Darwin's Dragons

by Lindsay Galvin

  ‘Sorry sir—’

  ‘No matter,’ he said, tugging on his whiskers. ‘Do you recall the small birds you preserved for your own collection, in the Galapagos?’

  ‘The finches? I do. But your own specimens were the best examples.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, impatient, his eyes red-rimmed from long hours at his desk. ‘But I labelled those myself and I’m afraid they are incomplete. Did you mark yours with the exact location and island?’

  ‘Of course, sir. Just like you taught me,’ I said.

  ‘Well, thank the blazes you are a better student than I am a teacher. The ornithologist, Gould, from the Royal Society, has agreed to sketch and identify them for me, and my own records are sadly lacking.’

  I opened a drawer in my bureau and found the logbook where I kept a neat record of my own small collection with dates, locations and sketches. I found the correct page and handed it to Mr Darwin. Seeing my drawings jogged my memory. The fumarole, the water . . .

  ‘There’s something else, sir. When I was on Narborough I observed a very similar bird, eating a yellow flower on a prickly pear. Its beak was longer and had more of a point to it than I’d seen before.’

  My master looked up, there was an ink stain on his lip and his fluff of hair stood on end. ‘Cactus flower? Can you remember well enough to sketch this bird for me, in detail?’

  ‘Yes, I think so, sir,’ I said.

  ‘I’d like you to do that now then, Covington. Right away,’ he said.

  I took out a piece of drawing paper. Mr Darwin nodded and went back to his studies.

  Farthing raised her head from the windowsill and gave a low hoot. She had been lazy lately, spending many hours laid out like this, as though soaking up the watery sun. Either that or by the fireplace. I wasn’t sure England suited her, or me either after five years at sea. I ran my finger around the inside of my collar, starched and itchy.

  Mr Darwin muttered. Farthing flicked up her head, then leapt to the floor and raced to the door. She scratched, hooting and growling.

  ‘Covington, please. You know I can’t have the lizard—’

  A smart knock on the door. Without waiting for an answer, the housekeeper we shared with the other apartments, Mrs Harvey, stepped in. Her cheeks were pink and tendrils of pale hair escaped her cap. Farthing yelped and she jumped out of the way, and then the lizard flew out of the door. Mrs Harvey gasped and gave a small curtsey, her reddened hands clutching her apron.

  ‘Farthing!’ I called.

  ‘Mr Darwin,’ said Mrs Harvey, with forced calm, ‘I simply cannot contend with more unexpected vermin. That . . . newt thingummy . . .’ she waved in the direction Farthing had just ran, ‘is bad enough. But I nearly killed this new little one with my broom.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Mr Darwin looked up from his work, frowning at Mrs Harvey, who was normally so steady and cheerful. She seemed awful out of sorts. What was this ‘new little one’ she was talking about?

  ‘We have vermin? Please lay the poison, Mrs Harvey, and quickly,’ snapped Mr Darwin. ‘I cannot have pests about. We are working with delicate specimens.’ He went back to his papers, frowning.

  Mrs Harvey straightened her back and I saw by the tremor in her lips she was genuinely shocked. ‘It’s your specimens that are the problem, sir. The kitchen is simply not the place . . . such blazing eyes . . . mercy me, I thought it were a devil.’

  I blinked at her. Little one? Blazing eyes? In the kitchen? Mr Darwin and I stood at the same time, scraping back our chairs, and I didn’t wait for him. I raced down the narrow stairs.

  The kitchen was warm and scented with fresh bread. Farthing had already reached the gap beside the stove and was standing on her hind legs, nose beneath the cloth that covered the open chest. The fabric was moving, and from inside came a rustling. My heart leapt into my throat and my hand shook as I went to remove the cloth, but I could not quite bring myself to do it.

  Could this really be happening?

  If all the eggs hatched there would be eight . . . eight dragons. I remembered their mother, her power and size.

  Mr Darwin leant over me and lifted the cloth just enough to see. The bright eyes seemed too large for its wobbling head. The hatchling stopped shifting over its broken shell and stared directly up at us. I blinked and shook my head. I knew those eyes. I knew that intelligent, curious stare. It opened its mouth and the inside was pink, the edges rough, and I knew one day it would be rimmed with tiny teeth. It released a mewling sound like a cat begging for fish scraps. It was the size of a newborn kitten.

  But it was far from a kitten. And not gold like its mother.

  It was green. Pistachio green.

  The hatchling wasn’t a dragon. It was a . . . Farthing.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The hatchling couldn’t be a . . . Farthing. Couldn’t be. I’d seen the way the mother dragon had defended her brood, had tried to lift the egg in her mouth . . .

  I pushed the cloth back entirely and leant forward to examine the newborn. To look for evidence on its tiny back, on its flanks. Like hatchling birds, the wings would be small, tiny, they would develop as the creature grew. The flanks were smoothly scaled, just as Farthing’s were, and green.

  No wings.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t credit it if I had not seen it with my own eyes. You are a wonder, Covington. A wonder!’ exclaimed Mr Darwin. ‘To have an egg survive that journey? The creature seems healthy and it is highly probable it is the same species as our Farthing. How singular for her to lead you to the nest when the eggs were in peril. Usually only the parent would show such protective behaviour.’

  I didn’t understand. I stared from Farthing to the hatchling and back again. Same shade of green. But Farthing was too small to be the mother . . . much too small. There had to be another explanation for this.

  One of the eggs had already hatched in the dragon’s lair.

  ‘The shell, the shell that was in my foot,’ I said, feeling gooseflesh rise along my arms.

  Farthing leapt up on to the edge of the chest and poked her snout inside. The hatchling lifted its own tiny triangular face and sniffed. Farthing bumped its snout with her own. Before we could stop her, Farthing climbed into the makeshift nest and curled around the newborn. Like a cuckoo bird grown too large for the nest it stole.

  ‘Well. I never saw the like,’ said Mr Darwin softly.

  The sliver of egg in my foot was from the egg that Farthing hatched from. My Farthing had somehow hatched earlier than the others.

  Mr Darwin was right. They were the same species as Farthing, there was no doubt, and it made no sense.

  Unless . . . they were all the dragon’s young.

  Farthing had survived the dragon fire.

  The dragon did not attack Farthing in its lair.

  Farthing had been desperate to save the eggs because inside them were her brothers or sisters.

  As I thought it, I knew it was right.

  Farthing was a dragon hatchling. The wedge shape of her head. The scales were green compared to her mother’s gold, but somehow alike . . .

  Mr Darwin and Mrs Harvey’s voices were a distant buzz.

  None of the other eggs moved.

  ‘Farthing is from the same clutch,’ I said.

  I looked at Mr Darwin. His eyes were shining. History was being made here, without any mention of dragons.

  An egg from the Galapagos, live and hatching was enough.

  The truth was too much.

  ‘Doesn’t seem likely, but not impossible. We know nothing about the breeding of these reptiles, Farthing being quite unique,’ he said.

  ‘They are all . . . dragons,’ I said.

  ‘Dragons? Great heavens!’ gasped Mrs Harvey. ‘I will not have—’

  ‘There’s nothing to fear, Mrs Harvey,’ said Mr Darwin, eyes flashing a warning to me beneath low brows, ‘there is a species of reptile known as a Komodo Dragon. It is kept at the London Zoological Society. That is what
Covington was referring to.’

  I pinched my lips together. Could I be wrong?

  Mr Darwin stood and smoothed the dust from his knees.

  ‘I will contact the Zoological Society immediately. Covington, watch the hatchling, make sure it doesn’t escape the chest. Mrs Harvey, I’m going to need you to find a temporary cage for our new guest. Here—’ He wrote something on the notepad he kept in his pocket and handed it to her.

  He fell silent.

  ‘Looks to me like the poor little demon needs feeding,’ said Mrs Harvey.

  ‘They eat fish,’ I blurted.

  ‘I’ll mix a pap from bread crusts and milk,’ said Mrs Harvey, ignoring me as she usually did. ‘You’ll need to feed them from a spoon. As a girl, I raised a fallen chick from a nest—’

  Darwin interrupted her. ‘Mrs Harvey. Please make haste before we have lizards overrunning the apartments.’

  ‘Well,’ she huffed, as she pulled off her apron and smoothed her hair back under her cap. ‘If you are going to feed them the mackerel I’d planned for supper, then it will be cold cuts again this evening.’

  ‘If you could just leave the mackerel out, thank you, Mrs Harvey.’

  ‘You’ll choke them to death if you feed it to them whole. It will need cutting and mashing, no bones—’

  ‘Please do not bother yourself, Mrs Harvey. Covington here is rather an expert on these . . . lizards.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The eggs hatched one by one, over the course of the following month. Farthing slept with them, curled in a mass of green scales inside the chest, and just before each egg hatched she would fetch me from the study. I fed them with mashed mackerel on a tiny spice spoon.

  There was at least two days between each hatching; a couple of the eggs took three. This was something Mr Darwin had never witnessed before. He now thought it possible that I was right, about Farthing being a sibling to these newborns, maybe even from the same clutch. His colleagues visited and were also surprised. Clutches of eggs always hatched in one go. Well, not these eggs.

  Not so surprising to me. After all, no one had ever come across a clutch of dragon eggs before.

  But on that point, I kept my mouth shut.

  My room had become the lizard nursery, while a special enclosure was being built for them at the Zoological Society. They slept and ate a lot. And they grew. They grew quickly. The first to hatch was now almost the size of Farthing.

  But one egg was left in the chest by the stove. One. And it had been five days since the last hatched.

  ‘Mr Darwin, Covington, it’s started!’ called Mrs Harvey from the kitchen. By now she’d taken quite a shine to the ‘giant newts’.

  We looked up from our desks at the same time.

  ‘Take a note to Mrs Whitby please, Mrs Harvey,’ said Mr Darwin. ‘I saw her only last night at the British Association presentation, and she is staying nearby. She was so desperate to witness a hatching.’

  Mrs Mary Anne Whitby was one of Mr Darwin’s regular correspondents and an experimenter in silkworm breeding. She arrived in a cloud of violet-scented grey skirts and a sensible black bonnet, and spoke with the master in quiet yet enthusiastic tones. The last egg was vibrating and shivering. Farthing peered over at it but rested her snout against the rim of the chest and did not move. The movement and tapping of the egg slowed.

  Mr Darwin had already directed me not to interfere with any of the hatchings.

  Farthing whined.

  ‘Go on then, Farthing. Give it a nudge or something?’ I whispered. Farthing twitched her head to one side but did not move.

  ‘There’s a runt in every litter, and it will soon die,’ said Mrs Whitby, a monocle clamped to her eye, ‘and good fortune for you, Mr Darwin – a specimen to dissect. Sooner rather than later mind, as it will quickly spoil.’

  Mr Darwin rubbed two fingers against his forehead. ‘It is true that the young creature inside may not be fit enough to survive, and that has a strong reason in nature . . .’

  I pictured Mr Darwin in sleeve protectors, his scalpels and tools lined up in front of him. I’d seen it often enough, a thing that had been living, reduced to a carcass, pinned and labelled, then a series of sketches and observations, and finally just mess for me to clear.

  The master caught me staring at him, stopped talking and swallowed.

  The last dragon egg gave a sorry little shiver.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  I shifted so I was positioned between Mrs Whitby and the treasure-chest nest. What to do? I looked at Farthing and remembered back on Narborough, when she’d followed, hiding from me. I had played Scratch and she’d listened.

  ‘Please, a bit more time,’ I said.

  ‘No rush, Covington,’ said Mr Darwin.

  I darted into the other room to collect my new fiddle. Settled by the stove, I played a rum jig, one that had never failed to rouse the sleepiest of old seamen into activity on ship.

  Mr Darwin gave me an encouraging nod.

  ‘These creatures are incredibly important to Science, they may be the only ones left of their kind if the volcano engulfed the island. It could be that the vibrations of the violin assist with the hatching, and a living specimen is far more valuable,’ he said.

  Mrs Whitby gave a delicate snort, but didn’t argue.

  I thought on what Mr Darwin had said. When I played, the lowest notes produced the most detectable vibration, right in the centre of my chest. I buttoned up my open waistcoat almost to the top and then lifted the last egg from the nest and rested it, tucked into the open buttons, against my heart. Its warmth passed through my shirt and vest. I lifted my fiddle and played a slow ballad.

  When I finished the tune, the egg continued to vibrate between my ribs. The hatchling inside was still alive, and I was sure it could hear and feel me.

  ‘Your husband mentioned you were a fine alto in your church choir, Mrs Whitby?’ said Darwin.

  A hymn. That was it.

  I played ‘Amazing Grace’ again and the lady dropped in, her voice clear and steady. The melody did not echo like it had in the lava tube of the Galapagos, but it took me back there.

  I looked down without halting the tune. A fine crack in the surface of the egg. I stopped playing and held the egg, which filled my cupped hands.

  Ignoring Mrs Whitby’s muttering, I did not ask Mr Darwin’s permission before I gently eased apart the crack. The lizard inside reached out a tiny claw and then the egg split in two across my palms and I was holding another miniature Farthing, perfect, smaller than the others, her eyes unfocused but bright.

  The tiny beast gazed at me, head wobbling on her spindly neck. She strained up, then lost her balance and tumbled backwards into her broken shell.

  This little one had a streak of silver shot through one of her copper eyes, shiny as a sixpence.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘Welcome to the world, little Sixpence,’ I whispered.

  Farthing leapt on to the side of the chest and curled around the youngest of her siblings, as she had done with each newborn. There was a hesitation in her jump, a lack of energy that made my stomach churn. Farthing wasn’t herself lately, slower. Quieter. The wound on her side still hadn’t fully healed. In the last month the green of her scales had changed, they had a sheen almost like mother of pearl. I didn’t think even Werner had a name for that colour.

  Sixpence nibbled mashed fish from the spice spoon. I waited for Mrs Whitby to leave and for Mr Darwin to come back to the kitchen.

  In between waiting, and making sure the eggs safely hatched, I had been researching, thinking and watching Farthing; the way, when she greeted me, her ruff was now slow to rise. She blinked more slowly. She seemed flatter somehow. But how to make Mr Darwin understand that these animals didn’t belong here?

  Because London was really not the place for dragons.

  ‘Sir, may I discuss . . . an important matter with you?’ I said, tripping over words more formal than I was used to.

&
nbsp; ‘Of course. Here,’ he said, passing me a small brandy, ‘to toast the safe birth of another little miracle.’

  I took a sip and grimaced.

  ‘You see, sir; it was the wings that put me off when I was on Narborough. Plus the fact that the mother dragon was intent on removing me, then burning me, so I didn’t get much chance to really look at her.’ I was rambling – I tried to slow down. ‘But a lot of things make sense. The dragon had the same type of scales, the same shaped body and face as these creatures. And their eyes. Farthing’s are copper and the dragon’s are gold, but they are both – extraordinary, in the same way. As for the difference in size and colour, differences like that between a mother and its young aren’t unknown in the animal kingdom. Are they? Sir?’

  My words tripped each other up, I needed to make him see what was so obvious to me now. He took a large gulp of his brandy and was silent.

  ‘. . . it’s like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Or when a tadpole turns into a frog!’ A deep crease had now formed between Mr Darwin’s eyes, but I had to finish. ‘The dragon is a species that hatches without wings, they must develop later, sir, maybe only when they are fully grown. And at some point their colour will change from green to gold. Look.’ I pointed to Farthing’s scales, but the sun must have disappeared behind a cloud because even I couldn’t see the shining glint any more.

  Mr Darwin peered at Farthing and shook his head very slightly.

  ‘You are suggesting these lizards will undergo a . . . metamorphosis? And become dragons?’

  ‘Yes! Why not?’ I said, my heart leaping in my chest.

  ‘Because aside from everything else, they are reptiles, Covington. Reptiles do not undergo metamorphosis.’

  ‘And mammals don’t fly, but look at bats!’ I was speaking rudely, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Mr Darwin sighed and rubbed his temples.

  ‘This must bring back a lot of memories for you, my dear fellow,’ he sipped his brandy and lowered his voice, ‘but you have to understand, this is a critical time for me. Critical. The ideas I am working on are important, and incredibly . . . sensitive. I must build my reputation before they can be credited. I cannot afford any controversy.’