C. Brittain - The Witch, the Cathedral

Gwennie shook her head hard. “Not me! I’ll never be a cook. I’ve decided I’m best at organizing and keeping track of things. I’m going to be constable of Yurt some day, like my father.”

“Do you think people will approve of a woman constable?” I asked, amused.

“Well, Paul approves,” she said proudly, adding, “Prince Paul, that is,” after a very brief pause. She flushed a little and looked away as I considered her thoughtfully. She and Paul were nearly the same age and had been childhood playmates, but I had assumed the prince and the cook’s daughter had drifted apart in the last ten years.

“I want to tell you, Wizard,” she said hastily as though wanting to change the subject, “that the staff all support you.” She unlocked the storeroom and showed me where she wanted the ledgers. “ We don’t think that wizards have to be stopped before they wrest control from the aristocrats. After all, we’ve known you for years, and you’d never be able to take power from anybody!”

She realized at the last minute that this was not coming out the way she intended and started to blush again. I excused myself before she could become any more embarrassed. But as I crossed the courtyard toward the main gates I decided I had better find out more of what Vincent seemed to have been telling the court.

On the grass beyond the moat a table was set up. The young chaplain and the Lady Maria sat in the sun, playing chess.

“Checkmate!” cried the Lady Maria in delight as I came toward them. If she was indeed moonstruck by the chaplain, as Paul had suggested, it wasn’t stopping her from beating him. “You moved right into my trap!” The chaplain gave me a complacent smile over her head as though to suggest that he and I both knew he had deliberately let her win. He didn’t fool me for a minute.

“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!”