“But as we know,” the chancellor said, “it is no longer the case that there is no alternative.”
Margerit flinched as he gestured toward her. “Chancellor Epertun, my academy has barely opened. It would be difficult to take on another thirty or forty students on no notice, and the scope of our curriculum…we don’t offer all the subjects that the university makes available.”
The chancellor grimaced in what might have been amusement or triumph. “Then you will appreciate the difficulties we have suffered in allowing unsuitable students into our halls.”
Was he deliberately goading her? She had been one of those “unsuitable students.”
“Our decision is made,” the chancellor concluded. “Rotenek University is now closed to women. I see no use in continuing this conversation. Maisetra Nantin, the fees that you paid for access have been returned to you. I advise you to see what arrangements you can make with Maisetra Sovitre.”
The directress appeared ready to persist, but Akezze—who had kept silent during the exchange—touched her lightly on the sleeve and rose, saying, “We thank you for your time.”
When they were free of the university’s corridors, Margerit broke the silence. “I never intended this. I never expected…”
“We could do it, I think,” Akezze interrupted her. “If you are willing. It isn’t as many as forty students. Perhaps only twenty taking advanced studies. The rest are taught within the Poor Scholars house itself.” She looked to Maisetra Nantin for confirmation. “We’d need to scramble to cover the medical studies, but for the rest…”
Margerit reviewed the difficulties in her own mind. The numbers…no, that could be managed. It would be within what she’d hoped to achieve in time. But could the rigid discipline of the Poor Scholars’ House be accommodated? Maisetra Nantin would be as formidable as Sister Petrunel had been in a conflict, and might be just as unwilling to view her as an equal in authority. But with Akezze as go-between… “Perhaps we should find a private place to discuss this further,” she suggested.
As she stood aside to allow Maisetra Nantin to enter the carriage first, Margerit spared a thought for the frivolous girl scholars who would have no similar alternative—girls like Amiz Waldimen and Verunik Felix and the others who had been her companions when she first came to Rotenek.
* * *
On returning home to Tiporsel House, there was barely a moment for Margerit to sense something was amiss. It was in the way the footman at the door glanced sideways with an ostentatious air of not telling her something important. But there, just beyond him, was Barbara, pacing the floor with a scowl and clearly waiting for her arrival.
Barbara jerked her head in the direction of the corridor to the back of the house and led the way, saying, “I’ve already sent a messenger to your aunt and uncle.”
Margerit’s stomach clenched. “To Aunt Bertrut?”
“To Chalanz, to the Fulpis. Best to reassure them with no delay. I took the liberty of suggesting that if the matter hasn’t gone beyond all hope of repair, it might make sense to put it about that the visit was planned.” Barbara paused at the closed door to the office. “I’ve left the scolding for you.”
The confusion resolved itself. Margerit slipped through the door and shut it behind her.
The figure that stood nervously before the small hearth might have been taken for a boy except that the cap that had hidden her tumbling riot of chestnut curls was now clutched and twisted in her hands. Margerit could guess the rest of the story from the ill-fitting brown wool coat and trousers—respectable enough not to provoke questions about a young man traveling alone on a public coach—and the small valise at her feet, barely large enough for the most basic necessities. Knowing her cousin, the first of those necessities were her journals. The stricken look on the girl’s face suggested either that Barbara had not been honest about the scolding or that her cousin had grown mindful of the enormity of her situation.
“Iulien Fulpi, what are you doing here?” Margerit demanded, seizing her cousin by the shoulders and shaking her violently. She wanted desperately to embrace her instead, relieved at safe passage through hazards only imagined now that they were past. “You’re too old to be running wild! What were you thinking?”
Iuli’s mouth quivered. “You promised.”
“What?”
“You promised you’d be at my coming-out ball. You promised I could visit you. You never sent for me. You promised I could spend part of my dancing season here in Rotenek, and when I try to ask my mother and father they won’t talk about it.” Iuli’s mouth was quivering more strongly and Margerit couldn’t guess whether it was genuine emotion or the result of long practice.
That was entirely like Iuli: saving up every daydream and wish and turning them into promises.
“I never promised any of that. It was always up to your father to decide. And now you’ll be lucky if he lets you walk to the park and back without a vizeino to chaperone you once I send you back.”
“Margerit, I can’t go back, not yet. Not until…I want…I couldn’t bear it. It’s like I can’t breathe. Like I’m running through hallways looking for something.”
There was enough of growing desperation in her voice to give pause.
“What is it you want?” Margerit asked more quietly.
“I don’t know!” It was close to a wail. “I only know I can’t find it at home. I don’t want to have all the doors closed on me before I’ve had a chance to find out. Sofi didn’t care. She’s happy with her betrothal and her own household and staying in Chalanz forever.”
So Sofi had landed a fiancé. It was news that her uncle hadn’t seen fit to share yet. But Iuli was close to hysterics and that wasn’t like her at all. Margerit took her by the hand and settled the both of them on the window seat that looked out over the alley between Tiporsel and the neighboring house. It was the only place in the room that two could sit side by side.
“Iulien, I’m listening. What do you want? I can’t promise you anything—I never could. But I can’t do anything if I don’t know.” She pulled out a clean handkerchief and passed it to her cousin.
Iuli dabbed at her eyes and her voice drew back from its frantic edge. “Margerit, you always had your books. You knew what you wanted, even when you couldn’t get it. You had Petra and your godfather to give you hope. All I ever had was you. And then you never came back.”
Margerit was struck to the heart. She knew Iuli had idolized her, and she suspected that there had been no one else her cousin had dared to share her poems and stories with, but she hadn’t thought it was more than a girl’s hero worship.
“Iuli, I’m sorry I didn’t come,” she said. “I was so busy with my school this summer.” It was the excuse she was permitted to give. If the Fulpis had allowed, she would gladly have made the journey even if only for the one day of the ball itself. “But, do you have any idea what danger you put yourself in to travel alone? Even like this?” She gestured to take in the disguise. “If you had been discovered you’d be ruined for life. Even if nothing…nothing worse had happened.” She shuddered. At Iuli’s age, she herself wouldn’t have known how bad that something worse could be. And even now, if word of the adventure trickled back to Chalanz… “Your parents must be frantic.”
“I left them a letter,” Iuli began in a thin voice, as if she knew how little that meant.
The letter must not have included any hint of her destination or the Fulpis would have overtaken her on the road.
“And how did you get these clothes? And arrange for the coach fare?” The trip from Chalanz to the capitol was not an outrageous fee, but more than the sort of pin money Iuli would have been allowed.
“I asked a friend to buy them for me,” Iuli explained, beginning to sound more like herself. “And you can pay for the fare on the coach itself, you know.”
“But where did you get the money?”
There was a pause and then a small quiet voice. “From my book.”
�
�Your…book.” Margerit tried to puzzle out a meaning from that word.
“From what the publisher sent me for my novel. Lissa…my friend keeps the money for me. She’ll send me the rest when I need it. I thought it was better not to carry too much in case of thieves.”
So she wasn’t entirely such an innocent. But… “Your novel?” Margerit repeated, still feeling stunned.
“Yes. I won’t be a burden on you if Papa is so angry he refuses to send me an allowance. Lissa did the correspondence for me because I couldn’t use my real name, of course. And she said the publisher might cheat me if he knew I was so young. She thought it was just a lark at first, but since the book sold she’s been very strict about showing me the accounting. I—”
“Your novel.” A sick feeling grew in Margerit’s stomach. She rose and crossed the room to the secretary desk and opened a lower drawer. This was one book she refused to display on the library shelves.
Delighted recognition lit Iuli’s face. “Did you like it?”
Margerit held up the copy of The Lost Heir of Lautencourt like a cudgel. “You wrote this?”
Something in her dismay penetrated Iuli’s enthusiasm.
“You know I did. I showed it to you. Margerit, what’s wrong?”
“Don’t lie to me! I never saw this until all of Rotenek started whispering and laughing over it.” Margerit found her hands trembling and she set the book down on the side table.
“I did! I gave you a copy two years ago, when you were in Chalanz for Sofi’s ball at the end of the summer. I changed it a little after that, but not so very much. You never said anything about it, so I thought you didn’t mind.” Iuli’s voice faltered.
Margerit cast her mind back. Two years? But she would have… A faint memory came: Iuli slipping away on the day they were leaving Chalanz, handing her a thick notebook. She’d set it aside unread because of the jouncing of the carriage. What had become of it? Had it simply been lost during the journey? Or slipped down behind the cushions, forgotten all this time? Could she have prevented all this trouble if she’d only paid closer attention? And Iuli wouldn’t have asked, thinking that her scribblings were simply being ignored as usual, after all the trouble of copying it out for her.
“Oh, Iulien,” she said and sat back beside her cousin in the window seat. She felt sick.
“I know it’s not very good,” Iuli began.
“That’s not it,” Margerit said. “It is good.” And it was, she had to admit that. “It’s good enough that people thought perhaps Lady Ruten had written it.”
Iuli brightened briefly, but when the silence stretched out she ventured, “What’s wrong.”
Where to begin?
“Iuli, anyone reading that novel knows it was about me. Me and Barbara. You couldn’t have made it plainer if you’d used our names. You’ve made us the subject of a great deal of gossip.”
“Oh.” Iulien digested that for a moment. “I tried to change things around as much as I could. Is it so very bad?”
“You have me fall in love with my armin and marry him. A man who turns out to be my benefactor’s long-lost son.”
“I made up the part about falling in love, but there had to be a love story,” Iuli protested. “It can’t be a proper novel without a love story.”
Margerit sighed. It was too late for anything except truth.
“Iuli, you wondered why your parents wouldn’t let you join me for a season in Rotenek. Have you wondered why they told me not to come to your ball? This is why: because I fell in love with my armin and we live together as if we were husband and wife. And the only thing that keeps us safe from scandal is that the world chooses to believe we are nothing more than very close friends. Do you understand what you’ve done?”
Iuli was staring at her with her mouth in an O. Perhaps the depth of her carelessness was sinking in. But then her expression turned into a smile of delight as her eyes brightened. “Oh Margerit, that’s so romantic! That’s even better than my story!”
Did she truly understand the seriousness? Or was her head still full of fancies and adventures?
“Iuli, a man has died because of your story. He insulted me over it, and Barbara challenged him, and Barbara’s armin killed him. Now do you understand?”
Now it was Iulien’s turn to echo helplessly, “Died?”
Margerit sat quietly letting Iulien’s imagination work through the rest of the consequences.
When the stillness seemed to stretch out into eternity, there was a small, quiet voice, “I’m sorry.”
Margerit felt her heart melting as it always did in the face of Iuli’s sincerity but she hardened herself…and then stifled a laugh, realizing she was fretting over Iuli’s behavior the way others had fretted over her own. Well, what was done was done. Time to worry about the future.
“Barbara sent a messenger to let your parents know where you are and that you’re safe. If I know her, she found someone willing to ride all night. And if I know your father, I expect he’ll be banging on my door in two days’ time, ready to drag you home and lock you in your bedroom for the rest of the season.”
“Yes, he would do something positively gothic like that,” Iuli said. Her voice was still subdued and it was agreement rather than protest.
“It is also possible—” Margerit repeated the word to suppress any hopes, “—possible that he will take Barbara’s suggestion to save your reputation and his own by claiming that this visit was planned. A precipitous decision. We would need to find a reason that would be accepted. No one would believe that I invited you here just to enjoy a Rotenek season—not just now. Everyone knows I have no time for anything but the academy.”
Iulien looked up hopefully. “Your academy.”
“Yes,” Margerit replied, catching her meaning. “Now that might be believed, if your father judges it best to smooth things over. And that means if all of Chalanz hasn’t already heard. We could say that you wanted to spend a term or two as a student and that your father changed his mind to allow it at the very last minute. And that’s why there was no time to tell your friends and neighbors back in Chalanz about it.”
Already she was composing a letter to follow Barbara’s hasty message to the Fulpis.
“No promises,” Margerit said quickly. “It still depends entirely on your father, and you know how little he approves of me. I won’t have you thinking this is some sort of reward. If the excuse is that you wanted to study this badly, then you must become a student—the most dedicated one I have. No balls or outings of any sort for the first term.”
She saw Iuli’s mouth begin to open in protest and then quickly close again. That threat held more weight for her cousin than it would have for her. Whatever the cause of her current sorrows, Iuli had been excited about the delights of a dancing season. Impulse might have led her to run off in a grubby coat and trousers but she would soon regret the ballgowns left behind.
“As soon as I can arrange where your room will be, you are confined to it until we get you some presentable clothes. And if you take one step out of line, then back to Chalanz with you. If your father agrees to let you stay, he’ll hold me responsible for your behavior. And now, before anything else, you have some apologies to make.”
She watched Iulien putting on her most earnest face.
“I’m truly sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you, Cousin Margerit, but—”
“Apologies,” Margerit said sharply, “do not include the word ‘but.’ And you don’t owe them only to me. You owe an apology to Baroness Saveze and to Saveze’s armin for the trouble and danger you put them in.”
“The danger?”
Iuli still didn’t understand. That innocence would need to change. “Duels don’t happen the way they do in your stories. People who have the truth on their side don’t always win. They’re dangerous and messy and unpredictable. It could just as easily have been Tavit who died. And for what? For a lie. Because we didn’t have truth on our side. That duel was fought to prove that Ba
rbara and I are nothing more than friends. And that is a lie. And we won. Think about that.”
“But I didn’t know!” Iuli protested.
“No ‘buts.’ You knew in your heart well enough to put it in your story. Truth is a weapon and if you’re going to use it you should know where all the edges are.”
Margerit crossed to the door where Barbara was still waiting out in the corridor. At least some of their conversation would have been audible through the door.
“Iulien has something to say to you and to Tavit, if you could send to ask him to come up.”
* * *
Dealing with classes and the new students filled the week before a return letter arrived from Chalanz. Enough time for the Fulpis to have received her proposal and considered it. Margerit had scarcely found time to speak two words to Iulien during that time except at meals. Aunt Bertrut had managed to assemble the beginnings of an acceptable wardrobe that permitted her to join the family at the table, and she and Uncle Charul had quickly been won over. Even Barbara seemed ready to offer grudging welcome. Brandel wavered between being intrigued and jealous at the addition to the household. Iuli’s contrition was genuine enough to have begun to capture the hearts of the staff. But until that letter arrived, all plans were held in suspension.
Margerit scanned it over quickly, looking for Uncle Fulpi’s judgment.
I am satisfied by the rapidity of Baroness Saveze’s response that you had no part in enticing my daughter in this madness.
Her eyes traced further down. She didn’t need to know whether she was forgiven or not. Ah, there it was.
As little fit as I consider you to oversee my daughter’s conduct, I believe Baroness Saveze has the right of it. We can retrieve the matter by a visit of sufficient length to suggest intention. I hope I need not mention that is this is considered my daughter’s dancing season. You are not to allow any particular attentions to or from men, nor to discuss her expectations. Furthermore, you are not to consider yourself a suitable vizeino. If my daughter is to be chaperoned in society, I expect my sister-in-law to be responsible for her conduct and reputation.
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 34
