Read Snow White and Rose Red Online
Authors: Patricia Wrede
Snow White and Rose Red (34 page)
“She hath forbidden it?”
“No, ‘tis not so bad as that; merely, ’tis writ plain in her manner that talk of thee’s unpleasing, and the court, as always, doth follow her lightest whim.”
“What of Bochad-Bec and the wight I told thee of, that showed itself in the crystal?” John asked. “Knowest aught of them?”
“Oakmen are sour and solitary, and come seldom to the court,” Robin answered. “I’ve seen Bochad-Bec a time or two, but I know little more of him. As to thy wight—” Robin scowled in concentration, and his hair fell into his eyes again. “I have a thought on that.”
“Ring bells and sound trumpets,” John said. “What is it?”
“Furgen died ten days ago. It was a grey and scaly water fay, much like to thy description, and it made no secret of misliking mortals. ”
“How did this Furgen die?” John asked.
“There’s the heart of things. The fay was killed by recoil from some spell that seemingly o‘erreached the bounds of Faerie. The Queen is furious.”
“Well might she be,” John said slowly. “This touches her authority. But how hath a water fay contrived the power for such a spell? Or was it one of the greater of its kind?”
“Nay, ‘twas rather lesser,” Robin said. He brushed his hair from his eyes with an impatient gesture and grinned impudently. “Thou seest why it hath such interest in’t. Some stronger fellow needs must have assisted Furgen’s work, but who would dare to so defy the Queen? And ’twas not Bochad-Bec, I’ll warrant you; that one’s no spellmaker of this ability.”
“Who, then?” John said, his tone expressing his frustration with all the world. “Who and why?”
“That’s the question, indeed,” Robin said agreeably. “Wouldst care to wager on how long ‘twill take me to discover it?”
“‘Tis kind of thee to offer, Robin, but I cannot let thee take the risk,” John replied. “It would go ill with thee, an the Queen were to find thee helping Hugh and me.”
“Belike it would,” Robin said. “And belike not. In any case, how dost thou think to stop me? I am no brown-haired mortal wench, to quail before thy railing and displeasure.”
“Do not be a fool!” John said, and was not sure himself what part of Robin’s statement he was referring to.
“Tcha!” Robin said. “It is my nature; how can I be otherwise?” He tilted his head to observe his companion, and grinned again. “And thou‘st said thyself that curiosity is my besetting sin.”
John rolled his eyes. “Thou art as bad as ever mortals be. Well, have a care, then; I’ve not so many friends of late that I can bear the loss of one.”
“Thou art not so bereft as thou dost think,” Robin said. “But have no fear for me; I’ll find no grief in this.”
“That’s as may be. Now tell me, ere thou leavest: what news of court?”
Robin’s eyes sparkled, and he launched into a witty description of the doings of the Faerie court, liberally laced with gossip. By the time they parted, John had an excellent picture of the state of affairs in Faerie, and he found it somewhat disturbing. The Queen had not put off her mourning clothes, and the atmosphere at court was uncomfortable, at best. Worst of all was the clear implication that Furgen’s spells had been employed without the knowledge of the Queen.
John turned his conversation over and over in his mind during the long walk back to Mortlak. As he passed the Widow’s cottage, he was strongly tempted to stop and ask her advice, but his promise to avoid drawing Faerie attention to the cottage held him back. Robin might have been followed, or the message spell noticed; if there were the slightest chance that the eyes of Faerie were turning in his direction, he would do nothing that might lead them to the Widow and her daughters.
In the weeks that followed, John held firm to his resolve. He no longer visited the cottage, and tried to avoid even the most accidental meetings with Rosamund and Blanche. In this he was more successful than he would have liked, and he found himself thinking more and more often of Rosamund’s chestnut hair and warm brown eyes while he waited for Robin to reappear with more specific news of Faerie.
Joan Bowes’s sharp eyes noticed the change in John’s habits, and she rejoiced silently at this evidence of her love spell’s success. She had followed Kelly’s directions with care, writing “John Rimer” and “Joan Bowes” three times on the cloth with a swan’s feather and the magic ink containing John’s hairs, steeped in moonlight. For a week following the spell’s completion, she waited hopefully for John’s head to turn in her direction. When it did not, she took to lingering in the street outside his lodgings whenever she could find an excuse for it. She was sure that sooner or later John would recognize her, and be lost.
John himself was quite unconscious of Joan’s peculiar conduct, for Kelly’s charm had not touched him at all. This was due more to his mother’s distaste for her son’s baptismal name than to his Faerie blood. Joan Bowes had had no way to know that the name she so carefully inscribed should have been “Thomas,” not “John,” and her spell had spent itself on emptiness.
When three weeks had gone by, and her hoped-for lover continued to ignore her, or to respond to her greetings with “Mistress” and an indifferent nod, Joan herself realized that the spell had failed. Stubbornly, she decided to find some other way to trap her chosen victim. Meanwhile, she consoled herself with the thought that at least her charm had put a stop to John’s visits to the Widow Arden’s cottage, and she spent several enjoyable hours picturing the disappointment of the Widow and her daughters at the disappearance of their suitor.
The cessation of John’s visits to the cottage pleased the Widow very well, for she was not blind to Rosamund’s attraction to him. Had he been wholly mortal, she would have gladly given them her blessing, but she did not entirely trust John’s Faerie blood, and she did not wish to see her daughter hurt. It would be as well for Rosamund to have some time alone, to reconsider, or so the Widow reasoned.
Moreover, the atmosphere in Mortlak troubled her. Witchcraft was no longer openly talked of in the market square or gossiped about in the public houses, but the joiner’s shop was doing a brisk business in small crosses made of ash, some of the laborers had begun wearing loops of red thread tied to their wrists and ankles, and clumps of rowan berries had appeared above more than a few doorways. These circumstances revived all the Widow’s misgivings about her family’s involvement with sorcerers and creatures of Faerie; she was certainly not going to encourage her daughters to deepen that involvement. She would have stopped them talking about Hugh, could she have done so.
Keeping Rosamund and Blanche from discussing Hugh was, however, quite beyond the Widow’s power. She had to be content with keeping her daughters away from the forest and the Faerie border, and with filling their hours so full of work that they had little time for other considerations. She hoped that, with their time occupied and John no longer visiting to remind them, her daughters’ interest in magic would gradually fade. It showed no sign of doing so, but the Widow knew how to be patient, particularly when she had no other choice.
Patience, even when there was no choice, was not and had never been Madini’s strong point. A week after Furgen’s death she was primed for action; by the end of July she was ready to explode. Unfortunately, the Queen of Faerie was still watching the border far too closely to allow a repetition of any of the spells that Madini had previously used to influence Dee and Kelly.
Of necessity, Madini turned to other channels. She slipped across the border (there being no ban on traffic to and from the mortal world, only on magical communication), and spent some time searching for a lever with which to pry the crystal free of Dee. She found Charles Sledd and his employers.
It had not previously occurred to Madini to make use of mortal edicts to achieve her purposes, but she realized at once that the witch-hunters were an ideal tool. If Dee and Kelly were arrested, their tools were certain to be confiscated as evidence, and once the crystal was outside Dee’s study and the protective spells that surrounded it, Madini would have no difficulty whatever in stealing it at last. With any luck, the witch-hunters would notice something odd about John Rimer, and cause trouble for him as well.
Well pleased with her discovery, Madini began adding fuel to the fires of rumor already running wild in Mortlak. She sent ghostly illusions to dance above the rooftree of Dee’s house at midnight, and disembodied voices to whisper Kelly’s name among the tombstones beside the church. She left a piece of mandrake root on the doorstep of the house for the maid to find, and tormented those who spoke ill of the wizards in hopes that her victims would think that Dee and Kelly had cursed them. Then she returned to Faerie and waited expectantly for Sledd’s arrival.
Charles Sledd was not particularly admirable in other respects, but he at least knew his trade. On the first of August, he visited Dee’s house, on the pretext of desiring a look at Dee’s wooden chest of seals, and was very well received. Dee not only welcomed him, but invited him to come to dinner with the household.
For this good fortune, Master Sledd had the Queen herself to thank. On the previous day she had sent Master Dee a gift of forty angels, and this princely sum had been delivered by no less than the Earl of Leicester. Master Dee was, therefore, in an unusually expansive mood; Master Sledd had only to show a small interest in Dee’s work, and the supper invitation was assured. The atmosphere was at first open and relaxed, and Master Sledd was soon deep in conversation with his host.
“They are great achievements,” Sledd said, in response to a long explanation of Dee’s various mathematical and nautical projects. “But I’ve heard that you’ve accomplished greater things still. What of those?”
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