Chapter 18 Ormdale
Chapter eighteen
Ormdale
By the time the menagerie closed its gates that afternoon, Una’s nerves were so tender, she couldn’t bear to face another human being or be called upon to make another decision, so she left Oolong in his basket near the kitchen range, buttoned on her mackintosh and galoshes, and turned riverwards.
At times like this, she always found a poem waiting in her head to sing her on her way. She had Aunt Emily to thank for that—for she had not given them vengeful copywork, but pretty poems to recite.
Dark brown is the river,
Golden is the sand,
It flows along for ever,
With trees on either hand.
As Una picked her way down the steep river path, she heard the familiar calls of the willow-whistler and chiff-chaff.
As she drew closer to the river, she left the path, avoiding the stinging nettles and the little white anemones and marsh violets hiding among the roots of the trees.
Una carefully stepped over every one, landing on the creeping jenny, which she knew would not be harmed, and would flower brightly next month even if trampled.
Una had known all the birds and flowers of the dale as a child, but it had been Aunt Emily who had given them their names.
She had also encouraged and praised Una’s wavery attempts at drawing them—so inferior to Pip’s way of capturing light and shadow with a bit of lead!
But Aunt Emily had said it was what the drawings did for Una that mattered, not for anyone else.
Una was not thinking anymore, it was just the poem and the birds and the fading light, and the lines of the flowers which she had learned to see with her pencil, and this was a gift from her aunt, she knew.
Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating—
Where will all come home?
Just like Violet, she thought. But she shook it away and thought instead of where she would go to rest and listen to the river.
It was a quiet place near the falls where an old, twisted willow stretched out a wide and accommodating arm.
From it, she could watch the surface of the river for a familiar, smooth head with trailing greenish tendrils that looked like river weeds to ordinary people.
Una was nearing the place when she heard someone shout in frustration from the bushes on the other bank. It gave her a horrible, cold jolt, because it was her sister’s voice.
“Sodding nettles!” it bellowed.
Una dodged behind a tree trunk. The last thing she needed at present was a chat with Violet.
Una picked out Violet now, struggling through a patch of nettles and brambles in her old brown dress and cardigan.
Una would have liked to wait for her to pass and forget about her. She was headed in the direction of Drake Hall. Did she intend to go and stay there after all, with Edith and Simon? Could Una hope for such a reprieve?
But as soon as Violet disentangled herself from her unnecessary and prickly detour, she looked round quickly. It was an expression and a posture that Una recognised all too well.
This was no social call—it was one of Violet’s dreaded escapades.
Una swallowed, sick to her stomach. For it had come to her with frightening clarity exactly how she felt about her sister’s sudden return, when she realised that—once again—she would have to be the one to stop Violet from doing something insane.
She was furious.
Violet had slipped away as soon as she could be sure of no one seeing or following her.
Bloomers would be better for what she planned to do, but they were still being laundered, so she chose the skirt with the most yardage to it.
She could hike it up if necessary, and who was there to see her underthings but sheep?
Besides, she’d shown a good deal more leg than that and been none the worse for it, as far as she could tell.
It was strange to put on the clothes of two years ago. They smelled of another life, another time—she hoped it would reassure the dragons.
A skirmish with a handy bramble-and-nettle patch gave her dress a nice patina of local mud and prickles, which also increased her chances.
She patted her bulging pockets with satisfaction.
Violet whistled softly for the dragons as she approached their pen. She climbed up on the stone wall and sat with her legs hanging inside, then held out both palmfuls of sugar expectantly.
Cariad came first, nuzzling Elfed behind her once more, and Violet had a small moment of doubt when her huge golden creature’s shadow fell over her. She remembered how Edith had described Cariad picking up a full-grown man and throwing him across a clearing, very nearly killing him.
Violet closed her eyes and waited. She had faced death more than once over the last two years. Death by dragon was not the worst way to go, by far.
A great, gusty breath warmed her hand, and the sugar cubes were gone.
Cracking open an eyelid, she saw Elfed push his head under his mother’s, looking for the sugar in her other hand. She kept still, hardly breathing.
“Stop!” came a shriek from behind her.
The sky whirled over her and Violet found herself gasping on her back, cast out once again.
A pounding of feet and her younger sister peered down at her, dark against the dim sky.
“Are you hurt?” Una asked.
Violet grunted, getting up. “No thanks to you! Why on earth did you have to go and do that?”
“I was trying to stop you getting yourself killed,” Una said.
“You’re the one who startled her!“ Violet objected.
Una took a step back, the brief anger on her face smoothing away. “You’ve been away for too long, Violet. Things have changed.”
Violet snorted. “Oh, come off it! I grew up here, same as you! Cariad is being overprotective. If I can just get Elfed on his own…”
“Cariad isn’t trying to protect Elfed, Violet,” Una interrupted. “She’s trying to protect you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Una pointed behind Violet. “Ask Simon, if you won’t listen to me.”
Violet turned to see her tall cousin dressed in riding clothes, striding to meet them from the direction of the Drake Hall stables.
“Why won’t Cariad let me near Elfed?” Violet asked at once.
Simon stopped. “Lovely to see you again, too, Violet. Will you be staying for supper?”
Violet had never been a mannered sort of person by any stretch of the imagination. Being tossed about by a dragon had shaken all of the manners out of her.
“No, I won’t!” she almost shouted. “Just tell me!”
Una looked away. Simon leaned against the stone wall and considered Violet.
“Violet, no one’s been able to train Elfed,” he said gently. “He’s not rideable. I even wrote to Wales, describing his behaviour. They said there wasn’t anything to be done.”
Violet’s eyes snapped up at the reference to Wales.
“Something…went wrong with Elfed, somehow,” Simon was saying. “We thought about gelding him to see if it improved his temper…”
“You didn’t!” Violet burst out.
“Edith wouldn’t hear of it,” said Simon.
“Truly, we don’t know what happened. No one has been cruel to him.
But it’s too late, Violet. It’s a sensitive process, as I understand it.
There’s a small period of time in which a Greater Welsh Dragon can bond and be trained.
That time, it seems, is over for Elfed.”
A black thought came over Violet.
“When?” she demanded. “When did it start?”
Simon paused, as if holding something back.
“Perhaps she ought to know,” said Una softly to Simon.
Simon pushed off the wall and laid his hand on Violet’s shoulder, warm and strong. He’d always done this when he had to say something that would hurt or disappoint her.
“We were going to give him to you on your twenty-first birthday,” he said.
“The day you disappeared,” Una said under her breath.
Violet shook her head, pushed Simon’s hand off her shoulder. “No, no, no! You said—you both said I wasn’t ready!”
“And then Edith convinced me you were. It was to be a surprise.” Simon’s voice became very kind, very soft, and somehow that made it worse, because it meant that Simon could see, perhaps even more than Violet could yet, how much this would hurt.
“If it was anything I said, Violet, I hope you can forgive me, one day.”
Violet thought with despair that her anger had nowhere to go but inward. Simon had done nothing. It had been entirely her own rashness and impatience that had caused this. For if Elfed meant so much to her, then why had she left him?
She ran towards the river, alone.
As soon as she got to the undergrowth, she found herself in the middle of another patch of nettles, and the welts that rose on her hands stung the tears out of her eyes at last.
Una did not go looking for her sister, but she found her all the same. At the snap of a twig under Una’s boot, a puffy face looked up from behind the curve of a great tree limb overhanging the river.
Una’s own hiding place, where the river was deep and quiet.
Violet burrowed her face into the bend of her arm again.
“I wasn’t coming after you,” Una explained stiffly. “I come here sometimes. I forgot that you knew about it too.”
Was there anything that the two of them had not shared in the past? Was there even one place where she could be herself alone, and not in relation to Violet at all? Where she wouldn’t be assailed feelings that exhausted her?
A little swish sounded in the calmest part of the river, followed by a soft series of bubbles.
Una drew a square of brown paper from her pocket, then unwrapped the square of ginger cake within and threw it into the river.
Violet watched her fixedly. “Is that…?”
“Yes,” Una said, wiping her fingers.
“How do you know?”
“I raised him from a baby,” said Una. “I know.”
Violet had, arguably, played her own part in the raising of the orphaned river dragon, but to Una’s relief, her sister did not argue with her, but merely nodded and snuffled.
The frogs hidden in the bank at their feet began to make their evening calls. Una sighed. It was too late now to find the peace she had sought at the riverbank. Una never felt safe being outside at dusk. Her governesses had made sure of that with their terror of evening damps.
“Martha will be waiting supper for us,” said Una. “Let’s go inside before we catch a chill. Step where I step and you’ll miss the nettles.”