Magic by Daylight

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  “He took no harm,” she said. “I put plenty of milk in it. He slept well enough, barring a nightmare or two...” She yawned again, hugely. Rather belatedly she patted her lips and murmured an apology. She added another “I’m sorry” about the untidy state of Morgain’s room.

  “You’re asleep on your feet, poor dear,” Clarice said. “Don’t give Morgain or anything else a second thought! A nightmare or two is perfectly natural under the circumstances.”

  “He’ll tell you all about them, given half a chance. I told him it’s best to forget about things like that; dreams go by contraries and we are not intended to know what they mean.”

  “I thought you believed in dreams,” Clarice said lightly, wanting to move on to Morgain’s bedside. “At any rate, I hope your sleep is untroubled. Do eat first. I’ve given orders that you are not to be disturbed once you’ve closed your door, and you may very well miss luncheon.”

  Pringle could hardly stop yawning long enough to thank her. Feeling that in another instant she too would be cracking her jaws, Clarice closed the door behind Pringle with a feeling of profound relief.

  Thinking of how dreadful Morgain had looked the day before, Clarice approached the bedside, steeling herself against any display of excessive sensibility. When she put back the curtain, what she saw so amazed her that she simply stood tike a stock, staring down at her nephew.

  He sat up, propped behind by mounds of pillows, a sketchbook on his knee. His hand fairly flew over the page, with never a pause for consideration. Except for his still being in his nightclothes at this hour of the morning, instead of up and doing the instant his eyes opened, everything about him looked the same as on any other day.

  “Morgain?”

  The boy glanced up just long enough to recognize her. “Aunt, are there one ‘t’ or two in ‘detritus’?”

  “Two,” Clarice said, spelling it. Then she added, “How do you feel today?”

  “Excellently well, thank you.” He wrote the word. “Thank you for spelling that! Pringle can’t and she wouldn’t fetch me a dictionary. Said reading would make me feverish.”

  Clarice had only the single instant when he glanced up to see the boy’s forehead. She could not accept what she saw. Now she pulled the bed curtains all the way back to allow extra light in. “How can you see what you are doing, scribbling away in the dark?”

  “That’s just to keep Pringle out with her fussing. She talks all the time, but she’s so good-natured I hate to give her a set-down.”

  He put his head to the side and shut one eye to better judge his work. Clarice reached out and caught his face between her hands. “Morgain, what happened?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t remember!” he exclaimed, wounded.

  “Of course I remember! I shan’t ever forget it.”

  “Looked horrible, didn’t I?” His tone was pleased. “Did you think I was going to die?”

  “I thought you were dead, my dear.”

  “Did you?” He grinned at her, as conscienceless as a monkey. “What a bore I wasn’t awake. Did Pringle scream?”

  “I think she did, now that you mention it, and you’re a dreadful boy to look so happy about it!”

  Morgain shrugged, all loose-limbed. “Doctor Danby put these stitches in, I collect. Or did you do it?”

  “No, I’m not that brave. I couldn’t even watch while the doctor did it.” She sat down beside him, watching his face change. “No, I’m not poor-spirited,” she said, answering his thought. “And you wouldn’t have enjoyed being awake for that one little bit!”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said magnificently. “You can’t help being a girl.”

  “No. If you want all the horrid details, you’ll have to ask Mr. Knight. He showed great presence of mind and even passed Doctor Danby the scissors!”

  She gently brushed the hair back from his forehead and confirmed what she’d thought she’d seen. Of the huge black-and-blue bruise that had begun to blossom on his face last evening, there was not a sign. Of the promised black eye, only a little greenish mark, as of a bruise several weeks old, showed. The wound itself had faded to a soft red, covered with a scab, old-looking and dried. Only the black silk stitches still seemed like new.

  “Pringle said you had a nightmare,” she said.

  “How would she know? She was asleep and snoring in that chair before the hour had struck twelve,”

  “She doesn’t snore anymore,” Clarice said.

  “No, now she whistles through her nose!”

  “You’re monstrously unkind to poor Pringle and she loves you very much.”

  “She fusses....”

  “And you adore her for it. Who else spoils you so? Not I, Monsieur Monstre.”

  At this childhood pet-name, Morgain grinned again. “No, why should you spoil me? You listen to me.”

  ‘Thank you. High praise indeed. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving! I didn’t have anything last night except for some—” He stopped short.

  “Pringle said she gave you some tea.” She gazed at him with quiet alarm. Maybe this sudden healing only meant there was something wrong with him on the inside. All her fears of how to tell his parents returned. She’d spent half the night wondering how she could bear to break it to Blaic and Felicia if their only son had been killed. The other half she’d spent starting at every creak of a floorboard or rattle of a window. If the Rider could stoop to harming an innocent boy, heaven only knew what other outrage he’d commit.

  When not tossing between these two points, Clarice found herself wondering about Dominic Knight. Had he come as a savior in the nick of time, or as the traitor who would open her gates to the enemy? Half a dozen times she made up her mind to send him away, only to change it in favor of his strength and the inner knowledge he seemed to have. How had he come by it?

  Morgain made a face. “Milky tea,” he said scornfully. “Pap for babies!”

  “Then you are hungry now?”

  “I could eat a roasted ox!”

  “I’m afraid the cook didn’t expect that request. Some coddled eggs and toast?”

  “I’d rather have gammon and eggs. ...” Morgain caught his aunt’s eye and sighed in the tone of one who suffers much from the well-meaning. “Very well. Coddled eggs and toast.”

  As she stood up, Clarice knocked the sketchbook to the floor. She picked it up and it fell open to the page he’d been working on. Clarice turned to Morgain and asked, “May I look?”

  “If you want to. It’s just another imaginary scene.”

  The circle of trees had been lightly sketched as though they stood beyond the footboard of his bed. Little arrows pointed here and there with one- or two-word descriptions written in beside them. In the corner of the paper, sketched larger than life-size and out of proportion to the rest of the scene, was a nut, more or less like a walnut and yet smoother-skinned and more rounded.

  “Excellent perspective.” Clarice handed it back to him. But nothing too fanciful about it, except the doors.”

  “Doors? I didn’t want to put—

  “No? Then what are those?”

  She pointed to the page. Off between the trees, two large rectangles appeared half-hidden by the forest all around and also well-concealed by the design of leaves and branches that covered the surfaces. It was impossible to tell if they were of stone or of wood.

  Morgain stared at them as though he’d never seen them before. Her worry returning, Clarice took the sketchbook from him and closed it firmly. “No more until you’ve eaten and had Doctor Danby come again.”

  She took his pencils and sought among the sheets for his eraser-gum. “How you can lose things without ever leaving.. .. What’s this?”

  Opening her hand, she showed him the nut she’d found under his pillow. “I found it,” Morgain said, reaching for it.

  “I’m not surprised you drew a picture of it; it’s too unusual not to keep a record. Isn’t it enormous? I’ve never seen a walnut that size before.” She
admired it for a moment more, then said, “Don’t keep it under your pillow anymore, though. That will give you the headache all by itself.”

  Clarice rang for Morgain’s breakfast and sat beside him while he ate every bite of it. When he wiped his mouth and said, “Now may I have some bacon?” She laughed and agreed.

  “I’ll nip down myself and bring it back. Everything is at sixes and sevens this morning, no thanks to you!”

  “Me?” he said innocently.

  “Yes. Maggie had hysterics—not that she saw your bloody corpse but she had them anyway—it’s all very well for you to giggle, Morgain Gardner, but you were more trouble to us than you were to yourself at that point. Where was I?”

  “ ‘Maggie had hysterics,’ “ Morgain said helpfully.

  “Yes. While she was screaming the place down, Cook gave notice. .. .”

  “She took it back again though, just as always?”

  “Just as always but not until Camber reached the point of ail-but breach of promise! Then Collie came in, limping, because he’d worn his boot-sole through looking for the man that—” In her eagerness to see Morgain laugh, she’d gone too far.

  “The man that hit me,” he said, finishing for her.

  “Yes. Did you see him, dear? Can you tell me what he looked like? The constable must know if he is to have any chance of finding him.”

  “I didn’t see anything, Aunt Clarice. He came from nowhere, riding that horse. I can describe the horse, if that’s of any help. It was as big as a carthorse, with huge feet. When it reared up over me, I thought I was dead for certain.”

  “We told Constable Newkirk about the horse. No one seems to have seen it since last night, or its rider.”

  “I only saw his whip, Aunt.”

  “His ...” She’d always thought the sensation-mad writers of Gothic horror tales were exaggerating when they spoke of “blood running cold.” Now she knew she had maligned them. A chill seeped out of her heart and crept into every fiber of her body.

  A rap at the door made them both look around. Dominic looked in. “How are you, Morgain?”

  “Well, sir, thank you.”

  “I wonder if I might speak with your aunt a moment? Just if you can spare her.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Thank you very kindly the pair of you,” Clarice said more briskly than she felt. Collecting her nephew’s tray and sketchbook, she bore them both away. “You need to rest, Morgain. If you sleep, you may come downstairs later for tea. No milk, however.”

  Morgain grinned, very nearly in his old way. Yet she realized that some measure of its impish brightness had dimmed, lost to his new knowledge of the easy brutality of the world. Balancing the tray on her hip, she pulled the bedclothes up around his thin shoulders and dipped to kiss his cheek. She did not cry, for he hated that, but she couldn’t restrain an unladylike sniff of emotion as she walked away.

  Dominic waited there in the doorway, reaching out for the tray as soon as she came near. “Allow me.”

  “Leave it there on the table. Rose will tidy it away.”

  “And his book. .. may I? Or would he object to my seeing these sketches?”

  “Morgain? He’s more likely to hound you with explanations of each little flourish.”

  “I don’t understand art,” he admitted. “I like portraits.”

  “We have a few at Hamdry, ancestors and such, but most of our art is sculptural. What did you want to see me about?”

  “The doctor cannot come today.”

  “I beg . .. why not?”

  “Look out the window.”

  She saw that Dominic stood and looked at Morgain’s pictures by candlelight. A branch of candles stood on the table where he’d placed the tray, and another stood waiting a light in front of her own bedroom door. Leaving Dominic to flip through the pages, she walked to the window and held the curtain back with one hand.

  Before her was another curtain, of pearly mist and swirling opal. This one no mortal hand could hold back. It concealed more than the lighted interior of a house from prying eyes. The fogs of the Devon moor were more dangerous than tor, or stream, or the will-o’-the-wisp. In the deep fog, every landmark blurred, every sound died, even the sun vanished. The most moor-wary individual could lose her way and fall in a long, rolling tumble to the bottom of a tor, or wander so far off the beaten path that she’d never find her way home.

  Clarice let the curtain fall. “No, he’ll not come today. Nor I think will anyone else.”

  “No, it’s thick. Where does it come from?”

  “I don’t know. The Old Ones will tell you—

  “The Old Ones?”

  She glanced at him, for there’d been something startled in his voice. “Old wives and old men. They’ll tell you either that the fogs have grown steadily worse or that what we have today is hardly worthy of the name.” Her voice dropped into a croak. “Niver zeen it zo bad in all me horned laife an’ I been zeen the Duke o’ Mon-mouth ride by with his gay cockade a-stuk in his hat.” Resuming her natural tone, she said, “Or they’ll say, ‘Fog? Call this ‘un a fog? B’ain’t no more’n a bitty mist this is. Iff’n you’m be more’n a finger, you’d a-zeen zome fogs! We used t’eat t’fog when it come down from moor. . . crawl right into yer bowl. Iss fai’!”

  “‘Iss fai’?”

  “It means a statement for which there is no argument and I don’t suggest you try to find one.”

  She noticed that he had one finger holding his place in Morgain’s book. “Did you find a sketch you especially like? He’s not above giving his work away, you know.”

  Dominic hesitated so infinitesimally that she was left more with the impression that he’d wished to avoid her looking at the page than with any actual perception. “This one is ... different from his other drawings.”

  He showed her the very one Morgain had been working on that morning. It was still unfinished, the sky only a blank, the trees not polished with the high attention to detail Morgain could command. She felt as if she were looking at a direct sketch, rather than one done from Morgain’s formidable imagination.

  “It is different,” she agreed. “He doesn’t usually sketch so roughly. He prefers to do things ‘properly,’ which simply put means that which gibes with his measure of propriety.”

  “I’m fascinated by these doors, here behind the trees.”

  “They are interesting. Morgain only said that he wanted some doors there. I don’t pretend to understand art... or at least not Morgain’s.”

  Dominic raised his gaze from the page to her face. Clarice shifted on her delicate shoes and gave him a warmer-than-usual smile. She said, quickly, “Why not that game of chess, Mr. Knight? There’s little else we can do until this fog lifts.”

  “I take it these fogs do not abide for long? The one last night, for instance. Not a wisp left by the time luncheon was served yesterday.”

  “There was still more than a little about when you were—practicing.” She cleared her throat of whatever made her voice so low. “Yet that was only a light touch. A heavy fog like this might last two or three days.”

  “So long as that? And me eager to find my way back to the monuments up there.” He waved his arm in entirely the wrong direction, pointing somewhere off the Isle of Wight by her dead-reckoning.

  “The monuments will still be here when the fog lifts.”

  He gave her a warm smile, so warm that even her feet, grown a little cold in a draft whispering over the floor, promptly thawed. She felt a slight sense of light-headedness, not unlike when she nearly fainted last night. The cause was so opposite, however, that she didn’t dare let him sweep her off her feet again. Surely she was not so spinsterish that one utterly charming smile from a personable man was enough to turn her head. Not even from the most personable man she’d met in years.

  “Then let us play chess.” He held out his arm as though he were about to lead her into the Grande Ronde at some society hostess’s perfectly planned ball.

&n
bsp; She swept him a right regal curtsy, as one might do for a royal gentleman conveying a signal honor upon one beneath him. “You are too kind, sir. The library?”

  With some inner trepidation, she laid her fingers atop his hand and together they walked away, quite in the grand style. Halfway down the stairs, however, Dominic said something almost unforgivable.

  “I like the way you laugh. Lady Stavely. You should do it more often.”

  Chapter Eight

  Clarice had never thought of herself as a poor loser. She never minded paying out her pence at the resolution of a game of copper loo, and was more likely to laugh with delight than frown with pique should Morgain defeat her at croquet. Blaic was an especially fine player, with a fiendishly straight eye. No, she did not mind losing.

  She hated being annihilated. Dominic played chess as though he’d been tutored by Attila the Hun. His was not a game of hours, but of horrible minutes in which pawns were slaughtered, knights unhorsed, castles destroyed, and royal families ruthlessly overthrown. She could only fall back, step by step, fighting to save this square or that piece, feeling all the while that she and they were doomed.

  “Checkmate.”

  “Where?”

  “That bishop and that knight hold you in checkmate.”

  “Oh, I saw the knight but.. . oh. Oh. I see.”

  “Again?”

  “Certainly.”

  It was frustrating to set up some cunning set of moves and countermoves only to see him come whirling through like a sickle among standing corn. He hardly seemed to think at all. She might sit there for long minutes, planning out each stage, usually with disaster awaiting on every side. Then, she’d no sooner move than his brown hand would flash out, arrange one piece, and take another. He almost always found something to take away from her ranks while his remained at full strength.

  Desperate, she had begun to play recklessly, knowing that he was using her long pauses to plan his own attacks. She spent less time considering the moves and did what seemed good at the time. The only benefit she reaped was that the torture ended more swiftly.

  “Again?” he asked, his brown eyes alight.