PREVIEW: Isabell and the Dragon

Chapter 2 Flight

April 2, 829AD Glastonburg Village

Isabelle was up before dawn, she had loaded her cart with dung from her cow the night before, she had as well several empty woven baskets on the cart. She was dressed in a faded baggy green skirt and faded blue vest that had been her mothers. She had rolled up the waistband to shorten the skirt to mid-calf to keep the mud off. Her blouse was hers and she owned two. This was her work blouse. She had made both blouses herself and they were made of the same coarse wool flax blend as the rest of her clothing. Her sandals were the clog style and made of beech wood. The heel five inches thick and the sole four. This height gave her feet the necessary clearance to keep them free of mud and the offal and garbage scattered on the village street. It also gave added height. With her clogs on Isabell stood five foot eight inches. Taller than most of the village men.

This was the last load of dung. She had spent the winter spreading dung on her field. She had managed to collect several loads of dung from her neighbors who were more than happy to have her cart it away. Today she would harvest the parsnips she had allowed to winter and then apply the dung. The plow-man would meet her midday at the field.

She walked quietly next to her donkey as she led it from the village toward the fields. The best land was reserved to the lord and those fields would be managed by the village peasants. The hilly rocky areas were given to the villagers and the fruits of that labor there taxed. Ten present for the tithe, ten present for the lord. Isabell was of the Yeomen class. As the niece of the Master Stonemason her gardening was strictly for their table, after taxes of course.

Isabell's hair, the color of pure sunlight, was in a thick long braid. She sang to her donkey and whispered words of encouragement. Albert was quite old for a working donkey. It had served her father before she was born. Isabell kept the loads light and lead rather than rode her Albert. They passed the ruins of the burnt monastery. Passing the ruins always made her heart hurt and her eyes tear as she remembered the priests who had been so kind to her father and had taken the time to educate the wild girl child that lived with them while her father worked the stones. All that was left were the burnt ruins and memories. All the priests, her father and older brother had been brutally murdered or carried away in the Norse raid nearly eight years ago.

Her father's younger brother had assumed the role as Master Stonemason and taken her into his home in the village. Her Uncle Gerard was a grim unhappy man. Part of the reason Isabell worked so hard with her garden was to repay Uncle Gerard. She tried hard but could not ever recall him saying anything of gratitude or kindness to her. He had married a village woman but she had died of the plague along with her son, her daughter and Isabell's sister and mother. Isabell has become sick with the plague but survived. Gerard had spent the season away working on a fortress in the north. He returned home to find his family dead, but Isabell alive. He never forgave her.

She left her cart at the base of the low hills. Albert was allowed to graze. Isabell inspected her hillside garden with pride. The edges of the plots were delineated buy low stone walls. Isabell had also planted apple and apricot trees to edge her boarder. The fruit trees beginning to flower. She smiled as she noticed other villagers were copying the practice, then bowed her head and said a silent prayer for her most recent sin of pride. Taking the baskets from the cart she began harvesting her parsnips. As she pulled them from the soft soil she knew that by allowing them to winter they would be sweeter. A tenth for the lord, a tenth for God, a tenth for the poor and the rest for me she sang as she pulled the parsnips. All the vegetables Isabell produced in her guarden were larger and more abundant than her neighbors, as soon as this thought crossed her mind Isabell stopped. She again closed her eyes in repentant prayer. "If I don't stop being so prideful I'll never get to heaven," she whispered to herself.

Finishing the harvest, she then carried the baskets of dung to the parsnip patch and spread it evenly on the field. She returned the empty dung baskets to her cart as well as her parsnip baskets. She sat on a large smooth rock and planned the planting and proper rotation schedule she followed. She planned parsnips, red and white cabbage, carrots the regular white ones and the new red one she had traded seeds for. Also onions, leeks, garlic, fennel, lettuce, artichokes, long beans and broad beans and peas, her asparagus was already well established and she would have her first harvest soon. "And melons!" she added verbally.

"Mistress Isabell, I'm here."

"Master Plowman Horace!" Isabell said smiling, "I have the field ready for you."

"Do you still want me to plow in steps and not up and down the hill?"

"Why yes, I've always done it that way."

"It takes longer and ends up costing you more, it's much cheaper the regular way," Horace said slowly.

"But everyone can see how following the hill preserves the soil and makes better use of the rain. How do the villagers explain my success?"

Horace hesitated, looking down and shaking his head, "They say you be a witch Mistress."

"What do you think Horace?"

Horace again hesitated, "You be no witch Mistress, but you survived the plague, you have knowledge of healing and herbs. You be most unusual, claiming to talk to animals and all...but you are a Godly woman."

Isabell laughed and paid the plowman and returned Albert and the cart to her home. Then giving Albert a thorough brushing and some silage left for the wooded area beyond the village. Finding her secret pond Isabell undressed and entered the pond. She knew bathing was sinful but she loved feeling clean and it was warm enough today to enter the water. In her mind she recited the seven deadly sins and did not find bathing in the list, she concluded it was perhaps less sinful than pride, the one sin she truly struggled with.

This was the pond her mother, her sister and she had hid in during the Norse raid. She remembered her terror as her father and brother had said their goodbyes and demanding they hide. The wood was said to be the home of malicious earth and tree spirits and was avoided by all. To Isabell it had become her secret safe place. Finishing her bath and washing her skirt and vest she donned her hunting clothes. She retrieved her bow from its hiding hole and leaving her clothes to dry went hunting. By the time she returned with two rabbits her clothes were dry. It was late afternoon when she returned home. She smiled at her uncle as she showed off her rabbits and started to build a fire in the hearth for meal preparation.

"Isabell, I have kept you hear all these years and fed and sheltered you. It's time you began carrying your own weight."

"What do you mean uncle, my garden and hunting feed us and bring in other thing by barter, I've kept you house and cleaned and did laundry and the cooking." Isabell was set aback and frightened by her uncle's words and tone.

"I mean cash, hard money Isabell." Not looking into her face, he handed her a yellow cape that would cover her head and shoulders. "I've indentured you to the tavern keeper."

"I'm a freeborn woman, you can't sell me. I will never a PROSTITE as long as I live." Isabell threw the hated yellow cape (the mark of a legal prostitute) to the ground.

"Now come girl. It's a sanctioned profession. Even the church recognizes it. And don't act so hurt, you've been sleeping around for years. You will do as you are told, or I will bring down the force of the law. You are just a dumb woman Isabell a nothing."

Isabell was deeply hurt and terrified. She had never been with a man, and absolutely no desire for any of the small minded men of the villager. She also knew her uncle was correct, he could sell her, he could bring the law down upon her. Barely able to speak she meekly whispered, "Yes Uncle," and completed the meal. Late that night Isabell ran.