A Natural History of Dragons Page 3

  Here I should write something heroic, but in truth, the thought that went through my head was: This is what you came for, and it is the last thing you will ever see.

  More gunshots went off, these not directly in my ears but still loud enough that I screamed again and curled into a ball, terrified that the shots would hit me, that the wolf-drake would leap again, that one way or another I was going to die.

  Instead I heard a frenzy of snarling, a horse’s agonized scream, men shouting and horns blowing, and then, after a moment or two, a blessed sound I recognized, for it was the same horn call they used when returning home from a successful hunt: prey down.

  Then there were men around me, and I uncurled only to realize that my cap had fallen off at some point in the struggle, and my hair come loose from the ribbon that had bound it atop my head. There seemed to be brown strands everywhere, waving like banners as if to advertise, Here! Look! A girl!

  Which was, more or less, what I heard the men saying. (But with rather more profanity.)

  More shouts, and then my father was there, staring down at me in horror: the minor pagan god, appalled at what his worshipper had done. I stared back at him, I think; this is the point at which things become somewhat muzzy, for I know I went into shock. Papa picked me up, and I asked about Jim, but no one answered me. Soon I was on Papa’s horse, still cradled in his arms, riding out of the woods and across the rocky hillside to a shepherd’s cottage.

  A physician had accompanied the hunt, to minister to both the dogs and the men; he arrived shortly after we did. I was not his first patient, though. I heard Jim’s voice moaning from the other side of the small room, but I could not see him through the press of other people.

  “Don’t hurt him,” I said to no one in particular, though rationally I knew the physician must be trying to help him. “Don’t blame him. I made him do it. And he protected me; he got in the way when the wolf-drake attacked.” This I had pieced together after the fact.

  The injuries Jim suffered through his heroic move were one of two things that kept him from being ignominiously sacked. The other—though I can take little pride in it—was my tireless defense, insisting that he was not to be blamed for bringing me on the hunt. Now, far too late, my guilt boiled up, and I fear I kept harping on the point long after my father had agreed to keep him on.

  All of that came later, though. Once finished with Jim, the physician came to me, and banished everyone but my father and the now-sleeping Jim out of the hut, for the wound was on my shoulder and it would not be appropriate for others to be there while it was bared. (This I thought foolish, even at the time, for young ladies may wear off-the-shoulder dresses, which show just as much flesh as his ministrations did.)

  I was given brandy to drink, which I had never had before, and its fire nearly made my eyes start out of my head. They made me drink more, though, and after I had enough in me, they poured some over the wounds in my shoulder to cleanse them. This made me cry, but thanks to the brandy I no longer particularly cared that I was crying. By the time the physician began to stitch me up, I was not aware of much at all, except him telling Papa in a low voice, “The claws were sharp, so the flesh is not too ragged. And she’s young and strong. If infection does not threaten, it will heal well.”

  Through lips gone very thick and uncooperative, I tried to mumble something about how I wanted to wear off-the-shoulder dresses, but I do not believe it came out very clearly, and then I was asleep.

  * * *

  Mama had vapors upon my return, of course, but no one questioned me immediately, because they judged that I needed quiet rest to recover from my ordeal. This was not entirely a mercy; it meant that I had many hours in which to imagine what they would say to me when the time came. And while I may not have Amanda’s vivid imagination, given enough time, mine does more than adequately well.

  When I was finally permitted to get out of bed, put on a dressing gown, and go out into my sitting room (two days after I deemed myself ready to do so), I found Papa waiting for me.

  I had prepared for this; those two days had their benefits as well as their drawbacks. “Is Jim recovering?” I asked before Papa could say anything, for no one had told me anything about him.

  Papa’s face pulled further into its grave lines behind his beard. “He will. He took quite a wound, though.”

  “I am sorry for it,” I said honestly. “Were it not for him, I might be dead. It isn’t his fault I was there, you know.”

  Sighing, Papa gestured for me to sit down. I settled onto a chair rather than the love seat he indicated, not wanting to look as though I might need to use it as a fainting couch. “I know,” he said, a world of weariness in his voice. “Madness like that could never have been his idea to begin with. He should have refused, of course, and reported it to me—”

  “I wouldn’t let him,” I broke in, eager to martyr myself. “You mustn’t—”

  “Blame him, I know. You’ve said it many times before.”

  I had the sense to close my mouth rather than continue to protest.

  Papa sighed again as he looked across at me. The late-morning light was coming through the windows and lighting up all the roses embroidered into my upholstery; in his sober grey suit, my father looked terribly out of place. I could not remember the last time he had come into my sitting room, if indeed he ever had.

  “What am I going to do with you, Isabella?” he asked.

  I bowed my head and tried to look meek.

  “I can imagine the story you will tell me, if I give you half a chance. You wanted to see the wolf-drake, yes? Alive, preferably, instead of safely dead. I suppose I have Sir Richard Edgeworth to blame for this.”

  My head shot up at that, and no doubt my guilt was written all over my face.

  He nodded. “Oh, I keep a closer eye on my library than you seem to think. The catalogue, so carefully folded back, and then one book covered in rather less dust than it ought to be. Which your mother would take as an indication that we should sack the maid—but I do not mind a little dust. Especially when it alerts me to my daughter’s clandestine activities.”

  Inexplicably, this made my eyes fill with tears, as if skulking about in his library were a thing to be repented of more than my wolf-drake escapade. Mama’s disappointment was a familiar thing, but his, I found, could not be borne. “I’m sorry, Papa.”

  Silence stretched out. Crawling with shame, I wondered how many of the maids were eavesdropping at the keyholes.

  At last Papa straightened and looked me in the eye. “I have to think of your future, Isabella,” he said. “As do you. You won’t be a girl forever. In a few years, we must find a husband for you, and that will not be easy if you persist in making trouble for yourself. Do you understand?”

  No gentleman would want a wife covered in scars from misadventures with dangerous beasts. No gentleman would take on a woman who would be a disgrace to him. No gentleman would marry me, if I kept on this way.

  For a few trembling, defiant moments, I wanted to tell my father that I would live a spinster, then, and everything else be damned. (Yes, I thought of it in those terms; do you think fourteen-year-old girls have never heard men swear?) These were the things I loved. Why should I give them up for the company of a man who would leave me to run the household and otherwise bore myself into porridge?

  But I was not so lacking in common sense as to believe defiance would result in happiness, for me or anyone else. The world simply did not work that way.

  Or so it seemed to me, at the wise old age of fourteen.

  I therefore pressed my lips together, gathering my strength. Under the bandages that swathed it, my shoulder twinged.

  “Yes, Papa,” I said. “I understand.”

  THREE

  The grey years — Horses and drawing — Six names for my Season — The king’s menagerie — An awkward conversation there — The prospect of a friend — My Season continues — Another awkward conversation, with good results

  I
will spare you anything like a lengthy account of the two years that followed. Suffice it to say that I forever after referred to them as “the grey years,” for attempting to force myself into the mold of a proper young woman, against my true inclinations, drained nearly all color from my life.

  My collections of oddments from the natural world went away, tipped out onto the ground of the small wood behind our house. The cards I had written up to label various items were burned, with great (not to say melodramatic) ceremony. No more would I bring home anything dirtier than the occasional flower picked from the gardens.

  Only Greenie remained, tucked away where Mama would not find him. That was one treasure I could not bring myself to forswear.

  I would be a liar, though, if I pretended that I gave up on my passions entirely. Horses were an acceptable pastime, if dragons were not, and so, in company with Amanda Lewis, I turned my attentions to them. They had no wings—a fault I never quite forgave them for—but I learned a great deal about them in those two years: the various breeds and their conformations; patterns of coloration; the different gaits, both those that occurred naturally and those that could be taught. I kept extensive diaries in a cipher Mama could not read, noting therein a thousand details of equine nature, from appearance to movement, behaviour, and more.

  Horses, as it happens, led indirectly to a new and unexpected source of pleasure. While my shoulder was healing—and indeed, for a long time afterward—I was considered too delicate to ride, but I could not stand to be in the house all the time. I therefore had the servants place a chair by the paddock on fine days, and there I sat to sketch.

  People often say kind and utterly misguided things about my “talent” for art. The truth is, I have no talent, and never did. If any of my youthful sketches survived, I would show them as proof; they were as clumsy as any beginner’s. But drawing was a suitable accomplishment for a young lady—one of the few I enjoyed—and I am nothing if not stubborn. So, through determined practice, I learned the rules of perspective and shadow, and how to render what I saw with charcoal or pen. Andrew, bored by this turn of events, abandoned me for a time, but he could be persuaded to tell me when the horse doctor was coming to treat injuries or birth foals; and so I learned anatomy. Mama, relieved to see me take up something like a ladylike pastime, turned a blind eye to these excursions.

  At the time, this seemed a sorry replacement for my grand adventures, which were (I thought) over for good. With the wisdom of age, though, I have come to be grateful for the fruit of those grey years. They honed my eye and taught me to keep notes on what I saw: two skills which have formed the basis of all my accomplishments since.

  For all that, though, they were two very dull, very tedious years.

  Their end came with my sixteenth birthday, and my official transition from “girl” to “young woman.” Mama therefore looked to my future—or rather I should say, put into action the plans she had been forming since I was born. She had great ambitions for my marriage: Sir Daniel Hendemore’s only daughter should not wed any of the gentlemen in the Tam River Valley, but go to Falchester and make her debut in Society, where she might attract the eye of someone very fine indeed.

  My patience with martyrdom would not have extended quite so far as to endure this peaceably, were it not for a startling conversation I had with my father shortly before I was to be dragged to Falchester.

  We had this encounter in his study, where I trained my eyes away from the shelves with their old, forbidden friends. My father leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers before him.

  “It is not my intention,” he said, “to force you into unhappiness, Isabella.”

  “I know that, Papa,” I replied: the picture of daughterly demureness.

  Perhaps a smile quirked his mouth inside its beard; perhaps I simply imagined it. “You do that very well,” he said, index fingers tap-tapping against each other. “Indeed, you’ve become quite a credit to us, Isabella. I know these years have not been easy on you, though.”

  To this I did not respond, having nothing ladylike to say. I valued his approval too much to cast it aside.

  After a pause, he said, “Matchmakers have gone out of fashion these days; we seem to think we can do better without professional aid. But I have taken the liberty of paying one to assemble a small list, which you will find on the table at your side.”

  Mystified, I found the paper and unfolded it, revealing six names.

  “A husband willing to fund a library for his bookish wife is not so easy to obtain; most would see it as a pointless expense. You might, however, find one willing to share his library. The gentlemen on that list are all amateur scholars, with well-stocked studies.” Papa’s eyes gleamed at me from beneath his brows, and the lines around them threatened to crinkle up. “I have it on good authority that the ones I have underlined possess copies of A Natural History of Dragons.”

  As I had not allowed myself to think that name for two years, it struck me with roughly the same force I imagine accompanies the name of a girlhood love, not seen for ages. For a moment, I understood Manda and her sensational novels.

  Before I succeeded in finding words, Papa went on. “I have not secured any of them for you; that task remains for you and your mother, who would not thank me for my interference. They are all eligible, however, and should you snare one, I promise my consent.”

  He rose from his chair in time to catch me as I came flying around his desk to envelop him in a hug. A laugh of startled delight won its way free of me. After our conversation in my sitting room, I had demoted my father from minor pagan god to well-meaning ogre—but it seemed that my dutiful efforts these two years past had paid dividends.

  Six names. Surely one of them would bring me joy.

  * * *

  The hunt for spouses is an activity on a par with fox-hunting or hawking, though the weapons and dramatis personae differ. Just as grizzled old men know the habits of hares and quail, so do elegant society gossips know every titbit about the year’s eligible men and women. Horses feature in both pursuits: in one as modes of transportation, and in the other as means of display. The fields and forests of the countryside are changed out for drawing rooms, ballrooms, and every other sort of room where a social event might be arranged and the eye of a potential spouse might be caught.

  So did Society descend upon Falchester, and the horns sounded the beginning of the hunt.

  Gossip about such matters ages badly; who said what to whom and where is swiftly forgotten, replaced by fresher meat. At my advanced years, such minutiae of my youth rank somewhere between the Gostershire tax rolls and the complaints of one’s hypochondriac great-aunt for their interest to the modern audience. I shall trouble you only with the part that had lasting effect, which is the day I went to the king’s menagerie.

  I was not supposed to go. Mama’s scrupulous plans called for me to be seen riding in the park that afternoon; she intended to make a virtue of my country upbringing, by displaying my skill in the saddle. But she, poor woman, had come down with a stomach ailment (I suspect bad fish at Renwick’s the night before), and could not accompany me.

  By a stroke of luck, Andrew was in town at the time, and came by to discharge his filial duty by commiserating with our mother. He was not yet hunting a wife; at that time he was idling his way through university, changing his mind every other week as to whether he would prefer to join the army and shoot at people in foreign places. But he was still my best ally among my brothers, and so when Mama fretted about the disruption of her plans, he offered to be my escort for the day.

  She did not consider this ideal—he might be mistaken for a suitor of mine, by those who did not know him—but I had no other chaperon arranged. (Amanda, who had come out and promptly wed the previous year, was housebound by the expectation of her first child, and could not be there to assist.) Andrew’s offer was better than my wasting the time at home, and so she agreed, with reluctance.

  Andrew caught my arm as soon as we were
away from her door. “Don’t put on riding clothes,” he said, sotto voce. “We’re going to the menagerie.”

  I blinked at him, surprised but not uncooperative. I enjoyed riding, but out in the countryside; trotting around the park in boring circles held little appeal. “But we shan’t get in.”

  “Yes, we shall,” he said, his eye gleaming with conspiratorial pleasure. “The Countess of Granby has arranged for the tour, and I am permitted a guest.”

  I knew little of the menagerie, except that the king’s late father had established it on spacious grounds downstream from Falchester, and the son had spared no expense to see it stocked with every exotic creature that could be persuaded to survive in captivity. It existed primarily for the entertainment of the royal family, with occasional public days, which I, growing up in rural Tamshire, had no chance to experience. As Andrew could well guess, a tour would be a rare treat for me.

  Our guide was Mr. Swargin, the king’s naturalist. Under his direction, the menagerie was organized according to broad type: birds in one place, mammals in another, reptiles in a third, and so on. Stuffed and mounted specimens of those creatures that had passed on stood alongside the cages of those that still lived. The king possessed parrots, platypi, and piranhas; cuckoos, camels, and chameleons. I attempted to restrain my enthusiasm; learning is an admirable thing, in women as well as men, but only when it is of the right kind. (That is, of course, society’s opinion; not my own. I am glad to say it has changed somewhat since my day.) As a young lady, I should show interest only in songbirds and other such dainty creatures, lest I brand myself as ink-nosed.

  The tour was disappointing in its organization, for people wandered in and out of the various gardens and glass-walled rooms, few paying even the slightest attention to Mr. Swargin’s speeches. I wished very much to listen to him, but didn’t dare single myself out by being the only one to attend to his words, and so I caught only snatches before we stopped before a pair of very grand doors.