Chapter 35 #2
Mr. Knightley answered. “The French are all through Surrey. The slavers are worse and closer, but Harriet and I met allies on our way. They will slow our pursuers.” To Mr. Darcy, he added, “The ‘widowed wyves’ are here, a ladies’ resistance. Your aunt, Lady Catherine, leads them with her wyvern.”
Mr. Darcy gave a mirthless laugh, more long-suffering than surprised.
Harriet took Emma’s arm. “Mr. Knightley told me about Augusta and Hartfield. I am so sorry.”
“She was brave,” Emma said. Her sad gaze traveled to the rest of us, and she explained, “Hartfield is lost. Burned.”
“This has been a cruel day,” I said, feeling Mamma’s loss and pity for beautiful, perfect Emma, her fortune lost, her home gone. Of course, she had somehow also managed to marry Mr. Knightley.
Harriet had her arm around Emma’s waist. She scowled. “I have not one ounce of sympathy for hideous Mr. Elton!”
Whoever that was, it made Mr. Knightley sweep Emma into his arms for a fresh embrace. When finally they let go, Emma dabbed her eyes and declared bravely, “Well, I am quite looking forward to a little loft in Chelsea. No more nonsense with cooks and maids and gardeners.”
I snuck a look at Georgiana, wondering if she was following this better than me. Loft?
“And I forgot to tell you,” Emma continued. “The third dragon is somewhere nearby, though I am not sure where.”
That launched eager conversation. By the end, Mr. Darcy was tromping in rapid circles. “It is no coincidence that we gathered here,” he declared. “Queen Mary chose to send the amulet here. We can bind the dragon of song!”
“Do we not need the flute for that?” Emma asked.
“We are missing more than the flute,” I said. “Where is the dragon? There is no lake. No big river like the Thames.”
“We have only ponds,” Emma admitted. “But I see the glow everywhere.” Her eyes roamed the stone ruins and the meadow’s ruffled heath.
“The Abbey. The hills. It is the glow of the wyfe of song in the vision.” To Georgiana, she said, “It is the glow that connects you and Mary. You must sense it. Or do you hear it as music?”
Georgiana did not answer. She had not spoken since Emma announced the third dragon.
Mr. Darcy, back to searching the sky, said, “When I spoke with Elizabeth, she…” He stopped and spun to Georgiana. “We must be prepared when she arrives. We need the third dragon. Georgiana, reach out—”
“I am considering how,” Georgiana snapped at her brother. “I do not sense what Emma described. And Lizzy is already bound, so how is this supposed to work? Are you saying Emma will bind Fènnù? Or shall we draw straws?”
Her tone perplexed me. Georgiana had a temper when provoked, but she was never petulant.
I tried filling the silence. “Perhaps you need to do something to sense the dragon. When Lizzy needed to bind Yuánchi, she projected her mind to where he slept.” Every face turned to me.
I squinted through my crooked glasses and realized they were surprised.
“Did none of you ask how she bound him? I was very curious. She told Yuánchi she would share her life with him. Share her experiences.”
Georgiana was very still and watching me. I tried to unravel her expression. Uncertain? Frightened? But frightened of what? She was fearless with draca. I could understand her being frightened of Fènnù, but this was a dragon of song…
“I do not ‘project my mind,’ ” she said at last.
“No,” I agreed. “You sing.”
She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. The others might have thought that was resignation or disapproval, but I had seen her shoulders relax to her singer’s posture.
Her lips parted, and she began a song rooted in old pentatonic forms but filled with modern, restless accidentals. This was her music, the music of the wyfe of song, music that reached and called…
Power unfolded around her. I had expected it, but the intensity staggered me. The hours of the day, the seasons of the year bent in time. The valley became an amphitheater. And her call grew stronger, shivering the very fabric of the draca realm, crying for an answer…
Her last note faded. Nothing happened. There was no response.
Georgiana’s eyes were fixed on mine. She licked her lips, and I thought she would speak, but she did not.
The loyal song draca flew up with a showy flick of his wings and settled on my shoulder.
“Could the little one be the third dragon?” Mr. Knightley suggested hopefully.
“No.” Emma and Georgiana answered together, and Georgiana smiled at that. But when she continued, her tone was edged. “If a dragon slumbers here, it is beyond my reach.”
Another song draca swooped up, then a third. The new arrivals settled side-by-side on a ruined wall.
“You can wake it,” Mr. Darcy said abruptly. “You must. You are a great wyfe.”
“Fitz, I cannot.”
This time, I had concentrated on her voice, not her features, and I sensed an omission, something unsaid.
Disturbed, I flipped my mind’s eye backward, as if a pictorial history might somehow help.
Unexpectedly, it did. “The song draca may not be dragons, but the perfumer thought they were important. She called them les presages. Harbingers.”
Georgiana seized on that. “They could lead us to the dragon.”
“No,” Mr. Darcy pronounced. “We stay here. We stay together. Elizabeth may arrive at any moment.”
“Fitz…” she said desperately.
“Do you not understand?” he burst out. “Elizabeth is astride the black dragon. If she is not mad already, it is a question of when. We must make every preparation to reclaim her. To… to overcome her, if necessary. You must try—”
I could not bear hearing them fight. “She did try! Her power filled these hills. Can you not trust your sister?”
He slammed around to face me, flushed, his brow furrowed. Mr. Darcy was not often interrupted.
Georgiana stepped beside me. “Mary and I will follow the song draca. We will stay close. I will know if Fènnù approaches, and we will return.” Her brother scowled, but whatever had unnerved Georgiana, it was not his anger. She stared back, equally intense and unmovable.
Finally, he conceded. His eyes drifted to the sky, and he said almost apologetically, “Go.”
Without a word, Georgiana set out, choosing a thin rabbit trail toward the meadow’s edge.
I hurried behind her, the tall grass swishing my skirts.
The song draca fluttered randomly around us, perching on ancient bricks, on bushes, on tree limbs.
If they were guides, they were poor ones, and Georgiana ignored them.
After fifty yards, she turned into the shade of a handful of birches and stopped, her back to me.
I had given up on guessing her thoughts. “What is wrong?”
She swept her hands outward, pushing away speech.
We had crossed a tiny wooden bridge before the birches, three aging boards over a stone-lined ditch.
The ground was marshy with rushes and tufted, purple-topped moor grass.
Feeling pathetically useless, I studied the trickling water.
“These drainage works are everywhere, and very old. The stone is eroded. What if there was a lake in this valley, and they drained it to build the Abbey?”
“Then the dragon of song would be sitting in the meadow,” Georgiana said tightly.
I brushed my finger along her wrist. “Are you angry with me?” When she shook her head, I said, “Then tell me what is wrong. You do not fear a hidden dragon, but you fear something.”
She turned to me, tears in her eyes, and whispered, “I sang, but my song was wrong. I knew before I began.” She intermeshed her fingers, squeezing until the knuckles blanched.
“I have seen visions of the blight since my mother died. I thought they were a summons. A part I was destined to play. I even imagined that Mamma was helping me somehow, guiding me. But now, when the need is desperate, I am failing. What if that is because of what I am? Because of what we are to each other?”
I understood her, but I was too surprised to answer.
She rushed on. “You mean more to me than life. I regret no choice I made. I had no choice. But draca bind wyves who marry.” She shoved her arm out, pointing at the meadow.
“Emma married, and she senses a dragon. But when I sang—Mary, I sang. I held nothing back, and the answer was silence.” She grasped my hands, her pianist’s grip almost painful.
“What if I cannot bind? What if what we have is… wrong, or inferior?”
“That is impossible.” I lifted our joined hands, holding hers as tightly as she held mine.
“Draca bind for our emotions. They seek out our passions. They have done so in hundreds of cultures for thousands of years. Human customs, our rulers, our religions… all that is ephemera to them. They certainly do not read marriage announcements in The Times.”
Georgiana gave a crazed laugh at that.
I pulled us closer. “When I was young, my knowledge of binding was what society taught: A virginal lady of good family may bind, and only on her wedding night, and only by gifting extravagant wedding gold to the Church. We have seen all of those claims proven false. You know this. The Britons handfast any who love, even woman to woman. Do those wyves bind?”
“Yes,” she admitted, and her desperate grip eased.
“Society’s rules for binding are lies to protect the privileged. Ignore them. Draca exist outside of human prejudice and pride. What draca treasure is love.”
Her shoulders rose roughly, then fell gracefully. “I know we have that.” She rested her forehead on our linked hands, then brushed her lips to my fingers. “Very well. I am less panicked. But something is wrong.”
“You just have not found the way yet. Be patient.”
“You have relieved my mind on one thing. When handfasted wyves bind, they bind once as a couple. I was afraid Fitz was imagining you would bind Fènnù alone. But however these bindings are chosen, you and I will be together.”