The Midnight Queen (30 page)

“The bridegroom is your kinsman, is he?” Sieur Germain nodded in reply, and the priest continued, “And who speaks for the bride's family?”

“I do,” said Mrs. Wallis, chin jutted. “She is orphaned; I am cousin to her late mother, who left her to my guardianship.”

Again the priest looked deeply sceptical, and for an anxious moment Sophie expected him to announce his intention of refusing their request. After a moment, however, he shook his head and sighed. “These hasty love-matches are of all marriages the least likely to endure,” he remarked, “but equally there is no reasoning with their authors.”

Pocketing the paper, he nodded to Sieur Germain. “I shall return tomorrow, an hour before sunset,” he said. “Mind you have your witnesses assembled; I do not like to be kept waiting.”

“I thank you, sir,” Sieur Germain replied with a bow.

The priest nodded again, curtly, and took himself off.

“Impertinent puppy!” said Mrs. Wallis, as soon as he had gone.

“Never mind, ma'am,” Sieur Germain soothed her. “He will do as well as any other, and we need suffer his impertinence only once more.”

Sophie had sprung to her feet and was pacing round and round the sofa. “And if he does not come back?” she demanded of no one in particular.

Gray rose from the sofa to plant himself in her path. “He will come back,” he said, laying a hand on each of her shoulders.

“Of course he will,” said Sieur Germain, dryly, “because otherwise the Temple of Tamesis must forgo the very generous marriage-tithe we shall pay him; and they have need of it, to shore up their riverward wall.”

Sophie bowed her head against Gray's chest. At once he folded her into his arms, and she drew comfort from the steady rhythm of his heart.
After tomorrow,
she told herself bracingly,
after tomorrow no one can part us if we do not wish it.

“Sophie.” Jenny's voice interrupted her reverie, and she raised her head in some confusion to locate its source. “Sophie, a moment?”

Gray let her go, bestowing on her briefly the particular smile that spread a warm flush over her cheeks, and, turning away, she followed Jenny out of the room.

*   *   *

“I have a difficult request to make of you,” said Jenny, when they were closeted in her sitting-room. “But first I think I ought to speak to you about—”

“I beg you will not,” Sophie interrupted hastily. “I was brought up by a healer, you know; I am not in the least need of
that
sort of lecture, I assure you.”

Jenny declared herself well pleased, but still she insisted on quizzing Sophie on a long list of herbs, with their precise uses. Having thus satisfied herself that her new sister should not find herself in unexpected need of baby's bonnets, she seemed about to speak, but at Sophie's inquiring look fell silent, suddenly intent on the hands clasped in her lap.

“You will think me a most contrary creature,” she said at last, colouring a little. “It is not that I have any wish to interfere in your . . . but, you see, you have both of you so
much
magick, and it appears that, in certain circumstances . . .”

“Jenny,” Sophie began, now rather flustered herself, “has this . . . has what you wished to say anything to do with your pianoforte?”

“It shames me to speak of such matters, when you are a welcomed guest in my home,” said Jenny, with a wan chuckle, “but, you see, if the house should be blown to bits around our ears, or . . . or all the windows melt—”

“Of course,” said Sophie, “someone might be hurt.” It had surprised her that Jenny, of all people, should be discomposed by a discussion of marital relations, but that she should fear to breach the laws of hospitality was easily understood. “I believe I may safely promise you that we shall be extremely careful. I thought perhaps an interdiction—or a very strong ward—Gray and I have been reading a great deal about warding-spells . . .”

“I thank you.” Jenny smiled gratefully. “And I hope I have not given offence.”

Sophie smiled in return, to conceal her dismay. “None, I assure you,” she said. “But I wonder . . . might I ask a question of you?”

“Of course you may.”

“It is . . .” She hesitated. “It is a very personal one. Of course you need not answer, if you had rather not . . .”

Jenny looked at her expectantly, and her courage failed her. “It is nothing,” she said instead, lamely.

“You are not having second thoughts?”

Sophie laughed, perhaps a trifle raggedly, but said nothing. What was there to be said?

Leaving her chair, Jenny sat beside Sophie and took her hands. “Sophie, you need not take this step if it makes you unhappy. We will find some other way to—”

“I am not unhappy, Jenny, truly,” said Sophie, anxious to make herself understood—to herself as much as to Jenny. “If I must marry someone, I can think of no other who—but—” She paused, feeling wretched. “I had not thought to marry so young . . . nor in such haste.”

To her surprise, Jenny gave her hands an understanding squeeze. “Of course not,” she said. “Your life has been turned quite upside down, and I cannot wonder that you feel harried. But, Sophie, listen. My brother is . . . he is an unusual man. He will certainly not expect you to sit at home and embroider baby-clothes, if you do not wish it. If you had rather study ancient languages, or go out riding every day—he will be very happy for you to do so, I know.”

Sophie could not help but smile at Jenny's way of putting things. “You do not seem so very unhappy to be embroidering baby-clothes,” she ventured.

“No, indeed.” Jenny returned the smile. “But, you see, I have everything I want, more or less.” Releasing Sophie's hands, she gestured vaguely about her. “I have never expected to go about having adventures, you know, or to be a great mage or a great scholar. Had I indeed expected it, I should have been greatly disappointed, I think,” she added with a laugh, “small as my talent is for any of those pursuits. But yours is quite a different case, is it not?”

“Because I am a
princess
, you mean.” Spitting out the hated word with bitter emphasis, Sophie rose abruptly from her seat and began to pace about the small room.

“Not at all,” said Jenny mildly, “though that must have some bearing, certainly. I only meant, however, that you are very much cleverer than I, and very much more talented. And then, to be so much in love as you appear to be . . .”

At this reminder—however little intended—of her most recent magickal disaster, Sophie's cheeks burned, and she cast a guilty glance in the direction of the drawing-room. She hardly knew how to express what it was that frightened her so: that they would all be soon involving themselves in mortal peril, and she could not bear to think what the end of it might be, if all their preparations should prove insufficient.
If I cannot protect him—or if he will not let me.

But all this would be equally the case, whether she married him or no.

“Jenny,” she said, finally coming to the point, “do you—please forgive my asking—do you love your husband?”

Jenny's smile grew a little rueful. “He loves me very much,” she said. “Not, perhaps, as my brother loves you—but very much, in his own way. And I am very fond of him. He is a good and an honourable man, and he has been very kind to me.”

“And to all your odd acquaintance,” Sophie added. She had not at first been much disposed to like Sieur Germain de Kergabet, but for her—as perhaps for Jenny?—he had improved upon closer acquaintance.

“Indeed,” Jenny laughed, “though that, I fear, is rather a recent development. From his behaviour to all of you here, one would not guess that only this summer he was annoyed that I should insist on corresponding with a brother whom my father had very reasonably thrown off.”

“But he trusts you,” Sophie persisted, rather shocked. “He was reluctant to take us at our word, but yours convinced him at once.”

“Yes, he trusts me.” No trace of mirth now remained in Jenny's voice. “I could not have agreed to marry him else. I learnt early—at my mother's knee, one might say—a lesson I hope you shall be spared: We should both be miserable, could we not trust one another.”

“Jenny, do you think—do you think I do right, to marry for love? You do not think I shirk my duty to my father, or to the kingdom?”

Jenny was silent for a time, her face very still. “I can only tell you,” she said at last, “what I have already told Gray: that not one pair of lovers in a thousand is given such a chance as this, and I should think you a fool to disdain such good fortune.

“No: I shall tell you one thing more. It was given to me once, long ago, to have my prayers very clearly answered for the good of one I loved, and I have long prayed for my brother's happiness in marriage, as I am sure he once prayed for mine. I do not presume so far as to call you the Great Mother's answer to my prayers; yet I cannot think how they might be better answered.”

Sophie flushed, and knew not where to look.

“I shall pray, also,” she said after a moment. “I shall beg the Lady Juno's blessing on my wedding day—that is most proper, is it not?”

“Most proper, indeed,” said Jenny, smiling.

In Which We Witness the Making of Promises

Breakfast on the
morning of the wedding was a hurried affair, every member of the household having some pressing task. Sieur Germain had gone out very early, despite a settled rain; the moment they had eaten, Jenny and Joanna whisked Sophie away to try on her wedding-dress, while Mrs. Wallis disappeared to join Mrs. Treveur in the kitchen.

Gray alone wandered the house in search of some occupation. Too restless and distracted to read, and disinclined for conversation, he yearned to escape the house. Instead he paced and fretted, until at last he was waylaid by his brother-in-law in the corridor outside the drawing-room.

“I have discharged your commission,” Sieur Germain said cheerfully, handing him a small paper packet, slightly damp and sealed with the mark of a renowned family of goldsmiths, “and I believe that Jenny has something to show you, also . . .”

“Has she?” he said. “Where shall I find her?”

“She is in the morning-room, I believe.”

“I thank you,” said Gray. He started down the corridor in the proper direction, only to turn back, the little packet clasped in one hand, to cry, “And I thank you, a thousand times, for— for—”

“Another time,” Sieur Germain replied, waving away his thanks. “The gods grant you many more years in which to discharge all debts of gratitude.”

“The gods grant,” echoed Gray.

Jenny received him in the morning-room—where she sat with Joanna amidst what must surely be a full cartload of hothouse flowers, whether destined for marriage-offerings or simply to decorate the house for the occasion, it was difficult to guess—with an expression of affectionate impatience.

“I had forgot, after all these years,” she said, “how difficult it is to gain your attention when you have something on your mind.”

Joanna produced a most uncharacteristic giggle; Gray frowned at her, but to no effect.

“I did have your things here,” Jenny continued, greatly increasing his bewilderment. “I wished to show them to you myself. But as there was not room enough for everything, once the flowers arrived, I have asked Treveur to put them in your bedroom—”

“
My
things? What things?”

“Graham Valerius Marshall, you did not think I should permit you to be married in those appalling clothes?” his sister demanded.

He glanced down at the outgrown trousers, the threadbare waistcoat, the coat that—despite the best efforts of Mrs. Wallis and several Kergabet servants—still bore traces of its misadventures at Merlin.

“I . . . I had not thought at all,” he admitted.

“Well, go and look.” Jenny shook her head in good-natured despair. “My lord will send his man up later to do something about your hair.”

In his bedroom he found neatly laid out a suit of clothes, recognisably much finer than any he had ever owned—and as to size (of which he was a rather better judge) more accurately cut than he would have thought possible. Not for the first time he wondered, with a groan, how he should ever succeed in repaying his brother-in-law for the tremendous outlay of coin which he must be making; to repay his even greater outlay of effort and goodwill was, of course, quite impossible.

*   *   *

Sophie woke to a hesitant knocking at her bedroom door and rose from her bed, against whose coverlet she had collapsed, exhausted from experimenting with warding-spells, some unknown while before, to open it. She had expected Jenny or Joanna—perhaps Mrs. Wallis, or Jenny's maid—come to harry her into new clothes or carry out their threats to dress her hair “just like the Queen's.” Instead the knocker was Gray, wearing the diffident expression that she so seldom saw of late, from which she deduced that his errand concerned matters of the heart, rather than of the intellect.

“Sophie,” he began, “might I—have you a moment to—”

“Come in,” she said, rubbing one eye, and, when he hesitated, “Gray, we shall be married in a few hours' time; surely there can be no impropriety . . . but do not close the door, if you had rather not.”

Rather to her surprise, he ducked under the lintel and pulled the door to.

“I have . . . I should have liked to give you a proper betrothal-gift,” he said, stepping close to her and taking her hand. At his touch she smiled, warmed to her toes. “This . . . it is not exactly mine to give—I have had to ask my brother-in-law to find it for me, and to pay for it—but the thought, at least—”

“There is no need to give me anything,” Sophie told him, indulging herself by stretching up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “
You
ought to know that, if anyone does.”

Gray returned the smile; he put up a hand as though to touch her cheek but halted it in midgesture. “Still,” he said, “one ought to do things properly, and, besides . . .” He let go her hand and reached into a coat-pocket, from which he extracted some small, glinting thing. Then reaching again for her hand, he turned it palm up, and gently folded her fingers round the object.

Opening her hand, Sophie looked down at a slender gold ring.

“Oh,” she said softly, rendered quite as inarticulate as Gray had ever been. She turned the ring around in her fingers, admiring the delicately chased laurel-leaves that decorated its outer surface, and marvelled that he should have contrived to choose for her so exactly what she might have chosen for herself. Then, looking up at him, hoping that he would read in her face what she could not quite manage to say, she slipped it onto her finger—against the vein which, so said healers' lore, leads most directly to the heart.

About to attempt some expression of thanks, she was forestalled by another, more importunate knock at the door. This time it was Jenny indeed, with Joanna and a brace of maids.

“Baths,” the mistress of the house announced succinctly, and, pointing an imperious finger at her brother, “Upstairs with you.”

Though the traditional festive visit to the public baths was out of the question, the Roman-plumbed facilities
chez
Kergabet were quite luxurious enough for Sophie's taste. On this occasion a fire crackled merrily on the marble hearth of the second-floor bathroom, and the large bath was already filled with steaming water.

Properly steamed and scrubbed, Sophie drank Mrs. Wallis's vile-tasting tincture of wild carrot seeds and was ceremoniously attired in her makeshift wedding-clothes. Jenny performed the motherly office of tying the broad sash in an elaborate knot, and her maid, Henriette, took firm charge of Sophie's hair.

By the time she was summoned to appear downstairs, Sophie felt she would go quite mad from the suspense.

*   *   *

The drawing-room was lit by half a dozen candelabra and filled with the scents of flowers blooming out of season—roses and lilies, hyacinth and eglantine. The priest had set up his altar, lit his incense, pronounced his opening invocation; he summoned the bride, and Jenny led Sophie forward. Sophie answered his questions in a sort of haze, declaring (not altogether truthfully) that she was indeed Sophia Lavinia Callender, of an age to marry and contracted to no other man, and had come here of her own will to be married to Gray; her family's consent was sought, and Mrs. Wallis gave it. She heard Gray called likewise, and likewise declare himself, and Sieur Germain give consent on behalf of his family. Bride and bridegroom bowed to the altar. The priest—who looked rather cross, for no reason that Sophie could discern—led them in making their offerings to those deities concerned with marriage.

Amidst all this strangeness, only Gray himself—though resplendent in new clothes, his hair freshly trimmed and so neatly arranged that it might have belonged to some other person—seemed at all familiar, and Sophie gazed at him steadily, casting only occasional glances at the priest and the invocations and offerings on which she ought to have been concentrating her mind.

“Graham Marshall, Sophia Callender,” the priest said sternly, “having given your consent to this marriage, signify it now by joining your hands.”

They did so, and he wrapped the leathern marriage-cord round and round their clasped right hands, intoning as he did so the ancient formula:
Bond of love, mild as silk; bond of trust, strong as iron; bind these two for all their lives. May the gods grant it.

“May the gods grant it,” echoed the assembled company: Jenny and Sieur Germain, Joanna, Mrs. Wallis and Master Alcuin, and nearly all the Kergabet servants.

Rain lashed the drawing-room windows; from time to time a bolt of lightning darted a brief unearthly light on the candlelit chamber, casting each face, each gesture, each object into stark relief, and was swiftly followed by a roll of thunder.

The priest broke one spelt-cake in two, handing one half to Gray and the other to Sophie, and offered others to Juno and Hymenaeus, Brigid and the Great Mother, on his little charcoal brazier. Sophie's mouth was so dry that she could scarcely swallow her portion. She choked it down, however; a marriage sealed by this means, a marriage
confarreatio
, was of all bonds the most difficult to break.

The priest read the terms of the marriage contract once more, that bride and bridegroom might give their formal agreement. Having done so, they were freed from the marriage-tie, which the priest handed to Gray. Without, the thunder had grown less frequent but more ominous; rain washed down the windowpanes in sheets.

“Attend,” the priest said, rather sternly, and for a moment Sophie looked him full in the eyes. When she turned back to Gray, he was holding out one hand, palm up, and smiling down at her; instinctively she returned a glad smile of her own. “
Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia
,” the priest prompted:
Where and when you are Gaius, I am Gaia—where you are, what you are, I shall be also.

“
Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia
,” Sophie repeated, gazing up into Gray's wide hazel eyes and laying her hand atop his upturned palm.
Great Mother,
she prayed,
Juno and Venus, from your great bounty, bless my wedding day . . .

“
Ubi tu Gaia, ego Gaius
,” Gray replied.

The last syllable fell into a sudden and profound silence.

*   *   *

“How funny!” said Joanna—sotto voce, but perfectly audible in the abruptly soundless room. “The rain has stopped.”

Jenny shushed her, and the rite proceeded through the few blessings and entreaties that remained; it must be only his own fancy, Gray decided, that the priest had begun to look distinctly frightened.

He and Sophie made their first offering as man and wife, and a final bow to the altar, and the company adjourned to the dining-parlour, where they were greeted by a wedding-feast which, though on a smaller scale, appeared to Gray at least the equal of Jenny's own. The priest of Tamesis, though earnestly pressed by Sieur Germain to stay to dinner, as earnestly declined, and had taken himself, his tithe-purse, and his paraphernalia away into the reinvigorated thunderstorm before the first morsel of food was eaten in the adjoining room.

“The priest would not stay?” Gray heard Jenny say to her husband, in a low and worried tone. “I do not like that omen.”

Sieur Germain only laughed, however, and said, “I see no omen in it, my dear. This weather makes him want his own warm bed, no doubt. We shall do better without such a dyspeptic guest, in any case.” Catching Gray and Sophie about the shoulders, he added, “Now, into the dining-room with you!”

For this occasion Gray and Sophie had perforce to sit together at the head of the table, and, had either been at all inclined to eat, they must still have gone hungry, so frequently were they congratulated, wished joy, long life, and good health (and, by a slightly tipsy Mrs. Treveur, many children), and called upon to speak. Gray hardly knew what he said when thus applied to; if he had been distracted by thoughts of Sophie earlier in the day, when she was elsewhere, here in her presence he found it quite impossible to think of anything, or anyone, else.

The hour was nearing midnight when, in lieu of the usual festive torchlight procession of the bride to her new home, the household took up candles and escorted Sophie up one staircase after another, to Gray's bedroom on the third floor. Sieur Germain—Mrs. Wallis not being of a size to perform this office—lifted Sophie over the threshold; and, with much good-natured teasing, the door was closed upon them.