A Season of Spells (A Noctis Magicae Novel)

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  “That is what I should do,” said Joanna—not, perhaps, an entirely accurate assessment—“but only the gods know how Amelia may proceed.”

  * * *

  “What I cannot understand,” said Sophie, “is why they should be here at all. Amelia has never once set foot in London since the Professor’s trial, to my certain knowledge; no one could suppose that she had any wish to see me, or to see you, Jo—so why, then, should she choose to come here now, when you and I are both to spend all the summer in Town, as we have never done since that year?”

  “Half the kingdom has come to London to see Lucia MacNeill,” said Gray, not unreasonably. “Might not Lady Maëlle have wished to do the same, and brought your sister along with her?”

  “Oh, but it was Amelia’s notion to come,” said Joanna. “Katell told me—she was a whole fortnight persuading Cousin Maëlle to make the journey.”

  “Was she, indeed?” Sophie pounced on this admission. “But why on earth . . . What did Katell say, exactly?”

  “I hardly know,” said Joanna, which was not precisely true. “It was a perfectly ordinary conversation, Sophie, not an interrogation. She said . . .” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes briefly, casting her mind back. She could not, would not repeat everything Katell had told her. “Amelia complained of the utter lack of eligible young men in the neighbourhood of Cal— of your house,” she said at last, “or so Katell told me, and said that if she were not to die a miserable spinster, living on sufferance in someone else’s home—”

  Gray winced, and Sophie said (speaking under her breath, but not so inaudibly as she perhaps supposed), “How dare she!”

  “—she must have a season in London, as she ought to have had when she was my age, so that she might have some opportunity of marrying, even if she cannot hope to marry well.”

  “I must say,” said Gray, with a thoughtful frown, “that does not seem a likely tactic to succeed with Lady Maëlle.”

  “Oh! No, it did not succeed at all,” said Joanna. “I only mention it because it shows that Amelia cannot have been thinking clearly; she knows Cousin Maëlle as well as either of us—better now, perhaps—and she may not be exceptionally clever, but she is not stupid. No; she persuaded her, according to Katell, by other means entirely—appeals to her better nature, and reasoned arguments, and on at least one occasion, tears. But—”

  She paused, biting back the words, But I have seen Amelia set her cap at many a young man, and this . . . is something else entirely.

  “I do not pretend to any expertise in the matter,” said Gray, slow and thoughtful, “but it seems to me that if your sister is come here in order to hunt for a husband, she is going about it in a very odd manner indeed.”

  Sophie hummed, not quite in agreement, and frowned at her reflection in the mirror. “I do think something is amiss,” she said; and after a moment, more cheerfully, “but I do not suppose much harm can come to Amelia, whilst she is living in this house.”

  * * *

  The following morning, however, when Miss Callender appeared in the breakfast-room (of which Gray and Sophie had hitherto been in sole possession), looking pale and shadow-eyed and strung tight with some unspecified anxiety, Sophie startled all three of them by exclaiming, “Amelia, what is the matter? My dear, you look very ill—is there nothing we can do to help you?”

  Miss Callender looked properly gobsmacked and, for just a moment, as though she were considering telling Sophie her troubles. But the moment passed, and she gathered her considerable dignity tight about her and said, “I did not sleep well; I believe I have a little cold. It is nothing of consequence.”

  Then she sat down at the table, helped herself to scones and apricot jam, and rang for a fresh pot of tea.

  A tense near-silence prevailed in the breakfast-room until Treveur came in with the tea, at which point Sophie, still looking rather shaken, excused herself and fled.

  Gray took a deep breath. “Miss Callender,” he said, and then—for they were close kin now, in a way—amended, “Amelia, if ever Sophie or I may be of any help—”

  “You are very kind,” she said evenly. “I assure you, there is not the slightest need.”

  She took a last sip from her cup, replaced it silently and precisely in its saucer, and rose from the table. “Good morning, Mr. Marshall,” she said, and left the breakfast-room.

  Kindly but comprehensively rebuffed—the rebuff entirely expected, the kindness an unprecedented gift—Gray finished his breakfast in thoughtful silence.

  Sophie is quite right: Something is much amiss here.

  * * *

  The Princess Delphine was fond of walking in the gardens of the Royal Palace, and Prince Edward equally fond of indulging his wife. As, not for the first time, Lucia, Sophie, Roland, and Joanna all agreed that they had rather be out of doors than not, the excursion diffidently proposed by Delphine quickly became a general enterprise.

  This afternoon their path took them through the inner gardens, towards the main fountain and the slope down towards the river, where, not twenty feet from the steep-cut bank, could be seen a large, oddly shaped green . . . thing.

  “What is that?” inquired Lucia, pointing—not only because she was curious, but because a silence had fallen, and if she could not think of anything to say she could at any rate provoke one of her companions to do so.

  “The maze!” said Joanna. “Has no one told you of it, Lucia?”

  No one had; whilst Edward and Delphine fell gradually farther and farther behind them, therefore, Joanna and Roland (with occasional interjections from Sophie) regaled Lucia with the somewhat baroque history of the Palace maze.

  It had been commissioned, Joanna explained, by Roland and Sophie’s distant ancestor, the seventh King Henry, and designed by an ancestor of Madame de Courcy, wife of the British ambassador in Din Edin.

  “He was raised to the peerage for his pains,” said Joanna, “but was later executed because one of Henry the Great’s mistresses lost herself in it.”

  “What became of her?” asked Lucia. It must have been something dire—though had not Henry the Great famously had several of his numerous wives beheaded? “Did she . . . starve to death, or—”

  “No,” said Joanna thoughtfully, “though that would make a far better tale.”

  Roland stifled a snort of laughter behind his hand, and strode off to hurry Edward and Delphine along.

  Sophie, however, frowned at her sister and said, “Jo, how can you?” in a tone of genuine reproach.

  “She did not starve to death,” said Joanna to Lucia, ignoring both of them, “but she wandered for some hours before she was missed, well after the sun went down; and when one of the gardeners found her and brought her out, she was raving of disembodied voices whispering in her ears, cold hands clutching at her in the darkness, wailing and sobbing from thin air.”

  Sophie shivered.

  “Shades?” said Lucia doubtfully. “Or someone playing a very unpleasant joke?”

  “It might have been either, for all I know of the circumstances,” said Joanna, shrugging, “or something else entirely. Some drug or poison, perhaps, which induced hallucinations. No one has ever discovered what, exactly, befell her in the maze, but she continued persuaded that the maze was haunted by the shades of those who had perished in it—which, so far as I know, no one ever has. She refused to remain any longer at court, and in the end—after Madame de Courcy’s ancestor was beheaded over the affair—the King arranged a marriage for her, and she retired to a life of utter obscurity on her husband’s country estate. She lived to a ripe old age, but never recanted her tale.”

  They pondered this in silence, accompanied by the gentle plashing of the fountain.

  “A pity she did not know a finding-spell to bring her safely back to the fountain,” said Lucia at last.

  “It would not have helped her,” said Soph
ie. “The maze is not only yew-trees; it is woven through with spells to dampen findings and summonings. Like an interdiction, you know, but more specific. It is one of the tasks of the Court mages to maintain the spells. Though, I suppose,” she added thoughtfully, “it may not always have been so. I wonder—were the dampening-spells worked on the seedling trees, to grow with them, or were they added later? Perhaps the maze was not thought difficult enough without them? Do you suppose . . .”

  “You must both have walked the maze, I suppose?” said Lucia, in an attempt to reel in Sophie’s wandering attention. “Perhaps you might show me the route.”

  “I have walked it many times,” said Joanna, “and—” She broke off abruptly, and began again with, “But Sophie and I are expected in Grosvenor Square this evening, and I fear we have already overstayed our time.”

  Sophie, glancing up to gauge the angle of the sun, seemed about to object; Joanna trod on her toes, however, and she subsided. Lucia pretended not to have seen any of this.

  “In any case,” Joanna continued cheerfully, “Roland knows the maze better than either of us.”

  Lucia eyed Roland, who appeared to have given up his brother and sister-in-law as a lost cause and was making his way back towards the fountain, and turned this notion over in her mind. Joanna was transparently throwing them together; but was it because she believed Roland might welcome such an excursion, or simply from a sense of her duty to promote this match?

  Less thinking, Lucia MacNeill, and more acting in your own interests.

  “I shall ask him,” she said.

  She carefully did not look at Sophie, for she was remembering their conversation of a few days past, during one of Queen Edwina’s soirées.

  “How does Roland go on in his Gaelic lessons?” Sophie had inquired.

  “Very well indeed,” said Lucia, “when—” She caught back the words when he can be bothered about them, and instead said, “when he can find the time to study.”

  Sophie had not been at all taken in. “He is young yet,” she had said quietly, slipping into Gaelic.

  And Lucia, gritting her teeth: “That is very plain.”

  “Lucia, Roland admires you, and thinks you very clever and rather formidable. He is half-afraid to speak to you on any serious subject, lest he say something which will lower your opinion of him beyond repair—”

  “Sophie.” Lucia closed her eyes. “Tell me truly, is Roland in love with someone else?”

  “Why should you suppose such a thing?”

  “You made me a promise, Sophie,” said Lucia, as gently as she could manage. If what she suspected were indeed so, she must find some way of conveying to him—without giving offence—that so long as he upheld his end of their bargain, he might do as he liked besides; but all depended on accurate intelligence.

  “So I did; and I have no notion of breaking it. You suppose me deeper in my brother’s confidences than I have ever been. I believe . . .” Sophie paused, gazing at nothing in particular, before continuing: “I believe he had persuaded himself in love with . . . with some idea of you, constructed from your portrait and perhaps your letters, and from his own imagination—”

  “And I am nothing like the Lucia MacNeill of Roland’s imagination,” said Lucia. “Well, I am sorry to disappoint him, but, for the matter of that, it was never my intention to promise myself to a man who prefers poetry to statecraft.”

  Sophie turned back to her. “Do you mean to cry off, then?”

  “Cry off?” Lucia repeated the English phrase—she recognised the words, but what did they mean together?

  “Put an end to your betrothal,” said Sophie, reverting to Gaelic; and, while Lucia was still gaping at her, “I know you are empowered to do so, irrespective of your father’s wishes; even had I not known it before, I received separate lectures on the subject from my father, my stepmother, and Joanna, all of whom apparently feared that I might encourage you to seek happiness elsewhere.”

  “Sophie, what has happiness to do with it?” Of course, one had rather be happy than not, all else being equal; but could even so romantical a person as Sophie have so profoundly mistaken Lucia’s point?

  Now it was Sophie’s turn to gape, though almost at once she smoothed her face into stillness. “It is all I wish for either of you,” she said, low. “For any of those I love.”

  Lucia had drawn a deep breath, then—released it—squared her shoulders. They could have only a few more stolen moments in this quiet corner, before they were winkled out and borne off to be displayed to Her Majesty’s guests.

  “I did not mention this because I resent Roland’s affection for any other person,” she said. “I do not wish him unhappy—or myself, either—but, Sophie, you must know that my father and yours, in agreeing to this match, were not acting to secure any one individual’s happiness but in the best interests of their kingdoms, of their people. Our people. To throw such considerations away—”

  Sophie, when well and in control of her magick, was more adept at keeping her feelings from showing on her face than anyone else Lucia had ever met, her own famously unflappable father included. To one who knew her well, however, that inscrutable expression was itself a signal of danger ahead: Sophie would not trouble to conceal her state of mind so thoroughly unless there were something of great import to conceal.

  They had eyed each other for a long, fraught moment, until Lucia’s own words came back to her and she understood what she had just said, and to whom.

  “I am my father’s heir, Sophie,” she said, very gently, “and this marriage was my own idea as much as his. My case is not at all the same as your mother’s, or yours.”

  Sophie’s expression had relaxed slightly, so that she looked merely cautious, rather than frozen like a fox caught by lantern-light. “I . . . no, I suppose not,” she conceded, and the topic had mercifully been dropped.

  Now, fetching out a smile for Roland as he came within speaking distance, Lucia felt uncomfortably under scrutiny—if Sophie and Joanna meant to go back to Grosvenor Square, why could they not go at once?

  “Our thanks for a charming afternoon,” said Joanna, winking impishly at Lucia. She clasped Lucia’s hand and stretched on tiptoe to press a sisterly kiss to Roland’s cheek; then, almost before Sophie had made her own farewells, took her sister by the hand and towed her away across the lawn.

  PART TWO

  London

  CHAPTER VI

  In Which Lucia and Roland Make a Discovery

  Edward and Delphine were nearly within earshot now, at last; they appeared to be gazing lovingly into one another’s eyes and no doubt were cooing endearments, a performance which Lucia did not greatly care to witness yet again. She looked at Roland, and back at the maze.

  Her curiosity had been pricked by the others’ tales; the sun was growing warm, and the maze would provide some shade; and as between exploring a maze and watching Edward and Delphine make sheep’s eyes at one another . . .

  “You must have walked the maze many times, I suppose?” she said, striking out towards it, though without quickening her pace.

  “Of course,” said Roland.

  He smiled at her, suddenly, briefly; so unexpected was it that she could not help grinning back.

  “Once,” he said, “Ned and Harry and I so lost ourselves in it that by the time the undergardeners found us and brought us out, we had missed our dinner. We had never seen Nurse so cross—I suppose she must have been frightened out of her wits, not only of our coming to real harm, but of the consequences to herself—and she forbade us to step even one foot into the maze. Of course after that, we could not rest until we had conquered it.”

  “Of course not,” Lucia agreed. Roland darted his eyes at her, dubious: Did he suspect her of making sport of him? “I quite understand the necessity,” she said. “My cousin Morag MacNeill and I once climbed to the top of Arthur’s Seat on a
moonless night, only to prove her elder brother wrong, for he said that we should be too frightened to do it.”

  “And were you?” said Roland.

  She had his ear now, plainly, for good or ill.

  “Quite terrified,” she said cheerfully. “Either one of us alone, I dare say, could not have got past the castle gate in broad daylight. We egged each other on, however, and when the sun rose, there we were, asleep like puppies in the lee of a boulder on the top of the hill. We had meant to go back straight away, you see, so that we should not be missed, but from Castle Hill to the top of Arthur’s Seat is a very long walk for a child of ten; and there comes a point, it appears, when exhaustion overcomes terror, even in the dead of night.”

  Roland produced an admiring whistle, then cleared his throat self-consciously.

  “And you?” said Lucia. They were standing very near the entrance to the maze now, and much better that he should be thinking of his own past deeds—or misdeeds—than of hers. “What came of your clandestine explorations?”

  A fleeting grin; another sidewise glance. “Ned’s tutor set him the tale of Theseus and the Labyrinth,” said Roland. “I rather suspect him of doing it on purpose. And we begged a ball of twine from the kitchens—”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Lucia, who had been studying her Ovid, at Sophie’s instigation. “The Minotaur, and Ariadne and her thread!”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Roland.

  Lucia studied his profile; he was smiling now, truly—the deep, slow-blooming smile that dimpled his cheeks and narrowed his eyes to gleaming slits, fringed by honey-gold lashes. He was rather appealing, in point of fact, when he smiled.

  “Harry and I were all for rolling up the twine again on our way out,” he said, “once we had found the centre at last, and could prove we had been there. But Ned had thought it through—Ned is not so quick a thinker as some, you know, but there is not a more methodical fellow in the kingdom, I am sure!—and he said, ‘If we do that, we may not be able to find our way in the next time.’”