Song of Sorcery Read Free

cry and the other reply
    ‘She’s gone with the Gypsy Davey—rode away with the Gypsy Dave.’”
     
    Intricate minor patterns wove through the main theme, invoking hoofbeats fading away from the lady’s fine home across the moors. The minstrel didn’t look up from the guitar again until the last keening notes quivered off his strings to die in the stillness around him. Sir William’s face was a most alarmingly unhealthy eggplant color, and the resemblance between Maggie and her grandmother was suddenly uncomfortably apparent.
    “Well, Dad,” she smiled around sharp white teeth, “What d’you think? Boil him in oil, or flay him alive?”
    What had Colin’s masters taught him at the academy? In dealings with aristocrats, when in doubt, grovel. He knelt so fast he banged his knee on the floor. “Your pardon, m’lady, Sir William. I only did as you asked. I meant no offense, and can’t think why the tune has given it. I’ll never play it again—ever.” In your vicinity, at least, he added to himself, searching for an exit as Sir William’s skin regained its former pallor.
    “Perhaps you should choose less exotic material in the future, lad,” the old knight advised drily, “or not mention names in your ditties. The Lord Rowan cuckolded in your song, unless of course there’s another one, is my son-in-law, married to my younger daughter, the Lady Amberwine.”
    Colin gulped, his eyes darting furtively to the leaded glass window and back to the long flight of stone steps they’d mounted coming to the tower room.
    “Who was this fellow with the stuffy nose who taught you that song?” Maggie asked.
    “Minstrel Giles, m’lady?”
    “I was wondering if he’d like that nose removed?”
    “Maggie!” snapped Sir William, “You’re scaring the lad to death, you little heathen. He said it wasn’t his song.” He turned more kindly to the minstrel, who by now was perspiring profusely. “Sorry, son.” He jerked a thumb at his glowering daughter. “She’s a terrific girl, really, just awfully fond of her sister, as we all are around here.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand this at all. Winnie—Lady Amberwine—is not at all your average running-off sort of girl. She’s too considerate for that type of thing. To just leave without explanation! No letter to us! Even if she didn’t like her husband, which I could have sworn she did, she’d hardly have placed her family in such an awkward spot without giving us fair warning—”
    “Fine lady, indeed, noble sir,” the minstrel agreed emphatically, “I’m sure she’s a fine, fine lady.”
    “Too right, she is that.” Sir William’s hands tortured the bedclothes for a few moments before he turned his baffled and miserable face to Maggie.
    She leaned down and hugged him. “Aw, Dad, of course she is. She wouldn’t just go gallivanting off with the first passing gypsy—you know very well she can hardly decide which gown to wear to breakfast in the morning without consulting every servant in the house, and me and Gran besides. She certainly wouldn’t be able to bolt altogether on the spur of the moment like that! It’d take her a week to pack!” She glared again at the cowering Colin. “Must have been one of His Lordship’s enemies paid that Giles fellow to make up that awful song.”
    Colin gulped and waggled a tentative index finger for attention. “Begging your ladyship’s pardon,” he began, not really wishing to call notice to himself again but equally reluctant for Giles to suffer the consequences of his own silence. “Giles confessed that he only gave the tune a bit of a polish—it was actually a popular creation.”
    “Common gossip music, then, eh?” Sir William looked even older and sicker than he had looked when Colin came into the room, and he had appeared twenty hard years older than Maggie’s grandmother then. “Maggie, what can be going on with the girl?”
    Maggie looked down, shoving her fists deep into her