Oh, thought Gray vaguely. Those were not only hailstones, then.
Someone had slung a great-coat about Lécuyer’s shoulders; kneeling on the rough boards of the watchtower, he gathered Gray’s owl-body gently into his arms, tucked him between the great-coat’s overlapping layers, and began to descend the ladder. Gray shut his eyes, wound his talons into the rough wool, and held on.
CHAPTER XXI
In Which Sophie Dispatches a Message, Joanna Commits an Error in Judgement, and Lucia Makes a Discovery
“Imperator Gallia?” Joanna repeated, her face folding up into a frown. “But the Emperor of Gaul is only a rumour, surely—a monster invented to frighten the common soldiers. You do not suppose—”
“Amelia evidently believes in him, at any rate,” said Sophie, rather more crossly than she had intended. “Unless, of course, one prefers to take the view that my friend Evans-Hughes has invented the tale for his own amusement.”
The two of them were presently in sole possession of the bedroom which Sophie was to share with Lucia, Sophie curled in the room’s one armchair and Joanna sprawled across the counterpane. Gareth, who had accompanied Sophie back to the Dragon and Lion and thereafter dined with the party from London, had then volunteered to conduct them on a guided tour of those of Oxford’s sights which could be seen in the interval between dinner and dusk. Lucia, Roland, and Gwendolen had received this suggestion with enthusiasm; when Joanna would have joined them, however, Sophie had leant casually towards her and muttered in her ear, “I have something to tell you about Amelia,” after which Joanna had promptly developed a headache, and elected to remain behind.
“Well,” Joanna sighed, “of course if anything casts the Professor in a flattering light, poor Amelia will happily swallow it whole. In any case, however, I do not see that that titbit gets us much forwarder. But Dover . . . Dover is very suggestive.”
“It suggests a wish to leave Britain as quickly as possible, certainly.”
“Dover,” said Joanna, pushing herself up on her elbows, “is the most heavily fortified port along the Manche, precisely because one can very nearly throw a stone across the strait from Calais and strike the ships in the harbour. Its entire garrison is on alert for the fugitives from the Tower, of whom Henry Taylor is one.”
“Seen in that light,” said Sophie, thoughtful, “it seems a most peculiar choice for him to have made.”
“Exactly,” said Joanna. “And in fact, according to your friend, from Dover Amelia went on to Calais alone, and neither of them was apprehended—nor even seen, so far as we know. Now, of course, the garrison and the local constabulary were on the lookout for the conspirators travelling together, not for one of them with a woman, or a woman alone, but no British ship’s captain who valued his livelihood would have given either of them passage to Calais without papers of some sort—”
“Woodville, the forger?” Sophie suggested.
Joanna replied with a noncommittal sort of hum.
“At any rate,” said Sophie, “this must all go to Kergabet, as soon as may be. If I write my letter at once, shall you have time to help me encipher it this evening, so that one of the guardsmen can deliver it in the morning?”
Joanna yawned hugely and rolled over onto her back. “I shall help you this time,” she said, “but after this I shall make you do your own enciphering. Hurry up, then! The light is going.”
Sophie called a globe of magelight, then another, and sent them to hover amongst the rafters. Then she extricated her writing-case from the bottom of a valise and sat down at the small spindle-legged desk, more decorative than practical, to begin her letter.
“I am glad she is not with Taylor,” she said, “but I do wish she had not gone off all alone.”
* * *
Early the following afternoon, in a state of mingled excitement and trepidation and armed with a three-hundred-year-old plan of their quarry, an assortment of tools, and a borrowed ladder, Sophie’s party approached the main gate of Lady Morgan College. Constructed from close-set wrought-iron bars, the gate was set in a tall, narrow archway flanked on either side by long wings of dressed Headington stone, whose windowless ground-floor walls were almost less forbidding than the broken-paned casements brooding dark above them. The gate was locked, and a heavy chain, wrapped several times and secured by a large padlock, anchored it to the gatepost. In the interstices of the ivy-leaves, Sophie saw that the whole arrangement had rusted to a near-uniform russet-brown. She ceased to fret that no one knew where to look for the keys to these locks, and began to wish for draught horses and a dredging-hook.
She and Roland and Lucia, however, had unlocking-spells at the ready. Sophie’s was one she had learnt from Gray and had never failed her before; perhaps it was made for well-kept locks, however, for its sole effect on the rusted padlock was to strike a few sparks. Roland’s brief, emphatic spell made the padlock groan, shedding flakes of rust, but still there came no telltale clicking of tumblers. Frowning, Roland tried it twice more, with the same result.
“The trouble with mages,” said Joanna, coming forward to peer at the lock, “is that you cannot conceive of a problem to which magick is not the solution. Gwen, come and see whether you cannot pick the lock, as you have such a talent for it!”
“Joanna!”
Sophie, glancing over her shoulder, saw that Miss Pryce’s face was flushed red.
Joanna, who had not been looking at her friend when she made her careless pronouncement, now wore an expression of dawning horror.
“I believe,” said Sophie—both to draw the others’ attention away from the unfortunate Miss Pryce, and because she had herself had an idea—“that picking locks requires equipment which we have not brought with us. We have brought a ladder, however, and Mr. Goff has got an axe.”
“Only a wood-axe, ma’am,” said Goff apologetically, “for doors and the like. It would not do much good against an iron gate, even rusted . . .”
Ceana MacGregor tapped Mr. Goff smartly on the shoulder and, when he turned to face her, held out her hand for the axe. He frowned, but surrendered it.
Ceana made for the padlocked gate, then hefted the axe and drew it back up over her right shoulder, the wrong way about, with the sharp edge upwards—which puzzled Sophie until it came down again, powerful and precise, and the blunt end of the axe-head rang against a single link in the great rusted chain. Two more precise blows upon that same link—two more again—a last, and it exploded into flakes of rust and shards of metal. Sophie scratched absently at the bridge of her nose.
Ceana MacGregor propped the axe, head down, against the wall beside the gate, and with assistance from Goff and Roland began unwrapping the chain. It was a long and noisy business—during which, to Sophie’s intense discomfort, a furious whispered argument between Joanna and Miss Pryce continued unabated.
At last the chain was reduced to a heap of rusted links at the foot of the wall, and Sophie and Lucia converged upon the gate’s own locking mechanism.
“Hmm,” said Lucia, in an interested tone; shifting (perhaps unconsciously) from Latin into Gaelic, she said, “there is magick in this lock, and I believe it still lives.”
“Lives?” said Roland, sceptical. “Like . . . like the yew-hedge?”
Lucia smiled a little at this cryptic query and said, “A little like. This iron gate is farther from its roots even than your tamed and trammelled yew-trees, but it has not quite forgot them; and the lock . . .”
She turned to look at Sophie, a solemn, meaning look. “Like calls to like,” she said. “Iron to iron. I shall try my spell, but I think . . . I think the lock’s own magick may be—”
“The key?” Roland offered sardonically, stepping up beside Sophie.
Lucia ignored him; she had leant her head against the bars of the gate and was murmuring low and quick. To Sophie’s eye, no effect was forthcoming.
“As I thought
,” murmured Lucia, stepping back a little.
Gwendolen Pryce had drifted closer without Sophie’s noticing, and now said quietly in Latin, “May I be of any help?”
“Have you a pocket-knife about you?” said Lucia. “Or a pen-knife? And can you call fire?”
“I have,” said Gwendolen, in a doubtful tone, “and I can, but why—”
“Well, give it here, then!” Lucia’s tone was eager.
Gwendolen hesitated; Lucia thrust out a hand insistently and repeated, “The knife. And call me a small flame to light, to light . . .” She rummaged in a capacious pocket of the riding-habit—split-skirted and tailored above to mimic a man’s dress—which she had insisted on wearing for the purposes of this venture, and pulled up a stub of candle. “This. Here.”
“Lucia,” said Roland, urgent. “Is this wise?” There was no response.
Sophie studied her friend—the quivering tension in her stooped shoulders, the slim fingers wrapped tight round the bars of the gate, the pale sliver of her profile, her one visible eye intent on her work. Lucia meant to give her own blood to the lock in hopes of inducing it to open; so much was clear, to Sophie if not to anyone else. Was this a brilliant or a disastrous notion? Or was it, perhaps—like many a notion of Sophie’s own—brilliant or disastrous only as subsequent events might decide?
Sophie nodded once at Miss Pryce, who, though her dark-curved brows rose in surprise, stepped forward with her pen-knife in one hand and took the candle-stub from Lucia.
“The flame must be hot,” said Lucia, low. “As hot as you can manage. Pass the blade through.”
Sophie only just heard the whispered Flammo te! before the wick burst into flame—a tiny flame, blue-hot and precisely controlled. Gwendolen Pryce knew her business when it came to minor magicks, though seemingly incapable of greater ones.
With a steady hand she held the pen-knife’s small blade in the flame—one breath, two, three—then wrapped Lucia’s splayed fingers about its handle and, abandoning magickal for more prosaic methods, blew the candle out.
Lucia loosed her hold on the gate and with her right hand raised the knife to the pad of her left forefinger. Now Roland at last saw what she had in mind, and Sophie caught him by both elbows just in time to arrest his panicked lunge towards her.
“Nuair a thig air duine thig air uile,” Lucia murmured—what befalls one, befalls all—as she nicked the pad of her finger.
Roland growled; Sophie gripped his arm to restrain him and dimly registered that Ceana—despite her very evident disapproval of Lucia’s proceedings—was doing the same on his other side.
“Whatever she is about,” said Sophie, low, “we must not interrupt it.”
Lucia regarded her bleeding finger, dripping steadily onto the blade of the knife—then, as though it had been the most natural thing in the world, crouched down and, holding the knife in her left hand, slid the blade slowly into the keyhole.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then came a sudden smell of hot iron; Sophie’s nose began to itch, so fiercely as to be almost painful; at almost the same time, Lucia yelped and staggered back from the gate, dropping the knife and cradling her left hand against her chest.
Ceana MacGregor caught her—just—when she stumbled and nearly fell headlong. The rest converged on her in a rush.
“Stay back,” Ceana snarled. She was holding Lucia upright with both arms locked about her ribs, but not without difficulty: Lucia—pale as her own candle-stub but still intently focused on the centuries-old lock—was struggling mightily to get free.
“Lucia,” said Sophie, very firmly and as loudly as she dared. “Lucia, look at me.”
Lucia blinked, blinked again, and abruptly ceased her struggles to escape. Ceana MacGregor eased her hold, though without releasing it.
“The lock needs blood,” said Lucia, as calmly as though she had not been fighting tooth and claw against her own guard captain just moments ago. “My spell was an adequate substitute for the key, but the locking-spell cannot be broken in that way; it must have blood. Not my blood, however; the spell has made that very clear.”
She held up her left hand, palm up, and Sophie saw that the skin of her hand, the palm and all five fingers, was burnt to blisters.
“And yet, why leave even such a loophole as that, if they truly meant it never to be opened again? Why, indeed—as we have asked ourselves before—not knock down the walls and buildings, and make some other use of the land beneath?”
“More to the point,” said Miss Pryce, who had gone back to the gate to retrieve her knife and was wiping it clean with her handkerchief, “how are we to know whose blood, if anyone’s, will appease the spell, and how are we to undertake the trial without anyone else’s being hurt?”
Sophie considered. “Suppose,” she said after a moment, “suppose that the lock and the spell expect the key and the blood, respectively—as Lucia believes they do—one might . . . er . . . apply the latter to the former, and so provide both at once. And as we have already dealt with the lock itself—have we not, Lucia?”
Lucia nodded without looking up. She had unwrapped Ceana MacGregor’s makeshift cold compress from her hand and was studying her burnt fingers.
“Then one might find another object of the same length and circumference,” said Sophie, beginning to look about her. “A key with no bit, so to speak, to serve the same purpose—”
“But it must be iron,” said Lucia, urgently. “You are thinking of a tree-branch, Sophie, or something of the sort, but it must be iron, like the lock itself. Not wood or bone—not even steel.” She held up her burnt hand.
“Very well,” said Sophie. She studied the gate, the height of the windows; considered the lower east wall, the height of the ladder. It was growing late in the afternoon, and everyone must be wanting their dinner. No—this problem, alas, would not be solved today.
“A tactical retreat,” she announced. “We shall return tomorrow, properly armed. Mr. Goff, I should be obliged if you would seek out a trustworthy blacksmith; perhaps the innkeeper may tell you where one is to be found.” Using a piece of string, she made crude measurements of the keyhole and noted them down on a page of her commonplace-book, which she tore out and presented to Mr. Goff.
He looked deeply dubious, but nevertheless said, “Ma’am,” and after glancing at the torn-off paper, folded it and tucked it away in a coat-pocket.
“Back to the inn, then,” said Sophie briskly, concealing her restless frustration as well as she was able, “for dinner, and a healer, and our beds.”
* * *
By a variety of stratagems, Joanna contrived largely to avoid Gwendolen during what remained of the afternoon and evening. At last, however, the company retired for the night, and there was no more evading the continuance of the afternoon’s dispute.
By now she had, by slow degrees, talked herself out of her self-righteous insistence that Gwendolen ought not to be angry with her, and returned to that first access of remorse; she hoped that Gwendolen’s temper, too, might now be cooled, at least a little.
“I am sorry, Gwen,” she began, without other preamble. “It is true that I did not know how strongly you should object to my saying what I said, but still I ought not to have said it, and I am sorry.”
Gwendolen, leaning against the edge of the dressing-table, arms folded, in a pose of wholly unconvincing nonchalance, gave her a long, measuring look.
“I believe you,” she said at last, unsmiling.
Joanna winced. To be believed was something, but in this case it was evidently some considerable distance from being pardoned.
“You know, I hope, that I should never hurt you by intent,” she said. “Perhaps, if I understood why—”
Gwendolen cut her off with an impatient huff. “Can you truly imagine no reason why I should be reluctant to advertise a talent for breaking and entering?” she demanded. “No
ne whatever?”
“I do not see that it is any different from an unlocking-spell,” said Joanna—not for the first time—“which Sophie and Roland and Lucia had no objection to being seen to work.”
“It is different,” said Gwendolen, through gritted teeth, “first, because very few common thieves can work an unlocking-spell, and second, because powerful mages of royal birth may do any number of things with impunity, which the cast-off daughters of heavily indebted country squires cannot afford even to be suspected of doing. Particularly”—she raised a hand to fend off Joanna’s protest—“if those daughters should happen to be engaged in equivocal and secretive intimate friendships with the protégées of men prominent at Court.”
Joanna closed her eyes for a long, silent moment: Lady Venus, wise Minerva, guide my tongue, or I shall say entirely the wrong thing once again.
“You surely cannot think my father any better prize than yours,” she said carefully. “And I hope you do not suppose yourself any less solidly under the protection of Lord and Lady Kergabet than I am?”
Gwendolen stared at her in frank astonishment. “Jo, you are Lady Kergabet’s sister-in-law,” she said. “And it is plain to see that they love you for yourself. Of course I am grateful to Lady Kergabet for taking pity on me that day at the Griffith-Rowlands’, and for all the rest of it, but—”
“You are quite wrong,” cried Joanna, equally astonished at this thorough misinterpretation of the facts. Seeing Gwendolen’s fine dark brows begin to draw together in a frown, she hurried on: “I do not say that Jenny did not begin by feeling sorry for your plight, but how can you suppose now that she does not love you? And—and in any case I love you, Gwen, and they should protect you for my sake even if they did not.”
Then—abashed at this uncharacteristic eruption of passionate words, and cut to the heart by Gwendolen’s expression of wonder at hearing them—she retreated to the washbasin to splash cool water upon her burning cheeks.
A Season of Spells (A Noctis Magicae Novel) Page 29