“Clarissa was being an utter brute, and I told her she ought not to talk so about Lord Duchemin, for he is my cousin, and even if George is not very clever, he has the kindest of hearts, and it is a beastly lie to say that Millicent is only marrying him for his money!” said Emily all in one breath.
“I did not say that at all,” interjected Clarissa. “I am sure the prospect of being a countess is as much an attraction as his fortune, to the daughter of a grocer! But I do not like a mésalliance. I suppose”—she glanced at Prunella—“some people would see nothing wrong in it. Some people would make themselves ridiculous if they thought they had half a chance at rank and fortune.”
“I know I should certainly take any opportunity of uniting myself to a viscount,” said Prunella cheerfully. “But I think you will find that society frowns on trying to break the heads of one’s schoolfellows even more than it does on marrying outside one’s station. What would the Sorcerer Royal think of finding a parcel of fishwives where he was told to expect a charm of gentlewitches? He does so much for the nation, I am sure we ought to spare him the disappointment.”
Clarissa gave a hateful titter, by way of showing she, for one, would not be squashed by an upstart. “Indeed, he does a great deal!”
To Prunella’s surprise, Henrietta leapt into the fray.
“Has any Sorcerer Royal done as much?” she said. “Mr. Wythe is known for his generosity. Think of all he did for that ingrate Mr. Cullip, who writes such shocking things of him in the Thaumaturgical Gazette!”
“I do not blame Mr. Cullip for doubting whether Mr. Wythe merits his office,” said Clarissa. “Zacharias Wythe is not even a proper sorcerer.”
“No one can say he is not a sorcerer,” said Henrietta hotly. “The Committee confirmed his claim to the staff. But perhaps you think the staff of the Sorcerer Royal may be used by anyone who is so disposed?”
It was not a serious question. The girls were given a serviceable education in thaumaturgical history, which contained so many instructive examples of the unfortunate consequences of women’s practising magic: Queen Mary’s horrific blood magics among them, and the outbreak of untrammelled witchery that had caused such chaos in the Middle Ages.
So, too, they had all been taught about the staff of the Sorcerer Royal, which only the true Sorcerer Royal could wield. The fraud Edmund de Bourgh had been blinded when he tried it. Richard of Kinnersley was slain by the very spell he cast to murder his rival. Jeremiah Larke had been sliced neatly in half, both ends of his divided person cauterised by the spell. These were preserved in one of the schools of magic, where he could still be seen, a pitiful look of surprise frozen on his face.
There was no denying that nothing so unpleasant had occurred to Mr. Zacharias Wythe, but Clarissa tossed her head. “All I can say is, I have never known a sorcerer that did not have a familiar!”
She looked around in triumph, as one who had produced a trump. All the girls had grown up in the thaumaturgical world, and understood its hierarchies. Any man could be a magician; any gentleman a thaumaturge; any scholar an unnatural philosopher. But only a magician that commanded the loyalty of a familiar could claim the title of sorcerer.
Without the assistance of a familiar, a spirit from the Other Realm bound in service to a magician for the duration of his mortal life, a magician had no access to the expanded world of wonder that was a sorcerer’s rightful demesne. He must rely upon his own imperfect perception and mortal frame in his spellcasting. But a sorcerer had the senses of his familiar to draw upon: his mind was intimately connected to that of a being of pure magic, and he had in his familiar a living channel to the power of Fairy.
“Does not Mr. Wythe have a familiar?” said Prunella, intrigued. Passing her days within the school grounds, she had little opportunity to hear the news of the outside world, which the girls imbibed upon their visits home. “Of course there have not been any new familiars for a great while, but I should have thought Mr. Wythe would have inherited the old Sorcerer Royal’s familiar. Did not Sir Stephen Wythe have a familiar?”
“Leofric,” said Clarissa, forgetting any intention to remain aloof in the pleasure of showing off. “My father knew him well. They used to lend each other books on insects—Leofric was a great entomologist. He had been familiar to the Sorcerer Royal for so many hundreds of years that he was nearly civilised, but Papa always said he was too ready to trust those he ought not. Poor creature! Now look what has happened to him!”
“When I spoke to Mr. Wythe at Papa’s party,” said Henrietta, blushing, “he assured me that Leofric is in good health, and much as he ever was, though he has retired from public life. I expect he has returned to Fairyland, and I do not see that there is anything to pity in that.”
“Oh, if you pretend to credit that, there is nothing to say!” said Clarissa contemptuously. “But everyone knows what truly happened, and if you were not so in love with him you would too. Everyone knows your precious Mr. Wythe is a murderer!”
The roses in Henrietta’s cheeks deepened to a flush.
“Henny!” cried Prunella in a tone of warning, but she had left it too late to avert disaster. Henrietta could never govern her abilities at times of strong emotion. She did not mean to cast spells when she was happy or sad or angry, she said, but the spells seemed to cast themselves.
The air in the classroom grew thick with magic. A strange light shone upon the girls, so that Henrietta’s curls appeared to writhe like serpents, and glowing sparks clung to Clarissa’s dress.
Henrietta stamped her foot, her grey eyes drowned in green light.
“I will teach you a lesson for that!” she cried. “How dare you call him my precious Mr. Wythe! How dare you say I am in l-love!”
5
I CANNOT BEGIN to describe our gratification at your condescension, Mr. Wythe,” declared Mrs. Daubeney. “No Sorcerer Royal has ever showed any interest in the magical education of females. The girls feel the honour of your visit extremely, I assure you.”
Mrs. Daubeney was not at all what Zacharias had expected. Knowing what he did of feminine magic, he had envisioned a grey-haired, discreet sort of woman, wise in the ways of girls—horsey, perhaps—but certainly not magical.
Instead Mrs. Daubeney possessed all the glamour that the ignorant layman might have ascribed to her. She was tall and handsome, with silver-streaked black hair and a nose tending towards the beaky. She dressed in a picturesque style, with a great deal of purple and velvet. If spells could be cast by pure drama of gesture, she would have been a veritable sorceress. She was perfectly fitted for running a school for gentlewitches, however, for she did not in fact appear to have any magical ability whatsoever. What she did possess was a brain as keenly alert to the main chance as any politician’s.
“Of course, dear Sir Stephen—what a loss to the nation!” Mrs. Daubeney’s voice dropped, and she looked solemn. “And yet, you know, he visited the thaumaturgical schools at Seaton and Yarrow, but never seemed to think of our magical girls. I am glad you recognise their importance, Mr. Wythe, for if we continue to neglect our girls, the nation will suffer for it!”
Zacharias had been brooding on the challenge awaiting him at the border, and the troubles he had left behind him in town, but this embarrassed him out of his abstraction. He muttered some civil platitude: he believed the magical education of females deserved more attention—commended Mrs. Daubeney for her sterling work.
“It is a shamefully neglected subject, and I fear we will repent of our inattention,” said Mrs. Daubeney. “What sad tales have I not heard of females driven mad by their magic! Of the sorrow they have caused their unfortunate family and friends! Yet what do we do to prevent these tragedies? We scold our girls if we catch them in spell-casting; we forbid them from reading grimoires—but we do no more, and are shocked when we find they have learnt night-spells from Nurse, and cantrips from Cook.
“If a girl-child m
akes her dolls dance, her parents admire her cleverness, and say it is of no account, for little Susan will soon outgrow such amusements. If, when she is turned fifteen, she is discovered in charms to curl her hair or brighten her eyes, she is reproved for her vanity, and told she must stop, lest she is thought fast. But no effort is made to make her understand the seriousness of her breach, and she comes to womanhood believing there is no harm in indulging in minor magics, provided she does it discreetly. And what is the result?”
Zacharias was at a loss for a reply. He knew, of course, what the Society would have him say. Magic was too strong a force for women’s frail bodies—too potent a brew for their weak minds—and so, especially at a time when everyone must be anxious to preserve what magical resource England still possessed, magic must be forbidden to women.
Yet Zacharias had seen too many hags in kitchens and nurseries, too many herbwomen and hedgewitches in villages around the country, not to know that women were perfectly capable of magic—at least, women of the labouring classes. Among their betters it was genteel to turn a blind eye to such illicit activities. One would not like one’s own wife or daughter to indulge in witchcraft, but it did not serve to be overscrupulous when feminine magic could prove so convenient in one’s servants.
Fortunately Mrs. Daubeney was ready with her own answer.
“In consequence of our criminal lenience, our girls are committing acts of magic every day!” she said impressively. “You may think I exaggerate, sir, but we see it in all our new arrivals. They are so accustomed to easing their way with little charms and devices, they cannot easily leave off. It is no small matter, changing a girl’s fixed habits, but we have learnt a great deal about how the change may be effected.”
“Indeed?” said Zacharias. “How—”
“I had hoped you would ask!” exclaimed Mrs. Daubeney, delighted. “But stay—why should I bore you with explanations, when I can show you? We have a class in session at this very moment, a class of our eldest girls, to whom we have imparted such a sense of their duty of restraint, as I believe you will not find in any other crop of magical females in this country.”
She leapt to her feet as though the idea had just occurred to her, though in fact she had been resolved upon it from the moment she heard of the Sorcerer Royal’s visit. For Mrs. Daubeney had grand plans for her school.
Miranda Daubeney had begun life as rather a silly woman, and she might have continued as such if not for the lucky turn, twenty years ago, of her husband’s dying and leaving an encumbered estate. She had been compelled to advertise for paying lodgers, and it was this necessity, painful as it had been at the time, that transformed the entire course of her life.
Mr. Hilary Gentleman had seemed a dubious proposition when he first applied for lodgings—haggard and tanned from his roving life in India, with a child tucked under his arm and a wicked-looking old leather valise he would never put down for a moment. But he had offered such a substantial sum that Mrs. Daubeney could not turn him away, and when she came to know him better, she did not regret her decision.
In time she had begun to nurture a secret hope that she might become something more than a friend to dear Gentleman. She had even grown fond of his child, despite the dusky tint to its skin, and its unfortunate predilections. Even then Prunella had begun to show troubling signs of being magical—signs which she needed the help of a mother to curb. Mrs. Daubeney would not have objected to being called upon to discharge that responsibility, but alas! It was not to be.
Mrs. Daubeney would never know what had driven Gentleman to drown himself, for the brief note he left, confiding Prunella to her care, explained nothing. She could not bring herself to send the child away: it would have to go into the poorhouse, or be boarded with some poor widow and like as not die of neglect, for Mrs. Daubeney could not find out that Gentleman had possessed a relation in the world.
But Prunella could not have an ordinary nurse, who would be frightened by her making little people out of soot, and drawing birds upon the wall that flapped and squawked as though they were alive. Mrs. Daubeney was puzzled to know what to do with her, when by chance she made the acquaintance of a village woman who had formerly been employed in a lord’s nursery.
Prunella’s eccentric ways disconcerted Mrs. Tomlinson not at all: “She’s an uncanny creature, but then so was my lord’s second girl, Annabel, and I never had any trouble with her. You need only be firm with them, ma’am, and show you won’t stand for their wickedness, and they will settle down soon enough. Annabel is a great lady now; she married a lord herself, and you may trust she never thinks of doing any magic now she is grown.”
Mrs. Tomlinson had proved so capable in caring for Prunella that when the squire’s wife confided in Mrs. Daubeney that her cousin Stapleton was sadly troubled by her daughter’s propensities—“she acts strangely at times, and they fear it may be magic”—Mrs. Daubeney had no hesitation in suggesting that this cousin should send her daughter to Mrs. Daubeney, who would see to it that the child’s propensities were checked. For Cousin Stapleton had married a man with twenty thousand a year.
It soon became evident that Mrs. Daubeney could not rely on Mrs. Tomlinson alone to educate the Misses Stapleton of the world. She found herself mistresses from the ranks of impoverished gentlewomen who knew from bitter experience how to suppress and conceal their talents from a world that wanted none of them.
To Mrs. Daubeney’s own surprise, it seemed she had a remarkable facility for management, and eventually she found herself in possession of a small but thriving girls’ school. Five years after she had taken in Prunella, she refused an offer of marriage from a widowed thaumaturge with three daughters, and only regretted that her decision was likely to deprive her of three potential students.
She was no longer content with being mistress of a small school, however. Mrs. Daubeney dreamt of an establishment for the education of magical females on an unprecedented scale, and she had every intention of making the Sorcerer Royal’s visit count to that purpose.
“Miss Liddiard is teaching our oldest girls the Seven Shackles today,” she announced when they arrived at the classroom door. “If practised regularly, the exercise will extinguish seven of the most common types of magic of which the mortal frame is capable. It is an admirable device, and I beg you will not be misled by its appearance. We shall find the girls droning on together, looking half-asleep, but you must not think our girls are usually so dull!”
She flung the door open with a flourish, revealing a scene of utter pandemonium.
A cluster of girls clutched at one another, shrieking in dismay. At the other end of the room, a young lady crouched behind a barricade of desks. She had one arm wrapped around a wriggling girl’s neck, and a small hand clamped over the girl’s mouth, stifling protest (which the captive nonetheless continued to issue with unabated vigour).
The young lady did not regard this. She was engrossed in blocking the hexes flung by another girl, who stood in the middle of the classroom screaming curses, her eyes blazing with red light, and all her red hair standing on end.
Mrs. Daubeney looked for a moment as if she considered fainting, but the situation was too dire for that. She gasped:
“Prunella! What is the meaning of this?”
“Oh, Mrs. Daubeney!” said the young lady. “Pray summon one of the mistresses! If someone could deflect Miss Midsomer’s hexes, I would be able to deal with Henrietta in a manner less injurious to her dignity. There, Henny, I know it is provoking, but I cannot very well release you, for you know you will try to strike Miss Midsomer dumb, and that would not be at all gentlemanly!”
“Mr. Wythe, I do not know what to say,” stammered Mrs. Daubeney. “What you must think of us!”
Zacharias stared. Prunella was light enough for exertion to lend her cheeks a brilliant colour, but that she was not of wholly European extraction was clear from the warm hue of her skin and the p
rofusion of dark curls tumbling over the back of her drab brown dress. Her small, three-cornered face was screwed up in a look of intense concentration that did not injure its beauty.
But it was not this alone that fixed Zacharias’s attention. Prunella was stopping Henrietta’s mouth not only with her hand, but with a spell—a spell hastily cobbled together, but of such ingenious construction that he would not have expected to see it from anyone but a trained thaumaturge. That she was contriving to maintain the spell while blocking Miss Midsomer’s hexes—which were also more advanced than Zacharias would have expected from a schoolgirl—was nothing short of extraordinary.
Prunella cried in vexation:
“Oh, don’t flap! Is that the Sorcerer Royal you have got there? He might be so good as to put a stop to Miss Midsomer’s antics, and grant me some respite!”
“To be sure!” said Zacharias, starting. “I beg your pardon.”
It was simple enough for him to draw a barrier around Miss Midsomer to contain her endeavours, but in fact it was not needed, for both girls suddenly lost their appetite for battle at the words “Sorcerer Royal.” Miss Midsomer stopped mid-screech and stood staring at Zacharias with a purple face, as though she had swallowed one of her own curses. Henrietta tore Prunella’s hand from her mouth, shrieked, “Oh, it is not!” and swooned to the floor.
“Good gracious!” said Prunella. She added, in a tone of reproach:
“If you were going to strike anyone down it should have been Miss Midsomer, for she was most provoking, and she knows perfectly well Miss Stapleton cannot help doing magic when she feels strongly on any subject.”
“Prunella!” said Mrs. Daubeney chidingly, but Zacharias was bending over Henrietta.
“This is Miss Stapleton?” he said. “Miss Henrietta Stapleton? But I know her father.”