Snow White and Rose Red

by Patricia Wrede

  “Histories and generations are very well, but what will this Prince Laski say when he asks you to make gold for him and you cannot do so?”

  “He is a great man, Ned, and he hath striven to confound the malice of the court toward me. ‘Tis not possible that such a man would value gold over knowledge.”

  Madini chuckled contemptuously as she watched Kelly roll his eyes, and she decided that this foolish conversation was no reason to delay the continuation of her search. She pondered a moment, considering what shape to send out, then bent over the lamp.

  Ned Kelly broke off in mid-sentence as Madini’s projection appeared in the room. “John! Do you see her?”

  “What is it, Ned?” Dee said, straightening up.

  “A child, a girl of seven or nine, with dark hair rolled up in front and hanging very long behind,” Kelly answered in a low voice.

  “Her gown changeth color, now red, now green, and she doth move among your books and they give way around her.”

  Madini turned. Kelly’s eyes were wide and fixed on her, and she suffered an unpleasant shock. She had become accustomed to working freely in the study, invisible to all the mortals; to find someone who could see her was a jolt.

  “Whose maiden are you?” Dee demanded, reaching for the quill pen with which he took notes on the work he and Kelly did.

  “Whose man are you?” Madini retorted.

  Dee looked in Kelly’s direction. Kelly, his eyes still fixed on Madini’s insubstantial presence, said, “She answers, whose man are you. ”

  Dee nodded and noted it on a sheet of paper. Then he responded, “I am a servant of God, both by my bound duty and also, I hope, by his adoption.”

  Madini stared at him for a long moment. By now she knew the location of every protective symbol and spell with which Dee and Kelly guarded their workroom, but the knowledge did her little good without the ability to erase them. It had not previously occurred to her that she might influence the men themselves directly. She half lowered her eyelids and smiled at Kelly. “Am I not a fine maiden?” she said, and then, remembering that she had given her projection the form of a child, she added, “Give me leave to play in your house.”

  Kelly repeated her words to Dee, who wrote rapidly. “My mother told me she would come and dwell here,” Madini went on, paving the way for another appearance in a more mature guise.

  Neither of the men responded. Madini resumed walking up and down the room, and Kelly’s eyes never left her. “She goes up and down, with the most lively gestures of a young girl playing by herself,” he said, and Dee copied assiduously.

  Hiding a derisive smile, Madini turned to a perspective glass in the corner of the study and pretended to listen intently. “One speaks to her from the corner of the study there,” Kelly reported, “but I see none besides herself.”

  Madini, sneering inwardly at the mortals’ gullibility, began a one-sided conversation with the glass, which Kelly reported in the same detached tone.

  At last Dee grew tired of waiting for his unexpected, unseen guest to say or do something of substance. “Tell me who you are,” he demanded, and he would not be put off by her evasions.

  “I am a poor little maiden,” Madini responded, and then, despite her best efforts to give a false reply, “... Madini.”

  Greatly taken aback, Madini turned the interview into other channels. She pretended to read off lists of kings of England and related nobility from a book her image took from a pocket, and so succeeded in avoiding Dee’s further questions about her home. The tactic had an unforeseen consequence; after listening to twenty minutes of Plantagenets, Mortimers, and Lacys, Dee asked her to declare the pedigree of the Polish Prince.

  By this time Madini had had enough of the game, so she once more returned an evasive answer. She was careful, however, to leave Dee with some hope of success at a later time before she covered the lamp so that her childish image vanished from the study. She was well pleased with the reactions of the two humans to her manipulations, but she was furiously angry that Dee, through the power of the crystal, had forced her to give her real name. The mortal wizard’s presumption alone was enough to enrage her; that he had been successful added fuel to the fire and gave her one more reason‘to hate the lands outside of Faerie.

  Nonetheless, she decided, after much thought, to continue as she had begun. The possibilities were great, and Madini was supremely confident that she would be more than a match for any merely human magic, now that she was prepared for it. For a brief time, she considered laying the problem before the Queen, but in the end dismissed the idea. The Queen’s sympathies lay with the mortal world; it was all too likely that she would remain blind to the pitfalls of continued commerce between the realms. It would be better, Madini decided, for her to handle the matter herself.

  For the next month, Madini appeared in Dee’s study at irregular intervals and under various names. At each appearance she coaxed, commanded, or dropped broad but casual hints regarding the removal or replacement of the spells that guarded the study from Faerie interference. To her chagrin, she found the men less easily manipulated than she had expected. They were perfectly willing to add whatever strange and outlandish symbols she could devise, but her best efforts could not persuade them to remove even one of the charms that kept her from the crystal.

  Joan Bowes became aware of the late-night lights at the Dee house almost as soon as they appeared. It was not long before it occurred to her that Masters Dee and Kelly might be more willing to deal in questionable magic than the Widow Arden had been. Her employer, Master Rundel, no longer interested her, but the newcomer called John Rimer was another matter. Joan would have given a great deal to attract his attention. It would be pleasant to score a triumph over the Widow and her daughters.

  Joan had, however, learned a lesson from her unpleasant encounter with the Widow the previous fall. This time, she approached the matter circumspectly. After some consideration, she decided to apply to Ned Kelly, who was, in her opinion, more likely to listen sympathetically to her fabricated tale.

  She accosted Kelly in the street near the market one damp grey afternoon in June, having decided (after much thought) that an apparently accidental meeting would attract less attention than would a visit to the sorcerer’s house. Joan stepped in front of Kelly as he hurried along the muddy street and said, “Your pardon, Master, but are you not that Edward Kelly who lives by the river?”

  “I am.” Kelly stopped and studied Joan with far from academic care. Apparently he liked what he saw, for he smiled warmly at her. “Why do you look for me?”

  “I’ve heard that you can do great things,” Joan answered with simulated diffidence. “I thought perhaps you’d lend me your aid.”

  The warmth left Kelly’s expression. “Knowledge and secret lore are not for casual use. They require great effort and dedication, even in the least of their practices.” He paused. “Nor is the cost of studying them small.”

  “I am only a poor maid-servant,” Joan said, “and I have but little money. Yet perhaps I could pay you in some other fashion.” She tilted her head as if to examine Kelly’s face and ran the palm of her left hand slowly down the side of her waist and hip.

  “‘Tis possible,” Kelly said. “Oh, ’tis quite possible. What would you?”

  Joan licked lips which had gone dry, and glanced quickly around to make certain no one was within hearing. This was the tricky part; until now the conversation had been overtly innocent, without mention of spells or magic. “There is a man,” she said carefully.

  “Ah.” Kelly studied her, his eyes bright and calculating below his black skullcap. “And do you want his name, his fortune, his liver, or his bed?”

  Somewhat taken aback by Kelly’s bluntness, and by his willingness to be so open in the middle of the street even if no one was near enough to overhear, Joan could at first do no more than stare. Then her imagination formed a picture of John helpless to deny her anything while the Widow and her daughters, equally helples
s, looked on. “All that, and more,” she said recklessly.

  “It can be done,” Kelly said, stroking his beard. “But ‘twould be best if ’twere not done in Mortlak.”

  “An you’ll grant me this, I’ll meet you when and where you will,” Joan promised. “A message to Joan Bowes at Master Rundel’s house will find me.”

  “I’ll send it in a day or two, when I’ve had time to prepare the means of achieving thy desire,” Kelly said, and with that they parted.

  Three days later, Joan met Kelly in a small copse of trees on the far side of the Thames, well hidden from the gossiping tongues of the townsfolk and the eyes of passersby. There she rendered Kelly the payment she had promised, and received in return a vial of dark liquid and a white cloth. “Add three of the man’s hairs to the vial and leave it in the light of the moon for three nights,” Kelly told her. “Then take a quill made from the feather of a swan’s wing, and write his name and yours together on this cloth three times with this liquid as the ink. Fold the cloth and put it between two flat stones beneath your bed, and leave it there two nights. On the third night at midnight, take the cloth out and hold it above your head while you say his name and yours three times. Do this for two more nights, then burn the cloth. Can you remember all of it?”

  “Aye, and do it, too,” Joan said, and hesitated. “But ‘twould be best, I think, an you’d show me how to shape the letters for the names.”

  Kelly showed her. “An you do as I’ve said, this man will be your slave, unless he is himself a great magician.”

  “‘Tis not possible,” Joan said, laughing. A few moments later, they left the copse in opposite directions. Joan headed for Chipping Norton just downriver, her mind occupied with strategies for obtaining three of John’s hairs. Kelly returned to Mortlak, to make another trial of the crystal. His interlude with Joan Bowes had given him an idea, and he planned to see whether certain letters written with ink aged in moonlight would persuade the spirits of the crystal to make real gold for him once more.

  The rumors of devils and black magic in the forest outside Mortlak were not confined to the town. Word of the strange events of Master Kirton’s hunt had come to London almost before the hunt itself was over, but a single incident, however sinister, was not sufficient to draw more than a thoughtful nod from those whose business it was to investigate such things. But when stories continued to circulate throughout the spring, the witch-hunters began to take notice.

  “The town of Mortlak’s uneasy,” a slender man in a black scholar’s robe said to the heavyset man seated across the table from him. “Would it bear looking into, do you think?”

  “An I were certain what ‘uneasy’ meant, I could perhaps make some answer,” the second man replied smoothly.

  “There was some talk of phantoms in the woods nearby, and a most unnatural bear, but that was in the winter, and there’s been no report since,” the slender man said, tapping a folded sheet of paper that lay on top of the pile in front of him. “I am inclined to think no more of the phantoms. But these persistent rumors of sorcery—”

  “In the town itself?” the heavyset man interrupted. His companion nodded, and the heavy man shook his head. “Doctor Dee lives in Mortlak; I’ll wager he’s the root of all this talk.”

  “The Queen’s Astrologer,” the slender man said in a thoughtful tone. “He hath powerful friends at court.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But he’s been accused before.”

  “He has,” the heavy man replied with visible reluctance. “‘Twas claimed that he did murder a young boy by sorcery, but ’twas not proven. ”

  The first man frowned at the paper-covered table. “This talk’s gone on too long to be ignored,” he said at last. “We must proceed, but not with haste. Send someone to speak with Doctor Dee; if more than that’s required, we’ll decide it later.”

  “As you wish,” the heavy man answered. “Now, as to the woman in Kent who hath bewitched her neighbor’s cow ...”

  Bochad-Bec and Furgen had found Madini’s arrogance irritating from the very beginning of their association, and they were nearing the end of their patience. Inevitably, once it became clear that Madini’s efforts to obtain the crystal were showing no results, each of them asked to be included in her spell-casting. Equally inevitably, Madini refused.

  This slight brought Furgen and Bochad-Bec to their usual meeting place under the oak by the border of Faerie, but this time they did not mention the meeting to their contemptuous partner. They began by comparing the responses they had each received from Madini when they offered to assist her.

  “She called me a bumbler because I brought her the lamp and not this crystal that she claims holds Hugh’s power,” Bochad-Bec told Furgen, all but beside himself with rage. “She said she did not want a bumbler by while she worked!” The oakman spat violently, nearly dislodging his red cap, and looked suspiciously at his companion. “Hadst thou better luck?”

  “No,” Furgen answered. The water creature’s face, usually so impassive, betrayed traces of a cold anger that was no less strong than Bochad-Bec’s. “She told me the spells she wove to link the lamp and crystal were too delicate to trust to a lesser magician than herself. ”

  The oakman snorted, but his shoulders relaxed slightly. “Madini insulted us both, then. We should stop her, I think.”

  “‘Tis time for that, and past time,” Furgen agreed. It stroked one long, grey finger across the points of its teeth. “And I know how to do it, if I can come at the lamp when she’s not near.”

  “In three days she’ll be at court, serving the Queen,” Bochad-Bec said. “She cannot take the lamp with her.”

  “That will do very well.”

  “What wouldst thou do?” Bochad-Bec said. A breeze rustled the leaves of the oak above him, sending dappled shadows dancing across the ground below.

  “Succeed where she’s failed,” Furgen answered shortly. “She’s tried to make the humans let us in; I’ll work otherwise, and draw them out to us. And we’ll see how Madini talks then.”

  “It’s not the humans we want,” the dwarf pointed out.

  “They’ll bring the crystal with them,” Furgen said. “I’ll see to that, never fear. ”

  “And what’s my part in this?” Bochad-Bec said truculently.

  “Why, to be by John Dee’s house to snatch the crystal once I’ve made him bring it forth,” Furgen answered.

  “Ah.” The oakman considered this proposal for a moment, then waggled his beard in agreement. “I’ll do it.”

  “I’m grateful,” Furgen said with a touch of sarcasm that passed completely by the dwarf. “Now come, and I’ll show thee how to come at the house unseen. The river’s best, and thou mayest hide in the kitchen garden. ” The fay departed to inspect the exterior of John Dee’s house in Mortlak.

  While the Faerie folk were at their work, Dee and Kelly were in the throes of yet another argument. Their money was running short, and the crystal still refused to make anything but Faerie gold, despite Madini’s comforting appearances. The proposed genealogy had satisfied Prince Laski for the moment, but it was clear to both the wizards that sooner or later the Polish envoy would request a demonstration of more immediately useful magic. Dee, to his partner’s annoyance, refused to consider any of Kelly’s suggestions, and instead expressed with some frequency his willingness to leave the matter in the hands of God. This stubbornness at last drove Kelly from the house, to pace the flat bank above the water stairs, while from the shadows by the wall Furgen and Bochad-Bec watched with glittering eyes, then slipped away.

  CHAPTER · EIGHTEEN

  “The fish was stronger than the dwarf, and though the little man tried to catch hold of the reeds to pull himself back, it did him little good. The reeds bent and the rushes broke, and the dwarf was in great danger of being dragged into the water.

  “The two girls arrived just in time. They caught hold of him and pulled him back, but though they tried their best to untangle his beard fro
m the fishing line, they could not do it. In the end, Snow White had to bring out her scissors once again and cut off another piece of the dwarf’s beard. ”

  THE EVIDENCE OF FAERIE INTEREST IN DEE’S HOUSEHOLD increased John’s certainty that it held the solution to Hugh’s enchantment, and he redoubled his efforts to slip inside. He was unsuccessful, and in desperation he decided to use the only piece of powerful magic he had been able to bring with him out of Faerie.

  Late one afternoon, early in July, he visited the Widow’s cottage to explain his reasons and his strategy to her and her daughters, and to enlist their help. He had not previously told them of his attempts to search Dee’s house, and the girls listened with absorption to his account.

  “And you will try again?” Rosamund said. “But how can you now succeed, having failed so often?”

  “I have a ring, which three times confers invisibility,” John said. “I’ve used it twice: once long ago in a Faerie war, and once to follow you out of Faerie when the border was closed to me. I am determined to use it for the third and last time in this endeavor.”

  “‘Tis good of thee, to use thy ring in thy brother’s behalf,” Blanche said softly.

  John shrugged. “As may be. I’ll have but one chance, and then the ring is useless. I’ve come to you for help, that we may wring the most advantage from this effort.”

  “What is it that thou wantest of us?” the Widow asked cautiously.

  “‘Tis completely safe, I warrant you,” John said reassuringly. “I’ve found a spell that will allow your daughters to see me from afar, and I would have them sit with Hugh and watch me as I search. ”

  “What, and you invisible?” Rosamund said.

  “An the scrying spell doth not show me, ‘twill show at least the rooms I pass through and what occurs around me,” John said. “And if you’re with Hugh, you may see some change in him that doth correspond to something where I am, which I could never tell. So we may learn something of use even if I fail.”