Chapter Eight
Jasper had come at a run when the lindwurm first began her ear-piercing complaint, but he had to wait in the visiting room to find out what it was all about, for Sister Louise and Miss Nettleford were both attending to the crisis, or so said the nun who had answered the door.
Even after the noise stopped, he still had to wait. He tried to be patient, but his instinct for danger, which had been niggling at him all day, was now almost as demanding as little Mary, if without the indescribable noise.
He was pacing the room when Sister Louise and Miss Nettleford both hurried in, followed by several of the other nuns.
“We believe the well has been poisoned or cursed,” said Miss Nettleford, without preamble.
It wasn’t possible. The well room was in the dungeon under the inner keep, guarded by both physical sentries and arcane wards. “What makes you think so?” Jasper asked, forcing the scorn out of his tone and expressing only polite interest.
But his disbelief was soon dispelled as they took it in turns to explain what had happened.
“And we have confirmed it is not the goats’ milk,” Miss Nettleford said in conclusion, “for there was some left in the can after Polly made up the bottle, and Mary is now drinking it with no signs of distress.”
“We tried giving her some water on a spoon,” said Sister Louise, “and she shrieked like a banshee.”
That seemed to settle it, then. “Very well, ladies. Do you think Sapphire’s horn would work on the well?
The trick would be getting him close enough to the water to dip his horn in.
” The surface of the water was some distance down a deep narrow cylindrical hole from the top of the wall that surrounded the well.
He was thinking out loud at this point, canvassing the alternatives. “Perhaps, at least as an interim measure, he could purify each bucket full?”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Nettleford, “you could set up a bucket brigade to fetch water from the fresh streams.”
“Good idea,” said Sister Louise. “Running water does not easily take a hex.”
The ladies were right. In fact, he had better immediately send out an order to stop people consuming the well-water. Or using it at all, since they did not know what it could do. Organizing a bucket brigade would then be the logical next step.
“If you ladies would excuse me,” he said, “I shall speak to Lord Percival and order the castle to shut down the well and throw out any water that has already been drawn.”
“Quite right,” said Sister Louise. “I shall come with you in case the man argues.”
*
Uncle Percy did argue. He started by scoffing.
Like Jasper, he was confident that nothing could possibly get through the protections on the well.
Unlike Jasper, he was not prepared to change his mind in the light of new information.
Sister Louise described the scene with the lindwurm and explained their reasoning and their conclusions.
“The lindwurm is a baby, my dear sister. Babies cry for no reason,” said Uncle Percy, in a tone that suggested he would have liked to pat Sister Louise’s hand. Or her head.
Thank goodness the man’s audacity stopped short of such an offense, but even so, Sister Louise was not one to allow others to overstep their bounds.
Jasper would have shriveled at the look the nun turned on Uncle Percy. It was all too reminiscent of the glares he’d had from his teachers when he had, once again, muffed a spell that other children mastered easily.
“In point of fact, babies do not cry for no reason,” she replied.
“It is a caregiver’s duty to discover whether they are hungry, tired, or in pain.
Mary, who has a very healthy appetite, refused food and gave every evidence of extreme distress.
When Delia attempted to taste her prepared milk, Mary, who was beginning to calm down, forced the cup from her hands and spilled the contents.
The unicorn put his horn in the puddle and after that, both babies were content. ”
“Yes, yes,” said Uncle Percy, flapping his hand as if to dispel such inconvenient facts. “But these actions could have other explanations. It is not as if babies are creatures of reason, after all.”
Sister Louise looked ready to argue the point in ways that would puncture Uncle Percy’s self-consequence, and nothing was surer to cause him to dig his toes in.
Jasper intervened before they could speak, repeating the request he had made at least three times during the conversation so far.
“Even so,” he said patiently, “I suggest placing a moratorium on the well until we discover the source of the poison.”
“Suspected poison,” Uncle Percy corrected.
“Even if some substance was in the lindwurm’s bottle, and even if that substance was introduced by way of the water, it is a reach to suggest it was poison.
After all, what do the Welsh gain by poisoning the catalyst?
Or the French, for that matter. They want her alive. ”
Jasper hoped that remained true. For if they had given up on being able to capture the catalyst, a less desirable option became the only acceptable alternative. If they could not have Delia and her gift, they might decide to kill her to prevent Britain from benefitting.
Eventually, he and Sister Louise wore Uncle Percy down, and he agreed to set a guard on the well, to send those mages who knew the most about potions and hexes to test the water, and to have those who’d already consumed water from the well examined for any signs of illness or influence.
“It is a suggestibility hex,” Jasper told Miss Nettleford two days later. He had been giving himself the reward of reporting to her each day, as a counter to the irritation of finding nothing and having to deal with Uncle Percy’s incessant suggestions that there was nothing to find.
Now the problem was solved, he would go back to restricting himself to weekly visits.
Not that spacing out his meetings with her had done anything to remove his hopeless infatuation.
Miss Cordelia Nettleford had somehow reached into his chest and taken his heart for her own, and there appeared to be nothing he could do about it.
He had tried to fall out of love, and it hadn’t worked. As for the other alternative, it was impossible. Even if he could figure out what his gift was and bring it to its full potential, she would still be the unicorn’s maiden and the realm’s catalyst, and out of his reach.
“It was Sister Louise and some of the nuns who noticed that the maid who brings your firewood and other supplies seemed to have changed personality, and then, after we started hauling all water from the stream, she changed back again.”
“She is such a surly person normally,” Miss Nettleford commented. “She does the bare minimum to keep her position and does it grudgingly. Then, for two days, she was pleasant and willing. Now she is grumpy again. Even worse than before, in fact.”
Someone had already told Miss Nettleford. Jasper should have expected it—she lived with the nuns, after all.
“Once we knew what to look for,” he said, “we found many examples around the castle, such as a guard who let someone out after curfew and then back in again, and a cook who gave away most of Lord Percy’s dinner and had to cook a new one.”
He wouldn’t discuss the romantic liaisons where one party had been reluctant, had agreed to the insistent demands of the other, and then claimed to have been hexed. Some of them were probably taking advantage of a ready excuse, but he was certain the water accounted for others.
Miss Nettleford shuddered. “How awful,” she said. “The examples you mention are bad enough, but I can only imagine what a person of ill-will might do with such a hex.”
Jasper’s imagination had already explored that avenue. “We have to assume that the mage who created the hex intended to use its influence to either get his people into the castle, or to bring you out into the open.”
“Thank goodness for Mary and Sapphire,” replied Miss Nettleford.
She could say that again. Jasper suppressed a shudder at the thought of how easily the enemy’s plot could have succeeded.
“We suspect someone dropped a hexed object into the well, maybe by someone who was already under the influence of the hex. We have a person diving in the well to find the object. Once it is removed and destroyed, we’ll figure out a way to clean the water.
” And the guard on the well would remain.
Jasper was determined to make sure of that.
“I wonder if Sapphire would allow us to lower him in, if we fixed up some sort of a harness, and I went with him,” Miss Nettleford mused.
“I’d rather find another solution,” said Jasper.
“Just think of how much work would be involved in cleaning the smell of men out of the well room! My mentors at the College of Mages write that, once the hexed object is found, they can probably discover what magic was used to charge it and create an antidote. How is Sapphire, by the way? And little Mary?”
“Both well,” Miss Nettleford told him. “And Mr. Thornton, I nearly forgot to tell you. I think the egg is nearly ready to hatch. I have heard peeping!”
“I wonder what the child will look like,” said Jasper. “It sounds as if we shall soon know. Please send me a message when it happens.”
By the time the egg had hardened, it was more than twice the size of a human head, so one imagined that the baby would be the size of a large newborn. But what magical beast might come from an egg delivered by a human mother was anyone’s guess.
Betting on the nature of the hatchling had become a favorite activity in the castle since Jasper and his party had arrived, and had spread to those sent here to be influenced by the catalyst. Current favorites in the betting book were griffin, sphinx, or some sort of winged human.
Other popular guesses included several different hybrids of reptile and human, including a crocodile-headed child, and a baby with a human head and a dragon’s body.