The Midnight Queen

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  “Amelia!” he was heard to demand. “Where is Morvan with the carriage?” And a moment later, “Mrs. Wallis, Miss Sophia is to be confined to her room until I decide otherwise, and on no account is to be permitted to communicate with Mr. Marshall. I shall deal with both of them tomorrow.”

  Gray heard, but did not catch, the housekeeper’s murmured reply; he was watching Sophie, who clearly—far from having learnt submission, womanly or otherwise—was consumed with fury. Her hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists; her hair seemed to crackle with energy. Gray could hear her rapid breathing. His every hair rose on end; he struggled for breath in the suddenly airless room, feeling dizzy and sick; there was a roaring in his ears, and dark blots swam before his eyes.

  He heard a sort of shimmering, shattering sound; then small sharp pains freckled the right side of his face and neck, his arm, his ribs. Something trickled down his face; he put a hand to his temple and brought it away wet with blood. A breeze, briefly gentle but growing more savage, jostled the potted plants and curios that cluttered the room. The sound came again, and again, louder and louder; at last Gray saw that the drawing-room windows were bursting inward, each more violently than the one before. Sophie, oblivious and rigid with fury, was perfectly aligned with the last, northernmost window when a horrified Gray hurled himself at her, knocking her to the floor. Abruptly the noise ceased and the breeze died away.

  In the vast stillness that followed, Gray and Sophie stared at each other in horror.

  “You said you had no magick!” he exclaimed. He pulled her against him, clasping her so tightly that he could scarcely breathe.

  After a moment he loosed his hold to look down into her face. Her brown eyes were pale and huge with shock, her face the colour of tallow; even her hair looked faded and dull. What manner of magick was this?

  “What happened?” she whispered. She touched Gray’s cheek, where blood was already drying. “Gray, your face is bleeding. What—”

  “Horns of Herne, Sophie, you blew the windows in! If that was not magick—”

  She blinked up at him. Her gaze followed the sweep of his arm about the room, taking in the windblown furnishings, the shattered glass. She shook her head.

  “You did this,” he said. “Or your magick did. Has nothing like this ever happened before?”

  “Of course not!” said Sophie—her voice a little stronger now. “Only in—never when—no! My father has always said I have no magick. Surely—surely, if I had, even he would—”

  Gray looked about him, eyebrows raised.

  It was at this moment, of course, that Miss Callender came into the drawing-room.

  Gray sprang away from Sophie as if from a hot stove, blushing scarlet. “M-m-miss Callender,” he stammered. “I fear—” But her expression stopped his tongue.

  Sophie began to shiver.

  For once Miss Callender seemed at a loss for words. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it again, and stood, for what might have been hours, gazing in silence about her ruined drawing-room. Finally she appeared to notice her sister’s waxen face and chattering teeth. “Sophia,” she said reprovingly, “you had best go up to bed. You are unwell—perhaps you have taken a chill. Mr. Marshall, what have you done to the drawing-room windows?”

  Sophie looked from her sister to Gray, and Gray found his voice again. “She has not c-c-caught cold, Miss C-callender,” he said, ignoring the question of the windows. “She is m-magick-shocked. She needs a hot drink and something to eat—cheese, or cold beef, or—”

  “My dear Mr. Marshall, my sister has no more magick than I have,” said Miss Callender, with her father’s exaggerated patience.

  Gray rather wished that she had witnessed Sophie’s display; it might have saved argument. “Miss C-callender, I assure you—”

  A small sound from Sophie made him turn round. She was trembling more violently than ever, and—Gray knelt to look more closely, and breathed a few choice curses—a line of bright blood trickled from each of her nostrils.

  Apollo, Pan, and Hecate! She will be very ill indeed unless I do something at once.

  Sophie touched her upper lip, looked at her reddened fingertips, flinched, and swallowed hard. Her eyes met Gray’s, frightened and pleading. Under their gaze, something in him roused itself and shook off the last vestige of concern with propriety.

  “Come with me,” he said. Sliding one arm around Sophie’s shoulders and the other under her bent knees, he straightened, towering over the protesting Miss Callender. “Rest easy, Sophie. We shall soon have you set to rights.”

  * * *

  In the kitchen Mrs. Wallis and Gray plied Sophie with strong cheese, new bread, ham, and hot sweet tea. She ate eagerly; soon the colour began to return to her cheeks, and her trembling ceased.

  Gray had forgotten his own injuries in his fear for her, but with her visible recovery this effect of mind over flesh began to ebb. Using his right hand to pour her a third cup of tea, he winced as each small splinter of glass made itself felt.

  “Gray, your arm—your face,” said Sophie, repentant. “I am so very sorry. Mrs. Wallis—could you—”

  “Of course, dearie,” said the latter—who seemed remarkably unperturbed by the situation. “Whatever was I thinking of? Come ’ere, young man. Let’s ’ave a look at you.”

  Gray submitted meekly, expecting simply to have his wounds bathed and bandaged. But after rinsing away the blood, the Callenders’ cook-housekeeper calmly laid strong, callused fingers against his temple and began drawing out the glass and sealing the cuts with a healer’s magick. Gray swallowed astonishment; servant or no, how had such a talent slipped the leash of the College of Healers?

  Sophie, scratching at the bridge of her nose, caught his eye and produced a shadow of her usual pert grin.

  “One finds magick in the most unexpected places in this house,” she said.

  * * *

  “Sophie,” Gray began, “I owe you an apology.”

  “I very nearly put out both your eyes,” said Sophie. “Surely it is not you who ought to apologise.”

  “Certainly I ought. I ought to have defended you.” Sophie frowned at this, but he went on: “At the very least, I ought to have warned you what might happen.”

  She sat up straighter. “Warned me? Do you mean that all the time you were asking me whether I was sure I had no magick, you knew?”

  “Well,” said Gray. “Not knew, as such. In fact, were it not for the excellent Mrs. Wallis, I should have the scars to prove the contrary. But I ought to have done. I have certainly suspected for some time that you were talented—thought you must be—only I did not like to distress you by speaking of it. And I had never guessed that you might be so powerful. I shan’t underestimate your capacities again.”

  “Gray, stop it,” said Sophie, shifting in her seat. “You make me feel quite frightened.”

  “I am sorry for it; but you must understand the implications. Not least, what the Professor may think to do about it. Sophie, in your reading of magickal theory—”

  “Wait. Stop. You said you had suspected. What made you suspect?”

  “Have you . . . have you never a peculiar feeling, when someone around you is using magick?”

  Sophie looked puzzled. “What sort of feeling?”

  “I feel it as though all my hairs were standing on end. But others feel it in different ways, and I have met talented people who feel nothing at all. Your father, I think, does not.”

  Understanding dawned on her face as he spoke. “I know what you mean now,” she said. “At least . . . you’ll think it silly.”

  “Indeed I shan’t. Wait—” Gray smiled suddenly. “Is it—does your nose itch, just there?”

  She stared at him, at the finger that touched the bridge of his nose. “However did you know?”

  “I’ve just remembered,” he said. “You were
scratching it this morning, when Mrs. Wallis was healing my cuts—and the same that day just after I came here, when I was mending the hats. But the point is that I have felt magick being done dozens of times since meeting you, and there was sometimes no other way to account for it, though I could not think at first what magick it was you might be doing. So I ought really to have known that something would happen, and warned you.”

  “That is unfair,” Sophie protested. “How should you guess that my father would provoke me into breaking windows?”

  “And what of this morning? Ought I to have stood there like a stuffed dodo while the Professor—”

  “I can fight my own battles, Gray,” she said firmly. “I have done so all my life.”

  And when Gray moved to speak, she glared at him. “If you intended to say that they ought to be fought for me because of my sex, you had much better hold your tongue. I should not like to hear you echo the Professor.”

  Gray hastened to change the subject. “What did he mean by his ominous hints about your mother?”

  “She died when I was eight years old,” Sophie said. “She tried a spell that got out of hand, and it drained her talent and killed her. At least—” She paused, looking thoughtful. “At least, that is the tale the Professor has always told. I begin to wonder, now, how much of it is true.”

  “Is there anyone else who might know?” Gray asked. “Miss Callender, or Mrs. Wallis, or . . .”

  “Amelia!” Sophie snorted derisively. “And I have asked Mrs. Wallis, and she tells the same tale, but of course with Mrs. Wallis one never knows.”

  She was silent for a long moment, apparently lost in thought. Then her brows drew together and she looked up at Gray, dark eyes narrowed. “You said just now—you said you could not think at first what magick I might be doing. Does that not mean that today was not the first time? And that you know now what it was?” She stopped, still frowning. “Not that I was doing magick. I have not the least idea how.”

  “But you have,” said Gray. He stood, annoyed to find that his legs still trembled, and crossed the room to stand by the large cheval-glass in the corner. “Come—I shall show you.”

  Sophie folded her arms. “Show me? Show me what? How?”

  “Come,” he repeated, and held out a hand.

  With visible reluctance she obeyed. Taking her hand, Gray drew her in front of the mirror, which he tilted so that both of them could see their faces. The part of his mind not focused on conquering Sophie’s scepticism appreciated the cool, firm touch of her fingers, and recorded that her hair smelled pleasantly of lavender and rosemary. Then he stepped back to stand behind her, his hands on her shoulders.

  Their two faces looked out at them, one scant inches from the top of the glass, the other nearer its centre. Sophie’s reflection showed dark eyebrows drawn together above large brown eyes; a face pale and tight-lipped, framed by chestnut-brown curls. “What is it?” the face said, twisting up and around to stare into Gray’s.

  “Close your eyes,” he said. She did not. He pressed her shoulders very gently. “Trust me, Sophie. For a few moments, no more. I should never ask you to do anything . . . anything wrong. You have my word.”

  Her eyes closed.

  “Now,” said Gray, “think about . . . imagine you were with the Professor now, you and your sister Amelia, all going to dine at the Courtenays’, with all their friends. Picture it in your mind, and think how you might feel as you went into the dining-room.”

  He knew that she was following his instructions when, in the mirror, her reflection began to change. “Now open your eyes,” he prompted, and she did so.

  Now the Sophie in the glass had limp, dun-coloured hair, pale lips, thin and sallow cheeks. Dull eyes blinked in puzzlement. “But that is only me,” she said.

  “Of course.” Gray nodded. “But bear with me a moment. Think about something that makes you happy—think about singing!—and go on looking in the glass.”

  In an eyeblink the reflection changed again: Cheeks plumped and warmed, hair darkened and grew glossy and thick, lips blushed and curved into a smile. The dull eyes grew deep and wide and sparkling.

  “Do you see?” Gray asked.

  “But,” Sophie said, “anyone’s face may change when her . . . her feelings change. Is that not so . . . ?”

  “Not as yours does, Sophie,” he said gently. “It is one thing to smile or frown, or blush, or grow pale. This . . . this is altogether different. Do you not see that your very eyes and hair change colours?”

  She shook her head.

  “I have never seen the like. When it suits you not to be noticed, you blend in. When you are happy . . . Like a human chameleon—you have read of the chameleon? Shape-shifting is one thing, but to do it without the least effort or thought, as you do . . .”

  “This is not shape-shifting!” Sophie protested, turning to look up at him. “Shape-shifting is powerful magick, difficult magick. I am no chameleon. What you speak of is only . . . it is only . . .”

  “I think,” said Gray quietly, “that it is a very rare magick, and a great deal more powerful than mine.”

  “But . . .” Sophie turned from him, and from the mirror, and sank down upon the sofa. “Gray, the Professor—he told me—how could he not know of this?”

  Of course he knew. He must have known. And it followed, did it not, that he must have had some strong motivation for keeping that knowledge from the person most concerned. He had kept her so close, in such isolation: why?

  Gray had never wished to drag Sophie or her sisters into this whole sordid business. But . . . I will deal with them both tomorrow, the Professor had told Mrs. Wallis, in a voice of grim resolve. What had he meant by that? Certainly nothing to Gray’s benefit, or, he was reasonably certain, to Sophie’s either.

  But Gray could say none of this here. Bad enough that he had said so much already; he could not risk discussing such matters where the Professor might have listening-spells in place. The garden. We shall say that she needed some fresh air.

  Leaning down to her ear, he spoke low and urgently. “Sophie, come out to the garden with me. There are things I must tell you.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  In Which Mrs. Wallis Comes to a Decision

  “Sophie! Mr. Marshall!” Joanna’s voice, shrill with an anxiety not natural to her, rang out among the shrubberies and floral borders.

  “So-phieeee!”

  Gray and Sophie, out of sight in the little-tended corner they had judged safest from listeners, looked at one another and wondered what to do.

  They had spent the past hour seated upon the grass in anxious, whispered conference, Sophie’s eyes growing wider and her face paler as Gray related the circumstances and events that had led to his presence in her father’s house and the discoveries he had made since his arrival. He wondered that she could so easily credit the bizarre tale he was spinning; Sophie had never struck him as credulous—rather the reverse. But perhaps she heard the desperation of truth in his voice, or perhaps the discovery of her magickal talent had made her more inclined to believe the unbelievable, for she questioned his recital of strange facts and half-proved fancies scarcely at all.

  At last he had said, “He has done his best to to make it impossible for me to return to Oxford, but now I believe I must; and now he has threatened both of us—I cannot think it safe for you to remain here, certainly not once he discovers what has happened.”

  And Sophie had not looked revolted, or even surprised; she had only looked at him gravely and said, “I should like to see this College of yours.”

  Then they had fallen to discussing ways and means.

  “There is one of the Professor’s riding horses that would be tall enough for you, I think,” Sophie had said, “and only one of the grooms sleeps in the stables at night, and the dogs know me. Do you think, if we were very quiet—and if you were to help me wi
th the tack—might we take two horses without raising the alarm?

  “But we must say nothing to Joanna,” she added urgently, as though Gray had been suggesting that they should.

  “You cannot be afraid that she would betray you?”

  “No,” said Sophie. “That is not what I am afraid of, at all.”

  * * *

  Hearing Joanna calling them ever more frantically, they exchanged a nod of resignation. Gray clambered stiffly to his feet, then reached down to help Sophie; slowly they made their way towards the house.

  “What if he is come back already?” she asked suddenly, though they both knew the Professor to be dining at the Courtenays’, and likely to return very late or perhaps, as on two previous occasions, not until the morning. “Amelia will have told him everything . . .”

  Cautiously, diffidently, Gray put an arm about her shoulders, as he might have done to comfort Jenny or Celia. “You were not frightened of him this morning,” he reminded her.

  “I knew so little this morning,” Sophie said. She shivered as they passed the central fountain, with its statuettes of Venus and Adonis. “This morning I thought him only a pompous, petty-minded fool. Now—”

  “Soooooo-phie!” Joanna sounded close to tears.

  “Joanna!” Sophie called, pulling away. “Joanna, it’s all right—we are here, safe. By the fountain.”

  There was a sound, as of running feet and bending branches; after a moment, Joanna’s flushed, freckled countenance appeared in a gap between two box hedges, and in another moment she was standing before them, hands on hips, eyes narrowed indignantly. “No one knew where you had gone,” she said accusingly. “I called and called. I thought you had been kidnapped, or—” Stopping abruptly, she turned that indignant gaze full on Gray. “Mr. Marshall, you are not courting Sophie, are you?”