Chantress Alchemy (11 page)

As I looked down on the dark river below, Nat came up
behind me, close enough that I could feel his warmth through the silk of my dress.

“Lucy, could someone be using magic against you?”

“I should think I’d be able to smell it, if someone were.”

“Maybe you can’t smell magic-making anymore,” Nat said. “Just as you can’t sing Proven Magic.”

It was an awful possibility. I thought of Wrexham and his threats—his confidence that he knew how to deal with Chantresses—and again I almost told Nat about what he’d said to me. But I was too afraid of what Nat might do.

“I’ve never heard of a way of stopping Chantress magic,” I said instead, arguing the thing out for myself. “If there were, wouldn’t Scargrave have used it?”

“I reckon he would have,” Nat admitted. “He used everything else.”

“So maybe there isn’t any magic at work here. Maybe the problem lies with me instead. Maybe there’s something I’ve done, something I’ve sung, something I’ve eaten or drunk—
something
that’s done this to me.”

There was a definite note of panic in my voice now. Even I could hear it.

Nat laid his strong hands on my shoulders and gently turned me to face him. “Whatever’s happened, it’s not your fault.”

I put my hands over his, trying to draw strength from them. It didn’t work; I felt small and cold.

“We don’t know that,” I said. “And in the meantime, I’m trapped. They expect me to work magic here—and how can I do that when I can’t trust what I hear?” I shut my eyes.
Wild Magic
will betray you when you least expect it
, my godmother had warned me. Perhaps this was what she meant. It felt as if my world had turned upside down. “Oh, I wish I’d never left Norfolk!”

“I wish so too,” said Nat. “But we’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, we’ll put it about that you’re not feeling well, and you’ll keep safe in your rooms.”

My rooms weren’t safe with Margery there. But I couldn’t explain that to Nat without telling him about Wrexham. . . .

“Only let in people you know,” Nat was saying. “And if you have to go out, guard against strangers especially. This court is full of people who have no alibis, and who I wouldn’t trust with tuppence.”

“Such as?”

“Lord Gabriel, for one. He spent the Scargrave years in Sweden, studying alchemy, and somehow he’s wangled his way into Sir Isaac’s good graces. And then there’s Sybil Dashwood. Her father was Lord Wycombe, but she and her mother lived on the Continent during the Scargrave years, and she’s only just moved back. Nobody knows much about her.”

“I met her last night,” I told him. “Well, not
met
, exactly. Apparently we knew each other when we were children.”

“Apparently?”

“Well, I don’t remember her. But then I don’t remember lots of things, you know. She says I spent a whole summer with her when I was seven.”

“And you have no way of knowing if you really did?” Nat shook his head. “That’s not good.”

“It could be true, I guess. She said she comes from a Chantress family. I guess that’s why my mother brought me there. But they don’t have magic anymore.”

“That’s what she says, yes. But who knows what the truth is.” Nat’s anxiety for me was plain in his eyes. “Think about it, Lucy: she could know more about Chantress magic than anyone else here, barring you. Maybe she knows enough to interfere with it in some way. Don’t let yourself be fooled by her—or by anyone else. Keep to yourself, if you can. I won’t be able to visit you in the day, but at night I’ll try and watch over your door.”

I thought about how he’d been standing there in the darkness outside my room this morning. “Were you keeping watch last night?”

He looked abashed. “I couldn’t sleep, so I came down,” he admitted. “And there was this, too.”

It was growing light now, light enough that I could clearly see the snowdrop he held out to me, fluttering like a tiny white dove on a slender green branch. “For you,” he said. “For Valentine’s Day.”

I forgot my fears in a rush of surprised delight.
The first man you meet on Valentine’s Day will be your sweetheart,
Sybil had said, but I hadn’t remembered it till now. “Oh, Nat. It’s beautiful.”

I reached to take it from his hand, then stopped. There was something wrong in his expression, something painful. He had the eyes of a man who wants what he cannot have.

“Nat?”

He wrapped my fingers around the snowdrop. “The letters. The visit. I said I would explain.”

What could the explanation be, to make him look like that? My hand tightened around the flower.

“It started after you left last summer,” Nat said. “Wrexham and his cronies on the Council wanted to know where you’d gone. At first the King wouldn’t say, but eventually they convinced him that your whereabouts were a state matter, and he agreed they should have a voice in any decisions he made about you. It was about then that Sir Barnaby became ill and had to resign. I was away at the time—I’d been out in the countryside for weeks, learning as much as I could about the blight—but when I got back, I found myself up in front of Wrexham and his handpicked committee, being questioned about my letters to you and my visit to Norfolk and . . . other things.” His face reddened.

“They had no right.” I was angry on his behalf. Angry on mine.

“But that’s just it,” Nat said. “The King has decided they do have the right. The right to decide who gets to visit you, who can send letters to you, who can communicate with you in any way. And more than that—”

“There’s
more
?”

“Much more.” The flush on his cheeks deepened till it looked like a burn. “Lucy, they get to decide who you marry.”

I was so shocked, I nearly lost hold of the snowdrop. I was seventeen, it was true, but I had imagined that marriage was still some years away for me. And I had always assumed that when the time came, I could marry whomsoever I chose.

Nat wouldn’t meet my eyes. “It’s a matter of state, they say. And Lucy—they’ve told me quite plainly that I’m not on the list of candidates.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. Had Nat told the Council he wanted to marry me? Or had they interrogated him simply because of his letters? I didn’t have the heart to ask. If there was to be talk of marriage between us, this was not how I wanted the conversation to run.

Nat’s cheeks were still an angry red. “I don’t have the necessary standing, they say. They don’t want me anywhere near you. At first I thought it was because I turned down the knighthood the King offered me last year, back when we defeated Scargrave.”
He glanced at me now, as if asking forgiveness. “I’m afraid I just couldn’t see my way to it—all that bowing and scraping, and being called ‘Sir.’ I’m an engineer and a scientist, not a courtier.”

“I understand.” His independent spirit was part of what had drawn me to him. I’d be a hypocrite to want anything else from him now.

“But it turns out that the key issue isn’t my lack of a title. According to the Council, it’s that I know nothing about my family, my lineage.”

I mentally cursed Court snobbery. Nat had been orphaned young and sold into servitude; he had no real memory of his parents. He’d needed courage and strength to survive such a childhood, but some people looked down on him because he’d once been a servant. “What does that matter? You are you, and there’s an end to it. Your worth has nothing to do with your bloodline.”

“That’s not . . .” He strode to the window. “Oh, Hades. This is damnably hard to talk about.”

“Nat, whatever it is, tell me.” What piece was I still missing?

“It’s a matter of breeding.”

I didn’t follow at first. “Breeding?”

He wouldn’t look at me. “If you are to produce more Chantresses, you must be married to a man who is of Chantress lineage himself.”

“This is about
children
?”

“Yes.”

I tried to pull myself together. “But it makes no sense. Why
should the Council care if I marry a man of Chantress lineage? Men can’t inherit Chantress powers.”

“Not in any detectable way, no.” Nat’s voice was even, but I could hear the strain in it. “It seems, however, that the sons of Chantresses carry something of their mother’s blood inside them, all the same. If they or their issue marry a Chantress, their bloodline strengthens the magic in the family. If a Chantress marries an outsider, she weakens her blood, and over time the magic in the family is lost.”

My body went cold, then hot. “And why should this concern the Council? Do they expect me to produce a line of Chantresses for their own benefit?”

He turned from the window, and I saw my own anger and frustration mirrored in his face.

“The Council is undecided.” He clipped the words tight. “Most wish you to marry a man of Chantress lineage, in order to produce more Chantresses. But others wish you to marry a man without such lineage, since they mistrust Chantress power.” Quietly, he added, “Either way, I have no standing, for I do not know what my bloodline is.”

I could not bear this. I
would
not bear this.

“I shall go to the King.” Still clutching the snowdrop, I turned toward the door. “I shall go to him straightaway and tell him this must be stopped.”

“He won’t listen, Lucy.”

“He must. It’s my business who I marry, and when. Not the Council’s.”

“And you think he’ll agree with that?” Nat’s eyes were bleak. “King Henry—whose own marriage is a matter of state scheming? The Council is brokering an alliance for him now, and let me tell you, there’s no room for sentiment there.”

This stopped me in my tracks. “And he accepts this?”

“As a matter of duty, yes. And he will take it very badly if you do not do the same.”

My hand crushed the fresh green stem of the snowdrop. “So you think that’s what I should do, then? Take the first suitor the Council appoints for me?” I tried to keep my voice from shaking.

“No!” He crossed the few steps between us. “That’s not what I think at all.”

“What, then?”

Before he could respond, distant voices broke the silence. I started in alarm. The household was waking.

“I have an idea.” Nat spoke low and fast. “But it’s going to take some time to work out.”

“Can I help?”

“It’s better if you don’t. For now, just keep out of sight. The Council is still arguing over who you should marry, and I doubt they’ll be able to settle on anyone soon. It’s possible that they’ll even let the matter drop for a while—especially if you aren’t ever seen with me.”

I cast an anxious glance at the door behind me. The voices were coming closer. “If we’re not careful, they’re going to see us together right now.”

He nodded toward a door on the other side of the room. “Not if I head out that way. Will you be all right here?”

I nodded. “Go, before they catch you! And be safe.”

Quick as the wind, he kissed my cheek and sprinted for the door. A moment after it closed behind him, the door on the other side of the room opened.

“Perhaps she’s in here,” said a laughing voice, and a young man strode into the room. As the light caught him fully in the face, I saw it was Lord Gabriel.

“Ah, my lady Chantress!” He swept a bow.

Behind him, Sir Samuel Deeps barreled in, his lace cravat askew under his puffy cheeks. “My dear lady!”

Another man piled in behind them. “Lady Chantress—”

“Oh no, you don’t.” Elbowing them both away, Lord Gabriel offered me a frilly bunch of rosebuds with a flourish. “For you, Chantress.”

I looked at the bouquet as if it were a nest of snakes. Was he
courting
me?

“I am the first, am I not?” Lord Gabriel said, bringing the flowers closer. When I still didn’t answer, he clarified, “The first man to see you this morning. Your valentine.”

I couldn’t give Nat away. My hand closed around his snowdrop, keeping it from sight as I slipped it into the linen ruffles of my sleeve. I accepted the roses. “How kind of you.”

The others had valentine offerings for me too. As they bestowed them upon me, more courtiers piled in, bearing still more flowers and sweets. For some, perhaps, it was merely a
game, but their avid expressions confused and repelled me. Were they angling for marriage—and perhaps the chance to control small Chantresses of their own?

Receiving their attentions was a miserable business. They expected me to flirt with them, but banter didn’t come easily to my lips. When at last I escaped to my room, pleading fatigue, I dropped every one of their bouquets on the floor.

Although the room had been straightened and a breakfast tray had been laid, Margery evidently had gone off again. A quick scout of the room assured me that I was all alone. Carefully I retrieved Nat’s snowdrop from my sleeve, only to find that it had snapped off its stem and lay crushed against my palm.

At the sight, something inside me snapped too. I tucked the snowdrop into my bodice and went back out into the hall.

I don’t care what Nat says. I’m going to the King. This marriage business has to stop.

It was not quite as easy to see the King as I had imagined. To be admitted to his presence, I had to pass through a host of guards, stewards, and secretaries. At last, however, I was invited into an antechamber outside his staterooms.

“Wait here,” a steward told me. “The King is meeting with the Inner Council, but I will let him know you wish to see him.”

He slipped through a high, arched door into the next room. The door didn’t quite catch. Through the crack I glimpsed a small group of councillors seated around a table, and I could hear some of what they were saying.

“It’s time we dealt with Boudicca.” Wrexham was speaking, and he sounded angry. “My scouts say the wretched woman has upward of a thousand followers now, all moving toward London.”

“Do her followers still include women and children?” the King asked.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” I recognized Rowan Knollys’s voice. Was he one of the scouts? “Perhaps as many as half are women and children. But some of the men—and even a few of the women—are armed.”