The Midnight Queen

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  “I am awake now, sir,” he managed to say. June sunlight streamed in the open doorway; he screwed his eyes shut against the pain. “S-sir, are—the others, are they—”

  “Nothing you need worry about, my boy,” the Professor replied, with the heartiness Gray had come to dread. “Taylor and Evans-Hughes are in the Infirmary, but the healers tell me they will be themselves again in no time at all.”

  He did not address the obvious questions: What of the rest? Why was Gray here, and not in the Infirmary with Evans-Hughes and Taylor? How long had he been here?

  A scout loomed behind him in the doorway, carrying a stack of folded clothes, a basin and ewer, a towel, Gray’s shaving kit. He looked about him impassively for some surface on which to place them.

  “Now, Marshall,” the Professor went on, “I have sent for some things from your rooms, and when you have washed and dressed I shall take you to the Infirmary. Though there is very little the matter with you, I expect.”

  Gray was about to blurt out that something was very wrong indeed, but it had become a matter of instinct with him by now never to offer his tutor any unnecessary advantage over him. “Y-y-yes, sir,” he said instead.

  “Good, good. On you go, then.” And the Professor was gone, leaving Gray alone with the scout.

  “You may as well put all of it on the floor,” Gray said, wearily. “What can it matter? Here—let me take that.” He relieved the man of the basin and ewer. “And I thank you. I am much obliged to you.”

  “Sir.” The scout, looking faintly surprised, nodded at him, then began dusting off a trunk to serve as a dressing-table.

  Gray set down the basin and ewer and looked through the pile of clothes. There was a handkerchief that was not his—a minuscule AG was embroidered in one corner—and something else vital was missing. “Do you—” He stopped. “I b-beg pardon; I do not know your name . . .”

  “Baker, sir,” said the scout, without looking up.

  “Baker, I wonder—do you know what became of my gown?”

  “I am sorry, sir,” Baker replied. “I couldn’t rightly say.”

  * * *

  Once in the Infirmary, Gray contrived to escape, briefly, from the Professor and the chief healer, and found Taylor and Evans-Hughes in adjacent beds, both looking battered and miserable. This was not unexpected—very probably he looked the same himself—but he was shocked by their reaction to his arrival.

  Taylor, whose fault all of this was, if anyone’s, narrowed his eyes and turned his bandaged head away; gentle, bookish Evans-Hughes greeted him with curses.

  “What—” Gray began, then stopped, bewildered.

  “How dare you!” Evans-Hughes growled. “How dare you show your face, after—”

  “Don’t talk to him,” said Taylor.

  “What is it you suppose me to have done?” Gray demanded. “What happened, after Gautier sent me for help—”

  “Sent you for help!” Taylor scoffed, ignoring his own advice. “How easy to make such a claim, now he cannot speak against you.”

  “Cannot—why not? And where is he?”

  The other two exchanged a look that Gray could not interpret.

  “The Proctors brought him in,” said Evans-Hughes.

  “Dead,” said Taylor.

  Gray’s stomach lurched, and he sat down, hard—on the floor, there being nothing else within reach. He felt the blood drain from his face. Only last Beltane-time they had all drunk to Arzhur Gautier on his eighteenth birthday . . .

  “But the Professor . . . the P-professor said . . .”

  Before he could finish his sentence, two strapping healer-assistants, dispatched by their master, came to haul him up by the arms and march him away to a hot bath, and thence to bed.

  The Professor was waiting for him there, wearing his heartiest and most insincere smile. “Marshall,” he said at once, “I have decided that you shall accompany me to my country home, and remain there for the Long Vacation. It will do you good to spend time in different surroundings. And, of course, I should otherwise be forced to agree with Proctor Morris that your actions in abandoning young Gautier to his fate cast into grave doubt whether you merit a place at Merlin—much less the continuance of your fellowship. You will much prefer to consider your situation at some distance, I am sure.”

  It was a command and a warning—not an invitation—and there was only one possible response. “I thank you, sir,” Gray said miserably.

  * * *

  All along their journey—to Portsmouth and across the Manche to the province of Petite-Bretagne, at the eastern edge of the kingdom—Professor Callender kept Gray closely leashed. At one posting-inn, some way inland from the port of Aleth, Gray contrived a few unwatched moments in the taproom, where a silver coin he could ill afford to part with secured him a bottle of ink and a sheet of rough note-paper, and wrote a brief and anxious note to Henry Crowther. The barmaid accepted it from him, and promised to see it safely into the next post-bag bound for England; on running him to earth, however, the Professor scolded him so caustically and publicly for leaving his rooms that Gray fully expected her to think him a lunatic and drop it into the midden-heap instead, and could not summon the necessary resolve to try again at their next halt.

  In every idle moment, his mind reverted to that half-overheard conversation in the Professor’s rooms. Unquestionably there was a conspiracy of some kind, and the Professor deeply involved in it. Who had those two men been, whose voices now seemed burnt into his mind’s ear? That they meant ill to Lord Halifax, Master of Merlin College, was plain. But ill of what sort? What did they hope to gain by his removal, and how did they mean to achieve it?

  Had Woodville known of this? Had Taylor? What of the others? Not Evans-Hughes, surely. Not Crowther. Mother Goddess, not Gautier!

  What did the Professor believe Gray to have done, or heard, or seen, that they had not, that he should keep Gray—alone of the half-dozen men conscripted to that ill-starred errand—so close at hand?

  And, supposing that he attempted to tell someone the little he had overheard—if it had not been only the product of magick-shocked delirium—who would believe him?

  If there was a way out of this tangle, Gray could not see it, try as he might. I know what I am running from. What am I running towards?

  PART ONE

  Breizh

  CHAPTER I

  In Which Gray Meets Sophie

  Gray toiled in the midsummer sun, on his knees among the rhododendrons, through an afternoon that seemed to last a month. Beautiful, Callender Hall’s gardens might be, but after only half a day he had already conceived a passionate hatred of them, and of flowering shrubs in particular. What was he doing in this distant corner of the kingdom, so far from all he knew? Why condemned to this sweaty, thirsty, apparently pointless labour? His eyes stung; his knees ached; his hands were scratched and sore. He missed his cramped, chaotic rooms at Merlin College with an unexpected intensity—and had even begun, in spite of everything, to miss the home of his childhood.

  He had just begun to think, implausibly, how much pleasanter returning to that home for the Long Vacation might have been—as though any such course had been open to him—when he saw the girl striding across the lawn.

  She was of middle height, straight and slim; she wore a plain gown, sturdy boots, and a man’s straw sunhat, large and ragged in outline, whose shadow hid her face. From a distance, her determined gait reminded Gray forcefully of his sister Jenny.

  The girl stopped in front of Gray. After a moment, during which he stared blearily at her skirts, she dropped to her knees in the grass, bringing her face level with his. A faint breath of lavender and rosemary briefly displaced the overpowering scent of compost.

  “You look dreadfully tired,” she said, and he blinked at her; was this the manner of this country, then, for young girls to speak so forwardly to strangers? Well, a
nd he had often enough heard his tutor call it backward and uncivilised . . .

  “Will you come indoors and have a drink?” the girl went on. Her Français had a perceptible, and rather appealing, local accent. “Otherwise you shall certainly collapse into the shrubbery. And the Professor, you know, is most particular about his rhododendrons.”

  She stretched out a slim brown hand, and Gray, bemused, took it. She heaved him up, with little apparent effort, and helped him out of the rhododendron bed. Slowly unfolding to his full six feet and three inches, he went on blinking and wiped a grubby forearm across his brow. The girl looked up at him, one hand on the crown of her preposterous hat to stop it from falling backwards, but if she found his appearance in any way unusual, she gave no sign.

  “I cannot think why he should try to grow them here, in all of this sun,” she said, as she led him towards the house. “Every summer without fail, three or four of them fall dead; no one else would be so obtuse as to lay all the blame on his gardeners, instead of having the poor things moved to a shadier spot. And I suppose he treats his students no better.”

  Though harbouring his own seditious views about his tutor, Gray had not thought to hear a renowned Senior Fellow of Merlin College discussed in such flippant terms in his own garden; the experience rather unnerved him. Worse, the longer the girl spoke, the more conscious he became of the very ungentleman-like appearance he must be presenting—stripped of coat, collar, and neck-cloth, his shirtsleeves rolled up above his elbows, dappled all over with flecks of loam.

  “I—I am very sorry,” he said; “I do not seem to have c-caught your name.”

  The girl sighed and shook her head. “Shall I never learn? I suppose Amelia is quite right to call me a barbarian.”

  She stopped, turned and made him a little bow, saying, “My name is Sophie Callender. It is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. . . . ?”

  Had she meant to put him at ease, she could not have chosen a worse tactic.

  Gray had been unnerved already, but to find himself conversing so familiarly with what must surely be one of Professor Callender’s own daughters . . .

  He began to stammer: “I really—I have not finished in the garden—I ought not—”

  “Nonsense,” said Miss Callender firmly, taking him by the elbow before he could make an escape. “There’s no evading the shouting, whether you would or no; and you still have not told me your name.”

  “M-m-my apologies, Miss C-c-callender.” Gray kicked himself in the ankle, hard, in an effort to get his tongue under control. “It is Marshall; Graham Marshall, of Merlin College.”

  But am I? He clung to it nonetheless, for if he was not Marshall of Merlin, what other place had he in the world?

  “A pleasure to meet you,” she repeated, tugging him by the arm towards the house. “And I beg of you, not ‘Miss Callender’—that is my elder sister. I am Sophie.”

  Gray wondered again whether such an unexpected mode of address might be quite usual here; after a moment he said, “My sisters call me Gray.”

  “I shall call you that also, then,” said Sophie. “I should have liked to have a brother. Gray. But you are not very grey, are you? You must wear a hat, if you are to slave in the garden all day.”

  She smiled as they turned into the kitchen garden and approached the back door. Inside the welcoming cool of the dark entry, she planted Gray in front of an enormous hat-stand-cum-mirror, and, with an inward groan, he saw what she must have meant: Wherever his skin was not covered by clothing or layers of dirt, the sun had burned it bright red.

  * * *

  In the kitchen, Sophie bustled about in the cold-room while Gray scrubbed his hands and face in the huge stone sink. Sophie handed him a clean linen towel, and took it away again when he had finished; then she presented him with a silver cup, worn thin with age and polishing.

  “My welcome to this house, Graham Marshall,” she said.

  Gray took the cup from her hands and raised it. “I thank you for this welcome,” he said, “and may the gods smile on you and on this house.”

  The little wine in the cup was rich and sweet, and Sophie smiled up at him as he drank it.

  The flagstoned kitchen was by far the pleasantest room Gray had seen in this house since his arrival late the previous evening. The sun streamed cheerfully in at high, narrow windows. The table at which they now sat, drinking chilled lemon-and-water poured by Sophie from an earthenware pitcher, was scrubbed and shining; along the whitewashed walls, about the level of Gray’s shoulders, copper and brass utensils hung gleaming at measured intervals. Sophie looked so much at home here that Gray had difficulty picturing her in any room that would suit the Professor.

  How typical of the Professor to have dropped him into this mystery with no preparation whatever.

  I must sink or swim, he reflected, and if the Professor has his way, I shall sink like a stone.

  * * *

  Sophie, trying her best to make conversation, began to despair of her efforts. Amelia would have flirted, as easily as breathing; flirting did not come naturally to Sophie, however, and in any event to flirt with Gray—having claimed him, however jestingly, as a brother—was beyond her.

  Though he did not seem much like other students of the Professor’s, she reminded herself that they had scarcely met, and she might well be mistaken. She was tempted to ask his opinion of a puzzling passage in the book of magickal theory that she had most lately (and secretly) borrowed from the Professor’s library—but what if he too should take the traditional view of the female mind’s suitability for magickal study? Sophie had been read lectures enough over the years that she had no wish to provoke another.

  “Where is your home?” she asked instead.

  Staring down at the table, he said, “I was born in Kernow.”

  “It’s said to be a beautiful country,” offered Sophie, who had never travelled more than a few miles from Callender Hall.

  “It is that,” said Gray.

  There was a silence then, until Sophie thought to say, “Have you sisters or brothers, at home in Kernow?”

  “I have t-t-two of each,” he said, looking up. For a moment Sophie saw a sharp, raw pain in his eyes; then it was gone, and a carefully neutral expression took its place. “You have an elder sister, I b-believe you said?”

  “Amelia, yes. Joanna, my younger sister, is away at school.”

  I should like to know why you looked like that when you spoke of your brothers and sisters. But she could think of no way to ask such an impertinent question without giving offence.

  The conversation limped along until Sophie hit on the happy expedient of the weather, from which they progressed to the Professor’s gardens and the pleasure of a cool drink when one is very thirsty. Sophie had refilled their glasses three times before she noticed that the light had changed—and a moment later, there was Mrs. Wallis, bustling in with the kitchen-maid on her heels to set in motion the preparations for dinner, and to scold Sophie (though in an affectionate tone that robbed her disparaging words of any real force) for cluttering up her worktable.

  “Out with you, Miss Sophia,” she said firmly, by way of peroration. “Dinner at ’alf past, and five courses, orders of ’Erself. I can’t be doing with you lot underfoot.”

  “Oh, gods and priestesses,” said Sophie, under her breath.

  * * *

  “Who is ‘Herself,’ then?” Gray asked, when they had made their escape. He was back in the rhododendron bed, digging; Sophie sat on the path a few feet away, heedless of the damage to her gown, fanning her face with her appalling hat.

  She glanced heavenward. “Mrs. Wallis will get herself into trouble one day, talking in such a way before those who ought not to hear it,” she said. “She means my sister Amelia. The real Miss Callender, you know.”

  “You are not on the b-best of terms?” Gray hazarded, his mind str
aying to his long, fractious history with his brother George.

  “An infamous suggestion!” said Sophie. “Certainly we are on good terms. As hedgehogs and carriage-wheels are, or geese and foxes.”

  Despite himself, Gray smiled. “If I am to meet this p-paragon,” he said, “I ought to be prepared. I beg you will tell me all about her.”

  * * *

  Miss Amelia Callender was precisely as advertised: a very pretty girl, everything about her most elegant—and not for a moment was anyone at her dinner-table permitted to forget it.

  Gray received exactly as much notice and attention from her as her assessment of his station required; he could almost see her mental abacus at work, assigning appropriate value to his speech (a gentleman’s), his family (unknown, and therefore suspect), his status as her father’s student, his dress (respectable but dull), and his person (too tall, too plain, and decidedly too much sunburnt). Conversing with her proved easier than he had feared, for she had clearly no interest in any topic of importance outside her own sphere, nor did she seem likely to remember, for more than a few moments, anything he said.

  The Professor—pink-faced and blustering as ever, his grey eyes half hidden under sprouting, tufted brows—introduced Gray to his daughters. Gray was about to mention Sophie’s having welcomed him already, but she caught his eye and silenced him with a minute shake of her head.

  “I—I hope my c-coming has occasioned no inconvenience to you, Miss C-callender, Miss Sophia,” he said instead, discomfited.

  Miss Callender cast him a suspicious glance; the Professor, however, seemed oblivious, saying only, “Amelia, my dear, you will remember, I hope, that you are to call tomorrow on Lady Guischard?”

  The dinner was a good one, and Gray, after his exertions in the garden, very hungry. He ate heartily and managed to reply when spoken to, but his mind was elsewhere—studying the interaction of the Professor with his daughters, of the sisters with one another, and the behaviour of each. Had he first met Sophie here, he might scarcely have noticed her; in the company of her father and sister she was silent and dull, unremarkable and colourless. Even her eyes seemed to have lost their spark; in fact—Gray squinted briefly across the table, and the hairs rose on the back of his neck, as though someone were working magick nearby—not only their spark but much of their colour. Her gown was much grander than the one she had worn to wander about the garden earlier in the day, but it too had a sort of drabness, as though, when dressing for dinner, Sophie had carefully chosen those of her garments best suited to blending into the woodwork. Through the whole of the meal, she spoke scarcely a dozen words.