The Witch & the Cathedral Page 11

  “Why would they do that?” she replied.

  “They certainly left town in a rush, I assume to avoid telling me.”

  “But if I were with them, how can I be here now? Or is that just another of my witch-like tricks?”

  I was fascinated by her hair, a dark brown that caught gold highlights as she moved her head. It looked luxuriantly soft. “What are your other witch-like tricks?” I asked, almost wishing after all that I had accepted the invitation to her cave.

  “What I actually like to do best of all isn’t even magic.” She paused briefly; I could tell this was very important to her. “I like to climb.”

  “To climb?”

  “I have to do it at night for the most part. It would cause scandal in the city to have a woman scrambling around on towers in broad daylight. But it gives me a sense of mastery, of power over my own body and over the world around me, to know there is nothing too steep or too tall for me to climb if I want.”

  “Then you have a power over your body I don’t have over mine. I went up the new cathedral tower last week, and it gave me vertigo. If you’re not a Romney, are you perhaps related to those workmen working on the new church?”

  “I thought they were from far away in the north somewhere,” she said with another smile. “Do they enjoy climbing too?” She had not actually answered my question, but it was too pleasant to have an attractive woman paying close attention to whatever I said to worry about it.

  V

  Even after we finished our food we continued sitting and talking, a conversation of unrelated questions and oblique answers, where she seemed continually amused by me. At last she looked out toward the street, where the movement of the sun over the house tops had cast the cobblestones into shadow. “I have a lot to do at home,” she said, as though surprised herself at how much time had passed.

  “I’ll walk you back.”

  She took my arm again. “You school-trained wizards may luxuriate in royal courts,” she said with a smile, “pondering the meaning of magic, but those of us who work for a living actually have to work.”

  We walked rapidly through twisting streets. Timbered house fronts leaned over us, seeming to stare down from multi-paned windows. We emerged in a quarter of small houses near the river, overlooked by the backs of the tall homes of the cathedral priests. Theodora stopped by a low door and turned her key.

  “Maybe it’s just as well you didn’t come here for lunch,” she said apologetically as she opened the door. “I’d forgotten I left everything so scattered.”

  Inside was a rather dimly-lit but completely conventional room. I had a brief glimpse of the black and white tail of a cat disappearing under a chair. Spread out on the table and chairs were brightly-colored embroidered pieces of cloth. “I do embroidery for some of the merchants and the garment retailers,” she said. “The best piece I’ve done recently is no longer here, but if you’re in the cathedral you’ll see it: the cloth on the high altar.”

  Joachim or whatever cathedral officer bought altar cloths, I thought, must not know that the skilled local embroideress he had hired was a witch. I was not going to tell him.

  “Usually I try to work at midday because the light is best,” she said. “The drawback to fire magic is that you never end up with anything better than candlelight. But I did enjoy talking to you.”

  “I hope I’ll see you again,” I said.

  “Of course you will. You promised to teach me some of your magic. An embroideress could use magic globes to shine beside her.”

  I tore myself away and started back up the hill. I thought I knew now the source of the lights the watchman had originally seen on the new tower. But I knew even less the source of the bat-winged monster.

  The dean was very quiet at dinner that night, as though he had decided it would not be tactful to keep quizzing me on my progress. I took advantage of his silence to think about Theodora. But, as usual, tact lost out.

  “My servant told me you were lighting candles in broad daylight this morning,” Joachim burst out at last. “Are you trying your own version of an exorcism?”

  “No, nothing like that,” I answered vaguely. “I was working on a different aspect.”

  For close to twenty years, I had been the wizard of Yurt. When I had gone to the school for a few months, it had been with the assumption that life in Yurt would be the same when I returned. Now, in the last week, I had discovered the queen was getting married, had resigned as wizard of Yurt, and had met Theodora. With all my habits and suppositions shaken up, I had to remind myself that for Joachim, to whom the monster on the cathedral tower was of overriding concern, nothing was happening at all.

  “I did find out one piece of information which may reassure you,” I continued. “The flickering lights on the construction at night, and maybe even the disturbance of materials up on the scaffolding, were due to the influence of a harmless magical being.”

  “Do you mean a wizard?”

  “Actually something closer to the fairies the workmen suggested,” I said, avoiding the word “witch.” But I wondered even while I spoke whether Theodora, even if she lit magical fires while scaling the scaffolding at night, would be capable of shifting heavy stones and equipment.

  “But what about the monster?” said Joachim, looking at me with enormous black eyes. I had always found it difficult to hide anything from those eyes.

  I dropped my own gaze to my plate. “I haven’t made as much progress with that as I hoped,” I confessed. “If it was called here by a wizard, that wizard is hiding very thoroughly from me.”

  Joachim started to speak, stopped himself, and then spoke anyway. “I know you don’t need me to remind you that the bishop was hoping you could be quick.”

  “And discreet,” I added. “Look on the bright side. If I can’t find out what’s happening, and the bishop blames you for bringing in a worthless magic-worker, then maybe the priests of the cathedral chapter won’t elect you bishop after him.”

  Joachim took a deep breath. “Forgive me if I have in any way suggested you are a ‘worthless magic-worker.’ It is just hard to wait for it to appear again.”

  “It may not appear at all,” I said. “Remember, while I was here last week there weren’t even any flickering lights. The guard saw a giant lizard with hands yesterday morning, but that was only a few hours after I arrived, and there’s been nothing further today. Maybe the monster is afraid of what it at least considers a highly competent wizard. I could stay here for a while, keeping it away by my very presence.”

  “But you want to get back to Yurt.”

  And Father Norbert isn’t the only priest who wants one less wizard on the street, I thought. “I can stay for some time,” I said airily. “For various reasons I don’t need to return to Yurt right away.”

  Joachim stood up, and I started to rise to help him collect the dishes, but he had only gone to the sideboard for a second bottle of wine. I watched his face as he worked out the cork and filled our glasses; he seemed even more sober than usual.

  “I may not always understand you,” he said after we had sat in silence for several minutes, “but I know you better than you think I do. Something has upset you, upset you terribly. What is it?”

  “Why do you think I’m upset?” I said lightly. I took a drink of wine to avoid looking at him.

  “Or made you angry, or frightened, or filled with sorrow. I know you were a little disturbed when you heard the queen was getting married, because you felt she was being untrue to the memory of the king we all loved and served, but this goes beyond her marriage. I first knew something was wrong when you arrived here yesterday at dawn, totally drenched. Since then you’ve acted distracted, and I know you well enough to realize that you’ve been thinking inappropriate thoughts even when you are not saying them.”

  It was a good thing, I thought, that he didn’t hear some of the more inappropriate things I had refrained from saying about the organized church.

  “And then this e
vening,” Joachim went on inexorably, “it’s as though some new and very strange ideas had come to you. I’d assumed you were as worried as all of us about the magical apparitions, but I soon realized that was not all. What then is it?”

  This was the one question I felt I could not answer. I knew he would be shocked if I told him I had tried to propose to the queen, even if I could make him understand why I had and why her refusal was so devastating. And I certainly couldn’t tell him that I had just met an extremely intriguing witch, even though, I reminded myself firmly, our relationship was completely innocent and was going to stay that way.

  “I’m more upset about your cathedral than I think you realize,” I prevaricated, still not looking at him. “It’s a blow to my self-esteem as a wizard not to be able to find out yet who or what caused the bat-winged creature to appear. And the wizards at the school specifically warned me about threats to wizardry from the priesthood. I know it’s not you, but it makes me uneasy to be surrounded by so many priests without knowing what’s behind the warning.” I dared at last to look up; I had been clasping my empty glass and staring into it. Joachim reached for the bottle and poured both of us more wine.

  “And you think this goes beyond the general fear by wizards of becoming involved in religion,” he said, “where all the shortcomings of wizardry will be revealed?”

  “I’m not sure how seriously to take it,” I answered, relieved to have distracted him from his original question and deliberately ignoring the second half of this statement. “And then your bishop tried to suggest that the wizards are trying to get a toehold in all the cathedral cities. Do you know where he got that idea?”

  The dean shook his head without answering.

  “And did you know that Prince Lucas, Prince Vincent, the royal chaplain of Yurt, and apparently a lot of other people are talking about a wizardly plot to dominate the aristocracy?”

  Joachim cocked an eyebrow. “The chaplain accused you to your face of this plot?”

  “Forgive me,” I said, “but I don’t like that young chaplain. He gets on my nerves somehow—maybe because he’s so unlike you.”

  “I didn’t appoint him,” said Joachim, “but I had thought you’d be pleased to have someone else at court who enjoys a hearty laugh.”

  “Lots of people in Yurt already enjoy a good laugh,” I said, “from the queen and Paul down to the stable boys. But I wouldn’t call the chaplain’s laugh ‘hearty.’ This may sound odd coming from a wizard, but I like to see a chaplain with more moral depth.” What I would really have liked, though I knew it was impossible, was to see Joachim back in Yurt again.

  The dean looked at me with raised eyebrows, considering. “I am afraid that too many seminary students these days do use the knowledge that the world is God’s creation as an excuse to enjoy it too fully, without considering their ultimate responsibility to save human souls. It would certainly be possible to give the royal court of Yurt a different chaplain, but I would not do so without a better reason than personal antipathy from the Royal Wizard.”

  But then, I thought, I wasn’t Royal Wizard of Yurt anymore. “Paul thinks he has an impure mind.”

  Joachim looked alarmed. “What does that mean?”

  “I think it means that Paul distrusts the discussions the Lady Maria has with him.”

  “I believe the Lady Maria can defend herself from impure thoughts very well,” said Joachim. If he was making a joke he looked perfectly sober. “Perhaps you should discuss this wizardly ‘plot’ with Prince Lucas,” he continued, “while you are both here in Caelrhon.”

  “He won’t want to talk to me. He almost attacked me today.”

  “Maybe some way could be arranged for the two of you to spend time together,” said the dean thoughtfully.

  I took a sip of wine and leaned back in my chair. “Did you ever think,” I said, changing the topic abruptly, “that it might be nice to give all this up?”

  “Give what up?”

  “These responsibilities. I know you feel the burden even more than I do. We’re supposed to be responsible for the young wizards and the young priests, for organizing and carrying out the important functions of our institutions, but after a while who wants the aggravation?”

  “What are you suggesting we do instead?”

  “I think the Romneys have the right idea,” I said, pushing my glass forward for more wine. “When they get tired of being in the same place too long, they leave. I know they’re rumored not to be Christians, so you might not want to travel with them, but we could have our own caravan, drawn by our own pony.”

  “And what would we and our pony do?” asked Joachim. A faint smile hovered near his lips.

  “We could go from town to town, see all of the different cities and castles—and even the pilgrimage churches—in the western kingdoms, and when we had finished with those we could start on the eastern kingdoms.”

  “What would we live on?”

  “I could do magic tricks, and you could work a few simple miracles, and people would pay us.”

  Joachim poured out the last of the wine. “You realize of course,” he said, “that that’s your most inappropriate suggestion yet.” But the smile had reached his eyes.

  PART FOUR - THEODORA

  I

  During the following weeks I saw Theodora every day. The first morning I strolled through the city for several hours, probing for wizards or magical creatures and seeing no one I knew except Prince Lucas, who turned deliberately away. Finally I spotted her coming out of a garment retailer’s. But after that I abandoned all pretense and we arranged our meetings.

  I did not telephone the school again. Zahlfast thought I should be home in Yurt, and I was unsure how to tell him I had resigned. And, at least so far, my presence did seem to be keeping monsters away from Caelrhon. And it was easy to find excuses to stay in the city now that I had met Theodora.

  We usually got together late in the afternoon, when the light was poorer for close hand-sewing. After a few hours every morning of searching in an increasingly desultory way for a powerful wizard I did not particularly want to find, or of going through my spells once again in a fruitless search for one that might work against monsters, I was gladder each day to see her. Strolling in the fresh air outside the city walls or sitting in the grass, thick with wildflowers, where the Romneys had camped, Theodora and I discussed magic. She explained fire magic to me, and I taught her some of the magic of light and air.

  “You call it the Hidden Language?” she asked. “My mother simply called it the language of magic. She said it had no grammar, only words and phrases to be memorized, but I’ve long suspected it must have an internal logic of its own. Otherwise, you couldn’t create new spells.”

  I felt vaguely uneasy teaching magic to a witch. The Master of the wizards’ school, I suspected, would disapprove. I rationalized that I was no longer Royal Wizard of Yurt, and that I would not want to return to the school either if they persisted in their belief that I would be good at teaching in the technical division, and thus I was not bound by the practices of institutionalized magic. Besides, this was not some witch in the abstract: this was Theodora.

  The grass grew so tall around us that someone else would have spotted us and stepped on us at the same time. She sat with her legs tucked demurely under her while I sprawled back on my elbows, looking up at her. The breeze blew tendrils of hair across her face, half obscuring it. “And have you created any new spells of your own?” I asked.

  “Just one that works reliably.” She snapped her fingers and said the two words to light a flame, but this one appeared not on the ground but in the air in front of her. It died out of course almost immediately, but another appeared just above it, then another, until a string of twenty tiny flames, each lasting only an instant, had climbed an arc up into the afternoon sky.

  “So that’s what you were doing up on the cathedral scaffolding?” I asked casually.

  Theodora’s dimple appeared. “I knew you were goi
ng to ask me about that sooner or later. The scaffolding presented a much better challenge than anything else in the city—and since my mother and I always embroidered for the cathedral, I felt secure there. I know the priests disapprove of magic, but as the tower wasn’t consecrated yet I thought they couldn’t object.”

  “They did object.” Once again I sounded accusatory. At least so far she had not seemed offended.

  She looked down at me and smiled. “That’s what the Romneys guessed. Isn’t that why the mayor sent for a wizard, even before the monster appeared, to find the source of the lights?”

  “But the mayor didn’t send for me.” For reasons not entirely clear to me, I had not yet told either the dean nor Theodora about the other.

  She plucked a long stalk of grass and tickled my nose with it. “The Romneys always worried about me,” she said. “They said I couldn’t be a wizard because I didn’t know how to fly. They never told me I couldn’t be a wizard because I was a woman. I still don’t understand why you don’t let women into your school.”

  This topic had come up more than once. Since the more I knew her the less I agreed with the school’s policy, it was hard to be convincing in my answers. “I’ve already told you,” I attempted, “that some of the wizards have been contemplating for years whether and how the policy ought to be modified.”

  “Then they ought to have been able to work it out by now.”

  Theodora learned so quickly, and she had so much magic of her own to teach me, that I kept finding myself thinking of her as an equal. Even without what I would consider proper training, she learned faster than most of the wizardry students. I had only rarely in the last twenty years felt I was meeting someone else’s mind on an equal level in the area of magic. Joachim was my friend, but our areas of expertise were so different we were sometimes strangers to each other, and even the teachers at the wizards’ school had to work to remember I was no longer their pupil.