by Holly Webb
“You did hit one of the guardsmen, Bella,” Rose pointed out.
Mr. Fountain sank back in his chair. “Oh Lord…”
“Papa, they’d just tried to stab Miss Anstruther!” Bella protested.
“Besides, I thought you hated going?” Rose couldn’t help laughing as she said it. Bella was like a cat, always on the wrong side of a door. Bella shrugged.
“Why wouldn’t we be allowed, sir?” Freddie asked. “I don’t think we were that badly behaved. Although the guards officer looked as though he’d like to clap us in irons when he realized he’d let slip the truth about the princess.”
“Yes, he was lucky. If it hadn’t all been a false alarm, he could have been court-martialed.”
“But if she’d disappeared, everyone would have had to know sooner or later, wouldn’t they?” Rose asked slowly.
Mr. Fountain looked at her and said nothing. Rose blinked. “They wouldn’t!”
“I suppose she is ever so popular,” Freddie said slowly.
“It would make everyone very angry if anything happened to her. Sir, what did actually happen? How did she end up in the garden?”
“What do you think?” Mr. Fountain asked. He sounded as though he really wanted to know.
“If she didn’t know what happened…” Rose began.
“Perhaps she was drugged?” Freddie asked hopefully. Bella shook her head. “They taste her food. All her cakes have a bite taken out of them first. I’d hate that.”
“So…it was magic?” Rose suggested, her voice very quiet, as though it was a dangerous thing to say out loud.
“The nation’s little princess was abducted by a spell,” Mr. Fountain agreed wearily. “It’s all I can think of. And I don’t know how it went wrong, either, how she came back. Because surely that wasn’t what was meant to happen.”
Freddie swallowed. “That’s…that’s not good, is it, sir… People are going to be…upset.”
“They are. Very. I shall have to go back to the palace later—a friendly magical face around at the moment, that’s what we need.” Mr. Fountain pressed his hands against his eyes for a moment. “Coming straight after that debacle with the Sparrow woman and those poor unfortunate children, this is awful. Disastrous.”
“You mean, I can’t go back to the palace because of my magic?” Bella said furiously. “That’s not fair!”
“Is the princess all right?” Rose had been looking out the window at the snowflakes whirling through the darkness. She wouldn’t like to be out in that, and she thought of herself as fairly hardy. Princesses were obviously delicate, and Princess Jane was china fair and slender—or she was on Miss Lockwood’s commemorative teapot back at the orphanage, anyway.
“Frozen. They missed her the first time they searched. She was under a bush, half buried in snow, and she had a white lace dress on. It looked like it was woven from snowflakes.” Mr. Fountain’s mustache shivered. “Poor child. She’ll be surrounded even more now.” He sighed. “Don’t worry, Bella. I will try to arrange for you to go back. The princess asked me if you would while I was making her some rather special cocoa. It just depends…I haven’t seen the king yet…He may not want…” He sighed wearily. “I must go back.”
“That must be very fine lace to look like snowflakes,” Bella murmured, her voice dreamy with longing. She adored clothes. “Was it Talish lace, Papa? The very best cobweb kind? Now that the peace is almost settled, I should think the princess can wear Talish lace again.”
Her father stroked her curls, smiling. “Perhaps you will get some for your birthday, little one, but I’m not promising. The princess’s dress was Talish, a gift from the peace envoy, but I should think most of the Talish lace coming into the country right now is smuggled.”
“Did it really look like snowflakes?” Rose asked. She couldn’t imagine how fine it would be. She’d seen Mrs. Jones working on her tatting in the servants’ rooms in the evening, but even though it was pretty, you couldn’t mistake it for snow.
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Fountain assured her. “With little sparkly bits—crystals, I suppose—and the most wonderful pattern. It caught the eye most distractingly.” He blinked, remembering it. “I must go, my dears. I will see you in the morning.”
***
But in the morning, Mr. Fountain was summoned to the palace early by a royal messenger in a livery that cast Bill into a deep depression. Miss Bridges had eyed it with the greatest interest, and then looked him up and down consideringly.
“A week, I’d give it,” he muttered to Rose at breakfast. “Less than. You’ll see. I’ll have a tricorn hat by Sunday, so she can show me off at church.” He scraped his bowl mournfully. “I wish I worked in the stables.”
“No, you don’t,” Rose whispered back. She didn’t speak out loud belowstairs at the moment, so as not to draw attention to herself. “Jacob’s had to sweep from the mews clear out to the street already this morning to get the carriage out. Sarah said so. You know she’s sweet on him, and she was worrying about his chilblains.” She looked at her bowl sadly. She always got small helpings now, and Isabella never left any breakfast.
Bill shoved his bowl forward, and Mrs. Jones automatically dolloped in another large spoonful of porridge. Bill flicked a glance around the table and swiftly swapped his bowl with Rose’s.
She stared at him in amazement. “Thank you! How did you know I wanted—”
“You were staring at that pan like it was your long-lost sister,” Bill muttered back. Being from an orphanage too, he was allowed to say that kind of thing without fear of starting a fight. “Shut up and eat.”
Rose did as she was told; Bill winked at her and shoved her bowl forward too.
“More? Already?” Mrs. Jones asked. “Well, a growing boy, I suppose…”
Bill nodded, trying to look angelic, which was hard with sticking-out ears and hair that stood up in obstinate spikes however short it was cut. He did have very round and innocent-looking eyes though, which worked to his advantage while he was conducting the great Thursday porridge robbery.
“Stop staring at me,” Bill hissed. “They’ll suspect.” Rose blinked apologetically and started to eat her porridge. Somehow it tasted even more delicious for being filched.
As the breakfast was being cleared, Mrs. Jones pushed a list of errands to be run in front of Rose.
“Shall I go with her? She might fall in a snowdrift,” Bill suggested hopefully. The snowfall had been very heavy the previous night.
“I’m sure Rose will manage, Bill,” Miss Bridges said, sipping her tea. “Although come to me before you go out, Rose, and I will find you some galoshes.”
“Galoshes? She needs a signal flare, not shoes,” Bill said under his breath.
“And don’t let me forget, Rose, that Mr. Fountain has given me a list for you from Sowerby’s, as well.”
Rose had no idea what Sowerby’s was, but everyone else in the kitchen sucked in their breath, as though it was something that shouldn’t be mentioned.
“Magic shop,” Bill whispered. “Got a big crocodile in the window. Moves its tail too sometimes. It’s a treat. You sure I can’t go with her, miss?” he wheedled. “She don’t know the way to that place.”
“Doesn’t,” Miss Bridges corrected him absently. “King’s English, William. And have you polished the shoes and the silver? I thought not.” She eyed him beadily. “You wouldn’t be planning a snowball fight with the stableboys, by any chance?”
“No, miss…” Bill said dismally.
The galoshes were made for feet considerably larger than Rose’s, and they flapped. Rose slip-slapped her way through the square, dodging snowballs being wildly thrown by a group of little children in the garden. The statues were wearing white fur overcoats, and the grumpy stone bird on the shoulder of one of them had an icicle dripping from its beak. It eyed her as she passed, as though daring her
to laugh.
Rose plodded on, trying to remember Miss Bridges’s complicated instructions for how to get to Sowerby’s. Snow seeped over the tops of the galoshes and through the eyelet holes of her boots. Her toes were going numb already, and Mr. Fountain’s old Macintosh boat-cloak crackled in the wind as though it would like to take off. It felt like wearing a smelly tent.
She made it to the grocer’s and stood inside the doorway for a moment, enjoying the warmth of the big cast-iron stove. The heat made the delicious smells of the shop even stronger, and Rose shivered her way through the warm pepper- and spice-scented air. The shop was full, as though everyone was lingering on their errands today, not wanting to go back into the snowy wilderness outside. Rose caught the ends of several conversations as she made her way to the counter.
“Poor little thing. Frozen quite solid, they say. Not even a shawl on.”
“It isn’t natural. Not snow this deep, and not this early in the winter neither!”
“Well, stands to reason it’s witchcraft, doesn’t it? What else could be doing it? Unless it’s a Judgment.”
“Let it creep in, then you turn around one day and this is what they’re up to!”
“Children crawling into the sewers for shelter. Cruel, it is.”
“They had it right in my mother’s village, burned the lot of them, they did. That was a long time ago, mind…”
Rose drew her cloak tighter around her and scuttled toward the counter, her mind whirling with frightening images.
As she went out with her purchases, a lady in a jet-trimmed mantle was holding forth to her friend about witchcraft and how it ought to be stopped. Rose wondered if they knew where half the sovereigns in the box behind the counter had come from. Not that she could tell which ones the master had made, but she knew that a lot of the country’s gold was magicked. Freddie had told her that without the gold, the country would fall apart. Did no one here know that? Didn’t they care?
If they knew what she could do, would these nice-looking people want to stuff her into the glowing stove and burn her?
Rose felt that her heart was a lump of ice, colder than the snow outside.
As the door of the grocer’s clanged shut behind her, she looked anxiously up and down the road. It was left from here, she was almost sure, but the high snowdrifts made it hard to get her bearings.
Hordes of small boys were shoveling passageways through the snow, some with shovels that looked suspiciously new. Rose wondered if any hardware stores had been broken into recently. But she gladly scrunched her way along the paths, dodging calls for a penny or even a farthing. The Macintosh cloak protected her when they threw snowballs for not paying.
Sowerby and Son was at the end of a row of shops that Rose had never seen before, a few minutes’ trudge from the grocer’s. Rose saw the sign swinging from the front and made for it gladly, hoping to warm up again inside. But as she drew closer along the narrow snow path, she saw that the owner and his assistant were outside, with steaming buckets and scrubbing brushes.
“Don’t you throw anything!” the assistant told her as she flapped up in her galoshes. “We’ve heard it all, all right?”
“I wasn’t going to,” Rose promised. “I’ve a list.” Sowerby’s was a small, dark-fronted shop that looked rather like a pharmacy, its windows full of bottles and jars, and little wooden drawers with labels like those in the workroom. The dark glass windows had gilded letters on them, advertising Esoteric Supplies, Exotic Ingredients, and Patent Apparatus, but right now they also had painted slogans in splattery writing: Witches Beware! Leave Our Children Alone! And, rather poetically, Drinkers of Blood Begon Although Rose wasn’t quite convinced about their spelling, which detracted slightly from the message.
The news about Miss Sparrow’s strange practices had clearly spread, she thought, shivering anxiously. And it had gone beyond newspaper articles and grumbling in the grocer’s, as far as demonstrations in the street.
“Come in, dear, come in.” Mr. Sowerby had a mustache to rival Mr. Fountain’s, only his was long rather than wide, trailing in two tails right down beyond his waistcoat buttons. “George, you keep scrubbing. Little monsters. What do you need, dear? Are you new? I don’t recognize you.”
Rose dropped a curtsy, although she wasn’t sure Mr. Sowerby would see it inside her cloak. “I’m Mr. Fountain’s new apprentice, sir, and a housemaid. It’s irregular. Sir, who painted your windows? They were saying in the grocer that witches made the snow!”
Mr. Sowerby pursed his lips. “Magicians, dear, please, let’s not lower ourselves. Arrant nonsense. That snow is real. It would take an unbelievably powerful spell to do something like that.” He looked out of the window, frowning, then shook his head. “It couldn’t be. Ridiculous idea. I tried to tell the louts who defaced the shop that, but they just threw snowballs at me. And stones,” he added grimly. “Luckily the glass is diamond hardened, though that was to stop things getting out, not things getting in.” He looked at her with bright little eyes. “Fountain’s new apprentice. Well. There’s a thing.”
“Here’s the list, sir. Mr. Fountain wants it all urgent, he said.” Rose brought out the list, and Mr. Sowerby fetched a set of brass scales onto the counter with a stack of the tiniest weights Rose had ever seen. She supposed magical ingredients must be rather expensive, as she watched Mr. Sowerby weighing the strange dusts and powders into little twists of oiled silk. She had been wondering why a magician would choose to keep a shop, rather than working for the king or doing something else a little more exciting, but as she looked at the towers of jars, she wondered just how much gold it would take to buy all this.
Mr. Sowerby had diamond ear studs, she noticed.
“Your shop is beautiful, sir,” she told him shyly, gazing at the shining bottles. The snow had stopped, and sparkling sunlight was streaking through the windows, throwing colored light on the wooden floor.
Mr. Sowerby glanced up at her, as he carefully weighed out an odd licorice-black powder that shimmered and shifted on the scales.
“Father and son, my dear, father and son, for two hundred years. Never a spot of trouble. Until now. You tell your master for me, Solomon Sowerby’s compliments, and he’d better get us out of this mess.” He shook his head. “Oh, it’ll pass. There’s been wicked rumors before, I suppose. But never anything like this.”
“You couldn’t have stopped them?” Rose asked, waving a mittened hand at the windows.
Mr. Sowerby grinned, showing pointed white teeth.
“With my hands tied behind my back, young lady. But I didn’t think that blasting a gang of ruffians to kingdom come would be sensible—not at the moment. Tempting though it was.”
“I’ve done it, Dad. And I’ve set them to repel anything else. Whitewash or whatever.” The boy who’d been cleaning the windows came back into the shop, clanging the buckets.
“Good lad. Have you fed Henry? Did you see Henry, my dear, on your way in?” Mr. Sowerby led Rose over to the window, and she gulped. The odd bench that she’d seen out of the corner of her eye in the far window had a tail, she saw now. And teeth.
“The kitchen boy at home said it was stuffed,” Rose murmured, staring at it nervously.
“Oh, so he is, so he is,” Mr. Sowerby agreed. “But Henry’s not so stuffed he can’t manage another meal, tee-hee-hee.” He laughed a strange giggling laugh but then stopped abruptly. “Look! George, they’re back! Little monsters, not again.” He shook his fist at a group of scruffily dressed boys, lugging a can of paint, who were leering at him through the window.
“They won’t get it to stick, not this time,” George said, folding his arms across his apron grimly. Then he smiled gleefully, his eyes creasing at the corners.
“Henry’s hungry, Dad…”
“Ah…” Mr. Sowerby sighed with satisfaction. “You’ve a point there, George, a very good point.”
“He won’t eat them, will he?” Rose asked, her voice squeaking with horror, wondering if she should run out and warn the boys. But then Henry might eat her too!
“He won’t get through the window,” George said regretfully. “Pity really. But you just watch…”
Rose peered into the window space, seeing now how Henry the crocodile coiled around the display of odd, carved boxes, his scales burnished to a greenish gold, and his teeth like carved ivory. He was stuffed. In fact, Rose could see the stitches where he’d been rather badly sewn up, and there was even a wisp of horsehair poking out between the scales. When Bill had said he moved his head, Rose had thought it must be some sort of clever clockwork. She’d seen a clockwork doll in a toyshop. But there was a feeling about Henry. She couldn’t see a key.
The boys outside had been daubing paint on the window for a few minutes now, but it wouldn’t stay, and they were getting angry. Presumably because Mr. Sowerby hadn’t done anything to them the last time, they weren’t afraid of him and George, and now they gave up on the paint and resorted to jeering and catcalls, shouting about witches and child stealers. Rose felt like screaming back at them, saying it was all lies, but she knew it would only make it worse.
The three of them watched in suspenseful silence until the boys began to bang angrily against the window. Then Mr. Sowerby let out a long-held breath and glanced hopefully at George.
“What is it?” Rose asked.
“Watch and see,” George muttered back, lifting her onto a tiny embroidered footstool so she had a better view into the window.
Henry’s shining scales glinted in the snowy light and flickered as the window shivered. Rose frowned a little. It had twitched. Had it? Was it just the glittering light? No, it had done it again. All at once the window was filled with eight feet of furiously thrashing crocodile, snapping, lunging, and roaring at the terrified boys on the other side of the fragile sheet of glass.
George and Mr. Sowerby howled with laughter as the boys scrambled their way through the snow to escape. Even Rose couldn’t help giggling. It was a rather mean thing to do, she supposed—but then the words they’d been painting up were about her. Her laughter died.
