Lily and the Prisoner of Magic (5 page)

‘Thank you, but I shall be quite comfortable here.’ The princess smiled at the dragon, and waved a hand at him. Instantly, he curled out one foreleg so that she could sit, arranging her skirts with delicate twitches until the faded fabric hung beautifully.

‘She’s ever so familiar-looking,’ Maria muttered. ‘Is she an actress, Lily?’

‘You may be seeing the resemblance to my sister,’ the princess told her, smiling slightly. ‘I am afraid that if you are all too frightened to keep a dragon, you will not want me in your theatre either. The Queen’s Men would be particularly interested to know where I am.’

Sam muttered something that made Daniel kick him, then turned scarlet, and swept off his cap. ‘It’s her!’

Daniel glared at him. ‘Who?’

‘Look at her! Put a crown on her!
Imagine her on a stamp!
’

Daniel swung back to stare at Princess Jane, and gasped, along with most of the rest of the crowd.

Colette swept a dramatic and perfect curtsey, and even Alf bowed.

‘Miss – Ma’am – Highness…’ Sam stuttered. ‘You’re dead! They gave out that you had a wasting sickness. There was a state funeral – they floated rose petals down the river off little boats. I’ve got a mug! Black and gilt, with your portrait!’

‘How very imaginative of someone…’ The princess smiled. ‘I should have liked to have seen the rose petals. However, I should think I was already imprisoned at Fell Hall by then. They kept me in my rooms at the palace for a few months, while they tried to persuade me to denounce magic. That would been what they called the wasting sickness, I suppose.’

‘She shut you up, all this time? But it’s been forty years… Your own sister?’ Maria whispered.

Princess Jane shook her head. ‘I think not. My mother, more likely. Sophia was much more soft-hearted. She may not have known. I hope not,’ she added wistfully. Then she turned and stared at Alf, her faded blue eyes suddenly sharp. ‘The dragon is under my protection, as are the children. I intend to help Lily and Georgiana rescue their father, and restore magic to its proper place in our country. My dear sister has been misled, and so have her people.’

Daniel gulped. ‘Are you proposing to become queen yourself? Is this, er, a revolution?’

The princess’s eyes widened. ‘Of course not…’ She paused. ‘Well, I hadn’t thought of it that way, at least. Oh dear. Perhaps it is.’ The steely gleam in her eyes dulled, leaving her looking much older. But the dragon lowered his head towards her, rubbing his huge face against hers, and purring.

Lily could see the magic rising off him in a cloud of misty silver, sparkling faintly around the old princess’s white hair, and sharpening her features so she looked almost young again, and strong. She sat up straighter. ‘We will do whatever is needed,’ she told Daniel and the others, sounding even more royal than she had before.

L
ily stared anxiously up into the sky. It was September now, and the nights were growing colder. She shivered, wishing she still had some of the beautiful clothes that Aunt Clara had provided for her and Georgie, when they were still her pretty little nieces. They had all been left behind when the girls were sent to Fell Hall. Aunt Clara had probably burned them.

Georgie and Maria and the others had done the best they could from what was in the big wicker hampers in the theatre wardrobe, but there were forty children to clothe, and it was a case of one dress and feel lucky. Lily wrapped the piece of old velvet curtain she was using as a cloak more tightly round her shoulders.

‘Can you see him yet?’ Georgie slipped out of the doors and into the yard.

‘No. Nothing. What if someone caught them?’ Lily wrapped her arms round her chest tightly and blinked a few times, her eyes stinging. She’d been gazing up at the stars for too long. It was after midnight now – maybe even one or two in the morning.

‘I don’t see how they could,’ Georgie said slowly. ‘He’d just fly off, wouldn’t he? No one would be able to stop him. Unless they had, I don’t know, a cannon… It’s just taking a long time.’

Henrietta nudged Lily’s ankle comfortingly. ‘There were a lot of places he had to get to, Lily. And most of those children couldn’t give him very clear directions. They hadn’t been home for years.’

‘I suppose…’ Lily blinked again, and shook her head wearily. Her eyes were starting play tricks on her – a patch of stars had just gone out. Which wasn’t possible. She dropped the curtain, shielding her eyes with one hand and gazing up. ‘It’s him! Look, Georgie, that dark patch – it’s him, it has to be!’

Georgie frowned upwards, and then grabbed Lily’s arm and hauled her backwards into the shelter of the doorway. Henrietta came skittering after them as the dragon executed a showy spiral landing into the yard. He lowered his head towards them, his dark eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘You were waiting for me, dear ones?’

‘We were worried about you,’ Lily admitted. ‘It’s been hours.’

‘Some of the smaller villages were difficult to find,’ the dragon admitted. ‘We had to resort to dropping down and reading signposts; it was most undignified. And I fear at one point we may have disturbed a courting couple behind a haystack.’

‘But you took them all back?’ Lily asked eagerly.

‘Every one.’ He sounded most definitely smug, now.

Out of the forty children from Fell Hall, only Lily and Georgie, and Peter, Mary and Nicholas, all three of whom were orphans, were left at the theatre. The others had all gone back to their families. Many of them had lived in London – it had always been a city full of magicians – and they had gone quietly home after a night spent at the theatre. Lily had worried that some of them wouldn’t be welcomed by their families, but so far none of them had come back, and yesterday they had received a grateful letter from one of the girls’ parents, overjoyed at the safe return of their darling.

The dragon had agreed to return those who lived further away to their old homes, if they wished to go. Even though Daniel had promised that he’d find work at the theatre somehow, for anyone who wanted to stay, all the children with families had decided to go back home.

‘I wonder if we’ll ever see any of them again,’ Lily murmured. ‘I’ll miss Lottie.’

‘They’ll come back to London when they’re older. Elizabeth promised Maria she would. She’s going to practise that embroidery spell, and work out more of them. Maria thinks she’ll make a fortune as a dressmaker to the Quality.’

Lily sighed. ‘But will she? What if their parents won’t let them use their magic? What if they won’t take them back? Elizabeth said her parents didn’t write to her any more, do you remember? Hardly anyone ever got letters from home.’

The dragon curled himself wearily on the cool flagstones of the yard, and sighed. ‘Then they’ll come back here, Lily. I breathed magic into every one of those children before I left them, showing them how to find their way back. If they aren’t welcomed into their old homes, the magic will bring them to me.’ He glanced sideways at the door behind the girls, and murmured to Lily. ‘The boy is here.’

Lily turned to see Peter standing in the open doorway. He was scribbling in the little scarlet-bound notebook that Daniel had given him, and Lily leaned over to see what he had written.

Did they all go?

She nodded, and looked at him, shaping her words as clearly as she could so that he could read her lips in the shadowy yard. ‘Yes. All of them. It’s only us and Mary and Nicholas now.’

I should go too.
He wrote it slowly, his hands jerking uncontrollably. He still hadn’t shaken off the lingering effects of the spells that had been used to drug him at Fell Hall, but now Lily could see the old Peter, deep inside. It was almost harder to watch him fighting inside this shell of a body that wouldn’t do what he wanted, than it was to see him lifeless and doll-limp.

‘You can’t! Where would you go?’ she demanded, glaring at him.

He shrugged, his shoulders twisting.

‘He needs something to do.’ The dragon had crawled closer to the doorway so he could stare at Peter, who was trying to stare back without looking scared. ‘Doesn’t he? Ask him; he can’t understand me, for I don’t speak in the same way you do.’

Lily looked back at Peter in surprise, and realised that the dragon was right. Peter had no idea what he’d said – the dragon had no lips to read.

‘It isn’t just charity, you know,’ she said slowly. ‘Sam could use your help. Especially if Daniel goes ahead with all these new illusions.’

Daniel had been using Elsie, one of the girls from the ballet troupe, as his assistant since Lily and Georgie had gone, but she hated the job, even though she was paid more. She particularly detested the trick where she had to be sawn into pieces, as she was taller than Lily, and she was convinced every night that Daniel was going to cut her toes off. She’d begged Lily to take her old role back again, but the girls had decided it wasn’t safe for them to be seen on stage. Lily was pretty sure that Aunt Clara had told the Queen’s Men everything. She and Georgie had to stay hidden, in case they came to the theatre searching.

Henrietta was particularly disappointed. She had adored being a show-dog, and the audiences had loved her. She tried to persuade Daniel that she could be part of the act again if she was powdered. She wouldn’t even mind people thinking she was a common or garden fawn pug, as she put it. But he didn’t think it would be convincing enough, and Lily pointed out that Henrietta jumped around so much catching handkerchiefs and bunches of flowers that the powder would probably all fall off.

Lily had persuaded Daniel to try Nicholas and Mary in the act instead, as Elsie was so desperate to go back to being a dancer. The two orphans had been reluctant at first. Neither of them remembered any life outside Fell Hall, and they found the idea of an audience very strange. But Mary was even thinner and smaller than Lily, and she was won over by Daniel’s extravagant praise when he saw how beautifully she fitted in all the cabinets. No one had ever said such encouraging things to her, and she was blossoming.

Nicholas was mostly persuaded by Maria, who promised to make him a whole outfit of everyday clothes in plain brown, instead of the hated pink silk trousers, if only he would try.

Having two assistants again had fired Daniel with a new enthusiasm for designing illusions. Mary had no magic of her own, but away from Fell Hall, Nicholas was finding that magic kept spilling out of him. He had to try very hard not to add real magic into the tricks, and kept complaining to Lily about how difficult it was.

‘I can’t not…’ he muttered to her, when everyone had yelled at him for turning the white rabbit into a strange green furry creature that had nearly bitten Daniel’s hand off when he tried to pull it out of the hat. ‘I didn’t mean to. I just thought about it, and it sort of happened.’

‘You mustn’t think about it,’ Lily said sternly. ‘What if it happens when there’s an audience?’ But then she’d spoilt it by giggling. Daniel’s face had been so very funny. It had taken Lily a good half an hour to turn the rabbit back again, and she’d only managed it in the end by borrowing some of the dragon’s strength. He had been curled up along the back of the stage, watching in fascination. Fake magic was something he had never come across before.

The dragon was right, she could see it now. Peter needed something to do, too. She’d been neglecting him, Lily realised guiltily, seeing at last how unhappy he looked. He was safe and fed and clothed, and she’d rescued him twice, and then she had stopped worrying about him. She was so happy to be back at the theatre that she had assumed everyone else was happy there too.

Before he had been taken to Fell Hall, Peter had been a servant boy at Merrythought, the house where Lily and Georgie’s family had hidden themselves away after the Decree that had banned magic. Their father had been imprisoned, and their mother had sworn that she had given up all magic. It had been a strange, empty house, with only a few servants. No one had wanted to work there, and the villagers across the narrow strait had thought the place was cursed. Peter had been found abandoned on the beach – his family hadn’t wanted him because he was a mute, everyone had assumed. After that, he had worked for his keep. He wasn’t used to being idle.

‘You could help Sam.’ Lily nodded thoughtfully. ‘You’re good at mending things; you always did that back at the house.’

Peter stared at her and extended one hand, showing her how much it shook.

Lily sighed and ran her fingers lightly over the back of Peter’s. His skin was greyish, his outdoor tan faded from being shut up inside at Fell Hall. ‘The spells left you shaky,’ she told him. ‘I can feel them, the rags of the magic. But that’ll go. It will, won’t it?’ she asked the dragon.

‘Probably,’ the dragon agreed.

Lily decided not to repeat the exact words. ‘He says it’ll get better,’ she told Peter. ‘Even if your hands are shaky, there are things you could do. And we might need your help too,’ she added. ‘Once Princess Jane is feeling stronger, she’s going to tell us how to get into Archgate.’

Peter frowned, obviously not sure what she meant.

‘I didn’t know either. It’s the magicians’ prison. We were so close to it, all the time we were in London, but no one knew! There’s a big white marble arch at the front of the palace, like a grand entrance. And the prison’s inside it, or under it, I think – it wouldn’t be big enough otherwise.’