“He’s arriving home later.”
The captain looked doubtful. “That uncle came up awful sudden. Maybe I’ll wait for him. What’s his name?”
“Um . . . Mr. Bunbury. He’s coming home late. Really, really late.”
“Uh-huh.” The captain sucked in the sides of his cheeks, and chewed on them thoughtfully. The soldiers arresting Lizbet’s father had already stamped away down the street. The remainder of the captain’s patrol shuffled their feet restlessly, cursed at the mice, or tried to skewer them with their bayonets.
“All right, missy,” the captain said at last. “You’re on your own for now. But the Magister of Children will get informed of this on the morn, and he’ll dispatch a marshal ’round to chat up this convenient uncle of yours.” He waggled a bony finger at her. “Make sure Mr. Whad-ya-callum is here to make an account of himself, understand?” He shouted to the rest of his soldiers, “Hustle your haunches, my scruffies, we’ve other mice to kill tonight.”
Inside, the house was dark, chilly, silent. Lizbet threw a shovelful of coal from the scuttle onto the banked embers in the kitchen stove, and worked the bellows on them until they glowed. Last night’s supper kettle was still sitting on the stovetop; she removed a stove lid and set the iron kettle over the opening to warm.
From the stove she lit a taper, and from the taper she lit the kerosene lamps in the kitchen, the parlor, and her bedroom. By the time the stove had begun to warm the house, the savor of pork sausages, sauerkraut, and caraway perfumed the air. The house should have felt friendlier.
Instead, it felt empty and eerie, like a portrait painting from which someone had erased the sitter’s face.
When the leftover dinner was hot, Lizbet ladled out a bowl and sat down at the kitchen table. She lifted a spoonful to her lips. Then, without eating, she set it back with trembling hand. She pushed the bowl away. She began crying helplessly. Every breath was a sob. Every sob made her chest ache as if it would tear apart.
What was she to do?
Since they had arrived in Abalia, her father’s attempts at magic had done nothing but go wrong. The ill-tempered talking goose that insulted passersby until someone shot and roasted it. The clockwork woodpeckers that pulled the nails out of buildings, thinking they were grubs. The love potion that made Johan, the smith’s boy, become impassioned with his own left great toe. Even months later, he sometimes kissed it on the sly, when he thought no one was watching.
Not that Gerhard’s other ventures had been any more successful. The year before, when they lived in Padz, Gerhard had promised friends that his contacts among the aristocracy would steer juicy sinecures, emoluments, and offices their way. Nothing of the sort happened, and Gerhard and Lizbet had to flee because Gerhard had lavishly borrowed of his friends’ silver to work his wiles, and could not pay it back.
Like the time, fourteen years ago, when he promised the daughter of the Comte d’Hille that he was a traveling prince in disguise. The Comte’s daughter believed him. The result was Lizbet.
Lizbet loved her father. He was funny and charming and kind and attentive, always willing to listen to her, or read to her, or get her a palomino pony for her tenth birthday, with a wavy mane that hung almost the ground. Even if the pony had to leave two weeks later, when Gerhard had no money to finish paying for it.
She loved her father, but she had no illusions about him.
However, Gerhard had never been in trouble as bad as this before. How was she supposed to get him out of jail?
Lizbet cried harder.
The soldier captain had said that her mother should go beg the Margrave in the morning. Margrave Hengest Wolftrow ruled Abalia. He ruled the surrounding boroughs and rural counties, and was Wildgrave over the wilderness beyond, called the Abalian Pale. The Pale stretched from the Falls of the Nur to the high country, the timberline, and the snowy peaks of the Montagnes du Monde. It was said that that in Wolftrow’s youth, fresh from conquests of the Bulgars, Tuscans, Catalans, and Berbers, he had ventured across the Montagnes into the lands beyond. He was the only man who had ever done this. Or, at least, the only one who had ever returned.
In Abalia, Hengest Wolftrow’s word was absolute and unquestioned. He answered only to the distant and half-legendary Empress Juliana, called the Pixie Queen, who sat on the Throne of Charlemagne.
Wolftrow could free Lizbet’s father from prison. If he wanted.
If Gerhard were not released, Lizbet’s fate was certain. She would never be allowed to live alone, without an adult. When “Uncle Bunbury” was found to be a fib, Lizbet would be taken to the Orphan Asylum. In the Asylum, the proctors beat you if you so much as smiled. Or so people said. They beat you even if you didn’t smile, just on principle. There were rumored to be gangs of older orphans who ran the Asylum from the inside. The younger boys were sent into the streets at night to steal. Even worse things were done with the girls.
Lizbet shook her head. Awful, awful, awful. And most awful of all, once in the Asylum, she would be trapped there. Any chance to free her father would be lost.
She hadn’t much time. She would go to the Margrave in the morning and beg for her father’s freedom.
Lizbet dried her eyes with her napkin and finished her dinner, thinking about what she would say to the Margrave.
Before climbing into bed that night, she changed into her nightgown and knelt beside the bed to say her prayers.
After she thanked God for her supper, peace in the realm, and the health of the Empress (she did this every night), she prayed for her father, and herself, and for success with the Margrave in the morning. “I need specific advice,” she added. She knew God couldn’t reply. Not at the moment. “I’ll talk to you soon about that, okay?”
She blew out the lamp and crept into bed. She could hear the rustle of mice in the walls. They must be in everyone’s house by now. Tormented by restless thoughts and fears, Lizbet tossed and turned for what seemed like hours before falling into an uneasy sleep.
Chapter 2
Lizbet awoke before sunrise. She washed her face in the basin of water by her bedside, shivering from the cold. She dressed in a hurry, wrapped a makeshift breakfast of bread and cheese in a handkerchief for later, and stuck it in the pocket of her pinafore. When she stepped out the front door, the town was still dark, only a little paleness on the eastern horizon promising dawn. Clouds concealed the stars. The raw air cut through her clothes.
Lizbet nervously glanced this way and that. Kidnapping or robbery might befall a solitary child.
Or worse. In Abalia, at the edge of the known world, even the winds were perilous. At age fourteen, Lizbet was almost out of danger, but on windy days younger children risked having their souls blown out of their bodies by the winds that howled down from the Montagnes du Monde. Wise parents kept young ones indoors when it was blustery out, but every year a few were caught by a sudden gust and their souls were blown away. One cannot live without a soul. A child deprived of one became weak and wan, and eventually perished, the boys dying of asthenia, the girls dying of the vapors. With the passing of years, however, souls become ever more tightly bound to the flesh. Adolescents were at little risk, and adults not at all.
At this hour before dawn, the air was cold but still. Lizbet hurried down Abalia’s narrow avenues between high stone buildings. Her footsteps echoed forlornly in the empty streets. Now and then a mouse skittered across the cobblestones or regarded Lizbet with tiny dark eyes from a curb.
She arrived at the Cathedral of St. Dessicata as the bells in the tower began ringing for Lauds. The first cocks were crowing in the distance. Lizbet crept in and found an empty confessional. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she said to the hooded priest behind the screen.
Confession done, she found a seat in a pew. She waited impatiently through the Benedictus, a few intercessory prayers, and the Lord’s Prayer. Only a scattering of worshipers
were present: some old women, a few priests, and a score of boys from the Orphan Asylum, who crowded into two pews near the front, guarded by proctors. They wore the ugly yellow clothing orphans always wore. People said it was so they might be easily caught if they ran away.
At the priest’s bidding, Lizbet joined the queue of people waiting to take the Eucharist. When she reached the front, she crossed herself, knelt, and opened her mouth. The host was dry and bland on her tongue. She sneezed, and hurried back to her seat as quickly as she decently could. She had so many questions! She hoped the right Person answered.
Communion was always a gamble: Lizbet never knew whether she would get to speak to God the Father, Christ the Son, or the Holy Spirit.
She liked the Holy Spirit best: a warm, silent presence that secretly healed the wounds of sin and sadness in Lizbet’s heart, and filled her with serenity and love and a determination to be a better Lizbet.
Christ the Son was nice enough, but He always overwhelmed Lizbet with well-meaning advice of questionable usefulness, everything from carpentry tips to how to cast out devils, when all Lizbet usually needed was a sympathetic ear.
This morning she found herself connected with God the Father. As it so often happened, he was in a mood to chat her ear off. He rattled on about the poor quality of souls lately, problems with impertinent angels, setbacks in Heaven’s war with the armies of Hell, and a hundred other complaints. Lizbet couldn’t squeeze a word in. She became fearful that the host would dissolve to nothing, and all communication with Heaven lost, before she got to ask her questions.
Finally, she got an opening. “. . . and the last three sunsets just haven’t looked right,” God said somewhat querulously. “Too much pink, not enough peach. Or maybe they needed fewer clouds. What do you think, Elizabeth?”
God was the only one who ever called her “Elizabeth.”
“Lord, I have to ask you something!”
“Hm? Oh, of course. I’m sorry, here I am, going on and on about nothing. No consideration. What can I help you with, Elizabeth?”
“They put my father in the Houses of Correction.”
“Yes, I know. Shocking. Both of you have my sympathy. Did you know that the experience of having to cope with adversity strengthens the soul? It builds character. Read any of the classical authors. They all agree on that.”
Lizbet frowned. Sometimes God just missed the point. “That’s great,” she said, “but right now, I mainly want to get my father out.”
“Of course. And that daunting task has my blessings. Good luck, Elizabeth! I’ll be cheering you on!” The Divine voice glowed with good will and enthusiasm.
“I need your advice though. What should I do?”
“If you won’t think it selfish of me,” God said, “might I suggest prayer? Novenas are recommended in times of crisis. Have you heard of the ‘storm novena’? ‘Pray up a storm,’ as they say! Let me explain . . .”
The host was almost gone. Desperate, Lizbet interrupted, “I’ll pray as much as you want, but please, please tell me what exactly I should do to get my father out of prison!”
“Hm,” God said. “I believe the Margrave could release your father. Have you considered asking him? Politely, of course.”
“Yes,” Lizbet said impatiently, “I’m going to ask him, but how do I get him to do what I want?”
“Well, if it were me, I’d threaten him with a plague of boils.”
“But it isn’t you, it’s me!”
“. . . limits . . . choices . . .” God’s voice was growing fainter.
Summoning her courage, Lizbet shouted, “Can you threaten him for me?”
Silence.
Lizbet looked around. Everyone else in the cathedral was staring at her. Had she actually yelled the last part aloud? Her cheeks burned. “Sorry,” she said. Staring at the floor, she scuttled down the pew and almost ran up the nave to the door.
She doubted God would really curse the Margrave with boils. That kind of thing happened in Scripture, but all sorts of things happened in Scripture that you never saw actually happen.
When she left the cathedral, morning light was beginning to creep over the passes between the peaks of the Montagnes du Monde. A few horse-drawn wagons and goat carts rattled over the cobblestones. The scent of mutton sausage grilling beside a vendor’s cart made Lizbet’s mouth water and reminded her that she hadn’t eaten yet. She unwrapped her bread and cheese and gobbled them greedily as she walked.
Lizbet’s next stop was the Margrave’s Palace.
The rococo limestone and marble of the Margrave’s Palace dominated the center of Abalia. The Chambers of Vengeance, where dour magisters in white powdered wigs and red satin robes bound men over to guillotine, prison, or outlawry, stood to its left. The Houses of Correction stood to its right. Three stories of flint blocks quarried from the Montagnes du Monde, it was as square and gray as a building stone itself. Tiny barred windows hid whatever deeds occurred inside.
The gates to the Palace were guarded by a pink-cheeked youth little older than Lizbet herself, in orange and blue pantaloons and sleeves that puffed out of his silver cuirass. He barred her way with a halberd. “What’s your business in the Palace, pretty thing?” he asked. He raised an eyebrow.
Lizbet flushed. She usually left the house only in the company of an adult chaperon. Strangers didn’t dare address her as “pretty thing.” “I want to see the Margrave,” she said.
“But does the Margrave want to see you?” the boy asked. His halberd didn’t budge.
Lizbet’s worries had been all about speaking with the Margrave. She hadn’t imagined she might not even be able to get to the Palace door.
“I need to see the Margrave,” she insisted. “It’s important.” She didn’t want to admit that her father was imprisoned. Not to this boy.
“So you say,” the guard replied. He licked his lips. “But perhaps you are lying. Perhaps you are the witch of the Grove of Frenzy in disguise, come to assassinate the Margrave? Prove to me you’re not.”
Lizbet couldn’t speak. Of course she wasn’t a witch! The accusation was so absurd she didn’t know how to meet it.
The guard rested the butt of his halberd on the ground, bent close to her, and said, “I’ve an idea. Witches, not being normal flesh and blood, aren’t warm and sensible, like us people. If you’re a witch, your flesh is likely cold as the wind. Give us a buss, cute bottom, and if your lips are warm, that’s proof you’re no witch.” He smiled, parted his lips, and bent toward her.
Lizbet stepped back. The guard made a sour expression. “Ah, a witch then. Be off, pretty witch. Until you can prove otherwise.”
“You just want to take indecent liberties!” Lizbet exclaimed. “You don’t really think I’m a witch!”
“‘Indecent liberties’?” The guard spat on the ground. “Fancy words, for a none-too-fancy lass. Girls better than you are being kissed all over this town.” His eyes looked her up and down, dwelling too long where they should not. Lizbet threw up her arms to cover her bosom. “You’re not nobility,” he said. “You’re a common girl, like I’m a common lad. You’re not too good to kiss me.”
Lizbet had never imagined such a situation, or such insolence. Hot anger filled her.
“I’m here to get my father freed,” she said, clenching her fists until the knuckles were white. “He’s in the Houses of Corrections. His name is Gerhard Lenz. He’s a magician. He’s the one who cast the rain of mice yesterday.”
The guard’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t say.”
“I am his daughter,” Lizbet said, meeting his gaze, “and I know his craft. Let me in the Palace this instant, or I will change your fingers and toes to mice, your nose to a vole, your tongue to a rat, and then call down a rain of cats and terriers to eat you!”
The guard’s pink cheeks turned splotchy. “Uh . . .”
Lizbet
braced her legs, rolled her eyes back in her head, and raised her arms to the sky. She made her voice as low and throaty as she could, and shouted, “HY . . . ZY . . . HINE—!”
“All right, all right, stop!” the guard said quickly. He nervously examined his fingers. “Just go in. Forget what I said.”
Lizbet needed no second invitation. She brushed past him through the gateway.
Behind its iron fence, the Margrave’s Palace was set fifty feet back from the street. A wide flagstone walk led across lawns just turning the luminous green of early spring. Lizbet was halfway to the Palace door when the guard’s voice yelled behind her, “You don’t have a cute bottom, anyway! It’s as big as a haystack!”
Lizbet swiveled. “HY . . . !”
“All right, I’m sorry!”
Lizbet hurried up the walk. Her father hadn’t taught her any magic. Her “spell” had been all a bluff. Like Uncle Bunbury. Over the last day Lizbet was piling one lie on top of another.
She was shocked by herself. She worried that the next time she spoke to God, He’d have something to say about it.
Inside, it took a moment for Lizbet’s eyes to adjust to the Palace’s dim anteroom. Men in military dress or frock coats hurried here and there. Directly in front of her, a balding fellow in uniform presided behind a table. He gestured her over. “State your business with the Palace,” he snapped when she approached. He glowered at her through steel-rim spectacles.
“I’m here to see the Margrave,” Lizbet said. “It’s about—”
“Sit there,” the man said. He pointed to a row of benches against the wall, where a dozen anxious-looking commoners huddled together. “Wait your turn. The Margrave will be seeing petitioners and complainants at noon, or after.”
Her success with the guard outside had given Lizbet a little courage. Instead of going over to the bench, she said, “I need to see him now. It’s about Gerhard Lenz.”
The man at the table was unimpressed. “Isn’t it always? Mouse damage is the popular complaint this morning. Sit with the others, wait your turn.” He motioned to another person who had come in behind her. “Out of the way, little lady.”
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