The Magic Mirror

by Susan Hill Long

  “What happened to her?” Margaret’s gaze slid to the mirror, but she forced her eyes back to Bilious’s face.

  “She died a bleak and ignominious death at the hands of the thief John Book.” His face reddened. “I’ve sworn to avenge her death,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll cut off his hands if he crosses my path. I’ll make him eat his own shoes.” He pointed at Margaret as if she herself were the thief John Book.

  He looked once more to the mirror and smiled. “Truth is, now the most I see in it’s a cup of ale.” He shrugged. “I’m a simple man. Or perhaps I’ve learned not to want too much.”

  Margaret sat quietly. What might she see in the magic mirror? She had no real memories of her mother or father, and though she’d been abandoned in a churchyard, somehow she felt she’d been loved. Or maybe it was wishing that made her feel so. She had a picture in her mind of a mother: ginger hair like Margaret’s own, dressed in a glorious gown of green velvet just like the scrap of rich cloth she kept under her pallet—and she’d have tiny, pretty ears for whispering secrets in. Margaret’s sadness was brought about not by missing a parent, as Bilious missed his dear wife, but by never having known one at all. Would her pain be greater had she known a mother and lost her? She wasn’t sure, but she thought probably. Poor Bilious. She reached out a hand and gently patted the peddler’s arm.

  Bilious closed his eyes and nodded. “Now I’d sooner gaze into a pond or a river, sommat teeming with life, than stare into this magic mirror and waste away with longing. Oh, it gave comfort for a time, but no more.” He beamed at Margaret with a smile more gap than teeth. “I don’t want it. And you’re a good lass, I can tell.” He held out the mirror to her. “It’s yours,” he said.

  Margaret stared a long moment at the mirror, but she did not move to take it. Was she a good lass? She wanted to have it. But she had nothing to give in return, and she would not be beholden.

  “No, not for me,” she said at last. She licked her dry lips. “Thank you anyway.”

  Though she refused the gift, she squeezed her hands together like a beggar hides a penny, and her gaze never left the shiny surface of the glass in Bilious’s hand. She could no more conceal her desire than she could her disfigurement.

  “Wait, then.” Bilious rubbed his chin, looking over Margaret’s belongings. “The basket is doubtless too dear to her mistress,” he muttered, “and as well the goods within….” He cleared his throat and, like wise Solomon, raised a finger. “If you won’t take the gift outright, the mirror is yours, let us say, for a price. It’s yours,” he said, pausing, “for the price of one stout crutch.”

  Margaret swallowed. The crutch? But she needed the crutch. She’d found the right stick herself down along the Mursey, washed bare and clean from its journey downstream. She’d polished it smooth.

  Rain began to fall again, and she blinked against it.

  But the mirror! How it shone and sparkled and promised! She hesitated a moment more and then thrust the crutch at the peddler.

  Margaret took the mirror greedily and gazed into it. Her heart drummed in her chest. What would she see? A mother? A father? What in the world would she see?

  She squinted. The silvery surface was mottled and gloomy, no better than a bucket. She angled the mirror into better light, and some rain dropped on it, obscuring any hope of reflection. Now the glass seemed to ripple like wind-pushed water. Better tell her, better tell her, better tell her, pattered the rain.

  She shook her head and lowered the mirror. She was afraid she’d see nothing. Nothing but her own plain face.

  “Look again,” Bilious said, kindly.

  Fearful, hopeful, she wiped the surface with the sleeve of her cloak, bent over the mirror to shield it from the rain, closed her eyes, and dared to pray. If it please God, let me see my heart’s true longing. Then she opened her eyes.

  She stared. The mirror was gray, nothing but rippling gray like the sky and the rain. It didn’t work.

  In frustration and despair, Margaret shook the mirror. And then came a jolt as sharp and dizzying as a knock to the kneecap, like waking in the night from a dream she’d swear was real, and then waking yet again to understand that the time awake, too, had only been a dream. And with all that came a rushing in her ears so that she barely heard Bilious’s voice asking what was the matter, and after several moments—who could say how many?—she could hear the rain again. She felt it too, clear, cold, pricking her skin, and in the mirror now the ripples cleared and an image began to settle: the face of a man.

  Bilious was saying something, but she waved him away.

  The man in the mirror had wild fair hair, and his eyes, too, were wild. Green eyes they were, as green as new grass, as green as her precious velvet scrap—as green as the soothsayer’s prophecy, she thought with a start—and he was muttering soundlessly and fiddling with objects on a wood table, tools of a sort she’d never seen. He scratched his ear, picked up a small tool, set it down, rubbed his bearded chin. Who was this man? Now he was looking with alarm at something Margaret could not see, something outside the frame of the mirror. Behind him she could see an arched window, crossed with bars, and beyond the bars a bird flew, and beyond the bird…but now the image was fading. Margaret shook the mirror and the glass rippled and went dark.

  Margaret slumped, as if she’d been held up by a puppet master’s strings and was now released. What on God’s earth had just happened?

  “Are you unwell, Maggie?” came the peddler’s voice. “What did you see?” Margaret raised her head, looked into Bilious’s seeking eyes, and saw concern and caring there.

  “I don’t know,” she managed. “But I’m all right. I think.”

  Bilious nodded, satisfied. “Well, I’ve trades to make, though I’ll not match the one I’ve just accomplished,” he said, thumping the crutch upon the ground and using it to pull himself to standing.

  Margaret, still reeling, rose stumblingly to her feet and grabbed hold of the side of the peddler’s cart. Pain stabbed her twisted foot and she gasped. How would she manage to walk without the crutch? Never mind how, she thought, wincing. She would manage.

  “Magic, mystery…have a care with the mirror’s power,” Bilious said as he began to poke through the items in his cart. “My departed wife, bless her”—he paused to wipe his eye—“she was wise as she was loud, and I will say to you what she said to me. ‘Bilious,’ she said, ‘do not ask what is my true love’s face, or show me the riches I long to claim. Ask instead, “Who am I and what am I about?” Time and tide you’ll need, to seek a true reflection—and never magic at all.’

  “Go well, then, Maggie dear.” Bilious began to put out his pots and pans, his hides and bronze bowls and wooden spoons.

  “Goodbye,” Margaret said. “And thank you.”

  She slipped the mirror into the pocket of her cloak. Who was the green-eyed, wild-eyed man? How was he in any way what she longed in her heart to see? She frowned in confusion. She had so many questions. Even so, she thought, in some manner the magic worked. For Margaret the Crutch, the magic worked. And that was enough. She patted the mirror in her cloak, gritted her teeth against the pain, and turned for Milk Street and home, bearing oats and fish in her basket and hope in her heart. Everything the same but everything different. Now, though she went with no crutch, her stumble and lurch seemed almost like a spring in her step.

  The going was slow without the crutch, and Margaret limped along, lost in thought, one arm holding the basket and the other stuffed in the pocket of her cloak, where she could keep hold of the mirror.

  “Margaret, good day” came a familiar voice in greeting. It was Hugo the hunchback, whose words grated like a nutmeg on a rasp.

  Margaret blinked and mumbled a reply. She had heard his whine too often of late; he’d visited with Minka at Martinmas, and again on the eve of the Feast of St. Fergus. He and Minka had whispered and tittered across their cups of ale, huddling as if to share a secret. As if—she shuddered to think—they were in l
ove.

  “On your way home, are you?” Hugo asked, and stepped closer.

  Margaret nodded. She lurched a step back, to keep her distance.

  What if the secret they kept was their desire to wed? She pitied Hugo, but she didn’t want him to live with them in their small house. The way his head dipped, it was impossible to look directly into his eyes. One eye lolled in such a way that she could never be certain whether he was looking at her or at someone three paces to the left. Margaret knew well that Hugo’s deformity was God’s will and not Hugo’s own, but she did like to look a person in the eye. Did his gaze skitter and start like Tim the baker’s, who sold bread gone green? Or did he smile and crinkle, like—well, like Bilious the peddler? With Hugo the hunchback, she simply couldn’t tell.

  “I’ve only just come from there,” Hugo was saying. He took another step toward her.

  Margaret brought her attention around. The hunchback’s tunic dragged in a wide puddle, a dark spread of filth creeping up the cloth to his knees. When he smiled, he showed a set of yellowed front teeth as blunt as a mule’s, worn down to the nub as if by gnawing and grinding.

  “From where?” she asked, stepping backward once again.

  Nearby, the butcher’s cleaver hit its mark with a sickening thump; Margaret swallowed hard and returned a thin, uneasy smile. What would become of her if Minka wed? What if they put her out on the street just like Beady Bone? She’d not seen the beggar in many years, and reckoned her dead of cold or hunger or worse. Margaret shivered and pulled her cloak tight around her throat.

  “From your house,” said Hugo. And then he winked, whether by intention or to clear the eye of its putrid-looking ooze she could not be sure. He took yet another step closer.

  Pulling her basket across her like a shield, Margaret stepped backward so hastily that her foot caught on the hem of her cloak, and she tripped and lost her balance and would have fallen except that Hugo’s hand darted out and he caught her arm and pulled her roughly to him. She could see into the steady eye now, inches from her face, and she did not like what she saw.

  “Let me go!” she ordered.

  “You might thank me for saving you,” Hugo whined, but after a moment he released her, tipped the brim of his ragged hat, and walked on down the street in the direction Margaret had come.

  Margaret straightened her shoulders and settled her basket once more upon her arm. The mirror rested pleasantly against her hip, and after a glance over her shoulder to be sure Hugo wasn’t watching, she reached her hand into the pocket of her cloak, pulled out the mirror, and peered into it.

  As before, the mirror rippled, then cleared. But instead of the face of the wild-eyed man, she saw Hugo the hunchback.

  Margaret’s stomach clenched, and she felt the ghost of Hugo’s grip on her arm. Repulsed, she pressed the mirror to her stomach and looked away down the road. Hugo was well distant, and could not possibly be reflected in the glass. What on earth? She blinked her eyes rapidly and slowly raised the mirror. Thanks be, the vision had faded and Hugo was gone.

  Margaret shivered, shoved the mirror in the basket, and made her slow way home.

  When Margaret arrived home at last, she was soaked with rain and muddled with confusion. Her bones ached from the effort of walking without the crutch. Minka complained of the fish (“foul!”) and the oats (“damp!”) and struck her with a spoon for being late. (“You are well aware how I suffer, unable to set foot outside the house for fear of strangers and tramplings, and yet you keep me waiting all the day!”) And then she found the mirror.

  Margaret made a grab for it, too late. “It’s mine,” she mumbled, too fast.

  “Yours,” Minka drawled. “And how did you come by such a pretty as this?” Minka drew her finger along the smooth handle and glared at Margaret from beneath her wimple.

  “Please,” Margaret said. Even had it not been magic, the mirror was a singular thing, a treasure. Excepting the bit of green velvet and a small horn comb, she’d never had anything fine, and hadn’t Minka taken that little horn comb—so pretty with its delicate carving—and kept it for herself? And the mirror wasn’t just a pretty. It was magic! “I traded for it,” she said, and then realized her mistake.

  “Traded for it?” Minka bellowed. “And what would you have to give in trade?” Minka looked about the room; her gaze caught on the empty peg by the door. “The crutch!” She whipped around. “Knotty-pated prat. Well. Never mind. More’s the fool who took it in trade for this,” Minka said, a look of triumph crossing her face as she flourished the mirror like a rondel dagger. “Better for me to keep it. Hugo expects no dowry, and will never be the wiser.”

  Margaret’s heart sank. A dowry. A wedding settlement. So she had been right about Minka and the hunchback sharing a secret. What would become of Margaret? Would Minka throw her out?

  Margaret braced herself for the blow. “You are to be wed, then,” she said.

  Minka blinked. Two bright spots pinked her plump cheeks. “I?” she said, hand at her throat. “I, wed the hunchback?”

  A chill crept along the back of Margaret’s neck. Minka didn’t mean—she couldn’t mean—

  “It’s all arranged,” Minka was saying. “It is you who shall wed the hunch—who shall wed Hugo the woolmonger. Don’t look that way, Mags, as if you’ve a curdled stomach. He’s a freeman with an income of five pounds a year,” she said, shrill voice rising with each word, “and he owns a proper house built all of stone!”

  “But I don’t want to marry!” cried Margaret. “And he is so old, and he slaps women on the bottom, and his—his hump!” she said. “And his eyes!”

  Minka switched her with a wooden spoon and called her a clay-brained baggage but then, for once, fell silent. She motioned Margaret beside her on the bench, and Margaret stumbled to her and sat.

  Minka remained silent several moments while she removed her starched white wimple and scratched her head. Coarse growth pale as straw sprouted a good inch back from a customary hairline. Minus the head cover, Minka looked bare and raw, like a chicken gone to molt.

  Minka looked at Margaret with a tenderness that, by its rarity, frightened Margaret. “You have no family, Mags, no prospects. Marriage to Hugo will protect you as I cannot,” she said. “Marriage will make you proper, give you a place. That he is old, so much the better!” she exclaimed, and dropped her hands to her lap. “He will all the sooner die, leaving you a respectable widow with property, and better still, he’ll leave you with your heart in one piece to beat another day.” She wrung her wimple in her hands and sucked in a ragged breath. “Would that I’d been so lucky.”

  Margaret still felt the sting of Minka’s spoon, but when she looked into Minka’s eyes, she saw there something she had never noticed before. Was it sorrow? Was it…love?

  “It’s for your own good, Mags,” Minka said, shaking out her wimple and settling it back on her head. “And if he is a bad husband, why then, you’ll simply pray to St. Wilgefortis.” She stroked her chin. “I’ll wager a bearded-lady saint knows much of suffering.”

  Margaret sat on the hard bench, feeling nothing, for if she let herself feel anything, she would split apart like a milkweed, and everything inside her would burst forth and blow away. Surely this was the lowest she had ever been in all her life.

  Minka had apparently forgotten all about the hideous news she had just delivered, for she was fiddling with the mirror, primping and fussing. She lifted the mirror to her face.

  Minka’s primping hand went still. Her pinched lips parted; her jaw went loose. She held the mirror at arm’s length, then drew it closer, stuck her neck, gooselike, toward it, squinted, squawked, then all at once thrust the mirror deep in her apron front and used both hands to cover her mouth, which gaped like a fish.

  “Bad luck!” Minka wailed. “The thing is cursed! What black magic is this, sent to bedevil me!”

  “What did you see?” Margaret said, alarmed. “What is it?”

  Minka pulled the mirror from her apro
n and dropped it on the table as if it burned her hands. “Look!” she said, pointing to it. “It’s the Devil’s work!”

  Margaret picked up the mirror. There again was the wild-eyed man. Did Minka see him too? Did she recognize him? She faced the glass to Minka.

  “Do you know who he is?” Margaret asked.

  “Of course I know who he is! Sweetheart! Handsome as ever he appeared in life! Oh, but he cut a fine figure in his knight’s tunic. And such good, strong teeth!” she wailed, and twisted her hands in her apron.

  Margaret’s brow knotted with confusion, and she brought the mirror close. There again was the wild-eyed man. And now a scene was unfolding in the glass. Margaret could see more of the man’s chamber. She could see a pallet on the bare floor, and pieces of glass and metal, and on the wooden table were more strange tools and shallow bowls and small vials. The man was fiddling with a large disk of gray glass, picking it up and setting it down, bending to look at it from different angles. She could see, as well, out and beyond the barred window, which framed a sky purple and gold as if lit by a dozen setting suns. There were tree branches, rooftops, and sky and clouds, and a pair of great tall spires, and beneath and between them a huge round window.

  Minka grabbed at the mirror, but Margaret wouldn’t let go. Surely she knew of that great rose window. Where was it? What city? Shoulder to shoulder, Margaret and Minka each tugged at the mirror, their fingers entwined on the bone handle.

  “There!” Minka looked from the mirror to Margaret and back again, tugging, tugging. “It is Sweetheart, God rest his soul. My soldier, my own true love, killed on our wedding day!”