by Lisa Cach
“That was … kind of her. I may be able to find you something better, if after seeing the dragon you are still set upon fighting it.”
“Not fighting it; killing it.”
“Mmm.” She coughed, as if masking a laugh, and then turned and disappeared through the archway.
George and Milo and the sheep followed, crossing through the stone-flagged hall and out onto the terrace he had seen through his window. She led them all down the length of the castle, around the end, and to another terrace beyond whose battlements the sea stretched out to the horizon. There was one short crenellated tower at the corner of the terrace, perhaps once used as a lookout.
George went to lean on the wall, looking down at the cliff that fell away beneath this side of the castle, and then out across the ocean. The water was blinding with sunlight.
The dragon had a damn good eye for real estate, George had to give it that.
He looked back at the castle and saw that they were on the other side of the great hall, and that another wing of the building stretched out toward the sea, giving the building an L shape. All the doors were shut, but in the upper story the windows had no coverings. There must be a devil of a draft, what with the wind off the ocean.
The mistress and Milo were waiting for him across the terrace, beside a wooden door in the main part of the castle. George started back toward them, then for no reason looked back over his shoulder at the upper-story windows.
He saw three pale faces that quickly disappeared.
A cold flush ran down his body. The windows were dark now, lifeless, holding no promise of anything beyond. Had he imagined them?
“Is this castle haunted?” he asked, half-joking, as he rejoined them.
The mistress’s head turned slightly, as if she was looking back at the other wing. As if she knew exactly what he meant. “Why do you ask?”
“I thought I saw something.”
“Many young girls have died here.” She hesitated, then continued: “At times I have heard footsteps, and voices, as if in another room, but when I go to look there is no one there.”
Ghosts! Just great. Why was his unconscious throwing this at him, too? Maybe they were symbolic of guilt … or maybe of his own lost spirit. Whatever it was, doubtless if he was still here tonight, the ghosts would come make their purpose known, probably in the dark of night when they could scare the crap out of him. In the waking world he didn’t believe in ghosts—not really—but this wasn’t that world of consciousness and electric lights.
He tried to smile. “I’ve never slept in a haunted castle.”
“I think you have more to worry about than ghosts,” she said and opened the wooden door. The iron hinges screeched, and the room beyond was dark. “Are you ready to meet the dragon?”
Chapter Eight
Damn those virgins! They were going to be put on privy-scrubbing duty when she found out who had shown their faces at the window. They had all sworn to stand back in the shadows, to not let so much as a fingertip show to this false St. George. They had said they could be trusted, had vowed to not utter a single word while he was on the terrace, that in no manner would they give away their presence.
Apparently the excitement of a half-naked male was too much for them to handle.
Not that she could blame them. Even with that broken pitchfork and stubble on his chin, the man was passing handsome. She was thankful for her concealing hood, that oh-so-necessary fabric that kept him from knowing how often her eyes strayed over the revealed V of his chest and down to that silver-coated bulge, so wrongly exposed by the slit in the bottom half of his surcoat.
The man was indecent. She ought to have a proper tunic made for him.
Ought to.
Did not want to.
Not only did she like his chest, she would be happy if his surcoat blew away entirely and left her with an unobstructed view of his lower body.
She understood now the powerful forces that had moved Osbert to his leering, slobbering behavior. It had taken her twelve years to reach the stage of a fifteen-year-old boy, but she was there now, and by St. Stephen she did not know what the hungers of her body might make her do.
It was a pity she could not chain him to a wall and keep him like a pet, to do with as she would. He had the look of someone who might know how to properly deflower a virgin, if he did not get himself killed first.
She looked at him, standing there with his pitchfork and an expectant look on his face. Sadly, his demise was more likely than not.
“This way,” she said and led him into the corridor that ran the width of the castle, separating the kitchen from the great hall. There were doors off it that led down to cool storage cellars carved out of the rock, and a large central archway that opened onto the kitchen. Another archway, directly opposite the kitchen’s, led into the great hall, but she had had the virgins close and bar its massive doors.
Windows high up in the lofty-ceilinged kitchen kept the room well-ventilated and filled with warm light reflecting off the yellow stones. The scents of herbs and wood smoke predominated, over traces of wool and dye, steaming mineral water, baked breads, and stewed meats. This room was the heart of the castle, was her favorite chamber, and she turned to see his reaction.
George—she could not think of him as “St. George”; it was impossible to believe that was who he was—looked confused. A tremor of concern passed through her. Had she missed some detail, one that gave away that she was not the only one who lived here?
“Is this the kitchen?” he asked, and stared around him like a gape-jawed lack-wit.
“By the rood, it is not the privy! What else should it be but the kitchen?”
“I meant no offense, mistress. In my homeland, the kitchens are small enough to fit in that corner,” he said, pointing. “And the fires are built against the wall, with a pipe above to draw away the smoke.”
“And to draw away the warmth as well, I should think. It sounds a backward place, this homeland. Tell me, is it where you lived before you died, or is it the heaven for saints that you speak of?”
“A world beyond this one is all I can say.”
She snorted. “Germania, is my guess.”
“Farther still,” he said, with a crook to his mouth and a look in his eye that said he knew much more than she ever would.
She would enjoy seeing that smugness wiped away. With unaccustomed pleasure she unlocked and pulled open the heavy oaken door to the staircase that would take them beneath the castle. Dampness and a faint hint of dragon stink welled out of the darkness.
The door was next to the stone basin where steaming mineral water bubbled, and George paused to dip his fingers in, pulling them back with surprise at the heat.
“A hot spring?” he asked.
“The veins of it run through the mount.” She lowered her voice. “Sometimes, in the night, I almost think I can hear the heart that pumps it, beating deep beneath the earth.”
He stared at her for a moment. “That must keep you awake,” he said, and forced a laugh.
“Yes.” She lit a torch from the central hearth. “Take the sheep’s lead.”
“What?” he asked, even as Milo handed him the end of the rope.
“Milo does not go down to the dragon.”
George turned to the man. “You said you had seen the dragon.”
“Once,” Milo said, and nothing more.
“Once is as much as most can bear,” Alizon said. Except for Pippa, that was, which was the reason the door had to be kept locked: the mischief-prone girl found the dragon more exciting than frightening.
Alizon stepped through the doorway and descended into the dark dankness of the stairwell. She felt George follow a moment after, dragging the sheep along behind him, its hooves scrabbling against the stone as it bleated in protest.
The walls were raw stone, cracked in places and seeping mineral water that ran in trickling cataracts down the stairs. A rope was threaded through wall brackets, providing a loose han
drail.
The air was a blend of drafts: one with the cold scent of buried stone, the other with the warm odor of the mineral water and a hint of something else, something with the fetid breath of feces and rotted flesh. Belch. It was the name she had given to the dragon, for the stink that wafted from the lair.
Her heart beat more quickly, and she felt a chill mist of perspiration growing on her brow and down her body. The torch quivered in her grip, and she hoped George, if he noticed, put it down to the flickering of the flames and nothing more.
For the sake of the other virgins she had grown skilled at masking her fear when she descended these stairs, but it was always there. She had never grown used to this passage, or what lay at its end.
Fluttering images of remembered horror came back to her, of her first descent, in the company of the crone. She heard again the nun’s rasping breath, close behind, pushing her forward, and her
stomach churned with an echo of the sick desperation she had felt.
“How often do you feed the dragon?” George asked.
The question broke the spell of her thoughts, bringing her back to the present. “Once a week. Any longer and he begins to complain.”
“In words?”
She paused on the steps to look back at him, and he bumped into her, then steadied her with his enormous hand. His palm swallowed her shoulder, and she had the unsettling feeling that, contrary to what Milo had said of his weakness, George would have only to flick his fingers to toss her against the wall. She wished she did have him in chains, and safely within her control.
She used sarcasm to mask her discomfort. “Have you met many dragons that could speak?”
“I have heard of such things. Some are said to be wise.”
She snorted. “Not this one.” She continued back down the stairs, which ended in another door, pads of leather attached around its edges, sealing it as well as could be managed. Even so, tendrils of stink wafted through invisible openings, and she swallowed against the urge to cough.
She gestured for George to open the door.
He cast her an assessing glance, as if he thought the dragon was going to be waiting with an open mouth on the other side but did not want to admit to concern over the possibility. He pulled open the door, releasing a thick stench that blew out at them as if from the dragon’s gaseous bowels. The sheep bleated in terror. George started to gag, then glanced at her and shut his mouth, his face going impassive even as his chest muscles clenched in betrayal of his revulsion.
She smiled beneath the cover of her hood. “You will become used to it.”
His perfect-toothed grin showed strain at the edges. “I have known men who smelled worse.”
“I pity their wives.” She stepped into the low-ceilinged passageway beyond, the torch held before her. “Watch your head.”
All sounds were drowned out by the baa-ing of the sheep as George dragged it after them, the bleats reverberating off the walls of the tunnel, seeming to increase in volume with every step. The passageway curved, and then up ahead there was a rough rectangle of dim light. Alizon slowed her steps, aware of George bent low immediately behind her.
“There used to be a door,” she said over the ringing bleats of the sheep, “but the hinges rusted and it became stuck half open. Then the dragon tried to come through it.”
“What happened?” His mouth was so close to her ear, she thought she could feel his warm breath through the wool of her hood.
A shiver ran down her neck that had nothing to do with what awaited them. Sense said to step away, but she stayed where she was. “His head got stuck, and when he tried to pull it back, he wrenched the door away.”
“He is free to come in?” He shifted behind her, as if preparing to run.
“He is too big now to do so. That, at least, is not a concern you need have.”
“I am not concerned.” He sounded offended and moved slightly away from her. “I am here to kill the damned thing, and a tunnel is as good a place as any other.”
“Yes, kill it with your pitchfork, I know,” she said, turning toward him, her voice quavering with hysterical amusement. Clearly he was going to insist on cockiness to the end, and the end it might very well be.
“You have never seen one of these in the hands of a master.” He was holding the pitchfork at an angle across his body, but against the expanse of his chest it looked more like a kitchen implement than a weapon.
The bleating of the sheep was beginning to make her head hurt, the sound ringing in her ears. She ignored George’s bravado, wanting only to get this over with. Let him see what he was up against, and then perhaps he would know how foolish his bravery was. “Obey me when we step out onto the platform beyond the doorway. I would not see you die too soon.”
“Yes, mistress.”
He was like a mocking child. She had forgotten the irritating behaviors of men.
They came to the end of the tunnel and stepped out onto a wooden platform that extended a few feet into a vast cavern, a smooth rock beach and a lake of water thirty feet below. To her left were narrow steps carved into the face of the rock, descending around the side of the cavern to the beach. The lake emptied through a wide crack in the cavern wall, big enough for Belch to depart if he wished, which was also the source of the daylight.
The platform and the stone stairs had been built in the de Burroughs’ time, as an easily defended back entrance to the castle. A small boat could be rowed through the passage to the sea.
From an opening halfway down the wall to Alizon’s right, hot mineral water poured down the rocks to the water, its heat against the chillier air of the cavern creating a permanent atmosphere of fog. It drifted in layers, sometimes clearing, sometimes swirling from winds blowing in from the sea, and sometimes lying in an impenetrable layer upon beach and water alike.
The dragon was nowhere to be seen.
She took the rope from George and pulled the sheep into a small stall set at the corner of the platform, closing the gate behind it and then removing the rope from its neck. She scooped a handful of grain into the stall from a canister tucked against the wall. The bleats stopped. The sheep’s hooves made hollow sounds upon the boards, and in the sudden quiet they could hear it snuffling at the oats and grinding its molars.
“Where’s the dragon?” George asked, going like an eager child to the low wooden wall around the platform. He leaned on it and looked down into the swirling fog.
“Do not lean over the rail,” Alizon warned, shuddering with remembrance of one other who had stood too close to the edge.
“I don’t see it.”
“He is there.”
“Yoo hoo! Dragon!” The man waved his pitchfork in the air. “Come on, show yourself, you godforsaken lizard! Or are you afraid of St. George?”
“Please,” Alizon said, grabbing a handful of surcoat and tugging on it. “Step back.”
“Hello!” he shouted, his voice echoing in the cavern. “Hellll-oooooo!”
She laid her hand on George’s arm, trying to get his attention. He glanced at her, the light of excitement in his eyes. “We’ll be able to see him, won’t we?”
“More closely than you wish, if you do not step away from the rail.”
He didn’t seem to hear her, turning back and looking again for his foe. Nothing moved below but the fog, silent and slow.
“Do you think he went out, over there?” George nodded toward the wide crack in the cavern wall.
“No. He would do so only if I did not feed him. He is too fond of his comfort, I think.”
George leaned back on his heels, some of the excitement visibly draining from him. “I don’t see him. I’m always the one who doesn’t see the deer beside the road, or misses the bear running off into the forest.”
“If you shout and swing your arms about as you have here, it is no wonder.”
He looked at her, a thoughtful expression on his face. Then it cleared. He grinned and slapped himself on the forehead. “I understand!
If I have the courage to face my dragons, I will find that they are nothing but so much mist! Such a simple lesson! There is no dragon. There is nothing here but the smell of my own fear!”
She had no idea what he was talking about, concerned only that in his excitement he was again flinging his arms around. “Please, come away from the rail,” she implored.
“You had me frightened in the tunnel, I admit. I really thought there would be a dragon here.” He leaned way out over the edge, shaking his pitchfork. “You don’t scare me, you beastly Missouri women! Call me what names you will, I am St. George the Dragonslayer, and proud of it!”
She damned modesty and gripped his hips from behind with both her hands and pulled, trying forcibly to drag him away. He was too heavy and too strong. She might as well have been pulling against a tree.
“You don’t scare me! Do you hear that?” he shouted.
And then it happened.
The splash of water was the only warning, but one that came too late. The great green-black body rose from the mist, propelled from the water by Belch’s thrusting tail. His pink maw was open wide enough to swallow a cow, and lined with ivory teeth the size of her hand. The massive jaws snapped shut mere inches from George’s forward-bent head, and then Belch was falling back into the mist, his body hitting the water below with a slapping boom.
“Jeeee-zus!” George cried, dropping his pitchfork over the railing and falling back, bumping into Alizon and knocking them both to the floor of the platform. “Christ!” And then he started talking in English she could not quite understand but knew from the forceful delivery to be a trail of curses.
A bone-vibrating bellow rose up from the mists below, the sound reverberating off the cavern walls. Water sloshed about as Belch swam, and then there was a moment of silence.
“Back! Back!” Alizon cried, pulling at George’s upper arm as she scrambled backward on the wood platform.
George stopped cursing long enough to look at her in confused alarm, and then there was another splash, and up rose the immensity of Belch’s head, and the scrabbling claws at the ends of his stubby arms. He landed on the edge of the platform, most of his weight on the narrow stone stairs. Boards splintered, part of the plank wall of the platform giving way.
