As the lights dimmed over the theatre, James finally relaxed and sighed, sinking low in his seat. The stage shone like an illuminated jewel, surrounded by waves and terraces of shadowed balconies, and the play launched to life with a fanfare of horns, a trill of flutes, and a boom of timpani. The orchestra in the pit below the stage was nearly sixty members strong, according to the program in James’ hand, and it sounded like it. Music filled the theatre like warm spring air, with barely any echo to dull its effect. On the stage itself, actors sprang into motion: dozens of peasants moved among a life-sized and perfectly captured medieval square. A line of soldiers marched into view. And there, entering from the right, was the King, and Donovan his royal advisor, and finally the regally beautiful princess Astra.
James remembered the scene well from his second year at Hogwarts, when he himself had been on stage in the guise of Treus, the Captain of the Guard. But this was different in nearly every way. The king was not young Tom Squallus with a pillow stuffed into his tunic.
He was an actual large man, more stocky than fat, with a true beard and a stately demeanor and robes and crown that looked as if they’d come directly from a museum. Donovan was a tall, beardless man with sharp, angular features, so cunning in the very lines of his face and squint of his eyes that James had to remind himself that this was an actor, not an actual villain scheming against the jovial king and the young princess that followed them.
Astra, James saw, was barely older than himself. She was ginger-haired and stunningly beautiful, the pale pillar of her neck adorned with a glittering necklace of silver and deep blue gems, flashing in the brilliant stage lights.
Despite having been in a version of the play himself, James had never fully grasped the story of Astra, Treus, and Donovan. He’d been far too preoccupied with the extraneous details of production—the costume shop and props crew, the glowing painted markers on the stage floor, and the constant, droning repetition of rehearsals. Now, as he watched the full production in all of its theatrical glory, he began to see why it was the ultimate classic story of the golden age of wizard literature.
This was, of course, helped immensely by the grandeur of the deeply enchanted production.
When Donovan manipulated the king into granting Astra as his bride, the villain used an actual spell, conjuring a terrifyingly realistic (if somewhat over-wrought) hex of entrancement that illuminated the entire stage with vicious purple light and left the first few rows of patrons nodding and woozy in their seats. When the villain sent Treus and his crew on the ruse of a completely invented sea mission, the oily coolness of his lies was simultaneously compelling and disturbing.
Around the theatre, several voices gasped, or cried out warnings, or angry insults at the oblivious, conniving villain.
When the Marsh Hag welcomed Donovan into her swampy lair and agreed to his paying request for a murderous storm, James momentarily forgot that he was watching from a cushioned velvet seat in a crowded theatre. He seemed to be dreaming the scene, watching from the flickering edge of the Hag’s firelight, the stink of her cauldron and rot of fermenting moss filling his nose as she, in all of her extravagant ugliness, proclaimed her famous, cackling warning: “The gale ye conjure hungers great, its appetite is hard to sate. Feed it well and bid it sleep, lest its gaze to you retreat!”
“Of course,” Millie sniffed during the intermission as they stood in the crowded lobby with glasses of spiced mead in their hands, James’ head spinning dully, “every seat in the theatre is enchanted with a disbelief-suspension charm. The longer you sit there, the more real everything on stage seems. If they didn’t have an intermission to break things up a bit, some of us would be charging the stage to join Treus on the Ballywynde every time he gives his rallying speech, deadly magical storm and raging Wraith river or not.”
“Wizards and men, forth draw ye wands and wits!” Edmund cried, stabbing his own toy wand into the air.
“Stop!” Ariadne insisted in her most strident, motherly voice.
“You’re embarrassing yourself! Can’t you at least try to act like a proper gentleman?”
By the time the fourth act was underway, the aforementioned magical storm was a pall of clouds and thunder boiling in the upper reaches of the theatre from wall to wall, flashing with gouts of bruise-coloured lightning. Treus gave his famous rallying speech, and while no one rushed the stage to accompany his quest, many in the audience did join in the recitation even from the first words— “Foul Donovan! Thou traitorous malcontent!”—some standing in their seats and raising their own wands in the air, pointing them at the magical storm overhead.
Somehow, actual ocean waves crested and broke over the ledge of the stage, cascading into the busy orchestra pit, as the Ballywynde circumvented the storm via the treacherous Dagger Peninsula. It beached spectacularly on the shore of Seventide within sight of the castle, just in time to prevent Donovan’s and Astra’s cursed wedding.
The villain was confronted and defeated by Treus’ sword, yet the castle itself quaked under the onslaught of the merciless storm as it tirelessly hunted its focus, Treus himself.
James gasped as the cyclone tore across the stage, shattering stained-glass windows with its icy mist and stabbing the walls with lightning, setting tapestries afire and cracking the stone floors into heaving, broken canyons. Treus leapt these, drawing Astra along with him, still in her wedding gown and streaming veil, now torn by the battering gale. Distantly, James remembered this scene from his own performance of the Triumvirate. Then, the pedal-powered wind machine had accelerated out of control, causing real and unexpected chaos. The scene playing out now seemed even less staged than that.
Walls tilted inward, disintegrating into rains of brick and stone. Fire raced along the ceilings, wrenching rafters loose and heaving them like pick-up-sticks in the hand of a child in tantrum. And Treus wove through it all, sometimes leading Astra, sometimes tugged forward by her, until the doomed lovers were in sight of the castle entrance. A flaming rafter fell upon them, finally breaking the lovers’ grasp on each other, and crushing Treus under its weight. James simultaneously saw the remainder of the scene as both lines in a playwright’s script, and dim, heartbreaking memories of Petra.
ASTRA [returns to Treus’ wounded side despite the onslaught all around, pleads]: “Advance! We’re nearly free! The castle’s doom’d, but hope prevails! O Treus, curse it not!”
James heard the line in Petra’s voice, untainted with melodrama and hysterics, speaking as if no one was listening but he himself, her expression stricken but stubborn with a thread of hope.
TREUS: “Dear love, I curse not hope. I’ve brave’d the tempest’s watery wrath and fell that sorc’rer’s might. I’ve cursed them all to gaze upon your loving face. But hope? What life I’ve left I live in barricades of hope.”
On the stage, Treus struggled to free his arm from beneath the burning rafter, flinging it out to grasp Astra’s hand. Blood painted his fingers, stained the side of his face. Astra dropped to her knees as darkness closed slowly in on them, the castle collapsing and crumbling inward, tightening the space, making it tragically more intimate and desperate with each moment.
Treus went on, and James mentally said the words along with him, thinking of Petra. “Though God himself may shake this world to fall upon itself, my love and hope remain. Depart, my dear, and leave me now: I walk to death in peace.”
ASTRA [overcome by futility]: “Pray no, beloved!”
The Astra on-stage flung her free hand against her brow, palm out, and sang the line with shrill hopelessness. But her voice was drowned out in James’ mind by Petra, who claimed the words forcefully, not like an elegy, but like a sudden plea, hoarse and breathless, the spoken equivalent of a grasp about the shoulders, a desperate embrace that comes seconds too late. James’ mind flashed with green, and in that flash he saw his cousin Lucy tumbling through the air dead, heard his own scream mingling with Petra’s.
The scene on-stage blended dizzyingly with James�
�� memories.
Astra was Petra, and Petra was Lucy.
ASTRA: “For months and years I’ve longed for thee alone: my dreams the home of thy desperate love! I’ll not depart my place at body’s side, lest unrequited dreams shall crush my soul!”
James sat forward in his seat and spoke the final words of the play aloud:
“Then give me a testament to love. A kiss to cure the pains of death, this one… to stand for all.”
On-stage, Treus and Astra kissed, even as the castle finally collapsed upon them, buried them, ended them. The lights dropped.
The entire theater vanished into perfect blackness. And James was kissed. In the seamless dark, it was Petra’s lips on his. Strangely, disconcertingly, it was also Lucy’s, chaste and brief and careful as a dove.
Heartbreakingly, he smelled his lost adopted cousin, the warmth of her exotic, silky black hair, a hint of lavender soap, a tease of licorice on her breath.
And then the lights came back on, dimly, and it was Millie. Her face was close to his still, smiling faintly, one eyebrow arched.
“Wow,” she whispered, “that suspension of disbelief charm really worked on you, didn’t it? You were Treus for a second there.” Her eyebrow arched a notch higher. “Was I your Astra?”
James couldn’t answer. He couldn’t think quickly enough to lie.
Millie saw this on his face, but merely nodded, still smiling, and dipped her eyes.
James had very little memory of leaving the theater.
James was, in fact, in a distracted, charm-induced daze until dinner that evening in the grand dining room of Blackbrier Quoit. As the formal dinner of Christmas Eve night, the event was the most ceremonious private affair that James had ever attended. Fortunately, Millie’s brother Benton rescued James from the embarrassment of his dress robes by raiding the mansion’s expansive attic, tracking down one of his own old wardrobes, and providing from it a much better, if moth-ball scented, set of robes. James was glad to make the switch and arrived at the dinner table much improved in both mood and appearance.
“You’ll sit between me and Grandmother Eunice,” Millie whispered to him as they filed into the room, herself changed into a mermaid-shaped emerald green dress and a triple string of pearls. “And you’ll be expected to make conversation with her at certain intervals.”
“What do you mean, ‘at certain intervals’?” he whispered back, a note of urgent worry edging into his voice. “And what am I supposed to talk about?”
Millie gave a bland, brief shrug. “She’ll decide that. Just play along. And answer honestly, whatever you do. Grandma Eunice can smell a lie a mile away.”
“But how will I know when I’m supposed to do what?”
Millie frowned and blinked at him, and James was reminded that, to her, this was just a traditional holiday dinner. “Just watch everyone else. It’s easy.”
“Merry Christmas, one and all!” called the booming, jovial voice of Millie’s father as he reached the head of the table, his own formal robes resplendent with a high white collar and matching bow tie. He raised both arms grandly, gesturing at the lines of tall chairs, the glittering crystal glasses and goblets, glinting ranks of silver laid atop neatly folded napkins, and glowing, moon-like plates, saucers and platters. “Do be seated, and let us be merry!”
James tugged out his chair and sidled onto it, watching as the dozen guests sank into their own seats, descending into easy, polite laughter and murmured conversation. The young cousins, Ariadne, Nigel, and Edmund, flanked their mother and father, Susan and Otto, across from Mrs. Vandergriff. Facing James over the white table and candelabra, Millie’s elder sister Mathilda settled in, measuring him with her overly made-up eyes and thin smile.
Beneath James, the seat cushion was deep, covered in purple velvet, but the back of the chair was very high and mercilessly straight, forcing him to sit upright. He put his elbows on the table, saw that no one else was doing so, and immediately pulled them back again, dropping his hands onto his lap.
Muggle servants in black tuxedoes and white ties stood around the perimeter of the room. James counted four of them, including Topham, who stood near the outer door, and Blake, who began to circle the table, discreetly pouring ruby wine for the adults from a large crystal decanter. No house elves were in sight, of course, but James knew that they had to be around somewhere, performing whatever meager roles that were still assigned to them.
Soon enough, as the conversation progressed and the soup course was served (cream of asparagus with gillyweed croutons), James began to understand the protocol of the formal table. Mr. Vandergriff led the discussion, usually with a question directed at someone else at the table—“What think you of Bragdon Wand’s Swivenhodge chances this year, Susan?”, or “Otto, how is your mother faring in Turkey with her trading business?”, or “Have you seen much of Briny and the old crew since leaving University, Benton?”—and the called upon guest would answer for the benefit of the entire table, always in a practiced, articulate voice. Unlike dinners at Marble Arch or the Burrow, no one interrupted anyone, and if there was laughter, it was unfailingly polite and brief.
After the initial answer, the conversation would descend for a time into smaller, related banters around the table. James watched to see which direction to turn when this happened. Just when he thought it was his turn to interact with Millie, Lady Vandergriff spoke up next to him.
“How does your father manage to care for the Black Manor at Grimmauld Place while attending to his prodigious professional duties?” she asked primly, dabbing the corner of her wrinkled mouth with a napkin and ignoring the established table topic.
James turned to look at the old woman, but she merely raised her chin and lowered her eyes to the wine goblet as she raised it in her hand, studying its prism of crimson light.
“Oh, he um…” James began, treading as carefully as possible.
The answer, of course, was that Dad didn’t actually care for the old place, as such. He sent Kreacher on occasion, just to give it a once over and assure that it was all still secure. Kreacher was always content to go, of course, since he alone seemed to harbor a sort of stubborn affection for the musty, imposing mansion. “He has help. Our house elf makes sure it’s in good shape, more or less, for whenever we go there.”
“House elf,” the old woman sighed to herself wistfully, ticking her chin a notch higher, still staring into her wine. “And how often do you go there, in fact?”
James shrugged. “A few times a year, I guess. Mum and dad prefer the house in Marble Arch, I think. It feels a little less… you know,” he reached for his own glass, which was filled with sparkling water, “old and dank. Erm. If you know what I mean.” He realized that this was unlikely to be the sort of answer that the Countess preferred, and quickly took a gulp of water to keep from saying any more.
Lady Eunice sighed briskly and set down her own wine glass without taking a sip. “The magical aristocracy is not like the Muggle variety, young master James. I cannot blame your father for not knowing this. He was not given the proper education in the responsibilities of his position, although one expects that he might have done some research in the years since. “ She turned an eye on James now, studying him before going on. “The threads of magical nobility are fewer and more tenuous with every passing generation. And yet, that only makes their remaining significance all the greater. The Black Manor is not merely an empty house, ‘old and dank’, as you have observed. Your father’s title—which you shall inherit, unless he wills it to someone else, as his godfather did—is not simply a name and a document. Magical nobility is quite different from the Muggles in that way. Your title is a responsibility, because it is one that comes with a great and secret power.”
James felt momentarily captured by the woman’s penetrating gaze. “Power, Ma’am?”
She nodded, still studying him severely. “Power, indeed. But not the power of property, nor position, nor land. The Black manor itself is a mere symbol. No, whe
n we of magical nobility speak of power, we mean it in the truest and most primeval sense. We are guardians, Master James. Our entitlement is the charge of certain deeply elemental forces. But they have not all been maintained. Some have been lost entirely, neglected to the point of impotence, and forgotten to history.”
She sighed deeply, resignedly.
James was intrigued despite himself. “What sort of forces?”
Lady Eunice relaxed slightly on her chair and allowed her gaze to drift over the table. “Few speak of it. Few, even amongst my peers, respect or remember. But once there was the Marquess of Rose whose endowment was the rapture of love. It was that title which guarded and preserved the tides of eros. Lost now to the ages, love still exists without the title’s noble ministrations, and always shall, but ever more tainted and diluted, random and untethered from its deepest cores.
“And much longer ago there was the Greene Barony, endowed with the boundaries of ambition, moderating the supply and demand of jealousy, rivalry, greed, and envy. Now, without its accountancy, such influences run rampant, unchecked, overrunning human nature like an invasive weed.
“And up until the beginning of this century there was the Dukedom of Goldenrod, guardian of the scales of courage and cowardice…”
James stared at the older woman as she spoke, not quite grasping the magnitude of what she was saying, and yet one detail struck him.
He blurted it out, interrupting her in mid-sentence.
“But, they’re all colours…”
James Potter and the Crimson Thread Page 30