by Webb, Holly
Bella was frowning thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if it was Miranda leaving that made Miss Fell so…well, you know. Stiff-spined. She said she fought with your grandfather, and left because she was so angry. That doesn’t sound like the same person Eliza’s talking about. I can’t imagine Miss Fell under anyone’s thumb now, can you?’
Rose let out a nervous giggle at the thought, but then she nodded. ‘I think my mother did her a favour.’
‘What went wrong?’ Gus leaned in closer to the mirror from Freddie’s shoulder. His ears were laid back, and he looked and sounded fierce.
Eliza darted back as though he’d aimed a blow at her, and Rose wondered if he had, by magic. She gave him a stern glare, and he gazed coldly back. Rose shuffled her feet, embarrassed. Sometimes she forgot that Gus was probably a great deal older than she was, and certainly a great deal better at magic.
‘Wrong?’ Eliza quavered. ‘Oh! He died, sir.’
‘Oh!’ Rose whispered. ‘John Garnet? My father died?’ For a few moments it had been such a lovely story, she had almost seen it, a little room, warm with firelight. The cradle ready, and the line of little wooden animals watching over it. Hints of it, little glints, had moved in the mirror behind Eliza, she was sure. Now there was only darkness again.
Eliza nodded. ‘It was a horse, miss. One of the carthorses, with a load of cabbages. Trampled, he was. It was awful. I thought Miss Miranda would die herself, she was that stricken. He’d made a little mouse for the ark, the night before, the size of a fingernail, it was. She sat there holding it, and crying because there was only one.’
‘She’d left everything to marry him, and he was gone, just like that,’ Rose murmured. ‘I would be too. Cabbages!’ she added, with a choking gasp of horrified laughter. ‘I’m surprised it wasn’t fish,’ she sobbed.
‘Oh, there, miss…’ Eliza wrung her silvery hands, and then stretched out towards the glass nervously, dabbing at it with her fingers, as if she wanted to reach through and touch Rose. ‘It’s only vegetables, at Covent Garden. Oh, I can’t, I can’t… You!’ she hissed at Bella. ‘Put your arms around her! Miss, I mean,’ she added hastily.
Bella did as she was told, patting Rose a little awkwardly, and even Gus stepped from Freddie’s shoulder to hers, and nudged her cheek. Freddie took a step backwards and offered Rose his handkerchief from a safe distance.
‘So what did she do?’ Rose whispered sniffily at last. ‘She can’t have gone back. Did she die too?’
Eliza shuffled regretfully, winding her fingers into the strings of her apron. Clearly she didn’t want to say.
‘Tell me!’ Rose snapped, and felt guilty when the little ghost’s eyes went round and fearful, though not as guilty as she’d thought she would.
‘She used her magic, miss. She had to, you were well on the way, so she couldn’t do anything heavy, like. She didn’t want to – she thought her father would find out, and come after her. But she didn’t have a choice. She sent me to put a little card up in the window of the Three Bells, the pub down the street. Any Tasks Undertaken, it said. Discretion our watchword. No love philtres. Miss Miranda said those would probably make our fortune, but she couldn’t bear it.’
‘Did he find you then? Mr Fell?’ Freddie asked. He was so fascinated he’d forgotten to avoid tearful girls, and had crept up close to the mirror again.
Eliza shivered. ‘No.’
Freddie drew in an excited, anxious breath. ‘But someone did?’ he guessed, leaning close to hear Eliza whisper.
‘It were all right at first,’ the little servant muttered. ‘She did little things. Found a lady’s lost lapdog. Found an old man’s will for his son, when he’d died and not said where he’d hidden it. But then she started to get known, you see? She was getting a reputation. And this shifty-eyed man came. He wanted her to look at some gold coins, and see if they were real, or forgeries. He said someone had used them to pay him.’ She shivered again. ‘And if they did, I feel sorry for them, I truly do.’
‘The coins were fake?’ Gus asked, with a professional sort of interest. Mr Fountain had made his fortune as the country’s only successful alchemist. Gus, as his familiar, clearly regarded this as research. He had stopped being quite so unpleasant.
Eliza nodded. ‘Very clever fakes, Miss Miranda said. With a spell on them to make them even better.’
‘Hmf.’ Gus considered this, his eyes hooded.
‘When Miss Miranda told the man, I could see he weren’t happy,’ Eliza whispered, her eyes dark with the memory of fear. ‘I couldn’t tell if what he’d said was the truth, or whether he’d made those coins himself, and he just wanted to see if she could tell.’
‘You think he was the counterfeiter?’ Gus demanded sharply, and Eliza nodded very slightly.
‘I thought so. Miss Miranda was just glad he paid her in the real kind. She was past caring, poor thing.’ Eliza eyed Rose almost accusingly. ‘Made her life a proper misery those last few months, you did.’
Rose nodded mutely, unsure if she should apologise. It was the strangest conversation.
‘It was the very next day that he came.’ Now Eliza was visibly trembling. It made her strange silvery skin shimmer all over, and she wrapped her arms around her chest, as though to try and hold herself still.
Rose found herself trembling too. ‘He?’ she whispered.
‘The counterfeiter told him. He must’ve done. Miss Miranda was on his patch, see? He came, and he had the card from the Three Bells’ window. He said we didn’t need it any longer, and somehow, when he said it, I knew it was true. He had the gift. He could make you believe anything, Pike could.’
‘Pike? That was his name?’ Bella sounded contemptuous, but Eliza frowned at her.
‘One of the stableboys told me once what a pike is – I’d never known before. Great big river fish, all greyish green and spotted. They lie in wait for the smaller fish, hanging still in the water, hardly even twitching their fins. And then a poor little fish swims past, and the pike leaps on it, and swallows it whole with its huge great teeth. They’re so crazed, sometimes they try to eat a fish that’s as big as they are, and die trying. Nasty, evil things.’
‘They taste nice, though.’ Gus’s bright pink tongue stuck out of his mouth for just a second, and his eyes misted with the memory.
‘Stop it, Gus. He likes fish,’ Rose said apologetically. ‘Did he bewitch Miranda too?’
Eliza shook her head thoughtfully. ‘Not at first. It took him a lot longer to catch her. She was sitting there, watching him drink tea, and she had a look on her face – same sort of look as that one had just now –’ she pointed to Bella – ‘like she thought he was common. And when he started saying that she was on his territory, she just laughed. But she was so tired, what with the baby, and grieving for Mr John. He went on, and on, and on at her. She didn’t see what he was doing. She was such an innocent, you see. All the time he was wrapping her in layers and layers of magic. Like a spider wrapping up a fly. The more he talked, the weaker she got, like he was drawing the strength out of her, sucking out her insides.’
‘Ugh.’ Bella shuddered.
Eliza nodded, and leaned closer to the glass again. ‘And when she was all drained out, he sent his magic into her. She was like a puppet, dancing on strings.’ She sighed. ‘I couldn’t tell her. I could see it, but he wouldn’t let me tell her. I couldn’t move, let alone speak. I just sat there in the corner, and she thought I was being a good, quiet servant, and all the time I was raging and screaming inside!’
‘What did he do to her?’ Rose begged, her nails digging into her palms, sure that she was about to hear how her mother had died.
Eliza laughed sadly. ‘He told her to pack. She only had her little carpet bag, and another bundle of the baby clothes. He had her walking out of the door, and I was still sitting there on the stool in the corner. But then she stopped – she didn’t see me – but she knew something was wrong. She knew I was missing. Even though he had her all wrapped up in a spell,
she remembered me.’ The pride in the little ghost’s voice was pitiful. ‘She made him stop, and bring me too.’
Gus twitched his whiskers. ‘You wanted to go? To be kidnapped by this powerful underworld magician?’
Eliza simply stared at him. ‘Where else would I go? Miss Miranda knew I didn’t have anywhere else. I couldn’t have gone home, even if I could find the fare for the stage from somewhere. And it would have to have been somewhere a decent girl wouldn’t even think of, mind you. No, if I’d have gone home, my dad would have sent me right away again. My family lived in a tied cottage, one that belonged to Mr Fell. If they’d taken me back after the way I’d run off with Miss Miranda, my whole family would have been out. We’d all have been in the poorhouse. I burned my boats when I went with her, Mr Cat.’
Gus laid his ears back a little at that, but he didn’t complain. Rose could see that much as he disliked ghosts, he was developing a grudging respect for this one and her loyalty.
‘That’s how Miss Miranda Fell and me, we joined the Pike gang.’ Eliza giggled, but she didn’t sound as though she really thought it was funny. ‘The most bloodthirsty gang of murdering thieves you’re ever likely to meet.’
‘She didn’t – she didn’t work for them?’ Rose asked, her voice horrified.
Eliza sighed irritably, a puff of chilly, silvery not-breath smudging the mirror glass. ‘Of course she did! She hadn’t a choice! Do you not understand anything? They made her do it. I cleaned and cooked and ran errands, and did what I was told, and Miss Miranda did the same. She did what she was told.’ Her shoulders drooped. ‘If it makes you feel any better, miss, I don’t think she ever actually killed anybody.’
Rose gasped. ‘You don’t think?’ She shivered, and her fingers seemed to grow cold and dead. And she dropped the mirror.
‘Catch it!’ Bella squealed, and Rose stared at her hands in dismay. She had no feeling in her fingers – it was as if they didn’t belong to her any more. The mirror seemed to spin as it headed for the floor, and a thin, despairing wail floated up.
‘Oh, no, no…’ Rose moaned, as it hit the floor with a thud.
Bella snatched the mirror up. ‘Eliza’s not there, but it isn’t broken!’ she cried thankfully. ‘Oh, Miss Fell would have killed us. Rose, what were you doing?’
‘My mother was working for a bad magician! For a gang of murderers! That’s probably how I ended up in the orphanage, Bella, someone fought back and killed her. She was a criminal!’ Rose stared down at her fingers. They felt just like they usually did, and she clenched them, digging her nails into her palms. She could feel that. She dug in harder, watching red half-moons flower on her skin. It hurt, which was good, because she felt as though things had changed so much in the last two minutes that it might not have done.
Through all her time at St Bridget’s, she had assumed her parents were simply too poor to keep her. She had never, somehow, thought that they might be anything but honest. ‘My fingers stopped working before. When Eliza said…’
‘She did say she didn’t think your mother had killed anyone,’ Freddie reminded her helpfully.
Rose glared at him. ‘Oh, wonderful! Not quite a murderer’s daughter, then!’
Freddie sighed. ‘She didn’t have a choice, Rose. You heard what Eliza said – she was bound into a spell. It sounded like a very clever one, too. She wasn’t used to dealing with other magicians, was she? Not if she’d lived most of her life in the wilds of Derbyshire, with what sounds to me like a mad family. He got her good and proper.’
Rose nodded. She set the mirror down in front of her, and gazed at it, her chin on her hands. She hoped it hadn’t hurt Eliza, being dropped. ‘It’s what Mr Fountain said would happen to me,’ she told them, very quietly.
Freddie blinked. ‘What?’
Gus was eyeing her sympathetically. ‘You see now that he was right, don’t you?’ he asked gently.
‘What did Papa say?’ Bella sounded indignant. She disliked it when other people knew more about her father than she did.
‘When everyone in the kitchens hated me, I was going to run away. Ssh!’ She held up a hand as Freddie and Bella both started to talk at once. ‘I never even tried. Your father stopped me, Bella. Him and Gus. I was going to try to make a living for myself the same way my mother tried to, finding things. Helping people. It seemed such a good idea!’ She laughed hollowly. ‘Gus said someone would cut me up and throw me in the river in a whole set of sacks. Or that I’d be made to work for someone awful. Like Miranda was.’
‘I can’t believe you were going to run away!’ Bella burst out. ‘You never told me!’
‘You hardly ever talked to me then, except to complain that your dresses weren’t properly ironed,’ Rose pointed out. ‘Nobody talked to me, that was the point. Even Freddie was being sniffy because he didn’t want to share being an apprentice.’
‘I’m sure I was not.’ Freddie scowled. ‘Or only a little, Rose, anyway.’
‘I hated it here. I can’t believe the same thing almost happened twice.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Perhaps I am like her.’
‘But you have people to watch out for you.’ Gus tickled her cheek with his whiskers. ‘We would not let that happen to you, Rose. We didn’t. Like we said then, we’re responsible for you. Even though we know who your parents are now, you are still Aloysius’s apprentice, and we will always be bound together. We would not let a back-street magician steal one of our children away.’ He sniffed disgustedly. ‘Think yourself lucky, Rose. Those Fells. Obsessed with birth and history and lineage, but not with people. They should not have let your mother out of their hands. Although…’ his whiskers shimmered thoughtfully, ‘it’s highly possible that the girl had more fun in the year she had living in the London slums than she ever did walled up in a draughty mansion in Derbyshire.’
Rose giggled in spite of herself. ‘I wouldn’t let Miss Fell hear you say things like that. She’d have you turned into fur gloves.’
Gus gave her a sharp look, before obviously deciding that this counted as nervous exhaustion and not insolence to cats. ‘Miss Fell might even admit the same. She said it herself – she could not leave the Fell house until she was so angry she made a clean break from the family. I suspect she is infinitely happier for it.’ He thumped Rose’s arm with his lead weight of a tail. ‘Now. Find that girl ghost again. I want to know what happened next, even if you don’t.’
Rose nodded and picked up the mirror, a little gingerly, in case the strange thing happened to her fingers again. ‘I do want to know, I suppose… Oh, of course I want to. I want to know every last bit, but I’m not sure I want to actually hear how she died. I just want to know.’ She looked round and saw that Bella and Freddie were frowning, and Gus was giving her the look of an impatient cat, his tail slightly twitching.
‘Just look into the mirror, Rose dear,’ he purred, unsheathing his claws very slightly.
Rose sighed. ‘Sorry.’ She stared into the dark glass, searching for Eliza, but only her own face stared back. The silvery ghost girl had gone entirely. ‘She isn’t coming back.’ Her voice had risen slightly in panic.
Bella peered at the glass. ‘Just do what you did last time.’
‘I did!’ Rose snapped. ‘Nothing’s happening.’
‘Maybe you scared her away, dropping it like that,’ Freddie said, tapping thoughtfully at the glass with one finger.
Rose shook her head. ‘I can’t have done. I didn’t drop it that hard, did I?’ she asked them pleadingly.
Bella shrugged. ‘It looks like you must have done.’
Freddie nodded. ‘It might have felt to Eliza like you did it on purpose,’ he pointed out.
Rose stared into the mirror again, straining her eyes and her mind, but the glass remained obstinately glass. What if Eliza never came back? ‘No…’ she whispered. ‘Please, Eliza, I need to talk to you. I have to know how it ended!’
Gus looked down at the glass, and hissed thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps it didn’t…’
Rose dragged her eyes away from the mirror-glass, and frowned wearily at him. ‘What do you mean?’
Gus went on staring at the mirror, his tail flicking faster now. But he seemed to be angry with himself, for once. ‘We could have been wrong. I’ve heard of the Pike gang. Notorious lot. Very savage. Mixed up in the opium trade too, I think…’ He closed his eyes in a slow blink, and then looked up at Rose. ‘They’re still there. So why shouldn’t she be?’
Rose felt the chair suddenly swing beneath her – as though a rug had been pulled out from underneath it.
‘Rose!’ Bella caught her hands, and rubbed them. ‘She’s like ice. Rose, wake up!’
Rose shook herself. Gus’s words had seemed to send her into a dream – that confused state where nothing is ever certain. The strangest things happen, but no one cares. She swallowed tightly, and whispered, ‘But you said…you all said it. That I was being silly, wishing she were still alive.’
Gus wrapped his tail firmly around his paws, and stared off sideways into the shadowy corners of the room. Clearly he hated having to contradict himself. ‘All I’m saying is, it may not be as much of a certainty as we thought,’ he growled. ‘So look in the mirror, girl.’
Rose snatched it up. Perhaps Eliza had just been shocked when the mirror fell. Surely now they would see her, edging towards them through the mist…
But there was nothing in the glass, not even the slightest silvery shimmer. Rose sat back, staring down at her hands. How could she have been so stupid and dropped the mirror? ‘What am I going to do?’ she whispered, more to herself than to the others.
‘Miss Fell might be able to help,’ Freddie suggested reluctantly. ‘She must have known Eliza, if she was your mother’s maid while she lived at Fell Hall. Maybe she could summon her for us.’
Bella sniffed. ‘I wouldn’t come, if I were a ghost and she summoned me.’
Freddie shuddered. ‘Knowing her you wouldn’t have a choice.’
But Rose shook her head. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea. You saw how much it upset her talking about my mother. What if we tell her all this, and raise her hopes, and then we can’t find her?’ She swallowed. ‘Or worse. If the gang did kill her, and Miss Fell has to find that out. It would almost be worse for Miss Fell than it would be for me. I’ve never even met her. Well, not since I was a baby.’
