The Witch & the Cathedral

by C. Dale Brittain

  As I strode with self-conscious gravity from his chambers and crossed the courtyard toward my own, I found myself wondering if a belief that the queen’s soul would be improved by a nunnery was his only consideration. Might he have some ulterior motive for wanting her out of the castle?

  III

  I awoke to the chapel bells the next morning with the happy realization that I was back home in Yurt, far from technical-division wizardry students. This cheerful thought was followed however almost immediately by the distressing knowledge that Prince Vincent was coming today.

  He had telephoned that he planned to reach Yurt in the afternoon. The queen was busy bringing heaps of roses into the great hall, arranging them in vases and attaching bouquets to the dark stone walls. I myself wandered out across the drawbridge, gloomily convinced that he was the mysterious person inciting aristocrats to distrust their wizards. At least the queen and Paul seemed unaffected so far. I looked down the hillside sloping away from the castle, past the walled graveyard where the king was buried.

  A distant group of tiny horsemen emerged from the woods, far earlier than anyone had expected. Faint on the wind came a trumpet call. Knights and ladies poured out across the bridge behind me. Even the queen, flushed, laughing, and pinning a white rose into her hair, came running out.

  The trumpet sounded again, and the horsemen kicked their steeds for the last ascent. The man in the lead, whose golden surplice left no doubt he was a prince, was mounted on a red roan stallion. I looked surreptitiously for Paul, who I knew would be furiously jealous. He stood motionless among the members of the court.

  With a jangling of bells and clatter of hoofs, the knights pulled up their horses. Vincent vaulted from the stallion and swept the wide velvet hat from his head. “My lady!” he cried and knelt before the queen. The jeweled scabbard of his sword and the long feather of his hat dragged unheeded on the brick road. With one hand he took both her hands and kissed them gravely.

  She blushed charmingly and tugged to bring him to his feet. He leaped up, smiling all over his face. He was graceful and muscular, with hair that glowed like burnished copper, and very obviously in love. He was, I thought ruefully, a truly glorious knight. Thirty years ago, before I had decided to become a wizard, I would have wanted to be just like him.

  “We had not expected you so early,” said the queen. “You must forgive me if you find me in some disarray.”

  “You should have known, my lady, I would not stay from your side one moment longer than I could help. And I came to see you, not your array.”

  The other knights were dismounting. “Where is Prince Paul?” Vincent called in a high, ringing voice that cut across the other voices. “I have something to give you!”

  Paul came slowly forward. His mouth was grim, but he determinedly looked Vincent in the eye. I knew him well enough to realize that he did not want any one to think that he was sulking.

  “My prince!” cried Vincent. “When I left here three weeks ago, everyone was talking of preparations for your coming of age ceremony later this summer. I remember what it was like to be eighteen, and how long a few months could be. I thought then that you might not want to wait for all of your gifts, so I brought you one now. It’s this stallion: he’s yours, I bought him for you, take him!”

  For a second all the color drained out of Paul’s face, then he stepped closer, stiffly, unbelieving, unable to speak. Vincent handed him the reins.

  I had to fight against my initial hope, that Paul would refuse the gift and would cast the reins into Vincent’s face with a rebuke for the patronizing note I thought I had heard.

  But I need not have worried. I saw all of Paul’s objections to Vincent cracking and dissolving away like ice in the sun. A smile started small and stretched until it threatened to crack his face. He found his voice at last. “Thank you! How did you know? He’s exactly what I wanted, more than anything!”

  He swung up into the saddle. The stallion arched its neck and took a few quick steps. In spite of the long trip to Yurt which had left the other horses lathered, the stallion seemed nearly fresh. Paul brought him around, the horse answering instantly to the reins. Then, reluctantly, the prince slid back to the ground. “You’ve just been riding him rapidly, and I don’t want to push him, even though I can tell he’s ready to go again. Thank you!” It was going to be hard after all for the young chaplain to incorporate Paul into his “conspiracy.”

  “I thank you too,” said the queen to Vincent, her emerald eyes dancing with delight although she managed to keep her manner sober. “You have done my son a signal honor. Now, would you enter my castle?”

  I watched jealously to make sure they weren’t holding hands, but they walked side-by-side in perfect dignity across the drawbridge and through the castle gates. Stable boys came to take the horses, although Paul took charge of the stallion himself, and the constable directed our new guests to their quarters. I lingered outside the castle for a moment, looking across the green hills of Yurt, wondering if the queen had secretly loved Vincent for years as I was sure he must always have loved her, or if her feelings were only a product of a few short weeks of courtship while I was not there to stop it.

  When I looked into the great hall a few minutes later, to see Vincent and the queen finishing arranging vases of roses, she motioned me over, smiling with a tenderness I knew was not meant for me. “Vincent, I’m sure you remember our Royal Wizard.”

  “Of course, though it’s been several years,” he said. “You performed some really spectacular illusions after dinner.” Flattery was not about to win me, but I nodded my head. For the queen’s sake I had to be polite. At least if he thought all wizards were plotting to take over the western kingdoms, he was too well-bred to say so.

  “You’ve been in the City, I understand?” he went on. “You missed what I gather has been the talk of Yurt, our whirlwind courtship!”

  “Don’t make it sound too rapid,” said the queen with a laugh. “We had after all known each other for years, and it was scarcely my fault when I invited you to stay for a week that you stayed for eight!”

  “And even so, when I left three weeks ago you still wouldn’t say you’d marry me.”

  The queen laughed again. “I waited a week before I telephoned him to say Yes, and I still told him he couldn’t come back right away. Do you think me very heartless, Wizard?”

  “Entirely heartless,” I agreed. I was sure the fact of their eight-week courtship was accurate; they wouldn’t tell me something anyone might contradict. But I wondered why they should go out of their way to tell me, when it was none of my business, that the queen had initially hesitated to accept Vincent’s proposal, and why they should do so in a manner so ostentatiously cheerful, affectionate, and in perfect dignity.

  Were they trying to distract me from why Vincent had left and why he had come back now? Was it accidental that the queen had invited Vincent to visit shortly after I had left for the City? Had something happened during those eight weeks he was here, something they hoped was hidden from everyone else and they didn’t want me to look for? Then I had to smile at myself. Now I was developing an “impure mind.”

  “We want you to know,” the queen continued, “that you’ll continue to be a valuable part of Yurt even after Paul becomes king and Vincent and I are married. We wouldn’t dream of getting rid of our Royal Wizard.”

  This came as a serious shock. I had certainly never dreamed of this. That she would even bring it up meant that they had indeed considered it.

  Though my first reaction was horror at realizing how close I had come to having to leave Yurt and join the Romneys, my second thought was to wonder why Vincent—he must be responsible—wanted to get rid of me. Was their cheerful unanimity a mask for severe disagreements, of which the question of whether to fire the wizard was only one? If so, the queen had apparently won this round, but might she lose the next?

  “I thank you, my lady, my lord,” I managed to say and retreated before they could spri
ng any more devastating surprises.

  The decorations were for the dance the queen had planned in Vincent’s honor, and in the late afternoon I could hear from my study the brass choir being tuned. Reluctantly I was drawn back to the hall; I had always liked the royal musicians’ playing.

  In spite of several suggestions from the ladies of the court, most playful, some even serious, that I join in, I sat obstinately in the balcony and watched. Even Paul was dancing, leading around women his mother’s age with charming grace.

  The queen and Vincent led every dance. The last of the sunlight, the flickering fire, and the glow from the magic lamps made the room bright as though the dancers themselves were filled with light. Vincent really was younger than the queen, maybe ten years younger rather than the five that Paul had guessed.

  But there was nothing about him to support Paul’s suspicion that he wanted the queen’s kingdom rather than her person. He had his eyes on her constantly as she turned in the intricate steps of the dance, with an open affection that was almost too personal to watch. Even though for the most part her own expression was amused or even mocking, he several times said something in her ear that turned her laugh into a smile of undisguised pleasure.

  They were only a couple in love, I told myself, and their unanimity, their cheerful picking up of each other’s lines, did not show any plotting or planning but only how closely their minds and spirits were intertwined. I only wished I believed it.

  IV

  In the morning I heard from my chambers the clatter of horses being brought from the stables. A surreptitious glance out the window confirmed that the queen and Vincent were going hawking. I would stay in my study, I decided, until they were gone.

  I was leafing through the third volume of the Arcana, looking for spells that might help the cathedral keep fairy lights off their new tower, when there was a knock on the door. “Come in!” I called, assuming it was the kitchen maid come to get my breakfast tray.

  But the door burst open with a bang that the kitchen maid would never dare. I swung around to see my doorway blocked by a dark form, silhouetted beyond recognition by sunlight outside. But unmistakable was the naked sword it held.

  I didn’t even think. Two words in the Hidden Language and the figure staggered; three more and the sword clattered to the flagstones while the figure dropped as though hit with a plank. I strode across the room to retrieve the sword, then turned to see who had unwisely tried to attack a wizard.

  It was Vincent. He sat up and tenderly felt his ribs. “I guess there’s nothing broken,” he said and gave me a rueful smile. “Help me up?”

  I took the proffered hand and pulled him to his feet, but I held onto his sword.

  “I’m sorry!” he said with apparently real penitence. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come hunting, and I thought it would be fun to pretend to attack you—just a joke, you realize, just to show you a trained warrior’s power! I had no idea you’d react like that.”

  “Wizards always react rapidly,” I told him sternly. “Suppose a trained warrior burst into your room. Wouldn’t you draw your sword first and inquire who it might be afterwards?”

  “I guess I’m lucky you didn’t kill me, in that case,” he said cheerfully, brushing himself off. “After my brother’s experiences, I should have known better! Let me have my sword back, and I’ll certainly never try a joke like that on a wizard again. Now that I’m here, do you want to go hunting?”

  I handed him his sword since I could think of no excuse to keep it. “Thank you for the offer,” I said, more sternly than ever, “but I need to spend the day in the perusal of my magic spells.” What could Vincent mean by his brother’s experiences?

  “We’ll see you later, then,” he said, uncowed. I closed the door firmly behind him and sat at my desk, doing nothing but listening until I was sure the hunting party was gone.

  Then I did turn again to my books, looking for a spell that might protect against the action of any other spell. In an hour I determined that there actually was no such thing, but with enough effort I might be able to create one.

  I put the volumes back onto the shelf, hoping I would not have to try. Even the simplest spell can have unforeseen results, and a spell against magic would create enough tensions within the natural fabric of the cathedral city that I might end up with the whole church sinking into a giant hole in the earth.

  Instead I reached for another book. If I saw the Romney children again, I wanted to be ready with something to impress them.

  It had been years since I had tried to make myself invisible. When I first came to Yurt, I had become quite good at making my feet disappear, but I had never been able to become invisible above the waist. Now, after reviewing my books, flipping back and forth between several volumes with fingers and three pencils marking different places, I thought I finally understood the problem.

  I stood up, took a moment to review the spells in my mind, and began. As the heavy syllables of the Hidden Language rolled into the silent room, I slowly became invisible, starting at the feet and working up to my head. I looked into the mirror with delight. Nothing was there.

  There was a sharp rap on the door. “Come in!” I called without thinking.

  This time it was the kitchen maid. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, coming in. “But with the extra people staying, I’m afraid I lost track of your breakfast tray, and so—” She stopped, not seeing anyone. I smiled to myself and tried not to breathe. “Sir?” She looked directly through me to my bedroom beyond.

  She shrugged then and picked up the tray. For a moment I was tempted to break the spell and appear abruptly before her, preferably with a flash and a lot of smoke. I went as far as to tiptoe over to the doorway where she would pass directly by me.

  But I resisted. She was a very young kitchen maid, and it would not be fair to make her suffer for Vincent having surprised me. Besides, I didn’t want to have to sweep a lot of broken crockery off my clean flagstone floor. I stepped silently aside and let her pass.

  As she swung my door back open, sunlight poured in from the courtyard. She didn’t see it, but I did: my shadow stretching out from invisible feet. The door swung shut and the shadow was gone, but I was left considering. My spell of invisibility made me and my clothing invisible to the human eye, but apparently not to the sun.

  I snapped my fingers, said the two words to break the spell, and reappeared in the mirror. I doubted even the wizard or magician the Romney children had seen could have made his shadow disappear. Now all I had to do was to find a way to make a cloak of fire.

  Since the spring morning was so warm, I had not lit a fire. Now I knelt at my hearth and put a pile of kindling together. Some wizards, I had once heard, could create fire straight from the air, but that was something never taught at the school.

  The challenge with a cloak of fire would be to surround oneself with living flames yet emerge unscorched. Once I had a small fire burning, I pulled another book off the shelf and started putting a promising spell together. Sitting with one hand holding the volume, I tentatively reached the other hand toward the flame and then rapidly drew it back. This particular protective spell didn’t seem to do anything against heat.

  I tried a different spell, one that I knew was effective against arrows. But it worked no better against fire than the first. The third spell I tried seemed to have potential until I realized that I was able to put my hand closer to the flame only because the flame was dying.

  I stood up, sucking the burnt back of one knuckle. “If the Romney children aren’t satisfied with illusions and invisibility, then it’s no use even trying to satisfy them,” I told myself and went out.

  Gwennie, daughter of the cook and the constable, was crossing the courtyard, staggering under a pile of leather-bound ledgers. I hurried to help her, putting a lifting spell on the volumes. “Where are these going?”

  She gave me a quick and grateful grin and pushed the hair back from her face with a dusty hand. “To the stor
eroom. I decided Father doesn’t need all these old ledgers cluttering up his office. Some of them even date from before I was born!”

  I had to smile because I well remembered when she was born, which didn’t seem long ago to me. “I would have thought you’d be helping your mother in the kitchens instead of your father.”

  Gwennie shook her head hard. “Not me! I’ll never be a cook. I’ve decided I’m best at organizing and keeping track of things. I’m going to be constable of Yurt some day, like my father.”

  “Do you think people will approve of a woman constable?” I asked, amused.

  “Well, Paul approves,” she said proudly, adding, “Prince Paul, that is,” after a very brief pause. She flushed a little and looked away as I considered her thoughtfully. She and Paul were nearly the same age and had been childhood playmates, but I had assumed the prince and the cook’s daughter had drifted apart in the last ten years.

  “I want to tell you, Wizard,” she said hastily as though wanting to change the subject, “that the staff all support you.” She unlocked the storeroom and showed me where she wanted the ledgers. “We don’t think that wizards have to be stopped before they wrest control from the aristocrats. After all, we’ve known you for years, and you’d never be able to take power from anybody!”

  She realized at the last minute that this was not coming out the way she intended and started to blush again. I excused myself before she could become any more embarrassed. But as I crossed the courtyard toward the main gates I decided I had better find out more of what Vincent seemed to have been telling the court.

  On the grass beyond the moat a table was set up. The young chaplain and the Lady Maria sat in the sun, playing chess.

  “Checkmate!” cried the Lady Maria in delight as I came toward them. If she was indeed moonstruck by the chaplain, as Paul had suggested, it wasn’t stopping her from beating him. “You moved right into my trap!” The chaplain gave me a complacent smile over her head as though to suggest that he and I both knew he had deliberately let her win. He didn’t fool me for a minute.