The room was reached from the courtyard by an outside staircase. Gwennie was waiting when I came out. “Could I talk to you for a moment, Wizard?”
We sat side by side on the stone steps, still warm from the day’s sun although it was now twilight. The castle around us was growing quiet, but from the stables came faint sounds of restless horses who had yet to reconcile themselves to the company of an elephant. The last swallows darted high overhead.
I looked at Gwennie from the corner of my eye while waiting for her to begin. She had a finely-shaped nose and brow-line, if a rather firm chin marked by a slight cleft, and straight dark blonde hair that was always escaping its pins. I myself thought she was as lovely as the Lady Justinia.
“All the years my father was constable,” she said with strained cheer after a few minutes, “I never realized how difficult his duties must be! Keeping the castle accounts, hiring new servants, assigning them their duties and ascertaining that they carry them out, making decisions ranging from when to whitewash the walls to when to buy new table linens to whether we should plant barley or rye this spring-”
“I’m sure everyone appreciates how smoothly the castle runs under your direction,” I said and waited again, knowing this was not what she wanted to talk about. For that matter, I had never really thought myself about the merits of barley versus rye. Gwennie was again silent as shadow filled the castle courtyard.
“This morning,” she said at last in a low voice, not looking at me. “Did you hear what that eastern princess tried to tell me?”
It didn’t seem worth denying. “I’m afraid I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“The worst of it is,” she said, so quietly I had to strain to follow, “I almost found myself agreeing with her.”
“Ahh,” I said as noncommittally as possible. This sounded more like something for which a castle employed a Royal Chaplain than an issue for the Royal Wizard. But then I wouldn’t have taken a moral dilemma to our chaplain either.
“I know him so well,” Gwennie said bitterly. “He likes me, he trusts my work as his constable, he remembers fondly the times we used to play together as children. If he found me in his bed in the middle of the night, he would be a little surprised, but I know I would quickly be able to find ways to arouse his interest-even having no experience of my own with men. I could even make him believe he was in love with me.”
Although I was quite sure this was not the sort of topic on which royal wizards were supposed to give advice, and although I didn’t like to think that my king could be so easily manipulated by a woman, I said nothing. At the moment Paul seemed ready to leap to do whatever Justinia might suggest to him, and my own situation was hardly an example of male independence and mastery.
“But what good would that do?” Gwennie continued. “If he did not come to love me by himself, with no help from me, it would not be real love. And,” she paused, gulped once, and continued, “and that he could never do, and I as constable of this castle would never allow. He would be the laughing-stock of all the neighboring kingdoms if he took a cook’s daughter as his wife, and what purpose would there be in becoming his concubine?”
It might temporarily take her misery away, I thought to myself, but even I recognized that would only be temporary.
“If he got me with child,” she continued, speaking fast now, her voice trembling on the edge of tears, “I know him well enough to be certain that he would not cast me out.”
She seemed to have thought it all through remarkably well for someone who had summarily rejected this option.
“He would find a place for me to continue to live in Yurt, and our son, if we had a son, would be brought up as a pet of the castle, well-trained and well-educated to serve as a constable or even a knight in some other kingdom, but he could never inherit the throne.”
Like Elerius? I wondered.
“Our daughter, if we had a daughter, would be well provided with a dowry to marry some wealthy merchant-even a petty castellan. But any children would be marked all their lives with the stigma of illegitimacy, and he would never truly consider them his.”
I was glad it was growing too dark for her to see my face. I thought of my “niece” asleep in Gwennie’s room. As she grew up, what stigma would she feel marked her, and would she come to believe I did not think of her as truly mine?
Gwennie had stopped speaking and seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “At least the Lady Justinia seems to have no plans to become queen of Yurt,” I suggested tentatively.
“And why not?” Gwennie burst out. “Does she think an eastern governor’s granddaughter too fine for the king of a small western kingdom? Where does she think she will find a better man, one braver or more true, more open and generous, or capable of greater love? If she’s as shallow as she seems, doesn’t she even realize she won’t find a man more handsome?”
Since this so completely contradicted everything she had said before, I decided to remain silent.
In a moment I heard the faint sound of a suppressed sob next to me. Gwennie rose abruptly. “Good-night, Wizard,” she said unsteadily. “Thank you for listening.”
“Good-night, Gwendolyn,” I said as her room door shut. I had always liked to think that as a wizard I was enough at the fringes of society’s strictures that they did not affect me. But I was affected if the young people I loved and served, whether children of king, duchess, or castle constable, could not become the individuals they wanted to be because of the expectations and silent rules that hedged them in. And in Antonia it touched me even more deeply and personally.
III
I woke up all at once, staring around in the dark. It was only a dream, I tried to reassure myself, nothing but a dream, but the scene was still more vivid than my own moonlit chambers. I had been in the bishop’s bedchamber only once, years before, back when the former bishop was still alive though very ill. But as I forced myself to settle back down and close my eyes again I could see that room clearly, the candles shining on the wood-paneled walls and on the brilliant red coverlets on the bed.
Emerging from the coverlets in the image before me were two heads above two sets of naked shoulders. Their faces were hidden, their mouths and chests pressed close together. One head had black hair streaked with gray, the other tumbled nut-brown curls. I didn’t need to see their faces.
A dream meant nothing, I tried to reassure myself, but found myself unwilling to be reassured. Absolute conviction did not respond well to reason. Suppose the dream did have meaning? Suppose my sleeping mind had provided me with an explanation my conscious mind rejected?
I kicked back the blankets, groped for some clothes, and banged the door shut on Elerius’s sleepy questions as I went out to fly furiously through the night toward the cathedral city.
I pushed past the bishop’s startled servants into his study and slammed the door behind me. He had been reading at his desk after breakfast, but he put his book down at once and looked up.
He’s pretending he doesn’t even realize there’s something wrong, I thought with the fury that had been building all during the long flight from Yurt. I supported myself with a hand against the wall and glared at him. He would learn now that even a bishop cannot trifle with a wizard.
“Joachim, you have been my friend for twenty-five years. We’ve both saved each other’s lives. I love you as the brother I never had. But now I must kill you.”
It sounded ridiculous as soon as I said it, but to his eternal credit he did not laugh, which would have been my own reaction. Nor did he do any of the other things I had expected. He did not shout for help, or leap for the door or the window, or drop to his knees to beg for his life.
Instead he turned his enormous dark eyes toward me, but disconcertingly not quite toward me. In a second I realized he was looking at the crucifix on the wall past my shoulder.
Murderous jealousy, I thought with a belated return of the good sense that had eluded me for hours, would have been more appropriate in a
boy thirty years younger. Wizards are bound by iron oaths to help mankind, not to kill them, not even false friends who hide their philandering under a cloak of religion. But I had gone too far to back down now, I thought, clenching my jaw. Nothing the bishop could say or do would stop me now.
But then his eyes calmly met mine. He took a deep breath and turned empty hands palms up. “If you must, then you must. I forgive you and shall bless you as I die.”
Dear God. My knees were suddenly so weak I could scarcely stand. I leaned back against the wall and put a hand over my eyes. If he had tried to run, I would have paralyzed him with a quick spell. If he had tried desperately to plead for mercy, I would have mocked him to his face. If he had screamed for his attendants, I would have blasted them with magic fire. But by doing none of these things, by surrendering at once, he had unmanned me completely.
He reached past me to turn the key in the door, locking us in together. “Before you kill me,” he asked mildly, “could you tell me why?”
Even the wall would no longer support me. Exhaustion and failure hit me together. I found myself on my knees, my face resting on the polished wood of the bishop’s desk, unable to speak and scarcely to breathe for fear I would start sobbing. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do anything-not because I had finally remembered the responsibilities that come with wizardry’s power, but because my will to act was gone. He had taken Theodora from me and I could not get revenge, could not demand her return, could not even threaten him. In a minute I felt a hand stroking my hair.
Murder victims are not supposed to reassure their murderers. I took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped my eyes with a sleeve, and sat back on my heels to look at him.
“Why do you need to kill me, Daimbert?” he asked again.
Any other man in the twin kingdoms he would have called, “My son.” If he had, I might have worked up enough indignation to try again. But it was now too late.
“Don’t worry,” I said wearily, although he did not look worried. “I’m not going to kill you after all.” We looked at each other in silence for a minute. “I would have thought you’d be terrified,” I said then. “Did you think I was joking?”
He shook his head, continuing to hold my eyes. “I’ve known you too long. I still do not always understand your sense of humor, but at least I think I know when you’re not joking.” He paused, then continued thoughtfully, “Maybe I should have been terrified. But as bishop, I need to keep life and death constantly in my thoughts.”
I wondered briefly and irrelevantly how terrified another bishop would have been.
“I know my sins,” he continued, “and am filled with remorse and the knowledge that I do not deserve salvation. But I also know the mercy and loving kindness of God, Who may save even a sinner like me.”
Fury slowly built in me again, but I was too weak to do anything about it, and, besides, I had already said I would not kill him. “Don’t be complacent,” I said in a low voice. “God may not forgive you quite as readily as you like to think. I should have realized how deeply you were sunk in sin when I heard a demon had boldly entered your cathedral. And this time you haven’t merely sinned against God. You’ve sinned against me.”
His dark eyes were genuinely puzzled. “Then I must beg your forgiveness, Daimbert. But you still haven’t said why you have to kill me.”
I started to speak and changed my mind. How could I have been so wrong?
A short time ago I had been absolutely certain. I had not just thought, not just decided, but known. Now that knowledge was gone so thoroughly it was hard to believe it had ever existed. And the bishop was still waiting for me to say something.
I’ve noticed this before. The earth never opens and swallows you up when you need it. But someone who had just been threatened with murder deserved an answer, especially someone who had been my best friend for twenty-five years.
I tried to say it and couldn’t. The silence became long and uncomfortable. At last I was able to force it out euphemistically: “You’ve made Theodora stop loving me.”
He immediately knew exactly what I meant and was immediately furious. His dark eyes blazed, and he half rose from his chair.
This was a new experience. I could only ever remember Joachim truly angry with me once before in all the years I’d known him. He might take my threat to kill him very calmly, but not the suggestion that he had broken his vows of chastity-especially with the woman his oldest friend loved.
“How do you dare-” He stopped and took a deep breath then, and I could see him fighting back his anger as though it were a physical presence. “No,” he said, quietly and icily.
“I know that now,” I said quickly.
He gave me a long, burning look. “I swear to you, by the blood Christ shed for us, that I have never touched her.”
I dropped my eyes, deeply shamed. I was fairly sure bishops were not supposed to utter oaths like that. When I finally dared look up again, Joachim was examining his hands as though he had never seen them before.
But he suddenly looked up at me and did the last thing I expected: he smiled. He was certainly full of surprises today.
“No wonder you wanted to kill me,” he said. “Well, I am grateful you did not. You were right to call me complacent.” He shook his head ruefully. “Sin always awaits us, no matter how carefully we think we guard against it. I had not realized that wrath could overcome Christian charity so easily.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Forgive my anger if you can, and tell me why you think someone has taken Theodora’s love from you.” He smiled again. “We talk about you frequently, and I know she loves you dearly.”
Theodora and I sat on opposite sides of the gold-ceilinged room. I myself would have preferred to have her next to me, my arms around her, but she seemed to prefer it this way.
After several hours’ unconsciousness here in the bishop’s best guest chamber, the one where visiting church dignitaries stayed, I felt both rational again and deeply humiliated by my own actions. I had been guilty of some very strange behavior at times in the past, but this had gone beyond all bounds, even for me. In retrospect I could not imagine what madness could have impelled me to do something so eminently likely to lose me both my best friend-even if I hadn’t killed him-and the woman I loved. The wizards’ school would doubtless have agreed-not even raising a perfunctory request for mercy such as the cathedral would have forced itself to make-when the city authorities condemned me to hang. Theodora’s unwillingness to sit any closer seemed only appropriate.
“Theodora, you know I’d do anything for you. I’d die for you.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I realize you think you mean it, but that’s what the boys always tell the girls in all the songs.”
“I’d give up wizardry for you.”
“We’ve already been through that many times. You couldn’t give up magic, no matter how much you wanted to, no matter how hard you tried.”
I was rapidly running low on sacrifices I could make for her. “Then what can I do?”
She gave the worst possible answer. “I don’t want you to do anything.”
We sat in silence for a minute. “Can I still visit you and Antonia?” I asked then, trying not to sound abject and not succeeding.
“Of course,” she said in surprise. “It would take more than a nightmare to change that. You’re sure she’s all right alone in the castle?”
“I told you I telephoned Gwennie this morning,” I said wearily. I had talked to Elerius as well, making sure no more magical attacks had taken place while I was gone, but I did not want to bother Theodora now with undead warriors.
Silence stretched out again between us. “Well,” I said then, putting hands on my knees preparatory to rising, “if there’s nothing I can do to make you love me, then maybe I should get back to Yurt.” I waited to see if she would say anything but she didn’t. “At least Antonia seemed happy when I told her I was her father.”
Theodora abruptly smiled, with
the lift of her brows and the dimple that I loved. “I’m so glad you told her! She had been asking about you the last few weeks, but I thought you would enjoy telling her yourself.”
It was as though the cool, reserved tone our conversation had taken had suddenly broken. I did not dare move but waited to see what Theodora would say next. She came across the room, took me by the ears and kissed me. “Maybe even in the bishop’s palace it won’t be too sinful to kiss the man I love.”
I wrapped my arms around her so she couldn’t get away again. “I don’t understand you, Theodora,” I said into her hair, feeling happiness breaking over me in spite of myself. “Why do you have to be so conventional sometimes? Why can’t you just tell me what you feel?”
She pushed herself back to look at me, though I kept a grip tight enough to forestall any attempts to escape. “Considering that you call me a witch,” she said, a smile twitching the corner of her lips, “I’m surprised to hear myself suddenly accused of conventionality.”
“You were just sitting there coldly, listening to me say I would do anything to make you love me, saying you didn’t want me to do anything!”
“Of course I don’t want you to do anything,” she said with a hint of a laugh. “I already love you! But it’s not respect for ‘convention’ that makes me feel that I should try to rise above concerns of the flesh here, as the bishop would surely want us to do. It’s respect for him, as the representative of God. He is so far above all of us-knowing him as well as you do, you must surely feel it too.”
It might be nothing like my nightmare, but in some areas she still felt more strongly about Joachim than me. I pulled her tighter to avoid meeting her eyes and maybe seeing something which-I managed to persuade myself-I would not see anyway.
“But I think he might understand now,” she said, kissing the side of my face. “When he sent for me he said you were very upset and had had a nightmare that I didn’t love you.” Her voice took on a teasing note. “Since you came to him yourself for comfort and guidance, why be surprised that I respect him as much as you do?”
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