The Midnight Queen (4 page)

He abandoned his hair as a bad job and stepped out of his room just as Sophie was shepherding the newcomer, and a stableboy laden with valises, across the landing. Joanna—a stocky, open-faced girl of perhaps thirteen, who bore no evident resemblance to either of her sisters—stopped short at sight of him, looking him up and down with candid grey eyes.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Joanna!”
Gray came very near to laughing at Sophie's outraged tone but restrained himself to spare her dignity. “Mr. Marshall, may I introduce my sister Joanna? Joanna, Mr. Marshall is one of Father's students, and our guest for the summer.”

Joanna curtseyed haphazardly, revealing to Gray that her petticoats were edged in mud and her scuffed boots half-unlaced.

Gray bowed gravely in return. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Joanna.”

“You have the most enormous boots I have ever seen,” said Joanna.

*   *   *

Joanna's presence enlivened that evening's dinner conversation considerably. She seemed to have made a project of provoking her father and eldest sister; in the face of her continual efforts in this direction, and Sophie's to school her to silence, Gray could think of almost nothing to say that would not make matters worse.

Over the second course Joanna announced her intention to seek a university place on leaving her school. Sophie frowned and muttered, “
Do
be quiet!” Miss Callender, displaying a most uncharacteristic want of poise, choked on her wine. The Professor, to Gray's surprise, said only, “You will find that you think very differently in a few years' time, Joanna.”

“Indeed I shall not,” she retorted, with the sort of defiance Gray wished he himself could bring to bear against his tutor. “It is quite absurd that only boys are allowed to do anything interesting, when everyone knows that girls are
much
cleverer.”

From Sophie, Gray had learnt that Joanna, far from being a keen scholar, was in fact much despaired of by the headmistress of her school, being prone to gaze out of the window during lessons that bored her and to involve her fellow pupils in nocturnal escapades of various sorts. He wondered whether this apparent shift of interests was genuine or whether, as he very much suspected, it was simply the latest in a series of calculated attempts to shock her father.

“Some girls may indeed be very clever,” said the Professor, still uncharacteristically calm, “though I must say that, alas, those present at this table are all uncommonly silly.”

Even Miss Callender looked mildly annoyed at this. Gray bristled, silently, on Sophie's behalf, and shot her a sympathetic look across the table; she would not meet his eye, but gazed without expression at the silver epergne in the middle of the table.

“No matter how clever a woman may be, her mind and temperament remain ill suited to such advanced study as must be undertaken by a university undergraduate.” He turned to Gray, smiling the smile that always portended something unpleasant for its recipient, and added, “I am sure you will agree, Mr. Marshall?”

“As you say, sir,” Gray muttered through clenched teeth, looking at his plate.

*   *   *

“You told me he was clever,” Joanna said accusingly, when the sisters had removed to the drawing-room after dinner.

“I beg your pardon?” said Sophie.

“Your Mr. Marshall,” said Joanna, scowling ferociously up at her. “You said he was clever, and kind, and interesting, but he is exactly like Father.”

“You are mistaken, Jo,” Sophie said. “I have known Gray far longer than you have, and I am sure you—”

“What is there to mistake?” said Joanna, impatient. “When one man professes an opinion, and another man replies with
As you say
, what are we to think but that his opinion is the same?”

“I cannot think any such thing,” Sophie replied staunchly, thinking of Gray's gritted teeth and downcast gaze, but as she was equally unable to explain his apparent endorsement of the Professor's views, Joanna remained unpersuaded.

The next morning Sophie set out immediately after breakfast and searched the gardens until at last she ran Gray to earth.

“Joanna believes that you agree with the Professor,” she told him without preamble, lying prone at the edge of a gravel path in order to peer at him through the box hedge. She had lain awake half the night fretting over her quarrel with her sister; never before had their opinions of any person been so much at odds.

“I imagine it possible that such a thing might occur,” Gray said. His head was bent to his work, so that she could not see his face. “In theory.”

“That women's minds are not suited to advanced study, I mean,” she said impatiently. “Do not be obtuse. I told her that she was quite wrong, of course, but . . .”

Gray at last put down his trowel and looked at her. “But . . . ?”

“But . . . if you do not agree, why not
say
so?” She paused again, biting her lip. Amelia would call this sort of inquiry
prying
, but Sophie felt that she must have an answer. “And not only that. It is perfectly clear that he loathes you, and you loathe him. I do understand that you must put up with him during term time, but I
cannot
any way see why you should come here and let him treat you as he does, as though the laws of welcome meant nothing. Mother Goddess, Gray! He treats you with more thorough contempt than he has ever shown even to
me
.”

Gray looked angry—but not, she thought, at her—and perhaps a little ashamed.

“I came here,” he said quietly, looking down at his filthy hands again, “because your father gave me no choice; and I hold my tongue because if he were to throw me out, I should have nowhere else to go.”

Sophie could not at once think how to reply. She sat up, wrapping her arms about her knees, and considered. After a moment, she heard again the soft
chunk
of the trowel.

Very quietly she said, “
I
am glad you are here.”

The sound of trowelling stopped. Sophie lay down again and peered through the hedge. Gray looked at her with a sort of astonishment in his face; then he smiled slowly, tentatively, and said, “So am I.”

*   *   *

Sophie dreamed that night, as she often did, of blood and fire and broken limbs, and of death falling from the sky.

On such occasions, it was her habit upon waking to creep down the servants' stair to the library, where for some years now she had been systematically working her way through the Professor's collection of basic works on magickal theory. Most lately she had begun on the
Elementa magicæ
of Gaius Aegidius; it was very slow going, for although notionally meant for novices, it was written in a style so ornate that Sophie found she must read each individual period at least three times before she could parse out its meaning.

She persevered, however, until the words began to swim before her eyes. Then she climbed the library stair and from the top shelf over the door retrieved another book. This one was smaller, old and worn, with the marks of small fingers upon it; the title stamped on its spine—it was a book of minstrel-tales for children—was in Brezhoneg, and on the flyleaf was written, in a child's uncertain hand,
Laora
.

The name notwithstanding, the book had belonged to Sophie's mother, who had used to read to the girls from it when they were small.

Sophie chose a page at random and began to read, intending only to refresh her eyes and her mind for a renewed assault upon Gaius Aegidius, who appeared to be working himself up to an interesting discussion of spells relating to water. Instead, however, she found herself leaning her chin upon her hand and considering her mother.

Sophie had been three years old, or thereabouts, when, escaping from the nursery one summer night to look at a beautiful full moon, she first overheard one of her parents' ugly arguments. The words eluded her—they were too distant, and spoken in a language imperfectly understood—but the voices, chill and venomous, sent her fleeing back to her bed, where she lay long awake before succumbing to a sleep beset with nightmares.

The next day she had watched them carefully. But all seemed as usual: Papa kept to his study, except when walking the gardens with Pellan, and patted the girls' heads absentmindedly when they passed by him in the shrubbery; Mama heard Amelia's lessons, spoke with Mrs. Wallis, watched Sophie and Amelia play in the garden with their dolls. Sophie splashed Amelia with water from the fountain, and Amelia cried; it seemed to Sophie now that Mama had moved more carefully and spoken more sharply than was her wont, but at the time she had been outraged by the unfairness of being scolded for such a trifle.

Soon enough the summer was over, and the Professor back to Merlin College for the Samhain term. The house, as always, had worn a more cheerful air when he had gone, but this time Mama seemed not to share it. She had begun to grow round, and had dark smudges under her eyes.

“Mama, why are you sad?” Sophie remembered asking one day. She had escaped from the nursery-maid again and found Mama weeping silently over her fancy-work: a tiny white bonnet, like the ones Amelia sewed for their dolls.

Mama had smiled sadly and stroked Sophie's hair. “You shall understand one day, dear heart,” she said, which meant—Sophie had known this much already—that no more answers would be forthcoming, however many questions she might ask.

A few days before Beltane, the nursery-maid had brought Sophie and Amelia to see Mama in her bedroom, where Mrs. Wallis showed them, not a doll, but a tiny, pink-faced baby girl with wide-open slate-blue eyes. “This is your new sister, my dears,” she said, smiling.

The servants exclaimed and cooed at the baby, but Sophie saw that Mama was weeping quietly.

“The gods withhold their gifts from me,” she muttered, as though to herself. “I was so certain, and yet it is another girl-child, the poor thing. He will be back again, and again, the brute, as long as he has no son . . .”

Mrs. Wallis's smile had vanished as Mama spoke, and Sophie had heard no more, for the nursery-maid was hurrying her and Amelia out of the room.

*   *   *

Sophie could not recall exactly when, or how, she had discovered herself to be her mother's favourite child. But certainly by the age of seven, she had come to understand this truth and was beginning to grasp the unfairness of it. If Mama should love her better than Amelia, that was only just, since Amelia was Father's favourite; but it was too bad of Mama (and Father, too) to spare no love for Joanna—who, besides, was not much more than a baby and could scarcely have done anything to deserve it.

Sophie could not pretend that she had not adored her mother, but from the beginning of Joanna's life she had also loved her small sister fiercely—and not only for the sake of Joanna's answering devotion. Not that Joanna was difficult to love. All the servants, and Mrs. Wallis in particular, found her round, solemn face and disconcertingly astute questions rather endearing than not, and tended to spoil her, and even Amelia, in those days, had been, if not precisely doting, at any rate very fond of her. So it was not that Joanna lacked for love, exactly, and Mama had never been unkind to her; only . . . Joanna followed Mama with her wide grey eyes, candid and sad in her stoic little face, so happy to receive even an absent half smile, and Mama might have made her so happy with a kiss or a caress, or by admiring her adorably wobbly little dances—but Mama never had. Joanna had never
cried
, of course—Joanna was known even then for never crying.

Sophie had said to Amelia one day, “When I am grown up, I shall have
six
children; and I shall love them all alike, and play with them as much as they wish, and never lose my temper or scold them.”

“You shall have to get a husband first,” replied Amelia, tossing her head. “It is a great pity that you are not pretty. Still, Papa will find someone to marry you, I suppose.”

And Sophie had snorted derisively, and said, “I shall find someone myself, I thank you.”

*   *   *

Then Mama had died, when Sophie was eight and Joanna only four. Joanna had seemed to go on very much as before; she did not mope and weep as Amelia and Sophie did. But Sophie had much more dreadful nightmares now, and was often enough awake o' nights to know that Joanna suffered likewise; she knew, if no one else did, that there was a hurt, bewildered child hidden behind that stoic façade. But she could find no opportunity to kiss and comfort Joanna, who would not, except in sleep, admit to feeling anything.

Instead, taking advantage of the disorder into which Mama's absence had temporarily thrown the household, Sophie had taken Joanna with her when she fled the melancholy house to ramble around the park. They searched for frogs and water-snakes; they picked flowers and wove daisy-chains; they sang together (Sophie tunefully, Joanna in her small, earnest monotone); and Joanna seemed to feel happier. Sophie, after a time, had begun to feel happier also.

*   *   *

Sophie blinked, stretched, and rolled her cramped shoulders with a sigh. It was a relief to have Joanna back again, however uncomfortable she might make things with the Professor and Amelia. Joanna did not mock her interest in magickal theory and, unlike Amelia, could be relied upon not to reveal her reading habits to the Professor. Unfortunately, Joanna was also unlikely to be helpful in her quest to decipher Gaius Aegidius. Now, Gray, on the other hand . . .

The sound of footsteps in the corridor outside warned Sophie that dawn was approaching, and with the ease of long practice she replaced the codex on its shelf, slipped out of the door, and crept back up the stairs to her bed.

In Which Gray Writes a Letter and Makes a Pilgrimage

My dear Jenny,
Gray wrote,
I hope this finds you very well.

Sighing, he put down his pen and raised his face to the window. It was late evening, and all over the grounds of Callender Hall darkness was absolute. At the moment Gray wanted nothing more than to be out in that darkness, flying. He knew very well that he was not yet recovered enough to execute a shape-shift and would only tumble to his death on the flagstones below. But he yearned towards his broad wings and round owl eyes, the loft of an updraught, the tiny night sounds—despite the disastrous ending of his last such flight.

Grim-faced, he picked up the pen.

You may have heard distressing tidings of my doings, Jenny. I hope you have not been anxious on my account. Be easy: I am well and mostly whole, and I believe no permanent damage has been done.

As I wrote from Oxford, my tutor has invited me to be his guest in the country—your country, I should rather say—until the next term begins. His house and gardens are situated in a most beautiful part of the country, as tranquil as one could wish—a charming prospect all in all. I am as well occupied here as I could possibly be elsewhere.

Gray looked up again, chewing the end of his pen. The number of things he could safely write about was pitifully small compared to the many more interesting subjects which he would have liked to discuss with Jenny—with any friendly and sympathetic person, for that matter. If only such a person were to hand!

He longed to confide more fully in Sophie. But of what use—beyond relieving his feelings—could such a confidence be to either of them? A poverty-stricken student mage, estranged from his parents, who (so ran the Professor's tale) had had to be rescued through the kind offices of his tutor from rustication—or worse—was no suitable acquaintance, still less a suitable friend, for the daughter of any respectable man. Sophie would wish to help him, he knew, but he saw no means for her to do so—only myriad opportunities to antagonise her father, which would do Gray no good, and might do Sophie harm.

There was nothing to be done, then, but write to Jenny and wait to see what came of it.

I have told you before of my tutor, Professor Callender. Also in his household are his three daughters, among whom is one at least whose acquaintance I think you might very much enjoy.

After another long moment's window-gazing, he added,

I understand, too, that the library is very fine, though I have yet to see it.

This was the broadest hint he dared drop that he was prisoner and not guest.

What else was there to say? It would all depend, he supposed, on how Jenny replied; if it were not safe to write openly, if his letter had been tampered with either before or after its arrival, she would discover it and let him know.

Please give my love to all.

Your affectionate brother
G

Gray made a second copy of the letter, then folded and sealed both copies and scrawled directions on their outsides, first to Jenny at Kergabet, her husband's country seat, and next to their London lodgings, having, to his chagrin, no very clear idea of her present whereabouts. Then leaving them on the desk, he rose and went to the window, where he stood for a long time, yearning for wings.

*   *   *

From the beginning of his magickal education, what Gray had most desired to learn was the art of shape-shifting, and the warnings of his undergraduate tutor, Master Alcuin—“This is a difficult and exacting magick, Marshall, one that most who attempt it will never master”—had only fuelled his determination to succeed.

The first step—he had learnt by now that this was always the first step—was to study: the anatomy and habits of a wide variety of animals, the histories of other successful shape-shifters, the means by which such transformations may be accomplished.

The second was to choose a shape. For Gray the choice was half made already: His desire to learn this magick had begun as a dream of flight, of soaring out of reach of boyhood tormentors. He pored over drawings of birds and spent hours—both by day and by night—observing the avian species that haunted the College grounds. Finally, on a rare visit to London, he spent a day in the city's famous Menagerie, and there a marvellous bird caught his eye: a large owl—round yellow eyes framed by rings of white and dark grey, long grey wing- and tail-feathers crossed with pale mottled bands—blinking solemnly on a tree-limb. As Gray watched, fascinated, the owl spread huge wings and dropped off into space, gliding silently across the aviary to alight on another perch. Then its head revolved almost completely, so that it seemed to look directly at him.

“Please, what bird is that?” he asked a passing menagerie-keeper.

Smiling at his enthusiasm, the old man replied, “The Great Grey Owl.”

After months of repeated attempts, Gray's first successful shift lasted only moments; the second, less than half an hour. But within a fortnight of that first success, he had taken to owl-shape as if born to it.

Only now, when it was lost to him perhaps forever, did he recognise how profoundly he had come to depend upon his ability to escape into the sky.

*   *   *

Jenny's answer, when it came several days later, eased Gray's mind, at least on one subject. Her husband, she wrote, despite disapproving of her disobedient brother and her continued correspondence with the same, was an honourable man who would never dream of opening or reading her personal letters; nor had her scrying detected the interference of any other person, so that Gray might safely write whatever he wished.

And I hope you will take the earliest opportunity to do so, as I have heard much about you this past month that requires explanation.

“I should imagine so,” Gray said aloud, ruefully, as he sat down to answer Jenny's letter.

*   *   *

The following week, seizing his moment while both the Professor and Joanna were temporarily silenced by mouthfuls of rabbit with onions, Gray took the unprecedented step of asking leave to go sight-seeing—largely as a means to test the length of his tether.

“I have heard, sir,” he began, “that the Temple of Neptune at Kerandraon is very fine. I wondered whether I might have leave to pay a visit there.”

When the Professor, despite ostentatious raising of eyebrows at this description of the local
pèlerinage
, did not immediately refuse, Gray, emboldened, went on: “Perhaps Miss Callender and S— and Miss Sophia might be persuaded to accompany me—”

“I should be pleased to act as your guide to our beautiful country,” Miss Callender said, “but unfortunately my duties as mistress of this house keep me far too busy.”

Gray hid his relief behind a look of polite regret.

“However,” she went on, briskly, “I am sure my younger sisters would derive great benefit from such an edifying excursion. Papa, you will of course send them in the barouche, and Mrs. Wallis can easily spare Katell or Gwenaëlle to attend them?”

Gray sighed inwardly. However—supposing that the still-silent Professor consented at all—a Breton maidservant would be vastly preferable to Miss Callender herself, whose chill civility was almost more wearing than her father's open disdain.

Appius Callender began to look thoughtful.

“Very well,” he said at last, and pursed his lips. “Sophia, you and Joanna may go, and Morvan shall drive the barouche. Amelia, you will speak to Mrs. Wallis about the arrangements . . .”

Gray looked up, astonished at his success, into Sophie's wide eyes.

*   *   *

The Professor went out alone after luncheon the next day, driving himself in the phaeton, and returned as the rest were dressing for dinner. Conversation at table, such as it was, gave place to a long lecture on the original construction and the more recent renovation of the temple they were to visit, which might better have held the listeners' attention had it contained more of history and less of the politics and arithmetic of patronage.

“Had matters been left to the architect,” said he, when Sophie ventured to ask whether it was known who had built the original structure, “there would be no temple to visit. It is men of substance who build temples, Sophia, not architects and stonemasons. Now, the temple at Kerandraon, as I have said, was to have been refurbished by Sieur Guion de Cournouaille; but, however, he was killed by—killed, that is, in an affair of honour, and his heirs refused to support the project . . .”

There was more in this vein, to which Sophie could not attend. She did succeed in collecting that the work on the temple had at length been paid for by the then Duke of Breizh, to whom a memorial stone had afterward been erected, on the seaward colonnade. This the Professor particularly commended to Gray's attention as being of great historical interest.

“Yes, sir,” said Gray, in the tone Sophie had come to recognise as indicating thorough absence of mind.

*   *   *

The following morning, the five of them—Sophie and Joanna facing Gray in the barouche, with the luncheon hamper on the floor between them, and Gwenaëlle perched beside Morvan on the box behind the horses—departed early for Kerandraon, a market town along the coast.

The moment the carriage moved beyond sight of Callender Hall, Joanna left her seat beside Sophie to slide in next to Gray, and Gwenaëlle clambered down from the barouche box into the space thus vacated.

“We are leaving the park now, and see—here is the first of our farms,” said Joanna to Gray, a little farther on.

As she spoke, and as his eye fell on the white and green of sheep and meadow, Gray's heart lifted strangely, as though freed from some oppressive weight; the three girls grew cheerful and voluble, chattering in Breton and occasionally glancing sidelong at their male companion amidst flurries of laughter.

The whole undertaking had assumed a glad and carefree air, and Gray smiled, at first, to see Sophie for once looking like any girl of seventeen, enjoying an outing with her contemporaries. As he could now understand only one word in ten of their conversation, however, he soon felt distinctly left out, and—as they had perhaps intended—turned from them to study the passing landscape.

He had wondered often that the Professor should choose to spend his holidays in such an out-of-the-way place, fond as he was of rich food, influential society, and the sort of entertainments more easily found in Oxford or London than on an isolated estate in Petite-Bretagne. With such income as the Callender estate must supply, surely one need not live halfway to Cape Finis Terra, unless by choice.

On the other hand, Gray could easily imagine living here himself. The country was so beautiful—richly green to the south, with the wild scent of the sea gusting from the cliffs to the north—and so like his native Kernow, even to the half-familiar sounds of the local language, that a wave of homesickness assailed him, such as he had not felt in many years. The few people they passed in the fields and pastures were hale and deeply tanned; they paused in their work, first to study the approaching conveyance and then, once it drew near, to greet “Dim'zell Zophie” and her entourage with every appearance of friendliness. Sophie, Joanna, and the servants returned these salutes with smiles and cheerful greetings of their own.

*   *   *

The Temple of Neptune, aptly enough, perched at the cliff's edge on the southern side of the cove in which nestled the town of Kerandraon. Originally built in the
style greco-romain
of so many centuries past, with a broad, gently pitched roof supported by Doric columns on two sides and (in deference to the local climate) thick stone walls on the other two, it had gradually acquired decorative additions of a more local bent, so that now it might just as well have been dedicated to the Breton sea-queen Dahut as to Neptune. This Gray supposed to be the reason the Professor had described Duke Gaël's refurbishments as insufficiently ambitious; a man more convinced of the superiority of Roman worship, law, and custom he had never yet encountered.

“This is a chancy place,” said a quiet voice at Gray's elbow, speaking in strongly accented Français; Gray turned to see Morvan, the Callenders' coachman, nodding his grizzled head. “The old magicks are strong here. Some can feel them—if they know what to look for.”

Gray studied the old man—Breton born and bred, thrice his own age at least, but lean and spry and strong, with a glint of sharp intelligence in his dark eyes. “Oh?” he said, in an encouraging tone.

“They say,” Morvan continued, lowering his voice still further, “they say as Lady Laora made pilgrimage here, to try if the Lady Dahut would save her from being sent away to marry the Saozneg King.”

Gray blinked.
Lady Laora?
Yes, the second bride of King Henry the Twelfth had been the daughter of the Duke of Petite-Bretagne, he recalled—very likely a distant descendant of Duke Gaël. Perhaps it was only natural that she should seek the gods' help in a place with such a connexion to her family. Though everyone knew of her mysterious disappearance, Gray had never before heard it said that she had gone unwilling to her marriage-bed; might that explain—if not excuse—what she had later done?

“But then, they likely say that of every temple along this coast,” Morvan went on; he grinned briefly, his air of mystery quite vanished. “Draws the pilgrims, y'see.”

Gray thought he did see; the Breton queen's notoriety had faded in England since his childhood, but perhaps here her fame persisted. Joanna had scampered away up the steps; Sophie and Gwenaëlle were filling their arms with the dahlias and lilies for which they had begged the head gardener before setting out that morning. Before Gray could collect himself to pursue this interesting topic, Morvan had thrust an armload of flowers at him and moved away, trailing the girls up the temple steps with the rest. Gray followed more slowly, pausing to admire the elaborate knotwork carved into the temple's supporting pillars.