by Webb, Holly
‘I have to know for certain,’ Rose told her, through gritted teeth.
‘I still don’t see how you think you can get in there!’ Eliza cried, sounding almost angry.
‘We’ll sneak in,’ Freddie told her. ‘We’re invisible under this spell. Pike might be able to see us, but if he’s the only magician, the rest of the gang won’t. We sneak in and rescue her.’
Eliza stared at them doubtfully, twitching her head from side to side as she tried to see the spell. ‘I can’t tell no difference,’ she objected.
‘It’s there,’ Freddie assured her. ‘And we can do other things too.’
‘Can you show us the best way to get in?’ Rose pleaded.
Eliza wrinkled her nose. ‘I can try. I’m still not that good at moving about, but I can tell you what it was like back then. Might all have changed by now,’ she muttered dubiously. ‘Whenever there’s a wrecked boat, they steal the timbers, build another little room in there. Proper rabbit warren, it is.’ She shrugged, and laughed. ‘Can’t do me any harm, I suppose. They can’t drown me again. But you’re not to let yourselves get caught! They’ll kill you as soon as look at you. Pike’s a monster, and that other one, Jake…’ She shuddered. ‘He’s almost worse. He smokes the opium himself, and he’s more like a ghost than I am. He never says nothing, and his eyes burn.’ She frowned. ‘Or maybe they won’t kill you. If you’re all magicians like Miss Miranda, they’ll keep you, and that’s worse.’
‘I’m not,’ Bill growled. ‘They’ll drown me.’
Freddie gave him a disgusted look. ‘Run home then.’
Bill snorted. ‘No chance. I’m not leaving you looking after this pair. Let’s just not get caught, right?’
‘I’ll show you the way in I used to know,’ Eliza suggested. ‘Make sure your spell is working.’ She crept out of the boat and stood up, brushing down her water-streaked skirts, and looking around. ‘No one’s moving outside,’ she muttered. ‘Let’s go.’
They followed her, threading across the mud flats to a broken stone wall, just under the warehouse. The stones had fallen apart enough that it was relatively easy to climb up onto the wall, where there was a narrow causeway around the side of the building.
Eliza led them as they crept around the building to a window. It had been boarded up with several old bits of wood, and Eliza sniffed. ‘They haven’t mended it. Didn’t think they would have done. Push that bit, it’ll slide over. This is the way I used to take you out to see the water, miss. Come along in, but quietly.’
Bill held the piece of wood aside, and Eliza disappeared, reappearing as a beckoning hand from inside the gap. Rose and the others scrambled in, naturally lining up along the inner wall, pressing themselves back against the stones. No one wanted to go further in. They seemed to be in a store room of some kind, lined with packing cases, mostly battered and water-stained.
‘Stolen cargo,’ Eliza said wisely. She beckoned again from the door of the little room. ‘Come on. Miss Miranda’s room used to be this way. Your spell still working, is it?’ She was looking at them doubtfully, as though she didn’t really believe in the magic.
Rose, Bella and Freddie took hands again for a moment to boost the strength of the spell before they followed Eliza, creeping along a narrow passage. It really was built out of bits of old boat, Rose realised, as she ran her fingers over sea-worn timbers, scattered with ancient barnacles. A strange, sharp-nosed face sticking out over a doorway made them all jump, until they realised it was part of an old ship’s figurehead, the paint long peeled away, leaving the face a weary grey.
‘Here,’ Eliza whispered. ‘This is where they kept her. And you, miss.’
The doorway was low, and there was no door in it – perhaps her mother wasn’t trusted enough to have a door to hide behind, Rose wondered – so they could see in as they gathered around the entrance to the room.
Eliza pressed herself against the doorframe, so close that they could see the splintered timbers through her. ‘That’s her…’ she whispered. ‘Still here!’ Her whispery little voice cracked with tears, as she stared into the room. ‘All this time…’
‘She’s there?’ Rose felt strangely reluctant to look. She’d been imagining the girl from the painting, which she saw was stupid now. That girl would never have survived in here. Whoever was in that room, it wasn’t the pretty child Miss Fell had loved, or even her father’s stolen sweetheart, or Hope’s doting mother.
But Gus was leaning forward in her arms, his whiskers twitching with interest as he peered around the tiny room.
She had to see.
‘Be careful,’ Freddie reminded her in a whisper. ‘She’s strong, remember. She might be able to see us, even through the spell.’
Rose stepped further in, brushing against Eliza, and feeling that strange faint chill again. There was very little to see. Rose’s mother – if that was who it was, Rose couldn’t tell – was sitting curled up on a low, narrow bed, leaning the side of her face against the wooden wall. All Rose could really tell was that her mother’s hair was a little lighter than her own – and that her woollen dress was faded and worn. Rose longed to go and tap her on the shoulder, and shake her out of that sad lethargy, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Not yet.
‘Sshh. Someone’s coming, I can hear them talking.’ Eliza flitted anxiously in front of her.
Two men were walking down the passage, muttering to each other. The children whisked inside the tiny room, and then drew back against the wall, flattening themselves against the timbers. The spell would stop most people seeing or hearing them if they were careful to whisper, but they were still there, and fatally obvious to anyone who brushed past too close. The two men shambled up to the doorway, and paused just inside, without noticing them.
They didn’t look like murderers. The most noticeable thing about them was that they both had very fine moustaches – not smartly curled ones like Mr Fountain’s pride and joy, but brisk, fat ones like nailbrushes. Rose was so nervous that it made her want to giggle. The second man’s hair was a dull greyish-brown, and it made him look as though he was wearing a dead mouse under his nose.
‘Pike has a moustache,’ Eliza whispered. ‘The rest of the gang copy him.’
‘Mrs Garnet, ma’am.’ The man’s voice was strangely nervous, which made Rose and Freddie exchange a surprised glance. But then, Rose realised, it wasn’t that odd. These two weren’t magicians. They were like the servants at the Fountain house, forced to live with magic and not really liking it. Rose’s mother was the strange, unpredictable one they had to depend on for the spells they needed. Probably the only thing they could say for her was that she was less frightening than Pike.
The figure curled on the bed shook a little, and uncoiled slowly.
Rose caught her breath, her heart suddenly beating in sickening thumps. She could feel the others, even Gus, looking at her mother, and then glancing back at her, back and forth, trying to see how similar they really were. She couldn’t tell. Miranda still had a faint look of the painting in the back of the mirror, but she had changed so much. Her face was milk-pale – which was hardly surprising. Had she really been shut up in here for longer than Rose had been alive?
‘You have her eyes,’ Gus purred softly. ‘Look. I can see you in her. We can bring her out. Somehow we will…’
Rose swallowed, and shook, and brushed her cheek gratefully against the glittering warmth of his fur.
The woman on the bed nodded at the two men wearily, and even that seemed like an effort. It was as though every move she made was fighting against the spell that bound her.
Eliza’s face was scrunched up and horrified. ‘He must have doubled the spell after he discovered what we done,’ she breathed in Rose’s ear. ‘This is much worse than it used to be. She can hardly move.’
‘How can she possibly do magic like that?’ Rose whispered back. ‘It’s like she’s piled down with chains.’
Eliza shook her head. ‘No. That’s the way he m
ade the spell. If she’s working for him, the spell lifts off her somehow. She’s free – she’s only free when she’s working for the gang. I think Pike hoped that would break her so in the end she’d choose to join them, but it can’t have worked.’
Rose nodded proudly to herself. Her mother might be working for the gang, but only because she was forced. She hadn’t lapsed. But the strength of that spell was terribly daunting. How would they ever get her out of it?
The man with the dead-mouse moustache took his cap off, and stood twisting it in front of him. ‘Mr Pike says, ma’am, you’re to make us look like this.’ He handed over a piece of paper with a rough drawing, but it was hard to see what it was from where they were squashed against the wall.
‘What is it?’ Rose clenched her nails into her palms.
‘I’ll look. They won’t see me, miss. Only you can, because you’ve got the mirror.’ Eliza flitted across to peer over his shoulder. ‘Footmen’s livery,’ she whispered to Rose. ‘She’s changing them, so they’re disguised for robbing a house.’
Rose nodded. It made sense. A tame magician must make the gang one of the most successful in London, despite their tumbledown quarters. But she still didn’t understand why Pike didn’t just do all this himself. Unless the gang was so huge that he was doing it too. She shivered at the thought.
Gus leaped into her arms with one of those jumps that was beyond even a cat’s usual powers. ‘She saw.’
‘What?’ Rose stared at him anxiously.
‘Miranda. She saw Eliza, when she went to look at the paper. I saw her eyes move.’
‘Are you sure?’ Freddie muttered, next to Rose.
Gus half-closed his eyes. ‘I am a cat. I am a natural predator, even without the magic. I can tell when a mouse has an itch behind its ear. Of course I’m sure, idiot boy.’
‘What’s she going to do?’ Freddie whispered, gazing wide-eyed at Miranda. ‘I thought only we could see Eliza? Can your mother see us through the spell, do you think?’
‘She shouldn’t be able to. We should be invisible to everyone. Not ghosts, but then we’d never had one to test it on…’ Gus stepped onto Rose’s shoulders, standing with his front paws on one shoulder and back paws on the other. His paws felt like little rocks, pressing into her, and she could feel his heart beating against her ear. He stretched his nose out towards the three figures around the bed, his whiskers flickering around his muzzle as he searched the air. ‘No. No, I don’t think she can. And I don’t think she can truly see Eliza either, not unless Eliza wants her to. But she knows there’s something.’
Miranda raised her hands towards the two men, and Rose saw them flinch. They must be truly terrified of Pike, to let themselves be enchanted when they hated it so much.
The glamour spell seemed to stretch them – footmen had to be at least six feet tall, and preferably, if there were two in a house, they had to match. The spell changed their clothes as well, the dirty greyish fabrics flooding with blood-red, and suddenly sparkling with golden braid and polished buttons. They wore white stockings, too, which Rose privately thought was a mistake on her mother’s part, as unless they had been specially bespelled to avoid mud, they would not be white by the time they got out of that horrid alleyway. But she supposed the men would just have to make do – the white stockings were what the footmen at the palace had worn, and those same buckled shoes. They must be going to rob a truly grand house, for they looked as though they would earn at least thirty pounds each a year, and who knew how much that grand livery would cost.
Freddie shot Rose an admiring glance. They knew how difficult it was to maintain one glamour, let alone two, and on such unwilling subjects. ‘She’s very strong,’ he whispered, and Rose nodded, feeling absurdly proud.
The two men surveyed each other, looking somewhat disgusted, and then nodded their thanks to Rose’s mother. Gus gave them a disparaging stare as they tramped past in the heavy buckled shoes. One of them was scratching at his powdered hair, and although they had the height of the real footmen, neither of them stood straight, as they would if they’d been trained up from boys.
The children listened to them trudging away down the passage, making rude comments about each other’s outfits. Then they focused their attention, again, on the figure they had come to see. She was sitting tensely on the edge of the low bed, her hair, still pretty with its bronze-coloured streaks, trailing down past her shoulders. Perhaps they wouldn’t let her have hair pins, Rose wondered. In case she did something awful with them.
As they watched, she pushed down hard against the bed with her fists, and stood up unsteadily, stretching out a foot to take a step into the centre of the room. She turned her head from side to side, her eyes wide and grey in the dim light. ‘Who is there?’ she asked, her voice dangerous.
Rose flinched from it. It was the voice of someone who had spent the last several years never able to rest. How could she have slept, with a gang of thieves around her? She had been on guard, all the time, and now she was fighting. One hand went up into the air, and started to pull, like someone bundling washing off a line, reeling it in.
Rose and the others felt the spell tugging away from them, pulling at their clothes and hair like a fitful wind. Bella, the youngest and least practised in her spells, twirled around, her skirt spinning, and fell straight into Rose’s mother’s hands, gasping in fright.
Miranda gripped her by the shoulders, a strange, half-there child, still disguised by the rags of the spell, but already starting to fight back like a little wildcat.
‘Stop that!’ Miranda shook her, just a little, and Bella seethed, her fingernails reaching out to scratch and tear. But she couldn’t free herself from that tight grip. ‘What are you? A magician’s child? What are you doing here?’ Suddenly she caught Bella even tighter, and pulled her forward to look closely at her face, scanning her with eyes that were doubtful and confused. As she stared at Bella, the little hint of hope in her eyes died away, and she shook her head. ‘No. No, you’re not. And too young, anyway… What are you doing here, child? Is this some new trick of Pike’s?’
‘Please let her go.’ Rose pulled the spell off herself, with the same gesture her mother had used, and stepped forward. ‘She isn’t the one you’re looking for. We came to find you. She doesn’t mean you any harm, she’s only frightened. Bella, stop it!’
‘More of you!’ Miranda muttered, looking around her wildly as Freddie revealed himself and Bill. But then her eyes fixed on Rose, and she seemed to turn even paler, although Rose would not have thought it possible.
‘Hope…’ she whispered.
Rose nodded. It didn’t feel like her name, but somehow it seemed to catch her, and tug at her insides, so that she took another step forward, her feet faltering. ‘Yes…’ she murmured huskily.
Her mother let go of Bella, and reached out her arms, but before Rose could take another step towards her, her mother suddenly shrank back, her mouth twisting in pain. Her arms slammed straight to her sides, and she writhed, as though she were in agony, and screamed out loud.
‘What is it? What’s happening to her?’ Rose cried.
‘It must be the spell,’ Gus said swiftly. ‘She was too happy. There was an alarm set into the magic. Get away, quick. Run!’ He leaped down from Rose’s shoulders, and tried to herd them all out of the door, but Rose could not be torn from the sight of her mother, quivering and ashen-faced in the middle of the room, and Bella had collapsed against the bed. Bill and Freddie were trying to pull Rose away, but she struggled, and wouldn’t let them.
A thundering rush of feet sounded from the passageway, and then the door was full of angry faces.
‘She is my daughter. She is my daughter.’
She said it again and again and again, in a dull, mechanical voice, and it was clear from the twitching and bulging of her eyes, and the way her lips were drawn back over her teeth, that she did not want to say it all.
A tall, pale, red-haired man, whose moustache was a glorious fiery
explosion, came into the room, smiling brightly. ‘Is she? Is she now? This is our little stolen baby?’ He stopped in front of Rose, held tightly by one of the footmen, who had been the first to come racing back when Miranda began to scream. He lifted her chin in his hand. ‘I hardly need to ask. You look very like your mother, girl. So. What happened to you? Where did you go? Hey?’ His voice was not unpleasant, and he did not swear, but Rose had the most terrifying sensation of a banked-up fire. It was as though old turf had been laid across the embers to keep the fire going through till morning. Then, when someone poked it, it would spring up into a blaze again, and consume anything that came near it.
She stared back at him, too frightened to speak, and had the sense to realise that this was a good thing, and that being dumb with fright might be useful.
‘She hasn’t her mother’s wits, then?’ He turned to Miranda, and waved a hand sharply across her mouth. She broke off mid-sentence, gasping, as though someone had poured a jug of cold water over her. Her eyes stayed desperate. ‘I – don’t – know.’ The words seemed dragged out of her.
‘And the rest of them. Four.’ He looked from Bella, to Freddie, to Bill. ‘Three little rich brats, and a servant.’
Rose realised with a start that the servant was Bill, and not her. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised, since she had her good clothes on. There was no mention of Gus or Eliza. Rose searched the room as carefully as she could, imprisoned against the brass buttons of a scarlet footman’s coat. No, Gus was gone. And presumably Eliza could melt through walls, or something like. She couldn’t be shut away. But then, neither could she manipulate locks, or carry keys, with her wispy fingers. It was better to pin their hopes on Gus.
They needed someone. The more Rose saw of Pike, the stranger and more powerful he seemed, not like any other magician she had met. The magic seemed to be spilling out of him, so that his hair glittered like red-golden wire, and his eyes burned. Even his voice, soft though it was, wrapped round her and pulled, holding her like silken ropes. Was it the same spell he had used to entrap her mother? Her eyes as wide as a startled rabbit, Rose stared at him. She didn’t think he was even trying.