* * *
The royal family having been announced, it occurred to Sophie that no one else had been. “No names, and no faces, and no welcome-oaths,” she murmured, incredulous. “It is an assassin’s dream.”
“Indeed.” Master Alcuin appeared to have heard her self-directed remark. “It has long been the custom for Samhain, but you will find that when a monarch believes himself less than universally beloved, he will always discover some reason that the custom ought not to apply this year . . .”
Sophie sank her voice still further to reply, “Would that His Majesty had been more perceptive.”
Then Gray, whose arm she held in what she hoped was a maiden-cousinly manner, moved another way, pulling her with him. Master Alcuin too moved slowly off, nodding affably at everyone he passed, till he was lost to her sight.
The royal hosts having at last made their appearance, the festivities could now begin in earnest. Very soon the great doors opened, with ponderous slowness, and the King and Queen led their guests into the Palace ballroom. They took their places at the top of the room; hundreds of other couples arranged themselves below, and a great consort of musicians—half a hundred at the least, thought Sophie, awed—struck into the evening’s first contredanse.
Sophie and Gray took up a station suited to observe their fellow guests and, standing a little apart, turned once more to the search for those conspirators whom they might reasonably hope to recognise—the Professor, of course, as well as Lord Carteret and Lord Merton.
Sophie cast many a wistful glance at the long lines of dancers. She had never before attended so much as a neighbourhood ball in Breizh; Amelia and Joanna, having both learnt at school, had taught her dances enough, but except when some evening party of Amelia’s ended in an impromptu dance, she had never seen them properly performed—and even then she had been always pressed into service to supply the music.
You are not here to dance with handsome young men, you silly girl, she admonished herself, scanning the dances, and the surrounding mêlée, for any sign of their quarry. But perhaps she did not do it so well as she had meant—perhaps she allowed her body too much sympathy with the rhythm of the music, or her face too much admiration for the dancers’ graceful movements—for after some moments Gray’s hand fell softly on her shoulder, and she lifted her face to hear him say, “Petite cousine, you will perhaps do me the honour of dancing the first two dances with me?”
Sophie regarded her husband in some consternation. “But . . .”
Stooping down to murmur in her ear, he answered her objection before she could articulate it: “We should be just as well placed to observe from within the dance as from outside it; should we not?”
“That is true,” she said.
“And you are most eager to dance,” he went on, more loudly, holding out his hand, “are you not, little cousin? We do not often see such grand assemblies at home . . .”
Smiling, Sophie took the offered hand. “I thank you, ma c’henderv,” she said—though it cost her some effort, when he looked at her as he was doing now, to continue the pretence that they were no more to one another than cousins, attending the ball with a family party.
Then they were joining the end of the nearest dance, and all her energy went into observing its steps, until at length she was mistress enough of them to return her attention to the hunt.
* * *
Gray quickly decided that he had made rather a dreadful error in judgement.
Though Sophie appeared to have no difficulty in learning—remembering?—the steps of the dance they had joined, moving through the figures more effortlessly and gracefully even than the fine ladies around her, he himself, possessing not much more experience and rather less natural grace, was not in such good stead. He had as yet made no misstep sufficient to impede the progress of the dance, but if he had ever danced these figures before, it was too long ago to remember, and following them left him no attention to spare for more vital matters.
Yet just as he was cursing himself for a fool and considering on what pretext he could extricate himself and Sophie from this predicament, his gaze happened to fall on her face, and through the glittering velvet masque her dark eyes glowed at him in silent thanks. Their hands met across the gap between them; they turned about, separated, bowed; and when Gray returned to his place, his eyes still on Sophie, it occurred to him that he had done all this entirely without thinking. Perhaps this was not such a terrible mistake at all, he thought, raising his eyes to look about him.
It was not surprising, perhaps, that none of the men he sought should be found among the dancers. Still, others enough—observers, hangers-on, the occasional gentleman casting a jealous eye on some dancing lady—were there to be scrutinised for any resemblance or connexion to the three he sought, to make him feel this time not entirely wasted. And, after all, the King could not be poisoned while actually dancing.
The first dance was finished, and he and Sophie had gone halfway down the second, when a couple standing up in the next set over—that led by the King and Queen—caught Gray’s eye.
Both seemed younger, and rather smaller, than the rest of the assembly. Though the golden-haired boy had now donned a masque—adorned beyond anything Gray had yet seen—still he was recognisable as one of the Princes; it could not be young Henry, certainly, but whether Edward or Roland was more difficult to guess. It was not he but his partner who had triggered that little shock of recognition, but again Gray could not quite think where he might have seen her before.
Then—bowing to the lady at Sophie’s left, then the one at her right—he saw the mysterious young lady execute a haphazard sort of curtsey with which he was most assuredly familiar. He stared hard at her as he and Sophie turned about once again, observing her manner of walking, the colour of her hair, the expression of that small part of her face which he could see, and the more he looked, the more dreadfully certain he became.
“Look at that young lady,” he murmured, when next the figures of the dance permitted a word in Sophie’s ear, “the one who dances with the Prince. I am very much afraid—”
But there was no need to finish the thought, for Sophie had contrived to look, without appearing to do so, and now turned back to clutch at his hand with desperate urgency. He had not mistaken, then: It was Joanna indeed.
“She promised me!” Sophie hissed between clenched teeth. “The little fool!”
“We shall find her,” said Gray, “and send her home straight away, before there can be any danger. Be easy, cariad . . .”
But how they were to accomplish this feat, without resort to a too-revealing magick, he had no idea whatever.
CHAPTER XXX
In Which an Error Is Turned to Advantage
For Sophie, the quarter-hour that remained in the second dance passed with agonising slowness. Only her knowledge that exposure meant the direst of consequences restrained her from bursting through the ranks of dancers and dragging her sister bodily away, and she was kept from some equally ill-advised magickal outburst only by Gray’s steadying presence—for which Joanna too, she thought grimly, would soon have cause to be thankful.
She watched Joanna and her grandly dressed partner all up and down their dance, while Gray watched the King and Queen; yet when the music ceased and the dancers began to drift away, and Sophie made to follow them, Joanna was nowhere to be seen. Desperate, Sophie looked up at Gray, whose height must give him a better view, but he was looking down at her at the same moment, frowning and shaking his head.
They moved nevertheless in the same direction as the generality of the dancers, hastening lest they be caught up in the formation of the next set, and trying to look every way at once. Joanna had prudently acquired, for this outrageous escapade, a gown of green velvet in the precise shade favoured by the Duchess of Norfolk, and thus worn by nearly half the ladies present. Where she had found it, and how (and with whose connivance)
cut it down to fit her, Sophie did not like to guess, but as a disguise, it could hardly have been better chosen. If indeed Joanna remained in the ballroom, she had contrived to conceal herself as effectively as even Sophie could have done.
Though Sophie’s furious anger with her sister was hardly a useful emotion in the circumstances, she kept it stoked and burning, for not far beneath it lay the naked, gibbering terror to which she must on no account give way—whose very existence it would be fatal to acknowledge.
And so absorbed were she and Gray in their efforts to catch some glimpse of Joanna, so forgetful of their original purpose, that all the rest of His Majesty’s guests might have been mere painted scenery.
Then, quite by chance, they were separated for a moment by the haphazard stumbling of some young nobleman, partaking too freely of the King’s hospitality, and Sophie half fell against a man who stood just to her left. The feeling was like leaning against a cattle-fence; but still, her mind all on Joanna, she did not at once recognise what—whom—she had found.
“Your pardon, mademoiselle,” the man said, gently steadying her, and that deep voice, together with the scarecrowlike frame, announced in no uncertain terms that here at last was one object of their search. Sophie stifled a yelp of alarm and reached out blindly for Gray, drawing breath again only when his hand clasped hers.
A glance beyond Lord Merton, now favouring her with a gallant if creaky bow, revealed the well-fed, richly accoutred form of the Professor. Here, then—Oh, gods and priestesses!—were two well-educated mages who had, on their last meeting, been more than a match for her concealing magick—and for her mother’s. Though Sophie had learnt a great deal in the intervening weeks, the shielding-charm Gray now wore was surely no different from that which had failed to deceive the Professor on that other occasion. They had meant to spot their quarry and observe from a safe distance, remaining themselves unobserved, but now . . .
How could she be so foolish? Sophie’s anger at Joanna flared again. And how could I?
But even with the thought, she was tightening her grip on Gray’s arm and concentrating on shielding him as well as herself from their adversaries’ notice. And almost instantly, to her immense relief, Lord Merton’s mouth, visible below his ornate masque, twisted in the puzzled frown with which she had lately grown so familiar, and he turned away from her and resumed his conversation with her stepfather. The latter glanced briefly at Sophie as she turned away, with frank suggestion in his eyes.
She swallowed her revulsion. Might she turn this mischance to good account? By some flirtation tempt the Professor and Lord Merton away, perhaps, and lock them up somewhere until tomorrow morning? Then there would be only three conspirators to watch, and if one of the Oxford men was carrying the poison—
Then there passed a woman clad in green velvet, and Sophie forgot for the moment all thought of subterfuge. “Joanna,” she said. “We must look for Joanna—”
She felt rather than heard Gray’s sharp intake of breath as he propelled them into the dubious shelter of a potted rose-tree, which topped him by less than a hand’s breadth. “Remember what we have come here to do,” he admonished her, sotto voce. “We cannot—”
“She is a foolish, thoughtless child,” Sophie retorted, dropping his arm, “but she is my sister—the only one I am ever like to have—and I have no intention of abandoning—”
Gray took her by the shoulders, almost roughly, and seemed about to shake her—or worse; instead, after a moment, he loosed his grip again and drew her into his arms. “You are not alone in loving your sister,” he murmured, gentle again. “But think: She will be in as much danger if—if our opponents succeed, as she could possibly be in witnessing our attempt to stop them . . .”
Sophie was forced to concede the truth of this. “But what if they—what if he—”
Looking earnestly up into Gray’s eyes, she could scarcely fail to see the shadow of dread that passed across them, but he answered her with every indication of confidence. “They have no reason to seek her—even to consider that she might be present here. And if we cannot find her, for all our searching, it is not very likely that she will be found by anyone else.”
Cogent though his analysis undoubtedly was, Sophie might yet have protested—had she not chanced, in glancing to her right just at that moment, to see the Professor and his friend moving away.
“Mother Goddess, bountiful and kind, keep my foolish sister safe,” she muttered under her breath, as they meandered through the crowd, a careful ten paces behind their quarry.
And still her attention was drawn by every flash of green velvet that she chanced to see out of the corner of her eye.
“He has got something in his pocket,” Gray muttered, as if to himself. With a guilty start Sophie followed his gaze to her stepfather; indeed, the Professor was continually darting one hand into the pocket of his waistcoat, then removing it again, as he spoke and laughed with his companions. It was a quick, nervous gesture, instinctive rather than deliberate; to one who did not perfectly know his ways, it might seem merely the fussy, fastidious habit of a fussy, fastidious man.
“Yes, I see,” she murmured in reply. “Is it, can it be—is he to be the one, then, do you suppose?” Oh, if only she or Gray could summon the poison away from him, and so end this painful game at once!
Obeying her frequent injunction to Joanna, however, by thinking before she spoke, she quickly saw that it was quite impossible. How could they summon an object they had never seen, having no idea what it might look like? And if the Professor did not see or recognise them, he would certainly notice the absence of this object of which he was so solicitous. Almost she could feel his hand closing about her wrist. He would raise a hue and cry, claim assault, even, perhaps, denounce his assailants as the murderers of Lord Halifax; Lord Wrexham or Lord Spencer, seeing the resulting commotion, would claim knowledge of a plot against the Crown and to have found the authors of it; Sophie and Gray would be detained, arrested, searched, and found to be in possession of an obscure and deadly poison—whose recipe must eventually be discovered in a book belonging to Master Alcuin and presently kept in Jenny’s house . . .
And, in any event, the thing in the Professor’s pocket might be something else entirely, and they should have given the game away to no purpose.
With a sigh, she resumed her watchful waiting.
* * *
It was not very easy to follow the Professor through that vast assembly without appearing to do so, but follow him they must, for he was not content to remain conveniently in one place; with Lord Merton hovering shadowlike at his elbow, he buzzed from one conversation to the next like a portly, rubicund housefly spreading flattery and officious goodwill—eagerly playing his new role as Master of the kingdom’s oldest College. Gray could not help thinking that Lord Halifax would have done all of it with more dignity. Though, for the matter of that, Lord Halifax would never have left Merlin College to its own devices on Samhain-night to begin with.
Preoccupied by the effort of keeping their quarry in sight without attracting suspicion in turn, Gray did not for some time ask himself where the rest of their allies might be, or whether they had found the men they sought—though his eye could not help seeking one small, green-clad figure, even as, within, he roundly cursed his young sister-in-law and plotted the angry lecture which he would read her, once caught.
At his side, Sophie drew in a startled breath. He looked down at her in some alarm, then followed her gaze to the form of Lord Merton—who had turned away from the Professor and seemed about to move off in another direction entirely.
“Will you go after him?” Gray said. “Or will I?”
“They will see you!” Sophie’s furious whisper startled him; had this not always been their plan? “Whichever we choose, he will see you, and—No. Besides, it is the Professor who—”
Of the two, the Professor certainly seemed the most likel
y to be carrying the poison, yet they could not let one of his collaborators slip away unpursued. But if Sophie had been shielding him all this time, they could not know how far they could trust to Queen Laora’s charms. What profit all their careful surveillance, if Gray should be revealed to his quarry the moment they were parted?
Then, of a sudden, the answer came to him. “I shall be quite all right,” he said. “Do you not recall how you befuddled them, in the Master’s study at Merlin, from clear across the room? If you could do it then, think how much better you shall do it now . . .”
Sophie stood for a moment clutching his arm and pressing her lips together, while Gray gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to importune her farther. At last her eyes brightened, and she nodded sharply and loosed her hold. Be careful, said her lips below the masque; he glanced away for a moment, so as not to lose sight of the Professor, and when he looked again it was to see her disappearing into the throng on Lord Merton’s heels. “May all the gods protect you, cariad,” he whispered prayerfully.
* * *
Knowing that, so thinly stretched as her concentration now was, any small lapse might be fatal, Sophie forced herself to look straight ahead, at the retreating back of her target—to shut out not only her own urge to pursue Joanna but the distracting, attracting sights and sounds that bubbled and seethed all about her; she must restrain herself at all costs from attending to the music, which would occupy her mind to an extent she could very ill afford. Not only her own concealment but Gray’s, too, depended now on this singleness of purpose: Mrs. Wallis might place all the faith she liked in Mama’s concealing charms, and where the rest of the conspiracy was concerned might be justified in so doing, but mages were a different matter.
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