Rose and the Lost Princess

by Holly Webb

  “What’s the matter? He really scared you, di’n’t he?” Bill asked.

  “He could see I had magic. He thought he’d made a mistake when he saw our clothes properly, but actually he was right.” She sighed miserably. “I don’t know what I am either. A housemaid or—or something else. Something everyone hates.”

  “I don’t,” Bill said quickly.

  Rose smiled at him briefly. “No. I’m glad about that. I’d miss you if you didn’t talk to me. But seeing the way everybody hissed at him, Bill…even if I don’t trust that man, he was what I am. I do know, really, you see. I knew then, when everyone was hating him. Me. Us.”

  Bill nodded. “That’s why you’re glooming then?” His voice was doubtful. “Isn’t it good to know what you are?”

  Rose looked at him, shocked. He’d surprised her again. “Well, yes. I suppose that’s right. I should be happy. Proud, even.” She nodded firmly. “You’re right. I should stop creeping around and just tell everyone.” Rose looked thoughtfully at the passersby, and Bill grabbed her arm.

  “Bearing in mind how things are, maybe not right now, eh?”

  Ten

  Rose was looking forward to asking Freddie and Mr. Fountain about the snow globe at her next lesson. She wondered if Mr. Fountain knew its strange creator—she had decided that the ice-eyed man must have made the globes because he had loved them so much. But although Freddie was fascinated by the toy and sat gazing into the wild snow for ages, Rose never had a chance to show it to Mr. Fountain.

  “He’s late again,” Freddie murmured, gently shaking the snow globe and giggling as the skaters shook their tiny fists at him.

  “I don’t mind.” Rose didn’t even look up from Prendergast, the magical primer that she and Freddie were supposed to memorize. She was trying to find out about weather magic, but the book was surprisingly cagey. Weather magic was apparently “dangerous, difficult, and inadvisable.” Which was not a whole lot of use. “I’d much rather read this than wash the windows.”

  “What’s the point of washing windows?” Freddie asked. “They only get dirty again. Waste of effort if you ask me. Really, I think servants are quite unnecessary. Your job is just busy-work.”

  Rose only sighed and ignored him. There was no point rising. Freddie would complain soon enough if the servants stopped running around after him.

  Freddie sniggered complacently, and Rose yawned. She had built up the fire, and it was pleasantly warm in the workroom, despite the weather. She glanced out of the window to see if it was snowing again. Not yet, but the sky was leaden gray and heavy looking. There would be another fall soon. She gazed dreamily out at the black trees across the square—and then jumped. A face had inserted itself between her and the trees, shimmering in the glass.

  “Freddie…” Rose whispered.

  “What?”

  “Mr. Fountain’s here…”

  Freddie sat up suddenly and looked at the door in horror, then turned to glare at Rose. “No, he isn’t! Don’t do that sort of thing to me, Rose. It isn’t fair. Oh.” At this point, he finally noticed his master floating in the window glass. “Good afternoon, sir.”

  “And to you, Frederick, now that you’ve finally deigned to notice that I’m here. Rose, you need to daydream more often. I’ve been waiting for you to stare at something shiny for over an hour.”

  “I’m doing this?” Rose asked, looking worried. She couldn’t feel that she was. She had never made anything that could see her back before.

  “Yes and no. I’m using your ability to do it, let’s say. Listen, I don’t have long. As you may have worked out”—here, the image eyed Freddie critically—“I am still at the palace. I’m so sorry to miss your lesson yet again, but I have no choice. Things are—difficult.”

  “Are you all right?” Rose asked him shyly, and Mr. Fountain gave her a weary smile.

  “Thank you, Rose. I’m perfectly fine. I haven’t slept, that’s all. I have been trying to obtain an audience with the king. He is understandably somewhat reluctant.”

  “But you see him every day!” Freddie burst out.

  “Not since he realized that a magician—or possibly a conspiracy of magicians—tried to kidnap his daughter,” Mr. Fountain replied shortly.

  “Oh.” Freddie seemed remarkably cowed by this news, Rose thought. She looked at him worriedly. He had been very matter-of-fact about his friends and relatives at the palace, but she had a feeling he would be deeply upset if any of that changed.

  “As far as I can see, the only way to get back into the royal family’s good graces is to find out what happened to Princess Jane—and catch who did it if I possibly can.” Being split into bits by windowpanes didn’t help, but Mr. Fountain looked particularly downhearted. Rose and Freddie exchanged anxious glances. “I shall be moving into my rooms at the palace. I must be there, to search and to counteract any more stupid rumors. The place is buzzing like an evil beehive.” The window image looked up at them both, strangely distorted by the snowflakes that were starting to fall behind it. “I’m so sorry—your lessons, and you’ve already missed so many this last week. We will have time soon, I promise, but this has to come first.”

  “Of course it does, sir.” Freddie got up, and went over to the window. He reached out tentatively to touch the glass, a more affectionate gesture than Rose had ever seen him use to his master in the flesh. “If you can’t solve this, who knows what will happen. But, sir, can’t we help? We can’t just sit here and read Prendergast’s Perfect Primer. We’ll go mad wondering what’s happening.”

  “Oh, yes!” Rose agreed, jumping up and coming closer to the window. She could feel the way Mr. Fountain was borrowing her magic now, a strange tickling feeling in her fingers and somewhere deep in the back of her head.

  “We could do something, couldn’t we?” Freddie pleaded.

  “If you’re moving to the palace all the time, you’ll need all your things. We could bring those, just to start with,” Rose suggested. The idea of Mr. Fountain existing without his mustache nets and brushes, and his cologne, was unthinkable.

  Freddie wrinkled his nose. Rose thought he’d probably imagined himself doing something more dramatic than being a delivery boy, but she nudged him and glowered, and he nodded obediently.

  “Yes…yes, I suppose that would be useful. If you could speak to Miss Bridges about packing my personal effects, Rose. And you, Freddie, make a list of the things I shall want from the workroom and my study. Well, go on, boy, find a pencil!”

  Freddie turned his back on the window to make an anguished face at Rose, but she slipped out of the door to find Miss Bridges, smiling sweetly at him.

  ***

  There wasn’t a great deal of room left in the carriage for Freddie and Rose. Once Mr. Fountain’s piles of smart, gold-monogrammed leather luggage had been inserted and packed around with bags and boxes of books, instruments and ingredients, Rose wondered if it might be easier just to sit on the box with the coachman. She was left clutching a large parcel of rather sharp-smelling powder, which was slowly leaking out of the corner of the wrapping, and an astrolabe, just in case it might be useful.

  The snow was still falling, and the drive to the palace in the gathering dusk seemed to take forever as the coachman peered ahead through the murk.

  Mr. Fountain had made sure there was a page to meet them at the door this time, and Rose pretended to ignore the amused glances of the soldiers as she and Freddie trailed in, dragging all their luggage. She made sure the parcel leaked powder over the nearest one’s black shiny boots and reminded herself to keep an eye on him, to see if it did anything interesting.

  The pageboy looked disgusted at having to carry a carpetbag full of squashy parcels and set off too fast for them to keep up with him along the scarlet carpets. Rose was torn between horror at getting lost—what if she blundered into the king?—and the impossibility of walking quic
kly when at every turn there was something fascinating to look at.

  “Oh, do come on, Rose!” Freddie muttered crossly, over his armful of books. Luckily, he knew where he was going, or at least he said he did. Rose didn’t know. Everywhere was gilded and sparkly and carpeted. They could, just possibly, have been walking around and around the same corridor the entire time.

  What was odd, Rose thought, was that such a wonderfully grand place could also feel so flat. After one got over it being a palace, and the fact that everything looked so expensive and beautiful, it was strangely cold. Almost sterile.

  Rose hugged the leaking parcel tightly as they processed along yet another corridor, lined with dark oil paintings and gas lamps in ornate, fussy golden sconces. The page boy had relented and come back, muttering about slow coaches and people who had their worldly goods tied up with string. Freddie was ignoring him in a lordly fashion while clearly dying to answer back, and Rose was just ignoring him.

  She worked it out just as they walked past an amazing white and gilt room, with a golden ceiling that seemed to be melting and dripping down the walls.

  There was no magic.

  She had only been at the Fountain house for a few weeks, but the building was so steeped in magic that every painting, every floorboard even, abovestairs at least, simply vibrated with inner life. Here, there was nothing. It was an empty prettiness, devoid of character, and it felt sadly disappointing. She supposed she had imagined it like some fairy-tale castle, and it did look like it. But there was nothing fairy-like underneath the gilt, only stone.

  The page boy stopped suddenly and flung open a door. Rose cannoned into Freddie, and the pungent parcel went into its final collapse at last. Rose felt it was a great pity that it covered Freddie and not the obnoxious page boy. He made a very fast escape, and Freddie and Rose were left at the door of Mr. Fountain’s rooms.

  “Good Lord.” Mr. Fountain hurried over in his shirtsleeves, looking somewhat horrified. “Freddie, what on earth have you done to yourself?”

  “It wasn’t me!” Freddie protested. “Rose dropped it. Why does everyone always blame me?”

  “What is it?” Rose asked, feeling a little worried. There was an awful lot of it, all over Freddie, and if it was poisonous…

  Mr. Fountain picked up a pinch of it gingerly, between finger and thumb, and sniffed it. “Experimental guano.”

  “It isn’t!” Freddie glared at Rose. “Of all the things to drop on me, Rose. Bird droppings. I shall never forgive you.” He shuddered, brushing the loathsome powder from his jacket.

  Rose joined in, brushing his sleeves. “I didn’t mean to. You know I didn’t. Why on earth do you have that much bird—bird leavings?” She added the last bit in a discreet whisper.

  Mr. Fountain seemed to be trying not to laugh. “I just thought it might come in useful. Strong source of ammonia, very powerful chemical. I’ve no idea why you brought it, Freddie. It wasn’t on the list.”

  Freddie flushed slightly, his pale skin firing up, and Rose thought shrewdly that he had probably gotten bored with the list from the workroom and just started stuffing things into bags.

  “Go in there and brush yourself down.” Mr. Fountain shooed him toward a door. “I’ll send for someone to bring the rest of the bags.”

  Rose had imagined Mr. Fountain’s room at the palace as just that, one room, and probably rather small. Actually, it was more like a series of enormous apartments, leading out of each other, and arranged as a study, drawing room, and bedroom. Everything was decorated in a Chinese style, and there seemed to be dragons everywhere.

  “The late king was very fond of Eastern decoration,” Mr. Fountain explained, seeing Rose staring at a chair that had been tortured into the shape of a water lily.

  “Don’t sit in it. It’s spiky.” He smiled. “I brought a great many cushions from home.”

  Judging from his rooms, the Counselor to the Royal Mint was an honored member of the royal household—or had been, at any rate.

  Freddie came out of the dressing room looking rather better, but he still smelled odd, and his smooth, yellow hair was sticking up—something that even being imprisoned in a cellar by a mad witch hadn’t reduced him to. He looked completely miserable, and Rose felt quite guilty, even though she still felt it was largely his own fault.

  “Aloysius.” A quiet voice spoke from the doorway. Rose turned to see a slender, bearded man standing there, watching them with piercing green eyes. She took a nervous step backward, and Freddie scuttled out of her way, as if he thought she might douse him in guano again.

  Mr. Fountain bowed, and now that he was safely out of Rose’s way, Freddie did too. Rose hastily curtsied as low as she could without falling over. She didn’t know the correct etiquette for meeting the king, but she was sure curtsying came into it.

  King Albert walked further into the room and sat down in the water-lily chair. An expression of acute discomfort passed fleetingly over his face and was replaced with a polite mask. Royalty, obviously, did not comment on the furnishings.

  “You wished to see me, Aloysius Fountain,” the king continued quietly.

  Rose watched Mr. Fountain lick his lips. She had never seen him nervous before. “Your Majesty. I am deeply grateful that you have condescended…”

  The king waved a hand irritably. “Spare me, Aloysius. Tell me the truth. I have always felt I could trust you until now. I am here against the advice of all my counselors. Tell me that you were not involved with these scoundrels who kidnapped dearest Jane.”

  Mr. Fountain stared back at him, eye to eye. “If I had kidnapped the princess, sire, you would not have found her under a bush in the garden. She would not have been found at all.”

  The king glared at him for a moment, and Rose trembled, wondering if she was about to see her employer arrested for treason. But then the king laughed shortly. “You’re right. I have never known you to make a mistake, Aloysius. They were magicians, weren’t they? The rumors are true?”

  “I fear so, Your Majesty,” Mr. Fountain agreed. “There are so few traces. I am trying…I am in the process of moving into my apartments here, so as to investigate more easily.”

  “Good.” The king eyed Freddie and Rose expectantly, and Rose stared sideways at Freddie, wondering what she was supposed to do.

  “My apprentices, Frederick and Rose.”

  The king sat up and winced as a sharp petal drove into some portion of his anatomy. “She is a magician?” he asked interestedly. There was a slight edge of disbelief.

  Rose stared sadly at the floor. She had hoped that in her lovely new clothes she didn’t look quite so much like a guttersnipe orphan, but it didn’t seem to have worked.

  “Indeed, sire. Very talented, despite an unorthodox upbringing.” Mr. Fountain beckoned to Rose. “And Frederick is George Paxton’s boy, you may remember? Related to one of your equerries, Raphael Cressy.”

  “Another of them?” The king looked doubtfully at Freddie and shifted the water-lily chair back a little.

  “A distant relative,” Mr. Fountain added reassuringly. Freddie tried hard not to appear dim but only succeeded in looking manic, making Rose desperate to giggle. She made a strange snorting noise and flushed scarlet. She sounded like a pig in front of the king!

  The king ignored her. “Aloysius, have you found anything? Anything at all? Jane still has no idea what happened. She says she was watching the snow falling from her window, and the next thing she remembers is that she was out in it.”

  Mr. Fountain sighed. “Sire, I’m sorry. I can feel no traces of magic in the princess’s sitting room, none at all. And yet it must have been a spell. I don’t see how it can have been anything else. The garden, where she was found, there are hints there, frozen somehow into the snow…But how she was taken from one to the other, I simply don’t know.”

  “So all my guards, all our precautions, ar
e they any use?” The king was clutching the arms of the uncomfortable chair tightly, his eyes fixed on Mr. Fountain’s face.

  The magician gazed back uncomfortably. “I fear not, sire,” he admitted, his voice very quiet. “A close personal guard, perhaps—but even then, they could be defeated by a well-executed glamour…”

  King Albert sighed. Then he seemed to square his shoulders, and he inspected Rose and Freddie closely.

  “Are these the children who defeated that awful woman? The ones you told me about?”

  “Yes, sire.” Mr. Fountain’s face was watchful, and his voice was cautious. A prickly feeling ran up Rose’s spine. Something was going on here, something that her master was not quite happy about. She glanced at Freddie, but his face was politely blank. His fingernails were driven into his fists though, as if he was trying to keep himself under control.

  “Surely the best guard for my daughter would be one who could fight back against these kidnappers, assassins, whatever they are, using similar methods…” the king mused. “And one who could remain undetected. A secret guard. Perhaps a child, a girl…”

  “Sire, are you really asking—” Mr. Fountain’s voice was its usual purr, but a hint of anger was vibrating through it.

  “Yes, Aloysius, I am. This is my daughter.”

  “Rose is someone else’s daughter!” Mr. Fountain snapped. “My apprentice, my ward!”

  “I’m no one’s daughter, sir,” Rose broke in quietly. “At least, no one who wanted me.”

  “You don’t know that,” Mr. Fountain told her. “I’m responsible for you, Rose. I can’t let you do this.”

  “I’ll do it!” Freddie gasped.

  The king smiled, and for a second, Rose saw that there was a sort of magic in the palace, a powerful bond between this man and his subjects. Even she, as a destitute child, someone who had never come closer to the sovereign than seeing a coronation mug, had looked on the royal family with awe. Now, like Freddie, she would do anything for the king. Even if it meant risking her own life, which Mr. Fountain obviously thought it did.