Chapter 36
THE WINDOW
EMMA
I woke to a soft rattle from our guest room door. It came again, a tiny but insistent bump.
Harriet was sound asleep, but the window showed the night-dark ridges of Pemberley valley against a faint blue glow.
Sunrise was near. My slippers lay precisely side-by-side with my dressing gown folded and fanned on the dressing table above them.
Lucy had learned my bedtime ritual as well as any maid at Highbury.
Wrapped against the chill, I stood motionless until I was able to accept the scrabble of disarranged hair on my neck and back, then I eased the door ajar.
A little tykeworm turned up her nutmeg muzzle and ink-black eyes, then sat on her haunches.
Not the tyke bound to Lizzy’s aunt. This one had dark brown paws, as if she had scampered through coffee grounds.
I crouched and whispered, “Good morning.” Only closely bound wyves dared touch draca, but, feeling bold after the firedrake in the physic garden, I stroked a finger down her back.
The tyke arched happily, so I petted her with my whole hand.
Her scales were warm as a cat lazing in the sun.
Her skin was supple, but each scale was hard.
It was like stroking close-set, smooth jewels.
Like the firedrake at the garden, this draca was not bound—the brightness of binding was curled up within her. Bemused, I asked, “How did you get into Pemberley House?”
She grinned inscrutably, revealing impressive fangs for such a small creature, then padded a few yards along the hall before looking back expectantly. I pulled the door closed and padded after her.
We wandered a hallway of polished wood floors. Windowpanes framed squares of magenta twilight. I passed beneath unlit wrought iron chandeliers and down a wide, curving stairway, the tyke’s paws silenced by luxurious carpet. The notes of a pianoforte became audible, and the tykeworm bounded ahead.
Candlelight and music poured from open, elaborately carved wooden doors.
I entered and was surrounded by a collection of pianofortes in gleaming walnut, red cherry, and black ebony.
One was square, a few were stubby triangles, the rest had modern serpentine curves on their treble side.
Most were pushed by the walls as if out of favor, but in the middle of the room, the largest two instruments faced each other, their nestled curves very feminine.
I had never seen such large instruments, seven feet long at least.
One instrument was closed. At the other, Georgiana, wrapped in a blue velvet robe with her black hair messily pinned, was playing a baroque composition filled with tinkling trills and ornaments.
Without interrupting her music, she smiled a greeting at me, then concentrated on her playing.
The mysterious tyke sat at her feet for a few bars, then began exploring the other instruments.
Not wanting to distract her, I walked to the far side of the room—a towering wall of glass. I had never seen anything like it, not even in London. Behind pinpoint reflections of candles, vague shadows of mossy oaks slumbered.
The precise meter of Georgiana’s playing relaxed. Skipping the traditional baroque close, the music dissolved into melodic, lingering chords. This was not the composer’s work, but a wandering improvisation.
“What do you see outside?” she asked. Her music changed, as curious as her words.
“It is too dark to see much,” I answered. That was a dull reply for someone serenaded and facing a tower of glass, so I added, “I am sure it is beautiful by daylight.”
Georgiana nodded toward the tyke, who had returned to stalk the hem of her robe with stiff-shouldered pounces. “Mary is shut away working all night, so I came to play. Our friend arrived outside to listen. I was not sure he was real, so I opened the door and sang of you, and he ran in.”
“He is certainly solid,” I said, quite familiar with wondering if things were real. “He thumped my door.”
The harmonies of Georgiana’s improvisation converged, narrowed, then ended on a single hanging note. She whispered, “I sang of you so you could see. Watch the window.”
She leaned into a deep, rippling chord—the start of a composition more involved than her improvisation.
Slow chords riveted my attention, glimmering on the edge of dissonance, dancing toward unexpected resolutions, then breaking apart and hunting anew.
The harmonies were complex, but the melody was songlike, resonating with romance and sadness, then searching and brightening.
It was music of emergence. Music of dawn.
Remembering her request, I turned to the window. The trembling high harmonies seemed to have drawn shimmering, reddish beams among the plum-purple shadows behind the glass.
“This was written for me,” Georgiana said, then she began to sing. I did not recognize the language—it was not Italian or French or German—but her voice soared in a descant above a rumbling bass melody, each accented note struck so hard the strings pinged percussively.
Her voice woke the music, then the music woke the world. It was like the mountains stirred.
A silent wind plucked my robe. The glass wall and its dozen reflected candles erased as if it had never been. My slippers nestled in the grassy loam of a springtime forest. Vital pollen danced in the air. My startled intake of breath was sweet with sappy sprouts and blooms.
Freckled beams of sunlight dappled a wyvern, a male with deep brown scales that turned ivory on his chest and belly.
His thoughts filled my mind. after so long, you have come
Do you know me? I thought.
Lady Anne saw the rising storm. saw it would surpass her strength. she sent me away to wait for you
Why for me?
so the next healer could be stronger. look to the north. i keep her gift for you
The wyvern vanished as instantly and completely as the glass wall.
Daylight darkened to stormy gray. The treetops whipped and shook in squally gusts.
Spring-green leaves rained down, decaying in mid-air so they turned splotchy brown by the level of my eyes, then slimy black by my feet.
They squelched to the earth in a soggy muck.
The stripped treetops revealed churning cloud. It was darkest toward the east, and my gaze followed.
Far away, across an endless expanse of blue water, an oily blackness spread. It writhed, serpent-like. It burrowed and feasted on corruption. My heart cried to flee, but terror rooted my feet in the rotted duff. The unholy malevolence spread, a vileness that thirsted for cities. For continents.
Even as the tree trunks themselves began to fall in fetid spoilage, Georgiana’s bright song penetrated the blackening skies. I clung to her voice, and the destruction faded. The ringing chords of her pianoforte emerged, buttressing her melody, and hope returned.
The glass wall reflected the music room, warm and well lit. Beyond, the old forest waited for dawn. Georgiana’s song had ended.
“Did you see anything?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap.
My mind was so overwhelmed that my answer was mechanical. “I saw a wyvern. Then blight. An oily blackness in the east.” Georgiana nodded, unsurprised, and my amazement broke loose. “What was that? A vision? Magic? I pray it was not prophecy.”
“I have no name for it. I see it, also. No one else does. Not even Lizzy. Lizzy has rules in her head, and her rules say windows do not vanish.” Georgiana played an idle passage with one hand. “The wyvern was Mamma’s. I remember him distinctly. I used to pet him. She said I was old enough. Eleven.”
I thought of his bronze and ivory vigil. “He said your mother sent him away.”
The bench legs rattled as Georgiana shot to her feet. “He spoke to you?” Her hand clutched the pianoforte’s case. “I only see him. Again and again, and then the world dies.”
“I am sorry you did not hear.” There was hurt in Georgiana’s eyes, so I tried to share what I heard. “He said Lady Anne asked him to wait for me.”
Her hurt became shock, then softened to puzzlement.
“Of course, I would not hear. I never hear draca’s voices.
I hear their music, which is better. But…
a message from Mamma….” She bit her lip, her shoulders rigid, her willowy frame gawky and thin.
“This is why I do not sing while I play. Together, they are too much. Things change.”
“Do you know what that… oily blight is?” I asked. Unlike the illusions of the miasma, which seemed implausible as dreams when I remembered them later, that vileness still chilled me. It was real.
“I first glimpsed it in my bedroom window after Mamma’s death.
I asked Fitz for a room with a bigger window—so I could see more—and he made me this.
” Without irony, her fingers swept the perspective of the windowed wall, thrice my height.
“When Fènnù rose, I wondered if she was the darkness, but when we met her at the museum, she was only broken, not evil. So, it is something else. It reminds me of how Lizzy describes a wyfe dosed with crawler venom, but the blight is not a person. It is a… force. It seeks to swallow the world.” Swiftly, she crossed from her instrument to the fireplace and rubbed her hands in the warmth.
“The east is where Napoleon leads his armies. But this evil is greater than a man. I think Napoleon is its pawn.”
Despite the bleak topic, that amused me. “Do not tell Napoleon. He would be insulted.”
Georgiana smiled, too. “Lord Wellington would be as well. He steels himself for the ultimate battle with Monsieur Bonaparte. He prefers enemies of flesh and cannons of iron, not ladies’ visions.
” Her cheeks puffed with a youthful sigh.
“The war is part of the blight, but the blight is much bigger. Has Lord Wellington asked you about the dagger?”
Her churn of topics was boggling this early in the morning. “I have hardly spoken with his lordship.”
“He knows there is another great wyfe. He suspects it is you or Mary. When he knows the truth, he will ask you.”
I imagined Lord Wellington accusing me of being a great wyfe. “Ask me what?”
“If you will wield the dagger. He hopes to find it, then have a wyfe command Fènnù to destroy the French army. He asked me yesterday, before he left.” She had settled at the keyboard again—she seemed unable to stay away—and she banged a showy minor chord, the sort overused in amateur theater.
“His frown was most grave. He warned that the dagger might kill me.”
I looked at this slim beauty, who two years younger I would have called a girl. Her eyes were thoughtful but not frightened. “How could you answer such a question?”
“I said I did not yet know.” Georgiana rolled her eyes comically. “Fitz and Lizzy and Mary… they are always certain what is right. They would answer ‘no’ and cite a thousand reasons. But do their reasons mean I must let darkness consume the people I love?”
I remembered gazing into Fènnù’s eyes outside the museum. “I do not think Fènnù should be commanded by anyone. Her mind is ill. It is unfair.”
Georgiana played a heroic chord. “I like your reason.” She tucked a black lock of hair behind her ear. “Will you and Fitz meet this morning?”
Yet another topic. “Mr. Darcy wishes to assist me with ‘methods’ that helped his mother. Your mother, I mean.”
Georgiana grinned affectionately. “He asked my opinion before he spoke to you. He was nervous about discussing Mamma.” Not for the first time, I wondered what family history had unsettled him, and she added, “When you stand like that, with your feelings hidden, you are so like her. Not how you look—your hair is gold, while there seems a rule that Darcys have dark hair. But your feelings are pent up in the lines of your body, like a dancer before the music begins and they are free to leap and swirl. Mamma tried to hide her feelings, too. But feelings always break free.”
Georgiana’s fingers had wandered into the composition she played before. The one written for her. The intensity and novelty of the harmonies summoned that long-ago night on a frozen ship when Mr. Knightley described a gifted composer. “That is Mary Bennet’s music!”
Georgiana nodded, pleased. “I knew you would realize. She wrote this about her and me. You are the first person for whom I have played it, so you are the first person to know that I love her.” Her shoulders lifted in a musing shrug.
“Well, perhaps not. I think Fitz has guessed. Still, it is different to say it.” She played a shimmering chord.
“I do not think love is proven until you tell someone. So, now I have.”
“Oh,” I said, inadequately, wondering what she had just shared.
I had scoffed when Mr. Knightley claimed Mary was jealous of my friendship with Georgiana, but since then I had witnessed their charming intimacies.
Had they been a man and a woman, I would have long since declared them wildly infatuated.
Still, it was not unusual for two ladies to set up a household of convenience, and some couples were rumored to be more.
The Ladies of Llangollen were a famous pair, but they had money, which made all the difference.
Money freed a woman’s life in a hundred ways; freedom of love was one.
But even for a wealthy Darcy, a non-traditional romance was dangerous.
The Society for the Suppression of Vice pursued what they called “husband-wives,” and the results were violent.
Georgiana’s fingers explored melodies. She was five years my junior, but she seemed vastly more confident of love than me.
“You are right,” I said, “Telling someone is a test. A proof.” I watched her wrists sweep graceful arpeggios the length of the keyboard. “I shall keep it in confidence. But Mr. Knightley has guessed.”
Georgiana smiled. “He would. He knows Mary so well.”
“I have never been in love,” I said softly. I must not be. It would be too cruel.
Georgiana’s music halted. When the overtones faded, she spoke, her head lowered as if addressing the keys. “Mr. Knightley is a good friend, and a great romantic. You make me fear he will be hurt.”
I had said that I was not in love.
There was only one circumstance where an absence of love caused hurt. But Mr. Knightley could not be in love with me. He knew I would not marry. Was this a caution? A rebuke? Had I encouraged him?
Mr. Knightley had seemed safe. A gentleman without a living could not marry. Then again, he could marry for money. But no man would knowingly forgo the prestige of binding.
Encounters played in my mind, teeming with repressed feelings and resentment, or painful explanations and regret. But even that part of love—heartbreak—was lost to me. Mr. Knightley was leaving.