As he returned to Llangennlys after the long weeks away, Fitz went next door to ask Farmer June for the spare key to Dragon’s Cottage but she wasn’t in. Then he found a key anyway, under a flowerpot.
He dumped his heavy rucksack on the floor and stared about dumbstruck as the scene in the cottage registered. Here was the table that Oscar had chewed in the first days of Perceval’s arrival – it was lying on its side. There were pieces of broken china (‘My favourite blue patterned vase!’) and bits of torn paper everywhere. Books spilled on the floor around the bookcases, the bindings torn off. Even his plants had been emptied out of their pots. Withered plant corpses and soil lay everywhere over the carpets.
He picked up the broken pieces of china, the torn books, the furniture that he had patiently collected over the years. His beloved copy of Dormund Lingwall lay in shreds, the covers spitefully defaced with obscenities. Why, he wondered, was it considered necessary to deface a book on gardening?
He spent the following days clearing up as best he could, but the task felt overwhelming. Even the bedsheets felt cold and damp and smelt as if someone had urinated on them. He had to wash everything before he could use it.
Spring arrived at last, proper spring. The sun shone a little and began to warm the earth and his old dragon bones; there were narcissi and daffodils, there were primroses. There were also weeds. The first thing he wanted to do was to restore his overgrown and rampant garden to some sense of order. But hardly had his spade entered the ground than Fitz realised he couldn’t concentrate. Perceval and Anna and even Oscar kept coming to mind. Although he admitted to himself that he was happy to be free of the need to walk dozens of miles every day and tend to the horse, to set up camp, strike camp, walk some more, keep the peace, undertake crowd control, clean, cook, pose for selfies, and lie awake nights worrying, he was certainly free of the need to be kidnapped and have all his scales torn off and his DNA forcibly extracted. But he missed Perceval more than he would have believed possible. The old knight, irritating as he was, had been someone who had lived through the same things that Fitz had lived through. He told himself that Anna was in Newport, only a couple of dozen miles away, and he would shortly go and visit. But days passed and he went nowhere much.
He mended and polished some of the broken furniture, threw out the bits of shattered vase and put a few spring flowers in a bottle. Life felt colder, lonelier, less fulfilling, more pointless. The plants in his garden refused to thrive regardless of the care that he lavished upon them. The weather, which had at first been pleasant, suddenly swung to unseasonal cold, then to extreme heat, and it was a battle to achieve even small horticultural steps. His side continued to ache from the wounds he had received when imprisoned.
Finally, Fitz was forced to the supermarket; it was that or face starvation. After weeks of being responsible for organising dozens of people – whole towns; indeed, what had felt like entire populations, he now had only himself to think about. Yet no matter how small the task of stocking his own larder, each ordinary chore he faced felt like an insurmountable obstacle. Everything exhausted him. Everything hurt. Fitz knew his time at Llangennlys was drawing to a close.
It’s time to go, he thought. But first I must write to Anna. And before I write to Anna I must retrieve that which I have hidden. That involves going back up to Blaenavon. Oh, but of course, it’s not there. I remember now. Of course I didn’t bury the codex. How could I? It would have to go to a museum to be properly stored and revered as it should be. What a miracle it had survived being stuck in his attic all this time. It needed to be kept in temperature-controlled surroundings. Be studied properly. By scholars. Why had he hidden it all this time? he asked himself. What had he hoped to achieve? Did he think he was going to clear Meghan’s name that way? And the answer was, yes, he had thought that. Because everyone blamed her for the demise of the dragons. Because in his heart he had blamed her too. And he felt a terrible burden of guilt. But now it was lifting.
*
He calmed his mind, sat down at his desk. Managed to find the remains of a good-quality writing pad and a pen with some ink in it. Even a stamp. At least he wouldn’t have to write on printer paper.
He stared at the blank sheet for an hour by the light of a lamp while outside the familiar lane in front of Dragon’s Cottage darkened. What would they call the cottage when he was no longer living in it? Forever Cottage maybe? But nothing is forever.
He recalled the night just before last Christmas when he had heard Perceval riding up towards his home. He remembered how irritated he had been by the sight of Perceval then; what he would give to see him again now, plodding down the lane in his ridiculous armour.
Farmer June walked down the lane, leading a couple of ponies from one paddock to another. She saw Fitz sitting in his window and waved cheerily. Fitz waved back.
‘Good holiday?’ she mouthed.
He nodded and gave her a thumbs up. Poor lady couldn’t have had much time to look at the news.
*
The following morning he left the cottage to post his letter. Isolated and misted with rain at the end of the lane lay the old red postbox, today it was wearing a knitted red hat with knitted sheep on it. He looked at the letter in his hand, hesitated for a moment, then posted it.
Then he returned home and, without eating or drinking anything, lighting any lamps, or a fire, he went upstairs and lay down on the bed and waited.
When two days later Farmer June and her husband Mike realised they had seen no sign of Fitz, nor any lights on at Dragon’s Cottage, they used their spare key to gain entry. They found the place orderly, tidy and completely deserted. They were just leaving when June noticed a letter propped against the desk
This is the last will and testament of me, Odo de Fitzwalter of Manorbier
*
And so it came to pass, one icy midnight with a sky full of stars, a dragon came to land by a lonely cliffside chapel. He looked and felt younger than he had for a long time; the wound in his side had vanished. A white horse cropped the grass nearby, deigned to look up briefly and neighed softly in recognition before dipping his head to graze the clifftop once more.
Down a steep flight of stone steps lay St Govan’s chapel, a tiny edifice cut from the living rock. Inside, a single candle burned on the low, stone altar, before which stood a man in cloak and sword, his back to the pews. The sound of the surf lashing the rocks below drifted in.
‘So. There you are.’
‘You took your time, worm!’
‘I got held up. And I wish you wouldn’t call me that. And what happened to you… at Fort Tuesday?’
Perceval shrugged. ‘We fought. It was Brogan – or some dreary new manifestation of him. In every age it seems there will always be men like that. We both fell into the ravine. Now I’m here, and he isn’t. And you, Fitz? You escaped?’
The dragon nodded. ‘I wouldn’t have without the girl. She saved me.’
‘They say Gawain is buried here, and the spring has magical healing powers.’ The two stood for a while staring at the diminishing candle flame throwing their distorted shadows onto the walls.
A single candle can light a place that has been dark for a thousand years.
‘Before we leave,’ the knight said, ‘I believe this feels like a suitable time to say a prayer for peace.’ So they prayed, there in the moonlight in the tiny chapel while beneath their feet the sea pounded the land into history.