“I think that’s what she’s discussing with the chaplain.” Hildegarde shook her head. “I’ll send a pigeon-message to Mother and Father tomorrow—I’d just as soon not try to explain this to Mother over the telephone. But I believe the nunnery has some sort of noviciate period, during which women can change their minds. So it’s not hopeless yet. The real problem, Wizard, is that Celia is nearly as stubborn as I am.”
During dinner that evening all the conversation was about the miraculous restoration of the high street of Caelrhon. Celia said virtually nothing and only played with her food, but the Lady Maria was in her element. “It’s like something out of the old stories of the saints,” she said enthusiastically. “The holy man walks out of the wilderness into the city, and no one recognizes his power except the children, until at last a great miracle puts everyone in his debt and silences all doubters.”
“I saw it too,” said Princess Margareta. She seemed, at least for the moment, to have forgotten both Paul and Justinia and basked in her position as assistant bringer of wonder-stories. The chaplain expressed an interest in making an immediate pilgrimage to meet Cyrus, and several people said they would join him.
But I had other concerns. After dinner I drew the king aside. He had listened politely to Maria’s stories, but most of his attention was still given to Justinia. They had gone riding that afternoon—he on his red roan stallion, she on an old white mare—leaving before I realized their plans. I did not like the idea of them roaming the countryside without a wizard’s protection against whatever magical enemies might be pursuing Justinia.
But I was supposed to serve King Paul, not order him around. “Could you do me a favor, sire,” I asked diffidently, “and take me along if you give the Lady Justinia any more riding lessons?”
“So you think I need a chaperone, Wizard?” he said with an amused smile. He glanced across the hall to where the Lady Justinia was talking to the queen. The eastern lady this evening was wearing an iridescent blue silk dress that matched her eyelids and left her shoulders bare. The Princess Margareta stood a short distance away, trying to appear uninterested in their conversation. “Did my mother put you up to this?” Paul added.
“Of course not!” I said in irritation. “It’s none of my business who my king decides to marry! But it is my responsibility to protect both you and her from black magic.”
“I thought you and that wizard friend of yours had cleared up that problem,” said Paul, still looking amused. “Or should I ask you for the return of the Golden Yurt?” He laughed and slapped me on the back. “You can tell whoever is worrying about me that I’m not planning to marry the Lady Justinia. Of course she’s an attractive woman, but I’m merely trying to keep her entertained during what must be for her a rather tedious stay in a foreign land.”
While I was relieved to hear this, it crossed my mind that the mage Kaz-alrhun, in sending Justinia to Yurt, may have had some such plan of his own. He was always calculating how to make events redound to his advantage, and he may indeed have intended the king of Yurt to fall in love with the lady. In spite of his immense shrewdness, Kaz-alrhun had become convinced, due to a rather improbable series of events, that I was one of the Western Kingdoms’ greatest wizards, and it was possible that he hoped an alliance between his niece and my king would bind me to him.
Paul looked past me, smiled again, and ran a quick hand over his hair. I turned to see the Lady Justinia coming toward us. But she turned her almond-shaped eyes not toward the king but instead toward me.
“Come thou this eventide to my chambers, O Wizard,” she said in her melodious voice. She turned slightly as she spoke, addressing me over a naked shoulder. “’Twould seem the time is ripe for thee and me to hold conversation.”
“Of course,” I said. I should tell her that I was trying to get in contact with Xantium. Now that I had met Cyrus, perhaps it would be possible to find out if she knew anyone like him who might be involved in the plot against her. And perhaps I could persuade her, even if I could not persuade the king, that she really needed a wizard with her whenever she ventured outside the castle walls.
As we left the hall together, I glanced back to see Paul glaring after us. If he had not just told me he had no romantic interest in the Lady Justinia, I would have said he was jealous.
V
Justinia’s automaton had a fire blazing, even though I would have called the evening warm. She seated herself gracefully on the carpet by the hearth and motioned me to join her. I recalled as I lowered myself much less gracefully that this was a flying carpet, although at the moment it showed no sign of going anywhere.
“I’ve been trying to find a way to talk to the mages in Xantium,” I said. “But the City merchant I reached this morning assured me there are still no telephones in the East. He was rather huffy about it, feeling it was somehow the wizards’ fault. Now, I know that some of the eastern mages communicate through images in deep pools of water, so I was thinking that if I was able to telephone someone in the furthest east port where the western merchants have telephones, then I might—”
But she interrupted with a look of horror. “Thou must not attempt to contact anyone in Xantium! Any magic would be traced in a moment, and then my enemies would pursue me even unto Yurt!” Her automaton rose at the alarm in her voice and approached me in slow, silent menace.
“All I want to do is talk to Kaz-alrhun,” I said in surprise. “He already knows you’re here.”
“But he remains the only one.” She leaned toward me and gripped my hand. “Even my most trusted slaves did not learn my destination. Please, I beg thee in God’s name, do not play at chances with my life!”
“Well, I think I could find a way to call without it being traced,” I started to say, then trailed off. The automaton retreated again. Justinia leaned closer, still holding my hand, close enough that I was almost overwhelmed by her perfume.
“And I was also going to say,” I continued quickly, trying to keep from babbling, “that it may be dangerous for you to leave the castle without an escort. I know the king never takes any knights with him when he rides, but if I came with the two of you—”
Her red lips curved into a smile. “This is better. Let us speak no more of Xantium, where my enemies are and I am not. Let us speak of Yurt and of the king.”
“Well,” I said, feeling flustered and wishing she would release my hand, especially since her rings were starting to bite, “he doesn’t seem to think he needs any magical protection. But since I don’t want to play at chances with your life any more than you do, I would appreciate it if you would ask him yourself next time if I could accompany you.”
“Or perchance there may not be a next time,” she said, shifting on the carpet so that our knees touched. I drew my knee back fractionally and she pressed hers forward fractionally. “I would fain persuade thy young King Paul that he would do far better to take his woman vizier as his concubine than to pay his attentions to me.”
“You said this to him?”
“Of course not,” turning her head on its fine neck in a scornful attitude. “Men will do naught, are they not persuaded they have thought on it themselves.”
And what did she hope I would think of myself?
“But he has awakened through my presence to his manhood and his position, and I trust that he will now find the strength to tell the old women that he will ne’er marry the little maid.” It took me a second to realize she meant Princess Margareta, not Antonia. “I think my hints have already made him aware of the vizier’s willingness to share his bed.” I had no reply. She gave me her slow smile again. “Now, all I must do is persuade him that he need not pay quite so much attention to me, that my own feelings may not be as immediate and as warm as his.”
I had never had a chance, I recalled through rising panic, to tell Theodora about the Lady Justinia. First I wished she was here, then I was just as glad she wasn’t.
“So wilt thou join me in my plan, Wizard,” she asked, still sm
iling and brushing my shoulder with her black hair as she leaned even closer, “to convey to thy king, obliquely of course, that he should pay me no more attention?”
I had to get out of here. She was so close now that I could feel her breath on my cheek. Neither my relations with Theodora nor with my king would be improved in the slightest by giving the eastern princess a passionate embrace, and her automaton had come silently forward again, staring at us voyeuristically with its flat metallic eyes.
“Gracious!” I cried, wrenching my hand out of her grip and leaping to my feet. “I’d last track of how late it is! I have to go say good-night to my daughter.”
Justinia looked up at me in silence, blinking iridescent eyelids, as it dawned on me what I had just said.
I stood silent and stiff, waiting for her to say something. In a moment Justinia rose to her feet in a single smooth motion and took my hand again, much less tightly. “Why didst thou not tell me at once, O Wizard?” she said, to my relief looking amused. “Antonia, is that not her name? I understand, then, that the maid’s mother is someone most precious to thee, and here is the reason thou hast always been so awkward in my presence.” I wouldn’t have put it that way, but I was at the moment incapable of speech. “Is the mother here in Yurt? Does King Paul know of thy love?”
I found my tongue again. “Nobody in Yurt knows Antonia isn’t my niece,” I said, looking at the floor. That is, for the moment no one else but the queen mother knew. It didn’t seem worth asking Justinia not to tell anyone; she either would or would not as she chose. “The girl’s mother does not live here, but yes,” lifting my eyes determinedly, “she is very precious to me.”
“Then I must to choose another if I desire the king to wax jealous,” said Justinia lightly, “or would convince him that I at least will ne’er be his concubine. I feel foolish now, not to have guessed that little Antonia was thy daughter. I ween that the purpose of her visit here is to commence teaching her magic? It is regrettable, O Wizard,” she added with something between a chuckle and a sigh, “because thou art passing handsome. Thy face and form are yet those of a young man, in despite of thy white beard, and thy wisdom and authority are of surpassing attractiveness in themselves.”
“Um, I really do need to kiss Antonia good-night,” I said, backing away.
“Of course, Wizard,” she said agreeably as the automaton, with a suspicious look, opened the door. Had she tried this on Elerius, too, I wondered, or would his much greater powers have put her in awe of him?
“Do not be shy to sit thee again by my side in spite of thy awkwardness this evening,” Justinia added. “Give the girl a kiss from me, and be assured that thy secret is safe.” She gave a slow smile. “I am well schooled in the keeping of secrets.”
I spent that night and much of the next morning composing conversations with King Paul, in which I combined plausible and nonchalant explanations for why I had never told him I had a daughter with assertions—assertions that never, of course, seemed forced or defensive—that my silence on this matter in no way implied embarrassment or shame about my relations with Theodora. None of these conversations seemed to come out right.
And yet, I reminded myself, I had brought Antonia to Yurt in the first place partly because I hoped to find some way to end the secrecy. This just didn’t seem the best way to do it.
If the Lady Justinia said anything to Paul, he gave no indication to me. He went riding by himself in the morning while I took a stroll with Antonia.
Her hair had been curled and ribboned elaborately by the Princess Margareta, who seemed to be treating her as a substitute for her broken china doll. Antonia’s Dolly too had a pink ribbon around her cloth neck. I realized, walking through sunlit meadows with my daughter’s small hand in mine, that her visit to Yurt was nearly over.
“Maybe I should take Celia and Hildegarde home with me,” she told me thoughtfully.
“Take them home?” I asked with a smile. “What will you and your mother do with them?”
“Here in Yurt everybody is always telling them they can’t do what they want to do. Mother wouldn’t tell them that.”
“She doesn’t let you do everything you want,” I said, amused at Antonia’s concern for the twins. Larks sang around us, and I was able to push to the back of my mind the voice which was trying out, “Wizards, of course, traditionally keep their private and their professional lives separate, so I therefore never happened to . . .”
“But Mother never told me I can’t be a wizard,” said Antonia. “Is that better than being a witch, by the way? And nobody will let Hildegarde be a knight, and now Celia thinks she’ll have to be a nun because she can’t be a priest. Maybe I should find out who keeps telling them all these things and turn him into a frog. What’s a nun, Wizard? Is it fun to be one?”
“No, I don’t think it’s fun to be nun,” I said, deciding to ignore the question about the relative values of wizard and witch—and even more so the issue of frogs. “But I’m afraid the twins were just down in Caelrhon, and they got the same answers there they got in Yurt.”
“Then I’ll have to find a better place for them to go,” said Antonia in determination.
We walked for a moment in silence. “Do you like my hair like this?” she asked then, turning sapphire eyes on me.
“Well, the bows are very nice,” I said cautiously, “but I like you in simple braids too.”
She nodded emphatically. “That’s what I decided. But I don’t want to hurt Margareta’s feelings. She broke her doll by accident, and now she has no one to play with but me. And this makes four different rooms in the castle I’ve slept in! I can’t wait to tell my friend Jen. Margareta’s unhappy because she doesn’t think the king loves her.”
I wondered whether Princess Margareta had told her this, or whether Antonia, with her mother’s quick insight, had worked it out for herself.
“I know what I can do, Wizard!” she said with a sudden skip. “I can take them all to see a dragon!”
“Well, since school-trained wizards are considered wedded to magic, it seemed best . . .” said the voice in the back of my mind with forced casualness. I pushed the voice away again and smiled at my daughter. Everything, the pain of being separated from Theodora, the deception, the embarrassment now that that deception seemed about to be found out, was worth it because of her. “Where will you find a dragon? I don’t think your mother has any around.”
“I’ll find one someplace,” she said confidently and enthusiastically. “Then Hildegarde can be a knight and kill it, but first the dragon will hurt Margareta so that she’ll be sick in bed and the king will realize he always loved her, and Celia will give the last rites so that she can be a priest.”
“It’s a complicated scenario,” I said, trying to keep from laughing.
“What’s a complicated scenario?”
“Your plan. While you’re at it, why not take Gwennie along too? I must say I’d never really considered, Antonia, that all that these women need is a trip someplace to see a dragon.”
“That’s right,” said Antonia. “Gwennie is sad too. How about Justinia?”
I thought about the lady’s self-possession. “She’s in fear for her life—reasonably well concealed—but I wouldn’t call her sad. But while you’re trying to find ways to help people trapped by their circumstances and other people’s expectations, how about King Paul?”
Antonia appeared to be turning over my bigger words in her mouth for a moment, but rather than asking about them she said, “I don’t think Paul needs to go see dragons. He could see them anytime he wants all by himself. After all, he’s king!”
I found myself wondering if Cyrus, in whom the bishop saw no evil and who had, at least for a moment, turned on me a smile brimming with goodness, had somehow found himself trapped by circumstances. But I didn’t want to think of him sympathetically.
Antonia plopped herself down in the grass by the path. “I’m getting tired of walking. Could you carry me—maybe carry me wit
h magic? Or could you teach me to fly?”
Princess Margareta took Antonia off with her after lunch while I settled down for some serious magic. I could find traces of no one else’s spells anywhere in the vicinity, but just at the edge of my attention I could occasionally catch hints of something in the distance, in the direction of Caelrhon. A demon, of course, with access to supernatural forces, would have no trouble hiding from me. I circled the outside of the castle, making sure that the big white lumps of chalk, surrounding us with a giant pentagram, were still in place. It was ironic, I thought, that the pentagram had originally been set up to confine a demon, but could now be just as effective in keeping one out.
Back in the courtyard, I spotted the Lady Justinia talking animatedly to Princess Margareta while Antonia watched and listened with interest. Margareta made only a few awkward comments of her own but seemed to be observing Justinia with even more thorough attention than my daughter. The princess, I thought, couldn’t seem to decide whether the eastern lady was someone glamorous to model herself after or a dangerous rival for the king’s affections.
Antonia waved to me but I just waved back and kept walking toward my chambers, feeling reluctant to speak to Justinia again just yet.
Sitting by my window, leafing through the Diplomatica Diabolica in an unsuccessful attempt to find something more useful to do, I saw Antonia dart away across the courtyard, but as I reached my chamber door, wondering what was happening, she returned to the others, pulling Hildegarde by the hand. Celia trailed behind her sister. The whole group disappeared into Justinia’s chambers.
I smiled as I went back to my books. They could use the distraction. In a day or so Hildegarde’s message would reach the duchess, relayed through several sets of pigeons, and then there would be no more time for the twins to play with Antonia. I ought to telephone Evrard, the Royal Wizard of Caelrhon, I thought, to tell him there was a demon loose in his kingdom—unless of course there wasn’t. But at least I would be able to tell him my doubts and uncertainties more easily than I could tell the wizards’ school, though he would be just as displeased when I told him the demon seemed involved with the cathedral.
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