Lady of Magick

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  Then she grinned, pulled his face down to hers, and kissed him.

  “I think,” said Gray rather breathlessly, some time later, “I think we understand one another well enough.”

  * * *

  They arrived late that afternoon, by prior arrangement, at the Plough and Pipes. Cooper, as was his habit, disappeared with the landlord to see to their several accommodations; Gray had long ago concluded that his object was, at least in part, to shield Sophie from the frank discussion of such matters as His Majesty’s requirements for her security, which must be necessary at each halt. On this occasion, however, he reemerged into the inn-yard at a rapid walk, wearing a thunderous frown; Gray at once caught Sophie’s arm and murmured, “Be careful. Something’s amiss.”

  Cooper strode across the inn-yard to stand by the carriage door, as though meaning to open it. “Mr. Marshall,” he said in a low voice, “ma’am, I think it best we don’t remain here. I believe the landlord has been telling all the neighbourhood about his illustrious guest, and I’m thinking you’ll not be very pleased with the results.”

  Sophie scowled.

  “What other choices have we in this neighbourhood?” Gray asked. “I seem to remember passing another inn along the road . . . ?”

  “The Drowned Man, aye,” said Cooper. He glanced sidelong at Sophie. “The horses have got another few miles in them, once they’ve been fed and watered and rubbed down. With your permission, sir, I thought to ask for a meal to be put up, in case you should be hungry before we reach the Drowned Man.”

  Gray strongly suspected that Cooper had ordered the said meal already, and was only couching the information as a request for permission in an effort to avoid ruffling anyone’s feathers. If so, the effort was successful, for Sophie at once said, “That is very well thought of. Yes, please do so. And be sure they put up enough for five; for you know that inn at Hathersage, when we asked for a cold collation, gave us scarcely enough for two, and we were all as ravenous as—as my sister Joanna, after scrambling about all afternoon.”

  Cooper nodded gravely and went away to see to the horses.

  “We may as well stretch our legs whilst the opportunity offers,” said Sophie philosophically, and they descended from the barouche and strolled arm in arm about the inn-yard.

  It was not long, however, before murmurs and flashes of movement began to catch at the corners of Gray’s eyes, and not much longer before it became clear that they were already the object of highly unwelcome attention; the inn’s upstairs windows were lined with inquisitive faces, and stableboys and serving-girls peered around posts and door-frames to stare. Sophie’s gloved fingers bit painfully into his arm; a shimmer of magick, intimately familiar but not his own, ran through him; and from one moment to the next the faces grew puzzled, and the murmurs changed in tone from agitated interest to bewilderment, then died away: Sophie had caused herself and him to become . . . unremarkable.

  “I am so tired of hiding,” Sophie sighed. “I wish we need not do it.”

  Gray stopped walking and turned back to face her. “I hope you are not hiding on my account,” he said.

  Sophie raised her face to his, wearing an expression of the utmost bafflement. “Of course not,” she said. “No one would stare and point at you, if you were not in my company.”

  From anyone else, this statement could only have been construed as insulting. Gray considered its source, however, and—after counting ten—said only, “And I should not object to being stared and pointed at, if you did not mind it.”

  Gray remembered how self-conscious he had once been about his height, and considered how much less trying it was to wear his six feet and three inches with confidence and authority than to be continually attempting to fold himself out of everyone’s way. Sophie, he thought, would be happier when she had learnt to wear her title as though it belonged to her, rather than putting it on, like an ill-fitting garment and a pair of boots that pinched, only when some particular occasion obliged her to do so.

  “But I do mind it,” said Sophie, in a tone of such finality that Gray could find no purchase for argument.

  They sat together in the barouche, gazing in opposite directions, until Cooper returned with the horses and a hamper, and were conveyed in near silence to the more modest comforts of the Drowned Man.

  * * *

  The official letter of invitation provided by the University, and letters of reference from Lord de Courcy, Lord Kergabet, and Oscar MacConnachie, smoothed their passage from the Border district into Alba proper; Gray deduced from the nonchalance of the guardsmen and officials on both sides of the Roman Wall that they had taken the Mr. and Mrs. Marshall mentioned in these documents at face value, and was glad to have been spared both any repetition of their reception at the Plough and Pipes, and the strop from Sophie which was likely to follow.

  The green or golden fields and sheepfolds, tidy cottages, and occasional great houses, the shepherds and the gangs of harvesters working in the fields, continued very like—if differing in style—from England on the one hand, to Alba on the other; until, on a sunny August day some forty miles past the frontier, they passed a field of what might have been barley, lying black and blighted. After it came another, and another; the air grew hazy, and the horses snorted at the oily smoke and stench of what proved at length to be a farmer burning half a hundred carcasses of sheep upon a pyre; so many blighted fields were there that for two hours or more, there was nothing to be seen but blackened stalks of grain, and withered marrows, and wasted beasts. The grim farmer cremating his flock aside, they saw no people at all.

  “Joanna was not exaggerating,” said Sophie, as Cooper urged the nervous horses past a paddock in which three shaggy, rheumy-eyed ponies chewed listlessly at the remains of a stand of clover. “But she said the people were not starving; I am not sure I can believe it.”

  She shivered; Gray tucked one arm about her, drawing her in closer to his side. “You must write to your father, when we are come to Din Edin,” he said. “I am sure something can be done.”

  “Yes,” said Sophie, “I suppose so.”

  She did not point out, though she must see the implication as well as Gray did, that what Joanna knew of Alba’s circumstances, surely His Majesty must know also.

  The blight ended as abruptly as it had begun, some few miles onward, and they saw no more such sights before they reached Din Edin.

  PART TWO

  Alba

  CHAPTER V

  In Which Gray and Sophie Land on Their Feet

  September had almost begun by the time the wheels of the Marshalls’ borrowed equipage clattered onto the streets of Din Edin. Gray stared around at the bustle and hum of the great city—no match for London, of course, but many times as populous as Oxford, and a dramatic change from the tiny villages and small farming towns through which they had been passing. Beside him, Sophie was blending in, or so he judged by her intent listening stillness and carefully expressionless face.

  “Is all well, kerra?” he asked, as the barouche slowed to allow the passing of a heavy waggon piled high with barrels that sloshed.

  Sophie turned and looked up at him; her dark eyes were wide and fathoms deep. “There are so many people,” she said, wonderingly, “and not one of them knows or cares who I am, or who my father is.”

  Gray grinned and squeezed her hand. “It is fortunate that I know you so well,” he said; “you must be sure not to say such things to strangers.”

  “You do not know me at all, if you suppose for a moment that I should,” she retorted, but though she attempted a scolding tone, she was smiling. Then something caught her eye and she sat up straight, all eager attention: “Look there! It is one of Harry’s men without trousers!”

  Gray turned his head sharply, startled. But though the man in question indeed wore no trousers, he was fully clothed in some sort of wrapped and gathered garment, in a colourful wo
ven pattern of scarlet and green and gold. This together with a splendid head of ginger hair, and a beard to match, made him stand out in the crowded street, but no one apart from themselves seemed to find him an object of interest.

  * * *

  They drew up at last before a modest house in Drummond-street, the door of which was opened, before Gray’s upraised hand had let the knocker fall, by a young woman in a green gown. Tall and slim, with auburn hair and a constellation of freckles across her fine straight nose, she smiled at Gray and Sophie as though perfectly delighted to see them.

  “You are Magister Graham Marshall?” she said, and to Sophie, “and Domina Sophie Marshall?”

  Gray, bemused, nodded.

  “Welcome to Din Edin, Magister, Domina. I am Catriona MacCrimmon—Rory MacCrimmon is my brother,” she added, by way of explanation. She spoke in a softly accented and curiously formal Latin. “I feared that I should not recognise you, but the moment I saw you I was altogether certain. My brother described you very precisely.”

  “How could he?” demanded Sophie, startled into speech. “He has never met either of us!”

  “I should imagine that he asked his friend Mór MacRury,” said Miss MacCrimmon cryptically. Then she smiled again. “Now, do come in and be welcome to our house! You have been travelling; I am sure you must be weary.”

  The business of dispatching Cooper and their baggage to their own lodgings in Quarry Close, and consulting as to the location of the nearest stabling for the horses, took some little time. At length, however, Gray and Sophie found themselves comfortably ensconced in a cluttered, welcoming sort of library-cum-sitting-room, partaking of tea and oatcakes whilst their hostess decanted from them, with an efficiency which Gray felt Joanna might have envied, the tale of their journey.

  Catriona—for so she at once insisted they address her, almost before they had finished drinking from her chased copper welcome-cup—seemed so much au fait with the life of the University that Gray was unsurprised when Sophie asked her, rather hesitatingly, whether she was herself a student there.

  “Oh! No,” Catriona laughed. “That is, I did study along with Rory for a year—you may not know that we are twins?—but I have not the patience to make a proper course of study in one subject; I much prefer to keep house for him and be left to read whatever I will. But you are to be a student, I understand?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Sophie, with one of her slow-blooming smiles. “Though perhaps I may also be insufficiently patient. I suppose we shall find out!”

  “I hope at least you will come to all of my lectures,” Gray said, “though I dare say you will find them very dull.”

  Catriona looked uncertainly from one of them to the other, as though she did not altogether know what to make of this remark.

  “He means,” said Sophie, with a brief reproachful glance at Gray, “that he has nothing to say which I have not already heard. But I trust that may not be so, for you have a prodigious library here, have not you? And I dare say it has a great many books in it, Gray, which even you have not read.”

  Catriona’s enthusiasm for the University Library carried the conversation happily forward until a bustle at the front door and a bass-baritone hail in which Gray could distinguish almost nothing but Catriona’s name announced the arrival of some other person.

  “Ah! Here is Rory,” Catriona exclaimed, jumping up from her seat on a sofa the other end of which held a tall, precarious stack of codices and a glossy ginger cat.

  She ran lightly out of the room. When she returned a few moments later, she was towing by the hand a young man a little taller than herself, with hair like rings of polished copper and the same freckled nose and bright, dancing green eyes.

  “Welcome!” he said, turning on Gray the widest, most disarming grin the latter had ever seen. “I am delighted to see you both arrived here in one piece—that is to say . . . well! You will forgive my clumsy Latin, I am sure.”

  Rory MacCrimmon shook Gray by the hand—his hand was large and callused, his grip confident—but made Sophie a very creditable leg, which performance made her blush becomingly.

  “I hope you have got something splendid for dinner today, Catriona,” he said.

  * * *

  If the dinner was not so splendid as those they had eaten in London, the simpler fare was plentiful, well seasoned, and delectable, and Sophie thoroughly enjoyed both the food and the society.

  “My colleagues are agog to meet you,” said Rory MacCrimmon to Gray. “A true shape-shifter! And the students, also. I predict you shall have a train of apprentices stretching from the University to Castle Hill.”

  His sister smiled gently at Sophie. “I hope you are not inclined to jealousy, Domina,” she said.

  “Of course not,” said Sophie at once—though as the conversation moved on, it occurred to her to ponder whether this was only because she had never had the least cause, and whether things might be different at the University, where clever women with an eye for Gray’s (to Sophie’s mind, very considerable) charms were likely to be all about them.

  She was not long left to ponder, however, for Rory MacCrimmon turned to her with his engaging grin and asked, “Have you ambitions in the shape-shifting line yourself?”

  “Not as such,” Sophie replied, cautiously, “though I confess I should rather like to be able to fly, as Gray does.”

  Catriona shuddered.

  “Should you, indeed?” said Rory. “I have not much head for heights, myself. My own project, as I have explained to your husband, is the form of a wild cat—now, wait a moment, where have I—”

  And over his sister’s protests, he leapt up from the table and ran out of the room, to return an awkward few moments later brandishing a sheaf of anatomical drawings and watercolour sketches; and the next quarter-hour or more was enthusiastically devoted to the physiology and physiognomy of the Alban wild cat.

  Sophie entered gladly into the men’s enthusiasm, but Catriona, she saw, did not; perhaps keeping house for her brother had given her her fill of wild cats.

  “Have you any projects in train at present, Miss MacCrimmon?” Sophie inquired, when a spirited discussion of the relative merits of feline and strigine camouflage, to which she could contribute nothing, offered her an opportunity for escape.

  “Catriona, please,” her hostess reminded her. “I have been dabbling in historical research; some of the clan histories make very interesting reading.”

  “Oh!” said Sophie, her interest piqued. “Have you any recommendations for a newcomer to the field? Though of course,” she added, more doubtfully, “I suppose the books will be all in Gaelic?”

  Catriona patted her hand in a familiar and (if it was not only Sophie’s fancy) rather condescending manner. “I shall look you out some books tomorrow,” she said kindly, “and bring them round when I come to call on you. And of course there are many more in the Library, in all manner of languages! Though you shall begin learning Gaelic soon enough—you know, do you not, that the University holds a daily tutorial for the foreign students and the visiting Fellows?—you must not be discouraged, however, if you find it does not come easily to you; Gaelic is not so easily learnt as Latin or Français.”

  The admixture of kindness, condescension, and pity in this speech left Sophie blinking in confusion, and she did not know quite how to answer it; there had been, however, an offer of books, to which there could be no other response than heartfelt thanks.

  “I am much obliged to you,” she said, therefore.

  * * *

  It was late in the evening when, escorted by Rory, Sophie and Gray set out on foot for Quarry Close. The day had been fine and warm; the evening was crisp, clear, and still, portending chilly days and frigid nights in the darkening of the year. The streets around the University were lit by magelight lanterns mounted on iron or wooden poles, so that their progress along the pavement took them fr
om light to shadow to light again.

  Sophie, warm in the circle of Gray’s arm about her shoulders, listened attentively to Rory MacCrimmon’s account of a scandal in what would seem to be the University’s equivalent of Merlin’s Senior Common Room, involving the theft of a manuscript and a series of unpleasant insinuations relating to an undergraduate. It did not seem to occur to him (and certainly should never have occurred to Gray) that she ought not to hear such a scurrilous tale; this lack of constraint completed the work begun by Catriona’s enthusiasm for the University Library, leaving Sophie feeling taller and broader of shoulder as well as (perhaps paradoxically) comfortably invisible. Perfectly unremarkable, Gray said, and so I shall be!

  At least, until someone here learns the truth.

  She put that thought resolutely away from her—it was bound to happen, and the gods knew that she had lived through worse!—and raised her face to smile at the midnight-dark sky.

  * * *

  Lamplight and magelight gleamed in the windows of the narrow stone-faced houses of Quarry Close. To one of these, with a grin and a flourish, Rory conducted them, handing over a heavy brass door-key which, when Gray tried it in the lock, stuck only a little.

  Then he was striding away in the direction of Grove-street, calling a cheerful good-night over his shoulder, and Gray and Sophie were alone in their new home.

  “Our own house!” cried Sophie, in high delight. “Or very nearly. Oh, but, Gray, I am afraid I shall be a shocking housekeeper. I ought to have watched Cousin Maëlle more closely . . .”

  “You forget,” said Gray, grinning down at her, “that I was an impoverished student for many years before I met you. What I do not know about subsisting on bread-crusts and rinds of cheese is not worth knowing.”

  For just a moment, he saw, she feared he might be in earnest, and the idea of his living for years on crusts of bread wrung her tender heart. Then she caught his intent and frowned at him for jesting on such a subject—but with a smile dancing in her dark eyes.