Chapter 5 The Great Wyves
THE GREAT WYVES
EMMA
We passed through several rooms, halting once so Lizzy could ask questions about a boathouse she spotted through a window. Then we entered a hall with a half-dozen paintings on the undecorated, white walls.
Mr. Darcy led us to a faded triptych, a painting with three wooden panels hinged so they could close like shutters. The center panel was about fifteen inches square, the two side panels half that width. It looked very old. The wooden frame had splits and stains, and the paint was damaged.
The left panel was unevenly faded and crazed with cracks.
It depicted a queen in the fashions of two or three centuries ago—a voluminous black gown trimmed with gold and a pearl-edged French hood that covered the back of her hair.
Her hand was outstretched to a golden wyvern as large as a hunting dog.
A bearded king stood behind her. Around them, courtiers and ladies had fallen to their knees in awe.
“This was commissioned by Queen Mary the first,” Mr. Darcy said.
“She was the sole surviving child of Katherine of Aragon, who was herself a powerful wyfe. Katherine bound a firedrake when she wed Henry the eighth. But Queen Mary surpassed her mother. In 1554, she married and bound a ‘tremendous wyvern of shining gold.’ Mary was the first queen regnant—a female monarch ruling England and Ireland. Her binding secured her claim to the throne, for a time. It proved her divine right to rule.” His formality softened, and he smiled at Lizzy.
“Historians thought the gold color was embellishment until your sister bound a gold wyvern.”
They were that Bennet family. The binding of a golden wyvern by Mrs. Jane Bingley, née Bennet, had been the talk of society.
Mr. Darcy turned to me. He seemed to expect a response. I nodded, and he gestured to the center panel.
This image was better preserved. The queen was seated on a throne, resting her hands on the sides of a kneeling child’s neck. The child was bent and sickly, his cheeks flushed.
The rendering of the queen’s robes was extraordinary, far more detailed than any other part of the panel. Every fold of cloth, every embroidered accent, every fastening was flawless. Yet it had the realism of life, not the flat perfection of a dressmaker’s illustration.
I took a step. I bent close. Each sewn pearl was a miracle. There were hundreds, faultlessly distinct. I could count the center decorations of her gown… eighteen. And—
“Miss Woodhouse,” Mr. Darcy said. “Do you admire the queen’s clothes?”
I started, unnerved by the precision of his question. “They are painted very finely.”
“The painter’s commission required that the queen’s robes be exact. The artist, likely eager to keep his head, complied.”
“What is she doing?” Lizzy asked.
“The queen is performing the Royal Touch. She is healing the boy.”
Georgiana’s head snapped around to her brother. “Healing him.”
Mr. Darcy nodded. “The Royal Touch was performed by kings and queens until a century ago when enlightened science began to question its efficacy. But Queen Mary’s healings are significant.
They created our custom of offering marriage gold to bind draca.
Mary gave each cured person a freshly minted piece of gold, called a touch piece.
Brides believed these were blessed and would help them bind on their wedding night.
Later, when Queen Elizabeth assumed the throne, her famed virginity joined the tradition.
Now, Church doctrine states that binding requires both virginity and marriage gold. ”
“You are saying Queen Mary was a great wyfe of healing,” Georgiana said eagerly. “Like Mamma.”
“The other important aspect of Queen Mary’s cures is that they succeeded.
Not always, but often. She saved lives.” Mr. Darcy’s eyes met mine.
“The precision of this painting is no accident. Before Queen Mary married and bound, she was subject to mental fits. Accounts of these were destroyed when she ascended the throne, but we know the queen was obsessed with illness and injury. She found solace in certain habits. Precise clothing was one.”
Air fled my lungs. He knew.
“I cannot imagine how this is relevant to me,” I said.
“My mother, Lady Anne Darcy, fought the same evils of the mind. An obsession with illness. Comfort in a compulsive search for perfection of clothing. Her struggle and her gift matched those of a queen centuries before.”
Lizzy was studying the third panel. “What is this?” Her voice was disturbed.
Mr. Darcy turned away from me to answer. A held breath escaped my lips. I felt like a rabbit saved when the fox leaps the wrong way.
“The third panel is The Immolation,” he said. “Queen Mary’s mania returned as she ruled. Her obsession with perfection drove her to condemn Protestants as heretics. She executed them with the symbol of her divine rule, her wyvern. That earned her other name in history. Bloody Mary.”
In the rightmost image, the queen’s hand was raised in imperious judgment. Dismembered bodies heaped the ground. Her wyvern, wings spread and claws clotted with red pigment, was breathing sky-blue fire. The color would seem pleasant if not for a screaming monk tied to a stake.
“I know the story,” Lizzy said dismissively. “What is this?”
Her finger pointed to a dagger in the queen’s lower hand. The blade was slightly curved and painted pitch black except one edge where glistening flakes like black glass had been embedded in the paint.
Lizzy’s fingertip touched the black flakes. The ever-present hint of her scarlet binding flared like flame in my mind, then it was blotted out by a presence monstrously huge and dark.
I backed away, my shoulder knocking someone so violently they gasped.
Then I was running, through a shrouded room, a hallway, a door, a kitchen.
A cook and scullery maid looked up as I fell against the rough outer door.
I fumbled at the latch, pounded it with my fist, then something jarred free and I was through.
Fresh snow crunched under my boots. The world had transformed; it was dusted in crystalline white.
The slippery footing and shock of cold stopped me.
I grasped an iron railing with both hands.
Freezing wet soaked my gloves. They felt dirty and isolating, so I pulled them off and threw them into a snow-topped hedge.
The day was ending, the sky tarnished to darkest pewter. Warm light from the open kitchen door carried my shadow across the snow. The outline shifted as a figure rushed out.
“Miss Woodhouse,” Harriet said breathlessly. “What is wrong?”
I moved my lips to say, Nothing. No breath sounded my voice.
Tiny, bounding steps crunched the snow. The tyke pawed at my ankle, his scales gleaming. I bent down and rested my bare fingers on his sides. He leaned into my hands, warm and caring, so I picked him up. He curled against my chest, his breath puffing clouds of steam.
Lizzy was speaking urgently. Her fingers touched my bare forearm. Without the shield of gloves, her scarlet power swarmed up my arm and slammed my mind, blinding and overwhelming. Painfully desirable, but locked away. Jealously defended.
Shuddering, I pulled away. My head rang and reeled. “Too bright! Your binding is too bright.”
“You see my binding?” she said. She closed her eyes. Her arms relaxed. Her head tilted back as if contemplating the sky.
The scarlet potency swirled into existence, ribbons of power that stretched to the north. Awareness flickered like an unseen moth in the night. The tyke squirmed in my arms to peer up at my face. Lizzy’s awareness hung within his black eyes, seeing me.
“In the tyke’s vision, she shines,” Lizzy whispered. “She has the aura of a great wyfe.”
“Leave me alone!” I cried, dropping the tyke. Panic squeezed my ribs. I turned to the white shadows, hunting a path to run, but a lithe hand caught my bare palm. A woman’s hand, fine-boned but with fingers sure as steel.
Georgiana lifted our clasped hands high between our eyes. Drawing me near. “I have faced what you face,” she whispered. Then she sang, so soft that only I could hear. “I am not bound. I am not bright. You are not alone.”
That scarlet power faded behind layers of music, foundations of strength and perfection. My panic became wonder.
I touched my other palm to the back of her hand, and she added hers behind mine.