Joachim stood up and followed the constable out at once. I sat for a moment, looking at the backs of his books on his shelf, then, feeling it was not polite to stay here while he was gone, wandered out into the hallway.
I had just had an idea about the constable. He had the keys to every room in the castle, yet he had told me that only Dominic, who had duplicate keys for most rooms, had the key to the cellar. Did this mean that he really did have the cellar key, but had wanted to deny it, knowing all too well what was down there?
The challenge of trying to figure out what was happening in Yurt would have been highly enjoyable if I had not kept being overwhelmed with terror. I was glad to think that Joachim and I were probably friends again, at least for the moment; he might have some good ideas. By the time he came back, I had a theory to account for the north tower.
The old wizard, I reasoned, liked to consider himself a wizard of light and air, but at some point he had dabbled in black magic. The old chaplain had suspected something of this, and so had the constable. The wizard had repented and gotten out with his soul intact, but when he retired he left all the paraphernalia of black magic behind him, locked up in his tower. The constable, however, who had somehow learned how to break magic locks, had gone in, taken everything down to his own den of evil in the cellar, and swept out the tower room to leave no traces.
This was quite an appealing theory, other than the gaps of where the constable might have learned how to break locks and what, exactly, the “paraphernalia of black magic” might be. Having tried to avoid such things, I actually had no idea, except perhaps some books of evil spells.
Joachim came swiftly back up the hallway and went into his room without speaking to me. But since he left the door open, I went in too after a minute. He had his saddlebag on the bed and was tossing a few things into it.
He looked up at me. “There’s a sick boy in the village. They want me to pray for him.”
I did not answer, feeling that “How nice,” the all-purpose comment, was highly inappropriate.
“Fortunately, I don’t think he’s very sick, and the doctor is already with him.” He threw his Bible in on top and strapped up the bag. “It’s the brother of the little girl who was bitten by the viper.”
“Dear God,” I startled myself by saying.
“If I were the father, I wouldn’t send for me,” said Joachim with what would have been grim humor in anyone else. “But he did.” He stood up, pulled on his jacket, and swung the saddlebag over his shoulder. I followed him as he strode down through the castle to the courtyard. The same man in brown that I had seen before was waiting on his horse. In a moment, the chaplain was mounted and the two rode away together.
I went out onto the drawbridge, although I was cold without a coat. The morning sun glittered on the icy snow. I watched until the two riders disappeared into the edge of the forest and felt very glad that I was not a priest.
I hurried back inside and went in search of the constable. I found him in the kitchen talking to the cook. “Is something wrong?” she said, seeing me over his shoulder. “I know Gwen says that you always like crullers, but I’d only made a few this morning. She should be back from her vacation this afternoon.”
“It’s not about the crullers,” I said, although another time it would have been. I didn’t even mention how stale the donut I had gotten had tasted. “I wanted to talk to the constable.”
“All right,” he said, turning to smile at me. “Well, we can order whatever we don’t have,” he said over his shoulder to the cook. “Just start making a list of what you’ll need. We can talk more later.” Turning back to me, he said, “Shall we go to my chambers?”
I had never actually been in the constable’s chambers, and I immediately agreed, although if I had expected to see the paraphernalia of evil I was sadly disappointed. His chambers, in fact, looked a lot like mine, without the rows of books on magic. Instead he had big leather-bound manuscript books that I guessed were the castle accounts and inventories. There were rows of plants inside on the windowsills, and the furniture was all painted blue and white.
The constable’s wife was mopping the stone floor, the outer door open, as we came up. “Oh, excuse me, sir,” she said, putting the bucket outside. She ran to close the bedroom door, but not before I had caught a glimpse of a wide, turned-back bed, the white pillows and comforter fluffed out to air. “I’ll just go over to the kitchen for a moment, if you want to talk in private,” she said.
I realized the chief difficulty with my theory of the constable having sold his soul to the devil was the constable’s wife. It appeared on the face of it much more likely that he had given himself to her, heart and soul, many years ago, and had been happy enough with the arrangement that he wanted nothing else, or at least nothing else that a demon could promise.
“It makes such a happy difference having the king well again,” he said. “But part of that difference is that we on the staff are kept much busier! The king told me this morning that he wants to have a big party here for Christmas. The cook will have to start planning immediately, as it’s only three weeks away, and we’ll have to send in our order by the pigeons in a day or two if we need to order anything special from the City. He wants the duchess and both counts to come, which means we’ll have to clean out all the spare rooms to have them ready. I can’t remember when he last had so many people at Christmas!”
This was the difficulty with all my theories about anyone in the castle. Everyone always seemed so good-hearted and happy-except for Dominic-that it was impossible to suspect them of practicing black magic. I would have concluded I was imagining the whole thing, except that both Zahlfast and the chaplain, in their own way, had sensed it too.
“The king must be feeling very social,” I said, “to be planning to have a large party here when he’s barely gotten back from visiting the duchess.” Privately I wondered what the queen thought of this plan. “But I wanted to ask you something.” It was probably pointless to ask, but since I had interrupted him anyway I might as well. “Are you sure you don’t have a key to the cellars?”
He looked surprised, as well he might, and took the heavy bunch of keys from his belt. “I’m quite sure I don’t,” he said, flipping through them. “Dominic took the key some years ago, when we decided just to lock the cellars up rather than trying to use them any more. They always were very damp. I’m not sure we ever had a duplicate key, because before then the door had always stood open.” I certainly saw no key on his ring that matched the rusty iron one I had borrowed from Dominic. “Why do you ask?”
I had been afraid he would say that. “I’d been thinking it might be possible to dry the cellars out and use them for my own purposes,” I improvised. “We wizards need rooms that won’t be hurt if one of our experiments in fire and light goes a little astray. I understand the old wizard had the north tower, but that he didn’t want the tower room used again, so I thought the cellars might be a possibility. I’d looked at them a little the other week, but I hated to bother Dominic for his key again, so I …”
The constable smiled knowingly. “I understand. You and Prince Dominic don’t always see eye to eye, and you’re almost afraid of him now. Don’t be insulted!” seeing me about to interrupt. “It’s not your fault. He’s a hard man for anyone to get along with, as well I know.”
I nodded, not wanting to say anything for fear I’d start laughing. It made a much better excuse for talking to the constable rather than Dominic about the cellar key than anything I could have invented. But this made me think again that I ought to suspect Dominic. Suspecting him of evil intent, however, seemed so easy that I was worried that my personal feelings might cloud my judgment.
“But are you sure you really want to try the cellars anyway?” said the constable. “We’d hoped you’d find the chambers we gave you satisfactory” (The old nurse doubtless found them delightful! I commented to myself), “but if you need something more we should at least be able to find you a room that’s drier than the cellar. Could you wait, however, until after Christmas?”
The constable looked really troubled that he would be too busy to find me a good room for my experiments in light and fire during the next three weeks. Now I supposed I would have to find some such experiments to do. Remembering that I was keeping him from his work, I reassured him that January would be fine, and rose to my feet.
“Wait a minute, sir, if you don’t mine,” the constable said, and I sat down again. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.” He frowned and looked away. “When the king told me the people he wanted to invite for Christmas, he mentioned the duchess and the two counts, as I’d already said … But he also said he wanted to invite the old wizard.”
“Yes?” I prompted when he fell silent.
“I wanted to ask if that was all right,” the constable said, still not looking at me. “He lives very near here, down in the forest, and the king thought he would love coming up to the castle for Christmas, rather than spending it alone, that is, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course I won’t mind.”
The constable looked up then, smiling. “I’m sorry to bother you, then, but one hears rumors of how young and old royal wizards are always at odds, and even though I’d hinted to you when you first came that you might visit him, I knew you hadn’t, so though I’d hoped that in your case …”
I interrupted before he could make his statement any more involved. “Actually, I have visited him two or three times. We’ve probably become as good friends as old and young wizards ever do.”
The constable was positively beaming now. “Well! That’s very good news. I hadn’t wanted to pry into what you’d done, knowing that a wizard needs his privacy, but I’m delighted to hear that! Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He was whistling as he took down an account book while I went back out.
I paused in the center of the courtyard, trying to think whom I should suspect next of having a den of evil magic in the cellar, since it was so difficult to suspect the constable. The constable’s wife, the cook, the stable boy, and the kitchen maid, the only other people who had been in the castle when we arrived to find it dark, seemed even less viable alternatives. I briefly considered but rejected the possibility that Dominic had put everyone to sleep from far away. I didn’t know of any spell that would do such a thing from a distance, and could think of no reason why he would want to do so. Besides, I always kept coming back to the fact that Dominic was the one who had first warned me against the evil spell on the castle.
I shivered and was starting back toward my chambers when I was startled by seeing a tall, thin form standing motionless just inside the castle gates. “Joachim’s back already,” I thought in surprise. Then the man turned to look at me and I saw it was not the chaplain. It was someone I had never seen before.
He did not in fact look like Joachim at all, except that he too had enormous black eyes, in a face that was almost inhuman in its pallor and expressionlessness. He stared at me without blinking.
“Excuse me,” I said, “can I help you? Have you just arrived?” For a moment I thought it might be a new member of the castle staff, signed on by the constable while the royal party was away, and arriving to take up his duties this morning.
But the stranger turned away again without speaking and, with long strides, started toward the south tower.
I went after him, but he had a large lead, and he disappeared around the tower’s base. When I came up, there was no sign of him.
This, I thought, was very odd. There were several doors he could have gone into, so his disappearance was not very mysterious, but no stranger coming to a castle should flee before the royal wizard.