The Herald of Day

by Nancy Northcott

  “Still, Grandmère—”

  “I beg pardon,” Miranda managed at last. “With respect, my lady, I cannot go to court. I appreciate your kindness, but I wouldn’t like anyone, especially yourselves, to think I had forgotten my place.”

  “Your place. I see.” He studied her.

  “I wonder if you do, my lord.” He’d no business looking at her in that curious way.

  “Ah, but I do. And my name is Richard.” Glancing at the mantel clock, he said, “At the moment, though, we have a decision to make. Miranda, do you remember discussing the Gifted Conclave Council when we were in Dover?”

  “Yes, mil—um, Richard. You said they were the leaders of our kind.”

  “The Conclave is what we call gatherings of all the Gifted in London. There’s a meeting this afternoon to discuss this odd weather and the events surrounding it.”

  “All the Gifted? How many is that?” What would it be like to look around and see only those who knew what you were?

  “There are about three hundred in the city proper, more who move in and out. Usually around a hundred turn up.”

  He flicked a look at his grandmother. “You have a right to go, Miranda, but we ask that you not do so this time. Lord Wyndon, the man your bear dream most likely represents, will be there, and he’ll notice you if you come in with us. I’d rather not call his attention to you yet.”

  “Especially,” the older woman added, her nose wrinkling in distaste, “in a setting where you cannot warn him off.”

  “Why not?” Miranda asked.

  “Because of the kinship our Gifts create. In that setting, aside from debating questions, extraordinary courtesy rules. One cannot snub or rebuff anyone there.”

  Richard added, “Exactly. Miranda, we’ll take you if you wish to go, but I’m sure Grandmère can put the time to good use if you stay.”

  “With magic lessons.” Arabella smiled. “And dressmakers and whatever else comes to mind.”

  Dressmakers? Why?

  Before Miranda could ask, Richard turned to her. “What will you have? The Conclave or a quieter afternoon?”

  “The quiet.” If they thought going to this Conclave would bring her to the attention of the man she’d sensed was evil, she would happily miss the gathering.

  “A wise choice.” He smiled at her and rose. “Grandmère, I leave this to you. When I return, I’ll send to Morgan’s handmaidens here in London and see if they have a vial of the pool’s water we can use. Waiting until after this masque four days hence to set out for Pendragon and the pool itself is too much of a delay.”

  “I agree,” his grandmother said.

  Richard smiled. “I’ll see you both at supper.” He kissed his grandmother’s cheek, bowed to Miranda, and left.

  Miranda gulped, her mind reeling once again. In the space of a few minutes, she’d been told she had rights she’d never imagined, would participate in blood magic, and might meet more of the Gifted. It was a great deal to take in.

  The door shut behind Richard, and his grandmother smiled. “We’ll dine, and I’ll send to the dressmakers and the cobbler. If you’re to be our cousin while you’re here, you must be dressed for the role.”

  “Milady—Arabella, I mean—I cannot pay—”

  “Nor shall you. I haven’t had a young woman to order clothes for in years. I’ll enjoy it. Besides, if you’re to find a new station when we’ve unraveled these mysteries, you should appear not to be in great need of one. I’ll send my letters before we eat. Afterward, we’ll resume your lessons and I’ll explain why you not only may go to court but should.”

  Richard scarcely heard the rain pelting down on the roof of his coach. The Conclave faced grave issues. Could they put aside their usual tendency to talk everything to shreds and actually solve this problem? Given the strange events occurring—samplers appearing, books disappearing and changing—it seemed unlikely.

  With harness jingling, the carriage turned into Walbrook Street and slowed to a halt before the Green Bull tavern. It had closed early for the Conclave.

  They’d left the unGifted footmen at home for secrecy’s sake, so Richard flung open the coach door and jumped down into the storm. Rain pelted him. Wind swirled his oiled leather cloak around him and threatened to snatch his hat.

  He looked up at his coachman through the downpour. “Remember the door off the alley, Thomas. It’s a shorter path.”

  “Aye, Richard,” the stocky man said, hunching against the storm. “Soon as I have ’em under a roof.” He shook the reins. Heads lowered against the weather, the horses hurried forward.

  Richard ran into the tap room. The stout door muffled the sound of the wind, but gusts rattled the windowpanes. Lanterns cast a dim light in the low, boxy common room, and the scents of tobacco and mutton from the day’s business hung in the air.

  The room’s lone occupant, a stout, middle-aged man with a kind face, stood by the rear door. Beaming, he strode forward to greet Richard. “Welcome, cousin,” he said in the customary greeting of one Gifted to another. “’Tis a vile day out, but we’ve food and drink, o’course.”

  “Thank you, Daniel.” Richard nodded. “You do well by us.”

  “They pay me right nice for it.” Daniel grinned. “Between that and the fee for early closing, I’m having a good day.”

  “As you should.” Richard clapped him on the shoulder and strode through the door at the rear of the chamber. He turned into a doorway on the left side, then descended a flight of rickety stairs lit by candles in sconces.

  Luck had favored Daniel in that his tavern sat atop the ancient Roman temple to Mithras. The power infused in the ground by two hundred years of faithful worship during the Roman rule of Britain made it a welcoming place for the Conclave.

  The stairs ended in a low-ceilinged cellar stacked with large casks containing beer or ale. The scents of damp earth and wood filled the air. At the bottom, Richard turned into a narrow, low passage that was warded so only the Gifted could see or enter it. Light and the pleasant din of conversation spilled from the doorway ahead.

  The passage ended in a wide, brightly lit room full of people. Carved from several cellars in buildings Conclave members owned, it offered ample space for the gathering. The appetizing scents of roast meat and warm bread mingled with the sweet one of beeswax candles and the jumble of musk and sandalwood and floral perfumes worn by some in attendance.

  Nobles or gentry clad in fine wool or velvet with copious lace at collars and cuffs mingled with more common folk clad in homespun linen and rougher wool.

  And there was Henry de Vere, Earl of Wyndon, across the room by the hearth with his libertine son, Viscount Canby. At least Wyndon’s daughter, Lucretia, who was reputed to have a poisonous temperament, was not here.

  “There you are, Richard!” Kit emerged from the crowd to join him. Softly, he added, “I see Wyndon and Canby are here.”

  “Wyndon never misses a gathering,” Richard murmured.

  They worked their way toward the tables of food in the back of the chamber, near where Wyndon and Canby stood.

  Kit stopped to greet the Council head, Lucius Balfour, a tall, slightly stooped man with silvery hair and a weathered face. “Good day, cousin.”

  Lucius smiled. “Kit. Richard. How good to see you.”

  “And you,” Richard said. Because Lucius was a tanner, their familiarity would appear strange outside this chamber. Inside it, though, magic made them kindred.

  “We’ll need the Council to stay after,” Lucius said. “A smaller group sometimes makes more headway. If you want to send Thomas home, Richard, I’ll take you back when we finish.”

  Richard thanked him, and Lucius continued quietly, “Nuisance though the rain is, it makes travel safer because it drives people off the streets. Folk are more quarrelsome than they were. They take offense at naught. There’s something in the air. The Council will discuss it.”

  “I noticed it,” Richard said.

  “Anyone with even a bit of
magic should.” Lucius grimaced. “Pray excuse me. We must begin, or we’ll be here all night.” He shouldered his way through the crowd, heading for the hearth at the end of the room.

  They might be here that long anyway, but saying so wouldn’t help. Richard frowned. “I’ll fetch ale for Thomas,” he told Kit. “Do you want anything?”

  When Kit shook his head, Richard worked his way through the press to the table by the alley door. Set next to a large barrel with a tap at the bottom, it held rows of leather tankards. He grabbed one and filled it for his coachman.

  Lucius stepped onto a box set before the hearth. “Good afternoon. Let us begin.”

  He didn’t shout, but his voice carried throughout the crowded chamber. “We are met to discuss the recent eerie wind and unnatural weather. As you know, London’s folk are more on edge than at any time since the execution of our late King Charles I, of blessed memory.”

  As though to underscore his words, muted thunder rumbled outside. His expression turned wry. “Does anyone have anything to report about this situation?”

  The tension in the room seemed to mute even the fire’s crackling. At last, a short, dark-haired man with a grizzled beard pushed forward to stand by Lucius.

  Beside Richard, the alley door opened, admitting a gust of wind and blown rain. Thomas stepped inside and shut the door quickly. Water dripped from his leather cloak and wide-brimmed hat. Richard handed him the tankard, and Thomas nodded his thanks.

  “Peter Gregson,” the bearded man at the front said by way of greeting. He cast an apologetic glance at Lucius. “It may be naught, o’course, but my father’s candle molds’ve disappeared. They’re good ones, made of iron by my uncle just before the Restoration. I’d like ’em back, and I can’t scry any sign of anyone stealin’ ’em. I left ’em by the hearth, same as always, two nights ago. Next morn—” he shrugged “—an empty spot.”

  “I found something that oughtn’t be there,” a deep voice said from the back of the room. Sir Robert Welmore, a baronet from Hampshire, squeezed through to the front. “My quarterly accounts now show income from a small farm in Sussex, but we lost that farm years back.”

  A sturdy, grim-faced man in homespun stepped forward. “Josiah Wortham,” he said. “That wind blew away the rye and wheat I’d sown—crops we needed for the winter.”

  “Same at our farm,” a woman called.

  Men and women came forward in a steady flow to announce that things had appeared or disappeared mysteriously. Richard reported Grandmère’s primer missing. More farmers complained of wind and torrential rain destroying their fall plantings.

  Richard’s eyes met Lucius’s across the room. The loss of those crops would be grievous, come winter.

  Kit murmured, “That litany’s alarming. We’re not dealing only with one changed book and a mysterious sampler.”

  “No,” Richard replied, “and matters seem to be getting worse, not better. For everyone here who reports a change, there must be unGifted who’ve experienced one and don’t remember it. God’s teeth, how widespread is this problem?”

  At last, Lucius stepped forward again. “We can reach only one conclusion from all this. Someone, cousins, has changed the past and thus, the present.”

  The room erupted. “Impossible!” someone shouted.

  Richard’s gut knotted. What he and his friends had hoped was a relatively narrow problem was appallingly widespread. But why was this happening? How?

  At least there would now be more Gifted working on answering those questions, though the discussion could alert whoever’d made the change to those efforts.

  “Can’t be done” and a chorus of similar opinions roared through the air. Through them all ran a current of entirely reasonable fear.

  Richard spotted Cabot and Jeremy standing by the corridor door. He and Kit made their way through the crowd to the brothers. Their grim faces and the worried looks they shot him signaled their shared dismay that the time shift was more drastic than they’d realized.

  Not mentioning the changes to Buck’s defense of Richard III had seemed tactically wise before. Now it seemed imperative. Whoever was responsible for these widespread changes had to be in this room or connected to someone who was. Keeping that person ignorant of their suspicions was the best move, at least for now.

  A sound like a thunderclap, but closer and sharper, broke through the din. Richard wheeled to see Lucius lower his hands.

  “Cousins,” Lucius said in that carrying voice, “we must try to determine when the course of events changed. Those of you adept at scrying the past—”

  A rumble of dissent rose, and he flung up a hand to stop it. “I know the present limits on scrying the past, but we must attempt it. Those who can do so, come forward, and the rest depart, save for the Council. We’ll send word of what we learn.”

  Richard turned to Kit. “What did he mean, limits?”

  “All this moaning helps nothing.” Wyndon’s deep, harsh voice cut through the silence. He stepped forward and swept the room with a contemptuous look. “If the past is, indeed, changing, chasing a cause we don’t understand is a waste of effort. Scarce resources and mysterious weather lead to fear and then to anger, an urge to lash out at whoever is handy. Only we Gifted can impose order for everyone’s benefit. We should do so without delay.”

  “Folly!” a woman’s voice shouted. “That would mean war.”

  “Dangerous lunacy,” a man agreed. “Remember how magical conflict back in Morgan and Merlin’s day pushed England into the Dark Ages.”

  Merlin and his twin sister, Morgan, had initially supported King Arthur while keeping most of their magic hidden. As the Saxons pushed into England, the twins had quarreled over Merlin’s decision to interfere in Britain by using his magic openly. The dispute, known among the Gifted as the Chaos Age, had spread, setting the Gifted against each other and the land aflame, sowing fear of magic that yet endured.

  Scowling, Richard raised his voice to carry. “Wyndon, you know the history of the Chaos Age as well as anyone. Do you discount it? Or do you know something the rest of us don’t?”

  Wyndon stared hard at him. “These strange events may signal great changes ahead. A chance for our people to stop hiding. I’d make peace even with you, Hawkstowe, to seize that moment.”

  “Which would ultimately lead to fighting among ourselves,” Richard replied, “as well as battling the army, and possibly topple the unGifted governments of Europe. No. We’ve no right.”

  “Perhaps they deserve to be toppled. Think about it.” Wyndon shifted his balance. “You’re ever quick to accuse me, but I seek the best fate for our kind.”

  “Did you engineer this?” Richard demanded.

  Wyndon rolled his eyes. “By what means? Change what has already happened? That would take more than magic. If you’ve uncovered the secret to traveling time, pray, share it with us all.”

  That wasn’t exactly a denial. Richard narrowed his eyes.

  Lucius stated, “Alteration of events in the past violates natural law. It’s forbidden.”

  “Mayhap Henry’s right.” A stocky man in a suit of fine brown wool pushed through to join Wyndon.

  Other voices rose, taking sides. Lucius clapped his hands again, but the dispute grew louder. More heated.

  Richard frowned. Wyndon looked strangely satisfied with the discord, as though peace were not to his advantage. As though he knew more than he revealed. But Richard had no proof. Wyndon had enough allies to prevent further accusations based on mere suspicion.

  “Order,” Lucius bellowed with intensity that rang in Richard’s ears. “We will have order, cousins.” He glared around the room. “The scryers will stay and work. The Council and those who wish to debate Henry’s proposal will also remain.”

  Richard swore silently. There went any hope of an effective Council meeting.

  A few people exchanged uncertain glances. Talking in disgruntled tones, most of the crowd drifted toward the stairs.

  “What in Hel
l’s bailey was that about scrying limits?” Cabot asked.

  “Scrying more than a few months back is now impossible, though we could do it several days ago,” Kit explained, his tone grim. “I figured it out this morning when I tried to scry backward for the Chronicle.”

  “What’s next?” Richard demanded. “People appearing and disappearing?”

  “I fear so,” Kit answered.

  “God’s feet,” Cabot muttered.

  Richard glanced over his shoulder. The Council was gathering by the hearth, along with others who would argue for Wyndon’s view or for Richard’s. His friends would stay to back him, of course.

  “As to the scrying,” Kit said, “I hope it’s only because time and events are in flux, but I fear it means the changes are happening too quickly for even magic to track.”

  Luncheon started a whirl of activity Miranda could scarcely believe. Salmon, beef with parsnips, a salad, and a blancmange offered more than she could eat. There was even a refined wheat bread instead of the coarse bread she was used to. She hadn’t known anyone ate so luxuriously.

  Even the utensils looked odd, silver instead of the pewter or tin the inn in Dover had used. And the fork had three tines instead of the usual two.

  After luncheon, the dressmakers and cobbler arrived, and time passed in a flurry of beautiful fabrics and quick measurements. All of it felt as though she were receiving a reward she hadn’t earned. If they were going to all this trouble and expense, though, that probably meant they didn’t intend to send her packing anytime soon, even if her visions weren’t proving useful.

  Not until mid-afternoon did Miranda and Arabella return to the library. A small table by the hearth held a plate of gingerbread squares. With the plate sat a wooden box of crushed leaves, a small, ornate silver bowl of lumpy sugar already snipped off the loaf, two even smaller, delicate white bowls decorated with blue flowers, a wide, shallow, silver bowl, and a silver pitcher with steam drifting from its spout.

  “Have you ever had tea?” Arabella asked.