Chapter Four
Miss Cordelia was the only person at Nettleford Manor to have considered the logistics of moving herself and her charges to London. Jasper gave up any idea of leaving that day, and bent his mind to finding a female driver, maiden female carriage horses, and preferably half a dozen female guards.
A chaperone, too. Miss Cordelia was an unmarried lady, and could not possibly travel with an escort of men and no reputable female companion.
To be sure, she would be safe in his company and that of his entourage.
Jasper was a gentleman, and one whose mission was to deliver the lady and her charges safely to London.
Besides that, little Sapphire would be a formidable enemy to anyone who succumbed to the temptation that the lovely young woman presented.
Everyone knew unicorns never forgot an injury or a slight, and who wanted to live the rest of their life looking over their shoulder for an angry magical beast with the ability to deflect most weapons, the power of translocation (not yet, but it came in the second year of their life, according to his reading), and an eighteen-inch ivory skewer on its forehead?
However, reputation took no account of reason, and Miss Cordelia required a chaperone.
Once Jasper was introduced to Polly, it was obvious she wouldn’t do. Too common and far too young.
And it wouldn’t be the lady’s mother. From what he could pick out of Sir Arnold Nettleford’s hints and elusive comments, Lady Nettleford had taken to her bed when Master Edgar, the young Nettleford heir, had been sent to the duke to have his erratic mage-gift brought under control.
Jasper wished him the best of luck, and none of the issues Jasper himself had experienced.
Whether Lady Nettleford had asked about or shown any interest in her daughter, who had—through no fault of her own—been hurled into the role of unicorn minder, Sir Arnold did not disclose. However, he made it clear enough that the lady’s mother would be of no help whatsoever.
Jasper asked for pen and paper, and then made use of three of the royal guards in his escort to take messages to the Duke of Chester, the mayor of Chester, and the nearest convent of the Sisters of the Three Warrior Maidens, which was about an hour’s ride southeast of Nettleford on a prominence called Bulkeley Hill.
On second thought, he sent two of the guards riding to Chester with his messages, and took another two as escort on a ride to Bulkeley Hill, to the Convent of St. Gwladys.
The warrior nuns acknowledged no master except God and no authority except the superiors of their own order.
They must be humbly requested for their aid, and it was better to do that in person.
The captain and rest of his men could be left to guard Miss Nettleford, the unicorn, and the remainder of her unlikely charges.
It took longer than he expected. Rather than simply delivering his request and riding away, he found himself being subjected to several grueling interviews.
The sister hospitaller was first. Her role was to see to guests, and so she had greeted him, listened as he explained his errand, and sent a message.
A few minutes later, he was ushered into the reception room of the mother superior, who asked a few incisive questions and then sent him off in the care of the sister sacristan, to have refreshments while she consulted with her senior advisers.
He returned after an excellent lunch to be grilled by three other nuns—one the sister in charge of combat training, one the convent’s most senior battle mage, and one the prioress.
She, it became clear, was also the convent’s most gifted healer, and had read widely on the topic of how magical gifts were transmitted through families.
Eventually, he was sent off to wait in the guests’ garden, where the hospitaller brought him an excellent cherry wine, and stayed to chat about the convent’s origins and history.
The order itself had been founded in France, and took their inspiration from the French warrior saint, Jeanne D’Arc, the warrior queen, Saint Margaret, and the warrior of faith, Saint Catherine of Alexandria.
The sisters specialized in providing escorts and wayside accommodation for women pilgrims, and for training women guards and women mages.
They were known for using only necessary force, and someone who attacked a pilgrim caravan guarded by the good sisters was unlikely to be killed. But they might wish themselves dead.
Eventually, a nun came to fetch Jasper back to the mother superior’s reception room, where he was told that an escort and a chaperone would meet him at Nettleford Manor on Monday at eight o’clock in the morning.
“I trust you can organize suitable transport for the unicorn and your other charges by that time, Mr. Thornton,” said the mother superior.
“Earlier, if you wish, ma’am,” Jasper assured her.
“We do not travel on Sundays except in extremity,” the nun explained. “You shall leave on Monday, arrive in London on Friday, and our sisters shall spend two days with our order in London before returning to us on the following Monday.”
And that was that. Jasper thanked her and returned to Chester, to find out whether his messages there had borne fruit.
*
Cheshire
After that, Jasper made a point of visiting Nettleford Manor every day, both to see that all was well with Miss Nettleford’s charges, and to monitor the growing magical effusion.
The latest beast—a pegasus born on one of the local farms—was going to be a nuisance.
The colt and its mother would have to go to London, too, and the mother was a big horse—part Shire.
The birth changed Jasper’s plans, and led to another flurry of messages and another visit to the Convent of St. Gwladys.
“We shall be traveling by canal boat,” Jasper explained to Miss Nettleford.
“In that way, we can ensure that the animals are not stressed, and by building quarters for the ladies in our party, the unicorn, the lindwurm and the egg at one end of the boat, and for the minotaur and his nurse, the pegasus and his groom, and the men, including the crew, at the other, we can keep the unicorn calm.”
With magical assistance and a canal horse trained to the boots—Jasper had sent out more messages to ensure changes of horse would be waiting at regular intervals—they would be able to manage seven to ten miles an hour. Reaching London in five days was achievable.
In the meantime, Jasper bent his efforts to discovering the identity of the catalyst. They were so vanishingly rare he could find no test, magical or otherwise, to disclose the person.
However, he figured that, if he marked the incidents on a map, he could narrow down the center of the magical storm.
It proved not to be that simple. The number of known incidents was greatest in and close to Nettleford Manor, but there was no semblance of a circle with diminishing effects the further one went from the central cluster.
Could there be unknown incidents that would even out the distribution?
Could it be that the potentiating effect took time to be apparent, and future incidents would provide clarity?
Time must have been a factor for the magical beasts and humans, given that the potentiating influence must have been active in the early stages of the pregnancy, before the offspring was fully formed.
The duke’s physician and the healer mages at the college confirmed that any potential in the foal within a gestating horse must have been triggered no later than halfway through the pregnancy, which meant the catalyst, whomever he or she was, had been active for five to six months.
He began again, drawing a timeline across the bottom of a long roll of paper and plotting the incidents by his estimate of when the plant’s or creature’s or human’s potential must have been triggered.
Sure enough, there was a substantial jump six months ago. Once one allowed for the fact that shorter-lived plants and animals were more likely to be magical and less likely to be reported to the authorities, the increase was even more dramatic.
To take just one example, a chick that grew to three times the size of its brothers and sisters, and which could also translocate, was clearly magical. But since it could not breed, it would make little if any difference to its flock or its farmer.
There had been another jump a little over a month ago. Of course, once the unicorn, the dragon, and young Edgar Nettleford’s gift all arrived on the same day, the duke sent out an order that every magical being or gift should be reported, whether major or not.
How could this help him to find the catalyst?
Perhaps he needed to start at the other end.
The chances are it is someone from Nettleford Manor, he mused.
And it suddenly occurred to him that a person who visited around the neighborhood would carry their potentiating power with them, thereby messing up his distribution map.
On his daily visit to Nettleford Manor, he questioned Sir Arnold, the butler, the housekeeper, and the stablemaster about the movements of the household in the past six months.
“Very few of the servants go farther than the village or the home farm,” he told the duke that evening.
“In fact, it is highly unlikely to be any of them. As for the steward and the family, young Edgar is out, since he is a mage, and we know that catalysts can’t themselves do magic.
And Lady Nettleford does not visit the farms or villages—or anywhere except for those manors where the lady of the house is a contemporary of hers. ”
“Which leaves us with the steward, Sir Arnold, and the unicorn’s maiden,” the duke surmised.
“Precisely,” Jasper agreed.
“It is probably Miss Nettleford then,” said the duke. “Both Sir Arnold and the steward are fifty if they are a day, and catalyst power usually shows up in young adults. So, things should settle down once she leaves the district. Well done, Thornton.”