Unexpected Magic

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “He must be the most appalling tyrant,” Cecilia thought. “Fancy every poor housewife having to give an account of herself every time she goes shopping, just because the Prince has said so! What a terrible country this is! I shall certainly never come here again.”

  She looked at Alex, quietly raging beside her. He was so annoyed and alarmed at being arrested—for that was what it must be—that the skin had tightened over the high bridge of his nose. Cecilia nearly smiled at him because he looked so exactly like Josiah. Alex, who thought she was trying to comfort him, stuck out his lower lip at her crossly.

  The Gairne road wound back again into the upland. For a minute they rode where they could see hills dimly behind twirling dark snowflakes, and then the soldiers swung around to the right, into that gap in the hills, between crags looking dirtily dark under snow, and out at the top of a long shallow valley.

  Cecilia and Alex stared between steel helmets at the great building standing halfway down the valley below them. It was a huge fortified mansion, with castellated walls and innumerable courts and gardens. It could have been a small city, mapped out in charcoal on white paper, with towers drawn jutting and leaping and graceful on every hand. From the highest tower flew the only touch of color, a green flag with some white device, and half the flagstaff stuck darkly up beyond the green.

  The soldier who had jerked his head at Alex nodded down at the mansion. “Falleyfell,” he said.

  Alex’s stomach went tight in a way that nearly made him sick. He could hear Miss Gatly’s voice as clearly as if she were riding beside Cecilia: “And Falleyfell is a kingdom out in the bay. So dangerous is it that he who sees it is as good as dead.” It helped him not at all to see that the soldiers all made faint blue shadows in the snow, or that they rode making real hoofprints. He could feel the warmth of them about him, horses and men, but that only made it the more sinister. As they went down and down into the valley and the walls of that mansion rose up vaster and vaster in front, Alex was more and more terrified.

  They stopped in front of great double gates. People looked down from a gatehouse overhead and seemed surprised because the men in black and the soldiers had returned so quickly. Then the great gates opened. Everyone rode through by threes into one of the biggest courtyards Alex and Cecilia had ever seen. They rode straight across it, with odd muffled echoes, up to the main grand part of the mansion. The men in black dismounted onto a great flight of steps leading to a big door with a snow-crusted coat of arms above it. Both of them turned and waited for Alex and Cecilia to dismount too. Cecilia thought Darron would have helped her down, had not the Count of Gairne held him back. So she looked at them both very haughtily, before she dismounted by herself, and then she picked up the long side of her riding habit with her most queenly air.

  “Up here, my lady,” said the Count, not in the least impressed. He and Darron went one on either side of Alex and Cecilia, and two of the soldiers came clinking slowly after.

  “Abominable man!” Cecilia thought. “It seems I am everyone’s lady here—it must be the custom. How I wish I had not been so nasty to our outlaw about it.”

  Beyond the steps and the door was a hall, a great square light hall, chilly and gloomy and full of silent people in black. “The court, I suppose,” thought Cecilia. Black cloth was hung over the walls, and it, together with the bleak snowy light from the high-up windows, made their eyes ache.

  They walked slowly down the hall. At the other end was a raised dais where two women sat, wearing the deepest mourning. The older one was dark, with a white, white face and huge hollow dark eyes, with a strange, wild, and beautiful expression. The younger was one of the loveliest ladies Alex had ever set eyes upon. She was so fair her hair was almost white, and everything about her was delicate and small and adorable. She was the kind of lady who is petted and pampered by everyone and too sweet to be spoiled by it all. And yet she was miserable. She sat gazing at nothing, as if someone had put her in her chair like a doll, and she looked so lost and lonely that both Alex and Cecilia wanted to run and kneel beside her and pet and pamper and amuse her.

  Neither lady seemed to notice them being brought down the hall, but most of the other sad, black-dressed people did. Ladies stared at Cecilia in an outraged way. Cecilia, flushed with embarrassment and with the cold air outside, tried to look loftily ahead. Alex noticed that most of the men seemed to be trying to catch her attention, to bow and to smile and to nod. They seemed delighted to see her and full of admiration. Alex wondered how they could admire Cecilia, when they had two such women on the dais. He looked irritably at Cecilia. Her riding habit was lavender blue, to match her eyes. Her ringlets were as brightly fair as the younger lady’s and her face was not only rosy and young and happy, it was every bit as worth looking at as either lady’s on the dais. For the first time in his life, Alex began to suspect that his sister was growing up into a raving beauty, and it alarmed him. It was one more frightening thing about this sinister black and white place. He glared at all the men who were bowing and smiling in that stupid, admiring way. He wished that he had a sword, as they all did, so that he could put a threatening hand on its hilt.

  There was some whispering and quiet bustling. Alex gathered that the Prince was not there and that he was being respectfully fetched. They had to wait for him, just in front of the dais, with the two ladies at eye level. The younger one did not seem to notice them. The older one gave them several quick, wild glances as if she were afraid of staring too long. Alex became more and more frightened, embarrassed, and impatient. He took to looking at his feet, and poking one or two lumps of snow from his boots with his whip.

  At last he heard mutters of “The Prince,” “His Highness, the Prince,” “Your Highness,” and looked up at the dais. The boy he had fought on the island was standing there, with his hands on his hips, looking down at him in astonishment.

  “You again,” said the Prince.

  He had the most beautiful black eye. Or rather, by this time it was not black any longer, but blue and purple and yellow, with red around the edges. “My goodness,” Alex thought, “I did hit him perfectly.” Most of his fear and embarrassment vanished. He was so pleased with that eye that he smiled, broadly, and put his hands on his hips too. “Yes,” he said. “Me again.”

  “Good!” said the Prince. “Good.” To Cecilia he sounded quite murderous. He stared at Alex in a dreadful, satisfied way, which turned Cecilia cold and faint. Alex stared back, admiring that black eye, cocking his head sideways, almost as if he had painted it on the Prince’s face with the finest of brushes.

  The Count of Gairne stepped up onto the dais and interrupted their looking at one another. “Your Highness, these people were discovered riding about the countryside in direct contravention of your decree.”

  The Prince nodded and went back to gazing at Alex. “I am sure they were,” he said. “They would be.”

  The Count leaned down to the Prince, softly, looking at Alex too. “Your Highness, am I right in supposing that this is the person who had the temerity to assault you on the island?” He was almost whispering in the Prince’s ear, but not quite. Cecilia, looking up at them, suddenly saw an angry little boy standing on the platform, too angry to notice that a fat, cruel beast was about to seize him, bite him, and strangle him. She nearly cried out to the Prince.

  Then the Count stood up again and he was simply a stout and unfriendly man, and the Prince was a venomous young person thinking over a dozen awful things he could do to Alex now he had him in his power.

  “Remember,” said Cecilia, very shrill and loud, because she was so much afraid for Alex, “remember that he did not assault you without provocation. You drew your sword on him—er—Your Highness.” Behind her, she heard the courtiers muttering. She was certain they were saying “Dreadful, loud girl,” or more stately words to that effect.

  The Prince, instead of answering her, turned to the Count of Gairne, with that Courcy-like set of the head that Alex so much detested. “Ye
s,” he said, “they are supporters of Howeforce, it seems, and the boy even imagines that he has a claim to our coronet.”

  Cecilia wrung her hands, despairing of ever being able to straighten this muddle out. The Count, she saw, was looking at them as if he were very interested, as if a whole crop of fresh, cold calculations had suddenly come into his head. “Honestly,” she said, “you have it all completely wrong!”

  “Have I?” the Prince asked her coldly. “Then what were you doing riding to Gairne?”

  Cecilia, to her consternation, blushed. She did not know why she should blush, but blush she did, on and on, until even her neck was hot. She was so amazed and embarrassed at the way she blushed that she could not say another word.

  “You would call them traitors, Your Highness?” suggested the Count of Gairne, still looking calculatingly at them.

  The Prince folded his arms. “Indeed, yes.” To Alex, he said: “You, I suppose, are by now aware that you have committed an act of lèse-majesté.” To Cecilia, he said: “As for you, I am sure you know that your precious friend Howeforce is now terrorizing our whole Principality and defying us at every turn.”

  “No, indeed,” Cecilia answered in a whisper.

  “Yes, indeed,” said the Prince. “It is a pity you are Outsiders. It makes the matter much more difficult. I shall have to keep you locked up while I consider what is to be done with you.” Then he looked over their heads and beckoned to people to come and take them away.

  People began to come for them. Alex could hear their footsteps slowly advancing from behind. “Look here!” he said, fresh from school history, “don’t you have any Habeas Corpus here?”

  The Prince frowned and the footsteps stopped. “What,” he said, “is Habeas Corpus, in heaven’s name?”

  “It means,” said Alex, “that no one can imprison anyone else without a fair trial.”

  The Prince was astonished, in the way that had so maddened Alex on the island. “How can it mean that? The Latin means ‘You may have the body,’ surely—which is a fair way of saying that you are our prisoner.” He beckoned once more, and this time soldiers came, in green liveries heavily banded with black, and surrounded Alex and Cecilia. The Prince smiled. Then he bowed, and, thoroughly enjoying each word, he said, just as he had done on the island: “You may leave us now.”

  Alex shook with rage. “You—you low-down, mean whelp!” he said. “You give me any more of that and I’ll come up there and black your other eye. I’ll lèse your majesty until your whole face is black and blue. I’ll—” Soldiers took hold of his arms. Courtiers came up with drawn swords. Even the younger lady moved and looked at him in astonishment. “I’ll do it to the lot of you!” Alex shouted.

  The Prince laughed, absolutely delighted with how angry Alex was. “Take him away,” he said. “This is wonderful! Lock him up, and his sister too. Oh, Towerwood, I thank you with all my heart for finding these two Outsiders.” He turned to the Count of Gairne and shook his hand. The Count smiled, and Alex, in spite of his rage, was frightened, scared so that his spine seemed to ripple, by the way that the Count smiled.

  Then they were marched off. To Cecilia’s consternation, Alex was taken one way and she was courteously conducted in the opposite direction. She hung back and tried to protest. The young man in charge of the soldiers bowed.

  “This way, my lady. The Prince’s orders. Pray take my arm.” He held out one elbow elegantly to her. Cecilia, looking hopelessly around the soldiers, felt she would have to obey. Reluctantly, she put her fingers on his slender, black silk arm, and, with a last look back at Alex, came the way he took her.

  All the way to the room where she was to be locked up, the courtier maddened her and embarrassed her with his politeness. He was young and pink and white and full of irritating elegances.

  “Allow me to introduce myself, my lady. I am Hugo Lord Arbard at your service—at your service entirely.”

  “Thank you,” said Cecilia wearily.

  “You come at a sad time, my lady—a sad time. We are all in mourning, you understand, in mourning for our Prince who died just before Christmas. Such a man—such a man.”

  “You must be very sad,” Cecilia said.

  “Sad!” he exclaimed. “Why, words are too small to express—words fail!”

  Cecilia thought: “I wish they would fail.”

  Lord Arbard showed no signs of words failing him. If he was at a loss, he simply went on saying the same thing until he thought of a new phrase. Then he used the new phrase until he had worn that out. Most of what he said was about the dead Prince. Cecilia would have been interested if he had told her what the Prince had really been like, but all he said was that he had been wonderful, superlative, excellent, good, splendid—and not a word of real description.

  Then they came to a small room. Lord Arbard bowed and handed Cecilia inside. “With the greatest regret, my lady—enormous sorrow, great regret, I fear I must leave you now. Adieu, au revoir, until we meet again—as I trust we shall.”

  “Lord Arbard,” Cecilia said, thoroughly irritated, “you are really much too polite.”

  He took it as a compliment. He bowed lower than ever and kissed his fingers to her. “Sweet lady, adieu.” Then he shut the door behind him—nor did he forget to bolt it as he went, for all his politeness—and Cecilia was alone in a small bare room. There was one chair, very hard and upright. Cecilia sat down on it and worried for a long time about Alex. She knew how Alex detested the boy in black, and now it was only too apparent that the Prince detested Alex quite as much. Now he had Alex completely in his power, and it looked—since he did not know about Habeas Corpus—that the Prince had absolute power in this strange country. Worse still, she thought, it looked as if he enjoyed his power. She tried to make allowances: he was only about Alex’s age—though she felt Alex would have been nicer in the same position—and, of course, he could only have had this power for a fortnight at the most. The Prince, his father, must have been killed the day the outlaw came to the farmhouse.

  This took her onto Robert Lord Howeforce. He was supposed to have killed the Prince, of course. His situation was much worse than she had realized. And now he was said to be terrorizing the countryside. Cecilia hoped and tried to believe that he was not. But then, she thought, how did she know? She had seen him for an hour or so and she had decided to believe in him. He had looked as if he was telling the truth when he said he had not killed the Prince. But all these people seemed to think he had.

  “Oh,” said Cecilia. “Have I been very silly?” Then she clapped her hand over her mouth because someone was unbolting the door.

  To her utter amazement, it was the elder of the two beautiful ladies. She came hurriedly into the room, wild and wide-eyed, and looked at Cecilia as if Cecilia were a huntress and she some kind of hunted beast. Cecilia, for all her amazement, remembered that this was probably a great lady. She stood up and made her best curtsey.

  The lady did not seem to notice. “Madam,” she said, in a deep breathless voice, “madam, what brings you and your brother to this land? Is it true you were seeking for Howeforce?”

  Cecilia thought: “I might as well admit it. Everyone is probably quite sure we were, anyway.” So she said bravely: “Yes, your ladyship. We—we had met him before, you see.”

  The lady pounced on this. “Met him? How?” Then as Cecilia hesitated, remembering how scornful the Prince had been of the way the outlaw had gone Outside, the lady said impatiently: “You need have no secrets from me. I am Robert’s mother. Now tell me quickly, for my time is short.”

  “His mother!” Cecilia thought. “Then what is she doing in the Court?” She curtsied again, and told the lady about the way the outlaw had spent the night at the farm.

  “Have you proof?” the lady demanded. “I must have proof, for there is treachery everywhere. This realm is a most perilous place just now and, I fear, will be more so before long.”

  Then Cecilia, rather shyly, because she felt a fool to have kept it,
brought out the paper torn from the book of sermons with the little orange seal on it. The lady took it and looked at it eagerly.

  “Yes,” she said. “This is Robert’s seal. He—Conrad of Towerwood, who calls himself Count of Gairne—he uses the device of the tower. I think I will believe you, girl.”

  “I am telling the truth,” Cecilia said, a little stiffly. “You can see from the printing on the paper. And there is a picture of Queen Victoria underneath.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the lady. “I will take this, so that my son can see it. We must see to your safety and your brother’s, girl, for the realm is in deadly danger while Conrad of Towerwood can lay his hands on either of you. Will you trust me with this token?”

  “Yes,” Cecilia answered reluctantly, “of course.” She was not sure that she liked this lady’s distracted, high-handed manner; and the way she called her “girl” was uncomfortably like the way Lady Courcy spoke. “Might I have it back, your ladyship, when you have finished with it?”

  The lady smiled. It was a comforting, sweet smile, which made her look a great deal less sad and wild. “Of course you may, my dear. I see you value it. You can trust me. I am the daughter of a Prince, the sister of a Prince, and, indeed, the aunt of a Prince. You may trust my word.”

  “Thank you,” said Cecilia humbly. She curtsied again as the lady hurried away and, when she was alone again, she sat down with tears in her eyes. Before long, there were tears all over her face and her handkerchief was soaked. “I see,” she thought. “The Prince who was killed was our outlaw’s uncle. And he had killed one uncle before. He should have said—he might have told us!”

  A little later, a maid brought Cecilia some food on a tray. It looked delicious, but Cecilia did not want it. After a while, another maid took it away, and Cecilia still sat in her chair. Then the short winter day began to be over. There was no light, and the room grew completely dark. Cecilia did not care.

  “I wish we had gone to the Courcy party,” she said. “This is a judgment on us for being so wicked. Now no one will ever know what became of us.”