Everyone exchanged meaningful looks. Everyone, that is, except me, who was baffled. “What was that?”
“Unexpected,” Mary said, releasing a breath. She squeezed my hand. “I must herd geese.” She vanished into the crowd, saying, “Where is Mr. Knightley?”
We took our seats, and after the confusion necessary for all improvised affairs, the entertainment began with a skit that featured, unexpectedly, the master of protocol. I had thought him an utterly humorless man, but he portrayed himself perfectly, remaining in character through a farce of tripping court buffoons. At the end, the court laughed uproariously, and he bowed stiffly. Perhaps he thought it was real.
A song followed, then a pantomime, pleasant in the way amateur performances are, but I did not know the players, so my mind wandered.
Yuánchi, I thought.
I am here.Our binding brightened, west and slightly upward. He was atop one of Pemberley’s hills.
It felt like cowardice to tell him this way, but more delay was cowardly as well.I am sick.
I know.
Somehow, I expected that. Our last connections had been so intimate, so integrated to his sensations, it stood to reason he felt mine as well.Will you leave when I am gone?
I must sleep when a binding ends. I will dream of you.
That was nice, but I was in a practical mood. What that really meant was that we needed to recover the dagger. Or at least free Fènnù from its control. Perhaps Mary had found a clue. Or Lord Wellington might recover it in London. Mary had enclosed a note to him with her letter to Dr. Davenport.
There was another round of applause, then a discreet conference between Mary and Georgiana. I realized that Mr. Knightley’s violin sat untouched on a table. Had he missed his performance? Emma and Harriet were absent as well.
Georgiana took a seat at the pianoforte, adjusting her music, and the audience hushed.
Mary faced us, her voice carrying and strong. “For our last work, we adapt the lost myth of Dido, Queen of Britannia. The time is long ago. Britannia is at war with the Gauls, but the war goes poorly. Desperate for allies, Queen Dido has agreed to marry Aeneas, a prince of Troy. But Aeneas was ensorcelled and withdrew his engagement. Dido’s heart is broken, and Britannia is doomed.”
There were intakes of breath from the audience, either due to Mary’s delivery, which was riveting, or because she had dared allude to the war.
“I do not know this myth,” I whispered to Darcy.
“That is because it is wildly altered,” he whispered back. “For one thing, Troy is inconveniently far from Britain.”
Mary finished her introduction with, “I, Belinda, Dido’s loyal maid, have come to comfort her.” Georgiana played a chord, and Mary began to sing.
The keyboard music was an old style, a spare continuo to lead the voice, nothing like Mary’s strikingly modern compositions. I knew Mary’s singing, of course. Neither of us were gifted vocalists; Mary was more accurate, while I was more sweet—Papa once called Mary’s singing “furry,” which had upset her. This music, though, somber and slow, fit her beautifully, and she sang with a confidence I had never heard as Belinda beseeched her mistress to put aside unworthy Aeneas and heal her heart.
While she sang, my binding to Yuánchi, a constant in my mind, brightened like a spiderweb catching sun. The sensation strengthened, and around me, the forces of the draca world began to rotate and fold, like the flow I felt when Georgiana invoked her strength. But these were structured and purposeful, a dressmaker sewing panels into a gown, not a paintbrush blending watercolors. The exactness was quintessentially Mary. Her aura as a great wyfe was real, even though it was strangely dispersed. She had power.
Outside on the terrace, motions caught my eye. Those iridescent small draca had gathered, landing on the rail and tables, heads cocked and listening.
Still playing the keyboard, Georgiana added her voice—the voice of Dido, Queen of Britannia, although oddly costumed in a flame-red Chinese gown. In all this time, I had only ever heard her sing short phrases, the notes she used to invoke her powers as wyfe of song. Now, her voice rose in a bell-clear soprano that blended beautifully with Mary’s earthy timbre. The melody grew more complex as well, and the harmonies more daring.
Georgiana sang a dark refrain:
“Belinda; darkness shades me,
death is now a welcome guest.
When I am laid in earth,
remember me, but ah! forget my fate.”
This heart-wrenching melody I recognized—Dido’s lament, the devastating death song of the queen—but already the music was forging a new path, and the queen did not complete her death song. Instead, the harmonies, resplendent with the shimmering contrasts of Mary’s composition, swelled with hope.
Georgiana sang a wordless counterpoint, her eyes closed as her hands swept the keyboard in a ringing challenge that shivered my skin.
Mary sang again, and the crowd muttered in surprise. Purcell’s sad ending had been discarded. These words were solely Mary’s:
