The Dragonboy of Regnaville - Page 8

Julian took a deep breath.  He gave a muscle-tensing jerk to test the strength and commitment of his captors, but they held on, screwing their eyes shut when the oaths and curses continued to spew out of his mouth in wailings and screechings.  'Julian, your brother lizard, comes before you, is on this Earth before you, predates you, slithers on the ground before God and Satan sit down to conjure you out of water and clay.  Water and clay!  But I am the fruit of the fire!  The fiery demon!'

At last, Fra Johannes was handed the holy water.  He took the silver chalice and splashed the purifying liquid over Julian.

'I am Hellfire!' he roared and spat into the priest's right eye.  Instantly, blood dripped from his eye-socket, staining his white robes.  There was a gasp from the crowd.  The muscles in Julian's arms and neck hardened like the stone wall at his back.  He writhed and twisted, throwing his captors in every direction, hissing, and lashing out with his sharp claws at anyone who tried to retake him.  Leopold the Drunkard was a big man, but he stumbled around with lines of ripped skin across his face and chest.  Then Julian leapt over Fra Johannes.  He ran and tumbled through the vines.  He didn't look back.  If he had he would have seen that no one was in pursuit.

He skirted the banks of the Danube, past the monastery, increasing his speed until he was able to climb onto the back step of Toma's caravan.  There he clung all night, dosing until the trundling rhythm of the wooden wheels stopped and the silhouettes of Birgitta and Holger appeared, their backs to the rising sun.

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Birgitta and Holger drew closer.  Out of breath, they found Toma barring the way.  Toma was now a tall, well-built young man, a lifelong friend of Julian's.

'There's nothing you or anyone can do, Holger.  They are past listening.'

'Please, Toma, please!'  Birgitta's pleas almost broke his heart and his determination, for she had been like a second mother to him for as long as he could remember.

'No, Birgitta.  I'll do what I can.  Take my caravan.'  He pointed down the valley.  'The horses are hitched up.  There is some food inside.  You must go.  They will turn on you next.  You know they will.'

Julian eventually climbed down the wall.  At first, the unruly mob to a man was speechless.  He peered round at them all, a smile wrinkling under his eyes and a snake wriggling in its final death throes dangling from his mouth.  With the bright innocence of a child, he said, 'Brother snake didn't recognise a member of his own family.'

'Julian.'  Fra Johannes spoke softly, offering his open palms in sympathy and friendship.  But as soon as Julian placed the dead viper in the priest's hands, the other men, fear in their cold eyes, grabbed him roughly by the arms, shoulders and neck.  They were all too aware of his strength.  A hundred blasphemies immediately poured out of their captive's mouth in a terrifying array of demonic voices - some as deep as the black abyss of Hell; others high like the shrieking of a thousand banshees.

'The Serpent is my Protector.  Its lair in the shade is my Heaven.  Its blood is my blood.  When the sun is on my back, its skin is my skin.  I see what it sees.  We are all the servants of the Serpent.  The original One who brought man and woman together in Eden.'

The men gasped in horror and tightened their grip.  Fra Johannes crossed himself and sent a small girl running pell-mell to the monastery for a chalice of holy water.

The Dragonboy of Regnaville - Page 6

Lighting torches as they marched along the river bank to the monastery, mad Leopold the Drunkard in the lead, they pushed the heavy door aside and, from the middle of the flagstoned courtyard, called up to the priest.

'Johannes!  Your presence is needed.  Father!  Brother Johannes, we need a man of God.  Julian, the Devil's spawn of Birgitta and Holger, needs the ministry of the Lord!'

'Or else Satan!' cried another.

'Come, my friends.  It is late,' muttered Johannes, rubbing sleep from his eyes.  'Let the clear light of morning and the clear minds of day decide our actions.'  But they would have none of it.  They would deal with the young man with or without him.  Each man, he thought, might listen to reason - well, apart from Leopold, reason not being one of his strengths - but not now that they were ensnared by the wild-eyed ravings of a drunken mob.

Julian saw everything from his perch up on the Catle wall.  There was no risk of falling.  For the past few years, his fingernails had grown claw-like and lodged perfectly securely into the crannies and crevices between the stonework.  He watched, with an idle curiosity, as the mob marched up between the rows of vines, torches held high, Fra Johannes at the centre. He'd helped them all in his time, always willing to lend a hand with fetching and carrying at harvest time.  What was there to fear?  Especially with Fra Johannes there, still in his white nightgown, his cross hanging on his chest, his white beard and long hair unconstrained by his priest's cap.  He could also see, at some distance, his parents, roused by the noise, running from their home trying to make sense of the sounds of anger, so out of keeping with life in Durnstein.

At the foot of the Castle wall, Fra Johannes turned to the crowd and, staring directly into the mad eyes of Leopold, suggested that they all return to their homes, he understood the situation, and he would deal with it.  Leopold grunted his disagreement and pushed the priest aside.

'Get down here, Lizard Boy!' he snarled.  'Get your skinny backside down here!'

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This was the beginning of the end.  People began to respect the old stories.  They stopped whenever Fra Johannes passed by, but he knew very well what they were talking about.  It was said that one of Julian's long-dead ancestors on his mother's side had an encounter with... remember these were very superstitious people... an encounter with a dragon.  'What are you going to do, Father?' 

To begin with, Fra Johannes just shook his head and smiled.  'What am I going to do?  Well, first of all, I'm going to see if Michael's widow needs any words of comfort.  After that, I might ask Julian if he'll help me mend a wall.  Such a strong, willing young man.'  He was a reasonable man, an educated man, and not easily put under pressure.  He believed that God had given humanity the ability to make rational judgements when called upon to do so.  He tolerated local superstitions because these were the people he lived amongst and he loved them.  And since he preached tolerance and forgiveness, he felt obliged to tolerate and forgive the wilder imaginings, myths and supernatural tales of his flock.

One night, after much drinking of beer and wine, a muttering, carousing bunch of men staggered out of the inn, glanced up at the Castle.  By the light of the full moon, they saw the dark figure of Julian.  He was stretched out against the pale stone of one of the towers.  Twenty feet off the ground.  Something they had considered to be a trick, a piece of gravity-defying acrobatics, suddenly seemed wrong, abnormal, inhuman.

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Childhood pranks were one thing.  But by the time he reached the age of sixteen, Julian was talked about, discussed furtively in corners, whispered about behind hands.

One evening, the inn was rowdier than usual.  No surprise.  The first barrel of wine of the season was being opened.  A small group of swaggering young men were challenging each other to the knife game.  In turn, one of them would spread out his hand on the table and stick the knife between his fingers, one space after another, building up some speed.  The rhythm - one, two, three, four - one, two, three, four - got faster and faster.  Fearing to lose face, Toma took a turn, but stopped abruptly, squealing when he nicked his thumb.

Without saying a word, Julian took the knife from him. He faced his audience.  Didn't even look at his hand or the knife. The speed was mesmerising and each stab of the blade perfectly aimed.  Until... yes, until... quite deliberately, with the usual thin smile and big round eyes, he jabbed the final thrust through the back of his hand, pinning it to the table.  There was a cry of sympathy, a groan of imagined pain on the part of his onlookers, and a rush to his side.  But Julian showed no concern.  Slowly he pulled out the knife and, quite innocently, held up the wounded hand for everyone to see.

An intake of breath and then a heavy blanket of silence, as all the drinkers at the inn watched the blood instantly dry up and the wound close.

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Holger kept quiet about his anxieties for some time, not even mentioning it to Birgitta.  But then Birgitta, too, was fearful and silent.  Julian understood the look of dismay that creased his father's face, the disapproving turning of his back.  So he stopped.  For a while.  After all, he was doing only what came naturally to him and he brimmed with health.  Though there was the skin that peeled from his elbows, the transparent film that grew over his eyes like a second set of eyelids, and the scaly rash that spread across the backs of his hands.  But nothing especially surprising among all the ailments of a 13th century Austrian community.  Everyone had been exposed to the Great Pimple outbreak of 1215.  As well as the spread of bloated belly a few years later at the end of the rotting turnip season.  Since being thrown into the River Danube was considered the best cure for anything and everything, Julian soon grew used to a regular soaking.

Durnstein was a quite place.  It hadn't always been so.  Forty years before, caught up in the Crusades, Durnstein Castle was known throughout Europe, and particularly in England.  For it was here that Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned on his way back from fighting in the Holy Land against Saladin.  When that period came to an end, Durnstein slowly reverted to its old ways of peace and neighbourliness.

That is, until Julian reached the age of thirteen.

'Catch the lizard, Julian!' Toma shouted, as a gang of ten or so teenagers gathered at the foot of the Castle wall.  Winters were harsh when the cold air travelled south, but the summers were warm.  Little green lizards sunned themselves on the Castle's south-facing wall, soaking up the heat.  'Catch the lizard!  Catch the lizard!'  The chant would get louder and louder.  So off Julian would scurry this way and that, fingers and toes splayed out against the stonework, finding every chink and rough edge.  Never faltering, never slipping, in defiance of gravity, as if he were glued to that wall.  He'd catch one after another, before letting them go.  The kids would sing his name, but some older people found this alarming.  Even the genial Fra Johannes looked thoughtful.

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On those slopes, he developed superior strength in his limbs.  At the end of a day's harvest, most grown men were ready to straighten their backs in front of a jug of ale in the inn that sat at one corner of Durnstein, directly opposite the monastery.  Julian, on the other hand, could have started on another vineyard.  And so you can imagine he became very popular.  Especially with the other children.  He had a keen eye and fast reflexes.  He could pluck two mosquitoes out of the air, long before they were aware of death lurking in his lightning grasp.  His behaviour could be mystifying.  He might sit motionless for long periods, surrounded by expectant friends willing him to entertain them, then burst into life, scale a tree in seconds and steal some pigeon eggs before the mother bird had time to blink.  He might also catch the hapless pigeon too if it were slow to flutter off and if the mood took him.

'Do the eyes, Julian,' said Toma, his best friend.  'Please do the eyes.'  Julian always obliged, sending everyone into fits of laughter.  For as he got older, the big eyes began to bulge more, making his ability to move one eye at a time, independent of the other, a trick worth seeing.  All the children would cheer when he sat bobbing his head up and down, waiting patiently with a smear of honey on his nose for a fly to settle.  Then his tongue would dart out and catch it.  Sometimes he spat it out.  Great applause would erupt, however, if he let it buzz a while in his mouth before swallowing it.

His friends may have laughed, but Holger, his father, found it disturbing.

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The twisted life of Julian the Dragonboy didn't turn out the way his mother, Birgitta, would have wished.  Even his wordless father, Holger, could never have contemplated the cruel, final encounter with someone from the future.  Not a good end to a young man's life.  And who could have predicted the nightmare that was Julian's path to adulthood?

Barely a year after Fra Johannes stepped out of the monastery and recognised the marriage of Birgitta and Holger, they were blessed on Christmas Day in 1223 with a son.  Born with big, round, unblinking eyes, a pale, delicate face, with a thin smile on his lips as if pleased to have arrived, Julian was admired by everyone.  Held tightly in the cradle of his mother's arms, he stared out at the world, satisfied that his home was to be the delightful little Austrian town of Durnstein.

And why shouldn't he?  Durnstein, they said, was God's own town - a patchwork of vineyards sloping down from the Castle to the River Danube, overlooked benignly by the monastery and the jovial Fra Johannes.  Three years, no more, had passed when Julian was running up and down between those rows of vines, helping to produce the family's grape harvest.  He had an amazing capacity to learn quickly.  Not only trailing after his mother and father, picking bunches of ripe fruit and dropping them carefully into the basket on his back, but also, quite soon, acquiring the know-how to prune the vines within an inch of their lives, ensuring an abundance for the following year.

Life should have been perfect.

Back home from Turkey - Istanbul and Cirali

So sad to leave Istanbul, followed by 33 degrees on a beach on Turkey's mediterranean coast.  Swimming in the clear blue, warm sea.  Reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall  on a sunbed under a bamboo sunshade.  Drinking raki and beer - though not at the same time.  We stayed at a hotel consisting of 5 luxury, en-suite, wooden cabins in an orange grove, 50 steps from the beach.  In the evening we walked to various retaurants with delicious, freshly caught fish.  We cycled then climbed up a hill to see the Chimaera - an area of hillside where flames come straight out of the ground.  If I'm making it sound too good to be true, then it was better than that.  (Feel free to ask me more about the place if you're interested.)  In the next few days, I'll try to get back to reality and put up some pictures.