a hundred birds burst forth to fly around the hall. In other wedding feasts Dunk had attended, the pies had been filled with doves or songbirds, but inside this one were bluejays and skylarks, pigeons and doves, mockingbirds and nightingales, small brown sparrows and a great red parrot. “One-and-twenty sorts of birds,” said Ser Kyle. “One-and-twenty sorts of bird droppings,” said Ser Maynard.

“You have no poetry in your heart, ser.”

“You have shit upon your shoulder.”

“This is the proper way to fill a pie,” Ser Kyle sniffed, cleaning off his tunic. “The pie is meant to be the marriage, and a true marriage has in it many sorts of things — joy and grief, pain and pleasure, love and lust and loyalty. So it is fitting that there be birds of many sorts. No man ever truly knows what a new wife will bring him.”

“Her cunt,” said Plumm, “or what would be the point?”

Dunk shoved back from the table. “I need a breath of air.” It was a piss he needed, truth be told, but in fine company like this, it was more courteous to talk of air. “Pray excuse me.”

“Flurry back, ser,” said the Fiddler. “There are jugglers yet to come, and you do not want to miss the bedding.”

Outside, the night wind lapped at Dunk like the tongue of some great beast. The hard-packed earth of the yard seemed to move beneath his feet…or it might be that he was swaying.

The lists had been erected in the center of the outer yard. A three-tiered wooden viewing stand had been raised beneath the walls, so Lord Butterwell and his highborn guests would be well shaded on their cushioned seats. There were tents at both ends of the lists where the knights could don their armor, with racks of tourney lances standing ready. When the wind lifted the banners for an instant, Dunk could smell the whitewash on the tilting barrier. He set off in search of the inner ward. He had to hunt up Egg and send the boy to the master of the games to enter him in the lists. That was a squire’s duty.

Whitewalls was strange to him, however, and somehow Dunk got turned around. He found himself outside the kennels, where the hounds caught scent of him and began to bark and howl. They want to tear my throat out, he thought, or else they want the capon in my cloak. He

doubled back the way he’d come, past the sept. A woman went running past, breathless with laughter, a bald knight in hard pursuit. The man kept falling, until finally the woman had to come back and help him up. I should slip into the sept and ask the Seven to make that knight my first opponent, Dunk thought, but that would have been impious. What I really need is a privy, not a prayer. There were some bushes near at hand, beneath a flight of pale stone steps. Those will serve. He groped his way behind them and unlaced his breeches. His bladder had been full to bursting. The piss went on and on.

Somewhere above, a door came open. Dunk heard footfalls on the steps, the scrape of boots on stone. “… beggar’s feast you’ve laid before us Without Bittersteel…”

“Bittersteel be buggered,” insisted a familiar voice. “No bastard can be trusted, not even him. A few victories will bring him over the water fast enough.”

Lord Peake. Dunk held his breath…and his piss.

“Easier to speak of victories than to win them.” This speaker had a deeper voice than Peake, a bass rumble with an angry edge to it. “Old Milkblood expected the boy to have it, and so will all the rest. Glib words and charm cannot make up for that.”

“A dragon would. The prince insists the egg will hatch. He dreamed it, just as he once dreamed his brothers dead. A living dragon will win us all the swords that we would want.”

“A dragon is one thing, a dream’s another. I promise you, Bloodraven is not off dreaming. We need a warrior, not a dreamer. Is the boy his father’s son?”

“Just do your part as promised, and let me concern myself with that. Once we have Butterwell’s gold and the swords of House Frey, Harrenhal will follow, then the Brackens. Otho knows he cannot hope to stand…”

The voices were fading as the speakers moved away. Dunk’s piss began to flow again. He gave his cock a