Lady of Magick

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  * * *

  Sophie was prickly and generally unlike herself all that morning, and it was in a mood of grim resignation that Gray escorted her across Din Edin, to the very fashionable street which housed the official residence of Aurélien, Lord de Courcy, Ambassador from Henry of Britain to the court of Donald MacNeill. Goff and Tredinnick trailed them at a discreet distance, so familiar by now that even Gray almost forgot their presence.

  The house was stone-built, looming grey and forbidding behind a high wrought-iron fence screened by prim yew-trees. “The better to poison unwelcome visitors,” Gray muttered, under his breath.

  A pair of liveried pikemen stood guard on either side of the heavy gate and frowned at Gray and Sophie whilst Gray explained their errand. Sophie at length produced a letter of introduction—directed to Lord de Courcy, in Sieur Germain de Kergabet’s hand—of which Gray had until this moment been perfectly ignorant, and said, “We are to give this letter into my lord of Courcy’s hand.”

  The left-hand guard—a gangling fellow whose speech held a strong flavour of the Borders, and whose elaborate moustache was, Gray strongly suspected, an attempt to camouflage the fact that he was not much older than Sophie—ducked his head into the tiny gatehouse and barked an order, at which there emerged a little page-boy in matching livery and incongruously muddy boots. The other guardsman (older by at least a decade, nearly as tall as Gray and much bulkier) opened his half of the gate just enough to let a child slip through; and, without so much as a glance at the visitors, the page-boy turned tail and ran in the direction of the house.

  “Sophie,” Gray hissed, seizing the first moment of guardsmanly inattention that offered, “where had you that letter? You have not been carrying it with you all this time?”

  She gave him a reproving look, jerking her head at the guardsmen, and wordlessly tucked the letter away in her reticule.

  Not a quarter-hour later—though it was a very long quarter-hour indeed, for Sophie would not discuss the mysterious letter in the guardsmen’s hearing, and Gray was discouraged from conversing with the guardsmen themselves by their rigid posture and forbidding expressions—the page-boy returned to the gate and, from the other side of it, made Sophie and Gray a deep, if not notably elegant, bow.

  “His lordship’s compliments, Monsieur Marshall, Madame Marshall,” he recited, panting a little as he straightened up, “and he invites you to take some refreshment, and apologises for your being detained at the gate.”

  The guardsmen’s gobsmacked expressions, thought Gray, did not much look as though it were indeed a natural and unremarkable thing for every British subject passing through Din Edin to call in upon the Ambassador. As he and Sophie passed through the gate on the page’s heels, however, he heard the Border-country guardsman mutter to the other, “He intends to feed them apparently! He never feeds the uninvited ones.”

  Gray was not sure whether this fact ought to worry him more, or less.

  The page-boy conducted them through the small but elegant garden that hid behind the yew-trees, up the steps to an imposing front door, and stood on tiptoe to rap energetically with a brass knocker in the shape of a gloved hand holding a sphere.

  “That knocker is an Iberian design,” Gray murmured, and Sophie looked up at it suspiciously. He had seen and admired one like it in a shop in Oxford, and contemplated its merits as a gift for her, but at last determined that its origins would outweigh any enjoyment she might derive from its whimsical design.

  The door was swiftly opened by an elderly manservant of the sort whom one could easily imagine growing up and growing old in the service of a great house. He bowed them through with excruciating correctness, but out of the corner of one eye Gray caught him affectionately ruffling the page-boy’s dark curls before sending him briskly back to his post.

  They were now escorted through the house to a spacious library looking out into another garden, again small but artfully arrayed. The Ambassador’s gardens did not call to Gray as the garden of his childhood home had always done (and did yet, if he were honest), with its exuberantly asymmetric stands of bright flowers and fragrant herbs, its darting butterflies and humming bees; but he could see that they were beautiful.

  Lord de Courcy rose behind his desk to greet them, smiling politely. He was a tall man, dark, with a face like a hatchet. On the near side of the desk, another man also rose—younger, stiff-starched and purse-lipped at the interruption—twisting as he did so to present his face rather than his back to the door. It was a face that niggled at the corner of Gray’s memory.

  “Ah,” said Courcy, with the shade of a smile. “Monsieur Marshall, Madame Marshall, we meet at last.” Then, turning to the other man, “Powell, the wards, if you please.”

  The younger man—Powell, then—raised his eyebrows briefly. Then he closed his eyes, settled his shoulders, and spoke a brief, decided spell that sent a perceptible shiver of magick out to the circumference of the room.

  “You were at Merlin,” said Gray, remembering at last where he had seen Powell’s face before. “You were a student of Professor Maurice, and you took a Double First in the year when I matriculated. Everyone was astonished that you did not go on to study for Mastery.”

  “Marshall,” said Powell, thoughtfully. As Gray’s (perhaps ill-considered) speech proceeded, Powell’s eyes had gradually narrowed in concentrated study of Gray’s face and of his person. Now they widened almost comically as Powell said, “Oh! You are that Marshall, the one who was sent down and then reinstated, the one who— Oh!”

  He turned abruptly to Sophie and gave her a bow which (thought Gray) nicely skirted the servility which Sophie so detested. “Your Royal Highness,” he said. “It is a great honour to make your acquaintance.”

  * * *

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company this morning, Your Royal Highness?” Lord de Courcy inquired, when Gray and Sophie had been welcomed to the small slice of sovereign Britain represented by the Ambassador’s house, and all four of them were seated about the small table at the study window, drinking tea. “I hope you do not find yourself in some unfortunate circumstance?”

  Gray darted a nervous glance at Sophie, but finding her perfectly composed, he relaxed again and reached for his teacup.

  There was a long silence before Sophie said, “I was reminded today that we have been remiss in paying our respects since our arrival in Din Edin, and naturally sought to remedy this omission.” She fished once more in her reticule and extracted Sieur Germain’s letter, which she presented to Lord de Courcy with a gracious incline of her head, clearly modelled after a gesture of Jenny’s. “This is a letter for you, from Sieur Germain de Kergabet, which I was charged to give into your hand.”

  Gray frowned at it. He could not for the world have humiliated Sophie by demanding to know its history in front of these virtual strangers; but he could not account for it, and the mystery nagged at him. Had she been concealing it since their departure from London? If so, to what purpose? Or had it arrived more lately, and if it had done, why in Hades should Kergabet use Sophie to convey a missive, which he might more easily—and more properly—have sent through diplomatic channels? If Sophie had not delivered it at once, it surely could not be a matter of urgency, might in fact be nothing but the simple letter of introduction it pretended; but in that case why the insistence on its being delivered directly from her hand to Courcy’s?

  Meanwhile Sophie was calmly sipping her tea and Lord de Courcy calmly slitting open Kergabet’s letter. Whilst he perused it, with the occasional frown and the occasional thoughtful hmm, Sophie drank tea and nibbled at a gooseberry tart, and Powell pretended—poorly—that he was not staring at her in a sort of befuddled fascination.

  Gray, after briefly glaring at him (though Powell took no notice), helped himself to shortbread and sat back in his chair to observe.

  It was not difficult to deduce the source of Powell’s bafflem
ent. Supposing that his employment with Courcy dated to the year in which he had left Merlin, it was entirely likely that he had been present at the Samhain Ball two years since, and he might well have been a witness to much of what followed from the attempt on King Henry’s life; even if his knowledge of the Princess Royal came at second hand (perhaps all the more in that case, given the tendency of rumour to exaggerate for effect), he must now be experiencing some difficulty in reconciling the desperate, frantic, breathtaking Sophie of that hideous night with the composed and decidedly ordinary-looking young woman presently seated opposite him.

  Outwardly composed, Gray amended, taking in the minuscule tremor of Sophie’s hand as she returned her teacup to its saucer.

  Courcy reached the end of Kergabet’s letter and folded it up again.

  “This letter was written more than four months ago,” he said mildly. “An eventful journey, was it?”

  A thunderous expression crossed Sophie’s face, lingering for the duration of a breath and then—perhaps fortunately—vanishing into smooth unconcern before either Courcy or Powell could remark it.

  “Sieur Germain did not specify that its contents were of especial urgency,” she said, in a colourless tone that, had they only known it, boded ill for anyone who continued to mock her.

  “My lord Ambassador,” Gray interceded, before the sardonic curl of Courcy’s lip could set fire to the smouldering resentment in Sophie’s eyes. “May we know what is in the letter?”

  “Certainly,” said Lord de Courcy. “It merely requests that I make welcome Lord Kergabet’s brother-in-law and his wife, and render them any assistance which they may require, as I am bound to do for any British subject who finds himself in difficulties in Din Edin.” He paused, then added almost carelessly, “And that I on no account reveal to anyone at all, except at Her Royal Highness’s express request, Madame Marshall’s true identity.”

  “It is not my true identity,” Sophie insisted. “I am Sophie Marshall, a student at the University in Din Edin. The Princess Royal is only the . . . the cloak I must wear when I visit my father.”

  “Nonetheless,” said Courcy dryly, “I am expressly forbidden to reveal the secret. Now, why should Kergabet consider that necessary, do you suppose . . . ?”

  Gray drew himself up to his full height—as best he could, sitting—and said, “Is it not reason enough, that she has asked it?”

  Courcy, to his surprise, said mildly, “You misunderstand me. Madame Marshall, your secret is safe, though I confess myself baffled by the importance which you appear to attach to it. The question is why your brother-in-law should believe me in need of such counsel. It has perhaps not escaped your notice that I serve His Majesty as ambassador at the court of Donald MacNeill, which post requires a not inconsiderable degree of discretion.”

  Sophie flushed, and Gray began to apologise, but Courcy waved him away.

  “The discrepancy interests me,” he said. “One is tempted to ask whether Kergabet intended his words for other eyes than mine.” He glanced at Sophie. “But no matter. I trust that you will call upon me again, should you at any time have need of assistance?”

  “Certainly, my lord,” said Gray, and Sophie nodded.

  “Very well. And, if no such difficulty should arise, I believe I may undertake to leave you to your studies.”

  “I thank you, sir,” said Sophie earnestly. After a moment she added, the words tumbling out like apples from a barrel overturned, “You think it eccentric of me, I am sure; but only suppose yourself in my position, and perhaps you may imagine what a relief it is to have even the illusion of making one’s own choices.”

  Powell looked baffled—it was not the first time Gray had observed this reaction to Sophie’s insisting on her status as an ordinary undergraduate student—but Lord de Courcy regarded Sophie gravely, his long index fingers pressed to his lower lip, and said merely, “Indeed.”

  They spoke for a time of matters less inflammatory—mutual acquaintance at Merlin College whom Gray or Sophie had seen more recently than Powell; the sights of Din Edin, and the climb which the Marshalls had made on Arthur’s Seat early in the autumn, before the turn of the weather; and the winter weather in Din Edin—which latter topic, however, led them inevitably to crop failures and the Law of the Storehouses, and ultimately to Sophie’s inquiring almost plaintively, “My lord, is there nothing that Britain might do to assist Alba? Have we not food enough, to lend a little to our neighbour?”

  Courcy’s face—already the smooth and unrevealing countenance of a diplomat—shifted just that infinitesimal distance into icy inscrutability. “It is my business to keep His Majesty and Lord Kergabet informed of circumstances and events in Alba,” he said, “and to advise as I may see fit, in light of my closer acquaintance with the terrain. The government of kingdoms, Madame Marshall, is more delicate and complex than you appear to imagine.”

  This was so conspicuously not an answer to Sophie’s question that Gray was not much surprised when, rather than make any reply, she only blinked in confusion.

  “What my lord de Courcy means to say,” said Powell—who looked far more alarmed than the circumstances appeared to warrant, though he nonetheless spoke with near perfect aplomb—“is that while, to the uneducated eye, His Majesty’s government may appear to be standing idle—”

  At this Courcy cut him off with a quiet word and a sharp look, and he fell unhappily silent.

  “My lord Ambassador,” said Gray, casting about for a change of subject, “what can you tell us of a man called Conall MacLachlan? He is brother-in-law to the Chancellor of the University, and is said to be a collector of Lepidoptera.”

  Sophie went very still beside him, and Courcy gave him a long, considering look.

  “I have only a passing acquaintance with the gentleman to whom you refer,” he said at last, “though Arthur Breck himself I know well. I may say, however, that I know no great ill of him.”

  “He knows who I am,” said Sophie abruptly.

  Gray glanced aside at her. Her face wore an expression compounded of chagrin—as though she had not meant to speak those words, and knew not what to do now that she had done so—and resignation.

  Courcy’s gaze on Sophie sharpened a little. “What makes you say so?” he inquired.

  Sophie described in meticulous detail her conversation with Conall MacLachlan. If her tone tended sometimes towards the defensive, it was perhaps not without reason, for everything Conall MacLachlan had said was, it seemed to Gray, capable of an entirely innocent interpretation. The difficulty was that some of his remarks were equally capable of a malevolent one.

  Courcy heard her out in attentive silence, his face as impassive as ever.

  “This dinner at which you met Conall MacLachlan,” he said, when Sophie had come to the end of her recital. “When did it take place?”

  “Nearly a month since,” said Sophie.

  “And yet there has been no rumour of your presence in Din Edin—the presence of your alter ego, I should say,” he amended, with a slightly condescending smile. “Not to my knowledge—and my knowledge in this particular sphere is considerable. If Conall MacLachlan is indeed intending to expose you, he is taking a deal of time about it.”

  “My stepfather,” said Sophie tightly, “waited fourteen years. The consequences were not therefore the less . . . significant.”

  Gray wondered what less politic adjective she had swallowed back.

  Lord de Courcy inclined his head very slightly—acknowledging a hit, Gray supposed. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I cannot see what benefit could accrue to Conall MacLachlan from such a course of action, which suggests to me that he represents no great risk to your incognito.” He paused for a moment, studying Sophie’s expression, and then continued: “Whereas your stepfather, I believe, stood to gain a great deal by his betrayal.”

  The words were well chosen; watching Sophie
side-on, Gray saw the taut lines of her face and posture soften.

  “You may be assured,” said Courcy, “that should any such rumour come to our ears, you should be informed of it at once. I reiterate, however, that I do not believe any danger to attach to the Princess Royal at present.”

  Sophie thanked him graciously enough, and gave Powell their direction; lest they outstay their welcome, Gray said, “I believe we must be on our way.”

  He paused for a moment, awkwardly undecided between rising and keeping his seat, and unreasonably resenting their host for the remembrance of youthful ineptitudes which the present circumstances called to his mind.

  The three other occupants of Courcy’s study regarded him in silence: Courcy coolly, Powell still a little anxiously, Sophie with a baffled frown. Ignoring the others, Gray met her gaze calmly and attempted to convey without speaking the words, We shall discuss all of this later, in privacy.

  “Quite so,” she said at last, deciding presumably that she had made her point—or that she had taken his. She rose from her seat, and the men hastened to follow her; or, rather, Gray and Powell hastened, whilst Courcy rose languid and graceful from the curve of his desk-chair.

  He held out his right hand to Sophie, and when, with a bemused half smile, she extended hers towards him, he took it in his and raised it to his lips.

  Gray bristled, and resolutely refrained from showing it. Sophie’s expression of astonishment was almost comical—a clear reminder, had anyone present required it, that she was altogether unaccustomed to the manners of her father’s court.

  “I trust,” Courcy said again, “that you will call upon me should you have need of assistance during your stay in Din Edin, for any reason.”

  And again Gray said, “Certainly, my lord Ambassador.”

  Courcy nodded. “Well, then,” he said. “Good morning to you, Monsieur Marshall, Madame Marshall. It has been most interesting to make your acquaintance. Powell will see you out.”

  And indeed Powell—after only the briefest moment’s startled hesitation—did so, escorting them not only out of the front door but, by a meandering path through the garden, to the gate itself. Along the way he engaged Sophie in a discussion of her studies—in particular, the differences between Merlin’s course of study in magickal theory and her present one—which led her by degrees to lay down her armour of wary civility and speak with real interest and enthusiasm. Gray paced behind them, listening, and was smiling to himself, until the moment when Sophie (who had just been enumerating in a rueful tone the books in Gaelic which she had still to read, and could read only slowly) exclaimed, “Oh! If only we need never go back!”—and then clapped one gloved hand over her mouth and looked back at him with dismay writ all over her face.