“Well, her comments have put me in a delicate position,” said the chaplain with well-modulated cheerfulness. “You may not believe me”-I didn’t-”but it was not I who originally pointed out to her the growing role that wizards are taking in all noble courts. While naturally I have stressed the position of the Church in my little chats with her, it was someone else who planted the first seed of the idea that wizards are manipulating the secular rulers of society.”
“Then who was it?”
“Christian charity forbids me from speaking his name.”
Prince Vincent, I thought with sudden conviction. He must be behind the rumors the Master of the school had heard.
“But I will try to make amends,” continued the chaplain, “by asking you to join us in a conspiracy!”
I barely avoided choking on my wine. “What sort of conspiracy?”
“We want to make sure the queen does not make the error of marrying Prince Vincent.”
Immediately I liked the young chaplain much better. I could sort out all these strange rumors later. “And who is we?” I asked with an accommodating smile.
He looked down for a moment as though embarrassed, then smiled again. “Well, I sounded pretty self-important there for a moment, didn’t I! So far, the conspiracy is mostly myself. The Lady Maria is of course in agreement with my purposes.”
“I would have thought she’d adore the romance of a love match.”
“In a way she does, but there is a core of wisdom in what you might think is just a silly head.”
I did not point out that I had probably known the Lady Maria since he was a child begging his mother for extra snacks. “How about other members of the court?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head regretfully. “When I tried to broach the topic to one of the knights, he said something-I know you’ll find this hard to credit-about the Church needing to stay out of the affairs of the aristocracy!” So if members of the court were being taught to distrust wizards, I noted with interest, they also distrusted the chaplain. “I would like to bring Prince Paul into our plans,” he added, “though at his age it is hard to trust his judgment.”
I thought uncharitably that the chaplain was not very much older. “I can understand why Paul doesn’t like the thought of his mother’s remarriage,” I said. “He’s had her all to himself, and he doesn’t want any disservice to his late father’s memory. But I don’t understand your own objections.”
He leaned forward and spoke gravely. The candlelight made flickering points of light in his eyes. “A woman, once widowed, does better to devote herself to God than to another temporal spouse.”
“So you think widows should never remarry?”
“The Apostle tells us it is best that they do not. I can see that she felt she had a moral obligation to raise her son to manhood before retiring, but a woman of true religious sensibilities would now to planning her retreat to a nunnery. The Nunnery of Yurt has an excellent reputation for holiness and was in the past, I understand, supported by generous and pious gifts from the royal family of Yurt.”
I was unable to answer at once. The queen had in fact, when very young, contemplated entering a nunnery rather than marry someone she detested, but she had instead married the king, whom she loved. I could not see her in a nunnery, then or now.
“Have you mentioned this to the queen?”
“I tried to suggest to her delicately that perhaps remarriage would distract her from the higher affairs of the soul, but she just laughed.”
I gave him my wizardly look. “Surely I do not need to tell you that to force a soul into suitable religious behavior will not help that soul’s salvation.” I rose to my feet without waiting for an answer. “Thank you for the wine. It is good if representatives of wizardry and the Church can agree on issues of mutual importance.”
As I strode with self-conscious gravity from his chambers and crossed the courtyard toward my own, I found myself wondering if a belief that the queen’s soul would be improved by a nunnery was his only consideration. Might he have some ulterior motive for wanting her out of the castle?
III
I awoke to the chapel bells the next morning with the happy realization that I was back home in Yurt, far from technical-division wizardry students. This cheerful thought was followed however almost immediately by the distressing knowledge that Prince Vincent was coming today.
He had telephoned that he planned to reach Yurt in the afternoon. The queen was busy bringing heaps of roses into the great hall, arranging them in vases and attaching bouquets to the dark stone walls. I myself wandered out across the drawbridge, gloomily convinced that he was the mysterious person inciting aristocrats to distrust their wizards. At least the queen and Paul seemed unaffected so far. I looked down the hillside sloping away from the castle, past the walled graveyard where the king was buried.
A distant group of tiny horsemen emerged from the woods, far earlier than anyone had expected. Faint on the wind came a trumpet call. Knights and ladies poured out across the bridge behind me. Even the queen, flushed, laughing, and pinning a white rose into her hair, came running out.
The trumpet sounded again, and the horsemen kicked their steeds for the last ascent. The man in the lead, whose golden surplice left no doubt he was a prince, was mounted on a red roan stallion. I looked surreptitiously for Paul, who I knew would be furiously jealous. He stood motionless among the members of the court.
With a jangling of bells and clatter of hoofs, the knights pulled up their horses. Vincent vaulted from the stallion and swept the wide velvet hat from his head. “My lady!” he cried and knelt before the queen. The jeweled scabbard of his sword and the long feather of his hat dragged unheeded on the brick road. With one hand he took both her hands and kissed them gravely.
She blushed charmingly and tugged to bring him to his feet. He leaped up, smiling all over his face. He was graceful and muscular, with hair that glowed like burnished copper, and very obviously in love. He was, I thought ruefully, a truly glorious knight. Thirty years ago, before I had decided to become a wizard, I would have wanted to be just like him.
“We had not expected you so early,” said the queen. “You must forgive me if you find me in some disarray.”
“You should have known, my lady, I would not stay from your side one moment longer than I could help. And I came to see you, not your array.”
The other knights were dismounting. “Where is Prince Paul?” Vincent called in a high, ringing voice that cut across the other voices. “I have something to give you!”
Paul came slowly forward. His mouth was grim, but he determinedly looked Vincent in the eye. I knew him well enough to realize that he did not want any one to think that he was sulking.
“My prince!” cried Vincent. “When I left here three weeks ago, everyone was talking of preparations for your coming of age ceremony later this summer. I remember what it was like to be eighteen, and how long a few months could be. I thought then that you might not want to wait for all of your gifts, so I brought you one now. It’s this stallion: he’s yours, I bought him for you, take him!”
For a second all the color drained out of Paul’s face, then he stepped closer, stiffly, unbelieving, unable to speak. Vincent handed him the reins.
I had to fight against my initial hope, that Paul would refuse the gift and would cast the reins into Vincent’s face with a rebuke for the patronizing note I thought I had heard.
But I need not have worried. I saw all of Paul’s objections to Vincent cracking and dissolving away like ice in the sun. A smile started small and stretched until it threatened to crack his face. He found his voice at last. “Thank you! How did you know? He’s exactly what I wanted, more than anything!”