Magic Below Stairs (16 page)

That night, Frederick could not sleep. Lord Schofield's words rattled around in his head like peas and beans. Over and over he thumped his straw mattress into a different shape, each shape lumpier than the last, until Frederick heard a rooster crowing. He buried his face in his hands. The sun would be up before he was asleep. “I give up.”

“You don't,” said Billy Bly from the far corner of the dressing room. “That's one reason I liked you from the first.”

“You!” Frederick lit a candle. “Where have you been?”

“Harvest season, isn't it?” Billy Bly looked smug. “Hunting always makes me hungry. So I've been harvesting.”

“Harvesting what?”

Billy Bly's sharp yellow teeth glinted when he smiled. “Don't worry. A hen's egg here, a water beetle there. Nothing anyone hereabouts would grudge me. I came to see why you called me.”

“But I didn't.” Frederick rubbed his eyes. He felt slow and a bit stupid. Maybe he had been closer to sleep than he'd thought.

“Why did you call me last night? His nibs interrupted you and cast the spell himself. But I'm not deaf. I heard you calling me.”

“Oh, that.” With Billy Bly lounging before him, Frederick felt silly about ever having thought the brownie was nothing but a dream. He didn't want to show what a baby he'd been about missing Billy Bly, so he chose his words with care. “I wanted to know more about the curse. I suppose it doesn't matter now, since Lord Schofield banished the thing.”

At the mere mention of the curse, Billy Bly shivered.

“Tell me,” Frederick went on, “why did you answer? Many times I've wished just to know you were around the place. What I wanted made no difference. Why answer my call now?”

“For the sake of time past and time to come,” Billy Bly replied.

That sounded to Frederick like something Lord Schofield would say. “What does that mean?”

“Time past, because I've always liked you. Time to come, because the day draws nigh I can't answer you at all. I won't hear you, and you won't hear me.” Billy Bly looked grim. “Nothing mortal lasts.”

“Wait.” Frederick thought it over carefully. Mortal meant something that could die. “Are you telling me that you're dying?”

“No.” Billy Bly held up his hand to cut off Frederick's next question before he asked it. “Now don't ask me if
you're
dying, for so far as I know, you aren't. No faster than any mortal creature, I promise you.”

“Do you know the future?” Frederick demanded.

“I have no way to see your end or mine. But sometimes I can see beginnings.” Billy Bly must have read Frederick's confusion in his expression. Patiently, he started over. “I came to say good-bye. Our parting is near. The new child calls me.”

“The child Lady Schofield is carrying?” Frederick scowled. “How can that be? That child isn't even born yet.”

“There are more spells on this house than the one Sir Hilary Bedrick cast. Magic runs in the Schofield family. Many a wizard has lived here before this one. They cast spells of protection. One of those spells has me in its power. If the owner's first child is born in this house, any brownie living here must serve that child and no other from the moment of its birth.”

“You are already under the spell? Servant to a baby? Before the child is even born?” The unfairness of it nearly took Frederick's breath away.

Billy Bly looked sad. “Aye, lad. More friend than servant, as I hope I have been to you. But the matter is settled.”

Frederick could hardly speak, he was so angry. “Can't we break the spell?”

“A friendly thought, but no. This spell is too strong.” Billy Bly looked more closely at Frederick. “Here, lad. Don't look so brokenhearted. I'm not bound to the child forever. Some of us serve until we are freed by gratitude. Some of us serve until we are given clothes. For me, I never serve more than one at a time, and I never serve more than seven years. Seven years and not one moment longer.”

Frederick thought the lump in his throat might choke him. With all his heart, he wished he were dreaming. But he wasn't dreaming. Billy Bly had only come to say good-bye. “Will I ever see you again?”

“Never.” Billy Bly's voice was full of regret. “Time runs swiftly, especially for a mortal like you. It would have been finished soon enough between us without this child's arrival.”

“If I hadn't come here, you wouldn't have to do it.” Frederick forced the words out. “This is all my fault.”

“Never say that. Never even think it.” Billy Bly tapped his chest. “It was my own doing to flit along with you so blithely. I didn't notice the spells laid upon this place until it was too late.”

“I wish I'd never come here. I wish I'd never heard of Lord Schofield.” Frederick broke off, gulping back the feelings that threatened to overtake him.

“Next you will say you wish you'd never left that orphanage, and we both know you don't mean that. I don't blame you. Not for anything.” More gently, Billy Bly added, “If it is any comfort, know I chose you freely. No spells required. I chose well when I chose you. No regrets, young Frederick. If I could, I would choose you again.”

Between one heartbeat and the next, Billy Bly vanished. The dressing room was as empty as the feeling in Frederick's stomach. For a moment, Frederick simply stared into the emptiness. Then he put out the candle. Eyes shut tight against the sight of the empty room, he curled back up in his blanket and lay silent as the last of the darkness yielded slowly to dawn.

Frederick did not let himself make a single sound. He certainly did not cry. What good would crying do? What good was anything?

When Frederick next opened his eyes, it was to the gloom of late afternoon. Even though it was scarcely tea time, the late October day was already yielding to dusk. Frederick washed his face and tidied himself. It was odd that neither Lord Schofield nor Piers had needed him all day. He wondered if he really had been sacked. Were they just waiting for him to wake up to throw him out of the house? That didn't seem too likely.

When Frederick came cautiously out of the dressing room and down the back stairs, the whole house seemed oddly silent. Silent, that is, until he stepped into the kitchen, where every servant in the household seemed to have gathered, all of them shouting.

Frederick stepped up to the nearest cluster of servants, all housemaids. “What's happened?”

Pink with excitement, Rose turned to him, tumbling her words out so he scarcely understood her. “It's her ladyship! Her labor pains began two hours ago. Nearly a week earlier than I'd wagered, too. That's me sixpence poorer. His lordship has sent Foster and the curricle to London. He's to fetch the man-midwife. Just in case he doesn't come in time, Mrs. Kimball has sent one of the grooms to the village to fetch our midwife.”

Frederick puzzled through the flurry of words too slowly to suit Rose. With a flash of impatience, she snapped, “The child is on the way. Lady Schofield's labor has begun.”

“Oh, is that all?” Frederick didn't try to hide his resentment of the child as he looked from Rose to the chaos going on around them in the kitchen. “I thought perhaps a war had broken out.”

“So it has, in a way.” Mrs. Dutton loomed over them both. “It's a battle her ladyship is in now. You are no use underfoot here, Frederick, so off with you. Rose, if you can't think of anything better to do than gossip, find some work and do it. Or I'll find work for you.”

Gratefully, Frederick escaped back upstairs to the dressing room. He still felt strange. Not just sad over his loss of Billy Bly. It was something more than that. Restlessness filled him. He tried to take Mrs. Dutton's advice and find some work to do. There were always boots to polish.

But try as he would, Frederick could not settle to polishing boots. His restlessness would not leave him. At last, although he knew he should keep on with his rags and polish, he cleaned his hands and ventured out again. He went up the back stairs instead of down. This time, he knew he was headed somewhere he had no business to go, the nursery.

With everyone else busy downstairs, the top floor of Skeynes was eerily silent. He heard the wind outside rattling at the windows, as if it was trying the latches over and over. As he moved down the corridor toward the nursery, every floorboard had a different creaky note underfoot to betray his steps.

The nursery door was open. Frederick stood on the threshold, just looking, for a long time.

Every windowpane shone, and the fresh white paint on the walls seemed to gleam. Braided rugs softened the polished wooden floorboards. Every stick of furniture was dusted. Every scrap of fabric was clean and pressed. A small fire smoldered into embers in the fireplace; all the warmth there was to keep the autumn chill at bay.

Frederick crossed the threshold and walked boldly around the room, touching this and that. He straightened up a rag doll slumped crookedly on a shelf. He set the rocking horse to rocking with a touch of his hand. He studied his reflection in the looking glass hung above the mantelpiece. He stood there, quite empty-handed. The child wasn't born yet, and already this whole room belonged to it. Not even Frederick's clothing truly belonged to him.

When the moment came, the child would be Billy Bly's master, blessed just to have parents. One day, if the child was a boy, the whole house and all its lands would belong to him. Every servant in the place would be his to command. And not just in this place. How many houses would the child inherit? How many servants would he have to do his bidding?

This child would be rich by any measure the world used. Why did the child have to have Billy Bly too? Billy Bly was all Frederick had ever had.

The embers on the hearth were dying. The room grew chill. Half out of habit, half to stop himself thinking, Frederick made up the fire afresh. When the flames were leaping merrily again, Frederick rested in the warmth, cross-legged on the hearth rug. He knew he should leave. He had no business in the nursery, no excuse to offer for his presence.

The colors of the fire held Frederick spellbound. More than the flames, he loved the shift and play of the burning embers. Inside every glowing coal, he could see the black heart of the fire. Blackness only made the colors lovelier. There would be no brightness without the dark, he thought.

With pure force of will, Frederick made himself rise above his feelings. So what if the child would never know his own luck? Weren't there plenty of children left back in the orphanage who would say the same of Frederick?

Perhaps Frederick had been born lucky too, and just didn't understand his own good fortune. All along, Frederick had believed he understood how lucky he was to have Billy Bly. Now he knew what it meant to have Billy Bly for a friend. Only now, when it was lost to him, did he truly value what a treasure he had possessed.

But Frederick hadn't truly lost Billy Bly yet. The spell did not take hold until the child was born. Perhaps it wouldn't be born. There had been trouble before. Perhaps Lady Schofield would lose this baby too.

That was an evil thought. With a shudder, Frederick banished it. He wished Lady Schofield no harm. Let her have her stupid baby. Let the baby have Billy Bly. Frederick would do without. He had done without a family all his life. He could do without Billy Bly.

Frederick rose and took a last look around. There was no trace he had ever been in the nursery. With a bit of good luck, there would soon be as much loud uproar in this room as there had been in the kitchen, a happy uproar of welcome for the infant. Let the luck be good. Let the baby be born safe and sound.

With some effort but with all his heart, Frederick wished good fortune to the child. A bit of happy uproar would be just what the old place needed, Frederick told himself, a bit of happy uproar and Billy Bly taking care of Skeynes and its new heir.

Wishing peels no onions,
Frederick reminded himself, nor did it clean the boots. With an ear cocked for domestic uproar, he headed for Lord Schofield's dressing room. Even from the back stairs, he could hear the cries and shouted orders from Lady Schofield's bedchamber. Wincing in sympathy, he let himself into his refuge. Lord Schofield's second-best boots needed to be cleaned and polished. With hands that shook only a little, he selected the tools he needed and set to work.