you have seen visions from the past. wyverns, too, hold the lore. but look forward, shining wyfe, and see: i will never fail your sister again
Jane, delighted by her wyvern’s arrival, dangled her enchanted baby a few inches from the gleaming, fanged muzzle. The baby cooed, as fascinated by golden scales as by my spectacles. The wyvern stood regally, watching the garden around us, and I knew Jane and her daughter would be defended to the death.
3
THESHRINE
MARY
Five hours out of Longbourn,our coachman, a military rifleman discharged after losing an eye, rapped on the front panel and called down, “Trouble.”
I pushed my head out the side window. Two farm carts had blocked the road. Four men lounged beside them wearing long, belted black coats, their cheeks shaven and hair cropped.
“Blackcoats!” I shouted up. We had been warned of raids.
The driver cursed and snapped the reins. The horses surged sideways, cranking the coach a quarter turn and into the fields, wheels bouncing over the rails of a fallen fence. That seemed reckless—we could have broken an axel—until I saw the second group of Blackcoats running up behind us, muskets in hand.
A gunshot rang out, and the horses leaped to a gallop. The coach banged and rocked, hammering across furrows of sprouting wheat. I leaned farther to see the men chasing us, and the doorframe cracked the side of my head, knocking me half out the window.
Dazed, it took a moment to understand why I did not fall. Georgiana had caught my flailing arm in her stretched hand, her other grasping the far door white-knuckled. She hauled me back through the open window. We fell in a tangled mess, then held on—to each other, to the seat frame, to the doorhandle.
The horses veered parallel to the furrows of wheat, and the motion changed to seasick swaying. A bullet passed, its whine dropping a perversely perfect octave, then a gun bellowed over our heads, the footman’s blunderbuss.
The coach banged again, almost knocking us airborne, then the wheels were rushing on gravel as the horses found their stride on clear road. “We’re past, ladies,” the driver shouted. “We’re safe. They’re not mounted.”
“Keep your head inside next time,” Georgiana whispered.
Late the next afternoon,our coach rolled into the valley below Pemberley House. The four-horse team was tired, having drawn us since morning, but the clop of their hooves quickened. They were Pemberley horses, stabled in Derby on our trip out and eager for home.
I was eager as well. Pemberley was safe.
Usually the valley was quiet, but today a crowd was gathered beside the lake. Carts and horses lined the road. Two massive, industrial wagons had been wheeled near the shore, and fifty feet onto the water, a strange, square barge floated, topped with heavy lumber trusses and busy men.
Georgiana called to stop the coach, and we made our way through the crowd. Most were Britons from the Pemberley hills. Welcoming “Miss Darcys” and “Miss Bennets” trailed us.
Mrs. Reynolds, the Pemberley housekeeper, was at the front. She metGeorgiana with a concerned frown and said, “This is unnatural madness, to be sure!”
“Where is my brother?” Georgiana asked, puzzled.
Mrs. Reynolds pointed outward. And downward. A stream of bubbles was bursting beside the barge.
“Mr. Darcy is underwater,” answered a white-haired, stooped gentleman, seventy years old if he was a day but beaming with boyish pride. He rolled on in a Scot’s brogue. “James Rennie, machinery maker, at your service. Mr. Darcy is testing my improvements to the diving bell.” At our stunned expressions, he added, “He is quite safe.”
On the barge, a man waved a pair of small flags. Mr. Rennie squinted and translated, “The bell is at five fathoms. Mr. Darcy has ‘pulled twice’ through the signal rope. That means ‘all is well,’ and he wishes to descend to seven fathoms.”
Georgiana’s arms folded into a knot. “Is that deep?”
“Five fathoms is thirty feet. Well within design capabilities. See the force pump?” Mr. Rennie pointed to the barge where four men strained to turn a huge, horizontal crank. They looked like oxen turning a mill. “That drives air into the bell. In the laboratory, I have measured two atmospheres of pressure, sufficient for ten fathoms. But five fathoms is enough for today.”
Mr. Rennie made a chop motion with his hand. An assistant picked up a pair of flags and signaled back. On the barge, ropes were lashed. Different cranks turned. A dripping hawser wound onto a shaft.
“Was he on the bottom?” I asked. That was hard to conceive.
Mr. Rennie’s buoyant confidence sank a notch. “The barge is anchored in fifteen fathoms. At the lake’s center, our sounding line did not reach bottom. It is a hundred fathom line, so the lake exceeds six hundred feet.” His mood bobbed back up. “However, Mr. Darcy is extremely… that is, he has offered to fund development.”
Six hundred feet. Could Lizzy be so far? Emma had sensed that Lizzy and Yuánchi remained bound, proof that Lizzy had survived her plunge into the lake. Anything more was conjecture.
My mind filled with myths of Amphitrite hiding in the depths, pursued by her Poseidon.
