Chapter 25 Nearing London
NEARING LONDON
MARY
Colonel Fremantle, Lord Wellington’s aide-de-camp, and I stood in front of our stopped coach.
The road to London stretched ahead, a packed misery beneath a smoke-reddened sun.
Tens of thousands were fleeing the city, a northward flood that spilled into the adjacent fields, plowing them to impassible mud.
London’s skyline was visible as low notches on the southern horizon.
I compared it to memories from other trips…
we were eight miles from the city’s outskirts.
After that, it would be two miles to the museum.
At least it was on the north side of the city.
Chathford House, the Darcys’ London home, was south of the Thames and likely unreachable.
A man staggered by, his lips gray and his arm crudely wrapped in bloody muslin.
I dug my nails into my palms and did nothing.
Passing this uncountable humanity felt like when Dr. Davenport first walked me through the slums of London.
I had wept, and afterward he provided a cup of tea and his first lesson: You cannot help them all.
Choose carefully where to spend your strength.
“This is a horror,” murmured the colonel. He was unshaven and red-eyed. “It is like witnessing the flight from Athens when Xerxes burned the city.”
“You read Herodotus?” Perhaps military history was required for officers.
“In translation. My uncle gave me a copy.” His lip twitched. “I was miserable at Greek.”
“You do not need the Greeks for accounts of razed cities. The crusaders ravaged Jerusalem in 1099. Two years ago, the Americans massacred the Indians at Prophetstown.” The colonel gave me an uneasy look, and I grimaced.
“When I am tense, I tend to be… academic. You are right, this is a horror. That is why our errand for the flute must not fail.”
We were traveling in a post-chaise carriage, a stripped-down military express that the colonel commandeered for his return trip by waving the signature on Lord Wellington’s letter.
The army kept four-horse teams in reserve every twenty miles, so we had raced one hundred and forty miles in twenty-odd hours, not once slower than a trot.
The jolts from the bench had bruised my calves, my shoulders, and very definitively everything in between.
Distant, punctuated thunder rumbled. Cannons. Some illusion made the sound seem to rise from the earth, as if the war raged in Hades.
We had met the first fringe of this exodus ten miles back. For a while, our military standard and livery opened passage, but that slowed as the crowd grew. Now, we had halted to consider tactics while the driver watered the horses.
A passing woman, sweating through fine clothes unsuited for walking, her hair threaded with gray, started when she saw the iridescent song draca perched on my shoulder. I stopped her with a finger on her arm. “What have you seen? Are the French in London?”
“I have seen nothing with my own eyes, but I heard men shouting in the street. Enemies on the brink of London, they said, the French army and the slavers. And there are creatures in the air…”
My exhaustion vanished in a tingle of fear. “Dragons?” Had the French captured one of the artifacts?
“Not a dragon.” The woman shook her head definitively; Londoners knew dragons all too well from Fènnù’s attacks and battles with Yuánchi. “Something different, swift and vile. It flew over me. The roar hurt my ears.”
She was pulling north, eager to leave, so I bade her good travel. She slipped into the dusty crowd, lost in a blink.
Our driver, his scarlet infantry coat caked with gray clay and dirt, reported to the colonel.
“The team is fresh enough, sir, but I don’t know what to do about the crowd.
There’s no way to find headway in this.” He squinted at the people, chewing his lip, then offered uncertainly, “If I laid about with my whip…”
Colonel Fremantle frowned. “Not that. We will consider other options.” The driver nodded and went to calm the nervous horses.
“I must reach the British Museum,” I said.
“And I must find Lord Wellington in Surrey.”
“Do you even think that possible? At least the museum stays still.”
The colonel’s lips compressed in a mirthless smile. “I suppose I shall wander, looking for soldiers who are unreasonably cheerful. It has worked before.”
“He has that effect on morale?”
“When all seems black, yes.” The colonel’s mirthless smile became an honest chuckle. “In Spain, I once followed a stream of happy gunners and found the duke at an improvised ball. I even danced with a Spanish lady. She was astonishingly beautiful. Sadly, I could not speak a word of Spanish.”
Since I had fallen in love, I had discovered a soft spot for romance. “You could learn. It is easier than Greek.”
“My father died when I was four. I have no fortune to tempt foreign beauties into marriage. That is why I enlisted, to earn a few pounds. And any marriage would be difficult with me gone to war for eleven months of every year.” He watched me with curious eyes, then ventured, “Do you worry about Miss Darcy when you are apart?”
It was my turn to smile. “Georgiana is like a demigod from a Greek myth, imbued with divine grace—in England, that is money—and beyond that, at her innermost self, stronger than us poor mortals.” I remembered the intoxicating reach of her song. “I suppose I worry she might do something foolish.”
The colonel rubbed his hands decisively. “We could unharness the horses and ride. A horse and rider can force a path where a carriage cannot.”
I looked at our four-horse team, prancing, skittish, and wild-eyed. I was reasonably comfortable on a horse, but that was on country paths. These did not even have saddles. “I doubt I could handle a horse in this press.”
The colonel nodded. “Probably for the best. They are not cavalry mounts. They might bolt.”
I worked my neck, loosening cramps and studying the smoky sky. “If only we could fly…” Colonel Fremantle produced a dutiful chuckle that choked when I continued, “but I cannot summon a dragon by myself.”
He eyed the song draca on my shoulder, so still and unbirdlike amid the chaos. “Miss Bennet, I do not wish to pry, but… I know Lord Wellington’s message, and I could not help but witness your and Miss Darcy’s discussion. What powers will you gain from this flute?”
“Me? Nothing. I have no power. But if I deliver the flute to the great wyves, they can end this war.”
I unfolded a scrap of linen and cleaned my spectacles while I thought.
Could we walk? Eight miles was three hours on good roads, but against this tide it must be six or more, and dangerous among a desperate crowd.
It would be fully dark when we arrived, and I doubted carriages would be for hire in a besieged city.
And when I recovered the flute—persuaded the staff to loan it to me, or claimed it in the name of the King, or stole it—how would I return?
“What if I need your aid when we reach London?” I asked. “Lord Wellington sent you to us.”
“To be frank, that would put me in a difficult position. Lord Wellington did not instruct me to aid your… quest. I have been left to guess at his intent. My duty is simple. Return to him.”
The song draca chittered, the points of his claws digging into my shoulder. I replaced my spectacles and blinked bleary eyes. “Do you see something new? Something dangerous?”
The colonel’s head pivoted, then he pointed. “To the west. Is that one of those flying creatures?”
Miles distant, a dark shape climbed on powerful strokes of colossal wings. Recognition wiped the cobwebs from my brain. “That is the black dragon, Fènnù.”
“The demon of the Thames,” Colonel Fremantle whispered. “Saints preserve us.” When I did not answer, he looked more alarmed. “I hope that is not our ride!”
“Nobody rides Fènnù.” She was miles distant, but I felt her gaze focus on me, then her awareness pressed my mind. The song draca on my shoulder flew away with an alarmed screech. “She must have sensed I was near. She will come. Stay close to me.” I called to our driver, “Come here, quickly.”
The crowd had seen her, and the Londoners who lived through Fènnù’s attacks cried out. People ran, northward on the road or scrambling over the fences into mud and rough brush.
Fènnù was closing at a phenomenal pace, sweeping through a curve that intersected the packed road two miles south of us.
Where her shadow touched, the crowd seethed in panic.
She swept lower, following the road, her wings driving for speed, low enough that dust rose behind her, then lower yet so the wind of her passage knocked people off their feet like wheat in a storm.
A windy howl became audible, the deepest pedal pipes of a celestial organ played in discordant madness.
Behind us, the horse team whinnied and fought their traces. The driver turned to go to them, but I grabbed his wrist. “She seeks me because she wants my sister. You are safest here.”
Incredibly, the road in front of us had emptied other than dropped bags and packs.
Fènnù’s dark shape grew. Already her wingspan filled my eyes, eclipsing the sky, surely atop us although the shadow of her wings was a quarter mile distant.
But no black cloud billowed behind her, that omen of her destructive breath.
Her approach was intimidation. She would turn aside.