Mamma blinked. “Is it in fashion?”
“Oh, itis!” Georgiana assured her and took her arm. “Shall you and I visit the schoolchildren until she is done?”
Papa’s librarywas how I had left it after visiting to deliver Jane’s daughter. The Longbourn business ledgers filled most of one shelf. 1786 through 1810 were labeled in Papa’s hand. 1811 and 1812 were labeled by Lizzy; secretly, she had managed our estate when Papa’s health failed.
Longbourn belonged to Jane and Charles now, but this year’s ledger, 1813, was labeled by me. I flicked it open and saw only my spikey numerals, the digits’columns exactly aligned. I had caught up the bookkeeping while Jane recuperated, but Jane and Charles had added nothing since. The optimistic explanation was that they consolidated both their estates’ accounts through Netherfield’s records. More likely, they paid any bill they received if it came with a smile.
For no sound reason, I opened the 1812 ledger. Lizzy’s neat numerals and annotations awaited. Accurate. Prettier than mine. The image turned watery, so I closed the cover, then squeezed my eyes tight until my feelings settled.
Why would a member of Napoleon’s court think a Bennet could find the mysterious flute?
TheLoch bairnjournal, the reason for my visit, was shelved beside the ledgers. For generations, its title had been misread as “Longbourn,” even causing the misnaming of our estate. It recorded the history of the Bennet family, and it was old. The first entries preceded the Tudor era.
I drew it out, the aged leather soft and rough as velvet. Faded embossing showed a wyvern clutching an empty chest. Lizzy had solved that riddle. Gentry ladies, titled “wyfe” even before they wedded, had the right to bind draca on their marriage night. But marriage gold, the wedding offering collected by the Church to ensure a binding, was meaningless. Draca bound for love, not gold—to experience the human emotions they never felt.
Or did draca experience emotions, but fail to understand them? That would be like my life, buffeted by feelings that others named with a wink or a shrug while in my breast they burned like unwatchable suns, or inscrutable gods even, overwhelming and enigmatic. Save for a few I had come to recognize. The heat of love. The collapsing hollow of grief.
I riffled the pages. I had committed them to memory, but it had been many months, and even my recollection faded. Some of the oldest pages were not intelligible, and in my mind’s eye those were a blur—precise recall without comprehension was difficult.
The Frenchwoman said the third great item was an artifact of music.
I knew less about the third item than the other two. I had held the dagger in my own hand; it was one of Fènnù’s ten-inch serrated teeth fitted with a leather-wrapped hilt decorated with a gold medallion. And through Fènnù’s memories, I had glimpsed an ancient wyfe holding the amulet, a splash of scarlet on a golden chain—a scarlet scale from Yuánchi, whose Chinese name meant vitality and life.
If the flute was made from dragon claw, logically the claw came from a third dragon—the dragon of song. And the flute was for the wyfe of song, Georgiana.
I turned a page, and my finger alighted on the passage I had recalled:
For the Great Song, I knowe the three relicks, edged, chayned, and hollow. The Queene holds the edged and chayned, but not the thryd, the hollow relick of Musike bathed in tears of betrayal.
Before, that had seemed mere stylistic rambling. Tudor authors enjoyed that; the Loch bairn journal, ostensibly our family history, was no exception. But three relics could be the three great items. The dagger was edged, and the amulet, poetically, might be called chained. A flute, the relic of music, would be hollow.
The reference to a queen, at least, was clear from the dates: Queen Mary the first, the great wyfe who gave golden touch pieces as blessings with her healings, sent her knights to steal the dagger Gramr, and eventually acquired the amulet as well.
I had no intention of giving the flute to the French. But if it related to our family, it might help Lizzy, or perhaps it led to the “great song” which might. And all three items mattered. They were made to heal the dragons’ broken song. Heal the growing blight that Georgiana saw in her visions.
The Frenchwoman had said a Bennet could find the flute. The peculiarity of that struck me at last, and, foolishly, I found my gaze wandering Papa’s shelves. But draca claws were a distinctive, lustrous black. There was nothing made of dragon claw at Longbourn. There was not even a flute. As a child, I had poked through every cabinet and crevice a hundred times.
I tucked the Loch bairn journal under my arm. The French had stolen books before, so the journal would be safer at Pemberley. I added the three slim volumes Papa had published as a young man. I had read them as a child; I read every book in the house. They were social and political theory, not history, but they were by a Bennet. Finally, I tucked in one more book, simply a keepsake.
A happy ruckus of children’s voices drifted through the open window, so I went out the back door into a bedlam of young laughter. A dozen children between five and ten were playing around a shining gold creature as tall as my waist—Jane’s wyvern, sitting stoic as a sphinx while a little girl petted her tail.
Georgiana and Mamma were seated at our garden table with a pot of tea. Georgiana met me with a smile and dancing eyes. “Your mother has been describing the local gentlemen to me. The single ones, that is.”
“Mamma!” I scolded her.
“Why ever not?” Mamma said, offended. “Hertfordshire gentlemen are suitable for any class of society. After all, if Mr. Darcy can marry Lizzy—” She faltered and took a sip of tea.
Unannounced, my sister Jane appeared around the corner of the house. She wore robin’s egg blue and had her new daughter, Jemma, in her arms. Jane gave a happy cry, then freed one finger to point at her wyvern. “I knew someone was visiting! I feel her moods sometimes, and she is so excited. Has Lizzy…”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
Quieted, Jane took a seat. “We must be patient. It is just that Jemma is growing so fast. Lizzy has not even met her.”
Jane bounced her baby girl a few times, then passed her to me. I took her happily. Jemma gawked up, fascinated, her plump fists wandering.
This cheered up Jane. “Look! She adores her Aunt Mary. Of course, you are the first face she saw.” I had delivered Jane’s baby at Netherfield after a four-hour labor so routine I finished Anna Barbauld’sEighteen Hundred and Elevenbetween contractions.
“She was too young to remember me,” I said, “but she enjoys my spectacles.” I grinned at her lively blue eyes. Her blonde hair had puffed into fine curls, and she had gained two healthy pounds. Already, she was the image of her mother. She likely slept through every night just to be considerate.
