Dangerous Women (52 page)

Martina was consulting with two of the town’s midwives, their voices low, their faces intent. Adela was coaxing Constance to swallow a spoonful of honey, saying it would give her strength, and she forced herself to take it upon her tongue. She knew why they were so concerned. When her waters had broken, they told her it meant the birth was nigh, yet her pains continued, growing more severe, and it did not seem to her that any progress was being made. “I want Martina,” she mumbled, and when the physician hastened back to her side, she caught the other woman’s wrist. “Remember … if you cannot save us both, save the child …” Her words were faint and fading, but her eyes blazed so fiercely that Martina could not look away. “Promise …” she insisted, “… promise,” and the other woman nodded, not trusting her voice.

Time had no meaning anymore for Constance; there was no world beyond the stifling confines of this tent. They gave her wine mixed with bark of cassia fistula, lifted her stained chemise to massage her belly, anointed her female parts with hot thyme oil, and when she continued to struggle, some of the women slipped away to pray for her in the church close by the piazza. But Martina kept insisting that it would be soon now, that her womb was dilating, holding out hope like a candle to banish the dark, and after an eternity Constance heard her cry out that she could see the baby’s head. She bore down one more time and her child’s shoulders were free. “Again,” Martina urged, and then a little body, skin red and puckered, slid out in a gush of blood and mucus, into the midwife’s waiting hands.

Constance sagged back, holding her breath until she heard it, the soft mewing sound that proved her baby lived. Martina’s smile was as radiant as a sunrise. “A man-child, Madame! You have a son!”

“Let me have him …” Constance said feebly. There was so much still to be done. The naval cord must be tied and cut. The baby must be cleaned and rubbed with salt before being swaddled. The afterbirth must be expelled and then buried so as not to attract demons. But Martina knew that all could wait. Taking the baby, she placed him in his mother’s arms, and as they watched Constance hold her son for the first time, few of the women had dry eyes.

When word spread six days later that the empress would be displaying her son in public, the piazza was thronged hours before she was to make her appearance. The men had heard their women’s stories of the birth and were eager to see the miracle infant for themselves; he was a native of Jesi, after all, they joked, one of their own. The crowd parted as Constance’s litter entered the square, and they applauded politely as she was assisted to the ground, moved slowly toward the waiting chair. Once she was seated, she signaled and Martina handed her a small, bundled form. Constance drew back the blanket, revealing a head of feathery, reddish hair. As the infant waved his tiny fists, she held him up for all to see. “My son, Frederick,” she said, loudly and clearly, “who will one day be King of Sicily.”

They applauded again and smiled when Frederick let out a sudden, lusty cry. Constance smiled, too. “I think he is hungry,” she said, and the mothers in the crowd nodded knowingly, looking around for the wet nurse; highborn ladies like Constance did not suckle their own babies. They were taken aback by what happened next. The empress’s ladies came forward, temporarily blocking the crowd’s view. When they stepped aside, a gasp swept the crowd, for Constance had opened her mantle, adjusted her bodice, and begun to nurse her son. When the townspeople realized what she was doing—offering final, indisputable, public proof that this was a child of her body, her flesh and blood—they began to cheer loudly. Even those who were hostile to Constance’s German husband joined in, for courage deserved to be acknowledged, to be honored, and they all knew they were watching an act of defiant bravery, the ultimate expression of a mother’s love.

Constance was obviously a courageous woman, but was she also a dangerous one? The events following Frederick’s birth give us our answer. Heinrich’s generous peace terms had been bait for a trap. He’d shown his hand during his Christmas coronation by having the bodies of Tancred and his son dragged from their royal tombs. Four days later, he claimed to discover a plot against him and ordered that Sybilla, her children, and the leading Sicilian lords be arrested and taken to Germany. Sybilla and her daughters eventually escaped, but her five-year-old son died soon after being sent to a monastery, said to have been blinded and castrated before his death. Heinrich’s heavy-handed rule provoked a genuine rebellion in 1197, and there is some evidence that Constance was involved in the conspiracy. Heinrich certainly thought so, for he forced her to watch as he executed the ringleader by having a red-hot crown nailed to his head. But in September 1197, Heinrich died unexpectedly at Messina. Constance at once took control of the government, surrounded herself with Sicilian advisers, and expelled all the Germans. But she would survive Heinrich by barely a year, in which she worked feverishly to protect her son. She had him crowned and then formed an alliance with the new Pope, Innocent III, naming him as Frederick’s guardian before her death in November 1198 at age forty-four. Frederick would prove to be one of the most brilliant, controversial, and remarkable rulers of the Middle Ages—King of Sicily, Holy Roman Emperor, even King of Jerusalem. And Constance? Dante placed her in Paradise.

A novelist and journalist, Lev Grossman is a senior writer and book critic for
Time
and coauthor of the TIME.com blog TechLand. His quirky 2009 fantasy novel
The Magicians
was a phenomenal international sensation, and landed on the
New York Times
Best Seller list as well as being named a
New Yorker
Best Book of 2009, and its sequel,
The Magician King,
published in 2011, has enjoyed similar acclaim. Grossman’s other books include the novels
Warp
and
Codex
. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and maintains a website at levgrossman.com.

Here he takes us to an ancient, venerable school for wizards, one haunted by a thousand age-old traditions as well as spirits of a different kind, to show us that even the most innocent of pranks can end up having dangerous and even deadly consequences.

You could say it all started out as an innocent prank, but that wouldn’t strictly be true. It wasn’t
that
innocent. It was just that Wharton was behaving badly, and in the judgment of the League he had to be punished for it. Then maybe he would cut it out, or behave a little less badly, or at the very least the League would have the satisfaction of having caused Wharton to suffer, and that counted for something. A lot really.

You couldn’t call it innocent. But you had to admit it was pretty understandable. And anyway, is there really any such thing as an innocent prank?

Plum was president of the League—unelected but undisputed—and also its founder. In enlisting the others she had presented the League as a glorious old Brakebills tradition, which it actually wasn’t, probably, though since the college had been around for something like four hundred years it seemed very likely to Plum that there must have been, at some point in the past, another League or at any rate something along the same lines, which you could count as a historical precedent. You couldn’t rule out the possibility. Though in fact she’d gotten the idea from a P. G. Wodehouse story.

They met after hours in a funny little trapezoidal study off the West Tower that as far as they could tell had fallen off the faculty’s magical security grid, so it was safe to break curfew there. Plum was lying full length on the floor, which was the position from which she usually conducted League business. The rest of the girls were scattered limply around the room on couches and chairs, like confetti from a successful but rather exhausting party that was thankfully now all but over.

Plum made the room go silent—it was a little spell that ate sound in about a ten-yard radius—and all the attention immediately focused on her. When Plum did a magic trick, everybody noticed.

“Let’s put it to a vote,” she said solemnly. “All those in favor of pranking Wharton, say aye.”

The ayes came back in a range of tones from righteous zeal to ironic detachment to sleepy acquiescence. This business of clandestine after-hours scheming could certainly take a whack at your sleep schedule, Plum had to admit. It was a little unfair on the others, because Plum was a quick study who went through homework like a hot knife through butter, and she knew it wasn’t that easy for all of them. From her vantage point on the floor, with her eyes closed, her long brown hair splayed out in a fan on the carpet, which had once been soft and woolly but which had been trodden down into a shiny, hard-packed grey, the vote sounded more or less unanimous.

Anyway, there was fairly evidently a plurality in the room. She dispensed with a show of nays.

“It’s maddening,” Emma said in the silence that followed, by way of spiking the football. “Absolutely
maddening
.”

That was an exaggeration, but the room let it go. It’s not like Wharton’s crime was a matter of life and death. But a stop would be put to it. This the League swore.

Darcy sat on the couch opposite the long mirror with the scarred white frame that leaned against one wall. She toyed with her reflection—with both of her long, elegant hands she was working a spell that stretched it and then squished it, stretched, then squished. The technicalities were beyond Plum, but then, mirror-magic was Darcy’s specialty. It was a bit show-offy of her, but you couldn’t blame her. Darcy didn’t have a lot of opportunities to use it.

The facts of the Wharton case were as follows. At Brakebills, most serving duties at dinner were carried out by First Years, who then ate separately afterwards. But, by tradition, one favored Fourth Year was chosen every year to serve as wine steward, in charge of pairings and pourings and whatnot. Wharton had had this honor bestowed upon him, and not for no reason. He did know a lot about wine, or at any rate he seemed to be able to remember the names of a whole lot of different regions and appellations and whatever else. (In fact, another Fourth Year with the unintentionally hilarious name of Claire Bear had been tipped for wine steward this year. Wharton showed her up, coolly and publicly, by distinguishing between a Gigondas and a Vacqueyras in a blind tasting.)

But in the judgment of the League, Wharton had sinned against the honor of his office, sinned most grievously, by systematically short-pouring the wine, especially for the Fifth Years, who were allowed two glasses with dinner. Seriously, these were like three-quarter pours. Everybody agreed. For such a crime, there could be no forgiveness.

“What do you suppose he does with it all?” Emma said.

“Does with what?”

“The extra wine. He must be saving it. I bet he ends up with an extra bottle every night.”

There were eight girls in the League, of whom six were present, and Emma was the youngest and the only Second Year, but she wasn’t cowed by her elders. In fact, she was, in Plum’s opinion, even a bit too keen on the League and her role in same. She could have made just a little show of being intimidated once in a while. Plum was just saying.

“I dunno,” Plum said. “I guess he drinks it.”

“He couldn’t get through a bottle a night,” Darcy said. She had a big poofy 1970s Afro; it even had an Afro pick sticking out of it.

“He and his boyfriend, then. What’s his name. It’s Greek.”

“Epifanio.” Darcy and Chelsea said it together.

Chelsea lay on the couch at the opposite end from Darcy, her honey-blond head on the armrest, knees drawn up, lazily trying to mess up Darcy’s mirror tricks. Darcy’s spells were marvels of intricacy and precision, but it was much easier to screw up somebody else’s spell than it was to cast one yourself. That was one of the many small unfairnesses of magic.

Darcy frowned and concentrated harder, pushing back. The interference caused an audible buzz, and, under the stress, Darcy’s reflection in the mirror twisted and spiraled in on itself in weird ways.

“Stop,” she said. “You’re going to break it.”

“He’s probably got some set spell running that eats it up,” Emma said. “Has to feed it wine once a day. Like a virility thing.”

“Of course that’s where your mind would go,” Plum said.

“Well,” Emma said, flushing mauve—gotcha!—“you know. He’s so buff.”

Chelsea saw her moment and caused Darcy’s reflection to collapse in on itself, creepily, like it had gotten sucked into a black hole, and then vanish altogether. In the mirror it looked like she wasn’t even there—her end of the couch was empty, though the cushion was slightly depressed.

“Ha,” said Chelsea.

“Buff does
not
mean virile.”

That was Lucy, an intensely earnest, philosophical Fifth Year; her tone betrayed a touch of what might have been the bitterness of personal experience. Plump and wan and Korean, Lucy floated cross-legged in one of the room’s irregular upper corners. Her dark straight hair was loose and so long that it hung down past her bum.

“I bet he gives it to the ghost,” Lucy went on.

“There is no ghost,” Darcy said.

Somebody was always saying that Brakebills had a ghost. It was like Plum saying there was a League: you could never prove it either way.

“Come to that,” said Chelsea, who had consolidated her victory over Darcy in the mirror game by plopping her feet in Darcy’s lap, “what
does
‘virile’ mean?”

“Means he’s got spunk in his junk,” Darcy said.

“Girls, please,” Plum said, by way of getting things back on track. “Neither Wharton’s spunk nor his junk are germane here. The question is, what to do about the missing wine? Who’s got a plan?”

“
You’ve
got a plan,” Darcy and Chelsea said at the same time, again. The two of them were like stage twins.

“I do have plan.”

“Plum has a plan,”
intoned tiny, cheery Holly from the one good armchair.

Plum always had a plan; she couldn’t help it. Her brain seemed to secrete them naturally. Plum’s plan was to take advantage of what she perceived to be Wharton’s Achilles’ heel, which was his pencils. He didn’t use the school-issued ones, which as far as Plum was concerned were entirely functional and sufficient unto the day: deep Brakebills blue in color, with “Brakebills” in gold letters down the side. But Wharton didn’t like them—he said they were too fat, he didn’t like their “hand-feel,” and the lead was soft and mushy. Wharton brought his own from home instead.