The Royal Sorceress (31 page)

She crawled into bed without bothering to don her nightwear and closed her eyes. The next thing she knew was that she was being shaken, firmly. She opened her eyes and saw one of the maids, staring down at her anxiously. Her long curly hair was falling down to tickle Gwen’s face.

“You have to wake up,” the maid whispered, urgently. Gwen, still half-asleep, couldn’t even remember her name. How long had she slept? Bright sunlight was pouring in through the windows, suggesting that it was early morning. “Master Thomas wants to speak with you.”

Gwen allowed herself an inner sigh of relief. At least Master Thomas hadn’t come charging into her room demanding answers, although it would have been a gross breech of etiquette. A master had ultimate power over his apprentice, but Gwen could count on the fingers of one hand the number of women who had been apprenticed in male professions. Master Thomas wouldn’t have violated her privacy so blatantly. On the other hand, he was certainly going to demand answers the moment Gwen showed her face.

“You have to come,” the maid insisted. She sounded worried. Master Thomas had clearly put the fear of…well, himself into her. “Please…”

Gwen pulled herself upright, ignoring the maid’s blush as Gwen’s bare breasts were revealed. “Please inform Master Thomas,” Gwen said, in a tone her mother would have recognised at once, “that I will attend upon him as soon as I have finished my toilet. And then inform the kitchen that I would like a late breakfast.”

The maid fled, leaving Gwen to pull herself out of bed and splash water on her face. Gwen had never taken long to dress – her mother took hours before going out to a ball or even a simple meal with a few friends – but she paced herself as she pulled on her apprentice’s uniform. It gave her time to clear her head and decide what she could – and would – tell Master Thomas. She wasn’t going to tell him the truth, at least until she’d sorted out her own thoughts and feelings. The memory of Lord Blackburn flashed in front of her eyes and she shuddered. Master Thomas was the most powerful magician in Britain, at least as far as anyone knew. He would have been called upon to father hundreds of children.

“It is vitally important that no one questions the paternity of your children,” her mother had said, once. The young Gwen had realised that David had been allowed far more freedom than she, and had demanded answers from her mother. In hindsight, she cringed at the memory and wondered why her mother hadn’t slapped her face once or twice. “You must remain like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. What contact you have with
men
” – her tone had suggested that Gwen would want little contact with men – “must be carefully chaperoned to ensure that your name is not brought into disrepute.”

Gwen scowled at the memory as she checked herself in the mirror. The King was known for having bastards, at least three according to her mother’s gossip. Queen Caroline might have been favoured by the British public, but she had never been allowed such liberty. Gwen could see how the scheme had worked for so long. No one would question the origins of a child, provided that they were adopted as very young children. Indeed, no one would have to know that the child had been adopted at all. The child himself might never know that the people who had brought him up weren’t his real parents.

She stopped dead as a thought crossed her mind. How did she know that Lady Mary was her real mother? How did she know that her father was really her father? The thought of Lady Mary adopting a young girl…but no, Gwen hated to admit it, but she did have her mother’s face. Lady Mary had the same blonde hair and face as Gwen; only Gwen’s eyes had come from her father. And she could see her father objecting to allowing someone else to father a child on his wife. It would have been more understandable if Lady Mary had had children from her first husband, if she’d had one. No one in High Society would have asked questions about that; indeed, the second husband would be expected to adopt the children formally.

The thought tormented her as she gathered herself and walked downstairs. She’d delayed as long as she dared, even though her thoughts weren’t complete. If she lied to Master Thomas and he caught her at it, he would never trust her again. But if she told the truth, she would put Jack and Lucy in terrible danger. And yet they were rebels, rebelling against the establishment. And they had a very good cause.

Master Thomas looked tired as she entered his study. He had a small office on the ground floor which he used for official business. Gwen had seen it once or twice before, but hadn’t spent any real time in it. He was seated behind a massive desk, reading a file of papers and checking off names against a list on the table. Gwen stopped in front of the desk and waited, uncomfortably aware that it was far too similar to facing her father after a childish prank. Master Thomas had every right to discipline her as he saw fit.

He looked up and fixed her with an unblinking stare. “What happened to you last night?”

Gwen swallowed, hard. There would have been plenty of evidence of the desperate chase and fight across the rooftops of London. They might even have found the dead body, the body of the man she’d slain. It would have been obvious that he had been killed by magic – and Master Thomas might deduce that Gwen, rather than Jack, had killed him. If he saw through her lie, she knew that he wouldn’t be merciful. Jack had betrayed him too badly for him to trust another apprentice completely.

“The rogue attacked my brother’s dinner,” Gwen said, finally. It dawned on her that she truly was as selfish as her mother had called her, long ago. She hadn’t even thought to ask after David and his guests. The guilt gnawed at her mind as she faced Master Thomas. “I gave chase across the rooftops and…”

She broke off. “He did something to me,” she admitted. “I blacked out and collapsed. When I recovered, it was midnight and I was lost somewhere in London. I made my way back to Cavendish Hall and went to bed.”

“He just left you there,” Master Thomas said. Gwen flushed. She knew how weak it sounded. Jack would have wanted to kill her if she hadn’t listened to him, if only to deprive Master Thomas of a powerful ally. “Where did you get the street clothing?”

Gwen hoped that he’d believe that her flush was embarrassment, rather than shame. “My clothes were rags,” she said. “I gave them to a street beggar in exchange for something I could wear back to Cavendish Hall.”

She had always hated it when men thought of her as a foolish female, a phobia she’d had ever since she’d become aware of the difference between men and women. It was ironic, she admitted in the privacy of her own mind, that that very phobia drove her to commit foolish acts. Chasing Jack across the rooftops had been foolish; not taking a bodyguard to her brother’s dinner party had been foolish…and then giving away her clothes would have been foolish. As explanations went, it wasn’t one that could be easily disproved. Her ruined clothes would still be worth far more than a labouring woman’s outfit.

“You should have known better than to give chase to him,” Master Thomas said, flatly. He sounded as if he was angry, but not at Gwen. Gwen wondered, absently, what else had happened since she’d been knocked out. Jack might have shown himself to her as a diversion, to distract attention from something else. “You risked your own life.”

“Yes, sir,” Gwen said, tightly.

“You’re strong and adaptable and you have much less to unlearn than your fellow students, but you’re not ready to fight another Master,” Master Thomas said, sharply. “You didn’t just put yourself at risk, Lady Gwen; you put the future of the Royal Sorcerers Corps at risk. Who could have replaced you if you’d died on the streets?”

His eyes met hers, boring into her very soul. “You will not risk your life again,” he said. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Gwen said. She felt...uncertain. Master Thomas had always been good to her, yet the memory of the farm mocked her – and him. How many women had he slept with in the hopes of producing talented children? And how willing had those women actually been? “I understand.”

“A male student would be feeling the sting of my displeasure,” Master Thomas said. “As it is, you can go to the library and study for the next few hours. An urgent matter has come up and I must attend to it. You can return to your practice tomorrow morning.”

Gwen nodded and left the study, not trusting herself to speak. Most of her fellow students would have regarded being banished to the library as a punishment, but Gwen rather enjoyed the chance to study the collection of books – and pick out the numerous misconceptions about magic put forward by various authors. Lombardi loved the library too, yet when Gwen entered there was no sign of him. There was no sign of any other students either. The library was as dark and silent as the grave.

She glanced around to be sure that she was alone and then started to hunt for a particular book. Jack had told her the name of the author, but she had no idea where it would have been shelved – or even if it had been left on the shelves. There was a section of restricted books that could only be read with permission from Master Thomas and Gwen knew, without needing to ask, that permission would not be forthcoming. She was on the verge of abandoning her search when she spotted the book she was looking for, hidden away amid a set of mathematical treatises. It was a small pamphlet, dated 1801. The author, she realised, might well have known Professor Cavendish personally. They might even have been friends, although Professor Cavendish, according to his official biographer, had been a very shy and retiring man. It was a minor miracle that he’d even been able to convince the establishment that magic existed.

The book’s title confused her at once. It read
The Sleeping Plague and the Origin of Magic
. Below, written in red ink, was a note that read
BANNED BY ORDER OF THE CROWN
, suggesting that there were only a handful of copies in existence. The Church and the Government, if Gwen recalled correctly, had considerable powers to ban publications they didn’t like, something that had often led to embarrassment. Even Gwen had heard of the shady circumstances behind the death of John Wilkes. Concealing the book in a larger tome, she found a private seat and opened the volume. It launched straight into text at once.

The origin of magic has confused numerous scholars since Professor Cavendish outlined the principles of magic thirty years ago. In theory, magic should have existed throughout the ages, but historical accounts of magic simply do not match the discoveries of Cavendish and his fellow researchers. The power to turn men into frogs, to kill someone at a distance through symbolic magic and powerful curses simply does not exist. Merlin’s legendary magic remains unmatched by modern-day sorcerers. And no attempt to summon the devil from his fiery realm has succeeded.

Gwen frowned, puzzled. She had heard about the misconceptions surrounding magic; John Wellington Wells and his friends had made a fortune exploiting the ignorance of common people, but she was surprised to see that they’d existed for so long. But maybe that wasn’t surprising. People had believed in magicians long before real magicians had come into existence. She skimmed through a section relating to Darwinists – or what had probably become the Darwinists, once Charles Darwin had outlined Darwinism – before coming to the meat of the matter. It took her several moments to understand what it said.

The general belief that magic is limited to the upper classes is demonstrably incorrect, as is the belief that magic is somehow limited to Britain. Indeed, there are very definite signs that there are French, Russian and even Turkish magicians. This leads us to consider that the origins of magic are nowhere near as clear-cut as suggested by Professor Cavendish. We must therefore ask ourselves the obvious question. What do all magic-users have in common?

On the face of it, the only thing that they appear to share is that they are all human. There have been no reported cases of magical animals or even humans who can shift into animal forms. What else do they have? There are both male and female magicians; there are magicians from all civilised countries; there are old magicians and young magicians…what do they have in common? Careful research suggests that there is
one
factor linking all magicians together.

During the Seven Years War, doctors in Britain became aware of something that became known as the Sleeping Plague. The victims would act as if they had been mesmerized, muttering to themselves or sleepwalking through life. Some of the victims, the ones with wealth and servants, were put in bed and left to recover on their own. Others, without money or property, died while they were affected with the plague. They were unable to take care of themselves. The plague seemed to fade as quickly as it had arrived, leaving a mystery that baffled doctors.

But one thing is clear. Every known magician was either affected by the Sleeping Plague, or is descended from someone who was affected with the Sleeping Plague. It has proved hard to gather information from the poorer sections of society, but I believe that the evidence connecting the two factors is impossible to refute. The Sleeping Plague created the first magicians – and the reason there were more upper class magicians than lower class is that upper class people were cared for while they were affected by the Plague.

Gwen stopped reading in shock. The writer hadn’t known about werewolves – they’d been isolated around 1810, if she recalled correctly – but his words made sense. Charles Darwin hadn’t written for at least two decades after Perivale had studied the Sleeping Plague, yet he’d never even considered the possibility that there might be a connection. Darwin had believed in the survival of the fittest, with magicians on top of a triangle that led down to the lower orders. He had provided the justification Lord Blackburn and his fellows used to keep themselves on top of the pile.

And that meant…what?

She pulled herself to her feet, carefully returned the book to the shelves, and settled down to more mundane studies. Inside, her mind was spinning. She needed advice, but whom could she trust? Master Thomas wouldn’t listen to her…