My First Duchess

The duchess wanted to talk of the upcoming trip to America, but the duke wanted to talk of matters ancestral.

"We Wathens have long had ill luck with our first wives," he mournfully intoned as he poled the skiff across the goopy waters of Wyvern Mere. His wife, a stout woman of thirteen-stone (most of it in her bosom and hips, it would seem) weighed down the prow, so that her husband the duke (a wisp of a man with the physique of a broomstick) stood correspondingly high in the air as the bow tipped up beneath him. "Aye," he sighed. "Ill luck."

"Indeed," snapped his wife. His seemed an ill-mannered remark, as the duke, lately a bachelor, had just recently taken her hand.

The duchess—Roberta Voyle-Pritchard in her former incarnation; Her Grace the Duchess of Malvern since May—would have once been fascinated by the topic of her predecessors, and had indeed spent many hours in the months leading up to the wedding (which she was planning long before her husband-to-be had even a dim anticipation of the fate rolling toward him) raptly studying the dusky portraits that hung in the Long Gallery of Wormingford Hall. But now her mind was on the transatlantic passage to New York. For weeks she had been carefully sounding out her acquaintances, so that she could book passage on a date and a liner where the company would bring maximal social pleasure with minimal possibilities for discomfiture.

"Bertha Thomas was telling me," she went on, "that Garbo will be returning from Sweden sometime next month, and there's every chance—"

"Ill luck," bleated her husband. "Even unto the days of my first ancestor, the first duke."

"Oh my dear!" The duchess cocked an eyebrow at her husband over her shoulder. "Surely you had an ancestor before the first duke! Surely he had ancestors too!"

"That was when we first came to Whisper Water," the duke continued, "and built the Hall. The willows go back to those days too. Ill luck," he sighed.

The duchess made a sour face at the trees as they slid past. They were black and ancient things that drooped over the slime-encrusted waters of the mere, as though bending to drink. Or to drown themselves, the duchess thought. She pulled her shawl tighter about her. It was a sunless day, and a cold mist hung over the silence of the waters. Even the plash of the pole in the water was muffled.

Five millions a year, she had supposed, would amply compensate for taking as a dwelling place the gloomy ducal seat that backed onto such a foul piece of marshland. But what good was five millions a year if you never spent some of it on the Riviera?

"Has anyone told you of the legend of the dragon?" the duke said.

"Yes, dear," she sighed. "There once was a dragon that lived in these parts, and it ate all the fair maidens for miles around." She looked back at him. "It's the story they tell about all dragons isn't it?"

Her husband's mouth twitched beneath his mustache. More and more the thing reminded Her Grace of a whisk broom.

"Yes, that's the story," he said. "The first duke put a stop to it, though."

"I thought that would have been Saint George!"

"There was no Saint George in those days. There was no dealing with it. Except—" He paused. "By making a deal with it."

The duchess didn't even glance around at that nonsensical remark, but kept her eyes forward as she rolled them.

"It was the same bargain as Rumpelstiltskin's," the duke went on. "Well, after a manner. The dragon had no taste for firstborn babes—"

"Oh, really, you can be utterly appalling when you've a mind!" the duchess muttered under her breath.

"—so it was his first wife he gave to the monster."

That did provoke another backward glance from the duchess. "Your first ancestor the first duke," she said in a very level tone of voice, "fed his first wife to a dragon?"

The duke shrugged. "They all did. It was the bargain."

"Who all did what?"

"All the dukes fed their first wives to the dragon." He shaded his eyes and scanned the mere.

That was too much for the duchess. "Oh, really, Augustulus, don't act the child! Of all the—! I suppose—! Did your father feed your mother to the dragon? Before or after you were born?" she added with a snort.

"My mother was his second wife," the duke replied in mild tones.

"Oh. Yes," the duchess said, a little awkwardly after her previous exclamation. "I'd quite forgot. But I know for a fact that your grandfather was married only once, and his duchess died in France!"

"So it was put about," the duke said. He continued to squint distractedly over her head.

"What?" The duchess half-turned in her seat. "What do you mean 'put about'? You mean she—?"

"And when they could, my ancestors married in secret first, and only took a real duchess after feeding the unwanted one to the dragon." He drew the pole from the water, and the skiff slid to a stop. "That's who the willows are for."

"Henry!" The duchess clambered to her feet, so that the skiff wobbled. "I think I have had quite enough of your—! 'Who the willows are for'? That the devil does that mean?"

"Memorials. I'll plant yours over there." He pointed to a spot on the bank.

"My what? Memorial? Henry, you have told jokes in poor taste before, but— Whaaaaa—!"

A scaly claw reached from out the water and neatly plucked her from the skiff. Without a ripple it dragged her below.

"I suppose it's a lucky thing," the duke said as he pushed the skiff around, and he spoke as though his first duchess were still seated in the prow, "that the damned thing is too stupid to understand how we gamed the bargain."

-30-
Submitted for The Writing Cramp: 3-9-21
Prompt: Use mist, whisper, wisp, silence