Lady of Magick (12 page)

Catriona turned to Sophie. “And you?” she asked eagerly. “Did you hear it?”

“I . . .” Sophie hesitated. “I think . . . perhaps. Just for a moment. But I may be quite mistaken.”

“It is difficult here, as I told you,” Catriona said, with a kindly, condescending smile that made Sophie squirm. “Or perhaps it is because you are not children of Alba.”

They dusted off their fingers with their handkerchiefs, and put on their gloves, and made their way down the slope to the footpath (where her father's guardsmen fell in behind them, as though they were two strangers who happened to be taking the same way home), and back to Quarry Close. Their muddied clothing drew a few stares, but no one spoke to them, nor did they speak to one another, until Catriona paused at the turning for her own lodgings and turned to Sophie.

“I hope you understand a little, now, how the land lies,” she said; and, bidding them farewell, she turned away.

Sophie watched her out of sight.

“I think,” she said at last, “that I understand less now than I did before.”

“Did you hear something, truly?” Gray said. “I did not, but I should have sworn that you did. Your face had that look.”

“I believe I did hear it,” said Sophie, slow and thoughtful. “Not with my ears, you know.” Gray nodded; with so many more years' experience of magework, he must, she thought, have understood this before she did. “I have not the least idea what. It was not . . .”

Her voice trailed away; Gray hummed inquiringly.

“It was not a happy . . .
sound
, let us say, for lack of a better term. There was a great deal of pain in it.”

Gray stopped suddenly, and Sophie, holding his arm, perforce stopped with him. “Joanna,” he said.

Torn between amusement and alarm—
This is taking the unworldly scholar rather too far
—Sophie elbowed him gently and said, “I am Sophie.”

“No.” Gray dropped her arm, not ungently, in order to run both gloved hands through his hair. As this was reliably a sign of frantic thought, Sophie waited patiently for the process to unfold; at length he said, “Joanna told you, did she not, that some here believe the blight and the sheep and cattle disease to be of magickal origin?”

“She did,” said Sophie. “But, Gray, she did not mean that it is so in fact; she meant only to warn us to mind where we put our feet.”

“But what if it
is
so in fact?” Gray persisted.

“Then we should need more than my few heartbeats' worth of confused impressions to discover it,” said Sophie. “I cannot imagine flimsier evidence.”

*   *   *

She broached the subject in her next tutorial meeting, nevertheless, and was not much surprised when Eithne scoffed at her, and Una said, “What can have given you such an absurd idea?” and Cormac MacWattie listened gravely to her hesitantly marshalled arguments and at last said, with the utmost courtesy and not the least shred of belief, “That is a very interesting theory.”

Even if it were true,
Sophie thought ruefully,
which I do not suppose
it is, why should they take my word upon it? As Catriona MacCrimmon says, I am no child of Alba.

Their excursion into Alban history or legend—whichever the case might be—continued, reaching no conclusion, for the evidence seemed to point all ways at once.

“The scholars whose views are enshrined in our libraries,” said Cormac MacWattie, by way of conclusion, “are as human, and as humanly fallible, as any of us; and the converse likewise. When in the course of your lives you are tempted to believe that the world is divided tidily into the known and the unknowable, the good and the wicked, the magickal and the mundane, I hope you shall call to mind our discussions here, and remember that matters are rarely so simple.”

*   *   *

By the time Gray had become accustomed to his students, his colleagues, and the rather different expectations of the audiences at his lectures, Sophie's tutor had chivvied his students headfirst into the theory and practice of illusion-spells, and Sophie became so engrossed in her experiments with these that on several occasions, Gray was forced to remind her of the existence of mealtimes. Here was one amongst a considerable number of subjects in whose theory she had acquired a thorough grounding, but whose practice the course of study at Merlin College had not greatly encouraged. As a consequence, Sophie found herself well abreast of her year-mates' reading but hopelessly behind in respect of execution.

“Gray,” she said, one evening during this period, pausing with a forkful of boiled mutton in one hand and a bread-roll in the other. “Tell me what you see.”

She returned the fork to her dinner-plate, balanced the bread-roll carefully on the palm of her left hand, and began describing circles about it with her right forefinger, muttering the while.
“Noctis umbra tegit te,”
Gray heard;
“te verbo lux revelat . . .”

A spell of concealment, then—a particular species of illusion-spell,
which he had never thought to teach Sophie, past mistress of rendering herself forgettable.

The bread-roll wavered momentarily, then reestablished itself as a sort of ill-made rendering of Sophie's left palm. She prodded at it with the fingers of her right hand, frowning. “The dissonance makes my head ache,” she said.

“It shows promise,” said Gray, tilting his head to examine the illusion from several angles. “Though if your hand were that colour in truth, I should be summoning a healer at once.”

Sophie said firmly, “
Lux
,” and the bread-roll resumed its former aspect. She tore off a chunk of it and chewed thoughtfully, turning the remainder about in her hands.

“This is so much more difficult than I feel it ought to be,” she said, after a moment. “Like . . . like learning to play the pianoforte with my toes, whilst my hands, which are perfectly capable already, are tied behind my back.”

Gray contemplated for a moment whether he ought to take offence at this; at last he said, “I hope you have not tried that analogy on anybody else.”

“Certainly not!” Sophie sat up straighter. “I know perfectly well how odious it sounds, and I should not dream of saying such a thing except to you.” She sighed. “But it is quite true, for all that.”

“Show me what else you have been practising,” said Gray, both as a means of changing the subject and because he was genuinely curious; the cross-pollination of the two Schools to which they were attached—of Theoretical and Practical Magick—had excited his lively interest from the first, and led him to consider how different his own life might have been, had a similar atmosphere prevailed at Merlin. Though, of course, had he never been forced to study with Professor Callender, he should never have met Sophie, and such a fate did not bear thinking of.

“There is this,” said Sophie, a little doubtfully, and pushing her half-empty dinner-plate aside, she curled her hands loosely on the tablecloth, palms angled very slightly upward, perhaps a foot apart.
She frowned fiercely at Gray's plate and again began muttering under her breath, so low and indistinctly this time that he could not make out the words of her spell.

There appeared in the space between her palms another dinner-plate, hazy and imperfect, but recognisably a copy of his own: here the last half-inch of a slice of mutton, there a sad little mound of boiled cabbage, the fork and knife laid down at odd angles.

The illusion wavered, then stilled; Sophie looked up expectantly.

Gray leaned down to examine the faux dinner-plate more closely. “Is it a visual illusion only?” he asked, then answered his own question by attempting to grasp the handle of the knife; his thumb and fingers passed through it and met in the middle. “Where is the catch?”

In a civilised society, the use of illusion-spells, as Master Alcuin (one of the few Merlin dons willing to teach such spells at all) had drummed into him years ago, must be governed by strict rules, one of which was that an illusion must always be distinguishable from reality by a sufficiently alert observer. A properly worked illusion, therefore, might be deliberately implausible of appearance—as a scarlet peacock, or a chair upholstered in oak-leaves—or, if modelled more closely on reality, contain a
catch
, some small but unmistakable clue as to its illusory nature. Though no very clever worker of illusion-spells himself, Gray had at least absorbed that detail.

“Come now, Magister,” said Sophie, grinning broadly; “surely you are capable of detecting it.”

Gray moved aside the remains of his real dinner-plate, pushed back his chair, and dropped to his knees, bending to bring his eyes level with the illusory one. He examined it from every possible angle, then climbed to his feet again and circled round to peer at it from Sophie's vantage point, then from each of the other two sides of the oblong table.

“There!” he said at last, triumphantly, pointing with Sophie's fork at the tiny thread of viridian running through a single cabbage-leaf. “That is very cleverly done,
kerra
.”

Sophie drew a deep breath and blew it out, dispelling the illusion.
“Do you think so?” she said. “I fear that my detail work is not all it ought to be.” Still, however, she looked enormously pleased with herself.

“Perhaps so,” said Gray, “but that will come with practice.”

Sophie retrieved her fork and addressed herself once more to her dinner. “I do miss Master Alcuin, and Joanna, and all our friends,” she said, after a moment. “But I am glad we are come here.”

Since their near
quarrel at Her Majesty's ball, Joanna had met Roland nearly as often as formerly, but with none of their former ease; though there had been no direct renewal of his unwelcome attentions, every word that passed between them seemed edged with the knowledge of what he was not saying.

Perhaps I am only imagining it,
thought Joanna, more than once. Certain it was, however, that the day must be approaching when Roland should discover the depth of her betrayal—that she had known what his father planned for him, and disclaimed that knowledge—and the anticipation sat like a lump of something indigestible in her belly.

Irrespective of Joanna's feelings, however, when His Majesty's Chief Privy Councillor was summoned to his master's presence, go he must; where Lord Kergabet went, Mr. Fowler must follow; and Joanna had no notion of allowing Prince Roland or anyone else to prevent her doing likewise.

Thus it was that she found herself, on this unseasonably warm October morning, following Sieur Germain and Mr. Fowler out of the former's carriage and up the steps of the Palace. They were met
as usual by the major-domo and—which was by no means usual—ushered at once into His Majesty's private audience chamber. Joanna pondered, as they paced through the corridors, what this might betoken, and was drearily persuaded that it could be nothing good.

She had not long to fret over the possibilities, however, for they entered the audience chamber to find King Henry deep in conversation with the Alban envoy, Oscar MacConnachie.

“Ah! Kergabet!” he exclaimed, looking up at the sound of their footsteps. “The very man.”

“Your Majesty.” Sieur Germain inclined his head respectfully. “I hope all is well?”

His Majesty looked at him in perplexity, as though it were slightly absurd of him to have supposed that an urgent summons to the Royal Palace might suggest some cause for alarm. Screened by Sieur Germain, Joanna and Mr. Fowler, their differences temporarily forgotten, exchanged a long-suffering look; they both knew King Henry to be, in most ways, a prudent and competent ruler, and deplored the habit he was presently indulging of affecting light-mindedness or outright foolishness in the presence of visitors from foreign courts.

“You have all the documents, have you not?”

Mr. Fowler hastened to provide Lord Kergabet's dispatch-box, from which the latter extracted several rolls of parchment and a stack of ordinary writing-paper, closely covered in Fowler's clear, elegant script.

“I believe we have everything in order, sir, yes,” said Sieur Germain. “I have three copies of each. Which did—”

“Excellent, excellent. Then we shall proceed.” His Majesty beckoned the major-domo, and on his approaching said, “Go and fetch Prince Roland.”

“Your Majesty.” The major-domo bowed and strode away.

It could not have been more than a quarter-hour before the major-domo reappeared, visibly restraining himself from hauling Roland along by the ear, but it was perhaps the longest quarter-hour which Joanna had hitherto endured. Within moments of their arriving, however, she was wishing heartily that they had not.

“Is this Your Majesty's idea of a jest?” Roland demanded, pink with outrage, when the news had been broken to him. “I am to be—to be
queen
of a kingdom of—”

Joanna coughed quietly; when Roland's wild gaze swung half towards her, she tilted her head very slightly in the direction of Oscar MacConnachie, and Roland swallowed whatever slight had been meant to follow.

“Your pardon, sir,” he said. “I spoke out of turn.”

There was a long, tense silence.

“Prince-consort,” said Sieur Germain at last, quietly.

“Sir?” Roland had evidently remembered his manners with a vengeance; Joanna winced inwardly at the chill in his tone.

“The husband of a reigning queen, Your Highness,” Sieur Germain said, “is styled Prince-consort. A position of more influence, respect, and responsibility, in fact, than that afforded by any other marriage alliance previously entertained for you.”

Roland visibly considered this.

“And how is it,” he said at last, “that this Lucia MacNeill inherits from her father? She has no brother, I suppose?”

“She has a younger brother, in fact, Your Highness,” said Oscar MacConnachie, “but he is not the heir.”

“We call Donald MacNeill
king
, because
king
is an idea we understand,” Sieur Germain explained, “but he is not a king as your father is; he is a chieftain of chieftains. There is no law in Alba, as there is in Britain, that the eldest son must inherit, or even the eldest child. As Oscar MacConnachie explained it to me, Donald MacNeill might have chosen any young man—or young woman—of his clan as his heir, subject to the will of the clan chieftains; he chose his daughter, Lucia, for the trust he reposes in her heart and in her wits, and his choice was confirmed by the clan chieftains in council.”

Roland's chin lost none of its stubborn set, but his eyes betrayed a glimmer of interest.

“And Lucia MacNeill,” Sieur Germain said, “has considered the alternatives her father set before her, and has chosen you.”

Joanna prayed to the Lady Venus that Roland would accept the
implied compliment and allow the conversation to progress towards the subject of Lucia MacNeill's many virtues, perhaps to the portrait that reposed in the box at Joanna's feet.

For a moment it seemed as though he might indeed fulfil her hopes; instead, however—after a long, speculative silence—he tilted his head to one side, frowning, and said, “Why?”

Jenny, thought Joanna irritably, would have known what to say to steer Roland—writer of love-sonnets to unsuitable young women, would-be adventurer, protector of sisters embarking on long journeys—in the correct direction. But Jenny was in Carrington-street, receiving morning callers whose husbands wished to curry favour with Kergabet or the King, and Joanna was here only because the King chose to indulge Sieur Germain's eccentric taste in assistants; and Sieur Germain himself—

“Because, Your Highness,” said that gentleman, “she and her father share His Majesty's desire for a strong and stable alliance between their kingdom and ours.”

Roland's expression congealed. Joanna managed—just—to refrain from groaning aloud.

Though Sieur Germain clearly recognised that he had taken the wrong tack, and seemed to be trying to come about, it was equally clear that he did not understand the nature of his mistake. Leaving the subject of alliances, he expended some effort in praise of Lucia MacNeill's political acumen; when this failed to crack Roland's air of grim endurance, he shifted rather abruptly into an admiring disquisition on her achievements as a scholar.

Joanna bent to retrieve the box at her feet. Mr. Fowler saw what she was about—though it appeared that no one else did; she caught his eye and scowled meaningly at him until he stepped forward and touched Sieur Germain's elbow. Sieur Germain paused at once, turning his head in Fowler's direction with the intent, Joanna supposed, of glaring him into better-bred behaviour.

Joanna gripped the sides of the box and stepped forward, neatly sidestepping the distracted Sieur Germain.

“Your Royal Highness,” she said, holding Roland's startled gaze.
“Lucia MacNeill of Alba presents her respectful compliments, and asks that you accept this token of—” For a moment Joanna's imagination failed her. Sieur Germain had ceased muttering to Mr. Fowler, and she could feel two sets of eyes focused on the back of her head. “Of her earnest wish to learn your heart as she hopes you will come to know hers.”

She proffered the box and held her breath, watching Roland's face.

His eyes softened minutely, though his lips remained set in a tense line. After a painful moment's consideration, however, he took the box from Joanna's outstretched hands and said, “My respectful compliments to the Lady Lucia, and I must hope the same.”

Joanna heaved a vast, silent, inward sigh of relief as the box left her hands.

Roland resumed his seat, which the rest of the assembled company chose to regard as a concession of sorts, to judge by the perceptible lessening of tension in the room. Settling the box upon his knees, he carefully removed the lid and set it aside, then unfolded the layers of linen and lifted out the portrait.

Joanna watched him closely as he examined it. She had herself studied the face of the heiress of Alba at some length, when the portrait had first come into Sieur Germain's possession, and had concluded that if the portraitist did not greatly exaggerate, Lucia MacNeill was a very beautiful young woman. The artist had contrived to capture, too, a certain challenging light in his subject's blue eyes, which led Joanna to suspect that Roland's life might soon become rather interesting. Roland's brows drew together in thought; one finger gently traced a curve along the canvas, and at last one corner of his mouth tugged reluctantly upward.

“She looks . . . rather clever,” he said, as though he had not very lately heard copious evidence to this effect.

“I believe she is accounted so,” Sieur Germain agreed, cautiously; it seemed he had decided to pretend likewise.

“I am glad of that,” said Roland decidedly. “I could not bear to be married to a stupid woman.”

This was very probably a dig at poor Lady Delphine, Prince
Edward's betrothed, of whose intellect Roland (not unjustly) held a very low opinion. Fortunately Oscar MacConnachie did not recognise this—or, at any rate, did not choose to acknowledge it—and accepted Roland's compliment to Lucia MacNeill at its face value, with an accommodating bow.

Whilst the eyes of the company were on Oscar MacConnachie, Roland fixed Joanna with a speaking look. Joanna, after the first startled meeting of glances, gave her very fullest attention to the Alban ambassador.

Roland restrained himself, in the ensuing discussion, from offering further comment on the laws and customs of Alba. Joanna thanked the goddess Minerva for this evidence of wisdom, small as it was, until the moment when, daring another glance at Roland, she found him studying her, his mouth set in a grim straight line, and recognised his motive: As his father, Lord Kergabet, and Oscar MacConnachie laid out their plans for Lucia MacNeill and himself, he was watching Joanna—so clearly in the secret where he himself was not—and remembering her assurances that she knew nothing of any such plans.

She met his gaze squarely now, with no effort at apology. She had brought that expression of hard-eyed betrayal upon herself, and she should not be such a coward as to flinch from it.

It was Roland, in the end, who looked away, though it might only be that he felt he had too long neglected the appearance of attending to his elders. When next he seemed about to turn in Joanna's direction, he interrupted the motion and bent his gaze instead upon the portrait in his hands.

What trials one brings upon oneself,
thought Joanna,
when one makes the mistake of growing romantical!