by Webb, Holly
‘Cup of tea, Rose?’
Rose stared blankly at Mrs Jones, and so did the rest of the servants in the kitchen. It didn’t sound such a strange thing to say, but then the cook hadn’t willingly spoken to Rose for over a month – not since Rose’s magical secret had terrified half the household.
Sarah the kitchen maid was sitting at the big scrubbed wooden table. She looked from Mrs Jones to Rose and back again, her round blue eyes anxious. Then she slowly passed Mrs Jones a cup and saucer.
Rose swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling tight and narrow with tears. Sarah too? They were really going to stop pretending she didn’t exist? She sniffed crossly. Why on earth was she wanting to cry now, when they were being nice to her again? When they’d made her invisible, she’d pretended so fiercely – to herself as well – that she didn’t care.
Mrs Jones pushed the cup of tea across the table. She let go of it rather quickly, so that she and Rose wouldn’t have their fingers on it at the same time, but it was a start.
Rose slid gratefully into a chair next to Bill, the apprentice footman, who was grinning at her encouragingly. Bill had never minded Rose’s magic as much as the other servants had. Perhaps it was because he was an orphan too, and that joined them together. Bill came from the boys’ orphanage that was across the wall from St Bridget’s, where Rose had lived until she’d come to Mr Fountain’s house.
He’d had longer to get used to the magic as well. He’d seen one of Rose’s first accidental spells, when he’d been sent out to show her the way round the streets and the shops. Rose had been so overawed by the grand dresses and smart carriages, that she’d strayed into the path of a gentleman on horseback, who’d tried to hit her. Strangely, he and his white horse had ended up covered in sticky black treacle. Rose still didn’t know how she had done it. But drenching a toff in treacle had been a good way to introduce Bill to her magic.
Bill shoved the sugar towards her and Rose spooned a few grains into her tea. Her hand was shaking, enough to make the spoon jangle against the china cup. Sarah had even given her one of the prettier cups, Rose noted, lifting it to sip. Only Miss Bridges the housekeeper had the flowered china, of course, but this cup had a delicate blue edge. Rose drank the tea cautiously, in case there was something horrible in it, although she didn’t think there would be – Mrs Jones couldn’t stand wasting food, and tea was terribly expensive.
Rose smiled cautiously at Mrs Jones, and whispered, ‘Very good tea.’
Bill smacked his lips. ‘Strong enough to stand a spoon up in.’
Mrs Jones nodded graciously, accepting the compliment as her due. ‘I can’t abide that dishwater stuff the master takes,’ she agreed. She stirred her own cup thoughtfully, and then looked up at Rose. ‘Did Their Gracious Majesties take tea?’
‘I never saw the king and queen have it, but Princess Jane did, with her breakfast, and again in the afternoon. Princess Charlotte had milk, sometimes with a dash of tea in it.’
‘Pretty little dear,’ Mrs Jones murmured fondly, and Sarah gazed at Rose in fascination.
Rose smiled into her cup. Mrs Jones had always adored the princesses, though of course she’d never come closer to them than throwing flowers under their carriage wheels. Even though their master, Mr Fountain, was the Chief Magical Counsellor to the Treasury, and attended on the king almost every day, his servants never came near royalty. Mrs Jones glanced admiringly at the newspaper illustration she had propped up on the dresser, which showed Princess Jane inspecting a warship. The artist had made the princess a lot prettier than she really was, Rose thought. She ought to know, considering she had spent several days disguised under a glamour to look just like Jane.
The strange, unnatural winter had started it, a few weeks back. Snow and ice had descended on the city with an iron hardness. As the days grew darker and colder, frightened stories about ice spells and dangerous magic had swept through the streets. London’s magicians had stalked about their business, followed by hissing whispers.
In the midst of it all, a group of Talish envoys had arrived to discuss the peace treaty. The war had been won eight years ago with a great sea battle, when the gallant captain of a British ship had told his sailors of the birth of a new princess, and fired them with patriotic valour, and an extra ration of rum. But it had been a close-run thing, and there had been no triumphant invasion of Talis. The great empire on the other side of the slender channel of water had simply turned away from Britain, and started to annex little bits of Italy instead.
It had taken years of letters and gifts, setbacks and tiny victories to get the peace this far, and the embassy were to be wooed with a grand banquet to celebrate Princess had Jane’s birthday. But then the princess had disappeared, and suddenly there could be no party after all, and panic gripped the palace. The envoys would hurry away back to Talis, deeply insulted, and the chance of peace would be lost again.
It was then that Rose had realised that kings were not like other people. All the while he was searching frantically for his daughter, the king had been grieving almost more for the loss of his treaty, and the peace. He needed a princess – or someone who looked like a princess. Mr Fountain had reluctantly allowed Rose to put on a glamour – an odd spell that gave her another face – and imitate Princess Jane, until she was found. Rose still didn’t like to think what would have happened if the princess had never been rescued. She might still have been dressed in a princess’s skin.
The birthday party had been a disaster, despite the glamour. The Talish envoy, Lord Venn, had attacked Rose, telling everyone she was an imposter – and of course he knew, because he and his master, the strange ice magician, Gossamer, had been the ones who’d stolen the real princess. She had been imprisoned in her own doll’s house.
Rumours of Jane’s disappearance had been flying around London, and everyone was blaming it on magic. There had been protests, and meetings, and even a debate in parliament. After Rose had rescued her, Jane had appeared on the palace balcony before the frightened and suspicious crowd. Over a thousand people were gathered in front of the palace, and no one was sure who to trust. The king had drawn his daughter forward, and given thanks for her safe return, but no one had cheered. Was it really the little princess? everyone whispered. Or just another fraud? Maybe the king wasn’t even the king!
Jane herself had spoken then, dragging Rose to the front of the balcony with her. Somehow the sight of the child who’d risked her life for their darling princess had swayed the crowd, and they had dispersed without a scene. But there were still dangerous undercurrents running through the city. Most people accepted that it had been rogue magicians who kidnapped the princess, and their own magicians were trustworthy, or at least as trustworthy as they had ever been. But the rogues had got away.
The atmosphere was jumpy and frightened, and it made matters much worse that the kidnappers had been part of the Talish peace embassy – even though the rest of the embassy had sworn they were bewitched, and the emperor had known nothing of the plot. Lord Venn had secretly been plotting to destroy the peace mission all along, they claimed. They had all been taken in by him.
Rose had disliked Venn, a plump, rude little man, but she had been terrified of his master, the ice-eyed Gossamer. Since the plot had failed, Mr Fountain had discovered some of their plans, and they knew now that Gossamer had been the ringleader, and the magician with the strength to conjure that dreadful winter.
It was all very well to say that Gossamer and Venn weren’t really working for Talis – and the emperor had said so, in several flattering letters to the king – but if they had succeeded, they would have left England weeping for her adored princess, and filled with hate for magicians a
nd magic. Magic that would be needed to win any war against Talis. If the enchanted winter that had frozen the Thames had gone on to freeze the Channel, which had been Gossamer’s plan, the emperor’s forces would have been over the ice in days, and London would have fallen.
Rose had rather hoped that Bill would be impressed she’d done her bit for the British Empire, but she hadn’t expected that everyone else would forgive her for being tainted with that magic nonsense, too.
But now she realised she had underestimated the fascination of palace gossip. Sarah, who had been terrified of Rose before she left for the palace – she’d seemed to think that Rose might turn her into something small and leggy – gulped her tea, and asked, ‘How many gowns does the princess have, Rose? Are they all embroidered with jewels? Does she wear kid gloves in her bath?’ She held out her own hands, her short, rather stubby fingers reddened and scaly from spending hours every day plunged in hot water. As a scullery maid, she spent her time endlessly scrubbing pans.
Rose smiled at her. She could tell that Sarah was dreaming of the princess instead, stretched out in a cloud of steam in front of an enormous marble fireplace, admiring arms with kid gloves to the elbow, and heavy with emerald bracelets.
Sarah dropped the teaspoon she had been using to stir her tea, and stared at Rose like a startled rabbit.
Rose gave her worried look back. Sarah hadn’t just imagined the princess, she had actually seen her, probably on the shining surface of her cup of tea. Rose’s magic had started that way, with accidental pictures. They tended to happen when she was telling stories, if she didn’t concentrate very hard on stopping them. ‘Oh… Where was it?’ she asked huskily, hoping that Sarah wouldn’t scream. Just when they had started to like her again! How could she have let herself get so carried away?
‘Floating on the tea,’ Sarah squeaked. And she hastily put her hand over her cup, as Bill peered over to look. ‘She’s not decent!’ she snapped.
‘Not in my kitchen, I’ll thank you, Miss Rose,’ Mrs Jones said firmly, snatching the cup and pouring the tea into the slop bowl. ‘I’ve said it before, and you know quite well. That magic nonsense makes the food taste nasty, and it interferes with the range. Not to mention setting jellies. You keep it for upstairs, young lady, hear me?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Jones, I really didn’t do it on purpose,’ Rose said quickly. ‘Those pictures, they just slip out when I’m not thinking. I didn’t mean to.’
Mrs Jones sniffed, and nodded regally. ‘Does she wear kid gloves in the bath?’ she enquired curiously. She gave Bill a warning look, one that suggested any silly remarks would see him removed by the ear.
Rose shook her head. ‘No. But she does have attar of roses poured in her bathwater. Princess Louisa gave it to her last Christmas. And pink silk bath sheets, with gold embroidery. And Princess Charlotte has a toy sailing ship to play with in her bath, and that has pink silk sails.’
Sarah and Mrs Jones sighed appreciatively. ‘And jewels?’ Sarah begged. ‘Dresses positively dripping with jewels?’
Rose shivered. She had only worn one jewelled dress: the silk confection that had been made to match a magnificent rose-pearl necklace, the king’s present to his favourite daughter. By the end of Jane’s birthday banquet, that dress had been shredded and covered in blood – Rose’s blood.
Rose shook her head. ‘Not jewels for every day. But the best fabrics. Lace, and velvet like cat fur. And no plain petticoats, lace on every layer.’
Sarah was nodding, as if this was quite what she expected.
Rose looked down at her tea cup, trying to hide her enormous smile, in case they should all think she was demented. The palace hadn’t been what they thought. It was a strange, cold place. Even without dark magicians conjuring up the unnatural winter that had frozen the city in the coldest, deepest snow for fifty years.
There was no magic there, not like Mr Fountain’s house. Even though Mrs Jones banned it from her kitchen – and her stern commands, strangely enough, did keep it out of the basement floor of the house – Rose could still feel it hovering close, waiting to enfold her. And now the hateful coldness from the other servants had melted away with the icy winter outside, she couldn’t hold that silly smile back.
‘Oh!’
Rose looked up anxiously. She hadn’t let another spell slip, had she?
But it wasn’t Sarah. The upper housemaid, Susan, was standing in the kitchen doorway, her expression one of disgust – as though she had found something horrible on her shoes.
‘You came back. What a pity,’ she snarled.
She was sounding brave, but Rose noticed she was lurking in the doorway, and making no move to come further in. Susan had always hated Rose, and the magic had made it a hundred times worse. It didn’t help that Rose and Susan had fought shortly before Rose left for the palace. Susan had grabbed her, and – she had no idea how – Rose had withered her arm black. It had gone back to normal since, but she knew Susan would never forgive her, even if the rest of the servants were prepared to put up with Rose’s oddness for the sake of snippets of royal gossip.
‘I’ll stay out of your way, if you’ll stay out of mine,’ Rose said coldly. It sounded like a threat, which was pretty much how she had meant it to sound.
Susan walked into the kitchen crabwise, edging round the walls and keeping the table between herself and Rose.
‘She ain’t going to smite you with fire,’ Bill snorted, smirking at her, and Susan snarled back.
‘Stop it!’ Mrs Jones said sharply. ‘No one’s doing anything in here. Rose is sensible enough not to take advantage, I’m sure.’
‘Freak,’ Susan breathed at Rose, as Mrs Jones busied herself with the teapot again. ‘Changeling…’
Rose shrugged, and smiled. She had a feeling that that would annoy Susan more than anything. The older girl knew how much taunts about her family hurt her, because Rose had let it show before. Rose had spent her time in the orphanage trying not to care about her parents. Trying not to wonder who exactly had left her in a fishbasket by the churchyard war memorial. And why. She had convinced herself it didn’t matter, but now that she seemed to have inherited something more than common sense and the plainest colour of brown hair, she wanted very much to know who it had come from. She no longer believed that she didn’t care.
But those were secret thoughts, and Rose was good at secrets. She had been stupid before, letting Susan’s words break into her. Well, from now on, she would be as still and sweet as stone, and Susan’s sniping would flow over her like water. It was only another kind of glamour, after all.
So she beamed amiably at Susan, and had the satisfaction of seeing her shudder.
Rose had found it surprisingly easy to settle back into her life as half-servant, half-magician’s apprentice, though she still found herself exhausted every night as she dragged herself up to her little attic room. The house seemed even busier than it had before she went away. Miss Bridges was determined that with Christmas fast approaching, the house would be spotless for the festivities. Mr Fountain liked the house to be decorated with holly and other greenery, and it did look wonderful. But it dropped berries, and bits of leaf, and small things scuttled out of it in the warmth of the house. It all meant more work.
Despite her extra lessons with Mr Fountain and Freddie, Rose was still expected to do her fair share of scrubbing. Even her fingernails ached.
Her magic lessons at the moment were mostly concerned with scrying – that strange art of seeing things far away. Mr Fountain was employing his apprentices to help in the desperate search for Gossamer. He had escaped with all his powers intact, and they had no idea where he and Venn had fled. Or what they were planning.
Unfortunately, the lessons were not going very well.
‘Have you found anything, Sir?’ Freddie asked hopefully that afternoon. ‘Any trace at all?’
Mr Fountain shook his head, and slumped into one of the chairs at the workroom table. He sat with his chin in one hand, twisting fr
etfully at his moustache.
‘No magic – but then I wasn’t expecting it, to be honest. Gossamer and Venn were almost impossible to pin down at the palace.’ He laughed shortly. ‘Hiding in plain sight, I suppose. Well, now they’ll be hiding themselves even more carefully. I haven’t had the slightest glimmer, though I’ve scryed for them all these weeks.’ He sighed, a long angry huff. ‘And not one hint from any of my sources. The amount of money I’ve spent bribing people. For nothing!’
He was surprisingly annoyed, Rose thought, considering that he could almost make money grow on trees. Mr Fountain was an alchemist, as well as a very powerful magician. Rose had never heard of alchemists before she left the orphanage, but now from what Freddie and Gus had told her, she realised how amazingly unusual Mr Fountain was. Alchemy had always been an obscure and slightly shameful brand of magic, simply because it didn’t work. Until twenty years before, when Mr Fountain and his fellow student, one Joshua Merganser, had actually managed to turn lead into gold. At the time, Freddie said, they had been so poor that they had stolen the lead in question off a church roof, but Rose wasn’t sure she believed that.
Mr Merganser had died in mysterious circumstances, and Freddie had told her some interesting stories about that too, which Rose really didn’t believe – most of the time. Whatever had happened, Mr Fountain became the only successful alchemist in the world. But it seemed that now even gold wasn’t enough.
‘The trail is completely cold,’ Mr Fountain moaned. ‘They’ve vanished. Vanished!’ He sank his head on his hand dramatically, and added, in a doom-laden voice, ‘Which can only mean they’re plotting something else. Who knows what the fiends are after now?’
The white cat, Gus, wove himself comfortingly around Mr Fountain’s arms, and his master stroked him unseeingly, which was a mistake. Gus demanded the full attention of his admirers, and he hissed a warning.
‘What? Oh! I’m sorry, Gus. Go on, you two. Show me what you’ve learned. Who knows, maybe it needs a fresh eye – one of you may catch a glimpse.’ Mr Fountain didn’t sound very hopeful.