Bee Sting Cake

by Victoria Goddard

  “Come and have cake, at least,” Mrs. Buchance said, smiling more brightly. “Nora, will you come?”

  “I’ve eaten enough cake for a week,” Mrs. Inglesides said, “and I must take advantage of the evening to myself. Good evening, gentlemen. Now, you be good,” she added firmly to miscellaneous children, deposited her pile of coats on the bottom of the stair rail, and departed.

  “Will you read us a story, Jemis?” Sela asked, trying to look winsome.

  “Later,” Mrs. Buchance said. “Take your cousins outside to play for now.”

  Sela pouted, but the dog chose that moment to start barking hysterically at something out the back, and all the children still in the hall ran off to see what he had found. In the sudden silence my ears rang.

  “I had hoped you might go out with Mr. Dart again this evening,” Mrs. Buchance said, taking Lamissa back from me. “My sister-in-law’s brother is coming to visit for the fair, and she very much wanted to get the house ready, so I said I would take my nephews for the weekend. It does make for a noisy household, I am afraid. Come back to the kitchen. You will find we are not very formal, Mr. Leaveringham.”

  Hal and Mr. Dart were both still looking stunned, but increasingly amused. I grinned at their astonishment and led the way down the hall.

  I made coffee while Mrs. Buchance cut the cakes. She set Lamissa on Mr. Dart’s lap, despite his protests that he had never held a baby before.

  “Don’t you visit your tenants, Mr. Dart?” I tried, but he made a face and said he left that to his brother and Hamish. Hal said, “I do,” and took Lamissa with a better grip, though as she was nearly walking she could sit up for herself just fine.

  Mrs. Buchance gave each of the three of us three slices of cake—a blackberry cream, a chocolate hazelnut, and some sort of layered pear and apple confection—and then poured the coffee and smiled warmly. “What brings you to Ragnor Bella, Mr. Leaveringham? Visiting Jemis? Or are you here for the Dartington Fair?”

  “Am I here for the Fair? I have been hearing nothing but the wildest speculation about the Dartington Fair since we left Yrchester.”

  “What’s the gossip on the mail coach?” Mr. Dart asked. Mrs. Buchance also looked keenly intrigued.

  “Gossip is that the baking competition is likely to be fierce—and if this is the quality of the offerings, ma’am, I can well see why—shall you enter your name in, Jemis, for a cake?”

  “You’re the better baker, Hal.”

  “No one else creams butter and honey as well as you.”

  “Why, thank you,” I replied, before catching the expression on Mrs. Buchance’s face and subsiding in embarrassment.

  “Perhaps you can enter together,” Mr. Dart said, with obvious calculation—no doubt as to potential bets on the topic.

  “If it’s permitted, I’d be delighted. We have nothing so exciting in Fillering Pool, let me tell you. No one gossips about our summer fair across three baronies. As we came south the more serious-minded kept trying to get on topic of the current crop of legislation or the dangers of highwaymen or the strange lack of Noirell honey, but everyone else wanted to gossip about how Mad Jack Greenwing’s son is back from university and the bets are accordingly wide open. I am delighted to find you’re a local, Jemis, I desire greatly to meet the man.”

  “Indeed,” I said weakly.

  Mrs. Buchance said, “I think I had better see what the children are up to,” and hastened off before we could do more than half-stand.

  Mr. Dart caught my eye. “Perhaps I had best use the privy.” He disappeared almost as quickly.

  Hal frowned. “Is something wrong? Your sister and Mr. Dart—”

  “She’s not my sister. My stepfather’s second wife.”

  “... I see.”

  I sighed. “Probably you don’t. I didn’t tell you before, but—”

  “Jemis!” cried Mr. Dart, running back in, his expression so shocked we both stood up in alarm. “You must come!”

  Hal and I followed him out to the back garden, where seven little boys and girls and one woman stood with their heads tilted back and their mouths open as they stared at the sky.

  I tilted my head back. My mouth opened of its own accord when I saw what they were looking at.

  It was a dragon.

  Chapter Four

  Theories on Dragons

  DRAGONS, ACCORDING to the natural philosophers of Astandalas, are the material embodiment of the chaos to be found outside the Pax Astandalatis. As the borders of the Empire were pushed outwards, so too were the dragons, until all that was left were legends and a few place names.

  Astandalas fell a dozen (or so) years ago, so I supposed it made sense that the dragons were coming back. Looking at this one, dancing in the sky like a vision of the beauty of violence, I was glad that we’d had six months of ‘how to fight legendary creatures’ in Self-Defence at Morrowlea.

  I am not much of a romantic.

  It was somewhere over the fields north of town, and as I watched a huge flock of starlings suddenly swirled around it. In a final twist of wings and tail it disappeared behind the trees.

  There was a prolonged moment of silence, and then all the dogs of town started barking madly, the starlings began screeching, and someone began ringing the alarm bells. Sela proclaimed, “That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!” and all the other children started talking at once.

  “It’s headed towards Dartington,” Mr. Dart said suddenly, and took off for the garden gate. Hal and I made hasty adieus to Mrs. Buchance and set off after him. I paused to pick up Hal’s dropped knapsack and then half-tripped over the dog, falling behind in my efforts to make it stay within the yard, though I caught up quickly once I had room to run. We found Mr. Dart halfway to the river path, half-running as he tried to get to the north gate bridge.

  Other people had the same idea, for the side roads were busy and people were standing on their steps gawping and gossiping, but they all seemed to stop at the town walls, where they stood chattering like the outraged starlings.

  “A dragon!” Hal said. “Can you believe it, Jemis? Where could it possibly have come from?”

  “Arguty Forest?” said Mr. Dart as we caught up. He grinned at me when I frowned at him.

  “That’s highwaymen—there are always rumours,” I added to Hal. “I expect from the Farry March.”

  “Or the Woods Noirell. People say there are unicorns in there.”

  “It’s a fair leap from unicorns to dragons,” Hal objected. “Unicorns are very rare but they’re the symbol of the Lady for a reason. Dragons, though.”

  “The Kingdom can be reached through the Woods Noirell, or so they say,” said Mr. Dart.

  “The King—Fairyland, do you mean?”

  I shivered and twirled the ring on my finger. My mother had always warned me about loose talk when magic was afoot. “Better not to name them aloud. We don’t want to draw their attention, if the Good Neighbours are out-and-about.”

  Hal laughed. “That’s an old wives’ tale, surely.”

  “A dragon just flew by,” I said.

  “And our Mr. Greenwing is most particular about his family legends,” Mr. Dart said, causing Hal to trip and fall over.

  He sat for an instant on the ground staring up at us. “I beg your pardon?”

  “My surname is not Greene but Greenwing,” I said, and then, when Hal continued gaping, added defiantly, “My father was Jakory Greenwing.”

  Hal accepted the hand I held out and stood up slowly. “No. You never said.”

  “I know.”

  “Not when Lark did her piece. Not after, when we were walking. Not when my mother took us to see that damned play—by the Emperor, Jemis, you didn’t say anything.”

  I fiddled with the strap on Hal’s knapsack. Mr. Dart walked a few paces off, looking at the sky as if after dragons, but not so far that I didn’t think he wasn’t listening. Hal shook his head.

  “Your father saved my great-uncle’s life twice. Di
dn’t you think we’d be pleased—overjoyed—to know?”

  I started at a movement in the hedgerow as a small bird flew off. I’d liked Hal’s mother, the dowager duchess. Hal was my closest friend bar Mr. Dart. And yet I had not been able to confess the shame, nor the pride, I felt at being my father’s son, not after the mortification of Lark’s paper—not even though Hal had stood beside me—nor after the horrible evening at the theatre. The dowager duchess hadn’t known the subtitle nor the subject, she’d said at the intermission, when the audience had been laughing hysterically and the ducal party were sitting in shock and I had pretended to another attack of the mysterious illness.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “Jemis—you know me. You could hardly think I’d be anything but honoured to know your story?”

  I seemed to be spending the afternoon in a state of excruciating embarrassment. I forced myself to meet Hal’s puzzled, unhappy expression. I swallowed dryly. “You stood up when no one else would. You helped me through a terrible time this spring. I know I should have told you earlier. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “But why didn’t you?” he asked, as honestly puzzled as I’d ever seen him. “Once we were out of Morrowlea, why didn’t you tell us then?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us you were a duke till Marcan was found out by the outriders his father sent?”

  “It would have changed things,” he said after a pause. “It did change things, even though you mostly just laughed, when you were feeling up to it.”

  Mr. Dart came back, evidently deciding to participate in the conversation. I felt a flash of commingled relief and irritation that he did so. “You must have been perilously ill, Jemis.”

  “It would be nice to say that was the reason, but it wasn’t.”

  Hal frowned. I smiled painfully at him. “It’s not that I had ... blanks,” I added earnestly to Mr. Dart, who was suddenly looking appalled. “But there were a number of things, conversations especially, that I was present for but paid no attention to. As it seems.”

  “And you went off by yourself?” Mr. Dart said. “You let him go off by himself?”

  “I couldn’t keep him a prisoner at Leaveringham Castle,” Hal pointed out reasonably. “And he didn’t exactly mention that he was losing track of conversations. He just seemed excessively quiet. By June he’d seemed in much better nick. Until the letters didn’t come.”

  “He stopped writing here, too. But we didn’t know about the illness, or the situation at Morrowlea.”

  “You seem recovered now,” Hal said, giving me a penetrating stare as he suddenly swung around. I tried not to squirm. At least they were speaking directly to me. “Or are you pretending to be well? But you haven’t sneezed once since the posting yard! I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed until now.”

  I smiled reluctantly and decided that while I was admitting to gross negligences of friendship I might as well continue with the rest. “I found out what it was.”

  “Oh? Is that what you were doing after Kingsbury, visiting physickers?”

  “No, just wandering around through north Fiellan and Ghilousette. Recuperating from a broken heart, what I thought was a failed degree, and—” I took a breath. Mr. Dart nodded encouragingly. “And from what turned out to be withdrawal from a serious addiction to wireweed and the effects of being ensorcelled for nearly three years.”

  Hal stared. “Who could possibly—” And then, as I had, he knew. His expression hardened instantly. “Lark.” He spat several curses. “What did she get out of it?”

  “Besides my abject devotion? It appears I have an untrained gift at magic, which she was stealing. The sneezing is by way of an allergy.”

  Hal started to march down the road. Mr. Dart and I followed. Mr. Dart said quietly, “You’d better tell him the rest of it.”

  Hal swung his arms. “The rest of what? How did you figure this out, anyway? Are Fiellanese physickers so accustomed to wireweed addiction they recognize its effects?”

  “No, but ... Violet is.”

  Hal nearly went down again. “These boots went into the Otterburn, too,” he muttered as he caught his balance. “Damned leather’s all stretched. What do you mean, Violet knows all about wireweed addiction? How? Why? How do you know that she knows?”

  I pinched my nose. My head was starting to pound. “She came here last week. She’s—I think Lark is one of the Indrillines, and Violet is their agent.”

  “Lark is one of the ... Bloody hell, Jemis! are you even listening to yourself?”

  “Not far from here is a country house that last week was attacked by a group of cultists being used as cover for a wireweed growing concern. Violet was here for I know not what nefarious purpose—”

  “She was here to warn you, Mr. Greenwing. Because you had no idea Lark was an Indrilline, and you humiliated her.”

  “And did a good job of it, too,” Hal growled, and then seemed to realize, as I had been trying not to, that thoroughly and publicly humiliating a member of the most powerful and feared criminal family on the continent, no matter how much she deserved it, was not perhaps a very good idea.

  “Perhaps she’s not an important Indrilline,” Mr. Dart said unconvincingly.

  Hal and I looked soberly at each other. Hal had learned surprisingly quickly how to behave as a “plain gentleman” (the standard of conduct to which Morrowlea students were held), but Lark had never comported herself as anything much less than a queen. She had been so glittering and magnificent and charming that no one had ever minded.

  “Violet—did she know you’re Jemis Greenwing, then?”

  “She says she didn’t, but ... Lark did.”

  “Through her nefarious connections, I suppose?”

  I shuddered at the thought of Lark having nefarious connections, ones she might send after me.

  —No, I thought. She was barely twenty-one. She had spent three years at Morrowlea not being in the criminal courts of Orio. She surely couldn’t have gone straight back and become—

  I looked at Hal pacing along beside me, and swallowed hard. Hal had. We’d walked up to the front door of Leaveringham Castle, he and I, looking much as we did now, and from the moment the butler had answered the ring he had been His Grace the Duke, come home at last.

  “No,” I said belatedly. “I told her.”

  “Oh, Jemis. It wasn’t just coincidence about her final paper, then?”

  I looked at him and shook my head slowly, then turned my attention forward as we crested a gentle rise and saw stretching out before us the long gentle valley of the river Rag. Dartington village was visible to the northeast, the lady-tower of its church a lovely spire of punctuation, surrounded by a pleasant patchwork of harvest-ready fields and woodlots just starting to colour for autumn.

  “No sign of the dragon,” Mr. Dart said, sounding disappointed.

  “There’s smoke over there.” Hal pointed.

  “That’s Magistra Bellamy’s cottage. She was away earlier—do you mind if we stop? She said she might have something for my arm today.”

  “Of course,” Hal said politely, in what I thought a rather ducal manner, at least until he added to me in a low voice, “His arm? Is it not simply broken? Is she a physicker-wizard? Here?”

  I reflected that I didn’t know what Magistra Bellamy was, exactly, and that the unfashionableness of magic extended to Fillering Pool. “No, Mr. Dart ended up with a stone arm last weekend. It was rather eventful. I’ll explain later.”

  Hal gave me a crooked grin. “There seem to be a lot of things you need to explain later, Master Jemis.”

  “It’s Mr. Greenwing,” I said, much more vehemently than I meant, and his smile faded into puzzlement again.

  Mr. Dart opened the latch of the witch’s gate. Magistra Bellamy had a pretty cottage, timber-and-plaster as was usual for the upper vale of the Rag, and an even prettier garden full of herbs and flowers, many of which were still blooming.

  “She has a passionflower!” Hal cried, an
d plunged off the path to examine a vine clambering up the wall. “And, oh, look, Jemis, the crimson glory vine—and isn’t it a beauty.” He touched wide crimson-purple leaves with gentle hands, murmuring names as he went from wall to bed to pot.

  “I think we’ve lost him,” Mr. Dart said, amused. He entered the gate and strode directly to the cottage. “I can well believe Roddy Kulfield writing to say his ducal patron was mad about plants. Shall we call him?”

  “No true gardener would be offended, surely.”

  “Verily.” Mr. Dart lifted the knocker, which was shaped like a unicorn.

  “Rare, but not unknown,” I murmured, though only Mr. Dart was there to smile, Hal himself by this time having his face deep into a patch of what I just about guessed was mint.

  Footsteps sounded, the door flew open, and Mrs. Etaris said, “There you are at last!”

  TEN MINUTES OF UTTER confusion later, I abruptly remembered that Hal was still investigating Magistra Bellamy’s garden. There was no sign of the witch herself. Mrs. Etaris had put me immediately to work scrubbing what seemed a remarkable quantity of copper and iron pots. Mr. Dart’s arm meant he was spared scouring, so he had been sent off with an amiable shaggy dog. Mrs. Etaris herself had disappeared somewhere to make mysterious thumping noises.

  I finished the first pot, a cauldron that had been caked with noxious grey-brown sludge I hoped very much was old pease porridge. It was when turning to the next that I recalled Hal, and also that duke or no duke, we’d been on kitchen duty a fair number of days together, and so rather than starting on the second I wiped off my hands and went in search of him.

  He was kneeling before some sort of bush, humming. I watched him for a moment as he carefully bent a branch down so he could examine the leaves better. Examining their shape and situation, I guessed, something he’d said about plant identification swimming to mind. He looked quite absurdly happy.