Hunting of the Last Dragon (4 page)

Brother, I'm hot with haste in getting here! I'm sorry I'm late; I've been talking with the monk in charge of the vineyards. He said the grapes are ripe for harvest, and that soon you will all be busy making wine and mead. With a twinkle in his eye, he told me that the Abbot said my pies are not quite to his taste, and henceforth I'm to help in the winery. I knew the Abbot would soon repent of letting me loose in his kitchen! And the winery will suit me well. Are you still bent on writing every word? God's precious heart—it shall take till Christmastide to write my tale! Well, now that you've got the vital stuff down, we'll continue with the story.

They were passing strange, those first days with Tybalt's people, more dream than real. When my anger was spent I slipped into a pit of woe so deep I thought
that I would never claw my way out. Tybalt and his family left me mostly to myself. While we travelled I stayed in their wagon, resting on a straw mattress, not caring that only frail crones and giggling maids travelled in the wagon with me. I could not have walked, or ridden a horse even if they gave me one; my strength had fled, as if millstones weighed me down. I spoke to no one, ate little of what they put in front of me, and drank deep of ale, which numbed my pain a bit. When we were camped I slept wrapped in a rug on the ground underneath Tybalt's wagon. Although the weather was warm, I was deadly cold.

I recall that one morning we stopped near a town and there was some debate, between Tybalt and the others, as to whether they should travel on or tarry there. Tybalt owned the fair, and in any discussion his word was always the last. In the end Tybalt and his two sons went to buy bread and extra food, while we stayed outside the city walls, with the horses and wagons. While we waited I heard the church bells tolling, and someone said it was the Feast of Corpus Christi. I thought of all the feast days I had gone to mass in the church of Doran, and of the bright paintings on the church walls, the candles and incense, the familiar rituals, and our old priest chanting the prayers in
Latin, which I didn't understand, of course, but loved for the richness of his voice. I enjoyed the feast days, since on them I didn't have to tend the swine, and in the evenings we all danced in the churchyard and sang wild songs the priest disapproved of. Sometimes I had managed to hug Prue's waist.

Alas! There'd be no embracing now, not of her nor anyone else I loved. I was getting myself right woeful, when Tybalt and his sons came back with enough provisions for a siege. They had heard talk in the town, they said, of other villages that were burned, and of survivors, half mad with fear and grief, who swore they had seen a winged beast. The townsfolk were living in fear, and every day at sundown they extinguished all their lamps and fires, to keep the town hid in the dark.

“There are warnings spoken at every gate and tavern door,” said Tybalt's elder son. He was Richard, the archer I had seen at the fair. “People are advised not to travel unless it's necessary, and then to keep away from open fields and roads. And they're told not to light fires at night, for that is when the dragon hunts, and it may be drawn to the smell of cooking meat.”

“They're all mistook,” said Tybalt. “The dragons were killed, every one, near sixty summers past. My
own grandfather slew the last of them, and searched for seven years after through the caves and the mountains, destroying all the eggs. My father helped him in those searches, and spilled some dragon yolk himself, so he told me. However, something's causing fires. Myself, I think it's those mad Scots, riding down from the north and plundering our villages and setting everything afire, just to taunt us. We'll not journey on the roads while they're about, but settle in the woods and wait for the savagery to stop.”

I remembered what my father had said about there being no hoofprints around his brother's village after it were burned; and there had been no hoofprints in the fields around Doran, either. I thought Tybalt's notion wrong, but said nothing.

Tybalt commanded us to unpack the sacks of provisions and share them fairly. That done, we journeyed on.

For several days we camped in one place in a forest, beside a river. During the day I sat by the water and did nothing. Once some children came and stood in a row in front of me, grinning and giggling. A girl carried a little stone, which she threw at me, striking me on the temple. I felt blood trickle down my cheek, but did not move.

“Mad boy, mad boy,” she said, and bent to pick up
a clod of earth. Then she began a silly rhyme, which the others took up.

Over and over they sang it, throwing stones and dirt at me, until Tybalt roared at them and they ran off, laughing and shrieking, to torment the freak.

I stayed where I was by the river, and sank deeper into misery. Tybalt came and sat by me. After a time he said, with gentleness: “I know you have a brave heart, Jude, though it's been sorely tested of late. But it's time to put an end to woe. Some matters can't be mended, and we have to go on as best we may.”

I knew he spoke fair enough, yet I could not banish the memory of my charred village, and could not stop thinking of how people must have panicked, fleeing through the wheat until even that was set afire. Images blazed through my mind, horrific, unbearable. I bent my head on my arms again, and felt Tybalt put a hand upon my shoulder.

“Don't dwell on it, lad,” he said. “When you're ready, work will help. It'll help us, as well as yourself.”

That evening I drank too much ale for my good, and got up in the night to be sick in the river. When I turned to go back a man stood there, his bow drawn and an arrow in place. I could not see his face, for although it was a moonlit night, we were under trees and the shadows were black. I thought of robbers, and near spewed again, from sheer fright; but then he spoke and I realised he was Richard.

“'Tis you,” he said, “wasting my father's ale.”

“Sorry,” said I.

“Aye, so you ought to be,” he muttered. We were standing close, and I could see the bitter twist of his mouth and his narrowed eyes. He was tall and well-favoured, like his father. “My father rescued you,” he said, “because he thought you had courage, and that you were an archer and would help me hunt to keep his people fed. You're a sorry disappointment, Jude of Doran.”

His opinion wasn't worth a turd to me, but I dared not tell him so. I asked, careless-like, “You're hunting tonight?”

“Nay. I'm keeping watch.” As he said it he glanced at the skies above the river. I followed his gaze, but saw nought save stars and a thin crescent moon.

“What do you watch for?” I asked. “Marauding Scots?”

“The winged beast,” he replied, his voice hushed, his eyes still on the stars. “They say the dragons were exceeding beautiful, for all their deadliness.”

“They also say the dragons are dead and gone. Your own father says that.”

“He's mistook. A dragon has survived, I know it. And I'd give half my life to see the creature.”

“If you do see a dragon, you might well give half your life,” I said. “Mayhap all of it.”

He gave me a look then that, if a witch had given it, would have withered me to a toad. “You're a craven fool, Jude of Doran,” he said. “You forget whose blood runs in my veins. No beast has the power to strike fear into me, whether or not it has wings and spits fire. But you—you're afraid of your own name. You waste your days pining away like a weakling maid, no good to anyone. If I alone were spared out of a whole village, I'd be looking for the reason why, and being glad for it. You don't deserve your good fortune.”

“Good fortune?” I cried, so loud that he hushed me, for people were sleeping all around.
“Good fortune?”

“Aye,” he said, bitter-soft. “Good fortune.”

He spat on the ground and walked away, his footsteps silent, true hunter's steps.

For most of that night I lay awake, haunted by his words. But though I thought till my head ached, I could
find no reason why I alone was left alive. On the morrow, still sunk in grief, I went back to sitting by the river, in the shade of a tree. The day was hellish hot—a foretaste of the uncanny heat that would last all summer long. Some later blamed the heat, and the dried-up ponds and wells, for the terrible spread of the fires and the utter devastation of the villages that were struck.

Later that morning Richard crept up behind me and hit me over the head with four dead hares. While I sprawled in the dust, he said, “Earn your keep. Go and feed the animals.”

So I did, giving the bear and wildcat two corpses each. The cat ate hers in a moment, but the bear lay panting in the heat and did not even lift its head. There was dried foam about its mouth, and its eyes were glazed. Neither beast had water. While there I noticed that the cover on the freak's cage had been folded back, and she was hunched in one corner, rocking, her head bent and her arms about her knees. The floor of her cage was covered in rotting grass, and the red dress she had worn for her performance in the fair was rolled in a bundle in one corner. She wore a muck-stained shift and no shoes, but her feet were tightly bound in rags. In another corner was a bucket, near to overflowing, which she used as a privy, and near the cage
door a bowl she must have used for food. It had maggots in it. There was a cleaner bowl, too, that I suppose was for water, though it was empty then. There were blowflies everywhere, even in her hair, though she made no move to brush them off. Her cage stank, bad almost as the bear's.

Curious, I went and stood in front of her. She did not notice me at first, but went on rocking, back and forth, back and forth. Suddenly she looked up, and I saw that she was crying. I wanted to flee, to have no part of her misery, for my own was heavy enough; but I stayed, mayhap because she once had smiled on me and called me brave.

Of a sudden I had a disturbing thought. Feed the animals, Richard had said. Had he by chance meant Lizzie Little-feet as well?

“What do they give you to eat?” I asked.

She turned her face away towards the trees, and did not reply. Her skin was begrimed with dirt, sweat, tears, and snot, and I looked again at her maggoty bowl and filthy floor, and almost retched. I wished I had never heard her speak. It would be easier to think she had no reason, no feelings.

I repeated my question and this time she replied, though she still would not look at me. “Nothing,” she said. “They've not fed me since the fair.” Her voice was
low and cracked, and she must have been suffering a cruel thirst.

“I'll ask Tybalt for some food for you,” I said.

Tybalt was crouching near his wagon steps, lighting a fire for noonday dinner, and Richard was skinning a hare. Tybalt's younger son, a boy of eleven summers, was skinning a squirrel. The carcasses of two wild swine lay nearby, skinned and threaded ready on a spit. I wondered if Richard had permission to hunt on this land, from the manor-lord who owned it, or whether he had poached.

“Can I have some bread for Lizzie?” I asked.

Tybalt looked up from the kindled fire and grinned. His face was bathed in sweat. “'Tis good to see that you are done with woe,” he said. “I'd be grateful if you'd feed the freak, and give her water, and clean out her cage. It's Richard's task to mind her, but he's been busy hunting to feed us all while we've been on the road.” He took a key from a bunch he carried at his belt, and gave it to me. “Lock her cage carefully, after. I've lost count of the times she's tried to escape, though she's never got far on her crippled feet. Ask my wife for bread and cheese for her, and see if there's some fish left over from last night.”

Tybalt's wife was Kitty, and she was little and bony, and not a friendly soul. But she gave me some bread
and cheese for Lizzie, and I scraped the mould from both as I took it back. I passed it through the bars to her, then tried not to watch as she stuffed it into her mouth. I unlocked her cage and picked up her bowls, then locked the cage and took the bowls to the river and scoured them with sand. Both I filled with water, thinking how thirsty she must be. I had to unlock the cage to give her the water. She fair snatched one of the bowls from my hands, pouring the water down her throat so fast she spilled more than she drank. “Leave this other one till later,” I said, “else you'll make yourself sick.”

As I lifted her down to the ground, she asked me my name. I told her and she said, with a shadow of a smile, “Jude the brave, and Jude the kind.”

“Jude the useless,” I said, and she smiled in truth. Then she lay facedown in the grass, sniffing, and scraping her long nails into the dirt. At first I feared she had lost her wits, then I realised that the earth was sweet to her, after the cage floor. Using a branch, I swept out her cage. I kept an eye on her, half expecting her to get up and hobble away, but she stayed near the cages, pushing grass and flowers through the bars to the bear and cat, and talking to the beasts in her own language. I emptied her privy bucket in the river and rinsed it as best I could. I was put in mind of looking
after my father's swine, and shook my head, half amused, thinking myself still doomed to muck. I washed the floor of her cage, then sat with her in the warm grass while it dried.