sixteen

Good morrow, Benedict. At least, I suppose it is good. Myself, I cannot rightly tell; we supped with the Abbot again last night, and now my head has a drum in it, and I have a brutal thirst, and my belly threatens any minute to unload itself of all the Abbot’s lovely wine. ’Twould be a sinful waste, to be sure, for it’s stuff he got in France. Have mercy, Brother—don’t bang the ink pot like that! And if I leave this stool in a hurry, don’t try to stop me, for ’tis a hellish long way to the lavatorium. Don’t laugh, either! I can tell you are, even if you do pretend to look for parchments fallen under your chair; your shoulders shake. ’Tis no laughing matter. I had good reason to drink deep at dinner. Jing-wei was in a strange mood, for a start, and I couldn’t say a thing aright. Chen said plenty that pleased her, though. And afterwards she accused me of looking like a grubby peasant—which doubtless I did, compared with the excellent Chen with his silken robes, plaited hair, and pared and polished nails. I’d like to see him after mixing clay and straw and dung, to mend tumbledown walls! Anyway, I don’t know what she was complaining about; I combed my hair and washed my hands, and got the worst muck off my clothes. ’Tis not my fault I don’t have a hundred silken outfits to pick and choose from. Did you know he wears something different every day, including jewels, and every costume is worth a lord’s fortune? It’s dinner again at the Abbot’s table today, and more wonders about China, no doubt. Pray for me if you will, Benedict, for something’s going on that unsettles my soul. Something in Jing-wei, that I don’t understand. God’s bones, man—must you still write down everything? I swear, you’re as vexing as Jing-wei! I’m getting mortal tired of you starting afore I’m ready! You can throw all this out, for ’tis nought to do with the story, and there’s nothing said yet the Abbot doesn’t already know. Now start again, another page.

Thank you. Now, to our tale.

St. Alfric’s Cove was an ominous, nightmarish place. There were no animals, no birds, only the restless sea sighing and crashing on the rocks, and the overwhelming presence of the beast. It was quiet as a tomb in the shrine, and I felt imprisoned, jittery, half out of my mind for fear, like a man awaiting execution. All that first day I paced, looked constantly out the window, bit my nails, and wished to God that I was anywhere but there. And all the while my thoughts were frenzied, trying to invent a way to get the fire-dust to the dragon. Lizzie was unusually silent, sitting very still with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes half closed.

“We could bring the dragon down here,” I said, in a rare moment when my despair lifted a little. “We could prepare the bag of fire-dust and put it on the beach with an animal tied near it, to lure the dragon down. Then, when it breathed on the animal to kill it, it would set the fatal dust alight, and . . .”

Lizzie ignored me. I fell quiet, seeing the holes in my plot. Her serenity was beginning to vex me.

“I hope you’re figuring something out,” I said, after a while. “I hope you’re hatching one hell of a plot, or sprouting wings, or working out a way to fly. Because I’m not exactly thrilled to the veins, stuck in here waiting for something to happen.”

Of a sudden her eyes flew open, and she sat up very straight. “Tell me,” she said, “is there any wind?”

I stopped my pacing and stuck my head out the window. “Aye,” I said. “Coming off the sea. I noticed a breeze before, when we were on the beach. ’Tis stronger now. And blessedly cool.”

Slowly, Lizzie stood. Though I warned her against it, she went outside and faced the sea, and lifted her arms to the breeze. Steady and strong, the wind filled her sleeves, billowing them, and tossing her long braids like blue-black banners.

“What are you doing?” I asked crossly, from near the door. “Cooling off, praying, or preparing for flight?”

Lowering her arms, she turned and faced me. She was smiling, half laughing, her face brighter than a new florin from the royal mint. “Flight,” she said, and came back into the shrine again.

I followed her, my heart in my boots, thinking she had lost her wits.

“Is this another trick Old Lan taught you?” I asked. “Another bit of witchery?”

“A bit of wisdom,” she said, “like the fire-dust. I’m making us a thing that will fly, to take the bag of fire-dust up to the dragon’s lair.”

“Are you making wings?”

“Be patient. You’ll see.”

I went and looked out the window at the peaceful sea, and tried to quiet my despair. Behind me, Lizzie delved in one of the bags, and I heard the rustle of her mother’s silken dress. There were a few groans as she walked about on the stone floor, and the slithering sound of silk on stones; then I heard the snip of Lan’s scissors. I spun around. The silken dress was spread out, scarlet splendour shimmering across near all the floor, and Lan’s sewing things were scattered beside it. Lizzie was cutting along one of the seams.

“You’re destroying your silk dress?” I cried. “I thought you held it dear!”

“Aye, I do,” she said. “But I’m not destroying it; I’m giving it a new purpose, a new form.”

“What form? Tell me what you’re doing, Lizzie, afore you drive me mad!”

Still with her head bent low as she cut the precious silk, Lizzie said, “In China we fly silk boxes in the wind. I don’t know what you would call them in your language; I’ve never seen them here. We hold them by long cords, and control them from the ground. They are so big and powerful, some of them, that they will lift men into the skies, if the wind is strong. Bowmen use them to fly above enemies hidden in the hills, and shoot the enemies down one at a time. Or soldiers fly in them to spy out enemy land. Sometimes if the silken things are made a certain way, they shriek and howl like devils, and warriors fly them at night over their enemies as they sleep, and the enemies wake and flee, thinking that devils are coming down to destroy them. They are used often in war, like the fire-dust. But they are used in peacetimes, too. My father said he flew in one when he was a youth, high in the mountains, just for the wonder of it.”

I was silent awhile, digesting all this. Then I asked, “And you’re going to make one so that you can fly up to the dragon’s lair on it?”

“No. But I can sew the bag of fire-dust into it, and fly that up to the cave.”

“How do you know how to make one? And what’s going to set the fire-dust alight, once it’s up there?”

“My father made me and my brothers such a flying thing when we were small. I remember it very clearly, for he let me help him make it, and to fly it after. It was a child’s toy, not large enough to contain a man. We flew it off the wall that surrounded our city, high over the valleys below. It was a long round tube, not a box, with a bamboo frame inside to hold its shape. When it was filled with wind, flying, it looked like a plump fish, or a dragon. If I can make one the same, the dragon might take it for a foe, and attack it with fire. Then it will set the silk alight, with the bag of fire-dust and shards within.”

“God’s nails and blood, Lizzie, you’re a marvel!” I cried.

“We shall soon see if I am,” she said, with a smile that set the blood a-pounding in my veins. “But I cannot take all the praise. I mentioned the flying things to Lan, when I was telling her of my childhood. And when we were packing our provisions, she was very insistent that I bring her sewing things and my mother’s silk dress. Mayhap she suspected the dragon’s lair might be unreachable, save in this way, and she wanted me to have all that would be necessary. But I still don’t have everything, and need your help. Will you find me some fine wood? Thin and light, to make the frame for the silk.”

“I might find some back in Seagrief,” I said, all eager, making to go right there and then.

But Lizzie said, with that smile again, “Not yet, Jude. ’Tis almost sunset. Go tomorrow. Meanwhile, watch the cave and tell me when the dragon appears.”

With hopes soaring, I sat in the entranceway of the shrine and watched the cliff. I could not see the cave from here, for it was hid by a bend in the rock, but I remembered its whereabouts. My eyes never left that place.

The sun sank lower, and it was almost in the sea when Lizzie stopped work and came and sat by me. She brought some bread and cheese and dried figs with her, and gave me some. “Our food is near gone,” she said. “In the morning I’ll get some sea-food for us. I stayed by the sea with the Gypsies once, and they showed—”

She stopped, and we clutched each other’s hands, the food dropped, forgotten. From high in the cliff, drenched in sunset gold, the dragon came. Slowly, almost sleepily, it drifted down. I wanted to retreat back into the shrine, but Lizzie squeezed my arm with her hand, and barely shook her head. “It has bad sight,” she whispered, “but movement may give us away.”

To my horror, the beast landed on the beach not far from us. It crouched on the pebbles and began cleaning its scales. Like a cat it was, washing itself, only it breathed fire to clean off the dirt, instead of using spit. My heart sank.

“Flame has no effect on it,” I said, very low. “Your fire-dust won’t work.”

“It’s not the fire-dust that will do the harm,” she whispered back. “But when it bursts into flame it hurls out the shards of flint and steel; those do the harm.”

The dragon was meticulous with its cleaning, even burning out the dust between its claws and along its tail. It was beautiful, gleaming like copper in the dying sun. But at times its movements seemed clumsy, and it was much occupied with a place just beneath its left foreleg, to one side of its chest. Then, when it lifted its head to sniff the wind, I saw that in that place was a gaping hole, with blackness oozing out.

“’Tis wounded!” I whispered. “Not mortally, though.”

“But it still bleeds,” murmured Lizzie. “See how it favours that side? ’Tis not a minor wound, Jude.”

She was right; when the beast went down to the sea to drink, I saw that its movements were not so fluid as before, and it limped badly, for it would not walk upon that leg near the wound. While it drank, its back towards us, Lizzie and I crept slowly into the shrine. Her silken dress lay in pieces along one wall. She leaned on me as we went to the window and cautiously looked out. The beast was in the tide, still drinking the sea. When it was done quenching its thirst, it turned to the corpse on the beach. While we watched, horror-struck, it poured fire across the thing, as if venting fury upon it. It was a wrath terrible to see, and Lizzie and I both turned away.

“It must have been the soldier who gave it the wound,” whispered Lizzie. We heard pebbles moving, and every now and then that awful breath, harsh like the winds of hell, and the smell of fire. At last it was over, and there was silence. Lizzie stood and looked out the window. “’Tis flying off,” she said. “Along the coast, northward.”

Then she came and sat by me again. I had my arms about my knees, and I shook like someone in a fever, stricken with blackest imaginings. After a time I said, “You know, Lizzie, it will do the same to us if it finds us.”

“We’ll kill it afore then,” she said. “It will be a kindness. It must be in fearful agony.”

“God’s bones—don’t tell me you pity it!” I said.

She smiled a little, and picked at a torn fingernail. Lan had pared her nails short, and her hands were little and shapely, like the rest of her. I noticed that her fingers were steady, no tremor at all.

“Are you afraid of nothing?” I asked.

She thought about that awhile, staring out the doorway at the gathering dusk. At last she sighed and said, “I’m afraid of many things, Jude.”

“The dragon, too?”

“Aye. But I don’t think on the fear, it only gives it power.”

“What do you think on, then? When Lan was about to work on your feet, and you knew you’d be in torment, what did you think on? And when you look at that beast out there, and know we have to kill it, what stops you going half mad with terror? What did you think on, when the dragon came down just now?”

“When Lan worked on my feet, I thought on the joy to come, on walking without pain. It took me beyond the suffering. And you helped more than you know. As for the dragon . . . well, when it came just now, I thought on how lucky we were to have this hiding place, like a shield of stone about us. And I thought on the bag of fire-dust and the shards, and how we shall finish what a soldier began.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Do you remember what Lan said about fear? She said fear was faith in the enemy. If you dwell all the time on what makes you afraid, your own fear sucks the strength out of you. The dragon doesn’t make you afraid, Jude—it doesn’t even know you live. You make yourself afraid, by believing in the beast’s strength, by having faith in it.”

I was put in mind again of what Lan said to me about the worst dragons being the ones in my mind. I said, “’Tis hard not to have faith in it, though, when I’ve seen what it can do.”

“Have faith in yourself, too,” she said. Leaning close, she pressed her palm flat against my chest, across my heart. “Hold fast to what lies in here,” she said. “No one can touch your heart, Jude—not unless you allow them to.”

I thought on that closed look she got sometimes, that silent wall she built about herself. I understood it, now. It locked out a multitude of hurts, and locked in a mighty strength. And I despaired, thinking on my own lost dreams and joys, crushed out of me that day I returned to Doran and found it all burned bare. My heart had been touched, all right, with or without my permission—touched and torn, and tossed to utter grief.

I think Lizzie knew what I was thinking, for she said, very gentle, “All things can be made new, Jude.”

I looked into her face, and saw such understanding there that I looked away quick, afore she saw my tears. “I think we should finish our meal,” I mumbled, scrambling on the stones for the bread and figs that we had dropped when the dragon came. She helped me search, and our hands touched in the dark, and held for two heartbeats. Then we looked for the bread again, and found it. In silence we ate, though the bread was stale and gritty in our mouths.

After, we lay wrapped in our blankets on the stones, listening to the sea, and looking at the stars through the tiny windows. Lizzie slept on the blanket that was already in the place, but I had only stones under me. The wind still blew off the sea, and the air was cool. Moonlight pierced the slits in the roof, for the moon was full, and our tiny shrine seemed filled with misty silver swords. There was a holy power in that place, doubtless from the saint who had once dwelled there.

At some time in the night I woke aching, as if my back had been beaten. I heard Lizzie restless, too.

“I think I prefer a witch’s straw mattress to a saint’s stones,” I said, and she giggled.

“Aye, ’tis uncomfortable and cold,” she agreed. “But if you share this place we can sleep on two blankets, which will be softer, and have one to cover us.”

Well, I wasn’t about to disappoint a maid in distress, so I got up and did as she suggested. It was more comfortable after that, and the smell of mouldy furs was worth the feel of Lizzie warm and close. Don’t dip your pen so eager-like in the ink, Brother, for there’s nothing thrilling happened, save that I was content for the first time since Doran, and found a wondrous peace in the nearness of a maid. Though I have to confess that in the morning I was sorely tempted, seeing her there against my arm, her hair—

Hark! ’Tis a grand storm outside! Shall I close the window shutters?

There—that’s stopped the draft. Still writing? Well, you may as well stop now, for I’ll not tell you any more about temptation, ’twill only torture you. I just saw Chen running across the courtyard to the barn, shining wet and all lit up by lightning like one of those bright fire-flowers Jing-wei told me about. He’ll be off to make sure the thunder doesn’t spook his horse. It’s lame, his horse, and he asked the Abbot if he can stay until its hoof is mended. The others are all moving on tomorrow; I suspect he wants to stay on Jing-wei’s account. I seem plagued with waiting for hooves to mend. I wish he would leave. His presence here is too disturbing. I confess, though, that Chen is making me think on things I have not thought about before. I’ve been remembering Old Lan of late, and the wisdom she had. I’m thinking now that mayhap she was no witch at all, but just a woman with more knowledge than perhaps we are comfortable with. Mayhap wisdom like Lan’s is only another side of truth, if truth be like a gem, cut on several sides to let the full light through. I see that sideways look, Brother. I’m sorry; I’m merely trotting out my thoughts. For God’s love, don’t write this down! I might be burned for heresy!