Song of Sorcery (2 page)

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After five months in bed, no amount of twisting, turning or repositioning could make Sir William quite comfortable. It wasn’t just his legs, injured when an arrow inexplicably found its way into his horse while he was hunting, causing the poor beast to rear and roll on him. Granny Brown claimed sickbed fever had prolonged his recovery far past the usual convalescent period, and lack of active use had caused his legs to weaken and his wounds to mortify, conditions she continued to fight with her entire herbal arsenal.

What he wished was that Amberwine could come home—even for a short visit. Although she had no healing magic whatsoever, and cheerfully admitted incompetence at managing even the simplest aspects of household or estate affairs, her lighthearted faery gaiety and placid, accepting intelligence brought the dimples out from under Granny Brown’s traditional witch scowls, and even slowed the brusque and practical Maggie down to something close to gentleness.

Ah well, he sighed to himself, arranging his bedclothes in a position suitable for the company whose footsteps he heard climbing the long spiral staircase to his tower chamber. He’d made Amberwine the best possible marriage to that southern lord—the fellow might even get to be king, they said, and she seemed to like him in the bargain. Where he’d find such a match for thorny Maggie was more than a sick man should contemplate. It was complicated arranging marriages for not-quite-born-in-wedlock children one acknowledged belatedly. The village witch’s daughter who at the age of two years is declared to be the daughter of the Lord-High-Mayor-Knight-Protector-of-His-Majesty’s-Northern-Territories (And Incorporated Villages) tends to remain the village witch’s daughter. No amount of equal education or advantage seemed to be able to make a witchchild as refined a lady as her faery sister. For all of Amberwine’s extra encouragement and coaching, Maggie remained neither fish nor fowl, her mother’s line too base for nobles, her father’s too noble for the base-born lads. Too bad she wasn’t a son, so all he’d have to do would be to leave her the estate, which she managed most capably, and find her a wife. Worthy wives were bound to be more common commodities than worthy husbands, he felt sure.

To the poundings on his chamber door he called permission to enter, and a disheveled Maggie did so, followed by an only slightly less disheveled young man.

“Hullo, Dad.” She dropped a kiss on his forehead.

“’Lo, Magpie. Who’s this?” He made an attempt at hearty cheerfulness in the direction of the young man.

“I caught Granny trying to feed him to Ching,” she replied. “She was in a dreadful huff.”

Sir William narrowed his eyes at the young man. “What did you do to cause my mother-in-law to wish to make cat food of you, sir?”

“Your pardon, noble sir.” The young man made him a low bow. “Colin Songsmith, Journeyman Minstrel, at your service. Noble sir, I don’t know why the lady was so vexed with me. I only sang the latest southern ditty for her, practicing it, y’know, before presenting it to you.”

“Present it to me then, dammit, and let’s get to the bottom of this. Maggie, dear, do scratch my shoulder—ah, right there—good girl.”

Since his fiddle rendition of the tune had met with such avian results, Colin unslung his guitar from his back and tuned it. The tuning gave him time to compose himself. Finally he tapped his fingers on the soundboard of the guitar and told them, “Not being from this district, or the one where the song originates, I can’t understand the fuss over it. I learned it from Minstrel Giles. He said he always comes north this time of year to avoid the first blossom of some of the southern plants. Gives him ill humors of the nose and throat, he says, and, as you well may imagine that’s an unhandy affliction for a troubadour.” He paused to allow this professional confidence to sink in. Maggie nodded briskly that she was perfectly capable of understanding occupational hazards and the old man impatiently waved him to continue. “Ahem—yes, as I was saying, folk down south at least, find this an entertaining tune. Giles says it’s all the rage.” He paused again for dramatic emphasis before striking the strings in a minor key. The guitar sent ripples of sobbing across the room once, twice, and once again.

The minstrel’s features coarsened and his voice dropped to a lower register. The guitar was a stone fence he leaned upon as he confided ribald gossip to another peasant. The music galloped along in time to his voice.

“The gypsy Davey came riding along,

Singing so loud and gaily.

He sang so sweet and so complete,

Down come our faery lady…down come the faery maid.

“She come trippin’ down the stairs

Her maids were all before her

As soon’s he saw her pretty face

He cast some glamourie o’er her.”

Sir William opened his eyes. A gypsy man had wreaked a great deal of havoc in the village two festival seasons ago by absconding simultaneously with two of the estate’s dairy maids, sisters whose soiled state Sir William had had to launder with generous donations to their dowries so they could be safely wed before they whelped. If the fella’d charmed a faery he must be quite the charmer indeed—the faeries were so enchanting themselves, they generally saw through the “glamourie” of others.

The minstrel dropped the peasant role and became the gypsy, insinuating himself into the lady’s romantic imagination. Casting Maggie as the lady, his passionate glances totally confused the expression of polite attention she had maintained. Trying to stare down the minstrel’s false gypsy as she would her grandmother’s cat, she found herself annoyed that she was unable to look away when she wished.

“Will you forsake your husband dear,

And all the wealth he gave ye?

Will you leave your house and lands

To follow Gypsy Davey—to ride with the Gypsy Dave?

Maggie flushed, her dark skin burgundy with befuddlement as the minstrel released her eyes to become narrator again.

“She dressed herself in her gay green cloak

And her boots of finest leather,

Then mounted on her pony fine,

And they rode off together.

“Late from huntin’ came Lord Rowan,

Asking for his lady.

The one did cry and the other reply

‘She’s gone with the Gypsy Davey—rode away with the Gypsy Dave.’”

Intricate minor patterns wove through the main theme, invoking hoofbeats fading away from the lady’s fine home across the moors. The minstrel didn’t look up from the guitar again until the last keening notes quivered off his strings to die in the stillness around him. Sir William’s face was a most alarmingly unhealthy eggplant color, and the resemblance between Maggie and her grandmother was suddenly uncomfortably apparent.

“Well, Dad,” she smiled around sharp white teeth, “What d’you think? Boil him in oil, or flay him alive?”

What had Colin’s masters taught him at the academy? In dealings with aristocrats, when in doubt, grovel. He knelt so fast he banged his knee on the floor. “Your pardon, m’lady, Sir William. I only did as you asked. I meant no offense, and can’t think why the tune has given it. I’ll never play it again—ever.” In your vicinity, at least, he added to himself, searching for an exit as Sir William’s skin regained its former pallor.

“Perhaps you should choose less exotic material in the future, lad,” the old knight advised drily, “or not mention names in your ditties. The Lord Rowan cuckolded in your song, unless of course there’s another one, is my son-in-law, married to my younger daughter, the Lady Amberwine.”

Colin gulped, his eyes darting furtively to the leaded glass window and back to the long flight of stone steps they’d mounted coming to the tower room.

“Who
was
this fellow with the stuffy nose who taught you that song?” Maggie asked.

“Minstrel Giles, m’lady?”

“I was wondering if he’d like that nose removed?”

“Maggie!” snapped Sir William, “You’re scaring the lad to death, you little heathen. He said it wasn’t his song.” He turned more kindly to the minstrel, who by now was perspiring profusely. “Sorry, son.” He jerked a thumb at his glowering daughter. “She’s a terrific girl, really, just awfully fond of her sister, as we all are around here.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand this at all. Winnie—Lady Amberwine—is not at all your average running-off sort of girl. She’s too considerate for that type of thing. To just leave without explanation! No letter to us! Even if she didn’t like her husband, which I could have sworn she did, she’d hardly have placed her family in such an awkward spot without giving us fair warning—”

“Fine lady, indeed, noble sir,” the minstrel agreed emphatically, “I’m sure she’s a fine,
fine
lady.”

“Too right, she is that.” Sir William’s hands tortured the bedclothes for a few moments before he turned his baffled and miserable face to Maggie.

She leaned down and hugged him. “Aw, Dad, of course she is. She wouldn’t just go gallivanting off with the first passing gypsy—you know very well she can hardly decide which gown to wear to breakfast in the morning without consulting every servant in the house, and me and Gran besides. She certainly wouldn’t be able to bolt altogether on the spur of the moment like that! It’d take her a week to pack!” She glared again at the cowering Colin. “Must have been one of His Lordship’s enemies paid that Giles fellow to make up that awful song.”

Colin gulped and waggled a tentative index finger for attention. “Begging your ladyship’s pardon,” he began, not really wishing to call notice to himself again but equally reluctant for Giles to suffer the consequences of his own silence. “Giles confessed that he only gave the tune a bit of a polish—it was actually a popular creation.”

“Common gossip music, then, eh?” Sir William looked even older and sicker than he had looked when Colin came into the room, and he had appeared twenty hard years older than Maggie’s grandmother then. “Maggie, what can be going on with the girl?”

Maggie looked down, shoving her fists deep into her apron pockets. “I don’t know, Dad.”

“You remember that nasty gypsy fella running off with Mullaly’s daughters and nearly emptying my wallet trying to save their foolish reputations?”

“Yes, Dad, I remember. Betsy and Beatrice Mullaly are as bovine as their charges, though. Everybody knows that. Winnie’s got more sense.”

“I think so. I don’t know. I wish I had my legs under me, so I could go see Rowan and talk to him myself.” He made an impatient attempt to rise. Maggie gently pushed him back onto the bed.

“That’s no good, and you know it. I’ll go talk to Rowan.”

The old man looked at her for a long time, then closed his eyes and sank back against his pillow. “Of course you will, lass. You’re the only one who can, I suppose.” Then opening one eye he looked at her again, more sharply. “You’re not thinking of going alone, of course?”

She shrugged. “Why not? We can’t have it all over the territories what I’m up to if there’s nothing in it. I’ll be all right. I’ve got my magic to protect me, after all.”

He snorted. “Hearthcraft, hmph. All very well for running the castle or tavern, but what are you going to do if you meet a bear, girl.”

“Very well, then,” she conceded, trying not to allow their disagreement to tire her father any further. “I’ll take the mockingbird, here, with me.”

The pronouncement came as a complete surprise to Colin.

Sir William peered closely at him. “Oh, then if a bear comes along HE sings the creature sweetly to sleep with a bloody lullaby, and you turn it into a great bloody hearthrug?” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, grayer since the accident. “Ah, well, he’s responsible to his guild for his conduct, and if he’s with you I can at least be quite sure he won’t be spreading that song about. I suppose it wouldn’t be wise to have any of the local guard go. I doubt any of them would purposely slander your sister, but people don’t seem to be able to forego telling everything they know, nonetheless.” He sighed once more, deeply, and capitulated. “He’ll have to do, I guess.”

“Good.” She kissed her father’s cheek again and rose to her feet. “I’ll just go put binding spells on the cleaning I’ve already done, and enlarge the larder a bit, before I talk to Gran about handling anything that comes up while I’m gone.”

“That should be exciting,” Sir William mumbled to her back as she swept through the door ahead of Colin.

2

Maggie was unalarmed to hear the Territorial troops marching in close order drill, accompanied by professional mourners keening for the dead and wounded, as she entered her grandmother’s cottage. She recognized the tromping of the marchers as her gran’s heavy-handed double beat on the loom batten, which always sounded like an advancing army, complete with fife and drum corps, and the keening sound as the old lady chanted a song in the ancient tongue to make the work less tedious.

“Maggie, darlin’!” Her grandmother exclaimed, raising her legs past the edge of the loom bench and twirling around on her behind to face her granddaughter. “I’m so glad you’re here! Now you can do this nettlesome chore and I can stir up that batch for Betsy Baker.”