Lady of Magick (6 page)

On the morning
of the Marshalls' departure, the family's early breakfast was enlivened by the arrival of an express from Carlisle, bearing a letter for Sieur Germain from Lord de Courcy in Din Edin.

Sophie and Gray appeared not to remark this particularly, and having noted with passing interest the coincidence of a letter's coming from Din Edin on the very day when they were themselves to begin their journey thither, they returned to their tea and bread-and-butter. Gwendolen, arriving in the breakfast-room almost on Treveur's heels, had not so much as glanced at the thick letter in his hand, being more concerned with claiming her share of Mrs. Treveur's excellent bramble jelly.

Joanna, however, watched Sieur Germain, covertly but very closely, as he opened the Ambassador's letter and read it. Lord de Courcy habitually sent his ciphered dispatches by the dedicated couriers who rode once every fortnight or so between Din Edin and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (weather and other circumstances permitting), whence they reached London by the Royal Mail; it must be something very particular that led him to send an express from Carlisle, and she yearned to know what it might be.

By the set of Sieur Germain's lips when he laid the letter down again, the news it contained was less than welcome. “Joanna,” he said quietly to her, “when you have finished your breakfast, go up to the library and make a fair copy of this letter, please.”

Joanna glanced at her half-finished third helping of breakfast, and then at the sheaf of writing-paper in Sieur Germain's hand. Then scooping a last mouthful of bread-and-butter and bramble jelly into her mouth with one hand, she held out the other for the letter, and rose from the table with alacrity.

*   *   *

When Joanna returned to the breakfast-table not half an hour later, a moral struggle was going on in her mind, between her express promise not to discuss the details of Roland's Alban betrothal with anyone outside the close circle of those presently involved in its negotiation, and the question of whether to let Sophie and Gray take up residence in Din Edin at present was to send them into difficulty, and perhaps even into danger. When she had sat down with the cipher key and Lord de Courcy's letter, she had been thinking only of its possible implications for Roland; by the time she had finished deciphering and copying it, however, this new worry had taken possession of her thoughts.

Deciphered, the Ambassador's letter was brief and bald:

My Lord President: Be circumspect in your dealings with MacConnachie, and do not tarry about the business. Donald MacNeill—
ruler of Alba, and prospective father-in-law of Roland
—favours the match, but some in his court, of whom see list appended, are united and bitterly earnest in opposing it. They can imagine no other reason for H.M.'s interest than that the marriage is a bid to place his son on the throne of Alba, and thus absorb their kingdom into our own; and what is only bluster now, I fear will soon take some more concrete form. It is difficult to gather news from the remoter parts of the kingdom, but it seems clear
that the poor crops and the livestock plagues which have been reported here and there will not be helpful to our cause, being rumoured to be of either divine or magickal origin. The attempted secrecy which H.M. and D.MacN. appear to consider necessary, has only lent fuel to the fire of these men's suspicions; therefore I hope that the business can be concluded satisfactorily without loss of time, and the news made public by official means
[this last underscored]
,
so that all may proceed openly and aboveboard, and this rumour-mongering be put to rest.

I remain, &c.
Courcy

She could not, must not, betray Sieur Germain by telling Sophie of the King's plans for Roland. Leaving aside all considerations of honour and trust, to do so would expose her patron to attack by all those who disapproved of her presence, even peripherally, in the discussions of the Privy Council; and, furthermore, she would be disgraced and, in all probability, sent away to live under the eyes of her mother's cousin, Lady Maëlle, eye in the depths of Finisterre, where she would go slowly mad with only Amelia and the housemaids for company.

But if Lord de Courcy was correct in predicting . . . what? Joanna's imagination at once flew from palace coups to civil war to bloody riots in the streets of Din Edin—

“Jo?” Sophie's voice, a little sharper than was usual, jarred her back to present reality.

“I . . . I am sorry,” Joanna said. “I was thinking.”

“Thinking something very unpleasant,” said Sophie, sotto voce, “to judge by the colour of your face.”

“Sophie,” said Joanna, looking down at her clasped hands, “will you come upstairs with me for a moment? I am afraid there has been some mistake about your books.”

*   *   *

“You know that I am a great deal with Sieur Germain,” she said, when she had closed the door of her bedroom behind her sister, “in council meetings and the like; and from time to time one hears things. I have lately heard—” How to convey her warning, without betraying the trust of others?

When embroidering a falsehood, work in as many threads of truth as you may.

“There have been poor crops in parts of Alba,” she went on, “and cattle disease and the like; and there are rumours of unrest, which is not to be wondered at in the circumstances. I . . . I do not like to think of your going where there may be trouble.”

Sophie's dark eyes widened; she sank into the carved chair before the dressing-table and folded her arms along its back. “Truly?” she said. “But cannot we help them, then? There has been no war between Britain and Alba for some years; is not the present King . . . if not our ally, at least not our enemy? Their gods are not ours, I know, but surely he would accept any help we might usefully offer, if his people are starving?”

“His people are not starving,” said Joanna hastily.
Yet.
“I am only remarking that when Fortuna turns her wheel, and one finds oneself under it, one is apt to seek someone to blame. If what I have been hearing is true, it seems some in Alba believe there is magick behind their misfortune, and mages behind the magick.”

Which was true enough, in some lights, with the wind in some quarters: Donald MacNeill was a mage, after all, and his daughter also—not to mention Prince Roland.

Sophie's face was very still as she thought all of this through. “Thank you, Jo,” she said at last, “for looking before we leap.”

“But you intend to leap nevertheless,” said Joanna.

“Jo, you know what an opportunity this is for us!” There was a faint edge of pleading in Sophie's tone, which anyone less well acquainted with her could not have discerned; Joanna rather wondered
that she did not bolster her argument by reminders of Joanna's own past leaps into hazardous circumstances. “And I cannot think that Rory MacCrimmon would invite us if there were any danger. And besides that, Jo, I . . . I have tried never to mention it, but things have not been altogether easy at Merlin.”

“I know that.” Joanna spoke before she thought.

Sophie blinked. “You know it? How?”

By what you did not say.
But Joanna was spared the necessity of formulating a reply by Gray's choosing that moment to call up the stairs, “Sophie? Have you nearly finished?”

“Nearly,” Sophie called back. She had clearly no intention of cutting this conversation short, but she could not—or, at any rate, almost certainly would not—physically restrain her sister, and Joanna was on her feet and out the door before Sophie had even left her chair. She paused on the threshold to say, in an urgent undertone, “Sophie, do please be careful!”

“I am always careful,” said Sophie, primly and, in Joanna's opinion, most untruthfully.

Joanna stalked away, down the stairs and past her brother-in-law, lest she say something Sophie might find difficult to forgive. It was cold comfort to reflect that even had she divulged the entire truth, it was very unlikely to have done any good.

*   *   *

Gray had been very firm and tediously specific in negotiating with his father-in-law's equerry the details of their conveyance to Din Edin. He was glad of it when, emerging from Jenny's front door in her sensible travelling-dress, Sophie regarded the sleek black barouche with its pair of bays, and the solidly built coachman standing by the near-side horse's head—all, as eventually agreed, quite free of the royal arms and livery—and gave a just-audible sigh of relief. If she also remarked upon the familiar faces of the two outriders—Tredinnick and Goff, whom Gray had last seen dressed as Oxford undergraduates loitering along the Broad—she gave no sign;
Gray nodded at them, however, in his customary manner, and they returned his acknowledgement with a pair of cheerful salutes.

Joanna came bounding down the front steps, followed more sedately by Miss Pryce, and stood at Sophie's shoulder; Miss Pryce hung back, as she had done throughout their stay at Jenny's—as though she should have liked to imagine herself a full participant in whatever was going forward, but could not quite bring herself to believe it.

“Good morning, Cooper!” said Joanna, addressing the coachman. “How are you? I hope your lumbago is quite gone away?”

“Why, Miss Callender!” Cooper produced a frank, engaging grin. “Yes, thank you, I am very well.”

Joanna looked him up and down approvingly, then stood back a little to examine the carriage. “I half expected to see the royal arms upon the door,” she remarked, sotto voce.

“That is because you have no faith in my powers of persuasion,” said Gray.

Joanna snorted.

“Sophie,” she said, “Gray, this is Edwin Cooper. Cooper, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall.”

Then, her social duty discharged, she wandered away towards the horses.

“Your servant, madam. Sir.” Cooper's nod, Gray was pleased to note, was respectful but in no way servile.

“Well met, Cooper,” said Gray.

Sophie caught Gray's hand in hers and squeezed it. “We are going to Din Edin,” she said, so softly that he had to duck his head towards hers to catch her words. “Really going.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling down at her. “Our great adventure.”

Her answering grin broke over her face, transforming it from sober thought to sudden, luminous beauty. Out of the corner of his eye, Gray saw Cooper rock back in astonishment, and he tensed warily. But in an eye-blink Cooper had recovered himself, smiling benignly at Sophie.

“I think we shall get on very well together,” said Gray.

*   *   *

“I like your sister,” said Gwendolen, in a considering tone, as the Marshalls' carriage retreated. “She does not give herself airs.”

Joanna bristled. “Of course she does not!”

“You need not puff up like an angry hedgehog, only because I paid your sister a compliment,” said Gwendolen, now sounding quietly amused. She was holding Yvon in her arms, and absently kissed his soft fair hair.

“A compliment, was it?”

“Anyone would think, to hear you, that you had not been at Lady Brézé's evening party with Lady Kergabet and me last Luneday,” said Gwendolen, “or had somehow failed to hear her dropping Queen Edwina's name in every other sentence, because her daughter was at school with Her Majesty. At present, I can think of no higher compliment to bestow.”

Joanna tried her best not to chuckle at this, and failed.

*   *   *

The early part of the journey north passed uneventfully enough for even Gray's taste. Their borrowed carriage was well-sprung and comfortable; Cooper knew his business, and treated both passengers and horses with appropriate care; Tredinnick and Goff were polite and unobtrusive. They went leisurely, with frequent pauses, leaving (as Cooper put it) no local sight unseen.

In the Peaks of Derbyshire, Sophie scandalised Cooper et al. by scampering about on rock outcrops from which she might easily have fallen to her death. Once or twice even Gray was rather alarmed, but when she came hurtling down from one such promontory, assuring him that he had never seen such a prospect, he was helpless to resist her plea that he come up at once and look at it, and soon found himself scrambling after her.

“There!” Sophie exclaimed breathlessly, flinging out her arms. “Is that not the finest thing you ever saw?”

It was a fine thing, indeed. The sun shone, and a fresh breeze chased towering cloud-ships across the brilliant summer sky; spread out below their rocky perch, the hills and valleys made an ocean of velvet-green and gold, dark-shadowed where a cloud passed overhead, then suddenly flaring into brilliance.

Gray glanced sidelong at Sophie, poised no more than a foot from a sheer drop, her bonnet dangling by its strings from one hand, and was suddenly reminded of their voyage from Rosko to Portsmouth, when she had stood in the prow of a fishing-yawl and wrestled with her conscience. He shivered.

“Come away from the edge,
kerra
,” he said. “The prospect is equally splendid from here, I assure you.”

She turned and gave him an odd, impenetrable look, but reached amiably enough for his outstretched hand, and allowed herself to be drawn back from the precipice and into his arms.

“I thought nothing could be as magnificent as the Breizhek coast on a windy day,” she said, “but this country is quite as magnificent, in an altogether different way. Truly the gods who made this kingdom are to be admired.”

Gray smiled fondly down at the top of her head. “You have found some new source of magnificence nearly every day of this journey,” he said.

Sophie turned in his arms and looked up at him, a puzzled frown creasing her brow. “Have not you?” she asked. “But then, I suppose you have done more travelling than I . . .”