The Cabinet of Wonders

by Marie Rutkoski

  “What are fireworks, Iris?”

  “Oh, you shall see.”

  Not one of the servants would be set free from his duties until the evening. Throughout the day, Prince Rodolfo and his guests would be in the garden, basking in its artificial warmth and bright flowers. They were being entertained by theatrical performances, as well as acrobatics (Petra heard that a high wire had been rigged fifty feet off the ground) and musical arrangements. They would then sit down to an elaborate fourteen-course dinner. After dessert at midnight, the nobles would return to the garden to see the fireworks, whatever that was. The servants were allowed to watch the procession of the nobles and the fireworks from the castle yard. When the court returned to the castle for a masked ball that would last until dawn, the servants would treat themselves to a delicious meal of roasted pig, with several barrels of ale to share. It was during the masked ball and the servants’ dinner that Petra hoped to find the prince’s Cabinet of Wonders.

  Iris preferred to work rather than attend the performances in the garden. But she would join the court later for dinner, the procession, and the dance.

  “Aren’t you worried that you’ll have an acid attack?” asked Petra.

  “I think I shall be too happy for that. Unless, of course” —her expression darkened—“I’m seated next to nincompoops at dinner. Which is highly likely, given that the court holds so many of them. And I’m sure no one will ask me to dance. I’ll have to drink punch in a corner and hope that some young lord with pins for brains starts a fight. That would at least keep me from going stark-raving mad with boredom. But, well, there’s no help for it.” Her face cleared. “I’ve been ordered to be present,” she said proudly. “Prince Rodolfo especially wishes me to see the reaction to his new robes.”

  Petra felt a twinge of guilt for not meeting Neel that morning, but she told herself that she would feel far worse if he became a secret for the captain of the guard to whisper into his Worry Vial one night. When it came time for the servants to crowd into the courtyard, Petra avoided Sadie, fearing that Neel might be present among the blue-gray sea of people, and that he would seek his sister and her. Petra instead stood next to Susana, who was so overwhelmed with excitement that she grew pale, her freckles standing out like brown stars. Petra let the two of them get shoved around by the older, taller servants, who blocked the girls’ view but also hid them from the sight of others.

  The courtyard was ablaze with torches. The procession began with the young children of the members of the prince’s circle. Dressed like fairies with gossamer wings, they marched solemnly. Their quietness seemed unnatural to Petra. If you put the smallest villagers of Okno into fairy costumes and asked them to parade around town, they would be pure mischief. But these children, David’s age and even younger, walked as if they were going to a funeral in inappropriate attire. They had probably been threatened with spankings if they dared embarrass their parents in front of the entire court.

  “Ooh,” Susana breathed. “Look!”

  The courtiers stepped out of the castle and filed toward the garden, where they waited by the door. They shimmered in bright fabrics and jewels, their faces hidden behind masks. Many nobles were dressed like fairy tale characters. Petra spotted Iris disguised as the Snow Queen, and watched Rusalka, the water goblin’s daughter, slip past. There was Finist the Falcon, a man-bird who captured a human girl’s heart. There walked Koshei the Deathless: wicked, immortal, and a wild horse rider.

  After the last of the courtiers had taken his place at the opposite end of the courtyard, trumpets sounded. Prince Rodolfo emerged.

  Petra would have to give Neel a krona. The prince did not wear a mask. He was not dressed as anything but himself, but that was enough. His skin was smooth and pale, his face attractively sharp. His lips were unexpectedly full and soft-seeming, like the mouths of the stone angels Petra had seen in Mala Strana. He was slender, and walked loftily. His robes were made of simple silk, without a pleat, tuck, or frill. But their color sent a wave of awe through the servants.

  Petra was prepared for the effect of rodolfinium. But there is a difference between seeing the color in a small bowl and seeing it spread over yards of rippling fabric. For the first time in her life, she felt like she might faint. She was not alone in this feeling. Several servants swooned, including Susana. Trying to support the girl and pat her cheek, Petra didn’t see the prince’s progression to the far end of the courtyard. She looked up again when Prince Rodolfo began to address the crowd.

  “My people,” he called. “I thank you for sharing the first day of a new year. I am sure that, with your love and support, my nineteenth year will be the happiest I have yet known.”

  The audience applauded. Prince Rodolfo’s gaze swept across the nobles and his servants. As he turned toward Petra’s corner, the girl was so startled that she nearly let go of Susana. The eyes that were just about to look into her face were silver. And they were not his own.

  Look down! Astrophil commanded.

  Petra hurriedly did so, hoping that the prince hadn’t noticed her.

  But he had. He stared briefly at the downcast face of the servant girl, whose features were a general blur. He was pleased by the way she stared so resolutely at the ground. He could hardly bear it when a servant returned his gaze. But soon he realized that his satisfaction came from another corner that he could not identify right away. Cocking his head as if listening to a distant tune, he grew to understand that the feeling that warmed him at the sight of the girl had something to do with the clockmaker’s eyes. They were never wrong. Whenever he wore them, his judgment of what was fine and beautiful was as accurate as a perfectly shot arrow. There must be something extraordinary about this very ordinary girl, though he could not tell what or why.

  But now was not the time to consider this. Now was the time to celebrate his fortune and his life.

  Petra didn’t look up until she heard the iron door clang shut behind the prince and his court. They alone were allowed to watch the fireworks from the blooming garden.

  Susana revived and said, feebly, “That was lovely. But it was awful, too, wasn’t it?”

  Petra didn’t have time to reply, because fire suddenly shot into the sky and exploded into a thousand red stars. The crowd collectively gasped and Astrophil trembled on her ear. Susana turned around and ran back to the castle in fear. Volleys of fire burst into the sky above the garden, and rained down over the walls like streaming jewels. Petra gazed into the sky with pleasure, the thunder of the explosions making her body thud with a second heartbeat. Some fireworks spilled their color down in a fiery rain, and others opened into sunflowers. The last one drew an orange salamander, which ran across the sky until it dissolved into glowing embers.

  A stunned silence followed. Then whooping cheers filled the courtyard.

  Petra was awestruck. She couldn’t imagine how the fireworks had been made.

  They must have been done with strong magic, Astrophil murmured, still shaking a little.

  “Did you like it?” she heard a man ask.

  Without looking to see who spoke she said, “Oh yes. It was amazing. It was … yes. It was.”

  “Ah, good. To have produced such an incoherent reaction is a compliment to my work indeed.”

  As if roused from a dream, Petra frowned. She turned around.

  There, standing before her in a green velvet robe, without a mask, was the man from the library, Master John Dee.

  “I designed the fireworks, you see.”

  “You’re a magician,” she warily guessed.

  “I?” He laughed, but his eyes remained keen. “I am a scholar.”

  “So the fireworks were not made by magic.”

  “No. They were made from a not very simple mixture of gunpowder and certain minerals. I would tell you which minerals, but I fear that this would lead us to a topic of conversation about which you would have too much to say. And we have far more important matters to discuss. Don’t we, Petra Kronos?”


  21

  The Magician Who Wasn’t

  MASTER DEE STOOD TO THE SIDE of the open door to his chambers, his hands hidden inside his robes. “Do come in, my dear.”

  His voice was polite, but Petra had been a servant long enough to recognize an order when she heard one.

  She stepped into the room, lit by only one green brassica lamp. Astrophil was perfectly still and silent. She had the impression that he did not dare speak to her in the company of John Dee. She, too, felt uneasy that this foreigner knew her name, had plucked her out of hundreds of servants, and had steered her past the guards onto the fourth floor.

  He moved in the shadows. He lit several candles by two velvet chairs. “Would you care to sit down?”

  Petra sat. So did he. His robes blended into the chair. Petra couldn’t tell where the chair stopped and the man began. He waited for her to speak.

  She looked around the room. John Dee was a lover of games. There was a chessboard, an open box with a red felt interior and two sets of dice, and an odd board covered with black and white disks. The only game she could play decently was cards, and even then Tomik often beat her. Still, she decided to try bluffing. In a voice strong with all the confidence that she didn’t feel, she said, “What do you want from me? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  She wasn’t sure what effect she hoped for, but amusement wasn’t it. As Dee laughed, Petra suspected that he had noticed her eyeing his games (maybe he had, in fact, left them out deliberately) and guessed her feeble attempt at strategy. It was even possible, she thought with dawning fear, that he was able to read her mind. She remembered Astrophil’s silence, and realized that this had already occurred to the spider.

  “My dear,” Dee said, “the question you should be asking is this: ‘Do we want the same thing?’”

  Petra folded her arms. “Fine. Do we?”

  “Look in the box on my writing table.”

  “Which box?” For there were several, of all sizes and made of different kinds of wood. The man was clearly fascinated by boxes—or, at least, he wanted people who entered his room to believe he was.

  “The long, flat one made of mahogany,” Dee said.

  She paused.

  “Mahogany is a red wood, harvested in a tropical land where everyone is born as a twin,” he told her.

  Petra gave Dee an odd look. Did he know that she had been a twin? She walked toward the escritoire, making sure not to turn her back on him. She selected the box and opened it. Inside was a small oil painting of a woman with red hair piled on her head in elaborate twists. She was wearing a full yellow dress studded with jewels. But as Petra looked more closely, she saw that they were not jewels but dozens of eyes and ears. She slammed the box shut.

  “She is the queen of my country,” said Dee. “I am Her Majesty’s most valued eyes and ears. I suppose you could call me a ‘spy,’ though I think that word hardly suits my skills. Your prince may think I am here on a purely ambassadorial visit, to amuse him with fireworks and stories about places he has never seen. I hope, however, that he does not think this, for that would belie the intelligence I know he has.”

  “I don’t see what I have to do with anything you’re talking about. I’m just a servant girl.”

  “If you are a servant, then you will obey my commands. You will obey me when I suggest that you do not pretend to be ignorant. It wastes my time and yours.”

  She was silent.

  “Let us play a quick game. It is a game of deduction. If I know who you are, then does it not stand to reason that I know a little more about you? What would Petra Kronos, daughter of Mikal Kronos, be doing miles away from her home in the sleepy village of Okno?”

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “I have my ways.” Dee noted her frustrated expression with a small smile. “Being the daughter of an artisan, you won’t blame me for keeping my trade secrets, I’m sure. If you would like to know what they are, why, then, you would have to come work for me.”

  Petra snorted. She forgot the nervousness she had felt when she first walked into the room. Strangely, the fact that this man knew her identity made her feel free. No matter what she said or did, her fate was now in John Dee’s hands. There was only one thing left for her to do: despise him for it.

  “I would like to share some information with you,” Dee continued. “I would like to tell you that more things are at stake here than your little plot. England knows about the prince’s weapon. I am speaking, of course, about the clock your father built. We know that the prince does not yet understand how to use it. But it is only a matter of time before he does, or finds someone who can. He would have done better to keep your father close at hand, locked up and easily accessible for information. But the prince is young and proud of his own skills. He also has a fatal weakness for beauty and those who produce it. No doubt he thought that by sending your father home, he was honoring both him and his own ability to eventually master the thing your father created. But what if the prince gives up trying to prove that he is just as talented as Mikal Kronos? It may not be long before the prince admits his mistake and sends your father an invitation to the castle. But will it be an invitation mounted on rich cloth and tied with a ribbon? Or will it perhaps be one accompanied by armor and swords and pikes?

  “What? Silent, Petra? I would have thought that this was a topic close to your heart. But, well, if you do not feel it is important enough to discuss, we can move on.

  “I wonder: have you ever considered why the symbol of Bohemian royalty is a salamander?”

  She said nothing, but glared.

  “A salamander loves fire. It lives in it, breathes in it, survives in spite of—because of—the heat that would kill you or me. The choice of symbols is never random. The princes of Bohemia have never been afraid of trouble. They have invited it. They have encouraged anger between the rich and poor to split the people into classes that despise each other. They have pushed their people to the brink of starvation. They have courted war. Prince Rodolfo is not afraid of, shall we say, a little heat. Because heat is what gives him power.

  “It is one political view. It is not for me to say whether it is bad or good. It is a strategy, and certainly the princes of Bohemia have profited by it. We English, however, are rather cold fish. Ours is a chilly climate. It rains enough to make a person feel perpetually damp. Our patron saint is George the Dragon Slayer. The symbol we have chosen shows a battle against a fire-breathing beast. It shows the death of fire.

  “Obviously international politics interests you very little. Those … unusual silver eyes of yours turn away as if you were listening to a boring school lesson. You do not see much beyond a horizon of yellow hills and your petty familial problems. But I assure you that Europe hangs in the balance. And I will make you care about it.

  “The emperor is ill and old and has too many sons to whom he has given too much power. When he dies, will the Hapsburg princes be content with the small countries they already possess? Will they agree with Karl’s choice of a new emperor? Or will they war among themselves and drag all of Europe into their struggle for the Hapsburg Empire? I think we both know the answers to these questions, and we know them because of what Prince Rodolfo commissioned your father to build. He clearly has higher ambitions than just being prince of Bohemia.

  “England could choose to support one of the three princes now, before the coming war. Indeed, this is what Rodolfo hopes will come of my visit. But choosing the wrong side would be disastrous for England. Even choosing the right side would not make my country safe. Her Majesty prefers to keep England’s neutrality. She prefers not to get involved at all in these central European problems. But inaction poses other problems, particularly when we consider the clock’s powers. If he were able to make the clock work to control the weather, it would be easy for Rodolfo to defeat his brothers and seize control of the Empire. All he would have to do is dry up the lands of Hungary and Germany in a brutal drought. This would cause mass starvation in
these countries.

  “With the clock, it would be equally easy for him to cow other countries into agreeing to his every wish. Indeed, if he chose to, it would be child’s play for him to conquer the rest of Europe. England, however, has no desire to be added to Rodolfo’s collection. Which is why the clock’s potential ability to control the weather must be destroyed. And which is why, dear Petra, I am very glad to have met you. You father has, so to speak, let a genie out of its bottle. It will be your job to put it back in.”

  “Me? Why don’t you do it?” She sarcastically added, “You’re obviously much more talented and intelligent than I am.”

  “True.” He inclined his head. “But in order to play this game properly, I must do so invisibly. I must be like your father, and make pieces move without seeming to be responsible for their movements. If the prince were to suspect my intentions, there would be dire consequences for me. But”—for the first time he looked worried —“the consequences for my country would be far worse. And so I am ready to strike a deal with you, Petra.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “A very easy one. You only have to do a little favor for me. Then you might gain my help in your quest.” He unfolded his arms and the dark velvet sleeves slipped back, revealing his hands for the first time. His nails were long, curved, and sharp, making his hands look like the claws of an animal. He reached into a pocket and drew forth a small glass bottle with green liquid inside. He uncorked it, dabbed a little on the tip of his forefinger like a lady might put on perfume, and then rubbed his left thumbnail with the oily finger, making the nail shine. “All you have to do is look carefully at this thumbnail and tell me what you see.”