At this point I had to interrupt him. “Stop. Wait. You don’t understand.”
“I fear I understand all too well.”
“You don’t. The duchess and I had a small drink together.”
“And that was all?” he demanded.
“She told me that she admired my illusions so much that she wanted me to leave the royal court of Yurt and come be her ducal wizard. I turned her down.”
Joachim sat back in the chair as though deflated. “And that was all?”
“That was all.” I myself found the situation quite amusing. He must have sat in my room for close to an hour, waiting for my return, preparing both the accusations and the spiritual counsel he would give to me, and then he found out that, at least at the moment, I didn’t actually need any spiritual guidance. But a look at his face told me he didn’t find any amusement in the situation.
“Then I will apologize for disturbing you,” he said stiffly. “I hope you sleep well.” He rose and left the room, taking the candle with him.
I started to protest, then realized it was undoubtedly his candle, brought from his own room. I turned on my belt buckle to get enough light to find a candle of my own. I stared gloomily at the flame, once I had it lit, wondering how I was going to become friends again with the only person in Yurt who seemed to have the potential to be my close friend. At this rate, he’d soon be suspecting me of having poisoned the king.
But I still had to chuckle, thinking of him sitting here, imagining me embracing licentious freedom, at the exact same time as the duchess’s teasing was almost driving me in panic from her chamber.
The next morning was Sunday, and I was in the ducal chapel early, sitting down in the front row while the duchess’s chaplain and the royal chaplain conducted services together. Neither one of them seemed to notice my presence.
IV
We stayed at the duchess’s castle for a week. Both because I feared being teased again and because I didn’t want the chaplain worrying about my soul, I tried to avoid the duchess. Instead I devoted myself to the Lady Maria, always speaking to her at dinner, positioning my horse next to hers when we went out riding, standing as an attendant at her shoulder in the evening in the great hall. She was, I realized, the only person in Yurt to whom I spoke regularly with whom I did not always feel myself sparring.
But she could turn the conversation to her own purposes as deftly as anyone else if she wanted-something I had already known, and of which I was reminded when I tried to find out more about her previous experience with magic.
The king, the queen, and the duchess had all decided to go hunting-that is, the duchess asked the king if he would accompany her, and when he agreed the queen said that she wanted to hunt as well. They rode across the stubble of the duchess’s fields and along the margins of the woods, hawks on their fists, hoping for a goose. Some of the rest of us, including the Lady Maria and I, went out with them primarily for fresh air.
The air was cold and slightly damp, although the grey sky did not immediately threaten rain. The Lady Maria seemed to enjoy my attentions and always raised her chin a little when the duchess glanced at the two of us together. Now, as we rode, I was amusing her by telling her again about the dragon in the cellar of the wizards’ school.
“So, my predecessor agreed to teach you magic?” I asked suddenly, with no reference to what I had just been saying, hoping to catch her off-guard.
Her big blue eyes held mine for an instant, more intently than they ever had before. Then she looked away with a small laugh. “I already told you; he refused to teach me anything because I’m a woman.”
“Come now, you can reveal your little secrets to me!” I continued in a tone I hoped she would like. “You certainly learned to make magic requests somewhere!” When she did not answer, I added, “And have you requested the perpetual youth and beauty that adorn you, or was that given you at birth?”
She surprised me by seeming to take my fatuous comments entirely seriously. At any rate, her shoulders first stiffened, then sagged, and she looked straight ahead without any of the amusement I had expected.
“I asked for a while,” she said in a very low voice. I could barely hear her, but I did not dare tell her to speak more loudly for fear she would say nothing at all. “But now all that I asked for has gone.”
“My lady,” I said in almost as soft a voice, “who did you ask?”
She suddenly became very involved with her horse’s mane. We had reined in and were standing under a leafless tree, but a dead oak leaf had been carried on the wind and caught behind her horse’s ears. She glanced at me once, a glance I was apparently not supposed to notice.
“You said you’d teach me magic,” she said at last. “I don’t need all that grammar. All I need is a simple spell, a spell to make me young.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t a simple spell like that,” I said gravely, trying not to reveal how surprised I was at her admission that she needed a spell of youth-or apparently had once had one. “There’s a difficult spell, that the young wizards don’t even learn until we’ve been at the school for several years, that will slow down aging, but it won’t make one any younger than one already is.”
“Even if it’s difficult, I know I could learn it,” she said with the trace of a smile. “After all, I learned your telephone spell after hearing it once!”
“It’s a different kind of spell, and much more difficult,” I said, which was partly true, but in part I felt a sense of panic that I had introduced her to magic at all. Our duty as wizards is to help mankind, but every spell, however small, has consequences far beyond the spell itself. It was for this reason that all the teachers at the school agreed, and impressed on us strongly, that part of our responsibility as wizards was not to freely extend the lives of everyone we met.
“You’re teasing me because I’m a woman,” said the Lady Maria, facing me squarely. “I know I could learn your spell, and I know that magic can make time run backwards.”
“Time can’t run backwards. It’s the most powerful force in nature, and magic can never ultimately change anything natural.”
Tears of frustration appeared at the corners of her eyes. “But it can! I’ve seen it work! Why won’t you tell me the truth?”
I was swept with a terror so sharp and sudden that my lips were almost too paralyzed to speak. “My lady, have you been dealing in black magic?”
“No! There’s nothing evil in wanting to be young! And all you do is laugh at me!”
She really was crying now. She kicked her horse savagely and galloped away. My own mare turned her head to look at me in inquiry, then, when I continued to sit with the reins slack, started nosing again among the half-frozen grass.
After a minute, I managed to gather up both the reins and my mental strength enough to start back toward the castle. I could see neither the Lady Maria nor the rest of the hunting party, but I wanted to be inside near a fire.
I wondered how it could have taken me so long to realize that the Lady Maria had become involved with black magic. First her extreme youthfulness, then the abrupt loss of that youthfulness, should have made me realize that she had found a magic that mixed truly supernatural power with magic’s own natural power.
What I found difficult was to imagine her involved in evil herself. Could the supernatural which gave her magic the power to turn time backwards have been the supernatural power of the saints?
The difficulty here, I told myself, was that the saints seem to have little interest in magic. I wished I had paid more attention in my course on the supernatural to the part about the saints. There had been wizards in the past, as I dimly remembered hearing, who had tried to develop a “white magic” which would be as powerful as black magic, but those wizards must not have had sufficiently pure hearts and motives, for the saints had never listened to them.