Lily and the Prisoner of Magic (6 page)

You want to get in it?
Peter’s writing looped madly over the page.

‘That’s where Father is. We’re almost sure. We have to get him out. He’s the only person who knows Mama’s magic well enough to take off the spells she laid inside Georgie.’

Georgie smiled at him sadly. ‘I’m just as broken as you. Except I’m getting worse, not better.’

Peter stared at her, his eyes dark and serious. He’d never known her as well as he knew Lily – Georgie had been shut up with the girls’ mother all the time they were at Merrythought, being taught the spells that had coiled themselves deep inside her, waiting to be released. Even Lily had been frightened of her some of the time then, she was so pale and ghost-like.

I thought you were staying here. Didn’t know you had more to do
. His sallow face flushed pinker, and he nodded determinedly.
I’ll stay till you’ve found him then. You need someone to look after you
. He shut the book with a snap and stowed it in his pocket, then headed back down the passageway before Lily could argue with him. Not that she would have done, or not much at least. She could see that already there was a new determination in his step; the awful dragging look of him had gone.

Princess Jane had been given the largest and least shabby of the rooms under the theatre. Daniel had wanted to go out and buy some new furniture that was slightly more fitting for a princess than the battered old iron bedstead that was already there, but the others had persuaded him that it might arouse the suspicions of the Queen’s Men. He had insisted that one of the scene painters should paint a coat of arms over the bed at least.

The princess had been exhausted by the journey, and her dramatic confrontation with Alf and the other theatre people. She had declared that she really didn’t care what the bed looked like, as long as she could sleep in it. Since then she had been holding court, propped up on pillows, and wearing a purple marabou-trimmed cape that Maria felt was appropriate for royalty.

Lily slipped into her room the next morning, hoping that the princess would be awake. Now that all the other children had been sent home, she was anxious to find out more about Archgate. The passages under the stage were full of hurrying people – Daniel had decided that Mary and Nicholas and the new illusions were ready to be shown to the audience tonight, and since he had demanded a whole new set to be made, to show off the dragon to the best advantage, there was still a great deal of work to be done. Lily had asked Sam if Peter could help, and she had left him stubbornly polishing the new cabinets to a mirror-like shine.

Henrietta leaped up onto the patchwork quilt that Sam had brought from home – it had been his grandmother’s, and had a faint, pleasant scent of lavender and old ladies.

Princess Jane was working on her delicate embroidery, and curled up on the quilt next to her was Georgie, practising stitches on a piece of linen.

‘What are you doing here?’ Lily asked, almost accusingly.

‘Just sewing.’ Georgie sounded bewildered.

‘We’re supposed to be setting you free of these spells, not teaching you fancy stitches,’ Lily told her. Then she bobbed her head apologetically at the princess. ‘Sorry.’

‘Sewing can be very settling to a troubled mind, Lily.’ The princess tucked her work away in its little basket, and sighed. ‘Your sister needs something to occupy her hands. She’s frightened.’

Georgie stared down at her embroidery, her hair hanging over her face.

‘I suppose…’ Lily muttered. ‘I came to ask about the prison, Your Highness.’

‘I think while I am here, it would be better simply to call me Miss Jane, don’t you? If we all get used to that, it will be safer when there are visitors.’

Lily nodded. ‘Miss Jane. Do you still think you can get us inside Archgate?’ she asked eagerly.

‘If the spells haven’t been changed,’ the princess said thoughtfully. ‘They know I escaped now, we must suppose. The warders of Fell Hall must have reported what happened. But I imagine they would expect me to try to escape abroad, to one of my other sisters, Lucasta or Charlotte.’ She chuckled. ‘Why would I be so foolish as to come to London?’ She leaned back against the pillows, closing her eyes. ‘It was a very long time ago, girls. But I went into the prison with my mother and Sophia. Only once. My mother wished to question a magician who was held there, to ask for information about my father’s murderer. She wanted to go herself. She needed us.’

‘Why?’ Henrietta wriggled closer, resting her heavy dark chin on the princess’s bony knees.

‘She couldn’t open the door herself. Only one of the royal blood, you see? Our mother had married into the royal line, she was not born to it.’

Lily frowned. ‘What if you were all on holiday? Or ill? Surely the king or queen didn’t have to open the door every time someone wanted to go in or out?’

‘The warders had special keys, which they wore on chains around their necks. A tiny pinprick’s worth of blood embedded in each one, and they would only work for that one person. Anyone else who wanted to enter needed one of us.’

‘I see.’ Lily was frowning. ‘Is that all, though? When you visited before, did you only have to stand in front of the door, and it opened for you? It was that simple?’

Princess Jane shook her head. ‘No. I would only be able to open the outer doors. After that we would have to use your magic to go further – there are locks, and spells, and strange guards on every passage.’

‘What sort of guards?’ Lily looked worriedly at Georgie.

‘When the prison was first built, after the great war with Talis, when magicians were first starting to be feared, the greatest magicians of the day helped design its wards. Rose, the girl I told you about, she and her master, Aloysius Fountain, spent weeks sealing spells into the stones.’

‘Our magic wouldn’t be strong enough for that, Lily,’ Georgie said anxiously. ‘Even if I were to let Mama’s spells out, I don’t think we could do it.’

‘We
are
strong,’ Lily said doubtfully.

‘Strong enough to wake a dragon, and free us all from Fell Hall,’ the princess agreed.

‘But you aren’t trained. It isn’t just having the magic, it’s knowing what to do with it.’ Henrietta’s wrinkles were deep with worry. ‘Georgie’s trained, but only by your mother, and brilliant magician though she is, she was hardly aiming for a rounded education, was she?’

‘You think we wouldn’t be able to do it?’

‘I’ve heard of Rose Fell,’ Henrietta muttered. ‘And Mr Fountain, and his daughter. They were strong, strong magicians, Lily. Clever, and
imaginative.
You don’t want to meet a creature that Rose Fell dreamed up down some dark prison passageway.’

‘Then what do we do?’ Lily practically wailed. Archgate had been almost within their grasp, and now it had been snatched away again.

‘You need an older magician to teach you.’ Henrietta kneaded the quilt with anxious paws. ‘But we don’t have one, except your father, and we can’t get him out of prison without the spells you need to learn first!’ She slumped down with her chin on her paws.

A sudden hammering on the door brought her leaping to her feet indignantly, and she barked a warning.

‘What is it?’ Lily called, stroking Henrietta calm again.

‘It’s me, Nicholas. Daniel wants you in the audience; he says he needs people to tell him how the act looks from the front.’

Lily sighed. ‘All right.’

Daniel was fussing about everything being perfect. The dragon had turned out to have a remarkable sense of pitch, and he kept pointing out exactly which of the musicians were flat. The conductor of the band had already handed in his notice twice. Now the stagehands were taking bets on which of Mary and Nicholas would cry first. By the time Lily and Georgie got to the front of the theatre, both of the new assistants were looking worried.

‘It’s this cabinet trick,’ Mary murmured to Lily, leaning over the front of the stage, while Daniel harangued the scene painters again. ‘It does work, but Nicholas and I keep getting mixed up about which of us is supposed to jump out when. And I don’t like being shut up in that tiny space with him anyway. I don’t trust him not to turn me all green and hairy like that poor rabbit. He might not mean to, but he’s nervous, and things go wrong when he’s nervous.’

‘Is she complaining about me?’ Nicholas demanded crossly. ‘I bet she is. Girls always blame someone else when they make mistakes.’

‘I didn’t!’ Mary yelped furiously. ‘Oh! It was you!’ She stamped across the stage, aiming a sharp kick at the Vanishing Cabinet as she went past it. The side of the cabinet promptly fell off, and Mary rushed away from the stage in tears, followed by a gloomy voice from up in the lighting rig.

‘All right, William, I know, I owes you a shilling…’

Despite the dramatic end to the rehearsals, the act was still to go ahead. Lily and Georgie had flattered and coaxed Mary into going on, and Daniel had told Nicholas that if he let so much as a speck of real magic pass his lips, he would sell him to a chimney sweep. Then he’d given him sixpence and sent him out to buy sweets, feeling guilty.

‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ Georgie whispered to Lily in the wings, as they watched Daniel and Nicholas and Mary preparing to go on.

Lily nodded. ‘He has to understand how to keep his magic bottled up inside him. With the way things are now, it’s the most important thing he has to learn. Even if it feels horrible,’ she added sadly. She hated not being able to use her magic whenever she wanted. It felt like pins and needles in her fingers, only ever so much worse.

‘What’s the matter with his face?’ Georgie muttered, a few minutes later, as Nicholas trotted past them to fetch a flaming torch. His cheeks looked swollen, and Lily stifled a laugh.

‘Daniel gave him money for sweets, because he’d shouted at him so much. He’s got toffee stuffed in both sides, I reckon.’

Even though Nicholas looked like he had severe toothache, the unaccustomed sweetness of the toffee was distracting him from green furry monster-rabbits. He smiled blissfully, and the magic on stage stayed strictly artificial as the act went on.

Mary was even slimmer than Lily, and she looked even more convincingly disappeared inside the Devil’s Cabinet. Daniel had added to the Divided Lady trick with a very realistic pair of false feet that Mary had to stick out of the end of the box. It gave the illusion an even more gory feel, and several of the audience stood up and clapped. One lady in a very feathery hat actually fainted.

‘It’s going so well!’ Lily hissed to Nicholas, as he darted into the wings to fetch a silvered hoop for the levitation trick, and he nodded happily.

Georgie watched with professional interest as Mary lay down on the tabletop, her full skirts spilling out over the wooden platform that would lift her high into the air.

‘She doesn’t look as bewitched as you did,’ Lily told her loyally.

Georgie glanced at her gratefully. ‘Maybe not. She looks good though; you’d never think it was all a trick, even from the side.’

The levitation was one of the most dramatic parts of the act. Before, Lily had always been part of it, watching Georgie and hoping that she wouldn’t slip, or let the board show. She’d been concentrating on her poses, and the delicate hand movements that she usually got wrong. She hadn’t watched the audience, or felt them.

Now, standing in the wings, their excitement and delight was reaching out to her in waves. She could feel her magic responding, dancing joyfully inside her. She cast an anxious glance towards Nicholas, but he was focused on the show, and his magic seemed to be under control.

As Mary climbed higher on the lifting apparatus, and Daniel swept the hoop around her to prove that she really was floating – even Lily could hardly see the clever twist he made around the joist that was actually holding her – the audience grew more and more enthralled. Lily turned to stare out into the theatre, smiling at the wide eyes of those in the front few rows. One little girl, dressed in the height of fashion and clearly out past her bedtime for a special treat, was standing up, clapping her plump hands excitedly and then hugging her doll, which was dressed as beautifully as she was.

Lily swallowed suddenly. The little girl was surrounded by a delicate wash of golden light. It ran down the curls of hair, sparkling around her face, and shining in her eyes. Magic.

The girl’s mother stared down at her in amazement, and then the child held her hands out in front of her and let go of her fabulous doll. Her mother reached to catch the toy, but dropped her hand back as the doll floated into the air. Just like Mary – except that there was no lifting mechanism concealed behind a curtain. This was an outpouring of perfect, childish power, and no one could deny it.

The golden light around the child and the doll was already drawing attention. Whispers and gasps ran through the audience, and several people were standing up to see what was happening. People were leaning out of the boxes and pointing.

The little girl’s father caught her up swiftly and hurried along the front row of seats, making for the aisle, while she wailed in his arms, demanding her doll back. The mother reached out a tentative hand towards the floating creature, but didn’t dare to touch her. She left the pretty toy hanging in the air as she half ran after her husband and daughter. The door at the back of the theatre slammed, and the doll fell to the ground, the golden light seeping away into the faces of the audience.

Daniel drew the act to a close after that, even though it meant leaving out the new Vanishing Cabinet trick. It wasn’t the time. As the audience cleared the theatre, Lily could feel the gossip about the strange little incident spreading out across the city as they made for their homes.

The doll still lay forlornly, half under the little girl’s seat. No one had wanted to take it, even though it was clearly valuable. Henrietta tugged it out gently by its silken skirt, and Lily crouched down to pick it up. ‘It’s beautiful. I never had a doll like this. Peter made me a wooden one, once. But this – look at her eyes!’

The doll’s eyes rolled open and closed as Lily tipped her – some clever weighting inside the porcelain head.