“I can think of no reason why not,” Gray said. “But it would not be easy. There is so much more than the face to be considered—form, and height, and voice, and gestures . . .”
“I shall begin with Joanna, then,” Sophie declared, “and you shall judge how well I succeed.”
But perhaps, again, her approach to the task was flawed, for by the time Joanna herself came to summon them to dinner they were weary of the exercise, and—apart from a pounding headache—Sophie had nothing to show for her efforts.
Perhaps, she thought, I shall try again after everyone is abed. It will be more restful than sleeping.
* * *
To arrive at an inn at twilight, and remain shut up, unseen, until one’s departure the following morning, is to invite all manner of speculation among one’s fellow guests. In the course of their journey, therefore, the travellers had made a habit of taking either dinner or breakfast in the common dining-room, and sometimes of appearing, severally or together, in the common room in the evening. At the Seven Sisters at Crookham near Newbury, Mrs. Wallis retired to her room after dinner, pleading exhaustion, while Joanna wandered off for a look at a very fine black saddle-horse rumoured to be stabled below. It was Gray and Sophie, therefore, who reemerged from their rooms at twilight, to prove themselves unremarkable travellers and to gather what news they could from their fellow guests.
Pausing before the door of the inn’s common room, Gray looked down once more at his companion’s dark eyes, sparkling in the face framed by her glossy chestnut hair; he felt as proud of her as though she had truly been the young sister whom he was escorting home. She must have taken pains, both physical and magickal, with her appearance; Elinor Dunstan bid fair to be the loveliest young woman most of those within had seen in some time.
This thought led to another, far less welcome.
“You look very lovely,” he told Sophie, quietly. “But would it not be best to draw as little attention as possible?”
Blushing, she dropped her gaze, and Gray instantly regretted having spoilt her innocent pleasure in her appearance. “Of course,” she said. “I apologise; I had not thought. Perhaps if I looked more like . . .”
She bent her head a little and closed her eyes. As he straightened, still watching her, Gray became conscious of an odd sensation, a mental stirring that he could not quite identify. Just as he began to grasp what it was, and to be astounded by it, she raised her head so that he could see her face.
Or, rather, the face that she now wore.
It was Jenny’s.
Gray’s stomach lurched. “Stop that!” he exclaimed, turning away from her.
“Gr— Ned?” Sophie said. “What is it? What have I done?”
“I . . .” Feeling ill, Gray groped frantically after some rational explanation for his reaction; he could hardly say to Sophie, and still less to Elinor Dunstan, I wanted very much to kiss you just now, until you looked at me with my sister’s face. “I am sorry if I frightened you. I have not seen you imitate so perfectly before—you were the very spit of Jenny—it was . . . it was a shock.”
All of which was true, in its way—Sophie had met Jenny only once; how in Hades had she produced so accurate a copy?—though not at all the whole truth; he hoped it would be sufficient excuse for his behaviour.
“I ask your pardon,” said Sophie. Gray turned back to her; she looked up at him—now very much herself again—and he breathed a prayer of thanks. “I only thought . . . I thought we should be less conspicuous if we looked more alike.”
“And you were right, I am sure.” He smiled down at her as reassuringly—and fraternally—as he could manage. “I do apologise for frightening you. You will do very well now, I think.”
Sophie’s expression was doubtful, but she squared her shoulders and slipped her hand through the crook of his arm, an innocent, sisterly gesture. Now dreadfully conscious of her touch, Gray hoped, absurdly, that she would ascribe his trembling to anxiety over the task at hand.
“Shall we go, then?” he asked.
* * *
In the common room of the Seven Sisters, two young ladies whispered together on a velveteen settee, under the watchful eye of an elderly matron; some half-dozen gentlemen of widely differing ages and varied appearance sat or stood about the room, some engaged in conversation, another reading a news-sheet, a pair idly playing at draughts.
On hearing the door close behind Sophie and Gray, all fell silent, the better to scrutinise the newcomers.
Sophie’s face grew warm under the gaze of so many strangers. She clung to Gray’s arm—the more because she could not understand what had passed between them, only that she had tried to produce some family resemblance, and perhaps succeeded too well—and needed no artifice to appear young and diffident. His smile of encouragement failed to reach his eyes.
Despite the season, the evening was chilly, and a fire had been lit; they crossed the room to sit by it, where they might be best placed to overhear any useful fragments of conversation. Gray’s arm trembled a little beneath Sophie’s hand.
Then, as had happened once or twice before, the eyes turned away, the strangers’ gaze slipping over Sophie and Gray as though they were—if not invisible—so unremarkable as not to be worth looking at. Gray’s quick, appraising glance confirmed that her devout wish not to be noticed had made it so.
He found her a seat near the hearth and took up a station facing her, one elbow on the high mantel-shelf, his back to the crackling fire. Sophie gazed pensively into the flames, trying to look as though she were not paying the least attention to anything else.
For some time she heard nothing of any interest; weary and drowsy, she had half slipped into the embrace of Morpheus when a few unguarded words made her ears prick up.
“What news from Town, Tregear?” The speaker had a deep voice and spoke in an oddly accented English. “One hears the most confounded odd rumours . . .”
“Softly, Dallyell!” Tregear’s accent echoed Gray’s, Kernow overlaid with Oxford, and his voice was strained and anxious. “The rumours come nearer the truth than their authors know. The old man grows quite mad; for sixteen years he’s sought that Breton harlot and her child, and ’tis worse now than ever, as though those three bonny Princes were no more than dogs or horses.” His voice dropped to a murmur: “I wonder that the Queen can bear the insult to her sons.”
Sophie’s hands clenched in her lap. It is my father and mother he speaks of. My father mad, and my mother a harlot. If she willed it strongly enough, might she simply disappear?
“And the tales of . . . unhealthy magicks?” Dallyell persisted. “Of calling on strange gods?”
“I wish ’twere in my power to deny it.”
Dallyell gave a low whistle; when he spoke again, his voice was scarcely above a whisper. “Hades and Proserpina keep such tales from the ambassadors at Court . . .”
“From your lips to the gods’ ears,” Tregear murmured.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie saw the two men clasp hands and move away to refill their glasses. For some time she went on listening, picking out bits and pieces of the conversations taking place around her, but—unless it were of value to know that the barque Julia Augusta had survived an attack by pirates off the Iberian coast, or that the Duchess of Norfolk had started a fashion for sea-green velvet—to no further purpose.
Was this Britain’s vision of her King—mad, deluded, obsessed?
And if it was also Lord Carteret’s view, what might he intend?
Sophie looked up, and her eyes met Gray’s; his face had paled under its sunburnt brown. “I feel a little unwell, Ned,” she said, as clearly as she could manage. “I should like to return to my room, I think.”
“Of course, Elinor dear,” said Gray, offering his arm again as she rose from her seat.
PART TWO
Oxford
CHAPTER XIV
>
In Which Oxford Is Not Quite as Sophie Expects
Rain fell steadily as September wandered into October and the four travellers wandered into the town of Oxford.
Since first discovering the existence of such a place—a city of temples and libraries, a city whose very purpose was to support the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom—Sophie had yearned to see it. Expecting that after another unquiet night, she would nod off during the journey, she had made Gray promise to wake her when the town came into view. From engravings and sketches seen at Callender Hall she recognised at a distance the great temples of Minerva and Apollo, the Great Library, the towers and gates of the outermost Colleges: King’s, Marlowe, Bairstow. As they skirted the town, bound northward to a wayhouse on the Cherwell, Gray pointed out the newly built Museum of the History of Magick and the roof of the Infirmary. Certainly the place did not appear to best advantage under the burden of the day’s steady drizzle, but Sophie was captivated.
They had nearly reached their destination when she spotted the small dome, the green of aged copper, at the centre of a group of derelict buildings—windows empty and dark, ivied walls half overgrown with weeds—on the far bank of the Cherwell. For no reason she could discern, the scene was oddly familiar. “What place is that?” she inquired, pointing.
“Those are the buildings of Lady Morgan College,” Gray said, with a thoughtful glance back at her. “Not used these past two hundred years perhaps. The green dome is a shrine to Minerva as Sophia, personification of wisdom.”
Lady Morgan College. Sophie remembered reading of this place in one of her mother’s books: a college for women, founded by a Cymric noblewoman in an earlier age; once a great centre of learning, the equal, if not of Merlin, certainly of many of the newer colleges. Abandoned, now, since the time of the Princesses Regent. This Sophie had never understood: Princess Edith Augusta—her own namesake, as she now knew—was said to have been a woman of great erudition, and to have possessed powerful magick; she herself had studied at Lady Morgan College, and yet it was in her time that the University had once again become the domain of men alone.
As those desolate, forsaken buildings—once a living, breathing community dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom and protected by the goddess Minerva, now an empty stone shell half reclaimed by the dedicates of Gaia and Hegemone—disappeared around a bend in the road, Sophie was gripped by a sudden, overwhelming sorrow. “I wish,” she said, in a voice half choked with tears, “I wish that I could bring it back to life.”
“Perhaps you could,” said Joanna, “if you were to become a princess again.”
The wave of loss and foreboding ebbed a little; Sophie swallowed and pulled a wry face at her sister. “You overestimate my influence, I think.”
“But if you cannot do it, Sophie,” Gray said, “then I can scarcely imagine who could.”
* * *
Leda and the Swan was, as its garish and rather suggestive signboard intimated, not in the habit of receiving respectable ladies. While Mrs. Wallis contrived, as always, to appear perfectly at ease, Sophie and Joanna looked about them with barely concealed apprehension, and Gray squirmed under the innkeeper’s knowing gaze. He knew very well what the fellow must think, and could not help feeling that a more capable man would not suffer such impertinence—nor would a more sensible one have brought three gentlewomen here to begin with. But if they were to avoid meeting any of Gray’s acquaintance—and all had agreed that this was vital—they had no good alternative.
Though the innkeeper at first was prone to delighted leering, a stern look and a few quiet words from Mrs. Wallis produced in him a remarkable civility and (she assured the others) perfect discretion. The business of negotiating for their rooms was mercifully brief, and they were soon safely ensconced in the chamber—cramped, unpleasantly furnished, but passably clean—that would be the ladies’ abode while they remained in Oxford, discussing strategy while Mrs. Wallis unpacked their things.
“The first order of business,” said Gray when he had warded the room, “is to explain matters to Master Alcuin, and seek his help. Sophie and I shall go—incognito, of course. Then—”
“How,” Joanna objected, “can Sophie possibly go into Merlin College incognito? You have got that charm of Aunt Ida’s, I know, but no matter how clever Sophie may be at not being noticed, she is a girl . . .”
Gray looked at Sophie, who returned his gaze with a pleased half smile.
“You have not told Joanna of your newest discovery, then?” he inquired. Joanna glowered, ill pleased at being left out of a secret.
“I did mean to show you, Jo,” Sophie said. “Watch, now, and you shall see.” She closed her eyes and bent her head.
Though he had observed variations of this process so many times by now, Gray remained fascinated. Sophie’s face was hidden, but he could see her hair blur and shift, her slender neck change shape. Hairpins clattered to the floor as long, dark locks grew lighter and shorter; head and neck shifted in curve and heft, and when at last Sophie raised her face again to look at the other three, it was with the wide blue eyes, straight brows, strong cheekbones, and tow-coloured curls of a young man. Perhaps rather a pretty man; Sophie’s prior experience with young men was not extensive.
The effect was jarring, and Gray looked away for a moment, enjoying Joanna’s gobsmacked expression instead.
“Ladies,” he said, “allow me to introduce my friend . . . shall we call him Arthur?”
The name had come to him unbidden; an echo of the lost Gautier, perhaps.
Sophie laughed and let the magick go, shaking out of her eyes her own long, chestnut-coloured hair. Gray had a sudden, mad urge to run his fingers through those glossy waves; he stifled it by reciting to himself, in Old Cymric, the first five Descents of the Greater Mabinogion.
“We shall go into the College,” he continued, when he had recovered his equilibrium, “and to Master Alcuin’s rooms, and explain to him what we are about. Lord Halifax—the Master of Merlin, that is—could scarcely do otherwise than have me clapped in irons if I approached him as myself, and is unlikely to agree to see us even as strangers, but Master Alcuin will be able to gain us an audience.”
“But he wrote you word of his being watched.” Mrs. Wallis had not appeared to be listening, but Gray knew her ways too well by now to have been misled.
“Yes,” said Joanna, “Gray did say that. Will you not be seen, both going and returning?” she demanded, looking from Sophie to Gray and back again. “What if you are recognised—will the Proctors not lock you up, for what happened to your friend?”
Only a few weeks ago such an objection might have reduced Gray to stammering counterarguments—but no longer. “We shall not be there as ourselves,” he pointed out, “and we shall have Sophie’s magick. And, once we have warned him of the danger that threatens him, our own danger will be at an end.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sophie nodding agreement as she finished pinning up her hair. But Joanna had not yet done. “And if this Lord Halifax refuses to believe your tale?”
“We shall cross that bridge when we come to it, Joanna,” Sophie replied severely. “If we come to it.”
* * *
“Be careful, Sophie,” said Joanna, anxious. Then, turning to Gray, she tilted her head back to glare up at him and went on, sternly, “If anything should happen to my sister, I shall make you very sorry.”
Sophie shifted restlessly from foot to foot, feeling out-of-sorts and awkward in the trousers, shirt, and coat which Mrs. Wallis had paid an uninquisitive seamstress in Market-street to make for her as Samhain-night masquerade wear. Keeping her boy’s face on, and her voice in a range suited to a youth of her own age, required considerable mental effort—she had not known how much, for such things had never much mattered before—and she was increasingly nervous about the whole scheme. And Gray had given her a most peculiar look, on first beholding her in her mu
mmer’s garb, which had not helped matters at all.
“I shall be perfectly all right, Jo,” she said, rather more impatiently than she had intended. “Gray knows what he is about, you know, and I shall have nothing to do but look like this and . . . and talk a little with Master Alcuin.” She turned to Gray. “Have you the—”
Forestalling her, he shot back the cuff of his coat so that she could see her mother’s obsidian charm on its black silk cord about his wrist. “I shall be as inconspicuous as anyone could wish,” he said. Had Sophie known him less well, she might have missed the undertone of worry in his voice. Possibly he regretted having yielded to her insistence on accompanying him. So be it; not for any consideration would she allow him to run such a risk alone.
They followed the Cherwell down to the unassuming wooden bridge that, on the opposite bank, joined their path to the South Road into the town. At first Gray strode along in silence, apparently lost in thought, and Sophie was forced into a half trot to keep pace with him; after a time, however, he slowed his pace to ease her way. There was nothing much to discuss, Sophie supposed, their plan having been thoroughly hashed out already, but the silence unnerved her, and at last, half unconsciously, she began to sing.
She stopped when, on turning southward, into the Mansfield road, they first began to encounter other foot traffic. She had not supposed Gray to be listening to her half-whispered song, but when it ceased, he turned back to her, looking surprisingly cheerful, and said, “I thank you—that was a clever thought, to sing a cheery walking song!”
Sophie considered asking him what in the world he meant—she had in fact been singing a Brezhoneg lullaby under her breath—but thought better of it. “Are we nearly there?” she inquired instead. She had not enjoyed the walk; her trousers chafed the skin of her legs, the starched collar cut into her neck, the coat was too warm, and the new boots pinched her feet most unpleasantly.
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