The Midnight Queen (39 page)

Gray was not as much comforted by this as he might have expected, though at least it did obviate the lurking nightmare image of Woodville and Taylor with their hands in the bloodied chest of a dead child.

The priest reported Gray's frantic flight to the College, Gautier's death as witnessed by Woodville—as Crowther had suggested to Gray, an unlucky accident that no one present could have prevented—and the Professor's decision to protect his own reputation by laying the blame for the entire débacle on Gray.

“Carteret is a cautious man; Callender, in his way, is cautious also. While Carteret insisted on meeting the putative Princess to judge her fitness for his purposes, and on testing the efficacy of Callender's poison, Callender—though drawn to Carteret's plan for its own sake, as an indication of his importance in the world, and for the opportunity it offered of exchanging his troublesome stepdaughter for what seemed a guarantee of future advantage—demanded a reward of his own: He wished to be Master of Merlin College, and Lord Halifax stood in his way.

“The test of the poison—which is to say, the murder of Lord Halifax—was to take place after the beginning of the Samhain term, when the College would be busy and the Fellows disinclined to brangle over the election of a new Master. Callender commissioned Mr. Woodville, who has what is apparently a well-justified reputation as a forger, to create a letter purportedly from Lord Halifax, suggesting Callender as his successor.

“Unfortunately, several events took place during the College's Long Vacation which led to alterations in both of these plans. The first was Mr. Marshall's inconvenient failure to perish in an ‘accident' which Callender had arranged for him to suffer in the Temple of Neptune at Kerandraon; instead, the accident befell Miss Joanna Callender, whose life Mr. Marshall subsequently saved. The second was his theft of two letters written by Lord Carteret and a portion of his personal diary, copies of which were later deciphered by Mr. Marshall, Mrs. Marshall, and Master Everard Alcuin, also of Merlin College. The third was that Mrs. Marshall—Miss Callender, as she then was, and of course originally the Princess Edith Augusta—discovered herself to possess considerable magickal talent, and the fourth was that, as a result of these circumstances, Madame Maëlle de Morbihan”—here the priest nodded at Mrs. Wallis—“determined that Callender Hall was no longer a safe refuge for the Princess Royal, and therefore aided and abetted Mr. Marshall and Miss Callender in fleeing to England.”

The priest paused and looked about him as if to judge the effect of his words on his various listeners.

As Master Alcuin had surmised, the Professor and Lord Merton had killed Lord Halifax—the poison had been in his wine—several days earlier than planned because they feared he might after all take Gray's warning to heart. The Professor had been in bad odour with his co-conspirators as a result of Sophie's disappearance, and the noisy catastrophe of Lord Halifax's death persuaded them that he had become a liability to their cause, but he remained their best chance of locating Sophie.

At length the priest's narrative arrived at the feast of Samhain. “The death of Lord Halifax,” he said, “had proved to Carteret's satisfaction that the poison—which is of Greek origin, incidentally, though found in a Breton book—could produce the appearance of a natural death. This was essential to his scheme, for he meant not only to murder King Henry but to discredit him utterly. Also essential was another property of the poison: If given in the suggested dose, it will kill its victim approximately one-half hour after it is ingested. In this case, the dose was to be administered in the chalice holding the
vinum primum
, which would pass through thousands of hands on its way to the altar but from which no one else would dare to drink.

“The King would drink from the cup, then pour the libation; then he would continue the rite, to the final offering—the cake made from the first wheat, barley, and oats harvested from the royal lands—and ask the gods to show their acceptance of his prayers on behalf of his kingdom, by answering in the affirmative his closing plea:
Grant that I may lead my people another year in prosperity and peace.
From the
libamen
to the close of the rite takes, in ordinary circumstances, approximately one-half hour; Lord Carteret's plan, then—understood and condoned by all of his co-conspirators—was for His Majesty's heart to stop within moments of his plea for the gods' favour.”

The priest, so far utterly impassive, now turned to look at Lord Carteret. Gray could no longer see the priest's face, but he could see Lord Carteret's, which was pale and slightly green. “The gods' will is not yours to bend to your own, nor is it yours to mock,” the priest said. Then he turned once more to the King and inclined his head. “Your Majesty.”

The royal family and the King's mage excepted, it was impossible that anyone present should be surprised by Apollo's verdict; but for these six, though even they must have had their suspicions, the shock was all too real. The Princes stared; Queen Edwina wailed, “Edric! Oh, Edric!” and fell sobbing into Prince Edward's arms. Sophie longed to offer some comfort, some word of understanding—but surely she was the last person in the kingdom whose attentions the Queen might welcome. Released from the priests' spell, she and Gray and Joanna had instinctively crowded together, and in Joanna's tightly folded arms, in the tense pressure of Gray's hand on her shoulder, Sophie felt their sympathy with her unexpressed dismay.

The King swayed on his feet for just a moment, passing his hand over his eyes as though to expunge a nightmare vision. But immediately squaring his shoulders and straightening his back, he gravely thanked the priests, adding, “We shall not forget the service rendered here by the chosen of Apollo Coelispex.”

The eldest priest smiled thinly. “See that Your Majesty does not.”

*   *   *

The verdict had been rendered. The Kergabet party were exonerated of any suspicion; Lord Carteret and his companions, their plans and intentions laid bare, were declared guilty of high treason and, prisoned still in silence, would now be taken from this place to attend their fate. Unable to protest the verdict aloud, they maintained a posture of dignity in defeat—all but the Professor, who paced up and down, gesticulating, and his protégé, who continued to sulk.

It might be, Sophie reflected soberly, that she would never again see any of them alive.

The holy men bowed in valediction, with no more genuine deference than before, but their disdain seemed no longer to trouble His Majesty. “Captain Prichard,” he said, “you will summon the rest of your men and escort these prisoners to the Tower; Vaucourt, you will go with them and put in place the necessary magickal precautions . . .”

Lord de Vaucourt, who must have been intimately acquainted with most of the conspirators, was pale and tight-lipped, but he did not presume to question the King's orders. There was silence for some moments, but for the Queen's despairing sobs.

Sophie could bear the sound no longer; shaking off Gray's restraining hand, she half-ran the few steps that now separated her from her stepmother. The Crown Prince frowned at her; Prince Roland smiled—but his welcome, she saw, was for Joanna, only half a pace behind her.

“Your Royal Highness,” said Sophie, “I am most dreadfully sorry . . .”

Edwina raised her blotched, reddened face from her son's shoulder; her expression was transformed, from bewilderment to bitter hatred. “This madness is
your
doing,” she choked. “Yours and your gods-accursèd mother's. Why must you come here? Why could not you leave us in peace? Why—”

“Mother!”
Prince Edward's voice quivered with indignation. “Her High—the Pr—she has saved Father's life—all our lives perhaps—and she and her friends are Father's
guests
 . . .” The Queen staggered away, into the arms of her younger sons, and the Crown Prince turned to Sophie a face pink with embarrassment. “I do apologise, most sincerely, for my mother's behaviour,” he said. “I beg you will not take offence. She does not know what she is saying.”

“Of course she does,” said Joanna, impatient. “And—”

“And I should not think of taking offence.” Sophie trod meaningly on her sister's toes. “She has had a most dreadful shock. I should feel just the same in her place. And so should you, Joanna,” she added, sotto voce.

Joanna rolled her eyes.

“Ned!” This from Prince Roland, who darted back from some distance to chivvy his brother into action. “Ned, do come along. Harry and I have persuaded her that she can do no more good here, but we shall want you to sing her to sleep.”

Edward seeming about to embark on an elaborate farewell, Roland tugged him away by the arm; a moment later they were gone, in the wake of little Prince Henry and the Queen.

“You had much better have held your tongue,” said Joanna.

Sophie sighed and shook her head. “I cannot blame her,” she said. “But I could not stand there like a stone when she was in such distress.”

They turned back again to see the King conferring in quiet earnest with Sieur Germain and Master Alcuin, apparently quite oblivious to the scene just past.

His Majesty had, of course, to do his duty. But Sophie felt that she must have liked her father a great deal better, had he instead thought first of comforting his wife.

In Which Sophie Makes Up Her Mind

Captain Prichard returned
with a round dozen guardsmen, men of impeccable discipline whose eyes widened only slightly when they understood the nature of their errand. From the prisoners' expressions—her stepfather's particularly—Sophie guessed that their escort would have good reason to be thankful for their enforced silence.

With the prisoners' departure, His Majesty's tension and determination seemed abruptly to desert him—and with them, all awareness of his being observed. He sank into the ornate chair—meant to evoke the Royal Throne, Sophie supposed—at the top of the audience chamber, like a wilting autumn daisy, and dropped his head into his hands, and wept.

His guests, no longer prisoners except of custom, looked at one another in alarm, and knew not what they ought to do.

“Edwina,” Sophie heard her father say, on a sort of quiet sob.

“She is—” she began to reply, only to recollect that she had not the least idea.

“Roland and Ned and Harry have taken her away and put her to bed,” said Joanna, with perfect self-possession. Sophie bit back a shocked exclamation and heard a strangled laugh from one of the men; the King seemed oblivious, however.

“They are twins, you know, she and her brother,” he said, addressing Joanna. His eyes, damp and pink-rimmed, were very blue; for the rest, he might have aged thirty years since Sophie last beheld his face. “All manner of torments await him in Hades, I hope, to reward him for involving her in this business! I thought him a man of better sense.”

He urged them to consider themselves his guests, but—to Sophie's relief—stopped short of an outright command, saying only, “You will undertake not to leave London for the present,” before at last taking himself away.

For some moments Sophie and her friends blinked at one another in silence. At last Sieur Germain ventured, “What say you all? For myself, of course, I had much rather return to Carrington-street, but . . .”

The others, Sophie found, were all looking at her. “His Majesty was kind enough to the three of us,” she admitted, “but I should like to go—” She had been about to say,
to go home
. “Jenny will be frantic,” she said instead, for indeed Jenny had had nothing for nearly two days but written messages of reassurance and strict instructions not to stir from home.

“We are agreed, then.” Sieur Germain smiled, and the whole room let out its breath in relief.

They now separated to make their preparations for departure. A steward appeared as if from nowhere to conduct the ladies to their borrowed apartments, and another whom Sieur Germain dispatched to give orders that his carriage be readied for their journey, and who politely informed him that four members of His Majesty's household guard would be accompanying them.

Sophie would not again be parted from her husband, however; ignoring Mrs. Wallis's raised eyebrows and Joanna's knowing grin, she dragged him after her into the bedchamber, communicating with Joanna's, which had briefly been hers. Hardly had the door closed behind them when, turning, she was lifted from her feet, caught up in so tight an embrace that she could scarce draw breath. “Oh, Sophie,” Gray whispered, his breath warm against her neck. “My Sophie . . .”

Quite unable to speak, she contrived to make a sort of strangled squeak in reply, at which, with a startled apology, he set her on her feet again and let her go.

At once she put her arms about him and leant her head against his chest, merely for the familiar pleasure of feeling his heart beat under her ear.

“Do you know,” Gray said, “have you any notion,
cariad
, how near we came to disaster?”

“I was dreadfully afraid,” she admitted. “But every word they spoke was falsehood, and we were in the right. His Majesty must have seen reason in the end . . .”

“And if he had not chosen to seek the truth?” Gray reminded her gently. “If he had taken the word of his trusted advisors and dismissed our own, as he might so easily have done?”

Sophie shivered, and turned away to begin gathering up her few belongings. The sight of her heavy cloak—how had that come here?—in the bright, cold sunshine of a winter's afternoon made her feel doubly foolish in her Samhain evening finery, sponged and pressed with great care, while she slept, by some no doubt bewildered laundry-maid.

She and Gray were alone now for almost the first time since her disastrous outburst. His words echoed in her mind:
Whatever dreadful thing you believe yourself to have done, will be no less dreadful, being hidden . . .
She had resolved already to take the first opportunity of telling him the truth. She
must
tell him, and at once; it was the height of foolishness, after all their misadventures together, to suppose that there could be any danger in doing so.

The difficulty was that she could think of no way to begin.

“Sophie.” His hand on her shoulder startled her so that she dropped the cloak on the floor. A murmured
adeste
brought the tangle of heavy fabric up into Gray's hands; then, laying the cloak over a chair, he drew Sophie against his side and looked earnestly down into her face: “
Cariad
, will you not tell me your trouble?”

Sophie turned her face away. “I have remembered,” she said softly, “how my mother died . . .”

*   *   *

They had been in Carrington-street less than three days, under the affectionate care of Jenny and her household, who in their own ways echoed the flurries of doting attention, and the storms of tearful recrimination, alternately bestowed by their mistress; and all the family were gathered in the breakfast-parlour when they were interrupted—with the utmost civility—by one of the guardsmen whom King Henry had insisted upon seconding to the Kergabets' house while Sophie was resident there.

The chief of his commission was to deliver a letter from His Majesty to Sieur Germain, acquainting him with the details of the traitors' fate. This Sieur Germain instantly unsealed and read through, while the others watched him in an expectant silence broken only by the clink of Joanna's knife and fork against her plate. Treveur had brought up a second letter for Mrs. Wallis—
Cousin Maëlle
, Sophie reminded herself for the hundredth time, to little effect—and a third which, circling the dining-table, he silently deposited beside Sophie's place. She looked at the neatly written direction,
To Mrs. G. Marshall
, and slipped the letter off the table and into her lap, in hopes that it might go unremarked.

At last Sieur Germain laid by the sheaf of heavy paper and looked down the table at Jenny, wearing an expression of disquiet.

“Whatever is the matter?” Joanna demanded, putting down her fork. Sieur Germain appeared not to hear her.

Sophie glanced across the table at Gray, whose face expressed profound confusion, and back at Jenny, who looked alarmed. “My dear,” said the latter, “please, tell us—what does His Majesty write?” Her face paled a little more. “He—he has not . . . had a change of heart?”

Sieur Germain blinked. “Not in the way you mean, my love,” he replied after a moment, and took up the pages again. “Listen . . .”

The King's letter used the formal Latin of a royal communication. The circumlocutory language, the long periods, were so difficult to follow by ear, and the narrative meandered so in setting out its argument, that Sophie did not at once understand the letter's import; once grasped, however, its message was unmistakeable.

The charge was high treason, and the penalty death by beheading, for these traitors so highly placed as to escape the indignity of the noose. Or so they had expected, from their knowledge of the law.

Indeed, William, Viscount Carteret, Lord President of the Privy Council—author and architect of the conspiracy—was to be executed in seven days' time. But for the rest—as also Henry Taylor of Merlin College, Oxford—the sentence of death was commuted to that of imprisonment in the Tower of London.

His Majesty had been moved to this display of clemency, his letter explained, by the relative youth of some of the conspirators, the prior faithful service of others, and, most particularly, by their role as instruments of the gods' benevolence in restoring the lost Princess to her family.

Sophie looked down at her plate.

Sieur Germain and all his family, the letter continued, were desired to wait upon His Majesty on the fifteenth day of November, when a great public feast-day would be held to give thanks to the kingdom's many patron deities for the gift of His Majesty's life and the defeat of the traitors.

“He has gone mad,” Mrs. Wallis said at last, wonderingly. “Truly he has gone mad, and believes himself inviolable. Cannot he see that he has enemies enough?”

“He is King of Britain, by favour of the kingdom's own gods,” Sophie objected. “It is his right—”

“He is mad, or a fool,” said Joanna flatly. “The Queen has begged him to spare her brother's life, I suppose, and Amelia has cried a few pretty tears, for the sake of my father—”

“Perhaps, Joanna,” Gray interjected mildly, “His Majesty wishes to show his subjects that he is no vengeful tyrant, and perhaps he is sensible of the risk of making martyrs of your father and those others whom he believes to have acted at Lord Carteret's behest.”

Sophie nodded; whatever the consequences might be, she could not be sorry that both Amelia and the Queen should find their sufferings diminished.

“That may well be,” Sieur Germain said, “and such an impulse does him credit, but it is susceptible of other interpretations, Graham, that we may all one day have cause to regret. As for His Majesty's other decision . . .”

Glancing along the table, Sophie judged the rest equally at sea. “Which decision?” she inquired.

Sieur Germain looked at her, and then at the letter in his hand. “His Majesty finds himself bereft of his closest and most trusted advisors,” he said slowly. “He professes himself in need of wise, sober, and impartial counsel, and . . .” A long pause, in which once more he looked down the table at Jenny, as though to read in her face the answer to some unasked question. “He wishes
me
to offer him such, in the capacity of Lord President of the Privy Council.”

Sophie stared.

Master Alcuin was the first to recover. “It is a sensible course,” he said, tugging thoughtfully at the end of his beard. “A man of good birth—but not too high—and of good intellect, who has proved his loyalty so incontrovertibly, and in so practical a fashion . . .”

Harry and Bertha came in to clear the plates and, finding all but Joanna's still nearly full, went quietly away again.

“The Normand faction will be furious.” Mrs. Wallis sounded (thought Sophie) unnecessarily smug. “And all those stolid Saozneg nobles too. Has he considered that, do you suppose?”

“You speak as though I meant to accept the appointment, Lady Maëlle,” said Sieur Germain, with the shade of a smile.

“Do you not?” Joanna asked. To all appearances, she had forgot already her denigration of His Majesty's intellect.

“I am as little qualified for such a post as any man could be,” he replied, and, when the others protested, he reminded them (though with a little return of his usual aplomb) how little he had lived in Town, how seldom involved himself in politics or appeared at Court.

“On the contrary,” said Master Alcuin, letting go of his beard and leaning forward. “It is for all these reasons, I think, that—Old Breton as you are—His Majesty does not fear to trust you now.”

“You think as I do, then.” Sieur Germain was nodding slowly, his expression thoughtful. Had he been intending all along to accept the post? “It will mean living much more in Town, and less at Kergabet,” he went on—speaking to Jenny, now, as though no person else were present. “We should be forced to live a great deal less quietly than we have done, and you, my dear, should be under constant siege, by ladies whose husbands seek preferment at Court . . .”

“But we should be in a position to do a great deal of good,” said Jenny, decisively, “and it has been some time, I think, since last His Majesty had the counsel of any who wished him well.”

*   *   *

His Majesty's second letter was read in the morning-room after breakfast, when Master Alcuin and Sieur Germain had retired to the library to write letters of their own.

“Well, Sophia,” Mrs. Wallis announced, “did not I call your father mad this morning? I am sure you will doubt it no longer, when I have told you what he writes.”

Gray looked up from his book, and Sophie from the game of chess into which Joanna had dragooned her, when she would have joined him on the sofa; her cousin shook her head in apparent disbelief, and Jenny said, “Lady Maëlle, you would perhaps be wiser to speak less plainly . . .”

Joanna frowned. “I do wish,” she said, capturing Sophie's priestess with quite unnecessary force, “that people would
say
what is in their letters, and not make such a great mystery of it.”

Mrs. Wallis, instead of reproving her, began to laugh. “Well, then, Joanna,” she said, “here it is: Your father being no longer suitable for the post of guardian, you and your sister Amelia are made wards of the Crown, so long as you remain unmarried—which is to say, that His Majesty has taken upon himself the responsibility of the most disobedient young woman in all his kingdom, and the most empty-headed.”

Joanna stared.

“He goes on to inquire whether I have any suggestion to make on behalf of either of you, as to where you might like best to live for the present—”

“But that is all settled!” Joanna looked from Mrs. Wallis to Jenny, with some alarm. “That is—I have no notion what Amelia may like—but
I
am to stay with Jenny.”