The Midnight Queen (8 page)

A codex cipher. It is a codex cipher, and all I need in order to read it is a copy of the
Sapientia Delphi
.

In Which Jenny Makes an Important Discovery

A fortnight after
Lord Carteret's departure, on an August morning when the fickle Breton sun shone with unaccustomed ferocity, Gray looked up from the tree-stump he was digging out to see an unfamiliar carriage—small, but very grand indeed—sweeping up the broad drive of Callender Hall. He stiffened, alarmed. As the carriage rattled past, he saw on its door the arms of his brother-in-law, Sieur Germain de Kergabet.

His first, irrational thought was,
Something dreadful has happened to Jenny
. He dismissed it immediately, however; Gray was the last person in Jenny's family to whom Sieur Germain was likely to pay a personal visit in such a case. It then occurred to him that Sieur Germain might be an acquaintance of the Professor, and the idea made him groan aloud. He put down his spade and loped towards the house.

The truth, as he learnt from Mrs. Wallis on his way through the kitchen—he could scarcely appear before potential guests of the Professor in his stump-pulling attire—was stranger yet: Chancing to visit the neighbourhood, Mr. Marshall's sister had, most naturally, decided to call upon her brother's friends.

*   *   *

Jenny sat with the Miss Callenders and Gray in the large drawing-room, slim and upright on a velvet-covered settee, and accepted a cup of tea but declined her hostess's stiff, almost ungracious, offer of further refreshment. Miss Callender seemed disinclined to conversation; Jenny did her best, but Gray thought she looked more tired and anxious than her day's journey alone could account for.

“What a lovely pianoforte you have there, Miss Callender,” said Jenny, nodding at it through the open doors. “You must play and sing a great deal, I suppose?”

“Oh!” Miss Callender gave a dismissive little laugh. “No, indeed, Lady Kergabet. It is my sister Sophia's property now. One must put away such amusements, you know, when one has the running of a household. In any case, my father does not much care for singing.”

“I am sorry for it,” said Jenny. “It must be a grief to you. I know that I should miss my playing and singing very much, were I made to give them up.”

Gray was sure Jenny had meant this remark kindly; it seemed Miss Callender did not take it so, however, for she flushed a little, and looked put out, and made no reply. Sophie, watching from the corner to which she had retreated with her interminable fancy-work, gave a grim little smile.

After nearly a quarter-hour of such limping conversation, a gleam of inspiration lit Jenny's face.

“Miss Callender,” she said, “my brother has told me so much about your father's gardens. Might I be permitted . . .”

Miss Callender jumped—almost literally, thought Gray—at this suggestion. “My sister is very knowledgeable about the gardens, Lady Kergabet. I am certain that she would be delighted to show them to you—would you not, Sophia?”

And Sophie, rising from her seat as though she had been included in the conversation all along, smiled warmly at Jenny. “Certainly,” she said, and added, as though casually, “and perhaps Mr. Marshall will join us also?”

Jenny's answering smile radiated profound relief.

*   *   *

Gray, seated on a stone bench in the kitchen garden, extracted a small bundle from his pocket and handed it to his sister. Sophie watched, puzzled, as Lady Kergabet carefully unfolded the object—a perfectly ordinary handkerchief, rather the worse for wear—and turned it slowly in her hands, her pale, delicate eyebrows drawing together in concentration.

“What is she doing?” Sophie whispered to Gray.

“Scrying is Jenny's magickal talent,” he said softly. “Watch and see.”

Lady Kergabet had closed her eyes and was frowning a little, murmuring steadily under her breath. Finally she raised her head on a long sigh and opened her eyes, blinking at Sophie and Gray.

“You were right,” she said bleakly. “I am very sorry.”

“Mother Goddess.” Gray did not stammer, but his voice shook. Sophie turned to him, startled, and saw him clasp trembling hands between his knees. “Poor Gautier. How did it happen? Did you see?”

Lady Kergabet shook her head. “I have tried my best,” she said, “but you know the things I see are often quite incomprehensible.”

Sophie tried to recall what she had read about scrying—the art of reading from an object the emotions, thoughts, or actions of its owner. It was a not uncommon skill, but one that—like healing—must begin with inborn talent; some of the authors she had studied set great store by it, while others wrote of scry-mages only in the most disparaging terms, conceding that they could not easily lie about what they saw, but insisting that they were very apt to be deluded or mistaken. The same object, she knew, would not necessarily produce the same fragments of understanding for every scry-mage who examined it; the echoes of ownership could fade or grow warped with time, and spells existed which could be used to create false echoes, or to alter or obscure genuine ones.

“Gray, who is Gautier?” said Sophie. “What—”

But Gray seemed not to hear her.

“If your friend was the owner of this handkerchief, however,” Lady Kergabet continued, “then he is certainly dead.”

“Dead? One of Gray's friends is
dead
?” Sophie looked from one of them to the other.

Gray stared at her as though just now reminded of her presence. He looked back at his sister; she shook her head. “It is . . . I asked Jenny for tidings of my friend Gautier; I had had ill news of him, and I hoped it might be . . . mistaken, but . . .”

Hesitantly, Sophie laid a hand on his arm as his voice trailed off. “I am very sorry,” she said.

*   *   *

They walked for some time, apparently at random but drifting gradually farther and farther from the house. When they had reached a point sufficiently distant, Sophie melted tactfully away into the shrubbery, leaving Gray and Jenny alone together for the first time since the latter's marriage more than a year before. The moment their hostess was out of sight, Jenny flung herself at her brother, reaching up her arms to encircle his neck; startled and pleased, he lifted her off her feet and embraced her fiercely. She was heavier than he remembered.

“I have been so
worried
, Gray,” Jenny whispered. “And now your friend—”

He set her down gently and clasped her hands in his. “Some dreadful thing is happening,” he said earnestly. “Here, and at Merlin. Gautier is dead, and others than myself have been injured; his death was not meant, I think, but I fear there may be worse to come, though I do not know just what—”

“Gray.” Under her bonnet and the mass of wheat-coloured curls, Jenny's pale face was drawn tight with confusion and alarm. “Gray, dear, please tell me what you do know—you frighten me terribly. Whatever it is, you know you have only to ask, and I shall do all I can to help . . .”

Gray sighed. He and Jenny, only a year his junior, had been confidants and confederates almost from the cradle; he knew her, none better, a woman of courage and good sense. Still, alone she was no match for the Professor's coven and their plot—whatever it might be; he ought not to involve her, knowing that there might be danger to her, but . . .

“Jenny,” he said abruptly. “Will you scry something else for me? Now, quickly?”

“Of course. Whose is it?”

He hesitated. “I am not altogether sure,” he said. “But I hope it may tell us something that I want very much to know.”

“Well, then?” She held out her right hand.

Gray fumbled in the pockets of his coat; after a moment he produced the broken pen he had abstracted from the Professor's study, which together with Gautier's handkerchief he had retrieved from his writing-case upon hearing of Jenny's arrival. Had he already made this choice, even then?

He dropped the bent quill into her open palm.

When Jenny opened her eyes again, she was ashen-faced and trembling.

“You must not stay here,” she implored him. “Come home with me now, Gray, please!”

Shaking his head, Gray steered her gently to a seat in the shade of a little rose-tree and sat beside her, clasping her chilled hands in his. “Tell me what you saw,” he urged her, his voice pitched low lest, even here, they might be overheard.

Jenny took a deep breath, then let it out again; the trembling eased a little, and the colour began to creep back into her cheeks. “It was quite clear,” she said at last. “Much more so than before. Your Professor—he told you, I suppose, that he is protecting you?”

Gray nodded, already disappointed—this he had always known to be at least half a lie, and Jenny's words proved the pen to have belonged to the Professor and not, as he had hoped, to Viscount Carteret—but determined not to show it.

“Gray, he intends no such thing,” said Jenny. “He may not have meant your friend to die—I cannot tell—but he certainly means that you should.”

Gray's first thought was neither shock nor, strangely enough, alarm, but rather,
Now I know why he let me go to Kerandraon, and what he hoped might happen if I sought out old Duke Gaël's memorial stone.
The second was that the Professor had evidently no very great care for his daughters' safety, and the third, a fervent hope that his own attentions to Sophie and Joanna had not already exposed them both to further danger from their father.

“You do not seem surprised.” Jenny's voice—low but tense, almost angry—interrupted his thought.

“I did not need to be told that the Professor wishes me ill fortune,” Gray said bitterly. But this new knowledge solidified in his mind that he had overheard a plot aimed not merely at the ouster of Lord Halifax, Master of Merlin, but at his death.

*   *   *

Sophie and Joanna found them, nearly half an hour later, still arguing in heated undertones.

“I
will not
leave them here to fend for themselves,” Sophie heard Gray whisper, as she emerged into the clearing around the rose-tree. She was about to clear her throat or cough to announce their presence when Joanna—predictably—forestalled her: “Leave who?” she demanded, careless of grammar, planting herself before Gray and his sister with hands on hips.

Both of them whirled to face her, Gray looking appalled and Lady Kergabet guilty.

“Be quiet, Joanna,” Sophie scolded, as though she were not herself wild to know the answer to her sister's question. “This is not your affair.”

Gray, recovering as much poise as he had ever had, crouched down to speak to Joanna face-to-face. What he said Sophie never discovered, but when he stood up again, her younger sister was unusually silent.

“We ought to go back,” Sophie said, and added, “Amelia will worry.”

The others all nodded their agreement with this transparent falsehood.

*   *   *

Jenny had gone back to Kergabet, and Gray remained. Unable as yet to face the Professor, he had asked Morvan to say that he was ill, and eaten his dinner from a tray; now, alone in his bedroom, he sat before the open window, pretending to study.

Just before taking her leave, Jenny had tucked a letter into the pocket of his coat and whispered, “I could not find the book you wanted, but I have brought you this,” as he bent to kiss her cheek in farewell. Now he drew the letter out and turned it over in his hands. No direction was written on the outside, but the seal was familiar—an owl of Minerva, superimposed upon Merlin's Oak. Gray's pulse quickened. What was this?

He broke the seal and unfolded the letter. It was disappointingly brief, but the hand was more than familiar. “Magister,” Gray breathed. At long last, he had an answer from Master Alcuin at Merlin.

My dear Marshall,
the letter ran,
I was grieved by your letter, and very much hope that you are well. I must urge that you send no reply; I strongly suspect that continued correspondence will put us both in further danger. Since receiving your first letter I have been followed and spied upon; I cannot be certain by whom, but I have recognised at least one protégé of your host. I am sorry to say that the tale you were told of your friend is indeed perfectly true, and moreover, that the blame is almost universally ascribed to you.

Gray stared in a sort of dull horror, his eyes stinging with tears as though he were hearing anew of Gautier's death. He could not go back, then; another home was lost to him, unless he could somehow prove his innocence, nor could Master Alcuin now help him in unravelling Lord Carteret's ciphers.

He could not claim to feel surprised by the news that all of Merlin believed him guilty: The Professor's threat
qua
invitation had all but promised it. He could not even be astonished to learn that he had unwittingly thrust Master Alcuin into difficulty, if not outright danger—but he could curse the thoughtlessness that had led him to do so.

Ought he to have gone away with Jenny? Did he put Sophie and Joanna in greater danger by remaining here than he might have done by leaving them?

In truth, he was more confused now than ever; he hardly knew which idea was the more preposterous—that the Professor, of all people, should be contemplating murder, or that he himself should be the target thereof.

What, after all, had he done that the Professor could object to? He had been on the man's own accursèd errand when all this began; he had not volunteered for the task but been recruited, under some protest, by the Professor's two favourites, Taylor and Woodville. Still he might have resisted, Taylor and Woodville being what they were, had other men he trusted—Evans-Hughes, and Crowther, and Gautier—not been of the party.

He scrubbed angrily at his stinging eyes and tried to think. He had overheard that strange conversation in the Professor's rooms, true; but the Professor surely did not,
could
not, know that he had done so. And what in Hades had Gray been doing there, when he ought to have been in the Infirmary with Taylor and Evans-Hughes?