Lily and the Prisoner of Magic (8 page)

From somewhere far away, she felt Nicholas’s anxious fingers on the handle of the Cabinet, as he wondered if it was safe to open it. With a fraction of the magic that was spinning through her, Lily loosed the catch so that the door swung open with an eerie creak, revealing only an empty space.

‘Where are we?’ Georgie whispered, a few moments later.

‘I don’t know. I went to the place Miss Jane said. I think we’re here. I’m almost sure we are.’ Lily shivered. The princess had filled her mind with sunlit memories, but this was a dark September evening, and there was a chill wind seeping through the little building they were sitting in.

‘We are here…’ Princess Jane’s voice was shaking, and Lily pressed close against her, wrapping her arms around the old lady. Henrietta clambered into her lap and curled up protectively.

‘I can smell flowers,’ Georgie said doubtfully.

‘Roses,’ the princess agreed. ‘There was a climbing rose over the roof. It can’t be the same one, all this time later. A cutting, perhaps.’

There was a faint sound of water splashing and falling, and a pigeon was murmuring contentedly somewhere overhead. Lily blinked, her vision adjusting in the evening light. They were sitting in some small space, and a much, much larger building was looming up in front of them.

‘Is that the palace?’ she asked in a very small voice.

She felt Princess Jane nod, as though she didn’t trust her voice.

‘It’s so long since I’ve been here,’ the old lady whispered at last. ‘It’s a summerhouse, in the gardens. I used to sit here to sew. Hardly anyone ever came here, Lily, I promise you. We won’t be found.’

‘Are you sure?’ Georgie murmured, peering out anxiously into the darkness. ‘Your mother must be over there somewhere – she hates us!’

‘Perhaps it was a stupid place to bring you,’ the princess said apologetically. ‘It was my place, you see; I always felt safe here. When you asked for somewhere safe, Lily, I could feel this spot, deep inside me.’

‘Then it’s probably the right place,’ Henrietta muttered, leaping down from her lap and nosing her way to the open double doors. ‘Instinct is very important, and all too often you humans don’t listen to it.’ She sniffed cautiously, and then looked back up at them all, her round, dark eyes glinting in the moonlight. ‘But I have to tell you, someone’s coming.’

‘Who?’ Georgie demanded anxiously.

Henrietta scraped her claws on the boarded floor irritably. ‘I’m a dog, Georgiana, not a mind-reader. I don’t know! One person. With several others following at a distance. A woman, oldish. Wearing a very strong scent of gardenias – ugh, she must have poured it on with a ladle!’

Princess Jane chuckled. ‘Sophia always wore too much of it; Charlotte and I would tease her.’

‘Your sister? The queen?’ Lily squeaked, and Henrietta hissed at her warningly.

‘Sssshhhh! She’s close!’ The pug cocked her head to one side. ‘But I don’t expect she heard you. I think she’s crying.’

Lily and Georgie could hear her now too, light footsteps pacing up and down the gravelled path, pattering and scrunching. And a voice whispering sadly, interspersed with little sobbing catches of breath.

‘What’s she crying for?’ Lily muttered. ‘She’s a
queen
, how can she be so unhappy?’

Georgie shook her head. ‘Don’t you remember when we saw her in that parade? How worried she looked?’

‘I suppose,’ Lily whispered back. Since then she’d been stolen away by the queen’s own force of guards, and she wasn’t feeling as sympathetic as she had been before.

‘Poor Sophia…’ Princess Jane stood up, and Lily caught at her skirt anxiously.

‘Don’t! You can’t!’

‘But she’s crying…’ The princess tried to pull away, but froze as another set of footsteps trod sharply into the garden.

‘Sophia!’ The voice was older, cracked-sounding, and Jane stepped back into the shadows, pressing herself against the back wall of the little summerhouse.

‘My mother…’ she whispered, the words hardly more than a breath, and the four of them huddled onto the bench seat, clinging silently to each other in the darkness.

E
ventually, Queen Adelaide led her daughter and their bodyguards out of the garden, leaving the girls and the princess clinging together inside the summerhouse.

‘Did you hear?’ Lily whispered. ‘She thinks her mother is being too strict.’

‘I knew Sophia wasn’t behind the way the Queen’s Men are behaving now,’ Princess Jane murmured. ‘She couldn’t have changed so much, even after all these years.’

‘But your mother is in charge now, isn’t she?’ Henrietta pointed out. ‘She’s the Queen Regent. It makes no difference what Queen Sophia thinks.’

‘Is it for ever? Can’t they change it back?’ Lily asked, frowning.

Henrietta grunted. ‘Not to be unfeeling –’ here she nudged Princess Jane with a wet nose – ‘but the old queen won’t last that much longer, will she? She must be in her eighties.’

Princess Jane sighed. ‘She looked awfully healthy to me. I can be just as unfeeling as you, Henrietta dear. I have very little affection for my mother, after forty years shut away on her orders.’

‘Who is your sister’s heir?’ Georgie asked suddenly.

‘Our next sister, Lucasta, and our little sister, Charlotte, both had to give up their claim to the throne when they married foreign royalty,’ the princess explained.

‘But that only leaves you!’ Lily gasped.

‘Well, except that I’m dead,’ the princess sighed. ‘Officially. I expect the heir is some distant cousin now.’

‘You’d be a much better queen,’ Lily muttered. ‘And I don’t care if that
is
treachery, and sedition, and all those things. Once we’ve got Father back and mended Georgie, I think we should fight for you to be restored to the throne.’

The princess smiled at her. ‘I think you can probably be beheaded for saying things like that. But I have had an idea, about freeing your father.’

‘Really?’ Lily sat up eagerly. ‘I was planning that we could sneak back to the theatre and get the dragon, then he could still try and sniff us out a magician to help, like he suggested. But I’m still not sure any magician is actually going to want to help us; it’s too dangerous.’

‘I think I know one who will. But you’ll have to go and find her.’

‘Who?’ Lily breathed, and Georgie caught the princess’s hand excitedly.

‘The girl I told you about while we were still at Fell Hall. Rose, the apprentice magician who was my bodyguard. She was an orphan, a foundling. But then she found her mother in the end, and discovered that in fact she was a Fell, a child with a great magical heritage. She was one of the greatest magicians in London – she was truly famous. She and her master, Aloysius Fountain, helped to design the Archgate spells. So why not ask her to help you defeat them?’

‘Do you think she would?’ Lily and Georgie spoke at once.

‘And more importantly, where is she?’ Henrietta demanded.

‘She went to America, after the Decree,’ Princess Jane said sadly. ‘She fought against it for a long time – Mr Fountain did as well. He was Chief Counsellor to the Treasury, an important government post, before the queen had him dismissed. He was an alchemist, you see; he could make gold. But no one listened to them, or to me. Everyone was whipped up into such a fury. All magicians were traitors, all magic was suspect. And so they left.’ Tears were running down the princess’s face as she remembered her friends. ‘She went to live in New York. She wrote to me – told me how lovely it was. They were destitute, as my dear sister had seized the property of any magicians who fled the country, but Rose’s magic was much admired over there. She built up a business with Mr Fountain, prospecting for gold. Telling people where to dig their mines. And then she got married.’ Here the princess sniffed delicately, as though she didn’t quite approve. ‘Rather beneath her, I always thought, to marry a servant boy, but she was very happy.’

‘So we’d have to travel to America?’ Georgie asked doubtfully.

Lily nodded, staring out into the darkness. ‘How would we get there? Oh! Colette’s going to America! To New York, don’t you remember? She told us, the very first night we came back to the theatre. She’s going to sing on board a steam ship, a great ocean liner.’

‘And do you know how much a passage on one of those ships costs?’ Georgie snapped. ‘Maria told me. Pounds! Colette couldn’t afford it, that’s why she’s working her passage! We haven’t got the money, Lily, and even if we could borrow it from Daniel, you need papers to travel on a ship like that. We’re fugitives, remember?’

Lily scowled. ‘We could find some way. Couldn’t we buy fake papers? And we could disguise ourselves, like we did when we first arrived in London. Don’t you want to get these spells lifted?’

‘Of course I do,’ Georgie muttered. ‘But we don’t even know if she’s still there. She might be anywhere by now – it was forty years ago.’

‘Even if this Rose has gone, America would still be a good place to find a magician to help you,’ Henrietta pointed out. ‘Magic is perfectly acceptable over there, and a great many of the magicians who went into exile fled to New York, or so Daniel told me. You’re sure to find someone who knows your family, someone who’d want to help rescue your father.’ She rubbed her velvety muzzle on Lily’s hand. ‘And even if you don’t, you’re safer there than here.’

‘I am,’ Lily murmured. ‘What would happen to Georgie?’

‘The further away she is from your mother the better. Your mother can’t call on the spells inside Georgie if she’s on the other side of the Atlantic, can she?’

‘I suppose not,’ Lily said thoughtfully. ‘What do you think?’ She found Georgie’s chilly hand and squeezed it.

‘I still think we’ll be lucky to find her. But I’ll try anything, if we only we can work out some way to get there.’ Georgie sighed. ‘I could feel the spells inside me, when the queen came close. They knew her. They know what they’re for.’

Lily swallowed. They hadn’t told Princess Jane what the spells inside Georgie were meant to do, just that they were trying to control her, and hurt her, and that they had to get rid of them.

But the princess put her hands around theirs. ‘It’s a plot, isn’t it? Your mama is a renegade magician – what else would she be fighting for? Georgie is a weapon.’ She laughed. ‘My poor dear mother. So convinced that every magician is up to no good. If they weren’t before, they certainly are now, after all her harsh treatment.’

‘You don’t hate me?’ Georgie whispered.

‘No. But I think it’s your duty to do anything you can to free yourself of these spells. You
must
go and search out Rose.’

‘Can we really go back the same way?’ Georgie whispered.

‘I hope so.’ Lily looked anxiously out into the dark gardens. It felt very late, so late that she was sure she could see the sky lightening over behind the trees. She had a feeling that the palace gardeners would be at work early, and they couldn’t risk being discovered.

‘What if they left guards at the theatre?’ Georgie insisted anxiously.

‘What if we all get lost halfway there and end up on the moon?’ Henrietta snarled. ‘Stop what-iffing! We don’t know! Do you want to stay here? Then we’ll be caught by the Queen’s Men for certain, won’t we?’

‘I was only trying—’ Georgie began furiously.

‘Be quiet!’

Georgie and Henrietta fell silent at once, the pug’s jaws closing with a definite snap, and Lily stared at the princess admiringly. Was it a special sort of magic, to be able to command people like that? Or was it just something that princesses learned?

‘Lily. Take us back, please.’ The princess stood up, and took both girls’ hands. ‘We are all tired and frightened. But that is no excuse for quarrelling.’

Henrietta scrabbled at Lily’s leg to be picked up, and nestled quietly into her shoulder. ‘I didn’t want to ask in front of your sister, but have you enough magic to take us back, without the dragon to help?’ she whispered.

‘I hope so,’ Lily muttered back. ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ She squared her shoulders, trying to summon up all the strength she could. They hadn’t really slept, just dozed a little, resting uncomfortably on the wooden benches. They could probably have gone back to the theatre earlier, but they hadn’t known how long the Queen’s Men might stay at the theatre searching for them. All the excitement of their escape had drained away now, and Lily felt limp and tired. For once, her magic wasn’t bubbling eagerly just under her skin, desperate to be called. She had to search for it, and it felt as tired as she was.

Perhaps they should just stay a little longer? She could sleep, perhaps, and draw back some strength. But then Henrietta tensed against her arm. ‘I can hear someone coming. They’re whistling!’ she muttered. ‘We need to go now, Lily.’

Lily dragged the magic up out of her bones and moaned wearily, trying to concentrate on the theatre. Her thoughts seemed to be spiralling round and round inside her head, and she slumped forward.

Princess Jane gripped her hand more tightly, and Georgie flung her arm around Lily’s waist. ‘It’s all right,’ she gasped. ‘You should have said you were too worn out, idiot. Oh, Lily, I can’t help, or we’ll end up with another wolf, or something else awful!’