The Magic Mirror Read online

  “Oh, Minka.” Margaret’s chin crumpled, and she thought of the night she left Minka snoring at the house in Lesser Dorste. Though quick with the sharp tongue and the willow switch, Minka had been the only mother Margaret had ever known. “I am sorry,” she said. “I have so much to tell you. I don’t know where to begin.”

  Bilious said, “At the beginning. No use starting in the middle, and we’ve never come upon the end, as long as we’re alive.”

  “Begin with the mirror!” Minka’s words burst forth, and she began to pat Margaret roughly about the hips to discover a hiding place. “Where is it?”

  “I don’t have it,” Margaret said, miserably, batting away Minka’s seeking hands.

  “Don’t have it?” Minka was flabbergasted. “Don’t have it! All my trouble coming after you, and you don’t have it!”

  Bilious stroked Minka’s arm and made soothing noises in the manner of speaking to his mare, Old Penelope, and as he did, the almonry door cracked open. Margaret glanced up in alarm, but no one entered, and the door closed again.

  “Come around here,” Margaret said, and led them to a bench concealed by a great wooden coffer bound with iron. There they sat, and she told them everything. At first Minka interrupted, but Bilious bade her keep her mouth shut. Minka had to settle for gasping and clenching her fists while Margaret spoke at length. She began with seeing the wild-eyed man in the mirror, and how such a longing was stirred in her to find him. How she dreaded a wedding to Hugo the hunchback, how she ran afoul of John Book and lost the magic mirror, how she took company with Bertram and Brother Henry and the pilgrims. And then she told of finding Petronilla, her own sister, discovering her true identity as a princess, and being betrothed first to the Toad and then to her own stepfather, Lord Geoffrey, and—

  “And that’s not all,” Margaret said.

  “Is that not enough?” cried Minka. Bilious patted Minka’s shoulder comfortingly. Urchin picked her teeth with a straw.

  “Petra has been accused of trying to kill me. Lord Geoffrey says she is sick in the mind, and he has sent her away, I know not where. But I don’t believe it! Any of it! Petra is kind and good and spirited. I must go and get her. I”—Margaret looked sheepish—“I heard it on the rain!”

  “Heard it on the rain? Heard it on the rain…now who’s ill in the head,” said Minka, raising an eyebrow at Bilious and tapping her temple. “Mayhap she does need my help, then, and just in time I’d say,” Minka said in Bilious’s direction. Turning to Margaret, she straightened her wimple and settled her hands on her hips. “Hugo the woolmonger looks a fair bargain now, eh?” she said. “I’d suppose the hump doesn’t appear so pronounced from this distance!”

  “If only I had the magic mirror,” Margaret said, ignoring Minka, “then I might somehow know what next to do.”

  “But we don’t have the mirror, do we,” said Minka. “Come away, now, Mags.” She leaned in toward Margaret and spoke in urgent tones. “Whether Lord Geoffrey speaks truth or lies, neither bodes well for you. You know not where Petronilla is, and there’s naught to be done for her from your present position. So let’s get you away—”

  All turned—froze—at the sound of jingling and footsteps approaching. Through the door strode a figure clothed in black.

  “It’s good to see you, Father Sebastian,” said Margaret.

  “Won’t you introduce me to your friends?” the priest replied.

  The sun was gone, and the day’s warmth gave way to the chill of night. Light from within taverns and houses lit up the twisting alleys and streets they followed toward the city wall, which would lead them to Isobel’s Gate.

  How it happened that Margaret was huddled beside Urchin in the back of Bilious’s cart was this: Father Sebastian let Minka, Bilious, and Urchin out the almonry door onto the street known as St. Mary’s Churchyard and bade them return with their cart. Then he called the soldier in and begged to keep Margaret longer at her work; the recent storms had left many cold and wet and in need of warm blankets. The soldier allowed it.

  Father Sebastian drew up the jingling rope at his waist, removed from it a single key, and pressed it into Margaret’s palm. He nodded at the almonry door to the street. “Let yourself out when your friends return,” he told her, “and I will go and make myself conspicuous outside.”

  Now, as they drove away, Margaret spied the maidservant, Emma, in animated conversation with the guard at the door of the cathedral. As the cart rolled past, Margaret thought Emma might have seen her. “Hurry, we haven’t much time.”

  Bilious urged Old Penelope as hard as he dared, and at last they reached the gate.

  Only a few more rolls of the cartwheels and she’d be free, Margaret thought. She pulled her hood to better hide her face.

  The church bells began to ring. As Bilious drove his wagon directly toward the gate, a soldier raised a burning rush and approached. “Do you wish to leave the city?” he called.

  Yes, Margaret thought, she wished to leave the city; yes, she wished to be free of wicked Geoffrey, to leave this place and never look back. And Petra? Emma loved her, and she would take care of her dear lamb somehow. Margaret never had asked the maidservant why she’d replaced the ribbon around Walter’s neck with a lacing.

  “You may pass,” said the soldier, waving the wagon through.

  A lacing like the ones Petra favored in her sleeves. Margaret’s lips parted with a sharp breath of revelation. Petra? Not Emma, but Petra? Petra, in the castle?

  “I was hoping we’d’ve been caught,” Urchin said with a grin. “I’d have liked to seen the dungeon.”

  The dungeon! Margaret pulled her hood deeper over her head, shadowing her face as the wagon rolled past the soldiers. A cold mist worked its way inside the folds of the cloak, and she shivered. This was her chance to slip away forever, to escape. And she could not take it.

  The heavy doors groaned on iron hinges, and the soldiers’ broadswords clanked as they grunted with the effort of swinging them shut.

  “Heeya.” Bilious encouraged his mare to lumber through, and with him the last folk departing the city for the night. Margaret pulled Urchin against her and leaned to her ear.

  “Find me at the almonry,” she whispered. She whirled away from Urchin’s grasp, fell stumbling from the rolling wagon, and made herself small and her hood deep, moving slowly backward against the flow of exiting people. And the great gates closed between her and Minka once more.

  “Curfew is nigh! Take to your houses!”

  Margaret found the shadows. She humped her shoulders and hurried away. At the sound of stomping feet behind her, she turned quickly. A band of armed soldiers was marching down the street. She ducked into an alleyway, and all went dark—someone had just closed the shutters for the night. The soldiers filed past the alleyway, steps from where she huddled against a wall. She murmured a prayer of thanks.

  If she were to be caught on the streets past curfew, she would have too many questions to answer. Surely an alarm had gone out when she wasn’t to be found at the cathedral. People would be looking for her. She had to get to the castle, had to find Petra. She dared not go by the wider roads, and stuck instead to narrow passages. She clumped down a narrow alley with walls so close she could have touched the other side if she’d reached out her crutch. She was nearly at the other end when a figure stepped toward her.

  Margaret stopped, turned, and began to run. A rat scurried across the way at her feet; she startled. Her crutch slipped in a puddle of muck; she fell. Chattering erupted from her cloak, and her pulse raced till she saw a set of tiny tufted ears—Pip! She envisioned how she’d pulled Urchin to her in the cart. The squirrel must have got from Urchin’s pocket to her own, and made himself at home. But now—footsteps! She scrambled to her knees quickly, heart pounding in her chest, tugged her crutch from the mud, and began to lurch away.

  “Princess!” came a whispered cry.

  Hearing the call in the night so frightened her, she stopped and turned around, rea
dy to brandish her crutch.

  Then the voice came again—“Princess, oh! Thanks to God”—and she realized it was Emma.

  Margaret fell into the maidservant’s arms, and though she didn’t know if Emma would betray her, she was weary and frightened and badly in need of an ally. (Pip didn’t count.)

  “Emma…did you tie a lacing around Walter’s neck?”

  Emma’s baffled look was answer enough. Margaret took a breath—and a risk.

  “Petra’s in the dungeon,” she said. “Geoffrey lied.”

  Moments later, the two were hunched over cups of mead and a plate of bread and cheese in a shadowed corner of the Crown and Bean, the alehouse dim-lit and open illicitly past the hour of curfew. Emma explained how she’d come to find Margaret in the alleyway. Her interest had first been piqued when Margaret did not return to the castle before tea. Upon arriving at the cathedral, Emma peered into the almonry and saw Margaret in conversation with three strangers, and by the princess’s attitude knew these folk to be friend, not foe. She then found the guard smoking a pipe outside the lesser south door of the cathedral, and announced that the princess had taken ill, and that she’d sent her to the castle with an escort, and she twisted his ear for not noticing them slip out.

  “Forthwith I returned to the castle and spun Lord Geoffrey the same story, and said you’d taken supper in your chamber and then to bed.”

  Margaret clapped silently. “A tale more twisted than my crippled leg. Thank you, dear Emma,” she said as she slipped Pip a nibble of cheese. “But why would you help me?”

  Emma wrapped her fingers round her cup. “Help comes when you least expect it. As for me, a rock fell unexpected from the sky onto my cursed second husband’s head. As for you? I wanted you to escape.”

  Margaret, speechless, stared.

  Emma tipped back her head, drained her cup dry, and set it with judgment on the scarred oaken table. “You are right. Geoffrey is not a good man. I seen him kick Walter in the ribs, and I need no more than that to know it,” she said. She looked intently into Margaret’s eyes, then pointed at Margaret’s cup of mead. “Will you be finishing that?”

  Margaret shook her head, and so Emma drank it down and drew her sleeve across her lips.

  “I don’t doubt he put her in the dungeon, the pure devil.”

  They weaved through dark streets to the castle. Emma cajoled the gatekeeper with hot soup from the Crown and Bean, and while he slurped, Margaret sneaked. The key to the cells was kept hanging on a peg in the wall of the weapons room, guarded by a watchman. As planned, Emma lured the watchman away with a wink and a flash of ankle, but—not as planned—he locked the door of the weapons room behind him. Now what?

  Emma had told her to go one flight down to the dungeon, once she had secured the key. She could see it through the barred opening in the weapons room door, but she couldn’t reach it. And now she was alone and without a scheme, and Emma’s amorous advances on the guard were for naught. If she went after Emma, she’d be discovered, and so would Emma’s part in her deception. What should she do? Sticking her crutch through the bars, she tried to reach the key on the wall. Not quite. She leaned into the bars and stretched her crutch an inch farther. So close, but not close enough. And then she felt a small furry creature stir in her pocket.

  Margaret murmured a prayer of thanks to all the saints of thieves and liars: Pip was a fine pickpocket, no matter what Minka said. Key in hand, she crept down the damp stone steps to the dungeon below, a journey no different by night than it had been by day. She thought how dreadfully the hours and months and years must pass in such a place, with no sun to bless a new day, no moon to comfort at night, only the hellish torches.

  Loud, regular snores came from the first cell. Margaret passed it by. She glanced into the second cell. The madwoman was awake and watching, she realized with a start. Margaret stepped to the next cell, and saw someone lying on the floor in a heap of silk. “Petra?” she whispered. “Petra, I am come.” The figure did not stir. Margaret worked the key in the lock and swung open the door.

  “Petra!” she whispered, kneeling and shaking her. She leaned her cheek to Petra’s parted lips and felt faint breath. Not dead, then, God be praised, but drugged, more like. Two vials lay on the floor among the dirty rushes. Margaret studied them, then put them in the purse at her waist.

  The snoring from the first cell stopped abruptly; then came a snort, and the snoring resumed.

  Margaret drew the prone Petra’s arm across her shoulder and, with effort, rose from the floor, gripped her crutch, and began to drag Petra away. Petra roused from her stupor. “I knew you’d get my message.”

  Margaret grinned. “Walter made a fine messenger. But I was slow to understand.”

  They stumbled toward the steps, past the madwoman’s cell, where she stood gripping the iron bars. “I had a feeling,” she whispered meaningfully, though Margaret couldn’t fathom what she meant.

  The woman coughed and tried again. “For years I could not even beg God’s forgiveness,” she whispered hoarsely. “It weren’t my fault, but then again…I beg…” She held Margaret’s gaze as if by force. “I beg of you…”

  Those eyes…Margaret tore her gaze from the old woman’s, fumbled for the key. “All will be well,” she said, merely to calm the poor woman and ease her way. She turned the lock and pulled open the door. She looked at the old woman and gestured come out. “What is your name?”

  “Lucy. I—I’m Lucy.”

  “Hurry now, Lucy.”

  But the madwoman stood on the threshold, cheeks wet with tears. Then came to Margaret’s mind a picture: the little family of quail on the road to Knightsbridge. “Follow me,” she said.

  The madwoman stepped out.

  “What of the other poor creature?” said Petra.

  “Leave ’im,” Emma panted, arriving in a rush. “That’s my third husband, may he rot.”

  The madwoman blinked in the scant light of the moon, breathing the clean night air into her lungs. She could have followed along behind the girls—wanted to very much indeed. But she didn’t. Nor did she set out to find Tom the apothecary, who would surely take her in, if he yet lived. He had come to see her down there, once or twice, but he’d had no money to buy her freedom. And anyway, she’d deserved her fate.

  Oh, how guards talk when they think their wards aren’t human. So she’d heard that Will Glazier was being kept in the old kiln. She’d always wanted to get word to him, but never did; what she had to say couldn’t be done secondhand. Face to face was how it had to be, to tell him the story of his wife, his little girl. Now—she had a feeling—there might be a new story to tell. There might.

  And so she went alone to Knightsbridge Wood.

  There was only one way out of the city past curfew. She found a place where the riverbank allowed, gathered her courage, and leaped into the River Severn. She swam the stinking length of it where it curved around the city. She floated with gobs of rubbish that in the dark could have been anything alive (and biting) or dead (and decaying) or worse. Though for one who had rotted in a dungeon for so long, the water was, if not refreshing, at least reviving. Along the wall she paddled, beneath the bridge, past the gatehouse. Then she dragged herself out and made for the trees.

  She waited and watched until she saw the ghosts: two pale figures moving slowly in the wood. She crept closer. She listened. But they weren’t ghosts. Of course not.

  “If you could just make him what he wants,” the large one said to the other. “He simply wants to see Isobel in the magic glass he swears you have the power to make.”

  The other did not speak.

  “He’s a man possessed. If he could see her but once, I trust he’d set you free. Don’t I come and give you a bit of exercise now and then? Do I bring the right amount of wood to burn? Perhaps the wood’s not dry enough. Is there any tool you do not have? Have you simply lost the gift?”

  When the smaller man shook his head, the big man sighed. “Only reason he ke
eps you alive now is he’s contrary. He thinks you’d rather be dead, and I bet he’s bloody right.”

  Even at this the silent man did not speak.

  The big man sighed again.

  She followed them on silent feet and didn’t get too close. She waited. By the time the big man had gone, the moon was spent; now the light was pale and wan, but it was enough to find what she was looking for. The old kiln had been abandoned since the foreign glassmakers had completed the rose window. Their work had been good, but not as good, not nearly as good, as the work that Will Glazier had done, she’d heard. Oh, she’d heard quite a lot, in the dungeon.

  She rolled a rock to the window, stood upon it, and saw within the man—unwashed, and hungry, and frightened—who startled at her sudden appearance in the window. The madwoman was slight, and old, but her hands were strong. She felt all over the bars, detecting where the iron was sturdy and where it was weak, all the while talking gently but firmly to the man, the way a midwife might talk to a mother in the pain of birth, and she broke him free from his prison in the old kiln and guided him out into the dawn.

  He resisted her, at first. And, oh, how well she understood what it was like to be some time away, to be imprisoned, to forget you once were someone with a gift. But gently Lucy reminded him who he was, who he had been, and she talked about the people who had loved him. And when the sun rose full and the city gates opened, she would take him to the apothecary—dear Tom, yes, he’d take them in if he yet had breath in his body—and she’d help him climb to the attic, and she’d lay a soft bed with a pillow. She’d feed him weak ale and strong soup, and she would hide him there till she decided what to do. She promised that all would be well—wasn’t that what the child had said? She almost believed again that it would.