My Lady's Dragon

Chiara da Luna

Chapter 6

The next morning, after a pleasant musical practice with Florenzia humming descants, Rose corrected the children's first attempts at letter writing, a task that left her grimly determined to continue with her teaching until she could hand the duties back to a qualified instructor. The youngest children in the Wexley village school could write better than many of the oldest aviator students.

When she returned to the pavilion after a light nuncheon, Rose started in surprise. "Oh! You are playing dragon chess!"

Captain Granby looked up from the small table where he had gathered the students.

"I found this old flight table," he said with a shy smile. "I can't teach them their sums or scribbling, but I can teach them flight patterns. You called it dragon chess?"

Rose came in for a closer look. The several levels of rope lattice looked like the flight table she'd grown up with at Wexley, but Granby was using pieces of wood to represent dragons. "Lil, do you remember the set that Hollins, the old carpenter, made for me? I always made you play with me when you visited. "

"And you always won, which totally galled me," said Lil from the sofa on the other side of the pavilion, where she reclined with a handkerchief over her face. "But he carved the most cunning little dragons. Added new ones every time I was there. The idea was to put together a formation and fight the other bloke. Each dragon had characteristics, and you rolled dice to see how each one would react."

"I'd pick Iskierka for my formation leader," said Granby's cadet loyally.

Rose shook her head. "The Kazilik was so unpredictable. Much better to pick a Long Wing leader with Xenicas on each side.

Florenzia preened. "I had no idea that you were a flight scholar, Rose."

Rose smiled. "Because I can play a children's game? No, and I apologize for interrupting your lesson, Captain Granby."

He grinned. "Not at all, Lady Rose. It sounds like more fun than memorizing formation patterns."

His students cheered in agreement.

Sitting up and leaning forward to see better, Lil offered, "I can carve some dragon pieces while Rose writes down the rules."

"An excellent idea," Rose agreed. "Do pay attention to your lessons in the meantime. You need some basic knowledge to play effectively."

The students turned back to the flight table with more eagerness. Soon they were pelting Granby with questions like "Can a Regal Copper beat a Grand Chevalier?" "How many Reapers does it take to bring down a heavy weight?" "Can a Celestial use the Divine Wind to stop flames from a fire breather?" When Rose saw his eyes glaze with the effort of responding to increasingly hypothetical questions, she suggested a change of subject, to Granby's obvious relief.

Judging them still too excited to settle at their slates, she announced music for their next effort. She felt that if she was going to teach, she ought to be able to teach her favorite subjects.

She discovered that Mrs. Pemberton had begun to teach them singing in parts. Rose had them sing what they knew several times, until some were sighing in boredom and others were clamoring for a new song. She bit her lip. They had only a tenuous grasp of singing in harmony, not likely to be improved by new material. Though they had been subject to Corps discipline since they were seven, in their studies, they had not the discipline to repeat until mastery, which showed in all their subjects. She cleared her throat and announced, "Certainly you can sing these songs while standing on firm ground. But can you sing them on dragon back? Florenzia, would you be so kind as to carry them all around the courtyard while they perform?"

This idea pleased Florenzia as much as the students. She proved an apt teacher, throwing in small challenges like a quick turn when she sensed them becoming complacent. They attracted the attention of other dragons, especially those in Rose's dragon chorus, and Rose decreed that a few other middleweights could join. She pushed aside the idea of competition in favor of their trying to sing in chorus while moving at different paces on different dragons. Amidst the shrieks, giggles, and falling down to swing by their carabiner harnesses, Florenzia lectured, "You cannot complain at all. This is no different than dragons flying in formation, which we must do almost from the time we are hatched. And during a battle, everyone must work together without thinking about it."

The analogy took very well, leading to a resurgence in concentration. Other dragons crowded in, the ones who had been interested in Rose's morning music, and sang along. Rose allowed them to support their passengers for awhile, and then decreed that the children must sing different parts than their dragons.

Music became everyone's favorite subject, including the dragons', who spurred the children to greater efforts when they saw how easily the dragons acquired the skills. Rose found herself obliged to insist on a certain level of effort in other subjects before they could take part in the musical fun. She cudgeled her brain for new challenges, such as singing while dancing on dragon back and singing while the dragons danced simple country dance steps, before she presented new songs. Soon half the covert's dragons joined the chorus, so that Rose lectured and demonstrated through a speaking trumpet from Florenzia's back.

It was such a pleasure to sing with such enthusiastic musicians that Rose frequently found herself racing through the courtyard to dinner, her choral duties having run long again. One afternoon she almost ran directly into Lieutenant Martin, who obviously thought she would stop if he placed himself in her path. But Rose's mind was too full of music and dragons to notice such impediments.

After the requisite apologies and assumptions of blame, Martin said, "I spoke hastily when I first met you. I am anxious to resume my duties."

"Oh." Rose looked blank; it seemed a long ago encounter. "Florenzia makes all the decisions about her crew. I am not her captain."

"That's just it," confided Martin. "I have spoken with her, and I think she misunderstood me. I hoped that you could negotiate for me and explain that my injuries made me surly."

"Had I not been performing your duties this week and had your change of heart not come after Florenzia announced her intent to share the prize money that she—and I!-earned, perhaps I might be tempted to do so," snapped Rose. "As it is, I see no reason to to try to persuade her against her instincts again."

"Again?" He flushed beet red to the roots of his fair hair.

"My mother took you on against her dragon's wishes. Since you have resigned your duties, I feel no reason to attempt what should surely fail. I do not hold my mother's place with Florenzia, and I think circumstances have but confirmed her reservations about you."

"I beg your pardon, my lady. Certainly I should not ask you to intercede in an area that does not concern you at all. I wonder at your continued presence here, where you can contribute nothing to our work. I trust those to whom I can make my plea will see it as I do." He flung himself away, not apologizing when his shoulder crashed into her and knocked her more off balance than their original encounter. She staggered a few steps, her mind whirling in rage. She turned away, thinking to avoid the dinner table, but found Captain Laurence at her side. He gravely offered his arm; she took it in gratitude but did not trust herself to speak. As he handed her through the door of the dining hall, he said in his quiet voice. "I should not regard him. The wishes of your mother's dragon must prevail with you."

Rose paused. "Indeed, sir, I remain for no other reason." She wondered why it felt like a lie.

She had little opportunity to dwell on Martin's words or activities as the tasks of her own days swelled full to bursting. If she was not teaching the young aviators, singing with dragons, or brushing up her Latin with Sipho, she was initiating Molly and Florenzia into the mysteries of fashionable ornamentation. As soon as the stitching frame was complete and a few dyed cables delivered, Florenzia could not wait to try her custom-made needle. Rose drew a simple daisy pattern on the framed belly rigging, and showed Florenzia where the stitches must go. It took Florenzia only a few days to learn to wield her needle through the frame from talon to talon. Soon she hardly ever dropped it, but residents and visitors soon learned to jump up on sofa or chairs when the needle crashed to the floor. The crash was prelude to the heavy needle rolling and clanking across the pavilion floor, where it bruised more than one foot.

Rose had her own stitchery projects, for Florenzia had not forgotten the promise of mourning apparel. The lacy iron talon sheaths were just the beginning. Florenzia wanted a bonnet from the ells of netting and beads that Rose had acquired in London. To create a hat on the scale of a twelve-ton dragon with a mass of sensitive, bristling tendrils took all of Rose's ingenuity, Molly's willingness to sew any amount of decoration on anything at all, and the assistance of a heavyish middleweight dragon named Perscitia, who seemed to function as the covert inventor and scientist. But only Florenzia was pleased with the hat. Rose was proud of her first efforts with felt and buckram, in creating a sturdy but frothy confection that a dragon could place on and remove from her head, but Florenzia's tangle of tendrils meant that the base, swaths of beaded black netting, had to be extremely wide, and the number of peacock feathers probably exceeded the entire amount worn at any one drawing room, because Florenzia would have it so. Like the famous description of the Mint, Rose considered the bonnet a triumph of architecture, an abortion of art. Nevertheless, she took happiness in Florenzia's pleasure as the dragon donned the hat and admired herself in her hand mirror (formerly the Great Mirror in the entrance to Wexley, but suitable for a middleweight dragon to see at least half of herself).

Nor did Emily forget her offer of military training in exchange for music lessons. Emily applied herself fiercely to the remaining four Scottish songs and obliged similar efforts from Rose with foil and pistol. Rose enjoyed the exercise of fencing, but she felt more confident of her skills with a pistol, until Emily declared her ready for the rollers.

"Rollers?" asked Rose, looking at the raised platform, some six feet square, that Emily indicated on the shooting grounds. In the middle of it was a six-inch thick wall almost four feet tall. The platform seemed to be mounted haphazardly on a multitude of shorter logs, polished to a smooth gleam. Rose tested the floor with one foot. "It doesn't seem very steady."

"That's the whole point, isn't it?" asked Emily, leaping on it and walking straight to the middle, despite its tipping and tilting. "Now you try it, behind the wall."

Emily grabbed Rose's arm as she stepped up and promptly fell backwards. Despite the assistance, Rose lurched to the middle and held onto the wall with both hands.

"You load for me," said Emily.

Rose tried, not successfully as Emily made no attempt to keep the platform still-quite the reverse, it seemed to Rose. They both sneezed through the clouds of powder. Rose tried to apologize, but Emily shrugged it away. "That's how we learn to shoot on a dragon, before we get on a dragon's back and put it and the crew in danger. As you're riding a Xenica, we ought to take out a few logs to let the platform pitch more, after you've mastered it this way, that is. Now let's trade places and you shoot. Just shot, no balls this time."

Rose inched around the wall while Emily climbed lightly over it. Emily eyed Rose's split skirt. "How do you find your pants-skirt now, with drawers?"

Refusing to give into a blush, Rose replied, "I like them both very well, now that I have adjusted the drawers."

"Adjusted them? How do you mean?"

Giving into the blush, Rose examined her pistol with fierce intent. "The flaps. They were not in the right places, for a woman."

"They wouldn't be, being made for a man. And so you made them over? I should like to learn how to do that. You've no idea how hard private matters are from dragon-back," Emily leaned over the wall. "There now, you've packed it well. Let's see you shoot."

Rose aimed carefully, but a sudden lurch cocked her pistol up in the trees: falling leaves were her only reward. She turned to exclaim in disgust to Emily and found her crouched down behind the wall. Smiling, Emily stood up and dusted her trousers. "You never know where someone will shoot," she explained. "But I call that a good first shot. The pistol went off in the general direction you aimed, and you wouldn't have killed anyone." She patted the top of the wall. "That's what this is for, to protect other people from wild shots. And most of them are wild. But you get better with practice."

Rose silently vowed to do so in all haste.

She was happy to eat dinner each evening with the officers, though she tried to sit away from Captains Granby and Laurence when she could manage it, to frustrate Florenzia's schemes—or at least look like she was. But even Laurence spoke freely across the table; it was impossible to avoid conversation, except by sitting at another table, which she did not care to do, or to have her meals carried to the pavilion, as Lil often did. She admitted to herself that she enjoyed the cheerful noise and the riot of aromas from the kitchens so close, to the dining hall, unlike Wexley, where the servants dashed upstairs and down corridors in hopes of delivering dishes before they cooled.

Lavinia, as a lieutenant, was now entitled to join their table, and Rose was happy to renew their childhood friendship. Lavinia was much as she had been at seven, sturdy and cheery, except on one evening when she collapsed rather than sat in her chair.

"Are you ill?" asked Rose with some anxiety.

Granby cracked a laugh. "I'd say she's dragon-swept. Exhaustion tempered by panic in a grand worry—dragon-swept, all right, swept along, who knows where, by a dragon with more imagination than sense, which describes most of them."

Laurence smiled, with a hint of pain, and refused to raise his eyes.

Lavinia exploded the word: "Florenzia!"

"Did I not say so?" chortled Granby.

Ignoring him, Lavinia said, "She has decided that she is responsible for her crew's religious instruction as well as the rest of their education." She started to put her head in her hands, but Sally slapped a plate down. Lavinia picked up her fork and stabbed at the meat over and over without raising it to her mouth.

Puzzled at the reaction, Rose said, "Yes, she spoke of it at prayers last night, thinking she should take a more active interest. I am to ask the chaplain if he will assist in preparing those of her crew who have not been confirmed."

"He is away, taking another's parish in an emergency," said Laurence. "Otherwise I should be happy to introduce you."

Rose was disappointed at the lack of a Sunday service, but Lavinia was relieved.

"That gives me a week's grace at least," she exclaimed. To the curious expressions around her, she said, "I am to march the younger crew, those not of age, to services each week, and all females are to be attired in skirts, none of us having owned one since we were seven."

"The lot of you are spoiling that dragon," declared Granby with some authority, being captain of the most outrageous dragon in the Aerial Corps.

"It's rather too bad of her," agreed Catherine Harcourt, a young captain close to Lil's age, whose tragic eyes seemed too large for her thin, pinched face. "I can't imagine my Lily coming up with such an idea. Florenzia must be having too much time to think. She needs to get back to work."

"The surgeon does not advise it yet," said Rose, starring at her plate in embarrassment before lifting her chin in resolution. "And I'm afraid—I'm very much afraid that I'm to blame. She asked me about the appropriate attire for church and other venues. I never dreamed she'd ask such a thing of you. My mother had only one dress that she always wore to visit me. She never bought another until my presentation. So I do understand your predicament. However, I am sure that we can find something suitable in my trunks, the ones you brought me from Wexley. Molly is making her own dress, but I believe you, a rifleman, and a bellman will need proper robes."

"Yes." Lavinia sighed in relief.

Laurence smiled. "Those mystical trunks of yours. From what Molly tells Gerry, they are a source of magic."

Rose could not avoid answering his smile. "If you define magic as dresses, fabric, bonnets, and ornamentation in the form of beads, ribbons, and artificial flowers for all occasions."

"And books," added Granby. "Your endless trunks have provided my young ones with much reading matter."

Rose smiled and winced. She had packed her trunks with everything she could call hers from her entire life, and seeing hulking ensigns eagerly reading books from her nursery days was painful.

"Well, they'll have to be magic," said Lavinia. "How could Kitty Winthrop, Deb Smithers, and I wear anything of yours? I should be tripping over my hem every step, and Deb won't be able to tie the back shut. I don't suppose you have anything that would hang so far as Kitty's knees, such a beanpole she is. And I am right unhandy with a needle. I bleed all over anything I try to mend."

Rose laughed. "Mademoiselle Molly shall adjust them all. She likes the work, and she is very quick and good. Her sister taught her basic stitchery, and she mended all the clothes for her class at Loch Laggan, for a suitable fee."

"Five pence, or an extra piece of meat at dinner and an extra bun at tea," explained Laurence. "With coin the preferred medium of exchange, entitling you her highest priority. She has turned Gerry out in fine form, with a nice set of ruffles on his dress shirt. He was miffed that she wouldn't do so for love, but she told him that if people who loved her wouldn't pay, no one else would either. He does take comfort that she charges Parker twice as much and puts his work last, no matter how he pays her."

The others shook heads or chuckled, as their personalities dictated. Meanwhile, a hulking, red-faced man crashed open the door and headed for their table.

He scowled at Rose. "See here, what do you mean by it? I'm all for educating the squeakers, but when it comes to neglecting their duties, I won't have it."

Rose refused to quake. She lifted her chin and said in freezing accents. "I recall neither our acquaintance nor encouraging such neglect."

"That's Berkley, of Maximus," supplied Granby. "Do sit down, there's a good fellow."

"That's neither here nor there," said Berkley, with another scowl. "Every time I turn around, the cadets and ensigns are reading some dashed book or other—or writing letters, dash it all—and when I tell 'em to get back to their work, they tell me that you, madam, have commanded them to do so on pain of not being allowed to participate in some music-and-dancing fol de rol."

"As their captain, you are certainly the arbiter of how they spend their time and acquire their education," continued Rose, still chilly. "Shall they resume their studies with you? My class is quite large, much larger than I expected."

Defying the impossible, Berkley turned even redder. "No need to be hasty, and I'm sure I appreciate your teaching them their letters and numbers, but what I say is there's moderation in all things, and they must remember that we're at war."

"I suggest you tell them so," said Rose.

"Now I've gone and offended you, and I'm sure I didn't mean to, only that I need my squeakers to pay attention to their work. Some of the other captains aren't as easy going as me." He inched backwards, squirming under her outraged glare.

Granby drawled, "You must pardon him, Lady Rose. It has to have been at least two hours since he last had food. He must be faint from hunger. He's an utter lamb if you keep him fed. We'll sit him down and pour victuals in his mouth until he stops ragging on the best blessing our young ones have had. I for one do not want to take back my duties as teacher, at which I never excelled, not even passably so."

"But if they really are neglecting their duties," protested Rose.

Laurence said, soothing, "As you said, it is up to their captains to direct their activities. I'm sure it's a novelty for all of us to see them pursuing their studies with such vigor. It is a compliment to you, and I am similarly grateful."

Rose cast a doubtful look at Berkley, who had taken his place at the end of the table. Sally slapped a steaming plate in front of him with a snarl of her own, and Berkley became occupied with removing gravy from his coat.

"Oh, hang it all," he growled. "I apologize, madam. They will tell you I don't mean half of what I say."

"Lady Rose," corrected Laurence in a murmur. In a louder tone, he said, repairing Granby's casual introduction. "Lady Rose, may I present Captain Berkley?"

She nodded, still doubtful, and wondered who the other captains were, those captains who were not so tolerant as this great bear of a man.

The evenings found her quite worn and happy to spend in desultory activities while Molly read aloud the serial story from La Belle Assemblée while Lil whittled tiny dragons for the chess game and Florenzia worked at her embroidery.

Rose easily brushed aside the twinge of guilt over not insisting on a more improving work such as a book of sermons for young ladies, . She was certain that neither Molly nor her audience would have been nearly as eager in reading or listening. Rose contented herself with Molly's improved reading skills and Florenzia's evident pleasure in the outlandish stories. Even Lil could be observed paying close attention, despite her expressed disgust, which nobody minded, not at all.

It was the sort of familial evenings she had mostly dreamed of, having known them only for her mother's short visits and the year of her first London season, when her mother would say, "Oh, Archie, do give over and let us stay at home for a night. It will not ruin Rose's chances to stay away for once. Let the swains regret her absence!" And Rose would dash off several notes to excuse them from the evening's parties, and they would all sit in the parlor, with Papa and Mother sitting close enough to touch, dandling Baby Basil between them, and Rose content to sit nearby with her stitchery to mask her pleased observation of them, as she sought to preserve the minutiae of the happy moments forever. Of course, there were family evenings with her aunt, uncle, and cousins too, which were quite different.

Even the silences were pleasant, both in London and the pavilion, when Molly reached the end of the installment and turned to the acrostic, and the others continued with their occupations. At least, such were pleasant until Florenzia threw out remarks like, "My captain was wont to say that Granby was the more handsome, but that Laurence's manners were the more gentle."

Rose held out for a few moments under the expectant gaze before saying, "I am sure I have never thought about it at all." She was sure, however, that if she expressed the slightest preference for either, that the hapless man's dragon would instantly appear at the pavilion with a captain clutched in one forehand and a clergyman in the other, both no doubt stunned, but easily able to revive enough to go through a marriage ceremony.

Florenzia looked puzzled and then whispered to Lil in a voice that might not have been heard on the other side of the compound. "Has she already begun the mating ritual then, of foreswearing any previous thought of a man?"

"Such things are not spoken of in front of children," said Rose, in an attempt at repression.

"You mean breeding?" asked Molly, not looking up from her acrostic. "They told us about it at Loch Laggan, how we're expected to have a child for our dragons. And how not to do so before it's time."

"They're good about teaching that, at least," agreed Lil. "Wouldn't do to have a bunch of brats and no one to care for them—or no one to go up with the dragons because they're minding the brats."

"I quite approve," said Florenzia. "One cannot begin these plans too early, and they should not be left to chance. Where would the Corps be if we dragons were reticent and reluctant? Now, Rose, if you do not fancy Granby or Laurence, there is no need for you to do anything you dislike. Though he may not seem the person to attach you, Berkley might do, and Maximus is quite anxious for him to beget a child also; Berkley is rather older than many of the captains. Or that nice young Hollis, of Elsie..."

"I find Berkley and the entire subject appalling!" exclaimed Rose as she jumped to her feet, throwing her mending down on the sofa.

Florenzia cocked her head. "Oh, do you? Perhaps you are like your father, then, only about women."

While Rose gasped for air and a response, Lil broke in the conversation. "Adone do, Flossie. Can't you see she's in the same situation as you? Bet you don't feel like breeding, with Ma's death so raw. Give us all a chance to move beyond tears, will you?"

As Lil blew wood shavings off her latest creation, a Regal Copper dragon larger than her others, Florenzia turned to Rose with contrite eyes. "Rose, I beg your pardon. I do see how your mind and heart are beyond such mundane concerns. I am sorry to have urged you against your inclination."

Rose started to sit down again when Florenzia suggested, "Although I am reliably informed that quantities of strong spirits can make the occasion tolerable. Do you think-"

"I do not and I bid you goodnight!" cried Rose. She ran for her room, her mother's room, and sank to the floor against the door when she had shut it (carefully, because slamming it would be vulgar). Such times bore a strong resemblance to evenings with her aunt.

But on the whole, the days passed happily for Rose as she and her students improved in all their endeavors. As soon as she could hit the target sometimes, Rose joined the target practice from Florenzia's back on their brief outings, extended to fifteen minutes, and then twenty, though Florenzia restrained herself from her more acrobatic moves. When the topmen threw out flat ceramic disks for the riflemen to shoot, Rose tried also, her only success being that she did not hit anything else either. Chagrin at her failures made her try all the harder until the day she did shatter one of the targets. The cheering from the crew startled and pleased her.

"Oh, Lil!" she called as Florenzia fluttered to the ground. "What do you think? I-" She broke off when she saw her sister's face, turned to the sky and seared with pain. Lil dashed a hand across her features and turned to snap at one of the harnessmen. "Chazzy, you lout, go to her head. You should have the harness half off by now. Can't you keep sober at least in daylight?"

Rose sat still and quiet. She felt she'd stumbled on as intimate a secret as any as she'd encountered in any of her parents' letters, which she still read, a few paragraphs at a time, with no further attempt at justification. She longed to reach down to comfort her sister but could not find the words to address a wound that Lil never meant for her to see. Still hurling invective at the dilatory harnessmen, Lil turned on her heel and stomped away. Rose stood perfectly still, in the midst of the flurry of action, as though she were invisible, tasting the salt on her lips, inhaling it with deep breaths. The sun sank behind them into the channel and splashed the sky blood red. Rose turned her steps to the pavilion only when twilight hid her from prying eyes.