Chapter 17 Ormdale, 1 day earlier
Chapter seventeen
Violet had spent the previous day on the opposite side of the river, near Drake Hall.
Before that, she had hidden in the back of a cart at Embsay, the closest railway station, and been rattled nearly to death on the long drive to Ormby.
Then she had slipped out when the cart halted for the clutch of tourists crossing the road to buy their postcards at the village shop.
It was still a great joke to her that Ormby could sustain a shop at all. She glanced up at the renovated parish church tower as she slipped through the churchyard.
The little sheep path to Drake Hall was still there.
She walked for more than an hour. Slowly, the sounds of carts and voices and trains and whistles faded from her ears, and the great silence of the dale reclaimed her.
Only it wasn’t really a silence.
It was wind-whistle and lark-song and sheep-bleet, and the untiring gurgle of delight that was the river.
The trees were not yet in leaf, just beginning to bud with green, so she had to crouch down to keep her cover as she drew closer to the river and Drake Hall.
When the neat Elizabethan manor house came into view with its chimney and gables, she sat behind some bushes and considered it. It was lunchtime now, and the staff and family would be busy indoors.
No reason to wait any longer.
She skirted round the stables to the paddock behind, her heart beating wildly.
Within the rock wall enclosing the meadow, on generously long picket lines, were two dragons the size of drayhorses, lying side by side, their ribbed wings furled at their sides.
The beauty of them—one the bright gold of a daffodil, the other the colour of the woods in autumn—stabbed at her like a pain.
The dragons raised their heads and looked at her.
Violet walked to the fence line, hands outstretched, tears springing to her eyes.
“Elfed,” she whispered.
Slowly, they rose and approached her.
The russet dragon, Elfed, had grown even bigger than his mother, Cariad. Elfed was still a little lanky in the legs and haunches, but when he filled out, he would be the most powerful riding-dragon she had ever laid eyes on. Her heart swelled with pride.
They paused in their approach, cautious, the mother snuffling and nudging her youngling as if to discourage him from continuing.
Violet pulled a linty sugar cube from her pocket and held it out. Elfed scuttled closer, his shadow encompassing her, the sharp point of the horn on his muzzle angling close to her face as he investigated what was in her hand.
Violet had seen him break open a ripe melon with that horn once.
Violet’s hand trembled in his shadow. It was only because she hadn’t eaten very well lately, she told herself.
As the dragon sideswiped the sugar cube, Violet reached out to stroke him, but he pushed her hand away with a huff and backed away, his double-lidded eye glaring at her as if she were a stranger.
Violet blinked. “Elfed? What’s wrong?”
She wedged the toe of her worn boot in a crack in the rock wall and pushed herself up to get closer to him, but Elfed’s mother, Cariad, stepped in front of her offspring with a warning huff of her own.
“What are you doing, Cariad? It’s me! Violet!” she protested, pushing herself up another step.
Then Violet found herself flat on her back, outside the paddock, trying to catch her breath.
Cariad had pushed her off the wall.
Violet groaned and sat up.
The dragons had taken themselves away to the other side of the enclosure.
On a thought, Violet sniffed her clothes. Sure enough, they smelled of trains, and towns, and the cart she had arrived in.
Disconsolate, she trudged down to the river’s edge, near the foss, where she knew the water ran clear out of the rock, and bent down for a drink.
The cold was sharp as an electric shock.
Violet contemplated her options as she wiped the freezing drips from her chin. If she swam here, she might manage to wash away the foreign smells that had offended the dragons. They might like her better after, but it would do her no good for she would be dead.
She shifted her weight. She had the distinct feeling she was being watched, and by hostile eyes. Tensing to run, she looked about her slowly and carelessly so as not to raise suspicion.
“There are lots of us,” said a small voice, oddly distorted, “and our dragon bites and makes fire, so don’t even think about running away.”
Violet looked above her and found a small child perched in the tree, with a tuffet of red hair that looked like a bright bird’s-nest caught in the spring-budded branches.
One of his cheeks was enlarged by the presence of a round object within, and it was this that made him sound odd.
“Are you a dragon snatcher?” he asked, swallowing laboriously around the object.
“I’m something far duller,” Violet confessed. “Don’t you recognise me? Because I recognise you, Ignatius Drake-Forrester. And I suppose your twin isn’t far behind? Do you remember me taking you to the circus, years ago? You liked the bears best of all.”
There was a rustle in the undergrowth behind her.
A girl of the same age as the boy—dark-haired, eyes like subterranean pools—crouched in the weeds.
Her arm hung round the neck of a black dragon the size of an exceptionally large dog.
The little girl reminded Violet of the murderous water-maidens Janushek used to tell them stories about.
“And Frances, too, I see,” said Violet, holding her hand out to the familiar feather-touch greeting of Frances’s forked blue tongue.
“Getting a little stout, isn’t she? Have you been feeding her too many sweets?
Now, I know you’re named for my sister Gwendolyn, but what do they call you these days? ”
Something shifted in the girl’s gaze, so that Violet no longer felt at risk of being pulled into the water.
“It’s our long-lost cousin,” she declared solemnly. “I’ve seen your photograph.” She thrust out a brown paper bag. “I’m Dolly Drake-Forrester. Would you like a humbug?”
Ormdale, 1 day later
Violet sighed and stretched her limbs in the big tub of blissfully hot water in the new bathroom at Wormwood Abbey.
She washed her hair with special care, looking forward to a warmer welcome from the dragons behind Drake Hall once she smelled like the Violet they remembered.
There was a tap at the door.
“Una?” Violet guessed.
“I’ve brought some clothes,” her sister replied through the door.
“Come in, then,” said Violet. “It’s unlocked.”
Una came in, averting her eyes. She carried a pile of Violet’s old shirtwaists and cardigans in one arm. Her other arm was burdened with a basket containing Oolong.
“I’m in a frightful hurry, but I found some of your old things,” Una said in a light tone. She glanced at Violet, then away. “They may not fit you anymore.”
“I’m probably a different shape,” Violet said, stretching out a wet arm and scrutinising it. “I have missed Martha’s baking, though.”
Una made a sound with her nose, as if to say Whose fault is that?
“Completely mine,” Violet murmured, answering the unspoken thought.
Una stared at her, all pretence at lightness gone. Then she said something odd. “The day you left, we baked your favourite cake.”
Violet stared back. “I suppose you did. It was my birthday, after all.“ She felt that something more was required, so she added, “I don’t mind if you ate it.”
Una’s nose twitched.
“Did you ever think what it was like for us,” Una said in a voice that scraped on her like a chipped teacup rim, “not knowing where you were or if you were safe?”
Violet shrank inside. It no longer seemed right to enjoy the lovely bath when Una was looking at her like that. Violet reached for a towel.
“I told you in the note I was going someplace safe,” Violet said a little defensively.
“And were you safe? Don’t lie,” Una warned. “I can tell when you’re lying.”
Violet stood, wrapping herself in the towel. It all depended on one’s definition of ‘safe,’ she decided. Violet hadn’t been chloroformed, after all. Her risks were largely voluntary.
“Mostly,” she compromised.
An impatient sound escaped Una.
Violet darted a glance at her as she wrung out her hair. If only she were better at understanding other people!
“You missed me,” Violet said, on an impulse.
“What?” Una asked, looking like one of the bugs George had pinned to boards.
“You’re angry because you missed me,” Violet said.
Una turned away. “Tell Annie if you want anything else. I’ll be busy for the rest of the day.”
The little dragon looked longingly at the bathtub over the rim of the basket.
“I could bathe Oolong for you, if you like,” Violet offered.
Una tightened her hold on the basket.
“He ought to keep his dressing on,” she said, and left.