I CANNOT BEGIN to describe our gratification at your condescension, Mr. Wythe,” declared Mrs. Daubeney. “No Sorcerer Royal has ever showed any interest in the magical education of females. The girls feel the honour of your visit extremely, I assure you.”
Mrs. Daubeney was not at all what Zacharias had expected. Knowing what he did of feminine magic, he had envisioned a grey-haired, discreet sort of woman, wise in the ways of girls—horsey, perhaps—but certainly not magical.
Instead Mrs. Daubeney possessed all the glamour that the ignorant layman might have ascribed to her. She was tall and handsome, with silver-streaked black hair and a nose tending towards the beaky. She dressed in a picturesque style, with a great deal of purple and velvet. If spells could be cast by pure drama of gesture, she would have been a veritable sorceress. She was perfectly fitted for running a school for gentlewitches, however, for she did not in fact appear to have any magical ability whatsoever. What she did possess was a brain as keenly alert to the main chance as any politician’s.
“Of course, dear Sir Stephen—what a loss to the nation!” Mrs. Daubeney’s voice dropped, and she looked solemn. “And yet, you know, he visited the thaumaturgical schools at Seaton and Yarrow, but never seemed to think of our magical girls. I am glad you recognise their importance, Mr. Wythe, for if we continue to neglect our girls, the nation will suffer for it!”
Zacharias had been brooding on the challenge awaiting him at the border, and the troubles he had left behind him in town, but this embarrassed him out of his abstraction. He muttered some civil platitude: he believed the magical education of females deserved more attention—commended Mrs. Daubeney for her sterling work.
“It is a shamefully neglected subject, and I fear we will repent of our inattention,” said Mrs. Daubeney. “What sad tales have I not heard of females driven mad by their magic! Of the sorrow they have caused their unfortunate family and friends! Yet what do we do to prevent these tragedies? We scold our girls if we catch them in spell-casting; we forbid them from reading grimoires—but we do no more, and are shocked when we find they have learnt night-spells from Nurse, and cantrips from Cook.
“If a girl-child makes her dolls dance, her parents admire her cleverness, and say it is of no account, for little Susan will soon outgrow such amusements. If, when she is turned fifteen, she is discovered in charms to curl her hair or brighten her eyes, she is reproved for her vanity, and told she must stop, lest she is thought fast. But no effort is made to make her understand the seriousness of her breach, and she comes to womanhood believing there is no harm in indulging in minor magics, provided she does it discreetly. And what is the result?”
Zacharias was at a loss for a reply. He knew, of course, what the Society would have him say. Magic was too strong a force for women’s frail bodies—too potent a brew for their weak minds—and so, especially at a time when everyone must be anxious to preserve what magical resource England still possessed, magic must be forbidden to women.
Yet Zacharias had seen too many hags in kitchens and nurseries, too many herbwomen and hedgewitches in villages around the country, not to know that women were perfectly capable of magic—at least, women of the labouring classes. Among their betters it was genteel to turn a blind eye to such illicit activities. One would not like one’s own wife or daughter to indulge in witchcraft, but it did not serve to be overscrupulous when feminine magic could prove so convenient in one’s servants.
Fortunately Mrs. Daubeney was ready with her own answer.
“In consequence of our criminal lenience, our girls are committing acts of magic every day!” she said impressively. “You may think I exaggerate, sir, but we see it in all our new arrivals. They are so accustomed to easing their way with little charms and devices, they cannot easily leave off. It is no small matter, changing a girl’s fixed habits, but we have learnt a great deal about how the change may be effected.”
“Indeed?” said Zacharias. “How—”
“I had hoped you would ask!” exclaimed Mrs. Daubeney, delighted. “But stay—why should I bore you with explanations, when I can show you? We have a class in session at this very moment, a class of our eldest girls, to whom we have imparted such a sense of their duty of restraint, as I believe you will not find in any other crop of magical females in this country.”
She leapt to her feet as though the idea had just occurred to her, though in fact she had been resolved upon it from the moment she heard of the Sorcerer Royal’s visit. For Mrs. Daubeney had grand plans for her school.
Miranda Daubeney had begun life as rather a silly woman, and she might have continued as such if not for the lucky turn, twenty years ago, of her husband’s dying and leaving an encumbered estate. She had been compelled to advertise for paying lodgers, and it was this necessity, painful as it had been at the time, that transformed the entire course of her life.
Mr. Hilary Gentleman had seemed a dubious proposition when he first applied for lodgings—haggard and tanned from his roving life in India, with a child tucked under his arm and a wicked-looking old leather valise he would never put down for a moment. But he had offered such a substantial sum that Mrs. Daubeney could not turn him away, and when she came to know him better, she did not regret her decision.
In time she had begun to nurture a secret hope that she might become something more than a friend to dear Gentleman. She had even grown fond of his child, despite the dusky tint to its skin, and its unfortunate predilections. Even then Prunella had begun to show troubling signs of being magical—signs which she needed the help of a mother to curb. Mrs. Daubeney would not have objected to being called upon to discharge that responsibility, but alas! It was not to be.
Mrs. Daubeney would never know what had driven Gentleman to drown himself, for the brief note he left, confiding Prunella to her care, explained nothing. She could not bring herself to send the child away: it would have to go into the poorhouse, or be boarded with some poor widow and like as not die of neglect, for Mrs. Daubeney could not find out that Gentleman had possessed a relation in the world.
But Prunella could not have an ordinary nurse, who would be frightened by her making little people out of soot, and drawing birds upon the wall that flapped and squawked as though they were alive. Mrs. Daubeney was puzzled to know what to do with her, when by chance she made the acquaintance of a village woman who had formerly been employed in a lord’s nursery.
Prunella’s eccentric ways disconcerted Mrs. Tomlinson not at all: “She’s an uncanny creature, but then so was my lord’s second girl, Annabel, and I never had any trouble with her. You need only be firm with them, ma’am, and show you won’t stand for their wickedness, and they will settle down soon enough. Annabel is a great lady now; she married a lord herself, and you may trust she never thinks of doing any magic now she is grown.”
Mrs. Tomlinson had proved so capable in caring for Prunella that when the squire’s wife confided in Mrs. Daubeney that her cousin Stapleton was sadly troubled by her daughter’s propensities—“she acts strangely at times, and they fear it may be magic”—Mrs. Daubeney had no hesitation in suggesting that this cousin should send her daughter to Mrs. Daubeney, who would see to it that the child’s propensities were checked. For Cousin Stapleton had married a man with twenty thousand a year.
It soon became evident that Mrs. Daubeney could not rely on Mrs. Tomlinson alone to educate the Misses Stapleton of the world. She found herself mistresses from the ranks of impoverished gentlewomen who knew from bitter experience how to suppress and conceal their talents from a world that wanted none of them.
To Mrs. Daubeney’s own surprise, it seemed she had a remarkable facility for management, and eventually she found herself in possession of a small but thriving girls’ school. Five years after she had taken in Prunella, she refused an offer of marriage from a widowed thaumaturge with three daughters, and only regretted that her decision was likely to deprive her of three potential students.
She was no longer content with being mistress of a small school, however. Mrs. Daubeney dreamt of an establishment for the education of magical females on an unprecedented scale, and she had every intention of making the Sorcerer Royal’s visit count to that purpose.
“Miss Liddiard is teaching our oldest girls the Seven Shackles today,” she announced when they arrived at the classroom door. “If practised regularly, the exercise will extinguish seven of the most common types of magic of which the mortal frame is capable. It is an admirable device, and I beg you will not be misled by its appearance. We shall find the girls droning on together, looking half-asleep, but you must not think our girls are usually so dull!”
She flung the door open with a flourish, revealing a scene of utter pandemonium.
A cluster of girls clutched at one another, shrieking in dismay. At the other end of the room, a young lady crouched behind a barricade of desks. She had one arm wrapped around a wriggling girl’s neck, and a small hand clamped over the girl’s mouth, stifling protest (which the captive nonetheless continued to issue with unabated vigour).
The young lady did not regard this. She was engrossed in blocking the hexes flung by another girl, who stood in the middle of the classroom screaming curses, her eyes blazing with red light, and all her red hair standing on end.
Mrs. Daubeney looked for a moment as if she considered fainting, but the situation was too dire for that. She gasped:
“Prunella! What is the meaning of this?”
“Oh, Mrs. Daubeney!” said the young lady. “Pray summon one of the mistresses! If someone could deflect Miss Midsomer’s hexes, I would be able to deal with Henrietta in a manner less injurious to her dignity. There, Henny, I know it is provoking, but I cannot very well release you, for you know you will try to strike Miss Midsomer dumb, and that would not be at all gentlemanly!”
“Mr. Wythe, I do not know what to say,” stammered Mrs. Daubeney. “What you must think of us!”
Zacharias stared. Prunella was light enough for exertion to lend her cheeks a brilliant colour, but that she was not of wholly European extraction was clear from the warm hue of her skin and the profusion of dark curls tumbling over the back of her drab brown dress. Her small, three-cornered face was screwed up in a look of intense concentration that did not injure its beauty.
But it was not this alone that fixed Zacharias’s attention. Prunella was stopping Henrietta’s mouth not only with her hand, but with a spell—a spell hastily cobbled together, but of such ingenious construction that he would not have expected to see it from anyone but a trained thaumaturge. That she was contriving to maintain the spell while blocking Miss Midsomer’s hexes—which were also more advanced than Zacharias would have expected from a schoolgirl—was nothing short of extraordinary.
Prunella cried in vexation:
“Oh, don’t flap! Is that the Sorcerer Royal you have got there? He might be so good as to put a stop to Miss Midsomer’s antics, and grant me some respite!”
“To be sure!” said Zacharias, starting. “I beg your pardon.”
It was simple enough for him to draw a barrier around Miss Midsomer to contain her endeavours, but in fact it was not needed, for both girls suddenly lost their appetite for battle at the words “Sorcerer Royal.” Miss Midsomer stopped mid-screech and stood staring at Zacharias with a purple face, as though she had swallowed one of her own curses. Henrietta tore Prunella’s hand from her mouth, shrieked, “Oh, it is not!” and swooned to the floor.
“Good gracious!” said Prunella. She added, in a tone of reproach:
“If you were going to strike anyone down it should have been Miss Midsomer, for she was most provoking, and she knows perfectly well Miss Stapleton cannot help doing magic when she feels strongly on any subject.”
“Prunella!” said Mrs. Daubeney chidingly, but Zacharias was bending over Henrietta.
“This is Miss Stapleton?” he said. “Miss Henrietta Stapleton? But I know her father.”
“I do not see how that helps matters. I expect he will be very cross to hear you have hexed his daughter,” said Prunella severely.
She knelt and raised her fallen friend’s head with all the gentleness her manner towards Zacharias had lacked: “Poor Henny! To think that you were defending the Sorcerer Royal, only to be so served out by the wicked creature!”
“I did not—” Zacharias began, but he had no opportunity to complete his defence, for Henrietta sat up and said:
“Prunella, if you do not stop upbraiding Mr. Wythe, I declare I really will faint, and I expect I will do myself an injury, and then you will be sorry for being so shrewish!”
Whereupon she burst into tears.
• • •
PRUNELLA was more relieved than not to be sent to her room in disgrace. She had not a high tolerance for sentiment, and within five minutes of Henrietta’s dissolving into tears, half the class had followed her. Prunella had been rather enjoying herself till then, but when faced with a class of upset girls the fun of the affray had drained out of her, leaving her cold and uncertain. She had been in scrapes often enough, but she had never seen anything quite like the look on Mrs. Daubeney’s face.
She was uneasy as she let herself into her little room, tucked in the draughty east wing of the school. On any ordinary day she would have taken advantage of the unexpected luxury of leisure to take a nap: sleep could not be overvalued by one who rose at five and often did not get to bed till eleven. But she was too restless. The look on Mrs. Daubeney’s face would recur, though of course Mrs. Daubeney could not blame Prunella for her students’ bad temper—could she?
“She ought to pick better-humoured girls to instruct, or at least teach them to avoid politics once she has them,” Prunella said to herself. “Mrs. D is always saying that a female ought not to know what to think about anything, but ought to do that prettily. Not but what she is shockingly bad at that herself!”
As she paced her room she caught a glimpse of herself in the small, cracked green looking glass on the wall. Her dress bore grey patches of dust, which must have been acquired in the attics. Clothed in this, she had appeared before the Sorcerer Royal!
Not that she gave a fig what the Sorcerer Royal thought. Only it was provoking to have looked so bedraggled before such a very handsome young gentleman. (Prunella saw now what had lent Henrietta such fire in arguing her cause against Clarissa’s. A single dinner party would quite suffice to make any susceptible young lady fall desperately in love with a gentleman as beautiful and melancholy as Mr. Wythe.)
“Bother those attics!” she said.
But in a moment Prunella had forgotten all about Mr. Wythe, for her own words reminded her of the attic she had been cleaning. In that large, cold, cluttered room sat a piece of old tarpaulin—and under it, a certain valise.
• • •
THE valise could not conveniently be hidden under her arm or her dress, so Prunella ran all the way from the attics down to her room. Her pulse beat high in her throat, though no one was about.
“It is not theft,” she thought. “Not truly theft, if it is really my father’s.” If it was not her father’s valise she would return it to the attic, of course, but the only way she might find out was by looking into it.
In her bedroom she dragged a chair over to the door. Having secured herself as much privacy as was possible for her, she opened the valise, sneezing as the dust flew from its surface.
How odd she felt! But hexes always excited the stomach. She was not nervous about what she might find within the valise. Like as not it was not her father’s at all, and had nothing of interest in it. Indeed, why should she care if it was her father’s, since she had never known him?
Despite these brave prophylactics against disappointment, Prunella was inclined to be crestfallen when she drew out of the valise a sheaf of old papers—newspapers and torn receipts, of no account. But the next thing was a worn old journal, bearing the name Hilary Reuel Gentleman, proving she was no thief—and then a black velvet pouch, which promised to be of even greater interest.
Still, this was so little that when she had emptied the valise she overturned it and shook it out, to make sure she had missed nothing. Something clinked on the floor, and would have rolled away into the darkness under the bed if Prunella had not caught it.
It was a small, heavy silver ball, engraved all over with intricate curlicues and dots. Among the swooping strokes and flourishes could be discerned the occasional exotic flower and animal, represented in miniature. Strange hues gleamed upon its surface: first it was silver, but then it was illuminated by a purple light, then green, then blue, the colours following each other in quick succession.
The weight of the ball in her palm seemed curiously disproportionate to its size. It felt as though it contained a great deal more than could be encompassed by anything so small.
“Perhaps it is a locket,” said Prunella, and set about prying it open, but there was not a join or gap to be found upon it. After some fruitless striving she surrendered the attempt.
She looked at the journal, but decided to leave it to the side for the moment, though she would not admit even to herself why she avoided it. “Doubtless it would take a vast time to puzzle out”—(letters were not Prunella’s strong point)—“most likely it is nothing worth reading—scribbles about his day, and what he ate, and what the weather was like.”
The black velvet pouch seemed safer, and Prunella harboured a faint hope that it might contain jewels, or perhaps gold guineas. It was nothing of the sort, however. She poured out upon her palm seven blue stones.
“This is my treasure!” she exclaimed. “A trinket, seven stones, a bundle of old papers, and a journal! Mrs. Daubeney need hardly begrudge me such an inheritance.”
There was nothing for it: she must look into the journal now, while she had leisure to examine her find. Prunella opened the book and smoothed its pages, with hands that did not shake—and even if they did, it did not signify, for no one saw her.
Though her lips moved as she read, and it was necessary for her to rely upon the aid of a finger to trace the lines, she was soon engrossed. The owner had only used about ten pages, filling them with scattered notes. But he had preserved letters within the leaves of the journal, and stray pieces of paper upon which he had copied out what seemed to be quotes from books—books on magic.
There was enough to keep Prunella occupied for several hours. When she finally looked up from the journal, it was almost time for the Sorcerer Royal’s speech. She was stiff and cold.
Prunella took out the stones again, noting the trembling of her hands with a philosopher’s detachment. She shivered partly from the cold, but partly, too, from what she had learnt. It seemed strange that she should still be the same Prunella, possessed of the same chapped hand.
The stones looked as obdurately dull as ever, save for their colour. They were a pure, pale blue like robins’ eggs, but veined with gold.
“What Mrs. D will say when I tell her!” said Prunella. Her laughter rang out, bell-like, in the stillness of the room.