A Season of Spells (A Noctis Magicae Novel)

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  From the middle distance—northward, in the direction of the stone-fields—came a series of what sounded like small explosions, accompanied by the occasional pained yelp or howl.

  On her knees on the floorboards, Sophie peered over the warped and splintered window-sill. “Mother Goddess,” she breathed, as the implications began to dawn upon her: The enemy was not only at this particular gate, and therefore Queen Ahez’s spell would not be so restricted, either. “Mother Goddess, what have we done?”

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  In Which the Fellows of Merlin Change Their Mind

  The death toll, in the end, was so low as to beggar belief, and His Majesty declared a feast day throughout the kingdom in thanksgiving to the gods for the carnage spared. The third and last of the minor earthquakes at Karnag claimed the life of Henri-François, Duc d’Orléans, before Sophie could carry out Lucia’s scheme to lock him in the cellar of the Ship at Rest; at Klison, the flood that swept away the invaders’ weaponry and siege-engines also killed two men of His Majesty’s army who had been taken prisoner; and a similar flood at Ivry-sur-Eure carried off two men and their mounts who happened to be crossing the bridge.

  The suspicion of many in Britain that Orléans’s followers had been under the influence of some magickal compulsion, though never unequivocally verified, was borne out by the startlingly high proportion of soldiers and officers who deserted or surrendered in the aftermath of the earthquakes, fires, floods, lightning-strikes, rock slides, and sinkholes which Sophie had called forth by invoking the magick of blood and stone. Many claimed to remember nothing of what they had done, thought, or said during the previous year—for most a safely unverifiable claim, but not without a kernel of truth. As a result, the men who had first conspired to murder King Henry, and later provided aid and intelligence to the enemy, were not condemned to death, but only returned to a more secure imprisonment.

  * * *

  Joanna recovered without incident from her encounter with magick, rather pleased to have had the experience of seeing magick use from the inside but infinitely grateful to be spared repeating it in the foreseeable future. Amelia, whose journey across Orléanais and Maine had resulted in a thorough change of heart on several points, returned to London to make her peace with her sisters and her guardian, and was invited, together with Lady Maëlle, to continue in Grosvenor Square at least until after the royal wedding. Over the course of that autumn and winter, her quiet beauty caught the eyes of many a young man, but her heart was won, in the end, by a gentleman of five-and-thirty who confessed that he had heard her playing upon Lady Lisle’s pianoforte, and singing a Breizhek love-song, some time before he ever saw her face (for he was rather short-sighted), and been inspired by the sincerity of her performance to seek an acquaintance with her.

  * * *

  Some two months after what the public insisted on calling the Battle of Le Ménec—though there had been no battle in the ordinary sense—the Princess Royal and her father received identical copies of a letter from the Fellows of Merlin College, which after the usual salutations read as follows:

  Whereas trustworthy reports from the scene of the battle indicate that the actions of female mages, though appearing at the time to be ill-advised and based in pure speculation, in fact spared the kingdom much of the expense of prosecuting a costly war and saved countless lives on both sides;

  Whereas the contributions of the said female mages are reliably reported to have been integral and even indispensable to the strategy which accomplished these feats;

  Whereas the female members of the expedition to Karnag are reliably reported to have conducted themselves with bravery, resourcefulness, intelligence, fortitude, moral courage, and a spirit of inquiry in the course of the said expedition, equal to those of their male counterparts; and

  Whereas, in light of these and other facts, it seems high time to revisit the policies and attitudes of the past several centuries with respect to higher education for young ladies,

  We, the undersigned Fellows of Merlin College, Oxon, do hereby endorse and support the reestablishment of a college for women on the site of the former Lady Morgan College, Oxon.

  The signatures of some half-dozen Fellows remained conspicuously absent from this missive, but these absences were very effectively overshadowed by the signatures of every other Fellow of Merlin and several Fellows of other Colleges.

  * * *

  The marriage of Prince Roland of Britain and Lucia MacNeill, heiress of Alba, was celebrated in London in October, and in Din Edin in December, of the year of the Hundred Days’ War. It was rumoured in Britain that they had been secretly handfasted at some time during their unauthorized journey to Breizh; the rumours were never confirmed or denied, and speculation continued for some time. The royal couple’s first child, a daughter, was born in the following October, and was named Maeve Edwina Sophia Joanna MacNeill, for her two grandmothers and her aunts.

  * * *

  In the autumn of that same year, the newly established Regents’ College opened its doors to its first matriculating students.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  Thereafter

  Joanna was well accustomed by now to being among the oldest in her year—second only to Gwendolen and to Mathilde de Courcy—but the feeling was magnified, somehow, by the experience of seeing young ladies several years her junior shake hands with the College Mistress and receive degrees exactly equivalent to her own.

  “To Mademoiselle Joanna Claudia Callender,” declared the Mistress of Regents’ College, “is awarded the degree of Artium Baccalaureus, cum laude.”

  Polite applause from the assembled guests was drowned out entirely by the cheering and, not to put too fine a point on it, hooting of Joanna’s particular friends; and, diploma in hand and flushed with both triumph and embarrassment, Joanna retreated to her seat beside Justine Beauvois to watch Mathilde, next in the queue, take her turn before the multitude.

  This first matriculating class had been a small one, and had grown smaller as the years progressed, so that by now only one-and-twenty young women remained to receive their degrees; no more than another quarter-hour had passed, therefore, before Mademoiselle Gwendolen Cornelia Pryce was awarded the degree of Magicēs Baccalaureus, summa cum laude, together with the prize (established by the Fellows of the College) for coming first in the practical examinations for the said degree. Joanna beamed up at the stage, and at Gwendolen blushing prettily at the centre of it whilst Mór MacRury stepped forward from the ranks of Fellows to ambush her with a congratulatory embrace, until she felt her face would split in two from the joy of it.

  At dinner in Hall, the atmosphere was buoyantly triumphant, the hum of conversation almost painfully loud, and the hall itself packed to the rafters with Fellows, students, and their families and friends. Joanna, so tightly wedged between Sophie and young Agatha that she could scarcely manage her knife and fork, had almost no attention to spare for missing Gwendolen: Agatha was ecstatic to be granted the honour of sitting down to dinner with the grown-up ladies and gentlemen, and expressed her elation by chattering nineteen to the dozen all through dinner; Sophie was full of plans for her summer in Alba, and was attempting once more to persuade Joanna to make one of the party (“Should you not like to meet Roland and Lucia’s little daughter, before she grows taller than either of us?”), before she should return to London to take up her official post as Secretary to the Chief Privy Councillor; Amelia was anxiously seeking advice from Jenny on the rearing of little boys. Joanna had only to look up and along the table to her right, however, to see Gwendolen sitting between her father and her sister Branwen, quietly glowing with pride in her own accomplishments and, more unusually, with pleasure in her family’s being by to share them. It was odd, after all these years, to see her in such company—and her father, at least, could not have looked more awkward and ill at ease had he set out to be so—but in a way that warmed Joanna’s heart and made her smil
e.

  After dinner they walked about the grounds with their guests, and at last saw them off at the College gate, whither they should return to their lodgings at the Dragon and Lion.

  “I could not be prouder of either of you, if you were my own children,” said Sophie, not for the first time, embracing first Joanna and then Gwendolen with undiminished enthusiasm. Gray shook their hands solemnly in the Alban manner; then the two of them strolled away towards their own rooms in the Senior Fellows’ wing, hand in hand and heads bent together.

  Joanna watched them go, and smiled.

  “Jo,” said Gwendolen softly, “what are you thinking of?”

  Joanna turned a little and looked up at her. “I hardly know,” she said honestly. “We are come to the end of something, today; but I cannot regret it, for I hope it may be the beginning of something better still.”

  Gwendolen, laughing, tangled her long fingers with Joanna’s amongst the mingled folds of their skirts.

  “From your lips to the gods’ ears,” she said.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This is the last book of a trilogy whose first book I began writing a decade ago, and thanking everyone who has contributed to its (and my) success would require a whole ’nother book. Still, I’ll give it a go!

  Many, many thanks to my fantabulous family (immediate and extended) and friends, my terrific day-job colleagues, and the lovely and supportive members of Kol Rina Women’s Choir, the Orpheus Choir of Toronto, and Congregation Darchei Noam for general and particular cheerleading and encouragement; to Anne Marie Corrigan, Alex Hunter, Tawnie Olson, Luisa Petroianu, Antonia Pop, and Kim Solga for walks, plot talks, and milk shake summits; to Jeannie Scarfe for late-night text conversations and beta reading; to Stephanie Sedgwick for equestrian consulting (and the owl colouring book!); and to Michael Appleby for emergency Latin support. All remaining errors are my own. For much of the writing of this book I was digging my way out of a not-so-nice brain-space, and I appreciate every. single. person. who offered hugs, tissues, encouragement, chocolate, and/or a listening ear when I needed it.

  Thanks to my amazing agent, Eddie Schneider, and his colleagues at JABberwocky Literary Agency for everything they do and for a delicious Indian dinner in a pub in London this spring. Thanks to my equally amazing and very patient editor, Jessica Wade (without whom this book would be much longer and nothing like as good), and her able assistant, Miranda Hill; to Amy J. Schneider for helpful copyediting, Diana Kolsky for the hat trick of gorgeous covers, and Tiffany Estreicher for the beautiful interior design; to Cortney Skinner for mapping the world of the series so beautifully; and to Michelle Kasper, Jennifer Myers, Kayleigh Webb, and Kim Burns for shepherding the book the rest of the way into your hands. And a shout-out to the fabulous Toronto Public Library system, and particularly to the North York Central Library, where at least half of the words in this book were written. Writing was fuelled by Kicking Horse Coffee, the Second Cup Coffee Co., DAVIDsTEA, and Adagio Teas.

  It’s not easy living with someone who’s writing a book while also holding down a full-time job! So all the thanks to Alex and Shaina Hunter, who have been putting up with me (and all the weirdos who live in my head) for twenty-four and fourteen years respectively; and to my mom, Luisa Petroianu, my baby brother, Dan Izzo, and the rest of the mishpacha (and mishpacha-of-choice), who have been putting up with me for even longer. I love you all so much!

  * * *

  The necklace and earrings Joanna lends to Gwendolen are modelled on a set made for me by Anne Marie Corrigan; Amelia’s silver-and-garnet ear-drops, on a pair given to me by Deborah and Sam Appel. The Kergabets’ bigger, fancier house in Grosvenor Square has many sofas, chairs, and chaises longues, but the green-and-gold-striped sofa in the morning-room is a close cousin of the silk-upholstered one which my mother inherited from her parents, on which (unlike the rest of the furniture) many generations of cats have been forbidden to sleep.

  Although “Duc d’Orléans” was a real title in pre-revolutionary France (a title reserved for members of the French royal family, rather like “Prince of Wales” in the UK), Henri-François, Duc d’Orléans, is an invention of my own. Similarly, Nevenoe (in French, Nominoë) and his wife, Argentaela, are real historical people, and Nevenoe really is considered the first king/duke of Brittany, but almost everything else this book states or suggests about either of them is completely 100 percent made up.

  I have also, of course, played fast and loose with the history and geography of France and its neighbours. The territories and places mentioned are, or at some point in history were, real ones; most of their alliances and allegiances, however, are fictional. Exceptions to the former are Ivry-la-Bataille, which I have renamed Ivry-sur-Eure (not to be confused with Ivry-sur-Seine); and the territory around Paris, historically known as l’Île-de-France, which, because no kingdom of France exists in the world of this book, I have renamed l’Île-des-Francs.

  Most of the songs in this book echo those in the two previous books. The exceptions are “The Oak and the Ash” in chapter IV and the two Welsh songs (“Suo Gan” and “Llywn On,” known in English as “The Ash Grove”) and the Scots song “O Whistle and I’ll Come to Ye” in chapter XI. “The Oak and the Ash” is the contemplations of a young woman from the north of England who wishes she weren’t living in London; “Suo Gan” is a lullaby; and the others are both love songs, though they could not be more different in character. The story mentioned in chapters XV and XXIII is, of course, the French fairy tale “La Belle au bois dormant” by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), better known to English speakers as “Sleeping Beauty”—judiciously adjusted for congruence with the Midnight-verse.

  Photo by Nicole Hilton, 2013

  Sylvia Izzo Hunter was born in Calgary, Alberta, but now lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter and their slightly out-of-control collections of books, comics, and DVDs. She is the author of the Noctis Magicæ novels, including Lady of Magick and The Midnight Queen. When not writing, she works in scholarly journal publishing, sings in two choirs, reads as much as possible, knits hats, and engages in experimental baking. Her favorite Doctor is Tom Baker, her favorite pasta shape is rotini, and her favorite Beethoven symphony is the Seventh. Visit her online at sylviaizzohunter.ca.

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