Rose 4: Rose and the Silver Ghost (14 page)

‘What was it?’ Bella demanded. ‘A ring? A necklace?’

Rose was staring at Eliza, shaking her head. ‘No. Of course. It was the mirror.’ She slipped a hand into the inside pocket of her coat – she had unstitched it enough that she could slide the mirror in. It was the only thing she had of her mother’s, and it had seemed important to bring it with them. She stroked the metal roses gently.

Eliza gave a reluctant nod. ‘She said that she loved it, and she wanted you to have something that she loved. Something special. She thought maybe one day you’d get to understand the meaning of the little mouse on the back, and you’d be able to trace your family. But it wouldn’t be obvious to just anyone. Only when you were old enough to know you came of a magical family, then you might be able to use it as a clue.’

She darted an anxious glance at Rose, clearly afraid of what she might say. But Rose only nodded. ‘What happened?’

‘I took it to a pawnshop.’ Eliza wiped her ragged sleeve across her mouth, as though the thought of it still frightened her. ‘I was stupid,’ she added in a whisper. ‘I was in a hurry. I had to get back before they missed me! So I went to a pawnshop I’d seen before, on the way to the market.’

‘Too close.’ Bill shook his head, and Eliza looked at him gratefully.

‘Too close,’ she echoed. ‘They knew who I was. One of Pike’s. I shouldn’t have been in there with anything precious to sell. Old Mr Green, he knew he’d get on the right side of Pike if he dragged me back.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Pike even let him keep the mirror, he was that grateful!’

Rose swallowed. ‘What did they do?’ she whispered. ‘Is that how you…?’

Eliza stared at them all, her back ramrod straight with pride. ‘I wouldn’t tell. I’d promised Miss Miranda I’d get you away. I let her down – if only I’d done as she said and left the mirror in the basket, they’d never have known what happened to you. Miss Miranda was going to tell them you’d died of the typhus. So I wasn’t having them going and finding you. I wouldn’t tell.’

Rose reached out one hand, and tried to stroke Eliza’s damp, rat’s-tail hair. ‘They drowned you, didn’t they?’

Eliza smiled, an odd, proud little smile. ‘Right here, miss. Pike held me under himself. It was high tide, then, of course.’

Everyone was silent for a moment, their eyes flicking nervously around the battered boat, trying not to imagine.

Bill swallowed. ‘And we’re going to barge into this chap’s hideout?’

Rose shook her head. ‘You should go back. But I have to try. If she’s there, I can’t leave her. Not after…’ She trailed off, and waved a hand at Eliza.

No one said anything, but Bella sneaked an arm around her waist, and Gus purred. Bill and Freddie shifted closer on their boxes. They were all coming with her, she knew. Four children and a cat huddled together under the battered little boat, staring at a ghost-child.

‘Then after that you haunted the mirror?’ Freddie asked at last.

‘It was because of the mirror I died,’ Eliza explained. ‘I stole it, didn’t I? I think that’s how it works, anyhow.’

‘You’ve been stuck inside it all this time?’ Bella shuddered.

‘Not so much in it, miss…’ Eliza frowned. ‘Just tied to it somehow. It was like a door, but I couldn’t open it. You opened it, and called me out.’ She looked at Rose, her eyes thoughtful. ‘What are you here for, miss?’

Rose blinked. ‘To find her, of course. I have to rescue her. She’d rather have died than let me grow up there, you said so! So how can I leave her? She’s my mother!’

‘You have to.’ Eliza shook her head firmly. ‘She couldn’t get away from Pike, how will you be able to do it? Besides, miss…’ She hesitated. ‘Pike could have done away with her, for all we know…’

‘I have to know for certain,’ Rose told her, through gritted teeth.

‘I still don’t see how you think you can get in there!’ Eliza cried, sounding almost angry.

‘We’ll sneak in,’ Freddie told her. ‘We’re invisible under this spell. Pike might be able to see us, but if he’s the only magician, the rest of the gang won’t. We sneak in and rescue her.’

Eliza stared at them doubtfully, twitching her head from side to side as she tried to see the spell. ‘I can’t tell no difference,’ she objected.

‘It’s there,’ Freddie assured her. ‘And we can do other things too.’

‘Can you show us the best way to get in?’ Rose pleaded.

Eliza wrinkled her nose. ‘I can try. I’m still not that good at moving about, but I can tell you what it was like back then. Might all have changed by now,’ she muttered dubiously. ‘Whenever there’s a wrecked boat, they steal the timbers, build another little room in there. Proper rabbit warren, it is.’ She shrugged, and laughed. ‘Can’t do me any harm, I suppose. They can’t drown me again. But you’re not to let yourselves get caught! They’ll kill you as soon as look at you. Pike’s a monster, and that other one, Jake…’ She shuddered. ‘He’s almost worse. He smokes the opium himself, and he’s more like a ghost than I am. He never says nothing, and his eyes burn.’ She frowned. ‘Or maybe they won’t kill you. If you’re all magicians like Miss Miranda, they’ll keep you, and that’s worse.’

‘I’m not,’ Bill growled. ‘They’ll drown me.’

Freddie gave him a disgusted look. ‘Run home then.’

Bill snorted. ‘No chance. I’m not leaving you looking after this pair. Let’s just not get caught, right?’

‘I’ll show you the way in I used to know,’ Eliza suggested. ‘Make sure your spell is working.’ She crept out of the boat and stood up, brushing down her water-streaked skirts, and looking around. ‘No one’s moving outside,’ she muttered. ‘Let’s go.’

They followed her, threading across the mud flats to a broken stone wall, just under the warehouse. The stones had fallen apart enough that it was relatively easy to climb up onto the wall, where there was a narrow causeway around the side of the building.

Eliza led them as they crept around the building to a window. It had been boarded up with several old bits of wood, and Eliza sniffed. ‘They haven’t mended it. Didn’t think they would have done. Push that bit, it’ll slide over. This is the way I used to take you out to see the water, miss. Come along in, but quietly.’

Bill held the piece of wood aside, and Eliza disappeared, reappearing as a beckoning hand from inside the gap. Rose and the others scrambled in, naturally lining up along the inner wall, pressing themselves back against the stones. No one wanted to go further in. They seemed to be in a store room of some kind, lined with packing cases, mostly battered and water-stained.

‘Stolen cargo,’ Eliza said wisely. She beckoned again from the door of the little room. ‘Come on. Miss Miranda’s room used to be this way. Your spell still working, is it?’ She was looking at them doubtfully, as though she didn’t really believe in the magic.

Rose, Bella and Freddie took hands again for a moment to boost the strength of the spell before they followed Eliza, creeping along a narrow passage. It really was built out of bits of old boat, Rose realised, as she ran her fingers over sea-worn timbers, scattered with ancient barnacles. A strange, sharp-nosed face sticking out over a doorway made them all jump, until they realised it was part of an old ship’s figurehead, the paint long peeled away, leaving the face a weary grey.

‘Here,’ Eliza whispered. ‘This is where they kept her. And you, miss.’

The doorway was low, and there was no door in it – perhaps her mother wasn’t trusted enough to have a door to hide behind, Rose wondered – so they could see in as they gathered around the entrance to the room.

Eliza pressed herself against the doorframe, so close that they could see the splintered timbers through her. ‘That’s her…’ she whispered. ‘Still here!’ Her whispery little voice cracked with tears, as she stared into the room. ‘All this time…’

‘She’s there?’ Rose felt strangely reluctant to look. She’d been imagining the girl from the painting, which she saw was stupid now. That girl would never have survived in here. Whoever was in that room, it wasn’t the pretty child Miss Fell had loved, or even her father’s stolen sweetheart, or Hope’s doting mother.

But Gus was leaning forward in her arms, his whiskers twitching with interest as he peered around the tiny room.

She had to see.

‘Be careful,’ Freddie reminded her in a whisper. ‘She’s strong, remember. She might be able to see us, even through the spell.’

Rose stepped further in, brushing against Eliza, and feeling that strange faint chill again. There was very little to see. Rose’s mother – if that was who it was, Rose couldn’t tell – was sitting curled up on a low, narrow bed, leaning the side of her face against the wooden wall. All Rose could really tell was that her mother’s hair was a little lighter than her own – and that her woollen dress was faded and worn. Rose longed to go and tap her on the shoulder, and shake her out of that sad lethargy, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Not yet.

‘Sshh. Someone’s coming, I can hear them talking.’ Eliza flitted anxiously in front of her.

Two men were walking down the passage, muttering to each other. The children whisked inside the tiny room, and then drew back against the wall, flattening themselves against the timbers. The spell would stop most people seeing or hearing them if they were careful to whisper, but they were still
there
, and fatally obvious to anyone who brushed past too close. The two men shambled up to the doorway, and paused just inside, without noticing them.

They didn’t look like murderers. The most noticeable thing about them was that they both had very fine moustaches – not smartly curled ones like Mr Fountain’s pride and joy, but brisk, fat ones like nailbrushes. Rose was so nervous that it made her want to giggle. The second man’s hair was a dull greyish-brown, and it made him look as though he was wearing a dead mouse under his nose.

‘Pike has a moustache,’ Eliza whispered. ‘The rest of the gang copy him.’

‘Mrs Garnet, ma’am.’ The man’s voice was strangely nervous, which made Rose and Freddie exchange a surprised glance. But then, Rose realised, it wasn’t that odd. These two weren’t magicians. They were like the servants at the Fountain house, forced to live with magic and not really liking it. Rose’s mother was the strange, unpredictable one they had to depend on for the spells they needed. Probably the only thing they could say for her was that she was less frightening than Pike.

The figure curled on the bed shook a little, and uncoiled slowly.

Rose caught her breath, her heart suddenly beating in sickening thumps. She could feel the others, even Gus, looking at her mother, and then glancing back at her, back and forth, trying to see how similar they really were. She couldn’t tell. Miranda still had a faint look of the painting in the back of the mirror, but she had changed so much. Her face was milk-pale – which was hardly surprising. Had she really been shut up in here for longer than Rose had been alive?

‘You have her eyes,’ Gus purred softly. ‘Look. I can see you in her. We can bring her out. Somehow we will…’

Rose swallowed, and shook, and brushed her cheek gratefully against the glittering warmth of his fur.

The woman on the bed nodded at the two men wearily, and even that seemed like an effort. It was as though every move she made was fighting against the spell that bound her.

Eliza’s face was scrunched up and horrified. ‘He must have doubled the spell after he discovered what we done,’ she breathed in Rose’s ear. ‘This is much worse than it used to be. She can hardly move.’

‘How can she possibly do magic like that?’ Rose whispered back. ‘It’s like she’s piled down with chains.’

Eliza shook her head. ‘No. That’s the way he made the spell. If she’s working for him, the spell lifts off her somehow. She’s free – she’s only free when she’s working for the gang. I think Pike hoped that would break her so in the end she’d choose to join them, but it can’t have worked.’

Rose nodded proudly to herself. Her mother might be working for the gang, but only because she was forced. She hadn’t lapsed. But the strength of that spell was terribly daunting. How would they ever get her out of it?

The man with the dead-mouse moustache took his cap off, and stood twisting it in front of him. ‘Mr Pike says, ma’am, you’re to make us look like this.’ He handed over a piece of paper with a rough drawing, but it was hard to see what it was from where they were squashed against the wall.

‘What is it?’ Rose clenched her nails into her palms.

‘I’ll look. They won’t see me, miss. Only you can, because you’ve got the mirror.’ Eliza flitted across to peer over his shoulder. ‘Footmen’s livery,’ she whispered to Rose. ‘She’s changing them, so they’re disguised for robbing a house.’

Rose nodded. It made sense. A tame magician must make the gang one of the most successful in London, despite their tumbledown quarters. But she still didn’t understand why Pike didn’t just do all this himself. Unless the gang was so huge that he was doing it too. She shivered at the thought.

Gus leaped into her arms with one of those jumps that was beyond even a cat’s usual powers. ‘She saw.’

‘What?’ Rose stared at him anxiously.

‘Miranda. She saw Eliza, when she went to look at the paper. I saw her eyes move.’

‘Are you sure?’ Freddie muttered, next to Rose.

Gus half-closed his eyes. ‘I am a cat. I am a natural predator, even without the magic. I can tell when a mouse has an itch behind its ear. Of course I’m sure, idiot boy.’

‘What’s she going to do?’ Freddie whispered, gazing wide-eyed at Miranda. ‘I thought only we could see Eliza? Can your mother see us through the spell, do you think?’

‘She shouldn’t be able to. We should be invisible to everyone. Not ghosts, but then we’d never had one to test it on…’ Gus stepped onto Rose’s shoulders, standing with his front paws on one shoulder and back paws on the other. His paws felt like little rocks, pressing into her, and she could feel his heart beating against her ear. He stretched his nose out towards the three figures around the bed, his whiskers flickering around his muzzle as he searched the air. ‘No. No, I don’t think she can. And I don’t think she can truly see Eliza either, not unless Eliza wants her to. But she knows there’s something.’