Legends! Beasts and Monsters (3 page)

Only the Chinese understood and admired the dragon. It was often said that some of the greatest Chinese emperors had been born the sons of dragons. Dragon bones and teeth were used as medicine.
A dragon guarded the houses of the Chinese gods and brought rain to the earth when the crops needed it. That is why the Chinese still fly dragon kites and honour the dragon by including paper
models of it in their New Year celebrations. The Chinese really did like the dragon.

But in fourth-century Palestine – when Saint George was alive – dragons were more feared than admired. It is true that they did have some unsettling habits. They tended to live in
rather dank and nasty caves, for example, often guarding huge piles of treasure which had almost certainly been stolen from somebody else. They also had an unhealthy appetite for human flesh, their
favourite food being princesses – although any young woman would do. But they were not the only man-eating animal on the globe. It was just that they got all the bad publicity.

Anyway, Saint George was the most famous dragon-killer of all – which is strange because he never actually killed a dragon. The other strange thing is that, although he is best known today
as the patron saint of England, George (as he was known before he became a saint) wasn’t even English. He was actually born in Palestine.

His father was a high-ranking officer in the Roman army and for a time George followed in his footsteps, serving as a soldier under the Emperor Diocletian. He was brought up by Christian parents
and he travelled the world, spreading the gospel and doing good.

His encounter with the dragon happened at a small town called Silene. And this is where the story begins.

The people of Silene had lived in fear of the dragon for many years. It lived in a cave on the edge of a stagnant lagoon, a few miles from the town. Now the vapours from this lagoon would often
be carried by the wind into the town and the people came to believe that the dragon was responsible for the rotten smell that seeped through their streets. So they began to feed the dragon two
sheep every day in the hope that it would go away. This was, of course, a particularly stupid idea and had exactly the opposite effect. Because once the dragon got used to the idea that it was
going to receive a free meal at twelve o’clock regularly, it decided that the townspeople must be genuinely fond of it and actually wanted it to stay. Certainly it had no idea that they were
afraid.

This went on for a number of years until, not surprisingly, the townspeople began to run out of sheep. So a council was called at which all the local politicians, along with the king himself,
met to decide what to do.

The minister for external affairs was the first to speak. ‘My honourable friends,’ he began. ‘This is a serious situation. Indeed, I am tempted to say that this is a crisis. We
have no chops. We have no shepherd’s pie. We have a shortage of wool. And why? Because we have given away all our sheep! And still this dragon refuses to go away.’

‘Hear! hear!’ all the other councillors cried, although in fact the minister hadn’t said anything that they didn’t already know.

The leader of the opposition got to his feet. ‘I would like to remind the council,’ he said, ‘that I was always opposed to the policy of giving sheep to the dragon. If we had
given it chickens, as I suggested, we would not now be facing this crisis. This is another example of government incompetence. The government’s behaviour can only be described as . . .
sheepish!’

His friends all laughed at this rather feeble joke. But now the minister for internal affairs leaped up. ‘The council’s policy of giving sheep to the dragon has been a great
success,’ he said. ‘Even though it is true that the dragon has not gone away yet, all the signs are that it will go away quite soon. We just need to feed it a bit more.’

There was a general outbreak of booing and shouting. Papers were waved, torn up and scattered until the Speaker, who was in charge of the council, had to call for order.

The minister for ministerial affairs stepped forward. ‘If, as my honourable friend suggests, we are running out of sheep,’ he suggested, ‘we could try giving it something
else.’

This produced a sudden hush as the other councillors considered the alternatives.

Then the king spoke, and his face was grim. ‘It is well known,’ he said, ‘that dragons like the taste of children. It seems to me, therefore, that there is no alternative. We
must give him our children. Once a week we will feed the dragon with our sons and daughters.’

For a moment, nobody spoke. The entire council was alarmed, but nobody wanted to argue with the king. After all, they had their careers to think about.

‘I’m not sure this will go down well with the voters,’ someone muttered.

‘How will we choose the children?’ someone else asked.

‘We will have a lottery,’ the king replied. ‘Every child in the town will be given a number. Once a week a number will be drawn out of a hat. The child that has that number
will be given to the dragon in order to save the town.’ He rose to his feet. ‘That is my law,’ he concluded. ‘There are to be no exceptions.’

Three months passed, during which time no fewer than a dozen children were seized by the royal guard, torn away from their weeping parents and then tied up and left outside the dragon’s
cave. Seven boys and five girls met this terrible end, the flesh picked so cleanly from their bones that the little skeletons gleamed pure white in the morning sunlight. As for the dragon, it
noticed the change in its feeding. It was even a trifle puzzled. But the king had been quite right to say that it would like the taste. In fact it had been getting bored with sheep and found the
children a welcome change. Needless to say, if it had been thinking about moving on, it now decided to stay exactly where it was and even considered inviting a few friends to join it.

By the time George arrived, an atmosphere had descended on Silene more poisonous than any mist that had been blown in from the lagoon. Every Tuesday, the day of the lottery, the streets were so
silent that if the town had become a cemetery nobody would have noticed the difference. Few people left their homes, and those that did went about their business with pale faces, their mouths
stretched in a grimace of fear, each avoiding the others’ eyes. Then at midday a bell would ring. Soldiers would knock on the door of a house somewhere in the town. A terrible cry of pain and
depair would break the silence. And everywhere parents would hug their children and thank the gods that their number had not been drawn.

George came on a Tuesday afternoon, a few hours after one of the lotteries had ended. It didn’t take him long to find out what was happening in Silene and when he did find out he shook his
head, half in astonishment, half in despair. Straight away he went to the palace to find the king, and as he walked into the throne room he heard the following conversation.

‘You can’t!’ the king was saying. ‘I forbid it!’

‘But you told us to,’ one minister replied.

‘You made the law,’ a second said.

‘And you said no exceptions,’ a third added.

‘But she is a princess . . . my daughter.’ Tears ran down the king’s cheeks. ‘She didn’t even tell me that she had been given a number. When I find the idiot who
gave her a number, I’ll have him executed. I’ll have him flayed alive!’

‘It was the minister of the interior,’ the minister of the exterior exclaimed.

‘No it wasn’t, Your Majesty!’ the minister of the interior cried. ‘As a matter of fact, I was the one who said that the royal family and all politicians should be exempt,
that none of us should have to draw numbers. But she took one anyway. She said she wanted to be like all the other children.’

This was in fact true. The princess, although she was only fourteen years old, had been horrified by the turn of events in Silene. She was an intelligent and educated girl and, some might say,
well ahead of her time. For example, she had argued passionately that criminals shouldn’t be put to death before they’d even been tried and that perhaps it was a bad idea to wage war at
the drop of a hat without thinking about the consequences. And she had been one of the first to speak out against this evil lottery. When the king had refused to listen to her, she had decided to
take a stand. She had insisted on being given a number herself and, when it had been drawn, she had presented herself to the soldiers without any argument. Perhaps, when she was killed, her father
would change his mind about this foolish law. That, at least, was what she hoped.

The king had changed his mind. But it seemed it was too late.