by Zen Cho
“What, now, will we speak of obligation again?” said Sir Stephen, smiling. “I have proscribed all such talk, remember. I have heard enough of duty from you, Zacharias. Now you are liberated from your office—which I know you entered for duty’s sake—I hope you will concern yourself much more with what you desire. With what would give you joy. You have given me such joy, my dear boy. That I shall remember, wherever death may take me.”
At the gate Sir Stephen paused and laid his hand upon Zacharias’s shoulder. A light pressure—a last look, full of affection—and he departed. He walked along the street, his image fading as he went, until even by straining his tear-blurred sight to the utmost, Zacharias could not descry any trace of his oldest friend.
27
ZACHARIAS WAS AT a loss for what to do about the caterpillars.
He had taken the lease of the cottage in large part for its charming garden. The trim flowerbeds and vegetable patch had captured Zacharias’s imagination. He had envisaged himself kneeling upon the earth, digging in the soil, making every day small, tangible contributions to flourishing.
He had not conceived of the multitude of afflictions that threatened vegetable kind, however. Every evening he pored over weighty tomes on gardening lore, and he rose every morning prepared to do battle, but in vain. His endeavours bore no fruit, of the metaphorical or physical kind, and each day he confronted the reproachful attitude of a garden struggling to retain its grip on life.
It eventually dawned upon him that he was going about the business in the wrong way. He had taken up gardening as a diversion from his primary occupation, the magical researches that took up the main part of his days, but he saw that he could not continue this strict division between work and leisure if he were to make any sort of success of the garden. If he desired it to thrive, he must apply to it what skills he had.
Once he had worked out a suitable formula, the garden did indeed begin to do better. Zacharias had hopes of roses soon, and he thought he might even venture to eat one of his cabbages.
This was to run a real risk, for it was not clear what the full effect of the spell had been. In ingesting the cabbage, would he also be consuming the magic that had grown it? What would be the consequence of that? He would not feed the cabbages to anyone else, but for himself he thought he might make the trial.
It was an advantage of living alone in the countryside that it enabled one to lead the uninterrupted life of the mind. Cut off from London, he could afford to ignore the bickering, the intrigues, the grandstanding and shufflings for position that had bedevilled his former life. Provided he did not, by leaving out any excessively magical equipment, alarm the villager who visited once a day to cook a hot meal and tidy the cottage, he was left in peace to pursue truth—even if that involved the occasional ingestion of a dubious cabbage leaf.
The caterpillars were a problem, however. Fat, fuzzy and complacent, they sat upon his vegetables in veritable hordes, ignoring him until he addressed one directly.
“Good morning, sir,” he said.
The caterpillar paused the busy movement of its jaws to reply:
“Pleasant weather, this, eh?”
It was an ideal summer’s day. The skies stretched out in endless blue overhead, unmarred by a single wisp of cloud; the fresh scent of greenery and earth rose into the nostrils, imparting a lively pleasure in being alive and outdoors.
“You seem troubled, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so,” said the caterpillar.
Zacharias experienced a brief internal struggle, but decided upon candour.
“I am simply at a loss to account for the preternatural intelligence of you and your brethren,” he said.
“I thank you for the compliment, but I am not certain my brethren are so very intelligent,” said the caterpillar cheerfully. “They seem tolerably addlepated to me!”
“Oh pipe down, Gilbert,” said one of its fellows, without rancour.
“The formula I devised was intended to encourage the development of this garden and its inhabitants,” said Zacharias, thinking aloud. “It was designed to seize upon the urge for life at work within each living being, making use of that natural force, so that magic would have little to do but expedite what would in any event occur in nature. Is the urge for life, at its base, a desire for understanding? Will my cabbages begin to compose minuets if I leave the formula to work itself through them? Indeed, what strange transformations might not I undergo if I pass too much time within the garden? I too am a living being, and presumably subject to the influence of the formula.”
“Your period of rusticating would appear to have made you an eccentric, Zacharias,” said a voice over the hedge. “Does conversing with your vegetables aid their development?”
Prunella stood in the lane outside the garden, her hand on her unicorn’s flanks. It looked as though she had ridden there on Youko, for she was dressed in a smart nankeen riding habit, and a flush glowed in her cheeks. The simurgh Tjandra was perched upon her shoulder, giving her something of the appearance of a fetching young piratess.
“I was addressing the caterpillars, not the cabbages,” said Zacharias, after a pause.
His heart was beating absurdly fast. It was the lack of prior notice, of course. He was no longer accustomed to society.
Prunella nodded. “I suppose you do not often have the opportunity for rational conversation. You must be very dull, living so out of the way. I have not seen a soul since I left the village.”
“There’s us,” said the caterpillar Gilbert.
Prunella blinked.
“I contrive to occupy myself,” said Zacharias. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
• • •
PRUNELLA wandered around the cottage, examining the books on the shelves and commenting unasked on the notes scattered on every available surface: “That formula will never work; there is a glaring error in the first verse, and besides, the spirits of the earth will only attend if you speak Anglo-Saxon.”
“There is pen and ink on the desk, if you are moved to correct any errors you observe,” said Zacharias. “I hope you have not been brought here by any untoward circumstance? From Damerell’s letters I had believed that only a minority within the Society continued unpersuaded of your claim to the staff, but I fear he may have sought to spare me anxiety.”
“Oh, I do not give a fig for the Society. It may engage in all the hysterics it desires—they do not make me any less the Sorceress Royal,” said Prunella. “But I must say, Zacharias, it was shocking of you to have foisted the staff on me and gone haring off to the countryside. Why, I had not even completed my studies when you absconded.”
“I did send you the necessary texts,” said Zacharias, looking at her with concern. “I knew it would be a trying time for you, but I believed it the lesser of two evils for me to leave at once. Though I was never a very popular Sorcerer Royal, I feared there might be a movement to reinstate me if the alternative was you. If I removed myself from the scene, however, I believed the Society would soon be brought to recognise your eminent suitability for the position—if only because there was no other eligible candidate, since Midsomer had agreed not to make any attempts to oust you.”
“Oh, Geoffrey Midsomer is quite exploded,” said Prunella. “He has gone back to Fairyland, and we do not expect his return in this mortal lifetime. He is not the only wicked thaumaturge in the world, however. I have had three attempts on my life in as many months. Tjandra and Youko insist on sleeping at the foot of my bed, and I am continually tripping over wards—Damerell sits spinning them in a corner of my study. Just you think on that, Zacharias. You have exposed me to the impertinence of every ha’penny magician who thinks he would make a better Sorcerer Royal than a half-caste upstart.”
“You still continue alive, however,” said Zacharias heartlessly.
“They make as unhandy assassins as they are incompetent magicians,
” allowed Prunella. “Still, it is a tiresome way to live. It was very unkind of you to have put me in the way of it.”
“I believed you the best candidate,” said Zacharias.
“And it was the only means by which you could prevent my being hauled up before the Presiding Committee and executed as a felon,” said Prunella. “I know.”
Zacharias was taking the teacups out of a cupboard, and he would have smashed his best china if Youko had not nipped out and caught two teacups neatly upon the points of her horns.
“Oh, did not you think I would discover your reasons?” said Prunella. “I was bound to find out, you know. Indeed, I ought to have known it sooner. You were always going on about what a shocking thing the Society would think it, that I had so many familiars. Once I learnt that the Sorcerer Royal could not be prosecuted for any crime, save as the Charter provides, it was all perfectly obvious.”
“That was not my only motive,” said Zacharias. He drew out a small table, set out the crockery, and poured the tea, allowing the ritual to calm him before he spoke again.
“I had for some time been wrestling with a dilemma,” he said. “The duties of my office seemed to require that I render up your treasures to the Society, despite the trust you reposed in me. I told myself that since the eggs belonged to you, and I had promised to keep the secret of their history, I could not betray your confidence. I felt no security in that position, however. If I had continued for much longer in the office, I suspect I should have found it untenable. It was necessary for me either to forswear the staff or surrender the eggs: I could not both remain Sorcerer Royal and keep faith with you.”
Prunella stared at him over the rim of her cup.
“That would never have occurred to me at all,” she said, with candid astonishment. “Of course I would never tell the Society about the treasures. They would want to take them away from me. I have not made up my mind to use them myself, despite my mother’s instructions—Youko and Tjandra suffice for my purposes, and after what I had to do to make Leofric leave, I am not inclined to take on a new familiar. It would be like a second betrayal. But I shall certainly preserve the treasures for my daughters, and their daughters. And if you told the Society, I should very likely have to kill you, for I could not permit my mother’s pains to be so thrown away.”
“I suspected you would have a different view of what your duties required,” said Zacharias. “As a private citizen, I might well agree. In my public role, I should have found it difficult to sustain such a view.”
“How extraordinary,” said Prunella. She uncovered the teapot and cast a quick, professional glance over its contents, saying, “I am due another assassination attempt, I see. I must arrange for this wretched Bloxham to be sent away. He is not an ill-looking creature, despite his inability properly to orchestrate a murder. I might see if the Fairy Queen desires an addition to her retinue.”
“Is it so bad, being Sorceress Royal?” said Zacharias.
“Assassins aside, you mean?” said Prunella. “It is not so very bad. I am very good at it,” she added, speaking as of a matter of fact. “It has made me wholly unmarriageable, but I cannot lay all of that at your door. Do you remember that shocking gossip Mrs. Gray, and the day she caught me flying about with dear Mr. Hsiang? I could not make out why she should be driving about the Park so early in the day—with Sophia Kendle, too, who was never friends with her before. It seems that Mrs. Gray had made inquiries about my family, and she contrived to discover an ancient relative of my father’s, an unpleasant old uncle who disowned my father when he married my mother. Of course, the first thing Mrs. Gray did was spread the news about town, starting with Sophia, because she was a particular friend of mine. That’s spite for you!”
“Your mother’s identity is known, then,” said Zacharias, watching Prunella closely. She did not seem overly distressed, however.
“Only that she was a black woman. No one in England seems to have heard of Seringapatam’s Grand Sorceress, and I have no intention of teaching them,” said Prunella. “It is quite absurd what a fuss there has been about it. So long as they thought me the offshoot of a noble family—my mother a bibi abandoned by my father—I was acceptable, it seems. But now that they know my father was a nobody who was married to my mother—and more to the point, neither of them left me any money—all my suitors have abandoned me. Sophia will not even speak to me—though that may be because I named her husband to the Presiding Committee. She would rather he were a Member of Parliament.”
“You nominated Kendle to the Committee?” said Zacharias. “I thought he disliked you.”
“He dislikes me extremely,” said Prunella agreeably. “It is ever so diverting to see him sitting in Committee meetings, gnashing his teeth because I gave him his step. He is tremendously useful: because he will insist on openly regretting Midsomer, everyone else is terrified of agreeing with him in anything. All I have to do to ensure a motion is passed is persuade Kendle to vote for the opposite course.”
“It seems you are having a salutary effect upon English thaumaturgy.”
“They all quake at my approach, if that is what you mean,” said Prunella. “It is that I caused the death of my familiar that frightens them the most. Everyone considers my want of feeling perfectly appalling.”
“Does that surprise you?” said Zacharias.
Prunella lifted her chin in the defiant gesture so familiar to him. “I cannot regret it, though I miss Nidget, and I know I used it barbarously. It deserved better of me. But I sacrificed it to help you, and I would do it again.”
Zacharias cast his eyes down, his cheeks warm. He was surprised, looking inward, to find that his decision had been made, almost unbeknownst to himself. It remained only to gather his wits and courage for the attempt. He had not expected to be brought to the point so soon, and he could not tell if this were the perfect time, or the worst. But he must do it now, or spend the rest of his days in regret.
“Have you any wish to marry, in the circumstances?” he said. “I myself doubted, as Sorcerer Royal, whether my duties would not prevent my enjoying any domestic happiness.”
“I never thought of that, you know,” said Prunella. “I only wished to have my own establishment, and not have to teach, like Miss Liddiard and all the rest of them, and be snubbed by my betters, and abused by my charges. Now, however, I have the stipend, and since Lady Wythe has kindly insisted that I remain with her, that suffices for my needs. But I do regret the prospect of children. I can hardly bequeath the treasures to my daughters if I do not have any daughters at all. However, there is no purpose in worrying about it, since it is unlikely anyone will ever offer for me.”
“There, I think, you are wrong,” said Zacharias.
“You know what I mean,” said Prunella impatiently. “I suppose I could always call upon the butcher’s boy who used to linger in Mrs. Daubeney’s kitchen, but I had grander ambitions. I did not only wish to be married, you know. I desired to wed someone wealthy, who was excessively in love with me, and would let me do whatever I wished.”
“That is still open to you,” said Zacharias. His throat constricted, and for a hideous moment he thought he would not be able to get it out, but by some miracle he managed to continue. “I inherited an ample provision when Sir Stephen died. I have been contented with a simple life, but if you—that is to say, if I were required to live in a higher style, my income could easily support it.”
Prunella looked blank. “I have not the least idea of your meaning.”
“I only meant to say that I would marry you,” said Zacharias’s voice, seeming to come from very far away, and not from himself at all. “That is, I would like to, if you would take me. I fulfill the conditions you specified, though I do not presume to believe that that alone is a sufficient incentive for you to accept my offer.”
Prunella shot out of her chair as if the cushion had burst into flames beneath he
r, and scuttled to the other end of the room. Youko, peacefully at work on a piece of seed cake, looked up in alarm. Tjandra flew to the chimneypiece, squawking.
“What can have possessed you to say that?” she rapped out.
Now that the thing was out, Zacharias felt more comfortable. “It seemed the right time. I am sorry to have alarmed you, however.”
“Oh, it does not trouble me at all,” snapped Prunella. She started pacing around the room in her agitation. “It simply came into your mind? You had no reason to think your offer would be welcome?”
“I can see I have surprised you,” said Zacharias. He hesitated. “Perhaps it would have been better to have given you some warning—to have built up to it. Courtship is not an area in which I can boast any expertise, however. My work, my experiences—indeed, my inclinations—have been such as to put it out of my power to make a proper study of the practise.”
“What did you go for to do it, then?” said Prunella belligerently. “When we were talking so pleasantly!”
“When you were haranguing me for having made you Sorceress Royal, you mean?”
Prunella was not listening.
“I suppose my talking of my prospects led you to believe I am desperate for an offer,” she said. “I do wish to be married; I have made no secret of that. But I have also always made it clear, I hope, that I will only accept a real offer. No, you are kind, Zacharias; I can see that you wish to help. But I hope I have more pride than to marry anyone who offered for pity!”
“You mistake me,” said Zacharias. He fixed an unseeing gaze on the teacups on the table, his pulse beating high in his throat. “I said that I fulfilled all the conditions you specified. If—if profound attachment is what you require in a suitor, you should have no cause to complain of me.”
Prunella turned and fixed Zacharias with an intent gaze.
“Zacharias,” she said, “do you mean to say you offered because you are in love with me?”
