The Poisoned Crown

RIPPLES


"Define the Irish Question between 1800 and 1917," Nathan read aloud.

"If we knew the question," his mother said, "we might be able to work out the answer."

"I don't think that'll satisfy Mr. Selkirk," Nathan said, sighing. He pushed his history essay aside and replaced it with a plate of buttered toast with honey and cinnamon, a recipe of his uncle's. The honey had oozed just the right distance through the toast and he bit into it with enthusiasm, if a little absentmindedly.

His mother noted his abstraction and knew or guessed the reason, but was prudent enough to say nothing. He was fifteen now, too told to press for confidences. She only hoped, if there was trouble, he would tell her in the end. The summer had been long and uneventful, a summer of normal teenage preoccupations: success (and failure) at cricket, doing homework, not doing homework, friends, fads, hormonal angst. They had managed a trip to Italy, looking at palaces and pictures in Florence and then staying with Nathan's classmate Ned Gable and his family in a villa in Umbria. Annie had feared they would never afford their share of the rental but somehow Uncle Barty had found the money, though he wouldn't accompany them. These days he rarely left the old manor at Thornyhill, deep in the woods.

Yet he wasn't really a stay-at-home sort of person. He had told Annie once that he was born in Byzantium before the fall of the Roman Empire, which, she worked out, made him about fifteen hundred years old. He called himself Bartlemy Goodman, though it was probably not his name. She might have thought him mad or unusually eccentric if she hadn't known him so well and seen what he could do, when the occasion demanded it. He had taken her in on a cold lonely night long ago when she was pursued by invisible enemies, becoming an uncle to both her and Nathan, and as her son grew up into strange adventures Bartlemy had been their counselor and support. But there had been no adventures this summer, and now autumn was failing, and the wind blew from the north, plucking the last ragged leaves from the treetops, and Nathan was restless with the feeling of deeds undone, and worlds to be saved, and time slipping away.

Soon, Annie thought, he'll start sleeping badly, and there was a tiny squeeze of fear at her heart that she could not suppress.

I sleep too deep, Nathan thought, and I dream too little and too lightly. The portal was closed, the connection broken: he could no longer roam the multiverse in his head, following trails he could not see on a quest he did not understand. He had dreamed his way through other worlds--the ghost-city of Carboneck in Wilderslee, and the sky-towers of Arkatron on Eos, where the Grandir, supreme ruler of a dying cosmos, sought for the Great Spell that would be the salvation of his people. Nathan had retrieved the Cup and the Sword to bind the magic, and now only the Crown was wanting--the Crown and the sacrifice and the words of power, whatever they might be. But there had been no dreams for nearly a year, and the pleasures of cricket and the problems of history were not enough to fill his life.

"How's Hazel?" his mother asked, helping herself to a piece of his toast. "I haven't seen her lately."

Hazel was Nathan's closest friend: they had grown up almost as brother and sister, though getting on rather better than most siblings. Adolescence had brought friction but had never driven them apart.

"You know Hazel." Nathan spoke around munching. "She didn't exactly like her mum's old boyfriend, but I think she approved of him. She doesn't approve of the new one at all."

"Because he's so young?"

"Mm."

Annie smiled. "Well, all I can say is good for Lily. I think Franco's very sweet."

"He's Italian," Nathan objected.

"How insular! Besides, you didn't mind the Italians last summer."

"That was in Italy!"

"Suppose I got myself a toyboy," Annie said. "How would you feel about that?"

"You are joking, aren't you?" Diverted from thoughts of other worlds, Nathan looked really alarmed.
"Maybe."

"Look, you know, if there's someone, it's cool with me--as long as he's nice and really cares about you--but . . . well, I'd rather have a stepfather than an older brother!"

"Nicely put," Annie said. "Still, I doubt if the situation will arise."

Nathan couldn't ever recall her having a proper boyfriend, even though several men had been interested. He said: "You must have loved Dad very much." Daniel Ward had died before he was born, killed in a car crash when he fell asleep at the wheel.

"Very much," she said. Only he wasn't your dad . . . Your father was a stranger who waited beyond the Gate of Death, waited for my love and longing to open the unopenable door, and when I would have given all that I had for all I had lost he took me, body and soul. He seeded my womb and sealed up my memory, and until you grew up so unlike Daniel--until I found the courage to unclose the old scar in my mind--I never knew the betrayal and rape hidden there.

But she loved Nathan, conceived in treachery, child of an unknown being from an unknown world, so she kept her secret. She saw his father's legacy in the mysteries that surrounded him, but she told herself, over and over, that he did not need to know. One day, perhaps, but not yet. Not yet.
That night, Nathan went to bed thinking of the Irish Question, and dreamed of the sea.


At Thornyhill Manor, Hazel Bagot was having a lesson in witchcraft.

"But I don't want to be a witch," she protested.

"Good," said Bartlemy. "That's the way to start. Now you need to learn what not to do. Otherwise you could bumble about like you did last year, conjuring dangerous spirits and letting them get out of control. Someone might get hurt. It nearly happened once, you know that; you don't want it to happen again. The Gift is in your blood. You need to know how not to use it."

"Why couldn't we have done it in the summer, when the evenings were still light?" Hazel said. She was wishing she had stayed at home, watching Neighbours and annoying Franco.

"Dark for dark magic," Bartlemy said. "In summer, magic is all sparkle and fun, and the spirits come to us dressed in their best, scattering smiles and flowers. In the winter you get down to the bone, and the true nature of things is revealed."

Hazel said no more, remembering how she had summoned Lilliat, the Spirit of Flowers, to win her the love of a boy at school, and how Lilliat had turned into Nenufar the water demon and nearly drowned her rival.

Bartlemy gave her tea and cookies, and she sat for a while eating, insensibly reassured. Bartlemy made the best cookies in the world, cookies whose effect was almost magical, though he insisted there was no spell involved, just good baking. Anyone who ate those cookies felt immediately at home, even if they didn't want to, comforted if they needed comfort, relaxed if they needed to relax. Long ago another cook had tried to steal one for analysis, hoping to work out the ingredients, but he had eaten it before he got it home and the urge to commit the crime had vanished.

"I don't want to be like my great-grandmother," Hazel explained at last. "She lived for two hundred years, until she didn't care about anyone but herself and she'd curdled inside like sour milk. I don't think I want to live on when my friends are dead; it would be so lonely. And I don't want to be mean and bitter like her."

"Then learn from her mistakes," Bartlemy said...