The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

by Galen Beckett

  Now, Father, I fear I must set down my pen for some time. He will be returning soon, and after that we will be coming to the city. Then I shall see you and Lily and Rose. It has been far too long. I promise I will never be away so long again. I have heard very little news of late from Lily; she has been remiss in writing letters. Well, I will learn everything myself soon enough. Look for me in no more than a quarter month.

  FATHER, WHAT THINGS I have to tell you now!

  I can hardly think it possible to explain all that has happened, but I must try—if only to help make myself believe that it is done, that it is in the past now, that we are both of us safe.

  But neither are we together! Mr. Quent has gone west to Torland with a company of the soldiers on business of the Crown, and it will be a month at least before I am to see him again. Nor am I at Heathcrest Hall, and whether I shall ever lay eyes upon it again, I do not know. At this moment I sit in a room at the inn at Morrowset, waiting for the next coach to come, as the mail was already booked from this point onward and I was forced to give up the seat I had occupied since Cairnbridge.

  Yet it is just as well I must wait for the coach, for I need more time to compose myself before I see my sisters. I do not want to alarm them. Even as I write these words, my hand seems to shake a bit less. I suppose it will take me the rest of the umbral to describe all that has happened since last I set pen to paper. That suits me; I have not yet the capacity for sleep.

  As I mentioned when last I wrote, Mr. Quent had previously been called away by his business for the lord inquirer. Where he had gone, I did not know. I could only guess he must be investigating some rumor of a Rising.

  The days were lonely with the children gone. My only company came from Jance and Lanna, and the former was hardly more talkative than the latter. As for Mrs. Darendal—I had thought it impossible she could be more grim, but I was wrong. I learned from Jance that she was expecting a visit from her grown son, who had not come to see her for some time. One might have expected this news to cheer her. However, on those rare occasions I saw her, she wore a look as dour as that of any gargoyle that ever frowned down from the cornices of a church—though I suppose such looks were for my benefit.

  At last came the day we expected Mr. Quent’s return. I knew his business often kept him away longer than anticipated. All the same, the moment I rose after a short umbral’s rest, I looked out the window, searching the lane that led up to the house for any trace of him.

  There was none, but every time I passed a window I looked out, and what the significance was of the pang I felt each time I saw the empty lane, I could not say. At times it seemed disappointment, at others relief. I wanted more than anything to see him. Or did I?

  There are yet secrets in this house that would make your blood go cold…

  In the time that followed his proposal, I had forgotten Mrs. Darendal’s words. However, over the last several, silent days they had come back to me repeatedly, as had his own whispered words.

  If you knew what peril I have placed you in by bringing you here to suit my own purposes…

  I became agitated and took to pacing the house, moving from window to window, looking out each one: waiting, wondering, dreading. At last I could bear it no longer. I did not want to be near another window!

  I went into the kitchen, and, finding it empty, I went to the door to the cellar. I opened the wooden door and with a candle in hand descended into the cool gloom beneath the house. Only on rare occasions had I ever been down here, and then just to fetch a bottle of wine. The darkness here seemed a palpable thing, like a remnant of the void from before the world was made, caught in a hollow beneath the crust of the land. Always I had dashed up the stairs as quickly as I could.

  However, that day the darkness suited me. Better the nameless fear it contained than the fear I could all too easily call by name and whose name was now my own. The candle sent the shadows scurrying as I reached the bottom of the stairs.

  I made my way to the wine cabinet, which was hardly five steps from the stairs, then moved past, farther into the cellars than I had ever gone. Ten feet I went, twenty. Still the light of the candle did not reach the far wall. Hoary beams arched overhead, suggesting the ribs of some great leviathan. For a moment I felt a fleeting warmth. Then I moved onward, and a chill took the air.

  At last a ghostly shape became apparent before me. Indeed, for a sharp moment I feared it truly was some sort of apparition, that there was after all a ghost that haunted Heathcrest Hall. Then, as my eyes adjusted further to the gloom, I saw it for what it was: something tall and squarish draped by a white sheet. It stood against a stone wall; I had reached the end of the cellar.

  As I approached, the candlelight skittered across the floor as if it were wet; only it wasn’t. Instead, the gray slate had given way to a smooth black stone that reflected the light. The chill deepened.

  Shivering, I drew close to the draped object. I meant only to lift the sheet, to peek beneath it, but even as I touched the cloth, it fell away with a whisper. The gold light of the candle went green.

  So this was where the painting had gone.

  I brought the candle closer. In the flickering light, the trees seemed to sway back and forth, and the roots writhed in the cracks in the stone wall as if trying to pry them apart. Above, a pale thing gleamed among the twisting branches: a figure all in white.

  The painting of the Wyrdwood did not fill me with dread as it did the first time I glimpsed it. How could a thing of canvas and pigment have the power to distress me when I had seen the true scene with my own eyes? I bent closer with the candle, examining the painting, admiring the fine brushwork, the care that had gone into rendering each leaf, each mossy stone of the wall.

  Gennivel Quent had been a skilled artist. However, I could not believe she had painted this simply from imagination. The depiction was too detailed. Had someone else described the scene to her? Or had this come from things she had seen herself?

  I moved the candle, and the flame wavered as a breath passed my lips. The first time I saw the painting, I had been captivated by the trees and the figure tangled among them; I had not noticed the smaller form that stood below and to one side, in the shadows beside the wall. Her little dress was wet and torn, her feet bare and muddy, her hair a sheaf of wheat. She gazed out of the painting with large green eyes set in a small face: a child of no more than three or four.

  A creaking echoed behind me.

  I turned around with a gasp and lifted my candle higher. Its light did not reach across the cellar, but I caught a dark shape slinking toward me.

  “Who’s there?” I called out, my voice overloud in the cavernous room.

  The shadow drifted closer.

  “Is that you, Mrs. Darendal?” I called again. “Or is that Jance?”

  Footsteps made cold echoes against the slate floor. I tried to back away, but the wall and painting were behind me. I could not retreat.

  “Show yourself!” I cried out, and thrust the candle before me.

  The figure stopped, and I sagged against a stack of boxes to keep from falling. “Lanna, you gave me such a fright. What is it? Were you looking for me?”

  The young woman made no answer. Of course she could not; despite all Mr. Quent’s encouragements over the years, she remained mute. I saw she was not looking at me but rather beyond me. Her face had gone slack; she looked very pale in the dark.

  My fear was altered to concern. “Lanna, what’s wrong?”

  She did not move, and I realized it was the painting she stared at. The poor thing—she had witnessed the Rising on the green in Cairnbridge all those years ago. She had seen the work of the gallows tree. It was that terrible sight that had struck her dumb. I could hardly imagine what memories the scene in the painting must conjure for her. I set the candle on the boxes and bent to pick up the sheet, intending to throw it over the painting.

  “You,” spoke a small voice.

  The word whispered away into the dark. I rose and l
ooked around. Was there someone else there? I could see nobody in the gloom, and I had not recognized the voice. It had been high and thin, like the voice of a girl. But Clarette was gone.

  The sheet slipped from my hands. “Lanna, you spoke!”

  She did not look at me. “You,” she said again. This time I saw her lips move, saw her speak the word. Her voice was stronger now, no longer a whisper. She reached her hand out, finger extended. However, it was not at me she pointed but rather at the painting.

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  Still she pointed at the painting—not at the figure in the trees but at the small form that stood by the wall. A trembling came over me, because I did understand. Lanna was several years older than me. She would have been a girl of nine or so. Old enough to know what was happening. Old enough to be struck dumb by the horror of it. Old enough to remember.

  Yet I would have been no more than three years old—a tiny child with green eyes….

  “It wasn’t the gallows tree you saw,” I whispered, more to myself than to Lanna. “You were there at the wood. You and Gennivel both.”

  The candle guttered in a stray draft, and the darkness closed in. I could not breathe. The entire weight of the house above pressed down, as if the old stones would crush us and seal us there in this black tomb. I ran past Lanna and toward the stairs.

  I stumbled in the dark, knocking my shins against trunks and stray barrels. I gained the stairs and flung myself up them to the kitchen. Gray light seeped through the windows. I smelled rain. At once the feeling of oppression lifted, and I gulped in breaths of air. Tea. I needed a cup of tea to steady my nerves, that was all.

  Yet a cup of tea would not change what I had just seen.

  You, Lanna had said. She had not spoken in nearly twenty years, but she had said those words to me, had spoken them as she pointed at the painting.

  “She is wrong,” I said aloud. “She is making up stories.” I tried to put a kettle on to boil, but my hands would not stop shaking.

  Lanna had been there at the Wyrdwood nineteen years ago, along with Merriel Addysen’s cousin, Gennival. How else could the detail contained in Mrs. Quent’s painting, and Lanna’s reaction to it, be explained?

  I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, but I could not bear to face Lanna, not then. I fled the kitchen, running into the front hall. Thunder rattled the windowpanes. A storm was coming. I walked up and down the hall under the watchful eyes of stag and boar. I could not help but think their gazes jeering, as if they had known all along. What other awful secrets of this house did they know that I did not?

  Again thunder sounded. Only this time it did not fade, instead becoming a rhythmic pounding. My heart leaped. I knew that sound. I ran to a window and looked out into the courtyard. A moment later the mist swirled and parted, and a horse and rider appeared.

  He had come! I hardly knew what I felt. My trembling was renewed, but from relief or dread I could not say. Either way, it would not do. I could not greet him like this. I took a minute to shake the dust from my dress and brush cobwebs from my hair. I drew several breaths, and only when some sense of steadiness returned did I go to the front entry.

  I found Jance in the open doorway, stamping mud from his boots. I looked past him but saw only fog and rain.

  “Is Mr. Quent not come?”

  Jance shook his head. “Nay, it is Mrs. Darendal’s son. He’s in the carriage house seeing to his horse. I came in to tell her, but this mud ought as well be pitch, and she’ll have my hide if I track it in.”

  I felt a keen disappointment, though that did not mean I did not suffer apprehension at his return. When one dwells in dread anticipation of an event, it is almost more awful when it does not occur. All the same, I forced myself to stand straight. Kin of Mrs. Darendal’s could mean nothing to me, but I was the lady of the house now, and it was my duty to receive him.

  “I will inform Mrs. Darendal,” I said to Jance. “Tell Mr. Darendal to come in when he is done with his horse.”

  “Aye,” Jance said with a relieved look, and went back out into the rain, shutting the door behind him.

  I went to the kitchen, but Mrs. Darendal was not there. The cellar door was closed; Lanna must have come up, but there was no sign of her. I went to the parlor, back into the front hall, and then up to the second floor. Still I saw no trace of the housekeeper. I looked in every room, even daring to crack the door to his study and peer in. I went to the servants’ stair and up to the attic, all in vain. It was possible she had gotten around me by way of the main stair. The house was so large, so dim, I might go in circles for hours and never find Mrs. Darendal.

  By then I was quite perturbed. What right had she to conceal herself from me like this, when it was because of her son that I sought her? I went back downstairs and through the front hall with the intention of returning to the kitchen to start my search again.

  A blast of damp air struck me as I neared the entry. The door stood open, and rain lashed in. Jance must not have latched it behind him. I pushed it shut against the gale, then started again toward the kitchen. As I did, I heard a sound through the opening that led back to the front hall. So she had circled around me—as was her intention, for all I knew! I turned and marched back into the front hall just as another peal of thunder shook the windows. A figure stood not ten steps away, back turned to me.

  It was not Mrs. Darendal.

  He was tall and wore a knee-length coat of wine-colored velvet. His boots were spotless, as if he had not just ridden through miles of inclement weather. Gold hair fell loosely over his broad shoulders.

  The man stood before a stuffed wolf. He must not have heard me over the thunder. After a moment I recovered from my surprise.

  “Mr. Darendal, I did not know you had come in,” I said, moving closer. “I have been unable to find your mother. I will keep looking, of course.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Quent,” he said in a low voice as he stroked the wolf. A ring glinted on his hand: it was wrought of thick gold and carved into the shape of a lion’s head.

  “Oh,” I said. I tried to say something else, but speech was beyond me.

  He turned around and grinned, an expression not unlike that worn by the wolf. I recalled how I had thought on the mail coach that he was likely handsome. I saw now that he was. He closed half the distance to me with a long, easy stride.

  “You need not look for my mother,” he said. “I told her it would be best not to be at Heathcrest when I arrived.”

  “It was you,” I managed to say. I wanted to retreat, but my legs would not move. “It was you the soldiers were looking for. Only you vanished from the coach when we stopped.”

  He pressed a hand to his chest. The lion’s head ring flashed like his tawny eyes. “By God, I’ve been discovered! Whatever will I do?”

  My fingers searched blindly for the door frame, discovered it, gripped it hard. “What do you want, Mr. Darendal?”

  “Nobody calls me Mr. Darendal.” He gave an elegant bow. “You must call me Westen, Mrs. Quent.”

  “Westen,” I murmured, as if it had been a command. I managed to move a step back. At the same moment he took a fluid stride forward, maintaining the distance between us as perfectly as if we were dancers at a ball.

  “The soldiers,” I said. “Why were they looking for you that night?”

  “What makes you think they were looking for me, Mrs. Quent?”

  I thought of the things I had heard in the village and what Mr. Quent had told me. “You had something they wanted. It was in your coat—a letter, or money. Something to help those who plot against the Crown. You are one of the common thieves who stalk the highway and aid them.”

  “On the contrary,” he said with another grin, “I am a most uncommon thief. Indeed, I can guarantee you, Mrs. Quent, that you could ride all across this county and the next and not encounter a highwayman like myself.”

  I gasped and tried to retreat, but he reached out and caught
my hand in his own. He bowed and touched his lips against it.

  A shudder passed through me. His grip was gentle, yet I knew it could tighten cruelly in an instant. “Why have you come?” I whispered.

  “You know why I’ve come.” He stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “Tell me, has Mr. Quent returned from his journey yet? No? Perfect—I did not think so. But he is due to return very soon, is he not? In which case we must be ready for him. We cannot let him arrive before we have made our…preparations.”

  I shook my head. I could utter no sound but a moan of dread.

  He placed his free hand against my cheek. “Hush, now. Do not fret. It will be quick as a wink. He will make no struggle. Indeed, I am sure he will give himself up freely. What man would not do the same for the sake of his lovely new bride?” He bent close, so that his lips brushed my ear. “And you are indeed lovely, Mrs. Quent.”

  His breath was warm against my cheek. His hand slipped from my cheek, down my throat—

  There was a bang in the entryway behind me. The door had flown open, striking the wall. I tried to turn my head. Had the wind thrown it open, or was it a figure I saw amid the lashing rain?

  “Jance!” I cried out. “Don’t come in! He is a brigand and a rebel! You must tell—”

  He let out a hiss and thrust me down to the floor. My words ceased as the breath rushed out of me. I heard him go by; then came the sound of the door slamming. I had but a moment. Clenching my teeth against the ache in my chest, I rose up and ran across the front hall.

  I heard his shout behind me, followed by the gunshot sound of his boots against the floor. However, I did not look back. I ran up the stairs and along the corridor on the second floor. I could hear him behind me. I had only time to dart through the nearest door and shut it. Even as I turned the lock, the door shuddered from a great blow.