The old king of Yurt, Paul’s father, had spent much of his time sitting on the throne in the great hall, dispensing justice, talking to other members of the court, or reading rose growers’ catalogues. Paul, on the other hand, only used his throne on the most formal occasions.
So my heart sank when he sent for me upon my return to Yurt and I found him seated there, resting his chin on his fists. This could be it, I thought, squaring my shoulders, my dismissal from Yurt for having a family contrary to all the traditions of wizardry. Well, I had always told Theodora I would happily do magic tricks on street corners if I could do so with her. I might now be emulating the man who had first taught me illusions.
But King Paul did not speak at once of dismissal. He appeared uneasy and kept crossing and uncrossing booted legs. The warm air of a summer evening washed through the room’s tall windows. “So Theodora is safely home now?” he asked vaguely, giving me a quick glance and looking away again.
“That’s right,” I said cautiously, waiting for what was coming next.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about her, Wizard?” he demanded almost accusingly.
“Well, I must apologize,” I said stiffly. “I realize now I should have told you at once, but I met her the summer of your coronation, and you will recall a lot happened that summer.”
Paul gave a quick grin. “Only adventure you’ve ever let me go on,” he remarked. “But why not tell me about the little girl?” he continued, looking uneasy again. “You didn’t need to pretend she was your niece!”
“As I say, I know now I was wrong,” I said, standing with my arms straight down my sides and heels together. “Organized wizardry does not want wizards to be fathers, and out of cowardice, I’m afraid to admit, I decided to say nothing. Once I had begun the deception, it was difficult to end.”
Paul had stared off toward the other end of the empty room as I started speaking, but he now turned back and grinned again. “So I’m not the only person in the castle who has others planning for him if and whom he’s going to marry, with or without his consent!”
It slowly dawned on me that Paul had been asking me about Theodora not as a prelude to requesting my resignation but to avoid talking about what was really on his mind.
He took a deep breath, planted his boots on the throne’s footrest, and faced me squarely. “How would you like to be Celia’s spiritual sponsor?”
“Her what?!”
“I knew you’d react like this,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s why I agreed to talk to you myself. I tried to tell her that wizards have never had much respect for the Church, but she insisted she wanted you. I wish you would at least consider it. It would mean a lot to her.”
“Excuse me, sire, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Celia comes of age in two weeks,” said Paul gravely. “She has told her parents that on her birthday she will ride over to the Nunnery of Yurt and make her maiden vocation. The chaplain and I have checked into the requirements for her. They won’t, of course, let her take her final vows until after a year as a novice, but there’s a ceremony when she enters, and she needs a sponsor. Preferably a man, the abbess told me, someone of mature authority. Prince Ascelin won’t do it because he’s still not reconciled to his daughter becoming a nun. I offered, of course, but Celia said she would rather have you.”
“But if she’s going to be a nun, Paul, she doesn’t want a wizard! Especially me. The abbess won’t want me either. I don’t know what Celia told you, and she hasn’t talked to me herself for weeks, but …”
“She told me you’d raise these objections. But listen, Wizard. This is very hard on Celia. First she decided to become a priest, but no one would take her seriously-not her parents, not her own sister, and not even the bishop. Then she met that miracle-worker over in Caelrhon-Cyrus, isn’t that his name? Studying with him was the first thing I think she felt she’d ever done that she chose for herself, rather than having others choose it for her. Then somehow that didn’t work out. I’m still not sure what happened, but at some point while trying to learn from him she decided to give up her plan for an active spiritual career and become a nun instead.”
She had run straight into a spell of madness, but I wasn’t going to mention that now.
“Then she found out-excuse me, Wizard-that you weren’t always as pure as a priest yourself, which only confirmed her desire to retreat from anything worldly, in spite of increased opposition from her parents. So you see,” he finished somewhat shamefacedly, “that she considers it a suitable act of forgiveness and penitence to begin her life in the cloister with you beside her.”
It sounded to me as though King Paul was going out of his way not to say anything judgmental about my conduct. Of course, it was rather irritating that people here in the castle seemed to be trying to demonstrate how broad-minded they were by overlooking something which, in fact, had not happened for years.
But if I was not dismissed then I should be able to stay on in Yurt, I thought with a flood of relief that surprised me by its intensity. Perhaps the Golden Yurt award really did mean that Paul respected me and my service to the kingdom, no matter what. But I had to concentrate on Celia. “So what does a spiritual sponsor do?”
Paul turned his emerald eyes fully on me. “Then you’ll do it? This is wonderful, Wizard.” He jumped down from the throne and clapped me on the shoulder. “I knew you’d agree if I explained it all to you. I’ll go tell Celia. She’ll be delighted.”
As he hurried out I found myself wondering which would be harder to explain to Zahlfast at the wizards’ school: that I had a daughter or that I had agreed to sponsor a novice nun.
“You realize,” commented Joachim, “that you’re probably the only wizard in the western kingdoms who worries about seminary students.” His face in the glass telephone looked unworried, even amused. I wished I felt the same.
“But what is Cyrus doing?” I demanded again. It had been two weeks since I returned to Yurt, and I had heard nothing from Caelrhon beyond a few pigeon-messages from Theodora, saying little more than that she and Antonia were fine and sent their love. I had tried again to get help from Zahlfast, but he had said even more frostily than before that if there was indeed a renegade eastern wizard holed up in Caelrhon’s seminary, then the wizard of Caelrhon and I would just have to keep an eye on him.
“Cyrus is attending seminary classes,” said Joachim, “studying, praying, the same as any other student.”
“I hope you’ve made him give up those meetings of his where people come and revere him.” I knew as I spoke that the bishop would think this one more example of my not trusting him to carry out his own duties, but I had to know. “The Lady Maria’s returned to Yurt now, but she won’t say anything about him-just tells me my mind isn’t pure enough to understand true holiness.”
Maria had come back looking pleased with herself but was surprisingly untalkative, except to say that the Princess Margareta had decided to stay on in Caelrhon for a few weeks. The princess, finding her own royal castle, Yurt, and the city all filled with ennui or embarrassment for one reason or another, seemed to have decided that, overall, the city offered the most possibilities.
Joachim hesitated for a moment, as though wondering himself if the topic of a seminary student’s behavior was fit for a wizard’s ears, but then continued as though there had been no pause.
“After the incident with the rats, of course, I ordered him to stop preaching or even speaking on spiritual issues to anyone but a priest. He could not deny that was magic, and he understood why I could not allow someone practicing wizardry to pass as the Church’s representative. I suspect he is irritated with me, in spite of his penitent attitude, as well as with you for detecting his spells.” Joachim seemed remarkably unconcerned about it. “But he is studying hard and making good progress, I hear. Many seminary students come in these days with the impression that they are already spiritually advanced, scarcely needing our guidance, so if he’s had a few rough spots in his early training he has company.”
“We’re not talking about rough spots. We’re talking about someone who works with a demon.”
“I know you believe that, Daimbert,” said the bishop good-naturedly, “but I have yet to see the slightest sign of anything of the sort. If there is black magic in his background, he has struggled hard to overcome it.”
“Has the mayor made him any more presentations?”
“No-why should he?” Joachim looked amused again. “Cyrus already has the key to the city, something the council has granted no other seminary student or priest-not even me.”
I thought but did not say that I would find menace rather than humor in someone trained in eastern magic, someone who had had demonic help with at least some of his spells, whatever the bishop might think, and who was doubtless now furious with the organized Church, with the mayor and council of Caelrhon, and with me. Even if he were trying to break away, through prayer and study in the seminary, from a demon he had unwisely summoned, he had set himself a very difficult task. The demon would haunt him whenever he was not actually in church, magnifying his sense of wrongs done to him, and tempting him with spectacular ways to get even.
“I hear you will be Celia’s spiritual sponsor at the nunnery,” Joachim continued, having put concerns about Cyrus behind him. “I plan to ride over myself for the ceremony, so I shall see you tomorrow.”
Celia, Hildegarde, and I rode down to the Nunnery of Yurt together. Given the circumstances, I had decided not to wish the twins a Happy Birthday. Their parents had announced at the last minute that they would accompany us. Celia, looking at the resignation and reluctance on their faces, which they made no effort to hide, took them away for a few minutes’ private conversation and returned without them, silent but with red eyes. She did not speak the whole journey.
The nunnery was only a few miles from the royal castle, but it could have been located in another kingdom for all the contact we had with it. One could see its church spire, rising above some trees, from the road, but I had never gone any closer. It was a hot day of midsummer, and the sun beat down on us and our black clothing, so I was relieved when we turned down the lane, bright with asters, that led to the nunnery.
The lane took us around the shoulder of a hill and into the nuns’ valley. A low wall, its gate open, circled the nunnery complex. The church itself, surrounded by its claustral edifices and farm buildings, looked peaceful and prosaic. In the surrounding fields the nuns’ tenants, stripped to the waist in the sun, were bringing in the hay. They waved to us cheerfully as we rode past.
“There’s still time to change your mind,” said Hildegarde hopefully. She had been itchy and uncomfortable in her black dress since we left Yurt. “You know they don’t want women who aren’t absolutely sure of their vocations. No one will think any less of you.”
Celia shook her head without bothering to reply.
A priest came out to meet us as we clattered over the paving stones in front of the church. Roses bloomed by the entrance: nearly as good, I had to admit, as in Yurt’s royal garden.
“The Lady Celia, I believe?” the priest said, having no trouble distinguishing her, with her sober, weary eyes, from her flushed and irritated sister. “The abbess awaits you within. And this must be your spiritual sponsor.”
“My name is Daimbert.” I had done my best not to look like a wizard, having even borrowed a belt from one of the knights so as not to wear mine, with its self-illuminating emblem of the moon and stars on the buckle.
The priest noticed me admiring the roses. “Those were a gift, many years ago, from old King Haimeric of Yurt,” he told me proudly. “He sent us the rootstock.”
Our horses were led away and the priest led us inside. Celia was whisked off to meet with the abbess, while two elderly nuns sat down with Hildegarde and me, to spend the next hour making sure we were clear on the details of our roles in the ceremony as family member and as spiritual sponsor.
What am I doing here? I wondered. I didn’t believe any young woman should be a nun, I didn’t think Celia herself really wanted to be one, and I was having trouble taking seriously the words and symbols that the elderly nun was trying to explain to me.
“Then, after you have spoken these words,” she said, looking at me over her spectacles, “dip your finger in the sacramental water and touch Sister Celia three times, once on each eyelid and once on the chin. Use your forefinger.” She was tiny and would have appeared fragile were it not for the cheerful energy that flowed from her. “But remember, don’t speak and certainly don’t dip your finger in the water until the priest has finished the initial prayers and the abbess has led the Amen twice.”
I heard the sound of more hooves outside and concluded that the bishop had arrived with his attendants. Why couldn’t he have been spiritual sponsor instead? I asked myself in irritation. He probably was used to performing rituals like this all the time.
“And you know, I hope,” the nun continued, “that you have to take her by the hand to lead her up to the bishop when it is time for her to make her maiden vows before him. We are very honored that the bishop himself will perform the office today, rather than one of our own confessors. We want everything to go perfectly.” She looked at me intently. “Will you be able to remember all this?”
Hildegarde’s role, I gathered from snatches of conversation from the far side of the room as I repeated my instructions back, would be much simpler. After the rest of the ceremony was over-so that it was clear that the nuns had accepted Celia for herself, not for any payment-Hildegarde would convey to the abbess the stone, the clod of earth, and the applewood staff that symbolized the property which the duchess had agreed to give the nunnery if her daughter really did insist on joining.
“Come,” said the nun briskly. “It is time to go down to the chapel.”