The Prince of Wales gave us a bristly smile.
As we climbed the stairs toward the laboratories, I wondered what the Princess Alexandra would think; but Edward’s wife, I suppose, must have inured herself to his infidelities by now, of which this was far from the most egregious.
He bent over her drawn form, her lips almost blue with the slowness of her circulation, her cheeks lacking the blush of life but somehow still alive, her shorn hair now reshaped into a more attractive coiffure than we had first given her, there in the Cheviot Hills. He bent his stout waist, planted one massive hand to the side of her head and, with surprising tenderness, kissed her through his beard.
She never stirred.
He looked down at her for a long moment, with three fingers of one hand inserted in the watch pocket of his vest. “Poor darling,” he said. Then after a moment he turned back to us. “Not much fun if they don’t kiss back, eh, lads?”
When I told de Laurency we were to leave Meg with Sir James and return to Alcroft, we had a bit of a tiff. He didn’t want to leave her; I believe he felt he could protect her better than the RTS — which, to my certain knowledge, has stronger magical wards than anything in Great Britain with the possible exception of the Grand Fleet’s headquarters at Scapa Flow. Eventually, he stomped off into an increasingly bitter night, not reconciled to the decision yet knowing it was mine to make.
He met me the following morning at Paddington Station, reeking of Irish whiskey; I imagine he was out with his radical friends, a passel of socialist trash. Cambridge men mostly, thank God, though we get our share at Oxford. Ten minutes out of the station, he opened the window to vomit down the side of the train, admitting quite a quantity of ash and cinders into the car. Filthy things, trains. He slept for a time thereafter.
Still hours out of Berwick, he awakened, and I told him of the visit by the Prince of Wales. He was appalled. “You let that vile lecher kiss her?” he demanded.
“You are referring to your future monarch, you realize.”
He snorted. “Lillie Langtry,” he said. “Lady Brooke. Mrs. George Keppel. And those are merely the ones that are public knowledge. The man is a scoundrel.”
“And was it not you who, scant weeks ago, was lecturing me on the morality of free love?”
He subsided slightly. “That’s different,” he said. “He married the Princess Alexandra, did he not? Does he owe her nothing?”
“I hadn’t heard that she objected to his, um, extracurricular activities,” I pointed out.
“Tcha,” went de Laurency. “Would you? In her position?”
“See here,” I said, “there was no harm done. And how could I have stopped the man in any event? He is the Prince of Wales.”
“Yes he is,” said de Laurency, “and God help England.”
As the train sped northward, I contemplated de Laurency’s words while he sat quietly on the opposite bench, reading poetry. Byron, of course.
Did I owe Janet, my own dear wife, nothing? On the contrary, I owed her a great deal. But not because a minister said words over us. I am a good C of E man, and believe in the sanctity of the sacrament of marriage; but what I owe her I owe her because she is my own true love.
True love. A silly concept, in a way; the stuff of penny novels and Italian opera. God’s love, the love of a parent for a child: more tangible and, in a way, more comprehensible. There is love between man and woman: could I deny it? Yet the proximate cause of my love for Janet, and hers for me, was no great fluxion in the celestial sphere, no fated union of souls, no great internal singing when first our glances met. The proximate cause — not the ultimate, you understand, nor the only, but the proximate — was a silly conversation we had one evening at a Christmas party at her father’s house. The details are otiose, and we disagreed; but she is one of the very few women I have ever met in whom intelligence, grace, and beauty are united.
She was waiting at Alcroft station.
It was an eternity before the children were at last in bed.
And hours later, studying her sleeping profile by the half-moon’s light, her black hair curling in rings across the pillow, her sweet bosom rising and falling beneath the sheets, I realized that however beautiful she might be, I would surely have never fallen in love with her if we had never had that silly conversation about Bentham, Gladstone, and the Suez Canal. How could I have loved her, never knowing her? And how could I have known her, merely looking?
We stayed in Alcroft a scant few weeks; the weather was turning cold. I spent our remaining time performing such magics as lie within my skill, to try to understand what had transpired here; helping the diggers at their work, laying out plans for future excavation. We found precious little of any value: a few bronze implements, a few Frankish coins, a nicely preserved drinking horn, and various shards.
De Laurency was less a help than a hindrance. He never seemed to be about the dig, and soon lost any interest in keeping his journal notes up to date. I often spied him atop the Cheviot, a small dark figure at such a distance, striking a pose and staring into space. I suspect when he wasn’t mooning about the moor, he was imbibing too much of the local ale.
God send me sturdy, even-tempered students!
Soon enough the first frost came, and we decamped to Oxford.
“I’ve brought Meg back to you,” said Sir James, standing in my office and warming his hands before the coal grate. De Laurency moodily fiddled with the fire irons.
“So your cable said you would,” I said. “I’m honored that you made the trip yourself.”
He sighed, and sat in the armchair to the side of my desk. De Laurency remained standing, staring into the blue flames. “Well,” said Sir James, “I felt it incumbent to report in person, though of course I shall be writing up my findings for the Transactions.”
“I appreciate that, sir. And what, if I may, have you discovered?”
Sir James cleared his throat. “Precious little, I fear,” he said. “The symbology, alas, is foreign.”
I blinked. “I don’t—”
“Magic is symbolic manipulation, yes?”
“Quite so.”
“By noting the effects of a spell cast by another, you can frequently deduce much about the symbolic elements used therein, and possibly re-create the spell yourself — perhaps not in very detail, to be sure, but close enough.”
“I have done so many times as an exercise.”
“And you have studied Roman magic?”
“Yes, and Mesopotamian.”
“And does not the symbology differ from our own?”
I blinked as I came to understand what he was getting at. “Certainly,” I said. “They had whole different systems of worship, of color association, of folk tradition; therefore, the symbolic elements used differ greatly from our own. Untangling a Greco-Roman spell is not particularly difficult, since so much has come down to us in both languages, but of the Mesopotamian we have scant understanding.”
Sir James nodded. “And this spell was cast by a wild Pictish mage of the eighth century A.D., possibly a Christian but still greatly influenced by pagan traditions. If I were a scholar of the Medieval Celts, I might conceivably be able to untangle the spell better, but as it is, I can really only report on its effects. Which is of dubious utility, as its effects are evident: she sleeps.”
De Laurency broke in. “Why does she sleep?”
Sir James looked mildly at him. “She is ensorcelled, of course.”
De Laurency snorted. “That much is obvious. Can you say nothing of the manner of her ensorcellment, nor how she may be released? Is Professor Borthwick’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ theory proven or disproven?”
Sir James sighed. “The spell clearly contains a release, a means of ending. I believe, but cannot prove, that the release is tied to love, in some fashion; a strong emotion, love, and it somehow flavors the spell. What further qualifications attend the release, and whether it must be effected by a kiss, I cannot say. As for Dr. Borthwick’s theory, it is consistent with the facts as we know them; but it is far from definitively demonstrated.”