The Riverwoman’s Dragon

Prologue

York, late April 1375

As the days lengthened and the pale green leaves of early spring, delicate as an infant’s fingers and toes, swelled to complete the forest canopy, a cruel visitor wound its way north along the roads and the waterways, sowing fear and sorrow. All knew of its coming, for it had called on a few unsuspecting households near York in the golden light of August past. The two youngest Wolcotts, an infant and a toddler, had succumbed. The manqualm taking the most precious members of a family disrupted the balance of affections. But Magda Digby had sensed trouble brewing among them long before, the Death merely coaxing out the poison. Other families were touched as well – children, parents, elders. All knew that it was merely a taste of what was to come as summer returned. The pattern was known: warm weather ripened it until it burst forth, spreading its seed. All were wary, looking for scapegoats on whom to hang the blame.

Memory of the first visitation stirred a deep, ancient fear in the folk that lay dormant in good times, a fear of the Riverwoman’s healing skill. For she was ever the outsider, the wise woman living just beyond the city wall, on a rock in the Ouse guarded by a dragon. She blamed no one for the shunning, having known the risk when she chose her path. Born of a long line of healing women on the moors who served their community with ancient roots in the wild hills, she had been raised to follow in their footsteps. And then, in the midst of a year of disasters, a shabby friar intruded on their peace, his beady eyes slithering and twitching as he preached of a vengeful god who would continue to punish them with sicknesses that thinned their flocks and disastrous summer rains that ruined their crops until they cast out the healers and wise women, worshippers of Satan, daughters of Lucifer.

Neither Magda nor any of her kin knew of such a being as this Satan or Lucifer, much less worshipped him, yet one by one, household by household, the folk turned on the healers, threatening to burn them all unless the women set aside their evil practices. It was a choice between what the friar called the dragon, Satan, and the lamb, the Christian god. Magda was confused – the god he described sounded far more the dragon than the lamb, and he seemed indifferent to the welfare of his ‘children’ – but her questions were received as attacks and she was cursed for them. All the while the slovenly, corpulent snake slithered through the community, forcing himself on the young women. Magda was ready for him, burning the arm that reached for her with a red-hot knife. For that she was ordered to submit to whatever punishment he commanded for her penance.

Magda chose banishment, walking off into the forests to the north, where she lived a long while in a community who practiced the old ways in peace. The only dragon they knew of was wise and fierce, a powerful protection. In time she returned south for the sake of a child longing for her brother. But she kept to her path of healing, ever wary of Churchmen, especially in times of loss when their worship of a god of vengeance separated folk from their own wisdom about the earth and their own bodies. She would bide her time, ready to depart if truly threatened. Over the years she learned that eventually the clerics grew so fearful they bolted their doors against the community, and then the folk remembered how she’d helped them in the past, once more seeking her aid.

For now, as she exited Bootham Bar in a soft rain, she bid the city farewell. The poor were her priority, particularly those living without the walls of the city and in the forest of Galtres. The city inhabitants were well served by physicians, barbers, and midwives, but the poor had only her.

The line to enter the city straggled out past the walls of St Mary’s Abbey. Bedraggled, already weary, many having risen long before dawn to make the trek, the folk stood in small clusters, eyeing the others with unease. They searched for signs of illness, fearing this might be the day the manqualm walked among them. The fear would be stronger in the throng at Micklegate Bar, on the King’s road from the south, where the Death already wakened.