Hunting of the Last Dragon Page 7

  Brother Benedict, will you please stop doing that? I’ve confessed all this to the Abbot, and he’s shriven me, and said a blessing over me. Now can we get on with the tale? I’d like to think I can tell it truly, as it happened, without you frowning and tut-tutting and splattering ink every time you cross yourself.

  Now, I’ll tell you of my life those days, in Old Lan’s house. At first I was as restricted as Lizzie in my walks, because of my sore ankle, and so I stayed mainly about the dwelling, resting in the shade. Lizzie went on short walks with Lan, or helped in the garden, or they sat on stones under the trees, talking together for hours like old acquaintances. When working in the house, Lizzie sat upon a stool to spare her feet, and she seemed at home, content with her lot.

  I cannot say I shared her contentment. I feared Old Lan, and sorely resented the fates that made me stay. Though Lan had commanded me to stay abed and rest, whenever she was out of the house I got up and stood on my hurt foot, hoping to strengthen it, thus hastening the day when Lizzie and I might leave.

  One afternoon, while Lan and Lizzie were out in the garden, I hopped over to the suit of armour, to inspect it. It was dusty and dull with smoke, but beautifully made, each link in the mail skilfully joined. I lifted it in my hand; it was heavy, but slid and moved like a silver skin. Leaving it, I lifted the sword from the wall, withdrawing it from its steel scabbard. It was heavier than Tybalt’s sword and cunningly etched with wondrous designs. There were jewels about the handle, and a coat of arms in scarlet and blue. I wondered who the man was who had owned it, and how it came to be here in Lan’s house, with the armour and helmet. What was his name, and who had been his lord?

  “His name was Ambrose,” Lan said, coming inside, her arms full of vegetables. “He was a knight, sorely wounded, and stayed here for healing. I told you to rest your foot, boy. I know you’re eager to be gone, but you don’t hasten healing, walking before you should.”

  I put the sword away, unnerved because she knew my thoughts. It was one of her less alarming habits, knowing what lay in people’s heads—and in their hearts, no doubt.

  Lizzie came in, too, her hands dusty with the soil, and with dirt smudged across her cheek. She smiled at me across Lan’s bent back, then sat on the dirt floor in the shade. Both cats leaped from the hearth and curled up in Lizzie’s lap. They were like fond kittens with her, though they snarled and spat at me. Lan crouched by her fire and began cutting up a cabbage and throwing it into the broth.

  “You knew this knight well, old mother?” Lizzie asked.

  Lan put down the knife and rested back on her heels, her eyes peering through the smoke, beyond it, to things I could not see. I sat on the bed, sensing a story brewing.

  “Aye, I knew him well,” Lan replied, soft and dream-like. “He was manly and tall, and lithe as a whip, once his scars were healed. Beautiful he was; my joy, and the love of my life. And I was the love of his.”

  I smiled, for she was mortal ugly. “I was a young widow then,” she went on, “as comely as Jing-wei. I found him on the lane one day, much as I found you, Jude. He was covered with ash, and he could hardly stand nor speak from pain and weariness. I brought him here, and helped him take off his armour, so that he could lie down and sleep. And under the mail his tunic was scorched to rags, and in parts melted onto his skin, for he was sorely burned. And when I washed the dust and ash from his face, his skin came off as well. All over he was burned, and the scars were a long time healing.

  “He had killed a dragon, though not before it breathed on him. Long had he studied the beasts, and knew much of their habits and weaknesses. He had a fine mind, did Ambrose, curious and well informed. He was right brave, and gentle, too. Never had I met a soul so tender, so full of loving gratitude for every day, so near to joy. He healed in time, though his skin remained scarred, even on his face, and one eye would never wholly open, nor close. He never went back to his lord, or to his lands. He stayed with me, and we loved. Then one day he sickened, and there were red lumps upon him, in his armpits and groin, and in his neck. By that night he was dead, and my heart’s joy with him. I buried him under the apple tree, and every spring I gather the blossoms as they fall, and put them upon my bed, and sleep touched by his transfigured skin.”

  I thought the story morbid, and was glad the blossoming was done, and hoped there were no withered petals left where I lay at night. When I looked at Lizzie her face was wet with tears. She got up, spilling the cats into the sun on the step, limped over to Lan, and put her arms about her. They were like grandmother and grandchild, kinswomen, close and alike in soul. Seeing them together made me ache for my own kin, and I got up and hobbled outside. Afore I knew it, I was crying as well. I knew not why; but loneliness went through me like a sword, and with all my being I longed for kin to put their arms about me. And I was guilty. God’s soul, I was guilty! Guilty for the way I had spoken to little Addy that last night, and refused to take her to Rokeby with me, thereby causing her death. Guilty because I had survived, when I should have died with them. Guilty because the thing that slew them still roamed free, and I did nothing about it. And so I bowed over in the grass and sobbed, stricken with remorse and pain, and not knowing how I could live.

  After a time my grief was spent, and I pulled up handfuls of grass and wiped my face and nose, and tried to gather up my fortitude. I realised, of a sudden, that Lizzie was sitting on one side of me, and Lan on the other.

  “Lord, I’m a fool!” I said.

  “No fool around here,” said Lan. “Just a boy a-sorrowing. My Ambrose, he could weep like that, too, and he did, oft times, for all his manliness. I knew he had left behind more than his lord and lands; that he had left a wife and children. He never spoke of them, but when they were in his heart there was fear, too, and he used to rub the scars upon his face, and weep. It was an unnecessary fear, for of all God’s creatures he was the most beautiful.”

  “Would his wife have loved him, if he had gone back?” asked Lizzie.

  “I never asked the fates,” said Lan. “I took what they gave me, and was grateful. But I saw how his spirit was troubled because of what he had abandoned—not only his obligations as husband and father, but also his duty as a knight. And I knew that, no matter how great our joy together, he would never know true peace.”

  Then they both got up and went inside, for it was sunset, and supper was almost done.

  And our supper must be near ready, Brother. I’ll stop here, and take Jing-wei for a walk in the orchard, since the sun is out just now. Doubtless you’d like some spare time yourself, maybe to visit old Father Matthew. Jing-wei said he has taken a turn for the worse, and is dying now. I’m sorry; I know he was the abbot here before his wits left him, and that you’re all passing fond of him. Jing-wei says he is never alone, and one of the brothers sits with him every moment, to keep him loving company on his last journey.

  Well, I’ll see you at supper. It’ll be Brother Tom’s bean soup again, no doubt—God have mercy on us all!

  ten

  Sorry I’m a little late, Brother; I’ve been in the orchard again, helping bring in the apples, and storing them on their racks in the huge pantry. I worked with Brother Tobit, and he kept me well entertained with his tales and bawdy jokes. I love his wit: I notice he’s the jester in the common room in the evenings, when you’re all allowed to relax and talk, afore the hours of the night and the Great Silence. When we finished with the fruit he showed me the barn, fair bursting with straw and hay and grain. I marvelled that you monks could use it all, but he explained it’s for guests as well. He said that often manor lords or ladies come, with hundreds of servants, soldiers, and all their horses and hounds besides, and you’re duty-bound to give them hospitality, sometimes for weeks. Well, at least Jing-wei and I help out with the work, so I don’t feel too bad eating your food, even if it is only Brother Tom’s everlasting beans— Don’t jab me with your pen! I’ll get on with it!

  Two things happened at Lan’s house that changed the lives
of Lizzie and me. The first was to do with Lizzie’s feet. I mentioned, I think, that Lan’s feet, too, had once been broken and bound, but she had straightened them. One day early in our time there, while I lay abed resting my sore ankle, Lizzie said to Lan, “Would you mend my feet, Mother, and undo the brokenness?”

  “It will be painful, child,” Lan replied. “I shall have to break the bones again, and set them straight. It will take time, and much patience.”

  “How much time?” I asked from the furs. I feared the answer, and it was worse than I expected.

  “It shall take twenty days or so, altogether,” said Lan. “A day or two to do the breaking and resetting, and twenty for the mending, afore she can walk on them again. That is if all goes well.”

  “We can’t stay that long,” I said.

  Lizzie sat on a little stool by the fire, and removed her shoes. “Let us begin,” she said to Lan.

  So they did, there and then. To start with, Lan bathed and massaged Lizzie’s feet, softening them with healing oils. Then she began to separate the bent toes from the skin of the soles. All Lizzie’s toes, excepting the big ones, had been forced under when her feet were broke, and now they were squashed flat underneath. Separating the skin made Lizzie moan something terrible. Then Lan began to uncurl the toes one by one, making the bones crack, and withdrawing the curved nails from the flesh, where they had grown in. Between workings she applied hot poultices to the convulsed muscles, until the foot was relaxed enough for her to continue. Despite the potion she had taken, Lizzie sighed and sobbed, rocking in her pain. At last I could abide it no longer.

  “Do you have to do this?” I cried, gripping Lan’s wrist, stopping her. Lizzie’s foot, twisted and twitching in the firelight, dropped into Lan’s lap. “’Tis cruel!” I railed. “Leave her be!”

  Lan shook me off, took the deformed foot again in her hands, and calmly went on.

  “Tell her to stop, Lizzie!” I cried, but she shook her head. She was beyond speech.

  “Go outside, boy,” said Lan. “You’re annoying me, and distressing Jing-wei.”

  “I’m distressing her?” I shouted. “You’re the torturer!”

  “This is Jing-wei’s choice,” said Lan. “She wants the brokenness mended. So keep out of it, unless you wish to help.”

  I did go outside, unable to abide Lizzie’s pain.

  After, Lan came out and did some work in her garden. I found Lizzie lying on the bed, still groaning. I knelt nearby. “You don’t have to suffer this, Lizzie,” I said, hoping to stir some sense in her. “Don’t let Lan do any more. You’ve managed all your life with your feet bound. I’ll help you go where you want to go.”

  “For the rest of my life, will you carry me?” she asked.

  I thought on that awhile, then mumbled, vexed, “I’m only trying to help you, Lizzie. Only trying to save you from unnecessary pain.”

  She stopped groaning and glared at me, her chin jutting out stubborn-like. “It’s not necessary for me to be able to walk?” she asked. “Is that your sentence on me, Jude of Doran? What of my wishes for myself?”

  “’Tis not a sentence!” I cried. “God’s bones, you can be contrary, if you set your stupid mind to it! I’m only trotting out my opinion. I have a right to do that, surely, since I’m the one who saved you. If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be a freak in a fair!”

  “That makes you my new keeper, does it?” she said. “It gives you the right to tell me what to do, how to spend my days, my life?”

  I was about to stand up and go, when she said, very quiet and gentle: “I have to do this, Jude. I want to be as other maids.”

  “You are as other maids,” I said, my anger melting. “Better than most.”

  She smiled then, not as Addy did with mischief and humour, but in a way that was warm and fond, making my heart pound like a drum and my face go red. And that was the last we spoke of the matter.

  The next time Lan began to work on her feet, I stayed to help, giving Lizzie her medicines for pain while her foot soaked in potions to soften the skin. Lan had straightened the toes of Lizzie’s right foot; this time she would work on the left. Sitting in front of Lizzie again, she laid a towel across her lap, then took Lizzie’s crippled foot firmly in her hands. Lizzie breathed in deep, and a determined look came across her, like that of a soldier about to do battle. “Go on with it, Mother,” she said.

  An hour passed. I don’t know how Lizzie endured it. She sat there on that tiny stool, gripping the edges till her hands were white, rocking back and forth and biting her lip till it bled. She did not seem to be aware of me or Lan; I suspect she was locked in her pain, struggling with it in some terrible battleground deep within. Lan told me to get a strip of leather from her chest of healing things, and I did, rolling it into a soft thing for Lizzie to bite upon. Then I stood helpless, while Lan worked and Lizzie moaned. Once Lizzie nearly fainted, and I got another stool and set it behind her and sat close with my front to her back, my arms about her, holding her. She clutched my hands and held them so tight I near cried out myself, but it seemed to give her some relief. And that was the way we always sat after that, when her feet were being mended.

  I learned a lot of things, in those long hours I held her in her sufferings. I saw that Lizzie was not a helpless maid I had rescued from a cage. I saw that she was a woman, strong and steadfast, breaking out of a far greater prison than the one I had saved her from. I was not her rescuer; she was saving herself, breaking out of the bondage of restraint and limitation, winning her liberty with awful agony.

  They were like journeys, those breaking, healing times, and afterwards we would stay sitting close, Lizzie and I, and she would lean back against me and beg me to talk to her, to say anything to keep her mind occupied. So I told her of my childhood, of the swine I had looked after, my games with Addy and Lucy and the twins, my bumbling efforts with Prue, and my wrangles with her father the miller. Sometimes we laughed, and sometimes we cried. Old Lan never interrupted those talks, but oft went outside leaving us alone in our sharing. In those times I spilled my soul, and never has another human being heard the story of my life and heart as Lizzie heard it then.

  Four days it was, before her misshapen feet were new-formed. They looked normal enough by the time Lan finished, though they were bandaged firm to hold the bones in their new places. The evenings I spent making special shoes for Lizzie out of firm leather, that later would be drawn on close about her feet, supporting them all around. Lizzie longed to walk, but Lan forbade it, saying she must rest the bones for twenty days or more, for them to knit together properly.

  Those days of waiting were hard for me. My own foot was well mended, and I wanted to be gone, to find a new life for myself, a purpose. Though I saw no evil in Lan, I still feared her company and the knowing way of her. I always felt she read my thoughts, and through all the hours in her home there ran the dread that she had supernatural powers. I think Lizzie laughed secretly at me, knowing my fears, but I could not help them. Even the folk from the village, coming for healing of their toothaches and their hurts, were wary of Lan. They would not come inside her door, but took their medicines from the step, and paid for them with chickens and bags of grain passed cautious-like over the dim threshold. And another thing troubled me: whenever I spoke of leaving, even when the twenty days were almost ended, Lan said Lizzie was not ready yet to walk, and must tarry longer to rest. Also, she thought up tasks she wanted done about her house, like building a wall around her garden to keep out the foxes, mending her stone oven outside, and chopping down a rotten tree behind her house afore it fell in a storm. I did not mind the work, or waiting for Lizzie’s healing, but I began to feel again that I was trapped, my stay spun out by Old Lan for reasons I did not know.

  Seeking peace, I went to mass one Sabbath at the church in the village, hoping to talk to the priest afterwards; but no one spoke to me, because I stayed at Lan’s. Yet I saw folk who had been glad enough of Lan’s healing in recent days, so I called t
hem all hypocrites, and went back to Lan’s without talking to their priest.

  That evening the second thing happened, that made our time at Lan’s a turning point. The evening started ordinarily enough: Lizzie and I were sitting near the hearth playing a Chinese game with little pegs of wood poked into holes on a wooden board. Old Lan had a rushlight burning on the wall, and sat beneath it, for she was altering the brown dress I had given Lizzie, to make it fit. It was stifling in the house, and I had a headache and was not in a good humour. Lizzie had just won the third game in a row, and I swept the bits of wood into a pile, ending the competition. Then I noticed that Lan’s sewing box, in which she kept her bone needles, hooks and threads, and scraps of fabric, had a dragon painted on the lid.

  “Why a dragon?” I asked, getting up and turning the box to the light, so I could see it better. The box was ancient, different from any I had seen, and I supposed it was from China.

  “Why not a dragon?” said Lan. “Move, lad; you’re in my light.”

  I stayed where I was, my shadow across her. “Because dragons are evil,” said I. “Also, since it was a dragon that wounded your Ambrose, surely you must hate the beasts. I wonder that you have one for decoration.”

  “’Twas a dragon that sent Ambrose to me,” said Lan, poking me with her scissors, making me shift quick enough. “Besides, dragons are like people, some good, some bad.”

  “That’s heresy,” I said. “The Church teaches very plain what is good and what is evil.”

  “In China,” said Lizzie, “dragons are gods, guardians of the sky and keepers of the storms.”

  “Then the people in China are mistook,” said I.

  “Are they, now?” remarked Lan, beginning to sew another patch upon a hole. “Are they all mistook, or only a hundred dynasties, and all their wise ones, and all their holy teachers, and even the great Khan himself?”