by James Bennet
The villagers stared at the figure in the net.
Fishwife looked at Miller and Miller at Fishwife. Blacksmith looked at Priest and Priest at Blacksmith. Tanner looked at Alchemist and Alchemist at Tanner.
The Village Elder snorted.
Then all of them started to mutter.
Finally the Elder spoke. “Have you lost your wits, sir? Or perchance drank too much ale?” He strolled over to the net in the square. “Why, this is a boy, not a dragon. Have your nights in the woods driven you mad?”
Fulk raised his hands to protest, but the Elder poked the boy with his staff.
“You, boy, what is your name?”
“Ben Garston,” the boy replied. “Red Ben to my friends.”
“And what have you got to say for yourself, Master Garston?”
“That as God is my witness, I am no dragon,” the boy said. “Simply a peasant and a thief. The knight caught me rustling cows up on Old Bryn’s farm.”
The Elder and the villagers gasped, for this was quite a confession. In those days, food was scarce and hard to come by, and winter in the Marches long. Coupled with the threat of the dragon, tempers in the village ran high, and no one stopped to hear Fulk’s claims as they cried out for a lynching.
“The boy is the dragon, I swear it! As a knight of the realm, he is mine!”
Nevertheless, the crowd grabbed the boy and carried him high to the edge of the village.
Now, as it happened, there was an oak tree there that the villagers liked to use as a gallows. Frayed rope hung from the branches like deathly pussy willow. No one had met their end here for many a year, not since a travelling monk had made off with the tithe, but the tree remained stout and fit for purpose.
Fulk spat and swore and tried to smite the boy with his sword, his desperation great. Why would these fools not listen to him? The Blacksmith, having heard enough, tied the slayer to a nearby tree and put him to sleep with his fist. Lynching was a tricky business and entertainment in those parts was scarce. No one wanted an interruption, least of all from a babbling knight.
The rope slipped around Ben Garston’s neck. The branches above whispered grimly. The rope gradually drew tight.
“Wait! Wait!” the boy cried. “Will you not hear my last request?”
Fishwife looked at Miller and Miller at Fishwife. Blacksmith looked at Priest and Priest at Blacksmith. Tanner looked at Alchemist and Alchemist at Tanner.
The Village Elder shrugged.
“Very well. What is it?”
“Release me,” the boy said, and everyone laughed. “Release me and I swear I’ll slay your dragon. I’ll bring the proof to the church by sundown in return for my freedom.”
The villagers muttered.
“What makes you think that a churl like you can win out where a knight has failed?” the Village Elder eventually asked.
“I am young and strong and cunning as a fox, weighed down by neither ale nor armour.”
“But what is to stop you from running away?”
“My honour,” the boy said, and then he pointed at Maud in the crowd. “A maiden under heaven sees the truth. Let her judge me. Let the damsel judge the faith in my heart.”
The crowd turned as one to face Maud. Fishwife looked at Miller and Miller at Fishwife. Blacksmith looked at Priest and Priest at Blacksmith. Tanner looked at Alchemist and Alchemist at Tanner. Maud made her way forward to the edge of the square.
And the damsel said, “Release him.”
“God’s bones, you think you can do this?” The Elder was privately hopeful, but he did not fancy another flogging. “What if you are wrong?”
“Then may the Devil dance on my grave.”
The gathered villagers grumbled and nodded. In those days, such oaths held darksome weight.
“Very well,” the Elder said.
The Blacksmith took the noose from around Ben’s neck and put Fulk’s sword in his hand. With a pat on the back, he sent the youth stumbling into the woods. Then the villagers went as one to the church, there to wait and pray.
In their folly, they left Fulk tied to the tree. They agreed he would only get in the way.
That was the longest day in Mordiford. Whitsun unfolded quietly, the festivities doused by expectation. The Priest lit candles in the nave, one for each apostle, but no one sang hymns or rolled any cheese. The Fishwife chewed the ends of her hair. The Blacksmith studied his dirty nails. The Tanner belched and dozed in the pews.
The sun crawled over the Marches sky.
By noon, folk began to mutter. They said that Garston had tricked them and would not return. Even when Maud stood at the altar and promised them otherwise, heads shook and lips curled.
Noon wore on. Soon the westering sun kissed the horizon, sinking into the hills.
“We are betrayed!” the villagers cried.
Then, when only a rosy line ran between the land and the sky, the villagers heard a shout outside. Led by the Priest, everyone hurried out of the church through the stout oak doors. There on the steps stood Ben Garston with sword in hand, the blade dripping with blood. Beside him on the steps lay a large red object, several feet long and much like a slug. Blood dripped from the object too, and a river of the stuff wound across the square and up the street, leading back into the woods.
“Behold!” the boy cried. “I have slain the dragon. I caught the beast sleeping on the banks of the Lugg, fat from gorging on cows and sheep. Through briar and fen I crept, and hacked the beast into a thousand pieces. Behold, before you, its tongue!”
Fishwife looked at Miller and Miller at Fishwife. Blacksmith looked at Priest and Priest at Blacksmith. Tanner looked at Alchemist and Alchemist at Tanner.
The Village Elder took a step backwards.
“How?” he asked in an awe-filled voice.
Maud, however, was already clapping, whirling around and around in the square.
“Oh joyous day! Our saviour has come! Mordiford is free of the dragon!”
And the villagers, caught up in the moment and very much relieved, joined her in her victory dance.
“Saved! Saved!” they chanted. And “Free! Free!”
The churl who was the boy called Ben (and something other besides) bowed low to the Village Elder, and the Elder, as promised, gave him his freedom. The old man was smiling for the first time that year. The muttering would stop now, at least for a while, and he might get a decent night’s sleep.
As the songs began in earnest and the cheesemaker went to find something to roll, Ben Garston took Maud’s hand and led her quietly into the woods, there to laugh and to kiss, and later to discuss the pressing matter of a necessary change of tastes. The threat had passed. The village slept easy. Surely this must mean that the cows and sheep should sleep easy too, if the dragon and the damsel hoped to have a happy-ever-after…
In those days, as in these, damsels often had the right of things.
Alas, fate is strange and often cruel, and there is one in our tale tied to a tree who knew the truth of the matter. As Whitsun waned and the villagers snored in mead-drenched dreams, Fulk struggled free of his bonds. When he staggered to the square and saw the great red tongue lying on the steps, he did not find it hard to fathom events. The devil and his whore had tricked the whole village and made a fool out of him in the process. Him, Fulk Fitzwarren, champion, slayer and knight of the realm! Or at least folk had called him that until this night. When King John came to learn that a simple churl had slain the dragon – and he would, for there was a lot of muttering in those days – he would stand by his royal threat, for he was not a very nice king. He would seize Fulk’s castle and lands, and strip his title from him like bark from a tree.
Mad with rage, the fallen knight saddled his horse and returned to the clearing where he had built his bonfire the night before. With a curse, he set his torch to the pyre, watching the flames lick the lowest branches of the trees. Then his spurs bit into his horse’s flanks and he galloped north for the place he had once called home
.
Thus taking his revenge, the fearsome knight, Fulk Fitzwarren, rode out of our story.
All night the fire raged. Branches crackled and leaves set sail on the sky, a fleet of embers in the dark. Sparks showered down, igniting the tar on forest roads, fuelling the inferno. Soon enough, all the woods were ablaze. Animals darted this way and that, abandoning burrow, nest and den. Birds fluttered past the moon with wildly flaming wings, a bright omen of doom.
In Mordiford, the bells rang, and villagers hurried to the woods with pails in hand, desperately trying to quench the fire.
And deep in the heart of the woods, curled up in his secret cave, Ben was woken by Maud choking beside him, the girl overcome with the smoke. With no time to spare, he sheltered her with his wings. His scales shielded him from the heat, but Maud was not so lucky. Slowly her face was turning red and blisters bubbled up on her limbs.
Ben rushed from the cave intending to fly, but the boughs above barred his way. The canopy was a burning cage and he dared not risk Maud in the blaze. In a panic, he crashed through the brush to the old clearing well and frantically scooped up water in his claws, carrying it back to his lair.
Kneeling beside his lady love, he poured the water between her lips.
Oh sorrowful, grievous day! He could only look on in horror as Maud turned as pale as milk and clutched harder at her throat.
“Oh my egg!” she spluttered. “My love! What in God’s name have you done?”
For the water was rank and deadly, poisoned days ago by the slayer. The rising flames had devoured the hag who lay dead in the clearing, leaving Ben with no warning when he had gone to draw from the well.
In despair, he carried Maud to the banks of the Lugg and rested her on the ashen ground. There his lips touched hers for the last time. Judged by God and damned by Heaven, he bade his lady love farewell. This brings us to the end of our tale. And just as every tale changes in the telling, each one also leaves a shadow. The shadow of this one is years of bad blood.
In the days that followed, Red Ben Garston left those parts, unable to face the shame and the memories. Some said he walked into the sea, choosing to drown his sorrows for ever. Some said he flew up to the sun and joined his lover in furious flame. Others held that he travelled to London, meaning to drink and sleep and forget.
All he left behind him were tales, which grew and spread just as the trees in the forest once again grew and spread. The day that he fled the Marches, a curious painting appeared on the western wall of the church, depicting a dragon resplendent in flame. Down through the years, the painting remained. Sometimes the dragon was red and sometimes green, sometimes with a tail and sometimes without, but it was always a token of Maud and her end.
Until one day the painting faded and folk no longer knew truth from fairy tale.
One mystery lingers still. From that day to this, no one in Mordiford could say whence Ben Garston came. His name did not appear in the village scroll of births, and no family came forward to claim him as kin.
Like the shadow of his own tale, Red Ben faded into legend and time.
The End
TEN
Fulk closed the book with an echoing snap.
Just like that, Mordiford was miles – centuries – away again, having spat out an ember that mourned and cooled and changed across years. That learnt how to forget Maud’s smell, Maud’s laugh, the way she had kissed compassion into him. But Ben never forgot the way he had lost her, how his appetites had brought about her doom. Since leaving the Marches, he had honoured Maud’s memory with caution and abstinence. He had never hunted again. His predator days were over. He became a milk drinker, harmless to livestock, to wild beasts and, of course, humans. At least the ones who didn’t mess with him. Wasn’t that why the Guild of the Broken Lance had chosen him for the Pact? Where some like Mauntgraul, the White Dog, found themselves lulled into the Long Sleep, their reign of terror brought to an end, Ben alone was allowed to endure, with only his scars for company. Scars and the memory of a young girl who had once stroked his snout and tail…
Here and now, strung up in the underground car park, he was painfully aware that the Black Knight was opening more than just physical wounds.
“You never had much luck with women, did you?”
Fulk tossed the book over his shoulder. The antique tome – which Ben guessed was a volume knocked together by some hired scribe or other and shoehorned into the Fitzwarren family library – smacked on concrete, several pages scattering. He unsheathed his sword, letting its length renew the distance between them, and stood swinging the blade like a golf club – this hulk of a man who was little more than a cheap hand-me-down copy of somebody else from long ago, an ancestor knight who’d first rolled the dice on an eight-hundred-year long losing streak. As soon as this latest version had wriggled from his mother’s womb, his teachers would have been there waiting, ready to infect his mind with the bitterness of ages. In schools hidden deep in the country, a string of instructors would have taught the chosen one a host of combative arts – swordplay, boxing, judo, wrestling, shooting, archery and more. Over the years, the aggressive attentions of House Fitzwarren had made Ben’s learning curve that much steeper, forcing him to adapt. The family trained each new Fulk in a deadly array of skills, from racing car driving to bull riding to high-altitude climbing. The patriarchs never let them forget that they were dealing with a dragon, the most dangerous creature known to man.
One slip, sonny, and you’re toast.
“You were always a coward, running away.”
Alongside the training, the trenchant education, the inherent, instilled injustice, the patriarchs talked about honour too, about glory and glory lost. They talked at length about seisin, the old law of lands and titles. They talked about a house betrayed, cheated of its heritage and cast down from its rightful place. King John, they said, was dead and gone, and Whittington Castle a ruin, but the principle still stood and honour could never be ignored.
Spei est Vindicta. That was the motto of House Fitzwarren. Hope is Vengeance.
Its coat of arms bore the hawk of perseverance on a field of gules.
The deeds to Whittington rested in the Guild’s hands now, King John’s clause unchanged. Until Ben Garston was dead, House Fitzwarren would remain outlawed, unable to take its official place in Britain’s noble ranks. And when Ben came to sign the Pact at Uffington in 1215, the Guild had denied the family’s vendetta with a dry and contradictory writ.
Those few bodies learned of this treaty shall henceforth never hunt Remnants or otherwise seek to do them harm…
This contradiction, a legislative knot that effectively cemented House Fitzwarren’s fallen status, had only served to fan the flames of enmity. Of course, the House obeyed the Lore on the surface. In truth, their agents simply went underground. Across the ages, the hatred of Fitzwarren sons had matured like the rarest wine. They would never forget the Mordiford shame. Chained, raw and bleeding in the car park, Ben knew that the man before him could never, ever forgive. By the time Fulk rode out on the hunt, his motorbike wheels churning up dust, he had become a living weapon, a poison arrow of revenge.
There was no point trying to bargain for his life. But it wasn’t only his funeral.
“I…like your take on the old tale.” Ben twisted his face into a grin, hiding a mouthful of pain. “It’s a little on the biased side, mind. The original Fulk was a drunkard well before he reached the borders. I wouldn’t call him fearsome, either.”
“You were scared enough to cut out your own tongue.”
“It grew back.” Ben tried to shrug, difficult with his arms stretched above him. “We were only protecting ourselves. Your champion did far more damage than I ever did.”
“Trees grow back too. Honour doesn’t.”
“Neither do loved ones. This is like in the story, don’t you see that?”
“If you think you’ll convince me to let you go…”
Ben gave a snort, blood bubbling from hi
s nose.
“I wouldn’t waste my breath. I know your duty. I know you have to kill me.”
“So what then? You want to debate the charter myths?”
“Let the girl go.” Ben spoke with cool intent, devoid of emotion, matter-of-fact. “Rose has done nothing to earn your enmity. House Fitzwarren…you have no right. You can have your jacket.” He nodded at the pile of scales near Fulk’s feet, the takings of the scrape, clink, splash game. “Hell, you can drain my blood and eat my heart, live a few decades longer. I’m a coward who has no luck with women. A worm and a snake, fine. But let Rose go. She has no part in this.”
Fulk rubbed a meaty hand through his beard. He squinted at Ben under the strip light, a spider inspecting a fly. Who knew what bitter seeds rolled around in his head, planted there by murderous tradition? The burst pipe dripped. Spiny shadows flowed across the walls, measuring out the slayer’s contemplation.
Then Fulk laughed. A resounding guffaw.
“Fuck me, when did you get so noble?” He spat on the ground, wiped snot from his lips. “When did you get so vain? You think this is all about you, don’t you? And isn’t it always? Always I’ll tell you about the worm, right? Never I’ll tell you about the knight. Those charter myths have got a lot to answer for. They’ve gone to your fucking head.”
“Then what—”
“Let’s just say we need your girlfriend for a little game of smoke and mirrors. She’s a damsel, right, and she’s done the nasty with a dragon? There’s power in that, according to the CROWS. Think of her as a fish on a line. Think of her as bait.”
“Let her go or I’ll—”
“What, snake? What will you do?”
“I have friends!” Ben was shouting now, abandoning his cool. “If you hurt Rose, you’ll answer to them!”
He didn’t know if this was true or not.
“How touching. Beauty and the Beast.” Fulk levelled the sword at Ben’s face. “But just like Mordiford, this story won’t have a happy ending.”
Ben’s head sank on to his chest. He reflected on the sequence of events that had brought him to this pass. It struck him now that he’d followed a trailing thread in the dust, from the Javits Center to Paladin’s Court and on to the British Museum, chasing a mystery that was much bigger than it had at first seemed. The thread in the dust turned out to be a wire, a sparkling fuse that had led him down a twisting tunnel to a truckload of dynamite…