Chapter 23 Cellars and Covenants
CELLARS AND COVENANTS
EMMA
“Steady,” Mr. Knightley said, his arm guiding me through a squat, vaulted doorway of old stone. The trim on my bonnet grazed the rock as I ducked.
Lady Catherine’s wyvern was ahead, shining in the gloom. We were in a long, wide cellar as ghostly as a catacomb. Thick columns of ancient brick rose every few yards, the tops merging in shared arches like a forest canopy.
“These are the Abbey ruins,” I said, emerging from my daze. I hardly remembered walking here.
“If you say so,” Mr. Knightley replied. “Miss Bates led us here. She seems to be managing our escape. I must go help her with Mrs. Elton.”
That cleared my stupor. “How is Augusta?” She had collapsed after I broke the infected binding between her and the foul crawler. I remembered Mr. Knightley slinging her over his shoulders.
“She has recovered enough to stand.” His hand tightened on my elbow, drawing me to face him. “How are you? You had one of your… episodes.”
“That is a polite description,” I said, forcing a smile.
I still felt the effects. Miasma was pooling in the distant corners, but it was ephemeral, a stage illusion that could be dismissed with rational effort, not the terrible, gut-churning threat I felt when obsessions ruled my mind.
“It is passing, though. Very quickly. I am not sure why…”
Was it the wyvern? Her presence had not helped me when we met at the London ball. Although Mr. Darcy had helped then by standing close to hide the visual madness…
Mr. Knightley was steadying my left elbow, so I turned to him and rested my other hand, ungloved, on his chest, almost like when we waltzed on the frozen ship.
Mr. Knightley was not as tall as Mr. Darcy—my eyes were a few inches below his, not staring into his neckcloth—but even if he were, his clothes would not have provided the solace of perfection.
He had sprinted through wild forest carrying a full-grown woman.
His coat was rumpled and strewn with burrs, his neckcloth undone, his hat lost. Tangled spirals of black hair hung to his shoulders.
The disorder should have distressed me, but, as I felt a shaky breath lift his chest—apparently he was not as recovered from running as I thought—he looked dashing and disheveled, like a pirate captain in a play.
“I wondered if our touching was helping,” I explained, belatedly.
In answer, he rested his fingers on the back of my hand. I felt the calluses from his violin strings, so unusual on a gentleman. My touch and his made an intimate pose, but, after dodging death together more than once, it seemed excusable.
“I should see to Mrs. Elton,” he said after a minute. “If you are recovered?” I nodded, and he bowed before hurrying outside.
I was not sure exactly where we were, but it was one of the larger old cellars, as big as Hartfield’s drawing room.
We were not buried, though. Shadowy sunlight trickled through slots in the roof.
The light was fringed with green from foliage above, and I heard birdsong.
Most of the Abbey cellars were overgrown like this; they looked like hillocks of meadow from outside.
I had thought them grand secrets when I was a child, doubly so because exploring them was forbidden. A rule I frequently forgot, naturally.
With my senses and mind calm, I recalled walking here after we met Lady Catherine and her wyvern. Walking, not running. There had been no more need to run.
The wyvern’s scales shimmered in the scattered light and seemed to blaze as I approached her.
“Did you kill the men who chased us?” I asked.
i fought those who fought me. the hounds were wiser. they fled
Her four-inch claws glistened against the stone floor. I had seen the inhuman ferocity of a wyvern’s attack before at the London ball. Our pursuers, the slaver soldiers, had certainly been killed. I had trouble summoning regret.
John and Mr. Elton would be safe, though. They were likely congratulating each other on avoiding the tiresome effort of running, particularly after it turned deadly.
“You must not approach her,” Lady Catherine said reprovingly as she ducked through the doorway and saw my proximity to her wyvern.
“Your ladyship,” I said politely and moved a few steps away. The wyvern’s muscled, stout neck swiveled, following me.
Lady Catherine observed that with an uneasy frown, an emotion that seemed out of character. This woman had, without batting an eyelash, dispatched her wyvern to wreak bloody murder. That required both an uncommonly strong binding and ruthless confidence.
Miss Bates entered next, cradling her roseworm. Once inside, she staggered, closing her eyes, her face ashen.
I hurried to her. Her roseworm greeted me with an alert cheep. The draca, at least, had recovered from her fight with the crawler.
“May I take your hand?” I said to Miss Bates. Weakly, she opened her eyes, then let me press her palm between mine.
The crawler venom she drank still coursed through her body, pulsing vilely with every heartbeat.
It was diminishing, though. I had sensed far worse when the slavers dosed Harriet to the brink of death.
Then, I had been able to purge the venom, but only because I had borrowed strength—the mysterious gift Lady Anne Darcy left for me in the keeping of her wyvern.
My own skills sensed injuries but were completely useless for actual healing.
“I have a terrific headache,” Miss Bates muttered. “But for a time, I felt… wonderful.”
“You must not take the venom again,” I warned. “It is addictive. A weaker wyfe would have been killed by the dose you drank.”
Her affinity was certainly strong. The unnatural boost from the venom had ended, but her binding shone a brilliant rose.
It was no match for the blinding power of the Darcys’ binding, but by any other standard, it was impressive.
I had spent much of my life dismissing Miss Bates as tiresome.
Really, I must have been shockingly self-absorbed not to recognize her qualities.
Lady Catherine’s wyvern trotted over to nuzzle my skirts. I could not see her binding at all. That was odd. Were my skills not recovered after all?
I squeezed Miss Bates’s hand and smiled. “You were tremendously brave.”
“I was thoroughly terrified,” she said. “But the widowed wyves do not stand by while women are enslaved. This place”—her bloodshot gaze scanned the brick pillars—“is where the widowed wyves were founded. Widows were consigned to the Abbey as nuns, but in secret, some remained bound to their draca. They met here and swore to shield women from persecution. There are chapters in all the counties. Lady Catherine heads the Kent widowed wyves.” She frowned and busily adjusted her shawl. “I admit it is rather dank in here.”
A wavering light was approaching from an opening in the back wall. A short, rounded gentleman in a clergyman’s black suit and white collar emerged beside a lady bearing a candle.
“Mr. Collins,” Lady Catherine snapped with no hint of her earlier unease. “Wherever did you vanish to?”
“Your ladyship!” the gentleman exclaimed, scurrying forward and performing a frivolous bow that displayed prematurely thinning hair.
“I took it upon myself to investigate this shadowed abode to ensure there was no lurking danger to your esteemed personage. But the longer passages proved exceptionally difficult to navigate…”
“My husband’s candle blew out,” the lady beside him explained with equanimity. “I went to fetch him.” She was a straightforward looking woman a few years older than me, tastefully but not extravagantly dressed.
In tones of profound disappointment, Lady Catherine introduced the gentleman as Mr. Collins, rector of Rosings Park. More positively, she added, “Rosings Park, naturally, is mine. And this woman is Mrs. Collins.”
“Please call me Charlotte,” the lady said, and I introduced myself. I had lost my gloves, so she removed hers to shake hands. Our touch revealed nothing. Had she not bound when she married?
This absence of bindings was becoming a puzzle. I stretched out my awareness, and the gloomy parts of the cellar gained a pretty, blue glow—that was new—but I saw only Miss Bates’s binding, nothing for Charlotte or Lady Catherine. Surely that was wrong.
Once, the loss of my affinity would have seemed a blessing. Seeing bindings was occasionally interesting but more often distracting and dangerous. However, if it broke the vile connection forced on Augusta, my affinity seemed to have a use after all.
As if she heard my thoughts, the wyvern’s voice chimed:
the one you call lady anne had the gift of healing flesh. yours is the gift of healing spirit
Lady Catherine was scowling at me with narrowed eyes, so I tried a trick of Lizzy’s and replied silently in my head, Does healing spirit mean healing bindings?
spirit, binding, song. all are one. lady anne saw the rise of the three wyves and knew her gift could not heal the song. she passed her duty to you. you must bind for strength
The ghost of Lady Anne’s wyvern had said something similar: you are as she thought you would be.
the heiress to her skills, but stronger.
Lady Anne’s history seemed woven with mine: Mr. Darcy had taught me her lessons, and I carried the red lanyard from her journal.
Despite that, I had never learned what happened to her, only that she sent her wyvern away and died, and that my symptoms—and my skills—appeared soon after.
And then there was that last part, you must bind for strength. That was a tiresome refrain with wyverns. But if there were more captives like Augusta, they might be right. The effort of dissolving that vile connection had drained me.