George & the Virgin

by Lisa Cach

  Too frickin’ cool!

  “I will kill the dragon,” he confirmed for her, standing straight, then thumping his fist upon his chest, over the red cross of St. George on its white field. “I am St. George!”

  She nodded, probably more at the tone of his voice than the words, and then, as she looked him over, a tiny creeping frown of doubt creased between her eyes. Her worried gaze met his; then she ducked her head in apology and sidled past to the door behind him. She opened it and peered out into darkness, then closed it again and frowned some more.

  “Sswear-d? Ahrse?”

  “Sswear-d? Oh, sword?” He did a Jedi master impression, swinging his imaginary blade.

  She nodded.

  “No sswear-d.”

  “Ahrse?” She feigned holding reins and bouncing along.

  “No ahrse either.”

  She made the soft, tongue-clicking sound of disapproval unique to women. Then, with one hand on her hip and the other alternately gesturing in the air and resting fingertips in contemplation on her chin, she embarked upon an extended monologue, clearly trying to work out how he was going to kill the dragon with no ahrse and no sswear-d.

  He listened, and as he did he caught more and more of her words. It was English she was speaking, only her vowels were sometimes pronounced differently. She also used those archaic thou and art words, and ended her verbs as if she was reading from the Bible.

  During his hungry years as a wrestler he had traveled to Africa and Asia for matches in towns both big and small. He had learned to make sense of whatever fragments of English a speaker offered, and to use the context of the conversation to fill in the blanks. His college theater training had helped perfect his natural talent for mimicry, and he could speak back to foreigners in their own accents. They were skills that served him well now.

  Emoni’s words gradually came more and more clearly to him, without the need to make translations in his head.

  “… smith make … something something something … no … something something … we have nothing that … something … they would try to stop … something … you will have to make do for now with this.” She stepped into the shadows, then came back into the candlelight holding a wooden pitchfork.

  He gave it a doubtful look. One of the carved tines was broken. “Do you think I can kill a dragon with that?” he asked, speaking slowly and mimicking her way of speech.

  She shrugged and spoke with equal care. “You are Saint George.”

  “Er, yes.”

  “If you gain the castle, you might find a sword and armor there.”

  “Castle?” All right! A castle!

  This was like a video game. Invade the castle. Find the sword. Kill the dragon. And if he got killed, he would just reset and start over.

  Then again, he had heard that it was impossible to die in a dream, so maybe the same thing was true of being in a creative visualization.

  But what if he imagined the dragon biting him— after he annoyed it by sticking that sorry pitchfork in its ass—and then his hypnotized brain convinced his body to die in real life?

  He dismissed the thought. Wouldn’t happen. That was the stuff of cheesy late-night television, of which he was a connoisseur.

  “The castle of the de Burroughs, on Devil’s Mount,” Emoni was explaining. “There is an entrance from it into the lair of the dragon. There is also an entrance through a cave on the shore.”

  “The dragon lives under the castle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who must I fight to get to the castle?”

  “Milo, who tends the sheep. And the crone.”

  What kind of matchup was that, a shepherd and a crone? Surely not one worthy of St. George. “I cannot fight an old woman.”

  “You must get past her—it is not for me to say how.”

  “But who is she?”

  “She was once a nun. When the first sacrifice was made, over forty years past, she was the one who brought the virgin to the dragon. She has remained at the castle ever since, to give the dragon its yearly tribute.”

  The woman sounded like a real sweetie—probably a jealous, bitter old witch who liked throwing nubile young beauties to their deaths. “Who is the virgin I must rescue?”

  Emoni cocked her head, brows raised in question.

  “There is a virgin to rescue, yes?” The way the story usually went, the hero was offered the virgin’s hand in marriage after he saved her from a hideous death. A creative visualization of wedding-night action might be fun. And since this was his dream …

  Emoni’s face grew sad. “There are only bones. In three weeks the lottery of virgins will be held, and a new one will be chosen to feed to the dragon. You must kill the beast before then.”

  He took the pitchfork from her. It was as light as a garden rake, and he couldn’t imagine killing an iguana with it, much less a dragon. “I will do my best.”

  Emoni shook her head. “No. You must kill it.” She pressed her lips tight together against the trembling that had suddenly started there. “You must.”

  He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Emoni?”

  She gave a choked sob and took a shuddering breath. The eyes she raised to his were bright with pain and passion. “Twelve years ago my closest friend was given to the dragon. I have fought the town ever since, to end the sacrifices. They would not do so, so I turned to studying the old ways— magic—to end them myself. And they must be ended. This year, my daughter …” She choked once more in misery, and it was several moments before she could again speak. “This year my daughter will be in the lottery. She is only twelve years old.”

  “Ah, crap,” he said by way of consolation, and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. She stiffened in his embrace, and it belatedly occurred to him that such might be a faux pas in this world where women wore cloths on their heads. He released her, and she scooted away.

  “What is your daughter’s name?” he asked. If someone tried to feed Gabby to a lizard, George would have stomped their sorry ass into the ground. This poor woman had a whole town to fight, though. No wonder she was frightened.

  “Alisoun. I named her after my friend.”

  “I swear to you, Emoni, that Alisoun will not go to the dragon.” And at twelve years old, she would not be going to his visualized marriage bed, either.

  Emoni clasped her hands together. “Then blessed be the name of Saint George, and may you deliver this town from the evil that has come to live in its heart!”

  The solemnity of her words were like a prayer, but the godlike feeling he expected to come when paid such reverence was nowhere to be found. Instead, he felt a twinge of anxiety. What if he failed?

  There was no advantage in letting Emoni see that trickle of doubt, though. “Rest easy. You have nothing more to fear.”

  While he himself had everything to worry about. He had better be able to find a real sword in that castle. Or a spear. Even a big knife, for God’s sake, would be better than attacking the dragon with a pointy stick that looked better suited to roasting marshmallows.

  He hefted the pitchfork as if it had substance and was a weapon to be feared in the mighty hand of St. George. “So, which way do I go?”

  Chapter Five

  Alizon lay in bed in her dark chamber, gazing at the sky visible through her narrow windows. It was the charcoal blue of the pre-dawn hour, telling her that she had once again lost a night’s sleep to the fitful wanderings of her imagination.

  They were of no use, these half-waking dreams she played with through the black hours: dreams of dark men ravishing her body, thrusting deep within her, accepting no refusal as they took her again and again.

  In her dreams, the men found her irrestistible in the way that Osbert had not. She needed to do nothing to please or to arouse, for her beauty and her spirit had charmed her phantom lovers, and they could never get enough of her.

  In her dreams, no one had her pretending to be a sheep.

  Several times a month she found he
rself unable to sleep, her mind restless and her body even more so, and it was then that the fantasies invaded her thoughts and stole the peace from her soul.

  She was twenty-six, and as virgin still as the day she had gone to the dragon.

  During the daylight hours she thought nothing of that, her mind occupied elsewhere. During the night and its solitude, there was nothing to fill her mind but her untouched state. These castle walls that in the sunlight seemed protection from the evils of man and beast, at night felt cold and thick around her, cutting her off from the life she might have led.

  On nights such as this she felt herself slowly petrifying, turning into a stone effigy of virginal youth, as if lying coldly carved above the crypt of a noblewoman.

  Sometimes, when she looked into her silver mirror, she was startled by the stillness of her features. She would wonder if she had lost the ability to smile or cry, and if her heart, too, had turned to stone.

  There were times she wondered if the only emotion left was hatred for the townsfolk of Markesew.

  “Mistress! Mistress!”

  Alizon bolted upright, pulling high the blankets to cover her bare breasts as Milo burst through her doorway. “What is it? What is wrong?”

  Milo was a hulking shadow in the dark, stumbling up to her bed. He was usually a quiet man, solitary, with simple wishes and simple tastes, preferring his small cottage at the base of Devil’s Mount to the majesty of the castle. He was rarely frightened or worried, for he had the imagination for neither, and that he had invaded Alizon’s chamber at such an hour and in such distress spoke of something gone dreadfully amiss.

  “A man! A giant of a man, and half naked!”

  The reality of an intruder had no kin in her mind with her fantasies of the night. A stranger could only mean danger—to all that she had built. “Where?” The word came out terse and fierce, her mind skimming through courses of action.

  “On the path. He said strange words, and then he hit me!”

  “He attacked you?” She reached for the chemise she had left at the foot of the bed and pulled it on over her head as she kicked back the covers and rose. Milo turned half away, giving her privacy, although she was as much a shadow as he in the dark.

  “He hit me, with a weak arm like a little girl. I almost could not feel the blows, although they cost him great effort to give. He grunted and stomped his foot with each one.”

  Alizon fumbled in the dark for her clothes, stepping into her leather shoes even as her hand found the soft wool of her gown. She must be more asleep than she thought, and it was addling her brain: the naked giant had the strength of a little girl?

  “I tripped and fell to my hands and knees, and he dropped to the ground and grabbed one of my feet, lifting it like a man shoeing a horse. He made more grunting noises, and I kicked him away and stood up. And then”—Milo’s voice rose, taking on an edge of hysterical disbelief—“then he jumped onto my shoulders! Like a demon he was, leaping from the ground!”

  Alizon paused in donning her gown. Milo was a huge man himself, and if this man could jump onto his shoulders … “But why would he do such a thing?” she puzzled aloud. She could imagine no reason for such a fighting technique.

  “He wrapped his legs around my neck as I staggered under his weight, and then we both fell over. He hit his head on a rock, and now he lies on the path.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “I do not think so.”

  “Then he might wake at any moment.” She grabbed her brown hooded robe off its peg on the wall.

  She needed no light to guide her through the castle, but stopped anyway to gather a lantern and light its candle in the embers of the fire in the great hall. She wanted to see this intruder’s face before she decided what to do with him. She might recognize him as one of the villagers, although none before had ever dared to come to this mount.

  There was only one main path from the castle down to where the seabed causeway came ashore, and she led the way down it as Milo followed.

  “How did you happen to see him?” she asked. The threat of the dragon was all the guard Alizon had ever felt the mount needed. Milo’s work was with livestock and heavy chores, not as a sentry.

  “I went out to piss, and thank Saint Stephen I did. He wears a white surcoat, and was easy to see under the moon.”

  Alizon shook her head in wonder. Who was this man, who had not even the sense to wear a dark color while creeping up a mountain? He sounded an uncommon manner of fool.

  They hurried through the grove of evergreens beneath the castle, then followed the switchbacks of the path two more turns and came upon an open slope. They found him, lying where Milo had left him, limbs sprawling and the split panels of his white surcoat shimmering like broken angel wings upon the ground.

  She gaped at the unconscious man. He was huge! Not huge as Milo was, with a barrel chest and heavy arms, but long—unbelievably long—and wellformed, muscled yet slender, with broad shoulders and a trim waist. His legs looked as if they might reach to her chin when he stood.

  She squatted down and moved the lantern up to his face.

  “Jesu mercy!” she whispered. A flicker of faint recognition lit within her, and then as quickly died.

  No, she did not know him. She would have remembered, even had he been a mere child when she left Markesew. Such clean features—a high-bridged, straight nose; square jaw; dark, arching brows—were not to be forgotten. His long, dark brown hair was swirled to one side, and without thinking she reached out to touch it.

  Soft. Silky.

  The familiar, nighttime erotic hunger stirred to life inside her, rising beneath her caution and apprehension. Her sensitive nose caught a trace of scents both spicy and sweet, not at all like the odors she associated with Milo, or those she remembered from men on shore.

  She glanced down at what little clothing he wore; then, with a cautious look to be sure he was still unconscious, lightly touched his hose. They shone like silver and were molded to his body, reaching up past where his braies should have been. The bulge of his sex was indecently visible, drawing her gaze. Alizon took a pinch of the strange silver material above his hip and pulled gently. It stretched, and she released it in surprise, the material snapping back into place.

  Marry! She had never seen such stuff!

  The man was plainly foreign, which brought yet more questions about why he had come sneaking onto Devil’s Mount in the dead of night. She decided she had better find out what that reason was, and who he was, before finding a way to be rid of him.

  She stood and realized she was shaking. Not for many years had she been so unnerved. She was mistress of her world here on the mount, and had remained so by letting surprises come to others, never to herself. “We must lock him up until he awakes.”

  “Where, mistress?”

  Milo’s cottage would be too easy from which to escape for such a giant, even one with the strength of a girl. “The guard room. We will have to carry him up to the castle.” She looked again at the huge sprawled body. He looked heavy. “Or drag him, if we must.”

  Jesu mercy, how would she control him once he woke?

  George woke cold and sore. His head throbbed, his butt felt like someone had used it for a doormat, and his feet were chilled and damp.

  He was lying on the hard floor of a small room, a thin blanket doing nothing to keep him warm. Weak sunlight sifted sickly through narrow, unglazed windows in three walls, and in the fourth wall a closed wooden door stared blankly back at him.

  Jumbled memories of trying to wrestle a barrel of a man came back to him. Unfortunately.

  He had assumed that any human opponent in this visualization would act like a professional wrestler, knowing his role in a match and the correct moves to answer his own. This fellow, presumably the shepherd Milo that Emoni had warned him about, had had no such notions of how to behave.

  He didn’t remember anything after jumping on Milo’s shoulders, but the lump George felt on the back of his head was
a clear enough indication of what had happened.

  He wasn’t getting off to a heroic start in this adventure. He had even lost his pitchfork.

  He sat up, groaning at the stiffness in his muscles and the sorry state of his buttocks.

  Giggling came from behind the door, faint but audible, and the whispering movement of cloth. George jumped up and bounded to the door, pulling at the iron ring that served as its knob.

  Locked.

  Many light footsteps ran away, the giggling fading with them. He bent down and put his eye to the keyhole, and saw an empty, stone-flagged hallway and a flicker of shadow at the end that was there for an instant, then gone.

  The flesh crept on the back of his neck. Spooky.

  His head throbbing, he turned to the windows, with their promise of sunlight and a view. Through the one on the wall to his left he could see down over a patch of stunted evergreens and far beyond and below them the blue of open water. Stretching off into the distance was the shoreline of the mainland.

  The window opposite the door faced the mainland straight on, and the village through which Emoni had led him last night. The tide was in now, but George could see beneath its rough turquoise surface the paler S of the stone causeway that he had crossed in the dead of night.

  He looked down at his silver lace-up boots. They were stained in blossoms of water and salt, still dark in patches of dampness.

  The tide had turned while he was only halfway across, the waves splashing at the sides of the causeway, spitting up their warnings at him. Emoni had made clear he should hurry, and had illustrated the importance with an old tale of a de Burrough heir. The young nobleman had spent the evening drinking in Markesew and lost track of the time. The tide was coming in when, drunk and reckless, he decided to ignore caution and ride his horse home across the causeway.

  Emoni said that on some nights you could still hear the scream of the horse as it was swept away. The heir was never found.

  Emoni hadn’t warned him that the causeway would be slippery and slimed with seaweed, or the stones of its uneven surface impossible to distinguish in the dark. Hurrying had meant mistakes, and he had cause to be grateful for his elbow and knee pads when he fell on the slick stones—once halfway off into the water. The second fall, he’d nearly impaled himself on his pitchfork.