Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

by Jonathan Strahan

  Mari took a step back, toward the door. But Diadem pulled a wand out from between the cushions of the chaise longue. It wasn’t a weak student wand, a mere stick of wych elm, carved with some simple runes granting minor magics. This wand was very old and very, very dangerous. Carved from a human shinbone, it was covered in minute inscriptions that called upon serious powers: powers of the past, powers of the present, and powers that were yet to be.

  “You shouldn’t have that,” whispered Mari. She felt like someone had just pressed an icicle lengthways against her spine, and her heart faltered in its steady rhythm.

  Wands like that weren’t just forbidden. They were outlawed. Owning one was a very serious offense. Actually using one put the wielder beyond the law: every witch and wizard who witnessed such activity was then empowered to do whatever was necessary to disarm or even kill the user and keep the wand in place till it could be made safe by the authorities. The only problem being that any sensible witch or wizard would run a mile before tackling the wielder of such a wand.

  “Why?” asked Diadem. “It’s a family heirloom, and besides, I don’t have it, as all my friends here will attest if you claim other wise.”

  She looked at Englesham.

  “Give the fragment to Mari, Caita.”

  Englesham, anxious to obey, took a small folded piece of parchment out from inside the sleeve of her gown and proffered it to Mari, who locked her hands into fists at her sides.

  “That won’t do,” said Diadem. She made a slight gesture with the bone wand and spoke three words that in passing curdled the milk in the silver jug on the table and frosted the cake with a hideous green mold.

  Mari found her hands opening and her right arm lifting up, her joints moving like an old puppet brought out of the attic and forced to answer once more to the strings.

  “Read it,” said Diadem. “Aloud.”

  Mari’s hands unfolded the parchment, even though she didn’t want to. Nor did she want to raise the parchment to eye level, but her arms lifted, answering the gentle string-pulling movements of Diadem’s wand.

  “I … I can’t decipher Ogham,” muttered Mari through clenched teeth. “Or pronounce Brythonic.”

  “Liar!” exclaimed Lannisa. “Oh, let me have a turn with the wand, Helena!”

  Diadem ignored her friend.

  “Really?” she answered Mari. “What was that essay of yours last year? ‘The Augmentation of Incantation: Brythonic, Ogham, and A Choir of Seven,’ I believe. You certainly convinced our old mistress of your familiarity with both language and cipher. She gave you a prize, as I recall.”

  “Swot,” said Clairmore venomously, almost spitting at Mari.

  “Read it,” commanded Diadem.

  Mari tried not to, but she had no choice. Diadem had her in the grip of a geas, which was bane-witch territory for certain, not that any of the others would ever testify against her, and Mari’s word alone would not count for anything. She regretted that she had not thought to equip herself with a defensive charm, as she usually did when called to Diadem’s rooms. But she had not considered that the inoffensive Miss Englesham would be recruited to Diadem’s flock of harpies.

  She started to read, roughly translating the Brythonic in her head as she spoke aloud. Most of the words were harmless enough in themselves, but they were joined by words of power in such a way that the totality of the phrase became a very powerful spell.

  Scholar-servants of low estate

  Brought into learning, of this date

  Shall with ashes adorn their face

  And must not be adorned with lace

  Their coats shall be—

  The fragment was torn there, and ended.

  “What does that mean?” asked Englesham anxiously. Lannisa and Clairmore did not ask, but looked to Diadem, who was certainly the only other person in the room who had understood the Brythonic original of this small evocation of the Original Bylaws.

  “You’ll see in a moment,” said Diadem. She pointed the wand at Mari. “You will find you cannot speak of this wand. But you are otherwise released.”

  She slid her wand up her sleeve, and Mari felt the geas lift. Her arms fell, boneless for a second, till she got control.

  But even though she was no longer under Diadem’s spell, Mari still felt a strong compulsion. It was different, more inside her head than physically controlling, but she could not resist it any more than she had the geas. She ran to the fireplace, knelt down, and, in lieu of immediately available wood ash, ran her finger along the grate and smeared the resulting sticky black coal residue across her face, two messy tiger stripes down each cheek.

  A slight smile curled up one corner of Diadem’s mouth. Lannisa and Clairmore shrieked with laughter. Englesham bit her lip and looked away.

  Mari stood up and returned to the door.

  “Will that be all, miss?” she asked calmly. Inwardly she was suppressing a fierce rage. If she had a bone wand like Diadem’s, four … or perhaps three … lady undergraduates would be smoking corpses, and Mari would be a murderer and a bane-witch, to be hunted across the protectorate and all the civilized lands beyond.

  So it was probably just as well she didn’t have an evil wand, thought Mari as she ran furiously along Agstood-Oozery Lane. She would have to find another way to be revenged upon Diadem, one that did not involve banecraft and outlawry. More pressingly, she needed to find out how to nullify or overcome the Original Bylaw that even now was sharp inside her mind, insisting that the black coal stripes on her face be replaced with fine gray wood ash, in the approved pattern that hadn’t even been mentioned in the fragment but that she somehow now knew.

  Back in the kitchen, Francesca, her face daubed with coal soot like Mari’s, was lighting a fire of hazel sticks in the corner of the vast old range that was now only used once a year to roast the Beltane ox. The other two current sizars in the college, Rellise and Jena, were helping her by breaking sticks. Rellise’s face was streaked with what looked like mascara, and Jena’s with something gray that defied immediate identification but was possibly a mixture of cigarette ash and toothpaste.

  Cook, still working on her pies, was watching the fire-building out of the corner of her eye. When Mari came back in, the huge outside door clanking shut behind her, Cook gestured with a floury thumb at the fire makers.

  “I don’t suppose you can explain this, Mari?”

  “It’s in the Original Bylaws,” said Mari. “Someone found a rubbing—one paragraph—from the stone, and invoked it. It says we sizars have to daub our faces with wood ash, in a pattern.”

  “Someone?” asked Francesca. The fire was burning merrily now. There would be a nice pile of ash soon. A handful of ash mixed with olive oil would do nicely to make the lines and swirls that all the sizars now knew, without knowing why they did.

  “Diadem and her lot,” replied Mari. “As usual.”

  Cook nodded grimly. Taking up a chopper, she began to split pig trotters. While she did not particularly care for the sizars, whom she considered neither fish nor fowl, Cook was a stern guardian of the other servants, who had often been the target of Diadem’s mistreatment.

  “I don’t suppose it’ll do any good going to Lady Aristhenia, then,” said Francesca.

  The sizars all nodded in mournful agreement. The mistress of the college was some sort of relative of Diadem’s, and in any event, she would never take the side of the sizars against the “proper students.”

  “What about the university proctors?” asked Rellise.

  Cook stopped splitting trotters and looked over at the four sizars thoughtfully. They didn’t notice. Mari was shaking her head.

  “They wouldn’t believe us, either. Besides, Diadem hasn’t done anything illegal with this, or even gone against the university rules. They’ve just brought to life an old college regulation. I wish we could get her investigated, since she’s definitely a bane-witch. She used a geas on me.”

  “But surely she’s not strong enough!” protested
Francesca.

  Mari opened her mouth, but couldn’t speak of the wand.

  “Well, she is,” said Mari. “Not that I can prove it, worse luck. How’s that ash coming along?”

  Francesca stirred the fire with the poker.

  “It needs longer. I suppose we should be grateful there isn’t a Bylaw to make us wear sackcloth as well.”

  “It did say we can’t wear lace,” said Mari. “Not that I’ve got any.”

  Rellise and Jena exchanged a look.

  “What?” asked Mari.

  “I had to change my … my unmentionables,” said Jena, blushing. “I was wearing some with lace trim … it was lucky I was in our room.”

  “We have to do something,” said Mari. She hesitated, not wishing to alarm the others, but then carried on. It was better to have everything out. “It’s not just the ash and the lace.… Well, it is the ash. But it occurred to me that it might stop us sitting examinations.”

  Three pairs of frightened eyes fixed on her.

  “What?”

  “You know that to sit the exams we have to present ourselves in ‘hat and gown, with wand and athame.’ ”

  The others nodded.

  “There’s also a bit about being sober and clean,” said Mari. “I don’t know how we’ll go with ash-streaked faces.”

  “But it’ll be because of a college bylaw!” protested Jena.

  “The university’s examination rules came in with the protectorate,” said Mari. “After our Bylaws were buried, so they were never taken into account. Even in the best case, it will go to the Chancellor’s Court, and we’ll still miss the examinations this year. And if I … if Francesca and I miss them this year, we’ll never get another chance!”

  “She planned it,” said Francesca furiously. Like Mari, she was in her final year, while Jena and Rellise still had a year to go. “Diadem the Arch-Bitch. She’s always hated us. Now this, to make us fail—”

  “No one’s going to make us fail,” said Mari, summoning up all her reserves of determination. “We will sit the exams and we will graduate!”

  “How—” Francesca started to say, but the fire fell in on itself, crumbling into ash, and all four sizars were gripped by the Bylaw demanding they clean their faces of their temporary indicators, prepare the ash, and then paint stripes ending in swirly marks on their cheeks.

  That took several minutes, some splashing about with cool water and olive oil, and concluded with a depressed silence as the young women looked at each other.

  “How?” repeated Francesca.

  Mari frowned. She’d been thinking about the problem ever since the Brythonic words had left her mouth.

  “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “This is deep magic; there might be all kinds of complications. I shall have to look up the spell the queen and the mistress used, and we’ll have to get the parchment as well.”

  “Who has it now?” asked Francesca.

  “Englesham,” said Mari. “I don’t think Diadem or her cronies would touch it. It’s sure to be spelled against bane-witches.”

  “If it was burned … destroyed … would that release us from—”

  Mari shook her head.

  “It can’t be destroyed, not now that it’s been invoked,” she said. “It’s not just a parchment. I mean, even Alicia Wasp and Queen Jesmay couldn’t destroy the Original Bylaws, only nullify them. But maybe we can do the same, if we can get the parchment. And since Englesham is too frightened of Diadem to hand it over freely, I suppose …”

  Mari stopped talking and looked at Cook, who was listening intently. The older woman reddened, sniffed, and paced down the other end of the kitchen to noisily rattle through the pots on the shelves there.

  “We’ll have to steal it from her rooms,” whispered Mari.

  The other three women drew back. Being caught stealing would mean instant dismissal from the college and probably charges from the civilian authorities as well.

  “But we … we can’t do that,” whispered Jena. Rellise nodded vigorously by her side, like a puppet at a village fair.

  “You won’t have to,” said Mari. “In fact, it would be best if you and Rellise stay out of this completely. Francesca and I are the ones who won’t get a second chance at finals. You still have next year.”

  “Oh good,” said Jena with relief.

  “Yes,” said Mari. She smiled, though it took some effort. She’d always had a low opinion of Jena and Rellise, who were never to be seen when there was any threat to the sizars, leaving it to Mari and Francesca to sort everything out. But for the sake of civility and kindness she tried not to show her contempt. “If you two stay here and take over our shift, Francesca and I will go and work out what we need to do.”

  She hesitated, then added, “Whatever we decide, it won’t happen for a few days, anyway. So just sit tight and do your work as normal.”

  “We will,” chorused Jena and Rellise.

  “Come on,” Mari said to Francesca. They got up together and started packing up their books, prompting a sudden inquiry from Cook.

  “Hey, where are you girls off to? There’s three hours yet—”

  “Jena and Rellise are taking over tonight,” replied Mari. “If you don’t object, Cook.”

  “Don’t suppose it would make any difference if I did,” sniffed Cook. She fixed Mari with one of her famously fierce looks and added, “Don’t you two do anything foolish. Or if you do, you might want to consider that the mistress is dining out tonight, and will be flying home.”

  Mari nodded gratefully, and she and Francesca hurried out into the kitchen garden, where they paused to note that the sun had almost set behind the spire of the college tower, and then they continued past the radishes and the rosemary, out through the garden gate into the Old House, and along the back corridor to the room they shared with Jena and Rellise. Unlike the lady undergraduates, who all had their own rooms, the sizars were housed with the servants, but in even more cramped conditions, since there were four of them in a room meant for three, and they also had to keep all of the paraphernalia of student witches: brooms, wands, staves, daggers, books, scrying globes, basic alchemical apparatus, and, most of all, books. Even with daily sorties to and from the library, the room was always overflowing with books.

  “So we go and steal the parchment tonight,” said Francesca. She kept pacing back and forth as Mari carefully made her way between two piles of books to the window seat.

  Mari laughed. “Was I so transparent? Jena won’t be as worried if she thinks nothing will happen for a few days, and Rellise only ever echoes Jena. So they’ll be happy, and they won’t give us away.”

  “What’s the plan?” asked Francesca. “Fly over as soon as it’s dark, nip in Englesham’s window, and nab the parchment?”

  Mari looked out the window. Though they were on the ground floor, it had a good view over the North Quadrangle toward the Oozery. One of the gardeners was doing something to the turf, working in the light of a flaming branch that hung suspended in the air without actually being attached to a tree. A fairly typical illusion for light, but not one she’d ever seen employed by the gardeners, who usually just conjured a simple marsh light or dead man’s lantern. Apart from him, there was no one around. In another hour it would be full dark, the tower bell would sound, and the college gates would be locked for the night.

  “It’s not going to be easy,” she said slowly. She looked up at the darkening sky framed by the college buildings, with the bulk of the tower looming above in the distance, a few stars beginning to make their appearance around it. “Diadem’s no fool. She’ll be expecting us to try to steal the parchment. And as Cook was just kind enough to tell us, the mistress will be flying in at some point. She’ll be bound to notice anyone else flying about the place.”

  “She won’t be back till late, not if she’s out to dinner,” replied Francesca.

  “We can’t count on that. What if she has a stomachache, or the dinner’s awful or even more boring than usu
al?”

  “So what do we do?” asked Francesca impatiently. She was always impatient, her temper matching her red hair. Valiant but foolhardy, in Mari’s loving opinion, which she had often expressed to her friend. Francesca for her part thought the dark-haired Mari was too controlled, too thoughtful. Together they made a formidable pair. Both, though they did not know it, were almost beautiful, and would be in time, if they were not worn down in servitude. That was one of the reasons Diadem and her friends were jealous of them, for their incipient beauty and their fierce intelligence, and their potential to transform from downtrodden ducklings into academic swans.

  Mari kept staring out the window, arranging and rearranging all the salient facts in her head. Every now and then she glanced at the gardener. There was something about him that was prompting a thought, but it wasn’t quite rising to the surface.

  “What did Cook’s nephew end up doing after he took his degree last year?” she asked finally, interrupting Francesca’s pacing.

  “You mean Bill? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I’m not sure,” replied Mari. “Do you know, though?”

  “Yes,” said Francesca, coloring slightly. “He went away to join the Metropolitan Police. I believe he is already a detective.”

  “But he hasn’t been back?” asked Mari.

  “No,” said Francesca. She paced over to Mari and looked down, her cheeks red and eyes bright. “Don’t be a beast, Mari, you know—”

  “Shh,” said Mari, taking her by the wrist. “Come here and have a look at this gardener. Remind you of anyone?”

  Francesca looked through the window. Suddenly her whole body stiffened and her head lurched forward, like a hunting dog on point.

  “Bill!” she exclaimed. “But … what’s he doing here?”

  “Police work, I suppose,” said Mari. “I bet it’s to do with … that … well, anyway … I’m beginning to get an idea of how we might sort all this out. I’m off to the library to look up how Alicia Wasp and the queen got rid of the Old Bylaws in the first place. You go and say hello to Bill and tell him—”