The Witch & the Cathedral Read online

  “Did Prince Paul go hunting with the others?” I asked.

  “He rode out by himself,” said the Lady Maria. “He took his new horse and told his mother she wouldn’t be able to keep up with him!”

  The chaplain was busily putting the chess pieces back in the box, clearly in no mood for another game.

  I leaned on the back of the Lady Maria’s chair and smiled down at her. “The chaplain tells me you’re opposed to the queen’s marriage yourself, even though you did tell Paul a woman like her deserves her happiness. I would have thought you’d love it: after else, who else could plan the wedding but you?”

  “Surely, as I told you the other night, in the case of a widow—” the chaplain began, but I ignored him.

  “Well,” Maria began, confused now and not wanting to meet my eyes, “I did hope to reassure the boy. And normally I would love planning the queen’s wedding. You never saw anything as beautiful as her first one, so many years ago! And although of course she wouldn’t wear a white dress for her second nuptials, I had thought that pink, both for her dress and for her bouquet, or maybe light blue—”

  The chaplain cleared his throat meaningfully.

  “But in the last few weeks I have come to think about it differently,” Maria continued resolutely. “The chaplain has made it clear to me that, at a certain age, only a heavenly spouse will do.”

  “Are you going to join the Nunnery of Yurt, then, my lady?” I asked in mock surprise.

  “Of course not!” she replied in real surprise. “I’ve never married—at least not yet!—so it wouldn’t apply in my case.”

  I moved in rapidly with my real question. “Aren’t you worried that if Vincent doesn’t marry the queen, there will be no one here to protect Yurt against the conspiracy of the wizards’ school?”

  Her brow crinkled in distress and her blue eyes widened. “When I mentioned that— When I repeated what Vincent had told us— I hope you realize, Wizard, I never meant you!”

  “Yes, yes, I realize that now,” I said in reassurance. No question then that the prince of Caelrhon was behind this oblique attack on wizardry, and not the priests as the school had thought. Regretfully, I gave up my suspicions of the chaplain. I would have to telephone the school and also have a long chat with Vincent; my dislike for him now felt entirely justified.

  But would Zahlfast have been so insistent that priests were seeking to destroy wizardry only on the basis of some foolish statements made by the younger son of the king of Caelrhon?

  I looked up to see someone riding toward us. It was Paul. “Back so soon?” I asked.

  His expression was radiant, almost as though he had had a religious vision. The stallion snorted and tossed his head as Paul reined in and dismounted.

  “I’m almost frightened of him,” he said. “I’ve never seen a horse this good. Walk with me; I want to cool him down.”

  I nodded to the Lady Maria and the chaplain; I wasn’t sure Paul even realized they were there. Maria, recovering quickly from her distress, said to the chaplain, “Don’t tell me you put the chess pieces away already. We still have time for another game before lunch.”

  “He’s as fast as the wind,” said Paul, “probably faster. He jumps like a dream—and I really mean a dream, one of those where you feel yourself floating effortlessly through the air.”

  I nodded, knowing what he meant. I still intermittently hoped, usually when half asleep, that flying could be like that instead of a lot of hard work.

  “I know he’d be willing to run all day—look at him now, still ready to go. But he never fights the bit, takes commands almost before I give them. I can’t do any more now.”

  We continued our circuit in silence for a moment. Paul was breathing much harder than the horse.

  “Do you remember me asking about fairyland?” he said suddenly. “It was years ago. My nurse told me about a place where you could go and see the fairies, and I asked you how to get there.”

  “And what did I say?”

  “You gave me a very good answer. You said that there was indeed a land of wild magic thousands of miles away, but that if I wanted fairyland, the real fairyland where lights glitter, the trees are covered with gold and flowers, and dreams come true, I would have to find it here in Yurt.”

  I couldn’t answer, being much too embarrassed that I had ever been that sententious.

  “When I was young, of course,” Paul continued, “I took your advice literally. I kept on peeking out my window at night, hoping to see the fairy lights, and when I walked in the woods I went quietly so that I might surprise them. Then as I got older, I thought I understood what you really meant. But now Vincent gave me this stallion, and it’s as though I finally found fairyland after all. This horse is like something I looked for when I was six, that I’d long since realized was only a metaphor, but suddenly it’s here.”

  I glanced sideways at his shining eyes, decided it would be completely inadequate to agree that this was indeed a fine stallion, and remained silent.

  We walked on slowly for another minute, then Paul turned toward me, really looking at me for the first time this morning. “You know what I like about you, Wizard?” he said with a grin. “You’re the best person to talk to I’ve ever known.”

  “I’m sorry you never had more boys your own age here,” I said. “Then you might have had more people to talk to.” If this stallion stepped in a rabbit hole and broke its leg, Paul might never recover.

  “Oh, I’ve missed them sometimes,” said Paul. “But I know why it’s been like this. ‘Only a count’s or duke’s son is fit to be raised with a future king,’ as I’ve heard often enough. Neither of Yurt’s counts had sons old enough to start knighthood training with me, and the duchess only has daughters. I guess I could have gone to live at the royal court of a larger kingdom, but I never wanted to and Mother didn’t want me to go, especially after Father died. Besides, first I had my nurse to talk to, then my tutor, and all the time you!”

  I felt depressed at this enormous responsibility I had apparently had without even realizing it. We finished circling the castle and returned to the chess players by the gate. The Lady Maria had already captured several of the chaplain’s pawns and both his bishops.

  The stallion shook his head, ringing the bells on the bridle. Paul laughed suddenly. “He knows he’s a real horse, not just a vision, and he knows he can run a lot farther today!” I gave the prince a boost, and he scrambled up into the saddle and sat for a moment, silhouetted above me against the sky. “I’ll be back later!”

  He touched his heels to the stallion’s flanks and was off, down the field and across the meadows, sailing effortlessly over the hedges until horse and rider disappeared into the distance.

  V

  I was waiting by the gates at the end of the afternoon when Vincent and the queen returned from hawking. Paul had finally come in an hour earlier, looking transformed, as though beyond happiness. It was a relief in a way to see that the engaged couple were merely extremely happy.

  “You missed some good hunting,” said Vincent, swinging down from the castle gelding he had been riding, the game bag in his hand. “We’ll have geese for dinner tomorrow. You know,” he added to the queen with a smile, “I can’t even begin to tell you how much better it is to be here than at home.”

  “How nice,” I said, not interested either in Vincent or in geese. “My lady,” to the queen, “I need to talk to you. Now. It’s about Paul.”

  “Of course,” she said, naturally surprised. “Give me ten minutes.”

  While I waited for her I wondered what I was actually going to tell her, since I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to speak coherently. I intended to have a long talk with Vincent tomorrow, so I need not bother her yet with his perverse views of wizardry. But I did feel a need to warn her that Paul had been bewitched by a horse, but there was also much more. What I really wanted to say was that she couldn’t marry Vincent under any circumstances but that I couldn’t explain why.
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br />   The queen came back out, still wearing her riding habit. “Can we go somewhere to speak privately?” I asked.

  A vision of being invited to her personal chambers flashed through my mind, but instead she said, “I’ve been riding all day and feel a little stiff. Let’s go for a walk until dinner.”

  She went first, holding the narrow train of her habit looped over one arm, the polished leather of her boots brushing through the sun-warmed grass. She sang softly as she walked, and our shadows stretched out long behind us. I had a new vision, of sinking into the grass with her in my arms, but while it was fairly easy to imagine myself kissing her, it was much harder to imagine her kissing me back.

  She paused half a mile from the castle. Swallows swooped across the meadow, passing close to us as they dove for insects. Although the sun was near the horizon the sky was still fully blue, and the day seemed caught in a never-ending pause between afternoon and evening.

  “What did you need to talk to me about?”

  “Paul doesn’t want you to marry Vincent,” I said, much more abruptly than I had intended.

  She looked thoughtfully out across the countryside and started slowly walking again. I strolled beside her. “I know he doesn’t,” she said after a minute. “It’s not surprising—at seventeen, he only thinks of me as his mother, not as a woman. He’s had a happy youth in Yurt, and he distrusts anything that might interfere with that. But there will be many changes, most of them good, once he comes of age, so my marriage will seem less threatening. And after our whirlwind wooing, we may want to wait a few months to marry!”

  A suspicious thought flashed through my mind, that Vincent had no intention of marrying the queen, that he had wooed her only because, as a welcome visitor to Yurt, he now had the opportunity to carry out some nefarious plan of his own. I found this thought so appealing that I wished I could believe it.

  “So I hope that Paul will become reconciled to the idea,” the queen continued. “I wouldn’t want to marry in the face of his opposition. But,” looking up with a smile, “don’t you think he may already be changing his mind?”

  “The roan stallion seems certainly to have been well thought out as a means to reconcile him to Vincent.”

  She laughed. “You make it sound like some sort of conspiracy. I’d had no idea Vincent was going to give him that horse, although it was no secret that that’s what Paul wanted—I had been hoping to find him a suitable stallion myself for his birthday. I think it shows a real sweetness on Vincent’s part!”

  I actually agreed, but I wasn’t about to say so. “In fact I’m rather worried about Paul’s reaction to that horse. He not only likes it, he loves, he adores it. I think at the moment it means more to him than any of us do, or even the kingdom of Yurt.”

  She laughed again. “It’s the novelty. You sound as though you thought this attitude would continue. I’m not worried.”

  I looked at her profile as we continued walking. She had very faint lines at the corners of her mouth, the result of years of smiling. The air around us was fragrant with mown grass and moist earth.

  For nineteen years I had known the queen, and I had been in love with her since the first moment I saw her, but in some way I felt I hardly understood her. If I did know her, I thought, or if she really knew me, I would be able to explain better my concern about Paul.

  But then I wasn’t entirely sure myself what was worrying me. She was right, of course; a boy could become quickly and entirely enthralled with the horse of his dreams without losing track of all else in his life.

  Paul was not my principal concern and never had been. “My lady, I don’t want you to marry Vincent either.”

  She stopped and turned toward me. Her emerald eyes danced with amusement—I wondered suddenly what Vincent had told her of his mock attack on me. “If you were still worrying that a king’s youngest son is not worthy of a queen, or whatever you were trying to tell me, I hope that seeing him here has cleared up your concerns.”

  “It’s not that,” I said, amazed at my own audacity. “I couldn’t bear to see you married to someone else.”

  “Someone other than King Haimeric?” she asked, looking at me with a faint, puzzled frown.

  Now that I had started I couldn’t stop. “Someone other than me.”

  All the laughter went out of her face. For a horrible moment I feared she would recoil in disgust, but her only expression was one of distress. She slowly started walking again, looking not at where she was going but at me. Her eyes went over my face as though she had never seen it before.

  “I thought wizards never married,” she said as though from a considerable distance.

  “They don’t. I don’t care. I’d give up wizardry for you.”

  “But you’re a very good wizard.”

  I was about to protest, to tell her that I hadn’t even known how to make myself completely invisible until this morning, then realized that she was trying to shift the conversation. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I’ve loved you since the first day I met you. I loved the old king as well, and as long as I could serve you both, and as long as you were caught up in his memory, I could say nothing. But now I find you are ready to love again and I have to speak.”

  Her foot caught on a tussock of grass, and she stumbled and almost fell. I caught her by the elbow and steadied her just in time. Once I touched her I couldn’t pull my hand back again. Her eyes were turned away, but the curve of her cheekbone was only inches from my face. I moved my hands to her shoulders, drawing her toward me. I could feel her shoulder blades, her rib cage through her clothes. Someone’s heart was pounding terribly loudly; it might have been mine.

  She kept her face down so I couldn’t find her lips. But I could hear her voice, faint against my shoulder. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  I let go of her as though she were made of fire. I turned abruptly away, feeling my face go scarlet. It was growing dark at last; the sun hesitated on the horizon but would be gone in a moment. “Forgive me, my lady,” I managed to gasp. “I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry. Please don’t think too ill of me. I would never have forced you.”

  She did not reply. Her breathing was broken, and in a moment I made myself turn toward her again. She had her hands over her face, and I thought I could see tears running between her fingers. I stifled the impulse to take her in my arms and comfort her and instead sat down in the damp grass.

  In a minute she sat down too, a few feet away. I looked away. “I shall leave Yurt, of course,” I said to the darkening sky. “I think they’d like to have me stay permanently at the wizards’ school as an assistant. It would be a good position, and I could make sure that you and Paul got a competent new Royal Wizard.” I noticed with detachment that the swallows had all gone for the night.

  “I never knew!” the queen burst out suddenly, as though she had not heard me. “I’ve lived beside you, what is it, close to twenty years, since before Paul was born, and I never knew! And all the time I thought I understood you. Maybe I don’t understand anyone in Yurt.”

  “Maybe no one fully understands anyone else—we may not even understand ourselves.”

  Fortunately she also did not seem to hear this highly inadequate platitude. “I think I thought of you as I did the chaplain,” she went on, her voice somewhat steadier, “someone serving a function, someone I liked and appreciated, but never someone I thought of as a man. I must have been so cruel to you, and I never even knew it! Do you think you could ever forgive me?”

  “There is nothing to forgive,” I said stiffly, looking out across the twilight landscape. “The fault is entirely on my side, for presuming where I had no right to presume. Unless—” I had thought I had frightened her with the impetuosity of my embrace, but she was now sitting next to me with no suggestion of fear. For two seconds I allowed myself to hope that she had been frightened not of me but of herself, that she had been about to give way to passion. “Unless you could love me instead of Vincent.”

  Whe
n she did not answer, I turned slowly to look toward her. She shook her head hard, her hands over her face again.

  “Do you truly love him, my lady?” I asked gently.

  This time she nodded.

  “And he loves you?”

  “I know he does.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  She wiped the tears from her cheek with an almost angry gesture. “Because I am terribly sorry to have hurt you!”

  I had imagined so many times over the years telling the queen I loved her that our conversation seemed almost unreal. But I knew I was not imagining this. If I had been, it wouldn’t have been going this badly.

  Neither of us spoke for several minutes. Then she struggled to her feet. I stood up as well. Her face now seemed composed but the smile that almost always lurked near her lips was gone. It did not seem worth asking her again if she might change her mind.

  She turned toward me and slowly reached out both hands, first to touch my beard and then to cup my face. It was rapidly becoming dark, but her emerald eyes seemed to glow at me. With one finger I delicately traced the line of her jaw.

  I waited for her to speak, but when she did not, I finally said, “I hope you realize, my lady, that in a minute I’m going to kiss you.”

  “I owe you a kiss, at least,” she said and tilted back her head.

  Though I told myself that I would not take a kiss given only because it was owed, I found myself kissing her before this thought had had time to take effect. With one arm around her shoulders and the other hand still lightly touching her cheek, I kissed her for what seemed about half an hour. She kept her hands to her sides and her body drawn back an inch from mine.

  She turned her head away suddenly. I let her go and shivered, immediately feeling extremely cold. In a moment I would start crying myself.

  “We should get back to the castle,” she said in a calm, almost flat voice. “We’re terribly late for dinner.”

  We turned together and started stumbling back across the fields. The yellow lights of the castle shone at us from narrow windows a mile away.