Chantress Alchemy (5 page)

“Us?” I echoed in surprise. “You mean he includes you?”

Penebrygg nodded.

Nat thought
Penebrygg
was mad? The mentor who’d rescued and raised him? I took a sharp breath. Perhaps I’d been too quick to accept Nat’s views as the truth. Perhaps there was another side to the story.

Whatever it was, I had no chance to hear it, for a pair of footmen started shepherding us into the Crimson Chamber.

“Come, my dear.” Penebrygg offered me his arm. “We must take our seats.”

We were not the last to enter. Through another set of doors, more councillors were hurrying into the room, which was as crimson as its name. Against the bloodred walls, gilt frames and sconces gleamed. Scores of candles lighted the room, and a fire burned bright in the onyx fireplace. In the center of the room, on a thick rush mat, stood a heavily carved table that looked as though it had hulked there since Plantagenet times.

Penebrygg walked up to it and pulled out a chair. “Here, my dear.”

The seat he offered me was at the right hand of what was obviously—from its size and position—the King’s own chair.

“I shouldn’t be sitting here,” I said.

“I think you will find that the King wishes it. He has been eagerly awaiting your arrival.”

After helping me into my chair, Penebrygg rushed away to his own seat farther down the table. Nat entered and sat beside him, his face set and grim. He did not so much as glance in my direction.

In my worry about him, I only half took in what was happening around me, so I was startled when another old friend from the Invisible College, Samuel Deeps, greeted me.

“My lady Chantress, how delightful to meet with you again.” A dandy by nature, he fingered the ruff of lace at his throat as he sat down on my right.

“How are you, Mr. Deeps?” I said, my mind still half on Nat.

He beamed. “Actually, it’s Sir Samuel now.”

That got my full attention.

Still beaming, he explained, “Quite a number of us on the Council were knighted this autumn.” He nodded at the long-nosed, long-chinned man sitting across the table from him. “Including Sir Isaac.”

Isaac Oldville gravely inclined his head in greeting to me. He looked abstracted, as if he were doing calculations in the back of his mind—a great improvement, I thought, on the irritable expression he’d so often worn when we were fighting Scargrave.

Of madness, I saw not a single sign, either in him or in Sir Samuel. Again my doubts stirred about Nat and his account of the Court.

But I had other questions too.

“Why wasn’t Nat knighted?” I asked Sir Samuel. “Or Penebrygg?” They were both on the Council—and no one else in the Invisible College had done more to help me defeat Scargrave.

Sir Samuel’s face clouded. “Well, that was rather awkward. They were offered the honor, you know. But they turned it down.”

Why?
I wanted to ask. But the question caught in my throat as I glimpsed a sandy-haired man coming into the room.

He was an unmistakable figure, built like a Viking warrior, with vast shoulders and eyes the cold, pale blue of a winter sky. I wanted to dive for the floor. It was the Earl of Wrexham: Marcher Lord, guardian of the borderlands—and Scargrave’s chief Chantress-hunter.

The King had long since forgiven him. Having been deeply in thrall to Scargrave himself, no one believed more in the possibility of reformation and repentance than the King. Fruitless to point out that when Scargrave had first come to power nine years ago, the King had been a small boy, while Wrexham had been twenty-three years old. In those dark days, people much older and wiser had found themselves powerless to resist Scargrave’s fearsome magic—and Scargrave had brought great pressure to bear on Wrexham, holder of one of the oldest titles in the land.

If Wrexham had aided Scargrave more than most, he had also rejoiced when Scargrave was deposed. He was Henry’s man now, one of the very first to swear an oath of fealty. The King had told me I had nothing to fear from him.

Nevertheless, there was something about Wrexham that made
my blood run cold. Even the beautiful symmetry of his face—so compelling to others—was unnerving to me, perhaps because I feared what lay behind it. During those brief weeks at Court last year, I’d felt those pale eyes stalking me as they’d once stalked other Chantresses. Even worse, I’d overheard him telling other courtiers that I was poisoning the King’s mind, using my magic and my wiles to my own wicked ends. I’d been relieved to leave him far behind when I went to Norfolk.

“What’s Wrexham doing here?” I murmured to Sir Samuel.

“Why, he’s head of the Council,” Sir Samuel said.

My stomach lurched. Head of the Council? No wonder Nat’s visits and letters to me had been curtailed. “I—I didn’t know.”

I watched Wrexham cross the room, speaking first to this man, and then to that one, while others waited their turn. It was as if he were holding his own small court within a court. For sheer presence, no one in the room could match him. Arrayed like royalty in cloth-of-silver and jeweled trimmings, he stood nearly a head taller than the others, and his massive hands were studded with glittering rings.

“He was the obvious choice after Sir Barnaby fell ill.” In a very low voice, Sir Samuel added, “Not that some of us didn’t suggest other candidates, of course. But Sir Isaac was about to leave for France, and Sir Christopher Linnet had just agreed to serve as ambassador to Spain. So when Wrexham came back to Court, fresh from his victory against the rebellion, it was clear to us all who Sir Barnaby’s successor would be.”

“The rebellion?” What had I missed?

“You don’t know about that, either?” Sir Samuel looked a little surprised. “It happened at the beginning of October. It was that old troublemaker the Earl of Berwick who led it. He was one of the last to swear fealty to the King, you know. I suppose we shouldn’t have been so surprised when he tried to break away from England.”

“Was it because of the famine?”

“In a way. The blight didn’t hit as hard up there, and Berwick thought he’d take advantage of our trouble and make his move while we were weak. He wanted to set up his own kingdom up there in the North, would you believe, and ally himself with the Scots. And he might well have done it too, if Wrexham hadn’t raised an army on the spot. Together, Wrexham and the King rode into battle against Berwick and won. So naturally Wrexham’s leader of the Council now.”

Naturally. My stomach flipped again.

“It doesn’t hurt, either, that he’s second cousin to the King,” Sir Samuel added. “They say he saved the King’s life on the battlefield, too—he and his men. ” And then he said no more, for Wrexham was striding toward us, his hair as gold as a coronet, his neck as thick as a tree.

He halted before me. Only the table—not nearly wide enough—separated us. I braced myself for insults.

What happened instead was even more shocking: he smiled at me, his teeth gleaming like a wolf’s.

“My lady Chantress.” His faded blue eyes gazed unblinking into mine. “How good to have you with us.”

I couldn’t look away, but neither could I smile back.
You have nothing to fear from him
, the King had said. But my heart was pounding.

Wrexham slammed himself down into the chair opposite me.

“The King!” the footmen cried out.

We all rose as King Henry himself strode in, his red-gold hair shining above the somber black of his clothes. He wasn’t much older than I was, but he had lost his old diffidence. Although he couldn’t match Wrexham for stature, he nevertheless carried himself with the assurance of a true king. He looked like a man who had done battle and won, not only on the field but off it. Yet I saw a glimpse of the old anxiety in his eyes as he sat down.

Was it Wrexham he was worried about? No, that was
my
worry. Doubtless Henry had other matters on his mind—including whatever threat had caused him to summon me here.

Motioning for us all to be seated, he turned to me with grave politeness. “Well met, my lady Chantress. I am sorry I could not welcome you on your arrival, but I trust you were properly received?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” I gave the expected answer. I had no intention of explaining that the most important welcome had come from Nat.

“Very good.” As the guards bolted the doors shut, the King raised his voice to address everyone. “Greetings, my lords and gentlemen. I have called you all here because matters are at a critical point. But at least one in our number”—he nodded at
me—“knows nothing of what has transpired in this place. My lord Wrexham, perhaps you would summarize for her?”

Summarize Wrexham did, in words as blunt as his broad, bejeweled hands. “It comes down to this, Chantress. Some devil’s run off with the Golden Crucible. And you’d better get it back for us, or else.”

There was a chill in Wrexham’s eyes that unnerved me, but mostly I was confused. Had the King called me all the way down to Greenwich to solve a simple robbery?

“I must say, I had thought to break the news a trifle more gently,” King Henry said, turning to me. “But the gist of what Wrexham says is true. We have suffered a great loss, and we very much need your help.”

“If I can help, I will,” I said, trying to avoid Wrexham’s gaze. “But I don’t understand. If it’s a matter of ordinary thievery, why do you need me?”

“Because nothing else has worked,” the King said. “And because the entire future of the realm depends on it.”

“On a . . . crucible?” I tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

“Yes,” the King said. “If we’re ever to fill the royal coffers, we must have it back.”

I still did not understand.

“Perhaps I might explain matters more fully, Your Majesty?” Isaac Oldville—Sir Isaac—no longer looked so abstracted.

“By all means.” The King waved his hand. “After all, you know more about the business than anyone else.”

What business? I was still in the dark.

Sir Isaac leaned forward to enlighten me. “As you doubtless know, the kingdom has suffered greatly over the past six months. Blighted wheat has led to a ruined harvest, a ruined harvest to hunger, and hunger to great unrest everywhere.”

“Unrest?” Wrexham snorted. “Call it what it is, man. Mobs. Riots.”

Sir Isaac ignored the interruption. “Some people are questioning the King’s rule,” he told me. “They say that under Scargrave they never went hungry. Rebels preach sedition, and the poor are listening. Indeed, some parts of the country have become almost lawless. Much of Suffolk, for instance—”

“I wouldn’t call Suffolk lawless,” Penebrygg interrupted from his place far down the table. “Boudicca is actually keeping the peace quite well.”

“Boudicca?” I remembered the benediction from the road:
Boudicca blesses you.
“Who is she?”

“No one’s quite certain,” Sir Samuel told me. “Which is unsettling in itself. Her real name’s Goody Boot, some say, but Boudicca’s the name she’s adopted. They say she takes from the rich and gives to the poor. And she has a fanatic core of followers.”

“Some of the rich have given willingly, I hear,” Penebrygg said.
“It’s little enough to them. And they say the woman Boudicca puts it all toward feeding the hungry.”

“They’re a rabble of cursed Levellers.” Lips twisting in distaste, Wrexham extended a hand to the King. “There will be no order in the kingdom until we crush them. If you would only see reason, Your Majesty, and let me lead an expedition against them—”

“A valiant offer,” the King said, “but first let us see how Boudicca explains herself when she comes before us. She professes loyalty to the Crown, after all, and she made no objection to my summons. Indeed, she is making good speed toward Greenwich, by all accounts.”

“With a host of followers,” Wrexham pointed out. “Five hundred at last count. What does she need five hundred men for, if not to foment rebellion?”

“They’re not just men,” the King countered. “The report says there are women and children in that number too. Which suggests it’s not exactly an army she’s bringing. For all we know, they’re following her for reasons of their own. Hunger makes men—and women—do strange things.”

“All the more reason to put a stop to the fool woman now,” Wrexham said. “Cut her down before she can do any real damage. If we don’t make an example of her and her followers, we’ll soon see open rebellion again. And after that, who knows? Spain and France might well take advantage of our weakness.”

There was a murmur of agreement from many at the table.

“It is true these are dangerous times,” the King conceded. “But
we’ve discussed this before, and I stand by my opinion: if we attack Boudicca before we’ve even attempted to meet with her, we could provoke exactly the kind of rebellion that we dread.”

Anger sparked in Wrexham’s pale eyes, but the King did not seem to see it. He was speaking to me. “What we need to do instead is find ways of remedying the real problem: the famine. Once we get hold of more food, all these troubles will pass. Fortunately, the Continent wasn’t touched by the blight, and they’re willing to sell us grain.”

“Which would be good news,” Sir Isaac said wryly, “if only we had the money to buy it.”

Anger still burned in Wrexham’s eyes. “The reparations have beggared us, just as I warned they would.”

“Yes, but we had to make them.” The King was resolute. “So much of what Scargrave took, he took wrongfully. That money shouldn’t have been in our coffers to begin with.”

“It’s a principle we could ill afford,” Wrexham said. “Giving back the money has made us weak. We’ve run the Treasury dry.”

“Not quite dry,” Penebrygg put in. “But with your program of fortification draining what’s left, Lord Wrexham—”

“Defense must come first,” Wrexham growled. “That is the first duty of a sovereign lord: to protect his people. Everyone knows that.”

“I would put food first myself.”

“That’s because you’ve never put down a rebellion.” Wrexham gazed at Penebrygg in disdain. “You philosophers know nothing about how to run a country.”

“We know something about it,” Penebrygg said, adjusting his spectacles. “At any rate, we have seen how one can be mismanaged.”