Chapter 13 Discoveries
DISCOVERIES
MARY
That afternoon, the sun spilling through the observatory windows painted the room an angry orange. The Pemberley inspections had found three infested fields. Two were burning. Already, bitter smoke stained the sky, and our meeting with the neighboring landholders was still to come.
“Mary?” Georgiana called from the doorway. “We have been looking for you.”
Distracted by the microscope, I muttered inarticulate syllables.
A shadow arrived, blocking the light on the condensing lens, and the eyepiece dimmed.
Just as well; I was tired of squinting. I tucked back my dangling hair and hooked my spectacles over my ears.
The shadow resolved into two people: Georgiana and young Thomas Digweed, who was thoroughly recovered.
Lucy’s request to visit him seemed to have been for celebration, not care.
“You are using the microscope!” Georgiana declared, charmed that I had raided her belongings. It had been on a shelf overflowing with palm-sized lenses of crown and flint glass, concave mirrors, and brass mounting loops. Telescope optics.
“Dr. Davenport taught me to use one.” He had demonstrated several mind-boggling views—consumptive tubercles, and red blood cells clotting before my eyes—then grumbled that most doctors considered magnification a useless novelty.
“What are you looking at?” Georgiana asked, her nose inches from the specimen tray. Thomas looked from the other side.
“A foul crawler,” I said, and Georgiana recoiled. “Or the immature grub of one. It is from the plums.” The plum orchard infection had been obvious, the fruit distended and overlarge for May.
Georgiana looked concerned, so I added, “It is thoroughly killed. I soaked it with camphor and alcohol.”
“I am not afraid of it,” she said. “I am disgusted by it. Must you… pick it apart?”
I was brandishing a hatpin to lever up a length of hardened shell, what would be the elytron in a beetle. “Look. Wings.”
That made her frown. “Crawlers do not have wings.”
“This would, if it hatched.” To Thomas—who seemed fascinated—I said, “Did you succeed?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He held up the small wicker box I had given him. “I collected them from the broad beans. My father wants to know if we should burn the field now?”
“Not yet. That field will be our exhibit.” I took the box to the window and angled it, peering through the mesh as spots of sun penetrated.
Nothing unpleasant had emerged, so I opened it.
There were two long beans, even more grossly swollen than the plums. They flexed slightly where the sun touched them.
“Good. Still alive.” With tweezers, I moved each into a separate glass jar.
“Disgusting,” Georgiana repeated. “Could you not raise puppies instead?”
“I want to find a way to kill them without burning crops.” I covered one jar with a copper lid punched with tiny airholes, then opened a flask of draca essence.
“The Loch bairn journal refers to essence as a treatment for crawler stings, but another passage suggests it is repellant to crawlers themselves, or even toxic…”
Georgiana was unconvinced. “We do not have enough essence to douse a field.”
“It is an experiment. It is not only our fields. The army is being attacked by huge crawlers. We need options.”
I dipped a piece of straw and dripped draca essence onto the second swollen bean. The pod throbbed with disturbing vigor, so I hastily covered the jar with another metal lid. We all crouched down to watch.
The treated bean settled and lay still.
“Is it dead?” Thomas asked.
“We must wait and see.” I secured both metal lids with twine, tucked in a note to mark the treated jar, and set the jars on a shelf. “Either way, we will learn what comes out.”
The infested broad beans filled a sloping, odd-shaped tenth acre, densely sown and intended for pig fodder.
The plants had grown into a morass of tangled green as tall as my waist, and a bitter reek underlaid the healthy, earthy scent from recent rain.
That aside, the day was pleasant. The burns at the other fields were finished, and the fouled sky had cleared to blue.
Georgiana and I tethered our horses to a hazel shrub near the field’s edge. The song draca had followed us from the mansion, circling and calling. He flitted to the top of a bush a few paces from me, his scaled muzzle cocked while his bright eyes watched expectantly.
“Not now,” I told him. He whistled, mimicking the tune of my words. I had never taught him a song for “go away,” so I flapped a hand at him until, affronted, he soared up to perch in a cedar overlooking the field. He chittered urgently. Even that sounded musical.
“Here they come,” Georgiana said. “All of them.”
A party on horseback rounded the bend, three well-dressed gentlemen I did not know escorted by Mr. Digweed. A good beginning. I had not been sure Mrs. Reynolds’ network of housekeepers would convince them.
The three men dismounted and greeted Georgiana warmly, the two older men fond as fathers. When that friendly exchange finished, glances drifted my way.
Georgiana said simply, “Miss Bennet.” With both my older sisters wed, I no longer required “Mary” in introductions. This would be the pinnacle of my social status: the eldest unmarried sister.
The first gentleman, Mr. Berrycloth, bowed to my curtsy, his ruddy cheeks framed by graying side-whiskers as stiff as brushes.
He pursed meaty lips and looked me over with the unrushed curiosity of a wealthy, old man.
Or was it dislike? I suppressed an urge to sneak a look at Georgiana and gauge her reaction.
These gentlemen might be strangers to me, but Bennet sisters were surrounded by rumors.
Lizzy’s binding of a dragon was tacit knowledge in this area, although her apparent death and the Darcys’ influence had kept the news from spreading.
Jane and her golden wyvern, although living quietly in Hertfordshire, marshaled a share of envy and mystery as well.
Mr. Berrycloth finished his assessment with a baffled look at my limp, hanging hair. It had not occurred to me to put it up, but it was too late to pander to convention now.
Gruffly, he cleared his throat. “Miss Bennet. The Britons speak of you.” He nodded and stepped aside.
Mr. Gastrell rolled up next, his portly belly wrapped in expensive tweed sealed by straining silver buttons. We exchanged wordless dips and polite smiles.
Mr. Spragg, the only one closer to my age than my parents’, was last. He snapped a stylish bow and held my fingers too long, reminding me unpleasantly of Wickham.
This man was less dainty though, his face rough from sun and wind.
A long-healed scar pinched his upper lip, perhaps a childhood accident.
“The Britons departed our property in my grandfather’s time,” he said. His attention lingered on me with the more practical interest of a young man. “What do the Britons say about you?”
“I do not know,” I said. “I have not asked them.”
He nodded as if that were an answer. “I was surprised to review my appointments for the day and discover a meeting of the Derbyshire landholders’ assembly.
As I have never heard of the Derbyshire landholder’s assembly.
” He flicked a smile. “Will Mr. Darcy attend, or does the assembly simply use a muddy trail on his land for meetings?”
“My brother is abroad,” Georgiana said, with a barely audible emphasis on “brother.” I was happy to let attention shift to her, but she deftly nodded it back to me.
“Mr. Darcy requested that we meet,” I said, in a rather choppy beginning. “There is a grave threat. A threat to agriculture, but also to life. Foul crawlers have adopted a new pattern of spread, based on infestation of fruits and seeds. The mechanism is unclear—”
“Crawlers?” portly Mr. Gastrell interrupted. “We rode all this way for a few pests?”
“More than pests,” I said. “A deadly risk.” He guffawed, so I explained. “The breadth of infestation is unprecedented. That density elevates the risk.”
“Slow down, Miss Bennet,” Mr. Berrycloth said, not unkindly. “You are afraid of crawlers, is that it?”
“Afraid? No. Not in a personal sense.” Now everyone looked puzzled. “The risk is of scale. We must coordinate our efforts in this region.”
“Perhaps if we showed them…” Georgiana prompted me. Reminded me.
“Yes,” I muttered, feeling idiotic. We had agreed to start with a demonstration. How could this be harder than proclaiming women’s rights amid shouted insults in a London square?
Mr. Digweed was already busy at the field’s edge. He picked one of the bloated, diseased pods, and the gentlemen gathered, serious at last. Even the most pampered gentleman landholder was, at some level, a farmer.
A pair of song draca swooped through the midst of our party. They perched in the cedar. More gleams shifted in the branches. Eight. Ten. I had never seen so many song draca together. They were singing softly, a discordant drone near the bottom of their range that set my teeth on edge.
“Are you calling them?” Georgiana whispered to me. The men were occupied asking questions of Mr. Digweed.
“Of course not.” The last thing we needed was draca. Single ladies with draca were, at best, suspected of unchastity. A display like this would prompt accusations of witchcraft.
Mr. Digweed said loudly, “Miss Bennet could answer that better.” That was my cue, so Georgiana and I joined the circle of men. Mr. Digweed laid the bean pod on the ground and offered me a stick. “Would you do the honors?”
I took it, feeling rather like a schoolteacher. “As grubs, they seem unable to sting, but keep a safe distance.” Muddy boots stepped back. I prodded the pod, trying to open it without injuring the crawler. A live specimen would be more convincing.
The pod slipped in the damp until I pinned it against a stone, then it split. A finger-length crawler squirmed free, the segmented shell gleaming before becoming coated in mud. There was a mix of hmms and ahs from the audience.