The Witch & the Cathedral - Wizard of Yurt - 4 (7 page)

As the Illusions faded away, people began to disperse. The young chaplain startled me by touching my elbow. "Would you care for a final glass of wine in my chambers?"

For a moment I was unable to answer. Even aside from my suspicions of him, coming back to Yurt had revived long-forgotten memories of the day I first arrived here. We had eaten in the same hall, its doors and windows open to the air; I had had the Lady Maria beside me; and after dinner I had asked Joachim to have a glass of wine in my chambers.

The young chaplain seemed to take my silence as a symptom of abstemiousness. "The Apostle tells us to take 'a little wine for thy stomach's sake,' " he said with a genial chuckle, patting the organ in question, "and we shouldn't disobey the Apostle, now, should we?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I was thinking of something else. I'd be very happy to join you."

I turned toward the stairs that led up to the small room both Joachim and his immediate successor had had, but the young chaplain turned the other way. I hurried after him, recalling some problem which had made him ask for different chambers.

"So how are you settling into your new duties?" I asked as I caught up. "You'd been here a month with the previous chaplain, but you'd only been on your own for a few weeks when I left." I wondered jealously if he now thought of Yurt as his kingdom.

"Very well, I hope. But maybe you shouldn't be asking me," he added with another chuckle, "but those I try to serve!"

He opened his door and motioned me to precede him. I observed at once that he had more space than I did. But I was also relieved to see that his chambers did not suggest an impure mind. The rooms were furnished sparsely, with nothing on the walls but his seminary diploma and the crucifix at the head of the narrow bed.

"You probably wondered why I asked you to join me," the chaplain said, opening a bottle, "especially after the Lady Maria seemed to imply that you and I ought to be fierce competitors!" He gave a broad smile and handed me a glass. Even though it had always bothered me that Joachim had a rather limited sense of humor, I would at the moment have preferred his sober intensity.

"So she's been taking her instruction in directions you hadn't intended?" I asked, taking a sip. The first night I had met Joachim, we had put away several bottles of City vintage between us. I had been determined to show him that no priest could out drink a wizard, and although I had never asked him about it, I had the impression he didn't want to let a wizard think he could out drink a priest.

"Well, her comments have put me in a delicate position," said the chaplain with well-modulated cheerfulness. "You may not believe me" —I didn't— "but it was not I who originally pointed out to her the growing role that wizards are taking in all noble courts. While naturally I have stressed the position of the Church in my little chats with her, it was someone else who planted the first seed of the idea that wizards are manipulating the secular rulers of society."

'Then who was it?"

"Christian charity forbids me from speaking his name."*

Prince Vincent, I thought with sudden conviction. He must be behind the rumors the Master of the school had heard.

"But I will try to make amends," continued the chaplain, "by asking you to join us in a conspiracy!"

I barely avoided choking on my wine. "What sort of conspiracy?"

"We want to make sure the queen does not make the error of marrying Prince Vincent."

Immediately I liked the young chaplain much better. I could sort out all these strange rumors later. "And who is we?" I asked with an accommodating smile.

He looked down for a moment as though embarrassed, then smiled again. "Well, I sounded pretty self-important there for a moment, didn't I! So far, the conspiracy is mostly myself. The Lady Maria is of course in agreement with my purposes."

"I would have thought she'd adore the romance of a love match."

"In a way she does, but there is a core of wisdom in what you might think is just a silly head. I did not point out that I had probably known the Lady Maria since he was a child begging his mother for extra snacks. "How about other members of the court?"

"No," he said, shaking his head regretfully. "When I tried to broach the topic to one of the knights, he said something—I know you'll find this hard to credit—about the Church needing to stay out of the affairs of the aristocracy!" So if members of the court were being taught to distrust wizards, I noted with interest, they also distrusted the chaplain. "I would like to bring Prince Paul into our plans," he added, "though at his age it is hard to trust his judgment."

I thought uncharitably that the chaplain was not very much older. "I can understand why Paul doesn't like the thought of his mother's remarriage," I said. "He's had her all to himself, and he doesn't want any disservice to his late father's memory. But I don't understand your own objections."

He leaned forward and spoke gravely. The candlelight made flickering points of light in his eyes. "A woman, once widowed, does better to devote herself to God than to another temporal spouse."

"So you think widows should never remarry?"

The Apostle tells us it is best that they do not. I can see that she felt she had a moral obligation to raise her son to manhood before retiring, but a woman of true religious sensibilities would now be planning her retreat to a nunnery. The Nunnery of Yurt has an excellent reputation for holiness and was in the past, I understand, supported by generous and pious gifts from the royal family of Yurt."

I was unable to answer at once. The queen had in fact, when very young, contemplated entering a nunnery rather than marry someone she detested, but she had instead married the king, whom she loved. I could not see her in a nunnery, then or now.

"Have you mentioned this to the queen?"

"I tried to suggest to her delicately that perhaps remarriage would distract her from the higher affairs of the soul, but she just laughed."

I gave him my wizardly look. "Surely I do not need to tell you that to force a soul into suitable religious behavior will not help that soul's salvation." I rose to my feet without waiting for an answer. "Thank you for the wine. It is good if representatives of wizardry and the Church can agree on issues of mutual importance."

As I strode with self-conscious gravity from his chambers and crossed the courtyard toward my own, I found myself wondering if a belief that the queen's soul would be improved by a nunnery was his only consideration. Might he have some ulterior motive for wanting her out of the castle?

I awoke to the chapel bells the next morning with the happy realization that I was back home in Yurt, far from technical-division wizardry students. This cheerful thought was followed however almost immediately by the distressing knowledge that Prince Vincent was coming today.

He had telephoned that he planned to reach Yurt in the afternoon. The queen was busy bringing heaps of roses into the great hall, arranging them in vases and attaching bouquets to the dark stone walls. I myself wandered out across the drawbridge, gloomily convinced that he was the mysterious person inciting aristocrats to distrust their wizards.

At least the queen and Paul seemed unaffected so far. I looked down the hillside sloping away from the castle, past the walled graveyard where the king was buried.

A distant group of tiny horsemen emerged from the woods, far earlier than anyone had expected. Faint on the wind came a trumpet call. Knights and ladies poured out across the bridge behind me. Even the queen, flushed, laughing, and pinning a white rose into her hair, came running out.

The trumpet sounded again, and the horsemen kicked their steeds for the last ascent. The man in the lead, whose golden surplice left no doubt he was a prince, was mounted on a red roan stallion. I looked surreptitiously for Paul, who I knew would be furiously jealous. He stood motionless among the members of the court.

With a jangling of bells and clatter of hoofs, the knights pulled up their horses. Vincent vaulted from the stallion and swept the wide velvet hat from his head. "My lady!" he cried and knelt before the queen. The jeweled scabbard of his sword and the long feather of his hat dragged unheeded on the brick road. With one hand he took both her hands and kissed them gravely.

She blushed charmingly and tugged to bring him to his feet. He leaped up, smiling all over his face. He was graceful and muscular, with hair mat glowed like burnished copper, and very obviously in love. He was, I thought ruefully, a truly glorious knight. Thirty years ago, before I had decided to become a wizard, I would have wanted to be just like him.

We had not expected you so early," said the queen. "You must forgive me if you find me in some disarray."

"You should have known, my lady, I would not stay from your side one moment longer than I could help. And I came to see you, not your array."

The other knights were dismounting. "Where is Prince Paul?" Vincent called in a high, ringing voice that cut across the other voices. "I have something to give you!"

Paul came slowly forward. His mouth was grim, but he determinedly looked Vincent in the eye. I knew him well enough to realize that he did not want anyone to think that he was sulking.

"My prince!" cried Vincent. "When I left here three weeks ago, everyone was talking of preparations for your coming of age ceremony later this summer. I remember what it was like to be eighteen, and how long a few months could be. I thought then that you might not want to wait for all of your gifts, so I brought you one now. It's this stallion: he's yours, I bought him for you, take him!"

For a second all the color drained out of Paul's face, then he stepped closer, stiffly, unbelieving, unable to speak. Vincent handed him the reins.

I had to fight against my initial hope, that Paul would refuse the gift and would cast the reins into Vincent's face with a rebuke for the patronizing note I thought I had heard.

But I need not have worried. I saw all of Paul's objections to Vincent cracking and dissolving away like ice in the sun. A smile started small and stretched until it threatened to crack his face. He found his voice at last. "Thank you! How did you know? He's exactly what I wanted, more than anything!"

He swung up into the saddle. The stallion arched its neck and took a few quick steps. In spite of the long trip to Yurt which had left the other horses lathered, the stallion seemed nearly fresh. Paul brought him around, the horse answering instantly to the reins- Then, reluctantly, the prince slid back to the ground. "You've just been riding him rapidly, and I don't want to push him, even though I can tell he's ready to go again. Thank you!" It was going to be hard after all for the young chaplain to incorporate Paul into his "conspiracy."

"I thank you too," said the queen to Vincent, her emerald eyes dancing with delight although she managed to keep her manner sober. "You have done my son a signal honor.

Now, would you enter my castle?"

I watched jealously to make sure they weren't holding hands, but they walked side-by-side in perfect dignity across the drawbridge and through the castle gates. Stable boys came to take the horses, although Paul took charge of the stallion himself, and the constable directed our new guests to their quarters. I lingered outside the castle for a moment, looking across the green hills of Yurt, wondering if the queen had secretly loved Vincent for years as I was sure he must always have loved her, or if her feelings were only a product of a few short weeks of courtship while I was not there to stop it.

When I looked into the great hall a few minutes later, to see Vincent and the queen finishing arranging vases of roses, she motioned me over, smiling with a tenderness I knew was not meant for me. "Vincent, I'm sure you remember our Royal Wizard."

"Of course, though it's been several years," he said. "You performed some really spectacular illusions after dinner." Flattery was not about to win me, but I nodded my head. For the queen's sake I had to be polite. At least if he thought all wizards were plotting to take over the western kingdoms, he was too well bred to say so.

"You've been in the City, I understand?" he went on. "You missed what I gather has been the talk of Yurt, our whirlwind courtship!"

"Don't make it sound too rapid," said the queen with a laugh. "We had after all known each other for years, and it was scarcely my fault when I invited you to stay for a week that you stayed for eight!"

"And even so, when I left three weeks ago you still wouldn't say you'd marry me."

The queen laughed again. "I waited a week before I telephoned him to say Yes, and I still told him he couldn't come back right away. Do you think me very heartless, Wizard?"

"Entirely heartless," I agreed. I was sure the fact of their eight-week courtship was accurate; they wouldn't tell me something anyone might contradict. But I wondered why they should go out of their way to tell me, when it was none of my business, that the queen had initially hesitated to accept Vincent's proposal, and why they should do so in a manner so ostentatiously cheerful, affectionate, and in perfect dignity.

Were they trying to distract me from why Vincent had left and why he had come back now? Was it accidental that the queen had invited Vincent to visit shortly after I had left for the City? Had something happened during those eight weeks he was here, something they hoped was hidden from everyone else and they didn't want me to look for? Then I had to smile at myself. Now I was developing an "impure mind."

"We want you to know," the queen continued, "that you'll continue to be a valuable part of Yurt even after Paul becomes king and Vincent and I are married. We wouldn't dream of getting rid of our Royal Wizard."

This came as a serious shock. I had certainly never dreamed of this. That she would even bring it up meant that they had indeed considered it.

Though my first reaction was horror at realizing how close I had come to having to leave Yurt and join the Romneys, my second thought was to wonder why Vincent—he must be responsible—wanted to get rid of me. Was their cheerful unanimity a mask for severe disagreements, of which the question of whether to tire the wizard was only one? If so, the queen had apparently won this round, but might she lose the next?