beside me. “The king has been telling me in his letters that you’re developing a telephone system for us!” she said, the perfect hostess, complimenting her guest on his accomplishments.
This brought me back somewhat to reality. “I’ve been working, but it’s proving more difficult than I expected,” I said, realizing it had been some time since I had had my glass telephones down from the shelf and resolving to start with them again tomorrow, or even today.
The royal pair kept moving, as she spoke a few words to first one person, than another. I found myself near the back of the group, walking with Joachim, as we entered the castle courtyard.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” I said.
“Warn you against what?”
“The queen!”
“But there is no evil in her.”
I gave him up. “It’s a good thing you’re a priest,” I said, left him wondering what I meant, and went into my chambers.
I pulled down one of the books I had not tried yet, because it was all advanced spells that assumed you already understood the basics without having to think about it. This seemed like the best place to start anew on the problems of the telephones.
But I had trouble concentrating on the pages. I kept thinking about those emerald eyes. Since I wasn’t a very good wizard anyway, maybe I could give up magic altogether when the king died, and then she and I-
This was clearly an unprofitable line of thought. I wished I had had the sense to watch Dominic, to try to judge his reaction to her homecoming. But I had been too busy staring at her, doubtless open-mouthed, to pay attention to anyone else.
Neither the king nor queen was present at the table at noon or again in the evening. The queen, we were told, was resting from the fatigues of her journey, although she had appeared to me to have too much energy ever to be fatigued. I didn’t want to think what the king might be resting from.
Instead I talked animately to the Lady Maria. Everyone at both tables was delighted to have the queen home, so she was the chief topic of conversation, except for the couple further down my table who were just delighted to see each other again.
Lady Maria was happy to discuss her niece. “That’s right, she and I came to Yurt together when she was a bride, a mere child really. Her mother is a cousin to the duchess, or maybe they’re second cousins. Haven’t you met the duchess? You will, I’m sure. Yurt has two counts and the duchess. Anyway, the king was visiting his subjects, and he came to the duchess’s castle at the same time as the queen’s family was visiting, including me. Of course she wasn’t the queen then. But as soon as the king met her he started making his plans, you can be sure!”
There was a sort of grunt from behind me where Dominic was sitting. He had not spoken to me again all day.
“Dominic remembers,” the Lady Maria said in a teasing voice. “I think my brother, that’s the queen’s father, of course, had some hope of marrying his daughter to the royal heir, when he first heard the royal party would be visiting the duchess’s castle at the same time we were. Did the royal heir have some plans that way himself, Dominic?”
She laughed, a light, tinkling laugh. I turned my head just in time to catch an extremely surly look from Dominic. I felt much more affectionate toward the Lady Maria than I ever had before.
“But imagine our surprise,” she continued, “when it turned out the king’s plans were quite different! Everything worked out so beautifully. Except,” she paused, looked around, and dropped her voice. “Except,” so low that only I could hear her, and I thought for a moment that she was going to say, except that she had never been able to make the hoped-for match with Dominic herself, “except that the queen has so hoped to provide the king a little prince, and she hasn’t been able to.”
“What are you two whispering about?” one of the ladies called to us from down the table. I realized that we had our heads bent together as though engaged in intimate secrets, certainly more secret than what everyone else must have long have guessed about the king and queen. I sat up almost guiltily and caught the chaplain’s dark, sober eyes on me.
“We’re talking about the telephones!” I said gaily. “Now that the queen’s back, I’m sure she’s eager to be able to telephone her parents, and I have some ideas for the next step to try. The Lady Maria has graciously agreed to assist me again.” If anyone giggled, they were polite enough to turn it into a cough.
V
I stayed up late that night with my books and was up again after only a few hours sleep, and was almost too engrossed in the spells to hear Gwen’s knock. But I heard it the second time and went to answer. This morning the breakfast tray held hot cinnamon crullers as well as my tea.
“Sir, could I speak with you?” she said somewhat timidly.
“Of course!” I said, motioning her to a chair. Gwen hadn’t seemed to want to talk to me since the first days I had been in Yurt. She now seemed subdued, not at all inclined to laugh at me. Maybe seeing me gaping at the queen had had the salutary effect of making her jealous.
Her first words destroyed any hope I might have had in that direction. “Sir, do wizards make love potions?”
“Love potions! My dear, why would anyone so charming as yourself need a love potion?” I realized I sounded as though I were her uncle and about forty years older than she was, but I couldn’t think of what else to say.
She ignored the compliment if she even noticed it. “No, I don’t need a love potion myself. But I’m afraid Jon is going to use one on me.”
“Jon?”
“You know him. He’s one of the trumpeters, and he also does the glass-blowing. He made you your glass telephones.”
“He does very good work, too,” I said, wondering why she would need a love potion used on her. “He seems a very nice young man.” Now I was sounding like an uncle again, trying to persuade the coy niece to accept her gallant suitor.
“I like him, sir, I really like him a lot. But he wants to get married, and I’m not sure I’m ready. Maybe not ready to marry anybody, and certainly not to marry him. He gets so jealous! Can you imagine, when you first came he even was jealous of you? He made me promise not to speak more to you than absolutely necessary.”
This, of course, was devastating. At first I had thought someone had warned her against me, and had speculated whether this might have something to do with the strangely distant yet evil touch I felt in the castle. Then I had decided she had had to restrain her affections before her heart broke. And now it seemed it was all due to a jealous glass-blower, who she thought should have known better than possibly to be jealous of me!
“I guess I’m breaking my promise talking to you now, but I really do feel I have to.”
“If you’re worried he’ll use a love potion to make you marry him,” I said with as much dignity as I could, “where do you think he’ll get it?”
“At first, of course, I was worried he’d get it from you, that he might even have asked you for it the day he blew that glass for you. But a month has gone by, and I know he hasn’t tried to slip me a potion yet, and I haven’t seen him talking to you again, except a few words in front of a lot of other people.”
“I don’t make love potions,” I said honestly. “That’s not something they teach us in the wizards’ school. That’s more something for magic-workers at carnivals than real wizards.”
“I think the old wizard, your predecessor, might have made love potions.”
This was entirely possible, but I didn’t say so. “I don’t, at any rate, so you need fear nothing from me.”
“But he might get it somewhere else, then, at a carnival, or even from the old wizard. How can I tell if he’s put it in my food?”
A good question, and the same question I was wondering about the king. A wizard can recognize another wizard at once, but since magic is a natural force, someone simply carrying a magic potion is not particularly obvious. If someone could poison the king, then Jon could try to make Gwen love him.
“Don’t ever eat or drink alone with him,” I said, which was not a particularly useful answer, but was all I
