“Joye, what will happen if the people of Markesew know that we are here?” Alizon asked, standing behind the girl who sat at the kitchen table, her bowl of porridge growing cold before her. The other virgins sat lined on either side of the long table, hands in their laps as they stared down at their breakfasts, unwilling to draw Alizon’s attention.
“They will come throw us all to Belch.”
“Ysmay, how do we know this?”
The dark girl’s lips tightened and tears of either distress or rebellion glimmered in her eyes. “Because of what they did to Reyne when she tried to leave.”
“How else do we know this?” Alizon asked, coming to stand behind Reyne and laying her hand on the young woman’s quivering shoulder.
“Because they fed us to the dragon once before,” Reyne answered, her voice hollow. “Because they care nothing for us. Because their sheep matter more to them than our lives.”
Alizon remembered the rare sound of Reyne’s laughter last night, as they had been climbing the stairs. A stab of regret went through her at having drained the joy once again from the girl.
Then she remembered her own misdeeds, her own succumbing to the temptation that George’s presence presented, and her resolve hardened. She must be harsh, for the good of them all.
“Mistress?” little Flur asked.
Alizon looked over at the child, her fair, baby-fine hair making her look even younger than her twelve years. “Yes?”
“Will Saint George kill the dragon?”
Alizon felt all eyes turn to her, bodies shifting in the eager wait for an answer.
“I could go home to Mama if he did,” Flur said quietly.
“And where would the rest of us go, Flur?” she said, forcing herself to be heartless. “How many of us have families waiting to take us in?”
Flur’s mouth turned down, and she ducked her head.
“We could work as we do now,” Joye said. “We need not depend upon families.”
“Where would we live? Where would we get our wool?” She looked around at each face. “And what do you think the good landsfolk would do, if they knew we had been living off their livestock all these years?”
“They would demand payment,” Braya said, her heavy jaw setting in anger.
“Would any truly be happy to see us, we whom they had thrown away?”
“No,” a few muttered.
“We were worthless to them and would only remind them of their guilt and selfishness. Were they glad to send us here the first time, and wouldn’t they be glad to send us again?”
“Yes,” several more said.
“Did they play music and put flowers in our hair, and tell us to be joyful as we went to our deaths?”
“Yes.”
“And is that fair?”
“No!”
“Do they deserve to keep their sheep?”
“No!”
“Do they deserve to live free from the fear of Belch?”
“No!”
She softened her voice. “And is our life better here than it ever would have been in Markesew? Do we have a finer home, finer clothes, finer food, and easier work?”
“Yes!”
“Do we have a strong family among each other? Are we sisters?”
“Yes!”
“Will we let anyone destroy what we have built?”
“No!”
“Will we?”
“NO!”
She let their answer echo up the walls of the kitchen, fading out the windows high above, then she picked up her brown robe and pulled it on, fastening the clasp at its neck. “I will deal with the stranger, who is not Saint George,” she finished, looking at Flur. “He is an inept fool on a hopeless quest, and within the week he will be gone from Devil’s Mount.”
“Are you going to let Belch eat him?” Pippa asked, her black starburst of hair making her look the imp that she was.
“We are not Markesew’s villagers, Pippa. We do not send innocent people to their deaths. He will leave the mount unharmed in all but pride.” She addressed them all. “You had your fun with him last night, and by the grace of good fortune were not discovered for what you are. He thinks you are the ghosts of dead virgins.”
A snicker went around the table.
“I do not think we will fool him a second time. Let there not be one.”
They nodded, unity apparently restored.
She should have been reassured. She should have felt back in control, confident of their obedience as she sought to keep them safe. If they were anything like her, though, their curiosity was more roused than satisfied about George, and anything might happen if her control faltered.
Nothing was as settled as she wanted.
“There is porridge in the pot,” Alizon said as she dumped innards into a sheep stomach. Blood caked under her nails and stuck between her fingers, and threatened the rolled sleeves of her robe. She blew at the wool “hair” hanging against her face, the strands tangling in her eyelashes and catching between her lips.
“Is there? Hmm. Er,” George said from somewhere behind her.
She was afraid to look at him, afraid that she might see in his eyes some memory of last night.
She rubbed her face against her shoulder, trying to dislodge a stubborn fuzz of hair. “I would serve you, but my hands are dirty.”
He came up beside her, her body sensing his approach in the movement of air. A tingling rush ran down her back.
“That’s not dinner, is it?”
Surprise made her turn to look at him, her vision obstructed by the hood. He was asking about the stomach she was stuffing. “No. Whyever would you think so?”
“Oh. Sorry!”
“Do you have a complaint about my cookery?” Annoyance was more comfortable than vulnerability.
“No, no! Not at all!” He paused. “It’s, ah . . . just a bit different from what I am used to. And I feel guilty having you wait on me when you plainly have so many other responsibilities around the castle. Tell you what,” he said, then stopped.
She waited. “Yes?”
“If it’s all right with you, I’ll cook my own meals. And clean up after myself, of course. What do you think?”
She pursed her lips, trying to decide if he suspected her of poisoning him, or of just being a bad cook. Either way, if he did the cooking it would make it more difficult to drug him nightly—using less powder, of course—and he might start poking into places he had no business being. “I would feel a poor hostess if you were to do that.”
“You would be making me feel more comfortable if I knew I weren’t such a burden. Tell you what,” he said again. Then he paused.
It was a peculiar speech mannerism. She waited, allowing her annoyance to grow, but curiosity eventually won out. “Yes?”
“I’ll cook for you, too.”
A chill went through her. Did he have plans to drug her in return? “No, I could not let you do that.”
“Certainly you can. Why not? It won’t kill you to give my cooking a try, will it?”
She gripped the bloody stomach in her hands more tightly. A bit of intestine bulged out of the top.
“Say yes,” he urged. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Cook for yourself, but not for me. I am content with my own fare.” She stuffed the errant intestine back in, then took a handful of blue-dyed flour from a bowl and dumped it into the stomach.
She felt more than saw him shrug. “Please yourself.” Then he added, “What is that that you’re making?”
“A treat for Belch.” She pointed to the harmless dyed flour with one bloody finger. “With enough of that in here, he should be sound asleep when you go down to cut off his head.”
“Stab him through the heart, maybe. I don’t know that cutting off his head will be necessary.”
She used her forearm to shove back her hood just enough that she could see his face. His nose was wrinkled, and his lips curled back in disgust as he stared at the pouch she held.
Looking back down, she pulled open the mouth of the sheep stomach and swirled her finger inside, mixing the blue flour with the blood and fluids there. “This is a bit of lung, right here,” she remarked, lifting the sack so he could get a good view. “Plenty of gut, of course, and then, here—” She dug around, organs sliding against each other. “I know there’s an eyeball in here somewhere. . . .”
He stumbled back.
“I have sweetbreads left over, if you would like them for your breakfast. You can cook them yourself.” She smiled, forgetting he could not see it. “Lung fried in butter, kidneys in gravy, a bit of brain on bread. I know I’ll be eating well these next few days.”
“Thank you, no, I had something else in mind. If you could point me in the direction of your pantry?”
She propped the stomach in a wooden bowl and rinsed her hands. “Tell me what you need and I will fetch it for you.” She could not let him see the quantities of supplies they had; he would realize they were not all for her and Milo.
“I’m not sure you’ll have everything.”
She gestured with her hand for him to go ahead and give her the list.
“Bread?” he asked. “Stale is fine.”
She nodded.
“Eggs, butter, sugar, cinnamon?”
Jesu, but the man had expensive taste. “No sugar or cinnamon.” Or at least, none that she would give away so freely.
“Honey, then?”
She nodded reluctantly, noticing again how big he was and wondering how much of such dear foods he would put down. She should have insisted he eat the porridge.
Lighting a lamp, she went to the cellar, leaving George to examine the cookware, scraping with his fingernail at spots and frowning as if she and the virgins did not know how to keep a proper kitchen.
Everything about George this morning rubbed her wrong. And it only made it worse, knowing that the reason was her own attraction to him and her shameless display last night. He threatened everything that she was, and she reminded herself she wanted him frightened away so that he could do her no more harm.
Belch would take care of that.
Alizon descended the stairs to the cool cellar hewn from the rock of the mount. Pots of butter, honey, cones of sugar, and other goods lined the shelves, while barrels of rough-milled flour and grains sat about on the floor. There were casks of wine and beer, sacks of nuts, and jars packed with dried fruits. She searched out the items of George’s request, pausing to nibble a date.
At the beginning, when she had first come here to Devil’s Mount, Belch had been a demon, a creature not of this earth, something thrown up from the bowels of Hell. He had been the incarnation of evil.
Then, slowly, as she took over the role of his keeper, he had become an animal. She had started to see him as a beast with an earthly need for food and warmth and sleep. His evil was simply the evil of a creature without conscience or thought, though unquestionally one with the power to kill whatever crossed its path.
Over the years he had become her ally. It was because of Belch that she could demand an ever-increasing number of sheep from Markesew and have the villagers obey, sacrificing to her that which they valued more than their young women. She knew that even old sheep had their worth, and were not given up without regret, and so she delighted in taking them from the people of her old home. She and the others had earned them.
It was because she alone had the courage to face the dragon that she was the mistress of Devil’s Mount. And it was Belch who had, ironically, given her the chance to save eleven girls not only from death, but from lives of poverty and misery, of toiling in fields and from dying young in childbirth.
Yes, Belch had helped make her what she was, and Belch had given her much of what she had. It was that truth that had gradually changed her feelings about the dragon from abhorrent hatred to a sort of protective fondness mixed with fear.
Today George would try to kill Belch, but she would not let it happen.
Alizon popped the rest of the date she nibbled into her mouth, downing it as mindlessly as Belch downed a sheep. She was the mistress of this mount, and she would protect all who inhabited it.
“Come on, try a bite. Don’t you want a bite?”
Alizon crossed her arms over her chest, lips tight together like a baby refusing food. “No.”
“You’ll like it, I promise.” George waved a chunk of his “French toast” at her, speared on the end of a knife. “It’s delicious.”
It smelled delicious, certainly. Saliva filled her mouth, but stubbornness and the self-satisfied way George was eating his cooking kept her from succumbing.
“I could teach you how to make it. It’s simple.”
“It must be.”
“You mean, if a bonehead like me could make it? That doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Here, come on, don’t be afraid to try something new.” He waved the piece of egg-battered bread, glistening with butter and honey, in front of her hood.
Against her will, Alizon’s lips parted. The French toast looked so much better than porridge.
“You know you want it. I won’t tell. Come on, try it.”
He was tempting her as he had last night. Lust, gluttony, what else would this man encourage in her? He was more of a devil than Belch! To accept anything from him would only weaken her, of that she was sure.
But it looked so good. . . .
“Good morrow, mistress.” Milo appeared in the doorway, saving her from the luscious square of golden bread. He nodded to George, gracing him with a grunt of greeting.
“Good morrow,” Alizon replied.
“Milo!” George dropped his knife back onto his square wooden plate. “My man!” He got up and jogged over to the corner where he had left his chosen sword propped against the wall. “I need your help. I need to sharpen this thing.”
Milo took the sword from him, testing the edge of the blade against his thumb. “I have a wheel in my cottage. I can do it now.”
Alizon grimaced. There was a small whetstone here in the kitchen, if George had thought to ask her. Milo looked pleased to have been asked for help, though. Boys and weapons, it had been the same through all time.
“I’ll go with you. I’ve never sharpened a sword before and want to see how it’s done.”
Milo glanced at George with the same expression she knew she herself wore: one of doubt and puzzlement.
“You’ve never sharpened one?” she asked.
“Er . . . my squire usually did it.”
His ignorance, however laughable, provided opportunities for those with knowledge. “Be sure Milo does not put too fine an edge upon it,” she said. “It will become brittle.”
Milo looked at her with a blank face; then comprehension came to his features—and a hint of disapproval, though he gave the barest hint of a nod to show he would obey: The sword would shine but barely cut through boiled meat when he was done.
“Really?” George said. “I didn’t know that.”
“It is your strength that will kill Belch, not a narrow edge of steel. Your strength and your wit.”
He gave her a doubting look, obviously hearing the touch of sarcasm that she could not keep from her voice. “Don’t touch my food while I’m gone,” he warned.
She made a noise of disgust and waved her hand at him.
He grinned, then slung an arm around Milo’s shoulders. Milo’s eyes widened in alarm, his face asking, “What now?” But George just steered him around to the doorway, and off they went.
Leaving her alone with George’s plate of “French toast.”
She sidled over to the table and looked down at it. There were at least a dozen little cut-up squares, so many that no one would ever notice if one was gone. She bent over the table and sniffed.
Warm, sweet, eggy.
She dabbed a fingertip in the honey and butter, then touched it to her tongue. So much better than porridge. Should she try it?
No. It would be giving in. It would be losing. In what way, she did not know, but she felt it with certainty.
She was not going to eat any of that toast.