PRUNELLA HAD ONCE thought life in London would be all flirting and balls and dresses, hitting attentive suitors on the shoulder with a fan, and breakfasting late upon bowls of chocolate. She sighed now for her naïveté. Little had she known life in London was in fact all hexes and murder and thaumaturgical politics, and she would always be rising early for some reason or other!
She could not help feeling a twinge of guilt as the latch clicked shut behind her. The orb that had flooded them out sat in her reticule, along with the familiars, shrunk for ease of transport.
Yet why ought she to feel guilty? She had left a note to explain her purpose. Zacharias would likely be unhappy that she had gone by herself, but he could scarcely accompany her. He had been overtaken by another of his paroxysms the evening before, and had retired, grey with suffering, at Lady Wythe’s insistence.
Prunella had recognised the strange orb at once. It was identical to the one she had seen at the Midsomers’. She thought it must be the same, but she knew so little of singing orbs that she could not be certain. There could be no harm in going quietly to Mr. Midsomer’s house, however, and seeing if the orb she had noticed before was still there. If it was not, that was a piece of the evidence Zacharias needed to be able to accuse Mr. Midsomer of his crime.
Prunella had a mission of her own as well. She had examined her singing orb the night before, in the solitude of her bedchamber, and it was clear to her now that what she had thought to be mere ornamental carvings—the loops and swirls engraved upon the surface of her orb—were writing, though in a script so unfamiliar that she had not recognised it as such.
As for what script it was, she had her guide in the name of Seringapatam, which Mr. Hsiang had mentioned. The spectacular fall of Tipu Sultan’s court at Seringapatam had been such a victory as no one would soon forget—a victory that had secured his vast kingdom of Mysore for Britain.
It all fit together. Her father had returned to England from India, and her mother . . . But Prunella would soon know more of her mother. She might discover something useful about her own singing orb while she investigated the Midsomers’. Perhaps she might even have an opportunity to interrogate the sibyl, whose mysterious reference to the Grand Sorceress Prunella now understood.
When Prunella approached the Midsomers’ house, an air of stillness hung over the building. Its facade looked like a solemn white face: “Of someone rather unhappy, I think,” said Prunella to her familiars.
It was not too difficult to locate a window looking into the room where the sibyl’s painting was hung. It was on the first floor, as Prunella recalled, but this proved no obstacle. Murmuring the formula she had learnt the day before, she summoned a wisp of cloud, clambered atop it, and floated up to the window, Nidget under her arm.
A brief examination of the room through the window satisfied Prunella that no one was there. Another minute’s spellcasting opened the window, and Prunella scrambled into the house, Nidget following her.
“Why, that was simple enough,” she said, dusting herself off. “I declare I do not know why more thaumaturges are not burglars. If I cannot find a wealthy gentleman to marry, Nidget, we could always resort to burglary for our livelihood—though I suppose Zacharias would disapprove.”
“I cannot say I disagree with him,” said a voice that was decidedly not Nidget’s.
Prunella jumped and clutched Nidget, staring. A woman rose from a sofa at the other end of the room. It was placed at such an angle that her person had been blocked from Prunella’s view when she had surveyed the room through the window.
“So you are a sorceress,” said Mrs. Midsomer sourly. “Midsomer swore there were none in England.”
Prunella straightened. It was an awkward position in which to be detected, but there was nothing for it. Denial was fruitless. She could only put a bold face on the matter, and be grateful that Tjandra and Youko had not come in with her.
“I am the first, and have not chosen to reveal my powers to the Society,” she said. She could not resist adding, “Though it is no surprise Mr. Midsomer should be mistaken. He is wrongheaded in every respect!”
“There, too, I must agree,” said Mrs. Midsomer, taking the wind out of Prunella’s sails. “If I had known he was so remarkably stupid, I would never have come away with him. However, I am sworn to his service, and since we are now bound together, I suppose I am obliged to take offence at your insult.”
“There is no insult I can fling at Mr. Midsomer which he would not deserve,” said Prunella. “He shall hear them all, and defend himself, if he can! Where is he?”
“Do not you know?” said Mrs. Midsomer, with a curious half-smile. “And Geoffrey was so worried when he heard you had been at our party! I told him you were of no account, and he ought to focus his attention on the Sorcerer Royal. Geoffrey has a silly habit of seeing enemies wherever he looks.”
“He is right to be worried about me,” declared Prunella. “I am his enemy, and I know what he is about. Tell him I have found this!”
She presented the orb with a flourish.
“Where did you get that?” said Mrs. Midsomer sharply. “It is not yours!”
“It certainly is not,” said Prunella, closing her hand around the orb. “I am not in the habit of trying to murder Sorcerers Royal. But Mr. Midsomer is—and he shall account for it!”
Mrs. Midsomer’s grey eyes widened, and she stepped forward, actually reaching out to clasp Prunella’s arm.
“It worked?” said Mrs. Midsomer. “Zacharias Wythe is dead?”
Prunella withdrew her arm in disgust. “I am not sorry to disappoint you, but no, he is not. He is a great deal more difficult to kill than your master seems to believe, and I must say your master is an absurdly ineffectual murderer!”
“My master!” sniffed Mrs. Midsomer. “He knows nothing of it!”
She snatched the orb from Prunella’s grasp, moving so quickly that Prunella had lost it before she knew what was happening.
“You ought not to take things that are not yours,” said Mrs. Midsomer.
She spoke always with a slight, charming accent of indefinable origin. It was stronger now, and her voice itself seemed to change. It had deep tones in it that were not altogether human, but recalled the clash of thunder and the deep-chested roar of the sea. Mrs. Midsomer’s shadow grew, expanding so rapidly that it filled the room.
Prunella took a step back, and then another. Nidget was taut in her arms, waiting to spring. She could feel the presence of her two other familiars outside. She had been striving to restrain them, but if she did not suppress her increasing fright, they would soon burst in. She bumped into a table and looked around. The painting of the sibyl was behind her.
“You have been remarkably foolish, chit!” said Mrs. Midsomer in a booming inhuman voice. “Zacharias Wythe may have escaped me again, but you need not think you will be so fortunate!”
“Sibyl,” said Prunella. She was glad to hear her voice ring out, hardly trembling at all. “Pray tell me, who is Mrs. Midsomer?”
“Lorelei,” said the sibyl behind her. “Monstress, siren and mermaid—murderess in desire if not in truth—and a paltry hussy if I ever knew one!”
“Be quiet!” snarled Mrs. Midsomer. She lobbed her orb at Prunella.
Light burst forth from the orb in an array of colours—green, purple, blue and red. Each ribbon of light was a curse, and they scythed through the air towards Prunella.
“Nidget! Youko! Tjandra!” cried Prunella. “To me!”
• • •
ZACHARIAS’S temples throbbed as he hurried down the stairs. He had passed the night in Lady Wythe’s spare room, and overslept in consequence. This invariably happened when Lady Wythe was present to overrule his orders to be awoken at such and such a time:
“Nonsense!” she would say. “Zacharias ought to rest. It would be the height of wickedness to wake him. Do you but try it, Lucy, and you shall have to look for another place.”
Yet it had been Lucy who woke him in the end, at Lady Wythe’s behest. Lady Wythe rose when he entered the sitting room, wringing her hands. Damerell was there also, pacing a groove into the carpet while he muttered a formula under his breath.
“Oh Zacharias,” cried Lady Wythe. “The poor motherless girl! I feel culpable, truly. I ought never to have lent countenance to her pursuit of an establishment. I should have done more to bring home to her the folly in proceeding as she did. And this is the result!”
The note she thrust into Zacharias’s hand bore a few lines in Prunella’s round, ungainly handwriting.
Dear Lady Wythe,
By the time you read these words I shall be gone. I beg you will not be alarmed—I shall be back before you know it—but pray tender my apologies to Mr. Wythe if I should miss our lesson today. When I return I think I may promise a GREAT SURPRISE! What I mean I cannot tell you now, only wait and you shall see. You may tell Mr. Wythe I have taken my case, and plan to put to use my acquaintance with his friend Mr. Hsiang.
I am, your humble and affectionate servant, &c.
“Now what does this mean?” said Zacharias.
“Dash the girl, cannot she stay still?” exclaimed Damerell. “The enchantment will never get a fix on her if she keeps flitting about.”
When Zacharias looked at him, he said:
“I came prepared to fight off a magical ambush, but find myself embroiled in a domestic melodrama—and what is worse, striving with Murchie’s wretched locationary, which is a spell I have never liked. Indeed”—turning to Lady Wythe—“I think it unlikely Miss Gentleman has done what you fear, ma’am. She is surely too sensible to run away with a man upon a single day’s acquaintance, when she has no assurance regarding his income.”
“You believe she has eloped?” said Zacharias.
Lady Wythe hesitated.
“It is a dreadful thing to think of her,” she said. “But I cannot make any sense of Prunella’s note unless it is that her abductor reappeared and repeated his offer. I did think that she seemed to regret refusing him, when she was telling me of him yesterday. It would be imprudent of her to accept, of course, but she is so young, and has lacked the guidance of firm principles, and it is so easy for an unscrupulous man to impose upon a giddy young female! Zacharias, are you acquainted with the gentleman who wished to run away with her?”
Zacharias murmured that they were acquainted, but he believed there was a misunderstanding. Mr. Hsiang was a very gentlemanlike man, not given to the abduction of young ladies—apart from anything else, he already had three wives.
“And he is so plagued by them that he has often expressed regret that he was not contented with one,” said Zacharias. “No, I cannot think she has run away with Hsiang.”
He was worried, but for quite a different reason. Zacharias did not know why Prunella had taken the familiars with her, but he suspected it meant Prunella had a plan. The thought filled him with apprehension.
The pale, frightened face of a footman peered around the door.
“Beg pardon, ma’am,” he said. “I have said you are not at home, but they have marched all the way from the Society, and they say they will not be put off whatever we do.”
For once Damerell relinquished his self-control so far as visibly to lose his patience.
“Oh, what now?” he cried.
• • •
ZACHARIAS opened the door to an illusion of magicians on Lady Wythe’s doorstep. Midsomer was among them.
“Zacharias Wythe, you are summoned to appear before the Presiding Committee of the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers to surrender your staff,” said one of the men. He handed Zacharias a scroll. “At a meeting called this morning, it was proposed that the Hallett procedure should be undertaken today. The vote was passed by a majority.”
Zacharias took the scroll silently.
Damerell swept the group of thaumaturges with a look of supreme contempt, ending with the man who had spoken. “Why, Cullip, you ha’penny conjurer, Wythe gave you your step!”
Cullip drew himself up to his full height.
“I was elected Secretary to the Committee because it was believed I should do my duty,” he said. “And I am doing it now, I hope.”
“Quite right,” said Zacharias composedly. “Gentlemen, I shall be with you directly. Damerell, if you would have the goodness to tell Lady Wythe—”
“I shall tell Lady Wythe nothing,” said Damerell. Damerell did not often lose his temper, but he did nothing by half measures. “They used to say that a man became a magician who was too scheming for Parliament, too bloodthirsty for the Army, and too much of a bloody sodomite for the Navy. But these are not quite the end times. We must still attempt to merit the name of civilised people. On what grounds is it proposed to strip Mr. Wythe of his staff? Even Hallett was deposed for a reason, however factitious. What fiction have you invented, pray?”
Cullip had gone a deep pink.
“It is a matter of common knowledge that Zacharias Wythe murdered Sir Stephen Wythe—his predecessor, his benefactor and the man who gave him his name!” he said. “And if it is possible to do worse than that, he has done it, for he also murdered the familiar Leofric, who had served the Sorcerers Royal of England since time immemorial. Now Wythe seeks to rob honest Englishmen of our magic, and give it over into the hands of women and foreigners!”
“What an extraordinary series of accusations,” said Zacharias. “On what basis am I said to have committed such wrongdoing?”
He strove to keep his voice light, but his heart sank when he saw the look on Midsomer’s face. This was the opportunity for which his enemy had been waiting.
“Do you deny, sir, that the Fairy Court has deliberately withheld magic from Britain at the behest of a parcel of Malayan vampiresses?” said Midsomer. “And was it not you who received their chieftainess when she came to England to further her scheme of revenge? You who defended her, and contrived at her escape when she was confined for her violent assault upon an Englishwoman?”
“I have not heard that Mrs. Midsomer suffered any greater injury than in losing a turban,” said Damerell. “Indeed, having seen the headdress in question, I am inclined to believe the witch rather did her a service.”
Zacharias shot Damerell a warning look. To Midsomer he said:
“I only recently discovered the block on England’s magic, and the reason for it. If you were aware of it before, sir, I am surprised you did not report it sooner. A solution might have been arrived at by now if the circumstances had been explained to the Society. But it seems you have preferred to foment dissension among our colleagues instead.”
“I have been working to ensure the removal of a murderer, a thief and a traitor from the highest office in English thaumaturgy,” said Midsomer coldly. “It is hardly for you to judge the value of the exercise. If you wish to defend yourself, however, you may do so before the Presiding Committee. The Committee will doubtless give due consideration to any pleas you wish to submit in mitigation.”
“Yes, it will all be perfectly aboveboard, I am sure,” said Damerell, eyeing him. “You certainly do not lack perseverance, Midsomer. I would not have expected less than that, having failed in all your attempts to assassinate Wythe, you should resort to knocking on his door and demanding that he put his neck in your noose.”
“You call me an assassin, sir?” said Midsomer. He tried to smile. “But the Hallett is a legal device, as I think you will find, and one of great antiquity.”
“Oh no,” said Damerell, his eyes gleaming. “I call you a sad incompetent, and your toad-eaters a pack of cowards, to seek to murder a man by committee.”
Midsomer’s face grew stormy. Cullip leapt forward, unholstering a wand from beneath his coat. Behind him an angry chant rose, many-voiced.
Damerell held up his hands. The sky grew dark, though it was morning. The lamps lining the street took on a lurid purple glow. Every man was haloed with green light, and the thick smell of magic washed into the nostrils with every breath.
“Gentlemen, I beg you will be calm,” said Zacharias, but he was already scrabbling for the counter-formula.
It was by pure chance that he looked up while searching his memory for the right syllables, and saw Prunella in the sky, speeding towards them upon a cloud.
She was shouting as she came, and when she leapt off her cloud he saw that she was soaking wet, her hair plastered to her head and her dress clinging to her form.
“She has run away,” she gasped. “She has hid herself in the sea, the coward, and she will not come out whatever names I call her. I had her—oh, I had her by the tail! I have searched an age, but the longer she is hidden, the more likely it is that we shall never find her. It is her realm, you know, so she will know all the best places to hide. You must come directly and find her out. There is not a moment to lose!”
“Prunella, my dear, you are soaked through!” cried Lady Wythe. She burst forth to the startlement of the assembled thaumaturges, who had not observed her lurking behind the door. “Where on earth have you been? But let us have no explanations now. We must get you dry as soon as we can. Oh—how do you do, sirs?”
The ominous chanting had fallen silent upon Lady Wythe’s appearance. Cullip stuck his wand back into his coat and muttered:
“Very well, ma’am, how d’you do? Ahem! I regret the necessity of disrupting your morning with Society business.”
“Not at all,” said Lady Wythe, smiling. “But you will forgive me if I ask whether the Society’s business could not be transacted somewhere other than my doorstep? I have here a young lady who will catch cold if swift measures are not taken, and Zacharias has not yet had his breakfast. These domestic contretemps will seem of little consequence to you, sirs, but you will humour a mere female, I know.”
The thaumaturges wavered. Lady Wythe had a great deal of natural authority; she was still held in considerable esteem by the Society; and she knew how to handle magicians. She had resisted the temptation to rush out and make a scene, showing herself at precisely that moment upon good advisement, and she would have brought it off if not for Prunella.
“Zacharias will have to delay his breakfast, ma’am,” Prunella said firmly. “We must go and kill the fairy who has been trying to murder him.”
Midsomer had begun to speak, but he clamped his mouth shut. Zacharias stared at Prunella, taken aback.
“The fairy?” he said.
“We have had it all wrong, Zacharias,” said Prunella. “It is not Mr. Midsomer who set those horrid traps for you, but his familiar! I saw the orb at the party, you see—the curse, I mean—so I went to his house, thinking I might discover if it was the same. But there Mrs. Midsomer attacked me! I routed her, however, I and my fa—” Prunella broke off, glancing at the thaumaturges. “That is to say, I suppose her guilt overcame her, for she turned into a mermaid and fled to the sea. I pursued her, but when I could not find her I thought I ought to return and seek assistance.”
“Where is Midsomer?” said Damerell abruptly.
The man was nowhere to be seen. His accomplices appeared no less bewildered than Damerell.
“Oh, was he here?” said Prunella, looking around. “You might have said. He will have gone to help her, of course. I should not be surprised if the creature were halfway across the Channel by now, with her husband in tow.”
“Where did you leave her?” said Damerell.
Prunella was already climbing back upon her cloud.
“She was just off the coast at Lyme when I left,” said Prunella. “It is a great distance to traverse even by cloud, but we—that is to say, I have worked out a modification of Mr. Hsiang’s spell that closes the leagues with singular speed.”
“We will follow by another method,” said Zacharias, who disliked heights. “Damerell, do you think it wise, perhaps, to call—?”
“It is already done,” said Damerell. “Gentlemen, we will take our leave of you.”
Cullip spluttered: “The Committee’s summons—!” But before he could complete his protest, Zacharias and Damerell had vanished.
“If you are so concerned about what the Presiding Committee will think, may I suggest that you summon a conclave to discuss the matter?” said Lady Wythe. A dangerous light shone in her eye. “I shall have something to say to the Committee myself, for it seems to me there has been a great deal of impropriety in these proceedings, which would never have been permitted in Sir Stephen’s day.”
• • •
EVEN if Cullip had wished to comply with Lady Wythe’s suggestion, he would have struggled to assemble an adequate quorum for a Committee meeting. Zacharias was received at Lyme Regis by a group of thaumaturges assembled upon the Cobb, comprising Lord Burrow, most of the members of the Presiding Committee—and Geoffrey Midsomer.
“Mr. Wythe,” said Midsomer portentously. “The Presiding Committee has been summoned here to witness, in person, your many breaches of your duties as Sorcerer Royal.”
“This is most irregular,” said Damerell. “Could not this have waited for a proper trial at the Society?”
Lord Burrow glanced at Midsomer. The Chairman of the Presiding Committee was generally esteemed for his integrity, though he had never much liked Zacharias.
“It is unusual,” he said, “but not unprovided for by the Charter. We were informed that we would receive evidence of Mr. Wythe’s alleged misdeeds here.”
“It is just as well,” said Zacharias before Damerell could respond. “For I have an allegation of my own to put to the Committee.”
It was clear he could no longer wait for the evidence he had hoped for, which Sir Stephen was still struggling to unearth. Zacharias must put his case, and hope the public and unusual setting would compel an admission from Midsomer.
“I should have preferred to discuss this with you privately, before putting in action the formal machinery of the Society,” he said to Midsomer. “But you have left me with no alternative. Do you deny that two months ago you performed an unlawful summoning, thereby depleting London’s atmospheric magic, and acquiring a familiar—a mermaid who until recently you have passed off as your wife?”
Midsomer’s eyes widened. Lord Burrow looked from Zacharias to his nephew, frowning. Whatever Midsomer had told his supporters, it seemed his uncle had not heard of this.
“Is this true, sir?” said Lord Burrow to Midsomer.
“Oh, why fixate upon such a trifle?” said Damerell maliciously. “Who among us has not dreamt of summoning himself a familiar? Midsomer is to be congratulated upon having become, in one stroke, a husband and a sorcerer. Let us not condemn him for his inattention to such a minor detail as the law.”
Midsomer seemed to lose his head at being so transformed from accuser to accused. He said, wild-eyed:
“Will you take the word of a bastard and a negro over that of your own nephew, sir?”
“Why, if they tell the truth, yes,” said Lord Burrow, but his voice was drowned out by a growling roar from above.
“Dash it, you contemptible mountebank! You are not to speak so to Poggs. You are not to call him such names!”
A vast shadow had fallen upon the roiling seas. In the sky a golden dragon came arrowing towards them, his wings spread wide and smoke rising from his jaws.
A groan of recognition rose from the Committee. Lord Burrow, looking quite human in his trepidation, turned to Damerell and said:
“Pray tell me that is not Robert of Threlfall.”
“Am I not to be permitted the assistance of my own familiar?” said Damerell haughtily. “I am a sorcerer, if I am a bastard. If the Society wishes me to forget it, it ought not to insist on sending me so many circulars.”
To Rollo, wheeling in the sky, he called: “Do not lose your temper, Rollo. It is foolish to expect a Midsomer to conduct himself like a gentleman. Never mind him, but see if you can find this mermaid Prunella has told us about. She is hid within the waters.”
“There you are!” cried Midsomer, with such triumph that Zacharias and Damerell stared. “There is the evidence I promised you, sirs. Mr. Wythe has sought to deprive Britain’s thaumaturges of their birthright of magic, and to pass that power to the undeserving. To this end, in secret, he has been educating a female in the unnatural science of thaumaturgy. And here she comes—the witch he has been training!”
Prunella dismounted from her cloud, seeming not to notice the startled gaze of the Committee.
“Have you still not found her?” she said disapprovingly. “Really, I have no notion how you managed before we met. It seems as though nothing can be done without me.”
Rollo’s massive scaly head appeared above the waters. He was paddling in the sea, looking for all the world like a gigantic dog.
“The mermaid is here somewhere, for I can sense her,” he panted. “But I believe she has made herself invisible. Oh, have you arrived, Miss Gentleman?”
“How do you do, Rollo?” said Prunella.
Prunella and Rollo had become fast friends in the course of Damerell’s shepherding of Prunella through ton society, but as far as Zacharias knew, Rollo had never appeared before her in his true shape. He preferred the human form, it being better suited for such pursuits as inspecting the horseflesh at Tattersall’s and playing whist at White’s. Yet Prunella did not seem disconcerted by encountering a dragon in the place of the dandy she had known.
“If you would have the kindness to continue searching beneath the waters,” she said, “I shall see what I can do to assist.”
She spread her hands, and lightnings flashed between them. The waves rose like children in a schoolroom, shoving and grumbling as they came to their feet. Prunella’s dark hair streamed out behind her on the salt wind blowing off the sea, and she spoke in a clarion voice.
“Bring her to me,” said Prunella. “The siren-singer; the murderous mermaid, fish-tailed and silver-eyed; she of the scale-feet and webbed fingers; she of the many names—Lorelei—Laura Lee—she who is called Mrs. Midsomer!”
“Ha!” said Rollo’s voice from the watery deeps. He rose from the sea, liberally sprinkling the magicians arrayed upon the Cobb.
He held something within his jaws. Rearing up, he dropped it gently on the ground, where it lay gasping like a beached fish.
It was Mrs. Midsomer.