The Midnight Queen

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  The Professor’s gaze swept over them again, suspicious, but he allowed Mrs. Wallis to bundle them off upstairs.

  Joanna was put firmly to bed, over vigorous protests, and left to her own devices. Mrs. Wallis lingered with Sophie, however, tidying needlessly and asking unaccountable questions.

  “I was very frightened indeed,” said Sophie, in answer to one such, “and Joanna I am sure was quite terrified. But we are perfectly recovered now, Mrs. Wallis, I promise you.”

  “Yes, dearie, I see you are; and you are quite sure there was nothing—this Mr. Marshall ’as not been making a nuisance of ’imself . . . ?”

  Sophie could not at once make sense of this remark; when at length she divined its meaning, she half wondered whether Mrs. Wallis had not been sampling the Professor’s brandy to steady her nerves. Had it been anyone else, she might have said so, but Mrs. Wallis had known her and her sisters from the cradle and had looked after them since their mother’s sudden death—if she was occasionally a trifle zealous in guarding them from harm, it was hardly to be wondered at.

  “I have not the least complaint to make of Mr. Marshall,” she said firmly. “I believe I am quite safe from unwanted advances on his part.” A less happy thought occurred to her, and she caught Mrs. Wallis’s sleeve. “I hope you will not put any such idea into the Professor’s head?”

  “I should think not, Miss Sophia!”

  She stayed a few moments more, pottering about Sophie’s bedroom and humming quietly to herself; Sophie began to feel terribly sleepy, and only just glimpsed the silent closing of the door before sliding headlong into oblivion.

  CHAPTER IV

  In Which Sophie Shows Talents of a Nonmagickal Sort

  If Joanna’s near-accident at Kerandraon was indeed a sign of divine displeasure, Gray saw no further evidence of it. Nor, fortunately, did the Professor again call him to account for endangering Joanna’s and Sophie’s lives, as he had on that first afternoon, but Gray’s comings and goings grew more circumscribed and more closely watched, and Sophie more cautious in her excursions into the garden.

  The success of his finding-spell in the temple had given Gray hope that his magick might be soon restored. Throughout his many experiments in the ensuing weeks, however, it remained at such a low ebb as to prevent his warding his bedroom against listening-spells—or transforming so much as a fingertip into a feather.

  One blazing August morning, having gained the farthest reaches of the garden before recognising the absence of his now-familiar sunhat, Gray returned to the house to look for it, irritated and already sweating in the heat. Upon his return, he cursed under his breath; the hat was not in its place on the hatstand. Where in Hades had he left the thing?

  With an exasperated sigh, he ducked through the doorway and started towards the back staircase, whereby he could reach his bedroom without risk of encountering the Professor or Miss Callender. Halfway to the first floor he paused, listening; somewhere in the house, someone was singing.

  The voice was at once familiar and strange, and Gray instantly recognised the song:

  Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!

  Ae fareweel, and then forever!

  He shivered. He and his sisters had often played that music and sung those words, before their mother—who disdained the Border Country dialect of her childhood home, and who did not wish to encourage romantic notions in her daughters—declared it unsuitable for their tender years. Though Cecelia, a cynic even in childhood, considered its sentiments amusingly histrionic, Gray and Jenny had always found it affecting and had been genuinely grieved when it was forbidden them.

  Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee,

  Warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee . . .

  Now, listening, Gray could no more have stopped climbing than if strong chains had been dragging him forward. As though bespelled, and dismayed at his inability to resist, he ascended the staircase and softly trod the passage on the first floor, through the baize door and out towards the drawing-rooms. The music came from the smaller of these, which Gray had not previously had occasion to enter.

  He entered it now, and—hairs rising like an angry cat’s—halted on the threshold in amazement.

  The singer, of course, was Sophie. This was not amazing; Joanna he knew to be quite tone-deaf, and Miss Callender—no, the notion was absurd. Although the voice did sound remarkably like Jenny’s, he knew that Sophie it must be. But that Sophie could look like this . . .

  Her hair was dark and shining, her cheeks glowed pink; she wore, he thought, the same blue gown as at breakfast, but there the resemblance ceased. Hearing Gray, she looked up at him but went on singing; her dark eyes sparkled so that he could not restrain a grin. How could he have thought her dull and listless at table that very morning? She was radiant now, joyful—beautiful, in fact. It was difficult to know how the same person could present such a different appearance, unless by some magickal transformation.

  Her song ended, Sophie rested her hands lightly on the keyboard and smiled up at him.

  “I thought myself alone in the house,” she said. “Amelia has gone visiting in the carriage and taken Joanna with her, and the Professor is out walking. This is not the sort of music they would approve of, you see.”

  She paused.

  “They do not much like me to sing,” she said.

  Which explained, presumably, why he had never heard her do so before.

  “I have not heard that song in—in years,” said Gray. He became vaguely aware that he was staring, and with an effort he turned his gaze to the window. “It is not one my mother approves of, either.”

  “So you know it? How wonderful!” Sophie clapped her hands like a delighted child. “Will you sing it with me, then?”

  In the warm room Gray shivered. “I—I only came in to look for my—my hat—”

  “Please, Gray.” Her tone was quite serious now. “I shall not keep you long from your work. Just once.”

  There is nothing I should like more, thought Gray—only I fear the consequences.

  “I should be honoured,” he said at last.

  Sophie smiled.

  * * *

  Singing with Sophie, Gray discovered, was very different from singing with Jenny or Cecelia.

  To begin with, she was a better musician than either; hearing her play the pretty, capricious music that pleased her father and Amelia, Gray had often pondered how many thousands of hours she must have spent in practising, to attain such consummate skill as made even the most difficult piece sound natural and unstudied. Though they had never before sung together, she followed his lead perfectly and without apparent effort; a glance from her told him to carry the melody, and her clear soprano wove bewitchingly about it, her fingers never stumbling in the rippling accompaniment.

  There was something else, too—some indefinable sense that, despite all Sophie’s protests, this room had magick in it.

  Had we never lov’d sae kindly,

  Had we never lov’d sae blindly,

  Never met—or never parted . . .

  In the middle of the second verse, Gray’s knees went weak and he clutched at the lid of the pianoforte to stop himself from falling. Sophie’s voice faltered, and the instrument fell silent.

  “Gray?” she said softly. “Gray, are you not well?”

  Gray’s vision blurred, and the room began to turn about him. Gentle hands caught his elbows; an arm round his waist supported him to a sofa, where he sat, head in hands, trying to regain his equilibrium. He was vaguely aware of someone kneeling at his feet.

  “Out,” he managed to say. He felt trapped, stifled; blinking desperately in an attempt to clear his vision, he was assailed by a sense of despair, of cold black dread, and he staggered to his feet, frantic for air. “Out—I must get out—please, outside—”

  There was a flurry of movement and the sound
of window-sashes flung open. Gray felt a breeze, smelled a hint of trees and sun, and lurched towards the source of these salvifics. Hands on the windowsill, head and shoulders as far out into the air as he could manage, he drew deep, ragged breaths. Slowly the panic receded.

  “Gray,” Sophie whispered, behind him. “Gray, come back to me.”

  He turned to look down at her. Her face was pale, her eyes large, and—no, it must be his own bleary eyes that made the rest of her look pale as well. “I felt—” he began. Remembering what he had felt, he began to shiver.

  “You are ill,” said Sophie. The gently scolding tone he knew was creeping back into her voice. “Going out without a hat again, as though you knew no better. Very likely you are sunstruck. You ought to be abed. Can you walk, or . . .”

  “Certainly I can walk,” Gray said, rather crossly, though in fact he was far from certain.

  As Sophie slipped an arm about his waist to support him, he considered protesting that he was not ill, had in fact been feeling very fit until a few moments ago. In the end, he said nothing: Something undoubtedly was the matter with him now.

  But it had, he was equally certain, nothing to do with being out in the sun.

  * * *

  Mrs. Wallis brought him a tray at noon: tea, toasted bread, and strong beef broth, an invalid’s meal. Gray glowered at it.

  “I am not ill, Mrs. Wallis,” he said.

  “Miss Sophia tells me you ’ad a touch of the sun this morning,” Mrs. Wallis replied calmly. Gray knew Sophie well enough by now to suspect that she had not put the matter so politely.

  “It was not the sun; it was—”

  It had felt, in fact, rather like magick shock—the dragging, hollowed-out aftermath of too much magick used too quickly—though magick shock had never so terrified him. But could one be magick-shocked who had used no magick?

  Sophie. The thought assailed him as he drifted into sleep, full of toasted bread and beef broth. I used none—but I am sure that Sophie did.

  * * *

  At dinner that evening, Gray—feeling much more himself after sleeping nearly all day—watched Sophie as steadily as he dared. Once or twice he caught her eye and chanced a smile. But his vigilance was of no use; the eager, vivid Sophie of the morning was gone, replaced again by a shadow of herself who seemed bent on escaping notice.

  It is magick, Gray thought; magick this morning, and magick now. There can be no other explanation. Sophie’s own magick, whatever her father may believe. But what manner of magick is this?

  He had an unwelcome sense that someone was waiting for him to speak.

  Professor Callender said, in the tone of one ill-pleased to be repeating himself, “We shall soon be welcoming another guest, Mr. Marshall—rather a distinguished one, I am happy to say. I am sure we shall all enjoy his company; do you not agree?”

  Had the Professor ever in his life asked a question that really was a question? “Yes, sir,” said Gray. “Of course, sir.”

  * * *

  Gray stood in the centre of his bedroom late that evening, in the light of a single candle on the desk, and prepared to speak a warding-spell.

  This has gone on long enough, he admonished himself. The magick was there at Kerandraon; it is there still, if only you will have faith in it. Magick cannot simply disappear.

  He drew a deep breath, set his shoulders, and straightened his back. Closing his eyes, he reached down into the core of his magick, the words of the warding ready on his lips.

  At the first syllable, his stomach began to churn. Swallowing hard, he went on; the Latin words that ought to have slipped fluidly out into the air had to be forced out, painfully, through his clenched teeth.

  His vision blurred. Before he had finished even half the spell, he collapsed.

  When he woke—disoriented, with queasy stomach and pounding head—his first thought was that, somehow, he had returned to Merlin while he slept, to begin his waking nightmare all over. Soon enough he recognised his surroundings, but his relief was short-lived, for with it came the remembrance of what he had tried, and failed, to do.

  Was it possible that his magick had simply vanished? That his violent encounter with the wards on the Professor’s Oxford rooms, in bringing on the worst case of magick shock he had hitherto suffered, had also done him some more permanent damage?

  One need not—as the Professor himself gave daily proof—possess any extraordinary practical talent in order to master the most arcane minutiae of magickal theory; indeed, the Professor was not alone among the Senior Fellows in disdaining what he termed “vulgar and unnecessary display.” Even limited, as he now appeared to be, to the smallest of magicks—calling light and fire, summoning small objects from close at hand—Gray might yet have spent many happy years as a Fellow of Merlin, teaching magickal theory to eager young men.

  And what choice had he, with no abode but his College rooms and no income but his College scholarship?

  But never again to fly! To pass another year, or more, under the Professor’s stultifying tutelage, deprived of that escape! And even this prospect, he suspected, was unduly optimistic; he had only the Professor’s word (and not so much his word as an oblique threat to the contrary) that his name would be cleared in return for his compliance.

  On the other hand . . .

  On the other hand were the comforts of home and family, the more appealing for being so long denied him. Perhaps even now, if he gave in—if he begged forgiveness and submitted himself to his father’s wishes—he would once again be welcomed there.

  Tomorrow I shall tell the Professor that I intend giving up my Mastery and taking up the commission my father wishes to purchase for me, he decided. And then perhaps he will let me go home.

  So saying, he betook himself to bed, only to be denied for many hours the relief of sleep.

  CHAPTER V

  In Which Professor Callender Welcomes a Visitor

  Gray began the next morning by searching the house for his tutor, intending to carry out his resolve of the night before. This quest proving fruitless, he sighed in resignation and fetched his gardening hat.

  Before the day was ended, he had undergone a change of heart.

  Still wanting an early glimpse of the Professor’s “distinguished guest,” he contrived to find work that placed him within sight of the front of the house. This was bound to irritate Pellan, who did not like anyone else—even the Professor, who paid his wages—to decide things about his gardens, but a dressing-down from Pellan would by now be nothing unusual, and the events of the summer had given Gray a strong distaste for surprises.

  The visitor was due to appear in the course of the morning, but when Joanna came out to summon Gray to luncheon, there had still been no sign of any new arrival.

  “Do you know who this mysterious visitor is to be?” he asked her as they trailed towards the kitchen garden. Although Joanna lacked Sophie’s gift for blending in unseen, she was, through continual gossiping in Breton with the house servants, often in possession of useful information.

  This time, however, she only shrugged. “I have not the least idea,” she said, plucking a leaf from a stand of bee-balm in passing. “But he must be terribly rich or terribly important, for Father to make such a to-do.”

  The same thought had occurred to Gray.

  “And if Father admires him so,” Joanna continued, “he will be dreadfully dull and probably very stupid, and we shall all be expected to flatter him and agree with everything he says. I have been considering,” she said, her round, freckled face screwed up in thought, “whether I ought to fall down the stairs and sprain my ankle, or simply take to my bed with a chill.”

  Despite himself, Gray had to stifle a snort of laughter. “Never the stairs,” he said. “You should not like your injuries to be too real. And a chill is difficult. A headache is what you want: very easily feigned—no outward signs—and s
hould a healer be sent for, you can say it has gone away.”

  Joanna looked reluctantly impressed. “Sophie was right,” she said; “you are rather clever.” Then, her face resuming its more customary expression of pugnacious suspicion, she demanded, “How did you come to be studying with Father? Had you done something to make the College angry with you?”

  * * *

  Gray had largely overcome his resentment at being expected to work outdoors in all weather, amidst clay and compost and thorns, yet still look the gentleman at meals. But today, as he hurried into the dining-room to join the others at table—his hair hastily slicked down and, under his coat and waistcoat, a clean shirt sticking to still-damp skin—the Professor’s disapproving glare forced him to swallow back a hot, unreasonable rage.

  “M-m-my apologies, sir,” he stammered, trying to slip gracefully into the empty place opposite Sophie and Joanna. He might have spared himself the effort; the chair he drew out from the table scraped horribly along the floor, his legs tangled with the cloth, and, attempting to keep his balance, he put his elbow down in a clatter of silver.

  Amelia and the Professor glared; Joanna for once had the grace to muffle her giggles. Sophie looked across at him with sympathy in her dark eyes.

  “Now that Mr. Marshall has had the goodness to join us,” said Professor Callender, with one last disparaging look at Gray, “let us begin our meal.” He offered the ritual words of thanks to Jove and Juno, to the All-Father and the Mother Goddess; Gray had never once heard his host invoke any local deity. Gray—raised on Kernowek servants’ tales—was of a different habit; under his breath he murmured his own thanks to Cerridwen, Rosmerta, and Dahut before lifting his knife and fork.

  * * *

  They were still at table when young Katell, smoothing her skirts with trembling fingers, opened the door of the dining-room.

  “Begging your pardon, m’sieu’,” she said in hesitant Français, “the coach ’as brought your guest. Shall I show ’im in, m’sieu’? I told ’im I’d show ’im to ’is rooms if ’e wanted, but—”