VIGNETTE THREE - INTO THE UNKNOWN

"The next time Your Majesties seek to feel the sand between your toes on a lonely island, remind me to assemble a guard troop," Drinian teased, leaning back from the groaning table with a smile to his charming hostess. Amidst laughter, only the host remained grave.

"Gladly though I should receive my old friends, were they to return from the East, I must beg Your Graces again to turn back from this cursed quest of yours."

"My Lord Bern." When crossed, the new Governor - and first Duke - of the Lone Islands thought, His youthful Majesty was more than ever the imperious image of his father. "For my part, I made a vow in the presence of Aslan, and before all my subjects, that I would venture beyond the known lands in search of our missing countrymen."

"After all these years, Sire!" Bern twisted the curled end of his thick golden beard between stubby fingers. "Not a sign of my shipmates, nor of their crew! They are dead. To waste your precious life in proving the fact serves neither Narnia nor Aslan."

"What proof have we of their deaths?" Drinian enquired, passing the spiced wine down the table to Edmund at the young gentleman's request. "It may be there are prosperous lands east of this one; that they and all their Galmian crew have settled in them, as you did here, to a better life than any honest man knew in Miraz's Narnia."

"That's true," Lucy seconded. "And even if they are dead, they shouldn't simply be forgotten. Oath or no oath, we have to look for them."

"Well spoken, Queen Lucy," Caspian murmured, his goblet raised in salute. She coloured.

"Are you really Queen Lucy?" Bern's littlest daughter, Sara, enquired, tugging the girl's skirt. "She reigned hundreds and hundreds of years ago; even before Papa's time!"

"Sara! Your Majesty, crave pardon, the child has not yet begun her fourth year!"

"Goodness, we're not offended - are we, Ed? Time flows differently in our world, Sara; when we reigned in Narnia…"

"In the Golden Age," the infant piped up. Lucy smiled.

"So people call it, but I suppose the past always seems preferable to the present, doesn't it? We were crowned as children and grew up; we lived thirty years in Narnia before we stumbled back into our other world; and there, we were children again, and nobody had even noticed we were gone! I don't understand it, so I don't imagine you can."

"I should like to be a Queen," Sara mused, casting a vicious look at the new Duchess of the Islands as she came to bear her chick away. "Nobody call tell a Queen when she has to go to bed!"

"Nobody but a King," Edmund added. "I say, Scrubb, aren't you going to eat those sweetmeats? Pass them alone like a good fellow."

"Filthy, unhealthy things," Eustace grumbled, shoving the platter past Lucy and knocking her goblet over in the process. As servants rushed to dab the mess, and Reepicheep very obviously fingered the blade of his rapier (he refused to leave it outside the dining hall: Edmund suspected it was to defend itself from Eustace Clarence the Mouse was so adamant on the issue) the boy Pug had labelled Sulky produced a mammoth pout. "And that ghastly child would make just as much a Queen as Lucy! Golden Age! Never heard such nonsense!"

His shrill squeaks carried the length of the high-roofed Great Hall, and all heads turned. "Our cousin is new to this world," Edmund stated, the fine hairs at the back of his neck prickling under the horrified stares. "He has no knowledge of our history."

"And I doubt 'e knows 'ow to read a book!"

"That will do, Lina!" Bern's fist slammed into the tabletop sending the empty dishes bouncing. "And how often must I remind you, he and how begin with an H! I must apologise, Master Eustace - Your Highnesses. My firstborn's manners are unforgivable. Now, are you still determined to sail on the dawn tide tomorrow?"

"Aye." Drinian answered for everyone. "The Narrowhaven tides seldom flood so high; there'll be less rowing for the men, and with the hold stocked and the rigging renewed, we have no cause for further delay."

"Our captain tires of the land, my dear Bern," Caspian quipped, rubbing his filled belly with one hand. "And he is perfectly correct; further delaying is wasteful to us, and unnecessarily costly to your people. Come, a Royal court at your door is an unconscionable expense!"

"Your Majesty's court has restored freedom and good law to our islands, Sire." The Lady Vera spoke on behalf of her own people. Caspian thought he could understand perfectly why Bern had abandoned his perilous seaborne life for the love of her. "We had thought Gumpas would cheat himself into the Governor's chambers for all our lifetimes!"

"Aye, but had you seen his face, when my Lord Drinian and I overturned his table!" Bern rubbed his hands together. The younger gentleman grinned.

"Or when we plucked him from his chair and dropped him on the floor."

"Or when we appointed another to the post he disgraced. Do not tell me, my Lord Duke, that no good can come of this uncertain quest of ours. In restoring right to these, our dominions, we have performed a noble task."

"Pompous twaddle!"

"And you'd know about pomposity, Scrubb!"

"Ed, don't let him upset you; you know it only makes him worse."

"Look at him, sniggering like an idiot," Edmund agreed disgustedly. "Don't s'pose we can leave him here?"

"Edmund!" Lucy was really shocked. "I know he's a beast, but he is really here because of us."

"Jus' what the islands need," Rhince opined in a low rumble, intended as a whisper. "Rid o' one bletherin' windbag in Gumpas, give 'em 'er Majesty's cousin instead!"

All the men of the Narnian nobility at her table, Lucy was almost certain, were hard pressed not to smile at their countryman's bad manners.

So was she.

On the next morning, four weeks after Narnian feet had sunk into the sands of Felimath, all of Narrowhaven - if not all of Doorn - assembled on the harbour walls to wave their Emperor's galleon away to the unknown East. In a small tavern, Pug, once the islands' most prosperous slave merchant, sulked with his cronies, moodily plotting a more profitable career once the interfering foreigners were gone.

Gathered on the Dawn Treader's quarterdeck, Caspian, Reepicheep and the Pevensies waved as enthusiastically on behalf of themselves and the crew, all, from the Captain down, smoothly moving about their tasks for the ship's getting under way. As the cheering grew fainter, and the golden prow swung from the narrow Roads into open sea, the young King expelled a deep breath and turned to his nearest friend, stooped over the compass to call the smallest of corrections to the man swinging on the ship's wheel.

"Well, my Lord Drinian," he said. "Here begins the true adventure. Who can tell what land - if any - we shall lay eye - or foot - on next?"

"One thing Your Majesty may depend upon with confidence," replied the other, not troubling to glance from his work. "His foot will be accompanied by those of half a dozen heavily armed guards! No more idle wanderings, King Caspian: nay, no matter how tranquil the landscapes may look!"