The Midnight Queen

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  She surveyed Sophie’s ransacked bedroom, marking Gray’s presence only with a slightly lifted eyebrow. “Pack your things, all of you,” she said. “Only what you can carry. We shall take our leave an hour past midnight.”

  CHAPTER IX

  In Which a Journey Begins

  Already growing stiff and sore after less than an hour on horseback, Gray peered over his shoulder, looking back the way they had come. Callender Hall lay still and dark, and all about its nest of gardens and follies, fields and woods, men slept.

  As they passed the limit of the Hall’s grounds, Gray had felt the upwelling of magick as the interdiction lost its hold on him and marvelled that he had not recognised it on their last departure. Having never been deprived of his magick before this summer, he was unprepared for the elation attendant on its renewal, for the sense of wholeness that he only now understood to have been lacking. He fancied that Sophie, too, ahead of him on her placid brown mare, sat a little straighter now.

  They had spent the time between Mrs. Wallis’s dramatic pronouncement and the hour after midnight in a quiet, covert flurry of activity. Thinking over the day’s events as he hastily stowed his belongings in one of the proffered saddle-bags, Gray could not help but wonder at the extraordinary good fortune that had juxtaposed Sophie’s outburst with the Professor’s absence from home. Perhaps it was only natural that after such an extended run of ill luck, they (and he, in particular) should be blessed by the Fates through the removal of one obstacle, but even if the cause were nothing more than the chance turning of Fortune’s wheel, the effect was cheering. It was an inexpressible relief to Gray merely to know that his captor—for such the Professor must be called—was not in the house with him; the thought of leaving this prison behind made him nearly dizzy with hope. Further than the leaving, however, he would not yet allow himself to think, so many things were there that might still arise to prevent even this from taking place.

  It had not occurred to him then to question how Mrs. Wallis came to have such a comprehensive plan of escape at the ready. He did so now. Certainly she was not the ordinary cook-housekeeper he had once thought her, but for what reason had she been so well prepared for flight?

  For so she had certainly been—for how long, Gray could scarcely guess. Before their astonished eyes parcels of food, pouches of coin, and dark cloaks were produced from hidden recesses in the kitchen and offices; arriving, at the appointed hour, in the stables, they had found a groom waiting—Gray did not like to think what threat or inducement had been offered him—with Joanna’s pony and three of the Professor’s best riding horses, their hooves wrapped in rags to muffle the sound of iron shoes striking the cobbles of the forecourt.

  One might almost think that Mrs. Wallis had done this sort of thing before.

  * * *

  Though they were riding at a walk, when the sun rose their small party was already well away from Callender Hall, bearing northeast towards the coastal road that connected Kerandraon with the port of Douarnenez to the east and with the Pointe du Raz far to the west. At Mrs. Wallis’s direction, they stopped shortly after dawn where their path crossed a stream, dismounting and leading their horses into the trees, where they could drink and graze without attracting notice.

  Joanna looked about her with evident interest. Despite the loveliness of their surroundings, however, Sophie’s gaze lingered on Gray.

  It was not that he had grown larger or taller (being already—Sophie chuckled silently—rather taller than necessary). Certainly he could not be said to have improved in looks, being still sandy-haired and suntanned, with a crooked nose and, to make matters worse, a day’s growth of beard, at which he scratched absentmindedly with one long hand. Still, she could not help staring. Perhaps he stood straighter, or perhaps his gaze was more direct and confident, or perhaps . . .

  “He looks different,” remarked Joanna, who had approached unseen and unheard, so deep was her sister’s concentration. “And so do you. Even Mrs. Wallis does.”

  Startled, Sophie at last withdrew her gaze, turning instead to frown at Joanna—who certainly looked just the same. “What do you mean?” she demanded, sotto voce, hoping that she did not look as dreadfully fatigued as she felt. “Different . . . how?”

  Joanna shrugged. “Not bigger, exactly,” she said. “But . . . more.”

  She trailed away and began to forage in Mrs. Wallis’s saddle-bags.

  Sophie turned again towards Gray, to find him gazing back at her with a speculative expression. He smiled and took a step towards her.

  She had been used to consider Gray as a boy of about her own age, earnest and anxious and apt to need looking after. Now however, she looked at him and saw a man.

  “Did you feel it, too?” he asked her. “When we passed the limit of the Professor’s spell?”

  Exhausted, saddle-sore, and hungry—recklessly fleeing the only home she knew, in quite inappropriate company—uncertain where they were bound, or what awaited them there—Sophie nonetheless felt that at last her luck had turned.

  * * *

  Mrs. Wallis appeared to consider their journey as being under her direction. This was only natural, as she had made all of the useful arrangements; still, Gray disliked not knowing where she was leading them, and it had become clear that her plans, whatever they might be, conflicted with his own. About midmorning, therefore, he abandoned his place at the rear of their little column to pull his mount alongside hers, noting as he did so that she rode remarkably—suspiciously—well for a female servant.

  The time had come for Gray to test some of those suspicions.

  “Mrs. Wallis,” he began, pitching his voice to reach her ears alone. “I should like you to answer me a question or two.”

  She turned her head briefly to look at him, then returned her gaze to the path ahead, so that the brim of her capote hid her face. “You are most welcome to ask, young man,” she said. “I cannot promise to answer so fully as you may wish.”

  Quashing the urge to demand an explanation of this statement, Gray reminded himself to tread carefully. “Our destination has not been discussed,” he said.

  “That is not a question.” Her tone held a trace of amusement. “But I shall answer it nevertheless. You intended to travel southward, to make for your brother-in-law’s estate—an excellent plan, had not your sister so lately visited Callender Hall and made your connexion to Kergabet known there. The servant girls may gossip about your sweeping Dim’zell Zophie away to the priestesses of Sirona, but their master will expect you to take refuge with the most powerful friends at your disposal.”

  “You believe the Professor will seek us there?”

  Gray saw at once the likelihood that she was right, and his heart pounded at the narrowness of Sophie’s escape—and Jenny’s. How could he have been so stupid?

  “Where do we ride, then?” he inquired. “I see that we skirt the road, and that we bear east . . .”

  Mrs. Wallis now turned again and fixed on him a penetrating stare which made him squirm within, though he met her eyes steadily enough. He could not seem to keep hold of all the questions he had meant to ask, but at least he should persist in asking this one.

  “Your scheme was to deliver Miss Sophia into your sister’s hands,” said Mrs. Wallis, “and yourself ride hard for the nearest seaport, for some urgent purpose of your own.” By her expression, she saw Gray’s astonishment at her knowledge of intentions he had not revealed even to Sophie. “You have some good reason for this, I am sure?”

  “I—”

  “You could not have persuaded her to remain behind, Mr. Marshall—not without violence—and young Joanna still less. Were I you”—here Mrs. Wallis smiled thinly—“I should not mention to either of them that ever you entertained such a thought.”

  “Mrs. Wallis—”

  At last she seemed to remember his question: “We ride for the port of Douarnenez.”
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  “Douarnenez!” For a moment Gray’s dismay overcame his discretion. At Mrs. Wallis’s raised eyebrows, he lowered his voice: “Is it not . . . ill-advised . . . to take ship so close to home? Shall we not be followed?”

  “I am sure we shall eventually be followed, Mr. Marshall, wherever we may choose to go.” She turned away again. “In Douarnenez there are friends who will conceal the evidence of our passage. Elsewhere we may not be so fortunate.”

  Gray nodded slowly, beginning to see the outline of her plan.

  He slowed his tall bay gelding, meaning to let the others overtake him and resume his rearguard post, and glanced back along the path to reassure himself that their party remained intact. Some dozen yards behind and below him, Joanna sat her pony with stolid determination, her gaze fixed on the way ahead. Catching Gray’s eye, she smiled grimly. Gray returned her look, wondering idly whether a lady’s sidesaddle was as uncomfortable as the ordinary sort; then he raised his eyes to look behind her.

  Sophie swayed with her mare’s gentle gait and closed her eyes; and then, appallingly slowly, she toppled forward and down, headfirst over the mare’s off shoulder, to fall to the ground in a crumpled heap.

  “Sophie!” Horrified, Gray wrenched his mount around and kicked it into a canter, covering the fifty yards between himself and Sophie in a moment. He dismounted in a slithering rush and knelt beside her, scarcely aware of anyone or anything else.

  Close to, fumbling with Sophie’s bonnet-strings, he could see the marks of utter exhaustion on her face. He bent his face to hers; feeling against his cheek the phantom touch of her breath, he exhaled on a long sigh of relief, discovering only now that he had been holding his breath in fear. Little wonder that after yesterday’s ordeal, their nuit blanche, and today’s long ride, she was at the end of her strength. They were all of them fatigued, but the rest had not borne the burden of a recent brush with magick shock.

  Carefully—little as he knew of healing, he had better have left this task to Mrs. Wallis, but he felt that it was his—Gray felt along Sophie’s hands and arms for any sign of injury. Finding none, he turned his attention to her head, dreading to find that it had struck a stone in her fall, and was relieved to see no evidence of harm. He murmured thanks to the horse goddess Epona that Sophie had avoided tangling her foot in the stirrup and her skirts in the pommels of her saddle, shuddering as he imagined her dragged limp behind a bolting horse.

  “Sophie,” he said again, chafing her icy hands. “Sophie, come back to me.”

  He remembered, suddenly, the time eight years ago when, during one of the family’s rare visits to London, his sister Cecelia had nearly died of a fever. Their frantic mother had sent Gray, Jenny, and their brother George to temple after temple with offerings of wine, candles, and coin—and Gray himself had felt as frightened and almost as helpless as he felt now.

  “She must have let her foot slip out of the stirrup,” said Joanna, startlingly close behind him. “She will do it. She is a dreadful horsewoman.”

  It reassured him to hear Joanna thus disparaging her sister, despite the trembling voice in which she did so.

  At last Sophie’s eyelids fluttered; the hands Gray held gripped his fingers in return. “Petra . . . ?” she murmured, blinking drowsily, as though she merely woke from a deep sleep. “Pelec’h emaon?”

  Despite his summer’s haphazard tutelage in the language, it took a moment for Gray to parse the Breton for What? and Where am I?

  He and Joanna helped Sophie to sit up. Mrs. Wallis had by now taken charge of all the horses; she passed four sets of reins to Joanna and knelt at Sophie’s side, producing from some pocket a copper flask. “Drink,” she urged. Sophie did so and gave a choking gasp.

  “Aquavit,” Mrs. Wallis explained to the others. “Now, then, Miss Sophia: Can you ride? We had best not linger here.”

  Sophie looked bemused. “I . . . I am not sure,” she said, reverting to English. “I do feel tired. So sleepy. I should be afraid of falling off again . . .”

  “You can ride with me,” said Gray at once, “and we shall put your mare on a leading rein.”

  The others looked doubtful, Sophie most of all. “Or,” he added, “perhaps Mrs. Wallis has brought some rope.”

  Sophie only seemed more bewildered, but Joanna had heard him aright: “He means, you shall ride with him or he will tie you into your saddle,” she translated in a reverent whisper.

  “I shall try,” Sophie said, looking up rather doubtfully at Gray’s leggy gelding. “If you think I ought.”

  * * *

  Most of Gray’s many questions remained unanswered—even unasked—and his every conversation with Mrs. Wallis seemed to raise more puzzles than it solved. He thought he might trust her to act in the best interest of Sophie and Joanna, as she saw it; so far their paths converged. But who was Mrs. Wallis, and what other schemes might she have afoot?

  For the moment, he was forced to concentrate on the task—much less easy than he had first supposed—of directing his mount while preventing Sophie, now slumbering more or less in his arms, from taking another tumble. She had already slept several hours, and Gray was relieved to see a more natural colour creeping back into her cheeks; he had never known anyone to die of magick shock, but neither was it usual to possess so much magick unawares. For all her study of grimoires and spells, Sophie had very little idea what she might be capable of—or how to bend her talent to useful pursuits. He had promised to teach her, it was true, but he would have been happy to see her in more able hands.

  Perhaps Master Alcuin might teach her. He has not the prejudices of so many of the others—and Sophie would like him, I think.

  An earlier conference with Mrs. Wallis had determined—or had she simply decreed?—that they must halt before nightfall at whatever inn or wayhouse offered, though they would not yet have reached Douarnenez—Sophie’s accident having delayed them some considerable time.

  “We shall need a disguise,” said Joanna, startling Gray from his reverie.

  “A disguise?” Again that hint of amusement in Mrs. Wallis’s tone. “What manner of disguise had you in mind?”

  “Well, something,” Joanna retorted. “False names, at any rate. We are far too close to home to risk announcing ourselves at an inn as ourselves.”

  “Joanna is quite right,” said Gray, who had given up any pretence of addressing either Sophie or Joanna as etiquette demanded. “Our plan—Sophie’s and mine—was to travel as brother and sister. Could we not . . .”

  “That is not such a very bad plan, after all,” Joanna said. “We both can be your sisters, Mr. Marshall, and Mrs. Wallis can be . . .”

  “Your widowed aunt,” said Mrs. Wallis promptly, confirming Gray’s suspicion that Joanna was not the first of their party to consider the question of disguise. “We have been on a tour of Breizh; we have been called home urgently and must take ship for England as soon as may be. You and I, Joanna, as well as your sister, have been travelling here some time and learnt something of the country—but not the language,” she added severely. “Your brother is but lately come from our home in England, to fetch us there.”

  “I see,” said Joanna. Her grey eyes gleamed. “That way we need not explain why Mr. Marshall knows the country so little. But—” Her face took on a worried cast. “What if we should be asked questions about our home? Sophie and I know nothing at all of England, Mrs. Wallis. And no more do you.”

  Mrs. Wallis turned to her with a maddening smile: “That’s as may be, Miss Joanna.”

  * * *

  “Trevelyan,” Gray said absently, his mind running by instinct to the names of his childhood acquaintance. “Chickering. Howell. Sophie, should you not like to stop a while and rest?”

  Sophie shook her head and produced an expression that must have been meant for a smile.

  “But Father knows you come from Kernow,” Joanna objected, from the b
ack of her piebald pony. “We should be found out in no time.”

  Gray doubted this, but one never knew. “Hughes, then,” he said. “Morgan. Richards. Dunstan—”

  “Dunstan,” Joanna repeated. “What sort of name is that?”

  “Saxon as ever was,” said Mrs. Wallis. “Dunstan will do very well for the three of you, I think. And Richards for me. You may call me Aunt . . .” She thought a moment. “Aunt Ida.”

  Again they looked to Sophie for some comment, but she appeared to have none to contribute. On waking she had resumed her former seat, and Gray found, to his surprise, that he rather missed her presence. Though less pale than before, and better controlled, she yet looked tired and drained, and her air of not much caring what befell her alarmed him.

  “I shall be Harriet,” said Joanna, “after all those kings, and, Sophie, you could be . . . what about Elinor? That’s a pretty name.”

  Sophie shrugged.

  “And you ought to be Edward, Mr. Marshall,” Joanna went on, “after the Crown Prince, and all those other kings.”

  “On one condition,” said Gray, managing a half smile in response to her enthusiasm. “You must stop calling me ‘Mr. Marshall.’”

  “Why, I shall call you ‘Ned,’ of course, dear brother,” said Joanna primly.

  She would, Gray suspected, have expanded indefinitely on the fictitious Dunstans, had anyone given her the least encouragement. None being forthcoming, however, she soon subsided into a thoughtful silence, and the four of them rode on, hardly speaking but for the others’ inquiries after Sophie’s health, until at length they reined in their mounts before a half-timbered wayhouse, well covered in ivy, along the coastal road.

  CHAPTER X

  In Which the Travellers Seek Shelter, and Joanna Enjoys Herself

  Suspicious as he was of Mrs. Wallis’s motivations, and irritating as he found her evasions, Gray continually had cause to be grateful for her participation in this venture.