Rose 4: Rose and the Silver Ghost (7 page)

Rose laid it down obediently, and Gus crouched in front of it, his shoulders sticking up sharply, and his tail lashing from side to side. Eventually he extended one paw, and raked a claw around the edge of the glass. Then he sat back smugly and blew on the mirror.

‘Tip it up,’ he told Rose, and she did, rather gingerly, turning the handle of the mirror so that the glass faced the coverlet.

With a splintering chime, the mirror-glass fell out onto the bed. Rose gulped, and lifted the frame back up, unsure what she would see inside. Her sensible instincts told her it would be the bare metal of the back of the mirror, or perhaps a silken lining bedding down a lock of hair. But the dark, and the late hour, and the flickering candles were screaming that it would be something horrible, like a finger bone, or that some disgusting apparition was already clambering and seeping out onto Bella’s bed.

In the event, it was something completely different. Hanging out of the mirror frame was a piece of paper, the thick expensive woven kind that Miss Fell had given them for their painting lessons. On it was a portrait, a watercolour, perhaps by the same hand as the sketch of the house that Miss Fell had set them to copy only yesterday.

‘That’s who I saw!’ Rose squeaked, tugging it gently out of the frame. ‘I’m sure it is.’ She picked up the glass front of the mirror, and held it and the painting side by side, looking from one to the other.

‘Uncanny…’ Gus purred, dangling his whiskers over the painted face. ‘You to the life. But five – maybe six years older? That hairstyle is out of date too.’

‘I can see why you thought she was your mother,’ Bella breathed. ‘Is there anything written on the back?’

Rose turned the paper over with trembling fingers, and traced the faded pencil inscription.

For my dearest Hepzibah, a portrait to remember me by on our travels. With all my love, Miranda Fell

‘Miranda Fell!
That’s
Miranda Fell?’ Bella squealed excitedly. ‘Oh, of course. I should have known!’

‘Why? What do you know about her?’ Rose seized Bella’s wrist and shook her a little. ‘Bella, don’t tease me, who is she?’

‘Ow! Shhh, stop it, Rose, do you want to wake everyone up?’ Bella cradled her arm tenderly and glared. ‘And don’t shake me, I was about to tell you.’

‘Please, Bella,’ Rose begged her, stroking the painted face. ‘I want to know.’

Bella put her own hand over Rose’s and traced the line of the face. ‘You know who the Fells are, don’t you?’

‘Gus said this morning that they were one of the most powerful magical families in the world.’

‘They were once,’ Gus put in reprovingly. ‘Sadly lacking now, of course. Living on their past glories, I should say.’

‘Well, yes, that’s what I’m about to tell her! Don’t interrupt, Gus!’ Bella glared. ‘Miranda Fell was the only daughter of the family, the only child even. The heir. All the money was to come to her, and that huge great house up in Derbyshire. She was incredibly beautiful, so they say –’ Bella looked critically at the painting, and then at Rose – ‘and wonderfully strong at magic. She had everything she could ever want.’ Bella glanced between Rose and Gus, her eyes sparkling. ‘But she threw it all away! She disappeared, and apparently she ran off with the gardener’s boy. Or at least, he disappeared too, so one can’t help but come to conclusions.’

‘Of course one can’t,’ Gus muttered. ‘Ran away with the gardener’s boy. What a lot of nonsense.’

‘It isn’t!’ Bella glared at him in outrage. ‘It’s what everyone says happened! My aunts still talk about it, it was the most enormous scandal.’

‘They talk about that sort of thing in front of
you
?’ Gus wrinkled his white-furred muzzle in disgust.

Bella blushed, her cheeks staining the faintest pink. ‘Of course not.’ Then she shook her curls defensively, and scowled. ‘But if I happened to be hidden behind the drawing-room sofa… No one ever tells me anything, I have to listen! I remember them talking about it, and they did say it was the garden boy.’

‘Hmf. Whenever a young lady disappears, it’s always the gardener. No imagination.’ Gus swished his tail disapprovingly. ‘I remember thinking so at the time.’

‘When?’ Rose whispered.

Bella and Gus stared at her, and Bella’s eyes widened. Gus straightened his whiskers, as though he saw how important a question this was. He glanced at Bella, and Bella wrinkled her nose, and then they looked back at Rose, together.

‘It was about eleven years ago, Rose child,’ Gus murmured, and Bella nodded, twirling one of her golden curls around her finger.

‘Where did they go? Did anyone ever say, in all the stories?’ Rose stared down at the painted girl, so as not to see them exchanging worried looks over her head.

Bella nodded and swallowed. ‘Her parents searched the whole country for her. They found the coachman from the stagecoach, and they paid all the passengers to talk. Miranda and the boy went to London, Rose. They came here.’

It all fitted. Like one of those strange jigsaw puzzles that Bella had in the schoolroom, maps and pictures all cut up. But there was a huge hole in the middle of the scene, and Bella hadn’t any more pieces, not even hiding under her chair, or knocked behind a cupboard like they usually were.

‘But then what happened?’ Rose asked. ‘Didn’t her parents find out any more?’

Bella shook her head. ‘They simply vanished. The Fells had enquiry agents all over London. But they never found even a sniff of them.’

‘So we don’t know if – if…’ Rose trailed off. She couldn’t say it, even now.

Gus nosed her cheek gently, his whiskers fizzing lovingly against her cheek. ‘If they had a daughter, and lost her, dearest one?’

‘Mm. Or left her.’ Rose brushed the sleeve of her nightgown over her eyes.

‘Something must have happened to make them leave you,’ Bella protested. ‘Or – well, they could be dead, Rose.’ She looked up at Rose anxiously as she said it.

Rose nodded. She had always rather hoped her parents
were
dead, as that would mean that at least they hadn’t given her away in a fishbasket. But the thought was dreadful now, when she felt as though she was chasing a trail at last, following the clues towards her birth. The image in the mirror had drawn her so much closer to that girl, Miranda Fell, who might have been her mother. It felt as though she must have died only a few days before, just slipping out of Rose’s clutches.

‘They probably are dead,’ she agreed quietly. ‘But I still wish I knew how it had all happened.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I can’t stop. Two days ago I didn’t know anything, and now I’m getting greedy. Now that I’ve seen her.’ Rose shook her head. ‘And the gardener’s boy. I can’t feel the same about him, somehow, and it isn’t fair.’ She rubbed at the rough edge of the paper. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a painting of him.’

Gus brushed his whiskers over the painting again. ‘This painting obviously has a strong link to Miranda, or you’d never have seen her in the mirror. If we put it back in its hiding place, we could use the mirror to scry. To find out what happened. Then you might even see him, if we do it well enough.’

Rose looked doubtful. ‘Would that work? I mean, the painting must have been done before Miranda ran away, mustn’t it?’

Deep wrinkles of thought appeared above Gus’s eyes, furrowing his white fur. ‘Yes… But it might not make any difference. We have to hope so, anyway. And we need to be quick. Look.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘It isn’t long till dawn.’

Rose glanced at the lightening sky. Very soon they would have to take the mirror back. This was their only chance. She slipped the painting back into its hiding place, and quickly, feeling silly but trying not to care, kissed her fingers and stroked them across that sweetly smiling face. Then she pressed the glass carefully back over the top, and gazed at her reflection. It looked just the same as before, perhaps a little more tired. Not like someone who might have a mother and a father now. Surely something so important should have made her look different?

‘Rose.’ Bella pulled her sleeve gently. ‘Rose, come on, we haven’t any time.’

The urgency had slipped into Bella’s voice, even though she was trying to be patient, and Rose nodded apologetically – she had to stop thinking about things. But her middle-of-the-night mind kept worrying away with so many strange little thoughts. Would her mother like her new dress from Venice? Would her mother like
her
?

‘Look into it properly,’ Gus commanded. ‘Rose, concentrate or I shall bite you, and a cat’s mouth is a hotbed of dirt and disease.’ He sounded quite proud about that. He nudged the mirror up in front of her face with his nose, and then peered into it hopefully with her.

Rose cupped her hands around the back of the mirror, and balanced it on her knees, cradling it carefully. Bella scrambled up on the bed next to her, and pulled the eiderdown around their shoulders, so that they sat huddled together, staring into the tiny circle of glass.

It was dark – but surely darker than it should have been? It wasn’t only flat, reflected night, it was the dark that comes before a vision, and Rose felt her heartbeat start to race.

A faint mist appeared in the darkness, threading its way towards them from the back of the mirror – wherever that was. It felt so odd. Rose knew that she was holding it, and she could feel the edges of the moulding pressing into her fingers. But there was a dark tunnel in the mirror, extending back miles. It made her feel dizzy looking at it, as though she were floating off down that black path, through the backs of her own hands, and somewhere out past Bella’s bedroom wall.

‘Rose! ROSE!’

‘What? I’m doing it, you wanted me to look and I am, can’t you see?’ Rose muttered, narrowing her eyes and trying to see what that strange mist meant.

There was a frightened little moan, and Bella put her hand across the glass, severing Rose’s link with the mirror.

‘What did you do that for?’ Rose hissed. ‘I had something!’

‘Did you indeed?’ a cold voice enquired. ‘Something other than the mirror you stole from my room?’

Rose finally looked away from the glass, and swallowed. Miss Fell was standing at the end of the bed, looking somehow taller than usual, as though fury had inflated her.

‘Oh.’ Rose ran her fingers over the back of the mirror, hating the thought of giving it back. ‘We’re sorry,’ she murmured, unsure what else to say. Sorry was no good anyway when her hands wouldn’t let go of the mirror.

‘You stole,’ Miss Fell repeated, her voice splintery cold.

‘We – we didn’t really want to,’ Rose gabbled. ‘But we couldn’t think of any other way to find out, and…’ She trailed off into silence. There
was
no excuse.

‘To find out what?’

Rose swallowed again. Her mouth felt dry and sticky. How could she ask Miss Fell if they were related, when she had just stolen from her?

‘It was you, Isabella, wasn’t it? Passing on little secrets? Whispering?’ Miss Fell seemed to glide as she came closer, and Bella shrank back against Rose, her eyes dark with fear.

‘I didn’t mean to – I only told her – I thought she ought to know! She looks so like you, and you kept watching her… What are you going to do?’ Bella’s voice was squeaking, higher and higher, and Rose gasped as she realised what was about to happen. Bella was losing control, falling into hysterics, which meant she was going to scream.

The noise began as a keening wail. Bella’s eyes were still fixed on Miss Fell, but Rose thought Bella hardly saw her, there was only blankness behind the blue, as though Bella had gone and hidden away inside her own head, shutting everyone out with that terrible screaming.

‘Stop her!’ Rose snarled at Miss Fell, as Bella trembled and fizzed in her arms. ‘It’s you that’s making her do this, she’s frightened. Tell her you won’t hurt her, you’re not angry! Oh, ow…’

‘Too late, I think.’ Gus’s ears were laid back flat against his skull, and his whiskers were bristling.

Miss Fell’s anger had subsided and the glassy look of fury had left her eyes. Now she looked slightly worried. Considering that she rarely allowed her emotions to show on her face at all, Rose reckoned this meant that she was actually very worried indeed.

‘How did you stop her last time?’ the old lady demanded, clicking her fingers in front of Bella’s glazed eyes. Her shoulders were shaking with the effort, but she did not cover her ears.

Out of pride, and anger, Rose didn’t cover hers either. She wanted to. She was desperate to wrap her arms around her head and screw her eyes tight shut, in case any more of the agonising sound crept in through her eyelids, but she didn’t. Instead she held Bella tight, letting the eerie sound shake them together. It was like being buffeted by furious waves, those great walls of jade-green water that had slammed against the ship on their journey home.

‘I hit her, but I don’t think it would work again, she’s gone further this time. She isn’t really there,’ Rose gasped.

Miss Fell placed her hands gently on either side of Bella’s face, and peered at her. ‘You’re right. We have to bring her back to make her stop.’

The door slammed open just then, revealing Mr Fountain leaning on Freddie’s shoulder, and looking horrified. Freddie had a striped scarf wound around his head, but it didn’t seem to be working, he was sheet-white, and looked sickened.

‘Bella! Bella, stop! What on earth has happened to her?’ her father demanded. ‘BELLA!’

Rose ignored him. The ebb and flow of the sound around her was still making her think of the sea-journey, and Freddie’s greenish pallor had given her the merest hint of an idea.

She wrapped her arms even tighter around Bella, squeezing her close, and laid her face against Bella’s, feeling the feverish heat of the little girl’s skin. Rose closed her eyes, and let herself rock with the noise, riding it. The bed was a flimsy raft, and they were shipwrecked on the sound, dragged up to the top of each enormous wave and flung mercilessly back down.

She had never tried to use her moving pictures inside anyone else’s head before, but if anything would break Bella out of her fit it would be this. She was dreadfully seasick, and had spent a large part of both their sea-journeys curled up moaning in her bunk. No one could scream and be sick at the same time, Rose was fairly sure.