The Herald of Day

by Nancy Northcott

  “No, never.” The cost was far too dear for all but the very wealthy. The same held for sugar. At the inn, Master Warren allowed its use only rarely and kept the precious loaf locked in his chamber the rest of the time.

  Arabella scooped leaves into the shallow bowl. “I’ll pour hot water over the leaves, and then we’ll let them steep a bit. Then we’ll drink from the porcelain ones. They come from China, as did the tea.”

  Miranda watched, rapt, as Arabella prepared the brew.

  Finally, the older woman sat back. “While the tea steeps, let’s deal with this question of the masque first. Our claim of kinship has some truth to it. We Mainwarings come of the old blood, the powers native to this land, as does your seer gift. Your proficiency with glamours belongs to the newer powers, from folk who arrived about the time the Romans left Britain. The two lines have intermarried from time to time. Somewhere, however distant the point, our family trees entwine.”

  “My lady, Arabella, all your kindness cannot change my common birth. Serving maids don’t mingle with the nobility, let alone royalty.” She mustn’t let the lure of being treated as though she belonged with such grand people seduce her from the truth she knew.

  “Apparently I haven’t explained very well.” Arabella pursed her lips. “Let’s leave that for a moment. Tell me about your training thus far.”

  “Most of what I know relates to glamours,” Miranda began. “My mother taught me the basic skills of creating those. I figured out summoning on my own when I was very small, and my mother refined that gift.”

  “’Tis a pity she didn’t have a chance to teach you more.”

  “Yes, it is.” The regret had stopped feeling sharp and bitter, but it would never entirely leave her. She had nothing of her mother’s save memories of the secret they’d shared.

  “Your father was not Gifted, Richard said?”

  “No, nor did he know my mother was. The need to hide the lessons from him made finding time for them even more difficult.”

  “While such pairings are not unusual, one rarely finds unGifted clergy in one,” Arabella commented.

  “They were both kind and generous,” Miranda said simply, “and drawn together by affection.”

  That she was already conceived when her parents wed was no one else’s business, but she sometimes thought her mother might’ve chosen a different man if not for that.

  “Lord—I mean Richard has tried to teach me scrying but with no success.”

  “Hmm. Have you ever done anything else outside the realm of glamours or summoning? Or perhaps, tried and not been certain whether you succeeded?”

  Hesitantly, she told the older woman about the hanging. “Nothing seemed to happen before I had the vision. When it ended, Mistress Smith was dead. Limp, a mercy at last, but I don’t think I helped her at all.”

  “I see.” Arabella frowned.

  After a moment, she said, “Perhaps we should start with what you already know. Show me the glamours you devised for yourself.”

  Summoning the image still came easily, in the blink of an eye. “This is it.”

  “Quite different. Stand up.” Arabella circled her slowly, her gaze intent. “Effective, as well. Can you summon any other appearance?”

  “I could when I was learning from my mother, but I haven’t tried since.”

  If she meant to try now, she should choose someone she knew. She’d spent plenty of time watching the cook, Flora. Miranda closed her eyes, calling Flora’s image to mind, feeling the bulk of her form and the scowl on her brow. Shaping the magic. She opened her eyes. “How’s this?”

  “Excellent.” Arabella gave her a measuring look. “Now show me what it would be like if no one were there. Conceal yourself altogether. If you can.”

  Miranda closed her eyes. Not here, she thought. No one here.

  “Very good,” her teacher said, pouring tea into the porcelain bowls. “You’ve made a promising beginning. Come, sit down again.”

  A candle in an ornate silver stand adorned the sideboard, its flickering light doing little to banish the rainy gloom. Arabella walked over and snuffed it magically. Then she brought it to the table where the tea tray sat.

  She set it carefully in the table’s center. “Do you know how to light it?”

  When Miranda shook her head, the dowager countess said, “Extend your power outward, to the candle, and order flame.”

  Miranda drew a deep breath. “I know how to open or extend my senses but not my magic.”

  “Extend your magic the way you do your senses. Envision the candle burning.”

  Miranda tried for several minutes, but the candle remained unlit. “I can see it burning in my mind,” she said, swallowing frustration.

  “Hmm.” The older woman passed her one of the delicate bowls and saucers. “Have some tea before we begin.”

  Arabella picked up her bowl and held it with her thumb on the bottom and her fingertips at the rim. Delicately, she sipped.

  Miranda tried to do the same. The hot brew was unexpectedly bitter, not quite the treat she’d expected, but she smiled to be polite.

  “It’s an acquired taste,” the older woman admitted. “Let’s add some sugar.”

  She set her tea bowl down and used a spoon to scoop a little sugar from its bowl on the tray. Tipping it into Miranda’s cup, she said, “You’re starting from farther behind than I expected. We generally start the candle exercise with children.”

  Miranda’s cheeks heated, but there was no point feeling defensive. “My mother did the best she could.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Arabella said kindly, “and circumstances can provide great obstacles. I fear the years you spent in hiding are also inhibiting you. You’ve built walls around yourself. For good reason, but walls can trap as well as protect. Let me think a moment.”

  The idea made sense, that blocking the power all those years could make it harder to summon now. But if she couldn’t sense these walls, how could she find her way past them?

  “Let’s try something new.” Arabella set her cup on the table. With a flick of one finger, she lit the candle again.

  Miranda longed to do such things with the same ease and confidence.

  The older woman said, “Summon your glamours—yes, very good. Now, widen your awareness. Take in more of the room, until you touch the candle.”

  Miranda tried, but nothing changed. “I’ve never done anything like this. I don’t know what to do.”

  Arabella’s eyes suddenly brightened. “Let’s try to build on something you know. Put a glamour around the candle. Make it a rose. Move nearer to it if need be.”

  Glamours, Miranda understood. She summoned the image, the memory of the petals and the thorn, and looked at the candle.

  Its flame burned steadily.

  “Try harder,” the older woman prompted. “Think of wrapping the candle in the rose.”

  Red petals replaced the flame. The wax became a green, thorny stem.

  Miranda gasped. “I did it!” The rose vanished, leaving a candle in its place. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. Very good, my dear. You lost focus only because you were excited. Now try it again.”

  The second time came more easily, and the third. On the fourth attempt, Arabella said, “Hold the rose glamour in place. Now imagine there is no flame.”

  “But if I’m making a rose, how can I change it another way at the same time?”

  “You aren’t. You see the flame behind the rose in your mind, do you not?” When Miranda nodded, Arabella added, “Now, see the candle with no flame.”

  The glamour flickered, flame shining through.

  “There is no flame,” the older woman repeated softly. “A rose, but no flame.” She drew a slow, audible breath. “Now, no rose.”

  Miranda dropped the glamour. Where the flower had been, the charred wick curled over the wax, a thin plume of smoke drifting upward. Miranda gaped at it. Her gaze shot to Arabella’s face.

  The dowager countess smiled
. “Very good. Very good indeed. We ordinarily start with lighting a candle, but unmaking is ever easier than making. I want you to practice this tonight.”

  “Yes, mil—Arabella.” Surely no bird could soar higher than her spirits were rising. She had done it!

  “Eat something, too. Magic comes from within, and it burns the body’s own power for its fuel.”

  Miranda helped herself to a piece of gingerbread, the surface dusted with precious cinnamon. Its flavors burst over her tongue, and her eyes widened. At the inn, Flora rarely used spices other than salt.

  “Magic also heightens the senses,” Arabella said. “It gives, even as it takes. You must never forget to eat after using it.”

  Miranda swallowed. “My mother said magic’s a divine gift. It does feel heavenly just now.”

  “Early success can be intoxicating.” The older woman’s smile faded. “Your mother was right, though some of our Gifted kin say it comes from the goddess.” She shrugged. “If the source is divine, male or female matters not. What matters is how one uses the power.”

  Father would have called that heresy, but it seemed reasonable enough. Miranda took a sip of tea. The sugar made a great difference. The taste was now exquisite.

  Solemnly, Arabella said, “Magic is like any other gift. It can serve evil as well as good, and many use it for fell purposes. That’s one reason those of us who serve good consider power a great leveler. When evil marches through the world, we cannot afford such petty distinctions as rank.”

  I’ll stir not a step for an agent of darkness, Hawkstowe had said in Dover. “Lord Hawkstowe—Richard, I mean—warned me that not all who have power use it for good ends.”

  “They don’t. We judge one another by how we use power, not by the ranks of our births.”

  Cautiously, Miranda noted, “Yet your family has rank in the peerage. I don’t understand.”

  “We don’t disdain birth rank.” With a smile, Arabella added, “I’d be a fool to do so.”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  Looking thoughtful, the dowager countess sipped tea. “This brings us back to what I tried to tell you earlier.”

  She set the tea dish down, looking squarely at Miranda. “If Richard took the field with other Gifted men and women, some of them would defer to him because he has an inherent grasp of strategy and deployment, not because of his rank. By the same token, he would defer to a cobbler, for example, who knew uses of magic he didn’t.”

  The words went against everything Miranda had ever observed or heard about the nobility. “But why?”

  “Magic levels the field. You’re a serving maid, or you were. You’re also a Gifted woman and therefore, so much more. Many Gifted men, some of noble birth, would value your bloodline and the Gifts you carry more than the wealth of an earldom.”

  The assurance in Arabella’s voice opened vistas of freedom and security such as Miranda had never allowed herself to imagine.

  She looked down at her chapped, work-reddened hands. No lady’s hands. “I know of no such men.”

  “I dare say you don’t. How would you meet them, when you had to live every day concealing what you are?”

  Miranda’s pulse leaped. Looking up, she found comprehension in the dowager countess’s bright eyes.

  “Come with us to Whitehall,” Arabella said. “Enjoy the music and the gaiety and the admiration you’ll surely garner. I would love to order a gown for you. Your manners are pretty enough already, and I can teach you the little more you would need to know. You should enjoy your youth while you have it, my dear. I did, and I regret not a moment.”

  “I can’t imagine you doing anything to regret, my lady.”

  The older woman’s eyes twinkled. “Not for lack of thinking about it, I assure you. You’ll come, then?”

  “You advised me to stay away from the Conclave lest I draw your enemy’s attention. Would going to a gathering at the palace not also attract notice?”

  “It would. Considering the connections you could make there, however, and the fact that Richard can, as your kinsman, keep anyone he chooses from approaching you, the benefit outweighs the risk. If he warned off a wizard at the Conclave, he would be thought abrupt and uncivil. At court, alas, such actions are acceptable. Come to the masque, Miranda.”

  A precipice lay before her. If she stepped off it, she would open the way for dangerous hopes, possibly even expectations. Yet the unknown future glowed with bright possibility the familiar past had lost years ago.

  Miranda took a deep breath and jumped. “I’ll come.”

  Chapter 10

  Miranda slept poorly. Richard’s report of the Conclave meeting had been very disturbing and had underlined the need to make sense of her visions. Yet naught she’d tried thus far had made any difference.

  She had to do something. But what use were glamours or summoning against changes in history?

  On her way to the library, she eyed the portraits on the wall. Her glance fell on a painting of a dark-haired man clad in short, puffy breeches and a doublet with a lacy ruff around his neck. A globe stood beside him. He looked remarkably like Richard, with the same black hair, straight nose and strong chin.

  “Good morning, mistress,” Richard said, emerging from a chamber down the corridor.

  She blinked at the formality before realizing there might be unGifted servants about. “Good morning, my lord. That portrait resembles you closely.”

  He gave her a wry grin. “I fear all the Mainwaring men look much alike. That particular one is Miles, one of Queen Elizabeth’s vaunted captains. We lost our title and most of our lands over the little matter of Henry VIII’s divorce. Miles impressed Elizabeth so much that she restored them.”

  “How fascinating.” And worrisome, no doubt. There were advantages to living in obscurity.

  Movement from the stairway caught her eye. She glanced toward it. A footman led a tall, kind-faced young man toward them.

  “Thank you, Colin,” Richard said.

  The footman bowed and hurried back down the stairs. The visitor strolled toward them, a polite smile on his face.

  Richard nodded at him. “Reverend Dr. Jeremy Winfield, allow me to present our cousin, Mistress Miranda Willoughby.”

  “A pleasure, cousin.” The young man bowed to her. “Miranda, if I may? And I’m Jeremy.”

  “I would be honored.” Because he’d bowed, Miranda curtsied. She had the same feeling of familiarity, almost recognition, with him that she’d experienced when she’d met Richard. “I’m pleased to meet you, Jeremy.”

  “You’ll be in my grandmother’s parlor this morning, Miranda,” Richard said. “Fourth door on the left.”

  All the doors were on the left because of the gallery that ran along the side of the house, but Miranda nodded.

  She walked to the indicated door and found it ajar.

  The dowager countess stood by the hearth, and her grave expression renewed Miranda’s frustration. Surely there was a way to master her Gifts faster. They were no use if she couldn’t wield them properly.

  “Come in, Miranda, and sit down.”

  “Is something amiss, Arabella?” Miranda seated herself carefully in an armchair near the fireplace. Using the dowager countess’s given name still felt odd, but not as much as it had.

  Arabella sat in the chair opposite Miranda’s. “Last night, I scried the hanging you described to me. Although that was just a fortnight ago, I had difficulty holding the scrying and so am not entirely certain I saw clearly. Your lips seemed to move, though just barely, as though you were trying to help.”

  “I barely whispered. If anyone had heard—”

  “I doubt you made much of a sound, and everyone was watching that poor woman. Word magic has long been used by those just coming into their skills. Those who are fully trained no longer need it, but the earliest use of magic relied on words, in spells. An incantation, carefully used, carries great power.”

  “My mother said that magic was the will and the powe
r. She taught me naught of spells, save the basic ones for summoning and glamours.” Miranda shook her head slowly. “If I used a word spell, my lady, I did it unknowingly.”

  “That, I do not doubt because of the result.” Again, she hesitated. “My dear, I cannot be certain, but I think there’s an excellent chance that you killed Mistress Smith.”

  “Killed?” Miranda shot to her feet, fists clenched. “But I didn’t mean—I couldn’t have! I wouldn’t.”

  “No, I don’t believe you would deliberately do so,” Arabella said gently.

  Miranda’s knees wobbled. She dropped back into her chair.

  “Nevertheless,” the older woman continued, “I believe you have the power to do so, and that you likely did.”

  “No,” Miranda choked, shaking her head.

  “I watched you. You seemed to say ‘stop.’ You did it again, and then a third time, and Mistress Smith stopped thrashing.”

  “But people do. They die, I mean. And stop.” Under her teacher’s steady, compassionate gaze, her cheeks heated. “I meant to give her ease, to stop the pain. Only that.”

  “Of course, but you directed your thought at Mistress Smith, who must have wished to escape the torment, if she could still think at all.” Sympathy darkened the older woman’s eyes as she added, “Your command could have empowered her wish. Or else, without any wish of hers, quenched a spark already nearly extinguished.”

  “Killing is wrong. So is helping suicide.” Her father’s words sprang to Miranda’s lips. Suddenly cold, she rubbed her hands over her arms.

  “So we believe. Yet there is also the ancient tradition of the coup de grâce, the killing blow administered in mercy to end a wounded warrior’s suffering.”

  Miranda swallowed against nausea. If she’d killed Mistress Smith by accident, what other havoc might she wreak?

  “My dear,” Arabella said quietly, “those who do not die instantly on the gallows have a slow and agonized passing. That woman was suffering, and wrongly. Do you not think she would have wished for a quick, merciful end?”

  Of course she must have. Miranda couldn’t deny that, but killing her was still wrong. “I didn’t mean to kill her,” she said, her voice shaking.