Free The Witch & the Cathedral - Wizard of Yurt - 4 by C. Dale Brittain Page B

under a pile of leather-bound ledgers. I hurried to help her, putting a lifting spell on the volumes. "Where are these going?"
    She gave me a quick and grateful grin and pushed the hair back from her face with a dusty hand. To the storeroom. I decided Father doesn't need all these old ledgers cluttering up his office. Some of them even date from before I was born"
    I had to smile because I well remembered when she was born, which didn't seem long ago to me. "I would have thought you'd be helping your mother in the kitchens instead of your father."

    Gwennie shook her head bard "Not me! I'll never be a cook. I've decided I'm best at organizing and keeping track of things. I'm going to be constable of Yurt some day, like my father."
    "Do you think people will approve of a woman constable?" I asked amused.
    "Well, Paul approves," she said proudly, adding, "Prince Paul, that is," after a very brief pause. She flushed a little and looked away as I considered her thoughtfully. She and Paul were nearly the same age and had been childhood playmates, but I had assumed the prince and the cook's daughter had drifted apart in the last ten years.
    "I want to tell you, Wizard," she said hastily as though wanting to change the subject, "that the staff all support you." She unlocked the storeroom and showed me where she wanted the ledgers. "We don't think that wizards have to be stopped before they wrest control from the aristocrats. After all, we've known you for years, and you'd never be able to take power from anybody!"
    She realized at the last minute that this was not coming out the way she intended and started to blush again. I excused myself before she could become any more embarrassed.
    But as I crossed the courtyard toward the main gates I decided I had better find out more of what Vincent seemed to have been telling the court.
    On the grass beyond the moat a table was set up. The young chaplain and the Lady Maria sat in the sun, playing chess.
    "Checkmate!" cried the Lady Maria in delight as I came toward them. If she was indeed moonstruck by the chaplain, as Paul had suggested, it wasn't stopping her from beating him. "You moved right into my trap!" The chaplain gave me a complacent smile over her head as though to suggest that he and I both knew he had deliberately let her win. He didn't fool me for a minute.
    "Did Prince Paul go hunting with the others?" I asked.
    "He rode out by himself," said the Lady Maria. "He took his new horse and told his mother she wouldn't be able to keep up with him!"
    The chaplain was busily putting the chess pieces back in the box, clearly in no mood for another game.
    I leaned on the back of the Lady Maria's chair and smiled down at her. "The chaplain tells me you're opposed to the queen's marriage yourself, even though you did tell Paul a woman like her deserves her happiness. I would have thought you'd love it: after all, who else could plan the wedding but you?"
    "Surely, as I told you the other night, in the case of a widow—" the chaplain began, but I ignored him.
    "Well," Maria began, confused now and not wanting to meet my eyes, "I did hope to reassure the boy. And normally I would love planning the queen's wedding. You never saw anything as beautiful as her first one, so many years ago! And although of course she wouldn't wear a white dress for her second nuptials, I had thought that pink, both for her dress and for her bouquet, or maybe light blue—"
    The chaplain cleared his throat meaningfully.
    "But in the last few weeks I have come to think about it differently," Maria continued resolutely. "The chaplain has made it clear to me that, at a certain age, only a heavenly spouse will do."
    "Are you going to join the Nunnery of Yurt, then, my lady?" I asked in mock surprise.
    "Of course not" she replied in real surprise. "I've never married—at least not yet!—so it wouldn't apply in my case."
    I moved in rapidly with my real question. "Aren't you worried that if Vincent doesn't marry the