Heart's Magic

By Flora Speer

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 1997, by Flora Speer

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In early March of the Year of Our Lord 1122,
two men rode northeastward along a forest path from Nottingham,
England, into Lincolnshire. Both were identically cloaked and
hooded against the damp chill and their black stallions might have
been twins, yet there were differences between the men. The one who
was taller and more muscular rode with a certain boldness, as if he
knew he had every right to be where he was and even more right to
be at his destination when he finally reached it. The second man,
shorter and more slender than his companion, rode surrounded by an
aura of silence and a peculiar reserve.

The pair traveled without guards in a part of
England not notable for its safety. The rest of their company had
been left behind at Nottingham with the order to wait there. The
giving of that order had generated a remarkably vigorous discussion
around the table of the tavern where they had all spent the
previous night. A nobleman’s retainers did not often dare to
dispute their master’s decisions. This nobleman’s companions were
more his friends than his servants and so they had felt themselves
free to object to the daring scheme he proposed to follow.

“I wish you would reconsider, my lord,” the
older squire, Hidern, had cried. “If you are found out, you will be
consigned to the lowest dungeon in the castle.”

“Or killed outright,” added the younger
squire, Bevis, who harbored a tendency toward lurid notions.

“And then conveniently forgotten, should
anyone ask after you,” Hidern finished.

“It’s best that I travel alone and
unrecognized during this first excursion,” the tall nobleman
insisted. “The rumors you two and Hugh heard while we were at court
only confirm what King Henry told me during my audience with him.
All is not well at Wroxley Castle.”

The nobleman did not think it appropriate to
add that the king blamed himself for whatever problems had arisen
at Wroxley. Devastated by the death of his two sons in a shipwreck
in the autumn of 1120, a still-grieving Henry had agreed to the
current arrangements for Wroxley in the following January and
without much thought on the matter—a hasty decision he repented
now, more than a year later.

“A certain feeling of insecurity at Wroxley
would be quite natural.” The speaker was the fourth man at the
tavern table. Of medium height and slender build, with straight
black hair and dark eyes, his features were so bland that they were
always immediately forgotten after he had left a scene. This
person’s accent was an odd one, unfamiliar even to men who had in
recent years mixed with the men—and the women—of distant countries.
The squires and the nobleman’s men-at-arms knew him as Hugh and,
trusting their leader, they assumed Hugh would not have been
granted the nobleman’s friendship were he not worthy of it.
Furthermore, during their travels together they had found Hugh to
be honest and dependable. Thus, they gave him their full attention
as he continued. “When the baron of a castle dies, there must be
concern about the future amongst the folk who live in that castle
or on the nearby lands. In this case, with the heir absent in the
Holy Land, the people of Wroxley will no doubt be wondering when—or
if—that heir will come home, and what will happen to them until he
does.”

“And if the newly confirmed baron of Wroxley
arrives in full panoply, with banners flying and men-at-arms behind
him, do any of you think the truth of the old baron’s death will
ever be told?” asked the leader of the group. “If only half the
rumors are true, the inhabitants of Wroxley will not dare to reveal
the events of the past year and a half. If the stories we have
heard are fact and not imaginary, then for the new baron to ride in
as if he expected to be welcomed home would only result in death to
many of those same folk who are still loyal to the old baron’s son.
We do not want a battle. The use of force is acceptable only after
all other methods have failed.”

“Well spoken,” said Hugh with a faint smile.
“You always were a good student.”

“For myself, I would prefer more
straightforward means. I see nothing wrong with a good battle.” The
squire, Hidern, paused as if wrestling with an alien concept before
he continued. “You have never failed us before, my lord. Bevis and
I will not quarrel with you over your plans. But know that if you
and Hugh do not return from Wroxley or send us word within the time
you have allotted, then we will investigate and if we discover that
you are in trouble, we will at once send word to King Henry.”

“Who will not be able to raise troops and
move them to Wroxley in time to be of any help to me,” his master
told him. “The king warned me of the problems I could expect to
encounter. Indeed, I have been well and truly warned by him, by
both of you, and by the friends I have at court. I do not undertake
this campaign unaware of the risks.”

“But you are undermanned,” Bevis persisted,
voicing the chief concern of both squires. “Please, my lord, let us
go with you. We can leave the men-at-arms behind if you want, but
for you and Hugh to enter that castle alone is folly.”

“No.” The single word was gentle enough, yet
it was spoken in so firm and commanding a tone that all protest
ceased from that moment on.

Later, while the squires were occupied with
the preparations their master had ordered for his journey, a more
private conversation occurred in the room the leader of the group
had taken for himself.

“The others don’t know all of it, Hugh.”

“I never imagined they did.” Away from public
gaze, Hugh’s features had assumed a more definite cast. His dark,
almond-shaped eyes shone with intelligence and the unlined skin of
his face lay taut over the exotic shape of an alien bone structure.
Hugh’s low voice still held the foreign inflections he seldom
bothered to disguise. “Since you have raised the subject, my
friend, I assume the time has come for us to speak of magic and of
unnatural events.”

“Magic,” Hugh’s companion repeated. “I have a
premonition that I am going to need your art, and your strength, if
I am to succeed. It’s why I have asked you to go to Wroxley with
me. I want a man by my side whom I can trust completely, who will
not lose heart at the touch of magic.”

“You will also need a name other than your
own,” said Hugh.

When morning came Hidern and Bevis armed
their lord, though not as strongly as they would have liked, and
packed a bit of food into the saddlebags, and then they stood
outside the inn watching while their master and his friend rode
away through the twisting streets of Nottingham.

The early morning sunshine vanished by
afternoon behind ominous gray clouds. As the hours wore on the
clouds thickened and lowered into fog. A light drizzle began to
fall. With every mile that shortened the distance between the
travelers and Wroxley Castle the dampness seeped a little deeper
into the very bones of the two men. Still, they pressed on,
determined to reach their destination before nightfall.

“Not at all like Jerusalem, is it?” the
nobleman said with a rueful laugh. “Until today I had all but
forgotten the weather of my youth, when I was so accustomed to fog
and rain that I scarcely noticed either.”

“This climate is certainly different from
others I have encountered,” Hugh responded. “Fog and rain are
conducive to fantastic tales of ghosts and magic and wicked
deeds.”

“Do you think the stories we heard while at
court were fabulous?” his companion asked. “Or do you believe
them?”

“I have not enough evidence to allow me to
form a reasonable opinion on the subject,” Hugh said. “We are yet
too far from Wroxley, and I am unfamiliar with the castle. Still,
from what we have heard, I do believe the prospects of furthering
my education while there are favorable.”

“I have no doubt,” said the other man with a
chuckle that contained little true mirth, “that before long, we
will both learn more than we expect or care to know about wicked
deeds.”

Wroxley Castle.

It was a small thing and perfectly round, its
gleaming surface smoothly polished. Made of crystal so clear that
it appeared to be a raindrop, the sphere fit snuggly into the palm
of Mirielle’s left hand. It had been a present from her nurse,
Cerra, on Mirielle’s tenth birthday, given to her because Cerra
said that Mirielle had the gift of inborn magic.

Most of the time when Mirielle looked into
the globe she saw nothing but the clear crystal. However, there was
an almost invisible inclusion, a tiny flaw at the exact center of
the sphere, one point at which the crystal was not perfect.
Occasionally, when Mirielle turned the sphere in just the right
way, light would strike off the inclusion. At such times she would
see a swirl of clouds in the crystal. On very rare occasions, she
could discern the figure of a man in a dark cloak. The man’s face
was always hidden from her, but whenever his image appeared, an
important change occurred in her life.

She had seen the mysterious image before the
deaths of her parents and Cerra, and had seen it again on the night
before her cousin, Brice, had knocked on the door of her parent’s
manor house to rescue her from her cold-hearted uncle’s plan to
consign her to a convent rather than provide a dowry for her. Brice
had demanded that Mirielle be made his ward and her uncle had been
glad enough to hand over guardianship of the orphaned niece who was
of no use to him.

Some years later Mirielle had seen the man in
the crystal once more, just before she and Brice had left North
Wales to move to Wroxley Castle, where Brice was to become the new
seneschal. And she had seen the vision in the crystal shortly
before Brice had announced that he was making her the chatelaine of
Wroxley.

Now, on this late winter morning, compelled
by a desire she did not understand, Mirielle had taken the crystal
globe in her hand—in her left hand, as Cerra had instructed in the
very first lesson she had taught to Mirielle on the methods by
which the inborn magic could be controlled and directed so it would
benefit others rather than inflicting evil.

The crystal was cool against Mirielle’s palm.
She sent her thoughts into the sphere, finding and then
concentrating on the imperfection she could just barely see.
Without thinking, she moved, turning toward the window until the
fog outside appeared to enter the room and fill the globe with gray
light…and the man appeared, muffled as usual in his dark cloak.

A tremor passed through Mirielle’s body. Her
hand shook a little, the motion disturbing the scene within the
crystal so that, for a moment, she thought she saw not one, but two
men, and she thought they were on horseback.

“It cannot be! The vision never changes.”
Mirielle’s surprised exclamation wakened her companion. Snuggled
into the bed in a fold of the quilt, a small gray cat stirred,
stretching. In the shadowy room Mirielle sensed rather than saw the
movement. It was enough. Her concentration was broken and the image
in the crystal globe vanished.

Damp morning air filtered in through the
window. The room was cold, the fuel in the charcoal brazier that
warmed it having burned away during the night. Shivering, Mirielle
knelt at the foot of the bed to wrap the sphere in the piece of
silk she used to prevent the crystal from being scratched. She put
the treasured object away in the clothes chest and shut the lid.
Deep in thought, she stayed where she was until the cat walked
across the coverlet to rub its face against her shoulder. Mirielle
gathered the cat into her arms.

“Minn, who is that man I see?” she whispered
to her pet. “Why did the scene change just then, when it has never
changed before?

“‘In danger lies the seed of change; in
change lies the seed of opportunity.’ Now, who put that saying into
my thoughts? Certainly Cerra never did. She believed in holding to
the ancient ways and did not like change.”

Mirielle sat on the edge of her bed, her hand
gone still on Minn’s back while she thought about her old nurse
Cerra, who had taught her young charge all she knew of herbs and
healing, and of certain other skills that must never be revealed
save to another who was also a practitioner. Or a pupil, as
Mirielle had been, eager to learn, eager to practice the Ancient
Art.