“Not half so happy as I am,” Rollo assured him. “Of course it was nothing to a clever chap like you, giving a speech to a pack of ravening schoolgirls, but if I had had to do it I expect I would have jumped into the river before the week was out.”
“It will be a source of unending gratification to me, that I should have been instrumental in averting that fate,” said Zacharias gravely. He inspected his cup of coffee, apparently lost in thought. “However, it was not an unrewarding visit. I encountered a few interesting characters at the school.”
“Oh?” said Rollo. “I thought it was only girls.”
“Yes. But even girls may be characters, you know,” said Zacharias. “Still, I cannot say I enjoyed the experience. I nearly turned tail and fled when I mounted the stage before all those eyes. What is the Queen of Elfland to an assembly of schoolgirls? At least she is not given to giggling.”
Rollo shuddered. “Giggling!”
“Such devotion on my part, I think, merits some recompense.”
“It is beyond anything,” said Rollo fervently. “If there is any service I can render, Zacharias, you have only to say the word!”
Zacharias nodded, as if this was what he had been waiting to hear.
“Very good. You will be pleased to know I have hit upon the very thing,” he said. His entire manner changed: he sat up, steepled his hands and continued, in a crisp, schoolmaster-ish voice:
“You will oblige me by prevailing upon your aunt Georgiana—and indeed upon any and all of the respectable women you know—to introduce Miss Prunella Gentleman to unmarried gentlemen of eligible prospects, so that she may find a husband.”
Rollo goggled. Damerell was apparently seized by a fit, but when a footman rushed up, desiring to assist, Damerell waved him away.
“Have some sense, man!” he gasped. “Don’t interrupt!”
“What can you mean?” said Rollo.
“I gave a speech at a girls’ school in your stead, and in consequence I find myself burdened with a new apprentice, a female of overweening ambition,” said Zacharias. “We have agreed that I shall facilitate her introduction into society, in return for which she will apply herself to the study of magic. I have nothing to do with the beau monde, but you do. It seems only just that you should take over the task.”
Rollo gazed at Zacharias in wild surmise, before turning piteous eyes upon Damerell.
“Why, Robert, it is clear as daylight,” said Damerell. “A girl has followed Zacharias to London, and she wishes to find a husband. Zacharias desires you to manage the business. And I must say, Rollo, it would only be gentlemanly to step up, considering what he’s done for you.”
“But, dash it—”
“I don’t desire you to marry her yourself,” said Zacharias reassuringly. “I gather she hopes for something better than a younger son, though I confess I have no clear notion of the income she seeks. You should certainly speak to her about her requirements, however.”
“It is best to be clear on these points,” Damerell agreed.
“Dash it, Zacharias,” Rollo burst out. “I am amazed! I never would have thought it of you, of all people. I can’t introduce your barque of frailty into society. Why, it is out of all reason—it is—I don’t know what it is!” He paused, choked with emotion.
“What Rollo means to say is that he thinks the proceeding unprincipled in the extreme,” translated Damerell.
Rollo nodded. Breath returning to him, he added, “And what’s more, it just ain’t the thing!”
“There is nothing of that sort between me and Miss Gentleman,” said Zacharias sternly. “I propose to tutor her—there is nothing more to our connection. Lady Wythe has agreed to have Miss Gentleman to stay with her, and to lend her countenance. But as you know, Lady Wythe has not been much in society of late, and I would spare her what I could. She has never been very fond of crowds.”
“She is staying with Lady Wythe?” said Rollo. “I must say, it seems a dashed racketing way of going on. Lady Wythe always strikes one as being such a model of propriety!”
“How many times must I tell you that Miss Gentleman is a perfectly respectable young lady?” said Zacharias in a terrible voice. “Will you or will you not do it, Rollo?”
“My dear fellow, anything to oblige, but—but anything decent, you know!” begged Rollo. “Anything plausible!”
“I fail to see what is either indecent or implausible about my request,” said Zacharias freezingly.
“Zacharias, with the best will in the world—!”
Damerell dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief and put it away. He seemed to feel that Rollo had suffered enough.
“It’s no good, my lad,” he said to Zacharias. “Rollo’s aunt ain’t good ton. She’s not a maternal aunt, you know. She is connected to the other side of the family. Haven’t you ever met her?”
Zacharias, still rather wooden, said, “No. But I had understood she was received by all the best families.”
“Oh yes. When Rollo’s aunt Georgiana knocks on one’s door, one doesn’t bar it and hope she goes away,” said Damerell.
“Doesn’t do any good,” said Rollo morosely, with the conviction of one who had tried.
“Quite. Rollo is of the best sort of family on his mother’s side, but his paternal relations are a different affair altogether,” said Damerell. “For your real influencers you must look elsewhere. I know them—and they owe me a favour or two. But first I must know what lies I am to tell them. Who is this girl? Tell your uncle Damerell.”
Zacharias explained something of Prunella’s history, and the position she had occupied at Mrs. Daubeney’s school.
“I gather that her father was a gentleman, though he seems to have been an elusive character,” he said. “Of her mother Mrs. Daubeney knew nothing. Mr. Gentleman spent time in India, and it seems likely that the mother was a native of that country. There is no suggestion that there was any irregularity in the connection, however. Miss Gentleman speaks as prettily as any fineborn girl, and she has as much education as any of Mrs. Daubeney’s gentlewitches.”
“Well, the mother need not be an insuperable obstacle,” said Damerell, considering the matter. “There is no other family in England? That is all to the good. We need not fear the appearance of disreputable relations upon the scene. Is the girl pretty?”
Zacharias spilt his coffee, and was too busy mopping up the result to meet Damerell’s eyes.
“Quite astonishingly so,” he said.
Damerell governed his features with his habitual composure, but his delight was evident to one who knew him as well as Zacharias did. The damnable thing about Damerell, thought Zacharias, was that he never failed to observe precisely what you would conceal.
“Very good,” said Damerell. “But why is it necessary to help Miss Gentleman to a husband?”
“I intend training her in the thaumaturgy, and she has promised to apply herself if I arrange for her to be introduced into society,” said Zacharias. “She seems confident that she will be able to obtain a husband of means, if she can only contrive to gain access to the right people.”
“She sounds a female of considerable resource. I admire her already. But now we come to the vital point: why is she to be trained?”
Zacharias was prepared for this.
“It has become clear to me that it is necessary to reform the thaumaturgical education of women,” he said. “The system that currently obtains is injurious to those women and girls who must do violence to their own natures to conform to it. Mrs. Daubeney’s school supplied ample proof of that. It proved, too, that there is a store of magical ability among women, which we would be foolish to disregard. A number of her students have obvious talent—talent that will otherwise be wasted in clandestine enchantments in the drawing room and kitchen, in charms to beautify a table or amuse an infant.”
“Miss
Gentleman is to be your first example of what may be done with feminine magic, then,” said Damerell.
Zacharias bowed. “Even without training, her abilities are striking. With instruction, what might she not achieve?”
He knew this was a poor explanation. If his purpose was to demonstrate the desirability of reforming women’s education by training one talented female, why not select one who would not make such strange demands? But further Zacharias dared not go. He must conceal the existence of Prunella’s familiars for as long as he could.
“Far be it from me to find fault with so noble a scheme,” said Damerell contemplatively. “But you will forgive a friend’s impertinence, Zacharias—have you considered the Society’s likely reception of it, when we have recently had such an alarming lesson in what may be done with feminine magic? I refer, you know, to the Malayan vampiress who nearly killed Mrs. Geoffrey Midsomer.”
“She was a witch, not a vampiress,” said Zacharias. “And if Mrs. Midsomer was bruised, that is the most I have heard she suffered in the way of injury! If I were to wait until the Society liked the notion of teaching women magic, my reform would never come to fruition.”
“Still, could not you wait till your position is stronger, before you quite upend all of the Society’s beloved prejudices?” said Damerell.
Zacharias shook his head. “Who knows how long I will be Sorcerer Royal? I may never again be in such a position to effect good.”
“But that is just what I do not like. It is such an unfortunate time for you to announce a scheme that is bound to be unpopular, with Geoffrey Midsomer wooing half the Society and bribing the other half, and the Treasury eyeing our coffers, and above all, our magic running dry.”
“That, at least, is a difficulty the Society will no longer be able to throw in my face,” said Zacharias, relieved to be able to supply good news for once. “I am confident we will see a marked improvement when the results of the next inspection of atmospheric magic levels are published in the Gazette.” The introduction of Prunella’s three familiars was bound to give rise to that benefit, at least.
Damerell blinked. “But that is excellent! Did your efforts at the border succeed, then, Zacharias?”
“After a fashion,” said Zacharias guardedly. The block on England’s magic was another matter best kept secret for now. The Fairy King’s rout was that very evening, and Zacharias would have a better notion of the reason for the block soon enough.
Damerell sat in silence for a while, no doubt turning over the various holes Zacharias could discern in his own account.
“You are grown very sorcerous, Zacharias,” he said finally. “You never used to be so mysterious. But I will see what I can do for your apprentice. The girl will need to be dressed properly, of course. Lady Wythe will obtain her admission to Almack’s, I presume.”
“Yes,” said Zacharias. “We have agreed that Miss Gentleman is to have everything that is suitable. You may call upon my bankers for any expense.”
“Then I think I can contrive a splash for your Miss Gentleman,” said Damerell. “But—you will allow me to say it once—it is a singular deal you have struck, Zacharias! One would think anyone would be pleased to be apprenticed to the Sorcerer Royal.”
“Unfortunately, Miss Gentleman is not just anyone,” said Zacharias glumly.
• • •
WHEN Zacharias returned to his study there was a small brown leaf on his desk. It looked as though it had blown in through the window, but Zacharias knew it for what it was at once.
A closer inspection proved it to be no ordinary leaf: its veins glittered with gold, and gold edged the blade. The Fairy King’s signature was on the other side: an inky hoof-stamp, redolent of earth and smoke.
His application for an audience had been accepted. Zacharias slipped the leaf into his pocket, feeling unwontedly nervous. It was what he had wanted—but the encounter must be managed carefully if it was to bear fruit.
That evening he laid the leaf on the floor of his study, and paced around it counterclockwise. The leaf would work its own magic. All he needed to do was circle it till the path was open.
As he trod his circumscribed round he found himself murmuring a little rhyme, which his nurse had used to sing to him, in his nursery days:
Ride a cock horse
To Banbury Cross
To see a black man
Upon a black horse—
“But no, I have confused it. How went it?”
A ring on his finger
A staff in his hand
The queerest magician
Ever seen in the land.
But that did not seem right either.
Zacharias stopped his pacing to puzzle it out, and saw that the gold veins on the leaf had spread out and multiplied, so that golden light lay in shining intersecting lines upon the floor. When he set his foot upon one of the lines, it widened into a shimmering path. He followed the path, and went through the walls of his study as though they were not there.
He ought to have found himself in the air, for his study was on the second floor, but instead he was walking down a dark tunnel. He felt as though he was asleep and dreaming, though his eyes were wide open. The only light was the golden glow from the path beneath his feet; the only sound that of his own voice, as he fumbled for the lyric:
As I was going to Charing Cross
I saw a fine lady upon a white horse
Runes at her fingers and spells at her toes
And she shall have magic wherever she goes—
“But that is all nonsense!
“There is,” Zacharias said, “a great deal in nursery rhymes. I wonder that there has not been a proper study of them. I must propose it to the Committee.”
“Mr. Zacharias Wythe,” announced the liveried eel at the door. “Sorcerer Royal, and ambassador of the mortal kingdom of Great Britain!”
Zacharias stood in a great gilded hall, lit with a profusion of candles, and filled with people—if they could be called people. For a moment he stood blinking in the dazzling light, and the guests stared at him. A brief hush fell.
Then the noise rose again, the chatter as lively as ever. It had been several decades since a Sorcerer Royal had been seen in Fairyland, but time held a different meaning for the inhabitants of Fairy, and given the Queen’s predilections, mortals were not so uncommon a sight as to provoke any lasting astonishment.
Zacharias was only one of many ambassadors waiting to be shown into the antechamber where the King held audience. He wandered around, still dazed by the strong magic by which he had been whisked to Fairy, narrowly avoiding stepping on the toes, flippers and tails of his fellow guests.
His anxiety about his upcoming audience was suspended for the moment, forgotten in the glory of Fairy. He had always hoped one day to see it, and this was such an opportunity as he would not soon have again.
In the mortal realm, Fairyland was used loosely to describe a number of magical nations which acknowledged themselves subject to the Queen and King of Elfland. The non-thaumaturgical might be even more imprecise, and use the term to describe all magical realms, whether connected to the Fairy Court or not. But of course, strictly only a creature of Elfland could be called a fairy: a being capable of changing its shape, but in its true form a sexless homunculus, pale-eyed and hairless.
Dragons, griffins, phoenixes, cockatrices, unicorns and the like were not native to Fairyland. It was a curious fact that in days past a familiar was more likely to encounter magical creatures of other species in England, in service to its master’s associates, than it was to have met such creatures in Fairy. For in Fairy could be discerned all the divisions of nation and class which subsisted in mortal society.
Though at least Fairy prejudices did not reflect those of English society, and here Zacharias was no more conspicuous than any other foreign ambassador. He was not even th
e only person in the hall wearing the form of a dark-skinned man: a novel incident to Zacharias, which felt all the odder for the fact that he knew his mortal sight could not be trusted to discern the true face of things here in the land of illusion. The various beings crowding the hall likely bore a very different aspect at home, and in their own eyes.
Though some were less disguised than others. Zacharias leapt back as a platter of sweetmeats clattered upon the floor before him, brought down by the sweeping movement of a dragon’s tail. A school of piscine footmen rushed to clean the mess, but the offender was unabashed.
“The Court might make better accommodation for its guests!” she exclaimed. “I declare the room grows smaller every year! Do not you think so, sir?”
Zacharias was taken aback to have criticism of his royal host so boldly demanded of him. He replied, in some confusion, that as this was his first visit, he was unable to judge.
“Your first visit?” said the dragon. She raised between two imposing talons a monocle the size of a dinner-plate, and peered through it at Zacharias. “Why, you are a mortal—a mortal English thaumaturge! You are never the creature who came and left us? I thought you might return, but not so soon.”
“I think you have mistaken me for another, ma’am,” said Zacharias. It was no great surprise, perhaps, that a black man and a white should appear much of a muchness to a dragon. “The thaumaturge you are thinking of is settled in England, and I believe has no intention of returning to Fairy. I am a different man altogether.”
“Oh!” The glowing topaz of the dragon’s eye swung closer to Zacharias. The pupil was a narrow black slit like a cat’s. “Why, you are the new Sorcerer Royal! How very droll! I must say you are much handsomer than I expected. Some of the Sorcerers Royal I have seen I would have eaten in the egg.” She let out an unexpected donkey’s bray of a laugh.
“Magical ability does not always correspond with physical perfection in mortals,” said Zacharias. “We differ from dragonkind in that respect.”
For reasons quite unclear to Zacharias, an image rose in his mind of Prunella, kneeling on the floor and playing with her familiars, one dark lock slipping out of its restraints to curl around the shell of her ear. He dismissed the image, feeling unaccountably embarrassed.