C. Brittain - Daughter of Magic

“A dog ?”

“It belonged to a boy who lives down in the artisans’ quarter, near the river-that is where this man seems to make his headquarters.”

That was where Theodora and Antonia lived. Faint unease prickled the hairs on the back of my neck.

“It had slipped its leash and run right under the wheel of a cart. The carter was very sorry, of course, but there was nothing he could have done. The boy picked up the dog’s body-some say its ribs were crushed, some that it was already dead. But as the boy, sobbing, was carrying his dog home, this man stopped him, very kindly. He took the dog from him, cradled it in his own arms a minute-scores of people claim to have been eyewitnesses-and returned it to the boy alive, unharmed and barking.”

I shook my head hard. “That’s not magic. Magic’s never had any control over the earth’s natural cycle of life and death. We can prolong life but not restore it when it’s gone.”

“Yes,” said the bishop quietly. “For that you need the supernatural, the power of the saints-or of a demon.”

I took a breath and released it slowly. This had suddenly become much more serious. I had imagined someone who had picked up a few scraps of the Hidden Language somewhere, trying to make a living by producing rather pathetic illusions and passing them off on the credulous as miracles. But this person had better be working real miracles. The other possibility was black magic, which meant he had sold his soul to the devil.

“Listen, Joachim,” I said. “There are a couple of very good demonology experts at the wizards’ school. I’ll telephone them-one will certainly want to come if this man is working with a demon. And that way-”

“No,” said the bishop, low and firm. “I told you, this man may be a saint. I don’t want him accused of black magic if he is, certainly not by one of the masters of your school, someone with no respect either for religion or the Church. That is why I sent for you. ” I had never had a whole lot of respect for the Church either, but I declined to mention this now. “I must find out where he draws his power, but I would not want him falsely accused-even martyred. The truly holy man,” and he paused for a second, looking past me out the window, “must always seem profoundly strange to those caught up in the petty affairs of the world.”

I considered for a moment, tapping my fingers on the bishop’s desk and making myself stop when I realized what I was doing. I had the spells, of course, to detect the supernatural, but those spells would not by themselves indicate if a supernatural power was demonic or divine. “You must have made inquiries,” I said. “What else have you found out?”

“I did more than make inquiries. I went down to the artisans’ quarter to see him.”

“And did you meet him? How old a man is he?”

“It was hard to tell his age,” said the bishop, his dark eyes distant. “He was tall and gaunt, with a face that looked as though he did not know how to smile.”

I didn’t like this at all. I had once met a demon taking human form, and this is just what he had looked like.

“That is,” the bishop continued, “until he did smile and his whole face was transformed by joy and beauty.”

Not a demon, then, I said as persuasively as I could to the cold sensation at the pit of my stomach. A demon would not smile joyously at meeting a bishop. That is, unless the bishop himself was sunk in sin-a possibility I thought I could safely disregard.

“I spoke with him for close to an hour,” Joachim went on. “He has something of an accent; at first I thought he might be a Romney but he’s not. He told me he was highly honored that I had come in person to see him, denied any particular merit of his own, and tried to dismiss the whole story of the little dog by saying that he expected the saints had heard the boy’s prayers.”

This sounded like what a genuine saint would do. I tried to be reassured.

“So I was reassured,” said Joachim. “He wouldn’t tell me his name, saying it was of no importance, and I did not press him. Instead we spoke of the love of God for all His sons and daughters, even fallen and sunken in sin as we are. He seemed to have thought very little before about religious precepts, considering he told me he had been brought up as a Christian, but he told me he would start attending services at the artisans’ church. In the days since I have heard he has become something a favorite of the children of the quarter.”

Including Antonia? I wondered in panic. “But something else happened or you wouldn’t have telephoned me.”

The bishop nodded and his enormous eyes found mine. “The children started bringing him, so the story goes, their broken toys, and he fixed them by passing his hand over them. One girl’s doll had fallen in the fire, and he restored the charred remains to new, and better than new.”

Could this possibly have been Antonia and her doll?

“This was not, of course, in the same category as restoring life, even the life of a dog. So I next began to wonder if perhaps he had told me truly, that the dog’s recovery was due to the boy’s prayers and not to this man’s own merits. He could be working magical illusions out of good if mistaken intentions, I thought, restoring the appearance alone of wholeness, knowing the children would be too confused or frightened to accuse him of fraud when their toys became broken again in their hands as the illusion faded. I even thought it might be some kind of magic different from your school magic-the Romneys’ spells, perhaps, or even witchcraft.”

“The Romneys don’t know any magic,” I objected. “And witchcraft- Have you been talking to Theodora?”

I must have sounded irritated, because the bishop gave a small smile. “I speak with her often, of course-she is, after all, one of the best seamstresses working for the cathedral-but I would not say anything to her about magic that would sound accusatory without speaking to you first.”

“So that’s why you called me? To ask me about witchcraft?”

“No. I called you, Daimbert, to keep me from possibly making a very serious mistake.”

Dustmotes danced in the horizontal light from the window. The sounds of the city were very far away as I waited for him to continue.

“Priests-and bishops-deal with good and evil every day,” he said after a long pause. “But rarely do we see absolute good or absolute evil. Instead we see gradations of gray, virtuous paths followed only because they are not very demanding at the moment, sins fallen into because of laziness or a desire for some temporary advantage rather than because of a soul turned to darkness. Young Celia imagines herself a priest moving in a halo of white light. In fact, priests move daily through petty and rather sordid sins: lust, selfishness, lies half-believed by the person who tells them, much of it caused by greed and boredom among the wealthy and by ignorance and misery among the poor. It has come to this, Daimbert,” leaning toward me, “that when I find myself meeting a man who is either very holy or else working with a demon, who represents true good or real evil rather than a gray somewhere between, I no longer trust myself to tell the difference. That is why I called you-you are one of the very few whose judgment I trust.”

So far I had a king and a bishop trusting my judgment-now all I needed was to do so myself.

“I had almost persuaded myself,” Joachim went on, “that we were just very blessed in having a holy man here in Caelrhon, when the incident with the frog occurred.”

It had been over twenty-five years since that transformations practical exam. Most of the time now I was able to discuss frogs without any self-consciousness. But the bishop’s use of the term “incident with the frog” brought back all the embarrassment of that long-ago disaster. Even after all this time, I had never worked myself up to telling him about it.