Chantress Alchemy

by Amy Butler Greenfield

  I thought about how he’d been standing there in the darkness outside my room this morning. “Were you keeping watch last night?”

  He looked abashed. “I couldn’t sleep, so I came down,” he admitted. “And there was this, too.”

  It was growing light now, light enough that I could clearly see the snowdrop he held out to me, fluttering like a tiny white dove on a slender green branch. “For you,” he said. “For Valentine’s Day.”

  I forgot my fears in a rush of surprised delight. The first man you meet on Valentine’s Day will be your sweetheart, Sybil had said, but I hadn’t remembered it till now. “Oh, Nat. It’s beautiful.”

  I reached to take it from his hand, then stopped. There was something wrong in his expression, something painful. He had the eyes of a man who wants what he cannot have.

  “Nat?”

  He wrapped my fingers around the snowdrop. “The letters. The visit. I said I would explain.”

  What could the explanation be, to make him look like that? My hand tightened around the flower.

  “It started after you left last summer,” Nat said. “Wrexham and his cronies on the Council wanted to know where you’d gone. At first the King wouldn’t say, but eventually they convinced him that your whereabouts were a state matter, and he agreed they should have a voice in any decisions he made about you. It was about then that Sir Barnaby became ill and had to resign. I was away at the time—I’d been out in the countryside for weeks, learning as much as I could about the blight—but when I got back, I found myself up in front of Wrexham and his handpicked committee, being questioned about my letters to you and my visit to Norfolk and . . . other things.” His face reddened.

  “They had no right.” I was angry on his behalf. Angry on mine.

  “But that’s just it,” Nat said. “The King has decided they do have the right. The right to decide who gets to visit you, who can send letters to you, who can communicate with you in any way. And more than that—”

  “There’s more?”

  “Much more.” The flush on his cheeks deepened till it looked like a burn. “Lucy, they get to decide who you marry.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HEARTS AND FLOWERS

  I was so shocked, I nearly lost hold of the snowdrop. I was seventeen, it was true, but I had imagined that marriage was still some years away for me. And I had always assumed that when the time came, I could marry whomsoever I chose.

  Nat wouldn’t meet my eyes. “It’s a matter of state, they say. And Lucy—they’ve told me quite plainly that I’m not on the list of candidates.”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. Had Nat told the Council he wanted to marry me? Or had they interrogated him simply because of his letters? I didn’t have the heart to ask. If there was to be talk of marriage between us, this was not how I wanted the conversation to run.

  Nat’s cheeks were still an angry red. “I don’t have the necessary standing, they say. They don’t want me anywhere near you. At first I thought it was because I turned down the knighthood the King offered me last year, back when we defeated Scargrave.” He glanced at me now, as if asking forgiveness. “I’m afraid I just couldn’t see my way to it—all that bowing and scraping, and being called ‘Sir.’ I’m an engineer and a scientist, not a courtier.”

  “I understand.” His independent spirit was part of what had drawn me to him. I’d be a hypocrite to want anything else from him now.

  “But it turns out that the key issue isn’t my lack of a title. According to the Council, it’s that I know nothing about my family, my lineage.”

  I mentally cursed Court snobbery. Nat had been orphaned young and sold into servitude; he had no real memory of his parents. He’d needed courage and strength to survive such a childhood, but some people looked down on him because he’d once been a servant. “What does that matter? You are you, and there’s an end to it. Your worth has nothing to do with your bloodline.”

  “That’s not . . .” He strode to the window. “Oh, Hades. This is damnably hard to talk about.”

  “Nat, whatever it is, tell me.” What piece was I still missing?

  “It’s a matter of breeding.”

  I didn’t follow at first. “Breeding?”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “If you are to produce more Chantresses, you must be married to a man who is of Chantress lineage himself.”

  “This is about children?”

  “Yes.”

  I tried to pull myself together. “But it makes no sense. Why should the Council care if I marry a man of Chantress lineage? Men can’t inherit Chantress powers.”

  “Not in any detectable way, no.” Nat’s voice was even, but I could hear the strain in it. “It seems, however, that the sons of Chantresses carry something of their mother’s blood inside them, all the same. If they or their issue marry a Chantress, their bloodline strengthens the magic in the family. If a Chantress marries an outsider, she weakens her blood, and over time the magic in the family is lost.”

  My body went cold, then hot. “And why should this concern the Council? Do they expect me to produce a line of Chantresses for their own benefit?”

  He turned from the window, and I saw my own anger and frustration mirrored in his face.

  “The Council is undecided.” He clipped the words tight. “Most wish you to marry a man of Chantress lineage, in order to produce more Chantresses. But others wish you to marry a man without such lineage, since they mistrust Chantress power.” Quietly, he added, “Either way, I have no standing, for I do not know what my bloodline is.”

  I could not bear this. I would not bear this.

  “I shall go to the King.” Still clutching the snowdrop, I turned toward the door. “I shall go to him straightaway and tell him this must be stopped.”

  “He won’t listen, Lucy.”

  “He must. It’s my business who I marry, and when. Not the Council’s.”

  “And you think he’ll agree with that?” Nat’s eyes were bleak. “King Henry—whose own marriage is a matter of state scheming? The Council is brokering an alliance for him now, and let me tell you, there’s no room for sentiment there.”

  This stopped me in my tracks. “And he accepts this?”

  “As a matter of duty, yes. And he will take it very badly if you do not do the same.”

  My hand crushed the fresh green stem of the snowdrop. “So you think that’s what I should do, then? Take the first suitor the Council appoints for me?” I tried to keep my voice from shaking.

  “No!” He crossed the few steps between us. “That’s not what I think at all.”

  “What, then?”

  Before he could respond, distant voices broke the silence. I started in alarm. The household was waking.

  “I have an idea.” Nat spoke low and fast. “But it’s going to take some time to work out.”

  “Can I help?”

  “It’s better if you don’t. For now, just keep out of sight. The Council is still arguing over who you should marry, and I doubt they’ll be able to settle on anyone soon. It’s possible that they’ll even let the matter drop for a while—especially if you aren’t ever seen with me.”

  I cast an anxious glance at the door behind me. The voices were coming closer. “If we’re not careful, they’re going to see us together right now.”

  He nodded toward a door on the other side of the room. “Not if I head out that way. Will you be all right here?”

  I nodded. “Go, before they catch you! And be safe.”

  Quick as the wind, he kissed my cheek and sprinted for the door. A moment after it closed behind him, the door on the other side of the room opened.

  “Perhaps she’s in here,” said a laughing voice, and a young man strode into the room. As the light caught him fully in the face, I saw it was Lord Gabriel.

  “Ah, my lady Chantress!” He swept a bow.

  Behind him, Sir Samuel Deeps barreled in, his lace cravat askew under his puffy cheeks. “My dear lady!”

  An
other man piled in behind them. “Lady Chantress—”

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Elbowing them both away, Lord Gabriel offered me a frilly bunch of rosebuds with a flourish. “For you, Chantress.”

  I looked at the bouquet as if it were a nest of snakes. Was he courting me?

  “I am the first, am I not?” Lord Gabriel said, bringing the flowers closer. When I still didn’t answer, he clarified, “The first man to see you this morning. Your valentine.”

  I couldn’t give Nat away. My hand closed around his snowdrop, keeping it from sight as I slipped it into the linen ruffles of my sleeve. I accepted the roses. “How kind of you.”

  The others had valentine offerings for me too. As they bestowed them upon me, more courtiers piled in, bearing still more flowers and sweets. For some, perhaps, it was merely a game, but their avid expressions confused and repelled me. Were they angling for marriage—and perhaps the chance to control small Chantresses of their own?

  Receiving their attentions was a miserable business. They expected me to flirt with them, but banter didn’t come easily to my lips. When at last I escaped to my room, pleading fatigue, I dropped every one of their bouquets on the floor.

  Although the room had been straightened and a breakfast tray had been laid, Margery evidently had gone off again. A quick scout of the room assured me that I was all alone. Carefully I retrieved Nat’s snowdrop from my sleeve, only to find that it had snapped off its stem and lay crushed against my palm.

  At the sight, something inside me snapped too. I tucked the snowdrop into my bodice and went back out into the hall.

  I don’t care what Nat says. I’m going to the King. This marriage business has to stop.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AN AUDIENCE WITH THE KING

  It was not quite as easy to see the King as I had imagined. To be admitted to his presence, I had to pass through a host of guards, stewards, and secretaries. At last, however, I was invited into an antechamber outside his staterooms.

  “Wait here,” a steward told me. “The King is meeting with the Inner Council, but I will let him know you wish to see him.”

  He slipped through a high, arched door into the next room. The door didn’t quite catch. Through the crack I glimpsed a small group of councillors seated around a table, and I could hear some of what they were saying.

  “It’s time we dealt with Boudicca.” Wrexham was speaking, and he sounded angry. “My scouts say the wretched woman has upward of a thousand followers now, all moving toward London.”

  “Do her followers still include women and children?” the King asked.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” I recognized Rowan Knollys’s voice. Was he one of the scouts? “Perhaps as many as half are women and children. But some of the men—and even a few of the women—are armed.”

  “Has she responded to our emissaries?” was the King’s next question.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Knollys said. “She says she did not order these people to come with her, but she cannot prevent them from following her if they choose. She will not drive them off when they have nothing. She still maintains that she is coming to Greenwich merely to obey your summons, Your Majesty. When we suggested she come alone, she refused. She said we must have misunderstood your instructions, for the King would never fear his own people.”

  “Shades of Wat Tyler,” Lord Roxburgh said.

  “Surely not,” Sir Samuel protested. “That was three hundred years ago.”

  “What does that matter?” Wrexham growled. “His name lives on, and so do the stories: how Wat Tyler took over London with his thieving peasant followers, how they murdered and pillaged as they went. We need to stop Boudicca before she does the same.”

  “I’m not convinced—” The King broke off, and I heard nothing but murmurs. Then the King spoke again. “My lords and gentlemen, the Chantress wishes to speak with me. I must leave you for a short while. You will, of course, make no decisions while I am gone.”

  Moments later, the King and his steward came through the door. At a word from the King, the steward rushed away, and the King came toward me. “My lady Chantress. How good to see you!”

  “And you, Your Majesty.” Although it had taken me a while to reach him, now I was glad I’d persisted. Up close, the King looked strained—he had shadows under his eyes, and stubble along his pale jaw—but he seemed genuinely glad to see me.

  “What news do you bring?” He guided me through another door, this one leading into what appeared to be a small study. Set against its elaborately carved walls was a vast desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

  “News?”

  “About the crucible.” He gazed at me eagerly. “That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it? You’ve thought of a magic to find it?”

  I shook my head. “No, Your Majesty.” I didn’t dare tell him that my magic was dangerously broken. I wasn’t sure he’d believe me, and even if he did, he might react badly. “The trail is cold,” I said instead. “I have thought and thought about it, but at this point I see nothing that can be done.”

  The King’s face fell. “You cannot help us?”

  “I would if I could, Your Majesty. I am sorry.”

  The King crossed his arms over his chest. “You have no hope to offer? Nothing else to say?”

  This was going to be a more difficult interview than I’d thought. But there was no point waiting to put my case to him. He had interrupted a meeting for me, and he was not an easy man to see. “Yes, I do have something to say, Your Majesty. Not about the crucible, but about another important matter: this business of marriage.”

  “Yes?” He was still listening, but his face was now set in stern lines.

  “You cannot do it,” I said. “You cannot let your Council marry me off.”

  “Cannot, Chantress?”

  Despite the warning in his voice, I couldn’t contain myself. “Surely I have a right to decide for myself—”

  “No,” the King said.

  His flat denial floored me. “No?”

  “Legally speaking, you have no such right,” the King said. “With all due respect, you are a female, under the age of majority—”

  “I’m a Chantress. That makes a difference.”

  The King frowned. “Yes: it makes it all the more vital that the Council take a hand in determining your future.”

  I couldn’t believe quite how much he had changed. “When I was last at Court, you cared as much about my opinion as that of the Council’s.”

  The King didn’t blink. “Your opinion still matters to me, of course.”

  “But not as much as the Council’s?”

  “Should it, when you chose to leave me, and they stayed by my side?”

  I stared at him. Was that how he saw me? As a deserter?

  “You had your reasons, I am sure,” he said without rancor. “But still, that is the truth of it. Since you left, the country has had to weather many crises, and I have needed to lean heavily on my Council to get through them. Whatever their individual failings, I could not keep the kingdom together without them.”

  I remembered what Nat had said: Wrexham has the power to split England in two.

  “To rule is to make hard choices,” the King said. “I have to think always of the country as a whole. And that means I must ask everyone to compromise.

  “But let us try to find common ground,” he went on. “You are loyal to me, I know; you swore your fealty. And I know, too, that you love your country. So this should not be so difficult. All I ask is that you serve your country as best you can. Your magic must strengthen us, not weaken us.”

  “I agree.” He had spoken of compromise, so perhaps there was room for hope. “What I don’t understand is why that means the Council should choose my husband.”

  “No? Think what would happen if you were to fall in love with a scoundrel or a schemer, Chantress. Don’t you see that the whole country could be put at risk? That’s why we need to find a man who can look after you properly, a man who has the
good of the country at heart.”

  A man to look after me? “You don’t think it’s enough that I have the good of the country at heart? I am the one who restored your kingdom to you, after all.”

  I had gone too far.

  The King looked at me, his gaze hard as steel. “You did, yes. And I am grateful. But that is exactly why we must be so careful. You have a great deal of power, and it must be managed wisely.”

  The world fears women with power. . . .

  “I really don’t see—” I began, but the King cut me off.

  “Enough. I ask no more of you than I ask of myself. My own marriage is a matter of state as well. My wife will be determined by the deliberations of the Council. That is a burden that those of us with great power must bear.” His eyes looked more shadowed than ever. “I regret any pain it causes you, but truly, our lives are not our own.”

  I started to speak, but he was already halfway over the threshold. “The next time you come to me, Chantress, I hope you bring better news.”

  As he slipped back into his meeting, the steward appeared at my side. Although his offer to show me the way out was couched politely, I knew I had been dismissed.

  Unwilling to be treated this way, I turned to the door that the King had walked through, then froze as I heard Wrexham shouting behind it.

  “The Chantress refused to help? How dare she!” A thump and a scrape like a chair being pushed back. “Is she still out there?”

  The King started to say something, but I didn’t wait to hear more. Racing after the steward, I left the state apartments as fast as I dared.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BOXED IN

  After escaping the King’s apartments, I wanted to barricade myself alone in my rooms. But I knew Margery would be waiting for me there, so instead, I wandered in whatever direction seemed quietest. I felt sunk in defeat. Nat was right: the King was not going to listen to me. Not when he saw the Council as the true power in the kingdom. Not when Wrexham was his right-hand man.