Mistress of Dragons (42 page)

“Wanted
their Mistress back, huh?”

“No,
they wanted her dead,” said Draconas. “And they succeeded. Did you see any
warriors out there?”

Gunderson
nodded, mystified. “I saw some skulking away. Looked like the fight’d been
knocked out of them.” He glanced at the body, clasped in Bellona’s arms. “Why
did they want her dead?”

“Because
she knew the truth,” Draconas replied. “The truth about the dragon. I know
Edward told you. Or didn’t you believe him?”

“I
believe he believes it,” Gunderson returned coolly. “Poor woman,” he added, his
tone softening. “What about the babe?”

He
took a step forward.

Draconas
raised a warning hand.

“Mind
the arrows!” he warned sharply. “We’ve enough corpses in here without adding
yours to the lot. The baby’s safe. Stay where you are. I’ll bring him to you.”

Gunderson
didn’t put up any argument, but stayed in the doorway.

Bellona
sat on the bed, holding Melisande in her arms. She had not looked up at the
sound of voices. She could see nothing but emptiness, hear nothing but that
last soft whisper. Draconas rested his hand on her shoulder, felt her muscles
turn hard, rigid, as though death’s chill had seized her, too.

Bending
down, he said softly, for her ears alone, “We’re not safely out of this yet.
You have to be strong, for her sake.”

Bellona
shuddered at his touch and lifted her head, her eyes red-rimmed and burning.
She cast an oblique glance over her shoulder at Gunderson.

“He’s
here for the baby,” said Draconas, aloud.

Bellona
stared, not comprehending.

Draconas
squeezed her shoulder, bruising her flesh.

“The
baby,” he repeated.

Bellona
looked up at him dumbly, her eyes those of a wounded animal that has no voice
to speak its pain. Draconas trusted she understood him. He hoped she understood
him. Otherwise . . . He didn’t want to think of otherwise.

Draconas
dropped down on his hands and knees, peered under the bed. One baby lay wrapped
in bloody rags, the other in the blanket his dead mother had woven to receive
him. Draconas took hold of the baby in the blanket, slid him out from under the
bed. Cradling the child in his arms, he rose to his feet and walked over to Gunderson.
He could feel Bellona’s eyes on him, but she said no word. She remained sitting
on the bed, holding fast to her dead.

“She
bore a son,” said Draconas, placing the baby in Gunderson’s arms. “He favors
the king.”

Gunderson
looked down at the child. All babies looked alike to him and this one was no
different. A round head, smashed-in nose, rosebud mouth, crinkled eyes
squinched tightly shut, trying to blot out this horrifying new world into which
he’d been born. The baby stirred fretfully and whimpered, wanting something and
missing it and not knowing what it was.

“God
forgive me for what I am about to say,” Gunderson said somberly, “for it is a
mortal sin. But it would have been better if the babe had died with the mother.”

“You
don’t know that,” Draconas replied. “None of us can see the future.”

“Some
of us can,” said Gunderson. He shifted his gaze from the baby, stared fixedly
at Draconas, eyes dark with enmity. “You’ve brought trouble enough on my king.
Keep away from him. If I see you near him or this child, I’ll kill you, so help
me, God.”

Draconas
would have liked nothing better than to swear that he would nevermore set eyes
on either Edward or his newborn son. He couldn’t make that promise, however,
for there was no way to keep it.

“I’d
get rid of the blanket,” he advised. “That’s her blood on it.”

The
blood was still fresh. Gunderson felt the dampness and grimaced. “I have a
woman waiting in Bramfell. A wet nurse. She’ll clean and feed the babe and
dress him up neat and proper.”

“As
befits a king’s son,” said Draconas.

Gunderson
gave a bitter, tight-lipped smile. “If you say so.”

“The
boy is Edward’s son,” Draconas stated emphatically. “If he believes nothing
else about what happened, he can believe that.”

“He’ll
believe,” said Gunderson. “More’s the pity.”

He
drew the bloodstained blanket more closely around the child, thrust the baby
beneath his fur cloak to keep warm. As he turned to leave, Gunderson glanced
back over his shoulder at Melisande.

“God
rest her soul,” he said quietly.

He
was walking out the door, trudging away, and Draconas was breathing a sigh of
relief when the second baby, hidden under the bed, gave a cry—a strange cry, a
low, feral wail.

Startled,
Gunderson halted, looked back. “What was that?”

Draconas
muttered a curse beneath his breath, shot a glance at Bellona.

“What
was what?” he asked loudly.

“I
heard a cry,” said Gunderson, walking back.

“The
cry was mine,” Bellona called out. Her voice was ragged. She bent over the
body, shrouding it with her long, black hair.

“It
sounded like a baby’s,” Gunderson said, returning.

Bellona
raised her grief-ravaged face. “You have what you came for! Your king has his
son. Get out, and leave me to bury my dead.”

“You
should be going,” Draconas said, blocking the door. “The child is hungry and
you have a long ride ahead.”

Gunderson
looked from one to the other, from Bellona to Draconas. He might have
persisted, but the baby in his arms began crying—the nerve-grating, insistent,
demanding shriek of the newborn. Turning on his heel, Gunderson left them,
clutching awkwardly the mewling baby in his arms.

Draconas
watched from the doorway, watched until the king’s steward had mounted his
horse and ridden off into the haze of smoke from the burning mill. The fire
must be out, for he could see no flames and the smoke was starting to diminish.
The villagers would be standing around staring at the ruin, as cold despair
settled in after the hot excitement of putting out the blaze. The midwife would
soon be among them, if she wasn’t already, babbling her tale, and the people
would gawk and stare in disbelief. Some would dismiss her as mad, but others
would believe. She would swear by all that was holy and eventually more would
start to believe her. They would come see for themselves.

Bellona
had not moved in all this time. Sitting on the bed, her arm beneath Melisande’s
head, she gazed down at the still, pale face, so calm in death, and smoothed
the fair hair with her bloodstained hand.

“You
have to take the baby and leave,” said Draconas.

Bellona
did not look at him. If she heard him, she gave no sign.

“You
promised her you would care for him,” Draconas said, his voice deliberately
harsh, a splash of cold water. “If you don’t leave now, the villagers will find
him and they will kill him. And probably us along with him.”

Bellona
stared up at him. “Kill him? Kill a baby? Why?”

The
child had gone quiet, after that one strange wail. As Draconas knelt down to
retrieve this second baby, he remembered Gunderson’s words, It
would have
been better if the babe had died with the mother
and he remembered his
answering platitude.
You don’t know that. None of us can see the future.
Well,
that much was true. But he grimaced as he pulled the baby out from under the
bed and saw that he was strong and healthy. Unlike his brother, this child’s
eyes were wide open. He stared unblinking at the light with an expression of
wary watchfulness.

“Look
at him,” Draconas told Bellona.

She
looked, but did not offer to hold him.

Still
wrapped in the bloody rags Draconas had thrown over him, the baby seemed an
ordinary infant, except for those oddly knowing eyes. Feather-wisp hair of
indeterminate color covered his head; he held his small, clenched fists tight
to his chest. His bow-curved lips were pursed shut, as though he had no
expectations of this world, was not prepared to make any demands.

“He
looks like Melisande,” said Bellona softly. “More than the other.” She reached
out to touch his cheek.

Draconas
thrust aside the bloody rags, revealing the child, naked.

Bellona
gasped in shock, recoiled in horror.

From
the groin up, the baby was normal. From the groin down, his legs were hunched
like the hind legs of a beast and covered with silvery blue scales. His scaly
feet had claws.

“He
is her son,” said Draconas, holding the baby out to her. “You promised
Melisande you would care for him.”

“He
is not her son!” Bellona cried, averting her eyes in revulsion. “He’s a
monster.”

“He
is her son,” Draconas repeated, relentless. “You promised her as she lay dying
that you would take care of him.”

Reluctantly,
Bellona looked back at the baby. “I don’t understand.”

“She
and Edward made love that day,” Draconas explained. “They had no choice in the
matter, either of them. They were meant to love, meant to create a child that
day.”

“I
don’t understand,” she said again, but this time her tone was dire.

He
avoided her question, kept on with what he had to tell. “The first baby born,
the elder of the brothers, that child is the son of King Edward.”

“And
this one?”

“That
was never meant to happen,” Draconas continued. “Another man came to Melisande
that night. His intent was also to deliberately get her with child. He attacked
Edward and left him for dead and he raped Melisande.”

“I
know,” said Bellona. “I saw him. I—”

“—attacked
him from behind with your sword. He dropped Melisande and turned to face you
and he would have killed you, but something stopped him. What was it?”

“How
do you know all that?” Bellona demanded, staring at him.

“What
stopped him from attacking you?”

“I
heard a snarl. I looked up and there in the sky was a dragon—”

Lifting
his hand, Draconas touched her cheek, which was wet with the tears of her
grief. Her tears fell on his flesh and, as Bellona looked at him, she saw the
human Draconas and, hovering over him, the spirit of a dragon with shining
red-orange scales.

“Grald
saw me as I truly am,” said Draconas, “and he knew he could not fight me as I
truly am. He would have had to change into his real form and he dared not, for
fear I would recognize him. He had done what he came to do anyway. He had left
his seed inside her. And so he fled.”

“I
saw him,” Bellona said, staring far away into that terrible night. “I saw him
as I saw you. He is—”

“—the
same as the Mistress. The same as myself. The same as”—he sighed softly—”the
blood that runs in his child. Dragons. All of us.”

He
placed the baby in her unresisting arms. Bellona gazed down at him, bewildered
and amazed.

“I
have broken the law of my kind to tell you this,” Draconas went on, “for it is
a secret that we have kept for thousands of years. A secret no human should
know. I won’t require you to keep my secret, for I have not earned the right to
ask that of you. I was the one who brought this upon Melisande and when she
needed me, I failed her. I ask only that you think about what I am going to say
and do what you believe is right.”

Draconas
knelt before Bellona, looked up into her eyes.

“Melisande
bore a human child, who will grow up gifted with the dragon magic. And she bore
a dragon child, who may not even have a chance to grow up, if humans find out
the truth about him. They will say he is cursed and they will kill him.

“Maybe
he is cursed,” Draconas added softly, his gaze shifting to the baby. He reached
out his hand, gently touched the child’s soft cheek. “Maybe he will grow up to
be the curse of his people. Or maybe he will grow up to avenge his mother. I
don’t know. But I believe he should be given a chance. For her sake.”

From
outside, drifting on the air, stinging and acrid as the smoke, came voices.

“The
villagers are coming,” said Draconas. “The midwife has told them what she saw.
The mob is forming. You can either save him or hand him over to them.”

“You
save him,” Bellona said and she held out the baby.

Rising
to his feet, Draconas took a step backward. “If I raised him, I would doom him
to worse than death. His dragon father wants him and so does the Mistress. They
are the ones who sent the warriors here. They were after the baby. They
attacked only after they heard the baby’s cry. I am the only one of my kind who
has taken human form. Maristara would know to come looking for me and
eventually she would find me and the baby. You are one of a vast multitude of
humans. You can take the child and vanish.”

Bellona
brought the child back to her breast, holding him awkwardly, precariously, for
her arms seemed to have gone nerveless. She couldn’t feel them, couldn’t feel
anything anymore.

“I
don’t understand,” she said for the third time, hard and grating. “I will never
understand. What right have you and your kind to meddle in our lives?”

“None,”
he replied. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we were trying to make amends.”

Angrily,
Bellona snatched the bloody rags from his hands. She wound them round and round
the baby. “I will take him. I will raise him. To do what, to be what, I do not
know. I’m doing this for Melisande,” she added fiercely. “Not for you.” She
placed the baby, wrapped in his mother’s blood, in Melisande’s chill arms. “First,
though, I will bury my dead.”

“There’s
no time. You hear the mob. They’re on their way. You have to go before they see
you. I will care for her.”

Bellona
hesitated, not wanting to leave Melisande, but she could hear the truth of his
words. Outside the cottage, the clamor of the mob swelled. They had a scapegoat
for their misery and they were eager for blood.

Draconas
spoke to her again, said something urgent to her. She heard his voice, but it
came to her as from a vast distance, drowned by the howls and shouts, drowned
by Melisande’s last words,
Take care of my sons.