Dragon's Boy (7 page)

“Old Linn,” Cai whispered out of the side of his mouth.

Lady Marion ignored him, “…and some of the old soldiers, bless them, still drink bull's blood and worship Mithras, though I believe they do it less out of religious fervor than out of companionship. Old boys together. They think I don't know about their little meetings under the castle in that rabbit warren of rooms down there, but I do.”

She seems to be saying it as a kind of warning,
thought Artos. But Cai whispered to him, “Father has promised to take us all.”

Artos glanced at him.
Us all.
Did Cai mean to include him, too?

“We shall therefore need silks and jewels and some good Scottish wool,” Lady Marion concluded.

Lancot nudged Artos. “I thought all Scots went naked,” he whispered.

“Only into battle, Lancot,” said Lady Marion smoothly. “They are perfectly well clothed at other times and their wool is the best in the known world.”

“Yes, Ma'am,” Lancot said, dimpling a smile at her.

“Now your father is out after that stag again, Cai.” She rolled her eyes as if to admit silently that sometimes men could be a terrible burden. “And probably drinking himself into another attack of the gout, which he will blame on the weather or the wiliness of the white beast. So I daren't accompany you.
Someone
has to see to the running of this household. And poor old Merlinnus is bedridden with the miseries. He can't take you boys as he did last year. But you, Cai, are quite grown-up now. Can I expect you to guide these other three gentlemen as befits the son of Sir Ector and the heir to
Beau Regarde
?”

Bed nudged Lancot. “Good Old Linn, going sick like that.”

Lancot bit his lips thoughtfully before nudging Artos.

But Cai, under his mother's direct scrutiny, stood straight and tall. “Yes, mother, you can count on me.” He knelt and kissed her hand.

“And promise me you will be especially careful of young Artos. He's not been away from this castle since…since being brought here all those years ago. I would not have him lost or hurt for anything.”

“Not for anything, Mother,”
Cai assured her.

Artos didn't like the way he said it.

They managed to get out of Lady Marion's room with only one other nudge from Bed and several winks from Cai as he turned toward them, ushering them out with quick waves of his hands. They filed out as they had come in, with Cai in the lead and Artos at the tail.

When he looked over his shoulder for one last glance, Artos noticed a strange expression on Lady Marion's face. In that moment, he realized that she'd seen all the nudges and winks and yet was prepared to ignore them because there was a time in a young man's life when he had to make choices on his own. Yet that expression also said that she knew her son for a wastrel, Bed for a bully, and Lancot for a generous fool. She nodded gravely at Artos, as if they'd a secret between them, as if she were saying to him—only to him—

“They'll be boys all the rest of their lives, but I know I can trust
you.
”

He didn't understand how he knew all that from a single glance, but he did. He nodded gravely back at her. Then one of the maids—the one with all the perfume, Sylvia—closed the door and Lady Marion was shut off from his sight.

A
T THE AFTERNOON BREAK
they played at the wands again, and again Artos beat Cai. This time he beat Bedvere as well by dancing away from the powerful strokes and making Bed look like a clumsy bear. Before he could have a go at Lancot, all three ganged up on him and pushed him to the ground, and the Master of Swords never protested.

Cai stuck a wand right at his throat, so hard it hurt. Bed lashed his arms twice on each side until Lancot pushed him away. But all the time Artos never cried “Hold,” and there'd been not even a hint of tears in his eyes, only a bright, blazing anger.

They let him up then and brushed him off, admiring him for his courage. The Master of Swords, his scarred arms folded in front of his chest, grunted his approval as well.

“Good show,” Cai said, throwing his arm around Artos' shoulder. “And no blubbing. My mother wouldn't be worried about you if she'd seen
that
!”

Bedvere's only comment was a beneficent growl.

It was Lancot who whispered, “Never mind them. They won't bother you again now that you've shown your true colors. Tell us another story.”

So he told them about the men in the Indies walking about on their hands, as if the beating had never happened, as if both his arms weren't striped with stinging red welts and a bead of black blood didn't rest like a jewel in the hollow of his throat. He'd never mention them ganging up on him, would not even allude to it. That's how such games were played, and he knew it without having to be told. Besides, they genuinely seemed to like him now. So everything really
was
all right.

He forwent dinner to go back to the dragon's cave. He carried no bowl of gravy, for he was still angry with the dragon for going off like that without a word. But he did bring the sword, sheathed at his side.

“And if there's wisdom in
that
,” he muttered to himself as he scrambled over the stone outcroppings, “it's that I, at least, keep promises.” He conveniently ignored the fact that he was a day late in keeping this one. A marsh harrier screamed a kind of punctuation to his mutterings.

The cave entrance seemed even darker and more uninviting than usual. Inside, it was silent as a tomb. But Artos had worked himself up to such a pitch of anger at the miserable wyrm's desertion that he was glad the place was empty. He expended several minutes calling the dragon some of the awful names he'd learned at swordplay the day before—
canker, pismire, firebrat, chinch
—and felt better immediately. The cave echoed loudly with the swears.

When the sound of them was done, Artos smiled feebly. “If you can go off without telling me,” he whispered into the black, unforgiving chamber, “I can go off without telling you.”

Then he set his chin, turned his back to the cave, and walked slowly along the path to
Beau Regarde
, the weight of the sword causing him to cant to one side.

The journey to the market towns was to take a fortnight, though they packed as if going for a full month. The preparations themselves seemed to take as long. They packed and repacked the saddlebags, counted and recounted the monies Lady Marion set out for them, and listened seven times over to their instructions. Artos even suggested to the other boys that their heads were packed as tightly as their bags, and they adopted that as their motto for the journey.

“Instructions from Lady Marion, instructions from Cook, instructions from the Master of Swords…and still this,” Cai said, his face narrowing into its pout. By
this
he meant the four soldiers sent along as bodyguards.

It isn't so much a boy's trip as one of those caravans in far Araby the dragon spoke of,
Artos thought. But he gloried in it anyway.

As they rode along, their cheeks were polished apple red by the cold autumnal winds. On the second day the weather broke and gray clouds rode sullenly over the brooding Mendip Hills. The leaves and grass seemed a darker green than before, and that was when the rain actually started, lightly at first like a fine mist. Then, as if the heavens had been slit open with a knife, rain torrented down.

They sheltered as best they could in a copse of trees, the horses stomping restlessly under the drip-drip-dripping from the overhanging branches. There was no lightning, and Artos alone was relieved. The dragon had told him a man could die struck by lightning and that lightning sought the high point, like a tree. The dripping of the rain down the back of his neck was all part of the adventure. Even the discomfort seemed fun, though Cai complained bitterly and long, as if the rain had been sent just to plague
him
.

At Shapwick there was a junior tournament for boys under sixteen. The other three signed up at once, but Artos held back. He'd really only worked with wands and not his sword, though he'd brought it with him, of course. And he was curiously reluctant to use it against another person in fun. But he was loud in his cheering for his three friends, so much so that many people turned to smile at him for his boisterous loyalty.

Cai was eliminated in the first round, but by a giant of a boy, so he didn't feel too terribly downcast. And when that giant was beaten in the final round by Bed, in a long and sweaty battle, Cai was positively elated.

Lancot won with the lance.

Artos was agog at the banners and drums and horns and—quite frankly—at the enormous numbers of people. The closest he'd ever come to seeing that many people in one place had been the last time the High King had visited Sir Ector, and that had been several years earlier, with scarcely a tenth of the crowd. He stored up the faces and the sounds and the smells to take back with him.

He especially liked the pie sellers and was nearly sick from eating six pork pies in quick succession, the hot, tangy sauce running down his chin. Luckily the pieman ran out of pies before Artos ran out of coins, and he spent the last of that day's coins to listen to a traveling troupe of players who told “The Conception of Pryderi” better than anyone he'd ever heard.

Five days later at Woolvington's wool fair, when they were settled at a fine inn, Cai kissed Olwen, a serving girl, and even told her that he loved her. But then, privately, he said horribly funny things about her to Bed and Lancot and Artos. Artos felt awful about it, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything to Cai. As Cai continued all evening to make jokes about the girl—about her fat ostler father and her ugly mother who was the inn's cook—Artos fell to remembering the way he'd treated poor garlicky Mag. He felt his chin sink lower and lower onto his chest and he wondered what to do. Since he didn't want to lose his new friends, he didn't protest, but he began to think a lot about the dragon's wisdoms.

It wasn't until their last evening at Woolvington fair, with Olwen sitting all unhappy by Cai's side and Cai winking broadly at his friends as if to remind them about his jokes at her expense, that Artos finally knew what he had to do.

He had been asked to sing and had gotten through several songs when he remembered one the dragon had taught him called “Olwen the Fair.” It was a sad song, really, for in the end Olwen dies. But it was lavish in its praise for the song's Olwen, for her fair cheeks and eyes the blue of cornflowers. He sang it directly to Cai's wench, ignoring the smirks and giggles of the other boys. He let her know with the song that he, at least, honored her.

At the song's end Cai's yellow-haired Olwen was so touched, she gave Artos a kiss and went out of the room with her head held high. Cai was a bit annoyed at losing her. And the guards who had accompanied them did not understand.

“You've got a sweet voice, young Art,” said one. “Too bad it'll soon be changing.”

Artos smiled. His voice might change—but the message would not. Inwardly he thanked the dragon, and he nodded at the guard.

They started home the next day, and something peculiar happened. Artos lapsed into a long, unbreakable silence. Though he'd been their main entertainment on the road there—telling stories and singing songs—it was as if he'd suddenly been bewitched.

“Tell us a tale,” Cai begged. “You haven't told one all day, and your tales make the road shorter.”

They all shouted their agreement. “Another tale, Artos. Or a song.”

He said nothing.

“Afraid of old Garlic Breath, then?” Cai asked slyly. “At least Olwen's breath was sweeter, you have to give her that.”

Artos sighed. So Cai had learned nothing. But Olwen, he knew, had been comforted. There was that.

By the time they passed by the town of Meare and were on their way toward Shapwick, they were all teasing him about Mag. He was so sunk in misery by that time, he didn't ask how they knew. He just assumed, miserably, that all his exploits at the castle were well known. Except, of course, his time with the dragon.

“He's afraid of my new sword and what I'll do to him at our next game,” Bed said, patting the sword he'd won in the tourney, the old one with the snakes put aside.

“Or my lance,” Lancot said brightly, though clearly he didn't believe that to be the case at all.

But Artos kept his silence. He kept it despite their attempts to wheedle him into a story or song or riddle or the name of the one who'd bewitched him. In the attempt they listed every girl they knew as the cause. And then, for good measure, they added the names of the hard-handed men he might be worrying about back home: the Masters of Hawks and Hounds, the Master of Swords, Magnus Pieter, Sir Ector, even sickly Old Linn.

Of course they never mentioned dragons. They didn't know one lived near the castle, and Artos had certainly not breathed a word of its existence to them.

But it was the dragon that obsessed him and had ever since he'd used one of its wisdoms to help the girl Olwen. With each mile closer to the castle, he remembered the total and utter silence of the empty cave and how he'd neglected the dragon out of anger, out of self-righteous pique. He wondered if the dragon had returned; if it was angry that he hadn't come by with its daily meat. He wondered if it even cared, if it had
ever cared
, really, or if he'd only been a distraction.

Artos Pendragon. Son of the dragon.
He knew he was no man's real son. He was a fosterling, fatherless as well as motherless. His hand went to the bag under his tunic.
Even more fatherless,
he told himself.
At least I've a ring from my mother. I've nothing belonging to the man who sired me. The only father I've had
—
if only for a few short months
—
has been a clanking, hot
-
breathed, storytelling dragon. And I left that dragon to play at willow wands with a trio of unruly, bulky, illiterate boys.