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 Even among thaumaturges it was an outdated passion.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 all 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.
She caught sight of Zacharias, and stiffened.
“There you are wrong,” said Zacharias faintly. “She is not merely any little old lady.” He stepped forward. “I believe we have met, ma’am.”
The matron opened her mouth, frowned, and said a quick spell. It was not too cold a night, but her breath issued in puffs of green mist. When the puffs dissipated, she spoke in fluid English:
“You must have done something very shocking to have incensed the fine ones,” said Mak Genggang. “In my country one need merely wander into the jungle to find the spirit realm, but the spirits have erected a perfect forest of wards about Britain. How do you contrive on so little magic? Though to be sure, the punishment is no more than you deserve for your wickedness.”
“I am sorry to hear you say so, ma’am,” said Zacharias. He paused. “Did the Fairy Queen tell you as much?”
“Is that what you call her? I never saw her at all,” said Mak Genggang. “I merely went through her country as a shortcut. It takes such an age to travel to Britain otherwise. I had to come, of course, since that ridiculous raja is here begging for scraps from the foreigners’ table. I shall not have that young ciku stealing a march on me! It is convenient that I have met you, for you will be able to help me.”
There must once have been a time when he was not harried on every side by the whims and starts of importunate females, reflected Zacharias wistfully, but that halcyon period seemed very far away.
“Indeed?” he said noncommittally.
“I desire to speak to your King,” said Mak Genggang. “You had best bring me to him straightaway—and no dillydallying, if you please, for the fate of the nation depends upon it!”
“Good gracious,” said Prunella, staring. “But what dreadful thing is it that is going to befall us?”
“I have befallen you,” said Mak Genggang. “I was not referring to Britain, however. I was speaking of what is of rather more importance: the fate of my nation, which your King seeks to bully!”
“If you will permit me to say so, ma’am, I believe there is a misunderstanding,” said Zacharias. “Our King has no wish to alienate you, and I am sure would regret any inadvertent offence.”
“If he had no wish to offend, he ought not to have lent his ear to Raja Ahmad!” retorted Mak Genggang. “A sovereign ought to learn better judgment of character. It must be clear to anyone with their wits about them that the raja is a fool. But then again”—her eyes gleamed—“I suppose it serves your King’s purpose to treat with fools!”
Zacharias decided he would steer clear of diplomacy. If he was to avoid confusing Britain’s relations with Janda Baik beyond repair, he had best keep his lips sealed, and entrust this new arrival to those who understood politics.
“I would be pleased to escort you to town, ma’am, and if I cannot promise you an audience with the King, I can certainly introduce you to his representatives,” he said.
Edgeworth would be far from delighted to see Mak Genggang, and Zacharias was likely to lose any credit he still possessed with the man when he produced her. But after all, she could not be left to rampage about the country, and doubtless find some magical means of breaking into Windsor.
“We must hope that the Government will find some means of addressing your grievances,” said Zacharias, who thought this very unlikely.
But Mak Genggang was more sanguine.
“I have a suspicion they will,” she said, with alarming good cheer. “If they know what is good for them!”