Chapter 41 Curate Mincekeep
CURATE MINCEKEEP
The rattle of a coach faded. I stood in our sitting room, one hand pressing my temple, fingernails biting to anchor my spinning mind.
Mary came in. “Our sister is more foul than I thought. She was horrid to Mamma, who is hurt and miserable. I must go back—”
“Our drake!” I cried. If Lydia took him, we were lost.
I cast my mind outward and sensed the brilliant gleam of his awareness. I raced past Mary, through the hall, and out the front door.
Our firedrake was clumsy on his perch, wings tense and askew. He thrummed a whistling growl unlike any sound he had ever made.
I stopped in front of him, relieved to find him but disturbed by his behavior.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
His burnished claws made a grinding sound on the iron perch. His black eyes met mine, wary and rebellious.
I stepped closer. “This is not a time for contests. We must be allies.” Slowly, I reached out a finger and stroked his shoulder.
The muscle under his bronze scales was vibrating.
“What has she done to you?” I drew my finger up his neck, and he began to relax, curling around my touch.
I ended with my fingertip under his narrow jaw and guided his gaze to mine.
Images filled my mind. Wickham and me behind window panes, the color of our warmth distorted by passage through glass. I saw anger in the set of my shoulders and felt it echo through the drake’s feelings, anger and protectiveness both.
Savage darkness grabbed like an armored fist, freezing and violent.
The scene vanished as the drake hissed.
“Hush,” I said. Whatever influence Lydia had exerted, our drake had not enjoyed it. My fear ratcheted down a notch.
Without thinking, I lifted him from his perch. That was a habit I formed with the Gardiners’ tykeworm. Tykes are famously tolerant of being held.
Our drake, however, had never been held. He scrambled in my grip, wings flapping for balance. I got a stinging smack on my nose. Then he settled, folding his wings, and I cradled him in my arms.
He was much heavier than a tyke, more like a solid child of eight or nine months. And much longer. His neck swanned upward. His chisel head tipped one way and another, peering at my face, then drifted around the side of my head, examining my ear.
My gaze landed on the sharp gouges his claws had cut in the iron perch.
I froze. Cautiously, I felt for his feet.
The dull outside curves of his claws pressed my forearm, harder than steel but no more dangerous than the back of a spoon. He had clenched his toes, folding the razor edges against his scaled body. I let out a relieved breath.
“Are we friends now?” I asked. His head craned farther, inspecting the back of my head. I tried to remember how the maid had done my hair this morning.
This was becoming a heavy armful of draca, so I shifted him into the crook of my arm. Something rough scraped my skin. I moved my hand away from his body to see.
A few loose, bronze scales sparkled in my palm. “What is this?” Our drake had never shed scales before. Had Lydia struck him?
Now that I looked, there were scales on the slate roof under his perch. And scattered on the ground around us. Some were pressed into old footsteps in the soil.
Whatever caused this, it had begun before Lydia came.
“Let me see you,” I said and lifted him to his perch. He grabbed on obediently.
There were tiny dull dots in his gleaming bronze where scales were lost. My gaze traveled downward.
A claw was missing from his left foot.
His right foot had the usual three in front, meshed with the long, wicked curve of his rear claw. But on the left, the third toe ended with an unhealthy-looking pit where the claw had been.
Dread burst into my mind, worse because it was so unexpected. Our drake had been unchanged my entire life. Never ill. Never hurt. Was he sick? I had been feeding him myself, and he ate normally.
I crouched so our eyes were close and opened my mind, projecting concern and imagining his lost claw and scales.
An image formed. Sparkling, cool water.
“Are you thirsty?” I asked, not really believing it. There was a birdbath only a dozen yards away. He sometimes sipped there, often with sparrows or thrushes splashing beside him. Little birds were strangely unafraid of our drake.
Whatever the cause, this was serious. We needed him to be healthy. But why an image of water?
I went inside and dug out one of the jars from Pemberley lake. They had revealed no benefit—or any effect at all—on Jane. But I had a case full of them, so I could try something new. Maybe the wyvern thought Jane had bound an ill draca.
I carried the sealed jar outside. The drake’s head darted while I broke the wax seal. I pried out the cork and offered the brimming jar.
With a screech and frenzied flapping, he shot skyward. He landed on the tip of the manor’s roof, squawking down at me like an annoyed jay.
I looked up in frustrated disbelief and jammed my palm against my forehead. I shouted up, “I do not require more mysteries!”
By wash day, our world was collapsing.
When I woke, Jane was hunched under the covers and breathing in shuddering gasps separated by long, frightening silences.
I ran to the kitchen in my nightgown, dodged a scullery maid done up far more elegantly than me, and snatched a chunk of old bread. Back in our room, I coaxed Jane’s dose of medicine-soaked bread between her lips. Her breathing calmed, and my panic receded to simple fear.
I pushed tangled hair out of my eyes and tilted the brown-glass bottle given to me by Mr. Darcy. More than half was gone, but not yet two-thirds. Four weeks had passed, so it would last a little longer than he had predicted. Perhaps three more weeks.
Should I write to ask for more?
The question hung, roiled by a muddle of concerns. Fear of the emotions unlocked when I wrote his name. A morbid whisper—Jane was worse every day; would it even matter?
Of course, I would write. What would he think when he received a letter from me?
Perhaps Miss Bingley was visiting Pemberley. After all, Mr. Darcy required amusement while Mr. Bingley was exploring America. Miss Bingley could join Mr. Darcy for breakfast, her hair perfectly coifed, and snipe at me while he ignored my letter.
That was such an unpleasant mental image that I reveled in it while I dressed. Jealousy was wonderfully simple compared to dying sisters and ill firedrakes.
Pondering unpleasant women brought back my confrontation with Lydia.
The good news was she had not returned. But her power over draca was frightening.
And I was mystified by her claim to be the Child of the Lake.
I did not know what she meant, or even how she knew the phrase.
We had never discussed the Longbourn journal.
The burr of a familiar accent drifted up the stairwell. I abandoned pinning my hair to hurl downstairs, shouting, “Mrs. Bruichladdich,” having learned something vaguely like the pronunciation of our Scottish laundress’s name.
“I’d of come up, ma’am,” she said as I landed in the hallway like a diving wyvern in long skirts.
“Please, I require your advice. For our drake. I fear he is ill.” As we went outside, I explained about the missing scales and claw.
Our drake was curled atop his perch, looking very forlorn. There were now tiny patches without scales.
“What is wrong with him?” I asked.
“I never seen this, ma’am. Draca don’t take ill, as a rule. When did it start?”
“I noticed a few days ago, but I believe it began more than a week ago. Perhaps more than two—”
I stopped as I realized the significance of that date.
“When Mr. Bennet passed,” Mrs. Bruichladdich said quietly.
“That is likely.” What could be more significant than the death of one of the married couple who bound him?
“Ma’am, with respect, could I speak honest to ye?”
“Of course. Please.”
“I was not expecting Mrs. Bennet to hold your drake. Good wyfe as your mam is, them who hold draca as widows are… strong ladies, if you take my meaning.” Her wizened voice was cautious.
I nodded for her to continue. “In the north, there’s a story of a lord who dinnae wish to lose his draca when his wyfe passed.
He had a lesser worm, not a powerful breed, so he caged it in heavy iron.
Thought he could keep it by force, ye see. ”
She stopped, and I wondered how much she had guessed. “What happened?”
“The beast wasted away and died. The story is an old one, in verse. I recall because the cage was dusted with fallen scales, like stars. Sounded both pretty and sad.”
I walked to our drake and ran a fingertip along his back. Our laundress breathed some unintelligible Scottish oath.
I said, “When a draca leaves his bound master and wyfe, where does he go?”
“Nobody knows, ma’am.”
I remembered the image our drake had shown me, sparkling and cool. “Back to the water.”
After my father’s death, our firedrake was not held by the strength of my mother’s bond.
I had forced him to stay. Imprisoned him.
And he had known I would. Those images he shared—inescapable traps, crushing boulders—were me, a woman with the power to seize him and the complacent selfishness to want him as a slave.
But my power was an illusion. I could release him, or he would die. One way or another, the keystone of our family’s estate was lost.
Inside me, an artifice of ego shattered like hollow porcelain.
I had been proud to conquer our prestigious firedrake.
It was satisfying to crush his protests with a thought, then celebrate with an extra dollop of jam on my morning crumpet.
A captive drake was such convenient proof I was special.
That I deserved the trust my father had placed in me.
I leaned close, and he stared into my eyes. “My beloved father is gone,” I whispered. “My dear sister drifts after him. Our home will be lost. But you have shown me a duty I can accomplish. You can be free.”