The Dragon of Wantley: His Tale

“I don’t know exactly what you mean to imply by that, young man,” said the Baron, coming out from behind the hogshead and puffing somewhat pompously.

“Why, zounds!” he exclaimed, “I left you locked up this afternoon, and securely. How came you here?”

Geoffrey coughed, for it was an awkward inquiry.

“Answer me without so much throat-clearing,” said the Baron.

“I’ll clear my throat as it pleases me,” replied Geoffrey hotly. “How I came here is no affair of yours that I can see. But ask Father Anselm himself, and he will tell you.” This was a happy thought, and the youth threw a look at the Dragon, who nodded slightly. “I have a question to ask you, sir,” Geoffrey continued, taking a tone and manner more polite. Then he pointed to the Dragon with his sword, and was silent.

“Well?” said Sir Godfrey, “don’t keep me waiting.”

“I fear your memory’s short, sir. By your word proclaimed this morning the man who brought you this Dragon should have your daughter to wife if she – if she – ”

“Ha!” said the Baron. “To be sure. Though it was hasty. Hum! Had I foreseen the matter would be so immediately settled – she’s a great prize for any lad – and you’re not hurt either. One should be hurt for such a reward. You seem entirely sound of limb and without a scratch. A great prize.”

“There’s the Dragon,” replied Geoffrey, “and here am I.”

Now Sir Godfrey was an honourable man. When he once had given his word, you could hold him to it. That is very uncommon to-day, particularly in the matter of contracts. He gathered his dressing-gown about him, and looked every inch a parent. “Elaine,” he said, “my dear?”

“Oh, papa!” murmured that young woman in a die-away voice.

Geoffrey had just time to see the look in her brown eye as she turned her head away. And his senses reeled blissfully, and his brain blew out like a candle, and he ceased to be a man who could utter speech. He stood stock-still with his gaze fixed upon Elaine. The nine house-maids looked at the young couple with many sympathetic though respectful sighings, and the seven footmen looked comprehensively at the nine house-maids.

Sir Godfrey smiled, and very kindly. “Ah, well,” he said, “once I – but tush! You’re a brave lad, and I knew your father well. I’ll consent, of course. But if you don’t mind, I’ll give you rather a quick blessing this evening. ’Tis growing colder. Come here, Elaine. Come here, sir. There! Now, I hate delay in these matters. You shall be married to-morrow. Hey? What? You don’t object, I suppose? Then why did you jump? To-morrow, Christmas Day, and every church-bell in the county shall ring three times more than usual. Once for the holy Feast, and may the Lord bless it always! and once for my girl’s wedding. And once for the death and destruction of the Dragon of Wantley.”

“Hurrah!” said the united household.

“We’ll have a nuptials that shall be the talk of our grandchildren’s children, and after them. We’ll have all the people to see. And we’ll build the biggest pile of fagots that can be cut from my timber, and the Dragon shall be chained on the top of it, and we’ll cremate him like an Ancient, – only alive! We’ll cremate the monster alive!”

Elaine jumped. Geoffrey jumped. The chain round the Dragon loudly clanked.

“Why – do you not find this a pleasant plan?” asked the Baron, surprised.

“It seems to me, sir,” stuttered Geoffrey, beating his brains for every next word, “it seems to me a monstrous pity to destroy this Dragon so. He is a rare curiosity.”

“Did you expect me to clap him in a box-stall and feed him?” inquired the Baron with scorn.

“Why, no, sir. But since it is I who have tracked, stalked, and taken him with the help of no other huntsman,” said Geoffrey, “I make bold to think the laws of sport vest the title to him in me.”

“No such thing,” said Sir Godfrey. “You have captured him in my cellar. I know a little law, I hope.”

“The law about wild beasts in Poictiers – ” Geoffrey began.

“What care I for your knavish and perverted foreign legalities over the sea?” snorted Sir Godfrey. “This is England. And our Common Law says you have trespassed.”

“My dear sir,” said Geoffrey, “this wild beast came into your premises after I had marked him.”

“Don’t dear sir me!” shouted the Baron. “Will you hear the law for what I say? I tell you this Dragon’s my dragon. Don’t I remember how trespass was brought against Ralph de Coventry, over in Warwickshire? Who did no more than you have done. And they held him. And there it was but a little pheasant his hawk had chased into another’s warren – and you’ve chased a dragon, so the offence is greater.”

“But if – ” remonstrated the youth, “if a fox – ”

“Fox me no foxes! Here is the case of Ralph de Coventry,” replied Sir Godfrey, looking learned, and seating himself on a barrel of beer. “Ralph pleaded before the Judge saying, ‘et nous lessamus nostre faucon voler à luy, et il le pursuy en le garrein,’ – ’tis just your position, only ’twas you that pursued and not your falcon, which does not in the least distinguish the cases.”

“But,” said Geoffrey again, “the Dragon started not on your premises.”

“No matter for that; for you have pursued him into my warren, that is, my cellar, my enclosed cellar, where you had no business to be. And the Court told Ralph no matter ‘que le feisant leva hors de le garrein, vostre faucon luy pursuy en le garrein.’ So there’s good sound English law, and none of your foppish outlandishries in Latin,” finished the Baron, vastly delighted at being able to display the little learning that he had. For you see, very few gentlemen in those benighted days knew how to speak the beautiful language of the law so fluently as that.

“And besides,” continued Sir Godfrey suddenly, “there is a contract.”

“What contract?” asked Geoffrey.

“A good and valid one. When I said this morning that I would give my daughter to the man who brought me the Dragon alive or dead, did I say I would give him the Dragon too? So choose which you will take, for both you cannot have.”

At this Elaine turned pale as death, and Geoffrey stood dumb.

Had anybody looked at the Dragon, it was easy to see the beast was much agitated.

“Choose!” said Sir Godfrey. “’Tis getting too cold to stay here. What? You hesitate between my daughter and a miserable reptile? I thought the lads of France were more gallant. Come, sir! which shall it be? The lady or the Dragon?”

“Well,” said Geoffrey, and his blood and heart stood still (and so did Elaine’s, and so did another person’s), “I – I – think I will choose the l – lady.”

“Hurrah!” cheered the household once more.

“Oh, Lord!” said the Dragon, but nobody heard him.

“Indeed!” observed Sir Godfrey. “And now we’ll chain him in my bear-pit till morning, and at noon he shall be burned alive by the blazing fagots. Let us get some sleep now.”

The cloud of slimly-clad domestics departed with slow steps, and many a look of fear cast backward at the captured monster.

“This Dragon, sir,” said Geoffrey, wondering at his own voice, “will die of thirst in that pit. Bethink you how deep is his habit of drinking.”

“Ha! I have often bethought me,” retorted Sir Godfrey, rolling his eyes over the empty barrels. “But here! I am a man of some heart, I hope.”

He seized up a bucket and ran to the hogshead containing his daughter’s native cowslip wine.

“There!” he observed when the bucket was pretty well filled. “Put that in to moisten his last hours.”

Then the Baron led the way round the Manor to the court-yard where the bear-pit was. His daughter kept pace with him not easily, for the excellent gentleman desired to be a decent distance away from the Dragon, whom young Geoffrey dragged along in the rear.

CHAPTER IX.

Leaves much Room for guessing about Chapter Ten

As they proceeded towards the bear-pit, having some distance to go, good-humour and benevolence began to rise up in the heart of Sir Godfrey.

“This is a great thing!” he said to Miss Elaine. “Ha! an important and joyful occurrence. The news of it will fly far.”

“Yes,” the young lady replied, but without enthusiasm. “The cattle will be safe now.”

“The cattle, child! my Burgundy! Think of that!”

“Yes, papa.”

“The people will come,” continued the Baron, “from all sides to-morrow – why, it’s to-morrow now!” he cried. “From all sides they will come to my house to see my Dragon. And I shall permit them to see him. They shall see him cooked alive, if they wish. It is a very proper curiosity. The brute had a wide reputation.”

To hear himself spoken of in the past tense, as we speak of the dead, was not pleasant to Sir Francis, walking behind Geoffrey on all fours.

“I shall send for Father Anselm and his monks,” the Baron went on.

Hearing this Geoffrey started.

“What need have we of them, sir?” he inquired. To send for Father Anselm! It was getting worse and worse.

“Need of Father Anselm?” repeated Sir Godfrey. “Of course I shall need him. I want the parson to tell me how he came to change his mind and let you out.”

“Oh, to be sure,” said Geoffrey, mechanically. His thoughts were reeling helplessly together, with no one thing uppermost.

“Not that I disapprove it. I have changed my own mind upon occasions. But ’twas sudden, after his bundle of sagacity about Crusades and visions of my ancestor and what not over there in the morning. Ha! ha! These clericals are no more consistent than another person. I’ll never let the Father forget this.” And the Baron chuckled. “Besides,” he said, “’tis suitable that these monks should be present at the burning. This Dragon was a curse, and curses are somewhat of a church matter.”

“True,” said Geoffrey, for lack of a better reply.

“Why, bless my soul!” shouted the Baron, suddenly wheeling round to Elaine at his side, so that the cowslip wine splashed out of the bucket he carried, “it’s my girl’s wedding-day too! I had clean forgot. Bless my soul!”

“Y – yes, papa,” faltered Elaine.

“And you, young fellow!” her father called out to Geoffrey with lusty heartiness. “You’re a lucky rogue, sir.”

“Yes, sir,” said Geoffrey, but not gayly. He was wondering how it felt to be going mad. Amid his whirling thoughts burned the one longing to hide Elaine safe in his arms and tell her it would all come right somehow. A silence fell on the group as they walked. Even to the Baron, who was not a close observer, the present reticence of these two newly-betrothed lovers was apparent. He looked from one to the other, but in the face of neither could he see beaming any of the soft transports which he considered were traditionally appropriate to the hour. “Umph!” he exclaimed; “it was never like this in my day.” Then his thoughts went back some forty years, and his eyes mellowed from within.

“We’ll cook the Dragon first,” continued the old gentleman, “and then, sir, you and my girl shall be married. Ha! ha! a great day for Wantley!” The Baron swung his bucket, and another jet of its contents slid out. He was growing more and more delighted with himself and his daughter and her lover and everybody in the world. “And you’re a stout rogue, too, sir,” he said. “Built near as well as an Englishman, I think. And that’s an excellent thing in a husband.”

The Baron continued to talk, now and then almost falling in the snow, but not permitting such slight mishaps to interrupt his discourse, which was addressed to nobody and had a general nature, touching upon dragons, marriages, Crusades, and Burgundy. Could he have seen Geoffrey’s more and more woe-begone and distracted expression, he would have concluded his future son-in-law was suffering from some sudden and momentous bodily ill.

The young man drew near the Dragon. “What shall we do?” he said in a whisper. “Can I steal the keys of the pit? Can we say the Dragon escaped?” The words came in nervous haste, wholly unlike the bold deliberateness with which the youth usually spoke. It was plain he was at the end of his wits.

“Why, what ails thee?” inquired Sir Francis in a calm and unmoved voice. “This is a simple matter.”

His tone was so quiet that Geoffrey stared in amazement.

“But yonder pit!” he said. “We are ruined!”

“Not at all,” Sir Francis replied. “Truly thou art a deep thinker! First a woman and now thine enemy has to assist thy distress.”

He put so much hatred and scorn into his tones that Geoffrey flamed up. “Take care!” he muttered angrily.

“That’s right!” the prisoner said, laughing dryly. “Draw thy sword and split our secret open. It will be a fine wedding-day thou’lt have then. Our way out of this is plain enough. Did not the Baron say that Father Anselm was to be present at the burning? He shall be present.”

“Yes,” said the youth. “But how to get out of the pit? And how can there be a dragon to burn if thou art to be Father Anselm? And how – ” he stopped.

“I am full of pity for thy brains,” said Sir Francis.

“Here’s the pit!” said the voice of Sir Godfrey. “Bring him along.”

“Hark!” said Sir Francis to Geoffrey. “Thou must go to Oyster-le-Main with a message. Darest thou go alone?”

“If I dare?” retorted Geoffrey, proudly.

“It is well. Come to the pit when the Baron is safe in the house.”

Now they were at the iron door. Here the ground was on a level with the bottom of the pit, but sloped steeply up to the top of its walls elsewhere, so that one could look down inside. The Baron unlocked the door and entered with his cowslip wine, which (not being a very potent decoction) began to be covered with threads of ice as soon as it was set down. The night was growing more bitter as its frosty hours wore on; for the storm was departed, and the wind fallen to silence, and the immense sky clean and cold with the shivering glitter of the stars.

Then Geoffrey led the Dragon into the pit. This was a rude and desolate hole, and its furniture of that extreme simplicity common to bear-pits in those barbarous times. From the middle of the stone floor rose the trunk of a tree, ragged with lopped boughs and at its top forking into sundry limbs possible to sit among. An iron trough was there near a heap of stale greasy straw, and both were shapeless white lumps beneath the snow. The chiselled and cemented walls rose round in a circle and showed no crevice for the nails of either man or bear to climb by. Many times had Orlando Crumb and Furioso Bun observed this with sadness, and now Sir Francis observed it also. He took into his chest a big swallow of air, and drove it out again between his teeth with a weary hissing.

“I will return at once,” Geoffrey whispered as he was leaving.

Then the door was shut to, and Sir Francis heard the lock grinding as the key was turned. Then he heard the Baron speaking to Geoffrey.

“I shall take this key away,” he said; “there’s no telling what wandering fool might let the monster out. And now there’s but little time before dawn. Elaine, child, go to your bed. This excitement has plainly tired you. I cannot have my girl look like that when she’s a bride to-day. And you too, sir,” he added, surveying Geoffrey, “look a trifle out of sorts. Well, I am not surprised. A dragon is no joke. Come to my study.” And he took Geoffrey’s arm.

“Oh, no!” said the youth. “I cannot. I – I must change my dress.”

“Pooh, sir! I shall send to the tavern for your kit. Come to my study. You are pale. We’ll have a little something hot. Aha! Something hot!”

“But I think – ” Geoffrey began.

“Tush!” said the Baron. “You shall help me with the wedding invitations.”

“Sir!” said Geoffrey haughtily, “I know nothing of writing and such low habits.”

“Why no more do I, of course,” replied Sir Godfrey; “nor would I suspect you or any good gentleman of the practice, though I have made my mark upon an indenture in the presence of witnesses.”

“A man may do that with propriety,” assented the youth. “But I cannot come with you now, sir. ’Tis not possible.”

“But I say that you shall!” cried the Baron in high good-humour. “I can mull Malvoisie famously, and will presently do so for you. ’Tis to help me seal the invitations that I want you. My Chaplain shall write them. Come.”

He locked Geoffrey’s arm in his own, and strode quickly forward. Feeling himself dragged away, Geoffrey turned his head despairingly back towards the pit.

“Oh, he’s safe enough in there,” said Sir Godfrey. “No need to watch him.”

Sir Francis had listened to this conversation with rising dismay. And now he quickly threw off the crocodile hide and climbed up the tree as the bears had often done before him. It came almost to a level with the wall’s rim, but the radius was too great a distance for jumping.

“I should break my leg,” he said, and came down the tree again, as the bears had likewise often descended.

The others were now inside the house. Elaine with a sinking heart retired to her room, and her father after summoning the Rev. Hucbald took Geoffrey into his study. The Chaplain followed with a bunch of goose-quills and a large ink-horn, and seated himself at a table, while the Baron mixed some savoury stuff, going down his private staircase into the buttery to get the spice and honey necessary.

“Here’s to the health of all, and luck to-day,” said the Baron; and Geoffrey would have been quite happy if an earthquake had come and altered all plans for the morning. Still he went through the form of clinking goblets. But his heart ached, and his eyes grew hot as he sat dismal and lonely away from his girl.

“Whom shall we ask to the wedding?” queried the Rev. Hucbald, rubbing his hands and looking at the pitcher in which Sir Godfrey had mixed the beverage.

“Ask the whole county,” said Sir Godfrey. “The more the merrier. My boy Roland will be here to-morrow. He’ll find his sister has got ahead of him. Have some,” he added, holding the pitcher to the Rev. Hucbald.

“I do believe I will take just a little sip,” returned the divine. “Thanks! ah – most delicious, Baron! A marriage on Christmas Day,” he added, “is – ahem! – highly irregular. But under the unusual, indeed the truly remarkable, circumstances, I make no doubt that the Pope – ”

“Drat him!” said Sir Godfrey; at which the Chaplain smiled reproachfully, and shook a long transparent taper finger at his patron in a very playful manner, saying, “Baron! now, Baron!”

“My boy Roland’s learning to be a knight over at my uncle Mortmain’s,” continued Sir Godfrey, pouring Geoffrey another goblet. “You’ll like him.”

But Geoffrey’s thoughts were breeding more anxiety in him every moment.

“I’ll get the sealing-wax,” observed the Baron, and went to a cabinet.

“This room is stifling,” cried Geoffrey. “I shall burst soon, I think.”

“It’s my mulled Malvoisie you’re not accustomed to,” Sir Godfrey said, as he rummaged in the cabinet. “Open the window and get some fresh air, my lad. Now where the deuce is my family seal?”

As Geoffrey opened the window, a soft piece of snow flew through the air and dropped lightly on his foot. He looked quickly and perceived a man’s shadow jutting into the moonlight from an angle in the wall. Immediately he plunged out through the casement, which was not very high.

“Merciful powers!” said the Rev. Hucbald, letting fall his quill and spoiling the first invitation, “what an impulsive young man! Why, he has run clean round the corner.”

“’Tis all my Malvoisie,” said the Baron, hugely delighted, and hurrying to the window. “Come back when you’re sober!” he shouted after Geoffrey with much mirth. Then he shut the window.

“These French heads never can weather English brews,” he remarked to the Chaplain. “But I’ll train the boy in time. He is a rare good lad. Now, to work.”

Out in the snow, Geoffrey with his sword drawn came upon Hubert.

“Thou mayest sheathe that knife,” said the latter.

“And be thy quarry?” retorted Geoffrey.

“I have come too late for that!” Hubert answered.

“Thou hast been to the bear-pit, then?”

“Oh, aye!”

“There’s big quarry there!” observed Geoffrey, tauntingly. “Quite a royal bird.”

“So royal the male hawk could not bring it down by himself, I hear,” Hubert replied. “Nay, there’s no use in waxing wroth, friend! My death now would clap thee in a tighter puzzle than thou art in already – and I should be able to laugh down at thee from a better world,” he added, mimicking the priestly cadence, and looking at Geoffrey half fierce and half laughing.

He was but an apprentice at robbery and violence, and in the bottom of his heart, where some honesty still was, he liked Geoffrey well. “Time presses,” he continued. “I must go. One thing thou must do. Let not that pit be opened till the monks of Oyster-le-Main come here. We shall come before noon.”

“I do not understand,” said Geoffrey.

“That’s unimportant,” answered Hubert. “Only play thy part. ’Tis a simple thing to keep a door shut. Fail, and the whole of us are undone. Farewell.”

“Nay, this is some foul trick,” Geoffrey declared, and laid his hand on Hubert.

But the other shook his head sadly. “Dost suppose,” he said, “that we should have abstained from any trick that’s known to the accumulated wisdom of man? Our sport is up.”

“’Tis true,” Geoffrey said, musingly, “we hold all of you in the hollow of one hand.”

“Thou canst make a present of us to the hangman in twenty minutes if thou choosest,” said Hubert.

“Though ’twould put me in quite as evil case.”

“Ho! what’s the loss of a woman compared with death?” Hubert exclaimed.

“Thou’lt know some day,” the young knight said, eying Hubert with a certain pity; “that is, if ever thou art lucky to love truly.”

“And is it so much as that?” murmured Hubert wistfully. “’Twas good fortune for thee and thy sweetheart I did not return to look for my master while he was being taken to the pit,” he continued; “we could have stopped all your mouths till the Day of Judgment at least.”

“Wouldst thou have slain a girl?” asked Geoffrey, stepping back.

“Not I, indeed! But for my master I would not be so sure. And he says I’ll come as far as that in time,” added the apprentice with a shade of bitterness.

“Thou art a singular villain,” said Geoffrey, “and wonderfully frank spoken.”

“And so thou’rt to be married?” Hubert said gently.

“By this next noon, if all goes well!” exclaimed the lover with ardour.

“Heigho!” sighed Hubert, turning to go, “’twill be a merry Christmas for somebody.”

“Give me thy hand,” cried Geoffrey, feeling universally hearty.

“No,” replied the freebooter; “what meaning would there be in that? I would sever thy jugular vein in a moment if that would mend the broken fortunes of my chief. Farewell, however. Good luck attend thee.”

The eyes of both young men met, and without unkindness in them.

“But I am satisfied with my calling,” Hubert asserted, repudiating some thought that he imagined was lurking in Geoffrey’s look. “Quite content! It’s very dull to be respectable. Look! the dawn will discover us.”

“But this plan?” cried Geoffrey, hastening after him; “I know nothing.”

“Thou needest know nothing. Keep the door of the pit shut. Farewell.”

And Geoffrey found himself watching the black form of Hubert dwindle against the white rises of the ground. He walked towards the tavern in miserable uncertainty, for the brief gust of elation had passed from his heart. Then he returned irresolute, and looked into the pit. There was Sir Francis, dressed in the crocodile.

“Come in, come in, young fellow! Ha! ha! how’s thy head?” The Baron was at the window, calling out and beckoning with vigour.

Geoffrey returned to the study. There was no help for it.

“We have written fifty-nine already!” said the Rev. Hucbald.

But the youth cast a dull eye upon the growing heap, and sealed them very badly. What pleasure was it to send out invitations to his own wedding that might never be coming off?

As for Hubert out in the night, he walked slowly through the wide white country. And as he went across the cold fields and saw how the stars were paling out, and cast long looks at the moon setting across the smooth snow, the lad’s eyes filled so that the moon twinkled and shot rays askew in his sight. He thought how the good times of Oyster-le-Main were ended, and he thought of Miss Elaine so far beyond the reach of such as he, and it seemed to him that he was outside the comfortable world.

CHAPTER X.