The Dragon's Boy Read online

  He tucked the red jewel into the leather bag he wore around his neck on a leather string. The jewel clinked against the little gold ring he kept hidden there, the only keepsake he had from the mother he’d never known.

  As it turned out, the journey back was as easy as the dragon had foretold. Somehow Artos hadn’t expected that, but his feet found the path—turning naturally where moss and stone had been worn away by years of heavy travel. He wondered briefly why he hadn’t come upon it before, but then he remembered that he’d found the cave by clambering up the tor’s back side.

  The path traversed the fens easily and comfortably, avoiding the wettest places and the cold, meandering stream. He was back within sight of the castle in minutes, feeling only slightly foolish to have been so mistrusting, and also greatly relieved.

  Artos grinned broadly at the castle. He was happy to see it but, at the same time, he was amused at its presumption, squatting there in the middle of nowhere. When he’d been younger, he’d thought Sir Ector’s Beau Regarde a grand place.

  He could imagine nothing finer. But now, from conversations overheard—if not from any actual experience of other places—he understood how small and unimportant the castle really was. There weren’t even any high walls around it, the commonest sign of a castle’s power. That was because no one would actually want to capture it, or so Cai had said during one of his major pouts. Beau Regarde was neither strategically important nor filled with treasure. Just a “small, out-of-the-way, backwater, do-nothing place” Cai had said, groaning, with Bedvere and Lancot agreeing. Still, Artos suddenly realized how much he loved it, how it suited him, for he was small and insignificant himself. (Only now, his mind reminded him, we both have a Dragon! So what does small matter?) Beau Regarde boasted two large square towers and a splendid gatehouse at the center of the southern entry, as if Sir Ector had begun the place with rather grander plans than he’d finished it with. Or else he’d grown tired of building it halfway through. But it was those towers and gatehouse that Artos was especially fond of. And Lady Marion’s garden, with its clipped lawns and the herbaceous border filled with roses blooming till nearly the winter solstice, was Artos’ special place to dawdle and dream. He used to climb the high wall between the towers and perch on the parapet (much to Sir Ector’s nervous complaints), staring across to the tree-capped horizon. He’d been certain he could see a faraway kingdom. His own kingdom. Where his mother and father waited, grieving for their long lost son. Now, of course, he knew that he had no kingdom. He was a fosterling. And those trees were only a small wood known as Nethy where the best mushrooms grew, for he’d traveled there once with Cook. At Nethy he’d learned that tree trunks weren’t always brown, no matter what the poets said. Birch had silver trunks, beech a pewter color, walnuts black, plane trees gray and yellow, and oak trees had trunks that were green with lichen. He was glad to know such things, for he enjoyed knowledge for its own sake, whether it was useful or not.

  When he reached the Cowgate he started to run, and he raced into the kennelyard at full tilt because the fear of punishment was suddenly the most real fear of all. As he ran he tried to cobble together five or six alibis, one of which would surely satisfy the Master of Hounds. But surprisingly no one noticed him. Skidding to a stop, he looked around warily, but the Master of Hounds was fast asleep in his great wooden chair, his thin-lipped mouth agape and his long, bandy legs stretched toward the fire. The brachet Boadie lay serene and comfortable by his feet, looking as if she hadn’t moved all day.

  “You…you…” Artos whispered at her, but as he couldn’t think of a word bad enough to call her, he was silent. She looked up at him then with such certain love in her dark eyes, he knelt down and buried his head into her bulging side. The unborn puppies kicked and squirmed under his cheek and he grinned, fear and anger all forgotten. Boadie smelled so doggy and warm and he was so very tired, he didn’t think about dragons anymore but closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  Bedvere found him an hour later.

  “Slug!” he cried, kicking Artos on the right leg. “Never where you’re needed, never where you’re supposed to be. Always messing about with dogs and things. Ever a fellow has to search you out. Slug!”

  Artos woke with a start and looked up, aggrieved. For a moment he thought of telling Bed about the dragon and showing him the jewel. But only for a moment. Bed would just think the dragon a lie and the jewel stolen. With his slack jaw growing well ahead of the rest of him, Bed looked as unimaginative as he was, and he disliked Artos exactly because Artos had an imagination. No use, Artos thought, sharing a dragon with Bed. He’d only want to go and kill it. Kill it! As if that giant docketing, fire-roaring Master of Wisdoms could be killed by a mere boy.

  It wasn’t often that he thought of Bed as a boy, since Bed was fully as large as a man and already had the beginnings of a mustache on his long upper lip. But Artos liked the thought so much, he whispered it to himself again: mere boy.

  Then, getting to his feet, his right leg still shining with the pain of Bedvere’s kick, Artos mumbled, “What do you want, anyway?”

  But whatever Bedvere had wanted he’d satisfied with the kick. He’d just come to tell Artos it was time for their supper and was angry at being made a messenger boy for someone he considered well beneath him. Lady Marion had insisted on it and even Bed couldn’t refuse to do her wishes, though he didn’t have to enjoy it. The message delivered along with the kick, Bedvere was content that he was a messenger boy no longer and left.

  Supper was quieter than usual, for Lady Marion was dining with her maids in her chambers and Sir Ector was still out stalking a white deer that had occupied him and his men for the better part of the month. The Ghost Stag everyone in the castle called it. Though Sir Ector was a notably poor hunter, he loved nothing better than to be out on the chase with his companions, drinking more than Old Linn, his apothecary-physician, had warned was good for him, and forgetting the manners that Lady Marion insisted upon at home.

  The boys made do with a small table by the hearth and told one another lies about their day: comfortable lies, the kind that could be believed honorably. Cai spoke of having almost bested the Master of Swords in one mock battle, Bedvere of having done nearly twenty-seven one-arm pushups; and Lancot, with his face wreathed in smiles, hinted at having kissed one of Lady Marion’s maids, and she all-willing.

  The only thing Artos mentioned was the chase after the hound. But when it was clear no one was listening to him, he let the rest of the story dribble away into silence, drinking his well-watered wine with a puckered forehead and an unreadable stare.

  Cai rose from the table first. As heir to Beau Regarde it was his right.

  “Let’s play some draughts,” he said, stretching his arms wide and looking like a lean, young version of his father.

  Bedvere got up and took a carved box out of a great wooden cupboard. He shook it and the game pieces rattled. Lancot took out the playing board. Then the three of them began to play, pointedly ignoring Artos.

  The longer he waited for an invitation to join them, the clearer it became that none was forthcoming. He felt his cheeks grow hot, set his lips together, and ground his teeth.

  I will not be hurt by them again, he reminded himself, but his hand went up to the leather bag in the unconscious gesture he always made when snubbed by them. The feel of the leather around the little gold ring always comforted him, but this time the bag was heavier and bulkier. He smiled slyly and drew the jewel out, quietly tossing it from palm to palm, hoping one of them would look up from the game and notice.

  When they didn’t, he stuffed the jewel back in the bag and, with little more than an awkward sigh, rose and went out of the room. He thought he heard them laughing as he left, but he couldn’t be sure.

  The kennelyard was quiet. He wondered if it was Boadie’s time yet, but it turned out she was running down the village streets, romping with some of the old hounds Sir Ector hadn’t taken with him on the hunt and acting as if she were
n’t carrying a bellyful of pups. When Artos called to her, she ignored him.

  Dreading his dreams, Artos went off to bed.

  4

  Conversation in the Smithy

  THE NEXT MORNING AT his break, Artos hurried to the smithy, the jewel clutched in his hand. He was determined to purchase some kind of sword with it, even if it could only buy him a castoff. Though he’d no idea of the jewel’s worth, he couldn’t wait another moment for the sword. After all, with a sword the other boys would have to pay attention to him. He’d be almost a knight. The jewel in his hand was hard and real and it should have made the whole episode with the dragon seem just as real. Yet somehow it didn’t.

  The memory of the dragon was vivid enough, but it was the stuff of nightmares: the clacketing scales, the gigantic foot, the keen knifelike nail, the shaft of searing breath flaring hot from the cave’s center, the horribly whispery shout. Indeed, he’d dreamed about it all night long. Especially the part about the forced promise to return with meat. Still, only the jewel in his hand, imprinting itself on his palm, seemed real. The reality of the dragon and the promise were carefully buried under layers of small-boy caution and years of polished imaginings. He would have been perfectly satisfied to leave them in the land of never-was, but then he arrived at the smithy in the middle of a quarrel.

  The quarrel was between Sir Ector’s apothecary Old Linn and Magnus Pieter the swordmaker. It was a whiney, word-whipping sort of argument that—because it isn’t shouted—you don’t realize it’s happening until you’re right in the middle of it and can’t possibly escape. Artos had thought it an ordinary conversation until he was inside the smithy door, and then it was too late because the two of them looked over and saw him and he couldn’t leave without embarrassment and loss of face to one or the other.

  They noticed him but, in the manner of adults, they didn’t stop arguing. It was as if his presence added fuel to their fires, as if each were trying to impress him so that he might choose up sides.

  “But there’s never any meat in my gravy,” Old Linn was saying, his voice rising into a mealy whine at the end. It was the word meat spoken in that way that brought the dragon’s last words back to Artos. Meat in the stew was what the dragon wanted and what Artos had promised. He shivered.

  “Nor any meat in your manner,” replied the smith. “Nor do you mete out punishment.” He fancied himself quite a wordsmith as well as a swordsmith, and so stated to any castle newcomers.

  In fact, Magnus Pieter was not much good with words, being a lumbering sort of person. He was really only comfortable with iron and fire and the great bellows in the smithy. It was well known that he rehearsed his word jokes, banging them out with each fall of the hammer onto the anvil. Artos could almost hear the rehearsal for this rain of puns: “Meat in the gravy (bang), meat in your manner (bang), mete out punishment (bang), meet you in battle (bang).”

  Once upon a time, Magnus Pieter had been regularly spitted in public by Old Linn’s quick tongue. They’d been best friends by their long and rancorous association. But last year Old Linn had had a fit, brought on Cook said “by age and all them secrets of his.” He’d fallen face first into his bowl of soup during one of the High King’s infrequent visits to the castle. And now Magnus Pieter was the castle wit (“What,—bang!—the wit—bang!”) and Old Linn a shambling wreck of an old man who never stood up after meals to tell any more of the great tales. Artos had loved the few stories he’d been allowed to stay up for.

  Old Linn hunched around the forge looking more like a tortoise than a man, his thin shoulders bent over as if they wore a carapace instead of a tunic, his scrawny neck poking out between the humps. His eyes were rheumy and staring. Definitely a tortoise, Artos thought.

  “My straw is never changed but once a se’en-night,” Old Linn whined. “My slops are never emptied. I am given but the dregs of the wine to drink. And now I must sit—if I am welcomed at all—well below the salt.”

  Well below the salt. Artos knew full well the sting of that, for being seated below the salt meant to be in a place of no honor at all at the table. To sit alongside the impoverished and the nameless, like himself. Only it wasn’t exactly true. Old Linn had never sat by him, but rather at the High Table not far from Lady Marion. He wondered why Old Linn bothered to lie about it. It was only later, after he’d left the smithy, that he understood the old man was exaggerating, as storytellers always do, for the effect.

  The smith smiled but never stopped the tap-tap-tapping on the piece of iron he was working. He argued back to the beat of the hammer. “But you’ve got straw (bang), though you no longer earn it (bang). And a pot for your slops (bang), which you could empty yourself (bang). You’ve got wine (bang bang), though you never pay for it (blow bellows). And even below the salt there’s gravy in the bowls (turn over iron, bang-bang-bang).”

  Artos nodded at that because he knew there was gravy in the bowls, even when you sat well below the salt. Sir Ector was a kind man and Lady Marion insisted on it. Then, realizing the nod had suddenly brought him right into the middle of their conversation when he hadn’t meant to be in it at all, he instantly regretted that nod.

  But they ignored him anyway, and Old Linn repeated his piteous whine.

  “But there is never any meat in my gravy.” At the word meat, Magnus Pieter was off again, beating out five or six slightly new variations on the anvil, and this time the word rang like a knell in Artos’ head. The hammer sounded like the clanking dragon scales and the word meat was spoken each time as the dragon had spoken it: loud, commanding, and with great implied meaning.

  Artos swallowed back all his own saved-up words. Clutching the jewel so tightly it left a deep print in his palm, he slunk out of the smithy. He’d never even had a chance to mention the sword, that shining piece of steel that might have made him the equal of any of the castle boys. And what good anyway, he thought miserably, is the dragon’s wisdom or the dragon’s jewel to me? Or the dragon?

  5

  The Getting of Wisdom

  ARTOS STRUGGLED ALL THE rest of the morning with his promise. Yet—though he couldn’t quite put into words why—he found himself in the kitchen begging a pot of gravy with meat at the beginning of his two-hour break. He would have been happier asking Cook herself, but she was sleeping off the heavy noon meal of soup, beef, and turnips. It was to Mag the scullery, hard at work scouring out the great tureens, whom he had to do his pleading. Mag was his bane. Several years his senior, she was small, wiry, and always smelled of garlic, with a bristly dark mustache like a scar under her nose. She’d had an unlikely passion for him ever since he was a small boy. While all the other serving girls moped after Lancot with his gold curls and maddening smiles, Mag longed for Artos. He gritted his teeth and spoke directly into the middle of her sighs.

  “Mag, could I get another pot of gravy with meat?”

  She sighed. “Master Artos, what would you be needing a pot for? (Sigh) Not for that scamp, Boadie? (Sigh) She’s big as a tun already. (Sigh)”

  “No, not for any dog,” he said quickly.

  She waited expectantly for the rest of the answer.

  “For…for…for…” Now when he most needed it, once again his imagination failed him.

  “For yourself, Master Artos? (Sigh) I’d gladly give it…thee. (Sigh)”

  The thee, familiar and tender, was so daring on her part that he grabbed for it at once.

  “Yes, for myself. For me.”

  “Thee. And growing into thy full manhood (Sigh) and needing such sustenance. (Sigh)” She actually fluttered her eyelashes at him in a terrible imitation of one of Lady Marion’s maids, adding slyly, “And what’ll thee give a poor girl for it? (Sigh.)”

  “Give?” He hadn’t considered the need of any exchange. Gulping, he managed to whisper, “My thanks, Mag?” He hoped it was enough.

  In the end it hadn’t been enough. Mag was a crafty bargainer. He’d had to kiss her on the cheek, avoiding the stink of garlic by the simple expedie
nt of holding his breath. He kissed her between one deep sigh and the next and escaped with the pot of gravy lumped with three pieces of meat.

  Artos strolled casually out of the Cowgate as if he had all the time in the world, nodding slightly at the sleepy-looking guards standing over the portcullis. Overhead a marsh harrier coursed the sky.

  Artos could feel his heartbeat quicken and he went faster across the moat bridge, glancing briefly at the gray-green water where the ancient moat tortoise—looking remarkably like Old Linn—lazed atop the rusted crown of a battle helm. Once he was across, he began to run.

  As he ran, it occurred to him that if the dragon wanted more stew—in fact stew every day—he might have to give Mag more kisses. Kisses on the cheek and, perhaps, kisses right on her garlicky mouth. He wrinkled his nose at the thought. This business of dragons could very quickly get out of hand.

  Since kissing Mag didn’t bear thinking about, he concentrated instead on the path. Though he hadn’t noticed in his haste to get home the day before, it was a quite well-worn thread, winding through the wilderness of peat mosses and tangled brush, past bright yellow kingcup and the white clusters of milk parsley. Once he had to clamber over two rock outcroppings that looked rather like the lumps of meat, and once he had to free his hose from a briar. But they were little troubles compared to the peat pools farther north that everyone knew held bones way far down, and only the fen folk could traverse safely day after day on their hidden paths.