The Midnight Queen (17 page)

He lifted a hand and rapped once, then three times in quick succession, then once again. He held his breath, waiting, sensing that Sophie, beside him, was doing the same. Would Master Alcuin help them? Would he—Gray experienced a moment of gut-twisting horror at his own stupidity—would he be in College to be asked?

There came muffled footsteps, then Master Alcuin's familiar voice: “
Quo vadis?
Have you no respect, whoever you are, for the sported oak?”

Gray put his face close to the aged wood and said, “It's I, Magister—your scapegrace student. With a friend. May we come in?”

What might have been a gasp of surprise was followed by the familiar soft creak of the inner door; at last, ponderously, the oaken door began to open towards them, and they stepped back to avoid being knocked flat.

Master Alcuin saw Sophie-as-Arthur first, and looked puzzled; this was no student of his, no student, in fact, that he had ever seen before. “Magister,” said Gray softly, and his former tutor looked up—for he was no more than two inches taller than Sophie—and saw him. This time Gray knew he had not imagined the gasp of shock he heard.

“
Marshall?
” the older man whispered. “And who is this?”

“A friend,” Gray said, as quietly as he could. “One you shall enjoy meeting, I assure you. But I think—”

“Of course, of course!” Master Alcuin's tone was the one he used when he was angry with himself for forgetting something very important—the name of one of the sons of Don, say, or an obscure Erse foretelling-spell. It transported Gray briefly to an era of his life which, by comparison, seemed idyllic.

Sophie tugged at his sleeve, bringing him back to reality; Master Alcuin was waving them through the door, glancing furtively about the landing outside his rooms. Gray sighed and followed them in. His mentor locked both doors behind them and at once filled the familiar enamelled welcome-cup.

In Which Gray Encounters Surprise and Disbelief

Gray warded the
room. Master Alcuin, in an apologetic murmur, warded it again, then, with the suddenness of a summer cloudburst, demanded, “What, Marshall, in the name of Merlin himself, do you mean by coming here?”

Gray blanched, and for a moment Sophie was certain—despite their welcome—that they had made a dreadful mistake. “I am constantly watched,” the don continued furiously. “You might have called on almost anyone else without danger, but I—And
he
is here—here in Oxford, though not living in College, for he has brought a daughter with him, it appears—you are mad to come here, Marshall, you will be discovered and—”

Gray and Sophie exchanged a look of mingled horror and relief: Master Alcuin was not concerned for his own safety, then, but for Gray's. Sophie's heart warmed towards this odd little man, to whom Gray had told her he already owed so much.
But Amelia is here,
she thought—not without wonder, for the Professor had always maintained the strictest separation between his family and the sacred groves of Oxford.
We might have run against her at any time yesterday, and been altogether undone . . .

Master Alcuin now appeared to remark once again that Gray was not alone; his expostulations continued, not allowing either Gray or Sophie, supposing her to be so inclined, any opportunity for reply. “I should not have thought
you
, Marshall, foolish enough—inconsiderate enough—to involve an innocent bystander—”

Here, finally, Gray cut him off. “Magister,” he said, “I fear that Sophie is hardly an innocent bystander.”

Sophie elbowed him sharply; Master Alcuin at once turned to her, pale-blue eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“We are wasting time. Show him,” Gray ordered, and Sophie, with some relief, unbuttoned her waistcoat and relaxed into her natural shape. Her hair, long again and uncontrolled, tumbled wildly over her shoulders and into her eyes. As she shook it impatiently back from her face, Gray stared at her, his lips moving rapidly but silently, as though he were working some spell, and it struck her that this was almost the first time he had looked her in the eye since their leaving the inn.

Their host was almost hopping up and down in his excitement, questions tumbling from his lips faster than any human being could have answered them.

“Magister.” Sophie had heard Gray use the same kind but quelling tone on Joanna. “Magister, please; there is much to tell you, and little time. If you will sit down, we shall explain everything.”

The elderly don did as he was bid, sinking slowly into a wing chair upholstered in threadbare blue velveteen; Gray and Sophie took two of the room's other three seats. “Perhaps, Marshall,” said Master Alcuin after a moment, still staring at Sophie with a sort of awe, “you will begin by introducing me to your friend.”

Gray looked at Sophie, who at once took matters into her own hands. “My name is Sophie Callender,” she said.

*   *   *

The effect was immediate; had she chosen to tell the whole truth, Gray thought, Master Alcuin could hardly have been more shocked. “It is true, then,” he said, shaking his white head. “I had dismissed the tales as common-room gossip, yet here you are, together . . .”

“Not
quite
true,” Gray interposed. What exactly had the common-room gossip been? Some of the variations of themselves that they had collected during their journey had been positively scurrilous. “Both of us fled the Professor's . . .
hospitality
, yes, but not alone, and not . . . this is not any sort of elopement. Our purpose, I fear, is a far less pleasant one.”

The tale, it seemed to him, grew more phantastickal and less plausible with every telling; by the time they had finished explaining their purpose (leaving aside, for the moment, the matter of Sophie's true identity), it would be astounding indeed if his mentor did not instantly throw them out. Master Alcuin listened intently, however, and seemed—though increasingly astonished—never to doubt their words.

“It is an almost incredible tale,” he said at last. “In other circumstances, Marshall, I should be most disinclined to believe it. But there have been . . . peculiar doings here of late. Since receiving that letter of yours I have myself been under constant watch; there seem to be listening-spells everywhere I go, and out of doors I am followed. It is difficult to know why this should be, unless something very sinister be afoot.”

“You do believe us, then?” cried Sophie. “You will help us?”

Master Alcuin smiled at her exactly as, on their first meeting some four years ago, he had smiled at a young and eager Gray.

“With all my heart, young lady,” he said, with rusty gallantry. “I am at your service.”

*   *   *

Master Alcuin, as Gray had predicted, possessed his own copy of the
Sapientia Delphi
, so that they need not venture forth to the Library. It fell to Sophie—who could not read Greek—to unravel the codex cipher, while the others worked on Lord Carteret's diary, which Master Alcuin, hinting at a wealth of past experience with codes and ciphers, had pronounced to be a double substitution cipher. It was tedious work, and she often lost her count of the lines on a folio and had to begin again, but it pleased her to be doing something practical to thwart her stepfather.

The words came slowly—for such a small book, it had a great many pages—and it was not until she had deciphered the last of them that she set the
Sapientia Delphi
aside and looked at the whole of the translated message.

The first half of it—the half taken from the Professor's study—read,

Expect visit

Require proof that method prepared for test

Query girl as promised

Proof necessary to persuade old man

The second read,

He has the girl

Test will occur as planned

Make all necessary preparations

Upon his return be watchful

Send no answer

“Gray,” she said. “Look.”

Both Gray and Master Alcuin left their work to examine her transcription.

“
He has the girl
?” said Master Alcuin in a puzzled tone. “
Query girl as promised
?
He
I suppose is Callender, given the circumstances, but who is the girl?”

Sophie and Gray exchanged a look. “We cannot know,” said Gray after a moment, “but it seems likely that the girl is Sophie.”

Master Alcuin frowned up at him, then down at Sophie. “And what should Lord Carteret want with you, my dear?”

“I have not the least idea,” said Sophie, not altogether truthfully. She read over the messages again. “
Query girl as promised
?”

“A weakness of codex ciphers is the difficulty of punctuation,” said Master Alcuin.

And Gray: “It is not
Query girl as promised
but
Girl as promised?
” His hand gripped Sophie's shoulder for just a breath. “He came to Breizh to inspect you, I fear, as well as to satisfy himself that the Professor's
method
, whatever it is, was well in hand. It was a risk, that visit, but not the greatest he might have taken; anyone might reasonably choose that part of the kingdom for a holiday, and we may presume that he did not dispatch his message until he was safely away from Callender Hall.”

Sophie shivered. “
Proof necessary to persuade old man
,” she read. She could guess who was meant, and surely Gray could guess also; she hoped Master Alcuin would not. “Whatever proofs he needed, we must suppose from the second message that he found them. And if the test is to
take place as planned . . .
”

“Then Lord Halifax is still their first target.” Gray's voice was grim.

*   *   *

Lord Carteret's diary, when at length Master Alcuin hit upon the correct combination of substitutions to decipher it, proved equally interesting. They had not rationally supposed that he would set down the details of a murderous conspiracy in pen and ink—it would be dangerous to risk anyone else's reading them, and he himself presumably did not need reminding—but he had done what was, for their purposes, the next best thing: The entries Gray had copied contained, interspersed with dyspeptic complaints about his journey and disparaging comments on the conduct of Breizhek servants and the tedium of country living, a number of brief self-directed memoranda:

Boy less stupid than C believes; girl perhaps even more so. Biddable and dull. Mother?

C wavering? Not to be trusted. Direct M to watch.

Gray glanced from the transcript in his hand to Sophie's on the table. “Lord Carteret's second message was directed to this
M
, then,” he said. “And
M
must be someone here in Oxford, if he is charged with watching the Professor.”

W reports HM visiting Temple of Taranis.

W reports HM entertaining priestess of Arawn and E distressed.

HM et al. to Caernarfon Sept. Direct W to follow.

Girl remains doubtful but evidence satisfactory.

C insists method prepared. Direct M test to proceed as planned.

“This is proof, surely!” Sophie exclaimed.

“It is proof of something,” Master Alcuin said cautiously. “It does little to enlighten us as to the nature of the threat, or its ultimate target, but it is indeed suggestive. Without the original document, however, it is not much better than hearsay. We might easily have fabricated these messages, and, as they are copies, scrying can tell us nothing.”

“
E is distressed
,” said Gray, “as anyone might be by a priestess of Dread Arawn—he or she is connected to
HM
. And if
W
is following to Caernarfon—”

“But who is
HM
?” Sophie said. Then understanding dawned in her dark eyes as she added up the clues. “Lord Carteret has set this
W
, whoever he is, to spy upon the
King
?”

They stared at Gray's transcription, absorbing the implications of this, and of the words
Proof necessary to persuade old man
, and of the rumours they had heard at the Seven Sisters in Crookham. At last Sophie said, hesitatingly, “You do not think that
he
is their next target?”

Gray felt like a terrier who had grasped the tail of a rat and found a rabid bear at the other end of it. “I fear we can draw no other conclusion,” he said.

*   *   *

It was a testament to Master Alcuin's appreciation of the gravity of the circumstances, Gray reflected with a wry smile, that he did not spend the whole length of their journey to the Master's Lodge conducting a detailed inquiry into the precise workings of Sophie's magick. His former student could see very well that he was aching to do so, but instead he kept up the sort of inconsequential chatter to which any Senior Fellow might subject visitors or newcomers to Merlin: details of the College Charter; potted histories of the various
bâtiments
, statues, and other structures along their route; obscure facts relating to this or that College luminary and his discoveries, magickal and otherwise. Gray, to whom all of this was as familiar as his own name, scarcely listened, but “Arthur” hung on Master Alcuin's every word, apparently following his characteristic mingling of English, Français, and Latin without difficulty, and again Gray was reminded of his own early student days. He had been just Sophie's age, then—a wide-eyed innocent, eager and shy together.

He trailed behind his companions, keeping his own eyes firmly above their heads, for if Arthur's face was an unsettling sight, Sophie in trousers was a thoroughly distracting one. Gray wondered that anyone could take her for a boy, even dressed as she was, and with that face on; despite her best efforts, she did not walk, or move, or stand, like anyone but her own dear self. It must be her magick that did the trick; was he, through close association, growing immune to its effects?

The Porter who kept the door of the Master's Lodge gave Gray and Sophie a narrow glance, but in the company of a Senior Fellow who came, as he said, on a matter of urgency for the Master's ears alone, they passed in without comment. The Master himself, it transpired, was taking tea alone in his study, and—a stroke of good fortune for which Gray silently thanked every god he could think of—would deign to see his visitors immediately.

Heart pounding, mouth dry, Gray followed Lord Halifax's superior manservant, Master Alcuin, and Sophie into the great man's study.

*   *   *

Selwyn, fifteenth Lord Halifax and Master of Merlin College, was a tall, imposing man of perhaps sixty years, with a mane of greying hair, a hawk's curved nose, and keen brown eyes. He looked to Sophie as though he should not suffer fools gladly. His study showed an odd mixture of tastes, or perhaps of histories. Tall glazed cabinets covered most of the walls, filled with scrolls and codices, some obviously of great antiquity. Above these, secured by iron brackets all about the room, depended a collection of fearsome weaponry: several longswords and broadswords; a long pike; a grim, businesslike battle-axe. Sophie shuddered a little at this last; the Master of Merlin might be (as Gray had told her) a great and learned scholar, but if he chose to keep these things so close about him, she should not like to fall foul of the man's temper.

Temper, however, was not to be their difficulty.

Lord Halifax greeted Master Alcuin with a warm handclasp; he exchanged ceremonious bows with “Dunstan” and “Randal”; he frowned momentarily at Gray, as though wondering where he might have seen him before, and slowly dropped an eyelid at Sophie. Resuming his own seat, he gestured graciously for his guests to be seated also; they perched awkwardly on velveted sofas, Gray on one side and Master Alcuin and Sophie on the other.