Here There Be Dragonnes (60 page)

Running over to Bran and Beauty I tore off their garlands, untied them from the rowan and tethered them again to an innocent oak sapling. Picking up the heavy cooking pot I attempted to heave away the contents into the bushes, but some of the scalding fluid tipped down my dress; panicking both from the heat of the liquid and from some imagined contamination I ripped it off and stood naked. Quickly I circled widdershins to counteract any lingering spells, then raced away to the stream to rinse my dress, without thinking further than that a great load was off my mind: I was free of power, spells and enchantments forever. Now I was me, myself, and never again would I be tempted to use a magic I was not entitled to!

Running through the bushes barefoot I stumbled more than once, but the knowledge that I must wash away all traces of my foolishness spurred me on. Splashing at last into the clear, cold water, I held my dress under and scrubbed away all traces of the magic between my ringers and looped it over a bush to dry, then turned to wash all fever from myself.

"Whatever in the world are you doing, Thingy dear?" There was a lilt to his voice like the turn of the water over the stones, and once more we stood face to face in running water, birth-naked the pair of us, but this time there was no shame on my part, no coyness, no hesitation. I had to know, I had to know right there and then, and convention and a few scraps of cloth, or rather the lack of them, were irrelevant.

"Oh, Conn! I had it all planned but it wasn't right, it was wicked and Snowy told me so and I think The Ancient's owl did too, but I spilt the supper down my dress and had to get myself clean and please say you don't mind, but I must know!"

"Darling girl, you're talking scribble again! Spilt the supper, have you? No bother: there's a tavern not a half-mile from here—"

"You don't understand!" I wailed. "I'm unclean, I—"

"Then that's soon remedied. Just stand still, girl dear, and I'll scoop some water over you . . . So." The water poured from his cupped hands over my shoulders, between my breasts and down my flat stomach to the cleft between my thighs. He lifted more, and this time the tips of his fingers accidentally brushed my breasts and I felt as though I had been kicked in the stomach. Looking down, I saw that my nipples were hard and firm like two wild cherries.

Looking down revealed something else, as well.

"Is that—is that because of me?" I asked wonderingly and put out my hand to touch, but he leapt back as though he had been stung, hands over his crotch, and all but lost his balance.

"Don't—don't!" he said. "You don't know, you don't realize . . ."

"I'm sorry," I said, but there was no consciousness of shame, only a lively curiosity. "I just wanted to touch. You see, that sort of thing has always frightened me before; there was Broom, and then the swineherd: they only wanted to attack, to hurt . . . But yours looks rather nice and friendly, not threatening at all. I have seen it before, you know," I added. "When you were ill, or bathing or getting dressed." I was going to say something about the Lady Adiora, but thought better of it.

"If you try and touch me," he said unsteadily, "knight or no, I won't answer for the consequences . . ."

"Do you mean—you would make love to me?"

"Just that!"

"Then—Oh Conn, I must ask! Does that mean you love me, just the littlest bit? Or is it only what they call lust? You see, I have to know. I've loved you so much all this time, ever since we found you in that ditch, in fact, and at one time I thought you might—Then you didn't ask again, and I thought you didn't . . . I know ladies aren't supposed to ask things like this, and it doesn't matter if you don't, I won't mind—well, not much anyway—but I must know—"

He stepped forward and kissed me then, quite hard, and I fitted nicely into his arms and everything was very interesting, because although my feet by now were cold from the stream and the skin was going all washerwoman-wrinkly, the rest of me was warm and smooth and tingly.

"Does that mean you do?" I asked, when I had got my breath back.

"Does it mean . . . ! Dear Christ, girl, I've worshipped you ever since I first saw you properly in those Waters of Truth! I loved you before, poor helpless little Thingummy that you were, but when I saw that beautiful face on you and the body to match and I knew you were born a lady it was just like your dull pebbles turning into the dragon's jewels: I felt you were way beyond my reach and would never consider an ageing, well-used adventurer!"

"But I
love
you—"

"But I wasn't to know, now was I? You never said . . ."

"Neither did you!" I thought back over the wasted miles. "You're not really well-used . . . Can I now?"

"What? Oh. Well . . ." He seemed a little disconcerted, but I looked down and saw that his body was still keen. Perhaps he was hungry. My mother had always made sure my father was fed and wined before she asked him something special, especially if she was afraid he might say no.

"Perhaps we could have supper first," I suggested. "There's bread left and a bit of cheese, and the mead—"

"Blow supper!" said Conn. "Hang supper! To perdition with supper!" And he picked me up in his arms and carried me all the way back to the fire.

On the way I tried to explain what I had intended to do and he kissed me in all the nicest places and told me he didn't need magic and moonlight and mushrooms to know that I belonged in his heart for always and then he laid me down and took me in his arms again and the earth stretched beneath us like a dreaming beast, and the sickle of the reaper took the last thread that bound me to my past and gathered me and tied me to my love and I heard the music again, the music The Ancient had called Love's Song, and the air sang with it the whole night through . . .

"How about breakfast?" said Conn.

"Breakfast?"

"Yes, breakfast: making love always leaves me with an appetite . . . Now you are to be my wife I shall expect all the comforts of home, you know: meals on demand, and all the rest of it . . ."

"Your wife? Am I really to be your wife?" I looked at him. He was laughing, his moustache curled upward, his eyes sparkled, and on his face was a look of love and contentment and on his jacket our two feathers: wisdom and fidelity. Yes, he meant it.

"Just as soon as we can say the right words in front of the right person." He reached over and spanked my rump. "Now, lazy one, get some clothes on and we'll go up to town." He followed the spank with a kiss on the offended portion. "And then if you'll bear with me learning the surgeon's trade for a while, we'll go on afterwards and find that home you dreamt of: sea, hills and a stream, wasn't it, with martlets in the eaves and seals to sing us to sleep? And we'll settle there and have children and love and quarrel and then kiss and make up. I'll cure the people and you will tend to the hurts of the animals, and we'll live happily ever after . . ."

And so we did.

And so the soldier: hung up his sword;
The hands that had hewn: turned to heal.
The loves she had lost: became different loves,
And the martlet made: his mansion in the eaves.
The wolf-cub waited: by the wall of the house
And the people of the sea: sang them to sleep. 
 

Thanks, as always, to my husband Peter, for his care and patience.
 

Belated thanks—sorry, folks!—to Bobby Travers and his daughter Joanna for smoothing our way out here.
 

Thanks, too, to Margaret and Barry Shaw for their help with Christopher.
 

I am also grateful to our
alcalde
,
Don Carlos Mateo Donet Donet, for his assistance and encouragement.
 

Last, but never ever least, thank you Samimi-Babaloo, my Sam—just for being yourself!
 

My mother was the village whore and I loved her very much.

Having regard to the nature of her calling, we lived a discreet distance away from her clients, in a cottage up the end of a winding lane that backed onto the forest. Once the dwelling had been a forester's hut, shielded by a stand of pines from the biting winter northerlies, but during the twenty years since she had come to the village it had been transformed into a pleasant one-roomed cottage with a lean-to at the side for wood and stores. Part of the ground outside had been cleared and fenced, and we had a vegetable patch, three apple trees, an enclosure for the hens, a tethering post for the goat and a skep for the bees.

Inside it was very cozy. Apart from the bed, which took, with its hangings, perhaps a third of the space, there was a table, two stools, hooks for our clothing, a chest for linen and a dresser for the pots and dishes. Above the fire was the rack for drying herbs or clothes, beside it a folding screen that Mama sometimes used when she was entertaining if it was too cold for me to stay outside—though as I grew older I preferred to sit among the pungent, resinous logs in the lean-to, wrapped in my father's cloak, thinking my own thoughts, dreaming my own dreams, where witches and dragons, princes and treasure could make me forget chilblains or a runny nose until it was time for Mama to call me back into the warmth and the comfort of honey-cakes and mulled wine in front of the fire.

Then Mama would sit in her great carved chair in front of the blaze—a chair so heavy with age and carving it couldn't be moved—a queen on her throne, me crouched on a cushion at her feet, my head against her knee, and if she were in a good mood she would talk about Life and all it held in store for me.

"You will be all I could never be," she would say. "For you I have worked and planned so that you may have a handsome husband, a home of your own, and a dress for every season. . . ."

That would be luxury indeed! Just imagine, for instance, a green dress for spring in a fine, soft wool, a saffron-yellow silk for summer, a brown worsted for autumn and a thick black serge for winter with fresh shifts for each. . . . A man who could afford those for his wife would have to be rich indeed, and live in a house with an upstairs as well as a downstairs. Even as I listened the dresses changed colour in my mind's eye as quick as the painted flight of the kingfisher.

Mama's planning for me had been thorough indeed. On a Monday she entertained the miller, who kept us regularly supplied with flour and meal for me to practice my pies, pastry and cakes; Tuesday brought the clerk with his scraps of vellum and inks for me to form my letters and show my skills with tally-sticks; on Wednesday Mama spent two hours with the butcher and once again I practiced my cooking. On Thursday the visit of the tailor-cum-shoemaker gave me pieces of cloth and leather to show off my stitching; Friday brought the Mayor, who was skilled with pipe and tabor so I could display my trills and taps and on a Saturday the old priest listened to me read, heard my catechism, and took our confessions.

Sunday was Mama's day off.

She had other visitors as well, of course, besides her regulars. The apothecary came once a month or so, sharing with us his wisdom of herbs and bone-setting, the carpenter usually at the same interval, teaching me to recognize the best woods and their various properties, and how to repair and polish furniture. The thatcher showed me how to choose and gather reeds for repairing the roof, the basketmaker, also an accomplished poacher, instructed me in both his crafts.

All in all, as Mama kept telling me, I must have been the best educated girl in the province, and she covered any gaps in my education with her own knowledge. It was she who taught me plain sewing, cooking and cleaning, leaving the refinements to the others. She insisted that as soon as I was big enough to wield a broom, lift a cooking-pot or heat water without scalding myself, that I kept us fed, clean and washed, and throughout the year my days were full and busy.

During the spring and summer I would be up before dawn—taking care not to wake Mama—and into the forest, cutting wood, fetching water, looking to my traps, gathering herbs and then home again to collect eggs, feed the hens, and weed the vegetables. Then I would milk the nanny and lay and light the fire, mix the dough for bread, sweep the floor and empty the piss-pot in the midden, so that when Mama finally woke there was fresh milk for her and a scramble of eggs while I made the great bed and heated water to wash us both; then I changed her linen, combed and dressed her hair and prepared her for her visitors. Once the ashes were good and hot they were raked aside for the bread, or if it was pies or patties I would set them on the hearthstone under their iron cover and rake back the ashes to cover them.

Once Mama was settled in her chair by the fire it was away again for more wood and water and once I was back there were the hives to check, a watch on the curdling goat's milk for cheese, digging or sowing or watering in the vegetable-patch and perhaps mixing straw and mud for any cracks in the fabric of the cottage. Then indoors for sewing, mending, washing pots and bowls, followed by any other tasks Mama thought necessary.

Once the gathering, storing and salting of autumn were over, my outside tasks during the winter were of a necessity curtailed, although there were still the wood- and water-chores, even with snow on the ground. There were the stores to check: jars of our honey, crocks of flour, trays of apples, salted ham, clamps of root vegetables, strings of onions and garlic, bunches of herbs, dried beans and pulses. That done, it was time for candle-dipping, spinning, carding wool, sharpening of knives, re-stuffing pillows and cushions, sewing and mending, mixing of pastes and potions and repairing of shoes.

Then came the time I liked best. While I dampened down the fire and made us a brew of camomile flowers, Mama would comb her hair and sing some of the old songs. We would climb into bed and snuggle down behind the drawn hangings for warmth, and if she felt like it my mother would either tell me a tale of wicked witches and beautiful princesses or else, which I like even better, would tell once more of how she had come to be here and of the men she had known. Especially my father.