PRAISE FOR
The Midnight Queen
“A fresh and inventive historical novel . . . I can’t wait to see what Sylvia Izzo Hunter does next.”
—Marie Brennan, author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent
“Elegantly written, fast-paced, and highly original—a stunning story of magic, scholarship, and true love. Sylvia Izzo Hunter brings both rural Brittany and an alternative Regency England to vivid life. A remarkably assured debut.”
—Juliet Marillier, national bestselling author
“Sylvia Izzo Hunter has crafted an impressive debut novel and begun a provocative series.”
—SFFWorld
“Great for readers of historical and fantasy lovers alike . . . I think you will enjoy the rich and detailed story and world that Sylvia Izzo Hunter has created.”
—Book Briefs
“An imagination so inventive as to come up with [as] enchanting and riveting a novel as The Midnight Queen will be sure to produce untold wonders . . . Deliciously complex . . . An absolute page-turner . . . The Midnight Queen is a fresh new story unlike anything else in its genre.”
—Black Dog Speaks
“A breath of fresh air, recalling books as they used to be—stories to be savoured . . . The Midnight Queen is a long journey through mistaken identities, conspiracies, and finding the limitations of magic capabilities, and a journey that was highly satisfying in the end.”
—Nyx Book Reviews
“In The Midnight Queen, Izzo Hunter pulls from a multitude of mystical tales and myths to create her own magical version of Britain that is both innovative and intriguing. The plot is creative and suspenseful—and never predictable. Your affection for the dynamic heroes will only grow as Hunter’s characters face challenge after unexpected challenge. The Midnight Queen is a novel that readers will be unable to put down.”
—RT Book Reviews
“An interesting and exciting story, full of magical spells and skills, which easily kept me intrigued . . . The characters are well developed, and I enjoyed seeing Gray and Sophie, in particular, grow both personally and magically.”
—Bitten by Books
Ace Books by Sylvia Izzo Hunter
THE MIDNIGHT QUEEN
LADY OF MAGICK
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.
Copyright © 2015 by Sylvia Izzo Hunter.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
For more information, visit penguin.com.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14466-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hunter, Sylvia Izzo.
Lady of magick / Sylvia Izzo Hunter.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-0-425-27246-6 (trade)
I. Title.
PR9199.4.H8684L33 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015007896
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Ace trade paperback edition / September 2015
Cover illustrations: Owl © Dn Br / Shutterstock Images; Leaf © Aleks Melnik / Shutterstock Images; Grey tree drawing © SoftRobot/Shutterstock Images.
Cover design by Diana Kolsky.
Maps by Cortney Skinner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe a general debt of gratitude to my family, my friends, and my colleagues of all sorts for the many hours (or possibly weeks) they have collectively spent listening to me complain about why on earth my characters behave the way they do and bewail my lack of progress in writing and/or revising, and for just generally being patient, lovely, and kind.
More particularly, I am indebted to my beta readers, Anne Marie Corrigan, Tawnie Olson, Antonia Pop, Jeannie Scarfe, and Kim Solga, for encouragement, critique, new angles of view, serious discussions of the psychology of fictional persons, and of course tea and milk shakes; to Latinista-in-chief Michael Appleby for saving me from incomprehensibility; to Alex Hunter for blocking help and chess strategy, and to Rhiannon Davies Shah for conversational Welsh (even though the chess game and that conversation ended up on the cutting-room floor); and to the nice people at the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Parks, Ontario, for answering my questions about Lepidoptera. Books consulted in the process of writing this one include Robert D. Anderson et al., The University of Edinburgh: An Illustrated History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003); Thomas Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration: Classic Style Book of the Regency Period (reprint, New York: Dover, 1971); and (on Google Books) R. A. Armstrong, A Gaelic-English and English-Gaelic Dictionary (London, 1825). All linguistic, geographical, biological, and other errors that remain are, of course, my own.
Thanks also to Carleton Wilson, my website guy, and Nicole Hilton, who kindly took my author photos. The beautiful maps are the work of Cortney Skinner.
And thanks once again to the fantastic team at JABberwocky Literary Agency; to my agent, Eddie Schneider, and my editor, Jessica Wade, who between them pushed and pulled me in the right directions to make this a much better book; to Isabel Farhi, able editorial assistant and fellow Wholockian; to copy editor Amy J. Schneider for saving me from many a continuity error; to Diana Kolsky for the stunning cover, and Tiffany Estreicher for the gorgeous interior design; and to Michelle Kasper, Julia Quinlan, Erica Martirano, and Nita Basu for shepherding the book the rest of the way into your hands.
Finally, ALL THE THANKS to Alex and Shaina Hunter for all the times they did extra household chores so I could write, brought me tea or ice cream, came to my choir concerts, and gave me helpful hugs, and also for all the times they said, “Shouldn’t you be writing?”
* * *
The plot of this book plays fast and loose with the history, genealogy, and mythology of Scotland, and to some extent even its geography, and personal names and some place-names have been Anglicized for ease of reading in English. The songs sung by the characters in the course of the story, however, are real ones. They are, in order of appearance, the student hymn “Gaudeamus Igitur”; the Somersetshire ballad “The Trees They Grow So High”; two eighteenth-century (as far as I know) Gaelic love songs written by women, “Ailein Duinn” by Annag Chaimbeul and “Fear a’ Bhàta” by Sìne NicFhionnlaigh; Robert Burns’s “Ae Fond Kiss”; and the Oxfordshire ballad “Oxford City.” The long spell in chapter XXXIII is borrowed from a thirteenth-century liturgical poem, with apologies to its various possible authors.
CONTENTS
Praise for The Midnight Queen
Ace Books by Sylvia Izzo Hunter
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Maps
PART ONE: Oxford to Din Edin
I: In Which Gray Receives an Invitation
II: In Which Joanna Receives a Declaration
III: In Which Sophie Makes a New Acquainta
nce
IV: In Which Sieur Germain Receives a Letter, and Sophie and Gray Make a Journey
PART TWO: Alba
V: In Which Gray and Sophie Land on Their Feet
VI: In Which Joanna Enters Unfamiliar Territory
VII: In Which Gray Gives a Demonstration, and Sophie Is at a Loss to Explain Herself
VIII: In Which Catriona MacCrimmon Renders Assistance, and Sophie Makes an Unexpected Acquaintance
IX: In Which Joanna Faces the Consequences
X: In Which Sophie Encounters a Collector of Butterflies
XI: In Which Jenny Entertains Unexpected Visitors
XII: In Which Joanna Reveals More Than She Intended, and Sophie Asks Unwelcome Questions
XIII: In Which Sophie Learns Lessons of More Than One Variety
XIV: In Which His Majesty Issues a Proclamation
XV: In Which Sophie Loses One Friend and Gains Another
XVI: In Which Sophie Receives an Unwelcome Summons, and Gray Is Read a Lecture
XVII: In Which Joanna Amends Her Plans
XVIII: In Which Gray Receives Ill Tidings, and Sophie Receives a Gift
XIX: In Which Joanna Is Surprised, and Gwendolen Is Disappointed
XX: In Which a Cat Is Set Amongst the Pigeons
XXI: In Which Mór MacRury Makes Herself Useful, and Joanna and Gwendolen Pay a Call
XXII: In Which Joanna and Rory Draw an Unsettling Conclusion
XXIII: In Which Lord de Courcy Makes a Petition
XXIV: In Which Sophie Receives an Illustrious Caller
PART THREE: The Ross of Mull
XXV: In Which Gray Confounds Expectations
XXVI: In Which Sophie Seizes the Moment
XXVII: In Which Joanna Writes a Letter and Attends a Council of War
XXVIII: In Which Sophie Makes Herself Useful
XXIX: In Which There Is a Change of Plans
XXX: In Which Joanna and Gwendolen Experience a Setback
XXXI: In Which Friend Is Not Easily Distinguished from Foe
XXXII: In Which Gwendolen Proves to Have Unexpected Talents, and Joanna Is Disinclined to Follow Orders
XXXIII: In Which Sophie Makes a Surprising Discovery, and Lucia MacNeill Pays a Debt
PART ONE
Oxford to Din Edin
CHAPTER I
In Which Gray Receives an Invitation
Weaving her way slowly through the stacks of the Merlin Library with an armload of histories and grimoires, her chin resting on the dull-green leather of the topmost, Sophie Marshall smiled to herself. From one pocket of her black scholar’s gown trailed a long scrap of writing-paper, on which an equally long list of abbreviated notations—such as M. Domitianus on G.A., “Aves Tenebrae,” Trevelyan Hist. Mag. Brit.—had been neatly written, and tidily scored through; the pile of codices in her arms representing the morning’s final foray into the scrum of undergraduates revising for their Finals, she could now retreat to her carrel to pass the balance of the day in solitude and study.
As she passed a shelf of Roman histories, another black-gowned figure erupted from a gap in the stacks, its face invisible behind another tottering pile. Sophie checked her advance, but too late; a moment later two undergraduates and more than a score of books lay scattered in the narrow aisle.
“Oof!” said the young man cheerfully, picking himself up and beginning to sort through the litter of codices. “A hazardous business, this! Now, let us see: Mine are the Greeks, you know, and these therefore will be yours, I think—”
Peering short-sightedly at Sophie, he held out a battered copy of Trevelyan’s Historie of Magick in Britaine. He wore a vague, amiable smile to match his voice, but as her hand closed on the spine of the codex, their eyes met, and a masque of politeness descended over his face. “I beg your pardon, Your Royal Highness,” he said repressively. “I hope you have taken no hurt.”
Sophie’s answering smile faded into a sigh. “None whatever, I assure you,” she replied, and busied herself in collecting up her books.
She reached her carrel with no further contretemps, and finding it—thanks to her warding-spell—still blessedly undisturbed, attempted to lose herself in contrasting the varying accounts of the lives of several famous British mages. But the encounter had flustered and annoyed her, and she found herself dwelling on it far more than she knew it deserved.
How could she have been so foolish as to expect a welcome here? Beyond each summer’s brief visits by the families of Merlin men receiving their degrees, no woman’s foot before her own had ever trod the paths and lawns of Merlin College—and few were those, as she had since discovered, who wished it otherwise. Her own wilful blindness had led her here, her determination to judge the College by her husband and by her tutor, Master Alcuin, who took her as she was; why had she not understood that it was not they but her stepfather, Professor Callender—with his nostrums about the dangers of advanced study to the delicate female mind—who exemplified the Merlin man? And her circumstances were not helped by the tendency of her fellow students to perceive the Princess Edith Augusta in place of Sophie Marshall.
And yet . . .
The lonely, isolated, often unhappy Sophie of a few years since, whose life was made bearable by her illicit forays into the Professor’s library, could have imagined no greater prize than this. After the astonishing revelation that Sophie was in truth the daughter of the King of Britain, her hasty marriage, and the chaotic night on which she and her friends had saved the King from his advisors’ plot to poison him, the promise of a place at Merlin had come, like a gift from the gods themselves, to save her from a life of useless idleness, isolation, and acrimony in the royal household, or of wandering penury with Gray. And for all the ceremonious politeness of her fellow undergraduates, the tongues stilled and faces averted at her approach, the glares, the naked resentment, she was more often happy here than she had been in her stepfather’s house—now Gray’s and hers, at least in name—in Breizh. Having once accustomed themselves to her, Gray’s friends treated her as one of themselves, no longer seeming conscious either of her sex or of her rank; the men of Breizh, with few exceptions, had made it a point to demonstrate their friendship. The rest resented her presence, but just often enough did they forget their hostility in the heat of debate that Sophie held out hope of a future thaw. And everywhere one went at Merlin, was there not some new discovery waiting to be made? If only there were fewer game-pits and cowpats along her path . . .
Sophie fetched a wistful sigh, twisted a curl of dark hair around one finger, and applied herself to the Aves Tenebrae.
At length she was recalled to the present by a soft tapping on the wall of her carrel. Turning in her seat and tilting back her head, she beheld her husband, looking slightly rumpled and bearing a covered basket.
“Have you time to spare for luncheon?” he inquired, depositing the basket and perching dangerously on one corner of the desk.
“It is not noon already?” said Sophie, startled.
Gray’s hazel eyes crinkled in silent laughter. “Indeed it is,” he said, “and high time you were dragged away from your books, evidently. Your hands are all over ink.”
Sophie examined her fingers. Then, casting an eye at her husband, she said, “Whereas yours, on the contrary . . .”
Gray looked down at his own hands, and registered the palimpsest of ink-stains—the fresher, darker blots overlaid on older ones half scrubbed away—with a rueful grimace.
Sophie grinned at him.
Then she pushed back her chair and allowed Gray to take her hands and pull her up out of it. “What have you got in that basket, then?”
* * *
“I have wheedled a picnic luncheon from Mrs. Haskell,” Gray explained happily, as he and Sophie emerged arm in arm into the Garden Quadrangle. “She is in one of her cheerful humours today, and allowed Nessa St
rout to pack it up for me. Had you rather eat in the quad, or in the Fellows’ Garden?”
Sophie paused and began to look about them. Having thoughtlessly made the suggestion, Gray at once saw it had been a foolish one; there was scarce a foot of space not already occupied.
All about the grassy quad, undergraduates—and even a few Junior Fellows—basked in the hesitant March sunshine. A few made some pretence of studying, drowsing over a codex under a willow tree or reclining on the lawn amidst a litter of papers and books, but most were simply and unashamedly lolling about in various stages of undress, gowns and coats and even one or two neck-cloths abandoned in little heaps on the grass. The place was so still that the progress of any person across the quad was spectacle enough to draw the attention of the less somnolent, and wherever Gray looked, some curious eye returned his gaze.
One rather undersized first-year had gone so far as to open his shirt; he met Gray’s eye with happy equanimity, but a moment later, his glance alighting on Sophie, he flushed to the roots of his tow-coloured hair and scrambled to retrieve his discarded gown.
Discomfited, Gray looked away—directly into the face of a Junior Fellow who was eyeing Sophie with curling lip and supercilious eye. Under the massive oak-tree in the centre of the quad—the one which generations of matriculating students had believed to be planted by Merlin himself—a trio in commoners’ gowns had their heads together, muttering; a moment later the knot of black silk exploded in laughter like a murder of crows, and one by one they swooped down to make extravagant, mocking bows.
“Clear off, the lot of you!” Gray ordered. They scattered, obedient to his scowl and his Master’s robes but howling with derisive mirth.
Sophie stood motionless, all her attention apparently on the springing buds of the nearest tree, until the last of them had taken himself off; only the tightening of her fingers on Gray’s arm betrayed her. “The quad seems rather overpopulated,” she said then, in a calm and distant tone.
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