Medicina Magica

Well, that was a lovely party: Corinne and Leah and Susie outdid themselves. Laurens was mostly civil, and when he wasn't he was amusing. Wilkes was charming as always, and so were Stephen and Charles and Kiran. Yvon behaved himself, even if he did bring Arianwen and that funny friend of his who always talks about maths, and Seth brought his wife who seemed very bored with us all. Ilóna didn't come. She was out again yesterday--she doesn't work when she has her monthlies, she says that they wear her out, and apparently she's still not feeling well. Some women really do have a terrible time of it, I know, but she swears she's tried everything and there's nothing else to be done for it. Of course Rosalind didn't stay long; she never does. I don't think my parties are interesting enough to please Rosalind, any more than they do Seth's wife or Ilóna's awful girlfriend, whom I just can't like no matter how hard I try (oddly, she makes me feel almost exactly like Endymion Dashwood does). But we had a good time.

Still, I keep reading Hadrian's letter over and over, and I wonder: what is he planning? Has he done it already? Does Ned know? Does Lavinia? Does Susie? Addie does not. I know because I asked her.

I'm glad Susie isn't marrying Greene. I'm not so glad that Susie's moving in with Corinne, but it's better than getting married, and perhaps she'll learn from Corinne's example about marriage too early, since she won't learn from mine.

I suppose I am living in sin. I shouldn't like it so much, should I?

I really dread hearing from Emily. She hasn’t said a word since the news came out and if I know my sister it’s because she’s seething, and she isn’t going to let go until she explodes. I don’t have any idea which one of us she is going to explode on, but I don’t want to hear it.

I can call him a cad and a selfish son of a bitch and a manipulative bastard and a rotter and a bigamist. That doesn’t mean I want to hear anyone else do it. It was all I could do not to slap Michael today. He was upsetting Addie and me, not to mention his own children.

I need to talk to Amadeo but at the same time, I’m afraid to. Laurens says that sometimes what you really need to get your head screwed on straight is a good shagging, and it’s a notion I’ve heartily endorsed ever since I met Ned (who is always a damned good shag, but I’m not going to think about that), but Amadeo is too vulnerable for that, and if I let him be the source of said good shagging, he’ll think it means a great deal. And maybe it will, but I don’t know what I think from one hour to the next; it’s not fair.

I am so tired of people having opinions about my life. No, that’s not it. They can have whatever opinions they like; I just don’t want to hear about it. Laurens wants me to make Ned’s life hell. I don’t think he has any business criticising Mrs Scalara for sleeping with another woman’s husband and I really don’t think he is thinking, or he would realise that when the war and our respective families aren’t doing to assure that, the press will be only too happy to take up the slack. And I’m tired of it.

If I want to get angry about Ned’s sleeping habits I will. It’s nobody else’s damned business.

I am getting altogether too good at letting people walk out that front door of mine. Ned. Hadrian. Amadeo.

I don't want to compel love or loyalty. I don't want to compel desire, or even to manipulate desire I know to be there. I don't believe in it.

I am very good at getting my way in my work. But not so good at getting my way elsewhere. An unhealthy talent for detachment. That's what my preceptors called it once. If they don't want to give me what I want, then I don't want it from them.

I want him. I want what I want. But I keep expecting him to do what Ned would do, even though I don't want Ned back and I don't want him to be like Ned.

I am going to go travelling tonight, I think. Out there in the cool grey clear.

Dear bloody idiot I married against the better advice of my mother and sister husband:

I saw your mistress today. She looks every day of her age. She wouldn’t let me look at her, so you’d better send her in to see Stephen at once. Kindly think with the head on your shoulders and get yourself seen to: we won’t be having any more; she shouldn’t have another; and as much as Delgardie needs an heir he will surely not get one from you. I don’t care how old she is, if you were mucking around in the faerie woods during a festival you oughtn’t have done it with her. Did you make a Teltown marriage with her? It would explain a lot.

I don’t care if she is some sort of divinatory savant, she’s still no better than she ought to be. Stop sending her out in the field! She’s got no sense of her limits, and it’s not as though she’s going to whip out a quill and draw charts for you in the middle of battle. What possible reason could you have had for dragging her to Aquae Sulis?

I don’t care whether she lives or dies. She was never any friend of mine no matter what she pretended. But Your children are getting attached to her, and if you don’t stop sending her out in the field or you get her up the duff at her age, don’t be surprised if she just drops dead on you—and don’t think I’ll take you back if she does!

Your depositions and reports are enclosed.

Sincerely yours,
your very unimpressed wife

It’s very early—I can barely see the sun in the sky—but I can’t sleep. I am used to sleeping alone—Ned’s always travelled a lot, and sometimes he’s gone for months at a time, so I don’t understand why I kept reaching over last night to his side of the bed as though I were surprised he wasn’t there. Except of course that it’s been years since he was gone for more than a couple of weeks.

We got along so much better when he travelled a lot. Lavinia Scalara isn’t what made the difference, because he was her lover then too, and now I don’t see how I can have missed it. Once, when he was gone, she came over here and prayed with me for him, and she’s come to a good half-dozen or more of our parties. I don’t suppose I thought that any woman, even her, could be so brazen; I’d ask her about her jewels, and if they were presents from her patron, she would tell me so without batting a lash. They’ve always been very formal with one another in front of me, but she made such a point of being loyal to her patron, and unwilling to entertain even the most honourable suit from anyone else, and Ned was always so insistent that no-one should press her.

I wonder if she’s been as faithful to him as I have—if the stories about her and Saunders contain any truth whatsoever. Saunders after all is Delgardie’s consort. I don’t want to believe that he could have been keeping us both to himself for so long. But I suppose he did.

Hadrian’s there. I can’t blame him for being curious and I suppose I know exactly where he learned to lie to me. And better there than with Dashwood. I wonder where Susie is. Probably still out with her American. I should start breakfast. I miss cooking sometimes, and Adele and the other two girls are here.

I wanted to wallow in my anger but I can’t, because my children see what I do and I can’t turn them against their father, who is part of them, enmeshed as much as I am in their flesh and blood and bone. I wanted to slip the chains of my body and fly, like I did as a girl, in the clear diamond star-fields, the sweet cleansing mists of the astral plane, but I can’t, because my children need me here, because my patients need me here. I wanted to drape myself in jewels like hers, the ones he never bought me, but he never bought me jewels because he knew I didn’t want them, and she did. (I don’t like diamonds; people die for them.)

Everything that he has given to her is something that I did not want from him. Except his heart. But maybe it wasn’t right for me to think that I could pick and choose, to say that I’ll have this and that from you, but never this. I thought, that if he could give these things up, one day at a time, eventually one day and the next and the next would blend into forever, but instead, they were just a collection of days that he wasn’t himself for me, weren’t they?

She can have him. She deserves him. I don’t know what I deserve, not any more. Except, not this.

So it’s not Julian Delgardie. Then who in God’s name is it? I have never believed that nonsense about him and Sir Lucian, about all the work he put into advancing Sir Lucian’s career. Luce has simply always been terribly loyal, not to mention reliable, which is more than can be said for some of the others in that band. Nor do I believe all that claptrap about Penny Davies from a couple of years ago. I cannot believe my husband would meddle with someone in his chain of command; it’s too bloody dangerous and too bloody stupid. Whatever people may say, I know, because he told me so, that he did not lay a hand on Julian Delgardie until the end of the war, when Delgardie went back to Magical Law Enforcement. I had quite made my peace with the idea of Delgardie. After all if it had been Delgardie it would have been my fault for breaking them up in the first place and if it had survived so long...

Roma. Who did he meet in Roma? The only person I can think of is Lavinia Scalara, and she’s had a patron all these years...

Hadrian was giving Amadeo the most unfriendly looks at church this morning when he didn’t think I was looking at him. And Adele has picked up the most obnoxious girl I have ever met as a friend. Prudence Bainbridge. What a brassy, loud, affected and utterly false creature she is. I don’t like her a bit. She’s exactly what I’d expect Ichabod Bainbridge’s grandchild to be like. And Hadrian is talking about Endymion Dashwood again! I must find the time to sit down and talk with them. Susie had her share of unsuitable friends, but this is ridiculous.

I am really being very unfair to poor Amadeo Luna. My life is crazy enough; he doesn't need to be so involved in all my complications.

I don't even know why I have these thoughts, except...

I think it would be nice to go to bed with someone who wouldn't know exactly how to reduce me to so much quivering jelly that it would put an end to any disagreement at once. When my husband wants his way at all costs, he is the sweetest, dearest, gentlest and most relentless man in the universe. I'm beginning to appreciate the virtue of a little awkwardness. Of course, that still doesn't make it right to drag an innocent third fourth party into an already complex and dysregulated situation.

Amadeo Luna sent me the loveliest piece of liturgical poetry. I was going to put it up over my desk but Laurens said he thought I shouldn’t, and Susie giggled at it. I cannot believe some people’s minds. Ned has gone back to Dumnonia. I told Susie about the conversation we had the other night, and she didn’t seem the least bit surprised, though her younger brother and sister just think he’s down there at work, and for all I know he may be. I asked her what she thought about it, and she said she wouldn’t say.

She finally admitted to me that she’s seeing someone. His name is Derek Greene, and he’s from Britannia Nova, and he’s nearly thirty. He’s undercover with the mundane American military. I told her she’d be happier with Yvon Leffoy, and she told me that she isn’t me, and that she’s going to marry him, and that he plans to talk to her father soon. I’m sure Ned will adore him.

The poem makes me happy, and I ought to write to Amadeo and tell him how much.

I saw him go into the Owl’s Roost on the way to Mrs Scalara’s house, and I gave him Amadeo’s report; we had an entirely awkward pint together and then I realised that he was watching Lavinia Scalara drink with some man I don’t know. It looked for all the world like Aristotle Mablin, but I’ve always assumed that he doesn’t drink—because he’s so very religious, and also because alcohol is not the drug that produces the kind of delusions that Mablin is given to preaching.

I’m not asking. Just...no. I’m going to assume that it is a setup or an information transfer or some other work-related activity because it has to be. If someone were to read these diaries we keep I expect they’d wonder why it is we’re all paid what we are. At least mine, which focuses entirely too much on my personal obsessions. Then again, the important things we do mostly can’t be written down, and I’m sure that’s truer of Ned than it is of me, if he even still keeps a diary. (At the moment? I’m glad I don’t know.)