A Natural History of Dragons Read online

  “Those dragons,” I said wretchedly. “I was sure I had made a mull of my entire future, gabbling away like that in public.”

  He smiled, and the sight caused my heart to flutter a little, most ludicrously. “Not a mull of it—not then, anyway. But there was that other time …”

  My heart changed from fluttering to lurching. “Other time?” I racked my memory for other occasions on which I had disgraced myself. There were so many!

  “Yes, that time just a moment ago, when I asked you to marry me.” His smile widened. “You still haven’t given me an answer.”

  So I hadn’t, and after I got over my moment of horrified self-castigation, I swallowed and returned his smile. Miraculously, my voice worked on the first try. “Yes,” I said. “If you haven’t run off by now, you’re quite possibly the only man in Scirland who would have me. How could I do anything but agree?”

  Prey down, the horns sounded in my head. And this time, I was decidedly the victor.

  FOUR

  My wedding, and a gift — Married life — The Great Sparkling Inquiry — Miss Natalie Oscott and her grandfather — Plans for an expedition to Vystrana

  Papa gave his consent to my wedding, and I saw true joy in his eye when I returned home after the Season’s end. I teared up unexpectedly, and could not muster the words to thank him for pointing me at such a chance for happiness, but I believe he understood.

  The wedding took place that autumn, just after my seventeenth birthday. It was a lavish affair; with only the one daughter, my parents could afford to dower me well and send me off in grand style. We had several truly august personages in attendence, too, thanks to the connections of the Camherst family, which were somewhat better than my own.

  My clearest recollections of the day ought to be of my husband, and many of them are, but the one I wish to share concerns my father instead. A bride has few if any quiet moments to herself during the course of her wedding day, but that evening, Papa drew me aside and presented me with a small wrapped package. “We have other gifts for you and your husband as a couple,” he said, “but this one, my dear Isabella, is for you.”

  I suspected what it was even before I removed the paper; my fingers knew the shape inside so well. I did not begin crying, though, until I actually saw the cover of Sir Richard Edgeworth’s A Natural History of Dragons.

  “I purchased that book for you,” Papa said, “despite knowing it might result in trouble. As it has led you to happiness, I believe you should have it.”

  With a fine disregard for the damage my tears were doing to my cosmetics, and also the possibility of leaving stains on him, I threw my arms about my father and hugged him for dear life.

  As absurd as it may sound, I think that was the moment at which I realized I was truly leaving. This is something the gentleman readers of this memoir may not understand, but the ladies will know it all too well. If they are married, they have been through it already, and if not, I am sure they have devoted some thought to the matter. To marry means to leave one home for another, and often one place for another. My own experience was not so disconcerting as that of royal brides who depart for another country, but from my family’s estate in Tamshire, on which I had spent virtually all of my young life, I now left behind everything I knew and removed to Jacob’s house outside of Falchester.

  Jacob. I have made a deliberate choice, in the writing of this, to refer to him as Mr. Camherst until now, for that was how I thought of him at the time, and for some while after. Weeks, perhaps months, passed before it felt natural to call him by his given name. We spent a fair amount of time together during our courtship and engagement, but even so, moving into his household as his wife felt distressingly intimate, and no amount of telling myself that such intimacy was now quite expected made it less strange. Only time could do that—time in which he would cease to be a half stranger to me, and become, not only my husband, but a kind of friend, as I had once hoped.

  For his own part, I think Jacob had to adjust to me as well. He did not live a rowdy bachelor’s life, but he had been a bachelor, and was unused to having a woman ordering certain parts of his existence. Nor, I think, did he quite know what to do with me. He offered for me that afternoon in Westbury Square because he liked the notion of a wife with whom he could converse about more than the guest list for a dinner party—but what to do with her once she was installed in his house?

  In the end, he left me much to my own devices. I had free run of his library and could request certain purchases of him, if there was a title I desired that he had no interest in. Edgeworth and a few other volumes I kept for my own, in my private sitting room. With so much material to read, I must confess that I occasionally neglected my social duties as his wife, failing to arrange the sorts of dinner parties and other events that are expected of our class. Jacob spoke to me about it, and I promised to mend my ways; unfortunately, tragedy soon intervened.

  Almost a year after our wedding, I found myself with child, but miscarried after a short time. This left me in a depression for several months, during which I ceased correspondence with nearly all family and friends; I could not even bring myself to write to Manda Lewis, with her healthy son and another on the way. Despite reassurances, I could not shake off a guilty conviction that I had failed in one of my primary obligations as a wife. Jacob did what he could to comfort me, but eventually buried himself in business interests for a time—I was not exactly pleasant company, prone to crying fits as I was. To console myself one rainy afternoon when even books could not hold my attention, I took out one of the few childhood possessions I had brought with me from home: my carefully preserved Greenie.

  Jacob found me thus, with the vinegar-soaked sparkling cradled in my hands.

  “May I see that?” he asked gently. I started; I had not heard him enter my private sitting room. The motion tipped Greenie over my fingers, and I cried out, but Jacob caught him as he fell, and with such a delicate touch that he was not damaged.

  Jacob inspected the sparkling with a close eye. “Vinegar. Who taught you that?”

  “The cook,” I said. “I used to collect things, when I was young. All kinds of things, really—rocks and feathers and so on—but sparklings especially. He was the only one I kept, though, when—”

  I stopped myself, but Jacob prompted me onward. “When?”

  Then I told him about the wolf-drake; he had, of course, seen the scars on my shoulder, but I had been vague about their origins, citing only a “youthful misadventure.” My husband might be tolerant of my interests, but I had not wanted to expose my childhood foolishness so thoroughly. He settled himself onto the sofa with me as I talked, and laid Greenie on my knee. I picked the sparkling up and described the aftermath of that incident, the grey years, and how I had disposed of my collections, keeping only this one relic.

  When I finished, Jacob reached forward and wiped away the few tears that had fallen during my recitation. “Sparklings, eh?” he said. “I must concur with your father on the subject of wolf-drakes—I should not like to see you injured—but sparklings seem harmless enough. If you wish to collect them again, I will not stop you.”

  Only in silly novels does the sun actually come out at the speaking of such words, but to me, it felt like it did.

  The weather continued foul for several days, but that gave time for a crate of vinegar to arrive. The cook eyed me strangely when I came to collect it from the kitchens, but I did not care; having this purpose in my life, however small, helped fend off the malaise that had burdened me for so long.

  Jacob affectionately referred to what followed as the Great Sparkling Inquiry. The woodlands around Pasterway, the town outside Falchester in which we lived, were a breeding ground for sparklings, and in the summer and fall one could not take an evening walk without encountering them. I began by collecting the recently deceased, preserving them in vinegar, but soon moved on to butterfly nets and cricket cages, so that I might observe and sketch living specimens. The gardener’s shed was
given over to my use, as we did not keep much of a garden and therefore did not need many tools, and I soon filled it to the roof beams.

  Many might laugh at me for my fascination—and in fact many did; this was not an eccentricity we could keep entirely quiet—but I rapidly learned that there is far more to sparklings than my childish eye had seen. They differ in size, color, and conformation between males and females, and there is more than one breed; I identified three in the vicinity of Pasterway, though I have since revised that analysis. I learned their behaviours and habits, and poured much unsuccessful effort into coaxing them to breed in captivity.

  Earth-shaking discoveries they were not, but the simple fact that I made them lifted me out of my depression and back into the realm of social life. I went out once more, and hosted gatherings at our house; Jacob spent more time at home. With their delicate tails and scintillating wings, sparklings healed the damage my heart had suffered.

  In a sense, therefore, sparklings led me to my life’s work not once but twice: first when they seeded my childhood interest in natural history, and again when they brought me back to myself following the miscarriage. Had I not recovered then, I would not have met Maxwell Oscott, Earl of Hilford, and heard of his Vystrani expedition.

  * * *

  Even before my miscarriage, I went to Renwick’s less often than before; it is not the best place for recreation if you are not on the catch for a spouse or shepherding a relative through the process. Jacob’s younger brother, though, had decided to advertise himself as an eligible bachelor, and Jacob had promised to help look out a suitable wife for him.

  It was not the best choice for my first truly public outing since my miscarriage. The press of people threatened to become overwhelming, and I had occasion to be glad that entry to the upper rooms was so closely regulated. True crowds, I fear, might have done me in.

  As it was, I spent the evening reacquainting myself with Society, the ladies’ comments alternating between solicitous concern for my well-being and pointed barbs about my recent hobby. I endured these latter in polite silence, mostly for Jacob’s sake; left to my own devices, I would have loved to shock the earrings off some of the women I spoke to with a few well-chosen details about my sparkling breeding programme.

  My one respite came from Miss Natalie Oscott, a merry-hearted young woman I met early in the evening, and found to be quite a congenial soul. Very nearly the first words I heard her speak were a comment on the historical scholarship of Madame Précillon, and when the ebb and flow of socialization left the two of us alone for a time, I found she had quite as much ink on her nose as I. When she offered to introduce me to her grandfather, I was glad to accept.

  “He doesn’t often come here,” Miss Oscott said over her shoulder, leading me through the crowd, “but my cousin Georgia has designs on a husband, and Grandpapa insisted on meeting the fellow—ah, there you are. Have you put the fear of Heaven into the young man yet?”

  “The fear of me, which is quite sufficient,” Lord Hilford said, pecking his granddaughter upon the cheek. He was not a tall man, balding and stocky of build, though without the large gut commonly observed among the older peerage. I could imagine him as quite fearsome to a prospective suitor, though he greeted me pleasantly enough. It transpired that he knew Jacob’s father, Sir Joseph, and he congratulated me upon my marriage. “Must have missed the news,” he said apologetically. “I’ve not been in Scirland much these last few years. Puts me quite behind the news, I’m afraid.”

  “You’ve been abroad, then?” I asked.

  Miss Oscott laughed. “Grandpapa’s hardly ever at home. Too busy visiting exotic places.”

  Lord Hilford drew himself up with an air of aggrieved dignity, looking down at his granddaughter—or attempting to, for she was scarcely an inch shorter than he. “I’ll have you know, my girl, that the last six months were entirely for my health. My physician advised me to take the sea waters on Prania.”

  “And the sea-snakes that can only be found off the coasts of Prania had nothing to do with it, I’m sure.”

  Her words spurred my memory. “Didn’t you present to the Philosophers’ Colloquium about those creatures?”

  He dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “Nothing terribly important. I spent six months swimming and being dosed with vile tonics I didn’t need in the slightest; the lecture was my attempt to get something of value out of the experience. I do travel for research, though, as my granddaughter has so pointedly indicated.”

  “That must be pleasant,” I sighed. “Jacob and I had hoped to take a tour after our wedding, but circumstances interfered. Where have your travels led you?”

  As I had surmised from Miss Oscott’s evident fondness for her grandfather, it did not take much encouragement to get Lord Hilford started in talking about his research. He puffed up a little and hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. “Here and there. After so many years, the places do pile up. I was with the army in my youth, during our wars in Akhia, but the desert doesn’t agree with me; the sun is too harsh.” One hand came away from its perch to rub at his hairless pate. “Not enough to protect me up top, you see, and I went bald at a young age.

  “Nor am I much of a sailor,” he went on, “so it’s the mainland for me, I fear. In fact, I think the climate of Prania did more harm to my joints than good. Rheumatism, you know. I intend to try the mountains next—a research expedition to Vystrana.”

  There are any number of animals in Vystrana that one could go to study, but in truth, my mind went straight to the creature I had seen a few years before, in the king’s menagerie. “Dragons?”

  Lord Hilford raised one white eyebrow at me. “Indeed, Mrs. Camherst.”

  “But—do you not study sea creatures?”

  “I have a little of late, but only in pursuit of a side theory of mine, regarding taxonomy. If I’m a poor sailor, what sort of seagoing naturalist would I make, eh?” Lord Hilford shook his head. “No, Mrs. Camherst, my interest is primarily in dragons. We know very little of them, compared to other creatures—it’s a terrible shortcoming in our learning.”

  It called to mind a fellow Jacob and I had dined with once. “Do you know Lord Shalney, by any chance?”

  His laugh turned out to be the basso version of Miss Oscott’s. “Verner? Certainly. I take it you’ve heard his diatribe on our lack of dragon knowledge, then.”

  “Shortly after my wedding,” I admitted. “Vystrana, you say?”

  “There’s a breed of dragons there—we call them rock-wyrms, though the locals call them balaur. Not a native word; it may be a loan from Bulskoi or Zmayin. Relatively approachable, as dragons go, and one doesn’t have to endure too much in the way of dreadful weather to find them, at least in the proper season. I often wonder what it is about dragons that makes them prefer extreme climates—or is it just that we’ve pushed them back as we’ve spread out? Were there once simple field- and meadow-dragons that liked their living more comfortable? I couldn’t say, but Vystrana seems a reasonable place to try and observe the ones we have.”

  I was a better hand at concealing my enthusiasm these days than I had once been. I like to believe the expression I presented to Lord Hilford was one of polite interest, rather than the quivering excitement I held within. “I am sure my husband will look forward to reading about your findings.” He would have to wait, though—first for Lord Hilford to conduct his expedition, then for him to issue his report, and finally for me to snatch it out of the mail and devour every word before giving it to him. Jacob found dragons interesting, make no mistake, but not with my degree of passion. He could read it after I was done.

  “Grandpapa brought a dragon back from Vystrana once,” Miss Oscott put in. “He gave it as a personal gift to the king.”

  “The albino?” I asked, looking to Lord Hilford.

  He nodded, beaming at the memory of his own accomplishment—as well he might, given the difficulties involved. “You saw my little drake, I take it?”

 
; “In the king’s menagerie.” I blushed a little, wishing I could do it as prettily as some ladies, and admitted to him, “Jacob and I met there, in fact. Not just in the menagerie, but in the dragon room itself. It made me so very low when I heard the Vystrani had died.”

  The earl looked philosophical. “Yes, well, don’t blame Swargin; he did his best. They rarely thrive away from their homelands. Most efforts to transport dragons fail outright, of course, and then they do poorly in captivity. The imperial dragon-men of Yelang claim they’ve been able to propagate some of their local breeds, but I have my doubts. My little white outlasted that Akhian, though!”

  I remembered Mr. Swargin talking about the desert-drake’s delicate constitution. I had hoped for her to survive, but she had succumbed to a pulmonary illness even before my wedding. “Was that one your acquisition as well, my lord?”

  “Only in part. I did help capture her—and swore blind after that I would never go to the desert again—but the Duke of Conchett was the one who presented her to the king.”

  Not one dragon captured and brought into captivity, but two. My estimation of Lord Hilford was climbing steadily, and had not been low to begin with. “And the Moulish swamp-wyrm?”

  He laughed outright. “Nothing could persuade me to attach my name to that thing. Ill-tempered and as intractable as they come, and an ugly example of the breed to boot. Not that Moulish dragons are ever what one might call attractive, mind you. But I’m certain its breath contributed to the ill health of the Akhian—of course, our climate also had much to do with it; I’ll put blame where blame is due—and it bit my little white more than once, when it got out of the control of its keepers. No, Mrs. Camherst, the Moulish beast was not my doing.”

  “I hope I haven’t offended,” I said, though I rather doubted I had.

  “Not in the least. You do an old man’s sense of self-importance good, asking so much about dragons.”