Lady of Magick

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  * * *

  “Joanna Claudia Callender, what in the name of Hecate were you thinking?”

  Jenny was apparently too angry to sit still—or perhaps, just now, she found the advantage of height appealing—for she paced to and fro before Joanna and Miss Pryce, like a Breizhek fishing-yawl in a storm.

  “If you like to make a spectacle of yourselves in public,” she continued, “that is your own affair, and there are certainly worse means of doing so than by galloping through a public park at dawn. But to go there unescorted, against Kergabet’s express instructions, and to involve Gaël and Loïc—not to speak of Mrs. Treveur—knowing that they should be held responsible, if you were to be hurt, or worse—”

  She dropped onto the sofa, now, with a pained huff, and smoothed one hand absently over her belly.

  “Please, Lady Kergabet,” said Miss Pryce. “It was not Miss Callender’s idea, and certainly not the grooms’; it was mine.”

  “I see,” said Jenny, regarding her with narrowed eyes; turning once more to Joanna, she added, “And Miss Pryce forced you to accompany her, I suppose? Coerced you into the saddle at knife-point, perhaps?”

  “No,” said Joanna. She dropped her gaze to the carpet and the muddy toes of her riding-boots. “Of course she did nothing of the kind.”

  “I rather thought not,” said Jenny.

  She sighed, then, and said nothing at all for such a long time that Joanna had to fight a strong compulsion to fill the silence with explanatory and apologetic babble.

  Miss Pryce did not resist so successfully. Joanna could see her hand twitching fretfully, and the sway of her skirts as she shifted from foot to foot; at last she burst out, “I only wanted to go riding. Mrs. Griffith-Rowland would not let me—she said I must remember my place, and astride a horse was not it—and Spider is a dear boy really—he would never hurt me, any more than Kelvez would hurt Miss Callender—and the weather was so fine this morning—I am sorry, Lady Kergabet, truly.”

  Her voice hitched; Joanna, looking up at her sidelong, saw her throat work. “I . . . I shall go upstairs and pack my things.”

  She curtseyed gracefully to Jenny, and turned away.

  “Gwendolen,” said Jenny.

  Miss Pryce turned back towards her, face carefully blank.

  “If you wished so much to ride,” Jenny said, “why did you never say so?”

  After a long silence, Miss Pryce said doubtfully, “I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

  “Gwendolen, come here.”

  Miss Pryce hesitated—glancing aside at Joanna, who attempted an encouraging smile—and slowly, haltingly, crossed the room to stand before Jenny.

  “When you spoke of packing your things,” said Jenny, “where did you intend to go?”

  Miss Pryce hung her head and spoke to her toes: “To the Griffith-Rowlands’, I suppose, if they should consent to take me back. Or to my father’s house, if he will have me.” She paused, then raised her chin defiantly. “Had I any coin for the passage across the Manche, I should go to my sister Branwen, in Rouen. Though,” she added, and here defeat crept into her tone once more, “I expect her husband would only send me back to Papa again.”

  “Sit by me,” said Jenny, patting the sofa seat.

  Miss Pryce sat, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. Joanna looked away from the flare of hope that lit her face; it felt wrong to witness this conversation, but worse to flee the room without Jenny’s having dismissed her.

  “I have welcomed you to my home,” Jenny said, “and I did so because I wished to help you, and felt you might be . . . less unhappy here.”

  Joanna gripped her elbows in an effort to keep still; plainly, Jenny’s words were not for Miss Pryce alone.

  “I can do nothing for you if we cannot trust each other,” said Jenny. “I recognise that your trust is not easily won, and I understand, I believe, why that should be so. But you have now lived a month in this house, and I think have had no cause for . . . alarm?”

  “No, indeed, ma’am,” said Miss Pryce, her voice so low as to be nearly inaudible. Joanna, by a sort of sympathetic instinct, shook her head.

  “If any thing distresses or alarms you, you must tell me,” said Jenny. “And if there is anything you need, or that you wish for, you have only to ask, and I shall see what can be done. I do not wish to treat you like a child; you have had enough of that, I think. And no one here will pry into your secrets. But there must be no more trickery and sneaking, and certainly no more taking advantage of the servants. I wonder that you should have done so, being so recently in a like circumstance yourself.”

  Joanna peered sidelong at the occupants of the sofa, and saw that Miss Pryce was hanging her head.

  “I did not think it through,” she murmured.

  “Jenny,” said Joanna, “you will not punish Gaël and Loïc? I am sure they will not be so gullible again.”

  Miss Pryce’s head snapped up, the better to glare at Joanna. Jenny, however, continued as though Joanna had not spoken. “You will apologise to Gaël and Loïc for involving them in your scheme,” she said, “and to Treveur for the trouble he and his staff were at in searching for you; and then I think we need say no more about it.”

  Miss Pryce blinked. “I . . . I thank you, Lady Kergabet.”

  “Go upstairs and take off those horsey things,” said Jenny, patting her hand.

  Miss Pryce rose from the sofa; when Joanna made to follow her, however, Jenny’s voice—soft, but with steel beneath—stopped her in her tracks: “Joanna, a word.”

  Joanna sat down again. “I know what you are going to say,” she began. “I ought to have known better.”

  “You certainly ought,” said Jenny. “And I ought to punish you—though it is something of a relief to see you behaving more like yourself.”

  Joanna blinked in surprise, but did not quite dare to demand an explanation.

  “But you must understand, Jo, the position in which you should be putting Kergabet, if such . . . pranks were to become generally known. If we cannot rely upon you to behave with discretion—”

  “I do understand,” said Joanna. The spectre of some form of house arrest loomed before her: no rides in the park, no excursions to the Palace, no useful or interesting work—nothing but morning calls from ladies who sought Jenny’s influence and patronage—and edged her voice with desperation. “And I am very sorry. Truly, Jenny—I promise I shall not do anything of the sort again.”

  Jenny studied her a long moment, and at last said quietly, “I shall hold you to that promise, Jo.”

  * * *

  The day’s surprises were not yet at an end, for when Joanna opened the door to her bedroom, she found Miss Pryce—still dressed in her dishevelled riding-clothes—sitting before the unlit fire with her arms clasped about her drawn-up knees.

  “What—” Joanna began, but Miss Pryce interrupted: “I am sorry, Miss Callender. It was wrong of me to attempt such a, such a prank, and foolish besides, and worse to involve you and the boys in it.”

  Joanna crossed the room and dropped to her knees on the little hearthrug, bringing her face level with Miss Pryce’s. “It was very wrong, and very foolish,” she agreed, “and I was wrong to connive at it.” And then, setting aside Jenny’s disappointment and her own self-reproach, she allowed the memory of the morning’s gallop across the park to bubble to the surface of her mind, and to produce a rueful, reminiscing smile. “But the gods know when I last had such fun!”

  Miss Pryce raised her eyes, and her startled expression gradually gave way to a hesitant smile. “I am glad you are not angry with me, Miss Callender,” she said.

  “I did not say so,” said Joanna, honestly, “but I should be a hypocrite indeed, to blame you for a thing I did myself. And I wish you might call me Joanna, as my friends do,” she added, “now that we have got into a scrape together, and lived to tell the tale.
”

  Miss Pryce, improbably, blushed; a faint flush of rose across her sharp cheekbones. “Joanna, then,” she said. “I should like that exceedingly; and you must call me Gwendolen, or—or Gwen.”

  “Gwen,” Joanna repeated, grinning. “I wonder—when the fuss has died down a little—will you teach me to ride astride?”

  CHAPTER III

  In Which Sophie Makes a New Acquaintance

  Sophie looked about her in mingled satisfaction and regret, surveying the trunks, crates, and bandboxes that filled what had so recently been her sitting-room. So different was this orderly, carefully planned departure from the hurried, stealthy dead-of-night flight that had been her leave-taking from Callender Hall that the two scarcely seemed to belong to the same category of ideas. Yet now, too, she was about to leave the comfortably familiar for the utterly unknown, and the disquieting echo reminded her what high hopes she had once had for her life at Merlin College.

  Her year’s examinations having been successfully concluded, and her life and Gray’s tidily packed away and labelled, variously, for conveyance to their lodgings in Din Edin or for stowage in Merlin’s attics, Sophie had nothing much to do but await the arrival of Sieur Germain’s carriage, which was to convey them to London. She prowled restlessly through the denuded rooms and up and down the stairs, adjusting and readjusting the disposition of trunks and valises, peering out of the window in anticipation of the carriage, and attempting to quell the mixture of trepidation and delight that the prospect of a journey always kindled in her heart: not only their visits to her mother’s kin in Naoned and to Gray’s family in Kernow, but even the more frequent journeys to London, less than sixty miles off. Din Edin was nearer four hundred, and, moreover, in quite another kingdom. Sophie wavered between joyful anticipation and dread at the prospect of once again starting over in a strange city full of strange people.

  But it must be better to be at Din Edin, where there are others like me . . .

  Though, of course, even in Din Edin she should still be a princess, and it could not take long for the fact to be found out.

  Well, perhaps the Albans will not set so much store by it, she told herself bracingly. And I shall have Gray with me; that, at least.

  Gray himself at this point appeared at the door of the sitting-room, a little pink in the face—it was past Midsummer, and the day was already warm—and grinning broadly. “Your chariot awaits, domina mea,” he said, with a courtier’s bow; then spoiling the effect entirely, he crossed the room in two long strides, caught her hands, and swung her about in a sort of impromptu gavotte.

  “Gray!” Sophie protested, laughing. “What are you about?”

  “I came up to warn you,” he said; “they have all come to see us off in style.”

  “Who have?”

  “Why, Evans-Hughes and Crowther and Pryce, and Master Alcuin, and Bevan and—”

  Sophie ran back to the window, which she was sure she had been watching all the morning, and flung it wide to peer out into the street once more, but saw no one she recognised. “Gray, what—”

  But even as she turned away from the window, a small thundering of booted feet sounded in the corridor, and a moment later a crowd of young men, seasoned by a very few white beards, erupted into the room—which suddenly seemed impossibly small—and burst into a reasonably tuneful chorus of “Gaudeamus Igitur.”

  Except that someone, Sophie recognised halfway through the first stanza, had improved it for the occasion: instead of let us therefore rejoice whilst we are young, their friends were singing let us therefore rejoice in the Marshalls’ good fortune, and then, may their road be smooth, may their beds be soft . . . may they detest Din Edin and soon return to us.

  Sophie laughed through a sudden lump in her throat.

  * * *

  She had ventured once to suggest a visit to Glascoombe, to take their leave of Gray’s parents and his brothers; but the hour subsequently spent in reminiscing upon their previous visit, in the summer following their marriage, reminded her why the trial had not been repeated.

  Instead they passed a pleasant se’nnight in London, with Lord and Lady Kergabet and Joanna, which allowed them to renew their acquaintance with Agatha and to be introduced to their new nephew, Yvon. Sophie was very fond of Jenny’s children, and also very glad that they were Jenny’s and not her own. As usual when the latter idea presented itself, she considered the example set by her own several parents—Mama, doting upon her at poor Joanna’s expense; King Henry, torn always between love for his children and duty to his kingdom; Professor Callender, tirelessly self-interested and prone to forbid his daughters whatever thing they liked best—and by Gray’s, to whom he was such a disappointment, and despaired.

  Joanna appeared much subdued, both more sober and less voluble than on their previous visit, and much taken up with errands and tasks for Sieur Germain, and with the young Miss Pryce, whom Jenny declined to explain except as a guest of her house. Joanna resisted Sophie’s attempts to discover what might be amiss by turning the conversation (to the children; to the recent betrothal of Edward, the Crown Prince; to Jenny’s mother’s most recent visit, and her tiresome celebration of Yvon over his elder sister), by requests to hear this or that song which only Sophie could sing for her, or by avoiding her sister outright. Sophie did succeed in extracting a promise from Joanna that she should make the Marshalls a visit in Din Edin in the spring; and from Jenny, a promise of regular reports on Joanna’s welfare.

  Joanna and she had spent so much of their lives apart—Joanna at school in Kemper more than half the year, whilst Sophie languished under her stepfather’s interdiction-spell at Callender Hall; Sophie at Merlin College whilst Joanna was here in London, nearly sixty miles away—that it had not occurred to Sophie till now how different a separation of hundreds of miles might be. Of course she should not dream of giving up such an opportunity, for Gray and for herself, only because she missed her sister; but miss her she would, though Joanna seemed in no danger of missing Sophie.

  * * *

  Sophie’s other duty whilst in London was to call upon the royal family, and upon the whole, the visit went off rather well. Her father and brothers were genuinely happy to see her, whilst Queen Edwina appeared to have grown either more reconciled to her stepdaughter or more skilled in concealing her resentment thereof, so that Sophie was able to converse with her, almost without guilt.

  She was received in one of the Queen’s private sitting-rooms, a chamber resplendent in blue watered silk and rosewood, and fed on cherries, redcurrants, strawberries and gooseberries arranged in gleaming pyramids, petits fours, profiteroles, and jam-tarts; for half an hour she patiently answered again a series of questions already asked and answered in her correspondence with her father.

  “Must you go so far away, Sophie?” said Prince Henry, a little wistfully, when the fruit and patisserie had all been eaten. He had shot up alarmingly since Sophie had last seen him, but had still the same round boy’s face and mop of golden curls, and the same sweet treble.

  “It is not so very far,” said Sophie, as much to herself as to Harry; “not much farther than Rouen, and nearer than Breizh. And it is only for a year, after all. We expect to return by the end of next summer.”

  “But Alba is quite different to Britain,” said Roland. “Mr. Hawkins—our tutor in history and Cymric, you know, Sophie—spent a year in Alba when he was young and has told Harry and me all about it. He is from the Border Country, and his grandmother came from Alba.”

  “It sounds a perfectly savage place,” put in Harry, enthusiasm now kindling in his blue eyes. “Not civilised at all. In the mountains, he says, the men do not even wear trousers!”

  Sophie blinked at the mental image thus conjured, and was glad that Gray had not come with her, for she could not have met his eyes without exploding into laughter.

  The Queen said, “Harry!” in a reproving tone, and Henr
y’s round face flushed.

  “I meant,” he said, “I did not—that is—Mr. Hawkins says that they wrap themselves up in woollen blankets, instead, so that they seem to be wearing skirts.”

  Sophie kept her countenance with some effort. “The Romans did not wear trousers, either,” she pointed out, “but you would not call them uncivilised, surely?”

  “No-o,” said Harry.

  “Oscar MacConnachie wears trousers,” said Ned.

  “Who?” said Harry.

  “The Ambassador from Alba,” said Roland, witheringly. “Idiot.”

  “Roland, for shame!” exclaimed Queen Edwina.

  “Roland, Harry may not know all the same things you do,” said Sophie quietly, “but that does not make him stupid.”

  Roland, who had shrugged off his mother’s sharper admonition, went rather pink and reached out a hand to ruffle Harry’s curls.

  “I should quite like to go to Alba,” he said, after a moment. “What an adventure it would be! But I am not at all sure it is a proper adventure for a lady, let alone the Princess Royal.”

  Sophie looked at him in surprise.

  “Fortunately,” she said, “I shall not be undertaking my adventure as the Princess Royal, but only as an ordinary undergraduate.”

  This repudiation of her ancestry she regretted almost immediately, and she glanced at her father to see how he bore it; he, however, was looking at Roland with a worried frown.

  Sophie was still pondering what this might portend when the door at the far end of the room opened to admit a slight, hesitant young person in a rather elaborate gown, who proved to be the Lady Delphine d’Evreux, the Crown Prince’s affianced bride.

  “Oh!” she said, her voice so low and diffident as to be nearly inaudible, regarding stranger-Sophie in evident alarm. She made a neat little curtsey to the Queen and continued, “I beg your pardon, ma’am! I did not know—”