Chapter 12 Fènnù’s Song
FèNNù’S SONG
MARY
The curtain hooks rattled. Golden morning flooded our room.
I lay curled against Georgiana’s back. She slept as hot as a furnace, so on cold nights, I tended to chase her around the bed like she was an elusive foot-warmer. But last night had brought one of the Peaks’ sudden chills. With no fire set, she conceded to snuggle.
I cracked an eyelid against the brightness. Our dressing table was a rosewood smudge, my spectacles a golden flicker out of reach. Swift steps passed behind me, and a blurred form crossed the looking glass.
Georgiana groaned theatrically. “Must you open the curtains? Make some music instead. That will wake us up.” She wiggled firmly into my arms. Her hair was an inky, braided mass and thoroughly disheveled.
The news about Lizzy had spawned two celebrations, the first a festive dinner, the second more intimate.
Remembering that, I buried my face in the curve of Georgiana’s neck and inhaled lavender and a musky hint of dried sweat. That made Georgiana giggle.
“Your pardon, madam,” came a rock-stern woman’s voice. “My singing days are past.”
Mrs. Reynolds. Georgiana froze in my arms like a startled deer.
In the silence—and into Georgiana’s hair—I said, “Where is Lucy?”
“Attending Thomas, as we agreed,” Mrs. Reynolds answered coolly. A pause. “It is half seven, madams.”
That was late. Lucy usually woke us at seven. Of course, Mrs. Reynolds kept a busy schedule. That was why housekeepers did not fill in for absent lady’s maids.
Clearly, Georgiana had not expected her. She had not twitched a muscle. I could not even feel her breathing.
I whispered, “Are you alive?”
“I am waiting to find out,” she whispered back. Mrs. Reynolds, formidable in the best of circumstances, had served as Georgiana’s governess after her mother’s death. That authority was not easily outgrown.
Mrs. Reynolds’s dry tones resumed. “Young people like to imagine they have invented this or that shocking behavior. I, however, have served in great houses for sixty-two years. If you wish to shock me, Miss Darcy, you shall have to try harder.”
Georgiana’s braid nodded dutifully. Perhaps she thought it was an assignment.
More gently, Mrs. Reynolds continued, “Shall I lay out your robes until you are ready to dress?”
“Yes, please,” Georgiana peeped.
The armoire opened. Cloth rustled. The bedroom door opened and closed, latching softly.
“Is she gone?” Georgiana whispered.
I lifted my head, squinting. “I think so. I cannot see.”
I started untangling myself from Georgiana’s limbs, but she caught my wrist and pulled me back.
“Hold me a moment. That was terrifying!” I laughed and hugged her.
She sighed gratefully, then said wonderingly, “I think we did shock her. She would never have let me loll in bed by myself. Or… perhaps I am indulged because I am with the mistress of Pemberley!”
“Do not joke about that.” The title summoned memories of Lizzy’s battles to protect Longbourn from the vultures who descended after Papa’s death.
Georgiana quieted, and we lay still while distant birds sang.
Some idle part of my mind unraveled the reason for Mrs. Reynolds’s visit. She did not trust another servant to attend us. Whether that was loyalty to Georgiana, or to Mr. Darcy, or simply duty, a rush of gratitude filled me.
I drew Georgiana close. “I forgot to ask if you wished to handfast on Beltane.” In the confusion after Lizzy rose and Mr. Darcy rode into the hills, the idea had vanished from my mind.
She snuggled against me. “I could not be more bound to you than I am now.”
Properly dressed, I examined Mr. Darcy’s drawing of the crawler grub. It was neat work; every line portrayed a specific feature. Except the dorsal ridge. He had drawn over that several times, hunting for the correct rendering. The ink was thick and muddled.
Georgiana and I were breakfasting in the grand music room, a glorious space with a towering wall of windows.
Georgiana, a famed pianoforte performer, was an equally brilliant technician, so manufacturers sent their new models for evaluation.
She tore apart each hapless arrival, marveling at innovations to the escapement or frowning at skimpy dampers, then reassembled it to play.
A year ago this room had eight instruments, but the war had shrunk the collection to four.
Two were new models loaned from the Erard London factory.
The other two were permanent acquisitions and Georgiana’s favorites, eight-foot grands built to order by Nannette Streicher, a great Viennese builder.
Their sweeping curves nestled back-to-back in the center of the room.
Georgiana stopped her practicing—some blistering finger exercise she invented—and came over for a bite of toast. She did not allow food or drink within ten feet of a keyboard, so our table was tucked in the corner.
I placed the melody I had transcribed by her plate.
Her attention shifted from toast to paper. “Not your usual style.” Her lashes lifted, and our gazes met. “This is like my songs. Music of power. And it is familiar, but I do not know why.”
“We heard it in Fènnù’s memory. The three great wyves attempting to heal the song.”
“Oh… you remember it from that?” She nodded with professional approval. “You are remarkable. I was overwhelmed.”
“They are connected. The relics, the great song. I think it is a clue.”
“Have you played it?”
“I sang it. Nothing happened. But I do not have… oomph.”
She had picked up her toast; playing made her hungry. The crust stopped an inch from her lips. “Oomph?”
“You are the great wyfe of song. You have oomph.”
She set down the toast. “My songs are not written. I do not write them down, I mean. I just sing what comes to me.”
“You can sight-sing anything. Will you try this one?”
I waited for her to refuse. Georgiana was cautious about singing. Cautious of the power it invoked.
She lifted the score, scanning through the lines. “I do not know if I should sing another wyfe’s music. Not with… oomph.” Thoughtfully, she handed the score to me. “This may be like my songs, but it is not mine. You understand it better than I. We should perform it together. You play. I sing.”
I had not expected that. My own breakfast twitched in my belly. But I sang it once already. I had barely even hesitated. Had I been so confident I would fail alone?
“Will something happen?” I asked.
Her lips curved. “You are the one who remembered it. What do you think?”
I had no answer, so I swallowed my hesitation, wiped my fingers, and walked to the second Streicher.
We sometimes played duos on the twin instruments—for pleasure, not performance, as I could not match Georgiana’s keyboard skill.
The instruments had an exquisite, singing tone from high-tension strings in iron-reinforced frames, an invention of the last few years.
I opened the lid to the short stick and positioned the music, then experimented with chords.
It would sound absurd to plink out a unison melody while she sang, but more importantly, the great wyves’ song was complex and layered.
Even if I could not reconstruct all three voices, I could test the harmonies that lingered in my mind.
Georgiana listened dreamily, standing beside the instrument so we faced each other. She did not need to see the score; her second reading had been to memorize it. Already she was lost in the music, imagining how the melody would fit with my harmonies.
I nodded to her and played an opening chord. She sang the first note, lingering and high. I had written no words for the vocalist. Georgiana chose simple syllables, sounds without meaning that fit the flow of the melody.
Music, whether heard or played, had always formed structures in my thoughts, abstractions that nested and resolved, intricate as filigree or roiling like thunderheads.
Social nuances might puzzle me, but music embodied Plato’s pure forms of emotion: ecstasy, longing, grief, and fury all distilled to their essence and stripped of artifice, innuendo, and imprecision.
But nothing prepared me for this. As Georgiana’s voice soared among the harmonies I played, fabulous arches threw themselves into my mind, scaffolding that supported another layer and yet another, each of Georgiana’s notes fixing a taller peak, a shimmering sun, hot or magnetic, that coaxed the phototropic, crystalline edifice higher.
It was a structure of flawless feeling, and my inviolate love for her infused every truss and beam.
Then the abstract became visible—the music room’s towering glass windows blinked out of existence, and I saw the form of music itself, a fairy fortress spun of countless interwoven triumphs and trials.
But incomplete. The summit soared, but the foundation gaped where two other musical voices should stand.
The fairytale pillars teetered like brittle spun sugar.
From far away, a tremendous presence, feminine and inhuman, launched towards us as fast as thought. Her shadow blackened the castle’s trusses, then spread to cover the horizons. Her mind, disfigured and diseased, swallowed us.
Fènnù.
Her voice roared like a mad goddess: Raise nothing between me and my wyfe of war!
Like an iron sky falling, her dark weight slammed down. The castle’s incomplete foundation shattered, and it crashed in catastrophic ruin. An arctic blast froze my skin to crackling ice, but then the real world—glass windows, polished keyboard, and a single sheet of music—snapped back into view.
My fingers still pressed the keys of the last chord. The harmonics faded from the strings. Georgiana’s whitened fingers clenched the edge of the pianoforte, supporting her deep gasps.
“Did you see that?” I cried. “See the music itself? I always see music, that is… ordinary, but to feel its shape and see the shapes build—” I shook my head, annoyed by my own rambling.
“Fènnù came,” Georgiana breathed. “We called her.”
“She spoke,” I said. “She thought we were separating her from Lizzy.”
“I heard her as music. Celestial music.” Georgiana drew a long, disciplined breath. Her hand, steady now, clasped mine. “Mary, we did that together.”
“The power was incredible…” I murmured.
Not Fènnù’s strength, massive though that was.
What shocked me was the power in that castle of song.
Emotion, clarified to perfection. It mocked the doubts that circled my heart.
Was my home Longbourn or Pemberley? Were Mr. Darcy’s promises a rich man’s whimsy, cast in a fire as casually as they were inked?
Was I wrong to accept them? Was I worthy of them?
“I felt powerful,” I admitted. Those words felt scandalous. Wonderful.
Georgiana’s fingers squeezed mine. Her smile was strained but happy. “You are powerful. Have I not told you so, over and over?”
While we stared at each other, a little dazed, a maid announced that Mr. Digweed and the Pemberley farming directors had arrived. After a few settling breaths, we set out to the other wing to meet them.
But I had not gone ten steps before more ideas poured out.
“Fènnù heard us because this is her song.” I waved the sheet of music; in my excitement, I had brought it along.
“And it is a third of the great song! That was the musical shape we saw forming, incomplete without the other two dragon songs. That is what those ancient great wyves were doing, assembling the great song so they could heal it with the artifacts.” Another connection formed. “Would that heal the blight?”
“The blight and the broken song are the same,” Georgiana said, which sounded like agreement to me.
I was bubbling like a child, and more words flooded. “All we need now are the other two artifacts, and the other two songs, and all three dragons.” I frowned, thinking through details. “And they may need to be bound.”
“Is that all?” Georgiana echoed mildly.
I caught her arms, stopping us so sharply the carpet runner under our slippers skidded. “We can heal the song. For the first time, I believe it.”
“You say ‘three dragons’ just like that. There is no sign of a third dragon.”
Why did she not see? “But it is so obvious. Three artifacts. Three wyves. Three melodies that form a great song.”
“It is a pretty solution,” she said softly. “A neat structure. I understand why you like it.”
That sounded less than enthusiastic. “You doubt it?”
“No, I saw it too. But the blight remains. And Fènnù fought the song. I have never heard her music so clearly.” Her brow pinched. “Did you feel how strong she was?”
“Did you feel how strong we were?” That left me giddy.
Foolishly, I spun, arms waving at the luxurious wainscotting and windows and grounds while half-formed thoughts sprayed out.
“You grew up in this. You cannot understand how I feel. All my life, I wanted to be something. To be worth something. To be anything other than the plain, peculiar sister, eclipsed in beauty and wit.” My laugh came out slightly manic.
“Now, when I am literally surrounded by women from legend, at last I feel like I belong. Like I have power.”
“That makes me happy,” Georgiana said. She touched my cheek, her fingertips rippling like a rolled chord. “But you should feel that way already. You are so exceptional. Look at your compositions. Look at what your Marys achieve in London.”
“That is all… mundane. This is incredible.”
She cradled my cheek, and—briefly—I imagined she looked uneasy.