Hunting of the Last Dragon Read online

  “A whole nation may be wrong,” I said. “Think of the Scots, coming here to murder and plunder and steal our land. And it were the Welsh afore them, causing strife, and afore them the Danes, and the French are always—”

  “And you English are golden-hearted and faultless?” said Lan. “You were here from the beginning, were you—never plundered and stole this land yourselves, from someone else?” I said nothing, for my grandfather had never talked about that.

  “Your English ways are not the only ways,” said Lan, “nor are you all so cunning as you think. You can’t even read or write, most of you, and only men of the Church have knowledge; but in my country people are studying at great universities, making music on wondrous instruments, and doing marvellous paintings on silk. While your English soldiers are busy poking enemies with spears and swords, my people are blowing their foes to smithereens with exploding fire. You tell the time by the position of the sun, but in one of our great cities we have a machine, driven by water, that marks time, telling every hour and the moments in between. You flatten animal hides to write upon, but we make fine stuff called paper. And while your monks are still sharpening feathers to copy books slow, one at a time, my people are carving books upon blocks of wood, and printing many copies, quickly and with ease. So don’t you tell me my nation is wrong, my people mistook. We have more knowledge, more accomplishments, than you can dream about.”

  I’m sorry about the feather bit, Brother Benedict; I see it disturbs you. Myself, I think your work is very advanced, and excellent, but I have to tell this tale the way it happened. If you’re interested in the Chinese way of bookmaking, you could talk later to Jing-wei, for she knows more about it than I do. Perchance the Abbot will be interested, too.

  I wish I had pressed Lan to talk more on such matters, for as it turned out she was wondrous wise; but at the time I was ill-content and full of gloom. Truth to tell, seeing Lan hooking the tiny needle through the fabric, and drawing through the thread, put me in mind of my mother mending clothes for me and the four plagues, and I was hurting in my heart as well as in my head. Also, the picture of the beast on Lan’s box awoke in me some dreadful imaginings, and I could not shake them off. Wishing for peace, I pulled off my boots, ready to go to bed. The goat was eating the straw, and as I chased it off, Lan said, “’Tis not as fearsome as you think, Jude.”

  “Nay, but it eats a fearsome lot,” I said.

  Lan cackled. “I meant the dragon!” she said. “That’s not so fearsome as you imagine.”

  “I don’t imagine it,” I lied. And I crawled into the bed and lay watching the smoke swirl about the thatch, thinking on the beast and what it might look like. ’Twould not be like the gorgeous coiled creature on Lan’s box, of that I was sure.

  “The dragons here, they’re not as large as people think they are, nor as cunning,” said Lan.

  “Have you seen one?” I asked.

  “Nay. But Ambrose told me much about them.”

  I sat up, the better to hear her talk. She was still bent over her sewing, her sparse white hair like a halo in the firelight, her nut-brown skull outlined dark within.

  “Ambrose always said that fear was faith in one’s enemy,” she continued. “He said if one understood that enemy, studied his weaknesses and strengths, where he slept and ate, what his face was like, his weapons, his defence—then the fear vanished. He said knowledge was the greatest weapon of all. And when it came to the fight, he said all that was needed was the right weapon, the right moment, and the steel-strong will to win.”

  “Little good his knowledge did him,” I muttered, “since he was burned half to death.”

  “But he survived, and passed that knowledge on to me,” said Lan. “Nothing in the world is ever wasted, Jude.”

  I almost laughed. Passed the knowledge on to her? God’s precious heart! Did she have some mad notion about hunting the dragon herself?

  “I know all about dragons and how they may be defeated,” Lan said. “I know why the knights failed, most of them. I know our best defence against this present beast, and what is the perfect weapon.”

  A chill came over me, like a fear. I glanced at Lizzie. She was watching me. There was a curious look on her face, as if she had heard all this before, and now wanted to know my response to the matter. I returned my gaze to Lan. She no longer sewed, but looked across the room at me, her eyes burning in the gloom.

  “Jude of Doran, it was fate brought you here to me,” she said. “And fate brought Jing-wei with you. For the weapon I have is something Jing-wei understands well, though you have never heard of it. And the will to win—well, who better to crave the dragon dead than yourself, since it destroyed everything you loved?”

  I said nothing, but a coldness clamped across my heart, and I was sure the devil was lurking in that place.

  Lan went on: “The dragon must be stopped, Jude. It will go on destroying, until all that is left is a land scorched bare, cities and villages laid waste, and corpses all consumed by flame. And if any folk survive, with burned crops and razed homes and unspeakable wounds, then they will be in such torment that they will beg the Almighty to send the plague, for even that will be a blessed relief.

  “I know this, Jude, as sure as I know the sun will rise tomorrow morn. Dragons, once they have tasted human flesh, become twisted in their minds, and must be destroyed. No one else will carry out that task; the king is busy with his battles, and even if some noble knight took it upon himself to slay the beast, he would have no knowledge and would end up worse than my Ambrose did, cooked alive in his armour, and with the dragon still rampant. But we—we have the means to put an end to this calamity, to spare a land from ruin and save a multitude of souls. I tell you true, Jude, ’tis not by chance you stay beneath my roof.”

  My heart thundered in my breast, and my mouth went dry. Of a sudden I knew what the old hag was hatching; knew, too, that Lizzie was already persuaded, spellbound, and that the mad plot wanted only my consent. I shook my head. I longed to escape, to flee for my life—but I was drowning in the madness of Lan’s eyes, and her words wove about me, bewitching and binding, though I strove with all my soul to shut them out.

  “You fear your enemy,” she said, “because in the wildness of your imaginings it is huge, hellish, beyond defeat, and ’tis folly to even think of hunting it. But if you saw it true, as it is, in the flesh, you would see that it is but a beast, no wiser than a warhorse, no larger than an ox, no more wicked than a starved dog that hunts for food. I tell you, lad, it would do you good to face the dragon. It would knock that unseemly terror out of you, and give you the strength to take up your true destiny. This task is yours, Jude: for this you alone survived, out of all your village. You’ll not rest until you have avenged your family. If you refuse this task, the regret and grief will gnaw at your heart, all your life. I know; I saw the poison that ate at Ambrose, when he failed to do his duty.”

  At last I tore my gaze from hers, and seized back my wits. “I am not Ambrose, and I have no knightly duty,” I said. “And ’tis no unseemly terror, to be afraid of a thing that overnight destroys a village and all its people with it. As for my destiny—that’s for God to know, not for you to plot. I’ll have no more to do with you, or with this heathen talk. You may have Lizzie under your evil enchantment, but you don’t have me.”

  “There is no enchantment,” Lan said, “only a dragon that must needs be slain, and two people who have the means to do it—though one is brave and willing, while the other is a coward.”

  “I’m no coward!” I shouted, and Lan laughed. Her mockery woke a wild defiance in me, scattering my wits again. “Since you know everything, witch,” I said, “and since you think I should face my foe, why don’t you call it here, so I can make its acquaintance?”

  Lan cackled so much that she rocked back and forth, tears pouring down her cheeks. “You’re braver than I thought, lad!” she chortled. “Braver than I thought!”

  But brave I was not, only a brazen foo
l a-tangling with a witch. And well may you splatter your ink, Brother Benedict, and cross yourself right heartily, for the next day something happened that made me know the fullness of her power, the terrible entangling way of her. For the next day—

  By corpus bones! There go the bells, for prayer! Quick—be off! Yesterday the Abbot scolded me for making you late sometimes. I’ll tidy up here, and blow the candles out. Godspeed!

  eleven

  Hail, Brother! That was a happy surprise, to be called upon to help harvest the remaining fruit and beans, afore the rains come and settle in for good. ’Twas an ill-planned break, as our story goes, but at least it allowed you more time to spend with Father Matthew, while he struggles between this world and the next. And it gave me time working in the orchard with Jing-wei. She came only in the mornings, for she cannot stand all day. Usually she’s busy in the infirmary, so I don’t see her excepting in our guest house in the evenings, and that’s always overcrowded with pilgrims and noisy children, and there’s little peace to talk. I miss her company. And there’s no need for you to raise your eyebrows like that, Brother; there’s nought between us but friendship. What, you’re writing already? Such eagerness! Or mayhap ’tis only obedience to the Abbot’s instructions. But I’d best get on with the tale.

  That was a bad night at Lan’s, after her devilish talk of a dragon hunt. I was unable to sleep for heat and nagging fears, and felt trapped in a trouble too big for me. Worse, Lizzie was entangled in it, too, but she didn’t seem to mind. I could hear her calm breathing on the other side of Lan, while I tossed and turned. Even when I did sleep, nightmares tormented me. I was sorely tempted to get up and run away, but terrors of night, and a deep unwillingness to abandon Lizzie, kept me in that bed next to the witch.

  In the morning Lan and Lizzie carried on as if there was nought amiss. For the first time Lizzie was allowed to walk a little way, which she did, with Lan on one side and me on the other. Though the walking pained her, she wore a look of joy. She and Lan chatted together, sometimes in their own language. No one spoke of last night’s talk, and I felt confused, shut out, as if they shared a secret I knew not. I thought mayhap it was sorcery that bound them, and excluded me. And I confess there was another thing that made me feel alone: the fear that Old Lan might be right, and it was indeed my destiny, and my bounden duty, to slay the dragon and avenge my family. If so, it was a duty I could not face, and in my misery I cursed Lan for pointing it out to me, and myself for being the worthless coward she said I was.

  While Lizzie rested I went for a walk past the village fields. The folk were out harvesting their wheat. They sang as they worked, their scythes flashing in harmony in the bright sun, and the peacefulness of the scene eased last night’s terrors, though it made me yearn again for Doran, and working beside Prue on our harvest days. And the flashing blades awoke another thing in me: a memory of Tybalt’s sword. Then it came to mind what Richard had said about a soothsayer, and a prophecy: that a dragon would come, and be slain by Tybalt’s sword.

  Oh, Brother Benedict—I cannot tell my relief at that remembering! Joy flooded over me, as if I were a man let out of prison, released from the sentence of death. I almost cheered beside the harvesters in their fields. Old Lan was wrong! It was not my destiny nor my duty to go off hunting for the dragon! She was wrong, her mad ideas all amiss—and I had proof! Almost laughing, I ran back to her house.

  She and Lizzie were picking herbs in the garden. I called to Lan, eager to tell her of the prophecy; but the way she stood there among the herbs, her wizened face like a walnut in the bright sun, her almond-shaped eyes shrewd and secretive, made me hesitate.

  “Well, boy?” she said. “What’s stirred up your pot?”

  “A sword,” I said. “Tybalt’s sword. I remember something I was told about it.”

  Lan knew of Tybalt, for Lizzie had spoken of her life before we came to Lan’s. I was aware of Lizzie, sitting on the little stool she used when in the house, half lost in the bushes of lavender and comfrey. She was very still, listening to what I said.

  “Richard told me a prophecy he heard from a soothsayer,” I went on, wishing Lan would not look at me as if I were a toad to be tossed into a brew. “The soothsayer said that Tybalt’s sword, which his forebears used to slay the last dragons, would slay a dragon again. It would slay the very last of them all.”

  “And this unknown soothsayer was right, think you?” said Lan.

  “Aye,” I mumbled, looking away. “It makes sense, what she said.”

  “And what I say is foolishness?” asked Lan.

  I looked at the ground, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  “I’d take great care if I were you, boy,” said Lan, wrathful and quiet. “I cut out the tongues of doubters like you, and fry them on hot stones, and eat them for my supper. Very nice with strips of toad and tarragon sauce.”

  I heard a muffled sound across the garden, and caught Lizzie laughing, her hand across her mouth, her eyes dancing at me.

  Then Lan cackled and bent over her herbs again. “Give us a hand, boy!” she chortled. “Only have a care; I’m very particular about my herbs.”

  The mirth in the homely garden, the scent of herbs, the ordinary occupation, all worked to ease the fear in me, and made me doubt the seriousness of my situation. Slowly, as I helped Lizzie and Lan in the peaceful garden, it dawned on me that last night’s wild talk had been in jest. I even thought that mayhap they both had hatched the plot—pretended to plan a dragon hunt—just to raise my hackles and have fun with me. Fool that I was, for being taken in! I’d lost a night’s sleep on account of their trickery! I almost laughed, there in the garden, half admiring their cleverness and the crafty way they’d duped me like a fool.

  Well might you laugh, too, Brother Benedict, at their clever trickery—except that I only thought right then that it all had been in jest. Hoped it was, more like! Anyway, it was what I believed at the time, and because of my belief I decided it was time to drop that game, and make some proper plans. It occurred to me that since I had lost all in Doran, I had let the world’s winds blow me where they willed. It was time to plan my own direction, and think in good earnest on the matter of my life and what I ought to do. I had to think on Lizzie, too, and what might be the best for her, since she seemed disinclined to think on it herself. And so I considered my next moves, while I helped Lizzie pick the herbs.

  She explained which plants to pick, and I shared her basket to put them in. It was pleasant work and easy, though several times Lan scolded me for taking too much of a plant, or failing to discard dead leaves. “You don’t listen, Jude!” she railed once, hitting me over the head with her shoe.

  When she turned away and bent over her bushes again, I raised my right hand and jerked two fingers towards her back. “I’ve still got my bow fingers, old witch!” I whispered.

  “Bow fingers?” said Lizzie, puzzled.

  “Aye,” I replied, low so Lan would not hear. “My bow fingers. ’Tis a sign of defiance and scorn. I saw soldiers do it, in the taverns. If a man is taken prisoner in battle, his enemies cut off his bow fingers and let him go. Without these two fingers, he can’t shoot a bow, and is no threat. Once I saw a lad mock an old war veteran, saying how his days of glory were past, and now he couldn’t even chew his food. The old warrior made this sign, saying, ‘I’ve still got my bow fingers, so beware!’ I liked the gesture. It’s expressive, don’t you think? And bold.”

  “So it is,” she said, with a small smile, “except that you told me once that you couldn’t shoot a bow to save yourself. So your bow fingers are hardly a threat, Jude.”

  “Cunning wench,” I muttered.

  She giggled, and we went on with our task. And all the time I worked out my plans for the leaving of Lan’s house. It was a prudent plan, I thought, fair and fitting for Lizzie as well as for myself, though I confess it caused some sorrow in me, too, for it meant that Lizzie and I must soon part, and I had got accustomed to her company.

&
nbsp; Later that day, when Lizzie and I were alone in the garden, tending the little stone oven where Lan baked her bread, I said: “I’ve been thinking a lot today, Lizzie, about my life and where I’m going with it. I don’t wish to tarry any longer at Lan’s. Truth to tell, I don’t much like the old crone. I never know whether she’s in earnest or in jest, and I suspect she torments me just to amuse herself. I feel uneasy here. But you like Lan well enough, and she loves you like a daughter, that’s plain as her two teeth. She’s of your own people, and you could help each other. Why don’t you ask her if you can stay—not just while your feet mend, but after, too?”

  Lizzie was silent, poking more sticks into the oven’s fire. She did not look at me, but knelt with the smoke swirling about her head, her red-and-green dress gem-bright in the late afternoon sun. She wore that closed, unfathomable look, and I had the feeling I had offended her.

  “I’m not abandoning you, Lizzie,” I said. “I’ll not forget you. I’ll visit you as often as I can, I promise. But I have my own life to think about. Well, what say you? Will you stay here with Lan?”

  She gave me a strange look, frowning and vexed. “You think that last night’s talk was all in jest?” she asked.

  “Aye. So it was. That’s why I’ve been thinking on a proper plan, and what we can do with our lives. ’Tis time we talked common sense, Lizzie.”

  Silent, she bent over the oven again, poking in the wood.

  “Lan was playing the fool with me,” I said. “That’s why she made another joke, when I told her of the soothsayer and the prophecy on Richard’s sword. Lan made some wisecrack about cooking up my tongue with bits of toad and tarragon sauce. We all laughed, remember? All that talk of hunting the dragon—it was all a jest, Lizzie! A cruel one, and it went on too long, but it was a jest for all that.”

  Still she said nothing.

  Desperate, I continued: “Richard’s soothsayer was not a fool. She foretold two things, and one has come to pass. She foretold a plague of fires that would herald the coming of another dragon. And the second prophecy, that remains yet to be carried out, was that Tybalt’s sword would slay the beast. So Lan is wrong.”