Rose (4 page)

She looked up and caught Miss Bridges eyeing her consideringly. Rose tried to look innocent, and rather stupid, but she wasn't sure that Miss Bridges was convinced. Her dark eyes were interested—interested and thoughtful behind the glittering pince-nez spectacles she was using to inspect the laundry list. Rose had a worrying feeling that Miss Bridges didn't believe she was stupid at all.

***

After breakfast Miss Bridges took Rose on a more thorough tour of the house than she'd had the day before to show her what her duties were. Like this morning with the fires, it seemed that Susan, as the first housemaid, dealt with the main rooms, the grander ones on the ground floor, and Rose did upstairs. That was fine by her. She'd had a quick peek at the drawing room as they passed, and the number of fragile-looking ornaments had set her heart racing. She would much rather clean bedrooms. It was just about possible to smash a chamber pot if you tried hard enough, but it would take a real effort.

“And this is the workroom.” Miss Bridges opened a smoke-stained door. “Mr. Fountain uses it for magical…things…” she added vaguely. “But he's always at court at this hour, so you won't be disturbing him. Dust the equipment, sweep the floor, polish the vessels, but for heaven's sake, Rose, do not touch
anything
that he's working on. It could be vital to the nation.”

Rose eyed the piles of delicate glassware anxiously. Perhaps the drawing room wasn't such a bad choice after all. She shivered. The room was gloomy—even though it was surrounded by tall windows. The light just didn't seem to reach into the corners. There were no spiders' webs and no dust, but it was still an eerie place. The central table was loaded with a complex arrangement of glass tubes and bottles filled with a murky yellow liquid, flowing sluggishly from one end to the other.

“Is that gold?” Rose asked curiously. After all, Bill had
said
Mr. Fountain made gold, and gold was yellowish.

“Of course not!” a voice behind her snapped.

The pale-haired boy, Freddie, was standing there looking disgusted.

Miss Bridges sniffed, which was the most unladylike thing Rose had yet seen her do. Clearly Freddie was about as unpopular as the cat, who now prowled into the room behind him, looking smug.

Rose watched him under her eyelashes while pretending to stare humbly at her boots. She was getting very familiar with them here. Rose had a feeling that it wasn't his magical ability that made Miss Bridges dislike Freddie—more that he was rude. She seemed to have more patience with magic (and the people who could do it) than the rest of the servants. Freddie had recently broken a Ming vase, of course—Miss Bridges had probably wanted him disemboweled for that.

Freddie stalked past her, wrapped in a cloud of
don't touch me
superiority. Rose wished she could ask him about the strange things that had been happening to her recently and how his own magic worked, but she was meant to be invisible to these people.

Miss Bridges left Rose to it, with another warning against touching things she shouldn't. Freddie settled at a table and started turning the pages of a large book, while the cat sat next to him and stared at Rose as she swept the floor. She could feel his eyes fixed on her. It made her feet feel twice their real size, and she almost tripped over her brush.

“You've missed a bit.” Freddie was peering over the book at the floor, and the cat was examining it too. Neither of them seemed to think Rose's work was up to scratch.

Rose carefully didn't sigh. Instead she just murmured, “Yes, sir,” and swept the patch he seemed to be pointing to, which looked perfectly clean to her.

Freddie lifted the book up to sit on its end, so he could snigger behind it, and Rose felt herself flushing angrily. Then she noticed the gold-embossed title on the scuffed black leather cover.
Prendergast's Perfect Primer for the Apprentice Mage
. If only she could look at it! It would surely tell her what to do about odd pictures on baths, dancing houses, and talking cats—preferably how to stop seeing all of them, so she could concentrate on her job. She tried to look over the boy's shoulder when she came around to sweep by the windows. He didn't notice—he was far too interested in the book. Even the cat appeared to be reading it. Rose crept closer and discovered to her disappointment that Freddie was not reading the spellbook. He had a comic tucked inside the pages and was deep in the adventures of
Jack
Jones, Hero of the Seven Seas
. Jack Jones was currently struggling with a giant squid. Rose sighed disgustedly, right behind Freddie, and he shut the book at once with a guilty snap. Rose ignored him. Briskly, she swept up her dust pile and made for the door. Perhaps tomorrow, when she was dusting, she could sneak a look at
Prendergast's Perfect Primer
.

As she left, the white cat and the white boy were still watching her with narrowed eyes.

After Rose had cleaned the workroom, she went down the stairs backward to see if it would confuse whatever the magic in them was, but it didn't. Rose was sure she could hear the house giggling—but it seemed a friendly sort of noise, not a nasty, sniggering one. All the same, she stubbornly stayed backward all the way down to the kitchen, and it was tricky, especially as she was carrying the brush and the dustpan too. Turning the corner of the first-floor staircase—the last one before she got to the back stairs, which she was sure would be safe—Rose gleefully went too fast, and one foot slipped out from under her on the deep carpet, and got hooked in the sweeping brush somehow, and she went tumbling and bouncing down the steps. Rose squeaked with horror, thinking all at once of Mr. Freddie and the Ming vase, and being sent back to the orphanage in disgrace. However oddly magical the Fountain house was, she wasn't going back—never, never, never! The house seemed to approve. As she thought it, defiantly, tears springing to her eyes, something caught her, and set her back on her feet.

Something. Someone? Something with strong arms. Furry ones. Rose gulped, sat down on the deep-red, patterned carpet of the sixth step, and looked up cautiously at the stuffed bear in the deep embrasure in the wall. Its glass eyes stared off into the distance, and its paws were innocently folded on its fat, rather balding tummy. The gaslight shone on its enormous, hooked black claws, but its face was foolish and not fierce.
Who, me?
she imagined it asking.
I'm stuffed, dear. Can't move, me. No, you caught the banisters, that's all. You be careful now, pet.

But something was chuckling, just beyond her hearing, as she crept down the last few steps.

That's it, dear. You go forward this time. Safer that way, see?

Rose crept into the kitchen, trying not to hear the bear's voice whispering in her ears, and trying to look as though the house was just a large and boring place she had to clean, and not a mass of twisting staircases and talking furniture that scared and fascinated her at the same time.

“I've finished, miss,” she told Miss Bridges, trying to look bright and keen and not like a person who talked to bears. Or rather, a person that bears talked to. That was what made it so unfair. She'd never talked to a bear in her life. She'd never asked to talk to bears!

Behind Miss Bridges, Bill sat at the table, his hair more like a doormat than ever. He was eating a huge slice of bread and dripping, but he still managed to smirk around it, and simper, in a way that made it quite clear he thought Rose was sucking up. She shot him a
just
you
wait
look. Somehow the knowledge that he was from St. Bartholomew's made him feel almost brotherly, in the sense that she could imagine pulling his hair (if it weren't so short) or stealing his sweets.

“Good girl,” Miss Bridges said approvingly. And without even glancing around, she added, “And you, Bill, stop pulling faces. The master's boots aren't done yet. Off you go.”

Rose was very impressed. She eyed Miss Bridges cautiously. She'd been fairly sure that the orphanage story about Miss Lockwood's glass eye had been false, but in this house, she wasn't so sure. She wouldn't put it past Miss Bridges to have something clever concealed in that smooth knot of hair at the back of her neck.

“Common sense, Rose, that's all.” Miss Bridges sounded amused. “I've never known Bill not to be pulling faces. Come along, dear, work to do.” And she sailed off, her black frock rustling importantly, with Rose pattering after her.

Miss Bridges was what the girls at the orphanage would probably have called a right tyrant, but all that really meant was that she liked things to be done properly, and she didn't like to see people sitting about doing nothing. As the housekeeper, Miss Bridges had her own room, along the corridor from the kitchen. It was a sort of sitting room, but there was a desk too, for her to do the household accounts and write the orders for the tradesmen. There was also an enormous cupboard, full of odds and ends and treasures. Rose's new boots had come out of it—nice black buttoned ones which had belonged to some maidservant long ago, but which fit Rose so well that she kept wriggling her toes in admiration. Miss Bridges went to it now and burrowed about at the back, emerging at last with a small basket, neatly lined in blue gingham. “Here you are, Rose. I don't like my maids to be idle, so when you've a spare moment, you can be at some mending.”

Rose gazed at it speechlessly. A needle case—just a scrap of felt, to be sure, but with two bright needles in it—a spool of black darning wool, a battered thimble, and her own darning mushroom! Her eyes pricked with tears at such richness.

“Though do remember, Rose,” Miss Bridges reminded her sternly, “that although you may do your sewing in the kitchen, you must darn your stockings in the privacy of your own room. It would never do to let Bill or, heaven forbid, the butcher's boy catch a glimpse of your stockings.”

Rose shook her head, appalled at the very idea.

“I shan't, miss,” she promised fervently.

“Good. Now, I have some errands for you to run, and I should think Mrs. Jones will have some things for you to get as well.”

“You mean, shopping, miss? On my own?”

Miss Bridges nodded. “Running errands is an important part of your job, Rose. Don't worry, you'll have a list and directions.” A tiny frown creased her forehead for a moment. “Rose, you can read?”

Rose tried not to sound indignant. “Of course, miss! They were very enlightened at the orphanage. I can write too.”

“Good. Good.” Miss Bridges started to write on a scrap of paper in elegant sloping handwriting. “Now, most of the housekeeping supplies are sent over by the shops, of course, but there are the odd things. I need some more silver polish for a start, as we seem to have almost run out.”

Rose tried not to look guilty. She and Bill had been rather lavish with it the day before.

Mrs. Jones was drinking her midmorning tea, reading her newspaper, and tutting. “Little boy gone missing from right outside his house, Miss Bridges, isn't that sad? Mind you, it'll be the parents' fault. People should take better care, that's what I say. And another revolution in one of them Far Eastern places. I don't know what the world's coming to, I'm sure I don't.”

“Quite.” Miss Bridges indicated her list. “Do you have any commissions for Rose, Mrs. Jones?”

Mrs. Jones brightened immediately. “Oh, now, let me see. Yes, if Rose is going to the grocer's, Miss Bridges, I need some more of those crystallized violets. You know how partial Miss Isabella is to those, and they're quite gone.” She added to Miss Bridges' list with a pencil stub from her apron pocket. “And she could go to the fishmonger's about that crab. They're only around the corner. She can give them this note. I will not be fobbed off with that pathetic little specimen. Crab, indeed. A fat spider, that's what it was.” She scribbled industriously.

“You will be careful, won't you, Rose dear? You're not used to those busy streets. You find a policeman and get him to help you cross. You'd better draw her a map, Miss Bridges. You've more of a sense for directions than I have.” She looked up and sucked the end of her pencil thoughtfully. “Or better yet, send Bill with her the first time she's out, don't you think?”

Miss Bridges looked doubtful. “Perhaps.”

Bill appeared at the door from the back kitchen, looking innocent and with a smear of boot polish on his nose. “Did you want me, miss?”

Miss Bridges eyed him consideringly. “Very well. You can accompany Rose, but you're to take her straight to the fishmonger's, no dawdling about with those unsuitable friends of yours. Go and put your proper livery on. And, Rose, fetch your cloak.”

Rose had no idea what Miss Bridges was talking about, but when Bill came back two minutes later, she discovered that livery meant a black jacket with greeny-gold frogging all across the front and a rather odd-shaped hat.

“Don't you dare laugh,” Bill hissed in her ear, as they endured another set of instructions from Mrs. Jones. Miss Bridges had gone back to her room to write a sternly worded letter to the chimney sweep about the presence of a bird's nest in the drawing-room chimney.

Mrs. Jones bustled about, finding Rose a basket, and telling them to put the polish and the violets on the Fountain account at the grocer. Then she looked a little cautiously out of the kitchen toward Miss Bridges' door and handed them each a penny from the knitted purse she kept in one of the jelly molds. “Buy yourself some bull's-eyes, Rose, or something nice. Bill, you are not to buy that horrid pink sherbet stuff. I will not have you being sick all over my kitchen like you were last time I gave you money for sweets.”

Bill shook his head, as if sherbet was the furthest thing from his mind. “Come on, then,” he told Rose, bowing to her as she walked out onto the area steps as though she were a duchess.

Rose stalked past him with her nose in the air, trying not to giggle. “Which way do we go?” she asked him eagerly, as the area gate clanged to behind them. It sent a shudder of delicious excitement running down Rose's spine. They were off, out on their own, and she even had a penny to spend!

Bill gave her a superior look. “This way, mouse, and don't you show me up.”

“Don't need to,” Rose retorted. “Have you seen what that hat looks like?”

Bill flushed. “Miss Bridges thinks it's smart,” he muttered. “I look like I've got a flowerpot on me head.”

“It isn't really that bad,” Rose promised him, feeling guilty. “And at least it fits.”

“I suppose. Come on. We got to get to the fishmonger, and that's down this way.”

Rose followed, trying to remember the route, but Bill took so many alleyways and cut throughs that she was quite lost by the time they fetched up in the middle of a busy street, packed with people and carriages. Rose stopped at the end of the alley, lifting her skirt away from a pile of rubbish and looking panicked.

“What's up?” Bill turned back impatiently as he realized she wasn't following.

“There's so many of them!” Rose whispered.

Bill looked out at the street again, as though he was seeing it differently. “Yeah. I suppose there is. I forgot what it's like, coming from the orphanage.” He blinked, and Rose could see him thinking back. Then he gave himself a little shake. “Don't worry, Rosie, no one'll hurt you. Mind you, don't get pushed in the road though. Some of them horses goes awful quick.”

Rose nodded. The horses were enormous shiny beasts, stamping and snorting with flaring red nostrils. The carriages were mostly open ones, with ladies in them, bowing and smiling to acquaintances as they passed.

“Does Mr. Fountain have a carriage and horses like that?” she murmured to Bill.

“Course. He's got a barouche, like that one over there. And two black horses. He keeps them in the mews, around the back. The groom and the coachman come in for their meals some of the time, but mostly Mrs. Jones sends me around the stable with a basket for them. Miss Bridges thinks stable company is low.”

Rose nodded and tried to look as though she knew what he was talking about. It didn't work. Bill just grinned at her pityingly. “You'll pick it up. Hey! Mind, you!”

Rose felt a tug on her skirt and squeaked in dismay, pulling back and huddling herself close to Bill. The pile of raggedy rubbish she'd been standing next to had turned into a child, who'd been sleeping against the wall, wrapped in a dirty cloak.

Bill hustled her away, into the street, muttering crossly about cheek, but Rose looked back in horror at the child's pinched cheeks. “Got a penny, miss, just a penny, for some food?” she heard it calling after her. She couldn't tell if it had been a boy or a girl.

“Shouldn't we go back?” she asked Bill worriedly.

Bill looked at her in amazement. “What on earth for?”

“She—I mean, he—that child only wanted a penny. And I've got one!” Rose gazed back, but the child had subsided back into the alley; she could see one bare gray foot just sticking out around the wall. She shivered. It could have been her. All those improving stories the orphanage schoolmistress had read them, where children died of cold in the street—she'd known they were true, and felt grateful, but she'd never quite been able to imagine it. After all, she had never been outside the orphanage. Now, suddenly Rose saw that they were all too real. She
had
been lucky.

“Bill, please?” she begged, but he was already heading off, up the street, impatient with her, and she had to run to catch up. She didn't dare let him out of her sight.

“You're soft, Rose,” he told her, as he felt her apologetic tug on his gold-braided sleeve. “You'll learn. Beggars are everywhere. You can't give to them all.”

“I suppose,” she agreed sadly. “It was just that it was a penny, and that's what I had.”

Bill sniffed, then he halted his step for a second, stood up straighter, and started to walk faster, Rose still scuttling after him.

“What is it?” she asked anxiously.

Another boy was walking toward them, in a similar livery jacket to Bill's, except his was green and he hadn't been afflicted with a stovepipe hat. Instead, he had a velvet cap with far too many rows of gold braid.

Rose could feel Bill bristling like a dog, and the other boy was eyeing them watchfully.

“Nursemaiding, are we?” the other boy sneered, jerking his thumb at Rose.

Rose tried to hide behind Bill, and Bill tried to look as though he didn't know she was there. They nearly tripped over each other. Bill glared at Rose, and the other boy sniggered.

“New housemaid,” Bill mumbled. Then he decided to go on the attack. “What you got a pancake on your head for?” he demanded.