A College of Magics

by Caroline Stevermer

  “Bad enough to watch the night through when it’s warm,” said Portia. “By morning she’ll be an icicle. I hope I get called in May.”

  Charlotte looked thoughtful. “She ought to last out the night pretty well. I bagged a goosefeather comforter out of the dormitory. She’s wrapped up to the eyebrows.”

  “Eve-Marie is a queen among women and she’s going to have the best vigil in fifty years, you’ll see,” Nathalie predicted. “No mice, no pigeons, nothing paltry for Eve-Marie. A tiger—a comet—something spectacular.”

  “I’m extremely glad to hear you say so,” Charlotte said. “It was your comforter.”

  “I’d rather see something utterly mundane,” said Portia. “I won’t be tempted to boast about it.”

  “An ant,” suggested Gunhild.

  “I’d hold out for a spider, if I were you,” said Nathalie. “What sort of spiritual guide would an ant make? Though I suppose it depends on your spirit.”

  “Must we really debate this now?” sighed Charlotte. “I’ve just spent the past two hours pursuing Eve-Marie from perch to perch while she muttered to herself about it. I think that’s why she chose the Gabriel Tower. There’s a view of the sea. Perhaps she hopes to see a fish. Isn’t there anything else to eat?”

  Portia passed the bread basket again.

  “Leviathan,” offered Gunhild.

  “Crumbs,” said Charlotte darkly. She emptied the bread basket and looked dolefully around the table. “Have I mentioned that I had no luncheon at all? I meant to make short work of my tutorial and just nip down to the patisserie after. But it was not to be. Dame Woodland came stamping in all rumpled and cross-looking, like my little brother after a bath. Seems they’d had a spot of bother with the anchors this afternoon. She was distracted enough to put me through my paces for an extra hour.”

  Faris looked pointedly at Menary’s unfinished dinner. “Menary lost her appetite and left us.”

  “Menary, eh?” Charlotte eyed the plate for a long moment, then said regretfully, “I find I’m not so hungry as I thought, thanks.”

  “What sort of trouble with the anchors?” Jane asked. “I thought Dame Malory seemed a trifle off her game this afternoon. Preoccupied with the underpinnings?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “Dame Woodland wasn’t disposed to enlighten me.”

  “An owl,” said Gunhild, after much earnest thought.

  “It’s early days for you to be worried about signs and portents, isn’t it?” Jane inquired. “Best be careful of such matters. My cousin Henry went to Glasscastle with a man who saw a white stag on his vigil. He was so excited he told his tutor. Poof.” She dropped her crumpled napkin beside her plate.

  “I don’t see how that superstition ever got started,” Faris said, as she handed Charlotte her own plate. “If no one can say what they see on vigil, explain to me how anyone knows what the vigil is supposed to accomplish.”

  Charlotte saluted Faris with her spoon. “Thank you. Extremely grateful though I am, I insist that if we bandy words, we bandy the correct words. It isn’t a superstition—it’s a tradition. If you fast and keep watch from sunset to dawn, you’re bound to see something. Fast long enough and you’ll make yourself see something. You believe it helps you and it helps you. If you don’t believe in it, of course it won’t work. That’s true of anything.”

  “And if you try to explain it, it won’t work,” said Nathalie. “The same way magic stops working if you try to explain it.”

  “Which is why none of our tutors ever teach us any magic,” Faris said. “I’ve gathered that much. But suppose I don’t believe in algebra. Algebra works just the same.”

  “Not for me,” said Portia. Gunhild nodded agreement.

  “Suit yourself,” said Jane. “When the Dean tells you it’s your night to keep vigil, eat a hearty dinner and go to bed. As for me, I believe it. When my night comes, I’ll be out there watching the wind, just like Eve-Marie.”

  “After all,” said Charlotte lazily, “if there’s nothing to it, all that’s lost is a night’s sleep. No novelty there. If it works as it’s said to, it’s magic.”

  “It’s the Emperor’s new clothes,” said Faris. “Odile never mentioned any vigil.”

  “You know Odile didn’t tell you everything. Take a long look at Eve-Marie tomorrow morning,” Jane advised. “Make up your mind then.”

  “Will you admit it’s superstition if Eve-Marie doesn’t see her spiritual guide during the vigil?” Faris asked. “No, you’ll claim Eve-Marie doesn’t have the aptitude for magic. It’s a double bind.”

  “What a scoffer you are tonight,” Jane marveled. “Is it Dame Villette’s baleful influence? Or the Dean’s?”

  “I just find it absurd that Eve-Marie is outdoors on a night like this, freezing for folklore,” Faris said. “It snowed this morning, for pity’s sake.”

  “Did it?” Jane looked surprised. “I sat by the window in logic and never noticed. I must have been paying more attention to the lecture than I thought.”

  Just past dawn, Eve-Marie returned from her vigil with a joyous expression and a bone-rattling cough. To her classmates’ well-concealed exasperation, she attended the morning lecture, nodding smugly throughout. Afterward, she allowed Charlotte and Nathalie to escort her to the infirmary, where she took to her bed with seraphic patience.

  “It was bad enough before,” Charlotte observed at the midday meal. “Eve-Marie always looked as though she knew something I don’t. Generally she does. But now that I know she knows, and she knows I know she knows—” She lifted her hands, exasperated. “I don’t understand how anyone with a chest cold can manage to look so extremely complacent.”

  “Dame Brachet covers the topic in deportment,” Jane replied. “Did she say anything pertinent about her vigil?”

  “I should hope not,” said Charlotte.

  “Double bind,” said Faris darkly.

  “Think what you like,” Jane replied. She nodded at Gunhild, who was silently absorbed in her plateful of cabbage. “Just try not to corrupt the young.”

  “Corrupting the young is not a pursuit I find appealing,” said Faris.

  “Any more upsets in the anchors?” Nathalie asked.

  Charlotte shook her head. “Not a sausage. Last time I asked, Dame Woodland tried to tell me I misconstrued her.”

  Jane smiled. “Somebody fell asleep and dreamed the whole thing, I suppose.”

  “Seasonal adjustment. Quite routine. That’s today’s story, at least.”

  “I do love it when they try to explain things to us,” said Nathalie. “Romance at short notice.”

  “That’s only fair. They enjoy it so much when they catch us doing it to them.” Faris put her napkin beside her plate. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off.”

  “Off where?” asked Jane. “Rhetoric isn’t for half an hour.”

  “I’m going to the patisserie in High Street,” Faris replied. “Somehow cabbage doesn’t thrill me the way it used to do.”

  “We only do it to soothe their nerves, poor things,” Charlotte said to Nathalie.

  “I expect that’s what they have in mind for us, as well. Grim thought, isn’t it?”

  “Extremely.”

  Faris left the others talking at the table. By the time she was out the college gate and walking into High Street, Jane was waiting for her.

  “I’d be careful about using that oak tree,” Faris advised, “particularly in broad day. The Dean’s declared her disapproval.”

  “You forced me to it. Why go to a pastry shop when you never have any money? Vulgar curiosity got the better of me.”

  “What did the others think?”

  “Nothing. I told them I was off to fetch a book from the study.”

  “Thank you for that. If you’d brought the whole pack along, I would have had to go to the patisserie after all.” She set off along the street.

  Jane fell into step beside her. “Where are we going, then?”

  “To the Glass
Slipper.”

  “Why?”

  “To see Gunhild’s sailor.”

  “Why?”

  Faris shrugged. “He might prove useful for further reference.”

  “In case you decide to corrupt the young after all?”

  “In case someone else wants to. Gunhild said Menary knew the sailor too. It might be interesting to find out how well they know one another.”

  “You think he’ll tell you? After you maimed him? Ha. I can tell you more than he ever will. If he knows the Pagan at all, he knows her very, very well.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jane looked exasperated. “Well, he’s hardly the first. Why do you think we called her the Pagan?”

  Faris blushed to the roots of her red hair, a painful contrast of colors. “Oh.”

  “It’s pathetic, of course, but it’s been going on almost since the day she arrived. If she didn’t care for herself, you’d think she’d care for her reputation. And Greenlaw’s. If word of this ever reaches my parents, they’ll explode with mortification, and fetch me back that very day.”

  Faris frowned. “Greenlaw has rules …”

  “And you know perfectly well how we keep them. Whatever two penny half penny court Menary came from, Greenlaw is a miracle of liberty by comparison. To give her some credit, she doesn’t seem to break the rules to get attention. She just breaks them for her own amusement. So far, she hasn’t harmed anyone but herself.”

  “What about Gunhild?”

  Jane stifled a sigh. “It’s our duty to keep an eye on her until she learns what Greenlaw is all about. After that, if it suits her to go her own way—or Menary’s—it’s our duty to let her.”

  Faris stopped at the Glass Slipper’s doorstep. “You don’t have a duty to me. I’ve learned what Greenlaw is all about. You needn’t come with me.”

  Jane rolled her eyes. “I told you why I’m here. You needn’t be quite such a giddy idiot.”

  “Vulgar curiosity.” Faris eyed Jane curiously. “The Pagan. Why does only Menary have a nickname?”

  “Oh, she’s not the only one. I thought you wanted to go find that sailor.”

  “Who else has one? Do you?” Faris followed Jane into the Glass Slipper. “Do I?”

  At their entrance, the host looked up from his customers and swept toward them. “No, no. No more of your kind in here,” he said indignantly. “No more students. We don’t serve students here.”

  “We don’t wish to be served,” said Jane primly.

  “We’re looking for a sailor called Maxim,” said Faris, her voice low. “I was told to ask for him here.”

  The host regarded Faris with deep suspicion. “You are friends of his?”

  “We only want to ask him some questions.”

  “I want to ask him questions too,” the host said angrily. “I want to ask him why he left the room he rented from me without paying the reckoning.”

  “He’s gone?” Faris looked alarmed. “Where?”

  “If I knew that, would I be short the money?”

  “When did he leave?”

  “I don’t know that either. If you see him, you tell him I’m looking for him.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “You are a very nosy young lady,” the host observed. “Go away.” He took Faris and Jane back to the threshold and shooed them out. “And stay away,” he advised, as he shut the door.

  Jane regarded Faris with interest. “Well, that was definite, at least. What next?”

  Faris set off toward the gates at the foot of the street. “I wonder,” she said, and fell into an abstracted silence. Jane at her side, she walked through the gates of Greenlaw and out along the causeway.

  After a few hundred yards, Jane asked, “Are we going to walk to Pontorson? It’s miles.”

  Faris looked up, startled. “You’re right. That would take all afternoon.” She turned back toward the gates, but before she reached them, left the causeway for the path that followed the foot of the seawall.

  Jane followed, picking her way carefully across the rocks. “Just out of curiosity, when does the tide come in?”

  Faris paused to look over her shoulder at Jane. The wind pulled her hair into snakes around her face. She put up her hand to clear her vision. “Tide?”

  “I forgot, you’re an idiot about things like that. Let me think. Yesterday, high tide was about half past one. So today it ought to be about three quarters of an hour later. What time is it now?”

  “Two o’clock?”

  “I asked you first. We’d better start back. Unless you expect to meet Maxim here?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “You go,” said Faris. “That would probably be best.”

  “What? No, it certainly would not. Come on.” Jane wheeled and took two steps, realized Faris wasn’t coming, and turned to remonstrate with her.

  Faris stood on the rocks, her back to Jane, her hair blown to a tangle, her hand up to brush it out of her eyes. Before her stood Tyrian.

  Jane came to stand at Faris’s elbow.

  “I thought you might turn up if I tried to leave,” Faris said to Tyrian. “I’d like your help.”

  “Of course.” Tyrian glanced appraisingly from Jane to Faris. “Your friend is right about the tide.”

  “I mean to find out where that sailor Maxim has gone. Can you make some inquiries for me? In an unobtrusive way. I want to ask him a few questions.”

  “In fact, I have already made inquiries. After you returned to the college, I went to the Glass Slipper to restore their poker. You broke the sailor’s arm, your grace. I found him still nursing his injury.” Tyrian looked rather pleased. “It was a challenge to find a doctor at that hour. I succeeded. His services, and his silence, have been paid for.”

  Faris looked anxious. “Did it cost very much?”

  “My expenses will be reimbursed. The unfortunate Maxim agreed to leave here and go to Paris to recuperate. When he did not meet me in Pontorson this morning, I returned to look for him.”

  “Pontorson?”

  “At the railway station, I’ll venture,” said Jane.

  Tyrian gave her a small smile. “I intended to put him aboard the train before I paid him.”

  “But he didn’t keep the appointment?” Faris looked puzzled.

  Tyrian’s satisfied expression gave way to faint discontentment. “No one has seen him since yesterday afternoon. His possessions are still in the room he rented. He’s nowhere to be found.”

  “Scarpered,” said Jane. “That’s a relief, in a way.”

  “Before he collected the money?” Faris countered. “That doesn’t seem likely.”

  “He might have been frightened. You were fairly brutal with him.”

  “Too frightened to pack?”

  “I think he was more angry than afraid when I last spoke to him,” said Tyrian calmly. “Someone may have frightened him subsequently. When I investigated his room today, I found a dead rat in his unmade bed.”

  Jane grimaced.

  Faris’s eyes narrowed. “That’s interesting. The owner of the Glass Slipper didn’t mention any rat.”

  “Bad for business, I should think,” said Jane.

  “Maxim left his belongings. He ignored an offer of money. He went off without a word, with a broken arm that will keep him from working for weeks.” Faris frowned. “Where did he go? And why did he go there?”

  Jane gazed out at the horizon, where the sky met the sea in a gray line. “Perhaps he is out there somewhere.”

  “I hope so.” Tyrian regarded Faris gravely. “It means nothing, I am sure. But the rat had a broken foreleg.”

  Faris stared.

  “How perfectly disgusting.” Jane felt something cold touch her left foot. She gasped and looked down. The rock she stood on was half submerged. “Time is,” she said, clambering to the next rock. “Tide is, too.”

  “So it is. May I escort you back to the college?” Tyrian a
sked.

  “You are very kind,” Jane said. “I confess that at the moment, I should simply hate to see a rat.”

  The three of them made their way back across the slippery rocks. Tyrian left them at the college gate. Despite Jane’s questions about Tyrian, rats, and sailors, Faris said nothing on the way back, nothing on the way to collect their books, nothing until they reached the landing on the stair near number five study.

  “You never answered me, Jane,” she said at last. “Do I have a nickname?”

  “You had one last term,” Jane admitted cautiously. “Hardly anyone used it. I’m sure it’s forgotten now.”

  “Well?” Faris eyed Jane warily. “What is it?”

  “Ferret.”

  Faris looked annoyed for a moment, then amused. “I suppose it could be worse. Who was responsible for that?”

  Jane’s ears turned a delicate shade of pink. She did not answer but Faris did not need to ask again.

  Menary made no trouble for Faris that winter. Gunhild found no more scrapes to fall into. Her sailor was never heard of again.

  Eve-Marie became so proficient at her studies that she traveled in a tangible mist of magic, like the scent of wet earth in springtime. To keep her from some involuntary use of magic, her tutor prevailed on the Dean and the proctors to administer her comprehensives at Candlemas. Eve-Marie passed them, accepted her degree with shining happiness, and departed for the lucrative position she’d won with the Foreign Office. Her friends made envious remarks to conceal their emotions, and took up the threads of the school routine again, but Eve-Marie’s strand was sorely missed.

  Charlotte and Nathalie applied themselves to their studies so strictly that they nearly vanished from the routine, too. Even Portia displayed some signs of academic ability. Which left Faris and Jane alone in their study of three-volume novels, Faris because she didn’t believe in learning things no one taught her, and Jane because she didn’t want to learn too swiftly.

  “Think about it,” Jane said over the teacups, one gloomy afternoon in early March. “Five months of Greenlaw Eve-Marie stole from herself. And why? To show off.”

  Faris was at the window, elbows on the sill, chin in her hands. “Does the first snow goose north in the spring fly to show off? Or does it answer a call it can’t resist?” A flight of geese had gone over in the night, their wild cry waking Faris from a dream of Galazon. She’d sat up in bed for the rest of the night, arms clasped around her knees, shivering with homesickness.