by Zen Cho
“But you need not speak to the young female, Mary,” said Mrs. Lale. “To think of Mr. Wythe bringing the creature here! Such a thing would never have happened in Sir Stephen’s day. They do say as Moors are more liable to be inflamed than ordinary men, and I suppose it’s to be preferred to his preying on innocent girls. But it’s not what one likes to see in a decent establishment. If it were any other gentleman but young Mr. Wythe I shouldn’t have stood for it, but Lale begged me to bear it, for Sir Stephen’s sake.”
Mary was evidently tenderhearted. She could be heard suggesting that it was hard on Prunella to be denied her dinner. After all, the poor thing had a mother.
“One that could not be decent, or she would be ashamed to see her now!” said Mrs. Lale. “No, you will not have me feeling sorry for her, Mary. You never will persuade me that the creatures do not like it, for if they were decent women they should have done anything rather than come to such a pass.”
An indistinct protest from Mary was followed by Mrs. Lale’s saying sharply:
“Even if natives feel differently on these points, she ought to have learnt to conduct herself properly if she means to live in England. I do not propose to put myself out on her account, I assure you. We shall see if Mr. Wythe has the boldness to complain on his strumpet’s behalf!”
Entering the dining parlour, Mary found Prunella sitting as though she had been turned to stone. The maid was no fool—the door had given way before her hand so easily that it could not have been shut—and she lit the fire in a silence that concealed great agitation of spirits.
The young lady was so very young! What a pity if such a pretty creature were really as wicked as Mrs. Lale said! Mary was sure she saw the poor girl’s lip tremble. Of a certainty she had heard every word.
Mary need not have worried. To Prunella, bred in a setting as near a nunnery as any English establishment could be, the notion that she could be mistaken for a fallen woman was so extraordinary that it could hardly offend. In these matters she was almost as innocent as Mrs. Daubeney had alleged, and the loss of her reputation for virtue—a weighty matter for any female who had any part in society—seemed so unreal as to occasion, at first, no concern.
After her first internal exclamation (“Why, that woman thinks me some sort of Jezebel!”), she had been struck by the humour of the situation. While Mary knelt by the fireplace with her tinder, pitying the poor young lady, Prunella had been fighting down giggles:
If I sit here shrieking with laughter, they will pass from thinking me a fallen woman to believing me a lunatic, and it will end in my having to sleep in the stables!
After Mary left, however, hunger began to have its effect in sobering Prunella. Once the first amusement was over she began to see what a shocking position she was in. What a landlady of a village inn believed of her was of little account, but Prunella could not afford such misunderstandings once she reached London. That would ruin everything she planned for.
It had not occurred to her before that her olive skin and dark eyes would seem to many an argument for the laxness of her morals. Had she but known it, she might have given serious thought to how odd it would look that she was travelling alone with Mr. Wythe, even accompanied by Cawley.
It is a pity we do not look more alike, or we could have told everyone we were long-lost siblings, and no one could complain of impropriety, reflected Prunella. How absurd it all is! No one would dream of maligning me so if I were a man. I might go anywhere and do any magic I pleased if I were Peter, not Prunella. Mr. Wythe could present me to the world as his apprentice without occasioning the least remark. Why, there would be nothing to prevent my setting up as a sorcerer, once I had contrived to hatch the eggs!
She spent a full half-minute considering whether she might pass herself off as a man: it would be so very convenient! But she gave up the notion with a sigh.
It might serve for a time, but I could not sustain it for long; indeed, I would not wish to. I must make as good a fist of being female as I can, and secure my position by the means permitted to my sex. What could not I accomplish with the support of an indulgent and monied husband? I fancy I should like patronising a girls’ school. I could set up as a rival to Mrs. D, and hire poor Miss Liddiard and the rest, and let the girls work as many enchantments as they desired.
The idea diverted her, but she dismissed it to return to the crucial question: But how shall I get myself any sort of husband if everyone thinks me a strumpet? A poor orphaned female—a native, if you please! and inconveniently magical to boot—had little hope of accomplishing her aim, even if she managed to preserve her reputation.
Prunella lingered a while in the dining parlour in hope that she might benefit from Mr. Wythe’s appearance to the tune of a mutton joint or cold souse. But when it became clear that he would not return soon from his mysterious errand, she retired to her bedchamber. The Lales’ delay in giving her the room was now explained.
They thought I would be sharing his, I suppose! Prunella was glad no one else was there to see her blush. I ought to have flown into a passion directly when they did not give me my own room; that would have persuaded them of my virtue. My being meek and believing the best of everyone has led them to think me a low trollop. I shall not run into that error again!
She rummaged in her valise and brought out the treasures, scattering them upon the bed. It was now nearly dark, and the fitful light of the taper lent uncertain illumination to the room, but the blue stones seemed to glow like gems. They were hard as gems as well, nothing of the eggshell about them.
She must persuade Mr. Wythe to teach her about familiars’ eggs as soon as she could, thought Prunella. Her interest in the subject could not draw suspicion, for who would suspect such an absurdity as her possessing seven eggs? She must take great care to ensure no one ever did suspect: doubtless Jezebels were not permitted to keep familiars’ eggs, even if the eggs were their fathers’ by the ancient right of treasure-seekers.
“I suppose I must resurrect Cawley, so that she can lend me countenance,” Prunella said to the eggs. “But she is so tiresome, and such a drain on one’s magic! I am knocked up from keeping her going for a mere day, and I shall need a chaperone for a great many more days.”
It felt natural to be addressing the eggs. Prunella had a hazy notion that the spirits locked within the eggs had thoughts and feelings of their own, dormant as they seemed—that in some way they were awake to all that passed in the outside world. She was sure the squashes were their doing.
If only she could puzzle out the dratted spell that kept them locked in slumber! It was true that Prunella had as yet no clear notion what she would do with the familiars’ eggs if she could hatch them, but that they were the key to everything she desired she did not doubt. She knew she should be able to turn them to account once she fathomed the secret of them.
“What can I do to awaken you? Could I ask Mr. Wythe when he returns from the border? Perhaps I could pretend I’d read about a similar circumstance in a book.”
But even as she spoke, the idea presented itself to her, so simple and obvious that she wondered that she had not thought of it before.
The eggs and the familiars within them were from Fairy—and the border with Fairyland was almost on the doorstep of the inn. Why should not she take the eggs there, and see how they responded to proximity to their place of origin? She might kill two birds with one stone, for where better to find magic than the Fairy border, that ultimate source of England’s magic? There would surely be enough resource there to animate a thousand Cawleys.
Mr. Wythe would not like it, of course. Zacharias had held forth at length on the instability of the border, and the delicacy of his proposed experiment, by way of explaining why he did not think it suitable to bring his new student with him on his errand. But if Mrs. Daubeney’s school had taught Prunella anything, it was that magical affairs must be conducted in secret. There was no reason
Mr. Wythe need ever know of her excursion. She would go that evening, telling no one, and bring the treasures with her.
She tied the velvet pouch containing the eggs under her skirts. Then, on a whim, she drew out from her valise a chain Mrs. Daubeney had given her when she was a little girl, and the carved silver ball that was her only other legacy from her parents. She would wear the orb on her neck, she decided, in remembrance of her poor father.
11
ZACHARIAS SUFFERED ANOTHER attack of his complaint that evening—an acute paroxysm, all the fiercer for the fact that the previous fit had been interrupted by the attempt on his life at the Blue Boar. It was late when the spasm released its hold upon him, permitting him to sleep. It seemed an outrageous cruelty on the part of an unfeeling world to wake him two hours later.
“I am sorry, Zacharias; I should not have woken you if I could have avoided it,” said Sir Stephen. “But if you will pick up runaway orphans, you must expect never to have a moment’s rest.” The humorous tenor of Sir Stephen’s words was belied by the anxiety on his face.
“What is it?” said Zacharias.
“Miss Gentleman is going to the border,” said Sir Stephen. “And if we do not catch her, I fear she will do herself a mischief.”
The fields were eerily still in the moonlight. No villager in Fobdown Purlieu would be abroad at this time for love or money. The witching hour might mean little elsewhere, but next to Fairyland, only a fool did not tread carefully at this most magical time of the night.
“She left the inn with that wicked old case under her arm,” said Sir Stephen. “She cannot mean to run away to Fairyland, surely? She seems too modish a young lady for such an old-fashioned yearning.”
A doomed longing for Fairy was a magician’s affliction—no female had ever been known to suffer it. Even among thaumaturges it was an outdated passion. To the modern thaumaturge magic was too prosaic a thing to move him to indulge in such irrationality.
“It may not be surprising in a young female who has learnt all her magic from old books,” said Zacharias. He would certainly arrange a donation to Mrs. Daubeney’s library, he reflected.
“There she is!” cried Sir Stephen.
The shimmering light of the border could be glimpsed above the dark mass of the hedgerow. Silhouetted against the light was the form of a young woman. Sir Stephen vanished into the night. Zacharias started forward.
“Miss Gentleman!”
• • •
PRUNELLA had begun to regret going to the border.
It had not been difficult to find Fairy. The moment she had stepped out of the inn, magic had gathered like an itch along the bridge of her nose, growing stronger as she neared the source of England’s magic.
When she saw the unmistakable glow above the hedge, the stones in the pouch tied to her skirts had suddenly taken on an extraordinary weight, as though they would drag her to the ground if they could.
After that first promising response, however, Prunella’s encounter with the border had proved disappointing. She arranged the eggs upon the sward so that they reflected the light of Fairy, in case that might provoke some reaction, but this had no effect whatsoever. She chanted a spell or two—a growing charm all the girls secretly used on their plots in the kitchen garden (a quiet but ferocious competition obtained among the girls as to who might produce the finest carrots), and then an awakening spell she had often employed for her sluggish charges at the school. But the eggs regarded this not at all.
She could feel the presence of magic all around her—every blade of grass, every inch of the sod, had absorbed a prodigious quantity of enchantery over the years—but somehow she could not grasp it.
She took to pressing each of the familiars’ eggs, one by one, against the border itself. The light had a surprising solidity: when she pressed a stone against the border she felt a thrill go through the egg and along her arm, and then a surrender, as the wall of light gave way before the pressure. But after the first relaxation it went no further, and the eggs looked exactly as they had before.
Prunella was nearly out of patience when Zacharias arrived, and she was compelled hastily to return the stones to the pouch tied beneath her skirts.
“What are you doing here?” she said ungraciously.
“What am I—?” sputtered Zacharias. “Pray, what are you doing here? Have you any notion of the risk you run by coming here at this hour? You would not be the first unwary mortal to be picked up by a roc or kidnapped by a pooka while straying too close to Fairyland.”
“I shouldn’t have thought anything like a roc or a pooka had been in these parts for a hundred years,” said Prunella. “Why, there is nothing in your border! We were told all the magic in England flowed from this source, but there is hardly any magic here at all.”
“Did not you observe the cork?” said Zacharias.
It was a challenge to find it amid the glare of the border, but Zacharias located it, and guided Prunella’s hand to the cork lodged mid-air. She looked puzzled.
“What is it?” she said.
“A joke,” said Zacharias sourly. “The Fairy Court has blocked the flow of magic from its realm into ours, and it has had the goodness to leave this calling card. There is a remarkable buildup of magic on the other side, as no doubt you have sensed. I wonder how they manage!”
“Oh,” cried Prunella involuntarily. “So there is no magic to be had here at all?”
Zacharias stared.
“Miss Gentleman,” he said, “I beg you will tell me what brought you here—and I would counsel you to be honest, if you still desire me to take you to London.”
Prunella had no intention of telling Zacharias about the eggs. She would be powerless to oppose him if he decided to remove them from her, circumstanced as she was in a remote village, far from anyone who might take her part. But she could not think of any convincing falsehood to explain her actions—so the truth, or some of it, would have to do. Glad that the darkness of night concealed the colour in her cheeks, she said:
“It is Cawley, you see! Though you might not think it, she requires a vast amount of resource, and it is beyond me to sustain her for the duration of our journey. I had thought I might retire her once we were away from the school, but—”
She hesitated. Prunella might be a brazen hussy, as the school’s cross-grained Cook had told her many a time, but she was not quite so indelicate as to wish to inform a handsome young gentleman that she had been mistaken for his mistress. Since there seemed no alternative, however, she told him what had occurred at the inn, concluding:
“So I thought I ought to try extracting magic from the border. I beg you will not be too vexed with me! You must know how provoking it is to be checked by a lack of resource when one wishes to cast even the simplest enchantment.”
“I regret that you have been so insulted,” said Zacharias slowly. He felt, with a pang of guilt, that he had not given serious thought to ensuring Prunella was shielded from offence. The vulnerability of her position was as clear to him as it could be to Prunella. “You are certainly right that we must resurrect your chaperone, and I shall see to it. I wish you had expressed your concerns to me, instead of racing off to the border at the middle of the night.”
He raised his hand when Prunella opened her mouth, and continued:
“I can quite see why you did not wish to confide in me, of all people! But if I am to be your instructor, and you my apprentice, there must be complete confidence between us. We shall meet with enough opposition from the world—if we are to make a success of your education, we must contrive to be allies, and trust one another. Come, can we agree on that?”
He held out his hand with a slight smile.
If Zacharias’s air of melancholy increased his appeal to susceptible young ladies, a relaxation in that melancholy scarcely injured it. His smile, and the warmth and gentleness of his manner, were al
l the more attractive for forming a contrast to his usual reserve. Prunella dropped her eyes, feeling foolish, but she shook his hand and murmured that she was very much obliged—would do her best.
“Thank you,” said Zacharias gravely. “May I see you back to the inn, Miss Gentleman? We have been fortunate to avoid any incident, but I cannot think it wise to linger at such an hour.”
Even as he spoke, a shadow appeared behind Prunella. It began as an inky splotch of darkness upon the light of the border, and it grew.
“Mr. Wythe?” said Prunella. At his fixed stare, she turned to look behind her, and gasped. “What is that?”
“A creature on the other side,” said Zacharias.
They called this the witching time: magical creatures were at their most unpredictable at this hour. Magicians had been known to vanish forever into the darkness when they were so foolhardy as to venture upon nighttime visits to the border.
Zacharias grasped Prunella’s arm and shoved her behind him, cursing himself inwardly. He had learnt the night before that he had enemies whose notions of justice would not stop at murder. At least one of them knew his movements well enough to follow him from London to Hampshire, and had nearly managed to get past his defences. Who knew what other stratagems his enemies might have devised for his confusion?
“Who goes there?” he cried, but he was already bracing himself to attack when a voice spoke in tones of rumbling discontent:
“Mana pintu ni?”
The voice was familiar, though Zacharias could not immediately recall when he had heard it before. On the other side of the border appeared the black shadow of a claw-like hand. It tapped the border three times. The sheet of light swung open like a door, and an aged woman scrambled down the hedgerow.
“Why, it is only a little old lady!” said Prunella.
That the arrival was a foreigner was clear from her brown skin and her manner of dress. She wore a tunic fastened with brooches that sparkled in the light from the border; beneath this a cloth wrapped around her person served as a skirt. Her attire seemed too light for the chill of a spring evening, however. The elderly female shivered. The next moment a cloak appeared out of thin air, and she folded it around her shoulders.