The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

by Galen Beckett

  The drawer was empty. In quick succession I opened the others, only to find they were similarly devoid of contents—all except for the bottommost drawer. In it I discovered a single object: a small box of black wood that fit easily in my palm when I picked it up. Despite its small size, it was heavy. A thin line suggested a lid that could be removed, but there was no sign of a hinge or latch. A silver symbol was inlaid in the surface: an eye inscribed within a triangle.

  A noise emanated from below me: a thudding, as of heavy boots. My dread was redoubled. I could not be seen coming from this room! I pushed the drawers of the cabinet shut, and as I did, the eye on each one closed with a snick. It was only when all were closed that I realized I still held the small box in my hand.

  There was no time to replace it. I tucked the box into the pocket of my dress, then turned to dash across the room. However, in my haste my foot caught the end of the cloth that draped the easel. I stumbled, tugging the cloth, and with a whisper it slipped to the floor.

  Dismay filled me. I could not leave it cast down like that; my presence here would be revealed. I turned to take up the cloth and throw it back over the easel.

  A forest stood before me.

  The painting was so large, I could have walked through it as if it were a door. And it seemed like a kind of door to me. Perhaps it was how vividly the trees had been rendered by the artist’s brush—from the moss on their rough bark to the smallest crooked twig—or perhaps it was how the green light in the room seemed not so much to fall upon the painting as fall into it, flickering among the bent trunks and mottled leaves, suffusing the image with a lurid glow that mere paint could never have produced.

  The trees seemed to sway back and forth in the painting of the Wyrdwood, but it was only an illusion caused by the wavering light. I took a step closer, and a certainty came over me that the painting depicted not just any stand of the ancient forest but rather the very patch that stood to the east of Heathcrest. The trees looked just the same, as did the mossy stone wall.

  It occurred to me that I should go. I wanted to, but I could not turn away from the painting. The air deepened, as if a premature twilight fell, and I let out a gasp. Now that I was closer, there was no mistaking it—the trees did sway back and forth in the painting, as if tossed by a wind. It was no illusion, nor was it a hallucination brought on by fever, like that night at Lady Marsdel’s. The shabby leaves trembled; the branches bent and dipped, reaching over the stone wall that bound the trees and held them back.

  I heard the footsteps again, just outside the room now. The sound of a deep, muffled voice passed through the door. Still, I could not turn away from the painting. There was something caught among the branches of the trees. It was pale and fluttering, like a piece of gauze that had been carried upward by a wind and had caught in the twisted branches. I leaned closer.

  My breathing ceased. A rushing noise filled my head. It was not a piece of cloth in the trees.

  She wore a white dress. Dark branches wove a cocoon around the woman, cradling her high above the ground, coiling around her arms and legs, caressing her white skin. Leaves tangled in her fair hair. I bent so close that my face nearly touched the painting. But would it indeed encounter canvas if I moved forward another inch? Or would I find myself in the wood, like her, caught among the branches of the trees?

  In the painting, the woman turned her head toward me. I caught the edge of a black smile and the glint of green eyes.

  Pain stabbed at my head. The rushing noise was my own blood surging violently through my brain. The emerald light pressed in all around, filling my eyes, my nose, my mouth, suffocating me. Through the roaring I heard the sound of a door being thrown open and a stern voice calling out.

  There was a distant noise, and I knew it was the sound of my own body striking the floor. For a moment all was a haze of green light.

  Then, darkness.

  WHEN I OPENED my eyes again, the green light was gone. The only illumination came from a single candle. I sat up and found myself on a sofa in the front hall. A dark shape hulked nearby: one of the hunting trophies, I supposed—a shaggy brown bear.

  The shape moved toward me.

  I had little time to feel fear, for as the figure stepped into the circle of light I saw that it was not a bear. Still, the comparison was not unfitting, for there was an ursine quality to his curling brown mane and to his heavy, rounded shoulders and the weight of his step.

  “Mr. Quent,” I said. My voice was faint.

  “Miss Lockwell,” came his rumbling reply.

  Now fear did come over me, nor was it a fanciful dread of shadows. I remembered the secret room, and the painting, and the suffocating green light. I remembered falling and then, just as the darkness came, a pair of strong arms bearing me up off the floor.

  “Mr. Quent,” I said again. It was wrong of me to go into the room. I do not know what possessed me. I can offer no defense. I can say only that I promise to never return there.

  But I could not draw in the breath these words required. My heart fluttered in my chest like a bird in a cage.

  “Perhaps you should lie back down, Miss Lockwell. I do not believe you are fit to rise yet.”

  His voice was low and measured, and I wondered at it. Why did he not berate me for my transgression? I knew him to be capable of the harshest words of reproof. Why did he not use them upon me now? Certainly this time I deserved them!

  Astonished, I could only do as he suggested and lie back down on the sofa. The light of the candle grew and shrank by turns.

  For several minutes I lay there, motionless. Stunned, really. All the while he stood just on the edge of the light. He might have made for a foreboding figure, only somehow he wasn’t. It was as if his form was a solid column, a buttress that held the darkness back. At last the throbbing in my head receded and the candle’s flame burned more steadily.

  Alarm cut through the dullness in my brain, and I sat back up. “The children! I left them alone. I must see to them at once.”

  “There is no need for that,” he said. “Mrs. Darendal gave them their supper, and I have put them in their beds.”

  “You!” I gasped.

  “You seem very surprised. I do not know why. They are quite easy to carry. Easier than yourself, Miss Lockwell. You seem small enough, yet you are something of a burden to bear.”

  I shrank back against the sofa, mortified. Of course he had carried me. How else could I have gotten down here?

  “How poorly you must regard me,” I said at last. I looked down at my hands in my lap. “But know it is no more poorly than I regard myself. I cannot explain. I don’t know what I was thinking. But I wasn’t thinking. I had been exploring the house, as I sometimes do.” I realized belatedly that admitting to snooping was not likely to help my cause. “It’s what I do for exercise, you see, when I cannot take the children outside. Perhaps the long confinement indoors has had an effect upon my nerves. It must have been so. And the light in the room was so strange! It was all green, coming through the leaves. When I saw the painting of the wood, it seemed to—”

  I halted. There was no need for him to think me weak of mind as well as weak of character.

  I sat that way for a minute or more, and he said nothing. At last I forced myself to look up at him. I knew my cause was lost—that when it was day again I must take my bags and leave. So what more harm could it cause to ask the one question on my mind?

  “The woman in the painting,” I said to him. “The portrait that hung next to yours. Who is she?”

  I saw his left hand stir in his coat pocket. “It is Mrs. Quent in that picture. My wife, that is.”

  I should have felt fear at my imminent dismissal. Instead, I felt sorrow. I would go, but he would still be here, alone in this echoing house. Nor could there be any hope she would join him; now that I knew she had existed, the evidence of her absence was everywhere around us, in all the shadows, in all the empty silences.

  I made myself look at his face. “
When did she pass?”

  “Years ago,” he said, and that was all.

  For a time we were silent. At last, feeling stronger, I pushed myself up from the sofa and found I could stand, if just.

  “Miss Lockwell,” he addressed me in a somber tone. “I think—”

  There was no need for him to speak the words. “I understand perfectly, Mr. Quent. You will not get any argument from me.” I gave a rueful smile. “Nor from Mrs. Darendal, I would think. And though you owe me nothing, all the same I will ask you for something—that you allow me to be the one to tell the children.”

  The lines in his brow deepened. “To tell them what?”

  My mind was indeed dull! Had I muttered the words instead of spoken clearly? “To tell them that I have been dismissed from your service. Is that not what you intend?”

  “What I intend, Miss Lockwell,” he said with a serious look, “is to find you a better source of exercise.”

  And I sat back down on the sofa.

  THREE DAYS LATER, when I was recovered from the incident in the upstairs room, Mr. Quent went to the village with Jance. When they returned two hours later, Jance was leading a gray mare.

  Mr. Quent called me outside; I went eagerly, leaving the children with instructions to continue their reading. The mare was a pretty little thing, with a muzzle like twilight velvet.

  “Mr. Quent,” I said at last, trying to contain my delight. “This is too much.”

  “Do you know how to ride, Miss Lockwell?”

  I could only confess that I did not.

  “You need not fear,” he said. “She is a gentle creature.”

  Before I could say anything more, he had lifted me into the saddle. This seemed barely an effort for him. Despite his words that day, it could only have been an easy thing for him to carry me downstairs. My cheeks burned, and I felt fresh shame at what I had done, but I bent my head under the guise of stroking the mare’s silvery mane.

  “Hold them like this,” he said, putting the reins in my hands—an action that required both of his own. His fingers were rough but not ungentle, and the dexterity of his left hand appeared little reduced by the lack of the fourth and fifth fingers. Once he was done showing me how to hold the reins, that hand was quickly returned to his coat pocket.

  Those first few times I rode, I went at a slow walk, with Jance leading the mare by the bridle. However, she was such a docile creature there could be no chance of my falling. It was not long before I was able to ride on my own and even urge her into a trot if I felt brave.

  Soon I looked forward to those rare hours when I could send the children to play or rest quietly in their room. Jance always seemed to know when I would need her saddled, and within moments of leaving the house I would be riding out from Heathcrest, over moor and down, reveling in the feel of the wind against my face. Sometimes I felt I could ride all the way to Invarel. It was a foolish notion, but when I was riding I forgot the confining dimness, the stifling silence that dwelled within Heathcrest.

  “You are getting very freckled,” Mrs. Darendal said to me one night as she brought a plate of parsnips into the dining room. Since my collapse she had been all but silent in my presence, but it seemed the urge to direct me had overcome her reticence. “You should not go riding so much.”

  I smiled, determined to be pleasant. “I wear my bonnet.”

  “A bonnet cannot protect you from the wind. It will ruin your complexion. It is already hardened, I can see.”

  “I see no such thing,” Mr. Quent said. Whatever his business was, it had not called him away of late, and he had dined with us more frequently. “In fact, I would say I have never seen her look so well.”

  The housekeeper treated him to a look I was glad not to have received myself. Mr. Quent, however, seemed not to notice, and Mrs. Darendal retreated.

  I could not speak for my complexion, but that the exercise and fresh air had done me good, I was certain. My mood had improved; the malaise I had suffered under—without really knowing it—had lifted. I was sure the fit I had experienced in the room upstairs would not happen if I were to enter there today. It had been an effect of melancholy and a weakened spirit.

  “Tell me, Clarette, Chambley, how do your studies go?”

  I looked up. Mr. Quent had addressed the children. However, Clarette was not looking at him but rather at me, her mouth open. Chambley clutched a piece of bread.

  I set down my fork. “Tell Mr. Quent what you have been reading, Clarette.” My voice was encouraging, but I could hardly have been more surprised than the children. However, once I prompted them to discuss what we had been learning of Tharosian history—their favorite topic—they chatted and chirped, and Mr. Quent listened for a quarter of an hour to accounts of ancient battles and the treachery of emperors.

  At last I gently urged the children to finish their meal. Then I sent them upstairs with the promise I would follow.

  “Thank you, Miss Lockwell.”

  I turned in the doorway. I could not read his expression or the look in his brown eyes. “For what, Mr. Quent?”

  “For your work with the children. They are much improved since you came. I fear my instinct was always to be stern with them, but a gentle word from you achieves more than all my most serious lectures.”

  These words took me aback. That he should be thanking me after what I had done was hardly comprehensible—that after I had violated his will and trespassed upon his most private sanctum he could express gratitude was almost unbearable.

  “I must see to the children,” I said, and hurried from the dining room.

  As I climbed the stairs, I could not feel so certain as the master of the house that my charges were improved. It was true they had been quiet since the day of their argument in the front hall, even subdued, but I did not take that as a sign of their well-being.

  Riding had improved my condition, but I could not think what could be done for them. They seemed to grow more wan by the day, and Chambley’s breathing had become a constant labor. However, I could rarely convince them to go out of doors. Clarette, I felt, might have been coaxed, but she would not let herself be parted from her brother, and he was reluctant to leave the house except for the briefest intervals.

  “Please, let’s stay inside,” I overheard him whisper to Clarette one day as I returned to our parlor with their coats. “It can’t be a good thing to go out. Not if she wants us to do it.” For some reason I did not think it was me he was speaking about.

  Now I opened the door to their room. As I did, Clarette turned suddenly from the window. Outside, a lingering twilight draped the moor. Chambley sat on his bed. He was shivering, though the room was warm. I hurried to sit next to him and put my hand to his forehead. It was clammy with sweat.

  “Clarette,” I said, “what happened? You brother was very well when I sent you upstairs.”

  She did not move from the window. Her eyes appeared black in the fading light.

  Chambley let out a whimper and leaned against me. “Did something happen just now, Clarette? Answer me at once.”

  “But I can’t answer you!” she burst out.

  “On the contrary, you can and will.”

  “You said I was never to say again that I saw things outside.”

  “No, I said you were not to tell a falsehood, Clarette.”

  “But you’ll say it’s a lie, even when it isn’t. So I can’t tell you what happened. You’ll scold me!” Her back had gone rigid. I could not tell if she was frightened or angry. Chambley threw his arms around my neck.

  “Clarette,” I said, making my voice low but firm, “I will never scold you for speaking the truth. Now tell me what happened.”

  She turned and pointed to the window. “We saw her. Standing out there below our window.”

  “Whom did you see, Clarette? Was it Mrs. Darendal? Or was it Lanna?”

  “No, it wasn’t them. It was her.”

  Now I was growing angry. I had had enough of this behavior. Chambley could n
ot stop shaking. “Who do you mean, Clarette? It was not myself. And if it was not Mrs. Darendal or Lanna, then who could it be?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “I will believe you, Clarette, if you tell the truth.”

  She only shook her head, taking a backward step toward the window.

  My voice rose. Such open disobedience could not be tolerated. “Clarette, answer me at once. Who did you see out the window?”

  Chambley pushed away from me. “It was her,” he cried out. “It was the Pale Lady. She was standing outside the window and looking up at us. Clarette said she wanted us to come down, but I said I wouldn’t go.” He leaped off the bed and glared at his sister, his small hands clenched into fists. “I don’t care what she says to you. I won’t go out to her. I won’t!”

  At last I understood. Clarette had been telling him stories again, frightening him. I stood and advanced toward Clarette.

  “Is this true?” I said. “Is this what you told your brother?”

  She looked up at me. “Yes. It is true. We saw the lady in white outside the window. We watched her run from the old wood. She came from the trees on the other side of the wall.”

  Now I went cold. For a moment I was back in the forbidden room. I saw again the painting of the trees, and the woman in a pale, tattered dress caught among the branches…

  I took a breath to clear my head. Clarette must have seen into the room after my collapse; the door would have been open. She had seen the painting. She was being cruel, that was all, teasing me as she had her brother.

  I fixed her with my gaze. “You will take back your words, Clarette. Tell your brother you are sorry for what you said.”

  “But I’m not sorry!”

  She started to turn away, but I caught her wrist.

  “Tell your brother you are sorry for frightening him.”

  She said nothing. I tightened my grip around her wrist. I saw her face go white; I knew I was hurting her.