The Midnight Queen (16 page)

“And the tales of . . . unhealthy magicks?” Dallyell persisted. “Of calling on strange gods?”

“I wish 'twere in my power to deny it.”

Dallyell gave a low whistle; when he spoke again, his voice was scarcely above a whisper. “Hades and Proserpina keep such tales from the ambassadors at Court . . .”

“From your lips to the gods' ears,” Tregear murmured.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie saw the two men clasp hands and move away to refill their glasses. For some time she went on listening, picking out bits and pieces of the conversations taking place around her, but—unless it were of value to know that the barque
Julia Augusta
had survived an attack by pirates off the Iberian coast, or that the Duchess of Norfolk had started a fashion for sea-green velvet—to no further purpose.

Was this Britain's vision of her King—mad, deluded, obsessed?

And if it was also Lord Carteret's view, what might he intend?

Sophie looked up, and her eyes met Gray's; his face had paled under its sunburnt brown. “I feel a little unwell, Ned,” she said, as clearly as she could manage. “I should like to return to my room, I think.”

“Of course, Elinor dear,” said Gray, offering his arm again as she rose from her seat.

O
xford

In Which Oxford Is Not Quite as Sophie Expects

Rain fell steadily
as September wandered into October and the four travellers wandered into the town of Oxford.

Since first discovering the existence of such a place—a city of temples and libraries, a city whose very purpose was to support the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom—Sophie had yearned to see it. Expecting that after another unquiet night, she would nod off during the journey, she had made Gray promise to wake her when the town came into view. From engravings and sketches seen at Callender Hall she recognised at a distance the great temples of Minerva and Apollo, the Great Library, the towers and gates of the outermost Colleges: King's, Marlowe, Bairstow. As they skirted the town, bound northward to a wayhouse on the Cherwell, Gray pointed out the newly built Museum of the History of Magick and the roof of the Infirmary. Certainly the place did not appear to best advantage under the burden of the day's steady drizzle, but Sophie was captivated.

They had nearly reached their destination when she spotted the small dome, the green of aged copper, at the centre of a group of derelict buildings—windows empty and dark, ivied walls half overgrown with weeds—on the far bank of the Cherwell. For no reason she could discern, the scene was oddly familiar. “What place is that?” she inquired, pointing.

“Those are the buildings of Lady Morgan College,” Gray said, with a thoughtful glance back at her. “Not used these past two hundred years perhaps. The green dome is a shrine to Minerva as Sophia, personification of wisdom.”

Lady Morgan College.
Sophie remembered reading of this place in one of her mother's books: a college for women, founded by a Cymric noblewoman in an earlier age; once a great centre of learning, the equal, if not of Merlin, certainly of many of the newer colleges. Abandoned, now, since the time of the Princesses Regent. This Sophie had never understood: Princess Edith Augusta—her own namesake, as she now knew—was said to have been a woman of great erudition, and to have possessed powerful magick; she herself had studied at Lady Morgan College, and yet it was in her time that the University had once again become the domain of men alone.

As those desolate, forsaken buildings—once a living, breathing community dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom and protected by the goddess Minerva, now an empty stone shell half reclaimed by the dedicates of Gaia and Hegemone—disappeared around a bend in the road, Sophie was gripped by a sudden, overwhelming sorrow. “I wish,” she said, in a voice half choked with tears, “I wish that I could bring it back to life.”

“Perhaps you could,” said Joanna, “if you were to become a princess again.”

The wave of loss and foreboding ebbed a little; Sophie swallowed and pulled a wry face at her sister. “You overestimate my influence, I think.”

“But if
you
cannot do it, Sophie,” Gray said, “then I can scarcely imagine who could.”

*   *   *

Leda and the Swan was, as its garish and rather suggestive signboard intimated, not in the habit of receiving respectable ladies. While Mrs. Wallis contrived, as always, to appear perfectly at ease, Sophie and Joanna looked about them with barely concealed apprehension, and Gray squirmed under the innkeeper's knowing gaze. He knew very well what the fellow must think, and could not help feeling that a more capable man would not suffer such impertinence—nor would a more sensible one have brought three gentlewomen here to begin with. But if they were to avoid meeting any of Gray's acquaintance—and all had agreed that this was vital—they had no good alternative.

Though the innkeeper at first was prone to delighted leering, a stern look and a few quiet words from Mrs. Wallis produced in him a remarkable civility and (she assured the others) perfect discretion. The business of negotiating for their rooms was mercifully brief, and they were soon safely ensconced in the chamber—cramped, unpleasantly furnished, but passably clean—that would be the ladies' abode while they remained in Oxford, discussing strategy while Mrs. Wallis unpacked their things.

“The first order of business,” said Gray when he had warded the room, “is to explain matters to Master Alcuin, and seek his help. Sophie and I shall go—incognito, of course. Then—”

“How,” Joanna objected, “can Sophie possibly go into Merlin College incognito? You have got that charm of Aunt Ida's, I know, but no matter how clever Sophie may be at not being noticed, she is a
girl
 . . .”

Gray looked at Sophie, who returned his gaze with a pleased half smile.

“You have not told Joanna of your newest discovery, then?” he inquired. Joanna glowered, ill pleased at being left out of a secret.

“I did mean to show you, Jo,” Sophie said. “Watch, now, and you shall see.” She closed her eyes and bent her head.

Though he had observed variations of this process so many times by now, Gray remained fascinated. Sophie's face was hidden, but he could see her hair blur and shift, her slender neck change shape. Hairpins clattered to the floor as long, dark locks grew lighter and shorter; head and neck shifted in curve and heft, and when at last Sophie raised her face again to look at the other three, it was with the wide blue eyes, straight brows, strong cheekbones, and tow-coloured curls of a young man. Perhaps rather a
pretty
man; Sophie's prior experience with young men was not extensive.

The effect was jarring, and Gray looked away for a moment, enjoying Joanna's gobsmacked expression instead.

“Ladies,” he said, “allow me to introduce my friend . . . shall we call him Arthur?”

The name had come to him unbidden; an echo of the lost Gautier, perhaps.

Sophie laughed and let the magick go, shaking out of her eyes her own long, chestnut-coloured hair. Gray had a sudden, mad urge to run his fingers through those glossy waves; he stifled it by reciting to himself, in Old Cymric, the first five Descents of the Greater Mabinogion.

“We shall go into the College,” he continued, when he had recovered his equilibrium, “and to Master Alcuin's rooms, and explain to him what we are about. Lord Halifax—the Master of Merlin, that is—could scarcely do otherwise than have me clapped in irons if I approached him as myself, and is unlikely to agree to see us even as strangers, but Master Alcuin will be able to gain us an audience.”

“But he wrote you word of his being watched.” Mrs. Wallis had not appeared to be listening, but Gray knew her ways too well by now to have been misled.

“Yes,” said Joanna, “Gray did say that. Will you not be seen, both going and returning?” she demanded, looking from Sophie to Gray and back again. “What if you are recognised—will the Proctors not lock you up, for what happened to your friend?”

Only a few weeks ago such an objection might have reduced Gray to stammering counterarguments—but no longer. “We shall not be there as ourselves,” he pointed out, “and we shall have Sophie's magick. And, once we have warned him of the danger that threatens him, our own danger will be at an end.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sophie nodding agreement as she finished pinning up her hair. But Joanna had not yet done. “And if this Lord Halifax refuses to believe your tale?”

“We shall cross that bridge when we come to it, Joanna,” Sophie replied severely. “
If
we come to it.”

*   *   *

“Be
careful
, Sophie,” said Joanna, anxious. Then, turning to Gray, she tilted her head back to glare up at him and went on, sternly, “If anything should happen to my sister, I shall make you
very
sorry.”

Sophie shifted restlessly from foot to foot, feeling out-of-sorts and awkward in the trousers, shirt, and coat which Mrs. Wallis had paid an uninquisitive seamstress in Market-street to make for her as Samhain-night masquerade wear. Keeping her boy's face on, and her voice in a range suited to a youth of her own age, required considerable mental effort—she had not known how much, for such things had never much mattered before—and she was increasingly nervous about the whole scheme. And Gray had given her a most peculiar look, on first beholding her in her mummer's garb, which had not helped matters at all.

“I shall be perfectly all right, Jo,” she said, rather more impatiently than she had intended. “Gray knows what he is about, you know, and I shall have nothing to do but look like this and . . . and talk a little with Master Alcuin.” She turned to Gray. “Have you the—”

Forestalling her, he shot back the cuff of his coat so that she could see her mother's obsidian charm on its black silk cord about his wrist. “I shall be as inconspicuous as anyone could wish,” he said. Had Sophie known him less well, she might have missed the undertone of worry in his voice. Possibly he regretted having yielded to her insistence on accompanying him. So be it; not for any consideration would she allow him to run such a risk alone.

They followed the Cherwell down to the unassuming wooden bridge that, on the opposite bank, joined their path to the South Road into the town. At first Gray strode along in silence, apparently lost in thought, and Sophie was forced into a half trot to keep pace with him; after a time, however, he slowed his pace to ease her way. There was nothing much to discuss, Sophie supposed, their plan having been thoroughly hashed out already, but the silence unnerved her, and at last, half unconsciously, she began to sing.

She stopped when, on turning southward, into the Mansfield road, they first began to encounter other foot traffic. She had not supposed Gray to be listening to her half-whispered song, but when it ceased, he turned back to her, looking surprisingly cheerful, and said, “I thank you—that was a clever thought, to sing a cheery walking song!”

Sophie considered asking him what in the world he meant—she had in fact been singing a Brezhoneg lullaby under her breath—but thought better of it. “Are we nearly there?” she inquired instead. She had not enjoyed the walk; her trousers chafed the skin of her legs, the starched collar cut into her neck, the coat was too warm, and the new boots pinched her feet most unpleasantly.

“Nearly,” said Gray happily, as they turned into Wellspring-street.

In less than a quarter-hour they had reached what Gray called, with a sweep of his hand, “the Broad,” and were passing the imposing frontage of Plato College; then, abruptly, Sophie found herself standing before the Porter's Lodge of Merlin.

This was the first test; if a shielding-charm, a false name, and a new suit of clothes could enable Gray to pass unchallenged through the front gate of his own college, then, surely, there was every chance that the rest of their mad scheme might succeed. As Sophie held her breath, Gray lifted a hand and knocked smartly on the heavy oaken gate.

After a moment a stolid, pudding-faced Porter put his head out of the square hatch six inches above Sophie's head. “Names?” he inquired.

“Edward Dunstan,” said Gray, “and Arthur Randal.”

“Merlin men?”

They had decided the previous evening that it would be best, at this stage of the journey,
not
to be Merlin men. “Marlowe,” Gray said. “I am a Marlowe man. Young Randal”—with a careless gesture at Sophie—“has not matriculated as yet.”

“And what do ye here, then?” The Porter raised his eyebrows at them.

“We are paying a few calls,” said Gray, and then, in a display of recklessness that made Sophie's heart leap into her throat, “Is Professor Callender in College at present?”

“Aye, just yesterday arrived.” The Porter opened the gate for them, no longer seeming much interested in their doings. “Ye'll find his rooms yonder,” he said, with a gesture so vague as, had they been genuinely in need of guidance, would have been worse than useless.

“I thank you,” Gray said cheerfully. “Come along, then, Randal. Look alive.”

*   *   *

Sophie followed Gray through the gate and into the broad green quadrangle of Merlin College. Had they had leisure, she might have spent the next hour gazing about her at the weathered stone buildings with their mullioned windows, the statuary scattered about the walls, the few capped and gowned students crossing the velvet lawn—some with their arms already full of scrolls, or their faces buried in books—and revelling in the atmosphere of the place, heavy with magick, with a hunger for knowledge and discovery.

As it was, however, she scurried across the quad at Gray's heels, scarcely able to glance at all these wonders before they were past and gone. On the other side of the quad Gray led her through a long, arched tunnel and, opening a door in one of its walls, plunged them into a rabbit-warren of corridors and staircases. Though Sophie lost her sense of direction almost at once, Gray strode confidently forward, obviously in his element—as well he might be, having spent nearly four full years of his life within these walls.

“We shan't really be anywhere near—” she began.

“Of course not. But we know now that he is here, and we must be on our guard. Now, wait—”

Suddenly Gray disappeared through a door marked (in English, Français, Latin, and what Sophie supposed must be Cymric)
Junior Common Room
, emerging a moment or two later with his arms full of some dark, heavy stuff.

“Here.” He thrust half the bundle at her. “Put this on.” As he spoke he was shrugging into what Sophie at last recognised as a commoner's gown: short and open-fronted, with two long black streamers to each shoulder in place of sleeves. Belatedly she tried to follow his example, only to become tangled in this second layer of unfamiliar haberdashery. Gray came to her rescue and lent his handkerchief to mop the perspiration from her face and neck, and before long two counterfeit Merlin undergraduates made their way along the corridors towards Master Alcuin's staircase.

*   *   *

This—their first goal—seemed to Gray almost anticlimactic: only the heavy oaken door of his tutor's rooms, before which he had stood, through which he had passed, a thousand times at least. Though never in quite the same circumstances, it was true.