The Midnight Queen

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  One thing, however, could still draw out the quick and vivid Sophie of their nights in the Professor’s library.

  “Will you teach me that?” she asked Gray eagerly one evening, when—lethargic after a long day’s journey, and disinclined to rise from his chair—he summoned the cup of tea Mrs. Wallis had just poured out for him and balanced it on his knee.

  Weary though he was, Gray could not help smiling at her enthusiasm. This lesson, too, began with a series of failures, but by the time Mrs. Wallis ordered the girls to bed, Sophie was in high spirits, having succeeded in summoning both Joanna’s gloves and her own huswife and thimble from Gray’s hand across the tea-table to her own.

  Such rapid successes inspired Gray to tease her, gently, about their roles’ being very soon reversed. He had remarked before that though her prior education had been so haphazard and eclectic, she asked perceptive questions, and her thirst for knowledge easily matched his own; it had wanted only this last shared endeavour to cast him back, for those hours, to his happiest days at Merlin.

  In Kervren he at last gave in to her persuasion and demonstrated a shape-shift, allowing her to disentangle his wings, feet, and tail from the shirt and trousers that collapsed around his owl body, and to perform the useful offices of tossing him out of the window and letting him in again. She was more enthralled by the reality of this magick even than by the idea of it, and he was sure that, could he have read her thoughts, he should have seen in them a burning determination to master it herself. That she could do so he had no doubt; but surely, he told himself, she needs a teacher more skilled and experienced than I.

  The closer they came to reaching England, still unimpeded and apparently unpursued, the more Gray feared that some dire setback awaited them, some ambush of the Fates.

  * * *

  When they reached Rosko, whence they would take ship for Portsmouth, Gray made a decision. For some time he had been struggling with conflicting impulses. On the one hand, each passing day made it the more urgent to decipher the documents he had copied from Lord Carteret’s dispatch-case, and clearly the sensible approach was to make use of every resource available to him; Mrs. Wallis was one such. On the other hand, he neither understood nor entirely trusted her motivations. It had become plain, however, that the problem was not to be solved by his own unaided efforts, and so on the evening of their arrival in Rosko he closed the door firmly on his doubts and brought out his ciphered messages—now sadly the worse for their journey—to show to his companions.

  “Mrs. Wallis,” he said, “what do you make of this?”

  Sophie gave the grubby papers a heavy-lidded glance and returned to drowsing before the fire. Joanna, however, jumped up from her chair, and Mrs. Wallis looked sharply up from the letters to Gray’s face and demanded, “What are they, and how came you by them?”

  “I have not the least idea what they are,” said Gray, “but the originals belonged to Professor Callender and Lord Carteret; I copied them in the hope that they might prove useful.”

  Joanna vented an admiring Ooh! which drew Mrs. Wallis’s frown in her direction—but only for a moment.

  “And it seemed advisable to you to violate Professor Callender’s hospitality by rifling the possessions of a fellow guest?” Mrs. Wallis asked Gray.

  Wrong-footed by the conversational tone in which she delivered this accusation, Gray spoke without thought: “What hospitality? The Professor never welcomed me to his house; it was Sophie who did that. And,” he added, as three pairs of eyes turned towards him in astonishment, “I suspected him of plotting murder, which I think must be some excuse, if my actions required one.”

  Sophie’s dark eyes were round as soup-plates. “Why did you stay?” she asked him. “If he did not welcome you, you must have known that he meant you ill.”

  Gray gave her a sort of half shrug. “I thought he merely wished to treat me as a servant,” he explained—which had been true enough, to begin with. Her troubled expression did not fade, but she said nothing more.

  Joanna had stationed herself just behind Gray’s chair, the better to peer over his shoulder. “That looks like Greek,” she said now, tapping one finger on the extract copied from Lord Carteret’s diary.

  “It is not Greek,” said Gray, and began to explain his theory, but Joanna’s attention had already passed on to the other document.

  “Does that come from a book?” she demanded after a moment. “Lightly the gods’ gifts?”

  Gray looked up sharply. “It echoes a book,” he said. “The Sapientia Delphi. ‘The gods’ gifts are lightly given, and as lightly reclaimed.’ This, below the gap, is copied from another document, which had no such notation. If I am not mistaken, it uses a codex cipher—”

  “Of course!” Joanna said.

  “A codex cipher?” From her seat before the hearth, Sophie looked up again with a flicker of interest.

  “A cipher that relies on a codex that both parties own,” said Gray. “The figures will be in pairs—the first is the folio, the second the word itself.”

  “It is an excellent code,” Joanna added, “because no one can break it who does not know which book to use.”

  “But you believe he has given us the book,” said Mrs. Wallis, in a sceptical tone. “Why—”

  “This notation,” said Gray, pointing, “was on the message I found in the Professor’s study, written in his hand—an aide-mémoire, I expect. Of course he did not mean anyone else to see it. Had I been able to find a copy of the Sapientia Delphi—”

  “But the Professor has got a copy,” said Sophie. She had curled herself tight in her chair, her arms wrapped round her drawn-up knees. “It was in the library until he came home for the Long Vacation, and then it disappeared. Things often do, you know,” she added, defensively. “He takes them into his study, and they do not find their way back until he has gone away again. I should not have remarked it at all, if it had not been one of those I was reading at the time.”

  “It was not in his study,” said Gray, and steadfastly ignored Joanna’s narrow-eyed stare. “Nor in his bedroom. Was he carrying it about with him? In any case, finding another copy must be our first order of business, when we come to Oxford.”

  Mrs. Wallis nodded grimly.

  * * *

  On a brilliantly sunny morning, at sea between Rosko and Portsmouth, the travellers perched on water-casks and coils of rope in the prow of their ship, which ran before a fresh breeze that whipped the ladies’ skirts and shawl-ends about their bodies and threatened to carry slender Sophie off entirely. The ship was neither more nor less than a Flemish smuggler’s craft, rigged fore and aft like a fishing yawl, and its crew ignored their passengers as studiously as they ignored its cargo. The rough deck under their feet rolled with the motion of the sea.

  They had spent the voyage discussing, in low voices and from every possible angle, the sum of their knowledge of the crime they sought to prevent. It was little enough: the Professor’s mysterious errand and the strange behaviour of Henry Taylor; the snatches of conversation Gray had overheard in the Professor’s rooms at Merlin; Lord Carteret’s inexplicable visit; the near-accident at Kerandraon, which all agreed had been intended for Gray; the testimony of Master Alcuin, that he had been watched and followed since receiving Gray’s first letter from Breizh, and of Sophie, that the Professor’s copy of the Sapientia Delphi had been removed from the library, which suggested—to Joanna’s inventive mind, at any rate—that he had been in the habit of exchanging ciphered letters with Lord Carteret and other co-conspirators unknown.

  “It is Lord Carteret’s involvement that disturbs me,” said Gray. “Professor Callender has no love for Lord Halifax, and College politics are meat and drink to him; but what can it possibly profit the President of His Majesty’s Council to involve himself in such an affair, when he must have so many more pressing matters to attend to?”

  “You said,” beg
an Sophie, her fine dark brows drawing together in troubled thought, “you said that Lord Carteret mentioned giving the Professor his choice of subjects to test his method. Surely . . . surely that can only mean that there is someone else they mean to attack?”

  Gray felt as though a truth he had long been suppressing had risen up to stare him in the face. “Someone more important to Lord Carteret,” he agreed.

  “Someone at Court, then?” said Joanna, sitting up straighter on her water-cask. “A political rival, perhaps!”

  “Perhaps,” said Mrs. Wallis pensively. “He must have many such, I suppose.”

  “But you have another hypothesis, I think,” said Gray.

  “Perhaps,” Mrs. Wallis repeated. Her fingers tightened on her reticule; she turned and gazed back over the waves towards Breizh.

  * * *

  As Gray was just beginning to make out the distant shore, Sophie abruptly turned round. “I have been thinking,” she said, in an oddly distant tone, “what would happen if we changed our minds.”

  “Changed our minds about what?” Joanna inquired.

  Gray’s stomach churned in a way that had nothing to do with the rolling of the deck.

  “About this.” Sophie waved one arm at the ship, the waves, the crying gulls. “No one knows where we are. We might go almost anywhere from Portsmouth—even to Eire, or Alba—”

  “Sophie, a man’s life is at stake,” said Gray. “Most probably more than one.”

  “I wish no one ill,” she said. “But my mother risked all to protect me, and the nearer we come to Court, the nearer I am to falling again into my father’s power. You have told us, ma’am, that Lord Carteret was among His Majesty’s closest advisors even before I was born. If he knew who I am, he would not take my part, or yours, or Joanna’s; and if he has allied himself with the Professor, then he is no friend to Gray. Suppose that we do succeed in thwarting their plans at Merlin; we shall have made a dangerous enemy. And if we do not succeed—”

  “We must succeed,” said Gray. He had Gautier’s death on his conscience already; he tried not even to consider the consequences of failure here.

  “But if we do not?” Sophie insisted. “We are known to Lord Carteret, and whether or not we succeed, whether or not he discovers who I am in truth, he will know us to be his enemies. All of us,” she repeated, with a meaning glance at Joanna. “And if they intend next to target some member of the King’s Court—”

  Then some other thought seemed to occur to her, and she broke off, scowling. She drew a deep breath and said, with the air of one facing a repellent and long-avoided task, “Mrs. Wallis, does the Professor know who it is he married?”

  Mrs. Wallis sighed. “She would tell him,” she said. “I could not prevent her.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  In Which Sophie and Gray Learn Something to the Purpose

  “How long has he known?” Sophie’s voice was flat, emotionless.

  Mrs. Wallis smiled thinly. “Fifteen years, more or less. She trusted him, at first, more than he deserved; by the time she understood his character, it was too late to undo what she had done. He used it against her more than once.” She glanced at Joanna—a moment, no more, but her look was troubled. “She came to fear that he would use it against you also. Has none of you wondered why I should have enough coin at the ready to bring us this far?”

  Gray darted his eyes at Joanna, then at Sophie. “You brought it with you,” the latter faltered. “You and Mama. When . . . when you ran away.”

  “Some of it,” Mrs. Wallis agreed. “Your mother, as it happens, did have the wit to conceal one important matter—the extent of the coin and the . . . saleable property with which we managed to escape. Only a small portion of it passed to your father”—she nodded at Joanna—“on their marriage; the rest we hid, or distributed for safekeeping to a few trusted friends. I was charged with retrieving it at need, for use in removing you both, should anything . . . untoward occur.”

  “Removing us, where?” Drawing herself up, Sophie glared down at her guardian with an expression that could only be described as imperious. “For how long, and to what end? For what could he do to us,” she added scornfully, “that he has not already done?”

  Mrs. Wallis’s face darkened. “You underestimate his capacity for malice,” she said. Looking at Sophie, then at Gray, she went on: “Together you are far more powerful than he, and either of you could best him in a battle of wits, fought fairly. But—”

  “It never would be fought fairly,” Joanna interrupted. “Father can scarcely manage not to cheat at chess, if he sees any possibility of losing; what might he do in a contest whose outcome truly mattered?”

  There was a grim silence.

  “We cannot let them succeed,” said Sophie at last, “whatever their aim. But”—she looked pleadingly at Mrs. Wallis—“you will not send me back to him? To the King? Mama would not have wished—”

  “We shall do what we must,” said Mrs. Wallis. The chill in her eyes sent a shiver down Gray’s spine.

  Sophie evidently read in those eyes the futility of her pleading. “My choice, then,” she said grimly, “is between Scylla and Charybdis. Between the father who would use me for political ends and the one who would use me for personal gain.”

  “Between one who has made your life a misery and one who may yet prove to wish you well,” Gray suggested.

  “Yours is a generous nature, indeed,” she retorted. “But perhaps it will not come to that.”

  * * *

  Portsmouth after the Equinox was the scene of much activity. To the usual hectic comings and goings of a busy commercial port—the fishing vessels offloading their catch, the merchant ships bringing Flemish cloth, Breton cider, wine from Bourgogne or tea from the Indies, or weighing anchor with cargoes of china clay or tin—was added the traffic of the season: gentlemen and ladies returning from their pleasure tours across the Manche, along with the first of those who had spent the summer on their country estates and would pass the winter in London. Ships of the Royal Fleet were putting in for repair, and the town was at once recovering from its Equinoctial celebrations and beginning to make ready for the great festival of Samhain.

  And at the sign of the Black Horse, in the Old Town, behind the strongest wards Gray could set, an energetic dispute was in progress. Though begun on fairly level terms, it was now a contest of three disputants against one, and quickly becoming a rout.

  “What proof have you that other Fellows of Merlin are not involved as well?” Mrs. Wallis folded her arms.

  “None whatever,” Gray said. “Indeed, I doubt not there are others. But there is one man at least of whose loyalties we may be absolutely certain. Have you any such acquaintance still in England, after sixteen years? Any who can be counted upon to put our interests above Lord Carteret’s?”

  Mrs. Wallis’s expression made clear that this shot had struck home. “Who is this trusted friend of yours, then?” she inquired. “Your former tutor, who has spent the summer months dodging the Professor’s spies?”

  “The same,” Gray said. “It will not be easy, but Master Alcuin will help us, if he can. And he is as likely to betray me as . . . as I am to betray Sophie.”

  “That ought to settle the matter,” said Joanna; Sophie looked at her crossly, but smiled at Gray.

  Mrs. Wallis nodded, her expression resigned.

  “I have been thinking,” said Gray, “that if they wish to test the effectiveness of their method, as we believe, then it must be one they are not altogether sure of. Not a knife to the heart, or a sword-thrust; not hemlock in the Master’s wine. Lord Carteret was very clear that the Professor must be careful to let no one connect him to the death. If their aim is to avoid the appearance of foul play—”

  “Then an ‘accident’ is most likely,” Joanna interrupted him. “A fall from a horse, or a fall down the stairs, or . . .”

&n
bsp; “Or some more obscure poison,” said Mrs. Wallis.

  “Obscure poison.” Struck by a thought, Gray leapt up and begun to rummage through the trunk that held his books.

  A quarter-hour later, he gave up the search; like the elusive magia musicæ, the object of his quest was not to be found in any of the texts he had brought with him. But Master Alcuin would know, if anyone did.

  * * *

  “May I show you something?” Sophie asked, suddenly shy.

  Gray smiled up at her. “Of course,” he said. He put down the book he had been reading, marking his place with a strip of linen, and sat back in his chair to give Sophie his full attention.

  She drew a deep breath and shut her eyes; it seemed to work better this way, though she had given up drawing on the magick directly. Instead, she called up in her mind an image of herself, of a Sophie whose hair was fair and straight, whose eyes were blue, whose small, straight nose was sprinkled with freckles beneath a high, smooth brow. When she opened her eyes again, Gray’s awestruck expression told her more clearly than any words that the transformation had been perfectly done, but she could not resist crossing the room to examine her reflection in the glass.

  Gazing intently into the blue eyes that were and were not her own, she heard soft footfalls approach, and after a moment Gray’s hands descended to envelop her shoulders. “Extraordinary,” he said. “If I knew your character less well, Your Royal Highness, I think I should be quite frightened of you.”

  Sophie pulled away from his hands, irritated at this reminder of her larger predicament, and went to the window, letting the mental image go.

  “I am sorry,” Gray said. “I spoke thoughtlessly.”

  When, reluctantly, she turned back to face him, he began again: “Tell me, was that a face you’ve practised, or was it improvised for the occasion?”

  “I did practise a little,” she admitted. “I should like—I ought to be able to . . . to masquerade as someone else, if I try, do you not think? Someone in particular, I mean. That might be useful.”