The Hunting of the Last Dragon Read online

  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.

  Behind us people were cooking their midday dinner over little fires ringed with river stones because of the dryness of the forest floor. I glanced at the wagons; they were placed in a large circle, with Lizzie’s cage together with the cages of the cat and bear. The cooking-fires were on the flat bit of forest floor within the circle, and there was friendly talk, and children playing in the dust, and dogs running about barking. We were not in a clearing, but here the trees were thinner, still giving shade, and we could hear the bubbling of the river not far away. The water sounded tempting in the heat. I looked at Lizzie. She was brushing flies from her face and wrists, and her skin was slick with sweat. Her nose was smudged with dirt, from when she sniffed the ground.

  “’Tis a pity to put such a filthy creature back in a clean cage,” I said. “Would you like a wash?”

  “I’d rather drink my water,” she replied.

  “I didn’t mean a wash in your water bowl. I meant, in the river.”

  A slow smile spread across her face, full of surprise and mischief and delight, like the smiles Addy used to give to me, those few times when I agreed to play a game. It broke my heart, that smile; and it mended it. I picked Lizzie up in my arms and ran with her between the cooking-fires, past the startled people, down to the river. We both were crowing like overjoyed roosters, while I held her close and swept her back and forth, up and down, in the water.

  Then there was a bellow behind us, and I looked around to see Tybalt standing there, most of the fair folk gathered behind him.

  “By God’s body, lad!” he roared, red with rage. “Bring her out—now!”

  I carried her up, and felt her arms tight about my neck again, her heart hammering against my breast. My own hammered, too, I don’t mind confessing. Never had I seen a man so wild, not even the miller. I felt guilty, and knew not why. Dripping water, I climbed the bank and stood by him. “She was not in any harm,” I said. “She was washing.”

  “You could have drowned her!” he shouted. “She’s what draws the crowds, at this fair. Her, and my sword. Put her back in the cage, and mind you lock it. And give me back the key, you mad fool.”

  In front of them all I carried Lizzie back to her prison. My boots squelched, for I had not stopped to take them off, and my clothes were heavy with water. Everyone was staring, children and adults alike, as if I had two heads and a tail. God’s bones, I thought, they’ll have me in a cage as well, soon—a lunatic to show, besides the freak! I was shaking, afraid of Tybalt and wary of his people, but Lizzie made little chortling sounds, and I realised she was laughing.

  “Ah—that were grand, Jude!” she sighed, as I sat her down in the doorway of her cage. “It were better than the time the bear escaped.”

  I pulled up armfuls of sweet grass and spread them over the floor of her cage. Then I unwrapped the dripping bindings from her feet and hung the strips over a top bar of her cage to dry. I held her wounded feet in my hands, and pity swept over me. Her feet must long ago have been smashed, for there were no bones left whole to give them form. Her toes had been turned under for so long that the toenails had grown and pierced the flesh underneath. It must have been agony for her to walk. “Is it true, what Tybalt said about your feet?” I asked. “Are they broken like this to stop you from walking and wandering?”

  “Nay,” she said. “It was to keep them beautiful. Only tiny feet are beautiful.”

  “Who said so?”

  “An emperor, many generations ago, in my land. He liked little feet, and commanded that all women highborn must have little feet. In my country we cannot marry well if we have ugly feet. There only peasants have big feet, since they must walk every day to the fields to work.”

  “You are highborn?”

  “Aye.” She frowned, looking at her cage. “It is more curse than favour to me.”

  “Who did this, Lizzie? Who broke your feet?”

  She looked away again, her eyes shimmering. “My mother and her mother,” she said, whispering. “Together they crushed my feet with big stones, and bound them tight, and pushed them into tiny shoes.”

  I leaned on the cage door and looked at her, marvelling at her sufferings. I saw then that, for all her tiny size and child-like slenderness, she had a woman’s face, a woman’s sorrow in her eyes. I wondered how old she was and looked down at the front of her, where her thin shift clung wet against her body. She had small breasts.

  Don’t blush so, Brother Benedict. You’re old, near thirty I should think, and must surely have noticed bosoms. I have to speak true, the Abbot said. And the truth is that Lizzie was not a child. She doesn’t know how old she is, but she told me that her woman’s-blood began more than two summers past.

  And on that obviously disturbing and astounding note, I shall let you take your rest. I’m off to the gardens again, for a walk afore evening prayers. I didn’t see Brother Tobit in the vineyard yester-eve, but found the Abbot instead. He asked how our story goes, and I told him it goes well. At least, I hope it does. He shared with me his dream that one day every soul in our land, man, woman, and child, shall be taught letters and be able to read for themselves. For that, he says, we shall need many books. Well, you and I are making one. I wonder if anyone shall ever read it, besides your worthy self. Mayhap I’d better keep the story seemly, on the chance that they might.

  six

  Good morrow, Brother! I hope I’m not late again; I’ve been talking with Jing-wei. She’s
looking after Father Matthew in the infirmary. He’s near ninety years old, and crotchety, and he wets his bed every hour. He makes her chant prayers all the time—which she can’t do, of course, so she sings to him in Chinese. He’s well pleased, and says her Latin’s excellent. I hope my story’s excellent, as well. So I’d best get on with it, no words to waste!

  The next morning I was crouching by the midday fire helping Kitty turn a haunch of deer upon the spit, when Tybalt came and handed me the key to Lizzie’s cage. “If you’ll swear not to drown her, lad,” he said, with a crooked grin, “you may be her keeper for a while. I don’t want her neglected, nor starved, nor allowed to get ill.”

  “I’ll not neglect her,” I said.

  I got a piece of leather thong and tied the key to my belt, beside the sheath for my knife. For the first time since Doran was destroyed I felt as if I had value again, a purpose to live. I liked Lizzie Little-feet, for all her strangeness. She accepted me, which was more than the rest of Tybalt’s people did. She lightened the loneliness in me, and there was an easiness between us I had not known with other maids. Mayhap it was her smallness, which made her seem more like a child than a maid near womanhood, that made me less bumbling in her company; mayhap it was her caged helplessness, or the way her face lit up when I drew near, as little Addy’s had. Truth to tell, it was this—her likeness to Addy, more than anything—that eased my pain. I sorely blamed myself that Addy had died, since she had begged that fatal day to go to Rokeby with me; and in a strange way I felt that in Lizzie I was given another chance, a way to mend my wrong. Whatever the reason, I spent more time polishing Lizzie’s cage than I needed to, and sometimes shared my meals with her, and we talked comfortably enough. On the third day that I was her keeper, she asked if I would wash her scarlet dress for her, which she used for the performance at the fair. So I did, though the children gawked and cackled and called me Washer-woman. As I spread the gorgeous folds across a branch to dry, I noticed, embroidered on the hem, a curious sign. Worked in midnight blue, it was a pleasing design made of graceful curves and lines, simply but elegantly linked. It was the only thing in blue; the rest of the dress was embroidered richly, but in gold and pink and white.

  “What is this?” I asked of Lizzie, whose cage was close, and who was watching me. “Is it a word?”

  “It is my name,” she replied.

  “Lizzie?” I said.

  She smiled, putting me in mind of Addy again.

  “Nay, dimwit. My name in Chinese. Jing-wei. My mother wrote it there in embroidery silk, that I might not forget.”

  “You can read?”

  “I learned with my brother, on the ship when we left China.”

  “Your father was a wealthy man, with money for such a journey?”

  “Aye. He was a nobleman.”

  “Why did you come here to England, Lizzie? And how did you end up with Tybalt here, locked in a cage? If your father was wealthy, how did he let such a thing happen?”

  “Three questions, Jude, and each reply a tale! What is it you want—the legend of my life?”

  “Aye, if you’ve a mind to give it,” I said, smiling. There was something about her eyes, the way they danced, that warmed all of me. Prue’s eyes, too, had danced, but in hers laughter had been mockery.

  Lizzie smiled again and leaned against the bars of her cage, her arms wrapped about her knees. “Then I’ll tell you my life,” she said. “It is a gift I give, for all the kindly things you do.”

  And so I heard her story, and until now have told it to no other soul, for it was her gift to me. But I think you should know it, good Brother, else this tale of mine will hardly be complete. Last night she said I might tell it to you, though she told me her story again and again, and was very particular about it, making me repeat certain parts to make sure I remembered them aright. I’ll do my best, and try to tell it in the words she used, and in her way.

  This, then, is the maid’s tale, of how she came to England, where she lived here, and how she came to be a freak in a travelling fair.

  Until her number-six birthday, Lizzie lived in China, in a city called Hangchow. It is built over lagoons. There are many large harbours, and waterways everywhere, and twelve thousand stone bridges, some high enough for the tall-masted trading ships to sail beneath. It is a hundred miles all around the city, and untold thousands of citizens dwell there. It has twelve great gates, and palaces, temples, and gardens, all richer and finer than anything we have here.

  In Hangchow the people wear silk and jewels, and drink wines made of rice and spices. The ladies are the most beauteous in the world, it is said. They ride in embroidered litters and wear jade pins in their hair, and marvellously jewelled headdresses.

  Lizzie lived in a house by a canal, so her father could sell his jade to the merchants on the ships that sailed in. From all over the world they came. Her house had gardens and woods, silken pavilions hanging like tents by silver cords, and stables with many white horses, for her father was a great hunter. She told me she remembers pine trees in the snow, and hunting with a hawk, and riding with her father on his horse. And she remembers her mother sitting near a paper window, painting flowers on silk.

  Then one day the sickness came, and many people died. Even Lizzie’s family was not spared, and two of her brothers and her sister were taken. People were dying every day. There was no stopping the sickness; it was passed on words, on food, on breath, on hands. Nothing could stop the sickness from spreading.

  In the end there were, in her family, only five left: her mother and father, her grandmother, one brother, and Lizzie herself. For years her father had talked of buying a ship and sailing to foreign lands to sell his jade. Also, during his talk with traders, he had befriended a merchant from England, who had invited him to visit him one day, if he should ever sail to that far land. Lizzie’s father decided that now was the time to fulfil his ambitions. So he bought a ship and hired men to sail it to England. He brought Lizzie and her grandmother, mother, and brother away to this country. They brought, as well, many friends— several families—and relatives.

  There was a storm when they neared land, and the ship broke up on rocks. Lizzie and her mother were in the sea, holding on to a big wooden box. It had all their family’s belongings in it. Of that time, she remembers only the cold, and water all around, and darkness. She woke in sand with rain beating down upon her, and her mother’s arms about her. There were some other people with them, but no one from their family. When daylight came, Lizzie saw the ship broke up on rocks, and the sands about strewn with bits of wood, boxes, shoes, and clothes. In one place was a long row of people, all dead.

  Later came some folk who said they were Gypsies. They lived in little houses on wheels, pulled by horses. They were very kind, and looked after Lizzie and her mother and the others who had survived. After a time the other Chinese people left the Gypsies, saying they were going to build a new place for themselves. But Lizzie’s mother was very sick and weak, so the two of them stayed with the Gypsies. Lizzie forgets how many summers they stayed—three or four, perhaps—though not all were spent in the same place, for the Gypsies were ever roving about.

  It was a happy time, Lizzie says. They taught her to speak English words, and gave her her new name of Lizzie, and pulled her around on a little cart with wheels. Her mother wanted to go and find their own people, but couldn’t walk far. Everywhere they went with the Gypsies, her mother asked if anyone had seen any Chinese people. The mother didn’t like Gypsy ways. She called the Gypsies peasants and wouldn’t learn their language, even though they were very kind. Lizzie’s mother often told her tales of their home in China. She took dark silk thread and made Lizzie’s Chinese name upon the red wedding-dress, so Lizzie would not forget. That dress was the most precious thing she had. It was the only thing they had from China; that, and Lizzie’s little shoes. Everything else in the box was ruined by the sea.

  One winter the mother’s sickness got worse, and she coughed until she spat
blood. An old Gypsy woman gave her medicines, but they didn’t work, and she died.

  For a few more seasons Lizzie stayed with the Gypsies. Then they all went to a village fair to sell medicines and jewellery the Gypsies had made, and Tybalt saw Lizzie. He wanted to buy her, but her new Gypsy mother wouldn’t let him. That night one of the men took her to Tybalt, and sold her for a lot of money.

  Tybalt hid her in a long box with swords wrapped in skins, and said that if she screamed or moved, the blades would cut out her tongue. So she stayed very still, though the next day she heard men and women shouting, and people screaming, and wagons being broke. They left then, and travelled a long time without stopping. Lizzie was much afraid.

  In those early days she lived with Tybalt’s family. She hated being with them. Math, Tybalt’s second son, hounded her something merciless. When he wasn’t tormenting her, he made her do his chores. His parents tried to stop him, but that made him worse; he teased her behind their backs, hit her where the bruises wouldn’t show. At night she crawled away, but Tybalt always found her. Once he chased her with dogs. In the end he kept her in a cage. It was for her own protection, he said. It was better for business, too, he said, because people would think she was half animal, and a better freak for that.

  For a summer and a winter she lived in that cage, until I came. After that, she said, all her life was changed.

  And the rest of her story you will come to know, Brother Benedict, for it is woven close with mine.

  seven

  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.”