Goodly and Grave in a Case of Bad Magic

by Justine Windsor

  A sudden possibility occurred to Lucy. During the Jerome Wormwood case, she had gone into battle against the golem before it had become a more peaceable being. Lucy had defeated the golem by animating a stone angel and bringing it to life.

  But she had done more than just make the angel come to life. For a short while she had become the angel. She’d seen through its eyes and fought using its stone fists. What if there was even more to animation than she’d realised? Could it be possible for one human being to animate and take over another human being in the way she’d animated and taken over the stone angel?

  Lucy nodded to herself, certain her theory could be true. But the next question was: why? Why would someone want to take over her friends? Could it have something to do with the Room of Curiosities? What if Vonk, along with Violet, Lord Grave and Lord Percy, was being animated by a rogue magician who wanted to gain access? And perhaps the children who’d attacked Lord Percy were working for that rogue magician?

  But that still didn’t explain the attack on herself and Violet. For a moment, Lucy thought she’d found a flaw in her theory. Then she remembered that she knew how to get into the Room of Curiosities. If Lucy herself had been the target of the attack in the alley, rather than Violet, that would tie in with everything else.

  The more Lucy considered all the unsettling events of the past couple of days, the more certain she became. There was a dangerous magician out there who wanted to get inside the Room of Curiosities so badly that he or she was willing to use animation in a most dastardly way.

  Excited and decidedly alarmed by her speculations, Lucy hurried off to find someone to use as a sounding board. The first person she collared was Smell. He was lurking in the kitchen as he often did, sniffing around for scraps. Luckily, Mrs Crawley was in the scullery and so didn’t waylay Lucy and tell her to start another task on her very long list.

  “Psst. Smell!”

  Smell looked up, his mouth hanging slightly open and his eyes glazed. “Yeah?” he said vaguely.

  “I need to talk to you!” Lucy beckoned him out of the kitchen and out on to the servants’ staircase so they wouldn’t be overheard. This staircase ran from the kitchen all the way up to the attic rooms and was used on those occasions when it would be inappropriate for Grave Hall residents or guests to see the servants going about some of their more distasteful tasks, such as emptying the chamber pots.

  Smell gave his head a shake and then padded out of the kitchen after Lucy.

  “Well?”

  “I need to ask you about animation. Do you think it would ever be possible for a human to animate another human?”

  “Not following you, Luce. Animation’s usually about bringing inanimate objects to life.”

  “I know that! But remember what happened with me and the stone angel during the Jerome Wormwood case? I became the stone angel for a little while.”

  Smell swished his tail. “Yeah, it’s true you took animation a bit further than usual.”

  “Exactly! So what if someone else is taking it even further?” She explained her thinking to Smell: that Violet, Lord Percy, Lord Grave and now Vonk were acting out of character because someone else was controlling them with the aim of getting inside the Room of Curiosities.

  “Phew. That’s a wild idea, Luce,” Smell said when she’d finished explaining. His one eye had grown very wide and his brow whiskers were raised.

  “But it would explain things, wouldn’t it?”

  “Hmm. Let’s say it could be true. Why exactly would anyone go to all that trouble to get inside the Room of Curiosities?”

  “I haven’t worked that out. But wait a minute, you’ve been inside the Room of Curiosities. When I accidentally freed Havoc Reek?”

  “Don’t remember it being much of an accident, Luce. I tried to stop you, remember?”

  “Yes, yes. But you know what’s in there, don’t you? Is there something a bad magician or an enemy of Lord Grave might particularly want?”

  “Luce, I was only in there that time and one other, so I know about as much as you.”

  Lucy sighed, but then suddenly had a thought. “Havoc Reek was trapped in the Room of Curiosities. What if it’s a sort of magicians’ prison? What if there’s another magician trapped in there and someone’s trying to get him or her out?”

  “Havoc was a one-off, I’d say. Grave only kept ’im in there ’cause ’e reckoned Reek had something to do with Bertie vanishing. Wanted ’im where ’e could keep tabs on ’im.”

  “Oh,” Lucy said, feeling a little deflated. “Well, if it’s not a person, then it has to be an object. But why’s someone after it now?”

  “Maybe it’s the ball,” Smell said thoughtfully. “It’s being ’eld to celebrate old Lady Constance offing ’ester Coin. Wonder if that’s got summat to do with it?”

  Lucy nodded in excitement. “Good point, Smell! Maybe … maybe Hester Coin’s supporters are plotting revenge and they need something that’s inside the Room of Curiosities to carry out their plan?”

  “You ain’t thinking straight, Luce. All ’er original fan club’ll be pushing up daisies by now.”

  “But what if there are relatives of hers who are still alive? Someone who’d like to get back at Lord Grave?”

  Smell licked his front paw as he pondered this idea. “Yeah, you could be on to something there, Luce.”

  “I need to find out more about what Hester Coin did and whether there’s a connection to the Room of Curiosities. And if she has any living relatives. And I want to find out if people can be animated. But who’s going to be able to tell me all that?”

  Smell whipped his tail back and forth. “You could ask Turner and Paige, but you might not be keen?” he said slyly.

  Smell was quite right. Lucy wasn’t at all keen on this idea and had been avoiding thinking about it. Turner and Paige were the magical guardians of Lord Grave’s library, which housed masses of magical knowledge and information. The problem was that Lucy’s last meeting with the two librarians had been a little unfortunate. She’d nearly suffocated them by locking them in an airless room and then nearly blinded them by engulfing them in a cloud of Mrs Crawley’s Extra Violent Mustard Mix.

  These were just two of the awful mistakes she’d made in her first few days at Grave Hall. But it had all been done with the best of intentions as at the time she’d sincerely believed that Lord Grave and the rest of MAAM had been kidnapping children to use them for deadly magical purposes. She’d been completely wrong, of course.

  “It might be a bit awkward,” Lucy said, sounding more determined than she felt, “but this is important. If Mrs Crawley or anyone else asks where I am, you haven’t seen me.”

  “Want me to come with you?”

  “No. You keep an eye on things here.”

  “Oh, ha ha,” Smell said, looking offended.

  “It’s just an expression!”

  Lucy headed for the servants’ staircase. She’d got about halfway up when she heard quick footsteps behind her. It was Bertie.

  “Wait for me!” he said. “I’ve been looking for you. I need to talk to you! There’s something amiss with Father. He’s barely speaking to me. Told me to go and boil my head just now. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.” Bertie stopped to catch his breath. Lucy saw that his eyes were shining with tears, as if he was about to cry.

  “He’s being mean to Bathsheba too,” Lucy said. “I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. I think he might be under some sort of spell.”

  “Spell? What spell?”

  “We need to get to the library.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain it all on the way. Come on.”

  Lucy set out her theory to Bertie as the two of them climbed the stairs to the servants’ quarters. Bertie seemed to have grown rather a lot in the few weeks Lucy had known him and he took up quite of lot of space in her cramped bedroom when the two of them went inside.

  “Lucy, why are we in here?”

  “To get
into the library obviously! Haven’t you been in it yet?”

  “Of course. It’s an amazing place. But this isn’t the entrance.”

  “This is the way I get in.”

  “Really? When I go with Father, we just go through a door. It’s a hidden one and—”

  “Tell me about it later. Come on, we need to kneel down here,” Lucy said, indicating the fireplace.

  There was some awkward shuffling around until they were both able to crouch down in front of the fireplace. The inside was covered with tiles. Those on one side of the fireplace showed a man sitting with book on his knees, and on the other they showed a man smoking a long, curved pipe.

  “Turner and Paige!” Bertie gasped. “But I don’t understand? How can they be on the fireplace like that?”

  “Well, it’s a wild guess, but I’d say that it’s some kind of magic at work. Unless you can think of a rational scientific explanation?”

  “So what happens now?” Bertie asked, choosing to ignore Lucy’s question.

  “We tell them what we want to learn about.” Lucy bent closer to Turner and Paige. She took extra care to be polite in case the two librarians were holding a grudge against her. “We want to learn about a magician called Hester Coin, please. And about the Room of Curiosities too, if that’s all right with you.”

  To Lucy’s relief, Turner and Paige seemed to have completely forgiven her. In fact, they looked pleased to see her again, although they got a little flustered when they saw Bertie.

  “Young Master Albert! How good to see you again!” Mr Turner said. “Forgive me not bowing, but it’s rather tricky when in ceramic form. One might crack at the waist.”

  Mr Paige, who never spoke, nodded in agreement.

  “Oh, that’s all right, I quite understand,” Bertie said.

  “How very kind. You know I can see Lady Tabitha in you. Such a fine, clever woman. She was kind-hearted, too. We still miss her.” Mr Turner sniffled and a ceramic tear rolled down his face, like a tiny glass marble. Lady Grave had died from scarlet fever when Bertie was very young.

  Mr Paige patted Mr Turner’s shoulder. When he’d recovered, Mr Turner told Bertie and Lucy to hold hands, which they did. Then Bertie held one of Mr Turner’s hands, Mr Turner held one of Mr Paige’s hands and Lucy held Mr Paige’s remaining hand.

  “This will feel a bit funny,” Lucy warned Bertie.

  “Yes, you may find it a smidge uncomfortable,” Mr Turner said, which was the somewhat inadequate warning he always gave. And then it began.

  Lucy had visited the library twice before, so she wasn’t alarmed when she began to feel as though her head was being squashed into her neck, her neck into her stomach and her stomach into her feet, and then she was plunged into inky darkness. She heard Bertie cry out in surprise, though.

  When the squashing and squeezing was over and they were all finally back in flesh and blood form, Lucy saw that the library had undergone a rather astonishing transformation since her last visit. Shelves lined every wall, stuffed to bursting with books.

  “What are all these books doing here?” she said.

  “Um, it is a library. What did you expect?” Bertie said.

  “Oh, and I thought we were in a pie shop!” Lucy retorted. “The point that I’m trying to make is that the last time I visited here, the books were all inside Mr Paige’s head.”

  “You’re quite right, miss, for safekeeping, because there’d been attempted burglaries,” said Mr Turner. “But Lord Grave feels that danger has passed for now. So most of the books have been returned to the open shelves. But we still have Mr Paige as a backup system and of course he still minds some of the more forbidden books, which his Lordship feels are too risky to be on the shelves.”

  “I didn’t know that. Fascinating,” said Bertie.

  “It’s one of the rarer magical skills,” Mr Turner said, looking at Mr Paige with great pride.

  “There is a more rational explanation,” Bertie said thoughtfully. “Some people can look at something, say the page of a book, and commit it to memory in a split second.”

  Turner and Paige exchanged glances. Lucy was sure she saw Mr Paige rolling his eyes towards the ceiling.

  “Well, shall we get on with things?” said Mr Turner briskly. “You need to know about Hester Coin and about the Room of Curiosities?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “Let’s start with the most straightforward thing. The Room of Curiosities. We can’t tell you anything. Only Lord Grave and Lord Percy are able to access information about that.”

  Lucy felt her excitement beginning to deflate. “But this is an emergency. We think Lord Grave and Lord Percy and maybe Vonk have been taken over.”

  “I don’t follow?”

  “I think someone is controlling them by animation.”

  “That’s not possible. Animation can’t be used that way.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Mr Paige,” said Mr Turner. “Is there any historical precedent for animation being misused to control another human being?”

  Mr Paige closed his eyes for a few seconds, as though he was concentrating on going through the vast library he held in his mind. Then he opened his eyes again and shook his head.

  Lucy sank down on to one of the nearby leather armchairs. So her theory was wrong. But now she was here, she might as well make use of the two librarians’ knowledge. “What about Hester Coin? Can you tell me about her?”

  “We have an excellent book on the whole Coin affair, written by Lady Constance Grave herself,” Mr Turner said proudly.

  “Oh, good!” Lucy said, cheering up a little. “Maybe I could take it with me to read?”

  Mr Turner suddenly became very interested in his nails, inspecting them closely. “Sadly, no. I’m afraid the book is not available to the general reading public. Only Lord Grave himself can read it.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not my place to question his Lordship’s management of his own library,” Mr Turner said somewhat sniffily. Lucy began to suspect he was still holding a little bit of a grudge against her after all.

  “What about me?” Bertie asked. “Would I be allowed to read it? I am a Grave.”

  “No. I’m afraid not, Master Bertie. I am very sorry to disappoint you, I really am.” Mr Turner gave an apologetic bow.

  While Mr Turner was talking, Mr Paige had begun rummaging around in some of the lower shelves of the library. He gave a little cry of triumph, one of the few sounds Lucy had ever heard him make, and pulled out two small pamphlets. He trotted up to Mr Turner and handed them over.

  Mr Turner took the pamphlets, peered at the one on top then briefly glanced at the other, which seemed to be an exact copy of the first. “Well, I suppose you’re right, Mr Paige. These were very widely distributed amongst the magical community and I expect there are many copies still in existence. His Lordship has never put any restrictions on them.”

  He handed one copy of the pamphlet to Lucy and the other to Bertie. Bertie didn’t bother opening his; instead he settled himself on the arm of Lucy’s chair and they began to read her copy together. It was very short, just one sheet of paper folded in half to make a booklet. Magicians Against the Abuse of Magic was printed on the first page. Lucy opened the pamphlet.

  MAGICIANS!

  The redoubtable Lady Constance Grave wishes you all to be made aware of the terrible tale of Hester Coin. Mistress Coin attempted to take control of our magical world through the most nefarious and forbidden magic, which is so dreadful that it cannot be written here, lest other weak-willed magicians should try to emulate her deeds. The terrible events took place at Grave Hall on Saturday last. Lady Constance defeated Mistress Coin, who is now thankfully dead.

  Lady Constance Grave is of the opinion that we as magicians need to come together to ensure magicians of Mistress Coin’s ilk are identified and dealt with before they can do untold harm to both the magical and non-magical world. She therefore proposes to set up an organisatio
n called Magicians Against the Abuse of Magic. If any magicians wish to join this organisation, please apply forthwith to Lady Constance Grave at Grave Hall.

  Lucy sighed. The pamphlet didn’t tell her anything she hadn’t already known.

  “You can take them with you to study if you wish,” Mr Turner said. “As long as you return them, of course.”

  Lucy was keen to try to mend fences with Mr Turner, so she politely thanked him and said the pamphlets would be very useful, even though they were hardly worth the paper they were printed on.

  “That was such a waste of time,” Lucy said, when they were back in her room. She sat on the bed and stared crossly at the useless pamphlet.

  “It might not have been,” Bertie replied, sitting down beside her. His eyes were gleaming with excitement. “When Mr Turner handed me my copy of the pamphlet, Mr Paige winked at me, as though he was trying to tell me something. That’s why I didn’t open mine in the library.”

  Lucy felt a flutter of anticipation as they opened Bertie’s copy of the pamphlet. It had the same text printed on it as her copy, but there was an extra page, sewn into the middle.

  Dear Friend

  We are a group of magicians who feel that those in positions of authority are remiss in not revealing the true extent of Hester Coin’s crimes. We think they wish to suppress the information to ensure that the magical community is kept in a state of fear so that no one will question the establishment of the organisation they call Magicians Against the Abuse of Magic, which we feel is designed to interfere in the lives of decent magicians. If you wish to learn more, there will be a meeting in London on November 10, 1750 in the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

  “That’s not much help,” Lucy said.

  “What about this at the bottom, though?” Bertie said.

  Lucy peered at it. There was a handwritten note. The ink had faded to a very pale brown, but it was just about decipherable.