by Lisa Cach
“Ah, but you miss an important point.”
“What is that?”
“A poor girl sacrificed once a year is cheaper than a purse of gold.”
“I can’t believe that an entire town could be so heartless. There must be another reason.”
“Must there? If you think so, then you do indeed come from a land far away. One where no one puts the health of their coffers above a human life.” She stood up. “More stew?”
“I can get it,” he said, moving to stand.
“No, please. Sit.” She took his bowl and went to fill it again, her back to him as she dished from the pot on the edge of the center hearth.
“My land is neither so far nor so distant as that,” he said, thinking about the Missouri boys and their injuries, and the money that wrestling brought in. “But what of their sheep, at least? The farmers must have lost enough of them to equal a large prize.”
“The sheep they send are the poorest of the flocks. There are times I think the farmers and townsfolk see the dragon as a convenient means of being rid of offal, just as one throws unusable scraps to chickens and pigs.”
She brought the bowl back and set it in front of him, and there was such tension in her voice and movements that he thought for a moment she was going to hit him. Instead, she refilled his cup from an earthenware ewer.
He stirred his stew, watching her from the corner of his eye as she again sat across from him. He glanced down into his bowl and noticed some small clumps of white. He mashed them against the edge of the bowl, blending them in. It was probably flour, used to thicken the gravy.
“And what of your own role in this?” he asked, keeping his eyes on his stew, hoping she would answer if she didn’t feel accused. “Why not spirit the girls away, instead of feeding them to Belch? Who would ever know the difference?”
She picked at a hangnail, then started polishing a fingernail with the pad of her thumb. Her tone was less defensive than he had expected. “Belch would know. He would attack the village.”
“Are you so certain he can tell a girl from a sheep, and of the two wouldn’t prefer the sheep to begin with?” He ate some of the stew.
She made a noise suspiciously like a laugh, and almost too quietly for him to hear said, “I once knew someone like that.” She went on in her normal voice, “It was only when Belch ate his first young girl that he stopped his ravaging. Everyone knows that dragons prefer virgins.”
“And gentlemen prefer blondes. But there are always exceptions.”
“Do they?” she asked, sounding surprised.
“Do what?”
“Gentlemen prefer blondes?”
“It’s only a saying.”
The mistress fidgeted and brought her hand up to her hidden mouth in the unmistakeable gesture of someone chewing on a hangnail. “What hair color do you prefer?” she finally asked, around the obstruction.
“Whatever grows naturally upon a woman’s head.”
He might have told the truth and said that he had a fondness for redheads—they made him think of autumn and Irish setters, fires and snuggling naked in a soft blanket in a cabin—but then she would turn out to be blonde or brunette, and she would never forgive him for saying he liked a different color best. He might not know much about women, but he knew that much at least.
“Oh,” she said.
“What about you?” he asked.
Her hands went down to her lap, and she sat still. “I do not think of such things.” “My ass.” “I do not think about that, either!” He laughed at her misinterpretation and its implications. “You’re quick to deny it.”
“Because it is untrue!”
“That’s not the usual reason protests come so fast. I think you do think about my ass,” he teased.
She made a grunt of disbelief, then a puh sound of ejected air. Another grunt, and a hand waved in dismissal. “You speak nonsense.”
“Women look at men’s asses,” he said. “We all know that. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“I do not look at your ass!” “Not even once? Come on. Admit it. I try to look at yours, but you’ve got it too well covered.”
Little choking, gasping sounds came from under her hood. The woman sputtered for a while, then regained the power of speech. “Lecher! To look at a nun’s buttocks! You are no saint!”
“ ‘Ain’t no saint.’ I’ve heard it before.” He grinned.
“I … I … I hope Belch does eat you!”
“Maybe just a little bite, if you’ll kiss it and make it better.”
She stood up. “I think you should go to your room now.”
“Only if you come with me.”
“Go!” she ordered, sticking her arm out to the side and pointing.
He took another bite of stew. “I’m not done.”
“That is of no matter. Go!”
“Sit down, mistress, please. I’m not a little boy to be sent to bed without finishing his supper.” His intestines made an unhappy gurgle, and what was left of his appetite disappeared. Oh, man, he hoped it hadn’t been a mistake to eat that. “And I’ll stop teasing you, I promise.” At least for now.
Her arm slowly lowered. She remained standing, and he guessed she was considering his size and the impossibility of forcing him to obey her. She was a bossy little thing, and it probably chapped her hide that she couldn’t force her way.
“These failed knights, the one or two who have tried to kill Belch …” he said, and pushed away his half-empty bowl. “Do you know anything of how they fought him?”
“Neither lasted more than a minute. They went in, they were eaten. As you will be.”
“Did you watch?”
“I have no stomach for such spectacles, much as you seem to believe otherwise.”
Or maybe she was too young to have been here then. “You were quick enough to drop the sheep down that hatch.”
“Would you rather I had not?”
“Point taken.” He sipped his beer, hoping the alcohol might kill whatever bacteria were multiplying in his gut. “Did you at least hear about how the battles went?”
She moved slowly back to her place at the bench and sat down. “Each had men with him who watched, although they lacked the courage to join their companion. I do not know how true their tellings may be.”
“Tell me what they said. The more I know, the better I can avoid their mistakes.”
“One was killed as he descended the stairs. Belch came out of the water at him, as he did at you today.”
“Was the man making noise like I was?”
“I do not know.”
“Had Belch been fed recently?”
“I do not remember.”
This was not proving helpful.
“What of the second knight?”
“He approached Belch as he lay upon his beach. The dragon did not move, so he stepped closer. And closer.”
“Yes?”
“And closer. Until he was right beside Belch’s head.”
“And?” he asked, leaning closer.
“And SNAP!” She clapped her hands together, making him jump. “Belch ate him.”
“Christ.” He sat back. He was reminded of nature programs, where the crocodile lurks in the muddy water, waiting for the zebra to come close, then lunging up and taking it down in a froth of spraying water.
His bowels gurgled.
The mistress shrugged and dropped her hands back down into her lap. “You are certain you would not rather leave now, with all your parts attached?”
“I can’t. I promised Emoni, and I won’t break that vow.”
“That is admirable of you.”
He couldn’t tell if she meant it. Damn that hood! He imagined her at this moment with ash-blond hair and large blue eyes, like a disdainful Michelle Pfeiffer.
He sat and thought for a minute. “I won’t stand much chance against him if I walk right in. He’s too fast.” He thought a little longer. “When does he sleep, do you know?”
“A better question might be when does he wake? And the answer to that is, ‘At the merest sound.’”
“Could I borrow some sleeping potion?” he asked, half joking.
“Mine?” she screeched.
“You have some?” He sat up straighter, excited. “How strong is it? Would it work on Belch?”
“I … You don’t … You want to drug him?”
“I want to keep my head upon my shoulders, so yes, I want to drug him!”
“Is that not dishonorable?”
“He’s a dragon. I don’t think he cares about honor.”
“But you! How could you kill him while he slept?”
“Much more easily than if he were awake, I’m hoping. The beast has eaten dozens of people—I see no reason to add my name to his list of dining conquests. Hell, yes, I’ll kill him while he sleeps.”
“There is no pride in that. Is that how men fight in your land?”
He thought of the wrestling ring, and the careful manipulation of the crowd’s mood by use of unfair moves and double-crosses. “To be sneaky and underhanded is a virtue, at times. You do have the potion?”
She hesitated. “A powder.”
“Great! Tomorrow I’ll drug him, and then it will be bye-bye, Belch.” His intestines churned, and he suddenly felt a buildup of internal fumes, those of the sort that if let loose would end forever any hope of seducing the woman across the table. “Great! Thank you for supper! I’ll go to bed now!” he said. Then he dashed from the table toward the doorway to the dark corridor.
“You do not want a lamp?” she called after him.
Damn! Of course he needed one if he wanted to find the jakes before he fouled himself. “Yes, yes, if you please.”
He waited in the arched doorway as she moved slowly—oh, so slowly—to light the wick of a small earthenware lamp. Behind him he felt a faint draft of air, and as he turned to look heard a creak of hinges directly across the corridor, then the soft thud of a door coming up against its jamb.
What the hell? That was the door that led into the great hall, the hall which he had not seen. And which should be empty.
She came over and gave him the lamp, the smoke from it reeking of burning tallow. The light was less than that from a match.
“Thank you,” he said, and he would have confronted her about the door to the great hall, only his innards twisted and groaned, and a sweat broke out over his body, accompanied by a roiling sense of nausea.
He made his escape while she might still think him an appealing man.
Chapter Twelve
He wanted to die. The past four or five hours—God only knew how long, there were no clocks here— were the most miserable of his recent memory, even worse than the night he had torn his muscle.
What he wouldn’t give for an anonymous, glaringly clean Holiday Inn bathroom, a box of Imodium, and a toothbrush.
Ice water would be good, too. Or anything nonalcoholic, except that he suspected that anything liquid and unboiled would send him back to the garrison-room privies, with their dark holes through which could be heard the distant crashing of the sea.
He lay naked but for an old sheet, on top of two of the beds that earlier in the day he had arranged end-to-end, making a surface long enough for his frame. He had piled them with extra mattresses, trying to make it level. It was a good thing he had done it then; he didn’t have the strength now.
Or the wits, he feared.
His head was strangely muzzy, prone to wandering down psychedelic corridors. It was only the twisting of his guts and the waves of nausea that pulled him back again and again to the present unpleasant reality.
Patches of darkness fluttered and rippled above him. He heard the squeak of bats. He closed his eyes and told himself they weren’t really there.
He attributed the brain fog to the weird beer. The intestinal disaster had to be the stew. Food poisoning wasn’t so fast-acting that he would have felt it at the end of his supper, but he had had the same stew for lunch, and there was plenty of time for that to have worked its evil on him.
The small lamp sat on the floor a couple of feet from his bed, its dull orange glow illuminating nothing. He curled onto his side and gazed at it, wishing that he could wake himself from his misery. Athena could hypnotize him again later, and when he restarted this mental game, he would know better than to eat the slop that the mistress served him.
Orange trolls danced into his vision, no taller than his knees. He squinted at them as they joined hands and danced around his flickering lamp.
“Go ’way,” he grumbled, and flopped his hand through the air. They disappeared.
A few minutes later came the sensation of something huge standing behind him. Sweat gathered at the nape of his neck and his muscles tensed. He could feel the cold breath of some creature as it breathed on his back, waiting for him to turn over so it could howl into his face.
“Go ’way,” he tried again. It came out as a whisper.
There was a soft rustle of movement, and then the sheet covering his body began to move away, off of him, pulled by an unknown force.
The whispers he had heard, the closing door when no one should have been in the hall, the faces at the window in the floor above: he didn’t want to know what they all might mean.
The sheet slipped lower. He held it, his fingers weak. With a soft tug it slipped free, then grazed over his hip and was gone, leaving him exposed. Defenseless.
He gathered what little strength he had left, and the even smaller amount of courage, and in one twist turned to face the darkness.
And screamed.
There were a dozen of them! Pale figures in white, gathered together to gape at him with their hollow eyes and wide-open mouths. One held his sheet in its hands, the edge of its face and arm traced in orange lamplight.
It was a girl’s face.
They were female, every one of the pale horrors! They were the spirits of the dead virgins!
He screamed again.
A spectral wailing rose up from their throats, and then they were whirling, gowns drifting, hands pulling at each other, their screeches rising and falling. He wrapped his arms over his head and curled into a ball, a noise coming from his own throat such as no grown man should make.
Alizon jerked awake. By all the saints in heaven, what was that noise?
She stared into the darkness, ears pricked.
There, again! That wailing!
And then it grew in volume, female voices added to the other.
Christ’s curse! The virgins.
She scrambled from bed and grabbed her hooded robe from its peg by the door on her way out, wrapping it around her naked body as she ran on bare feet down the passageway to the virgins’ rooms. Her fingertips brushed empty space where closed doors should have been, but the voices were not coming from within.
They were coming from below.
At each end of the passageway were stairs that led to the floor beneath. She had barred the door at the top of the stairs into the soldiers’ quarters, in case George should wander in the night.
Apparently, she had barred the wrong doors: It was her own charges who could not be trusted and should have been locked in.
She ran for the stairs, her feet sure even in the black of night. The wails of women grew louder, then faltered, and then low, quick voices drifted up the stairs, and gasps of laughter.
The deeper groans of George continued, distant and alone.
Alizon waited on the landing until the first pale faces had come around the spiral of the stairs, and then she spoke with the cold edge of fury in her voice. “You swore to obey me.”
The gasps gave the leaders away. They were Joye and Ysmay, with Braya right behind. There was much stumbling and bumping as the line of women and girls came to a halt, those still around the bend of the stairwell questioning and complaining.
“You said you had drugged him,” Joye said with the defensiveness of the guilty. “He was not supposed to wake.”
“You disobeyed me, and now you have ruined everything. Everything.”
“We only wanted to look,” Ysmay whined. “He did not even know we were there until Pippa pulled the sheet off him.”
There was a furious wave of shushing and cursing, and someone shoved Ysmay, almost setting her off balance.
“It is true! If his buttocks had not been chilled, he would have slept on!” Ysmay protested.
“Be still!” Joye said.
“It was Braya’s idea to go down and look,” Ysmay muttered.
Reyne’s timid voice came from somewhere behind the leaders. “He will think us nothing more than a bad dream, mistress. Listen. Even now he cries out. It is as if he is tortured by the demons of sleep.”
Reyne was right; Alizon did hear George continuing to moan, beyond what a man in an empty room should do. That truth threatened to make her anger ridiculous, which only incensed her the more. “Go to your rooms, and do not come out until I say you may.”
Alizon stepped aside and allowed them to file past her, their giggling silenced now and their heads bowed. She snapped after them: “I will deal with you in the morning, if we still have a life and a home of our own.”
“Yes, mistress,” several voices mumbled.
When the last door had closed behind them Alizon wrapped her robe more tightly around herself and descended to the garrison room. George’s moans had lowered to whimpers.
The faint lamplight was enough for her dark-adjusted eyes to make out the man as he lay curled on his side, his arms wrapped around his head. No one had replaced his sheet; his skin looked as smooth as polished stone and likely just as cold. Her nose caught the faint odor coming from the privies, which spoke of someone who had been ill.
Guilt washed over her, turning her own stomach. She had not known how much of the powder to use on him; it came yearly with the sacrificial virgin, to sedate her during her final hours, but she had only ever used a sprinkling of it, to sometimes help a new girl sleep. Those who had used it occasionally reported strange dreams upon the morrow, and complained of dizziness, but never had Alizon known that it could do to a person what she saw before her.