PRUNELLA’S CONVERSATION WITH Zacharias in the Park had left her in a thoughtful mood. Though she was meant to attend a card party that evening, she was just as glad when Lady Wythe declared herself too indisposed to go.
“I am sorry to spoil your fun, my dear,” said Lady Wythe, blowing her nose. “Could not that charming young friend of yours, Mrs. Kendle, go with you? She is a flighty creature to chaperone anyone, but you are not likely to get into any sort of scrape at Mrs. Cornwallis’s.”
“Sophia is engaged tonight, I believe,” said Prunella. “I shall not mind a quiet evening. Mr. Wythe has reproved me for my want of industry, so I mean to make a great advance in my studies, and amaze him tomorrow with the perfection of my formulae.”
“I hope you will not overwork yourself,” said Lady Wythe. “Zacharias drives himself so hard that he is not properly conscious of the toll he is likely to exact by demanding the same of others.”
Prunella promised to exercise restraint, though she said ruefully, “I think there is little danger I shall do too much!”
She began the evening’s work with the best of intentions, but the elvet picked a quarrel with the other two familiars: the unicorn and simurgh possessed placid tempers, but Nidget was a jealous, spiteful creature, and objected to sharing Prunella’s affections with the others. It was necessary to separate them, and placate Nidget. And then Nidget was so amusing, and told her such curious things about Fairyland, though it had only partial, confused memories of the place, that somehow Prunella had not got past the second chapter of the book she was reading when Lady Wythe’s butler announced a visitor.
“Why, Sophia,” exclaimed Prunella. “I thought you had gone to your party. You have come at an awkward time, I am afraid. Lady Wythe is unwell, and has retired for the evening.”
Sophia Kendle was a pretty young creature, vastly proud of having been snapped up in her first Season. She had fallen madly in love with Prunella the moment they met: “I am sure you are destined to marry a duke, you are so pretty and clever, and then your not knowing anything of your family is so romantic,” she declared.
She had just turned twenty-one, but looked younger as she danced up the hall to take her friend’s hands. She formed a curious contrast with her husband—a contemporary of Sir Stephen’s and a middling thaumaturge, possessed of a considerable fortune.
“We did not come to see Lady Wythe, save to request a favour of her,” said Mr. Kendle.
“What Kendle means to say is that he is a cruel beast, and has decreed that we must go to a stupid party of thaumaturges, where I shall know no one, and be bored to death,” said Sophia. “I plagued him to stop here, so that I could beg you to come with me. Pray say you will, darling.”
Prunella hesitated. She did not know Mr. Kendle well, but he did not look as though he desired Prunella to join the party.
“I do not know that Lady Wythe will like it,” she said, but Sophia cut in eagerly:
“But she can have no objection, for I shall chaperone you, and that will be ever so droll! The party is a very respectable one, only you know thaumaturges are such tedious creatures, my dear Kendle excepted, I could not endure a whole evening among them without a friendly face to look upon. I meant to go with Amelia, but my sister is unwell, and I do not expect it will make any difference to our hosts if we exchange her for you.”
“Miss Gentleman does not wish to go, Sophia. It is uncivil to insist, and we ought not to keep the horses standing,” said Mr. Kendle.
Sophia drooped, crestfallen. Mr. Kendle looked so self-satisfied that Prunella was suddenly possessed by a spirit of perversity. She had not intended to accept Sophia’s invitation, but she should like to discomfit Mr. Kendle: Prunella disliked a man who would crow over his wife. Then, too, Mr. Kendle’s odd manner kindled her curiosity. What reason had he to dislike her?
“Not at all!” said Prunella. “I should be pleased to go, and it is kind of you to ask, Sophia dear, for I should have been dull here by myself. Let me run up to Lady Wythe to beg her leave, but I am sure she will not mind, and we need not keep your horses waiting any longer.”
Lady Wythe had no objection to Prunella’s accompanying her friend (“Though it is curious I should not have heard of a thaumaturgical ball!” she remarked), and they were soon off in the Kendles’ carriage.
The mystery of Mr. Kendle’s manner was satisfied sooner than Prunella expected. It was dark when the carriage drew up outside a town house. The windows were blazing with amber light; carriages lined the street outside; and altogether it seemed a very considerable party. Prunella was glad she had worn her primrose silk, though it would have been a trifle grand for Mrs. Cornwallis’s party (Mrs. Cornwallis had a wealthy bachelor cousin, who had already declared his fondness for a pair of snapping black eyes).
Prunella had not contrived to catch the hosts’ name amid Sophia’s chatter. She had prepared an expression both charming and apologetic as they entered the house. When she saw the hostess she forgot her preparation altogether, however, and gaped.
“May I introduce my wife’s friend, Miss Gentleman?” said Mr. Kendle.
Mrs. Geoffrey Midsomer did not seem to know the name, or to remember Prunella from the Spring Ball. But then there had been a great many people at the Ball, and Prunella only recognised Mrs. Midsomer because of her part in its spectacular close.
“Delighted,” said Mrs. Midsomer. “How do you do, Miss Gentleman? How kind of you to come, Mr. Kendle. Geoffrey values your support beyond measure.”
Mr. Kendle glanced nervously at Prunella. “We look forward to the evening, indeed.”
Indeed, thought Prunella. She did not at all regret coming.
• • •
IT was clear the Midsomers were not aware of Prunella’s connection with the Wythes, which suited her perfectly. It was a detail they might easily have missed, as Mr. Kendle had done. Prunella doubted he had known that his wife’s friend had any connection with Lady Maria Wythe until Sophia had insisted on going to her house.
She contrived to put Mr. Kendle at his ease by disclaiming any acquaintance with the Sorcerer Royal: “Oh, he frightens me to death! Lady Wythe wonders that I am never to be found when he visits!” When he had left her and Sophia to speak to his friends, Prunella took care to ensure they were lost in the crowd, well away from their hosts.
She wished she had asked Zacharias about Geoffrey Midsomer. He was the ill-tempered man who had been so uncivil to Zacharias at the Ball, but she knew from stray snatches of conversation between Zacharias, Damerell and Lady Wythe that that was not all. Whatever the trouble was, it must account for Mr. Kendle’s being so froward about her accompanying Sophia.
“What a fascinating party!” she said to Sophia, looking about with unfeigned interest. “But this is not an official Society event, is it, Sophia?”
Sophia was not sure. “There does seem a vast number of thaumaturges! I never saw so many in my life. Kendle said it was to be a gathering only of Mr. Midsomer’s friends, but it seems he has a great many friends. What a curious creature that Mrs. Midsomer is! Did you think her pretty, Prunella?”
“I did not.”
“Nor I. Yet the Midsomer family is an old one, much esteemed in magical circles, Kendle says, though not wealthy. Mr. Midsomer could have had anyone he liked.”
Prunella thought of the broad, potato-like face of Mrs. Midsomer. It had neither charm nor beauty, but there had been a curious power in those restless, searching grey eyes.
“Perhaps he likes her,” said Prunella.
“People have the oddest tastes,” said Sophia. “What are you looking at?”
Prunella’s eye had been caught by a painting, an unremarkable daub in oils of a brownish-grey landscape. Anything less appealing could scarcely be conceived, and yet the painting was housed in a gorgeously worked gold frame, with a spray of hothouse flowers set beneath it like an offering. She pointed this out to Sophia, who exclaimed:
“But that must be the picture that prophesies! Kendle told me of it. It is a family heirloom. The Midsomers have had it since the Conquest, and they are sinfully proud of it.”
There was a dark smudge in the corner of the picture, which closer attention revealed to be a cloaked figure huddled under a ledge of rock.
“That must be the oracle,” said Sophia. “Kendle says the painting is an enchantment, and the oracle speaks prophecies when the mood takes her.”
“‘Her’?” said Prunella, looking at the smudge with fresh interest. She would have questioned Sophia further, if she had not seen the gleam of silver on the small table beneath the painting.
There was a singing orb on the table. It might have been the twin of the one she wore around her neck.
“Is something amiss?” said Sophia.
“No, why should you ask?” said Prunella. She picked up the singing orb, remarking casually: “What a pretty trinket! But you were speaking of this prophetess, Sophia. I thought women were not permitted the practise of magic?”
“Oh, the oracle was not a mortal!” said Sophia, laughing. “What a diverting notion! No, she was a sibyl, Kendle says, which is a fairy, you know. She was trapped within the picture by the artist, a thaumaturge who had been attached to her, but was betrayed in his affections.”
As Sophia spoke Prunella examined the singing orb. Their arms were still linked loosely together, and she hoped Sophia would not feel the rapid beating of her heart, or the trembling in her hand.
The orb was not quite the same as her own. It was of a different, darker metal, from which the candlelight struck bluish green sparks. It was carved with different marks, too: minute pinpricks, forming lines and flourishes that intertwined across the surface of the orb.
“What a tragic story!” said Prunella. She was wondering whether, if she could only distract Sophia for a moment, she could conceal the orb within her reticule. It was wicked to steal, of course, and Zacharias would be cross if he discovered it, but surely there was no harm in borrowing the object for a time. A comparison with her own orb might enable all sorts of instructive experiments.
“Yes, isn’t it? I adore a tragedy!” said Sophia. “Kendle tells such gruesome tales of the attachments between mortals and fairies, and they are invariably tragical, for the fairies’ caprice is beyond anything. You should hear how the Fairy Queen treats her mortal paramours when she tires of them! They are turned into mantuas and half-boots, transformed into newts, and who knows what else besides. I am sure her poor swain wished he had never taken it into his head to fall in love with a fairy!” She gestured at the painting.
“Why do you say so?” said a new voice.
Prunella hastily returned the orb to the table, and turned to face the lady who had joined them.
“Mrs. Midsomer!” she said brightly. “Mrs. Kendle and I were admiring your lovely painting.”
“It is an ugly piece, but Geoffrey likes it,” said Mrs. Midsomer. Her strange eyes seemed almost to glow with their own light. “And the sibyl serves her purpose. You do not seem to admire her, ma’am?”
Sophia was crimson. It was awkward for her to have been overheard speaking of the Fairy Queen’s discarded beaux by the wife of one such.
“One feels sorry for the poor man, you know,” she stammered. “To have his confidence so betrayed!”
“But he died of old age, whereas she is doomed to pass the rest of her life trapped betwixt gilt frames,” said Mrs. Midsomer. She turned to Prunella. “I saw you were interested in my bauble, Miss Gentleman.”
Prunella preserved her composure. Mrs. Midsomer was a whimsical creature, it was clear, but she need not think she would intimidate Prunella Gentleman.
“It is a pretty thing!” said Prunella. “I was wondering, ma’am, what it is for?”
Mrs. Midsomer gave her such a penetrating look Prunella almost wondered whether she was able to discern Prunella’s own orb, concealed beneath the bodice of her dress. But instead of replying, Mrs Midsomer leaned over, and said to the painting:
“How are you keeping, sibyl?”
Her loud, harsh voice plucked at a memory in Prunella’s mind. Had not Zacharias said something about the voice one must use when casting spells?
“Magic hates a whisper,” he had said. “The forces of the supernatural respond best to a good strong bellow.”
The huddled figure in the painting rose, revealing a lined, weary face.
The sibyl had once been beautiful, but age and isolation had worn her down. The hair under the rough fabric of her hood was silver, the face seamed with lines of sorrow.
“What d’you want of me?” she snapped. Her voice issued from the canvas clear and curiously full-bodied, in contrast to her flattened form. “When Ormsby locked me away I thought I should at least profit from some peace, but no—it’s pester, pester, pester, all the day long. ‘What’s my fate, sibyl? What’s to become of me?’ Surely that’s clear enough—death and the ruin of all your hopes, the same for all mortals.”
“Not me,” said Mrs. Midsomer.
The sibyl pursed her lips. “I would not be so cocksure if I were you. Death and despair are hardly the preserve of mortalkind, as you’ll find soon enough.”
“It is not my fortune I wish you to tell,” said Mrs. Midsomer. “I shall make my own. But tell me of this woman.” She gestured at Prunella. “Who is she? Have I anything to fear from her?”
The sibyl raised her great hollow eyes, and Prunella felt Sophia’s arm quiver in hers.
“The mortal woman has love, but she will lose it, and know the bitterness of despair,” said the sibyl. “Which is to say, she likes her husband now, but will soon stop when she knows better.”
“That,” said Sophia, trembling in indignation, “is exceedingly impertinent!”
But Mrs. Midsomer overrode her protest, snapping at the sibyl:
“It is the other mortal I meant! What do you see of her past and future?”
Prunella had been trying to make herself scarce, stepping sideways so that Sophia hid her from the sibyl’s view, but she did not move quickly enough. The sibyl’s gaze fixed upon Prunella, and her eyes widened. “You!”
It was a large, busy, noisy room, and the press of the crowd had been such that their curious interchange with the sibyl had gone unnoticed till now. At her cry heads turned in their direction, and conversations broke off in exclamations.
“I do not need my fortune told, thank you,” said Prunella hastily.
“What do I see?” cried the sibyl in a voice that to the unfortunate Prunella sounded like a foghorn. “I see the Grand Sorceress, her palms embroidered like a bride’s in mortal blood! I see the Keeper of the Seven Spirits, mistress of the four points of the realm. I see the past and future of English magic, converging in one. I see the Undersecretary of Wonder and the Queen of the Five Boroughs of Magic (the last merely an honorary title, of course). Hail to thee, Lady, who brings such visions with her—hail and well met!”
“Hail to thee, too, I am sure,” said Prunella.
“But you are talking nonsense!” said Mrs. Midsomer crossly. “What has she to do with my beloved?”
“She has nothing to do with your beloved,” retorted the sibyl. “No one cares for your beloved half as much as you do! This girl is a fine creature, for a mortal, and she will make their wicked Society so cross I am delighted to have seen her.”
“Oh, if that is all!” said Mrs. Midsomer, losing interest. “Then you may be quiet!” She walked off without a second look at any of them.
“Good gracious!” said Sophia. “What a very odd woman! As for that sibyl, well!” They looked at the sibyl, who had returned to her downtrodden pose, and looked like nothing more than an ordinary picture. “I do not know what Kendle will say! And to have subjected you, my dear, to such a diatribe! I could not make out a word of her speech, could you?”
“Not a word,” echoed Prunella. “She must have been driven mad by her long imprisonment. I pity her, do not you?”
“I think she is too impudent to be pitied,” said Sophia, who was still pink with vexation. “I declare I was never so put out! How I wish Kendle were something sensible, like a Member of Parliament. I have said as much to him, but he will not contemplate giving up magic for a moment.”
To Prunella’s relief, Sophia was so taken up with the sibyl’s incivility to her that she said nothing of the creature’s speech about Prunella. The sibyl had not spoken so very loudly, and the general hubbub had been such as almost to drown out her voice. Prunella could not trust that Sophia or Mrs. Midsomer would not pass on enough of the sibyl’s speech to betray her, however, even if they did not understand the whole. Prunella had hardly understood it herself, but it had all sounded decidedly magical, and was bound to cast suspicion on her.
Dared she conceal the incident from Zacharias? He would be excessively vexed to hear of it. But he might be able to explain the meaning of the sibyl’s speech. The Seven Spirits were the treasures, of course, including the four unhatched eggs, but who was the Grand Sorceress, and what were the four points of the realm? The Undersecretary of Wonder rather lacked elegance as a title, reflected Prunella, but the Queen of the Five Boroughs sounded well.
“Oh, what a bore!” exclaimed Sophia.
“What is it?” said Prunella.
The guests had gathered at the end of the room. She and Sophia were swept along with them, but there was nothing to see—only Mr. Midsomer standing at the centre of the crowd, looking about with an air of complacency.
“I believe he means to make a speech,” said Sophia. She pulled her mouth into a pretty moue. “I am sure these magicians are vastly clever, but do not you think, Prunella, that they do not know the first thing about a party? Fancy forgoing dancing for speeches!”
“Gentlemen, I am honoured by your presence here tonight,” said Midsomer in a carrying voice. “Honoured by your support of my endeavours to restore dignity to our profession. Too long have we been compelled to silence—but soon we shall speak with one voice, and our words will decide the destiny of English thaumaturgy.”
“There is Kendle!” whispered Sophia.
Mr. Kendle stood with a group of other magicians close to Midsomer. Their countenances were grave, but their eyes were fixed on Midsomer with a fierce, bright look that made Prunella uneasy.
Midsomer held up a scroll.
“I have here that for which you have waited,” he said. “Our amendment to the Charter of our honourable Society is approved. The Hallett procedure, which has so long been prohibited, has been restored. We have now a means by which the staff of the Sorcerer Royal may be removed from the unworthy. No longer need we abide by the dictates of a Committee that has acceded to the usurpation of our profession’s noblest office. No more are our hands tied!
“I have invited you here today as a sign of my gratitude—but also to remind you that our work has just begun. On Thursday I shall stand before the Society and propose a motion for the procedure to be undertaken to remove the pretender. I require your support, colleagues, for a vote that will alter the history of English magic!”
“Never fear, Midsomer, you have it!” and “Hear, hear!” cried his audience.
Midsomer swept a triumphant look over the crowd.
“Now, gentlemen, since you are of my mind,” he said, “I come to my third reason for arranging this gathering. I have long desired to take you into my confidence. I have hidden my secret only for fear that it might put our enemy on his guard. But now the time is ripe. English thaumaturgy is assembled against him. And you, sirs, the mainstay of English magic, merit nothing less than the truth. When I returned from Fairyland, I returned with a gift for England—a pearl beyond price, hidden till today. I returned with a familiar!”
The guests fell silent, as though in one stroke they had been deprived of their faculty of speech. But in a moment their voices rose again, the whole room talking excitedly at once.
“But then, sir,” cried one man, “you are a sorcerer!”
Midsomer inclined his head, as much as though the title were a royal one. “I have not claimed the title before this day, but I hope I am as worthy a sorcerer as ever sprung from English soil.”
He said no more, but he did not need to say anything else, to call up in his colleagues’ minds the man for whom he was such a natural replacement—a man who had not sprung from good English soil.
“I think we know, sir, who may be called upon to receive the staff when it is removed from he who so little deserves it.” It was Mr. Kendle who spoke, and Prunella lowered her eyes, in case he should notice her looking daggers at him.
“This crowns all our efforts,” cried another thaumaturge. “It is such a triumph for English magic as we have not seen in decades. Will you tell us more of your familiar?”
“I will do better than that,” said Midsomer, smiling. “I will show her to you.”
Turning away from his astonished audience, he said to his wife, standing demurely behind him:
“Laura, my dear, will you come forward, and be introduced?”
“Why, Prunella, your hand is like a vise!” whispered Sophia. “What is he saying?”
Prunella loosened her grasp. She said, striving for calm:
“He is saying that Mrs. Midsomer is a fairy, though I ought to have known it without his telling us. Those eyes alone proved it! And her shocking manners, and knowing how to call forth the sibyl!”
But the excitement vibrating in her voice was owed in largest part not to the revelation of Mrs. Midsomer’s nature, but to what it meant regarding Mr. Midsomer. For if he intended to become Sorcerer Royal, and sought to enact this mysterious procedure upon Zacharias—if he had even gone so far as to get himself a familiar, and demand the allegiance of his colleagues—then there could be no question about it. Mr. Midsomer must be the assassin.
• • •
SOPHIA found Prunella rather a distracted companion for the remainder of the evening: her conversation was not so sparkling, and her laughter not nearly so ready as usual, and both ladies were united in desiring an early retreat.
Mr. Kendle would have liked to stay and concoct plans with his colleagues, now that their triumph seemed so near at hand. But his discontent was moderated by the thought that it might be no bad notion to remove Miss Gentleman from the scene. It was unlikely she had understood enough of what had passed that evening to carry tales—though Mr. Kendle indulged his pretty young wife, he had little opinion of her intelligence, and Miss Gentleman seemed no different from any of the other flighty young creatures Sophia called her friends. Even so, he made sure to slip a charm for forgetfulness into her mind when he handed her down from the carriage.
Prunella disposed of the charm by feeding it to Youko, as Nidget and Tjandra objected to the taste. She was in a considerable tumult of spirits, and it seemed intolerable that she would have to wait an entire night before warning Zacharias.
She wished she knew what the Hallett was. Despite attentive eavesdropping at the party, she had not been able to obtain any clarity on the point, for everyone seemed to assume that everyone else knew what it signified. The name Hallett was a familiar one, but where had she heard it before?
Though she racked her mind, pacing her bedchamber, no answer presented itself. But that the Hallett represented another of Mr. Midsomer’s attempts to remove his rival, Prunella did not doubt.
How could anyone think he might make a better Sorcerer Royal than Zacharias! she thought. When Zacharias is so good and clever, and would not hurt a fly! Whereas Mr. Midsomer is little better than a murderer. Indeed, he is only prevented from being a murderer by his incompetence. The horrid little ginger-haired man—“Oh!”
She had exclaimed aloud, and Tjandra fell off the bed in startlement. He righted himself at once, and flew to the mantelpiece, but it was necessary for Prunella to spend some time petting him before he would condescend to be friends again.
“It was only because I was surprised,” she explained. “Mr. Midsomer is related to Clarissa, of course—you did not know her, Tjandra, but she was at the school. I remember she had a brother, and it must be he. It accounts for all. I could believe anything of a relation of Clarissa Midsomer’s! She pinched the littler girls when she was cross. I thought it an unchivalrous habit.”
Since she could neither wake the household with her news, nor, in her agitated state, go to sleep, Prunella resolved that she would review all the spells she knew for warmaking. If Mr. Midsomer means to attack Zacharias, he need not think Zacharias’s friends will sit quietly by and let him!
Though few of the schoolgirls had been as vicious-tempered as Clarissa Midsomer, a life passed amid the feuds and rivalries of a girls’ school had left Prunella not wholly unprepared for battle. She found she knew six hexes, some of them quite highly finished pieces of devilry, and Nidget said that it was sure it could invent others:
“We were always quarrelling in Fairyland! I am sure I killed dozens of my kinsmen, and other enemies besides.”
“I declare, Nidget, sometimes you frighten me,” said Prunella, gazing at the elvet in dismay. “I beg you will not say such bloodthirsty things in Zacharias’s hearing. I am sure he would not like it. But if your experience helps us defend him, that is all to the good.”
Nidget was not overly fond of Zacharias, for it suspected Prunella of allocating too large a share of her affections to the tall reserved mortal who made her such regular visits. It said crabbily:
“And what has he done for us that we should defend him?”
“Why, what would become of me if his enemies should succeed?” said Prunella. “I have not received a single offer of marriage yet, and if Zacharias loses his staff, or worse, before I am able to establish myself, we may find ourselves on the streets! We are only here at his sufferance, Nidget, and it would behoove you to remember that.”
Both she and Nidget knew self-interest was not her chief motive for desiring Zacharias’s safety, but Prunella could comfort herself that at least none other than her familiars had reason to suspect she felt anything for him but a perfectly decorous gratitude. To be in love was so inconvenient, so—missish! Particularly when Zacharias, she was certain, would never see her in that light. It was nothing more than a passing fancy, she told herself, and fortunately there was such a lot to think of that she scarcely had time to dwell on her feelings.
“You ought not to risk yourself for that milksop,” said Nidget jealously, but Prunella snapped:
“You are a fool if you think Zacharias is a milksop! But I know you are not really so foolish. The longer we stay up, the more we shall quarrel, so we had better go to bed, and we will all be better-tempered tomorrow.”
With that Nidget had to be content, for she climbed into bed and put her head under her pillow, by way of signifying the conversation was at an end.