Chantress Fury (9 page)

A distant clock chimed the three-quarters hour.

“Oh dear.” Sybil put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Lucy, but I have to get back. Otherwise my ladies are bound to come looking for me.”

“I understand.” I hurried away from the loggia with her. “I ought to be going too.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t more help.”

“You
were
a help.” It was disconcerting to think my senses might have misled me about the nature of my enemy, but I was pleased to think that the culprit might not be a Chantress after all.

Sybil gave me a quick hug and pattered away. I stood for a moment in the rain, watching her go, her shoulders stiffening under her cloak as she took up the burden of being Queen again.

It pained me to see the change in her. But then I had my burdens too—and they wouldn’t be lessened by my standing there in the rain. I strode off, determined to see what else I could discover about Sybil’s wise women.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WISE WOMEN

“Wise women?” Gabriel’s well-arched eyebrows shot up, and his skeptical voice echoed loudly in the anteroom of the Great Library. “You want me to research
wise women
?”

“Yes,” I said crisply.

After one too many clashes with Nat and Sir Barnaby over the best way to proceed with the riverside defense efforts, Gabriel had offered his services to me. I’d gladly accepted, but I was beginning to think that I’d made a mistake. Captain Knollys and my men hadn’t given me this kind of reaction when I’d raised the matter of wise women with them.

“You mean cunning women?” Gabriel said, eyebrows still raised. “The ones who sell charms and fake love-potions?”

“How do you know they’re fake?” I countered.

“They must be. Most of those women can’t even read. It’s all superstition.”

“I wouldn’t be so quick to judge,” I said. “Just because they’re poor and unlettered doesn’t mean they have no power. And anyway, I’m not looking for love-potions. I’m looking for wise women who claim to have a special influence over water.”

Gabriel’s face told me what he thought of that.

I looked up at the coffered ceiling of the anteroom and told myself to be patient. “You’re the one who wanted to help,” I reminded Gabriel. “And right now this is what I need—someone to search the Great Library for any references that might be useful. Someone with a knowledge of old languages and arcane texts. I think you could do it. Will you?”

With a small sigh, Gabriel bowed. “Very well. Anything for you, Chantress.”

Was I right to put so much weight on what Sybil had told me? I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I was headed down the wrong path—and perhaps listening to the water would put me on the right one. That night, while Gabriel researched wise women, and Knollys and my men went looking for them, I stationed myself down by the river, paying especially close attention to the places where the strange sea creatures had appeared.

I had to concentrate quite hard to hear anything, however, for Nat’s plan to arm England with iron was proceeding at a dizzying pace. All along the riverfront, men were hammering in spikes by lantern light and calling out to each other as they mended iron rails and chains. Here and there, blacksmiths had set up temporary forges where their anvils rang out like bells in the night. Meanwhile Sir Christopher, Penebrygg, and their friend Robert Rooke labored over a new design of water pump in the shadow of Whitehall itself. The hoses made a ghastly sound as they sucked.

I kept as far from the sound and fury as I could, the better to listen to the river. Mischievous as ever, it was full of songs, but they told me nothing I didn’t already know. If the Thames was privy to any magic secrets, it didn’t share them with me. At last, a few hours after midnight, I gave up and went to bed.

The next morning came much too quickly, and it brought more rain. A gloomy prospect, but at least my ankle was feeling better. I dressed as quickly as possible and gulped down some porridge with Norrie while I went over the night’s reports. No sea monsters or mermaids had been sighted overnight, which was cheering.

From Captain Knollys, there was nothing but a brief note asking me to come see him. Done with breakfast, I rushed off to the guardrooms to find out what was happening.

Halfway there, my hastily pinned-up hair slipped loose. Clapping a hand to the unraveling coil, I went in search of a mirror and found one in a tiny jewel box of a room nearby. While I stood before the mirror, twisting my hair up again, voices filtered through to me from the next room.

“You think Lord Walbrook will marry the Chantress? My dear Clemence!”

I couldn’t see the speaker, but I knew her by her tone alone. It was Lady Clemence Grey’s older sister, Ardella, who was married to the Lord High Admiral.

“It’s not so ridiculous,” another woman said. It sounded like Lady Gillian. “Didn’t you see the way he looked when they came off the river?”

“I heard someone say he’s never stopped loving her,” Clemence said wistfully.

“Nonsense,” Ardella said. “She has some kind of hold over him, perhaps. But you needn’t worry. He won’t marry her. Who would? No man wants to wed a woman who has the power of magic, trust me. Walbrook, least of all.”

Under my frozen hands, my coil of hair sprang free and tumbled down my back. I wrenched it tight and started putting it in order again—but an angry curiosity kept me listening to what was said about me.

“I suppose you’re right,” Lady Gillian conceded. “She’s a strange creature. Really, when you come down to it, she’s not even human, not fully.”

“Yes,” Ardella said. “And anyone who marries her has to think of the children.”

“Children?” Clemence sounded confused. “What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you ever heard the story of Melusine?” Ardella’s voice sank low, as if she were relating a juicy bit of gossip. “She was a Chantress too, or so they say—daughter of the faerie Pressina. She tried to hide her true nature from her husband, but her blood betrayed her. Her children were monstrous. One son had a lion’s foot growing out of his face. Another had a tusk for a tooth. And when her husband finally confronted her, she turned into her true form, a sea serpent.”

That wasn’t the way Lady Helaine had told the tale. According to her, Melusine’s sons had been perfectly normal on all counts, and she’d had a Chantress daughter as well.

What was the true story? I didn’t know. But I did know I’d heard enough of Ardella’s sly scandal-mongering. The woman was poison. I jabbed the last pins in, eager to get away.

“Ugh,” said Lady Gillian. “Who would want to marry a creature like that?”

“No one,” Ardella said emphatically, still in that malicious voice. “Not even dear little Lucy’s father, from what I hear.”

A pin slipped in my fingers, piercing my scalp. My father? I knew he’d been a musician, and little more. What did Ardella have to say about him?

“I know someone who used to be friends with her mother, Viviane,” Ardella went on. “She loved the man desperately, even ran away from her guardian to marry him. But when she told him she was expecting their child, he got cold feet. Maybe he thought she’d bear another tusked wonder. At any rate, he left her.”

I felt dizzy; the mirror seemed to wobble. I’d been told that my father had died before I was born, but the details had been vague. Was it just a story? Was Ardella telling the truth?

“How awful,” Clemence said.

My whole head burned. I had to get away.

Desperate for a refuge, I stabbed the last pin in and retreated toward my room. Then I remembered: I needed to see Captain Knollys. Still dazed, I turned myself around—and almost bumped into Gabriel.

“Chantress! Just the woman I wanted to see.” He flashed a smile at me, then looked more closely. “Are you all right?”

I wasn’t all right, but I worked to hide it. I touched my bracelet to his outstretched hand—a gesture of greeting that was starting to become almost routine. “I’m fine. I was just on my way to the guardrooms, and then I was planning to look for you. Did you find anything in the library?”

“Nothing much,” Gabriel said. “Though I was there till almost dawn.”

Till dawn? He didn’t look it. Freshly shaved and fashionably tailored, he wore boots so polished that I could almost see my reflection in the black leather. People said that Gabriel’s valet was the best in all England. I believed them.

“Let’s sit down, and I’ll give you my report.” Gabriel steered me into the next room and gestured toward a velvet couch—high-sided, soft, and intimate.

Thinking it looked a little too cozy, I sat myself down in the nearest chair instead. “This will do.”

“Very well.” He pulled another chair close. “I did find a reference in a fourteenth-century chronicle to wise women who talked to the creatures of the sea. A century later, another writer speaks of a group called the Well Women who practiced certain rites on the banks of the Thames.”

“Rites?”

“Chiefly wading into its waters and making offerings. There’s one mention of a wicker Flower Maiden that was set alight and given to the river. But there’s not a word about singing.”

“Nothing at all?” That was disconcerting. Of course, early chronicles were notorious for missing out important details. “Did they mention any kind of music?”

“No.” Gabriel stretched out his legs, jaw tightening as he suppressed a yawn. “One of them talked about the music of the spheres, but that was in a different section entirely.”

“The music of the spheres?” I’d heard the phrase before, but I had no idea what it meant. “What’s that?”

Gabriel, who enjoyed playing the expert, was happy to explain. “Well, some scholars argue that all heavenly bodies—the sun, the moon, the planets, even the stars—have their own unique music. Pythagoras wrote about it, and so did Plato, and plenty of others. Some think they meant it just as a metaphor, a way of talking about theories of mathematics and astronomy. But the rest say no, it’s actual music.” His hand, idly running down the chair, came close to mine.

I pulled my own hand back. “No one suggests that it’s connected with water, do they?”

“Not that I’ve read,” he admitted. “But the moon is the force behind the tides, so that’s a connection to the ocean. Come to think of it, it might be worth seeing if there’s anything about music in Paracelsus—”

“He’s the man who wrote about elementals?”

“Yes. Although he’s better known for his books on alchemy and medicine.”

The mention of alchemy made me sit up straighter. That too was something I hadn’t considered—but perhaps I should have. “Did Paracelsus think alchemy could give people power over elementals?”

Gabriel’s fingers restlessly explored the chair arm. “He thought a true master might be able to make the invisible visible. And yes, perhaps even give him control over some elementals.”

“Does he say how?”

“No.”

A dead end, then. But a suggestive one. Could alchemy be part of the puzzle I was trying to solve? Who better to ask than the man beside me? Gabriel was one of the best alchemists in the kingdom, even if he’d sworn off active pursuit of it after his talents had gotten him into serious trouble last year.

“Gabriel, do you know of anything in alchemy that might explain what’s happening now?”

His brown eyes flashed. “If I did, don’t you think I would have said so before?” There was hurt as well as anger in his face. “I’ve expressed my loyalty in a thousand ways, not only to King and country but to you personally. What more do I have to do to prove myself?”

Seeing how distressed he was, I forgot my caution and laid my hand on his. “I didn’t mean to question your loyalty. I was just hoping that you might remember some small detail that could help us now. Or that you might have heard some rumor from your alchemist friends—”

“I have no such friends.” He clasped my hand, his dark eyes fervent. “Not anymore. I swear to you that I’ve turned my back on the art forever. You must believe me.”

“I do, Gabriel. I do.” I released his hand, but he didn’t let me go.

“I don’t think you understand how I feel.” His eyes turned soulful. “Chantress—”

Behind us a library door flew open. As I pulled away from Gabriel and spun around, young Barrington galloped into the room like a stallion on the loose.

“Come quickly, Chantress! We’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Bright-eyed and panting, he gave me a brilliant smile. “We’ve found something.”