Author's Note: Having come up with a past history for Drinian in this chaper, I'm tempted to write it up as a full adventure. What do you think? Anybody be interested in reading it?
The instant she opened her eyes, she knew: something was changed. The ship no longer bucked and struggled, fighting the attempts of her crew to restrain her
"It's over," she murmured, hardly daring to speak the thought aloud. "At last it's calm again!"
Too calm, she realised. The Dawn Treader, hurled like a cork about the tumultuous ocean for twelve frenzied days, barely limped along, her great hull making none of the lively creaks of activity familiar to a well-travelled Narnian queen. Not having been on deck since the first squall had struck, Lucy picked out her brightest blue dress - a purchase made Narrowhaven - stepped into low sandals, and hastened up, through the hatch, onto the poop.
"Oh, my word!" she exclaimed, stopped in her tracks by the vision of devastation that greeted her. "It looks like a ruin!"
"The word's wreck, Lu. And it is." Edmund had offered his assistance, along with Caspian: and, such had been the enormity of the crisis that Drinian had swallowed his doubts about letting lubbers loose and accepted their aid in hauling on ropes, chopping away debris, and other such rough tasks he could hardly spare a trained seaman to complete. The haggard face of her brother was, therefore, some small preparation to Lucy for the more dramatic changes wrought by continual emergency in the rest of the crew.
There were, she was surprised to discover, few people about. A lone sailor stood at the tiller, where at the tempest's height three men, lashed together for safety, had battled to maintain some semblance of a course. One man had been sent back to the lookout shelf inside the prow: two more (she could hear if not see them, by the rhythmic clank-clank of the pump) worked to force the last of the invading waters from the bottom of the hold. Down on the main deck, a small knot of men under the supervision of their captain were labouring to reinforce the bowsprit, hastily rigged to the stump of the mainmast when the great tree trunk had been carried over the side on the fourth day of the storm.
Drinian's voice was raw as he called his instructions: Lucy winced in sympathy, feeling the snagging pain every word must cause his overused vocal chords in her own throat. Like the common seamen, he wore the same clothes as on the first day, stiffening with drying salt where they were not still damply clinging to his form. The poor man can hardly have left deck in a fortnight, she realised. Small wonder if he looked exhausted.
"Ah, Lucy!" Caspian was in a marginally more presentable state: he had been sent regularly to dry off and change into fresh clothes, though not all the power of the crown could have found him a hot meal aboard the wind-tossed vessel. "We have endured, as you see; but barely."
"I'm surprised we didn't drop straight to the bottom in this rotten, leaking tub," Eustace announced, daring anyone to debate with him. "Not even a signal flare, to call for help!"
"Small help's to be found hereabouts, young fella." Lacking the restraint of his betters, Erlian rose to the bait. "An' get yer 'and out o' that, do you want to be 'oisted up the jury-rig?"
"By the neck if we're lucky." The low rumble could only have come from one man: Rhince, lumbering awkwardly as any novice sailor in his weariness. "Make way, Yorr Majesty--" this to Caspian. "Cap'n, the boson's got men patchin' the sail, but…"
"More patch than original sail, eh?" Drinian pushed a hand back through his brine-matted hair. "We shall have a hot breakfast this morning, Rhince, for all the crew: then, I expect the better part of the men to retire to their hammocks 'til nightfall."
"What of yerself, Sir?"
"When I am satisfied the ship is as safe as may be, I shall leave her to your care, Master Mate. Mouse! Take that blasted rapier - your pardon, Queen Lucy - and remove yourself from any place where you might get under the feet of the crew! Have you not noticed, the Royal Galleon o' Narnia better resembles a prison hulk than a fencing gallery?"
Caspian sniffed, much affronted by his captain's frankness. Drinian flashed him a friendly grin, one that lifted the strain and the tiredness, and raised the spirits of all who saw it.
"Naught but the truth, Your Majesty. A good breakfast will make the task of restoring my lady the less daunting. I should say a good wash too, but we dare not spare the water. Two of the casks were breached in the hold; it would be wise, I believe, to begin rationing immediately."
"Oh, now that's just not on!" Into the serious silence, Eustace's shrill voice rang louder and surlier than ever. "It's bad enough that I was kidnapped and brought aboard this miserable wooden tub: now you're going to torture me as well! I don't mind telling you Pevensies, I shall be lodging a formal complaint against you both - and you, Caspian. You can't even keep that circus rat of yours under control, and these people expect you to get them out of this appalling mess…"
"The King won't get us out of it, Master Eustace." When Drinian spoke so sternly, Lucy noticed, even Caspian looked distinctly nervous. Had Scrubb never heard about the absolute authority of a captain over all those aboard his ship? "We shall find our way as a crew. Unless you have a worthy suggestion to offer, you - as a landsman and a stranger - would be best advised to hold your loose tongue. Beg pardon, Your Majesties - I am loath to grieve you by addressing a connection of yours so rudely."
"Don't mind us," Edmund assured him cheerfully. "Scrubb's an intolerable fellow in his better moods, and they don't come around too often. Can we have coffee with breakfast? I know the sun's burning off the last of that cloud, but I still feel chilled to my bones."
"Coffee it will be, King Edmund." Drinian stretched gingerly, flexing his aching back. "No eggs, mind."
"Not now the hens are all dead," Eustace agreed sweetly, grinning at the horrified squeal his words brought from his younger cousin. "Good gracious, Queen Lucy, you don't suppose they could swim, do you?"
Lucy bit her lip. "Drowned?" she questioned softly. Caspian nodded.
"It saved them from being crushed when the mast went crashing through their coop," Eustace told her cruelly. "Now if you only had the sense to keep that vicious little beast you call a mouse in a cage too…"
"We do not permit ignorant strangers to abuse the knights of our kingdom, whatever may be the custom in your native place." He was tired, he was hungry, and he was frightened, though a King could hardly confess as much. In such a condition, Caspian considered, it was hardly surprising that a gentleman's temper might fray. "As you suggest, my Lord Drinian; rationing of our water will be implemented immediately. Our foodstuffs…"
"More plentiful, Sire."
"We've got half a dozen tough hens to chew through. Jolly good, what more could we want?"
"Go away, Scrubb." Edmund's clenched his fists, longing to smack the smirking target his cousin presented. Just once in a while, he wished the Narnians were a little more vicious - a little more like their ancient enemies the Calormenes. "Don't suppose we can clap him in irons?"
"If they're Narnian ones, they'd probably break." Pleased with himself, Eustace sauntered toward the forecastle, waiting for the summons to eat.
"Ignore him," he heard Edmund advise. "If he doesn't get a response, he shuts up. Where do we go from here, Caspian? Captain?"
"Onward, King Edmund." He was not surprised the question should be asked, but that it should come from such a source puzzled Drinian. "What else is there to do?"
"Not much, I suppose," Edmund agreed slowly. Rynelf, one of the men working nearest, cleared his throat.
"Begging Your Majesties pardons, but we have no knowledge of there being hope ahead, Captain."
"And the certain knowledge that our water will last barely half the time it would require for us to reach the nearest land to the west." No sense in concealing the gravity of their position: Drinian expected his crew to be sensible enough to deduce it for themselves. "Under the unappealing circumstances before us, do we have a better choice than going on in hope?"
The seaman cocked his head. "Not that I see, Sir," he answered, returning cheerfully to his work. Drinian favoured him with a pleased smile.
"We'll have no difficulty from the men, Sire," he said quietly. Caspian nodded.
"We all knew the risks, I suppose," he agreed. "Ah, breakfast is ready! I never thought I should be so grateful for the promise of a hot meal!
As they assumed their places together with Reepicheep at the topmost of the mess tables, Drinian called the men to attention and, succinctly, laid out the position to them. Not a single voice - or not a single voice worth heeding, he amended - was raised in objection to the unanimous decision of monarch and captain to press on.
"It's all very well to talk." Eustace sounded more shrill than usual in the silence: probably meant he was frightened, Edmund thought. "But don't you see, it's all so much wishful thinking? You may all be happy to float around until we all die of starvation, but I'm not!"
"Thirst comes first, an' if the young gent was so clever, he'd know it!"
"That will do, Ugrian," said Caspian firmly. "Their Majesties' kinsman is entirely correct to remind us, we cannot know if safety lies before us. However, if the alternative to wishful thinking is giving up hope, or turning into the wind to attempt to row to known lands west… my Lord Drinian, we have water, at a quarter of a pint per man, for thirteen days. How long, in your estimation, would the journey to Narrowhaven require?"
"Twice that and more, Sire, and with men at the oars all the way," came the crisp response. Caspian nodded.
"Well, Eustace, taking all the facts into account, we appear to have no difficult decision before us. If, however, you can suggest an alternative escape from our dilemma…"
"I was kidnapped and dragged onto this crazy voyage," the boy replied loftily. "It's not for me to get you out of a mess you made."
"He means, he's got no idea," Edmund translated helpfully. Around the tables, men laughed.
"Rhince, we begin the rationing of water directly; you will be responsibly for distributing equal shares," Drinian instructed, glad to have his expectations of the men's stout-heartedness confirmed. "Forget not, shipmates, that Aslan gave his assent to His Majesty's quest. Would he have sent his anointed King of Narnia on a fool's errand to float until his bones can be picked apart by the seagulls?"
"The Cap'n's right," Rhince called out. Caspian nodded.
"I think, perhaps, he is," he said, looking (Lucy thought) far more cheered by the thought than he ought to have shown himself to be. "Well, shall we start breakfast?"
"A moment, if Your Majesty will allow it. Men, we have had little time to mourn our shipmate Puttendraw, lost overboard on the sixth day of the storm. Rise now, and honour him in silence before we continue the quest he began."
Lucy's little gasp was the only sound beside the creak of bones as every member of the crew and all their passengers (Eustace had to be kicked hard on the ankle by Edmund) stood with bowed heads. How had she failed to notice the empty space at the far table, where quiet, ruddy-faced Puttendraw had eaten his meals?
She tried to remember the sixth day; when the tempest had been at its height, and the Dawn Treader had been tossed from towering waves into dull, grey ocean troughs and the scream of the wind had whipped the words from men's throats before their neighbours could hear them. To be carried over the side and into the dark, broiling waters, to struggle a moment for a last glimpse of the ship as she surged ahead, knowing there could be no rescue, before being caught in the vortex and dragged down, down to the seabed, never to rise again. Could there be any fate more horrible than that?
At a nod from Drinian, the crew resumed their seats and began to eat; quietly, their minds still on their lost shipmate. Lucy followed suit, taking care to sip her water slowly. The rationing (the men might not have realised it, but she knew) had begun with the careful measuring of a cupful per man before the galley fire had even been lit. Drinian was not the captain to leave any thing to chance.
She suspected they were going to be very grateful for that fact, before the voyage was over.
No sooner was breakfast over, and every person's plate washed and stowed, than Drinian was dismissing Rhince and two-thirds of the crew to their quarters. "The ship is secure, and the weather seems set fair," he said, when the Mate protested against leaving a mere handful of men on duty in unknown waters. "I'll take the tiller. And by the Lion's Mane, if I see one of you on deck inside the next six hours…"
The threat was unfinished, and accompanied by a smile. Bowing to the inevitable with no more objection, Rhince led the majority of the men down the hatches and to an unbroken stretch of much-needed sleep.
Caspian hovered nervously at the ladder between the main and poop decks, watching his captain's calm adjustment of their course with wide eyes. "Caspian?" Lucy whispered, plucking his sleeve. "What's the matter? You look as though you've got something to say and you don't know how to do it."
"Eh?" The young king blinked, guilt flashing across his face. "Well, in a manner of speaking. Oh, what am I thinking of? Drinian!"
"Aye, C - Sire?" There it was again, the almost-slip. Queen Lucy had noticed it, and seemed amused more than affronted that a mere nobleman should presume to use his sovereign's name. She followed him up the ladder, King Edmund behind her, both of them determined to understand what had their friend flapping like a frightened hen. Not the best of similies, Drinian decided, remembering the awful sight of the birds drowned in their own coop, their feathers torn where they had pecked at each other in the panic.
"I must apologise, my friend." That was the best way to do it, Caspian assured himself, apologising not being an art a king had much practise in. "When poor Puttendraw went overboard, I ought not to have said what I did."
"Your Majesty's reaction was quite natural, Sire." By the clipped formality of the phrase, Lucy guessed that the apology was more needed than Drinian would admit. "The instinctive response of any man to seeing a fellow in trouble is, surely, to call for assistance."
"Yes, but - confound it, Drinian, I promised I should never seek to counter your commands on this ship! And what I said after… old friend, I am sorry. I know you would have been the first man into the water, had there been any hope of bringing the ship around and saving that poor fellow."
"A captain's job can be jolly tough at times," Edmund put in, remembering the wise words of old Purlian, captain of the Four Sovereigns' galleon, Splendour Hyaline. "Especially when he has to place the safety of the ship above the life of one of his men."
"True enough, King Edmund." A frown darkened his brow before, resolutely, Drinian cast melancholy aside. "Besides, if Your Majesty must apologise for the breach of a promise made before we sailed, so must I! I seem to recall that, in answering your demand that we go about for Puttendraw, I ignored Your Highness' title in favour of the more familiar mode of address I almost used again just now."
Caspian grinned. "That breach of promise I can accept gladly enough! Hearing so many Sires and Majesties from you is distressing! My friends, you see, my Lord of Etinsmere and I were partners in mischief as boys, in the days before Miraz contrived to steal my father's crown. I fancy Edmund and Lucy will forgive me, if I ask that our use of given names, above titles, is extended from the privacy of our own conversations to include those witnessed by them."
"Nothing to forgive," said Edmund promptly. "It's jolly difficult to be a Majesty all the time, isn't it, Lu? Knowing what it's like - and I had Peter and the girls to remind me of my name - I'm glad there's at least one person in Narnia can cut the formalities and talk to Caspian, not the King."
"What happened to you, Drinian? When Miraz seized the throne, I mean?" Lucy had sensed there was a story behind the obvious friendship between the sovereign and his captain, yet had never found the excuse to enquire. Drinian's shoulders lifted.
"My father, Ma'am, was Tirian, the late King's chief counsellor: too close to His Majesty to be allowed to live and lead a revolt against a jealous usurper that murdered his master. In the same hour that Miraz was creeping into His Majesty's chambers, two of his affinity - Glozelle and Sopespian, if the rumours of the time can be credited - broke down the doors of Etinsmere and slew the master of the place before the eyes of his infant daughter. To stop her screams, they murdered my sweet Katharina too. I was spared by the good sense of our nurse, that prevented my running through the nursery and into Katharina's room."
"Oh, Drinian! How awful!" Edmund was horrified. Lucy, her hands clasped at her mouth, could only nod.
"My mother was from the house, tending a sick relation," the young nobleman continued, almost as if to himself. "When she returned at dawn, she found horses saddled and me dressed, ready for escape. We fled across the Mount Pire Pass, into Archenland, where my father's sister lived with her husband, once Admiral of that country's fleet. There, we heard of the death of Caspian, our master, and the seizure by his brother of the Narnian crown. We heard, too, how my poor mother was accused of the killing of her lord. No mention was made of my poor sister: until Caspian X came into his proper inheritance, it was assumed in Narnia that she, like myself, was safe in Archenland."
"How old was she?" Lucy could only squeak, her voice filled with tears. Drinian expelled a sigh.
"Only five, Ma'am; I was past my eighth birthday by half a year. Oh, we lived well enough in Archenland; I had my freedom, unlike Caspian here, held under the beady eyes of Miraz and his vicious queen. I joined my first ship - the Archenlandish frigate Tiger - on my tenth birthday , and with their fleet I served eight years, until word came from Narnia of His Majesty's victory over the tyrant. I resigned my post, saddled the swiftest of my horses, and rode for home."
"To the very great delight of all his old friends," Caspian finished warmly. "Drinian has been first amongst my council ever since; Trumpkin, Trufflehunter and the rest admire him vastly: and by his efforts, the Dawn Treader will be but the first great ship to sail under the banner of the Lion."
"Aye, Sire: the carrack Narnia Brave will be close to launching now, and the shipwright Master Mortan has a dozen further vessels laid down. My ancestors were seamen, Your Majesties - the first Lord of Etinsmere was granted his honours for commanding the Telmarine fleet, no less. It has been our boast, through generations when Narnians cowered from the coasts, that we Etinsmeres have salt water flowing where the blood should be."
"So you see, this quest of mine is Drinian's too," Caspian explained. "The lost lords were friends of his father; the last of King Caspian's party alive, for Miraz murdered others, that dared question the deaths of both their leaders in one black night. Indeed there were others, killed in strange accidents during the first months of Miraz's reign. Danilvar of Glasswater fell from a roof, with only Madam Prunaprismia for witness. Belisar of the East March was felled by an arrow out hunting; Lord Sopespian found his body. Drinian…"
"The Lord of the Lantern Waste was discovered by Glozelle, drowned in a muddy ditch. Erimon, my uncle, and his ally Arlian were executed, for supposed treason to the new regime. The heirs of those gentlemen and others were persecuted during the usurper's reign, Your Majesties, and all now are part of King Caspian's court."
"I knew Miraz had been a tyrant, of course," Edmund murmured, "but somehow, I never realised he was quite as bad as that! By all means use your normal way of talking, in front of Lucy and me; in fact, if you call him Caspian when the crew don't hear, and we call him that all the time, I reckon you really should stop majesty-ing us. We prefer to be Edmund and Lucy to our friends - don't we, Lu?"
"Absolutely." Lucy nodded until her ponytail was bouncing. Drinian, after a sidelong glance to obtain his master's approval, smiled broadly.
"If it be the will of Your Majesties, then Edmund and Lucy it shall be. But with a single member of the crew about to hear, the formalities will be maintained."
"Understood." Lucy thrust out her hand. One brow raised, Drinian shook it solemnly. Caspian grinned.
"Well, my friends," he said, his heart feeling lighter than it had since the day before the storm had crashed upon his poor, gallant ship. "If you will excuse a mere passenger, I believe I shall abuse my fortunate position aboard and get some sleep. I've spent scarce a quarter the time on deck that Drinian has these past two weeks, and I can barely hold my eyes open!"
"Always was a contemptible lubber," Drinian muttered teasingly as his king and friend turned away.
The laughter of his three closest comrades was the last thing King Caspian heard as the hatch closed, letting the gloom of the lower decks consume him.