A College of Magics

by Caroline Stevermer

  Next morning, as she left Hall after breakfast, Faris felt a hand touch her sleeve. She looked around to find the gray-eyed student, immaculate in crisp academicals, black over a blue frock, her silky brown hair pinned up with precision in a neat Psyche knot.

  “Yes?”

  “I must apologize,” said the student. “I’m terribly sorry for what I said yesterday. My only excuse is that I had no idea who you are. I didn’t know until just now, when I asked the Pagan. I am sorry.”

  Faris frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  The student looked perplexed, then chagrined. “I thought I’d dropped the brick of the century. Has the Pagan misled me? Or are you just being chivalrous and pretending I didn’t drop it at all?”

  “Who’s the Pagan?”

  “Oh, dear. Look here, I can’t explain now. I’m already late, of course, and my tutor will slay me if I’m any later. You’ll have to come to tea. I promise I’ll explain everything. Are you free at four o’clock?”

  “I think so,” Faris replied, warily.

  “Good. Number five study. Don’t be late.” She touched Faris’s sleeve again and hurried away, black poplin billowing behind her.

  Faris watched her go, wide-eyed.

  At the appointed time, Faris made her way to the door of number five study. She was puzzled and inclined to misgiving. Only third-year students, and not all of them, had study privileges.

  Odile had scorned study privileges as clubby, cliquish, partisan, and distracting. She had often told Faris that third-year students were a moody lot, and first-year students ought to steer clear of them as a rule, lest they be distracted into wasting time before their required courses were complete. But of course, Odile had her moody moments, too.

  Faris knocked. Her hostess answered the door so promptly she might have been lurking in wait on the other side. Faris followed her into the study, a high-ceilinged room with a fireplace, a mullioned window, and a view of the sea. The room was furnished only with a table and four chairs. On the table, the tea service was solid silver and the china was old and fine.

  Faris stopped with her back to the door. Perplexed, her hostess turned from the tea service. “What’s wrong?”

  “For one thing, I’m not certain I ought to be here. I don’t know who you are and I’m not at all sure that you know who I am.”

  Her hostess winced. “So much for my manners. I’m Jane Brailsford. We were in deportment together last year. I have a very forgettable face.”

  Faris was silent for a moment. The name was familiar, though the face wasn’t. Jane Brailsford was English, the daughter of a determinedly respectable family. Finally, Faris said, “My name is Faris Nallaneen.”

  “I know. The Pagan told me—Menary Paganell. I ought to have recognized you from class but I’m afraid my memory for faces is perfectly shocking. I was always worrying about pearl necklaces, too. Oh, dear. It was dreadful of me to say you should go home, but I had no notion of your circumstances. You must believe me.”

  Faris stiffened. “I beg your pardon? What circumstances are you referring to?”

  “Menary told me you’d been sent here because you couldn’t—er, because you might, ah, press your claim to the duchy.” Jane raised her brows. “My, what good posture you have when you bristle. I’m sure Dame Brachet would be pleased to see it.”

  “What else did Menary Paganell tell you?”

  Jane frowned. “Is it possible that Menary has taken liberties with the truth? All too likely, I expect.”

  “What else?”

  “You’ll forgive me for repeating it? She told me you are the duchess of Galazon’s natural daughter by a sea captain, and that you were exiled to Greenlaw for the good of the duchy and for the improvement of your character.” Jane looked apologetic. “If it is any consolation, I didn’t believe the part about the sea captain. Menary seems to have a fondness for all things nautical.”

  Faris stared at Jane. Jane sustained her angry gaze, her eyes level and calm.

  “I have two questions,” Faris said at last. “One for you and one for Menary Paganell. Before I ask her why she slandered me, tell me why you asked her who I was. I scarcely know her.”

  “You come from Galazon. Galazon is in Aravill. Menary never ceases boasting about her family back in Aravill. She’s the only student I know from that end of the world. So I asked her.”

  Her answer provoked another wordless stare from Faris. Jane returned it courteously.

  “If it matters,” said Faris finally, her tone icily polite, “Galazon is an independent principality. Aravill claims suzerainty but they are wrong to do so. My mother was the duchess of Galazon. Until I reach my majority, my uncle rules the duchy. To honor my mother’s last wish, he claims, but really because we do not agree, he has sent me here to age, like cheese—” Faris paused to steady her voice. “In two years, I shall return to Galazon and turn him out. Perhaps after that I shall travel to Aravill, even attain the heights of Aravis itself, and insult Menary Paganell as she has insulted me.” Faris whirled and threw the study door open.

  Jane caught at Faris’s poplin sleeve. “Are you going to find Menary now? It’s tea time.”

  Faris froze, staring at Jane’s hand as though it were made of raw liver. “Of course.”

  Jane’s voice held only calm interest. “What will you do when you find her?”

  Faris met her eyes. “I don’t know. Deliver the same lecture to her, I suppose.”

  “Dry work. I’d hate to miss the spectacle but I’m perishing for my tea. Just sit with me for a moment while I drink a cup and then let me come along to watch you murder Menary.” She closed the study door and led Faris back to the table. “Though of course, we’ll have to queue up for the privilege. She does love to do an ill turn when she sees the chance.”

  “Do you speak so highly of all your friends?” asked Faris, coldly.

  “Menary doesn’t have any friends. She doesn’t want any. She’s more interested in servitors. I merely asked her a few questions. And don’t snipe at me for my shocking geography,” Jane added. “If it isn’t the Empire, it’s all the same to me: Galazon, Aravill, Graustark, or Ruritania. You really can’t expect me to keep all those little countries straight. I’m not ignorant, just English. Milk? Sugar?”

  “Can you tell Wales from Finland?”

  “Don’t sulk, it’s not becoming. The tea’s a bit stewed, I’m afraid, but that’s your fault for distracting me. The milk may render it palatable. Now, tell me about this wicked uncle of yours.”

  Faris glared at Jane but accepted the cup and saucer Jane offered. “If you were in my place, would you sit here and drink your tea?”

  “In your place, I would challenge Menary to pistols at dawn.”

  “May I call on you if I should need a second?”

  Jane inclined her head graciously. “I am at your service. Now sit down. I have a stem ginger cake from Fortnum’s.”

  “Very well. But I won’t tell you about my wicked uncle. You’re going to tell me what you meant yesterday, when you said you didn’t want to live anywhere but Greenlaw. Ever?”

  “Oh, dear. I talk too much, don’t I?”

  “Not yet,” said Faris, and took her place at the table.

  By the time the last morsel of cake was gone, Jane had given Faris two pots of tea and a fair notion of her circumstances. She had several uncles, none of them wicked by Faris’s standards, a father, and three brothers with no higher ambition than to shoot as much game as possible as frequently as they could. She also had a mother, whose goal was to marry her children to the most chinless aristocrats available.

  “I wanted to go up to Oxford,” Jane explained, “but of course Father and Mother think only bluestockings go to Shrewsbury, so that could never be.”

  “What persuaded them to send you to Greenlaw, then?”

  “My cousin Henry attended Glasscastle. Greenlaw and Glasscastle are nothing more than a matched pair of ridiculously expensive finishing schools, a
s far as my parents are concerned. If Glasscastle was unexceptionable for Henry, Greenlaw was unexceptionable for me. Henry came out of Glasscastle so highly finished, no one notices that he never uses any magic. No one knows whether he’s capable of it or not. Not even Henry, I suspect,” Jane added. “I wasn’t enchanted with the idea of a French finishing school, but when Papa suggested it I thought three years of Greenlaw might be worth it, if only to give Mama more time to find me a husband with a chin. So here I am.”

  “Here you are, and you don’t want to go back again.”

  Jane shook her head. “The first day I saw Greenlaw was the first day I ever truly saw anything. The sun shines differently here. Even the tides are different, lower and higher than anywhere else. It was as though I’d come home to my own country, in a place I’d never visited before. These months since Whitsuntide were torture. Now that I’m back, I never want to leave.”

  “But this is your last year. What will you do next Whitsuntide?”

  Jane inspected the depths of her tea cup. “Travel, perhaps. But even if I go back to Brailsford, it won’t be the same. From the first time I stepped into the great hall to see the proctor, Greenlaw has been home to me.”

  “If the Dean asked you, would you stay and teach? Then you’d be able to live here as long as you liked.”

  “If they asked me, I’d accept. My family would consider it eccentric but I don’t think they’d disinherit me.”

  “What subject would you teach?”

  Jane put her cup down. “I’d tutor if I could. What interest is there in lecturing? That’s just window dressing for the finishing school.”

  Faris looked surprised. “Fearsome window dressing. Is tutoring so different? I don’t start with Dame Villette until tomorrow.”

  “Don’t you know? Hasn’t anyone told you? Don’t you ever gossip?”

  “My friend Odile graduated last term. She told me to think carefully about what topic to choose for my thesis and to hope for a tolerant tutor.”

  “Oh, the slyboots. As though there’s any topic that doesn’t lead to magic eventually. That’s what you’re tutored in, Faris. Choose what thesis you like, it’s magic you study. After all, this is Greenlaw, not Shrewsbury.”

  The following day, as Menary Paganell left her tutor’s study, Faris Nallaneen eased out of the next doorway and fell into step beside her.

  “On your way back to the dormitory? That’s the way I’m going. I’ll walk with you.”

  “I’m going to the library.” Menary did not waste a glance at Faris.

  “I’ve just come from there, but I’ll walk with you anyway. I was reading the Almanach d’Ostrogotha. Are you familiar with the Almanach? It’s like the Structure of the World. I’m sure the Dean would love it. A place for everyone and everyone in her place.”

  Menary uttered a wordless exclamation of scorn and walked on.

  “Perhaps you ought to refresh your memory before you discuss my family again. Or should I say our family? My grandmother married your grandmother’s uncle. My father’s mother, I mean. He was no sea captain. I don’t know how you could make a mistake about that, unless you were misled by the fact that he died at sea.”

  Menary walked faster. Faris matched her stride.

  “It’s confusing to foreigners, all these little duchies and kingdoms and protectorates. The names are longer than the census rolls. I think Jane Brailsford finds it quaint.”

  Menary stopped abruptly and sneered up at Faris. “What interest does Jane Brailsford take in you?”

  “What interest do you take in me? Why confuse someone about our kinship? I’d be distressed if it happened again.”

  For the first time, Menary looked at Faris as though she were perfectly visible to the naked eye. “Say I distress you. What of it?”

  “Distress me, and prepare to hear the whole history of our families discussed from one end of Greenlaw to the other. I will provide genealogical charts, if necessary. It will be boring and inconvenient, but it ought to clarify our kinship.”

  “There is no kinship.”

  “No? Let us repair to the library. I will show you the Almanach d’Ostrogotha. I even know the page number.”

  “Are you trying to threaten me? You’ll regret it.”

  “Do you find the truth a threat?” countered Faris.

  Menary walked away without answering, golden head held high. Warily, Faris watched her go.

  On her first visit to her tutor’s rooms, Faris was startled to discover Dame Villette was the woman with tired eyes she had met on her first day at Greenlaw.

  “I thought you were a proctor,” Faris blurted.

  Dame Villette looked up from the stack of papers spread across the desk before her. “I am. Once I was merely a tutor, but I found that didn’t afford me scope to discipline callow youth. So I became a proctor, too.”

  “What will you tutor me in? Will you teach me magic? Or will you just hint about it, as the Dean does?”

  Dame Villette stifled a sigh. “What subject have you chosen?”

  “Does it matter? I’ve been told all subjects lead to magic in the end.”

  “Such candor. Such insouciance. I’ll try to match you. Some things can’t be taught. Magic is one such. You may or may not learn it. That is entirely up to you. Greenlaw is warded to make magic likelier here than in the world outside. We have one or two traditions which may make learning more likely, too. But just in case no one has told you, or just in case you weren’t listening when they did, no student performs magic at Greenlaw. To do so is grounds for expulsion. Do you understand that?”

  “No. How can Greenlaw claim to produce scholars of magic when magic is forbidden here?”

  “Magic is not forbidden here. But in order to ward Greenlaw, the scholars here have been given charge of the use of magic within our precincts. If we wish to live exempt from the natural laws balanced by the wardens of the world, we must maintain the balance within our walls. Thus, students are forbidden to practice magic.”

  “If I were studying medicine instead of magic, I would be given some practical instruction in medicine.”

  Dame Villette put her palms together and exhaled slowly. “If you were to study law instead of magic, you would not be permitted to practice until the authorities were satisfied that you were qualified to do so. Perhaps once you qualified, you might still choose not to practice.”

  “If I were studying law, I would study law. Not deportment, not geometry—law.”

  Dame Villette put both hands flat on the stack of papers before her. “If you studied law, you might master what you studied. Your work from last year shows little sign of such mastery. Many students show sufficient expertise at this stage of their studies that they attend only the early lecture and devote the rest of their time to work with their tutor.”

  Faris looked bemused. “Oh? Only the backward attend class after the first year? Yet Odile was worse than I at Greek. And Jane Brailsford took deportment with me. Or is it as Odile said, we are assigned work until we have no time to spare to attend classes?”

  Dame Villette widened her eyes very slightly. “Shall we put that theory to the test? Take back this paper you wrote on the Georgics last term. Think through your points again. Find sources to support you. Let me see it when you’ve finished.”

  Faris accepted the paper Dame Villette handed her. It was one she had written for her Latin class, a little dog-eared at the corners and much marked in blue pencil. “When should I turn it in?”

  Dame Villette looked mildly surprised. “When you’re finished.”

  Virgil occupied Faris through the month of October. By that time, most of the first-year students were settled in at Greenlaw, oblivious to the tutoring the more advanced students received in addition to the lectures. When the Georgics paper was turned in, Faris began to discover that there was more to life at Greenlaw than studying and sleeping and complaining about the food. And there was more to being Jane Brailsford’s friend, she learned, than eating g
inger cake and drinking poisonously strong tea.

  Jane Brailsford’s acquaintance was wide, her friends drawn from every year. There was wide-eyed Gunhild, a newly arrived student homesick for the village on the Raftsund that she had left for the first time in her life. There was calm Eve-Marie, who would probably take her comprehensives with record high marks, and even more probably stay to lecture at Greenlaw in years to come. And there were Charlotte and Nathalie, second-year students who spent nearly as much time in number five as Jane did. Charlotte, Faris recognized. She had once been so tired she’d forgotten how to eat artichokes.

  Faris learned that to be Jane’s friend was to be invited into the lair called number five study to criticize three-volume novels of romance and adventure with as much gravity as if they were Latin texts. To be a friend to Jane and Jane’s friends meant sharing the contents of the parcels they received from indulgent relations, and arguing over the best way to roast apples and chestnuts over the study fire. Rather to her own surprise, Faris took to this behavior. Rather to her own amazement, Faris found that Jane’s friends took to her.

  Too busy to be homesick, Faris found that diversion and scholarship sorted well together. There was nothing so entertaining as the amusements that beckoned when she had something extremely pressing to do in the way of scholarship.

  If she had done all her work as soon as it was assigned, she would have been free to enjoy the roasted chestnuts, the melodramatic novels, and the part-singing with a clear conscience. Yet, straightaway, the chief charm of their simple amusements would have vanished, for there was nothing forbidden in them, save that they required time, and time was always at a premium in their studies.

  Thus scholarship improved diversion at Greenlaw, but Faris found that the reverse was also true.

  Greenlaw, grave and scholarly, was filled with music. Greenlaw had stored up years of music from the students who had gone before, and it had music for every day in the college calendar. There were Greek hymns sung on Lantern Night, and Latin aubades for May Day Morning. There were madrigals and part-songs, rounds and catches. There was the occasional music of the world outside, imported by students who had returned from their holidays with a crank gramophone or a sheaf of sheet music. But the greatest part of the music at Greenlaw came through the voices of students like Jane and her friends, and it was as diverse as the students themselves.