Chantress Alchemy (21 page)

“Are you saying you cannot do magic at night?” Lord Roxburgh said in disbelief.

Even Sybil looked surprised.

I flushed. “No, I am not. I am only saying . . .” What
could
I say? Nothing about scrying, that much was clear. It was singing they wanted. Anything else would not satisfy—and might raise questions I did not want to answer. Besides, the power in scrying still frightened me, for I did not know where it came from, or what it might do.

“God’s blood, Chantress!” Wrexham shouted. “It is just as I
suspected: You will not do magic—not for us, not for your King. Not even when your life depends upon it.”

My life? Did he really mean that? I looked straight at him, and saw the cold light in his eyes.

Yes, he really did.

Panicked, I said, “My lord, please understand: magic is not as simple as asking and getting.”

“It seems simple enough from where I stand,” Wrexham said. “If you value your life, you will find the assassin for us.
Now
.”

Fear cinched my throat. My godmother had been right.
We are hunted; we are prey
. I was surrounded by men who hated me, who would kill me without pity if I showed any weakness.

Even if I confessed that I had no magic, they would never believe me. They would say I was lying, that my very denial proved me a traitor. I was well and truly trapped. I had to sing; I had to be seen to work magic. . . .

Be bold, be brave, be every inch a Chantress . . .

Through the haze of panic in my head, a rough plan started to take shape. It was a gamble, at best. But a gamble was better than nothing.

My cape swirled as I drew myself upward. “Very well. I will sing for you,” I said. “But first we must go to the room where the King was attacked. If the magic is to work, it must be done there.”

†    †    †

Wrexham ordered me to walk in front of him. “For your safety, Chantress,” he said, but it was like having a dagger drawn at my back.

With torches lighting our way, we trailed out of the East Tower, all of us in company. No one wanted to miss the possibility of magic. Unless perhaps it was my downfall that some of them hoped to see? Even Sybil came with us, for Wrexham was loath to let her go.

At first I did not recognize the route we traveled, but when we stopped, I saw we were in a chamber very close to the one that held Nat’s secret room. Its paneled walls shone like polished ebony against the blazing torches.

It was not a large room, and it felt even smaller when the entire company had assembled inside it. As they settled themselves, I studied the walls and windows and floor, searching for any clues I might use in my “magic.” There was little to work with.

“So, Chantress.” Even without the dais, Wrexham still towered over me. “We are here. Prove your loyalty.”

“So I shall,” I said, pretending to a confidence I did not have. “But first may I remind you: magic has its limits. No matter what you or I may wish, I cannot find the crucible out of thin air. Neither can I pluck out assassins and poisoners and present them to you on a plate.”

A murmur of dissatisfaction ran through the crowd.

I raised my voice. “It is possible, however, that by magic means I may be able to learn something of what occurred here tonight. The crime is so recent and the struggle so brutal that an impression of it may yet remain in the very fabric of the place. I will use my magic to discover what I can. May it lead us to the villain.”

Silence—but this time an encouraging one.

Taking that as my cue, I stepped away from Wrexham and waved them all back. “Give me space and quiet.”

When they all obeyed, even Wrexham, I felt a small glow of satisfaction.

Now, however, came the hard part. I must sing.

I did not want to close my eyes. Indeed, with Wrexham standing so close, hand on hilt, I could hardly bear to. But I knew I must, to have any hope of hearing whatever real music was in the room—for I was still hoping, desperately, that a miracle would occur, and my magic would come back in time to save me.

I listened long and hard. Every time I was about to open my eyes, I heard faint fragments of discord, so ghostly I feared they might be coming from my own imagination. I pursued them anyway, to no avail.

Eyes still closed, I heard sighs and the shuffling of feet. The audience was growing restive.

My heart thudded. I must sing something—if not real magic, then something that sounded like it. Yet where was I to begin? Always before it was the song that had told me where to start. Now I had only the evasive notes in the air around me, and I did not dare to use even those. My experience with the mist song had reminded me that Wild Magic was as wild as its name; it had a violent energy that could destroy everything in its path—including me.

Instead, I drew on my memory of the drills and exercises my godmother had forced me to learn last year as part of my training. They were not themselves magic; they were meant simply to
build my strength and teach me technique. I had loathed them at the time. Now I patched bits and pieces of them together and concocted something I hoped would pass as a Chantress song.

The melody I improvised had nothing of the strength of a true song-spell, or its beauty, or its complexity, and as I sang it, my fears began to grow. Would Wrexham see through me? Would the Council know me for a fraud? Did I have any hope of fooling them?

The notes wobbled in my throat. I cut the song off and opened my eyes.

They were all watching me, fear and awe in every face. Even Sybil watched me with wide eyes.

“The room holds tight to its secrets,” I said. “But I have charmed something from it.” I walked to the wall, my cloak sweeping behind me, and pressed my hand to a place I had spied earlier, where the joinery was slightly out of line. To my relief, the panel gave way, revealing a small cupboard in the wall. “It happened here.”

A few in the crowd looked impressed, but not Wrexham and his closest allies.

“This is your magic?” Lord Roxburgh sneered. “You tell us nothing but what is already known.”

“Ah, but did you know this?” I took a deep breath. “The attacker was the thief who stole the crucible.” I was only guessing, but it seemed a reasonable deduction. “And he—or she—was acting on someone else’s behalf.”

“Someone else?” My words caught Wrexham by surprise. “Who?”

“I cannot say for certain; the magic is not so exact. I can only tell you this: there is a queen involved, a queen who wants to do the King harm.”

It was the best I could do with the picture I had seen in the scrying water. Was it enough?

“Which queen?” someone cried.

“That I do not know . . . ,” I began.

The room dissolved into bedlam.

“The Queen of France!” someone shouted. “She’s intriguing with the Scots again, and she’s sent her spy into our court.”

“What about the Queen of Spain?” another argued. “Those Spaniards have always had it in for us.”

“Depend upon it, it’s Queen Mariana,” someone else agreed. “She wants the Philosopher’s Stone for herself, to cure her sickly son.”

“What about Christina of Sweden?” Lord Roxburgh suggested. “She’s a devotee of alchemy, we all know that. And the Swedish treasury is almost as depleted as ours is.”

“Queen Christina?” Gabriel shook his head. “Never. She’s always been the King’s friend.”

Lord Roxburgh’s beady eyes flickered over him. “You are quick to defend her, Lord Gabriel. But then you spent a great deal of time at her court. Four years, was it?”

“And what of it?” Gabriel sounded flustered. As others turned to stare at him, all with the same considering look in their eyes, he added heatedly, “I trained with the alchemists in Queen Christina’s court, it’s true. But that doesn’t make me her spy. I’m the King’s man, I swear.”

Gabriel, a traitor working for the Swedish queen? Was that the truth that lay behind the picture I’d seen?

Others evidently thought so. Wrexham wheeled on Gabriel, as if ready to wrestle him to the ground.

“Is this the traitor, Chantress?” he asked.

“I do not know.” For all my suspicions about Gabriel, I wasn’t prepared to condemn him on such flimsy evidence. “The magic could not give me a name.”

Next to Lord Roxburgh, a bewigged man spoke up: my dinner companion, Lord Ffoulkes. “It could be the girl.”

At first I thought he meant me, but he pointed to Sybil. “She was brought up in France, wasn’t she? She could be working for the French queen.”

Sybil gasped. “I’m not. I swear I’m not. I’ve never even
met
the queen.”

“Miss Dashwood was sleepwalking when the King was attacked,” Lord Roxburgh pointed out. “Or so the Chantress says.” He looked at me.

“Yes.” I couldn’t back away from that lie now; I was in too deep. But Ffoulkes’s suspicions chimed with my own doubts about Sybil. It seemed all too possible that she might be a French spy.

The others, however, had gone back to watching Gabriel.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped, all trace of his lazy grin gone. “I’m not the man you want.”

“Then who is?” Lord Roxburgh demanded.

“It could be anyone.” His eyes almost black in the torchlight, Gabriel pointed at his accusers. “One of you standing here,
perhaps. Or perhaps none of us at all. It could be a servant—”

“A foreign queen choosing an English servant as her agent?” Lord Roxburgh inquired. “That seems most unlikely.”

“They could be masquerading,” Gabriel argued. He stopped short, as if a new thought had struck him. “Or perhaps what the Chantress saw wasn’t a foreign queen at all. Perhaps it was Boudicca. I’ve heard that’s what some of her followers call her: the Queen of the People.”

Boudicca? From the expressions on the faces around me, I wasn’t the only one surprised by the suggestion.

“Is that possible, Chantress?” Wrexham demanded.

I thought back to the picture I had seen. Neither figure had looked like anyone I knew, so what had made me so certain the woman was a queen? The gold circlet on her head, no doubt—but that did not mean she was a queen by blood. She might be merely a self-proclaimed queen, like Boudicca. “I suppose it is possible, yes.”

A tense quiet settled over the room.

Wrexham eyed Gabriel, then scowled at me. “It is not enough, Chantress. We need to know more.”

My stomach tightened. I had no more to offer. “That is all I saw, my lord.”

“Then sing again.”

“My lord, I don’t think—”

“I’m not asking you to think!” he shouted. “You will sing for us, do you understand? You will sing your throat raw, if that’s what it takes to find the traitor.”

Panic robbed me of breath. He wanted the impossible, and he was willing to break me to get it. And this time I truly could see no way out. Having forced me to work “magic” once, he would ask for it again and again, until at last the truth would become plain. I would be revealed as a lying Chantress, a Chantress who had worked false magic, a Chantress who had no true power.

What would Wrexham do to me then?

“My lord Earl!” A guard shot into the room.

“Not now,” Wrexham snarled, barely sparing him a glance.

He didn’t fall back. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but you asked us to find Nathaniel Walbrook.”

I’d been relieved by the interruption, but now I tensed in apprehension. Wrexham had sent guards after Nat?

The pale Viking eyes swung away from me. The guard had Wrexham’s attention now.

“You mean you’ve found him?” Wrexham asked.

“No . . . that is, not quite, my lord. We have one witness—a footman—who saw him headed in this direction. That was some time ago, but it’s all we have to go on. I’ve given my men orders to search the rooms here. Including this one, with your permission.”

“What is there to search?” Wrexham demanded irritably. “We’d have seen Walbrook if he were here.”

The guard looked abashed.

“Unless—” Wrexham’s eyes narrowed as he looked again at the cupboard where the King had seen the crucible. “Unless there are other hidden compartments in this part of the palace, ones
big enough to conceal a person. Yes, that is a possibility we must consider. Order your men to knock on all the walls!”

“We’ll help you,” Gabriel cried. Within moments half the Council was tapping at the walls. Less than a minute later, at the guard’s command, the pounding began next door. It was as if a regiment of carpenters had descended on us.

Nat’s secret room
, I thought in a panic.
They’ll find it. What if he’s in it?

Of course, he could be anywhere. But if he had been seen running this way. . . .

“My lord, we’ve found something!” a guard called from the next room.

When we rushed in, several guards were clustered around the place where Nat’s secret room was hidden.

“It’s hollow here,” one of them said. “And if you look in the chamber next door, the walls don’t join up quite right.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Wrexham roared. “Bash the wall in.”

The guards were more than willing to follow his order. Two pikes smashed into the wall. The panel splintered, revealing Nat’s dark hideaway.

“Light!” Wrexham shouted. “Bring the torches!”

Please don’t let Nat be there
, I prayed.

But as the flames came close, I saw him. He was crouched against the farthest reaches of the wall, and his eyes, wild and hunted, searched out mine.

Beside him, glowing red-gold in the torch light, was the crucible.

The guards pushed forward, blocking Nat’s way out—and blocking my view of him. “I didn’t steal it!” I heard him protest. “It was already here when I came in.”

“Arrest him!” Wrexham ordered.

The room erupted into a shouting mass of men.

“No!” I cried out. “He didn’t do it.”

No one heard me. Guards, lords, gentlemen—they were all shoving forward and crying out for Nat’s blood.

“Get the traitor!”

“Hang him!”

“Hie there, you—bring us some rope!”

Rope? Dear heaven, were they planning to hang him right here? Surely they only meant to take him prisoner. . . .