The Dragon Charmer

by Jan Siegel

  “Do you think what Gaynor saw was really Alison?” Will pursued. “Alison returned from the dead?”

  “N-no. The dead don’t return. Ghosts are those who’ve never left, but Alison had nothing to stay for. I suppose he might use a phantom in her image, possibly to confuse us.”

  “I’m confused,” Gaynor confirmed.

  “Will you be okay for the rest of the night?” Fern asked. “We could change rooms if you like. I’ll drive you into York in the morning: there are trains for London every hour.”

  “I’m not leaving.” Behind the dark curtains of her hair Gaynor achieved a twisty smile. “I’m frightened’—of course I am. I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life. But you’re my friend—my friends—and, well, you’re supposed to stand by friends in trouble…”

  “Sentimentality,” Fern interjected.

  “Hogwash,” said Will.

  “Whatever. Anyway, I’m staying. You invited me; you can’t disinvite me. I know I wasn’t very brave just now but I can’t help it: I hate bats. I hate the way they flutter and their horrible ratty little faces. That’s what they are: rats with wings. I’ll be much braver as long as there are no more bats.”

  “We can’t absolutely guarantee it,” Fern said.

  “Besides,” Gaynor continued, ignoring her, “you’re getting married on Saturday. I’m not going to miss that.”

  For an instant, Fern looked totally blank. “I’d forgotten,” she said.

  They went back to bed about half an hour later, warm with the twin comforts of chocolate and alcohol. Will bunked down in the room next to Gaynor’s, wrapped in the ubiquitous spare blanket. Worn out by events, reassured by his proximity, she fell asleep almost at once; but he lay with his eyes open, staring into the dark. Presently he made out a hump of shadow at the foot of his bed that had not been there before.

  He said softly: “Bradachin?”

  “Aye.”

  “Did you see what happened?”

  “Aye.”

  There was an impatient silence. “Well?” Will persisted. “Did you see a woman come out of the mirror?”

  “I didna see ony woman. There was a flaysome creature came slinking through the glass, all mimsy it was, like a wisp o’ moonlicht, and the banes shining through its hand, and cobwebs drifting round its heid. Some kind o’ tannasgeal maybe. It was clinging round the maidy like mist round a craig. She seemed all moithered by it, like she didna ken what she was doing.”

  “Where did it go?” Will asked.

  “Back through the glass. I’m nae sure where it gaed after, but it isna here nae mair.”

  “But how could it get in?” Will mused. “No one here summoned it, did they?”

  “Nae. But a tannasgeal gangs where the maister sends it—and ye asked him in long ago, or sae ye seid.”

  “You mean Az—the Old Spirit sent it?”

  “Most likely.”

  “Yes, of course … Bradachin, would you mind spending the night in Gaynor’s room? Don’t let her see you, just call me if if anything happens.”

  “I’m no a servant for ye tae orrder aboot.”

  “Please?” Will coaxed.

  “Aye, weel… I was just wanting ye tae keep it in mind. I’m nae servant…”

  The hunched shadow dimmed, dissolving into the surrounding dark. After a few minutes Will closed his eyes and relapsed into sleep.

  In the room on the floor below, Fern was still wakeful. She was trying to concentrate on her marriage, rerunning a mental reel of her possible future with Marcus Greig. Cocktail parties in Knightsbridge, dinner parties in Hampstead, all-night parties in Notting Hill Gate. Lunches at the Ivy, launches at the Groucho. First nights and last nights, previews and private views, designer clothes, designer furniture. The same kind of skiing trips and Tuscan villas that she had experienced as a child, only rather more expensive. In due course, perhaps, there would be a second home in Provence. Her heart shrank at the prospect. And then there was Marcus himself, with his agile intelligence, his New Labor ethics, his easy repartee. She liked him, she was even impressed by him though it is not difficult for a successful forty-six to impress a rising twenty-eight. She knew he had worked his way up from lower-middle-class origins that he preferred to call proletarian, that his first wife had been a country type who left him for a farmer and a horse. Fern had contemplated marrying him on their third date. He fulfilled the standards she had set for her partner, and if his hair was thinning and his waistline thickening, he was still generally considered an attractive man. She was nearly thirty, too old for fairy tales, uninspired by casual love. The more she thought about it, the more she had wanted this marriage and she still wanted it, she knew she did, if only she could keep hold of her reasoning, if she could just remind herself what made those scenes from her life-to-be so desirable. She should never have left London. Away from the polluted air and the intrusive voices of traffic, telephones, and technology, her head was so clear it felt empty, with too much room for old memories and new ideas. She had done her best to fence them out, to fill up the space with the fuss and flurry of wedding preparations, but tonight she sensed it had all been in vain. The future she had pursued so determinedly was slipping away. She had worn the witch’s gloves, opened her heart to power. Trouble and uncertainty lay ahead, and the germ of treachery in her soul was drawing her toward them.

  She languished in the borderland of sleep, too tired now to succumb. Her mind planed: recollections long buried resurfaced to ensnare her, jumbled together in a broken jigsaw. Alimond the witch combing her hair with a comb of bone like a Lorelei in a song, her lips moving in what Fern thought was an incantation, until she heard the words of an antique ballad: Where once I kissed your cheek the fishes feed. And then the siren dived into deep water, and there was the skeleton lying in the coral, and she set the comb down on its cavernous breast, and Fern saw it slot into its place among the ribs. And the head looked no longer like a skull: its eyes were closed with shells, and its locks moved like weed in the current. Sleep well forever there, my bonny dear. A ship’s foghorn drew her out of the depths no, not a foghorn, an albatross, crying to her with a half-human voice. They said in Atlantis that albatrosses were the messengers of the Unknown God. It was very near now, almost in her room. How ridiculous, thought Fern. There are no albatrosses in Yorkshire. It must be the owl again, the owl Gaynor talked about…

  She was not aware of getting up but suddenly she was by the open window, leaning out into the night. She heard the sough of the wind in the trees although there were no trees anywhere near the house. The owl’s cry was somewhere in her dream, in her head. And then it came, hurtling out of the dark, a vast pale blur too swift and too sudden to see clearly. There was a rushing tumult of wings, the close-up of a face a mournful heart-shaped face with nasal beak and no mouth, black button eyes set in huge discs, like a ghost peeping through the holes in a sheet. She thrust out her hands to ward it off, horrified by the impression of giant size, the predatory speed of its lunge. The power came instinctively, surging down her arms with a force dream-enspelled, unsought and out of control … The owl reeled and veered away, gone so fast she had no time to check if its size had been real or merely an illusion of terror. But its last shriek lingered in her mind, haunting and savage. She stumbled away from the window, her body shaking with the aftermath of that power surge. When she touched the bed she collapsed into it, too exhausted to disentangle herself from the blankets, helpless as with a fever. Dream or reality faded, and in the morning when she finally awoke, late and heavy eyed, she was not sure if it had happened at all.

  VI

  Weddings have their own momentum. Once the machinery has been set in motion—once invitations have been issued and accepted, present lists placed with suitable department stores, caterers conjured, live music laid on, flowers, bridesmaids, and multistory cakes all concocted—once male relatives have hired or resurrected morning suits and female ones have bought outfits in the sort of pastel colors th
at should be worn only by newborn infants—the whole circus rolls on like a juggernaut with no brakes, crushing anything and anyone who may get in its way. The groom is sidelined, the bride traumatized. Couples who are madly in love lose track of their passion, floundering in a welter of trivial details, trapped by the hopes and expectations of their devoted kith and kin. Those less in love find in these chaotic preliminaries the wherewithal to blot out their doubts, giving themselves no leisure to think, no leeway to withdraw. So it had been with Fern. She had made her decision and intended to stand by it, obliterating any last-minute reservations; and now, when she felt a sudden need to stop, to reconsider, to take her time, there was no time left to take. It was Friday already, and although she had overslept she did not feel rested, and the morning was half-gone, and the phone was starting to ring downstairs. Someone answered it, and Fern stretched and lay still, temporarily reprieved, and for the first time in more than a decade she opened her waking mind to memories of Atlantis. A villa on a mountainside, a room golden with lamplight and candlelight, the blue evening deepening outside. The echo of a thought, bittersweet with pain: This is how I shall remember it, when it is long gone … She got up in a sudden rush and began rummaging furiously in her dressing-table drawer, and there it was, tucked away at the back where she had hidden it all those years ago. A skein of material, cobweb thin and sinuous as silk, so transparent that it appeared to have neither hue nor pattern, until a closer look revealed the elusive traces of a design, and faint gleams of color like splintered light. As Fern let it unfold, the creases of long storage melted away, and it lay over her arms like a drift of pale mist. She was still holding it when she went down to the kitchen in search of coffee. Will frowned: he thought he had seen it before.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Gaynor, touching it admiringly. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. What is it a scarf?”

  “Something old,” said Fern. “Like it says in the rhyme. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. This is very old.”

  “What will you do for t’rest of them?” asked Mrs. Wicklow.

  “A new dress, a borrowed smile, the three-carat sapphire in my engagement ring. That should cover it.”

  Gaynor started at her flippancy; Mrs. Wicklow found excuses for it. “Poor lass. Happen it’s all been too much for you. It’s always hard on t’bride just before t’big day, specially if she hasn’t a mother to help her. You don’t want to go drinking so much coffee: it’ll wind up your nerves even tighter.”

  Fern smiled rather wanly, pushing the empty cup away. “I’ll switch to tea,” she said.

  After a breakfast that only Will ate, Mrs. Wicklow departed to make up beds and bully Trisha, and Will and Gaynor went out in search of Ragginbone.

  “You won’t find him,” said Fern. “He’s never there when you want him. It’s a habit of his.”

  She went to the upstairs room where the dress waited in solitary splendor. It was made of that coarse-textured Thai silk that rustles like tissue paper with every movement, the color too warm for white but not quite cream. The high neck was open down the front, the corners folded back like wings to show a glimpse of hidden embroidery, similar to the neckline worn by Mary Tudor in so many somber portraits. The sleeves were tight and long enough to cover the wrist; the waist tapered; the skirt flared. Further decoration was minimal. It had beauty, simplicity, style: everything Fern approved of. If I was in love, she thought irrationally, I’d want frills and flounces and lace. I’d want to look like a cloud full of pearls, like a blizzard in chiffon. No woman in love wants understatement. But there was no such thing as love, only marriage. On an impulse she took the dress off the dummy and put it on, wrestling with the inaccessible section of the zipper. There was a hair ornament of silver wire, fitting like an Alice band, in order to secure the veil. She arranged it rather awkwardly and surveyed herself in the mirror—Alison’s mirror, which Will had moved from Gaynor’s room. In the spotted glass the sheen of the silk was dulled, making her look pale and severe. Her face appeared shadowed and hard about the mouth. I look like a nun, she decided. The wrong kind of nun. Not a blossoming girl abandoning her novitiate for the lure of romance, but a woman opting out of the world, for whom nunhood was a necessary martyrdom. A passing ray of sunlight came through the window behind her, touching mat other veil, the gift of Atlantis, which she had left on the bed, so that for an instant it glowed in the dingy mirror like a rainbow. Fern turned quickly, but the sun vanished, and the colors, and her dress felt stiff and cumbersome, weighing her down; she struggled out of it with difficulty. I must have time to think, she told herself. Maybe if I talk to Gus…

  She could hear Mrs. Wicklow coming up the stairs and she hurried out, feeling illogically guilty, as if in trying on the dress before the appointed hour, she had been indulging in a culpable act. Mrs. Wicklow’s manner was even more dour than usual: Robin, Abby, and Robin’s only surviving aunt were due later that day, and it transpired that although Dale House was lavishly endowed with bedrooms, there was a shortage of available linen. An ancient cache of sheets had proved to be moth eaten beyond repair. “It’s too late to buy new ones,” Fern said, seizing opportunity. “I’ll go down to the vicarage and see if I can borrow some.”

  She felt better out of doors, though the sky to the east looked leaden and a hearty little wind had just breezed in off the North Sea. At the vicarage, she explained to Maggie about the bedding and then enquired for Gus.

  “He had to go out,” Maggie said. “Big meeting with the archdeacon about church finances. It’s a funny thing: the smaller the finances, the bigger the meeting. Did you want him for anything special?”

  Maybe she would be better off talking to Maggie, woman to woman, Fern thought, tempted by the hazy concept of universal sisterhood. Haltingly she began to stammer out her doubts about the forthcoming marriage. She felt like a novice curate admitting to the lure of religious schism. Maggie’s face melted into instant sympathy. Her normal Weltanschauung combined genuine kindness and conscientious tolerance with the leftovers of sixties ideology at its woolliest. In her teens she had embraced Nature, pacifism, and all things bright and beautiful, Freudian and Spockian, liberal and liberationist. She had worn long droopy skirts and long droopy hair, smoked marijuana, played the guitar (rather badly), and even tried free love, though only once or twice before she met Gus. At heart, however, she remained a post-Victorian romantic for whom a wedding day was a high point in every woman’s life. Relegating the loan of sheets to lower on the agenda, she pressed Fern into an armchair and offered coffee.

  “No, thanks, I…”

  “It’s not too much trouble, honestly. The percolator’s already on. What you need is to stop rushing around and sit down and relax for a bit. All brides go through this just before a wedding, believe me. I know I did. It’s all right for the men—they never do any of the work—but the poor bride is inundated with arrangements that keep changing and temperamental caterers and awkward relatives, and there always comes a moment when she stops and asks herself what it’s All For. It’s a big thing, getting married, one of the biggest things you’ll ever do—it’s going to alter your whole life so it’s only natural you should be nervous. You’ll be fine tomorrow. When you’re standing there in the church, and he’s beside you, and you say ‘I do’—it all falls into place. I promise you.” She took Fern’s hand and pressed it, her face shining with the fuzzy inner confidence of those fortunate few for whom marriage really is the key to domestic bliss.

  “But I’m not sure that I”

  “Hold on: I’ll get the coffee. Keep talking. I can hear you from the kitchen.”

  “I had this picture of my future with Marcus,” Fern said, addressing the empty chair opposite. “I’d got it all planned—I’ve always planned things—and I knew exactly how it would be. I thought that was what I wanted, only now I—I’m not sure anymore. Something happened last night it doesn’t matter what that changed my perspective. I’ve always a
ssumed I liked my life in London, but now I wonder if that was because I wouldn’t let myself think about it. I was afraid to widen my view. It isn’t that I dislike it: I just want more. And I don’t believe marrying Marcus will offer me more—just more of the same.”

  “Sorry,” said Maggie, emerging with two mugs in which the liquid slopped dangerously. “I didn’t catch all that. The percolator was making too much noise. You were saying you weren’t sure—?”

  “I’m not sure I want to get married,” Fern reiterated with growing desperation.

  “Of course you’re not.” Maggie set down the mugs and glowed at her again. “No one is ever one hundred percent sure about anything. Gus says that’s one of the miraculous things about human nature, that we’re able to leave room for doubt. People who are too sure, he says, tend to bigotry. He told me once, he even doubts God sometimes. He says that if we can deal with doubt, ultimately it strengthens our faith. It’ll be like that with your marriage: you’ll see. When you get to the church”

  “Maggie,” Fern interrupted ruthlessly, “I’m not in love with Marcus.”

  The flow of words stopped; some of the eager glow ebbed from Mrs. Dinsdale’s face. “You don’t mean that?”

  “I’ve never been in love with him. I like him, I like him a lot, but it’s not love. I thought it didn’t matter. Only now—” Seeing Maggie’s altered expression, she got to her feet. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have saddled you with all this. I’ve got to sort it out for myself.”

  “But Fern—my dear—”

  “Could I have the sheets?”

  * * *

  Equipped with a sufficiency of linen, Fern and Trisha made up the beds together while Mrs. Wicklow prepared a salad lunch for anyone who might arrive in time to eat it. Marcus and his family were to stay in a pub in a neighboring village, maintaining a traditional distance until D-Day—something for which Fern was deeply grateful. Having to cope with her own relations was more than enough, when all she wanted, like Garbo, was to be left alone. Shortly after one the sound of a car on the driveway annouced the advent of Robin, Abby, and Aunt Edie, the latter an octogenarian with a deceptive air of fragility and an almost infinite capacity for sweet sherry. Robin, at fifty-nine, still retained most of his hair and an incongruous boyishness of manner, though where his children were concerned he radiated an aura of generalized anxiety that neither their maturity nor his had been able to alleviate. Abby, in her forties, was getting plump around the hips but remained charmingly scatty, easily lovable, impractical in small matters but down-to-earth in her approach to major issues. They had lapsed into the habits of matrimony without ever having formalized the arrangement and Fern, suspecting her father of a secret mental block, had never pushed the subject. Abby had received her seal of approval long before and Fern was content not to disrupt the status quo. However, even the nicest people have their defects. Abby had a passion for pets, usually of the small furry variety and invariably highly strung to the point of psychosis. There had been a vicious Pomeranian, a sickly Pekinese, a succession of neurotic hamsters, gerbils, and guinea pigs. Unfortunately, she had brought her latest acquisition with her, a Chihuahua salvaged from a dogs’ home whom she had rechristened Yoda. Fern tried not to fantasize about what might happen if the canine miniature came face-to-face with Lougarry. There was much cheek-to-cheek kissing, hefting of luggage, and presentation of presents. Fern felt she was functioning increasingly on automatic pilot: her mouth made the right noises while inside her there was a yawning emptiness where her uncertainties rattled to and fro like echoes in a gorge. At Abby’s insistence she showed her the dress, thrown in haste back over the dummy, and while Abby touched and admired it, a sudden cold fatalism told Fern that all this was meaningless, because she would never wear it now She would never wear it at all.