Hunting of the Last Dragon (6 page)

Good day, Brother! I see Jing-wei's story got you all inspired yesterday, and you've drawn Tybalt's sword at the end of the narrative! A fine book you'll make, if you carry on with your excellent illustration—splendid almost as the books in your great library.

Now, to my tale again:

That summer with Tybalt wore on, beaten by the heat into languid hours of laziness and boredom. Even the river was sluggish and warm, and the children, playing in it, were barely refreshed. Dogs lay panting in the shade, and I reckoned even the birds were swooning in the heat, for we seldom heard their songs. In the cool of early morn Richard hunted deer for us, and we caught fish from the river. We took great care of our fires, that they did not spread in the parched woods. In the evenings we ate bread and cold meat,
and tried to keep the children quiet. Several times Richard entertained them with his father's sword. He used it as Tybalt had, twirling the blade fast about himself, and slicing off the tips of twigs that the children held out in their hands. I confess I was envious; he was the way I wished to be, graceful and strong, with the power to make maids' eyes shine. Once he gave me the sword and told me to do a trick or two with it. He was mocking me, as usual, for he knew I could barely lift the thing; but I swung it about a little, thinking of that happy hour when I had held it in Tybalt's pavilion, as entertainment for the folk of Rokeby. As I handed it back to him, Richard said, “This sword shall slay another dragon one day.”

“Are you a seer now?” I asked.

“Nay, not me,” he said, “but I met an old woman once who was a soothsayer. It was five summers past, but I have not forgot. She foretold a plague of fires that would herald the coming of another dragon, the last of them all. And she said this sword would kill the beast. One of her prophecies has come true.”

His eyes wore a strange gleam, and I got away as quick as I could, thinking he was mad.

One day soon after, we smelled smoke, and the sweltering skies turned hazy bronze. Tybalt went riding out with several men to see the cause of the fire, and
came back saying it was far on the other side of the river, and seeming to rise from one place. “'Tis no small village this time,” he said. “This time it's a large town.”

“It weren't the Scots, then, playing games,” said a woman. “They'd not take on a town.”

Tybalt shook his head and looked very grave, but said no more. We stayed where we were, and were quiet, and lit as few fires as possible.

One afternoon a lone horseman came. We were all afeared it was the lord who owned the land we were on, and that Richard would hang for poaching his game; but it was a travelling minstrel, and he stayed with us the evening, and broke the jaded hours with thrilling songs. He also had stories that disturbed: accounts of towns and villages and harvest fields turned utterly to ash. These he had seen with his own eyes. People were fleeing to the hills to hide, he said, or else digging burrows in the earth, or making boathouses for themselves in marshy land, which would not burn.

“We know, now, what is the cause of it,” he said, and I held my breath. “There have been several accounts of a winged beast. Then there was a sighting by twenty sailors all at once, and every man swore on holy writ that what he said was true. I know; I was in
the port when they told it to the priests. They told of a beach on the western coast, with rugged cliffs and sands of greyish white, like ash. It was sunset when they sailed past, and they saw, flying low along the shore, a beast with wings. While they watched they saw it rise up and disappear into a cave in the cliff. It is St. Alfric's Cove, they said, for there is a little shrine there where once the saint had been shipwrecked, and was led ashore by seals. He lived there, a hermit, for more than fifty winters, eating fish the seals brought him.”

“There must have been a dragon egg missed during the great searches,” said Tybalt, his face grave. We were sitting around a single fire, for the children had gone to bed, and we were picking the last of the bones and drinking ale. “My father said dragons are fifty years in the shell, and the young beasts are fledglings a dozen years or more, afore they can fly any distance. There must have been just one egg that survived. Perchance even more.”

“There is only one dragon,” said the minstrel. “All accounts are the same: all tell of a winged beast with a tail bent partway along, as if it did not form properly in the egg. 'Tis red-gold, so they say, and huge, with a neck as long as a tower, and wings like a ship's sails,
and teeth like plough blades. Myself, I doubt the size; the dragons of old were generally small, though no less deadly for that.”

I looked at Richard. He was staring into the flames, his head bent, but I saw the glitter of his eyes, and could guess his thought.

“Could a lone beast burn a whole village?” a woman asked.

The minstrel picked up a handful of dust, letting it trickle through his fingers in the firelight like golden sand. “In the heat that plagues these present days,” he replied, “a burning straw could set a whole city alight. The land is tinder dry. And if the summer goes on like this, and a dragon is about, then it has the power to burn half the kingdom.”

“But our good king will send his finest soldiers to kill it, for sure,” said someone else. “Mayhap they're on their way, as we speak.”

“Alas, there's no such plot,” said the minstrel. “The king is busy at war with the French and the Scots, and has more than enough to worry on. The dragon won't be crushed until after the wars. Not unless there's a mighty hunter among us ordinary folk, with the courage and cunning to slay the beast.”

Gloom fell on us all, but I saw Richard's face lit up
by the flames, transfixed and radiant, as if he heard a summons.

“Where is St. Alfric's Cove?” Richard asked. “Near what town?”

“'Tis about two days' walk beyond the city of Twells,” said the minstrel, “through the villages of Crick and Seagrief. Seagrief itself is on the edge of the cliff overlooking St. Alfric's Cove, and the folk there keep a fire burning every night, to warn ships away from the rocks. 'Tis a remote place, not often visited.”

Talk turned to other things. Soon after, I went to bed, curled up under Tybalt's wagon, and I was glad that Richard went on watch again. My dreams that night were terrible.

The next day the heat was worse. Not a breath stirred the leaves or the dust, and the air was taut as a bowstring just afore the arrow is released. Tybalt said he smelled a storm, so one of the lads climbed a tree and looked beyond the woods, and spied black clouds brewing on the edge of the world.

The air grew tenser still, and even breathing parched my throat. All our nerves were overstretched, for there were several fights, mothers were sharp-tongued with their children, and the dogs were snappish. Everything shimmered in the heat, and the floor
of Lizzie's cage was too hot to touch. I took her buckets of water, and she tipped them slowly over herself and became cleaner than ever, as well as cool awhile. I begged a spare dress from one of the women, and Lizzie changed from her grey rags to a chestnut-coloured garment that suited her well, though it was too big. Then, herself content, she craved me to look after the bear and cat as well. One of the younger lads had the task of tending them, but he was lazy about it, and I suppose the beasts were suffering. The bear, especially, was in bad shape. It would not drink, even when I risked life and limb, for Lizzie's sake, and reached through the bars of its cage with a cup and poured water onto its lolling tongue. It did not move. There were maggots in its eyes and lips, and its mangy fur crawled with lice.

“It's dying, I think,” I said to Tybalt.

“Aye,” he agreed, when he had been to inspect it. “It will be better killed, and we'll eat its meat.”

Lizzie was sorely upset when I told her. “It will be better for it to be killed today, Lizzie,” I told her, “for 'tis suffering something terrible in this heat, and otherwise will die slowly, of starvation and thirst.”

The lads cheered when Tybalt said the bear would be used for food that night, for they were all wrought up and in fine fettle for some fun. Led by Richard,
and with much crowing and laughing, they tied ropes about the bear's neck and dragged it from the cage. It hardly fought, it was already so far gone. They tied it up between two trees, and set the dogs on it. I've seen bearbaiting before and never liked it much; but this, with a bear helpless and sick, was hard to look upon, and I wondered that Tybalt allowed it.

Seeing the bear suffer so drove Lizzie from her wits. She howled worse than the bear, and threw herself against the side of her cage as if she would break herself free to rescue it. By the time I opened her door and pulled her from the bars, her brow and arms were bruised. Like a fiend she fought, cursing and screaming in her own language. Suddenly she went limp against me, sobbing as if her heart would break. At last the bear was dead, and she grew quiet. I sat with her on the cage floor and held her while she wept, stroking her hair the way I had, in times past, comforted Addy or the twins when they were woebegone.

While we sat that way a shadow passed overhead, and black clouds covered up the sun. The heat eased a little, and thunder rolled. I looked up and saw Richard watching us. He had a feverish look these days, as if a secret, huge and mad, consumed him. Now malice and scorn were added to the frenzy, and it worried me.

Soon after, while I was alone down by the river
washing Lizzie's food bowl, he came and stood beside me and said, very soft, “She's a comely maid, when she's polished up.”

I said nothing, for I smelled evil on its way.

“You must be letching for her, Jude,” he went on.

“And you must be daft,” said I.

“Come on, I've seen the way you are with her! 'Tis nought to be shameful of. You've had a maid before, haven't you?”

“Aye.” I bent over the bowl, scouring it again with sand, though it was already clean.

He crouched down by me, and I could feel him looking at my face, laughing. “Liar, Jude of Doran. But Lizzie—well, there's a maid for your first! Hapless and helpless, and right grateful to you. She'd need no persuading.”

I stood up to walk away, but he gripped my sleeve. Smiling, he was full of villainy. “If you won't take her, Jude, I may be tempted to myself. I've a mind to have a maid, afore I face hell.”

The bit about hell I didn't understand, but the rest of it was clear. A kind of rage befell me, and I lifted Lizzie's metal bowl and banged it down hard on the top of Richard's head. He didn't fall, but he looked mighty surprised, then he hit me in the stomach. I collapsed like a puppet, and lay curled on the dirt
while he kicked me. People came to watch, some telling him to stop, others laughing and saying that, for all his size, Jude of Doran was a right milksop. At last someone stopped Richard, and I was left alone to recover. I bled and spewed a bit, then cleaned myself up in the river, collected Lizzie's bowl, and staggered back to her cage. She said nothing at first, until I handed her the bowl, and she saw the dent in it. Then she said, straight-faced as a nun: “'Tis a pity you had not gone down to empty my privy bucket, Jude. It would have fit over his head nicely, and not been dented.”

“Richard isn't worth a turd,” I said, and she laughed. I laughed with her, and it was good, that mirth, for it eased the hurt in both of us. And while we laughed the storm broke and rain began to fall, heavy and hard. I locked her cage door—a small act I had grown to loathe—and pulled the cover across. One corner I left folded up, so she could watch the children dancing in the downpour.

Everyone went mad in that thunderstorm. By God's soul, it was a blessed relief! I stood out in it, face upturned and washed of dust, cool water on my tongue and throat, and all of me baptised with rain.

All evening it rained, and I went to bed in Tybalt's wagon, with his family, since the ground outside was
running mud. Richard said he would go on watch that night, though his father said there was no need. “A dragon wouldn't see past its own smoke, in this storm,” Tybalt said, but Richard got his knife and bow anyway, and a heavy cloak, and went out into the teeming dark.

At some time in the night I woke, and for one blessed moment thought I was at home again, with my family breathing all around. But the rain, instead of landing quiet on the thatch, was drumming on a wooden roof; and that made me remember, and the pain crushed down on me again. I slept, and had a dream that Richard came inside and bent over me to strangle me. I woke sweating and hot, and needing to let out some of the evening's ale. Quiet, I pulled on my boots and went outside.

All was hushed, for the rain had passed and a full moon sailed, ship-like, between the rolling clouds. I went down to the river, and on my way back looked over to Lizzie's cage. The cover had been pulled off, though I could see little else in the shadows beneath the trees. My hand reached for her key tied to my belt. It was not there. The leather thong was sliced through, smooth and neat, as with a knife. So it was no dream I had, of Richard! He had been there right enough, but thieving instead of throttling.