Chantress by Amy Butler Greenfield Read Free Book Online Page B

Nat?”
    “Incantare.” Nat spoke as if he were used to supplying Latin verbs on demand. “ Cantare , meaning ‘to sing,’ and in , meaning ‘in’ or ‘against.’ ”
    “ ‘To sing something into being,’ in short,” said Penebrygg. “Or, if you like, to sing it into a form that bends it against its true nature. Enchantment—that is the work of a Chantress. And has been for time out of mind.”
    “But what kind of enchantment?” I pointed to the fire, little more than a pile of smoky cinders. “Could they—we—make that fire burn brighter?”
    “A Chantress could set a lake on fire, if she wished to,” said Penebrygg. “Or at least the most powerful ones could. I speak, of course, of the days of Arthur and Camelot, when the faerie blood still ran strong. That was when the Lady of the Lake gave a sword to Arthur, and the Chantress Niniane beguiled Merlin.”
    “An interfering bunch, the Chantresses,” Nat said, eyes on his carving.
    “You’re too hard on them, Nat,” Penebrygg said. “They generally did more good than harm. But in any case, their power waned over the centuries, and eventually Chantresses of any kind became rare.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    “No one knows for sure,” Penebrygg said. “It is said that some Chantresses kept themselves apart and never married or mated. Some say, too, that many Chantresses were unusually susceptible to plague and other ills. In any case, by our own time, there were almost no Chantresses left, and their powers were in such abeyance that people had almost forgotten they existed. But they could be found here and there, if you listened to the old stories and had a mind to look for them. Which few people did, until the Great Devastation.”
    “The Great what?” I asked.
    “The Great Devastation,” Nat repeated with a touch of impatience. “The explosions at Hampton Court Palace that wiped out King Charles, his heirs, and half the aristocracy almost eight years ago. Surely you remember? By your own account, you were in England at the time.”
    “I was very young—”
    “So was I, but it’s impossible to forget.”
    My reply was choked off by a fragment of memory that suddenly rose in my mind.
    Winter sunlight pokes through a basket as I hide beneath it, pretending I’m a chick inside the egg. And then, my mother’s hushed voice in the wind, speaking in strained tones.
    “He is dead, Norrie. The King is dead, and his family, and hundreds more with them, and they say it is magic and treason that murdered them. And now they are hunting for magic workers—”
    “Have a care, mistress, or Lucy will hear you.”
    The voices dwindle into whispers.
    I swallowed hard. Treason? Murder? Magic?
    “I—I do remember a little,” I said faintly. “We heard he was dead. The King, I mean. I remember my mother was very upset.”
    “As were we all,” Penebrygg said. “It was a kingdom in deepest mourning—and deepest shock. No one could quite believe the scale of the destruction. And people panicked, too, because the new heir to the throne, Henry Seymour, did not inspire confidence. He was only a distant cousin of the King, and he was a mere ten years old. To many, the kingdom seemed rudderless. People talked of civil war. And perhaps it would have come to that, if Lord Scargrave had not taken young Henry’s part.”
    “Scargrave.” I seized on the name. “The man I overheard in the library?”
    Penebrygg nodded. “The very same: Lucian Ravendon, ninth Earl of Scargrave. A good man, once upon a time. Thoughtful and resolute, a warrior born and bred, of ancient family and seemingly incorruptible. Many urged him to claim the throne for himself, but instead, he threw his support behind Henry, the rightful heir.
    “To safeguard the boy, Scargrave installed him in the Tower of London, and that ancient fortress became the seat of royal power, as it was in the days of William the Conqueror. Right awayHenry appointed Scargrave as his Spymaster and Lord