by Webb, Holly
‘Or we could both have heard a suspicious and frightening noise.’ Bella nodded, twisting her face into a scared-little-girl look, and wringing her hands together. ‘Yes, I see.’ She stroked the black velvet dress regretfully, but closed her wardrobe door. ‘Shall we go, then?’
Rose smoothed the front of her nightgown nervously, and nodded. ‘We should get on with it. Have you got the slippers?’
Bella produced them from under her pillow with a flourish. They sparkled invitingly, but they slid onto Rose’s feet with a slightly sticky eagerness that made her shudder. Still, they worked – Bella tried leaping on the creaky board two feet to the right of her dressing table, and there wasn’t a sound.
Rose picked up her candle, and the girls padded out into the corridor, with Gus sliding around their feet silently. They paused outside Miss Fell’s door, and stared at the handle uncertainly. Moonlight was shining through the tall window at the end of the corridor, gilding the brass doorknob so that it seemed to ripple and shimmer.
‘Open it!’ Gus purred gently, nudging Rose’s leg. ‘Go on!’
‘What if she’s still awake?’ Rose hissed. ‘She always says she hardly sleeps.’
Bella immediately assumed her scared face. ‘Don’t worry, Rose, I will cry. You know how good I am at it.’
Rose grasped the handle, and turned it, gently pushing the door open. Miss Fell’s candle was extinguished, and a pitifully small figure lay under a mound of quilts in the huge bed. Without her corsets and huge silken skirts, she was a tiny old lady.
‘Look!’ Bella breathed. ‘On her nightstand!’
Next to the bed, the mirror glimmered in the faint candlelight, and Rose stole closer to snatch it up. She paused, her fingers hovering over it, watching Miss Fell sleep, wheezing gently in a nest of lace-edged pillows. It all seemed too easy. What if the mirror was enchanted against theft? What if it screamed as soon as she picked it up?
Rose grasped the handle, waiting for the metal to bite her back, or some strange spell to fell her to the ground. She was almost disappointed when nothing happened. It was only a mirror, and it did nothing.
She grabbed it up, and whirled around in the spell-slippers, shooing Bella and Gus out of the room.
They rushed silently across the corridor, giggling and panting and throwing themselves into a heap on Bella’s bed, as the pent-up nerves took over.
Eventually, Rose stopped shaking and laughing, and stared down at the mirror lying on Bella’s pillow. It looked unhelpfully plain.
‘Now we have the rest of the night to work out why it’s so special,’ she murmured.
The mirror was very pretty, made of silver that had been polished so many times it was almost silky. It was oval, with a handle, and the silver frame had a pattern of roses moulded all around it, like a garland. Several of the roses were so worn away that they were more like shadows on the silver. Rose stroked the pattern, smiling. If she had been born the young lady that everyone now wanted her to be, she would have been given something like this. Perhaps with a brush that matched, specially chosen for a little Rose. But Miss Fell’s name was Hepzibah, so that didn’t quite fit.
‘Look into it!’ Gus hissed, peering over her arm. She had told him about the strange vision she’d had from the mirror before. ‘You might see her again.’
Rose swallowed nervously, and held the mirror out in front of her. She had a right to be anxious, she told herself firmly. She might be about to find out a vital clue to the mystery of her abandonment. Within the next few minutes, she might even have a family.
But then she bit her lip, and stared determinedly into the slightly dull glass. That wasn’t true. How could she ever have a family, whatever she found in the mirror? A proper family would never have left her in the first place. She might get relatives, but that was about it.
She had been expecting to see the same odd reflection, the older version of herself. Instead, her own face stared back at her, worried, and heavily shadowed by the flickering candles. Behind her in the mirror lurked a blue-eyed child, and a highly curious cat.
‘I can’t see anything strange,’ Bella complained.
‘It looks like any old glass,’ Gus agreed, pushing his nose around Rose’s elbow and gazing into the mirror. A well-groomed white face looked back at him, and he twitched his whiskers at himself admiringly. ‘What did you do the first time, to make it show you its secret?’
‘Nothing.’ Rose shook her head. ‘Really nothing. I saw myself at first, and I only caught a glimpse of her as I gave the mirror back. She just came sliding out of the frame towards me, somehow.’
‘So she’s in the back of the mirror,’ Gus muttered, sniffing at it. ‘I can’t smell a secret catch, but it may be very well hidden.’
‘What do you mean, she’s in the back of it?’ Rose’s hands shook without her meaning them to. She didn’t want the thing touching her if it had someone inside it.
‘A lock of hair is all I meant,’ Gus snapped. ‘Or a letter. In a secret compartment. Something that holds a memory of the girl, and it made you see her. Stop being so fussy and feeble, Rose.’
‘Oh!’ Rose nodded in relief. ‘Yes.’ She had seen the locket that Mrs Jones wore all the time, tucked neatly under her apron, and every so often when they had stopped work for a cup of tea, she would draw it out and polish it on the corner of the apron. She had shown Rose how it opened with a tiny spring, and inside there was a woven piece of sadly faded light-brown hair. Baby Maria Rose’s hair, the tiny daughter that Mrs Jones had lost to the cholera so many years ago. This mirror could well have something similar inside it. Perhaps that was why Miss Fell loved it so much? Because it held the memory of someone she had loved?
‘The lock of hair could even have belonged to one of her suitors,’ Bella suggested dreamily. ‘He died before they could marry – how tragic!’
Rose raised an eyebrow at her. She sometimes suspected that Bella had read quite a few of those books Miss Anstruther stashed in the ink cupboard.
Bella went pink. ‘Well, it might be true!’ she protested.
Gus was still sniffing at the mirror, and even licking at the rose garlands with the tip of his shocking pink tongue. ‘I’m sure there’s something inside,’ he muttered. ‘Lay the mirror on the bed, Rose.’
Rose laid it down obediently, and Gus crouched in front of it, his shoulders sticking up sharply, and his tail lashing from side to side. Eventually he extended one paw, and raked a claw around the edge of the glass. Then he sat back smugly and blew on the mirror.
‘Tip it up,’ he told Rose, and she did, rather gingerly, turning the handle of the mirror so that the glass faced the coverlet.
With a splintering chime, the mirror-glass fell out onto the bed. Rose gulped, and lifted the frame back up, unsure what she would see inside. Her sensible instincts told her it would be the bare metal of the back of the mirror, or perhaps a silken lining bedding down a lock of hair. But the dark, and the late hour, and the flickering candles were screaming that it would be something horrible, like a finger bone, or that some disgusting apparition was already clambering and seeping out onto Bella’s bed.
In the event, it was something completely different. Hanging out of the mirror frame was a piece of paper, the thick expensive woven kind that Miss Fell had given them for their painting lessons. On it was a portrait, a watercolour, perhaps by the same hand as the sketch of the house that Miss Fell had set them to copy only yesterday.
‘That’s who I saw!’ Rose squeaked, tugging it gently out of the frame. ‘I’m sure it is.’ She picked up the glass front of the mirror, and held it and the painting side by side, looking from one to the other.
‘Uncanny…’ Gus purred, dangling his whiskers over the painted face. ‘You to the life. But five – maybe six years older? That hairstyle is out of date too.’
‘I can see why you thought she was your mother,’ Bella breathed. ‘Is there anything written on the back?’
Rose turned the paper over with t
rembling fingers, and traced the faded pencil inscription.
For my dearest Hepzibah, a portrait to remember me by on our travels. With all my love, Miranda Fell
‘Miranda Fell! That’s Miranda Fell?’ Bella squealed excitedly. ‘Oh, of course. I should have known!’
‘Why? What do you know about her?’ Rose seized Bella’s wrist and shook her a little. ‘Bella, don’t tease me, who is she?’
‘Ow! Shhh, stop it, Rose, do you want to wake everyone up?’ Bella cradled her arm tenderly and glared. ‘And don’t shake me, I was about to tell you.’
‘Please, Bella,’ Rose begged her, stroking the painted face. ‘I want to know.’
Bella put her own hand over Rose’s and traced the line of the face. ‘You know who the Fells are, don’t you?’
‘Gus said this morning that they were one of the most powerful magical families in the world.’
‘They were once,’ Gus put in reprovingly. ‘Sadly lacking now, of course. Living on their past glories, I should say.’
‘Well, yes, that’s what I’m about to tell her! Don’t interrupt, Gus!’ Bella glared. ‘Miranda Fell was the only daughter of the family, the only child even. The heir. All the money was to come to her, and that huge great house up in Derbyshire. She was incredibly beautiful, so they say –’ Bella looked critically at the painting, and then at Rose – ‘and wonderfully strong at magic. She had everything she could ever want.’ Bella glanced between Rose and Gus, her eyes sparkling. ‘But she threw it all away! She disappeared, and apparently she ran off with the gardener’s boy. Or at least, he disappeared too, so one can’t help but come to conclusions.’
‘Of course one can’t,’ Gus muttered. ‘Ran away with the gardener’s boy. What a lot of nonsense.’
‘It isn’t!’ Bella glared at him in outrage. ‘It’s what everyone says happened! My aunts still talk about it, it was the most enormous scandal.’
‘They talk about that sort of thing in front of you?’ Gus wrinkled his white-furred muzzle in disgust.
Bella blushed, her cheeks staining the faintest pink. ‘Of course not.’ Then she shook her curls defensively, and scowled. ‘But if I happened to be hidden behind the drawing-room sofa… No one ever tells me anything, I have to listen! I remember them talking about it, and they did say it was the garden boy.’
‘Hmf. Whenever a young lady disappears, it’s always the gardener. No imagination.’ Gus swished his tail disapprovingly. ‘I remember thinking so at the time.’
‘When?’ Rose whispered.
Bella and Gus stared at her, and Bella’s eyes widened. Gus straightened his whiskers, as though he saw how important a question this was. He glanced at Bella, and Bella wrinkled her nose, and then they looked back at Rose, together.
‘It was about eleven years ago, Rose child,’ Gus murmured, and Bella nodded, twirling one of her golden curls around her finger.
‘Where did they go? Did anyone ever say, in all the stories?’ Rose stared down at the painted girl, so as not to see them exchanging worried looks over her head.
Bella nodded and swallowed. ‘Her parents searched the whole country for her. They found the coachman from the stagecoach, and they paid all the passengers to talk. Miranda and the boy went to London, Rose. They came here.’
It all fitted. Like one of those strange jigsaw puzzles that Bella had in the schoolroom, maps and pictures all cut up. But there was a huge hole in the middle of the scene, and Bella hadn’t any more pieces, not even hiding under her chair, or knocked behind a cupboard like they usually were.
‘But then what happened?’ Rose asked. ‘Didn’t her parents find out any more?’
Bella shook her head. ‘They simply vanished. The Fells had enquiry agents all over London. But they never found even a sniff of them.’
‘So we don’t know if – if…’ Rose trailed off. She couldn’t say it, even now.
Gus nosed her cheek gently, his whiskers fizzing lovingly against her cheek. ‘If they had a daughter, and lost her, dearest one?’
‘Mm. Or left her.’ Rose brushed the sleeve of her nightgown over her eyes.
‘Something must have happened to make them leave you,’ Bella protested. ‘Or – well, they could be dead, Rose.’ She looked up at Rose anxiously as she said it.
Rose nodded. She had always rather hoped her parents were dead, as that would mean that at least they hadn’t given her away in a fishbasket. But the thought was dreadful now, when she felt as though she was chasing a trail at last, following the clues towards her birth. The image in the mirror had drawn her so much closer to that girl, Miranda Fell, who might have been her mother. It felt as though she must have died only a few days before, just slipping out of Rose’s clutches.
‘They probably are dead,’ she agreed quietly. ‘But I still wish I knew how it had all happened.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I can’t stop. Two days ago I didn’t know anything, and now I’m getting greedy. Now that I’ve seen her.’ Rose shook her head. ‘And the gardener’s boy. I can’t feel the same about him, somehow, and it isn’t fair.’ She rubbed at the rough edge of the paper. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a painting of him.’
Gus brushed his whiskers over the painting again. ‘This painting obviously has a strong link to Miranda, or you’d never have seen her in the mirror. If we put it back in its hiding place, we could use the mirror to scry. To find out what happened. Then you might even see him, if we do it well enough.’
Rose looked doubtful. ‘Would that work? I mean, the painting must have been done before Miranda ran away, mustn’t it?’
Deep wrinkles of thought appeared above Gus’s eyes, furrowing his white fur. ‘Yes… But it might not make any difference. We have to hope so, anyway. And we need to be quick. Look.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘It isn’t long till dawn.’
Rose glanced at the lightening sky. Very soon they would have to take the mirror back. This was their only chance. She slipped the painting back into its hiding place, and quickly, feeling silly but trying not to care, kissed her fingers and stroked them across that sweetly smiling face. Then she pressed the glass carefully back over the top, and gazed at her reflection. It looked just the same as before, perhaps a little more tired. Not like someone who might have a mother and a father now. Surely something so important should have made her look different?
‘Rose.’ Bella pulled her sleeve gently. ‘Rose, come on, we haven’t any time.’
The urgency had slipped into Bella’s voice, even though she was trying to be patient, and Rose nodded apologetically – she had to stop thinking about things. But her middle-of-the-night mind kept worrying away with so many strange little thoughts. Would her mother like her new dress from Venice? Would her mother like her?
‘Look into it properly,’ Gus commanded. ‘Rose, concentrate or I shall bite you, and a cat’s mouth is a hotbed of dirt and disease.’ He sounded quite proud about that. He nudged the mirror up in front of her face with his nose, and then peered into it hopefully with her.
Rose cupped her hands around the back of the mirror, and balanced it on her knees, cradling it carefully. Bella scrambled up on the bed next to her, and pulled the eiderdown around their shoulders, so that they sat huddled together, staring into the tiny circle of glass.
It was dark – but surely darker than it should have been? It wasn’t only flat, reflected night, it was the dark that comes before a vision, and Rose felt her heartbeat start to race.
A faint mist appeared in the darkness, threading its way towards them from the back of the mirror – wherever that was. It felt so odd. Rose knew that she was holding it, and she could feel the edges of the moulding pressing into her fingers. But there was a dark tunnel in the mirror, extending back miles. It made her feel dizzy looking at it, as though she were floating off down that black path, through the backs of her own hands, and somewhere out past Bella’s bedroom wall.
‘Rose! ROSE!’
‘What? I’m doing it, you wanted me to look and I am, c
an’t you see?’ Rose muttered, narrowing her eyes and trying to see what that strange mist meant.
There was a frightened little moan, and Bella put her hand across the glass, severing Rose’s link with the mirror.
‘What did you do that for?’ Rose hissed. ‘I had something!’
‘Did you indeed?’ a cold voice enquired. ‘Something other than the mirror you stole from my room?’
Rose finally looked away from the glass, and swallowed. Miss Fell was standing at the end of the bed, looking somehow taller than usual, as though fury had inflated her.
‘Oh.’ Rose ran her fingers over the back of the mirror, hating the thought of giving it back. ‘We’re sorry,’ she murmured, unsure what else to say. Sorry was no good anyway when her hands wouldn’t let go of the mirror.
‘You stole,’ Miss Fell repeated, her voice splintery cold.
‘We – we didn’t really want to,’ Rose gabbled. ‘But we couldn’t think of any other way to find out, and…’ She trailed off into silence. There was no excuse.
‘To find out what?’
Rose swallowed again. Her mouth felt dry and sticky. How could she ask Miss Fell if they were related, when she had just stolen from her?
‘It was you, Isabella, wasn’t it? Passing on little secrets? Whispering?’ Miss Fell seemed to glide as she came closer, and Bella shrank back against Rose, her eyes dark with fear.
‘I didn’t mean to – I only told her – I thought she ought to know! She looks so like you, and you kept watching her… What are you going to do?’ Bella’s voice was squeaking, higher and higher, and Rose gasped as she realised what was about to happen. Bella was losing control, falling into hysterics, which meant she was going to scream.