C. Brittain - The Witch, the Cathedral

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.

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.

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.