Black Heart, Ivory Bones

And Still She Sleeps GREG COSTIKYAN

Greg Costikyan designs games and writes novels, short stories, and articles about the games industry. His most recent games include Fantasy War and Seven Wonders, an historical graphic adventure game. His most recent novel is Sales Reps From the Stars.

He lives in New York with zero TVs, one guinea pig, three cats, four computers, two children, and a redhead.

He asserts that he is not a Romantic.

“’Ow’d ye like to kiss them smackers, eh?” said the fellow in the queue ahead of me — cloth cap, worn tweed trousers, probably his only shirt. I gave him a stern look, and he, suitably chastened, turned away.

There she stood in her glass case; they had dressed her in someone’s idea of Medieval garb, a linen dress at least four centuries wrong. Slowly, her breast rose and fell; slowly enough to show that this was no mortal slumber.

I forbore from saying that I had indeed kissed her, poor dear. To no avail, to no avail.

I found her, after all. Well, to be literal about it, one of von Stroheim’s diggers found her, but von Stroheim was away at the time. I was in charge of the excavation.

We were in the Cheviot Hills, not far from the village of Alcroft in Northumberland. It was a crisp October day, a brisk breeze off the North Sea some miles to our east, the sky pellucid; a good day to dig, neither cold enough to stiffen the fingers nor hot enough to raise a sweat. I had been with von Stroheim in Mesopotamia, and this was far more pleasant — though the stakes were surely smaller, a little Northumbrian hill fort, not a great city of the Urartu. Still, it was a dig; while many of my profession prefer less strenuous scholarship — days and nights spent with cuneiform and hieroglyphs — I enjoy getting out in the field, feeling the dust of ages between my fingers, divining the magics and devices the ancients used.

This, indeed, is my dear Janet’s despair: that I am forever, so she says, charging off to Ionia or Tehran or the Valley of the Kings, places where a woman of refinement is unlikely to find suitable accommodation. Ah, but the homecomings after such forays are sweet; and truthfully, they are not so common, a few months out of each year. And between times, there is our little Oxford cottage, the rose garden, the faculty teas; a pleasant enough life for a man of scholarly bent and a woman of intelligence, a serene and healthful environment for our children. Far better this than the life of many of my classmates, amid the stinks and fumes and poverty of London, or building the Empire amid ungrateful savages in some tropical hell a thousand miles from home.

When I told Janet that von Stroheim proposed to excavate in Northumberland, she was pleased. She and the children could accompany us; after all, it was in England. What was the difficulty?

So I had let a little house in Alcroft, and rode up each morning to join von Stroheim and his men.

I brought Clarice with me that morning, she riding behind me, small arms about my waist, a picnic lunch in the panniers. I doubted she would want to come with me often, as there is not much to excite a child at a dig; but she could play on the lea, pet the sheep, wander about and plague us with questions.

The encampment made me glad that I had taken the house in Alcroft; the tents were downwind from the jakes, today, the sheep browsing amid them. The diggers were breaking their fast on eggs and kippers, while our students dressed in their tents. De Laurency was missing, I saw — my prize pupil, but a bit of a trial, that man.

While Clarice happily chased sheep, I went up the hill. The diggers — rough men in work shirts and canvas trousers — and such of the students as had completed their toilet came with me. They resumed excavation along the lines von Stroheim had marked out with lengths of twine, while I pottered about with a surveyor’s level, an enchanted pendant, a dowsing rod of ash.

It was while I was setting up my equipage that de Laurency appeared, striding up the hill, burrs in his trouser legs, his hair windblown and wild, a gnarled old walking stick in one hand. “Where the devil have you been?” I asked him.

He smiled vaguely. “Communing with the spirits of the moor,” he said.

“Damme, fellow,” I told him. “There’s work to be done. And hard work, too; you can’t expect to gad about the countryside all night and—”

“Bosh, Professor,” he said gently. “I’ll dig like a slavey, never you fear.”

I returned to my equipment; if it weren’t for his brilliance, I’d shuck de Laurency off on some other don. Dig like a slavey indeed; the man was slight and prone to sickness. He’d be exhausted by midday, I had no doubt, and wandering Northumberland in a mid-October night is a good way to become consumptive.

But to work. My task was to delineate the ley lines, the lines of magical force that converged on this site. They were the reason we had chosen to dig here; in this part of Northumbria, there was no site so propitious for ritual. That, no doubt, was one reason a fort had been built here; another was its defensibility and its capacity to dominate the region. From the hilltop, one could see as far as Woolet to the north, to the peak of the Cheviot to the west.

There was not much left of the old hill fort: a hummock of sod marking where walls had run. It was one of a series of forts built by the Kings of Northumbria along these hills, defenses against the Picts, though by the eighth century it was well within the Northumbrian borders, for the kingdom stretched north as far as the Firth of Forth.

Still, it was the prospect of magic that had drawn us here. We knew so little about the period, really; we knew the Romans had bound the Britons with powerful spells, had tamed the wild Celtic magic of their precursors. We knew the Anglo-Saxons had brought with them their own pagan power; and we knew the Church preserved much Roman knowledge through the fall, magic well used by the Carolingians in their doomed attempt to re-create the Empire. But how much exactly had survived, here in Britain? What was the state of the art in the eighth century? We could not ask the question in the south, for modern works have masked so much of the past, but here in sparsely inhabited Northumberland we had a better chance to find some answers.

My first surprise of the morning was to discover that the ley lines were active; power was drawing down them, from a line up the Cheviot in the direction of Glasgow. A spell or spells were active still, buried somewhere in this fort.

Lest this sound everyday to you, let me emphasize that the fort was eleven centuries old. The last mention of it — Castle Coelwin, it was called — was in the chronicles of the reign of Eadbehrt of Northumbria, who abdicated in 765. I have seen working spells as old, and older — in Rome, and Athens, and China — but who in miserable, divided, warring eighth century England could perform a ritual so strong, so binding?

It was while studying my equipment, dumbfounded at this discovery, that one of the workers ran up to me, out of breath. “Professor Borthwick,” he said, “best coome quick. We’ve found a gel.”

Indeed they had. They had dug a trench about two feet deep in what we termed the Ironmongery, a location toward the center of the fort where we had expected to find a forge, a common feature of fortresses from the period. The rusted remnants of several tools or weapons had already been found there, and the diggers had abandoned spades for trowels and brooms, lest some artifact be damaged by digging. And well that they had, for I shudder to think what a spade might have done to her fair flesh.

About her was loam, evidence of rotted wood; de Laurency, a curious look of epiphany on his face, crouched over her, tenderly brushing away loose dirt with his bare fingers. He had uncovered a hand and a part of an arm.

Her femininity was obvious through the narrowness of the hand. Her fingernails were long, inches in length; God knows when they had last been trimmed.

I cannot count the number of times I have carefully whisked the dirt from a skeleton, uncovering evidence of past violence or disease, looking for artifacts or skeletal damage to learn something of the corpse’s fate. But this was no corpse. It was a living body, clad in flesh — cool to the touch, but with a slow, slow pulse — buried in the cold earth and yet somehow holding on to life.

Gently, we uncovered her; her hair and nails were preserved along with her body, but her hair was matted and filthy, her poor flesh besmirched with a millennium’s dirt.

De Laurency worked by me; the diggers stood back, the other students stood aside to give us room. He said, low enough that I think only I heard him:

I glanced at him, askance; there are times when I greatly appreciate von Stroheim’s brutal practicality. Romanticism is all very well in poetry, but this is science. And that, I believe, was doggerel.

We had uncovered her head and shoulder when von Stroheim appeared, returning from an errand.

“Mein Gott,” he muttered when he saw her, and turned to me with excitement. “Well, Alistair. Another puzzle, eh? What shall we make of this?”

It took a good two hours to dig her cautiously from the earth. And then we put her in a litter and carried her down to the encampment.

Clarice was fascinated, and with her little hands helped us to bathe and barber the girl. Though her hair was golden, it was far too matted and filthy to leave; we were forced to cut it off. For the nonce, we covered her with a simple canvas sheet; we had no women’s clothing with us.

She appeared to be about sixteen; blond-haired and, when an eyelid was held back, blue-eyed. She was a scant five feet tall — probably large for the period — and just under a hundred pounds. She was well-formed, and her skin fine, though faint scarring gave evidence of a bout with smallpox. She breathed shallowly — a breath every five minutes or so; her pulse ran an impossibly slow beat every thirty seconds. Apparently, she had received enough oxygen, filtered through the soil, to survive. Since her discovery, she has never made water, nor passed stool; never eaten nor drunk. Yet her fingernails and hair slowly grow.

Clarice looked up at me with shining eyes. “It’s Sleeping Meg,” she said.

Out of such things are discoveries fashioned: a peculiar magical fluctuation, an unexpected finding in the dirt, the words of children.

An intelligent child, Clarice, my sweetheart; eight going on twenty, her mother’s dark curls and laughing eyes.

She took me to the house of her playmate, Sybil Shaw, a local girl whose widowed mother eked out a living taking in cleaning and letting out rooms. Mrs. Shaw was a stout, tired-looking woman in her forties, hands reddened with her washing, wispy curls of blond turning gray escaping her cap. She greeted us warmly at the door and offered tea; behind her, I could see irons warming before the fire, petticoats laid out for goffering.

“If you would be so kind, Mrs. Shaw,” I told her, a cup of tea balanced on a knee, “I would very much appreciate it if you could tell me the story of Sleeping Meg.”

“Och aye,” she said, a little mystified. “Sleeping Meg? ’Tis but a children’s tale, ye ken, a story of these parts. What mought a scholar like you to do with tha’?”

And so, patiently, I explained what we had found at Castle Coelwin, and Clarice’s words.

Mrs. Shaw snorted. “I misdoubt it has owt to do wi’ the tale,” she said, “but that’s as may be.”

I shall set out the story here in plainer language, for Mrs. Shaw (good heart though she has) possesses a thick North Country accent — and a meandering style — that would simply obscure it.

It seems that in the days when Arthur and Guinevere were still much in love, the Queen gave birth to a daughter whom they named Margaret. She was the darling of Arthur’s knights, and as a child was dandled on the knees of the likes of Gawain and Lancelot. And at sixteen she was betrothed to the King of Scotland, whose armies had several times ravaged towns along England’s northern border, and with whom by this marriage Arthur hoped to cement the peace.

But Morgain heard of this, and saw in it a danger to her son, Mordred, Arthur’s bastard; a legitimate daughter, wed to the Scottish monarch, would have a better claim to Arthur’s throne. With whispers and magic, she turned the King of Scotland against the proposal.

When Arthur and the Scottish King met in Berwick to seal the marriage, the Scot demanded all of Northumberland as a dowry. To this Arthur could not agree; and the King of Scotland took this as confirming Morgain’s words against Arthur. Enraged, he enlisted the sorceress’s aid to wreak his revenge; and she cast a mighty spell on Margaret, that she should sleep and never waken till betrothed to a Scottish prince, the betrothal sealed with a kiss.

In horror, Arthur went to Merlin, who could not directly unweave so mighty a spell; but he altered its terms, so that but a kiss by her own true love would awaken Margaret.

They built her a bed in Camelot, and covered her floor with flowers; many a knight essayed her awakening, but though many loved her, they loved her as a child and not a woman. And dark times soon befell Arthur and his knights; and what became of Margaret none could say, though perhaps she sleeps somewhere still, awaiting her true love’s lips.

“What,” said von Stroheim, feeding a stick to the campfire under the starry October sky, “are we to make of this old wive’s tale?”

“I’ve asked about, and it’s not just Mrs. Shaw’s; it seems to be common in the region.”

“It’s merely a variant on Sleeping Beauty,” von Stroheim said. “My own mother told me that story when I was a child.”

“I’m sure she did,” I told him. “As did mine. But there is often a nugget of truth in legends, as von Schliemann showed at Troy, what? Perhaps rather Sleeping Beauty is a variation on Sleeping Meg. A happier ending, at any rate; surely I would alter the tale in such fashion, if I were to rewrite it.”

“Yes, very well,” he muttered impatiently. “But Arthur? Centuries off, and problematic in any event, as you well know.”

“It’s common for stories to become conflated with others,” I pointed out. “Suppose the true story goes something like this: Eadberht offered his daughter to one of the Pictish kings to seal a truce. For whatever reason, the deal broke down and a spell was cast. She fell into a slumber, from which she never recovered.”

Von Stroheim scowled. “Ach, incredible,” he said. “Eleven centuries and no one falls in love with her?” He looked toward the tent where she now lay, properly dressed in my wife’s own clothes, guarded by de Laurency. “I’m half in love with her myself.”

I grinned at him. “Well, kiss her, then,” I told him.

He looked at me startled. “Why not you?”

I raised an eyebrow. “I, sir, am a happily married man.”

He snorted. Von Stroheim is a cynic on the subject of marriage. “Very well. And why not?”

We entered the tent. The girl slept on a pallet of straw; de Laurency sat by her, gazing at her fair face by the light of a kerosene lamp. He looked up as we entered.

Von Stroheim went directly to the pallet, knelt, and kissed her: first on the forehead, then on the lips.

De Laurency sprang to his feet, a flush on his pale cheeks. “What the devil are you doing?” he demanded of von Stroheim.

Von Stroheim raised a bushy brow and stood to face the student. “That’s ‘What the devil are you doing, Professor,’” he said.

De Laurency flushed. “Do you often attempt to kiss women to whom you have not been introduced?” he demanded.

The two were silent for a moment, standing in the flickering yellow light under the low canvas roof. It is an image that has stayed with me; the young, sickly Romantic attempting to defend the honor of the girl; the older, bearlike man of science astounded that his simple experiment should rouse such antipathy.

“Be serious,” he said at last, and ducked to leave the tent.

De Laurency sat, fists still clenched. “He had best leave her be,” he said.

“Simmer down, boy,” I told him. “It was an experiment, nothing more. If the story has any truth, it is a kiss that will awaken her.”

“Not a kiss from the likes of him,” said de Laurency fiercely.

Outside the tent von Stroheim was gazing at Orion, hands in his pockets against the chill. “It is all nonsense, anyway,” he said. “You have erected an enormous structure of conjecture on an amazingly small investment of fact.”

“Yes, Herr Doktor Professor,” I said, a little sardonically, amused at this change in mood. “It is time we telegraphed the Royal Thaumaturgical Society.”

Janet sighed when she heard the news from London, sitting on the chaise in the parlor with me, her arm about my waist and her thigh against mine; the children were asleep, coal burned in the fireplace, we sipped hot cider before retiring. “How long?” she said.

“No more than a week,” I said. “Sir James has promised to investigate directly we arrive, but I wish to be present for at least the preliminary examination. I do want to return as soon as I may; it is important that we find out as much as we can at the dig, before cold weather sets in.”

She laid her head on my shoulder. “And is that the only reason you want to return quickly?” Her lips were on my neck.

“No, dearest,” I whispered in her ear. “Neither the only nor the most important.”

She kissed me, and I tasted the cider on her tongue.

The trip to London — de Laurency insisted on joining me — was, as usual, quite dull. But Sir James Maxwell made us quite welcome at the Thaumaturgical; after a cursory examination of Meg in his laboratory, he joined us in the society’s lounge.

I was not insensible of the honor. While I have a modest scholarly reputation, Sir James outshines me by several orders of magnitude; it was he, after all, who through his discovery of the field equations, put thaumaturgy on a firm mathematical and scientific footing.

Ensconced in leather armchairs, we ordered Armagnac and relaxed.

“Precisely what do you hope from me?” Sir James inquired.

“Two things, I think,” I said after a pause for consideration. “First, a spell clearly binds her; it would be useful to learn as much of it as we can, to cast light on the state of magical knowledge during the period. Second, it would be marvelous if we could awaken the girl; wouldn’t it be grand if we could talk to and question someone who had actually lived a thousand years ago?”

De Laurency rather darkened at this, and muttered something into his brandy. I glanced at him. “Speak up, Robert,” I said.

“She is a freeborn Briton,” he said, rather defiantly. “If she should waken, you would have no right to keep her, study her, like some kind of trained ape.”

“‘Briton’ in the period would mean ‘Celt,’” I pointed out. “She is Anglo-Saxon.”

“Pedantry,” he said.

“Perhaps. But I take your point; she would be a free woman. However, I suspect that learning to live in the modern age would be difficult, and that she would be grateful for our assistance. Surely we can expect cooperation in return?”

De Laurency coughed, a little apologetically. “I’m sorry, Professor,” he said. “I’m sure you mean her no harm. But we must remember that she is a person, and not an … an artifact.”

Sir James nodded sagely. “You are quite correct, sir,” he said, “and we shall take the utmost caution.”

Sir James promised to begin his studies on the morrow, and we parted.

I had taken rooms at the Chemists, my own club and not far from the Thaumaturgical. The next morning — a fine, brisk autumn day, the wind whipping London’s skies clean of its normally noxious fumes — I walked back toward the RTS. And as I did, I heard the omnipresent cries of the street hawkers:

“Globe, Wand, Standard, Times! Getcher mornin’ papers ’ere, gents. Sleepin’ Beauty found in North Country. Read hall about it.”

“Blast,” I muttered, handing the boy a few pence for a Wand—one of the yellower of Fleet Street’s publications. The article, and the illustration that accompanied it, was rather more fallacy than fact; but it contained the ineluctable truth that our discovery was now at the Royal Thaumaturgical Society.

I fully comprehend the utility of publicity when the need to solicit funds for research arises; but I feared, at this juncture, that public awareness of Meg could only serve to interfere with our investigation.

My fears proved immediately well-founded. While I checked my coat at the Thaumaturgical, a man in a rather loud herringbone suit spied me and approached.

“Dr. Borthwick?”

“I am he,” I responded, wondering how he knew me; I caught the eye of the porter at the front desk, who looked down slightly shamefacedly. A little bribery, I supposed.

“I’m Fanshaw, of Fanshaw and Little, promoters,” he said, handing me a card. It bore a picture of a Ferris wheel and an address in the East End. “Wonder if we might chat about this Sleeping Beauty girl you’ve got.”

“I fail to see—”

“Well, sir, you see, I read the papers. Can’t always believe what they say, but this is a wondrous age, ain’t it? Magic and science, the Empire growing, strange things from barbarous lands. That’s me business.”

“Your business appears to be sideshow promotion,” I said.

“Dead right, sir. Educational business, educational; bringing the wonders of seven continents and every age to the attention of the British public. That’s me business. Though the gentry may view us askance, we serve a useful function, you know, introducing the common people to the wonders of the world. The Wand says she’ll be awoken by true love’s kiss, is that right? Can’t believe what you read in the Wand, of course, but you could make such a spell, could be done, I understand.”

Wondering how to get rid of the fellow, I said, “A variety of theories have been propounded to explain the young woman’s state, and this is indeed among them. But until further research is performed—”

“Oh, research, yes, of course,” he said. “Research costs money, indeed it does; a shame, that exploration of the wonders of the universe don’t come cheap. And that’s me business.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Making money. For all concerned, all concerned; business ain’t worth much unless all walk away from the table happy, eh? Now, sez I to meself, be nice to wake up the girl, eh, find out what life was like back in those days, eh? Sez I, bet Dr. Borthwick would be keen on that.”

“It would be desirable to be sure, but until we better understand the magic that has so long sustained her—”

“Well now, look here. A kiss to awaken her, eh? But has to be her own true love. Where d’ye find her own true love?”

“Even should the theory prove meritorious, I’m at a loss—”

“Precisely! Impossible to say. So then, kiss her a lot, eh? Many folk. True love bound to burgeon in some young man’s breast eventually, eh?”

I blinked at the man. “Precisely what are you proposing?”

“Consider the possibilities. ‘Will you be the one to wake up Sleepin’ Beauty? Are you her prince?’ A shilling a peck, I imagine; bit of a sum, for a sideshow, but this is high-class stuff, Sir James Maxwell investigated, a princess of the ancient world, eh? Bit of pelf for me, bit of pelf for you, bit of pelf for research, eh? And maybe one of the marks wakes up the bint.”

I restrained the urge to smite him on his protuberant and rather rugose nose. “Get out of here,” I told him, raising my voice, “or I shall have you forcibly ejected.”

“Right ho,” he said cheerfully. “Jimmy Fanshaw don’t stay where he’s not wanted. Further research required, and all, maybe the proposition’s a little premature. But you’ve got me card; if you lose it, just remember, Fanshaw and Little, easy to find us, we’re big in the business. Once you’ve finished looking her over, what’re you going to do with her, eh? Research costs money, we could make a pretty penny, you and me. And that’s me business.”

Two porters, looking rather worried, were approaching across the marble floor; Fanshaw saw my eyes on them and turned.

“Oh yes, yes,” he said, “just going, keep calm, lads,” and he strode off toward the big brass doors.

I was glad de Laurency wasn’t with me; I didn’t fancy a fistfight in the lobby of the RTS.

And what a ludicrous notion! That the poor girl’s “own true love,” whatever such a thing might mean, might be found in a horde of carney marks nicked at a shilling a head! I’d sooner use her as a hat stand. It would be more dignified.

Some days later I stood with Sir James in his laboratory, at the stroke of noon when white magic is best performed; it was a clear day, despite the lateness of the year and the smokes of London, sunlight spilling through the large French doors and across the pentacle inlaid in the wooden floor. A brazier wafted the scent of patchouli through the air.

Within the pentacle pale Meg lay atop a silver-metaled table, clad in a shift of virgin linen, her arms crossed over her breast; the lines of the pentacle shone blue with force. Sir James’s baritone raised in invocation to the seraphim, the Virgin, and (I thought oddly, but perhaps appropriately under the circumstances) the great Boadicea.

The brazier produced a little smoke, enough to show the beams of light shining from the windows — as well as a line of energy stretching northward from Meg’s body, across the space demarcated by the pentacle, disappearing through the wall of the laboratory.

Slowly, Sir James touched that line with a wand of ash, then brought the wand toward a manameter, a device of glass and mercury.

The wand touched the manameter. Mercury boiled suddenly over its top, and its glass shattered. The pentacle snapped cold, its blue glow disappearing.

Sir James looked a little shaken. “Well over a kilodee,” he said to me. “That answers one of your questions, at any rate.”

“It does?” I said.

“Someone had a good grasp of magical principles in the eighth century,” he said. “As good as a competent Roman mage, at any rate. That is a good, strong spell.”

“Could you shield her from that line of power?” I asked.

He nodded warily. “Aye,” he said, “but would that waken or kill her? She is more than a thousand years old; magic must sustain as well as suspend her.”

As I bent to swab up the mercury with a rag, there was a knock at the door. It was one of the society’s porters, a little agitated, bearing a salver with a card. “A … a gentlemen has asked to speak with you, Sir James,” he said.

Sir James took the card, raised a brow, and handed it to me. It said:

Edward, Prince of Wales, is a large man. Large in many ways: large in girth, large in stature, and large in appetites. We bowed, of course.

“Maxwell!” the Prince bellowed. “You look well, man. Haven’t seen you at the theater lately.”

“Mmm, no, Your Highness. Press of work, you know.”

“Ah well, work. Smokes, fumes, and explosions in the lab, eh? Good smelly fun, for a chap like you, I assume. I may smoke in here, may I not?”—this while brandishing a cigar.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“Well sit down, dammit,” he said, clipping off the end of the cigar and running a lit lucifer down its length. “Can’t smoke at Windsor, you know, Mater won’t have it. Can’t at any of her residences. Reduced to wandering about the gardens in the most beastly weather just for a smoke. Caught Count von Hatzfeldt, the German ambassador, in his pajamas with his head up the chimney once, can you imagine? Just wanted a cigarette, caused the most dreadful ruckus. I hear you’ve made quite a discovery, Dr. Borthwick.”

I cleared my throat. “An interesting one, certainly, Your Highness,” I said.

“Oh, call me Wales, all my friends do,” he said, waving the smoke away from his neatly trimmed beard. “Beautiful girl, I understand. Shan’t wake till kissed by a Scottish prince.”

Sir James cleared his throat. “This is an hypothesis,” he said. “We have verified that the binding spell is Scottish in origin, but the rest is speculation based on local legend.”

His Royal Highness snorted in amusement. “Trust scientists and wizards for excessive qualification,” he said. “‘Hypothesis … speculation.’ Well, you deal with hypotheses by testing them, what?”

Sir James and I exchanged glances.

“What do you propose, Your Highness?” I inquired.

“Wales, Wales,” he said, waving his cigar before his cummerbund. “Ah, case in point; my most important title, to be sure, Prince of Wales. But you know, I’ve got scads of them — Earl of this and Commander of that. I’m a Rajah, too, did you know? Several of them. In any event, I am also Thane of Fife, as well as Earl of Dumfries and Galloway. Since the Act of Union, I’m the closest thing you’ll find to a Scottish prince. And I can’t say I object to kissing a pretty girl.”

Sir James chuckled. “I’ve never known you to,” he said. “You propose to assist us with our inquiries, I suppose?”

The Prince of Wales gave us a bristly smile.

As we climbed the stairs toward the laboratories, I wondered what the Princess Alexandra would think; but Edward’s wife, I suppose, must have inured herself to his infidelities by now, of which this was far from the most egregious.

He bent over her drawn form, her lips almost blue with the slowness of her circulation, her cheeks lacking the blush of life but somehow still alive, her shorn hair now reshaped into a more attractive coiffure than we had first given her, there in the Cheviot Hills. He bent his stout waist, planted one massive hand to the side of her head and, with surprising tenderness, kissed her through his beard.

She never stirred.

He looked down at her for a long moment, with three fingers of one hand inserted in the watch pocket of his vest. “Poor darling,” he said. Then after a moment he turned back to us. “Not much fun if they don’t kiss back, eh, lads?”

When I told de Laurency we were to leave Meg with Sir James and return to Alcroft, we had a bit of a tiff. He didn’t want to leave her; I believe he felt he could protect her better than the RTS — which, to my certain knowledge, has stronger magical wards than anything in Great Britain with the possible exception of the Grand Fleet’s headquarters at Scapa Flow. Eventually, he stomped off into an increasingly bitter night, not reconciled to the decision yet knowing it was mine to make.

He met me the following morning at Paddington Station, reeking of Irish whiskey; I imagine he was out with his radical friends, a passel of socialist trash. Cambridge men mostly, thank God, though we get our share at Oxford. Ten minutes out of the station, he opened the window to vomit down the side of the train, admitting quite a quantity of ash and cinders into the car. Filthy things, trains. He slept for a time thereafter.

Still hours out of Berwick, he awakened, and I told him of the visit by the Prince of Wales. He was appalled. “You let that vile lecher kiss her?” he demanded.

“You are referring to your future monarch, you realize.”

He snorted. “Lillie Langtry,” he said. “Lady Brooke. Mrs. George Keppel. And those are merely the ones that are public knowledge. The man is a scoundrel.”

“And was it not you who, scant weeks ago, was lecturing me on the morality of free love?”

He subsided slightly. “That’s different,” he said. “He married the Princess Alexandra, did he not? Does he owe her nothing?”

“I hadn’t heard that she objected to his, um, extracurricular activities,” I pointed out.

“Tcha,” went de Laurency. “Would you? In her position?”

“See here,” I said, “there was no harm done. And how could I have stopped the man in any event? He is the Prince of Wales.”

“Yes he is,” said de Laurency, “and God help England.”

As the train sped northward, I contemplated de Laurency’s words while he sat quietly on the opposite bench, reading poetry. Byron, of course.

Did I owe Janet, my own dear wife, nothing? On the contrary, I owed her a great deal. But not because a minister said words over us. I am a good C of E man, and believe in the sanctity of the sacrament of marriage; but what I owe her I owe her because she is my own true love.

True love. A silly concept, in a way; the stuff of penny novels and Italian opera. God’s love, the love of a parent for a child: more tangible and, in a way, more comprehensible. There is love between man and woman: could I deny it? Yet the proximate cause of my love for Janet, and hers for me, was no great fluxion in the celestial sphere, no fated union of souls, no great internal singing when first our glances met. The proximate cause — not the ultimate, you understand, nor the only, but the proximate — was a silly conversation we had one evening at a Christmas party at her father’s house. The details are otiose, and we disagreed; but she is one of the very few women I have ever met in whom intelligence, grace, and beauty are united.

She was waiting at Alcroft station.

It was an eternity before the children were at last in bed.

And hours later, studying her sleeping profile by the half-moon’s light, her black hair curling in rings across the pillow, her sweet bosom rising and falling beneath the sheets, I realized that however beautiful she might be, I would surely have never fallen in love with her if we had never had that silly conversation about Bentham, Gladstone, and the Suez Canal. How could I have loved her, never knowing her? And how could I have known her, merely looking?

We stayed in Alcroft a scant few weeks; the weather was turning cold. I spent our remaining time performing such magics as lie within my skill, to try to understand what had transpired here; helping the diggers at their work, laying out plans for future excavation. We found precious little of any value: a few bronze implements, a few Frankish coins, a nicely preserved drinking horn, and various shards.

De Laurency was less a help than a hindrance. He never seemed to be about the dig, and soon lost any interest in keeping his journal notes up to date. I often spied him atop the Cheviot, a small dark figure at such a distance, striking a pose and staring into space. I suspect when he wasn’t mooning about the moor, he was imbibing too much of the local ale.

God send me sturdy, even-tempered students!

Soon enough the first frost came, and we decamped to Oxford.

“I’ve brought Meg back to you,” said Sir James, standing in my office and warming his hands before the coal grate. De Laurency moodily fiddled with the fire irons.

“So your cable said you would,” I said. “I’m honored that you made the trip yourself.”

He sighed, and sat in the armchair to the side of my desk. De Laurency remained standing, staring into the blue flames. “Well,” said Sir James, “I felt it incumbent to report in person, though of course I shall be writing up my findings for the Transactions.”

“I appreciate that, sir. And what, if I may, have you discovered?”

Sir James cleared his throat. “Precious little, I fear,” he said. “The symbology, alas, is foreign.”

I blinked. “I don’t—”

“Magic is symbolic manipulation, yes?”

“Quite so.”

“By noting the effects of a spell cast by another, you can frequently deduce much about the symbolic elements used therein, and possibly re-create the spell yourself — perhaps not in very detail, to be sure, but close enough.”

“I have done so many times as an exercise.”

“And you have studied Roman magic?”

“Yes, and Mesopotamian.”

“And does not the symbology differ from our own?”

I blinked as I came to understand what he was getting at. “Certainly,” I said. “They had whole different systems of worship, of color association, of folk tradition; therefore, the symbolic elements used differ greatly from our own. Untangling a Greco-Roman spell is not particularly difficult, since so much has come down to us in both languages, but of the Mesopotamian we have scant understanding.”

Sir James nodded. “And this spell was cast by a wild Pictish mage of the eighth century A.D., possibly a Christian but still greatly influenced by pagan traditions. If I were a scholar of the Medieval Celts, I might conceivably be able to untangle the spell better, but as it is, I can really only report on its effects. Which is of dubious utility, as its effects are evident: she sleeps.”

De Laurency broke in. “Why does she sleep?”

Sir James looked mildly at him. “She is ensorcelled, of course.”

De Laurency snorted. “That much is obvious. Can you say nothing of the manner of her ensorcellment, nor how she may be released? Is Professor Borthwick’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ theory proven or disproven?”

Sir James sighed. “The spell clearly contains a release, a means of ending. I believe, but cannot prove, that the release is tied to love, in some fashion; a strong emotion, love, and it somehow flavors the spell. What further qualifications attend the release, and whether it must be effected by a kiss, I cannot say. As for Dr. Borthwick’s theory, it is consistent with the facts as we know them; but it is far from definitively demonstrated.”

De Laurency scowled and made a small noise expressive of impatience.

Sir James frowned and said, “Young man, as a scientist, you must learn to be comfortable with a degree of ambiguity. As a system of epistemology, science relies on theories tested and not yet disproven; but even the solidest theory is grounded on quicksand by comparison to the only two things that we can truly know, in the strong philosophical sense of ‘to know.’”

“And those are?”

“I know that I exist, because I experience my existence,” replied Sir James. “And I know that the Creator exists, through faith. And some would argue with the latter as an adequate proof.”

“Is there no hope for her?” I said.

Sir James turned to me. “Oh certainly,” he said. “There is always hope. Perhaps her true love will find her. And perhaps as the state of magical knowledge advances, some future wizard, cleverer than I, will untangle the Gordian knot of her spell and release her from slumber.”

For some days I left poor Meg sitting in my guest armchair, her head cushioned by a pillow, as I pondered what to do with her. De Laurency was right; she was a free woman, and any experimentation more intrusive than Sir James’s gentle exploration was inappropriate. Yet she seemed to need our care not at all; she required no greater sustenance, it seemed, than the very air.

One snowy December afternoon I returned from high table in the company of von Stroheim, with too much capon and a bit of port under my belt. Somewhat to my surprise, we discovered a small, elderly, dark-complexioned gentleman sitting at my desk chair, gloved hands on walking stick, gazing at her visage. He was outlandishly garbed: green velvet pants, paisley vest, silver-buckled shoon. He wore rings on both ring fingers, over the outside of his moleskin gloves.

“Good afternoon, my Lord Beaconsfield,” I said, von Stroheim glancing at me in startlement; he had not recognized Disraeli, but I had, of course. I am, to be sure, a lifelong Tory. “To what do I owe the honor?”

He glanced up at me. “Dr. Borthwick, I presume? And can this be Professor von Stroheim? Please forgive an old man’s intrusion. I read of your young charge and had wished to see her. I trust I may be forgiven.”

“I believe England may forgive you anything, sir,” I said. Von Stroheim grinned a sardonic grin at me from behind Beaconsfield’s back; he has often accused me of shameless flattery.

Disraeli chuckled. “Well, it seems the public loves me now that I am retired,” he said, “but it has not always been so. Nonetheless, I take the compliment in the spirit in which it is offered. Is this fairy tale true?”

“Wholly bosh,” said von Stroheim. “The maunderings of old wives and the wistful fancies of middle-aged men.”

“My conjecture has not been falsified, Helmut,” I said. “You must forgive us, my lord; the disagreements of scientists must sometimes seem like the quarrels of old couples.”

“I rather hope the story is true,” said the Earl of Beaconsfield. “I came … well, it’s a peculiar thing. I’m working on a novel, you know; I haven’t had time for fifteen years, but now I do. And, as in all novels — well, most — love plays a role. But the devil of it is that I know so little of love; I came to it so late, and in so untidy a fashion. I had thought somehow I might gain an insight from the young lady’s plight.”

“That is the problem with novels,” von Stroheim said. “They revel in pretty lies.”

“Late and untidy, my lord?” I said.

“As a young man,” said Beaconsfield, “I was too enraptured with my own prospects to pay much heed to ‘pretty lies,’ if it please you, Professor. ‘Woman was to him but a toy, man but a machine,’ if I may quote my own oeuvre. I married not for love, but for money; Mrs. Lewis was fifteen years my senior, rich and well-connected, when I asked her hand. I did so neither from passion nor affection, but out of cold political calculation, for my modest inheritance had been squandered, my novels did not suffice to keep me in the style to which I had become accustomed, and I desperately needed funds to continue my political career.”

“You, my lord? Act from cold, political calculation?” said von Stroheim — a trifle sardonically.

The Earl chuckled. “It is so. Yet I came to love her; she soon let me gently know that she understood my motivations, but loved me nonetheless. And as time passed, a true affection ripened between us. The proudest and happiest day of my life was not when the Queen granted me the title of Beaconsfield, nor when I acquired the Khedive’s shares in the Suez Canal, nor yet when I browbeat old Derby into sponsoring the Reform Act; it was in sixty-four, when I obtained for my darling the title of Viscountess.”

“Some men give jewelry,” von Stroheim said.

Disraeli laughed out loud. “A Prime Minister can do better than that,” he said. He sobered, and reached out a gloved hand to trace the line of her jaw. “I found love so unexpectedly; surely this poor creature is as deserving as I?”

“Ach, it is incredible,” said von Stroheim. “Eleven centuries! The world is full of idiots. Surely one falls in love with her. Has de Laurency kissed her yet?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” I said.

“Is it that easy?” Beaconsfield said. “True love, as the story goes?”

“True love,” said von Stroheim incredulously. “Vas ist?”

“Yet it exists,” said I.

Von Stroheim looked me up and down. “Well,” he said at length, “you and Janet almost make me believe it is so.”

“You too, my lord,” I said, “came to love only after acquaintance.”

Disraeli shrugged.

“Is there no hope for her, then?” I asked.

The Earl stood up abruptly. “Perhaps none,” he said. “Some stories are tragedies, you know. A fact that presses against me, as the end of my own tale draws near.”

He died last year, did you know? But he left us one last novel.

Was it that very night? I think not; the next, perhaps. Certainly within a few days.

I was working late by gaslight; after putting the children to bed, I had found myself wakeful and, begging Janet’s pardon, had returned to Balliol to continue my fruitless attempt to decipher the Linear B. I found the shutter to my office window unlatched; sleet and cold wind dashed through it. Cursing, I latched it shut and, fingers shaking with the cold, lit a fire in the grate.

As I crouched before the fender, hands held out to the burgeoning flame, I heard a tenor keening; the drone of words, as faint as an insect buzz. I cocked my head, wondering what on earth this could be, then realized the sound came from up the flue.

I went to the window, threw open the shutters, and peered up at the roof.

My office is on the top floor of the hall; its window is a dormer. About it, and upward, slope slate shingles, slick that night with the freezing rain. And there, atop the curved Spanish tiles that run the length of the roof’s peak, clutching the chimney, stood de Laurency, sleet pelting his woolen greatcoat, a scarf about his neck, his lanky hair plastered against his skull.

Into the sleet he said, in a curiously conversational tone of voice:

I was tempted to shout, yet I feared to dislodge him from his unsteady perch. I forced my voice to a conversational tone. “What the devil is that?” I demanded.

He blinked down the slick roof at me. “Byron,” he said.

I snorted. “No doubt. And what the devil are you doing up there?”

De Laurency gave me a quick smile; a smile that departed as quickly as it had come. “In a moment,” he said, “I propose to step onto these tiles and slip to my death on the cobbles below.”

I was tempted to tell him to try to hit head first, as he might otherwise simply be crippled.

“And why,” I asked, “should you want to do that?”

He closed his eyes, and with real pain in his voice said, “I am unworthy! Truly I love her, and yet I am not her true love!”

“Ah! Kissed her at last, did we?”

He blinked down at me, with some hostility.

“About bloody time,” I said. “Mooning about like a silly git. All right, you’ve had your smoochie, didn’t work, carry on, eh? Come on in and I’ll fix you a brandy.”

“Is it you,” he said bitterly, “your age, or the age? The age of machines and mechanical magic, all passion and glory a barely remembered palimpsest? Or you, a dried-up old didactic prune with no remembrance of what it is to love and be loved in the glory of the springtime moon? Or were you always a pedant?”

I looked up at him at a loss for a time. Finally, I said, “Oh, I was a pedant always; an insufferable youth, I fear, and barely more tolerable in middle age. And yes, this is a practical age. But I, I know more of love than three of you, de Laurency; for I have three to love, who love me dearly in return.”

De Laurency looked at me incredulously. “You?” he said. “You have three lovers?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “My darling Janet, my sweet Clarice, and littlest Amelia.”

“Oh,” he said with dismissal. “Your children.”

“My children, yes,” I said. “And will you know what that is like if you dash your fool brains out on the cobbles below?”

He straightened up, scowling. “Know this,” he said. “I love Meg truly; I have worshiped her since first I saw her, gloried in the scent of her golden hair, longed to see the light of her eyes. I have felt her slow, shallow breath; in dreams have I seen her life amid the court of Northumbria, the gallant knights who served her, the adoration of her royal father.” Here I could not restrain a snort; you’d think a prospective archaeologist would better understand the misery of such a primitive and barbaric life. “And I feel we have communed, one spirit to another! And so I gathered my courage, my every hope, and with my lips I gently kissed her! And still she did not stir!”

“Yes, well, so did von Stroheim and the Prince—”

“They did not love her!”

“And you do? You puppy! You pismire! You love yourself rather more than you love her! What vanity, striding about the moor and reciting Byron! I’ll wager you spent more time contemplating what a Romantic figure you cut, against the heather, with your windblown hair, then considering the beauties of nature or the nature of beauty! Love! What do mean by that? Agape or eros? Do you know the difference? Do you care?”

He stared at me, thunderstruck. “Of course I know! Do you think me ignorant? And agape, of course; I would hardly dare to desire her, to—”

He sobbed, and swayed, barely holding onto the chimney.

It occurred to me that the lad badly needed a rogering by some down-to-earth, buxom lass. But I dared not suggest such a course.

Love, indeed.

“Come in, Robert,” I said at last. “The night is cold, the lady sleeps, and I have brandy waiting.”

And to my surprise, he did.

And, oh dear, what was I to do with her? The finest minds of magic could not help her. If ever she had had her own true love, he was centuries dead, and to love without knowing is an impossibility. She would sleep, sleep on, and sleep forever, if I had my guess.

Hire her out for a shilling a peck? Pshaw.

Leave her be on my guest armchair? Well, you know. I rather need the space.

De Laurency said once that she was a person, not an artifact. True, in its fashion; but she might as well be an artifact, you know. A fine specimen of Medieval English maidenhood, 765 A.D. (est), Kingdom of Northumbria. You could tie a tag to her toe and stick her in a case.

And why not?

The great and good of England had shown up to gawk at her; and if they, why not the masses? Edify the people of England, preserve the specimen for future study. That is the function of a great museum.

After I packed de Laurency off home, I looked down at the poor dear, and kissed her.

On the forehead, not the lips; I am a happily married man. And though I love her, in a fashion, I have already my own true love.

And the next day I sent a telegraph the British Museum.

Poor darling Meg; I hope she is happy here, ’tween Athene and Megatherium; surely happier, at any rate, than buried in Alcroft’s clay.

Greg Costikyan says: “‘And Still She Sleeps’ was the first short story I wrote after a three year hiatus that resulted from severe depression. Depression is sometimes a treatable psychiatric condition, and sometimes a completely normal response to external events — in my case, the collapse of my marriage. One shouldn’t put too much emotional freight onto a story that is fundamentally wry and rather light in tone, but ‘And Still She Sleeps’ is, in some sense, an attempt to grapple with the nature of love — a matter of obvious concern, given my immediate experiences, and a subject I still can only claim to have the haziest grip on. The story of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is one of the ur-stories that shapes our society’s notion of Romantic love — and thinking about it, and what’s wrong with the image of love it presents, was the proximate cause of the urge to write this piece.”