She put her hand on his arm. "Sir Ruck, if it you like and please," she said, with her best coaxing grace, "tell me of your dragon that you slayed."
He began to walk. But he glanced aside at her and didn’t pull away from her touch. "It was in a hard winter," he said. "The bulls came and bears, and boars from the high fells. Only a man outlawed would occupy such a wasted place as this. But the warring did not wroth me as the winter, so much. Shed the clouds sleet, and I slept, my lady, on the raw rocks, rigged in my arms, with hard icicles hanged over my head like serpents’ teeth. It was too terrible to say a tenth of it." He nodded toward the grass that carpeted the undulating forest floor. "Not as now."
"But say me of the dragon." She walked beside him, balancing on the top of a ridge while he went in the furrow, her hand resting on his shoulder. "How did it appear?"
"My lady, if you would discover what manner of beast it was, then would you not know its habitation, and what weather likes it? So I’m telling you."
"Ah. I crave your pardon. The winter was a harsh one, then, that drove the wild creatures down from the hills. Dragons, I’ve read in the beastiaries, dwell in sweltery places."
"Swelter did I not, my lady, that eventide. For harbor I halted in a hollow below cliff, where the stones sloped down perilous steep. I fettered Hawk, to forage for his fodder, could he find it, but I broke not even hard bread to brace me. Black night befell us, of all brightness wanting." He stared ahead as he walked, his eyes narrowing, as if he could see it. "Thus in pain and plight full unpleasant in truth, I dropped down as if I were dead and lifeless, but that I shivered and shook, sore with cold."
Melanthe pulled her mantle closer about her as they came to the end of the curving ridge. At the base of it a tumbled wall of stone was succumbing to hawthorn, and beyond that the furrows lay perpendicular to those they traversed. He turned along the wall, taking Melanthe’s arm and prompting her to walk before him down the trench.
"Weary sleep shunned me, I say you, my lady. Blew appalling airs out of that black atmosphere, tolling awful tunes to terrify a hunter." A freshening breeze swept the bare branches above. He raised his eyes, watching them. "I believe it was the breath of the beast."
Melanthe glanced up. The shadow of new clouds raced across the woods, throwing a chill into the wind. At her feet she realized there was a subtle dirt track in the bottom of the furrow, as if theirs were not the only feet that passed this way.
"Were there lightnings?" she asked. "Perhaps it were an unseasonal storm, far off."
"Yes, there were lightnings, my lady," he said from behind her. "Lightnings and luminaries as the long hours passed. My bed of boulders grew to burn me. Sat I straight up, with my skin blistering, smarted by hot steel where skimmed my armor. And I heard then a hiss, my lady, so hideous and vast that my heart haled to the heels of my feet."
"The wind might make such a noise."
"Came it out of the cliff, from a cavern deep, and a wind with it as you wish, my lady, weirdly reeking."
"Of burning brimstone, I think?"
"No—" He paused, and then said thoughtfully, "More like to the smell of a siege in the summer heat—when the bodies of the dead grow bloated and burn with the sack of the city."
"By God’s self," Melanthe murmured. "How pleasant."
"My lady has read of some beast with such a breath?" he asked.
"Several might have such," she said. "A manticore, a griffin. They are found in Ethiopis. The basilisk of India may kill by no more than its smell."
"Not slayed by the scent of this serpent was I. I shocked out my sword from the sheath, my lady. The rocks rained down about me, for rattled the earth itself. The air grew ardent, and out of the opening, coiling and curling like a cable, a great serpent came—colored comely blue, and carried into the sky."
She stopped, holding up her skirt as she looked around at him.
"Over the wall, my lady, if it please you," he said in an ordinary tone, with a slight bow of his head.
Melanthe looked down and saw that the faint dirt track made a turn at a place where the stones were broken down. He gripped her arm to steady her as she stepped across, and then tugged the horse after them through the gap.
As the great hooves cleared the stones and thumped down into a bed of damp leaves, she said, "It was colored like the sky?"
"Yea, but shining, my lady. In the night it nigh glared."
"Shining!" She frowned. "The serpent called the Scytale glows, so that it may stupefy its victim by its splendor."
"Bedazzled was I to beholden it, my lady."
"And the air about it grew hot?"
He made a heartfelt sound of assent. "Heat such as Hell might hurl, my lady. All my iron afflicted me, as if afire was I. By what work I wielded my sword, I know not. Marks it made upon my palm for months thereafter."
She chewed her lip. "A basilisk might cause such. They’ve been known to burn people up. I read nothing of their color as blue. They’re striped in white. But they have wings and might fly." The slope of the land rose as they walked. She followed the path over another ridge and furrow.
"Wings it wore, yes," he said, "but it wafted as if the air arched it aloft, like autumn leaves, for its bulk was too big to bravely fly on wing. It shrieked as the sound of...as the sound of..." He paused for a long moment. "I can’t think of a word. As the sound of..."
Melanthe kept walking, scouring her memory for what she had read of these things in the beastiaries, barely listening to him as he repeated the phrase beneath his breath.
"As the sound of—a scythe on a whetstone!" he exclaimed, with the tone of having solved some puzzle. "It shrieked as the sound of a scythe on a whetstone."
She tripped over a root and caught herself. As she looked up she realized that the ridges and furrows ended here. A darker forest lay ahead, the trunks older, thick and gnarled. She hesitated.
The steady beat of the destrier’s hooves came to a halt behind her. "Will my lady ride now?" he asked.
Melanthe was not so certain that she wished to lead the way afoot into this woods. She nodded. He put his hands at her waist and lifted her up to sit aside on the saddle next to Gryngolet. For a moment he looked up at her, a phantom of his uncommon smile in his eyes.
It was an impossible thing to resist. She smiled back, but he cast down his look, moving away to lead the horse into the deeper wood.
They traveled steadily, following a muddy path that skirted bogs and roots, as sinuous as his dragon. The rhythm was brisker now, for she realized that he was after all not so weighted down by his armor that he couldn’t stride along at a far more active pace than hers. She ducked branches, deep in thought, unable to conceive of what beast he had actually slain. His description was detailed enough: its size immense, its scales blue, its breath fetid, and the air about it scorching; its aspect like a great serpent, but head broad and flat, more like to a lizard with the teeth of a wolf, wings too small to hold it aloft.
She allowed for exaggeration—what hunter didn’t make his boar larger and fiercer with the telling?—but the more she pressed him for particular attributes, the more she began to think that he had killed a very large basilisk. Until he showed her the scars beneath Hawk’s coat, three long ridges two full inches apart, that the monster had made as it fell upon the horse from its fiery height. Then her opinion wavered.
"A griffon hates horses," she speculated. "But say you its head was like to a lizard? Not an eagle?"
"No, my lady, nothing like. But my horse has the heart of an eagle. Sprang he up with a scream, striving to kill. Such strength did he spend that he splintered his chain. His loose fetter he flung, to flay as if it were a weapon. He smote the serpent and slashed it in its loathly eye. The dragon rebounded with a roar, ripping his hide." He laid his hand on Hawk’s shoulder over the old scars, passing his palm down the horse’s coat as he walked. "I plunged to impale the paunch that it bared. Mother Mary blessed me, I believe, and abetted me in that moment, for my sword struck
the scales and slipped between. Bright blood boiled forth, but the creature coiled about my cuirass, choking my breath, wringing life from my limbs and light from my eyes. I discovered my sword divided and dragged from my hand. I felt the fetid air as the fangs locked upon my feet, in the way that a snake feeds on a field mouse."
He stopped speaking. Melanthe realized that her hands clenched the saddle, gripping it as if she could throw off the deathly coils herself.
"What did you do?" she asked, loosening her grip.
"I submitted my soul to Mary’s sweet mercy." He glanced back at her. "Next I knew, I lay near dead. Beside me the beast was buckled, embedded with my sword in its breast, its lifeblood all about me. My sabatons it had sucked off my soles and swallowed my legs to the knee. I wrenched free and withdrew, and bowed down to bear thanks to God the Almighty. And thus in another day this adventure betided," he said. "I abidingly thereof bear witness, my lady."
"Good Lord! What became of the creature?"
"I’ll show you, my lady."
"Wee loo! Show me?"
He nodded ahead. "My lady sees before us, through the trees? There’s a chapel. Perhaps the creature’s bones lie there yet."
* * *
She slid from the saddle even before he could help her down. In the afternoon shadow the little chapel was a dark smudge against the boggy woods, an old and unadorned rectangle of slate, windowless. With an echoing scrape of wood on stone, the knight pushed open the door and stood back to let her pass.
She saw it immediately. The skull lay in the shaft of light from the door, enthroned upon a wide bench below the crude altar. It was huge, and nothing like a basilisk’s eagle head. Just as he had said, a long and pointed snout, with great eye and nostril hollows and vicious teeth like no living creature she had ever seen. Remains of its spine lay scattered in a rough line down the bench. A fan of thinner bones, like an enormous hand or a wing, was assembled carefully on a nearby table.
"It is a dragon." Melanthe strode into the church, stripping off her gloves, leaving the knight leaning upon the door to hold it open. She bent over the skull.
In the half-light it was bleached bone, the sunken eye holes deep caverns of black. But at the first touch, Melanthe sucked a hissing breath.
Stone. No real skeleton, but heavy and hard, solid inside where a skull would be gaping. The eye hollows, the backbone, the teeth—all white lime rock, impossible to misjudge.
She whirled to face him. He was still leaning on the door, his arms crossed, the faintest suggestion of an upward curve at the corner of his mouth.
"You lied to me." She narrowed her eyes at him. "It’s nothing but a rock!"
His mouth twitched.
"You lied to me!"
"My lady wished a firedrake." His hidden smirk became a grin.
"You knew that I believed you. You took delight in it. You lied to me!" Her vehement words returned, fierce whispers echoing against the walls and floor, lied-lied-lied.
"Lied?" The door scraped as he pulled back his weight in the face of her sudden advance. "A tale, my lady, that I made for your pleasure. In verse—" He gave a modest shrug. "Of a kind."
"Verse! I—" She stopped. She remembered him searching for a word to describe the dragon, repeating the phrase under his breath, until he came out with the same sounds echoing and compounding through the sentence, rhyming at the head of words instead of the tail, like the old poetry. In the peculiar convoluted idiom that was his normal English, she had barely noticed.
He was still smiling at the floor. He thought it amusing. In a voice as cold as the dragon stone, she said, "If I discover you in a lie to me again, knight, you’ll rue it to your early death."
Ruck raised his eyes, his humor expiring. She was white, staring at him with her chin set and trembling.
"As you live," she said through clenched teeth, "never lie to me. Swear it now."
"Lady—" He had meant only to amuse her. She didn’t understand.
"Kneel!" she commanded.
He hesitated. He expected her to smile. He thought she would say that she made merry of him, and laugh as she had when she threw the sand.
"On your knees, knave!" She pointed at the floor. Her hand shook. "Abase yourself!"
Shock welled in him, and resentment, warring with his honor that was bound to her homage. Slowly he stood straight from the door.
"In the name of what you hold most dear," she cried, "before God!"
In outrage he slammed one gloved fist inside the other. The harsh metal sound of it rang in the little chapel, violence and submission joined as he gripped his hands together and lowered himself before her. The whip of his pride kept his head upright. He could see her fingers, balled tight in fear or rage or some emotion beyond his comprehension.
"Never will I speak false to you, my lady," he said briefly.
"Swear it!" Her voice rose nearly to a shriek. "Swear upon what you love as your life!"
He flung himself to his feet. "On my lady’s heart, then, I swear!" he shouted. "Before God, I won’t lie to you, not while I live! I have not lied, never! Was but a tale. A poem—for the delight of it, no more than that!"
She glared at him. Then she turned away, pacing to the stone dragon, her cloak sweeping the floor. She drew a breath. Slowly, as if she had to will it, her hands stretched open at her sides.
She spoke more quietly. "I depend upon you for truth." She looked back at him. Her lilac eyes were intense, outlined in black. "There is but one person on the earth that I trust, and that is you."
If she had said some incantation, some unholy powerful mutter, if she had spilled blood and boiled toads, stolen his hair and molded his figure in wax, she could not have bound him so well and finally. He felt love like pain, love for her when still he did not know who or what she was.
She said in a smaller voice, "You didn’t tell me it was a poem."
"My lady—" He made a miserable bitter laugh. "Were no true poem, but a ragged thing, made out of my head. I won’t be false with you, my lady—never, nor devise a lay or tale again."
Her furred cloak rustled. He watched her as she ran her finger down the dragon skull. "Was somewhat agreeable a tale," she said. "You may devise such—but tell me." She looked up at him. "Certainly tell me when you don’t speak in truth."
He bowed his head, just barely, in acknowledgment. He was angry at her, at himself, and still more mortified. The weariness of two nights without sleep marred his judgment; he didn’t know why he’d hazarded to speak in sport to her, or even half in sport. "Were a stupid joke, my lady."
"Only tell me." She seemed almost penitent. "Only warn me."
"Yes, my lady."
With an unnatural bright smile she stroked the dragon skull. "This is a monstrous creation. How came it here, do you know?"
"I found it. In a place to the south, cemented in a shelf above a rockfall. For awhile, I carried it about as a penance. Weighs it sore, my lady. But a priest was here then, and he gave me absolution to dedicate it to the glory of Saint George’s chapel, which he said this was."
"A penance!" She took on the smooth light manner of a court lady. "When have you ever sinned, monkish man?"
His mouth tightened. He disliked her mockery the most when she ridiculed the virtue that he fought so hard to preserve against her. Sin and dishonor and temptation incarnate she was, with her elven’s boots and her black hair drifting free of its golden net. "Daily, my lady," he murmured.
"Daily!" she echoed, glancing at him and then down at the dragon.
He followed the slow caress of her fingertip across the stone, a carnal thing, simple and compelling. "Every hour, my lady," he said low, "and every minute."
She tapped the skull briskly. "Forsooth, I believe it must be a true dragon. Drowned in the Deluge. Or perhaps it stole a very ugly damsel by mischance, poor creature, and congealed to stone when it looked upon her. Some of us need no knight to fly to our rescue."
"More like it were the Deluge, my lady."
"My lady wife’s," he said. It was not a falsehood. He was sure it was the truth. It must be the truth.
"Alas." She lifted one brow. "I may but mourn it was not mine."
"If I say you truth, my lady, I can’t flatter also," he said stubbornly.
Pink flushed her cheek. "In faith, I’m honestly answered for my ungrace in asking."
Ruck had not spoken false. He must have sworn upon Isabelle, for she was his wife. But he looked at Princess Melanthe’s face, and he could not remember Isabelle. Had not been able to remember, not for years.
"What wants you of me, my liege lady?" he asked harshly. "Dalliance and kisses?"
"Yes," she said, without looking up. "Yes, I think I want those things of you, otherwise would I not bear myself so bold. Such is not like me. But I’m not sure."
He had never known a woman to be so open about it, or so maddening. His heart thudded slow, but his blood felt too hot for his veins.
She made a peculiar laugh. "Too strange it is—I’ve said in my heart that now I’m free, now I have no need to deceive. Now I can speak always in truth—and I find I can’t distinguish what is true and what is not." She faced him openly. "I’ve forgotten how."
The painted cross stood behind her, simple and stark. To cool himself, Ruck said, "The priests would tell my lady to pray and find God’s truth."
"So they would. And then take themselves off to their dinners and concubines." She lifted her chin and threw back her shoulders with a little shrug. "But lo—you’re a man with a nun for a wife," she said. "I know not what the world comes to, with these upside-down arrangements!"
"My lady," he said, "more upside-down is it, that so worthy as you would incline to so poor as your knight."
"Ah." She rested against the table and looked about the little shadowed space, opening her hand. "But among these hundred of suitors, you’re my favorite, Sir Ruck."
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