Chapter 41 Curate Mincekeep #2
I lifted the command, Stay, I had driven through him like a spike. He reared, startled.
I stepped back. His wings half-spread, fanning the air. My skirts danced against my shins.
Mrs. Bruichladdich plucked at my sleeve. “Ma’am.” She had said that several times now. I ignored her.
“Go,” I said to our drake. Would I have to order him to leave?
Instead, his head dropped, a furious rumble building. His shoulders stiffened below furled wings.
Mrs. Bruichladdich grabbed my arm, hard. “Ma’am, there’s folks coming!”
“What?” I said as she tugged me toward the manor entrance. I heard shouts and pulled free.
A crowd was approaching, twenty men at least with Mr. Sallow in the lead. Beside him was a young man I did not know. He wore fine clergyman’s dress of shining black silk, but his vest and collar were brilliant crimson, a style I had never seen.
And beside him, in a severe black gown, was Lydia.
The crowd closed to ten yards from our draca house, then our drake’s shriek cut the air. His wings spread wide. His neck stretched, ebony teeth bared at Lydia.
The crowd stalled in a milling mass.
Mrs. Bruichladdich was calling for me to come inside. But whatever was happening, Lydia was the cause. I would not hide from my sister.
Across the dozen steps that separated us, I called, “Have you misplaced ‘Wickie’ this morning?”
“My husband is on an errand,” Lydia replied. “A most important engagement. But I can deal with my selfish sister before I join him.”
The young priest called out to the crowd. “This is the house of corruption! A den of sinful women in congress with Satan!” A few shouts rose.
That was too ridiculous. “I fear Longbourn will disappoint you. We are rather a dull lot. May I ask your name?”
Mr. Sallow answered for him. “This is Curate Mincekeep.”
My bemused disbelief became apprehension. I knew that name.
Hertfordshire society, naturally, adhered to the uncontroversial and undemanding mainstream of the Church of England.
The few exceptions were families that followed the evangelists, a movement I found unpleasantly strident although I admired their support for liberal causes.
Several of their founders were women who advocated prison reform and the abolishment of slavery.
But England had other, more extreme, factions. Curate Mincekeep led a populist movement fighting liberalization of the Church. He was notorious for fomenting violent protests against shelters for fallen women. One of his mobs had torched a shelter in London, killing two women.
The men behind him looked rough and unpleasant. I had seen a few of their faces in town, but there was no one I knew, and no gentlemen other than Mr. Sallow.
Curate Mincekeep shouted, “Our mighty inquisition will purge this evil!” Scattered yells rose.
That chilled me. The terrors of the Catholic Inquisition, and the equally violent purges of the Protestant Reformation, had ended with the Enlightenment. But before that, thousands of women were tortured into false confessions of witchcraft and burned at the stake.
That horror had never infected England. Not until last year, when English extremists claimed “inquisition” as their rallying cry to raise the Church above the state.
I was alone, facing a mob.
The manor door opened, and Mary stepped out beside me. She wore Lydia’s scarlet gown, now so ornamented with black ribbon that it was passable mourning dress. It might even be fashionable. Scarlet mantels for mourning were a fad in London.
“Curate Mincekeep,” Mary called out. “You are far from your parish of All Hallows Barking.”
“Show respect when addressing the Church, woman,” he shouted back.
“My respect is for ecclesiastical law.”
My eyebrows rose. I had seen Mary read church texts, but solely to practice her scorn. That seemed rather far from respect.
Mamma arrived on my other side, standing arm-in-arm with Mrs. Hill. Mamma looked flustered but annoyed, like she had overheard an unflattering rumor in a shop. Kitty trailed her, looking nervous.
Four ladies of our household now stood opposite the crowd. Five, really. Mrs. Hill certainly counted. She was scowling with tremendous authority.
An unshaven man pointed a dirty finger at Mary. “Is she one of them ladies in congress with Satan?” He sounded more enthused than disapproving.
Mary ignored him and called out, “The Holy Inquisition is a Catholic barbarity rejected by the English Church. It is forbidden by English law.”
The crowd quieted, and several men exchanged concerned glances. A few heads nodded, presumably approving of sensible English law over outlandish concepts like Catholics.
The curate eyed his new opponent. “I am an agent of episcopal inquisition.”
I bit back a laugh. Only a stranger would argue semantics with Mary.
Mary cleared her throat, a bookish habit that signaled the beginning of serious debate.
“Episcopal inquisition?” she said in a puzzled tone.
“That requires an episcopus—a bishop. I am sure you are merely a curate, and one who was reprimanded by Archbishop Manners-Sutton for association with radical elements. Our own parson is superior to you in rank. Mr. Fernsby, Mr. Sweet,”—she nodded to two men in the group, neither of whom I could have named—“you attend his services. I suggest we send for him and hear his opinion of your ‘inquisition.’ ” She pursed her lips, then added, “Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.”
I did not know the Latin, but from Curate Mincekeep’s flush, it was not flattering.
The crowd, however, was shuffling in a bored manner. This was much less exciting than women in congress with Satan.
Mr. Sallow apparently reached the same conclusion. He grabbed a fistful of the curate’s robes and pointed to our firedrake. “There is the proof! A firedrake, improperly bound to an inferior estate. The animal is a menace, uncontrolled after its master’s death!”
That made me angry, and I spoke before Mary could reply.
“The Longbourn drake is bound to my mother and has been for decades. Mrs. Bennet is no stranger to you. Longbourn is an old and honorable estate. Why is Mr. Sallow disturbing a household of ladies in mourning? I think it is self-interest and bitter envy.”
There was a buzz from the crowd. Curate Mincekeep lifted his arms and silence fell. “The Lord will decide! His power shall deliver this firedrake to the rightful owner.”
Mr. Sallow looked dangerously satisfied. Some deal had been struck. I did not know how Lydia convinced him she could deliver our drake, but I knew the chosen owner would be Mr. Sallow. In exchange, doubtless he would support Lydia’s claim for Longbourn.
I met Lydia’s gaze and was struck by how unwell she looked. Her eyes were feverish, and the black of her pupils had swollen to swallow the blue. She had powdered her face even more than when I last saw her, but the cakey white did not hide a cobweb of discolored lines on her cheeks and forehead.
A mocking smile stretched her lips, and an oily sensation chilled the back of my neck. Our drake squealed in distress.
I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind.
The bright shine of our drake’s mind was buried under pounding, writhing darkness. It was a terrifying assault—the same sticky blackness Lydia had thrown to drive me away from her ferretworm.
I pressed at the dark with my mind, and a filthy surge blew me back like a leaf. I threw myself harder and was tossed away. There was no contest. I was utterly overmatched.
But there was something I had not seen before. A hair-thin thread of silver extended out of the black storm. It reached almost to me, humming with tension as if tethered to something.
I tightened my grip on my mother’s hand, and the thread shimmered brighter. It was the bond between my mother and the drake.
I cast my mind along it, following the thread as it shook under the force of Lydia’s assault. The darkness closed around me, buffeting and tugging. I had to drag my awareness along the silver string, like a sailor clutching a lifeline in a night of raging storm.
A crystal wall stopped me, the defense our drake had built to repel me now deployed as a shield against Lydia. Fingers of filth clawed at it. Beyond, the brightness of our drake’s awareness shone.
The crystal wall shuddered and fell inward, then caught and held again. Our drake’s defense was being crushed.
Let me in, I thought. Let me help you. Please.
Like sprawling through an unexpectedly opened door, I fell into the drake’s awareness. His brilliant senses flooded my mind.
I saw the crowd, fists raised and bodies twisting. Their motions were slowed and pitiably clumsy. My human mind recognized a fight: a thrown punch, a man falling.
But those glimpses were peripheral. The drake’s attention was locked on one person. The enemy. The corrupted wyfe.
In the drake’s senses, Lydia seethed with muddy, suffocating power. She was a vile goddess surrounded by insignificant rabble.
And, with a shock that stopped my breath, I recognized this tall woman shrouded in dark corruption. I had seen Lydia through draca eyes before—at Pemberley, when the tyke ran into the forest and saw a woman and man ride away with the stolen books.
Lydia and Wickham had been in Derbyshire. They had conspired with the thieves that killed Mr. Rabb.
My shock ignited into fury. I clenched my mother’s hand, and her binding flared, a brilliant cord to channel my anger. I screamed, “You shall not have him!” even as I plunged deeper into the drake’s awareness. I heard my words through his ears, distant and distorted.
The crystal wall exploded in radiance. Lydia’s dark assault shredded and burned like a handful of peat tossed into a smith’s furnace.
I sang in triumph, tones high and pure. Wings caught air. The world fell away as I soared upward.
A remote, human part of me thought: He is leaving.
Dizzyingly, flight arced and hung. Effortlessly, sky and earth spun. I stared down, a bird’s view of our manor and grounds, and with inhuman ease, my vision locked on Lydia’s figure in the crowd, dazed and falling to her knees.
Wings folded. Killing rear claws stretched. Flame swelled my chest. I plummeted, a bolt of fury that would slice and burn. Wind roared as screams rose in the crowd.
“No!” I shouted. With a jarring snap, my awareness yanked free.
Heat scalded my face. I struggled to see with weak and watering human eyes.
Lydia was on her knees. Unhurt. Glaring at me, disbelieving and furious.
A foot from her dress, the earth was burning, a yard-wide strip that ran the length of the garden between us. Dying embers of leaves and petals spun in the air, glowing crimson and gold.
At the last moment, our drake had heard me and turned his attack to flame the earth instead.
The crowd was wide-eyed and still. And it had grown. Mr. Hill and a half-dozen of our tenants had arrived while I fought Lydia. They were mixed with the strangers, caught in small, frozen scuffles. Their poses—mouths open to shout, fingers clenching clothing, fists cocked—looked almost comical.
With a flip of his wings, the drake landed on my shoulder. Landed with his claws open, as was painfully evident even through my thick dress. I gritted my teeth as he settled and found his balance.
“The Lord has delivered this drake to his rightful owner,” Mary announced.
I had forgotten about that. Thank goodness for Mary. Although, it would be better if our drake chose Mamma. I considered asking him to move, but my mother would not enjoy having a heavy, razor-clawed animal drop onto her shoulder.
One man ran, then it was a scramble. In seconds, only the Longbourn tenants and Mr. Hill remained.
Mrs. Hill walked to her husband and hugged him—something I had not witnessed in my entire life—then scolded him for standing in the daisies.
“That Mr. Sallow is very rude,” Mamma said. “I shall tell him my opinion when we meet in town.”
“Thank you, Mamma,” I said and kissed her cheek. She clucked. “And you, Mary. You were remarkable.”
Mary was pensive. Finally, she said, “I will thank our tenants,” and crossed the smoldering garden to mingle with our defenders.
I watched her methodically speak with each person—serious, as she usually was, but receiving warm replies. While I was north, Mary had assumed my estate duties with Papa. My sister was very changed in the last six months.
“Your shoulder is bleeding,” Kitty said timidly.
The cuts beneath the drake’s claws felt thin as hairs, but the cloth was wet. And this was my new bombazine twill. “At least it is a black dress.”