‘I cannot say. I believe there have been one or two dragons among the Werths, but not for a great many years.’
‘What of Margery?’ said Great-Aunt Honoria, causing Gussie to startle, for she had not known her to be in the room.
Lady Werth looked up, frowning. ‘Honoria, I believe we have spoken about eavesdropping?’
‘I believe we have,’ said Lady Honoria placidly.
Lady Werth sighed. ‘Who is Margery?’
‘A dried old stick of a thing even when I was a girl,’ said Honoria. ‘But dragons do live a tiresomely long time.’
Gussie sat up. ‘Margery Werth?’
‘She would be your grandmother,’ said Great-Aunt Honoria. ‘Some seven or eight times removed.’
‘But that is perfect!’ said Gussie. ‘I am sure she could help Lord Maundevyle. At the very least, she may be able to communicate with him, which is more than any of the rest of us have managed to do.’
‘And where is she to be found?’ said Lady Werth.
‘You cannot imagine that I have any notion.’
Aunt Werth was observed to direct an exasperated look up at the ceiling, and may have gone so far as to mutter something unflattering under her breath.
‘I am dead, not deaf,’ snapped Great-Aunt Honoria.
Lady Werth rose gracefully from her seat, with an air of purpose about her that instantly arrested Gussie’s attention. ‘I am going,’ said she, ‘to consult the Book.’
‘Is that safe?’ Gussie said doubtfully. ‘Uncle has but just recovered the use of his left hand.’
‘We will not involve your uncle.’ Lady Werth swept out without another word, trailed by Great-Aunt Honoria’s head. Gussie set aside her misgivings, repressed likewise a thrill of excitement, and followed in her train.
Chapter Fourteen
Some said that the Book was haunted by the spectres of past Werths. Some said a former Werth had become the Book; that it was, itself, the product of the self-same Wyrdings that were recorded within.
If the latter was true, Gussie reflected, whoever it had been was not best pleased about it.
Beneath the great, massed pile known as Werth Towers was a set of cellars. The upper cellars were devoted to the storage of wines, as is usual, and liberally haunted with the spectres of past relations, which is not. These did not trouble Lady Werth or Gussie overmuch; most of them were thin, faded things whom only Nell could reach. Great-Aunt Honoria, though, was a different matter.
‘Watch where you are going,’ she snapped, as the exploratory party reached the bottom of the cellar stairs. And, ‘I heard that, Archibald!’
That would be Gussie’s great-great-grandfather’s youngest brother, if she did not misremember her family tree.
‘Yes! Well!’ barked Honoria. ‘Your wife had two heads, but you don’t catch me mentioning it!’
‘Honoria,’ murmured Lady Werth. ‘Do try to act with a little decorum.’
Great-Aunt Honoria sniffed, and sailed past her ladyship down into the second level of the cellar. ‘Provoking creatures,’ she snarled. ‘And Archie was never even handsome.’
She whisked ahead down a wide passage lit with bright, new gas lamps, unaffected by the chill — or perhaps the atmosphere — which raised the hairs on Gussie’s skin. Pausing before the forbidding aspect of a huge, heavy door of solid oak, bound with black iron hinges, she bobbed up and down with impatience. ‘Quickly, quickly!’ she said. ‘The Book!’
Lady Werth appeared serene as she approached the door, drew back the bolts, and unlocked it with an enormous iron key. But Gussie, who knew her aunt well, detected tension in the line of her jaw, and the rigidity of her posture.
Gussie was not perfectly composed herself, and suffered a racing heart and a thrill of horror as she entered the room at her aunt’s side.
The Book of Werth lay on a pedestal in the centre of a stone-walled room otherwise bare, save only for the lamps set into the walls. It did not move, nor did it offer any reaction to the entrance of three visitors at all, and Gussie permitted herself the hope that it might be in one of its better moods.
‘Shut the door, Gussie,’ murmured her aunt, passing her the key.
‘Naturally,’ Gussie returned. ‘What could be more sensible than to lock the three of us in with the Book?’ But she obeyed, for she knew that letting the Book out could be more disastrous than locking anyone in.
Only once the door had clanged shut behind them, and the key scraped in the lock, did Lady Werth approach the pedestal. Honoria soared up into the air, affecting unconcern, but a thin trail of blood leaked from the ragged edges of her severed neck.
A droplet of it fell onto the covers of the Book.
A low snarl rolled through the room.
Undeterred, Lady Werth seized the Book, and swiftly opened it.
Gussie had seen the thing before, some once or twice, and felt no need to examine it closely now. It was a manuscript of advanced age, its pages bound some centuries before. Being as thick through as the span of Gussie’s hand, it possessed plentiful space for the family records it contained: one page for every Werth who survived past their third birthday.
Lady Werth had brought a pen with her, Gussie now saw: a majestic object, made from the feather of some exotic bird in hues of crimson and gold. She dipped the tip in a pot of red ink, and began writing on a fresh page. Lizzie’s entry, Gussie saw: a new gorgon among the ranks, her powers recorded for posterity.
Aunt Werth had not written more than five or six lines when the Book snarled again, and bucked, causing a red blot of ink to blossom over the page.
‘Gussie,’ said she, and there was winter in the word. ‘Pray assist me.’
Gussie took one side of the Book and her aunt the other. Between them, they contrived to wrestle the enraged Book into submission, and Gussie held her half of the tome in place as her aunt continued, calmly, to write.
But waves of icy-cold were emanating from Lady Werth, and Gussie shivered.
‘Good,’ said her ladyship in due course, and turned a few pages back. Gussie tried not to notice as a slim, scaled tentacle slithered from between the pages, and coiled itself lazily around her own wrist.
She was startled to observe that her aunt had opened up Gussie’s own page in the Book; and also to note that there was not, as yet, much written there.
‘What about Margery?’ barked Great-Aunt Honoria. ‘You had better hurry, Georgie, if you don’t want to lose a finger.’
‘In a moment,’ murmured Lady Werth, writing more quickly now.
‘It is empty,’ said Gussie. ‘My page.’
‘When you turned three,’ said her aunt, her pen scratching away, ‘we imagined you unWyrded. It was only later I began to suspect the truth, and I was never certain enough to record it in the Book. You see, Gussie, you are unique among the family; possibly in the whole of England. I have never heard of such a Wyrde as yours.’
Gussie blinked, silenced.
‘In a way, then, I am grateful to Lady Maundevyle. It is a pity for you, perhaps, but it is well to be certain of the facts of the matter. Now we may determine how best to proceed.’
‘You could not have mentioned it to me somewhere these past twenty years?’ Gussie said.
‘Had I been certain, I might have.’
‘Had you let me out more often, you might have had this certainty sooner.’
‘At whose expense, if I was right?’ Lady Werth directed a swift, cool look at her niece. ‘Yours, undoubtedly; and that of some hapless soul who might rather have gone on unWyrded.’
‘Like Lord Maundevyle.’
Lady Werth sighed. ‘It is a pity he and his mother could not agree. The younger Selwyn seems unperturbed.’
‘The younger Selwyn is not precisely a model of good judgement.’
‘Good judgement consists of accepting the truth about oneself, however much one might sometimes deplore it.’
‘I cannot altogether blame his lordship for regretting the loss of his
hands. Or his coats. Or his capacity to enjoy toast and tea without destroying the dining-room.’
Gussie’s entry completed, Lady Werth put away her pen and began briskly to turn pages, ignoring the Book’s growling with admirable serenity.
‘I do think we ought to hurry, Aunt,’ said Gussie uneasily, feeling a tremor shoot through the pages under her hands. The tentacle coiled about her arm tightened, and declined to be scraped off.
‘We have almost finished,’ said Lady Werth. ‘I want only to find Margery’s pages — yes, here they are.’ She had turned a long way back through the Book, not far from the beginning, and the vellum under her fingers was crisp and yellowed with age. ‘A dragon! You were right, Honoria. Turned upon her third birthday…’ She read on.
But Gussie pointed at the sentence her aunt had just read. ‘It says first turned, Aunt. Does that not suggest that she had occasion to turn draconic a second time, and perhaps more? In which case, she must have had the capacity to change out of it again.’
‘Nothing is explicitly said to that effect, but you are quite right. It is implied.’ She finished skimming through Margery’s entry, at a speed Gussie wondered at, for the writing was tiny and crabbed and faded. She herself could scarcely make out two words in every three.
‘She lived in the cellar,’ said Lady Werth, her brows rising in surprise. ‘Perhaps in these very rooms, and a hoard was kept here for her amusement. Is that not nice?’
‘Delightful,’ Gussie murmured. ‘If we contrive to strip the Towers of all of its valuables, I am sure we could get up just such another for Lord Maundevyle’s entertainment.’ As she spoke, her glance strayed back towards the unreasonably large door, whose unwieldy proportions now made rather more sense.
Lady Werth shut the Book and backed quickly away from it. A sheen of ice glimmered upon her cheek. ‘Now, I think we had better return above. The key, Gussie?’
‘I appear to be attached,’ said Gussie, for both her arms were now wound about with tentacles, and she was being drawn, slowly but inexorably, nearer to the Book.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Lady Werth, and advanced upon Gussie. ‘This is just what happened to Aunt Beatrice.’ She set herself to unwinding the tentacles around Gussie’s left arm, though they furiously resisted her efforts.
‘She’s been seen since, I suppose?’ said Gussie, striving to keep her voice even.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Lady Werth. ‘That is, I am almost sure of it… ah, there.’ The grip on Gussie’s arm fell away, and she began at once to work on those still pinning her right arm to the pedestal. But even as she worked, something chilly slithered around her leg, and her aunt’s wrist.
‘Very well,’ said Lady Werth, and a puff of frost erupted from between her lips as she spoke. ‘Nothing else for it. Honoria?’
Something of bright metal, sharply agleam, fell from above: a small axe with a wicked blade. Lady Werth caught it in her free hand, and swung it without hesitation at the tentacles still woven around Gussie’s arm. The axe missed her skin by a hair’s breadth and sliced mercilessly through the Book’s appendages.
A terrible, hair-raising shriek split the air.
Unfazed, Lady Werth performed the same operation twice more, freeing her own arm and Gussie’s leg. Gussie at once backed away from the pedestal, and barely caught the axe as her aunt hurled it towards her. She hefted it as she threw back the key, and stood guard over the Book while her aunt grappled with the door.
‘I really must send somebody down to oil this lock,’ said Lady Werth coolly, as the door swung open.
Something slithery made a grab for Gussie. She hacked about with the axe, slicing through flesh, and as the Book keened and roared with rage she fled the grasp of its reaching tentacles and made for the door with all speed.
Once safely restored to the other side, its comforting wooden weight firmly closed and bolted, Gussie hung the axe upon a small hook by the door, resettled her rose shawl about her shoulders, and smoothed her gown. Livid red welts were fast appearing upon the bare skin of her arms, everywhere the Book’s appendages had grasped at her. ‘I should think I would not much like to be a book, either.’
‘That is no excuse for bad manners,’ Lady Werth said, taking a deep breath. ‘I believe tea is in order.’
‘Something warming, certainly,’ Gussie agreed, watching as frost crept over her aunt’s hair, and crusted upon her eyelashes.
‘I shall be well in a moment,’ said Lady Werth, and swept up the stairs.
Gussie followed, leaving Honoria camped outside the Book’s prison, crooning endearments through the door.
***
Nothing but a vast hunger could have forced Theo out of his tower, having been deprived of it for so many days. But such a hunger came upon him eventually. Late in the afternoon, when the sun slanted golden across the clear lawns of the Towers and the thunder of Aunt Wheldrake rolled sulkily away, Theo ventured down the many stairs, and out. He went with rolled-up sleeves and no coat, the temperature being high; and now he need not trouble himself about propriety of dress. No one to see him out here, and the rabbits wouldn’t care.
He stalked across the pristine lawns and into the taller grasses behind, running his hands through their feathery tops as he passed. Odd, for his senses discerned little that was alive, and there ought to be plenty for dinner at that hour—
A flash of crimson scales materialised between the grassy stems, and a bulky, ungainly dragon-shape appeared.
Theo growled.
‘When you have been here a little longer,’ said he, ‘you will come to understand what everybody else here knows, and that is that this is my — promenading ground.’
Lord Maundevyle sat with a stalk of grass sticking out of his mouth, doing his best to chew it with teeth made rather for ripping and tearing. He did not appear chastened.
‘Not that I am so overpoweringly fond of rabbit,’ Theo said, glowering. ‘Only it wouldn’t be the done thing to snack upon one’s relatives, now would it? Not even in this family. And that, my lord, is exactly what I shall be obliged to do if you go on scaring off my dinner.’
Lord Maundevyle spat out the grass, and heaved a sigh.
‘Not that anyone would object were I to inconvenience Aunt Wheldrake, only it isn’t done. You understand?’
Lord Maundevyle gave no sign of doing so.
‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ said Theo, walking a suspicious circle around the dragon. ‘Dragons don’t eat grass, and I hope you are not expecting to survive upon rabbit. There aren’t nearly enough to feed both of us.’
The dragon’s head drooped, and he snapped irritably at Theo as he walked past.
‘Ohh,’ said Theo. ‘Couldn’t catch one? Dear me. And too polite to begin on my uncle’s sheep?’ He stopped again before Lord Maundevyle, and considered the sorry sight. ‘You had better come with me,’ he decided. ‘We’ll see what the kitchen can scrounge up for you.’
Another two minutes saw him halfway back across the lawns, the dragon lumbering along next to him. ‘Leave my promenading spot alone,’ Theo said severely. ‘Or we shall both starve to death. Not but what they would oblige me in the kitchens, for there’s always something going. But it isn’t fresh, and the one time I ventured upon a kitchen-maid, mother kicked up such a fuss! Unjustly, too, for the girl volunteered. Wouldn’t take no for an answer, in fact.’
Lord Maundevyle snorted, which Theo decided to take as sympathetic commiseration.
‘Doubtless my ancestors had an easier time of it,’ Theo glowered. ‘Nobody objected to Lord Anthony swanning about the countryside, feasting upon the peasantry. I was born in the wrong time, Maundevyle.’
The dragon snorted again, and to Theo’s indignation, this time he could take it for nothing other than laughter.
He encountered his mother so immediately afterwards as to cause him a moment’s discomfort. ‘Hallo, Mother,’ he said, with a sideways glance at Lord Maundevyle. ‘Er — been there long?’
‘No,’ said
she, blandly.
Lady Werth was in the shrubbery, taking the sun. Gussie wandered along at her side, all solicitous attention. Small wonder, either, for Mother appeared halfway to an icicle already.
‘What’s happened to upset you?’ said Theo.
‘You would not have enjoyed the sixteenth century, Theo,’ said his mother without answering.
‘I think he would have enjoyed it far too much,’ said Gussie. ‘And been burned at the stake as a consequence.’
Theo’s gaze sharpened upon the thin arms tucked under the fine fabric of his cousin’s rosy shawl. Red marks. ‘Good God!’ he cried. ‘You have not consulted the Book?’
‘It was necessary,’ said Lady Werth.
‘Not that it has availed us much,’ said Gussie. ‘Margery Werth was indeed Dragon-Wyrded, and while it is implied that she may have been able to change herself out of it again, we are no nearer to discovering where she might be, or how she might have contrived to do it.’
‘I should be surprised if she is still alive,’ said Theo. ‘Surely she would be here, if she was.’
‘Why?’ said Gussie.
‘Well—’ Theo groped for an answer.
Gussie waited, but Theo had nothing to add. ‘If you are taking his lordship to the kitchens,’ said Gussie, ‘which from all your talk of starving to death I collect you are, I should get on with it. Especially if you want anything raw.’
‘Why did not you take me along?’ Theo demanded, reverting to the subject of the Book.
‘Of what use would you have been?’ Gussie folded her arms, in no way attempting to cover up the crimson evidence of her foolishness.
‘Wouldn’t have those welts, if you had,’ Theo said. ‘Nor would you be icing over, Mother.’
‘You are bosom buddies with the Book, of course; with you, it is docile as a lamb,’ said Gussie.
‘No,’ said Theo, and that was all he said, but he smiled, and was gratified to see Gussie shudder a little.
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