“This . . . what?” Joanna demanded.
“If I am right, then there is no cure for what ails your sister,” he said, “except for someone to find her husband and bring him back to her.”
“Well!” said Joanna, with a great deal more confidence than she felt; “if that is so, then that is what we must do.”
* * *
She began, immediately upon her return to Quarry Close, by penning a brief, bald note to Lord de Courcy, outlining Sophie’s symptoms, Rory MacCrimmon’s premises, and their mutual conclusions.
By way of postscript, she added,
I have yet to discover any concrete evidence to tie Rory MacCrimmon to the vanished mages in general, or to my brother-in-law’s disappearance in particular, and am, on the whole, disposed to believe him guiltless. But as I am sure you will agree, my lord, an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
This she sent to him—together with Dr. Beauharnais’s book, now marked at the relevant pages with strips of writing-paper—by way of Menez, catching him as he and Williams were turning over their duties to another pair of guardsmen and returning to their quarters at the Ambassador’s residence.
“You must give it directly into his hand, or Mr. Powell’s,” she said, reverting to their shared mother tongue, the better to make her point.
Menez gave her a reproachful look and answered her in Gaelic.
Joanna’s face warmed in embarrassment as she recollected, far too late, his incognito as an ordinary Alban labouring-man. She had no Gaelic to offer, beyond the few words she had contrived to learn from Donella MacHutcheon; but she could at any rate say Please, and did so. Menez tucked the parcel under his elbow, touched his cap to her, and trotted away.
CHAPTER XXIII
In Which Lord de Courcy Makes a Petition
“Sophie Marshall!” Lucia MacNeill, so elaborately attired for her role as heiress of Alba as to be almost unrecognisable, ran to Sophie with open arms. They embraced briefly; Lucia MacNeill stood back a little, her hands on Sophie’s shoulders, and a frown of dismay gathered on her face as she studied Sophie’s.
“I am only a little fatigued,” Sophie tried to say.
She swayed a little on her feet, and could not even summon the energy to resent it; she was unutterably weary, oppressed with fear for Gray, and wanted nothing so much at present as to sit down quietly somewhere and weep.
“Sophie!” Joanna’s voice, sharp with anxiety, cut through her lethargy like a stiff breeze sweeping away fog. “Sophie, come and sit down at once, before you do yourself an injury.”
“I am perfectly well,” Sophie tried to say, for she could not sit down when the King of Alba might at any moment descend upon her. In the end, however, she let herself be steered towards a chaise longue and sank down upon it gratefully enough.
When she opened her eyes, some unguessable time later, Joanna, Rory, Mr. Powell, and Lucia MacNeill were engaged in some low-voiced, energetic conversation, and there was still no sign of Lord de Courcy and Donald MacNeill.
“She would come with us,” she heard Joanna say, in a sort of exasperated mutter. “I could not prevent her—because Courcy asked it—though anyone can see that she ought never to have left her bed.”
“Hush, she will hear you!” This from Rory, with a furtive glance over his shoulder at Sophie. She attempted to glare at him and failed.
At a faint noise of footfalls in the corridor, the disputants fell silent; a moment later, the great doors banged open, and the King of Alba strode into the room, with Lord de Courcy dogging his heels.
Sophie struggled to her feet, one hand white-knuckled on the high arm of the chaise, and shoved herself upright in time to make her curtsey to Donald MacNeill. She managed it creditably enough, or so she was telling herself when a hot black wave of nausea struck her and she clutched at the furniture again.
At once Joanna was at her side, and Rory at the other, each curving one arm about her, at waist and shoulders, to keep her upright.
“Sit down,” Joanna hissed. “Rory MacCrimmon, please—”
“Sophie, I do think you ought to rest,” said Rory, in a gentling manner even more infuriating to Sophie than Joanna’s peremptory tone. “You are not—”
With Herculean effort she stiffened her spine, willed strength into her shaking limbs, and shook off solicitous hands on either side, ignoring the resulting sotto voce expostulation. She managed the necessary three steps without assistance, though it cost her every last iota of strength and concentration, and seated herself with what dignity she could muster, her back as straight as she could make it against the back of the chaise and her trembling hands folded in her lap.
“I am well enough, I thank you,” she said. “And we are not come here for the purpose of discussing my health.”
There were dark spots dancing before her eyes, but they did not prevent her seeing the exchange of glances—furtive, frightened—between Joanna and Rory. She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, fighting down nausea. People were speaking, but she could not parse their words.
I could bear all of this, and more, if there were some purpose in it—but it is all so pointless and stupid, and Gray is gone, and what purpose is there in anything, if—
There was a hand on her shoulder again. Not Gray’s hand, which had so often rested there; it was too small and insufficiently warm. She opened her eyes again just as Joanna settled close beside her on the chaise longue and, raising her chin to speak to someone, said defiantly, “As we are speaking of the disappearance of my sister’s husband, I cannot conceive of any reason why she ought not to be present.”
This was surprising; had not Joanna been trying to persuade her to stop quietly at home, not an hour since?
“I have at least one excellent reason to offer.” The voice was deep and gruff and entirely unfamiliar, and Sophie forced her head up and around to see who was speaking.
“And that is,” Donald MacNeill continued, approaching the chaise longue the better to pin Sophie with his intent blue gaze, “that, if Your Royal Highness will forgive my blunt speaking, you have the look of one who has already made friends with death.”
Sophie managed a glare, but even she knew it for a very poor one. Her head ached; in fact, there seemed no part of her body that did not ache. Her heart, perhaps, worst of all.
Donald MacNeill’s face blurred and swam.
“Do not cry, Sophie,” said Joanna, reverting to Brezhoneg as they both tended to do when in distress. She flung both arms about Sophie and drew Sophie’s head down to rest upon her shoulder. “We shall find him, I promise you—only, do not cry, love, please. I cannot bear it.”
Joanna sounded near to tears herself, and this was so unusual a circumstance as to jolt Sophie back to full awareness of her surroundings, if only for the moment. At once she wished herself anywhere but at the centre of the circle of faces—faces bearing expressions of worry, of impatience, of unsettled speculation, but every eye focused on her own—that hemmed her in. Stop it, she thought, desperately, stop looking at me, go away—
The magick welled up, thready and uncertain—a shade of its former self—but still too much, too quickly, to be so long sustained.
In Sophie’s mind, Gray’s voice said, Have a care!
But it was Joanna’s voice, crying “Sophie!”—high and raw and sharp—that she heard last of all, before the darkness crowded in and swallowed the anxious faces one and all.
* * *
Joanna had never been nearer to fainting herself than at this moment, staring down at her sister’s limp form and pallid face, at the blood smeared bright across her skin. Her own throat was raw—had she been shouting?—and her eyes felt huge and hot.
If only Gray were here, or Jenny, or Lady Maëlle! Any of them must have been better suited than herself to cope with this disaster.
But they are none of them here, she re
minded herself sternly, drawing as deep and slow a breath as she could manage, and you are. You wished to help Sophie, and now you must do what she requires of you.
By the end of this bracing little speech, Joanna had—at least outwardly—regained her equilibrium.
The babble of voices all about her—questioning, exclaiming, recommending, deploring—faded gradually back into her awareness. She dismissed those which she could not understand, and sorted the rest according to their likely usefulness to Sophie.
“Mr. Powell,” she said, pitching her voice to carry through the noise and proud of its relative lack of wobble. “Your assistance, if you please.”
Mr. Powell, though startled to be so addressed, fairly leapt to attend upon her, and willingly provided both his handkerchief and his help in stretching Sophie out upon the chaise longue, her head pillowed in Joanna’s lap and one knee slightly bent to prevent her rolling forwards onto the polished stone floor.
From Lucia MacNeill she demanded a basin of warm water, a towel, and a bottle of smelling-salts, if such a thing were to be had; and from Rory MacCrimmon, advice on how best to treat a severe case of magick shock, for she had never done so without instruction from some more knowledgeable party and did not wish to forget some critical point.
By his greenish face and wide eyes, Rory MacCrimmon was operating more from theoretical than from practical knowledge, and at first he produced a torrent of stammering Gaelic which was of no use whatever.
“In Latin, please!” said Joanna sharply; he shut his mouth abruptly, swallowed, and began again with more confidence.
The result was a flurry of orders from Lucia MacNeill to her father’s major-domo, which brought servants bearing blankets, a pot of tea, hot toddy, and trays of cheese and bread and fruit, as well as the smelling-salts and wash-water—all of which confirmed Joanna’s somewhat hazy recollection that the treatment for magick shock was very like that which healers recommended for persons suffering from loss of blood, or from a sudden shock of surprise or grief.
Joanna supervised the arranging of blankets and sponged the blood from her sister’s face, murmuring prayers and pleas and imprecations under her breath. Sophie had lain insensible, now, far longer than on that previous, deeply alarming occasion when she had tumbled off her horse on the road to Douarnenez—longer, surely, than could be at all good for her—and smelling-salts and every other ministration seemed altogether unavailing.
Every eye was on them both, now, and Joanna no longer wondered at Sophie’s often wishing to disappear, for at present she heartily wished the same herself.
“What can she have been attempting, to bring this on?”
Lucia MacNeill’s sotto voce question had perhaps not been meant for Joanna’s ears, but Joanna answered it nevertheless: “You were all of you staring at her, as though she had been a pickled specimen laid out for dissection. No doubt she was attempting to turn your attention elsewhere.” She had seen that cornered-fox expression of Sophie’s more than once, and it generally preceded some daunting feat of magickal misdirection, invisible to ordinary eyes. “It is a sort of instinct with her. She—”
Joanna broke off abruptly as Sophie’s hand stirred under hers. “Sophie!” she said.
Sophie’s one visible eyelid lifted minutely. “Pelec’h emaon?” she whispered hoarsely.
“You are in Donald MacNeill’s castle in Din Edin,” Joanna replied, also in Brezhoneg. “You remember, Sophie; we are here to speak with Lord de Courcy and Donald MacNeill about finding Gray. Do you feel well enough to sit up?”
“I . . . yes,” said Sophie, but her tone was justifiably dubious.
Joanna glared at the others until they retreated.
“Come, then,” she said encouragingly.
It was a long business, complicated by the tangle of blankets and by Sophie’s small huffs of pain, but at last Sophie was sufficiently upright and in command of herself to sip at the cup Joanna held up for her, and eventually to eat a little bread and cheese.
“I cannot think what is the matter with me,” she said some time later, pressing a slim hand to her temple. Her colour, Joanna noted, was still very bad, though her face was not quite so much the colour of a green cheese as it had been, and she moved carefully, as though every small motion hurt her.
“Rory MacCrimmon has a theory,” Joanna offered, cautiously. She did not think Sophie in any fit state for this conversation, but as, on the other hand, there did not seem any great likelihood of improvement in the immediate future, it was perhaps best to have the thing over.
“Have you, Rory?” Sophie looked up at her friend. Joanna was watching him, and saw his eyes widen at whatever he saw in Sophie’s face.
“Yes,” he said.
* * *
“And all of you agree that this is possible,” said Sophie, staring around at them.
They looked back at her with solemn eyes—Lucia MacNeill and her father, Lord de Courcy and his secretary, Joanna and Rory, all seated in a sort of haphazard arc before her—and try as she might, she could detect no sign of prevarication in any of them.
“It is of course impossible to be sure,” said the Ambassador’s secretary (Mr. Powell, that was his name), “without extensive empirical testing, which is equally impossible. But it does seem to me not only possible, but much the most likely explanation; the one, that is, which most parsimoniously accounts for all of the facts.”
Sophie looked from Mr. Powell to Rory and found him nodding earnest agreement.
“I have never heard of such a thing,” she protested, though even she could hear the weak, capitulating tone of her voice.
“Nevertheless,” said Lord de Courcy, “and whether or not this theory is in fact correct, surely our best course of action is to proceed as though it were. The costs of ignoring the possibility are simply too high.”
Sophie frowned, attempting to parse this—it seemed to her—unnecessarily cryptic declaration. If only her head were not so woolly! It was preposterous, was it not, to suggest that Gray’s mere absence should be making her ill? The strain of not knowing where he was, or why, or what might be happening to him, certainly—the terrifying knowledge that his last letter had been written under duress—but—
“But,” she demanded breathlessly, as the corollary at last came clear, “but what about Gray?”
“The magick runs both ways, Sophie,” said Rory gently.
“Then—then we must do something.” Sophie’s grip on Joanna’s hands tightened involuntarily; at Joanna’s muffled squeak, she forced her fingers to relax, but the tension stringing her tight was not eased in the least. “There must be something, some better way to seek him—”
“That was, in fact, our purpose in coming here, Your—Madame Marshall,” said Lord de Courcy mildly. “As you may remember.”
Sophie flushed.
Courcy turned to Donald MacNeill. “I have no jurisdiction here, my lord,” he said, “except insofar as this matter concerns subjects of my King, and I should not wish to appear to be overstepping my authority. I should however be remiss in my duty as liaison between my kingdom and your own, did I not offer you this counsel. You, I trust, will not take it amiss.”
He paused; every eye in the room was upon him now. Donald MacNeill cocked a sardonic eyebrow.
“His Majesty, Henry of Britain,” said Lord de Courcy, “is in all things temperate, moderate, and deliberate; he is slow to anger and pragmatic in his choice of adversaries. There is, however, one exception to this general rule, which is that whosoever threatens harm to his children, and his daughter most particularly, may expect swift retribution.”
Sophie blinked in astonishment, and no little alarm; unless she much mistook, her father’s ambassador had come very near to issuing a direct threat to the King of Alba.
“My lord Ambassador,” she said, “I beg you will not—”
“As I hope
I have made clear,” said Donald MacNeill, narrowing his eyes at Lord de Courcy, “any assistance which we may reasonably offer in this matter, you may be sure of receiving.”
“And we do thank you, my lord,” said the Ambassador, with a little bow.
* * *
“What assistance?” said Sophie.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” said Donald MacNeill.
Joanna narrowed her eyes; Sophie’s voice might be low and husky with exhaustion, but her query had been perfectly clear.
“What assistance,” Sophie repeated, a little more loudly, “had you intended to offer us, sir?”
Mr. Powell looked appalled.
“Mrs. Marshall,” he said, in a tone of gentle remonstrance which made Joanna long to bite him, “may I suggest—”
But Donald MacNeill held up a hand, and Powell fell silent.
Donald MacNeill paced slowly across the distance that separated Lord de Courcy from Sophie and stopped once more before the chaise longue.
“This affair concerns me as closely—that is, very nearly as closely as yourself, Sophia of Britain,” he said quietly. “The University in Din Edin operates under my personal patronage as well as by the charter of the clan which holds the chieftain’s seat of Alba; any harm perpetrated within my borders upon such visitors as these is a direct threat to the continued flourishing of that ancient institution, which exists for the advancement of knowledge and to welcome all those who seek it, no matter their origins—and thus an offence to Alba and to myself. It is a matter of great personal regret to me, and no little frustration, that our investigations thus far should have discovered nothing of substance which might lead us to an explanation of the facts.”
He had by now seated himself beside Sophie on the chaise, perhaps tiring of the painful-looking curve of her neck as she looked up at him.
“What we now possess, thanks to you and your friends,” he went on, “and had not before, is direct evidence of foul play. Whether or not, as Lord de Courcy has posited, these several disappearances are all the work of the same person or persons unknown, the similarity of the persons concerned, and of the circumstances of their vanishing, would seem to preclude mere coincidence.”
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