Mr Drake and My Lady Silver

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘Am I?’ said Gilligold sleepily, and shut his eyes again.

  Ilsevel brandished the knife, and would have driven it into his nose without compunction, save that Phineas caught at her arm. ‘My lady,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget your sister’s note.’

  He is fond of treasures, it had said. Well, yes. Of course he was.

  But it had also contained two objects.

  Ilsevel retrieved the bundle of cloth from her bodice.

  ‘Perhaps you might consider a trade,’ she said, and pricked the tip of his nose with her knife.

  The eyes flew open. ‘Have you brought treasures?’

  Ilsevel held her two prizes before his eyes: the withered grass, and the shrivelled piece of apple.

  A blink. ‘And what are these pitiful things, that they should equal the Queen’s Hoard in worth?’

  ‘This,’ said Ilsevel, holding up the silvery grass, ‘was gathered from the throne of my noble grandmother, the queen Titania, when she ruled over all of Aylfenhame. And this—’ she held up the apple ‘— is an apple gathered from the Goblin King’s own enchanted orchard, in the days before it was lost. Artefacts of vast power, and much more useful to you than my sister’s old ball gown.’

  ‘Done!’ said Gilligold.

  This took Ilsevel aback, for she had expected some argument, or at least a little bargaining. Were they so very valuable as all that? Ought she to have offered only one? She felt a sense of foreboding, for perhaps she ought not to put two such articles of power into the hands of one such as Gilligold.

  It was too late, however, for the grass and the apple were gone from her hands; Gilligold had taken them already. She felt the ground buckle under her feet as he, rather horribly, smiled — and seemed to go back to sleep.

  ‘Wait!’ she called. ‘My sister’s treasures!’

  ‘Just knock upon the caches,’ rumbled Gilligold, without opening his eyes. ‘They will answer to you.’

  He spoke and moved no more.

  ‘If this is what Torpor looks like,’ said Ilsevel, peering at his great, slumbering face with a perverse fascination, ‘I do not at all want to try it.’

  Phineas took her hand, and pulled her away. ‘Come, before he changes his mind.’

  He ran, and Ilsevel followed.

  ‘Why did that work?’ Phineas said, as they traversed the rumpled swell of Gilligold’s gigantic belly. ‘He traded all the Queen’s Hoard for a handful of grass!’

  ‘Grass that once grew upon the throne of the most powerful — and, I may as well add, most famous — faerie queen there ever was,’ Ilsevel reminded him. ‘And those apples were true marvels, every one of them. The Kings of Gadrahst — the Goblinlands, that is — once possessed an enchanted orchard, and every fruit that grew upon every tree held some magical property that might be harnessed only by eating some part of its flesh. I cannot tell you how many desirable enchantments might be wrought with such articles. Gilligold has more jewels and gold than he could ever need or use, and appears to be so bored by them that he has drifted off altogether.’

  ‘And what will he do with the grass, and the apple?’

  Ilsevel tried to appear unconcerned, though the same concern gnawed at her. ‘At present he appears content to sleep on the matter.’

  They had reached the path by this time, and increased their pace, the ground being reassuringly solid under their feet. Soon they came upon the quartz-bound caches again. Ilsevel fell upon the nearest, the one containing Anthelaena’s hair-comb, and rapped smartly upon it.

  The quartz melted away at her touch, and she seized the comb.

  ‘Quickly,’ she said, possessed by an inexplicable urgency. Perhaps it was the sense of near completion, the fact that her sister’s restoration might be imminently achievable; whatever it was, she was suddenly unwilling to lose so much as a single unnecessary instant. She tore from cache to cache, wresting free their contents, until at last her own hands and Phineas’s were filled with Anthelaena’s glittering treasures.

  Back to the Door they ran, the roses and hellebores and moonflowers bobbing at Ilsevel’s waist, and the jug of ice-wine swaying from Phineas’s shoulder. The Door still stood open; they burst through it and kept on running, to the indignation of Nigmenog and Gollumpus. ‘Now, now!’ called Nigmenog as they tore past him. ‘Is that polite? I should think not! Come back here!’

  They did not pause, not until they had reached the shining silver bridge. There they stopped, all at once, because the bridge was no longer empty: the dark shape of an unknown person stood there.

  Surprised into silence, and alarmed lest someone should have come to take the Queen’s Hoard away again, Ilsevel could only clutch Anthelaena’s harp and doll and shoe-roses to her chest, panting for breath. ‘Who—’ she began.

  ‘Don’t stop there,’ said the figure with Tyllanthine’s voice. ‘The coach will be here any moment.’

  The figure was indeed robed, and the shape of the hood was familiar. Ilsevel let out a sigh of relief. ‘We have got everything,’ she told her sister, holding out her hands to show off the proof.

  But Phineas hung back. ‘I have heard much about Glamours lately,’ he said. ‘Are you sure this is Tyllanthine?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ snapped Tyllanthine. ‘Are you still carting this mushroom about?’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ said Ilsevel acidly, though she felt an unaccountable surge of affection for her irascible sister as she spoke. ‘There was never anyone to match her for venom.’

  Eloquent in silence, Tyllanthine turned her back upon her sister.

  And then came the carriage speeding up to the bridge, bright with promise and starlight. It drew up near to Ilsevel, and the doors opened invitingly.

  ‘Get in!’ said Tyllanthine. ‘No time to lose! All has been made ready, but if we do not make haste we will be honoured with some most undesirable guests and I should not like to have to kill anybody today.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Ilsevel as she dashed for the carriage, clutching Anthelaena’s precious treasures to her chest.

  ‘Why, to Mirramay, of course! They are waiting for us.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  If Ilsevel had been disposed to resent Tyllanthine for leaving her sister and Phineas to encounter all the risks of Warethorn Rose, she was shortly obliged to reconsider, for Tyllanthine certainly had not been idle. A succession of coaches brought the victorious party to the gates of Mirramay, and hastening through them shortly afterwards, Ilsevel found a city transformed.

  When last she had stepped through those vast, majestic gates, she had discovered her erstwhile home to be abandoned, save for rag-tag bands of darkling fae wandering hither and thither. Her heart had ached sorely at the sight of its once-grand houses tumbling down, its wide, airy streets soiled with litter and debris. The palace had been worse, far worse, for it was stripped of its treasures; what remained of its furniture was broken and worn, its upholstery hanging in tatters. Her solitary footsteps had echoed sadly through the abandoned halls, and she had not encountered a soul.

  The city that now met her gaze was the Mirramay of her memory, the home of her youth, and her heart soared. The derelict buildings were, by some miraculous art (or, more likely, Glamour) restored to their former beauty; the low winter sunlight glinted off walls clad all in white, or in ice-blue and rose and pale gold, lit with great, bright, crystal-clear windows. Pearly gilding glittered here and there, and silver carving, and statuary, and the triple fountains that had marched along The Queen’s Way for so many ages past were pristine and perfect, pouring streams of water into the frigid winter air. Ilsevel’s hopes and spirits rose with every step, and she hastened towards the Palace, eager to discover what more marvels of restoration awaited her at her former home.

  But Phineas, who had kept pace with her most of the way down The Queen’s Way, had somewhere dropped back, and Ilsevel became abruptly aware of his absence. She paused, too, leaving Tyllanthine to sail on ahead, and turned back.
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br />   Phineas stood in the centre of the crossroads fifty feet back, the wide boulevard with its glittering fountains behind him. He stood agape, staring ahead at the great golden palace with an expression of… awe? No, it was not awe. As Ilsevel drew nearer, she discovered it to be something more akin to woe.

  ‘Why so cast down, my Phineas?’ she said. ‘It is no great punishment to look upon such beauty, surely?’

  Phineas transferred his woeful gaze from the palace to Ilsevel’s face. He appeared to be trying to speak, but the words would not come. Instead, he silently held out the armful of Anthelaena’s treasures which he had been so carefully guarding, gold silk-tissue trailing from his fingers.

  ‘I cannot take them,’ she said, confused, for she was too burdened herself to manage Phineas’s as well. ‘Why should you wish me to?’

  ‘I… I cannot,’ whispered Phineas.

  ‘Whyever not?’

  He looked about, from the honey-gold palace to the graceful spires topping the manor-houses to his right and left, and finally to the white-paved road beneath his feet. ‘It is too much. I am not… this is no place for me.’

  Ilsevel understood. Where she saw the familiar streets of her home city, and the beauty and grace to which she had been accustomed ever since her birth, Phineas saw an intimidating magnificence, the likes of which he had never experienced in his life.

  ‘It is only splendour,’ she said, with an encouraging smile. ‘Why should you be unworthy of beauty, my Phineas?’

  In answer, Phineas merely looked down at the coat he wore — splendid only because it was borrowed — and past it to the shabby trousers he wore underneath, and the muddy, cracked leather of his boots.

  ‘Mere apparel,’ she said. ‘Easily resolved.’

  ‘You’d as well dress a sparrow in jewels,’ said Phineas bluntly.

  ‘You are no mere sparrow. You are the equal of anything and anyone, Phineas, and let no one persuade you otherwise.’

  ‘It is not my place.’

  ‘Your place?’ Ilsevel stared, dumbfounded, and stifled an urge to shake him. ‘Your place is wherever you wish it to be, and if you should wish it, that place is by my side.’

  He looked up, directing a searching stare at Ilsevel. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I have declared it to be so.’

  This did not much impress him, for he said nothing.

  ‘Phineas…’ said Ilsevel, more gently. ‘I… I do not want to do this without you.’

  He visibly wavered, then with a sigh, he took a step towards her. ‘Do not forget about me,’ he said, and she judged that it cost him to say it.

  ‘I could not. Come, now, or Tyllanthine will have both our heads.’

  ‘Do you think she needs an excuse?’

  Ilsevel laughed. ‘I concede the point.’

  The palace was another wonder all its own, for the ancient snowleaf trees grew still in the courtyard, their trunks still clad in golden bark, though their white leaves had fallen for the winter. The twin pools were full and clear, though their blue-green and rose-lavender waters were coated in ice. Inside, many surprises awaited.

  The first was that the interior had been, somehow, restored, and looked almost as it had on the day of Anthelaena’s death. A fire roared in the hearth of the Great Hall, and the tapestries — from Queen Titania’s day — hung once more upon the walls, their colours jewel-bright and new. The moss-and-silver carpets ran once more down the corridors, the mirrors and paintings in their iridescent frames hung once more upon the walls, and even Ilsevel’s favourite chaise-longue was back in the alcove in the library, the one under the window, where she had so often retreated with a book. Going from room to room with tears in her eyes, Ilsevel could not find the words either to thank Tyllanthine, or to ask her how she had accomplished it — where she had found all these lost things.

  Tyllanthine, uncharacteristically forthcoming, answered the unspoken question anyway. ‘The Goblin Market,’ she said, pointing at a pair of tall amethyst vases filled with clear water and silver fish. ‘Together with most of the paintings, and some of the furniture. And then Grunewald had some, you know — for safekeeping, he swears, and that may even be the truth. Wodebean recovered some other things from the Thieves’ Hollow, and from other traders of his acquaintance, and then I had reserved a few articles myself. And I divested the wretched Oleander Whiteboots of fully half of his hoard.’

  Ilsevel could not speak. She could almost begin to lament Tyllanthine’s thoroughness, for it began to seem that she had stepped back many years in time, to the heartbreaking days before Edironal’s disappearance; before the deaths of her sister and her niece; when she had been happy, and had not known what waited in her future.

  She swallowed these feelings, mustering every shred of cool composure at her disposal, and managed to say, ‘You have worked wonders, Tylla.’

  Tyllanthine said, ‘I know. Quickly now, for we are late.’

  Belatedly, Ilsevel remembered Tyllanthine’s earlier words: They are waiting for us. ‘Who awaits?’ she asked, but Tyllanthine did not seem disposed to speak further, and only hastened on, leaving Ilsevel and Phineas to trail after her.

  Ilsevel, recognising the passage her sister took through the winding corridors, realised that they were on their way to the throne room. So it soon proved, for Tyllanthine turned a corner, hurried up the wide, ivy-wreathed steps of the grand staircase, and unceremoniously threw open the pearl-tinted doors to the throne room.

  And Ilsevel was briefly taken aback, for a great many people were gathered therein.

  There was Grunewald, the Goblin King, wearing the human face he so much preferred to his own. He wore full Court regalia, and shone with power and jewels. Next to him stood a human girl with dark hair and bright black eyes, clad in similarly splendid attire; she looked quite at home there. A young Ayliri woman stood on the other side of the room, dressed in the enchanted attire of a princess; puzzled at first, Ilsevel realised, with a shock, that this was Lihyaen, for she had her mother’s clear golden eyes. She was grown now, no longer the child Ilsevel had known; she looked hale and well, but tense, and Ilsevel longed to go to her. But she was flanked by a motley band of humans, half-humans and Ayliri, and even an unusually well-dressed brownie; Ilsevel recognised none of them, and they were too thickly crowded around the princess to admit of Ilsevel’s approach.

  There were others in the crowd that she knew: Mr. Balligumph, for one. That tall figure rising so far above the heads of the rest could only be the tree-giant, Sir Guntifer Winlowe, a favoured courtier and Palace Guard of her grandmother’s. Wodebean had taken up a position in a shadowed corner, recognisable only by the characteristic red of his mantle, and the hunch of his shoulders. She saw Iseult and Valiel, two of her sister’s ladies-in-waiting; her own friend Lady Galdrin, statuesque in an emerald gown and white, bejewelled wig; the pixies Wyn and Hedwig, once the haunts of the gardens; and almost every household brownie that had ever attended upon the palace.

  A full company of the Palace Guard surrounded the great, glass throne, each resplendent in the mulberry-velvet coats and silver braid of their ceremonial uniform — though the swords belted at their waists were not at all for show, nor were the bright spears each guard held in their left hand.

  Upon the throne itself, in the centre of the wide, plush cushion of silvery velvet, was the purple-furred cat. The creature was far larger than a cat had any right to be, and was curled up comfortably there, apparently fast asleep.

  Distantly, Ilsevel discovered a new memory of this cat: the recollection burst upon her all at once. She had glimpsed the creature as a frog, when she had yet to be freed from her own transforming curse; the cat had seemed far larger, then. She had sniffed at Ilsevel’s frog-face, and stuck out her tongue; licked Ilsevel from head to tail-stub; and then darted away. It had not been many days later when the hob-woman had arrived, with her potions and her cures, and restored Ilsevel to her natural shape.

  No mere chance after all, then. Ilse
vel’s recovery had been Anthelaena’s doing.

  Tyllanthine bustled up to the throne, oblivious of her ragged robes among all the Queen’s splendour. In a gesture of unusual tenderness, she laid a withered hand briefly along the cat’s head as she passed. Anthelaena awoke — and began, with deliberate care, to wash one of her paws with her long, rough tongue.

  Ilsevel began to see the trouble. For though Anthelaena obviously recollected some part of her past — she had found Ilsevel, after all, and known her in some, vague way — she did not in the least resemble a Queen of Aylfenhame anymore. She looked all cat, as comfortable in the shape as any feline born to it, and though her throne-room was crowded with her own friends and family, lords and ladies, handmaidens and servants and guards, she paid as little heed to any of them as might a cat born and bred.

  It would take a great deal to remind her of who she really was.

  ‘Ilse!’ snapped Tyllanthine. ‘Hurry.’

  Hurry. Yes, because though the palace appeared filled with friends, that did not preclude the possibility of there being enemies abroad, too. The sooner Anthelaena was restored to herself, the better. Ilsevel wrested herself free of her tangled thoughts, and stepped smartly up to the throne.

  Tyllanthine had acquired her own armful of treasures, gleaned, perhaps, from the Markets and the Hollows and from Grunewald. She held up a glove of cloud-like lace and it rose obediently to hover above the throne. A necklace of rainwater-pearls followed it, and that was all; Tyllanthine, empty-handed, advanced upon Phineas.

  That would not do.

  Ilsevel intercepted her, and thrust Anthelaena’s harp and shoe-roses and pocket-watch into her sister’s arms, and then the cat-shaped doll. She turned to Phineas herself, and divested him of the starlit armband, the orchid comb and the mist-beribboned gown more gently than Tyllanthine would have done. He looked ready to vanish straight into the crowd, but she held him with a look. ‘The jug,’ she said. ‘We will need it shortly.’