The War and the Fox Read online

  “It is.” She thought for a moment. “How long do you think you’ll be able to get away with not following their orders? They seem very set on it, but Captain Lowell covered up for you this time.”

  “If I get results, I don’t suppose they’ll mind.”

  “Be sure you get results, then,” Alice said, “because I don’t want to have to do all the magic for our unit. It looks very tiring.”

  The faint stirring of humor lifted Kip’s spirits, and to his surprise he found a smile creeping onto his muzzle. “It is that. I’ll be careful. We must share the burden, after all.”

  Malcolm and Lowell had continued arguing in low voices that Kip had caught a little of. The gist seemed to be that Lowell could leave on his own and maybe catch a few words outside the door to make sure they weren’t fleeing, or he could risk what he already knew to be Emily’s mercurial temper. Lowell ceded the point, but not happily; he stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

  “Well argued,” Kip said.

  Malcolm turned and spread his hands, a grin spreading over his face. “The demon took my eyes but left my voice, and I’d much rather be blind and voiced than sighted and mute any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather have both?” Alice asked.

  “Aye, and I’d rather have a family fortune and a castle for all of us to live in, but life doesn’t deal you the cards you want.”

  With a small rush of air, Emily appeared in the middle of the room, a plain traveling cloak over a formal dress. Though she’d translocated without so much as a stumble, in a way Kip hoped to emulate one day, her face was drawn and shadows lingered under her eyes.

  Kip wondered if she were tired, but she caught her breath and rushed to Malcolm to embrace him. “I’ve missed you all. I wish you could have been with me.”

  “You smell different,” Malcolm said into her hair, “and yet the same. And I’m quite pleased I took the time to wash.”

  She turned from him to Kip. “I’ve been from palace to ocean and I have so much to tell you.”

  After she released Kip, it was Alice’s turn. “We were in a battle today,” she told Emily.

  “Alice did very well,” Kip said. “I think my caution is the only thing holding her back.”

  “You did well, too.” Alice’s ears flattened in abashed pleasure. “You got rid of the British sorcerer. And Malcolm stopped them finding us.”

  “It sounds like it came out all right.” Emily looked around at them. “You’re all unharmed, and that’s the most important.”

  “There were some tricky parts,” Kip said.

  “Alice, you’ve got nothing but that screen for privacy?” Emily asked.

  The vixen smiled. “What did you have, when you lived in the basement of the Tower?”

  “A door, at least.” Emily smiled back. “I suppose the army isn’t accustomed to having women in their midst, either.”

  “They will be.” Alice folded her arms, her ears proudly up.

  Kip smiled and turned to Emily. “What’s your news?”

  “Well.” Emily looked around the room and then sat on the carpet in the middle of the floor. The others arrayed themselves in a loose circle. “Let me tell you.”

  We didn’t accomplish everything we’d hoped, but this is only the first stop. Spain isn’t going to weigh in on our side and end the war, but neither are they going to help the British, and all in all, after this trip I think they are slightly more favorably inclined to us. But let me start at the beginning.

  Besides me and Abigail Adams, the other members of our party are Esau Plainfield, a spiritual sorcerer; Jenny Fortescue, Abigail’s womanservant; Thomas Lickridge, our secretary; and Albert Dorn, who I think is a bodyguard but I’m not sure and nobody will tell me exactly what he does. Master Plainfield is along to make sure nobody ensorcels Abigail into agreeing to something she doesn’t want to. I think he is also on the lookout for chances to improve our odds with a little sorcery of our own, but of course nobody will admit that.

  They’re all perfectly pleasant except for him. He can’t stop telling stories about all the political conferences he’s attended and the famous people whose minds he’s snooped about in. I’ve tried not to listen, but I learned some terrible things about what Viceroy Middleton liked to do to dogs. Also Lickridge tried for the first three days to sit or stand next to me whenever possible until I mentioned casually that he should be careful lest he find his quill stuck in a very painful place, and now he lavishes his attentions on poor Jenny.

  Master Plainfield needed to show me the Spanish Court—one reason he’s part of our group is that he has been to all these places—and he’s very good at that. The image was so clear that even though I’d never been to Madrid, I had no doubt I could go to this place. There’s a reception room specifically for visiting sorcerers—this is common, they tell me—and Master Plainfield knew the room inside and out. Three distinctive, detailed paintings, gilt frames, the ceiling with a fresco of King Alfonso the…Sixth, I think, driving out the Moors. It’s not in good taste, especially since there are Moorish sorcerers, and I wonder what they think of it? There’s a carpet in bright gold and yellow that looks like it was made in Africa, though I doubt that makes up for the fresco. And the place has a different smell. Kip, I suppose you’d be able to describe it better with your words, but it smelt older and dustier somehow than the Colonies.

  A Spaniard greeted us and asked our business, and Lickridge told him, and he asked us to wait. Master Plainfield advised us to make ourselves comfortable, and it was a good thing, because the Spaniard was gone almost an hour. Then he came back with a half-dozen male and female servants—two Calatians, Kip—and they took us through the palace to this very nice series of apartments and told us it would be six days before his majesty King Carlos would be able to grant an audience.

  I thought that was terribly rude, but Abigail told me that they’d been counting on it. Everyone in her group would have something to do during that week—preparing, talking to lesser ministers, and so on, and really a week was a reasonable time for a diplomatic meeting. Since they would all be staying in the palace, she wanted me to make my way out to the coast where they keep their ships, learn the size of their fleet, and also learn the location so I could get back there. I had to be very discreet but we needed to know, if they did offer us aid, if they promised more than they had or significantly less than they could spare.

  With Jenny’s help I made myself up as a maidservant. The two of us went to talk to some of the soldiers and after two days finally convinced one to take me with him on a trip out to the harbor. Oh, don’t give me that look, it was all perfectly innocent. Well, perhaps not “perfectly,” but I didn’t do anything untoward. I told him that my father had defected from England during the Napoleonic Wars and we had settled in Spain, but my father had just passed away and it was hard finding work in Madrid and I’d always loved the sea, and so on.

  We rode for a day, and he wouldn’t tell me where we were going until we arrived in Corunna. That’s where Spain docks most of her armada. The soldier said he didn’t know what call there might be for a maidservant there but there were women there sure enough. So after a little discussion, I shook free of him and I went down to the harbor.

  There are so many ships. I thought they would be easy to count, but when I came in sight of them, they took my breath away. I counted to ten, to twenty, to fifty, and still it wasn’t even half of them. I must have wandered around for an hour. After I had the feel of the place, I bought a small meal of bread and cheese and went down to the water to eat it, because it was beautiful there.

  And then you won’t believe what I saw. Victor Adamson, strolling along the dock as if it were one of his father’s shipyards. So I left my bread and cheese and I walked down to meet him.

  Yes, yes, I know, Kip, don’t say it. I was startled and I couldn’t imagine what he was doing there and I just had to know. I wouldn’t be in any danger; I cou
ld get away with a thought and he doesn’t have any magic, and he wasn’t with other sorcerers. So I went up to him and he saw me coming and stopped to meet me.

  “Good afternoon, Mister Adamson,” I said, as if we were meeting on a Boston street.

  He responded just as politely. “Miss Carswell.”

  I asked if he were there on behalf of his father, and he said, “In a manner of speaking,” and then he asked what I was doing there. So I said I was there to take the air, that one of my friends had been to Corunna and had recommended it and I was only in for the afternoon. He wouldn’t tell me how he’d gotten there, but of course it was sorcery; it had to be.

  We parted without learning much more about each other’s business. I returned to the Spanish court with a day to spare before our audience. Abigail told me that the meetings leading up to the royal audience had gone very well and that the Spanish were receptive to our mission. “Anything to break the power of the English, and what better than by splitting it?” she’d said to them, and her forthrightness had gone over well, it sounded.

  So we were hopeful as we prepared to meet King Carlos and his advisors. And my goodness, the preparation we had to undergo! We had to be dressed in our best clothes, and we were given many instructions. Kneel when the king is announced. Don’t rise until he’s seated. If he stands then immediately kneel again. Don’t speak unless he specifically invites you to speak, and stop as soon as he signals you to stop, even if it’s in the middle of a sentence. Also, we ladies were told that while we were kneeling, he might walk close to us and even touch us and we were not to react in any way, so that was something to look forward to, let me tell you. Though in the event, he didn’t touch any of us that I know of.

  Oh, and we were met in a side audience room, and the Steward—he was the one who lectured us, a dour thin man named Juan—made a point of telling me that the room had no unguarded access to the royal chambers. You know, in case I should decide to jump back to it at a later date to assassinate the king. But even though it wasn’t an official royal chamber, it was still gorgeously frescoed and the whole room was gilt-edged with relief molding and the chairs were velvet and gold-painted wood and the seal of the Bourbons was all over it.

  We went through all of the protocol—what’s that? Yes, I’ve heard that meeting the English King is much the same. In any event, Carlos is quite old and it was his son of the same name who did most of the talking. I believe he has an older son who tried to take over from him around the time of Napoleon and who is still around somewhere? Yes? In any event, Carlos IV, the King, was a very sweet old man but his son was much more severe. How, he wanted to know, could he count on the Americans to be loyal allies? How did he know we would engage in favored relations with Spain after winning our independence? We were rebelling against one master; how could they be sure we would not cast aside our friends once we no longer needed them?

  It was a strange line of questioning, but Abigail was equal to it. He even asked why we sent an old woman to represent us, and Abigail said, “Remember that it was an old woman who first sent Cristobal Colombo to our shores, and so is it not fitting that in our time of need, we send an old woman back to Spain as our emissary?” Of course, Isabella I was only something like forty when all that happened, but it was well said nonetheless.

  Still, he seemed to be pushing hard on loyalty and trustworthiness, trying to push Abigail into making a promise of some sort. She told me this afterwards; I admit I did not follow all of the subtext of the conversation at the time. I was watching Plainfield, who was watching the spiritual sorcerer of the Spanish court, both of them making sure the other wasn’t manipulating any of the people there.

  Abigail handled the conversations well enough that Carlos—the older one—interjected at one point in Spanish, which I understood well enough to translate as, in essence, “Oh, let’s give them some ships already.”

  So then the son got this crafty look on his face. It reminded me of when Patris thought he’d outsmarted you, Kip, and it boded about as well. “Ships, yes,” he said. “You wish some of our ships to help you counter the British advantage. Why could they not simply use sorcerers to bring their armies from place to place?”

  This was another odd question but I think I read it well. Abigail asked me to address it, and I told him that moving large numbers of people via magic was so strenuous as to be not worthwhile; a good translocational sorcerer can move two other people at once, so it would either take a hundred sorcerers or a hundred hours and you’d wear out the sorcerers, and so on. Of course, you can do better with calyxes, but not very much better, and anyway I didn’t want to give away too much even though the Spanish also have calyxes, I think? Yes, thank you, Kip. He was fishing to see if we had a way to move armies, because I don’t think they do yet.

  So anyway I told him we didn’t, and he nodded and said, “Then ships. How many ships do you think you would like?”

  We had talked about that, and Abigail said that we would take as many as they could spare, and we didn’t think it needed to be a lot, that if we could keep the British from blockading our harbors so we could trade, that would likely be sufficient to turn the tide in our favor, so to speak.

  He pressed us for a number, and Abigail said again that we didn’t know, that it would depend on what they could spare. And here I started to get a little uncomfortable, because he was looking at me and I could only think of one reason he would be doing that, and that was that he knew I had already been there. And if he knew, then there was only really one way he could have.

  Sure enough, after Abigail had finished her perfectly diplomatic response, Carlos the Younger turned to his father, clearly annoyed that she hadn’t fallen into his trap. I expect he wanted her to say a number and then he would have said, “How do you think they knew to ask for that many?” But he said something like, “The Americans seem very earnest and trustworthy, but in fact they have brought a spy into your court, Father.”

  And then of course Victor came out, all smiles and unction, and told the court in perfect Spanish (Plainfield translated for me) how he’d been down at the shipyards as part of the courtesy his delegation was extending to the Spanish court, how he was lending his shipbuilding experience to help where he saw the opportunity. He’d spotted me there and he’d come back and asked if I’d been authorized to be in Corunna, which of course I had not.

  Carlos the younger took up the story from then, concluding that I was a spy and that the Americans’ intentions were dishonorable from the start. His father’s face grew more and more angry—not angry, actually, more like disappointed—as he went on, and it was clear we weren’t going to get our help from Spain.

  But Abigail, God bless her, wouldn’t just walk away. She said very evenly that of course it was in our interests to secure our own information about the Spanish fleet, that my orders had been to do nothing but observe and count ships, and that in fact I had done nothing but that. And then she said, “I am most curious to know what delegation comprises this young man and how close it must be to the Spanish crown to allow him to ignore all of the courtesies demanded of a foreign visitor in the presence of royalty.”

  Carlos the elder did look angry at that, and Carlos the younger was taken aback, clearly not having thought of this. Victor looked confused, and then the elder Carlos told us that Victor was here with an emissary of Britain to request peace with Spain while the American rebellion was being settled. We speculated later that he claimed to represent America, to show that there were some in the Colonies who didn’t desire independence, but we don’t know for certain. At any rate, Carlos the younger babbled something about Victor having already shown the proper courtesies, but King Carlos didn’t seem impressed with that, and in the middle of it cut his son off and told us all to leave his presence, that our petitions were all denied and we should leave the Spanish court on the morrow.

  Victor, belatedly, knelt, and that only highlighted that he hadn’t before, and Carlos withdrew into his thr
one room as we all stood and left the audience chamber. So it was a disaster, and mostly my fault, but at least Abigail was sharp enough to pick up on Victor’s flaw and use it to make sure our enemies got no advantage.

  6

  The Hand of Master Albright

  When she’d finished, Kip drew in a breath. “Victor, working with the British. Not a surprise, I suppose.”

  Malcolm took Emily’s hand. “Don’t fret too much about how it turned out. Victor would have found a way to spoil the delegation somehow.”

  She snatched her hand away. “Very nice. You give him so much credit?”

  “Nay.” Malcolm reached out, and after a moment Emily sighed and took his hand back. “I meant only that he was prepared for you as you were not for him, and next time you’ll be prepared for him as well and perhaps it won’t go as easy for him.”

  “Thank you for the confidence.”

  While Kip was trying to think of something comforting to say, Alice stepped up to Emily. “I think you’re frightfully brave, going across Spain by yourself like that and being a real spy, just like Michael Dagger in Napoleon’s army. We’re here fighting battles, but you might be able to end the whole war.”

  “Not if I keep acting this way.” Emily smiled gratefully though and ran a hand through her hair. “I didn’t tell Abigail that I went up to Victor. I haven’t told anyone but you. I’m afraid that if she found out, she’d send me home. I told her he was there and I saw him, and she said it was simply a case of bad luck, but that next time perhaps I should be more stealthy.”

  “A little.” Kip smiled. “But Alice is right; you did well to get to Corunna at all, and now you can go back there anytime. You become more valuable with every bit of knowledge you gain.”

  “Thank you all,” Emily said, straightening her back. “Here, I brought you some Spanish bread. It’s from this morning, really quite lovely, and I don’t know how they feed you here.”