The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons)

by Brennan, Marie

  M. Velloin’s tactic for dragon hunting was this: He would watch from the hilltop until he saw a cloud of dust advertising the approach of some group of medium-sized herbivores (antelope or other such ungulates—never anything so large as an elephant). Then he and the others would ride to intercept it, close enough to the watering hole to be within a savannah snake’s likely orbit. The arrival of men on horseback would invariably spook the herbivores, which in turn could sometimes be relied upon to provoke the snake, if present, into striking. Then M. Velloin, galloping along with the herd, would attempt to shoot the dragon from the sky.

  This is, of course, a hazardous undertaking. Like all species then considered to be “true dragons,” the savannah snake possesses extraordinary breath, in this case a corrosive mist. On the first instance of M. Velloin successfully flushing a dragon, he failed to shoot the beast, and one of the other men took the retaliatory spray across his right arm and shoulder, even up to his face. This immediately raised painful blisters, which soon after burst; and in a tropical environment such as Bayembe’s, open wounds of that sort are extremely dangerous. They attracted midges and flies, and despite our best care, soon became infected. The man ultimately survived, but he was scarred thereafter, and much weakened in body.

  Yet such perils do not deter hunters from their goal. M. Velloin was not the only one to ride out again after the man was wounded, and two days later, he met at last with success. And, as per our arrangement, he immediately quit the field and dragged the body back to where we had set up camp.

  Almost immediately. He had, I saw, taken the time to claim his trophies, prising the teeth and claws free. I scowled at him. “I should like to have seen those in place, M. Velloin. We are not only going to make casts of the bones; there is a great deal to be learned by studying the specimen as a whole. How am I to understand its swift running, when you have taken away the claws?”

  He looked abashed, and also like he was trying to use his abashment to mollify me. I refused to be mollified, and ordered him out of the way as we got to work.

  The routine will be familiar to those who read the previous volume of my memoirs. My words to M. Velloin were true; I had every intention of extracting as much data from this carcass as possible. I therefore set to work sketching, while Mr. Wilker and Natalie took measurements, which I would use to correct my anatomical drawings when I produced the finished images.

  We had quite an audience at first, some of whom were even willing to assist rather than getting in the way. M. Velloin, I must grant, was among those who chose to help. But our work is not exciting to watch, and so before long most of the observers drifted away. I was on my knees in the dirt beside the snake, flexing and twisting its hind foot to consider how it ran, when I realized that one was still present and watching very closely: Okweme, the oba’s son.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, too distracted by my task to address him as politely as I should have.

  He slid one of my sketches from beneath the rock pinning it down and studied it. “You are indeed an artist.”

  “Had you any reason to doubt it?”

  Okweme shrugged, returning the paper to its place. “Women sometimes exaggerate their skill, to attract a better husband.”

  It was very fortunate that Mr. Wilker was undertaking the task of butchery, severing and defleshing a wing on the far side of the carcass. Had the knife been in my hand, I might have cut myself. Was Natalie right? Was he evaluating me as a potential marriage prospect?

  Among the Mebenye and the Yembe alike, creativity and artistic talent are considered great virtues in a wife: well, I was an artist. I was also a widow with many fertile years ahead of her, and that is not a thing they tend to leave at loose ends in their society. And this might explain the olori’s interest, when I told her of my work. But surely a prince like Okweme was not so bereft of prospects that he needed to court the first unmarried woman who wandered by, artistic talents notwithstanding. Why should he be interested in a Scirling, anyway?

  I had to answer him. “I am hardly a professional,” I said, realizing too late that a disclaimer of skill is a sign of modesty, and also attractive. Was there nothing I could say that would not dig me in deeper? In desperation, I rose up to lean over the snake’s body. “Mr. Wilker, is the wing ready? Ah, excellent. We should take the casts now, if Natalie has mixed the plaster.”

  She had indeed, along with other materials none of us mentioned aloud. We retired into our tent with the wing bones: long things, so slender it seemed they must snap beneath their own weight. But of course they did not, for that is the virtue of dragonbone. “The solution is under the cot there,” Natalie said in a low voice, then went out, pulling the flaps shut behind her.

  Mr. Wilker took the bones over to the cot. Between the two of us, he was the superior chemist (I being not much of a chemist at all), and better qualified to run the process that should, at least in theory, preserve savannah snake bones as well as those of rock-wyrms. I busied myself with the plaster, which would suffer an unfortunate miscarriage of procedure in the next few hours, resulting in no usable casts at all. The prospect of mockery for my error hardly pleased me, but we had agreed that it would arouse less suspicion than if Mr. Wilker were blamed for the loss. And we did not want anyone giving much consideration to the question of why we had no casts—not when we would, we hoped, be busy hiding the actual preserved bones.

  We worked in silence for about a minute. Then Mr. Wilker cleared his throat. “He has one wife already.”

  Savannah snakes, as I have said, are not large beasts. Of course Mr. Wilker, on the other side of the carcass, had heard every word. I flushed and answered him sharply. “Is that meant to deter me? I am not looking to make him my new husband.”

  “I didn’t think you were,” he said. Then he fell silent: perhaps because he was attending to the task of dripping one chemical solution into another at a steady pace, or perhaps because he was thinking. Either way, when the dripping was done, he went on. “But you haven’t exactly been dissuading him.”

  “Instruct me in how to dissuade a prince in a fashion that will not offend him and cause us trouble soon after,” I said, “and I will do it with a glad heart. Until then, I must go on trying to be polite, for the sake of our expedition.”

  Mr. Wilker laid the last of the bones in their chemical bath and sealed the top, to protect them from both dust and prying eyes. We would need to remain here for at least three more days before they could be moved; I hoped M. Velloin would not take it into his head to shift his camp. Then my companion stood, looking at me. “Do you want to remarry?”

  My hand on the edge of a plaster-filled tub almost overturned it, which would have made a very nice answer for why the casts had failed. “I fail to see how this has any relevance for our work, Mr. Wilker.”

  “I should think it’s obvious, when you attract marital interest wherever we go.”

  “One princeling hardly justifies that description.”

  It would have been wiser for me to leave the matter there. But I made the mistake of looking at Mr. Wilker, whose expression I could not read. With the flaps closed, it was stiflingly hot inside the tent, and I was all too conscious of the need to keep our voices low. Natalie was supposed to be keeping watch outside, but canvas makes a very poor barrier to sound. All these factors and more combined to make me leave my plaster tubs and cross to Mr. Wilker, who, with the cot and the box it hid behind him, could not retreat. “Do you have a personal reason for broaching this topic, Mr. Wilker? Because if so, I would thank you to do me the courtesy of admitting it.”

  His face had been reddened by days in the sun, but I think he flushed still further. “Mrs. Camherst—”

  I will never know what he would have said. I suspect, looking back, that he would have pointed out to me what the roaring of my heartbeat in my ears had obscured: Natalie’s voice outside, greeting the man approaching our tent, warning us that we were about to have a visitor. But I did not hear it, and Mr. Wilker
did not find his tongue quickly enough, and so when light burst upon our dim little scene, M. Velloin found me standing scant inches from my companion, face tilted up toward him, and both of us red as beets.

  We could only have looked more guilty had he caught us in an embrace. We sprang apart with exclamations of surprise, me retreating to my plaster. With Velloin silhouetted against the brightness outside, I could not see his expression, but the way his head turned from me to Mr. Wilker and back again said more than enough. “I thought I would see how you’re getting on,” he said, and I could have slapped him for the amusement in his tone.

  “Quite well, thank you,” I said, failing to sound at all polite. “Thank you for the specimens.”

  He approached me and held out a sack. “The claws. I assumed you would like to examine them.”

  Velloin offered them to me, not to Mr. Wilker, which under the circumstances was not only decent of him but surprising. He had to have been questioning my scientific purposes—men like him generally do—and would question them even more now. “Thank you,” I said, this time with more sincerity. “I will draw these this afternoon, while the plaster dries, and return them to you.”

  “No need to hurry,” he said. “I’ll be going out with the prince in an hour or so, to see if we can’t bring down a few lions. You’re welcome to join us, Wilker.”

  Mr. Wilker was not a hunting enthusiast, but I was hardly surprised when he accepted. It would separate the two of us for a time, which was good both for our own peace of mind, and for quelling suspicion.

  Or so I hoped—quite naively. As you may have guessed, this was the beginning of the long-lived rumour that Mr. Wilker and I were on intimate terms. At least, this is the point at which such whispers became common currency in Bayembe; it is possible that the simple fact of my departing on the expedition with him, especially in combination with the to-do over Natalie, began those rumours at home even before more specific word arrived from Eriga. A widow, by virtue of having been married, is protected from a degree of scandal that would ruin a maiden, but it does not mean that she can carry on in whatever manner she pleases without anyone taking notice.

  I would like to say that I cared not a whit for the whispers. It would suit my dashing reputation for me to shrug off the concerns that burden more ordinary women. I was younger then, however, and apart from the damage to my own esteem, I cared a great deal for the effect the rumours had on those around me. It undermined Mr. Wilker, to have his scientific work overshadowed by impropriety; it reflected badly on Lord Hilford, to have given his patronage to two such scandalous people. But what enraged me the most was the foul elaboration of the rumour that said our indiscretions had begun in Vystrana, and that Jacob had either winked at it, or died because he did not.

  All of that lay in the future that Gelis afternoon. The first stirrings of it, however, began during the hunt that night, when Okweme was (so I later heard) jocular with Mr. Wilker in a way that did not seem friendly at all. It continued for the remainder of the trip, and when we returned at last to Atuyem, the seed nurtured in water found fertile soil in which to grow.

  NINE

  The rumours continue—Galinke’s theory—Two months in the bush—Reconsidering Edgeworth—Malaria—Witchcraft—A letter from Lord Denbow

  One might have expected Okweme’s interest in me to cool, with rumour saying I was already involved elsewhere. On the contrary, he pursued me more closely after that—but I did not like his reasons for doing so.

  He said nothing directly, of course. But his manner shifted: friendliness taking on an oily sheen, warmth bringing him closer than I wished him to stand. I tried to describe this to Natalie, and could not find anything specific to point to; the problem was in the aggregate. “I cannot help but feel,” I said in frustration, “as if my supposed misbehaviour with Mr. Wilker has, in his eyes, made me available to any man who chooses to claim me. One expects this sort of thing from a rake at a masquerade ball in Vickery Gardens, not from the son of a king.”

  “Some of those rakes at Vickery are the sons of kings,” Natalie said dryly. “But I know what you mean. Well, I shall cease telling him where you are; perhaps that will help.”

  It did, but not enough. In desperation, I turned to Galinke. My irregularity meant I did not rejoin her in the agban, but I saw her after she emerged, and she invited me to stroll with her in the oba’s gardens. As soon as I thought it reasonable, I directed our conversation to that particular knot. “There is nothing between myself and Mr. Wilker but professional matters,” I told her, when the tale was done. “But I cannot see how to convince anyone of that.”

  “Sometimes women keep themselves to our side of the palace for a long time, and after that the rumours fall quiet,” Galinke said. “But only sometimes. And you cannot do that, not without abandoning your work.”

  Which I would never do—though sometimes I had cause to be glad for the segregation the palace imposed. “Tell me,” I said. “Okweme is your brother’s son; have you any notion why he might be pursuing me? He did so even before I sullied my reputation. My skill with a pencil is hardly enough to make me a desirable catch, and I do not flatter myself that my beauty or charming manner has anything to do with his intentions. What political benefit might he gain, that I do not see?” Or what benefit his mother might gain, though I did not say it. I was beginning to think she had set her son on me, like a hunter putting a hound after a rabbit.

  “Your people are currently very important in Bayembe,” Galinke pointed out. “If they gain more territory and influence here, it could be to Okweme’s advantage to have a connection.”

  “But I lack connections. My family, if they were Yembe, would not even rate chambers in someone else’s compound up on this hill. My late husband’s family would, but only barely. Unless—” The hypothetical I had described, the Hendemores and Camhersts as Erigan families, gave me a new idea. “Is it possible he thinks my children—our children, if he married me—would inherit something of value? We pass down such things in the father’s line, not the mother’s. My brothers’ wealth, such as it is, will go to their sons, not mine.”

  Galinke had been shaking her head as I spoke, but the way in which she stopped told me a thought had come to her. She cast a surreptitious glance around and then, seeing no one, still took the precaution of drawing me down onto a bench, where we would be half-concealed by a stand of flowering reeds.

  “It would be very strange,” she said. “But—to your people, children belong to their father’s lineage. Here, it is the mother’s. Your people would expect Okweme’s sons to inherit from him.”

  I began to see what she aimed at. “Is there something of value he has, that he cannot pass down to his own children?”

  Galinke nodded. “Certain honours and property from his uncle, yes. And Okweme has no full sisters; all of Denyu’s other children have died, so his heirs are more distant—cousins he does not like. He has two daughters from his wife, but that means nothing. They belong to her lineage, not his. But your children would belong to your lineage—and he could try to argue that, by the customs of your people, what is his should become theirs. To do otherwise would be to leave them with nothing.”

  It was almost enough to make me laugh. Okweme n Kpama Waleyim wanted me for my country’s inheritance laws—or at least that was our speculation, though we had no proof as yet. But putting even a possible explanation on his behaviour renewed my incentive to escape it. “I shall have to contrive to be in the field more often,” I said. “Without him, this time. Tell me, what happens if a woman becomes, ah, impure, while out in the bush?”

  I will not say it was my desire to avoid Okweme and the agban that led to our second excursion, but they were among the relevant factors. He was not so shameless as to contrive a reason to join us again—not when there would be no hunting on our trip—and Galinke assured me that rural people were more flexible in matters of impurity, so long as we had ourselves cleansed appropriately.

  Other fac
tors included our first preservation attempt, which, while not a failure, had been less than perfectly successful. Mr. Wilker (who was exceedingly stiff with me, on account of our as-yet-unfinished confrontation) said the acidity of savannah snake blood differed from that of rock-wyrms, but thought he might adjust the process and achieve better results. And apart from the anatomical study of dragons, we had a great deal to learn about their behaviour and movement, which would require observation under conditions that did not involve Velloin shooting everything that moved.

  We spent more time in the bush over the following two months than we did enjoying the comforts of Atuyem, which was exactly as I preferred. Mind you, I cannot pretend the environment of Bayembe is entirely pleasant: as in the previous volume of my memoirs, there is a great deal I am omitting regarding the heat, the dust, and the ever-present flies, whose buzzing I learned to hate beyond all reason. (One night a fly became trapped in our tent, and its aimless wandering in search of an exit brought me to the very end of my tether; only Natalie’s intervention kept me from turning up the oil lamp and lighting the canvas on fire.) But on the whole, I find the hardships I suffer in warm climes vastly preferable to those of the cold—flies being the exception.

  What pleased me was the understanding, for the first time in my life, that I was indeed a naturalist. Not the wife of a naturalist, brought along for her artistic and secretarial skills; not a hobbyist, collecting sparklings in her garden shed; but a scholar in my own right, engaging fully in my work. The tasks we set ourselves—to document the prey of savannah snakes, their breeding habits, their sexual differentiation, and so on—gave myself and Mr. Wilker sufficient distraction to pretend our unfortunate conversation had never occurred, and we fell into a rapport (at least for the purposes of our work) that was deeply and satisfyingly professional. I will not bore you with the minutiae of that work; anyone interested may refer to Dragon Breeds of the Bayembe Region, Draconic Taxonomy Reconsidered, or the articles eventually published in Proceedings of the Philosophers’ Colloquium over the years following our expedition. As the second of those titles indicates, however, it was during my time in Eriga that I began to consider the question of what, precisely, constitutes a dragon.