Lady of Magick (3 page)

If Guivrée had stopped short of asserting that the ancient gods of Britain's provinces were not fit to lick the metaphorical boots of the gods of Rome, Gray suspected, it was only because he chose not to set that particular cat amongst a set of pigeons so many of whom were Breizhek, Cymric, or Kernowek born and bred—not because he did not himself believe it true.

“There was a great deal of muttering,” Bevan went on, “but the only student who dared put a question at the end of the lecture was Soph—was Mrs. Marshall,” he corrected himself, colouring a little at Gray's silently raised eyebrow, “and it was a very good question, too, to which he had not a good answer. He began to bluster about women's fancies, instead, and there was nearly a brawl between his supporters and—”

“A
brawl
?” Ransome exclaimed. “And I
missed
it?”

Gray contrived to keep his countenance by carefully
not
looking at Bevan.

“Well,
this
time,” said Ransome, in a rather disgruntled tone, “his lecture was nothing but a dispute with a book by a Fellow at the University in Din Edin, which I daresay no one else present had read—”

“
I
have read it, at any rate,” said Bevan irritably. “It is a treatise on the theory of zoomorphic shape-shifting,” he explained, aside to Gray; “you know, sir, that I am particularly interested in—”

“Yes, yes, Bev, all of Merlin knows it,” Ransome interrupted, rolling his eyes.

No observer of this conversation, Gray reflected, could have guessed that last term Ransome had blacked the eye and bloodied the nose of a second-year student who had mocked Bevan's patched boots, or that what progress Ransome had made in Old Cymric was due almost entirely to Bevan's patient tutelage.

“But you see, Magister, he insisted—Professor de Guivrée did, I mean—that the author is quite wrong about things; I am not perfectly sure what things,” Ransome confessed cheerfully, “but it seemed to be all of them. It all sounded reasonable enough to me at first, but
then
he said a perfectly absurd thing, and that is what I wanted to ask you about, sir.”

He shook his flaxen hair off his face and sat back in his chair, looking expectantly at Gray. Beside him, Bevan closed his eyes briefly and put a hand to his brow as though his head ached.

“And,” said Gray, after a moment, “what, Ransome, was the perfectly absurd thing?”

“Oh!” Ransome flushed a little. Then he sat up straight, folded his face up into a scowl, hooked one thumb into his waistcoat pocket, and produced a startlingly accurate approximation of Professor de Guivrée: “‘It should surprise no one, however, to find such entirely wrongheaded ideas propounded by one who freely confesses to collaborating with . . .
females
.' I mean to say, Magister . . . !”

Gray smiled at him. “I do believe the tone of your mind improves, Ransome,” he said. Ransome, he now recalled, had mentioned a large number of very clever sisters at home in Cirenceaster; perhaps they had had more influence on him than he allowed.

Din Edin. Collaborating with females. That sounds very much like someone I know . . .

“Bevan,” said Gray, “what was the name of this shockingly broad-minded scholar? I believe I may be acquainted with him.”

*   *   *

On the morning of the first of June, having sat up very late with her books the previous evening, Sophie awoke much later than was her custom, and was in danger of entirely missing a lecture which she
very much wanted to attend. She was hurrying out the door when her attention was caught by the stack of letters which she had brought up the previous afternoon, and which had lain all night forgotten on the rather unfortunate hatstand; and she paused, one hand still ungloved, to riffle through them. One directed to herself, in her sister Joanna's hand, she tucked into her reticule for later perusal. The rest were all directed to Gray, but only one (which looked rather the worse for its journey from Alba) seemed likely to be of immediate interest.

Gray himself emerged from the bedroom in his dressing-gown, yawning, as Sophie was pulling on her other glove. “Where are you off to so early?” he inquired.

“You remember,” said Sophie; “Doctor Richardson, from Marlowe, is giving a lecture today—with illustrations—on his travels in Egypt.” She made a grab for the letters and handed them up to him. “Look! There is a letter from your correspondent in Din Edin!”

Gray took the letters and frowned at them, in the manner of a man who has not yet eaten his breakfast.

“I overslept, and had not time to make tea,” Sophie said, “but the kettle is on the hob—I must go, love, for I shall be late if I do not leave this moment.”

Standing on tiptoe, with a hand on each of Gray's shoulders, she hastily kissed him, then darted out the door and down the stairs.

*   *   *

“You will never guess what was in that letter from Din Edin,” said Gray, when they sat down to their rather spartan dinner that afternoon. He retrieved the letter from the pocket of his coat, together with a broken pen, two silver coins, a scrap of writing-paper scribbled all over with magickal formulae, and an owl's tail-feather.

“A translation of that very puzzling account of the Battle of the Antonine Wall?” Sophie hazarded, inhaling soup and exhaling suggestions, Joanna-like. “An antidote for wolfsbane poisoning? Another list of books which you must send northward at once, with all possible speed?”

“I said you would never guess,” said Gray, laughing. “No; it is an invitation from Rory MacCrimmon, on behalf of the School of Practical Magick at the University, to lecture there all next year on the practice of shape-shifting.”

Sophie put down her spoon with a clatter, looking satisfyingly gobsmacked. “An invitation . . . an invitation to
you
?” Then it seemed to occur to her that her astonishment might be taken amiss, and a becoming pink flared in her cheeks. “That is—”

Gray grinned at her. “I can scarcely credit it, either,” he said, which was entirely true: He had hinted very hard over the course of several months, but until now he had not thought he should succeed in his object. “But it is so, indeed. And look!”

He passed the letter to her, pointing out the second paragraph on the second page, and watched happily as she read:

As you have mentioned your wife's interest in magickal study, I wish to assure you both that she is of course welcome, should she wish it, as a student either in my own School or in the School of Theoretical Magick, whichever may be the most suitable . . .

Sophie, round-eyed, put the letter down very nearly in her soup-plate, from which Gray rescued it with the ease of long habit.

“And it
is
true that there are other women at the University?” she demanded.

Gray nodded. “Several hundred of the undergraduates are women, MacCrimmon says. He seemed surprised at my asking, though I had told him of the dispute regarding female scholars when Bevan and Ransome first brought it to my attention. You should be entirely unremarkable there, I daresay.”

“You intend to accept his invitation, I hope?”

“I should very much like to do so, yes,” said Gray. “Of course there will be all manner of administrative and political details to sort out, but if the notion pleases you—”

But as Sophie was not much interested in administrative or
political details, Gray was spared the danger of revealing that one of them consisted in securing her father's permission to undertake the journey, and another in arranging conveyance and accommodations for some at least of the quartet of Royal Guardsmen (two posing as undergraduates, one as a journeyman baker, and the fourth as a banker's clerk) presently responsible to His Majesty for Sophie's safety.

Sophie looked almost dangerously gleeful. “I should like it of all things,” she said.

“My dear,” said
Sieur Germain de Kergabet to his wife, “have you any objection to my taking Joanna with me today?”

Joanna sat on her hands in tense and hopeful silence. Though Sieur Germain, in his capacity as Lord President of His Majesty's Privy Council, seemed truly to value her assistance as a sort of unofficial undersecretary, he deferred always (or nearly always) to Jenny's wishes in the disposition of Joanna's time; Jenny having now attained that advanced stage of gravidity at which the slightest exertion fatigued her, who could deny her claim to Joanna's companionship and support?

“No, indeed,” said Jenny, cheerfully; “Agatha and I will go on splendidly together, I am sure. Do you dine at home tonight, my dear?”

Without waiting to hear Sieur Germain's answer, Joanna excused herself and ran upstairs, lest Jenny should suddenly change her mind.

When she emerged from her bedroom, with her bonnet-strings dangling and a sheaf of her memoranda from the previous day's meetings in one gloved hand, she nearly collided with the nursery-maid bringing little Agatha downstairs to her mother.

“Aunty Jo!” said Agatha, putting up her arms. “Aunty Jo!”

Joanna therefore descended the stairs slowly and awkwardly, with Agatha on one hip and her papers and reticule under the other arm.

Sieur Germain was below in the hall with Mr. Fowler, putting on his hat. Joanna handed Agatha back to the nursery-maid and thrust her head into the breakfast-room to call a hasty farewell to Jenny; then she clattered down the stairs and, after taking a moment to tie her bonnet-strings and compose herself into the picture of a dignified young lady of good family, followed Sieur Germain and his secretary out of the front door.

*   *   *

The morning's meeting with the Alban ambassador was interrupted by a page bearing a message.

The outer sheet was directed to Sieur Germain and proved, on Joanna's unfolding it, to be a perfectly unobjectionable—though also perfectly unnecessary—memorandum. Folded within, however, was a second sheet of paper, directed to herself. With growing dread, she unfolded it and beheld what was unmistakably a sonnet:

In those dear eyes of soft and wintry hue

Within whose depths my heart is daily drown'd—

Flushing with mortification, Joanna stuffed the sonnet into her reticule and handed the memorandum along the table to her patron.

The meeting dragged on for a further hour, whilst Joanna took precise and dispassionate notes on Alban marriage customs for Sieur Germain and inwardly wrestled with the problem of the sonnet. She did not doubt its author, for it was by no means the first such . . . tribute . . . she had received; as feigning ignorance seemed only to have made her admirer more persistent, the time had clearly come to take a firmer hand.

When at last the conclave was adjourned, therefore, she touched
her patron's arm and murmured, “I shall be with you shortly; I must just have a word with Prince Roland.”

“Certainly,” said Sieur Germain. “I shall be with His Majesty in the audience chamber.”

Joanna smiled pleasantly at the Crown Prince, who could have no notion what his brother had been up to. “Ned,” she said, “where might I find Roland?”

“Why, out in the gardens, I suppose,” said Prince Edward, looking puzzled. “Or perhaps the library.”

It took her some time to locate Roland, having first to shake off his elder brother's earnest escort and elude the assistance of a series of pages and stewards. At length, however, she ran him to earth in the Fountain Court, where he was engaged in teasing a peacock by imitating its gait.

Joanna stood for some moments unnoticed, watching him and shaking her head in affectionate exasperation; though a great trial to her at present, Roland had not lost his talent for making her laugh.

“Roland!” she said at last, waving his latest poetical effort at him. “Whatever do you mean by this?”

The Prince turned towards her with a glad cry of “Joanna!” Then seeming to register her general failure to fling herself into his arms, he said, somewhat deflated, “Did not you like my sonnet?”

“Roland,” said Joanna, exasperation once again overriding amusement, “you have no business to be writing sonnets to me! Or to anyone else, for that matter—but most especially to me. What would your mother and father say?”

Roland looked down and scuffed at the turf with one shoe. “I do not see that it is any of their business,” he muttered.

“Of course it is their business!” said Joanna. “You are second in line to the throne of Britain, until Ned has a son.”

“But Sophie—” Roland began.

“I should not take Sophie as a pattern, if I were you,” said Joanna. “Unless of course you have been yearning all this time for a draughty garret in Oxford, and said nothing about it to anyone.”

Roland had, Joanna remarked not for the first time, a very stubborn set of the chin.

“She would not give up the man she loves, for any consideration,” he said; “I call that noble and admirable.”

With an effort, Joanna refrained from rolling her eyes. “You may call it what you like,” she said, “so you do not attempt to follow her example. You had much better take up a less dangerous pastime than writing sonnets to unsuitable young ladies.”

“I do not write sonnets to
unsuitable young ladies
,” said Roland, visibly stung; “only to you.”

Joanna's face heated, whether in outrage or embarrassment she hardly knew. “Roland, you cannot—”

“My dearest Jo!” He strode forward and, before she could retreat, had trapped both of her hands in his and was gazing earnestly down into her face. “You must let me tell you—”

“Let me go.”
The words emerged with surprising firmness, considering the flailing panic of her thoughts, and he obeyed her at once, stepping back a pace with a look of some alarm. Immeasurably relieved, Joanna drew a breath and said more calmly, “I am going to give you some good advice, such as you might receive from your wise and sensible elder sister, if you had one.”

Instead of which, you have got Sophie,
she added, to herself.
The gods help us all.

Roland groaned, but Joanna persisted: “If you must write love-poetry, choose some other object—the Lady Venus, perhaps, or the beauties of Gaia.”

“I am not in love with Venus, or with Gaia.”

Joanna nearly laughed aloud. “And you suppose yourself in love with me? Roland, you know I am extremely fond of you, but you have not the
least
idea what it is to be in love.”

“Well, no more have you,” said Roland, looking wounded.

“In any case,” said Joanna, “even were your father inclined to let you choose your own bride without interference—which, for very sound reasons, he is not—there is not the least possibility of your ever
being permitted to marry me. I must conclude, therefore, that you wish to persuade me to some dalliance; and that, I tell you plainly, you shall never do.”

“That is not what I—that is not at all—” Roland stammered, crimson-faced. “I wish to persuade you to an engagement.”

Joanna was so shocked that she laughed aloud. Surely,
surely
, he could not be serious? Quite apart from the far grander marriage which his father was already secretly arranging for him, how could he possibly imagine such a thing?

Roland's stiff posture grew stiffer, and his red face redder, at this effrontery.

“I do not see why my father should object,” he said. He began to pace, forward and back around the near rim of the fountain. “My father likes you very much, in fact.”

“As the Kergabets' protégée, and Sophie's sister, he may,” said Joanna, who was herself rather fond of King Henry. “I daresay he finds me amusing. But your mother does not; and in any case it does not follow that I should for one moment be tolerated in the character of your wife. Roland, the daughter of a convicted traitor! You cannot seriously suppose it. But this is all beside the point, because
I do not want to marry you
.”

This, at last, seemed to make an impression; he stopped in his tracks and regarded her with a gobsmacked expression that nearly made her choke.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Firstly,” said Joanna, “because I am very fond of you and your brothers, and wish you every happiness, which is exactly what you should
not
have, if you married me. And, secondly”—raising a hand to forestall his protest—“because it is my dearest ambition not to be a princess.”

This was not strictly true, in that Joanna had many ambitions more definite and positive than that one, but it was true enough for present purposes.

Roland, inexplicably, appeared heartened by what she had
intended as a thorough set-down. “I shall say no more at present, then,” he said cheerfully, and gave her his best courtly bow, with a brotherly kiss to follow.

And then, whistling, he strode away, leaving Joanna alone in the Fountain Court with the peacocks and her own exasperation.

*   *   *

The following day brought a letter from Sophie, the first in more than a fortnight. Joanna—suffering still under some irritation of spirits, as a result of her conversation with Roland—had gone for a ride in the park in lieu of both breakfast and morning calls. She had been particularly eager to avoid a planned call upon Mrs. Griffith-Rowland, with whom Jenny felt obliged by Kergabet's position to maintain an acquaintance, but whom both she and Joanna cordially disliked; having seen Jenny's carriage and pair in the stables, she was hopeful that she had succeeded in this object.

And, better still, a letter from Sophie! She snatched it up from the salver in the hall and broke the seal at once.

“Din Edin?” she said aloud, upon reaching the middle of the second page. Was it wise of His Majesty to be sending Sophie to Alba whilst he himself (or, at any rate, Lord Kergabet) was in the midst of negotiating Roland's betrothal to the Alban heiress? Did he, in the teeth of all evidence to the contrary, imagine her in the role of envoy? Surely not. But then, King Henry had a blind spot where Sophie was concerned, the size of the boulder of Sisyphus.

“Jenny!” Joanna bounded up the stairs to the first floor with no thought to propriety, or to the smell of horse which clung to her skin and clothing. “Jenny, you will never guess—”

She stopped short on the threshold of the morning-room, staring at the stranger who had taken possession of her accustomed seat.

“Why, Jo, dear!” Jenny turned, smiling, and beckoned her in. “I had nearly given you up for lost. Come in and meet our guest.”

Joanna approached warily; the stranger rose to her feet, at which she seemed inclined to stare. She was tall—at least as tall as Jenny—
and the gown she wore, severely cut from some stiff, heavy fabric in an unflattering shade between mustard and chestnut, emphasised her bony wrists and elbows.

“Miss Pryce, may I present my sister-in-law, Miss Joanna Callender; Joanna, Miss Gwendolen Pryce.”

Miss Pryce raised her head just long enough to meet Joanna's eyes as they exchanged ceremonious curtseys. The face thus glimpsed was all planes and angles and wide dark eyes: An interesting face, Joanna thought, which might have stories behind it.

This thought did not prevent her frowning when Miss Pryce resumed her former seat on the sofa, leaving Joanna to perch on the edge of a hard chair lest Madame Joliveau, the housekeeper, scold her for covering the furniture with horse-hairs.

“Miss Pryce has come to stay for a month or two, perhaps,” Jenny continued, in the light, almost careless tone which (to Joanna's experienced ear) suggested that a great deal lay unspoken beneath her words. “Jo, as you are on your way upstairs, perhaps you will save me the climb, and show Miss Pryce her room? Madame Joliveau has had her things put in the small bedroom on the second floor.”

“Of course,” said Joanna. “If you will follow me, Miss Pryce?”

“Thank you, Miss Callender,” said Miss Pryce, faintly; “thank you, Lady Kergabet.”

“What brings you to London, Miss Pryce?” Joanna inquired, as they climbed the stairs to the second floor—this being the least intrusive of the many questions which presented themselves to her mind.

“My stepmother has persuaded my father that I ought to be a governess,” said Miss Pryce. She glanced sidelong at Joanna.

Joanna frowned. “But Agatha is rather young for a governess, surely?” she said, puzzled. “She is not yet three.” And Jenny had said
our guest
, not
the new governess
.

“Agatha—that is Lady Kergabet's daughter? No; to the Griffith-Rowlands, who are my father's neighbours in Clwyd, when they are not in London. They have got four children, and—”

She stopped abruptly, and shut her mouth into a tight straight
line. Joanna revised her assumptions, and began to regret that she had not gone out with Jenny after all; evidently this had been no ordinary morning call. “I am a little acquainted with the family, yes,” she said.

By now they had reached the small bedroom—it was the one Sophie had slept in, briefly, before her marriage to Gray, with the same kingfisher-blue coverlet still upon the bed—and Joanna opened the door and stood aside politely for Miss Pryce to enter it. A sad little trunk and threadbare carpet-bag, she saw, had been stacked beside the dressing-table.

“Oh!” said Miss Pryce, in a tone of gratified surprise. “How lovely!”

She stood in the centre of the blue-and-ivory carpet, gazing about her at the small, prettily furnished room that was to be hers, as though it had been a palace; and for the first time she smiled. A small and hesitant smile it was, but it gave her narrow, rather saturnine face the spark of animation which had hitherto been lacking.
Yes,
thought Joanna at once;
I rather thought so.