Hunting of the Last Dragon Page 11

  Jonah Smollet sighed deep. “You’d best have the donkey,” he said.

  And that was how Lizzie and I came to have a donkey for our journey. ’Twas a well-timed gift, to be sure, and I was grateful for it, though the owner went away sorely disgruntled. While Lan set about cleaning up the woman’s cut, Lizzie and I finished packing our things. We put a thick folded blanket on the donkey’s back, tied the sacks of supplies together with ropes, and slung them across. When all was ready, Old Lan came out to see us off. She and Lizzie embraced heartily, and Lizzie vowed to come back sometime and visit her.

  “Nay—you’ll be busy with other things, when you’ve done with the dragon,” said Lan. “I’ll know how you be, and where you be. You’ve great joy ahead, dear one.”

  They embraced again, and I think the old crone would have hugged me, too, had I not stepped back right quick.

  Lan wished me Godspeed, and her last words to me I never forgot, for their strangeness: “Remember, Jude, the worst dragons are the ones in your mind.”

  Then I lifted Lizzie onto the donkey’s back and picked up the rope that was about its neck, and we set off. Lizzie looked back many times, and waved farewell. I never looked back at all. I set my face to the way ahead, and felt like a man heading off on a journey to his own hanging.

  Don’t look so gloomy, Brother; we did not go to our deaths, obviously, else I would not be sitting here upon this stool, telling you the tale. And our journey was pleasant enough, if you forgot the minor detail of the dragon at the end of it. Our road wound between small woods and green hills marching westward, dotted with the spires of distant villages; and the coast was far off yet. Besides, I had the company of a comely maid, and a cheerful one.

  Talking of company, I’ve just remembered something else. New visitors arrived here at the monastery today. I’ve not seen them myself, but they’re being housed in the west wing of the guest house, where the nobles stay, so they must be grand. They’re Easterlings, I’ve heard; merchants from the Indies, Persia, and China. They’re travelling together for safety, and between them they have twenty horses and fifty hounds, and forty servants or more. The Abbot won’t like housing the hounds, I’ll warrant, with all his precious geese safely ensconced in the barn. He has enough to worry about, with Father Matthew’s funeral to be organised. I’ll see you there, tomorrow? Meanwhile, I’ll say a prayer for Father Matthew’s soul, and one for all of you who loved him.

  fifteen

  Well, Father Matthew is in heaven now, sent on his way with so much love and singing and ceremony, ’twas enough to break a heart.

  Today’s ceremonies meant more to me than you know, Benedict. For during them I realised that I had never said farewell to Mama and Father, to my grandfather, or to little Addy, Lucy, and the twins. I’d carried a terrible pain within me, ever since that last day in Doran, and have never laid it down—until today.

  Today I laid it down, out in the garden at Father Matthew’s grave. In my heart I buried them there with him. Only they weren’t buried; I think their souls were flying upwards in the autumn wind, free at last. As I am free.

  I cannot talk anymore today; my heart is too full. We’ll continue with this story on the morrow. ’Tis St. Jude’s day tomorrow—the day of my patron saint. Mayhap he knows my story, too, and has given me the blessing of his peace.

  Brother, what a lot has happened since last we met! As it was St. Jude’s day yesterday, the Abbot asked Jing-wei and me to have supper at his table. So we did; but we weren’t the only guests. He asked the Easterlings as well, so Jing-wei met the Chinese merchants. Two brothers they are, one old as you, perhaps, one not many summers older than I. The younger one is called Chen. He deals in purple silk, sandalwood, nutmegs and other rare spices, as well as spikenard and ebony. He wears silk gowns richly embroidered, and has long hair like Jing-wei’s, pulled back in a tight glossy plait. He speaks English well enough, though his accents are strange, for he’s not been travelling in this country more than a year, and he has a quaint way of saying things at times. He told us that he comes from Hangchow, the same city that Lizzie lived in, when—

  No need to sigh like that, Benedict! I’ll get on with my story. I just thought you might be interested, for Chen told us some amazing tales. My own journey to the coast is mild, compared with Chen’s travels—though he’s never fought a dragon, that I know, nor even seen one. Jing-wei told him, briefly, what we’d done, and he was speechless with amazement—and he wasn’t often speechless. All right, all right—I’ll get on with it.

  So, we travelled with our donkey through the countryside, westward to the coast. The journey was mainly uneventful. We ate frugally twice a day, to make our supplies last, and filled our water skins from streams. We passed through several villages, but did not talk to the people there, save to ask directions to Twells, for Lizzie had commanded me not to tell a soul of our quest. Lan had said the same thing, and I saw the sense of it. I had no wish to be taken for mad and thrown in chains—or, worse, to have devils beaten out of me. At night we slept on our blankets under hedgerows or beneath trees, with the donkey between us. Of a night Lizzie told wondrous tales: madcap things that happened when she lived with the Gypsies, or curious legends her mother had passed on to her, from China, or stories she made up herself when she was caged, to make the captivity bearable. I loved her wit, her way of lifting my heart and making me laugh. And yet sometimes I’d say or do a thing she disagreed with, and then she’d vent her ire on me, right forcefully.

  One evening while we were sitting on the grass facing one another, and I was massaging Lizzie’s feet the way Lan taught me to, we saw the dragon flying overhead, away from the coast. Though it was high up we could see its belly glow with inner fire against the stars. Me it struck with mortal fear, but Lizzie watched it in wonder.

  “’Tis beautiful,” she sighed. “When I was a child I loved dragons. Our Chinese dragons are different from your English ones. Yours are dangerous beasts, creatures to be feared. Ours are gods to us, symbols of good luck and power.”

  “You’ll find it hard to kill one, then,” I said, only half in jest. “Mayhap we should forget this mad quest, spare ourselves a great deal of trouble, and save our skins besides.”

  “You swore you’d not abandon this quest, Jude!” she said. “You swore it! If you go back on your word—”

  “God’s nails and blood! I only spoke in jest,” I muttered.

  “Liar,” she said, and shoved me in the chest with her oiled foot, making me tumble backwards. When I recovered, she was laughing at me. She was a strange mixture, was Lizzie, of sweetness and defiance, childlike joy and self-control so unbending it was fearsome.

  I forget how many days we journeyed. Nine or ten altogether, perhaps. The further west we got, the barer the roads and fields became. We came to the city of Twells around noon one day and found it uncannily quiet, with black banners flying from its towers. I thought plague was there, and would not go in; but a beggar at the gates said most folks had fled because of the winged beast. We went in only to buy fresh bread and a little more cheese, for Lan had given us some money; then we asked directions to the villages of Crick and Seagrief, and hastened on. We had left the main road, and the way was only a beaten track between fields and alongside woods and streams. After a time we passed no one else at all, save small groups of people fleeing eastward. We asked if they were from Crick or Seagrief, but they said they were not, and could give us no news. They warned us of the dragon, said that doomsday had come, and advised us to turn back. When we went on our way regardless, they shook their heads and called after us that we were mad.

  That evening, when I was looking for a sheltered place to sleep, we came upon a burned village. Like Doran it was, and I led the donkey off the road and along the far edges of the burned fields, so we did not have to look upon the destruction. The next day we passed two such villages, and from then on all that we passed were burned. Some were not wholly gone; amid the ruins blackened walls had been mend
ed, and rough thatch laid across. A few survivors lived in them, and came out to tell us to turn back. Some of these villagers had unsightly burns, and their eyes were haunted, without hope.

  With every village we passed my terror deepened, and I was certain to my bones that we would never win against the beast that caused all this, no matter how powerful the weapon we had. Always Lizzie appeared calm, and I wondered again if somehow Old Lan had enchanted her, given her some way of flying beyond fear.

  So we went on westward, and saw the sea like a steel blade along the edge of the world. Then all the lands were scorched, even the wild moorlands and the grasses by the ash-grey streams. The earth was tinder dry, and a cloud of dust and ash, disturbed by our feet, hung always in the air behind us. As far as the eye could see, the land was burned dry, or covered with a bitter ash. The air smelled foul, our eyes stung constantly, and dead birds and insects lay all about on the parched ground. I suppose they died of starvation, or of the fumes in the air. There were no animals, no rabbits, foxes, hedgehogs, nor anything that moved. The silence was unearthly.

  I felt sick most of the time, and our donkey, that until now had been amiable enough, became restive and unruly. I had a hard time keeping it going, and Lizzie said that animals often sensed danger afore humans did. She had seen the bear and wildcat, and Tybalt’s horses, all restive as a storm approached, long before the men had wind of it. Having less to eat didn’t help our donkey, either; it grazed on the few remaining clumps of grass, though they were thick with ash, and its belly rumbled something terrible. I suppose it felt as ill as I.

  There were no trees, and we sheltered that last evening under a wall in one of the burned villages, though it cut into my memories and grieved me sore. Lizzie gave no sign of wariness or fear, excepting that she talked less. That night I became aware of a distant sound, a kind of quiet thundering, that never stopped. Lizzie said it was the sea crashing on cliffs. I thought of St. Alfric’s Cove, and could not sleep that night. So I watched over Lizzie as she slept, and murmured to the donkey to keep it calm, and kept a sharp lookout for the dragon. I did not see it.

  Dawn came. We ate a little from our dwindling supplies, then I lifted Lizzie onto the donkey. The beast would not move. No matter how much I cajoled or threatened it, it would not move. So I lifted Lizzie down again, and removed the sacks from the donkey’s back, and left the beast to roam. We hated leaving it there, shelterless and vulnerable to the dragon, but saw no other way. So we went on, Lizzie clinging to my back as she had when we left Tybalt’s, and me carrying the bags of supplies. In the distance stood another village, smaller than the last, and also black and burned. Alone it was, on the cliff at the edge of the world, and I supposed it must be Seagrief.

  About midday we came to it. Like the other burned villages, it was deserted, and stank of dragon-fire and death. I did not go inside, nor even look at it. Between the village ruins and the cliff was a little track, which must have been used by the village folk on their way to the beach to go fishing, in the days before the dragon. Still with Lizzie on my back, I followed the track right to the edge of the cliff, where there stood a little tower-like structure, no taller than myself, with a fire pit underneath and holes made in the sides that faced the sea.

  “’Tis where they lit the fire to warn the ships,” said Lizzie, slipping from my back. Together she and I walked to the end of the track. Dropping the bundles I carried, I gripped Lizzie’s arm, and we supported each other as we looked down.

  Below our feet the path tumbled crazily down the dizzy cliff, carved into narrow steps and trails that twisted dangerously, sometimes edged with rickety fences for safety, sometimes plummeting through treacherous clefts in the rock. Far below was the wide curve of the cove, contained within the savage cliffs by jagged rocks that marched far out to sea, many of them half hidden by the tide—a fatal trap for unsuspecting ships. The beach was wild and desolate. I could see two fishing boats, abandoned and broken now, and, in the centre of the cove, a tiny shrine built all of stone, with a cross on the top. Beyond it, shining like blue silk, lay the sea. It fair took my breath away, Benedict. Never had I seen the sea; and the hugeness of it, the power of the waves as they crashed across the rocks, the almighty endlessness of it, were awesome to me. When I looked at Lizzie, her face was composed, still, and I guess she was hiding feelings long buried since her childhood. I suppose the ship she came to England on had been wrecked on rocks such as those that stood below.

  “We have the right cove, anyway,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

  “Keep your voice down, Jude,” she warned, whispering. “The dragon may be directly beneath us.”

  My stomach churned in sudden fear. “Its lair can’t be too close to the path,” I said, “else the village folk would have discovered it, and destroyed the egg afore it hatched. The cave must be well hidden. Mayhap we won’t even be able to find it.”

  She gave me a knowing sideways look, her lips curved. “Not thinking of giving up already, are you?” she said.

  I tried to smile back, though I felt sick. “Me? Give up?” I said. “You know me better than that, Lizzie.”

  “Aye, I know you right well,” she said.

  I looked down the rugged path again, and fought the dizziness that washed over me. It was the only way down; all the rest of the cliff soared sheer to the heavens.

  “We’d best hurry down,” Lizzie said. “We can hide in the little shrine, and observe the dragon as it comes and goes, and get to know its ways. Then I’ll know where and when to lay the fire-dust.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to carry you down,” I said, peering again down the path.

  “I know that, dimwit. Give me one of the bags to carry. We’ll need one free hand each, to steady ourselves.”

  “It’ll hurt your feet,” I said, but she was already picking up the smaller bag, already setting foot on that perilous steep path. Picking up the other bag, I followed her.

  I don’t know how she managed that track. It was steep and slippery with dust and ash, and we had to watch each place we put our feet, lest we should slip and go plunging to our deaths. Every second I was aware of the beast that lived thereabouts, and after every few steps I cast my glance across the cove and the wide curve of sea and sky, lest it should come winging back. Lizzie must have known, for after a while she whispered, over her shoulder, “It flies only at dawn and dusk, Jude. It will be sleeping now.”

  “But we might wake it,” I whispered back, looking at the cliff opposite. At that moment I lost my footing, and in my wild efforts to clutch the rocks afore I went hurtling into Lizzie, I disturbed a pile of stones. They went clattering and bounding off the precipice down onto the rocks below.

  “Aye, you might wake it,” said Lizzie, when I was under control again. We were still, listening and looking, but no dragon came. Lizzie added, with a fleeting smile, “But you might not, since its hearing is not good.”

  Despite her wounded feet and her slowness, she managed better than I, on that terrible path. Mayhap it was something to do with her natural grace, the careful and elegant way of her. Perhaps pain forced her to work out every move afore she made it, so there were no mistakes; perhaps her sense of balance was better than mine. But I felt like a bumbling ox behind her, and often I slipped and slithered, disturbing more stones, certain I sounded like a herd of horses ploughing down the slope. It was awful hot, and I sweated as much from fear as heat, for there was no place to hide if the dragon came.

  At last we reached the bottom, and scanned the surrounding cliffs for sign of a cave. There was none.

  “Well, that solves our problem,” I said, wiping my sleeve across my sweaty face. “The sailors were mistook. Let’s rest a bit, then go.”

  “We can’t rest,” she said, dragging on my arm. “We must hide in the shrine. Mayhap its cave is in a crevice, seen more easily from the sea than from here. And we must keep our wits about us. We don’t know the dragon’s habits yet; it may come down to drink, or bathe
, during the day.”

  “Bathe?” I said.

  She sighed, long-suffering plain on her face. “Aye, bathe,” she said. “Birds do.”

  “This is hardly a sparrow we’ve come to kill.”

  “But it might have a sparrow’s inclination to be clean. Make haste!”

  I picked up the bundles, and we crossed the pebbly beach to the tiny shrine. I noticed that the pebbles were dark with ash, excepting where the sea had washed over them, and a bitter stench hung about the place.

  The shrine was tiny, not half the size of Lan’s house, the doorway so small that even Lizzie had to bend her head to get inside. Within, we could stand easily enough, though my head touched the roof. The shrine was stone, save for the timbers laid across for a roof, and covered with turf. The floor was made of smooth pebbles, with a rough fire pit in the centre, its ashes long cold. In one corner lay a pile of rotten furs.

  “I suppose St. Alfric slept in these,” I said, putting the bundles down and crouching to touch the bedding, hoping that perchance the power of the man might somehow remain, and give me some protection. Then I dropped the stuff, surprised. “There’s a blanket here!” I said. “New, by the feel of it. Someone’s been here not long past.”

  “A knight or soldier, doubtless,” said Lizzie, “come to slay the beast, and failed.”

  I looked around for other signs of recent habitation. There was a bag containing mouldy food, but nothing else. All was deep in gloom, for there was but one tiny window facing the sea. Some of the roof had fallen in and a few slender sunbeams slipped through, lighting the rising dust and ash disturbed by our feet.

  “I suppose the villagers brought the saint food and fire,” I said. “He can’t have survived just on the fish the seals brought to him. And it would have been cold as death, in winter.”