C. Brittain - The Witch, the Cathedral

“I know,” he said regretfully. “I still don’t understand why she sold him. But then,” with a grin, “I’ve never liked black horses that well anyway.” Paul kicked his horse to a faster pace. He was bareheaded, and the wind swirled his hair. When he was young his hair had been so blond it was almost white, and even now it formed a golden halo around his head.

We rode for a mile, more rapidly than I would have liked but not as rapidly as I had feared, down the hill from the castle and then along a deep tree-shaded lane by the meadows. Larks soared over the long grass, and in the distance I could see people starting to harvest the hay.

Paul tied his reins to a branch and threw himself down on the grassy verge. “No one will overhear us,” he said, intense once again.

I reminded myself as I eased out of the saddle that I couldn’t treat him like a boy. Legally he would be of age in another three months, and with his mother’s fire and his father’s sweetness of temperament he would be a formidable king. If I let his boyish enthusiasm for horses remind me too strongly that I had given him horsy-rides on my knee not long ago, I was never going to have his confidence. “What’s bothering you?” I asked, seating myself beside him. “Is it your mother’s remarriage?”

“Yes,” he said gloomily, lying down with his hands under his head. “It wasn’t hard to guess, was it?” He jerked back up to a sitting position. “How can she do it? Why would she want to marry anyone, after Father? If she has to marry somebody, why does it have to be Prince Vincent?”

Since I had been asking myself exactly these questions, I found it difficult to answer.

Paul was now examining one of his riding boots, rubbing his thumb on a scrape. “I even tried talking to Aunt Maria,” he said. “If Mother remarries it will affect the entire kingdom.” He shifted his attention to the other boot. “But she just said something foolish about how a woman like her deserves her happiness.”

As I had been about to say something similar, I was glad I had not spoken. Instead I asked, “What are you afraid will happen to the kingdom?”

“Vincent will move here,” said Paul from the depths of despair, “and nothing will ever be the same again.”

“You mean your mother isn’t planning to leave Yurt?” I asked, trying with only moderate success to keep the excitement out of my voice.

“Why should she?” said Paul, ignoring my tone if he even heard it. “She’s a queen, and back home in his kingdom he’s just the young prince. He’ll come here and change everything.”

“But there’s a limit to what he’ll be able to do. After all, you’re going to be king, not he.”

“I don’t mean he’s going to introduce bad laws or anything,” Paul said in irritation. “But we’ve been so happy and comfortable here, and now everything will be different.”

I observed with interest that nostalgia was perfectly possible even for someone thirty years younger than I. The afternoon breeze was a caress. The thought that the queen would not be leaving was so cheering that it was hard to be properly sympathetic.

“So what can we do?” He looked straight at me for the first time, waiting for an answer. He had the same brilliant green eyes as his mother.

Short of assassinating Prince Vincent I had no good suggestions. I was still unable to speak reassuringly of how the marriage was really best for the queen, especially since this was apparently what everybody else had been telling him. “I honestly don’t know, Paul. I was just as upset as you are when I found out.”

“So that’s all we can do, be upset together?”

“And learn to live with it. People can learn to live with a surprising number of problems. Yurt has gone on without your father, though when he died I never thought it would.”

Six winters ago, I reminded myself, was far more recent to me than it was to Paul. He did not find my comment reassuring. “Mother’s certainly recovered nicely from her loss,” he grumbled. “You would have thought at her age she’d be much too old for love.”

Since I knew no good way to contradict this foolish idea without also pointing out that I thought eighteen was much too young to know anything about love, I said nothing.

“And this Vincent is younger than she is by at least five years; she won’t tell me exactly. I think he’s deceiving her terribly. She goes around telling people she feels like a girl again, while it’s clear that his only interest in an old woman is to get hold of her kingdom.”

I had to smile at this, but since Paul had rolled over onto his stomach he fortunately didn’t see me. I would have been in love with the queen even if I had been eighteen and she was forty-three. “Do you know when they’re planning the wedding?” I asked with remarkable calmness.

“Not yet-I guess there’s still hope she’ll discover her mistake before it’s too late. She told me she didn’t even want to start plans for the wedding until after I come of age, and the dean of the cathedral sent her a note that if she wanted to get married there she would have to reserve the church six months ahead of time. And she said she didn’t want to get married during the winter.”

So they might not be getting married for close to a year. I agreed silently with Paul; the longer the wedding was put off, the more likely that she would have the sense not to go through with it.

He changed the subject abruptly, turning toward me with arms wrapped around one knee. “So what have you been doing the last few months in the wizards’ school?”

“I ended up teaching improvisational magic to technical wizardry students. In spite of all the formulas and books we have, you still have to be able to create your own spells-and to know when to try something unusual. Of course,” I added with a chuckle, “sometimes the unusual is not a good idea.” I went on to tell him about the three drunk newts.

Paul laughed, pulling up and twisting together blades of grass. “I think I’ll go study at the wizards’ school,” he said thoughtfully.

This made me sit up sharply. “Do you mean that?”

He looked at me with surprise. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

“No, but- Usually members of the aristocracy don’t become wizards. The training is too long and too hard and the rewards too negligible in comparison to aristocratic rule.”

“But aristocrats become priests sometimes.”

“Well, yes, but I’ve never heard of a king doing so. And there are a lot more priests than there are wizards. I assume a lot of men have a religious calling or something.”

“So would I be the only king at the wizards’ school?”

“That’s right,” I said, hoping desperately he was just casting around in his mind for an alternative to living with Vincent.

“What is it, an eight-year program?” he asked, positioning a blade of grass between his thumbs. He blew on it and seemed pleased to produce a high, blatting tone. “Maybe you could just teach me a little magic here.”

“I could certainly teach you a few simple spells,” I said, trying to hide my relief. I liked Paul tremendously, but I could not imagine him in the wizards’ school-nor imagine Yurt abandoned by its new king. “Real wizardry training,” I went on, “has almost all taken place at the school for the last century and a half. There are thousands of aristocratic courts in the western kingdoms and probably hundreds of seminaries, but only one wizards’ school. Since the old apprentice system died out, everyone’s been trained the same, and most of us know each other. But there are still a number of people, not wizards, who know the odd spell or two. Your father tried to learn to fly once though he never got very far. And your Great-aunt Maria wanted me to teach her wizardry; her problem was that she got bored with the first-grammar of the Hidden Language.”