The Witch & the Cathedral - Wizard of Yurt - 4 (33 page)

I hoped that Theodora realized that Joachim never said that he was delighted to meet someone unless he meant it He brought up chairs for us, dismissed the servants, and poured us tea.

"Is that what you had in mind," he asked me, spreading jam on his toast, "when you said you wanted priests and wizards to stop distrusting each other?" He spoke soberly, but something about the angle of his eyebrows made me think he was enjoying himself.

"I hope you understand what you've just done," I said darkly. "Talking about how the city of Caelrhon needed to be defended didn't fool anybody. You dared the renegade wizard to attack you next week in Yurt, using yourself as bait to draw him out!" This was, after all, Joachim's own plan, and I knew he would sacrifice himself quite willingly if he thought it necessary. "And after putting yourself in danger like that, you then decided to preach on harmony between wizardry and the Church?"

"If there are important thoughts and attitudes that need to be changed, one should start changing them at once," he replied calmly.

"You certainly got the attention of your cathedral priests. They're standing out in the street wondering what they should now do differently—even Norbert, I'm sure. With someone else, they might have balked at the idea of becoming friends with the wizards, but they're too much in awe of you to do anything but agree."

"They're not in awe of me," said Joachim casually, and with what I thought was a thorough lack of insight, "just of the authority of my office." He started to refill our teacups and looked concerned that mine was still full, though Theodora had retreated from the conversation by sipping hers.

"But how about the other bishops?" I demanded. "They won't be in awe of your office. Aren't they going to reprimand you for heresy?" At this rate, I thought, he might not even live long enough to be reprimanded.

Joachim cocked his head at me as though wondering what I meant. "I said nothing that could possibly be considered heresy. I only preached the brotherhood of mankind and told everyone that I wanted unfounded and untrue rumors to stop." He broke into an unexpected smile. There are advantages to being in the Church rather than connected to your wizards' school. We don't have the central organization you do; there isn't a Master like the Master of your school to whom I have to answer." There was no doubt about it, he was enjoying himself. "Bishops in council can of course discipline erring brethren, but no one could possibly call a council against me for urging priests and wizards to serve God's purpose together."

Considering how reluctant he had been to be elected bishop, I thought, he was not at all reluctant to exercise the authority of his position once he had it. "But how about you?" I persisted. 'You’ve certainly told me enough times over the years how inferior magic is to religion."

He gave me a long look from eyes in which a glint of humor lurked. "It is, of course," he said. "But I've probably been too dismissive. After all, even wizards— strange as this concept may seem to you—are the children of God."

I shouldn't waste my time worrying about priests and bishops reacting to the new bishop of Caelrhon. Joachim as bishop might be hard for me to deal with. I gave up the effort and laughed. "All right, Joachim. I can tell your own personal safety is much lower on your list of concerns than it is on mine. I'll try to protect you. I have to get back to Yurt now, but I'll see you there very soon.

"And you'll be riding up with our party, I believe?" Joachim said to Theodora, who had been too overcome by the honor of drinking tea with the bishop to say anything. "Good.

We shall be able to talk properly then." He rose. "I do indeed have a lot I need to do, but I have an advantage that makes many things easier for me now than when I was dean."

The glint was back in his dark eyes. "I have a dean to help me!"

But before letting us out he rested a hand gravely on Theodora's head. "Bless you, my daughter," he said, "and the child that you carry."

"So you did tell him everything," said Theodora. I walked with her through the city streets to her house. It wasn't exactly an accusation, but from someone who valued her privacy as much as she did it was also not an endorsement of my night-long conversation at the bishop s palace.

"I already told you that," I said. "I had to tell him I was going to be a father because he wouldn't have let me go until he found out why I was so upset." Although I had said highly insulting things to her just the day before, I now felt I had to phrase it diplomatically. "You did rather manipulate me, you know. But there are all sorts of things the bishop still doesn't know about you. You can tell him yourself that you're a witch, to keep him amused during your long ride to Yurt together."

She looked at me as though wondering if I was serious. "You don't seem very respectful toward the bishop."

"Of course not. Even if we're going to start working together now, I'm afraid my habits of disrespect toward the organized Church are too deeply ingrained to change."

She started to smile in spite of herself. "I used to think it was a shame there weren't more wizards like you. Now I'm beginning to think its just as well."

"Many wizards would agree," I replied. "But I must say I find it disturbing that you're always teasing me but treat Joachim with awe. After all, we were at Yurt together for years, and we're the same age."

She shook her head, still smiling. "You two may have once been the same age, but you've stayed the same while he's twenty years older. And he isn't royal chaplain of Yurt anymore—he's the bishop."

As we walked, I kept glancing at her out of the corner of my eye, wondering if I dared ask her again to marry me. The picture of standing with her before Joachim to be married was so intensely real that I could not let myself believe it might never happen. But if I asked her too often it would become nothing but a joke between us, which she at any rate would never take seriously.

The royal party headed back through sunny valleys and hills toward the royal castle of Yurt. Paul rode his red roan stallion, but he had acceded to my concerns enough to stay within sight of the rest of us.

My eyes were starting to feel gritty from lack of sleep, and even though I knew I would be stiff at the end of the day from jouncing on an old mare, I still preferred to let her do the work of transporting me home. There was a spell I could use against fatigue, but I hesitated to use it; after its effect wore off, I always felt worse than before. I hoped Joachim would be alert enough to attend to his new duties today. But maybe people with pure minds needed less sleep.

At the moment, my thoughts kept me from dozing. I was extremely fond of the queen, I told myself, as I was of Paul, and for that matter of everyone else in the court of Yurt.

The queen was just as lovely as she had always been, her nature as spirited and as affectionate. But nineteen years of daydreams about her seemed gone as though they had never existed. Even the memory of kissing her in the twilight in the fields outside the castle seemed so far away that it might have happened to different people.

Partly my daydreams had been driven out by Theodora’s reality, I reasoned, and partly my unspoken imaginings had been dissipated by telling Joachim about them. But it made it much easier than I could have expected to ride next to the queen and to talk to her.

Now, if it had not been for Theodora, I told myself, I could have imagined nothing better than continuing as Royal Wizard of Yurt. I thought I would even have been able to think approvingly of the queen's marriage to Prince Vincent, if I hadn't been so sure that he was only using it as an excuse to get into Yurt and seize it for himself. I tried to sound her out, to see if she might know something that would help me even if she did not realize she knew it. "Why did you decide to move up your wedding, my lady?" I asked casually.

She looked up sharply, the sunlight gleaming in her emerald eyes. In spite of her easy and natural manner, I thought, she did remember our last real conversation. But what she saw seemed to reassure her. I wasn't sure if this meant she too knew me better than I thought she did, or if it meant she didn't really understand me at all. She answered without awkwardness or embarrassment. "We just couldn't bear to wait any longer"

The sudden constriction of my chest made no sense, I chided myself, because I was now ready to hear her talk of such things without pain.

"It seems," she continued, "that all I've done recently is prepare for the two ceremonies: Paul's coming of age and my own wedding. It would have been easier, of course," she commented wryly, "if he'd been in Yurt during the last month. I let him go to the cathedral city for a few days, and next I know you've kidnapped him!" "I apologize for taking him with me," I said, thinking that it could not indeed have been easy to make preparations for a once-in-a-lifetime ceremony when the key person in that ceremony wasn't even there.

"But if it hadn't been for Paul, the rest of us might still be up in the border of the land of magic."

She looked thoughtfully toward the red stallion and its rider, running long loops next to the road while the rest of us proceeded more sedately. "He tried to downplay it when he told me about it," she said, "but I could tell that he had been responsible for finding a way for you all to escape. Of course, I know perfectly well, Wizard," she added generously,

"that you would have come up with something of your own in not much more time."

"He got to know Prince Lucas much better during the trip, too," I said, hoping to work the conversation back to Lucas's younger brother Vincent. "It's good that the two future kings of Yurt and Caelrhon should be friends."

"He tended to gloss over the dangers of the trip," said the queen with a smile, "but I could tell there were at least a few places where you might all have been killed. That's not the sort of thing a mother likes to hear about, but, now that it's all over safely, I can reassure myself that maybe he needed a little real adventure. We've always tried not to spoil him, but there's no question that he's been somewhat sheltered."

So far I was no closer to finding out anything about Vincent I could talk indefinitely to the queen about Paul, even though he would be exasperated to know we were talking about him like this. But I still needed to know if she had observed anything about Vincent. "When I came back from the City and first met the prince, my lady," I began, "there was something about the way that the two of you treated each other which I can only characterize as odd,"

She gave me a surprised look, as well she might, but said nothing.

"You and he seemed happy to be together," I plunged ahead, "but I had the strangest feeling that I was watching a play, that you had rehearsed what you told me about your whirlwind courtship."

The queen blushed most becomingly and tugged at a loose stitch on one of her riding gloves. I let the silence stretch out, knowing she would have to answer eventually.

Having exhausted the possibilities of her glove, the queen glanced around to be sure no one else was within hearing distance, cleared her throat twice, and gave what I had to call a giggle. "I hadn't realized it was that obvious," she said. "Maybe we were acting in a play, although I hadn't thought of it that way. But it would have been rather embarrassing to admit that I had been courting him."

"You were courting him," I repeated.

"I wouldn't tell anyone other than you," she said, which I presumed was meant as a compliment "But this winter, when I realized that my baby boy was going to be king very soon, and it had been six years since King Haimeric had died, I decided I would remarry. I was never meant to be a nun."

I nodded but did not trust myself to speak.

"Even you going back to teach at the wizards' school," she continued without looking at me, "made me realize that the years were passing, and that if I wanted another husband I should choose him soon. Going over the possibilities, I quickly picked out Vincent. That's why I invited him to come stay in Yurt this spring."

I rode in silence without answering. It all sounded coldhearted and calculating to me, not at all like the queen.

"It sounds very coldhearted when I put it like that," she went on, as though reading my thoughts. "But I wasn't deliberately planning to marry him, because I didn't know if I would love him. Rather, I thought I would review my options, to see if I could come to love someone else after the king."

She gave me a quick glance, as though wondering if she should apologize again for never having considered me as a candidate. If so, she decided against it. "Vincent seemed from the beginning the most likely of the lords and princes I knew."

"So he doesn't mind that you picked him out?" I managed to ask.

"Not at all! He was highly flattered. He was just a little irritated with me at first for inviting him to Yurt to see if he might be the man I would want as a husband, and then being so slow to make up my mind. You see, he'd always been secretly in love with me." She gave a dreamy smile that I would gladly have missed. "His only problem was his family; he said his older brother kept suggesting that this might be a chance for Yurt to take over Caelrhon. Vincent, I'm afraid, has always felt somewhat stifled living under his brother's shadow. He has no use for politics himself, of course."

This time she fell into a silence that she seemed to have no intention of breaking. I did not believe a word of it.

Or at least I did not believe what she had said about Prince Vincent, even if she thought it was true herself. Her own motivations, I thought reluctantly, might make sense. This was, after all, the same woman who had threatened her parents with becoming a nun many years ago, when they had tried to marry her to someone she did not like. If the young chaplain had started pressuring her to join the Nunnery of Yurt, her immediate reaction would have been to marry again.

And she had always loved parties and dancing. If nothing else, working her way through the eligible men in the adjacent kingdoms would have promised several seasons of festivity.

She pulled her horse over to the side of the road and called to her son. "Paul! I think you've tired your horse until mine can match him. I'll race you to the woods!"