C. Brittain - A Bad Spell in Yurt

Joachim looked at me gravely a moment, then slowly started to smile. “You’re right this time; but I may have difficulty explaining this to the bishop.

“She had worked much of it out for herself already,” he continued after a brief pause. “So when I sent her a message to come to my room, she had a good guess what I was going to say. She seemed to have the strangest idea, however, of how to act in such a situation. She came in as though she were a naughty schoolgirl caught in some mischief.”

I could have told her this would never work with Joachim. It wouldn’t even work with me.

“But it all seemed to be a facade, behind which she was genuinely terrified and repentant at what she had done. Even though she kept referring to the demon as a ‘little magic man,’ she realized how close she had come to damning her soul for eternity. She agreed at once when I explained to her that a few years of vain youth and beauty in this world could never be worth an eternity in hell. She had also had a chance to realize that asking to ‘see a dragon’ was not the innocuous request she had originally imagined.

“In fact,” continued Joachim, looking somewhat uncomfortable, “once she stopped pretending she thought of it as a naughty joke gone wrong, she broke down and sobbed. I was trying to impress on her the need to beg God’s forgiveness, and she kept on asking if I thought you would ever forgive her.”

“I hope you told her I would.”

“I told her that you were not angry with her personally, that you had been willing to die to save both her and the kingdom because you were following the high purposes of God.”

Joachim’s black eyes were completely sober, and I began to wonder uneasily if he was going to start treating me with the awe and reserve that everyone else in the castle seemed to be demonstrating. Of course, in his case it was harder to tell. But it was no use coming back from the dead if I then spent the next two hundred years being treated like some saint. In the next few days, I would have to think of something outrageous to do to remind everyone that it was, after all, only me.

“I did warn her very sternly against further experiments with pentagrams.”

“I’m sure you did,” I said, “and I’m sure you imposed some suitable penance on her. You don’t need to tell me about that-that really should be a matter kept secret between a sinner and her priest.” I changed the subject abruptly because I did not want to talk about the Lady Maria anymore; I was just glad that he had spoken with her, so I didn’t have to. “But tell me, Joachim, how do you do it?”

He lifted his eyebrows at me.

“First you saved the king’s life and then you saved mine. I want to know how you do it. It can’t be a very common ability. Everybody seems in awe of me for being alive, whereas they really ought to be in awe of you for having worked a miracle.”

“Prayer is available to anyone,” he said, more soberly than ever, “who calls on God with a contrite heart. I already told you that the saints had pity and mercy on you for your sacrifice. It had nothing to do with me.”

I considered suggesting that in that case maybe I had been sent back to this world because neither heaven nor hell wanted me in the next, but decided not to. Joachim had limits.

He was still looking at me, as though in assessment. “You yourself don’t seem to be taking spiritual issues as seriously as one might expect.”

I was glad I had not spoken. “But I am serious,” I assured him, which was true. “It’s just that I’m joyful as well. Isn’t someone who’s come back from the dead allowed to be joyful?”

Joachim took a slow, deep breath. He had leaned his chin on his hand, so I couldn’t see his mouth, but I could swear from his eyes that he was smiling.

Gwen came in at that point to get Joachim’s breakfast tray, and she gave a little jump, as though remembering the last time she had found us together like this.

“It’s all right, Gwen,” I reassured her. “Neither of us is going anywhere.” She rushed back out, clutching the tray, without a word.

Since we had been interrupted anyway, I stood up to thank Joachim again and to go back to my chambers. I was still weak, and my head was beginning to ache badly. But I wanted to go to lunch with everyone else today-the cook had been sending very small meals to my room, apparently not realizing that someone who has been miraculously restored to life needs to eat a lot, and she hadn’t even given me any Christmas cookies. A little nap before lunch, I thought, was just what I needed.

But as I reached for the handle to my chambers, I felt a hand on my arm and turned around to face the duchess. “Can I come in for a moment?”

“Well, my lady, I was just going to lie down-”

“I won’t keep you a minute,” she said, stepping inside before I could protest further. I wondered what had become of awe and respect just when I needed them. “But I’m about to go home, and I couldn’t leave without finding out what really happened.”

I noticed then that she was dressed for travel, in tall boots and a heavy cloak, and as she shut the door behind her I could see the stable boys starting to bring out the horses.

“If I leave now, I can celebrate Epiphany comfortably at home,” she said. “The household here doesn’t need any more people underfoot, now that the holidays are almost over and you’re going to start repairs to the castle. Besides, my own staff will be returning from vacation, and I need to be there to explain to my cook why she can’t find anything in her own kitchen and why she has five hundred pounds of boar that need immediate processing.”

I stretched out on my bed and she sat beside me. “I gather you suggested to the others,” I said, “that the demon had decided on its own to come live in our cellars. Thank you for doing so; I wouldn’t want everybody to start suspecting each other of black magic.”

“But that’s why I had to talk to you,” she said. “You told me that someone here had summoned a demon, and I’ve been wild with curiosity the last three days trying to work out who it could be.”

I hesitated. Having decided that I would have to do my best from this point on to keep my soul pure, I didn’t want to start lying. On the other hand, I did not want to give away the fact that the Lady Maria had heedlessly sold her soul without even realizing she was doing so. Repenting of her actions would be painful enough to her, without feeling that everyone in the castle knew her for a sinner and a fool. I was glad again that Joachim had spoken to her, instead of I.

“I talked to your chaplain right away, of course,” she continued, “just after he’d brought you back from the cellars. I wanted to be sure that he knew someone here had been working with a demon. He gave me the strangest look-he’s so dour, you can’t tell half the time what he’s thinking.”

I let this slur on Joachim pass without comment.

“All he’d say was that the person who had summoned the demon had done so unintentionally, without evil purpose, and that that person’s soul was now safe. So I’ve had to work it out for myself. I remembered that King Haimeric first became ill within a year of his marriage, about the same time his old chaplain died. So my first thought was that the new royal chaplain must have been responsible. But then I realized that since he’d been able first to heal the king and then bring you back to life, he couldn’t possibly be in league with the devil.”

I was interested to see how the duchess’s reasoning had paralleled my own. It had taken her much less time than it had taken me, but then she had had the advantage of knowing from the beginning that there was a demon involved.