Other Earths (17 page)

I saw no reason to lie. “Yes,” I told her. “I am afraid of the magic of under-hill.”
Of your relatives.
Old magic, root-and-briar magic, coiling and twining and dragging you down into earth and dreams . . . I’d chosen the river rush, after all, or been chosen by it. I wanted something clear and clean.

“You are wise, then,” Queen Aeve said. “Tell me. Can you find out more, or are you too afraid?”

“I am afraid, but I will do as you ask.”

I felt, rather than saw, her smile.

“You’ll be rewarded,” was all that she said, but she did not say how.

If you want knowledge, of magic as well as rivers, you need to go to the source. The Thames rises near Oxford, the city where my mother was born, and in its early stages it is called the Isis: hence, my name. I took my mare from the royal stables at dawn the next day and rode west, setting a hard pace across the chalk hills and the beech groves, until we saw cream-gold towers in the distance and Oxford lay before us.

They’d let me study here, a great favor, since I am a woman. Not officially, of course, but
sub rosa
, lessons taken in a shadowy cell at the back of the Bodleian library. I had been granted this as a result of my grandfather, cleric and scholar, endower of a college that was already three hundred years old. I had learned a great deal about rivers, about the sea, in this land-locked, placid city in the middle of the wheat-pale hills.

Now I skirted the city bounds, stopped at an inn overnight, and continued west until I came to a stone by the side of the road that showed the way to Seven Springs. The grotto lies high at the Cotswold edge, river-birth carving limestone into palaces and caverns. When I arrived, early on the morning of the second day, there was no one there. A light mist was spiraling up through the branches. Beech mast and acorns crackled under my boots, and the cave-mouth lay before me, so enveloped in the white exposed roots of the beech that it was hard to tell where wood ended and stone began.

I was glad to be alone, but it also made me afraid. Not good, I thought, to be up here in the hills, the kingdom of faery. The goddess would protect me, or so I believed, but who ever really knew? I remembered walking along the Severn shore, looking westward to the black line of the Queen’s Forest and beyond that the dusk-blue hills of Wales and the line of fortress castles, magic-warded. The court of the Queen-under-the-Hill lay behind that iron band. Aeve’s cousin, Aeve’s rival, and a long enmity between the two thrones of Albion, one dark, one—or so Aeve claimed—the province of the Light.

Sometimes even a dim light can illuminate, if the shadows are dark enough.

Time to face my own darkness. I lit a candle and stepped inside. Water-breath, and presence: not the green deep presence of Thamesis himself, but the Riverine Isis, delicate, a cat-soft whisper in the shadows.

“My Lady?” No reply, but I didn’t expect one, not straight away.

I walked deeper into the temple, as far as the first spring, and held the candle out over black water. I could see my own face reflected in the dark mirror of its depths: I did not look like myself, but older, the woman I would one day be. And behind that, overlaid, was another face that was not myself at all.

Reflected flame flickered. I said, “I spoke to a ghost, and she told me of a fleet. There was magic in it, from Under-Hill. I need to know where the fleet will come from.”

No answer. I stared into wet fire, beginning to think that this, too, would be withheld. Then the lips of my reflection moved, although I myself had finished speaking.

“Watch for the Lowlander,” the reflection said. “Watch for the midnight moon.”

“Who is the Lowlander?” I asked, though I thought I already knew: the Dutch considered that they had a claim to the throne of Albion; there had been incursions, and almost certainly there were spies.

The face was silent and still. A ripple of water, caused by a breeze that I did not feel on my skin, eddied across the surface of the black pool. The chamber grew colder; I was gazing back at myself alone. Though the candle still flickered in my hand, in the water, the flame was no longer to be seen.

I made an offering of cyclamen to the wall shrine, placing the white flowers before the black face of the Riverine Isis, and walked out into the day. The sun was rising, gilding the mist and causing the trees to drip. An insubstantial landscape, luminous, half-real. I rode back to London, thinking of the Dutch.

 

The queen was of the same mind as myself, Oldmark told me. A Holland spy had been arrested in the grounds of Lydgate Palace only a week before. There had been a diplomatic incident, only half-resolved, and the Dutch court was threatening to raise penalties on shipping.

“It would not surprise anyone,” Oldmark said, “to learn that there is mischief afoot in that quarter.”

“But why involve the dead?” I asked. “And why was there under-hill magic present?”

Oldmark looked uneasy. “I do not know. But an alliance between the Lowlands and Under-Hill would be a sorry thing. There have already been rumors that the Queen-under-the-Hill courts the Spanish, and you know that there are political connections.”

I did know; I nodded. “I wish I’d been able to find out more,” I said.

“I am certain that you did your best,” Oldmark replied.

But that night, the drowned came over-ground.

I was roused from my sleep by distant shouts. The sound was coming from the direction of the palace gardens. Accommodated in the servants’ wing as I was, it took me a little time to throw on a robe and make my way through a maze of passages to the front of the building.

They were coming out of one of the fountains, an endless procession of white-faced, green-haired spirits. Some of them were decomposing away, just as their bodies had done: These were the ghosts of those who had lain long in the water, so long that it had seeped into their souls to rot and stain.

Oldmark appeared beside me, almost as white faced as one of the spirits.

“What are they doing?” he whispered.

“I don’t know.” The procession of ghosts was heading toward the water-stair, the gates that led down to Thamesis. Toward and then through, disappearing into—it must be—the river. Gesturing for Oldmark to stay where he was, I opened the French doors and ran down the steps to where the ghosts walked.

Sometimes they can’t see you. To them, you are as vague and shadowy as they are to you, and perhaps as terrifying. But when I put out a hand, with the fluttering of a spell, one of the spirits turned his head.

A man in a costume I did not recognize: rough trousers and a dull tunic. Long hair straggled down his shoulders, twined with weed. Not a recent ghost, then. He spoke to me, and I did not know the language, either: something Northern and harsh. I looked over his shoulder to his fellow spirits and saw a woman in a long, draped dress, her aquiline features downcast and somber. These were ghosts from the far past of Albion, and so many of them: summoned from every well and river and spring, every shore. The reek of under-hill magic hung about them. I looked back to Coldgate and saw the gleam of gold beside Lord Oldmark. The queen had arrived.

The stream of ghosts was slowing, and soon no more crawled out of the depths of the fountain. I went slowly back into the palace.

“I have sent word to my cousin Under-Hill,” Queen Aeve said. I began to curtsey but she waved me up again. “I have told her that I know of her plot with the Dutch court, that I will not tolerate it.”

Lord Oldmark and I waited; neither of us wanted to be the one who asked her what she planned to do. But she went on, “I’ve ordered the fleet of Albion to the mouth of the Thames, to sail for Dutch waters.” Her face twisted. “We have made mincemeat of the Spanish. Let the Dutch see if they have better luck, shall we? Oldmark, see that Mistress Dane is paid.” With that, she swept back into the palace.

One does not question the actions of a queen, at least, not out loud. But Aeve was ever one for the grand gesture. Sending the navy to chastise the Dutch, on what was still little enough evidence, was characteristic. And the navy, though still great, was not what it had been when Aeve first came to the throne, before its flagship, the
Rose
, had gone down under Spanish guns, taking Albion’s Admiral Drake with her.

Oldmark turned apologetically to me, disturbing my speculations.

“Mistress Isis, I know the queen appreciates your help.”

“I have helped little enough,” I said. I was not being modest. In fact, although I did not say so, I felt that I had helped only in setting Queen Aeve off upon the wrong track, a hound after a false scent. I did not say that, either—it is not safe to compare queens to bitches.

“Lord Oldmark, might I remain in that chamber for a night or two more, before returning to Gloucestershire? There is an avenue of research that I should like to pursue.”

Oldmark appeared slightly surprised, but he agreed. I returned to my room and took out the small traveling chest, setting it upon the table.

Inside the chest were the characteristic accoutrements of the river-speaker: the forked hazel twig, bound in brass, the lead and crystal compass, a collection of maps. I took the maps out of their leather case and riffled through them. I wanted to see where Coldgate lay.

London is a river city. Everyone thinks only of the Thames, but the streets are built over rivers, hidden streams, concealed rivulets. The Wandle, the Effra, the Westbourne and the Fleet; the Falcon, the Ravensbourne, the Earl’s Sluice, and many more. All the drowned streams that flow beneath the city to the Thames.

I was right. I’d felt it in the wine cellar, that breath of dampness, a river’s ghost. The oldest map of all showed a stream running underneath Coldgate. It had been known as the Winterbourne, and at this, my heart stuttered a little, for the bournes have a magic all their own. Underground streams, which can be summoned to rise again in times of great peril.

Or in times of war.

At that moment, I thought I knew what the Queen-under-the-Hill might be trying to do.

I picked up a cloak and the hazel twig and went out into the evening. A fog had come up from the Thames and hung over the box hedges, playing around the fountain in watery coils of its own. Late November and the taste of mist in the mouth . . . Water rising, in times of war. When I reached the fountain, I held out the hazel twig. A moment, and then it twitched. From the map, the Winterbourne lay beneath. I followed it back to the wall of Coldgate, hastened back down into the cellars.

It took a lot of searching before I found the little door, hidden and dusty behind a stack of barrels. It had once been locked, but the lock was rusted, and I pulled it away. It was unlikely that what lay behind it had been deliberately concealed—the lock was there to prevent people from wandering down beneath the cellar. Steps led down, and I followed them.

I did not get far. The smell of water struck me halfway down the slippery stair, and then it was all around me—I clung to the rail, in a minute of sheer panic during which I thought I would be swept away—but it was not real. The ghost of the Winterbourne was rising, spectral water all around me. My lamp showed diffuse and dim, rocking my hand, and around it I glimpsed a shoal of eels, tails flicking as they sped along. Standing in the race of the water I felt like a ghost myself. I backed up the steps and looked down into the foaming torrent.

It wasn’t just the spirit of the river that was rising. Magic was rising, too. It was all around me, tugging, curious, and I did not want to be noticed in this way. I slammed the door to the wine cellar shut with a muttered spell and went to tell Lord Oldmark to get me a boat.

 

Thamesside, looking back at Coldgate. We rocked on an icy current, the river slapping our little boat back and forth. Behind us, heading for Tower Bridge, one of the huge coal barges churned slowly downriver, the horse-team on the opposite bank patiently padding along toward the eastside docks.

“You had best be correct in this, Mistress Dane,” the seated figure at the prow said. Aeve’s voice was river-cold.

“Your Majesty, if I am not, my reputation is in any case gone, and I do not care what happens then.”

The queen inclined her cowled head.

“The navy has been ordered to continue out into the North Sea,” Oldmark said to me, in a low voice. “All but five ships, which are heading back to London.”

“Even the navy will not be of much help, if I am right. Aeve must appeal to Thamesis, as rightful ruler of the river’s city.”

Oldmark nodded. “You have explained. She knows what she needs to do, if it comes to that.”

It will
, I did not say. I was sure that I was right, but arrogance is best left undisplayed. “Watch the palace,” I told him.

I could sense it in the air, magic building up, as if behind a dam, with the strong mossy taste of Under-Hill. “It won’t be long,” I said, beneath my breath. Aeve turned, irritably, with the impatience of queens.

“Nothing is happening.”

I couldn’t really blame her for the irritability: It was foggy and freezing out here in the middle of the river. I was surprised that she’d agreed to come at all. And as if prompted by my thought, the queen came to a decision.

“We will go back,” Aeve said and rose.

“Wait,” I said, forgetting to address her as I should, but as I spoke, Oldmark echoed me, “My Lady,
wait
.”

Before us, across the black, choppy expanse of the river, Coldgate was fading. Magic was humming in the air like a beehive, so strongly that my skin prickled and burned. Aeve gasped as it struck her. Instead of the palace, its grounds, the streets that lay beyond its walls, we were facing the mouth of the now-buried Winterbourne, a ghost shore, muddy and strewn with stones. A single post rose up from the mud, tapered to a point and covered with weed: some ancient marker from the time before the Romans came to London. It shimmered, and I saw the skull that crowned it, grinning.