The captain of the Dawn Treader was four years the king’s senior, tall like a strong young sapling, wicked with a sword, quick-witted and bright. Now that Narnia no longer feared the sea, Drinian was wont to be a very great man; so he thought, and so everyone seemed to say. He would make his home on the waves: a mighty captain and a prince of the seas.
When the Dawn Treader embarked, he scarcely expected to retire from seafaring after one voyage. But he scarcely knew King Caspian then.
Caspian pleasant, sharp, and charismatic, but more than anything he was insatiably curious. The young king peppered Drinian with questions at every opportunity. “What does this instrument do?” “Why is this rope tied here instead of over there?” “How far can you see when you look out at the horizon?”
Drinian could not help but love him. They fell into an easy report of laughter, competition, and honest advice. Before the first month was out, Drinian felt as though he had never known life without King Caspian by his side. Their souls, he felt, were knit together by something intangible, yet utterly indelible.
Because he loved him, Drinian did what he could to be beside his king always.
When at last the Dawn Treader came to port in Narnia, pennants flying, Drinian found Caspian in his stateroom preparing to disembark. The Star’s Daughter had been staying there since Ramandu’s island, but the king had all manner of items stored about the room that needed organizing.
Drinian stood in the doorway until he was sure he had Caspian’s full attention. Then he took off his sword belt and his mail shirt and his helmet, knelt before the king, and offered them up. It was a pledge like a knight of old might have made. No words were needed.
Caspian stood looking at him for a long moment. Drinian lowered his gaze. Then suddenly there was a hand beneath his chin: Caspian’s hand, raising Drinian’s face to meet his eyes. He took the sword and the proffered armor and placed them on his desk, then returned and gave Drinian his signet ring.
“Brother of my soul,” he said, “I thank thee.”
-
Drinian stood for Caspian at his wedding. When Rilian was born, he was the third person ever to hold the child.
Rilian was hot to the touch when he was born, but the Lady Queen said this was to be expected for the blood of the stars. He blinked up at Drinian and kicked his impossibly tiny feet. When Drinian turned to the king, he saw that Caspian was weeping
-
When Caspian rode out to battle, Drinian rode beside him. The Lady Star managed the Cair in their absence, safe in the knowledge that her husband was defended by a knight more loyal than any other. Indeed, sometimes Drinian flattered himself to imagine that Caspian was like King Peter of old, and that Drinian was the King Edmund, his brother. It was said that those two never failed in defense of one another; neither did Drinian intend to fail his king.
Drinian remembered King Edmund, but he’d never met King Peter. Caspian talked about him sometimes: young, but brimming with strength and a leader’s poise. A strategist and a warrior. The greatest and most humble man he’d ever met.
“I haven’t come to take your place, you know, but to put you in it.”
In the Golden Age, had King Edmund worried over his brother before battle? Had he poked as many holes as he could find in his King Peter’s stratagems, fortifying them and making them better? Had he held King Peter on his shoulder when soldiers were lost at the High King’s word?
He must have, Drinian imagined. From the months they had spent together, Drinian knew King Edmund to be a measured and stalwart man. At any rate, Drinian aimed to be nothing less to Caspian.
-
As Rilian grew, he came to rely on Drinian’s council. He was like an uncle and more: patient when the King was weary and present when the Queen grew distant. Drinian was the first to know when the young Rilian loved a girl, twelve years old and hopelessly woebegone. He’d patted the boy on the back and regaled him with stories of hearts broken and mended.
As he grew, Rilian confided deeper concerns: disputes with his father, insecurity in his role as prince, fear on the eve of battle.
Drinian listened as one who had long ago pledged his life to Rilian’s father. In time he came to love the boy almost as his own.
-
Once, the Lady Queen put her warm hand on Drinian’s arm and whispered, “I could never have wished for a greater brother to my husband, nor a dearer uncle to our son. Thou’rt more beloved of our family than I can say, dear Captain.”
-
They were happy for many years: Caspian, the Lady Star, Rilian, and Drinian. This bears saying. Whatever came after, they were happy for many years. Narnia prospered and her royal family had joy.
-
On a sweet spring morn when Rilian was a young man, the royal retinue returned to the Cair with the cold body of the Queen in tow. That evening found Rilian in Drinian’s quarters, mourning there so as not to compound his father’s shattering grief.
“She tried to speak,” murmured Rilian, staring unblinking at a point on the wall behind Drinian’s left shoulder. “She tried to speak but she could not be understood. Now I shall never know what words she wanted to say in her final moments.”
“Courage,” said Drinian, “thou’lt speak with her again when Aslan takes thee to his own country.”
“Yes,” said Rilian, drawing himself up and finally meeting Drinian’s eyes. “Yes, courage. The worm that slew her still lives, and I’ll not rest so long as it remains alive.”
-
Caspian arrived at Drinian’s door mere minutes after Rilian had left. On seeing him, Drinian immediately enfolded the king in his arms.
“Brother of my soul,” Caspian wept on Drinian’s shoulder. “I loved her! Do you know how much? Oh, how I loved her. My darling, my sister, my bride!”
-
A month passed during which Rilian was scarcely seen in the lands around the Cair. The Lady Queen was interred beneath a great white stone. Caspian wept and moved through the halls of the castle as though surrounded by a thick haze of fog. Drinian comforted him. Rilian rode north again and again.
During the short times when he was at home, the prince looked as though he had seen visions. His eyes were wide and tired and there was a manic energy in his limbs. He did not seem to sleep.
Caspian did not seem to notice the change in his son, so lost was he in the fog of his own grief. Yet Drinian saw it. He sought the boy out one evening and urged him to give up his hunt for the worm. “There is no true vengeance on a witless brute as there might be on a man.”
Rilian drew back, eyes alight with something dangerous that Drinian had never seen before. “I have almost forgotten the worm these seven days!” he exclaimed.
“Then, by the Lion’s mane, why dost thou ride so continually into the northern woods? Child, the king grieves. He needs thee beside him.”
“That may be,” replied the prince, “but my lord! There I have seen the most beautiful thing that was ever made.”
Drinian thought of the lilies and the light at world’s end. He thought of the Star’s Daughter as he had first seen her, of Caspian on his wedding day, of the baby prince blinking and sniffling on the day of his birth. He looked at Rilian’s transformed face and he feared for the son of his heart.
-
Drinian had many good reasons to withhold the story of the woman Rilian was seeing at the fountain, at least for the moment. Rilian had asked him to keep it secret, and Drinian had never before broken the boy’s confidence. Caspian had too much weight on his shoulders already; he walked like an old man now and Drinian could not bear to add to his worries. There was no cause to think that the woman was an immediate danger to Rilian, for they had been meeting for more than a week without incident.
Yet when Rilian did not return from the north one night, Drinian’s heart was disturbed within him. As the hours passed and the shadows grew long, he tore his clothes and paced his quarters, summoning the courage to do what he must.
He found Caspian seated outside the Small Armory waiting for word from the search parties. His shoulders were slumped and his hair grew white at the temples. Drinian’s dearest friend was wasting before him and he had no power to stop it. No, he could only add to Caspian’s woes, more’s the pity.
Drinian fell to a knee, just as he had done aboard the Dawn Treader so many years before. He put out his hands, empty now, and bowed his head. “Lord King, slay me speedily as a great traitor, for by my silence I have destroyed your son.”
Caspian stood; it seemed to take an age. Yet when at last he was on his feet, he hefted a battle axe and rushed forward upon Drinian.
Drinian held fast, prepared for the death-blow, until he felt a hand beneath his chin.
The axe had been cast aside. Caspian stood stooped before him and lifted Drinian’s head so that their eyes met. “I have lost my queen and my son,” he said, tears welling at the corners of his eyes. “Shall I lose my friend also?”
The king held out a hand and drew Drinian to his feet. An instant later he was enfolded in strong arms. “Brother of my soul,” Caspian wept. “How could I bear it?”
-
In all the next fortnight, Drinian and the king were scarcely parted. They supped together, slept in adjoining chambers, and wept together.
Oft times they walked by the sea in the cool of the day, listening to the lapping of the waves and the cry of the gulls. Drinian recounted stories he had learned as a boy from his Galman mother, of sirens and pirates and children riding across the seas on the backs of great whales. Once in a while he drew a smile from the king.
“Perhaps we should go to sea again,” Caspian said one such evening. “Another voyage. Perhaps it would be a balm to the soul.”
“Someday,” Drinian answered. “Not today. Thou art too much a king to depart with the kingdom in such a state.”
“With my soul in such a state.”
“Am I not the brother of thy soul? Have I not sworn it? Give me a little of thy care, Majesty, and I’ll carry it for you.”
Caspian opened his mouth and shut it. “Tis beyond speech,” he said.
“I know it,” answered Drinian. “Say only what thou canst. The Lion, in his mercy, will provide the rest.”
-
“O my son Rilian, my son, my son Rilian! Would the Lion I had died for thee! O Rilian, my son, my son!”
-
When at last Caspian was old and sick and dying, he walked with Drinian by the sea and told him, “The time has come.”
She was a beautiful ship, taller and sturdier than Dawn Treader once was. She was elegantly designed, artfully crafted and expertly engineered bow to stern. If he had been a different man, her captain might have boasted that she was the rival the Splendor Hyaline, the flagship of Narnia’s Golden Age.
As it was, Drinian took the helm with an old grace. The feel of the ship’s timbers beneath him was a comfort, the tender touch of a long-abandoned dream. He hoped Caspian would be comforted too.
Caspian X could have been called the Restorer, or even the Great. Yet Caspian was the Seafarer both in name and in memory. Drinian, the brother of his soul, was his captain before he was anything else. Aslan willing, the sea would prove a balm to both their souls.
Caspian: I turned out perfectly fine!
Drinian: Caspian, this morning you thought a ghost made your toast.
Caspian: I DIDN’T PUT THE BREAD IN! YOU DIDN’T PUT THE BREAD IN!!!
