† † †
The guards delivered me to my rooms, where I found Margery waiting up for me. When the guards made as if to accompany me, she pointed them firmly to the door. “It isn’t proper for you men to be here, not when the Lady Chantress is about to take her rest. You can take up your post outside. I’ll watch over her in here.”
The guards looked at each other, then did as she asked. Was that because of her implacable manner—or because they knew she was Wrexham’s spy?
Well, if she was his spy, what did it matter now? Wearily, I sank before the fire. As Wrexham’s wife, I could expect to be surrounded by his spies for the rest of my life.
Wrexham’s wife. Was it possible? Exhausted and defeated, and still terrified for Nat, I watched the fire through blurred and aching eyes.
“You cannot sleep there by the fire, my lady,” Margery said.
“Did you know?” I asked dully.
“Know what, my lady?”
“That I was to be married to Wrexham.”
“My lady!” Her shock appeared genuine. “Surely not—”
“He told me so himself. Before the Council. There can be no doubt.” Despite my best efforts, my voice shook.
“Oh, my lady.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “He has wanted another wife for some time. But I did not think it would be you.”
I didn’t want to keep talking with someone who was in Wrexham’s pay. “It is very late, Margery. You should go to bed.”
Her voice grew wooden again. “I must help you into your own bed first, my lady.”
“No. Just leave me.” I was fighting now for self-control. “Please.”
For once, she let me have my way. “Yes, my lady.” I heard her soft footsteps tread back and forth behind me. She placed a blanket around my shoulders. “Good night, my lady.”
I heard her walk into her own small room and climb into bed. She left the door between our rooms open, but once I was sure she was asleep, I allowed the scalding tears to fall.
If only I had run away with Nat when he’d asked me to! Guilt and regret gnawed at me. I’d been so certain that I knew a better way forward—and look at the result: I was to be married to Wrexham, and Nat was to be hunted down and hanged for a traitor. And I had no way to prevent any of it. The only magic I could do now was to see strange visions. And what kind of power was that? A paltry one at best.
Unless I could somehow use it to see the face of the true culprit. . . .
My tears dried as I considered this. When I had scried with Sybil, the faces of the king and queen had been blurred. But if I tried it again on my own, I might see more clearly and be able to identify the queen. Or perhaps I would see an altogether different picture, one that would reveal some other clue.
Scrying would tell me something else, too: if I were successful, I’d know that the scrying magic was my own, and that Sybil didn’t control it—or me.
Of course, even if Sybil were innocent, there remained the danger that the visions were more than visions, that they somehow worked harm in the real world. What if I scried a picture of Nat being captured—and it happened? My whole body tensed. Perhaps I ought not to try scrying after all.
Yet what else could I do? Lie here and hope for my Chantress magic to come back—knowing, all the while, that Wrexham was drawing his net tighter and tighter? And that if he found Nat, he would condemn him to torture and death?
No. To do nothing was intolerable.
After listening to be sure Margery was still asleep, I crept over to the chest in the corner. On it stood the floral offerings from my erstwhile valentines, which Margery had arranged in vases. I tried not to make a sound as I pulled the nosegays from the shallowest bowl. Made of fine, gilded porcelain, it was quite different from the bowl Sybil had used, but it was the only reasonable container I had.
I carried the bowl, nearly full of water, over to the fire. How to get the light right? I tried several different arrangements, but nothing worked.
Just as I was about to give up, a log in the hearth broke in two, sending up a shower of sparks. I saw their fire reflected in the water, and then, beneath that, another swirl of light diving down and down and down . . .
Ask, some small part of my mind said. Ask the question.
“Who stole the crucible?” I did no more than breathe the words. “Who pinned the blame on Nat?”
Deeper and deeper I fell, and then all at once I saw colors rich as stained glass. They whorled and shifted and then resolved into the picture I’d seen before: the murderous king and queen. Again, to my horror, they fought their life-or-death battle, clawing at each other’s throats until their blurred faces turned blue.
But this time the picture twisted, and a new image appeared before me: a circlet of gold crowning a faceless head, and a hand with a pearl ring grasping a knife. A flash of blue light, and the knife sliced between crown and head. Blood spurted. Another slash, and the crown tore away. And now it felt as if I could not breathe, as if I myself were dying. . . .
My hand flailed, rocking the cup, and the picture vanished. I was left sitting before the fire, a half-spilt bowl of water before me, and a spreading puddle on my cloak. Dread filled every inch of me.
I knew now that the magic was mine and not Sybil’s. But what did the pictures mean? Whose hand had wielded the knife? Could it be Wrexham? I was fairly sure that one of his rings had a pearl. But then why hadn’t I seen his other rings too?
So many questions! But the worst one was this: By conjuring these pictures up, had I somehow harmed the King?
“My lady?” Margery appeared at my side. “Did you cry out?” Sharp-eyed as always, she swooped down on the cup. “What’s this?”
“There was a mark on my cloak,” I said. “I . . . I wanted to get it out.”
“You ought to have left that to me, my lady. Velvet needs special care.” She started mopping at the wet cloth. “Anyway, you ought to be sleeping now.”
“I can’t.”
She looked up from her mopping and surveyed my face. “Syrup of roses and saffron, that’s what you need, my lady. I could send to the kitchen—”
“No.” I had a sudden thought. “Could you send someone to check on the King instead? That’s part of why I can’t sleep. I worry he’s taken a turn for the worse.”
Her eyes widened. “It’s the King you’re worried about? I thought—” She cut herself off and asked quickly, “Is your magic telling you something?”
“No.” I didn’t want to bring magic into this at all. “It’s just ordinary worry. But if I knew the King was doing well, I might be able to sleep.”
Margery’s face had turned unreadable again. “All right, my lady. I’ll ask a guard to find out.”
It took nearly half an hour for the answer to come back. During all that time, Margery sat up with me, her presence fraying my nerves still further. But when the guard reappeared, the news was good.
“The King’s condition has improved, my lady,” Margery reported, giving me a severe look. “He is sleeping peacefully, as you yourself should be.”
This time she gave me no quarter, shepherding me toward my bed like a collie. But I climbed in willingly enough, for I wanted to be left alone with my thoughts. After Margery went back to her own room, I lay there in the dark, plotting out what to do next.
The scrying hadn’t told me much, but thankfully it hadn’t done any harm, either. Which meant that I could trust Sybil’s good intentions. She wasn’t working black magic through me; she was truly trying to help.
What I wanted to know now was this: Did she have any other magic to offer me? Something stronger than scrying? Something that would help me foil Wrexham’s dreadful plans? Something that would allow me to clear Nat’s name?
First thing tomorrow, I would find Sybil and ask.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
PRISONER
Exhausted in body and mind, I eventually sank into a deep sleep. When I woke, it was almost noon, and Margery was out. Give
n her distress at my wanderings yesterday, I suspected she wouldn’t be gone for long. But if I was quick, perhaps I could dash out to see Sybil before she returned.
I hurried into my clothes—the blue woolen skirts and bodice that I had worn on my travels, now cleaned and pressed. But when I slipped into the vestibule and tried to open the outer door, it wouldn’t budge.
Outside I heard voices.
I pounded on the door. “It’s the Chantress. Let me out!”
Metal clanked. The voices grew louder. But no one answered me.
A good quarter hour later, I was still calling for help when the door opened sharply, almost knocking me down.
“My lady Chantress.” Wrexham’s enormous frame filled the doorway. Behind him, out in the corridor, stood a line of men with pikes and swords. I stepped back, and he pushed the door shut behind him. “I hear you have been making trouble for the guards.”
The mere sight of him filled me with loathing. “I want to go out.”
“You will stay here until Walbrook is found.”
So Nat was still free? Relief washed over me—and then fear, for this was only the first day, and the hunt was far from over.
I have to get help from Sybil.
“And you will have no visitors,” Wrexham went on, “until we are certain the danger is over.”
No visitors? “You mean you’re locking me away?”
“I am protecting you, Chantress. The Council agrees with me on this: you are young and confused, and for your own safety we must guard you until all danger is over.”
“And the King? Does he agree too?”
“The King is not well, but I have explained matters to him,” Wrexham said carefully. “He agrees we must keep you safe.”
His eyes didn’t quite meet mine, and that gave me hope. Perhaps the King did not know that I was being treated as a captive. “I want to see the King myself.”
Even this small protest made anger flare in his eyes. “I have already told you, Chantress: you will not be seeing anyone.”
“I insist.”
“You will do as you’re told!” His fist flew past my face and slammed into the wall beside me.
His rings splintered the wood. They could so easily have scarred my skin. Shaken, I backed out of his reach.
He took another step toward me, fists still bunched, the knuckles on one hand bleeding. “My wife will not disobey me.”
My wife. The words made me sick. But I did not want those rings to split my face. Though it made the bile rise into my throat, I bowed my head to him. “Yes, my lord.”
His breath rasped. “That is better.”
I must not raise my head. I must not look him in the eye. Instead, I stared down at his huge hands, at the blood on his knuckles, at the golden hairs on his fingers, at the gaudy rings that glinted in the light. And that’s when I saw the truth: Only one of his rings—the pearl one—bore a conventional jewel. The other stones, though beautiful, were something else entirely.
They were the stones of dead Chantresses.
My breath stopped.
I shut my eyes. The crazed pattern of cracking on the stones was unmistakable, and so was the odd way that the light refracted inside them. I’d only seen such a thing once before, in Lady Helaine’s stone after she died, but I had never forgotten it.
It was all I could do not to reach for my own ruby, slung under my bodice on its long, thin chain. It, too, had a crack in it—a different pattern, signifying that I had lost the power to do Proven Magic yet was still living. Would it, too, decorate Wrexham’s fingers one day?
My head was still bent when I heard Wrexham heave the door open. At the sound, I sprang forward, hoping to catch the door before it closed.
Wrexham was too quick for me. The door slammed in my face.
“Bar the rooms shut!” he commanded the guards. “For her own safety.”
The bar came clunking down.
† † †
I was pacing the room, caught between fear and fury, when the door opened again. Margery walked in past the guards, an enormous bundle of bloodred cloth in her arms. The moment she was through, the guards slammed the door shut again.
I looked at Margery. “So they’ll let you in and out, but not me?”
Pink-faced, Margery hugged the bundle closer to her. “I had duties to see to, my lady.”
Duties that included reporting to Wrexham, no doubt.
“And those men out there are only trying to do their duty,” Margery added. “My lord Wrexham gave strict orders to them. You’ll find he guards his possessions most carefully, my lady.”
His possessions? Did she mean me?
“When the Countess was alive, he never let her stir without guards at her side.” Margery spread the cloth out on the bed, her back turned to me.
I didn’t like what I was hearing. “You mean Wrexham’s wife? She never went out on her own?”
“No. And by the time I served her, she mostly kept to her rooms.”
“Was she ill?”
“No.” Margery’s hands stilled over the cloth. “Just . . . fragile.”
A fragile woman, completely under Wrexham’s brutal control. Something made me ask the question: “Margery, you never told me: How did she die?”
“She had a bad fall, my lady.” She kept her back to me. “But we shouldn’t speak of such sad things. It will not make your confinement any easier to bear. Let us turn to more cheerful subjects.” She turned, tugging out a length of the cloth to show me. “Only look at this: the very best Venetian silk, and there’s enough to make an entire gown. My lord Wrexham gave it to me this morning—”
So she had seen Wrexham. And his hands, covered in dead Chantresses’ stones, had touched this cloth. I looked at the cascade of shining silk with revulsion.
Margery faltered as she took in my expression. “It’s a gift for your betrothal, my lady.”
“I do not accept it,” I said.
“But you must, my lady,” She fingered the cloth anxiously. “My lord Wrexham will be most offended if you do not. He says you must be properly dressed—”
“Because I am his possession?” I said softly.
The cloth fluttered down from Margery’s hand. Her face was carefully blank. “My lady, it is the very best silk. And the color suits you. Only allow me to make it up, and you will see—”
“I tell you I will not wear it.”
She looked at me for a long moment, her face drawn. Then the blank mask came down. Without another word, she scooped up the cloth and removed it to her room, out of sight.
† † †
When Margery returned, her hands were empty, and there was no more talk of Wrexham or silk or betrothals. Indeed, for most of the afternoon there was hardly any talk at all. Margery busied herself about the room, and I sat silently by the window, blindly turning the pages of a book, seeing Wrexham’s rings in my mind’s eye.
I listened to every sigh and sound and squeak in the room, willing them to become music, to become magic. If determination and desperation sufficed to summon song-spells, I would have had them at my beck and call. But it seemed that Wild Magic could not even be bothered to toy with me today. Just once, when I leaned my head against the drafty window frame, did I hear a single shaky note on the wind. And it was gone almost as soon as it came.
Worn out by listening, yet unwilling to stop, I lost all track of time that afternoon. I only knew that whenever I looked up, Margery’s watchful eyes were on me.
Something, it seemed, was bothering her, and the longer I stayed at the window, the more restless she became. Perhaps it was only the dress that was on her mind, but I found myself tensing, wondering what else might be in store for me.
“Won’t you eat, my lady?” she asked, not once, but twice, and then again.
Each time I turned her down. Even as the light began to fade from the sky, I continued to sit at the window, looking out at the garden, where soldiers paraded. Did their maneuvers have something to do with
the hunt for Nat?
With my eyes I traced the boundaries of the garden and what I could see of the walls of Greenwich Park. Let Nat escape, I prayed. Please let him escape. And let me find a way to reach Sybil. . . .
“You really must eat something, my lady,” Margery said once more as she lit the lamps. “Such a beautiful platter they sent up for you, and you haven’t tasted anything on it.”
The platter overflowed with delicacies from last night’s banquet. Merely glancing at it made me sick. “No, thank you.”
“Just a bit of the roast chicken,” Margery suggested, “or a few of the sugared grapes . . .”
“No, thank you,” I said again, this time more forcefully. “I don’t want anything.”
“But you must eat.” Margery looked pained. Was she hoping that food would sweeten my temper, and make me change my mind about the silk? “I remember the Countess—”
“Enough, Margery.” I couldn’t bear to hear another word about Wrexham’s first wife. “I’m nothing like your Countess. I’ll never be like her.”
“But that’s just it, my lady.” Margery’s voice was sharp with anxiety. “You are like her. She used to stand by the window, just like that, and she wouldn’t eat either. That’s how she became so frail. She wasted away, my lady; she had no strength to stand up when he—”
She stopped abruptly.
“He?” I repeated. “You mean Wrexham? He did something to her?”
She shrank back. “I oughtn’t to have said anything, my lady. Please, please don’t tell him what I said.”
The dread in her eyes horrified me—not only for what it told me about Wrexham as a master, but also for what it told me about myself. In all the time that I had feared Margery, I had never once stopped to think that she, too, might be living in fear. I had never tried to step into her shoes, never wondered if she served Wrexham because she had no other choice.
“I promise I will not say anything, Margery.”
The naked relief in her face shamed me.
“Would he punish you, then?” I asked. “If he knew?”
A mute nod.
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