The Magic Mirror

by Susan Hill Long

  Urchin shook her head meaningfully, and Pip ducked.

  “On pain of death,” said Minka, with menace in her voice, “you will throw that ratted, flea-infested hair upon the ash heap.”

  Bilious could be heard laughing quietly from his post farther up the bank. Minka sighed. “Keep it, then,” she said. “By God, I command you to keep it!”

  Urchin grinned. “I obey,” she said, waving the repugnant hair over her head in triumph.

  Minka smiled wide, and then without another word she pushed Urchin into the river, clothes and all.

  “You wouldn’t drown a poor squirrel!” Urchin cried.

  “If only, but seeing as how he clings to the little beggar, I expect I’m stuck with the pair,” Minka muttered over the sound of splashing.

  Bilious tossed Minka a cake of soap. It was a brisk and thorough washing for girl and squirrel both, and shortly Urchin was clean and fed and dressed in a fresh grain sack from the wagon.

  “Lovely,” said Bilious.

  “Lovely is as lovely does,” growled Minka.

  And as the orange yolk of the sun dropped behind the hilltop, the cart rolled west to Kingston-upon-Hull, bearing Bilious and Minka, and Urchin between them. Before long, Pip perched on Urchin’s shoulder, wound his tail around her neck, and went to sleep.

  In the morning, Bertram and Margaret stood in the back of the great wide nave and spoke quietly with Brother Henry while they waited for the holy mass to begin. By luck and stealth they’d managed to exit the castle (a place far easier to get out of than in), slip by the curfew guards, and make their way to the chapel in the night. When they’d told the friar about their encounter with the princess, he’d wisely asked no questions regarding how they had gained entry and exit and simply advised caution.

  Father Sebastian approached, swinging a thurible of incense. He swung the smoking vessel on its chains in three directions as with purposeful strides he blessed (and veiled the stink of) the unwashed.

  As the fragrant smoke wafted over Brother Henry, he bowed his head in prayer. Every step of his pilgrimage was another he must take to atone for his sins. Would a lifetime be enough? He gazed at the stained-glass windows of the cathedral and saw not their story, but his own darkest day.

  Henry saw again the thundering hooves, the lifeless man, the riverbank, the town of no significance. The ring, and the vow. After all this, could he carry on with his charge to bring the package to the queen? If she got it, if it helped, then perhaps it would lessen his guilt. His vision of the captive crone urged him: She needs me! On he rode. But before he reached Knightsbridge, word came that the queen had died. And so he had failed. Failed his God and his queen and the crone. He collapsed in despair. There was a woman—he remembered her ready laughter, like the bray of Bertram’s bagpipes—who nursed him back to health, but his was sickness of the heart, not of the body. So he shed his armor and left her with all his possessions, even the linen-wrapped package, and never returned to court.

  He sold Gilly—magnificent Gilly—and brought the money in offering to the friary in Dale’s End. And when they took him in, weak and undeserving, he fell to his knees and wept.

  Now, in the cathedral, he prayed, “God, deliver my soul.”

  Wraithlike curls of aromatic smoke licked Margaret’s cheek too. A priest went to light the tallow tapers of a candelabrum beside her—each flame for a departed soul, paid for by living loved ones—and she staggered back as if scorched by the fire. Like Beady Bone in her nightmares, Margaret had no one who would light a candle for her. The candles reminded her of who she was: a foundling with no mother or father, rejected by all, even by Minka, who’d aimed to be rid of her by marrying her off to a hunchback. She sniffed and drew her sleeve across her nose. No one gains from wallowing, she thought, save the pigs.

  Smoke from the incense reached Bertram’s nose, and he prayed for guidance. How might he serve? How must he live? He could not follow Cousin Henry forever; eventually he must be a man and set upon his own path. He breathed in deeply, and gave a wry smile to think his breath so far had been good only for the bagpipe, and not so much even for that.

  Sebastian moved away down the nave, swinging the thurible, and Bertram gestured to Margaret. They left Brother Henry with his head bowed in prayer and went out onto the cobbles of Church Street.

  “What do you want to do, then?” Bertram asked when they were outside. The quiet of the cathedral was overtaken by shouts and murmurs of people moving in a strong current toward the center of the city. “Shall we go back and visit the Princess Putrid?”

  Margaret tried to smile. The princess. A strange interlude indeed. Petronilla had refused her and pulled her hair and talked of death and stuffed her under the bed. No, she would not pursue the princess today, despite the odd coincidence of their like appearance.

  “Today,” she insisted, “we search for the wild-eyed man. After all, the soothsayer’s prophecy said nothing of a look-alike girl, but spoke of the man in the glass.”

  “And the danger surrounding him,” added Bertram. “Don’t forget the danger part. And the death.”

  Margaret sighed and rested her chin on her crutch. In this vast city, the hope of finding the wild-eyed man seemed thin as gruel, the magic distant as a dream. She began to doubt she’d seen him at all. If she had, his chamber must be located west of the cathedral, to have gained the view of the rose window. Was there a village west of the city? If only she could gaze into the magic mirror again and learn something more.

  “Come on, then,” said Bertram. “Here’s coin in my pocket; let’s have some proper breakfast and think on it. Father Sebastian is very kind, but his dry rye, dried apple, and dry ale will not hold me.”

  They stepped inside a tavern and found two empty seats at the table. A serving girl brought hard-cooked eggs and herring pie, and then poured ale from a pitcher. When Margaret asked what village might lie beyond the western wall, the girl pursed her lips and stood up straight with a vigor that bumped the table and sent Bertram’s egg rolling.

  The serving girl looked around the suddenly silent table. “Nowt but Knightsbridge Wood,” she said.

  Margaret swallowed. Why was everyone stopped, mid-chew, and staring straight at her? “No village?” she said. “No…township?” She gave Bertram a sidelong glance.

  “Nothing,” said the serving girl. “Nary even a way in nor out, to the west. Only the wood, and you’ll not dip a toe there,” she added, “not if you value life and limb, and not if you value all what’s holy.”

  Bertram’s eyes, big as saucers, were fixed on the serving girl, his fork hovering above his herring pie. “What has you so afraid?” he said in a whisper.

  As if a plug had been pulled on a keg, words came pouring all at once from all around the table.

  “Ghosts!”

  “Haints!”

  “Eerie moans and wailing!”

  “Strange blue smoke in the night—smoke but no fire!”

  The serving girl raised a spoon to silence the table. “Once, my man dared me to go to the wood at night,” she began, “but I wouldn’t, not ever.” She took a cup, filled it with ale, and swigged. “Imagine!” she said. “Me, go out to the wood at night? Even if I could scoff at curfew, which I could not. Imagine!” she said again, and filled her cup once more. “Being caught outside the gates all night with the ghosts? No thanks, I says to him.” She shook her head with a vehemence that made her hair bounce. “No thank you at all.”

  “I seen them, the ghosts,” said an old man in a large felt hat. “A pair of haints, floating four feet from the ground at the edge of the trees.”

  “I smelt the brimstone!” said another.

  “I heard the moaning, like the Devil’s own bellows!”

  The patrons fell into conversations, and Bertram and Margaret hurriedly forced down their boiled eggs and herring pie.

  Outside the tavern, Margaret put her hand on Bertram’s arm. “I want to go to the wood,” she said.

  Bertram
sputtered and shook off her hand. “Did you not hear those good folk? Do you not fear the ghosts?

  Margaret frowned. “There won’t be ghosts in the daytime.”

  “You don’t know that. Danger and death, the prophecy said!” Bertram added.

  “ ‘Just because you limp doesn’t mean you can’t heal,’ he said too,” Margaret countered. “Mayhap at the hands of the wild-eyed man!” But then she softened. “Let’s walk along just inside the western wall and see if anyplace might afford the view I saw in the mirror.”

  To that Bertram agreed. The city streets rambled here and there, without order, and there were many sharp turns and dead ends. Were they still traveling west? Margaret wasn’t sure. When after a time they came to the North Gate, they knew they’d wandered far enough. They made their way again toward the center of the city.

  “Folderol!” came a cry, and Margaret turned sharply. A jester approached, juggling three colorful stitched-leather balls, tossing and catching and pushing them around so fast the colors blended in the air. Bertram wondered aloud if the jester was the baker’s wife’s sister’s husband’s brother, and Margaret laughed. The fellow’s cap was split on top into what looked like a pair of horns, one red, the other yellow. His tunic, too, was divided into red and yellow sides, from his throat to the tip of his long, pointed shoes.

  “You admire my juggling skills,” the jester said to Margaret. His voice rang out, high and singsongy. “You approve my garb?”

  Margaret nodded.

  “The jester wears two colors to mark the nature of life,” he went on. “All in life is both good and bad,” he said, juggling all the while, “just as every coin has two sides. And so drop a penny in my cup, for luck!” When Margaret said she had no coin, he cackled and moved away, the balls still circling madly over his head.

  Margaret thought of Minka and her bad-luck coin.

  “Psssst. Psssssssst!”

  Margaret and Bertram turned. A girl was beckoning to them. She wore a too-large cloak that dragged in the dust, a dingy wimple topped by a cone-shaped hat, and on her feet a pair of shoes that made Margaret stare, for they were sewn of finest leather and dotted with silver pieces.

  Petronilla?

  “Quickly,” the girl whispered, and led Margaret and Bertram through a narrow alleyway to a spot that housed a row of fat barrels and squat crates. Then she turned to face Margaret. It was the princess. “I knew you by your lurching gait, no offense.”

  Margaret waved her hand: None taken.

  “I don’t have the answers. My questions number even more than yours, I’ll wager.” She stopped speaking, and took a deep breath. “But I believe that we two, that is to say…Here.” She indicated a large crate. “Sit, and I will tell all.”

  The princess told the tale they already knew: the story of the two half-sisters, and the wall, and the river, and the grief.

  “You must be Beatrice.” Petronilla’s voice was quiet. “Must be!”

  “Aha!” said Bertram. The ever-present bagpipes across his shoulder wiggled in accord. “I knew it! Didn’t I say so, Maggie; didn’t I tell Henry?”

  Margaret, stunned, sat in silence many long moments. Finally she asked, “What makes you believe it?”

  “We could not look more alike,” said Petra, “excepting that you are in grave need of a thorough washing and some scented clothing to wear. No offense!”

  Bertram jumped in. “Was your half-sister born with a twisted leg?” he asked.

  “No,” admitted Petronilla, glancing from him to Margaret, “but the leg further aids in your identity. Though you did not perish as…” Petra paused, looking sideways and swallowing. “As long believed, such a fall…could hardly have been without consequence.”

  “True,” Bertram agreed, setting his bagpipes on the ground. He took up Margaret’s crutch and picked up where he’d left off whittling.

  “But would you not agree it is far better to walk with a limp all your life,” Petronilla said, her voice gaining speed and volume, “than to have no life at all?” She leaned forward, lips parted, and all but begged an answer.

  “Yes, of course,” said Margaret. “Of course it is.”

  “Especially when a body has so fine a crutch,” said Bertram, holding out for appraisal the wood with the designs he’d been working, and ogling the crutch from one side and another. The two girls turned blankly to him. “Not, of course, that that’s what’s important right now,” he said.

  “They won’t let me remember anything about you,” Petronilla said, turning back to Margaret, “nothing except…” She glanced away, folding slightly at the middle like a wilted bloom. She took a deep breath. “To protect me, you see. To keep me from sadness as a child, the loss of my sister and then the loss of my—of our—dear mother.”

  Margaret put her hand out uncertainly, and Petra took it.

  “When I saw you in my chamber,” Petra went on, touching Margaret’s hair, “it was the comb that brought me to my senses.”

  Margaret allowed Petra to slide the carved ornament from her hair. Then Petra pulled a comb from her pocket and held the two side by side. The same grain to the horn, the same delicate carving, the curved design of one finished by the opposite curve of the other. A matched set. “They belonged to Mother. To our mother.”

  Margaret’s heart beat fast. She knew the similarity of their appearance, however striking, could still be chance. But the combs…

  “Mother would be overjoyed to know that you survived.”

  “How did I come to such a fall?” Margaret asked.

  Petronilla looked away. “My father said that you were playing—you and I were playing together—and you…and you simply tumbled from the wall.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  Margaret sat very still. She had no memory of a terrible fall, no memory at all of a sister, of royal birth. But she had been found in a velvet dress too fine for common folk. Could it be true? Could any of it be true? Had she once walked straight and without pain? Her twisted leg ached and throbbed, as with fresh injury.

  “Sister?” she said, tentatively.

  Petra nodded. “My elder sister. And, as such, heir to the kingdom—future queen.”

  Margaret looked at Bertram, whose mouth had fallen slightly open, and back to Petronilla. A sudden rush of sound filled her ears, as if all clarity and reason had turned to rockfall, or furious wings.

  Margaret gulped. “No,” she said, over the noise inside her ears. She shook her head. “No, that can’t be. I’ve no wish to take from you. I…” Again she glanced helplessly at Bertram.

  Petra grinned, shaking off the gloom that had seemed to engulf her moments before. “Oh, you’ll find there are a few thorns in the royal bed of roses—it’s not such a loss for me.”

  “But…truly?”

  “Yes. Father—”

  “I must meet him!” cried Margaret.

  “He is gone this day to Minster City, to arrange a wedding on my name saint’s day. I am betrothed to a fat toad. I mean, to a well-positioned duke. But your arrival changes everything, and now I—I don’t know, but perhaps it shall be you who kisses the toad and makes him a king.”

  At this, the rushing and roaring in Margaret’s ears grew, insistent as Bertram’s bagpipes. She stood and reached for her crutch as if to make haste away. Bertram was at her side in an instant.

  Petra, too, rose from her crate. “You dislike the notion?”

  Margaret’s face went hot. She lost all sense of reserve, and fairly yelled over the sound of her own thoughts. “Queen?” she said. “It cannot be. I think—I must think—” She sputtered and looked pointedly at Petra. “You say I fell from the castle wall. How did I not return, then, to the castle? How is it I came to be found in the churchyard of Lesser Dorste?”

  Petronilla crumpled. “I don’t know!” she said, her voice shrill. She turned to the side, slid a small bottle from her purse, and went to take a sip but seemed to think better of it, for she returned the bottle to her purse, unop
ened.

  “They didn’t say,” Petra said, and shivered visibly. “By the saints, I know nothing more! And what of you?” Petra demanded of Margaret. “Do you remember nothing of me, of time spent together when we were very young?” Petra narrowed her eyes. “I was but three years old, and you not yet four.”

  Margaret took a step back. “I remember nothing. Nothing at all.” Petronilla’s changeable manner—joyful, indifferent, angry—made Margaret feel as if she’d swallowed the pit with the fruit. She looked down at the ground, uncertainty returning. To Bertram she said, “If what she says is true, and we are sisters, then I wonder that nothing was spoken of it in the soothsayer’s prophecy.”

  “What prophecy?”

  “And I wonder that nothing was seen of it in the magic mirror.”

  “What magic mirror?” Petra stomped her slippered foot. “I demand you tell me this instant!”

  All three sat down once more on the ring of crates, and Margaret told Petra everything, about the soothsayer at Grimsby—

  “Don’t leave out the part about the danger and the death,” said Bertram.

  —and the peddler Bilious’s gift of the magic mirror, and how she’d seen a strange man in it—

  “A man who is surrounded by death,” said Bertram solemnly, “and danger.”

  —and how she could see, as well, visions belonging to other people, not only her own.

  “And now I do not have the mirror. I’d hardly gained its power when”—she shook her head—“I lost it.” She roused herself. Once more she wondered why she’d not seen Petronilla in the glass. “But the man I saw,” she said, putting up a hand to Bertram to stop him from speaking again of the death and danger, “with fair hair and green eyes. Do you know such a man?”

  Petra shrugged. “Many a man answers to that description.”

  “Does your father, Lord Geoffrey?”

  “Certainly not. Father is balding, and beak-nosed, and beady-eyed on his best days.” Petra frowned. “Best not to mention the mirror to him. He’s a fiend for his own reflection. The man has fifty mirrors if he has a single one; they line the walls of his chamber.”