by Holly Webb
Mr. Fountain was holding one end of his mustache and regarding it oddly, his expression half pained, half thoughtful. Surely he wasn’t considering keeping it? At last he sighed and snapped his fingers regretfully. His mustache curled crisply back into its perfect pomaded points, Gus was snow white again, and Freddie had an extremely short haircut. Rose suspected the master had taken advantage of the opportunity to tidy him up a bit.
“I think we may need a little practice,” Mr. Fountain said slowly.
Four
Rose trailed down the stairs to the kitchen after the lesson, her head still half full of confusing power. Of course the glamour hadn’t worked as it should, but she had done something! And the tingling, shimmering sensation of being surrounded by magic was still wonderful. She was too preoccupied to notice the sudden silence that fell as she walked into the kitchen. She sank into a chair and looked hopefully at the teapot that was standing on the big wooden kitchen table. She was tired, and just the sight of that snow falling outside the windows had made her feel cold. Freddie was right. It was sticking. She was dazed enough that when no cup of tea was passed across the table, she did not simply get up and go away, which was what she was meant to do.
Rose glanced up, a polite request on her lips, but then she met the expressions worn by the two other people at the table, and her thirst for tea died. She had almost forgotten. Everyone knew now, about the magic in her. They’d known for a week, but they didn’t seem to have gotten used to the idea.
Rose had found the staff hard to understand when she first came to the Fountain house from the orphanage. For a start, she couldn’t see how everyone in the lower part of the house managed to ignore its magical qualities so completely. For her, the stairs moved, the stuffed animals talked, and the furniture sparkled with magical history. Except in the kitchen, where Mrs. Jones refused to allow that nasty-tasting magic stuff.
Mrs. Jones had been one of Rose’s favorite people in the house. She was kind, and she was a wonderful cook, and she gave Rose enormous portions to fatten her up. After a lifetime of orphanage food, where there was always just enough to get by but never so much that you felt full and a good two-thirds of most meals consisted of cabbage, Rose adored eating at the Fountain house. The dresses she’d made for herself when she arrived were already starting to feel somewhat snug around her middle. It was wonderful.
But Mrs. Jones had a very strange attitude toward magic. She tolerated it, as long as it stayed in its place, which was preferably well away from her. She didn’t mind magical things, as long as they were big and expensive and difficult. But casual, easy magic—someone who could light the kitchen fire by looking at it—that was unnatural.
Rose had eventually come to realize that Mrs. Jones only trusted magic if it was bought and sold. She’d even given Rose an amulet of protection a few weeks before. It was a complete sham, but she had meant well, and she had paid for it. Now that she knew Rose could protect herself, she was frightened, and that made her angry.
The events of the past week, her sudden pariah status among the servants, flashed back into Rose’s weary mind with painful sharpness as she saw Sarah and Mrs. Jones watching her warily, as though she might smite them with something.
“All I wanted was a cup of tea,” Rose said quietly, staring back.
Mrs. Jones looked upset, and Sarah clutched her cup as though the thick china handle was a lifeline. She was so scared that it broke, the handle parting company with the cup, and she shrieked and jumped up.
“You put a spell on me!” she gasped.
“No, I didn’t!” Rose snapped back. “You were gripping it so tightly I’m surprised it didn’t break into splinters! It wasn’t even a chipped one,” she said disgustedly, looking at the mess.
Mrs. Jones looked for a second as though her sympathies were with Rose, but then she shook her head. “Sarah, sweep it up, and do stop howling. You…do whatever it is you’re meant to be doing.”
She can’t even use my name, Rose realized sadly.
“Did she do that?”
Rose leaped up from her chair and wheeled round to see Susan behind her with a tray of toast crusts and splashed milk—Isabella’s afternoon tea. If it hadn’t been for her lesson, she would have been the one fetching it. Despite Susan’s declaration, she had ended up doing some of Rose’s work.
“No!” she snarled and glared back at Susan.
“Freak,” Susan hissed. “Witch girl. What was that witch doing with all those children in her cellar? Eating them? I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s what witches do. You’ll start wanting to do that soon, I shouldn’t wonder. Someone should get rid of you before you turn. One of my friends who works for a lord, she said I should look for a new place, instead of staying with murderers. You ought to be shut away, all of you.”
Susan’s accusation was unfortunately close to the truth. Mr. Fountain had been right, Rose realized. Gossip was flying round the city, and tempers were rising. The snow won’t help, Rose thought suddenly. Even I thought it was unnatural this early in the year. When children start dying of cold in the back alleys, they’ll want someone to blame…She blinked. Maybe it is magical, she thought suddenly. But why would anyone waste magic making it snow?
Susan sensed that Rose was no longer paying attention and took a threatening step forward.
Rose looked up and glared back at the older girl, her fingers itching. Why didn’t she do something to Susan? She could. They hated her anyway, so it wouldn’t make any difference. She deserved it. Rose watched a faintly wary expression settle in Susan’s black eyes, and the older girl put the tray down slowly.
“Go on then,” she said very quietly. “Show us what you can do. What are they teaching you?” She put her hands on her hips and walked slowly toward Rose. She was only a little taller, but she still managed to loom over the younger girl. Rose guessed Susan was depending on her being too overawed to do anything. She wasn’t, she promised herself. She was scared of hurting Susan, that was all. Really.
She backed away, fumbling for the door, and ran. All the way up to her room in the attics, arriving in her own tiny space breathless and gasping. And furious, but mostly with herself, not Susan. She was just a mean, jealous, ugly, horrible toad, that was all. It was Rose who was stupid. She was going to have to do something; that was clear. Even the glory of magic lessons wasn’t enough to make life worth living, when all but an hour of her day would be spent with people who hated her.
“And I hate her,” she muttered miserably. “She’s mean. Why does Susan have to be like this?” But what would she be like, Rose wondered, if a new girl had turned up, younger, everyone’s pet—for Rose had been Mrs. Jones’s favorite until the magic happened. Rose hoped she wouldn’t have been quite as unpleasant as Susan, but she had to admit she would have been tempted to make a few catty remarks. And then Susan had discovered that the little maid from the orphanage, the one she’d been bossing about all over the place, could do things she would never be able to do. That one day Rose might even own a house like this. It would be hard to accept. It made sense. But that didn’t make it any easier for Rose to put up with.
“And I won’t,” she said firmly. “Next time, I will do something horrible to her, and I don’t care what they think.” She sighed. Susan couldn’t do it back though. Didn’t that make winning a bit less special? A bit—easy?
A slow smile spread across her face. It didn’t necessarily have to be something magical. There were plenty of things she could do to Susan without the merest hint of magic. Especially now she had access to the workroom, with its jars and cabinets full of interestingly scary spell ingredients. Newts’ eyes in Susan’s porridge, she thought dreamily. The stuffed crocodile in her bed. Rose giggled appreciatively at the thought.
***
She climbed the stairs to the workroom deliberately early the next day. None of the servants would complain if she said she was on her
way to her lesson with Mr. Fountain—they might not like what their master did, but they had the utmost respect for his authority. Although even Miss Bridges had given Rose a horribly thoughtful look that morning. Rose had seen her glancing over Mrs. Jones’s shoulder at the newspaper.
Rose had dithered over clearing the kitchen table, purposefully brushing against Mrs. Jones’s arm as she moved the teacups. It hurt to see the woman who’d once bought her sweets hurry into the scullery to scrub away the touch of her skin, but it got her what she wanted. She skimmed the dense print hurriedly.
PARLIAMENT TO PASS LAW ON WITCHES
Rose’s stomach kicked, and she tasted acid in her mouth. A law saying what? She read on, feeling sick. It seemed the headline was exaggerating somewhat, but there was to be a debate on whether “certain restrictions” should be made and licenses issued. Rose scowled at the paper—she wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded bad. She looked up to find Mrs. Jones staring at her from the scullery door, a frightened look in her eyes.
Rose shook her head wearily. “I’m just the same as I was before,” she told the cook, her voice shaking slightly. “I haven’t changed.”
Mrs. Jones nodded, but Rose knew she was only doing it so that the witch would leave. Rose whisked out of the kitchen, furious at the injustice of it all. All she had ever done was try to help!
Once in the workroom, she looked around carefully for Gus. He divided his time between this room and Mr. Fountain’s study, with occasional forays to the kitchen for treats. She checked his usual sleeping places: the windowsill, on the chairs, under the table, sprawled on the back of the stuffed crocodile—he said its scales were good at scratching his itchy spine—but he was nowhere to be found. She huffed a little sigh of relief. She didn’t want to explain this to him. Not so much because he would disapprove of her stealing from the workroom—he was more likely to ask why she was bothering, why she didn’t just shrink Susan to the size of a pin and throw her in a gutter. He disapproved of Rose’s cautious ways and wanted her to be more adventurous with her powers. Rose suspected he was as much of a dramatist as his master.
Rose wasn’t quite sure what she was actually looking for. She wanted something disgusting probably, she thought. Something to scare Susan into leaving her alone. Spiders? It would work but, unfortunately, Rose didn’t like them either. The thought of plunging her fingers into the jar labeled Arachnids, dried, legs of made her feel sick.
Cautiously, she stood on tiptoe to examine the cabinet that took up most of one wall. It was made of heavy, dark wood and contained hundreds of little drawers with brass mountings for slipping labels into. They were all marked in a variety of hands: a clear, flowing script she recognized as Mr. Fountain’s, and Freddie’s writing, less confident, with bits crossed out. But there were other hands too, and one who wrote in emerald-green ink that had never faded. The expert glamour-maker, Rose realized, wondering what he had used powdered rose quartz for. How many magicians had kept their secrets in this cabinet? It was possible that even Mr. Fountain didn’t know everything that was in here. There had to be something she could use to have her revenge on Susan.
Rose started by carefully opening a few of the lower drawers. Most of them were full of strange powders and dusts. She had no idea what they all were, and she was reluctant to touch them. What if they were poison? She knew that one of the spells in Prendergast’s Perfect Primer, the book that she and Freddie were supposed to be learning from, called for the dried venom of the Indian cobra. Any of these could be it.
She looked hopelessly up at the rows of drawers above her. She wondered miserably what on earth she thought she was going to find—and what would she do with it when she’d found it.
She sat down on the floor, unconscious for once of what she was doing to her dress. There had to be something—something to show Susan that Rose could fight back. Maybe just a little bit of magic wouldn’t be cheating? Rose smiled grimly. Susan didn’t have a problem taking advantage of her natural nastiness, after all.
Rose hopped up again and went to the big wooden table to leaf through Prendergast—that was how Freddie always referred to it. The book had a bossy, nanny-ish tone, but it was quite comforting at the same time. There were a few more advanced works on a shelf by the door, and even their covers looked frightening. One of them was bound in snakeskin, and Rose had heard it hiss. For now she would happily stick with the basic spells. She flicked through the heavy pages, her eyes drawn by a word here and there, glancing at the illustrations. What would upset Susan most?
She was incredibly vain, Rose thought to herself. She loved her clothes and hated her black uniform dresses. She’d saved her wages for a Sunday hat with violets on it. Rose squeaked, remembering, and leafed back. Yes, here it was. A Spell to Enliven an Image. It ought to work on velvet violets—they were a sort of image, weren’t they?
Quickly, Rose dipped a scratchy pen into the inkwell and scribbled down the spell—it didn’t seem too difficult, and all she needed was to burn a little piece of the image while she spoke the spell…
Ah. So she was going to have to steal a piece of Susan’s Sunday hat. Rose nibbled one of her fingernails thoughtfully.
***
After the lesson, Rose hovered in the corridor, flicking a feather duster around and trying to look busy until Mr. Fountain had gone. Freddie and Gus stayed in the workroom, or so she thought.
She scuttled quickly to the attic stairs, which led up from this floor to the servants’ bedrooms. It seemed unlikely that Susan would come upstairs in the afternoon, but it wasn’t impossible.
“What are you doing?”
Rose stumbled and grabbed the banister to stop herself from falling. “Gus!”
The white cat was sitting on a step above her—which was impossible because he’d certainly been in the workroom when she’d left, and he hadn’t gone past her. Rose wondered for a second if he could make himself invisible…
“You just don’t look,” Gus told her loftily, seeing her frown.
“What are you doing up here?” Rose demanded.
“I asked first.” Gus stared down at her sternly.
Rose looked sideways. “I’m just fetching something…”
“Mmmm?”
“It isn’t important.” But Rose could feel how unconvincing she sounded. She sat down on the step below Gus. “How did you know?”
“You look excited. And frightened.” He leaned down to rub his head against her ear. “Is it exciting?”
Rose laughed abruptly. “It’s probably dangerous. I was going to steal a bit of one of the violets off Susan’s Sunday hat, so I can make it so she’s got a flowerpot on her head instead. I don’t know if it would have worked. I just wanted to do something.”
Gus sprang up, his tail twitching with excitement.
“Come on!”
“You don’t want to stop me?” Rose asked, almost hoping he would.
“Of course not. It’s about time you showed that little madam what’s what.” Gus led the way up the stairs, his tail waving eagerly.
Susan’s hat was hanging on a hook in her room, a room that was exactly like Rose’s. Rose hovered in the doorway, holding the doorknob and not quite daring to let go.
“Oh, come on,” Gus mewed irritably, and he darted in, leaping onto the bed and from there making a spectacular sideways leap, batting the hat off its hook with one gracefully outstretched paw. Then he picked it up in his teeth and trotted back to Rose, holding it like a large and flowery purple rat.
“Whatever does she put on her hair?” he muttered, spitting it out at Rose’s feet. “Ugh. Do you have anything to cut a bit off with?”
Rose pulled a little knife out of her apron pocket. She’d borrowed it from the workroom, where it was used for cutting up roots and things, but now she looked at it rather doubtfully.
“Useless,” Gus pronounced. “I do hope yo
u’re grateful, Rose. This whole revolting object is permeated with some foul hair oil.” With his eyes closed in disgust, he quickly bit off one petal, and spat it into Rose’s hand, furiously scrubbing at his mouth with a paw afterward. “Now what do we do?” he asked in a rather muffled voice.
“We get out of here,” Rose muttered, beckoning him away and tucking the velvet petal away with the knife.
She was so nervous, she didn’t think to put the hat back on its hook.
***
Rose was sitting in the back kitchen sewing, mending a hole in a sheet, while Bill polished shoes opposite her when Susan stormed in.
“Have you been in my room?” she snarled.
Caught out, Rose gaped at her, suddenly unable to think of anything to say. Across the table, Bill paused, holding a polishing rag in midair. “Don’t talk daft,” he muttered. “Why would she?” But he cast a slightly anxious glance at Rose.
Rose swallowed, her mouth tasting bitter. She didn’t know whether to lie or not. She had wanted a showdown with Susan, after all.
It was just that she had wanted to be a little more prepared for it.
She pushed her chair back with a screech and stood up. “All right. Yes, I went in your room.” She pulled the tiny piece of purple velvet out of her apron pocket. “And I cut this off your hat.” She decided not to implicate Gus. He might well be able to take care of himself, but Susan was sly enough to poison him. Rose wasn’t going to risk it.
“You little brat! Little witch brat, you’ve done it now.” Susan stepped forward, snatching the velvet scrap and seizing Rose’s arm. “I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”
Rose twisted, but Susan’s fingers felt like iron bands.
“Let go of her,” Bill demanded, surging around the table.
“What if I don’t?” Susan sneered. “Going to pull me off her, are you? Get yourself in trouble for hitting a girl?”
