by Webb, Holly
Luckily, Miss Bridges and Miss Fell seemed to like one another. Rose suspected that actually Miss Bridges would have liked anybody who was prepared to educate Bella – or at least try. It also helped that Miss Fell had made a special visit to the kitchens, and had been so very gracious to Mrs Jones about the orange syllabub she served at the supper the first night, that the cook didn’t give notice after all.
Although, if Miss Fell kept asking for lavender shortbread, it was possible that Mrs Jones might reconsider, of course.
Rose sighed, and shrugged the thoughts away. She sometimes thought that she would never understand people who had been born with money. ‘I’ll go down to the kitchens. Wish me luck. If Mrs Jones is in one of her moods, I’ll be having bread and dripping for supper, without the dripping.’
Luckily for Rose, when she reached the kitchen, Mrs Jones was hidden behind her newspaper, with a cup of tea at her side, sighing heavily. ‘Dreadful. Dreadful,’ she kept muttering, as she rustled the pages.
‘Another murder?’ Rose whispered to Bill, who was drinking his tea out of his saucer, as no one else was in the kitchen, and Mrs Jones couldn’t see him from behind the paper.
Bill shook his head, and slurped. ‘War,’ he muttered, eyeing the edges of the newspaper.
‘Oh…’ Rose sighed. The war with Talis had escalated over the last few weeks, and they had arrived back to find London papered with still more recruiting posters, and columns of soldiers marching through the streets. They frightened Rose when she was out on errands. Somehow she seemed to see those bright uniforms splashed with mud, and other worse things. Then she would blink, and again the cloth was only red with dye. It made her feel sick.
What would happen if the Talish emperor did as everyone said he meant to, and there was an invasion? Would there really be fighting in the streets? Rose kept telling herself that Mr Fountain and the other magicians would never let it happen. But the emperor had magicians of his own. Lord Venn had even worked for him for a while. The plot to steal Princess Jane had been a subtle ploy to gain the emperor’s trust. Who was to say that another powerful magician wasn’t directing the Talish forces now?
Rose stared at the words screaming from the cramped type of the paper. Cannon. 7th Light infantry. Treaties dissolved. Undue provocation…
Her new life in the Fountain house was so wonderfully precious, and the bands of soldiers seemed to be marching over it in their heavy black boots.
‘Those Talish. Traitors!’ The newspaper shook aggressively.
Rose crossed her fingers behind her back, and cooed, ‘Mrs Jones… Would we by any chance happen to have lavender shortbread?’
Mrs Jones’s eyebrows appeared over the top of the newspaper. ‘That woman will be the death of me,’ she sighed. ‘There’s a porcelain jar of dried lavender in the larder, Rose, fetch it for me, there’s a dear. And next time,’ she eyed Rose sternly, ‘next time, try to encourage her to want something that you know I already have. Use that dratted magic stuff.’ She gave a slight shudder as she said it, but Rose still stared at the cook over her shoulder as she went to the larder. Mrs Jones detested magic, and kept the kitchen doors sealed against it by some ancient rituals of her own, which Rose suspected were just as magical in their own way as Mr Fountain’s spells. She usually pretended not to know that Rose could do magic too.
‘Miss Fell would see straight through me, Mrs Jones,’ Rose told her, as she came back with the solid blue-white jar. ‘She can make spells with her little finger that I couldn’t do if I tried with all of me for a week.’
Mrs Jones folded up her paper, and smoothed it out with little thumps of her fat hands, as though she was squashing away things she didn’t want to see. ‘She seems such a nice, proper lady,’ she murmured, and pulled the lid off the lavender jar with a sharp jerk.
‘Looks like nasty little dead beetles,’ Bill said disgustedly, as he peered into the jar. ‘And the smell! She’s going to eat that stuff?’
‘It’s a lovely smell!’ Rose said, glancing at him in surprise. It made her think of drawers full of clean, pressed linens. Miss Fell herself smelled of lavender, Rose realised. She probably kept bags of it to freshen her laces, but Rose couldn’t help wondering if her fondness for lavender shortbread scented her from the inside out.
‘How are we going to put the lavender in the biscuits?’ Rose asked anxiously. She had forgotten it was Sarah the kitchen maid’s afternoon out, and she wasn’t sure she was up to inserting lavender into shortbread herself.
Mrs Jones sniffed. ‘Lavender glacé icing. It may not be exactly what madam ordered, but she’ll have to lump it. We can’t all cheat.’
Rose gave a brisk nod. ‘I only hope it puts her in a sweeter mood. She’s supposed to be teaching us painting in watercolours later on, and after the dancing lesson we’ve just had…’
‘You’re good at pictures,’ Bill pointed out, but Rose sighed.
‘Not painting them. Mine just happen when I’m talking, and I don’t mean them to. Sorry, Mrs Jones,’ she added automatically. Mention of magic was not usually allowed in the kitchen either.
‘Watercolours are very suitable for a young lady, Rose,’ the cook told her approvingly as she whisked a bowlful of icing.
‘I’m not a young lady,’ Rose pointed out, pursing her lips.
‘But you could be, dear. Most girls would bite your hand off for the chances you’re getting. Latin, and all that. Mind you, we’ll be lucky if we’re not all speaking Talish this time next year.’
‘You can’t say you aren’t a young lady, anyway,’ Bill put in, filching a fingerful of icing while Mrs Jones examined the lavender. ‘You don’t know.’
‘Oh, don’t you start,’ Rose told him witheringly. ‘You’re like the girls at St Bridget’s, all sure they’re really little lost princesses.’
‘But you might be!’ Bill protested. ‘All that… strangeness had to come from somewhere, didn’t it?’
‘It’s just an accident,’ Rose muttered. But she didn’t sound sure. Before she came to work at Mr Fountain’s house, Rose had spent so long in the orphanage refusing to imagine that she had a family, that she found it desperately hard to think about her history now. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find the people who had thrown her away – for that was what they’d done. They hadn’t even bothered to deliver her to the orphanage, simply abandoned her in a churchyard – in a fishbasket, to add insult to injury. Why would she ever want to know them?
‘What are we to paint today?’ Bella asked, rather unenthusiastically, swooshing her brush about in a water glass.
Miss Fell frowned. ‘Isabella, dear. Don’t splash. Today I have found a painting for you to copy.’ She brought a pasteboard folder over to the schoolroom table, and untied the ribbons. The watercolour inside showed a large house, built of white marble, like some ancient temple, and surrounded by perfectly green gardens.
Rose’s shoulders slumped a little. At least in their lessons before they had painted flowers, and one of the china ornaments from the drawing room. Copying another picture seemed so dull.
‘Try to match the colours,’ Miss Fell instructed them. ‘See the delicacy of line? Light washes, girls, no heavy-handed brushstrokes.’ She sighed, and gently stroked a finger down the paper.
Rose wondered why she kept the painting tucked away in a folder, instead of having it framed to go on her wall. It was clear that she loved it.
Rose dipped her brush into the water, and tried to enjoy watching the colour spread across the paper. But it all seemed so silly! She was no pampered little rich girl, being groomed for a society match. Why on earth was she bothering with this?
The answer was simple, of course. Because she wouldn’t dare refuse, although she was rather hoping that Bella might do it for her.
But Bella was doodling happily in a mixture of green and pink streaks, the odd tree shape appearing here and there. Rose glanced over at Miss Fell, who was staring out of the schoolroom window at the square, twisting a lavende
r-scented handkerchief between her fingers.
Irritably, Rose sketched in the line of the colonnade along the front of the house. It formed a pretty terrace, where doubtless the daughters of the family were allowed to stroll. Probably they went nowhere else, Rose thought bitterly, constrained in corsets so they could walk only a few steps among the peacocks. Perhaps she had been better off in an orphanage after all? But a magician’s daughter wouldn’t be so hemmed in, she admitted, spying Bella now mixing paint directly into her paint water to make tornado-swirls. Delicate mists of colour sank through the water – until it turned an ugly purplish-brown. No one could stop Bella doing what she wanted.
And not me, either, she told herself, half-looking at the watercolour, and painting without thinking. A pattern grew under her fingers, coils and swirls and feathery shapes, and the peacocks stalked slowly through her thoughts.
‘What is that?’ A papery whisper pulled Rose out of the strange, dreamy state she’d been in, and she jerked, streaking red paint across her sketch. Miss Fell was standing over her, the handkerchief now pressed to her lips.
‘Oh – I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to…’ Then she tailed off, looking down at her painting. The house was still there, but the composition had changed entirely. Now a young girl was walking through the scene, heading away from them towards the house, a shawl trailing from her elbows. She had one hand stretched out, with a piece of bread to feed the peacocks, and they walked beside her, their tails trailing along the ground like her long shawl. The feathers seemed to grow into the intricate pattern of the fabric, as though she was wearing them too.
‘That’s – that’s not in the picture,’ Rose stammered.
Bella leaned over from her side of the table to examine Rose’s work. ‘How did you paint that?’ she asked wide-eyed. ‘Rose, last week your posy of snowdrops looked like tree trunks. And who is she?’
‘How did you know her?’ Miss Fell asked, her voice still strange. ‘You can’t have known her! What did you do?’
When Rose simply gaped at her, the old lady seized Rose’s chin in her hand, and pulled her face around, turning it so she could look into Rose’s eyes.
‘I didn’t! I didn’t do anything! I was thinking, and not paying attention, it just happened. I don’t think I painted it at all,’ Rose added, shamefaced.
Miss Fell let go of her, and clutched the back of a chair, as though she needed it to stay standing. Rose and Bella stared at her, wondering what on earth was wrong, and whether they should do anything. This wasn’t like Miss Anstruther’s fits of the vapours. Rose was sure she could see the old lady’s bones as she clung to the chair, and she was trembling. ‘Miss Fell?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Ma’am? Should we fetch you a – a cordial? Or some smelling salts?’
‘Useless quackery,’ the old lady snapped, seeming to come to herself all of a sudden. ‘Make sure that you wash those brushes properly, girls. I have a slight headache, and I shall be going to lie down.’
But she tottered from the room, actually leaning on her cane instead of using it as part of her harmless-old-lady disguise as she usually did, and as the door swung shut behind her, Bella raised her eyebrows at Rose. ‘Slight headache, my foot,’ she pointed out.
Rose nodded, and picked up her sheet of watercolour paper. ‘Who is this?’ she asked, staring down at the girl in the picture, and tracing the interlocking pattern of the paisley shawl. ‘I don’t remember her. How could I? I can’t see her face properly, but I’m sure I’ve never met her. There’s something though…’
Bella frowned at the painting too. ‘She isn’t all that much older than us,’ she pointed out.
Rose rolled her eyes without Bella seeing. Bella hated being the youngest in the house, and refused to admit that Rose was older than she was. Rose didn’t actually know how old she was, but she was reasonably certain she was at least ten or eleven. Bella was only eight. But Bella was right – this girl was young. ‘Perhaps fifteen or sixteen?’ Rose suggested.
‘She’s got a tolerable figure,’ Bella pronounced. ‘But I don’t think her hair is naturally that fair. Probably it’s the same colour as yours, and she put lemon juice on it.’
‘Or maybe I just painted it the wrong colour,’ Rose said.
‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ Bella snapped. You only held the brush. This was a spell. Miss Fell knew it too, and more than she was saying.’ Bella’s eyes were fixed on the strange sideways portrait, as though she was willing the girl to turn around. ‘It was something to do with you and that house – and her.’
‘You mean, she really is still working? As a servant?’ Miss Fell’s fluting voice filled the word with horror.
‘Well, yes.’ Mr Fountain looked uncomfortable, glancing at Rose as though he hoped she might rescue him.
‘In between her lessons?’ Miss Fell went on, glaring at Rose. ‘She is an apprentice, how can she possibly be a maid as well?’
‘I’m used to working, ma’am,’ Rose murmured.
‘Be quiet, Rose.’ Gus walked along the back of the chaise longue, and wafted his tail over her mouth. Rose tried to argue and found she couldn’t – her mouth felt as though it had been stuffed with hair. She swiped at it, and glared angrily at Gus, but he only purred, his eyes smug. ‘She is ridiculously stubborn, and I have been telling her for months that she can’t be a magician’s apprentice and a housemaid.’
Rose hadn’t realised that Miss Fell thought she was an apprentice and nothing else. She had lain awake through the night, hearing the city bells tolling hour after hour, as she wondered and worried about the girl in her painting. Then she had dragged herself out of bed at six to lay the fires. She had been laying Miss Fell’s bedroom fire, and had stupidly dropped the fire irons in the grate.
The clumsy crash of the irons had woken the old lady – who had been remarkably patient with the careless servant in front of her, until she discovered who it was. Miss Fell had swathed herself immediately in a lace-trimmed wrapper, and summoned Mr Fountain and a tea tray to the drawing room. Gus hadn’t been summoned – he had arrived out of incurable nosiness.
When they had returned from Venice, Rose had been unsure what she was supposed to be. While they were away, she had very definitely been a young lady – she had danced at a palace ball, for a start. Little Venetian servant girls had lit the fire in her bedroom – and to her shame, she had even stayed asleep while they did it.
But back at Mr Fountain’s house there had been the flurry of finding a room for Miss Fell, and dusting it, and hanging the curtains for the bed, and fussing until everything was perfect. So Rose had found herself putting away her beautiful silver lace dancing dress on a hook in the tiny bedroom up in the attics, feeling quite sure she would never wear it again. And then she had run down to the kitchens to soothe Mrs Jones’s panic about how to produce a suitable supper for the master and his guest, when (she claimed) there was only a haddock in the house, and that was past its best.
How could she possibly refuse to help? As Rose stared at Miss Fell’s disapproving face, she imagined a similar expression on her own, as she told Miss Bridges that she was not a servant now, and would not be ordered around. She hadn’t joined the family at the supper – which wasn’t haddock, of course, although Mrs Jones swore that she was ashamed to send it upstairs.
‘But I am a maid,’ she whispered. ‘That’s why I came here. Miss Bridges took me out of the orphanage, ma’am. I can’t forget that.’
Miss Fell’s eyes glinted like flints. ‘You must. You are no longer a servant.’ She stared thoughtfully at Rose. ‘It’s much easier to be a housemaid, isn’t it, Rose?’
Rose gasped. She was willing to bet Miss Fell had never scrubbed steps, or blackleaded a grate. How on earth would she know? Did she think maids spent all their time gossiping in the kitchens?
‘She’s right.’
Rose flinched as Gus delicately pricked her hand with one extended claw. She glared at him. She much, much preferred him as a dance partner, she decid
ed.
‘It may be hard work, but someone is always telling you what to do. You have a list to run the errands, or you just do the same back-breaking chores every morning. You never have to think.’ The silvery-white cat swiped his whiskers across her cheek affectionately. Their tips felt like tiny dancing feet. ‘No difficult decisions to make. You can be lazy.’
Rose stared down at her lap, where her hands were tightly folded. Callused, dry-skinned hands, which Bella kept being rude about. But Rose couldn’t stand the thought of raw chicken-skin gloves, however much Bella swore they would make her skin pretty and soft again. She stretched out her fingers, eyeing the roughened patches.
Was that what it was? That she didn’t want to give up a life where she only had to follow orders? She had always had marked hands, for as long as she could remember, for she had worked at the orphanage – they all had, even the littlest ones could carry washing. Rose had been proud of working, and delighted with her wages. Mr Fountain had paid her the same allowance he gave Freddie, since she became an apprentice, but that didn’t feel quite the same.
‘Freddie always has dirty hands too,’ Gus told her helpfully. ‘Covered in ink, and who knows what else.’
Rose sighed. ‘But who will do my work?’ she asked miserably. ‘Already they’re stretched below stairs, with me having so many lessons.’
‘Can your housekeeper not engage another maid?’ Miss Fell asked. ‘Or even two. Really, the house seems to be run on a skeleton staff as it is.’
Mr Fountain sighed. ‘I suppose so. I dislike new people in the house. It feels different.’ He twirled his moustache irritably around one finger. His magnificent scarlet brocade dressing gown clashed horribly with the mauve armchair he was sitting in, and he looked generally grumpy, and very tired. He was spending even longer than usual at the palace, dragged into meetings about military strategy, and war defences, and he hated it. ‘I will speak to Miss Bridges.’