Mistress of Dragons (43 page)

Clutching
the baby, half-blind with her tears, Bellona turned and ran from the bed
stained with blood. She ran from the death of the woman she had loved as long
as she was conscious of being able to love. She stumbled over the bodies on her
way out the door, kicked them aside, and paused in the doorway. She saw the mob
on its way up the hill. She would not run from them, she decided. She walked
calmly out the door, carrying in her arms the baby, silent and uncomplaining,
as if he knew his peril. She walked down the hill behind the house, heading for
the forest that would swallow her up, swallow the child.

Only
later, alone and safe within the green trees, would she recall Draconas’s last
words to her.

On
the day the dragon’s son asks to know what and who he is, bring him back here
to his mother’s tomb.

Draconas
stood in the doorway of the cottage. In his mind’s eye, he watched one of
Melisande’s sons ride to the city of Ramsgate-upon-the-Aston, where he would be
welcomed by a loving mother into a royal house, destined for a life of ease and
comfort. He watched Melisande’s other son fleeing death after only a few
moments of life, raised by a woman who would find it hard to love him, destined
for a life of loneliness and isolation, torment and anger.

Draconas
watched until both faded from his view, then he returned to fulfill his
promise.

Melisande
lay in bloody sheets of the birthing, as her babies had laid in her blood. He
placed her right hand on her breast. Lifting her left hand, he clasped the
cold, white flesh in his own. He clasped her hand gently, mindful of his
talons, which no one could see. No one but himself.

“I
never meant for it to come to this, Melisande,” he said quietly. “I am sorry.”

He
placed her left hand on top of her right hand, then, lifting up her body in his
arms, he walked out of the cottage.

He
met the mob charging up the hill, and he stood in front of the open doorway and
regarded them in silence. Startled by his composure and unnerved by the specter
of death that he bore, a woman, whose face was so lovely and cold and whose
long fair hair trailed down to brush the dirt, the villagers lowered their
shovels and their rakes and eyed him uneasily.

“The
babe must be inside!” the midwife yelled from the back, spurring them on. “It’s
a demon I tell you!”

The
mob growled and several men in front lunged forward. Draconas cast a glance
behind him.

The
cottage erupted in flame, fire so fierce that the flames seared the faces of
those in the front ranks.

The
villagers gave a collective gasp, then falling and tumbling over each other,
they turned tail and raced back down the hillside, shrieking that the devil was
loose among them.

Draconas
walked on, carrying Melisande down the road that led to the river.

THE
SONGS QUOTED IN THE TEXT ARE, IN ORDER OF presentation:

“Deuil
Angoisseux,” by Christine de Pisan

“When
to Her Lute Corinna Sings,” by Thomas Campion

“With
Garments Flowing,” by John Clare