Wizards Daughter

Iknow of his death and her grievous sin. Perhaps it is a sin committed long ago by a god or a wizard or a witch, something strong enough, something bad enough, to continue existing all these years- until the two of us came together.'

'Yes,' she said, 'yes, we are one.' Her heart was tripping. 'You believe that our coming together brings us more knowledge, more power?'

He strode away from her, walking the length of the library, staring out the windows for a long moment before saying over his shoulder, 'I am a simple man, dammit, a man of business. I own ships, I own property in Macau and in Portugal and here in England. Despite my wealth, I am still simple. Dammit, I want to be simple, I don't wish to be cut adrift from what is normal, what is expected, what I am used to.' He turned around and smacked one fist against the wall. A portrait of a racing horse shuddered, the frame tilted to the left. 'Here I am carrying on, and you don't even know who you are. I am a fool-but a simple fool. Forgive me, Rosalind.'

'What happened to me when I was a child was not your fault.'

He walked back to her, grabbed her hands, and held them against his chest. 'If it means being magic to resolve all this, then I will give up my simpleness. We will wait for the night and see what happens.'

'Open the door this minute, do you hear me? I want to speak to that wretched ghost! He is not in the drawing room so he must be hiding from me here in the library. Open the door now.'

He kissed her quickly, set her away from him. 'Shall we let my dear stepmother come in and try to find Captain Jared?'

'Will you tell her it's the very first Vail and not her father-in-law?'

'No, let Captain Jared amuse himself at her expense if he wishes to.'

Nicholas opened the door, gave Miranda a slight bow. 'My wife and I have to visit a sick tenant. Have yourself a fine time with our ghost.'

Miranda gave both of them a malevolent look, turned her back on them, and said loudly, 'Well, you dead old monster, are you in here? I don't see you. Are you hiding from me?'

There was only the sound of the ormolu clock on the mantel, its steady ticking like falling rain in the silence.

'So you're afraid of facing me, are you? Well, you always were a coward when you were alive and-'

A creaky old voice sang out,

A crooked root is what I see.

Not the rose you pretend to be.

A black-hearted witch with an ugly nose

Set big and lumpy on a rotten rose.

'I am not a crooked root or a rotten rose, you cursed dead moron! I am a rose! Lumpy? I have a beautiful nose! What do you know, you're only a bloody ghost with a big mouth. You're not even here, just your voice, and let me tell you, your thymes aren't at all clever. Ugly nose indeed! Show yourself, I'll show you a lumpy nose!'

Captain Jared, smart ghost that he was, kept quiet.

'You never liked me, never accepted me. It wasn't my fault that mewling bitch died. She was a weakling, a drain on your son, an encumbrance. I didn't kill her, your son didn't kill her. She simply died from all the meanness inside of her.

'Your son loved me, he married me, and I gave him an heir-I gave him three heirs-yet my heirs still wait in the wings for that miserable Nicholas to drop dead. You always turned your nose up when I came here and for no reason. I hate you, do you hear?'

A soft rhythmic sound came from the corner, like a boot lightly tapping its toe against the floor.

Nicholas took Rosalind's hand and they left the library to a silent ghost and his furious stepmother.

They heard her shout through the closed door, 'I am not crooked! It is you who were crooked your entire blighted life, pretending to be a wizard. Tell me what is going on here, you old sinner, tell me now, else I'll never leave! Why did my precious Richard have that wretched vision?'

Silence, then a deep pitiful sigh, and a depressed singsong voice:

She'll leave if I talk

She'll stay if I don't

She'll haunt me forever

Unless I'm more clever.

Prithee, just look at me now

Shrieked at endlessly by a lumpy-nosed cow.

'More clever than I? You're a dolt, to have you as a father-in-law fair to burned me to the core, but I survived. A cow? I'm a cow? You should thank me, for I was the one who sent you that little brat who cursed me with those black eyes of his as he slunk behind furniture so I couldn't see him, but I heard him chanting curses, death curses. I told his father how he spewed hatred at me and at him, that I feared for my newly born son's life, how he bragged that he would kill you, kill all of us. Nicholas was always a spawn of the Devil, I told his father, had thick bad blood in his veins, and he believed me. A man should believe his wife, curse you.

'At least now you're dead, save for something malignant that has managed to stick its snout out of the ether. And just what is this prithee business? Another of your affectations, no doubt. No one has spoken that word for hundreds of years. Ah, but you must always be the poseur, even dead. I believe I'll have you dug up out of your grave and burn your wretched skeleton. That'll see you gone, now won't it?'

Nicholas and Rosalind had to lean close to the library door when Captain Jared sang softly, that ancient voice echoing eerily,

The knife rises high And brings the end near. The knife starts to fall

And you choke on the fear. The prince must win Evil must die

Pay attention, madam, for the end draws nigh.

The prince will win? What prince? The end was nigh? Captain Jared sounded very serious about that. Rosalind supposed nigh meant tonight. They heard Miranda shriek and throw a hassock toward the fireplace.

Nicholas whispered against her temple, 'Do you think he's hiding up the chimney?'

Rosalind shuddered. 'If she was thinking aright, she would realize it isn't the old earl, that it is someone else. And all those things she told your father… It's evil what she did, Nicholas-claiming a little boy chanted curses, making threats.'

Nicholas shrugged. 'Whatever she said or did, when I think about the past, I am vastly relieved I was forced to leave England, forced to face what I was at my core, forced to make my own way. Had I remained, raised as a pampered earl's son, would I have become like Richard perhaps? Or like Lancelot?'

'You would have become exactly what you are only you would not speak Chinese and have Lee Po about to correct Marigold's English. I begin to believe she makes mistakes on purpose to gain his attention.'

He couldn't help himself, he laughed, kissed her, said against her temple, 'Captain Jared certainly has the old girl going, doesn't he?'

The day seemed interminable, so many hours to be got through until the sun set and it could be considered night. Nicholas and Rosalind did indeed visit tenants, happy to welcome the new countess, happy to see Nicholas now their roofs didn't leak, there was hay in the sheds for their animals, and grain grew in the fields.

They spoke to three more women who were willing to sing with a ghost and work at Wyverly Chase, and they managed to get through a tense dinner with Nicholas's three half brothers and his battle axe stepmother.

Nicholas asked Richard as he sipped on a lovely Bordeaux, 'You had this vision only once?'

'That's right. It was real. It was the truth. But I see you still have her with you. You are a fool, Nicholas, a right fool.' Richard shrugged. 'Why should I care? After she flings your heart into the bushes, I will be the Earl of Mountjoy.'

Miranda hissed.

Richard turned to her. 'What makes you dislike that image, Mother?'

Miranda waved her fork at her son. 'A vision simply shouldn't happen to a fine, normal, wickedly handsome young man like yourself. It happens only to crazy old men like your grandfather, whose blasted ghost sang out a 'prithee' to me.'

'I rather like his songs,' Aubrey said as he chewed on Cook's ham. 'I wonder if he will allow me to sing with