The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons) (36 page)

The effect of these accusations, along with others acquired during the expedition (such as the rumours of intimacy with Tom), was to drive all interest in my scientific discoveries out of the public mind in both Bayembe and Scirland. While my companions and I recuperated from our trials—in Nsebu, for Sir Adam had refused to allow us to return to Atuyem, even after my house arrest ended—we endured endless questions, not one of which had to do with natural history. On Tom’s advice, I answered as few of those as my indiscretion and the status of my inquirer would allow. The political negotiations played out with a minimum of our involvement, which was as I preferred; I devoted myself instead to making better notes of my observations in Mouleen, since swamp conditions had made proper efforts there impossible.

It was a peculiar time. If I had felt odd briefly leaving the Green Hell for the savannah during our trek to the Great Cataract, how much stranger was it to sit on a chair in a Scirling-style house, to sleep in a bed, to wear skirts once again? The air felt positively cool and dry after the oppressive humidity of the swamp, and the sky seemed impossibly huge. Things that had become routine to me these past months reasserted themselves as unthinkable: had I truly eaten
insects
? Conversely, things which had once been shocking were no longer so. When every woman one has seen for half a year, only Natalie excepted, goes about wearing nothing more than a loincloth, the Gabborid custom of leaving one breast bare seems positively modest.

Over it all hung the certainty that we would not be in Eriga for much longer. “They’ll drag us home,” Tom predicted, shortly after we were reunited. “The soldiers were talking on the way here; they said the government might recall all civilians from Nsebu, if the Ikwunde continue to press. Except for the trading companies, of course. And now, with what you’ve done…” He shook his head, bemused. “There will have to be an inquiry.”

Natalie laughed. The recent surprises seemed to have done her in; her manner was that of a woman who had washed her hands of everything, and now was merely waiting to see what would happen next. She said, “Well, I’ve ruined myself thoroughly enough to avoid marriage, and if I am
very
stone-headed I may yet avoid the madhouse. I suppose I am ready to go home.”

I was not. Now that I knew fangfish were immature swamp-wyrms, I wanted to study their life cycle in greater detail, perhaps get an estimate for what percentage survived that infantile stage and grew to adulthood. I wanted to see the seasonal mating of the swamp-wyrms in the lake below the Great Cataract; I wanted to watch the great queen dragons lay their eggs, and distribute them through the forest alongside Yeyuama and the others. I wanted to document how the hatchlings fared in the river environment of Bayembe (and that was
before
I knew what would happen after their transplantation).

But I have never once left the site of an expedition feeling that I have learned everything, answered every question there is to ask. My curiosity always finds new directions. Despite that, I was honestly not certain I could face the Green Hell again—not so soon. Like a man undertaking strenuous labor, I had thought myself fit enough while I was still working, but now that I had stopped, a profound weariness set in, as much psychological as physical. A mattress might feel strange beneath my back at night, but I was not eager to trade it for a damp pallet again.

Regardless, the choice was not ours to make. Tom was right: before the month was out, Sir Adam informed us that we were to return to Scirland. “Are our visas revoked?” I asked.

I meant the question politely enough, but Sir Adam was not inclined to read anything I said in a charitable light. He said, “They will be, if that’s what it takes to get rid of you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Tom hastened to assure him, and we left his office.

We did obtain permission to return to Atuyem—under escort, of course—so that we might make our farewells there. I had already parted from Yeyuama two weeks before; the Moulish did not tarry long in Point Miriam after handing over the Labane. I sent gifts with him, as lavish as I could arrange: more iron knives, foodstuffs not found in the swamp, anything I thought the Moulish might find of use. They wear little jewelry, but I sent a carved wooden pendant for Akinimanbi, a charm made in Bayembe to protect infants from sickness. I had no belief in its supernatural efficacy, nor would Akinimanbi necessarily think much of an item that invoked a Yembe god, but it was the best gesture I could think of to express my gratitude for her aid and forbearance.

In Atuyem, I met with Galinke and clasped her hands. “Despite all the trouble and confusion that has come of it,” I said, “I am still more grateful than I can say that you recommended me to your brother. I only wish there were something equally vital I might do for you in return.”

She smiled broadly. “In a way, you have. The more secure Bayembe is, the less likely it is that I will be sent to the mansa as his wife.”

I had not forgotten our early political discussions in the
agban,
which had played no small role in affecting my decisions. “Then I am glad to have been of service,” I said.

Galinke was not the only one who benefited from our expedition. Faj Rawango had, on account of his ancestry, been appointed to a prominent role in the new contact with Mouleen. And of course Ankumata had gotten what he desired, though he did not bid us farewell in person.

When people speak of the tragedies in my life, they ordinarily mean the deaths: not only Jacob, but all those around me who have perished, whether in direct consequence of danger or simple misfortune and the passage of time after our friendship has formed. At times, though, I think these partings should be accounted as highly, if only in the ledger of my own sorrow. Akinimanbi did not die on a Labane spear, but I never saw her again after leaving for the Great Cataract; in that sense I lost her as thoroughly as if she
had
died. So it was with Yeyuama as well. I only saw Faj Rawango once more, years later, and although Galinke corresponded with me, we could not be friends the way we might have been had we dwelt in the same land. So it has been, again and again throughout my life, as I form connections with people and then lose them to distance and time. I mourn those losses, even when I know my erstwhile friends are safe and happy among their own kin.

But the only way for me to avoid such losses would be to stay home, to never journey beyond the range of easy visitation. As my life will attest, that is not a measure I am willing to take; nor would I forgo the pleasures of my transient friendships if I could.

So we made our farewells, packed our things, and boarded a steamship in the harbor of Nsebu. Much browner, thinner, and more worn than we had been when we arrived, we made our way back to Scirland.

TWENTY-FIVE

Reactions at home—A stranger to me—Conversations and apologies—No longer a recluse—The thief—A small bar—The cost of the world

There was indeed an inquiry, and a flood of articles in the news-sheets, and gossipmongers swirling in the social waters like so many hungry fangfish.

That I survived these things at all owes a great deal to Lord Hilford, who was my tireless champion in venues ranging from Society to the Synedrion. He defended me against Sir Adam’s report, accusations of fornication, and his own son (who had not forgiven me in the least for absconding with his daughter). Natalie was disowned, and took up residence with me as my permanent companion.

She proved surprisingly able with Jacob, once she was a resident of my house rather than a visitor to it. “I would not want one of my own, I think,” she said with a laugh, “but I do not mind borrowing yours for brief spans of time.”

My son. Now three years old, he had grown tremendously in my absence; I might not have recognized him, had his resemblance to his father not become even stronger. He, I think, barely recognized me at all, shrinking into Mrs. Hunstin’s skirts when I crouched down and held out my arms for him to come.

His diffidence struck me like a blow. It was not only his youth that made him forget me, or the fact that I had been absent for a third of his short life; it was the distance between us before that. I was, I thought wryly, as remote a figure in his world as a queen dragon was to a fangfish, dwelling far away in the clean, turbulent waters of the lake. (Of course I thought of it in those terms. My head was full of plans for the book I would publish, which I had been using as a distraction from the prospect of a Synedrion hearing. And I had begun to think about motherhood as a naturalist might—which made it much more interesting to me.)

The witchcraft ritual had purged some of the tension and pain from my thoughts, though, and on the journey home I had realized that I was eager to see my son once more. I vowed, as Mrs. Hunstin coaxed him toward me, that I would find some means of improving matters between us. I still had no desire to be the sort of mother society expected me to be; but surely I could be
some
kind of mother to him, in my particular way, to a greater extent than before.

My own mother … I will not go into detail regarding the conversation between us, save to say that “conversation” is an exceedingly polite name to give it. She had heard the rumours about Tom Wilker, and drawn very erroneous conclusions from them, not the least of which was the notion that I had only gone to Eriga for his sake. I took great exception to her readiness to condemn me, and after that I no longer had to ignore her letters, for she wrote me none.

Andrew I apologized to for the loss of the penknife he had given me when we were children. He listened to the tale of its demise with all the wide-eyed excitement of the eight-year-old boy he had been, and afterward clapped me on the back as if I were a man. “It fell in a noble cause,” he said solemnly, and then demanded to know whether Erigan women really went bare-breasted.

I had expected to return to my life as a recluse, albeit for different reasons than before. I imagined myself rising each morning to write papers on our observations, Tom and I having agreed to bombard the Philosophers’ Colloquium and other scholarly bodies with material until they were forced to acknowledge our existence and our merit. We had plans for another book as well, which ultimately turned into two:
Dragon Breeds of the Bayembe Region
and
Dragon Breeds of Mouleen
.

But I had not accounted for my celebrity, which brought a flood of mail and even some curiosity-seekers to my house in Pasterway. Natalie dealt with these, but I could not (and did not) refuse all invitations to events and house parties; if I wanted the Colloquium to acknowledge me as a scholar, it was to my benefit to present myself as such in public. (This also lent strength to my assertions that any scandals, real or imagined, associated with my time in Eriga were secondary at best to my true purpose there.) I set to work making a place for myself in Society, even if it was not the place Society intended for me.

And, one Athemer morning in early Pluvis, I sat down in Kemble’s parlour with Tom, Natalie, Lord Hilford, and Frederick Kemble himself, to discuss the matter of dragonbone.

“It was Canlan,” Lord Hilford said. “I have no proof of it—nothing I could take to a court, not with a marquess as the defendant—but I’m certain he is the one behind the break-in. The man I set to investigating wrote to me recently, reporting that Canlan received a very large sum of money from a company in Va Hing. A new outfit, one whose members include several chemists and industrialists.”

Tom frowned, drumming his fingers on one knee. “But why sell the information, when he could profit more by exploiting it himself?”

The earl snorted. “Because he needed ready money. The Canlan estates are not what they once were; to invest in this research himself would require more funds than he can spare. And also, I suppose, because he’s lazy. Gilmartin isn’t a chemist himself, which means he would need to hire men who are, which means dividing his profits, and also a great deal of work I doubt he’s inclined to undertake. Much easier for him to hand it off to someone more energetic.”

I thought of the accusations against me, that I had betrayed Scirland by helping Bayembe do without
our
help. That had largely been inadvertent on my part, but Canlan had sold this knowledge to Va Hing with malice aforethought.

Of course, I could hardly throw stones, not when we had stolen the seeds of it from a Chiavoran working for a Bulskoi lord in Vystrana. Whatever came of this would be an international collaboration, against the will of all involved.

“What do you have for us, Mr. Kemble?” I asked.

He rose and unlocked his desk, taking from it a small oblong wrapped in canvas. Because I was the one financing his work, he handed it to me first.

My hopes were too high; I nearly dropped the thing, surprised by its heavy weight. This was not the feather-light material from which we had built the
Furcula.
I unwrapped it nevertheless, and found in my hands a solid bar the color of dragonbone, no longer than my palm.

“Chemically, it’s the right substance,” Kemble said. “Which is more than I had a year ago. But the structure is entirely wrong. It’s too dense; it weighs more than lead. Though it’s stronger than lead, for what that’s worth.”

His tone said he did not think it was worth much. “If it has the strength of dragonbone, surely that is of use,” I said, giving Tom the bar to examine.

Kemble grunted. “Only if you could produce it in large quantities, easily and cheaply. Which, right now, you can’t. Or at least I can’t. I gambled on making that; it cost all the funds you gave me for the next year. I had to know if it would work. But you might as well build your machines out of firestones as use that for any industrial purpose.”

I could not contain my wince. His funds for a
year
? I could not fault him for the experiment, but even so …

Kemble proceeded to outline the method by which he had created the bar, while Tom and Lord Hilford asked intelligent questions. I followed none of it, but slouched in my chair in a most unladylike fashion and chewed on my lower lip. It was progress, though not success. And I was determined to follow through until it
became
success, even if it bankrupted me—but far better, of course, if it did not. With Natalie now a part of my household and Jacob steadily growing, I would need a greater income.