The Magic Mirror

by Susan Hill Long

  “So be it!” the woman cried. Her voice rose and carried, and she pressed a fist to her chest. “I will speak of another crime! This man…” She pointed at Geoffrey and gathered her words. “I am she what took the child Beatrice to John Book’s camp twelve years ago. For my offense I may perish,” she called, “but I’ll not conceal your crime to save myself!”

  The people murmured. Guards approached uncertainly from the far side of the field.

  Geoffrey’s horse pawed the ground. “Silence!” Lord Geoffrey roared.

  “No!” The woman’s words tumbled out now, as if she knew she had but a moment to say what she would. “I found the little princess! The one who fell into the river and drownt, only she did not drown! I pulled her out, and I brought her to the camp, and once I knew who she was, I should have done different, but—”

  “Silence, I command it!” Geoffrey’s horse gave a few nervous high steps.

  The woman would not be stopped. “But then he”—she pointed at Lord Geoffrey—“paid the thief John Book to do away with her! To have the girl kilt!” She looked around at the stunned faces. “I’m sorry for my part, I’m cursed sorry!”

  Geoffrey’s face flushed with rage. The horse pranced in place, jumpy, and tossed his head.

  Henry put out a commanding hand. “See reason, Lord Geoffrey! The truth has set the field against you!” he shouted. “Let us discuss these revelations in private. There is no need of this foolish duel—throw your helmet down.”

  All was quiet as the people looked from west to east, waiting to see what the lord regent would do. No one spoke; there was no sound. No tweet of bird or rustle of squirrel or puff of breeze broke the silence.

  Henry threw his own helmet to the ground. “Enough, Geoffrey.”

  Geoffrey looked long at the braided woman. Then he dropped his head to his breastplate and let his helmet fall.

  It was over.

  The crowd gave a sigh; Henry drew his leg across his pony and slipped to the ground. Margaret smiled at Petra with relief, and they embraced.

  Then came the scream of a mighty destrier. Geoffrey dug his heels into his horse and rode hard down the field, teeth bared, his mark the braided woman, who froze in terror, then lowered her chin and closed her eyes as if accepting her due.

  Henry leaped up onto Gertrude’s back and urged the pony across the field, bearing down, but the field was long. Geoffrey would reach her first.

  Margaret saw the braided woman fall to her knees, clasping her hands in prayer. She heard the pounding, felt the furious hoofbeats through the ground in the sole of her good foot and straight up the grain of her crutch, and her heart thundered; the air went still, and over the city to the west the spires of the cathedral pierced the sun.

  And into the fast-closing space between charging horse and kneeling woman, Margaret limped—clump-slide—onto the field. She raised her crutch high, like a lance, and held it steady.

  “No!” cried Bertram.

  “Hear me, God and all the saints!” screamed Minka.

  Margaret stood her ground. The charging horse was almost upon her. She squinted against the sudden blaze of orange light that streamed out of the west around the spires of the church. By what faith did she think she could stop the charging steed? By what faith did she believe her crooked leg would hold her steady? Margaret squeezed shut her eyes against the onslaught of the horse. And then, just as suddenly, she threw aside her crutch and yanked the mirror from her belt, and, using every ounce of strength to stay standing, to stay strong, she held the mirror to the sun.

  Geoffrey’s mount screamed, a sound to curdle the blood, to visit in nightmares, terrible and heart-shattering. With the sun reflected into his eyes, the horse reared and twisted, and his hooves came pounding to the ground inches from where Margaret stood, mirror clutched high in both hands. The earth shook, Margaret fell, and the mirror flew from her hands and through the air. It landed at the feet of the mighty horse, who trampled the shining thing as if it were a snake. In the next moment the horse bolted wild and ran Geoffrey underneath the friar’s banner on the shield tree. There sounded a terrible crack! The horse galloped on, and Geoffrey fell senseless to the ground.

  The shards of the shattered mirror, blinking and broken and beyond repair, reflected the orange sun. Margaret, on her knees, blinked back.

  The sheriff appeared now that everything was over, ordered Lord Geoffrey taken into custody, broke up the crowd, and turned to the few who remained. “Er, a few questions,” he said, and sighed. Twenty-odd years on the job, and somehow he always managed to snooze through any bit of excitement. Made it blasted difficult to get a story straight.

  The braided woman’s name was Alice, and she was John Book’s wife. They’d not been wed at the door of any church, but married just the same these many years, and no escape. She told of the night she’d pulled the little girl from the River Severn and taken her to their camp. She told of the night Geoffrey was supposed to pay ransom for the girl and collect her, and how instead he’d paid for her death. She told of how she’d comforted the little girl. How John Book had allowed her to keep the child, how he’d used the gift to bind her more tightly to him. But much as Alice had loved the sweet girl, she’d feared for the life she would lead with that lot. She could not subject another to her fate.

  “One night while the men slept, I took her into town and left her in a henhouse. I figured the hens’d keep her warm, and she did so love to guzzle raw eggs,” Alice said fondly. “I told John she run away, and then, quick like, I told him I seen a rich party traveling heavy by the road, and him like a magpie, he forgot about little Bebe and we went after those people and took ’em for all they had.”

  She sagged. “It pained me. Little Bebe, she were sweet as butter, and I loved to play at being her mum. She used to clutch my hair for comfort; it would soothe her crying. So I cut off my braid what she seemed to like. It’s all I could leave her with. I cut it off and give it to her. I hoped she’d remember me not unkindly, poor chick.” She was weeping now. “When my hair grew long again, I felt I’d betrayed her. I knew not whether she lived or died. And yet my hair went on ever as before.”

  The woman wiped her eyes. “I look for her wherever I go, these dozen years.” She looked hopefully at the party. “Knows you what became of ’er?”

  Until an hour or so ago, Margaret had believed it was she. Putting a hand on Alice’s arm, Margaret whispered, “She lived,” and the woman smiled through fresh tears.

  “I lives” came a voice. Urchin wiggled her way around Minka, behind whom she’d crept up unawares.

  Everyone stared. A cricket could be heard fiddling in the grass.

  Then: “Holy Mother of the jumped-up!” Bilious gasped.

  “The wily thing,” Minka muttered. “Surprised?” she said, elbowing Bilious. “Not I. And you didn’t want to take her in!”

  Brother Henry beamed. “God’s hand guided you, Minka,” he said, to which Bilious gave a snort.

  Bertram moved close to Margaret and grinned from ear to ear.

  “Who’d have thought,” Emma said, gawping.

  The sheriff scratched his head.

  Urchin stepped slowly to Alice’s side, with little Pip wrapped around her neck. Then she reached into the belt that cinched her grain-sack tunic, withdrew a matted hank of hair, and held it out. Alice alone did not grimace or cringe. For a few long moments no one spoke, and then Alice rose and pulled Urchin to her, and Urchin did not refuse her embrace. She stood tolerantly and let herself be smothered, while Alice’s long braid fell across her shoulders.

  “And how then did you go from the henhouse to the streets?” Bilious wanted to know, but Urchin only shrugged and worked a tooth with her tongue.

  The sheriff cleared his throat, and Alice released Urchin and turned to him.

  “I did come to the city with John Book once before, lately,” she told him, “on what ’e called pressing business.”

  “And what was the pressing business John Book
had in the royal city?” the sheriff asked.

  “Blackmail.” Alice sniffed loudly, and Henry passed her a cloth to blow her nose. “He wanted more money for taking the child from Lord Geoffrey.”

  “Did he get the money?”

  “He did.”

  “Will you swear it?”

  “I will.”

  Brother Henry walked with Alice and the sheriff down the hill and into the city.

  Petronilla was eager to know her sister “once my sister has known a bath,” so Minka and Bilious and Emma took charge of Urchin and promised Petra they would spare no effort to get her clean and to the castle. That left Petra and Margaret and Bertram, who sat together in the grass of the high meadow, picking shards of the ruined mirror from the dirt.

  There wasn’t anything to say, really. All this time spent wishing for some bit of magic. Finding and then losing the mirror, again and again. She might as well have tried to hold the moonlight, or the wind.

  Margaret tossed a tiny piece of useless, sparkling mirror into the dirt. The bridge of her nose began to sting, and she thought she might cry. “I thought I had a sister,” she said. “I was so sure.” She was only Margaret the Crutch, then as ever.

  “Just look-alikes,” said Bertram, after a moment. “Like looking in a mirror. Strange.”

  “None so strange as a two-headed goat, I suppose,” said Margaret, and they tried to laugh.

  “Not sisters,” Petra said, “but friends. Always and ever, our blood oath will stand.”

  Blrrr-blrrr! There sounded all at once a trumpet.

  They turned toward the sharp tones and saw approaching in the distance a band of riders some twenty strong, outfitted in traveling cloaks and many in armor and mail. And then came the loud, matched tones of high minstrelsy—the curved horn, the blaring trumpet and drumming nakers—and such shining in the sun of the instruments of combat and music-making blinded the eye and thrilled the heart. And finally came into view the standard-bearers holding aloft the banner as all approached the grand gatehouse, and on the banner rode the colors of the Duke of Minster.

  Blr-blrrrr! sounded the trumpet, and again, blr-blrrrr!

  “God’s wounds!” cried Petra, craning her neck and smoothing the crumpled silk of her skirts. “Did no one send a messenger? It’s Frederick de Vere!” When Margaret showed no recognition, Petra flung out her hands in vexation. “It’s the Toad!”

  Margaret and Bertie watched Petra stomp down the hill, as it was her duty to greet the travelers.

  Margaret wasn’t sure what to do. The mirror was no more. The magic was truly gone. What had it all been for?

  The city spread out before them like a tapestry. At one end the cathedral, at the other the castle, and all in between the rooftops and spires, the river and the bridge, and beyond the west wall the wood. Margaret bit her lip and studied the scene.

  Bertram cleared his throat. “Maggie, this might be poor timing, considering, but…my bagpipe, you see…” His voice faltered. “Maggie, I’ve something—”

  “The wood.” Margaret grabbed Bertie’s arm and sent the bagpipe tumbling to the grass, where the bladder lay rippling and round. “Knightsbridge Wood, Bertie, where none but outlaws dare to go.” She pointed carefully beyond the cathedral, as if lining up to let fly an arrow into the dark mass of trees.

  “And ghosts. Don’t forget the ghosts. But, Maggie—”

  “It’s time we venture in!” Margaret said, interrupting Bertie and grabbing her crutch. “I came on this long journey in search of the man in the mirror. The wild-eyed man could see the rose window from his chamber, Bertie,” she said. “The only place from which such a view can be seen has got to be Knightsbridge Wood, and now I won’t be stopped from going.” She clambered to her feet.

  Bertram rose to stand beside her. “But the outlaws, Maggie!”

  “And the ghosts, I know, I know,” said Margaret, “and the danger and the death, but we must go there, Bertie.” And she began the walk, clump-slide, down the hill.

  Bertram followed, his bagpipes sloshing.

  The sun had dropped below the tops of the trees, and the wood, dark and dense, was eerily quiet. They searched the edges of the forest for a way in, and after a while they found a thin trail that, to one desperately looking, might seem to be a path.

  “Never follow a path in the woods,” Bertram said. “Everyone knows that. They never lead anywhere. It’ll only get us lost.” He glanced around nervously. “Deer paths,” he muttered, “or wolf. Oh, let me,” he said, and he stepped in front so that he could hold back the branches for Margaret to pass more easily.

  After a while they came to a place where the trees thinned, and the way was easier, and then the wood opened up into a small clearing. And there in the center, plain to see in the dusk-softened light of the clearing, was a sort of hut. It was about the height of two men at its highest point, and the sides sloped to the ground like a haystack, or a beehive. There was an oaken door with a heavy lock, and a high window with iron bars. Margaret put out her hand, and Bertram took it. Eyes wide, she looked back over her shoulder in the direction of the city. Yes. There it was. From here she could see the spires of the cathedral rising above the trees, and between the twin spires the great rose window.

  Margaret’s heart thumped in her chest, and she was grateful for Bertram’s hand in hers. She squeezed it, and he squeezed back. She licked her dry lips and stepped—clump-slide—toward the strange little hut.

  “Hello?” she said. “Hello? I’m here! I’ve come!”

  No answer.

  They crawled up onto the rock beneath the window and, finding the bars loosed in their frame, they climbed into the hut. They saw inside the furnace it housed, the wood table, the tools and the shards of glass, designs drawn on paper, words.

  Bertram knelt and picked up a small square of parchment upon which were inked two words.

  Lux Vera, Margaret read.

  But no one was there. The chamber was empty. The wild-eyed man was gone.

  It was full dark and beginning to rain when Margaret and Bertram stumbled out of the wood. They’d followed the edge of the wall to Isobel’s Gate, and now they stood just inside. Margaret leaned on her crutch, the rain patting her hair and her cheeks and the backs of her hands, and wondered which way to go. Back to the castle? She didn’t belong there. Not now, not anymore. The cathedral?

  “Curfew is nigh! All must be in for the night!” the guards called out into the dark.

  Margaret felt tears prick at her eyelids. She couldn’t bear another minute of this day. Beatrice Bone, the thundering hooves, the shattered mirror, the shattered hopes. Of course, it wasn’t curfew that worried her; she knew she’d be taken in tonight. But what of the next day? And the day after that, and all the days and nights to follow?

  Out of the dark at that very moment, carrying a torch to light the way, came of all people the madwoman.

  Lucy’s heart beat fast and strong. Just because she had no use for magic didn’t mean she didn’t believe in it. “Come now, with me,” she said. When Margaret said nothing, Lucy put out her hand. “Please,” she said. “You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

  Margaret stared.

  “Please. I know you are weary. Follow me.”

  “Curfew!”

  Follow follow follow went the rain.

  “Quickly, now.” Lucy glanced at Bertram and back at Margaret. “Just you,” she said.

  Bertram stepped close to Margaret. “It’s all right, Bertie,” Margaret said. She’d decided. “I want to go with her. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Bertram adjusted his bagpipe on his shoulder and nodded, with a suspicious glance at the old woman.

  “All will be well,” Lucy told him. “But your instrument sounds ill.”

  “You should hear me play it,” he said balefully.

  So Margaret went to the apothecary’s house on Claremont Street for the second time that day. She leaned heavily on her crutch. She was hungry, and tired, and sad.<
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  Lucy opened the door and pushed it wide, and ushered Margaret in. “All right, now,” she said. “It’s all right.” And there was a man sitting beside the hearth, and the light from the fire flickered warmly over his tousled fair hair, and he was looking at Margaret, and she saw that his eyes—not wild, not now—were green.

  “He’s accustomed to be awake in the night,” Lucy was saying in a calm voice, knowing her guests were nervous and confused. “It’s when he did his work, so none would see the smoke from the kiln. He kept him there, Lord Geoffrey did, all these years, under orders to make another magic mirror. But he never succeeded.”

  Who—but how—and why— Margaret didn’t know where to begin.

  He stood. The bench gently teetered, toppled, and fell. Margaret’s crutch seemed to take root in the floor, to grow branches, to leaf out, and to flower, all in the space of time it took for the questions to leave their lips:

  “Are you my father?” and “Are you my child?”

  Tom the apothecary ladled bowls of hot soup, fragrant with herbs and thick with good potato and onion and leek, and then quietly left his houseguests to their supper and Lucy’s tale.

  It began the night Princess Petronilla was born. The midwife had seen Will Glazier brought into the castle under guard. And she had a feeling.

  So she slipped down to the dungeon. Said she needed a hair off a criminal’s head to make a poultice for the queen, and the guard believed her. In hurried whispers Will told her about the magic mirror—what he’d seen—and begged her to go and find Catherine behind the kiln. Help her get away. And get word to Queen Isobel of Lord Geoffrey’s true nature.

  So Lucy had gone to the wood. But—too soon, too soon—Catherine began to labor. Lucy had strength and skill and time enough to save but one life that night: she saved the child. She promised the fading mother she would.

  The guards had come looking, kept on looking for the midwife, the baby. So they had to keep moving, place to place. They lived like that near two years. She made herself small, and kept to the shadows, mostly. She doted on the child, bought her a fine dress of green velvet and a pair of tiny shoes, dotted with beads, like a princess would wear. All the while she kept the mirror tucked away.