The Midnight Queen

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  Gray stared.

  At his side, Sophie began to laugh—a muffled, half-manic giggle. He turned slowly to look at her; by now she was gasping for breath, her face pink, her eyes watering. “Sophie,” he said quietly; and then, when she reacted not at all, “Sophie!”

  She drew a deep, ragged breath and choked back one last giggle. “I am sorry,” she said, hanging her head. Then, after a moment, she calmly extended a hand to her sister. “Come along, Jo, dear. We had best show ourselves before someone else thinks to miss us.”

  * * *

  Miss Callender waited in the hall, in loco parentis, to greet her wayward sisters, and had evidently been marshalling her arguments at leisure for some time.

  “Sophia,” she began composedly, her ire evident only in the fingers clenched among the folds of her gown, “Mrs. Wallis tells me that indeed it was you and not Mr. Marshall who was responsible for destroying the large drawing-room. She has, however, refused to tell me how or, more importantly, why you have seen fit to behave in so destructive a fashion. You I trust can offer some explanation?”

  Sophie fetched a sigh. “It was magick,” she said at once, folding her arms. “Father made me extraordinarily angry, and what you saw was the result. Mr. Marshall assures me that once I have learnt a measure of control, I shall be able to prevent such unfortunate accidents in future.”

  For a moment Miss Callender gaped at her sister. Then, as gracefully as if she had rehearsed the motion, she turned to glare at Gray, contriving somehow to look down her elegant nose at him despite her inferior stature.

  “Mr. Marshall,” she said—the four syllables carrying a hundredweight of disparagement and scorn—“My father will be most displeased that you have encouraged my sister in this unfortunate delusion.”

  Gray, exasperated by her wilful stupidity, drew breath to retort, but before he could speak, both he and Sophie were shouldered aside by a furious Joanna.

  Goddess grant she has not her sister’s magick, or we shall all be incinerated where we stand.

  “You know nothing, Amelia!” Joanna declared. “Nothing about anything! You would not know magick if it slapped your face—you’ve nothing in your head but frippery and flirtations. You believe every idiotic lie Father tells you, and what’s more—”

  Miss Callender, pale with rage, raised her hand to strike her youngest sister—Gray heard Sophie’s indrawn breath—and, each of them taking one of Joanna’s elbows, they half dragged her away towards the relative safety of the kitchen.

  “How dare you!” Miss Callender shouted after them, all composure gone. “I shall tell Papa! He will—”

  Joanna struggled wildly. “Do as you like!” she cried. “It will not make you one jot less stupid!”

  She succeeded in freeing herself of Sophie’s grip and made as if to fly at Miss Callender again. “I think not,” said Gray, catching her about the waist with his free arm and slinging her, kicking furiously, over one shoulder. Abruptly she went limp, as though defeated, but Gray’s brother Alan had long ago taught him that trick, and he merely tightened his grip about her knees.

  * * *

  Gray deposited Joanna, red-faced with outrage at being carried topside-to, on the flagstones of the kitchen floor, where Mrs. Wallis regarded her with an expression mingling amusement and dismay.

  “Now then, Miss Joanna,” she said. “And what ’ave you been and done this time?”

  Joanna ceased glowering at Sophie and Gray, the better to glare at Mrs. Wallis. “I cannot understand why you must all protect Amelia,” she said. “You know quite well that she would never lift a finger for any of us, and she has always been Father’s favourite; it is not as though she needs anyone else on her side. Herne’s horns, Sophie! If—”

  “Joanna!” Sophie tried valiantly to look disapproving whilst struggling against laughter. “Wherever can you have learnt such language?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a deep flush creeping up Gray’s face.

  Mrs. Wallis looked hard at Sophie, with an odd abstracted look upon her face. Then she straightened decisively in her chair and cleared her throat.

  “We appear to be straying from the matter at hand,” she said crisply. “What have you told Miss Amelia?”

  “The truth,” said Gray. “As far as we know it.” He seemed not to notice how little she sounded like herself.

  Mrs. Wallis sighed. “Unfortunate,” she said. “I had hoped . . . Well. And what did she make of it?”

  “An ‘unfortunate delusion,’ I believe she said.”

  “Amelia has never been particularly adept at irony,” said Mrs. Wallis, with another weary sigh, “but this time I believe she has surpassed herself.”

  * * *

  “You knew,” Sophie choked. “You knew that I was capable of this.” Both girls looked thunderstruck, as though a mainstay of their existence had been violently struck away—as, perhaps, it had.

  “I suspected,” Mrs. Wallis amended, still infuriatingly calm. “Something must have happened sooner or later, with so much magick and no training at all. The—that is, your father put all his trust in the interdiction, but—”

  “Of course!” The crash of Gray’s fist on the tabletop made all of them jump. “An interdiction! First that confounded box-room, and now this house. How could I be so stupid? I ought to have recognised it at once.”

  “What is an interdiction?” Joanna demanded.

  “An ambient spell,” recited Sophie, “designed to impede or prevent certain uses of magick.”

  “So,” said Mrs. Wallis, nodding in what looked very like satisfaction, “you have made good use of your nights in the library. Well done, Miss Sophia. And what else might you know about interdictions?”

  “That is why he brought you here,” Sophie said to Gray, ignoring this interruption. “It must be. So as to cripple you, and prevent your telling anyone what you know. An interdiction is not like a protective working—it cannot be attached to a movable object, or imposed on a person without his consent. So he brought you here, and then interdicted the house and grounds—”

  “But it was not for me, Sophie,” Gray protested. If she had not collected thus much from Mrs. Wallis’s earlier assertions, could he convince her? “The Professor may well have interdicted the box-room in his College rooms on my account, but the interdiction here was already in place when I arrived. It was for you.”

  “Then,” Sophie began after a long moment, her voice pitched scarcely above a whisper, “then he did know. You were right, Gray; he knew all along, and hid it from me. But”—for a moment as imperious as her sister, she rounded on Mrs. Wallis—“but not from you.”

  “I knew you were talented long before he did, Miss Sophia,” said Mrs. Wallis, meeting her gaze with perfect calm. “Your mother told me, when you were only a babe in arms.”

  “My mother?” Sophie’s face was ashen now, as starkly white as the kitchen walls. Joanna’s rapt gaze moved from one of them to the other, as though she watched a duel or a game of tennis. “When I was a babe in arms? But how . . .” Her voice trailed away.

  “The present interdiction on this house is the Professor’s work,” Mrs. Wallis explained, “but it was meant to replace one worked by your mother, when you were very small. She suspected that you should grow into considerable power; she meant to teach you the use of it, when you reached the proper age, and worked the interdiction to guard against . . . accidents. Accidents of the sort that occurred this morning. Alas, after her death, the Professor . . .” Mrs. Wallis paused delicately. “His talent was never as great as your mother’s—an affront on her part which he has never forgiven—and he did not take seriously her predictions with respect to you. And of course, as you know, he does not consider higher magickal teaching appropriate to the female sex.”

  Here Joanna made an impolite noise; Sophie seemed about to question some part of what she had heard,
but Gray, wishing the tale to continue uninterrupted, laid a hand on her arm.

  “He seems to have decided,” Mrs. Wallis said, “that, rather than put himself to the trouble and expense of educating you and teaching you the use of your talent, it would be easiest simply to continue the interdiction, maintain the fiction that you are as untalented as your sisters, and trust that no happenstance should result in the discovery of the truth.”

  Again Sophie began to laugh, the sound quickly taking on a manic edge. She controlled herself, however, sufficiently to gasp, “Perhaps he will enjoy the irony—I should never have known, had he not made me so furious . . .”

  “On the contrary,” said Mrs. Wallis, “I planned to explain all of this to you when you came of age, when the Professor had no longer any standing to prevent it. In the meantime, you have had the library, and a measure of safety in your innocence, and now”—she nodded at Gray—“it appears that you have also a teacher.”

  If she had intended this last as a diversionary tactic, it was extraordinarily effective, for Sophie turned at once to Gray, her eyes widening, and said eagerly, “You will teach me, will you not? I shall have so much to learn. Oh! Shall I be able to call light?”

  “I should expect so,” said Gray, answering the second question first, “and I shall do my best, of course, but—”

  “But you have just said,” Joanna interrupted him, “that there is a spell upon this house to prevent people from working magick.”

  “Evidently,” Gray said, “this interdiction is a selective one, affecting only those acts requiring a very significant expenditure of magick.” Somewhat abashed to find that he had reverted to the formality of the lecture hall, he glanced to Mrs. Wallis for confirmation.

  “It is meant to interdict only very powerful spells, yes.” She nodded. “Else it would interfere with the running of the household.”

  This was only natural, of course; had the interdiction been worked to affect all magicks, he should not have seen the Professor call fire to light his pipe, could not himself have called light for nocturnal excursions or worked his small spells to unlock doors, should at this moment have been swathed in linen bandages to protect the morning’s injuries from infection. And no mage could live comfortably under a total interdiction, as three mages—four, if one included Sophie’s mother—had quite evidently done in this house for many years.

  “But what happened earlier today, then? That was a significant expenditure of magick, certainly . . .”

  As soon as he had said it, however, the answer came to him: “It was stronger than the interdiction,” he said, awed. “It—broke through the Professor’s spell. Not a deliberate channelling of magick, but . . . a dam bursting. A conflagration.”

  He shuddered, imagining how that conflagration might have ended.

  “Do you mean—” This from Joanna. “Do you mean that Sophie has stronger magick than Father’s?”

  Gray nodded. “Considerably stronger than his, and almost certainly stronger than mine.”

  “Small wonder that he does not like either of you, then,” said Joanna.

  Into the thoughtful silence that followed this pronouncement came the jangle of the bell from the large drawing-room, shockingly loud. Sophie jumped, and Joanna clapped her hands over her ears.

  “Miss Amelia’s drawing-room must be put to rights,” said Mrs. Wallis, as if to herself, rising from her chair with a sigh.

  At the kitchen door she turned and spoke again. “You put yourself in great danger this morning, Miss Sophia. I should advise you to retire to your room—and to sleep, if you can. I shall send your dinner up to you. As for you—”

  The drawing-room bell rang once more, a long impatient peal.

  “I shall go up to my room and stay there, Mrs. Wallis,” said Joanna meekly.

  Mrs. Wallis paused to fix her with a penetrating stare. “See that you do,” she said.

  When she had gone, the three of them regarded one another in consternation.

  “What has become of our Mrs. Wallis?” said Sophie. “And who, in the name of all the gods, was that?”

  * * *

  The locked doorknob rattled softly; someone was turning it from the outside.

  “Sophie?” Joanna called softly. “Sophie, may I come in?”

  Sophie waited in silence, hoping that Joanna would think her asleep and go away. Instead, the knock and the call were repeated.

  Grimacing, Sophie unlocked the door and opened it an inch.

  “I had rather be alone, just at the moment,” she said.

  “Why?” Joanna demanded. “What are you about?”

  “Nothing. I only—Go away, Jo. Please.”

  Joanna slid her boot-toe into the gap between door and jamb. “I shan’t,” she said. “Not until you have told me why. You know I can keep a secret if I must, Sophie.”

  Sophie tried to shut the door, but her sister was too quick for her. The booted toe kept door and frame apart just long enough for Joanna to lean her full weight hard against the door; Sophie was knocked off balance, so that Joanna half fell through the doorway and fetched up rather violently against a bedpost. Sophie leant on the edge of her dressing-table, flushed and breathing hard.

  “Are you all right, Joanna?” Gray’s anxious baritone inquired.

  At the sound of his voice Joanna whirled to face him, looking astounded and incensed.

  “I told you to go away!” Sophie hissed. It was now too late to exclude Joanna from this conference, but still vital to preserve its secrets from other ears; hastily she shut the door and locked it again.

  “But you—you—” Joanna began.

  There was a certain satisfaction, Sophie thought grimly, in having rendered both of her sisters speechless in the course of a single day. “Yes, Joanna, I am indeed aware that there is a male person in my bedroom,” she said. “I should be grateful not to have the whole household’s attention drawn to the fact, however.”

  Joanna opened her mouth again but quickly clamped both hands over it. Having drawn several deep breaths, she lowered her hands and said, very quietly, “What is Mr. Marshall doing here?”

  Sophie looked at Gray, who returned her gaze with a barely perceptible lift of brow and shoulder. Then turning to her sister, she said fiercely, “Swear on the bones of our mother that you’ll tell no one.”

  Joanna’s grey eyes grew wide. “I swear,” she whispered.

  “We intend to run away.”

  For a moment Joanna stared at her, and then at Gray. Sophie held her breath for the inevitable outburst, but when it came it took a most unexpected form.

  “Horns of Herne!” Joanna exclaimed. “This is dreadful. I shall owe Katell ten copper coins.”

  “What?” Sophie’s incredulous exclamation was doubled in her ears by Gray’s.

  “We had a wager,” Joanna explained, impatient, “and Katell has won it. She heard him call you ‘Sophie’ in the garden last week and wagered me ten coppers that you and Mr. Marshall would be away to the Sisters of Sirona before summer’s end. I said that you would never be so foolish.”

  The manic laughter rose to Sophie’s lips again—would there never be an end to this day’s absurdities?

  “I am not running off to be made handfast to Gray, Joanna,” she said, as patiently as she could manage. “I do not want—that is, I am not ready to marry just yet, and if I were to marry, I hope I should do it properly, and not by eloping to the Sisters of Sirona in the middle of the night. But you must see that I cannot stay here, in the Professor’s house, after what has happened today—nor can Gray, either.”

  Joanna frowned. Sophie ought to have known, she told herself, that her sister would not be so easily put off. But the rest of the story was Gray’s secret, not her own, and he had not authorised her to repeat it.

  “Where are you going, then?” Joanna demanded. “And how did yo
u intend getting there? I hope you did not mean to steal one of Father’s carriages; you would be found out and dragged back here within the hour.”

  “I have at least that much wit left to me, thank you,” Sophie retorted, at last goaded beyond caution. “We thought to take two of the riding horses. They will not be missed so quickly. As for our destination—”

  Her near indiscretion was stopped by her sister’s laughter. “You meant to go on horseback, with that valise?” Joanna pointed to the large case open upon the bed, filled haphazardly with Sophie’s belongings. “And if Father should come after you, in the carriage-and-four? How did you think to get away unseen? And how much coin have you? What will you live on, until you reach wherever-it-is?”

  The justice of all these criticisms struck Sophie of a sudden, deflating at a stroke her furious anger at her father, her determination to remove herself from his influence, and her confidence in the plan she and Gray had concocted. They had neither of them enough experience with subterfuge—not even so much as Joanna had gained, from an addiction to minstrel-tales and servants’ gossip; their entire scheme was at once revealed to be jury-rigged, ludicrously ill planned, and amateur in the extreme, and Sophie felt all the absurdity of having believed they might succeed.

  “Joanna is right,” she said, turning to Gray with a heavy heart and seeing her own melancholy state reflected in his face. “We shall have to stay and take what comes.”

  “I did not say you ought not to go,” Joanna protested. “I only said that your plan was stupid. Now that I know what you are about, we shall be able to think of a better one. For if we are to leave, it must be tonight, while he is not here to stop us!”

  “If we—”

  There was a knock at the door. Startled, they turned to look; the door opened—though Sophie knew she had locked it—and in the doorway stood Mrs. Wallis, wearing a lawn apron and a determined expression. Over her right arm hung several heavy leathern bags. “Fortunately for all of us,” she said, as she distributed these to her astonished audience, “Miss Sophia’s safety does not depend on Miss Joanna’s inventiveness alone.”