The Magic Mirror Read online

  She had a feeling.

  Outside the walls of the city, a small party approached. It was Bertram and Henry and the borrowed slow, fat pony. Bertram had brought his gift for Margaret, and he intended to present it to her with his good wishes: that she be healed and that she might walk straight and without pain. He knew not if the water was holy away from its source at St. Winifred’s Well, but still he had filled the bladder of his bagpipe and stoppered it, and they’d traveled three days from the holy shrine and come to Isobel’s Gate. But their arrival was ill timed, and now the gates were shut. They would have to spend the night outside the city walls.

  Bertram looked left and right as they moved into the woods, on guard for ghosts and sniffing the air for brimstone, and so he jumped when they came upon two figures. Flesh and blood, thank the saints, the man and woman were arguing, and gesturing at the large, prone body of a man at their feet. Off a short distance, a girl dressed in a grain sack sat comfortably on the ground against a tree trunk and watched the goings-on with some amusement.

  Brother Henry frowned. “They bicker as skilled as puppeteers,” he said to Bertram.

  Bertram smiled and urged Gertrude onward to see about setting a place to sleep, when his attention caught on one word: Mags. His ears perked. He listened more closely.

  “If you hadn’t spun us all round the compass like a top, north and east and west and east again, well, woman, I swear my eyes have crossed!”

  “If you hadn’t stolen her crutch to begin with!” said the woman.

  “It were a fair trade!”

  Bertram strode to the woman, and Henry followed.

  “Do you speak of Margaret Church?” Bertram asked.

  “No,” she said shortly over her shoulder, and kept up her verbal attack on her companion, but Bertram interrupted.

  “Margaret the Crutch, then?” he said.

  The woman turned fully to him. “Ye-es,” she said.

  “Are you called Minka?”

  “Yes!”

  Henry pointed at the figure prostrate on the ground. “Drunk?”

  “No.”

  “Dozing?”

  “Dead!”

  A short while later, Minka and Bilious and Urchin and Bertram and Henry, having accomplished the introductions, sat together round a glowing fire ring, the tired horses not caring a whit for the story Minka told.

  “Bad luck is ever my lot!” she began.

  “Oh, just tell it!” Bilious bellowed.

  Minka scowled at him, and then began again.

  “We’d just come out the city gates, hiding Mags with us in the cart—”

  “What? Why?” Bertram interrupted.

  Minka shushed him with a wave of her hand. “It’s a long story and we’ll get to it in time,” she said, “I promise you.” She looked up at the moon. “We’ve got all night,” she added, and began a third time to tell her tale.

  The moment the gates had closed them out and Margaret in, Minka had begun to cry and wring her hands.

  “Bad luck is my lot!” she’d cried, and Bilious had quieted her with a look.

  “She said to meet her at the almonry, and by God we will, but we cannot till the morrow as well she knows! What is she about, and what are we to do?”

  Urchin spoke. “She’s got our Pip,” she said, then sucked on her teeth.

  “Fat good that rodent will do her,” said Minka.

  Margaret was in danger, and alone, and they were locked out of the city for the night.

  There were others camped outside the gate. A merry band of players donned their masks and rehearsed their play. Some distance away, a lone harpist plucked a mournful tune.

  And so they’d sat in the shelter of a copse of maples in view of the gate and in range of the River Severn’s stink, to wait for they knew not what.

  It soon arrived: the thief John Book.

  John Book and his band took what they wanted from Bilious’s cart—hides and brass pots and dull knives—and then, perceiving no threat (the mummers and the harpist had got up and disappeared like vapor), they sat down with Bilious and Minka and took what food they had and ate it right in front of them. Bilious cursed John Book as him who had murdered his dear wife. John Book laughed and put his face in Bilious’s and said, “She were a lovely bit of business. We had us a bit of fun, we did. A fair creature, she were, a bonny beauty. She laughed like a fairy, like tinkling bells.”

  “You plainly don’t even recollect her, you brute!” said Bilious, his voice quivering. “She, which you murdered outright, did not ever laugh like tinkling bells, but rather wheezed like a bleating bagpipe! But she were my wife!” and he spat in John Book’s face.

  The crew of outlaws laughed nervously. “John Book doesn’t like that,” muttered one of the men. “Not one bit. If there is one thing John Book does not like, it is being spat at.” They watched to see what their leader would do. He wiped the spittle from his cheek and glared at Bilious, then drew his knife.

  At a sound like a bellowing elk, everyone turned. It was Minka, bearing down on the thief with Bilious’s—Margaret’s—crutch held high. She brought the thing down with all her might and knocked him sideways, after which he fell over and struck his head upon a rock.

  “I’ll wager that’s another thing John Book doesn’t much like,” Minka said, and brushed off her hands on her skirts.

  The other bandits laughed and capered, expecting Book to rise and smite poor Minka. Only one among them did not laugh and jig about: a woman with a long, dark braid. When Book did not rise but lay dead, the outlaws waited a respectful moment, then searched his pockets. Minka then raised the crutch threateningly, and they ran off without their—Bilious’s—loot.

  “Just deserts, I say,” said Minka. Bilious, slack-jawed, said nothing but stared at the dead body.

  “Close your mouth, Bilious; you’ll catch flies.”

  He snapped his mouth shut, gulped, and finally grinned. “Well done, Minka! Well done!” he said, and grabbed her up in a fervent embrace, which caused them to tumble, laughing, to the ground. Overcome, he tilted his face and puckered his lips and moved slowly closer, and closer….

  “Stop!” cried Minka, holding up a hand.

  For her gaze had hit upon something familiar in the hoard.

  Minka leaned forward now, to poke the fire with a stick, and she looked at her listeners, one by one. “It were Margaret’s satchel,” Minka said. “And in it, magic mirror.”

  Moonlight winked on the glass. It was enough to see by.

  “It shows the beholder’s own true love,” Minka said, turning it over in her hands. She had looked in the glass earlier, at the feet of the body of the thief John Book. She’d thought to see Sweetheart again, her true love. When the face of Bilious had appeared instead, she’d shaken the mirror up and down with vigor, but could not knock the image free. She saw Bilious in the mirror again now. She glared at him crossly. But when he smiled with his four teeth, she smiled back. “Oh, holy mercy, saints preserve me,” she muttered. She passed the mirror to Brother Henry as if it were afire.

  “I dare not seek the face of God in a trinket,” he said, and turned the mirror over. “Lux Vera,” he said, and looked around at his companions. “It’s writ across the back.” He rubbed his chin. “ ‘The True Light,’ it means.”

  Bilious grunted. “I’ve always seen just what I longed to see, when it were mine. Give it here.” Sure enough, Bilious saw Minka holding a cup of ale in each fist. “Wondrous vision. And a truer light I never saw, Brother,” he said with a chuckle. “Lux Vera. Take a turn, lad?”

  Bertram accepted the mirror from Bilious. He prayed he wouldn’t see a bagpipe. He raised the mirror, and in it saw Maggie. But the vision was dark. The only way he knew it was Maggie was by her limp. As he watched, she stopped and rested her forehead on her crutch—the crutch he’d carved. Then she lifted her head and pressed on.

  He looked around at his companions. “The vision is dark” is all he said.

  “But t
here will again be light,” said Henry. “There will always be a light.”

  When the gates creaked opened at dawn, an early mist dampened the air, and a fine fog surrounded Minka and Bilious and Urchin as they marched straight up Church Street to the cathedral, and along St. Mary’s Churchyard to the almonry door. With them were Bertram and Henry.

  Also in the throng were a madwoman and a glazier, who passed unnoticed.

  “Good job the priests pray with such regularity as we can meet here in secret,” Bilious said with a wink as Margaret answered their knock.

  Margaret surprised herself by bursting into tears at the sight of Bertram, and she threw her arms about him, nearly knocking him off balance.

  “I came to see you wed,” he said.

  “Then you’ll be disappointed,” she said, “for there is to be no wedding.”

  “No?” he said, a grin across his face.

  “No,” she said, and smiled back. He shifted his bagpipes, and Margaret noticed that the bag jiggled like a jelly.

  Margaret presented Petra and Emma and related the happenings of the night: how Petra was never in the country but in the dungeon all along, and how they’d freed her and left the castle by way of a wheelbarrow and a well-placed blow to the head.

  “I didn’t marry badly three times without learning how to knock a man senseless,” Emma said. “I shot off a prayer to St. Wilgefortis and heaved ho with the night watch’s own sword.”

  “But it was Pip who carried the day by squirreling out the key,” said Margaret, placing the sleeping Pip in Bilious’s cupped hands. “You should be very proud.”

  “I am,” said Bilious solemnly, with a sidelong look at Minka.

  “Now, you’ll want this back,” Minka said, ignoring Bilious and holding up Margaret’s satchel, “it after all being what got us all started on this winding road.” Minka thrust the sack at Margaret, who took it and slid out—yes!—the magic mirror.

  Even as her blood raced and her heartbeat pulsed in her ears, Margaret’s mind calmed, for she trusted the mirror’s magic to show her something. She noticed the words etched in fine script across the back: Lux Vera.

  “ ‘The True Light,’ ” Brother Henry read over her shoulder.

  Minka elbowed the person nearest, who was Bertram, and rolled her eyes. “She hopes to see a wild-eyed man.”

  “I know,” said Bertram. “She doesn’t seem worried about the danger and the death.”

  “Eh?” said Minka.

  “Never mind,” said Bertram glumly.

  Margaret lifted the mirror and gazed into its surface. There he was: the wild-eyed man. She smiled to see him, as if she had known his company in life and missed it. Strange, she thought; something was changed. But the vision was dim, and she could not have said what was different from what she’d seen before. Was it his eyes? Were they not so wild?

  “Let me!” begged Petra, and grabbed the glass from Margaret and held it to her face. After a moment, she laughed wickedly. “The mirror surely shows my heart’s desire and, I hope, the future, for I see my dear father locked in his own dungeon. Ha! May he find himself at home there soon,” she said.

  There was much shy gladness, but little time. The almonry was not the safe haven it had been, for there would be almsgiving following morning prayers, and the annex would soon be hopping with priests and poor alike.

  Margaret frowned. “There is that great wooden coffer we might hide in—”

  “And suffocate,” said Minka.

  Bertram snapped his fingers. “It’s a simple matter to get hold of a few masks,” he said. “There are groups of mummers in the city just now, fitted out for their plays, and so disguised we could move about.”

  “I can pinch ’em,” Urchin offered happily.

  “Thank you, Urchin,” said Petronilla, “but I am a royal princess with ample resources.” She reached for a purse that wasn’t at her waist. She’d come, after all, straight from the dungeon.

  After a few silent moments of patting around pockets and purses, they realized that none among them had any coin.

  “Even Pip would come up empty,” Bilious said.

  As the bells rang the midmorning hour, one by one they turned and looked at the church collection box.

  “Oh, I’ll do the deed,” said Petra, “but someone please remind me to refund the amount and more, for I’d hate to meet my father in hell come Judgment Day.”

  Henry set off for the abbey herbalist, to see if he could determine the contents of the liquid that yet remained in the vials of elixir that Margaret had carried out of the dungeon.

  And Bertram, with Urchin to help, set out to procure an assortment of mummers’ masks.

  An uncomfortable hour had passed in waiting when the pair at last returned. “The Devil and Old Vice,” Bertram said, handing one ugly mask to Petronilla and an even uglier one to Minka, “and an angel.” He delivered a beautiful silver-faced mask to Margaret, and then he flushed. “They’re what came soonest to hand.” To Margaret he also gave a painted cloak, to hide her fine gown and her crutch. Petra’s gown was too bedraggled to be mistaken for the clothing of a princess. He and Bilious donned masks of ladies’ faces, and Emma and Urchin wore masks of plain white.

  The “mummers” wandered the streets the better part of the afternoon, picking up food and drink (with yet more borrowed coin) and listening for news. The pleasant hours passed in browsing and pretending, and Margaret could almost forget their terrible cares as a cheerful sun traversed the sky. She reveled in an anonymity she had not enjoyed in many weeks, if ever: even with her telltale crutch she felt, for once, invisible.

  They met Henry as planned in the alley beside the Crown and Bean.

  “The herbalist is still testing the mixture, but already he’s detected skullcap and lavender, which herbs induce sleep and visions and numb the senses and the mind,” Henry explained. “But there is another ingredient, beyond a doubt, and damning: belladonna—deadly nightshade. In careful dosage it brings on euphoria, followed by sleep. Too much, and it causes death. The monks at the abbey won’t even speak of it. But they grow it in their gardens as a cure for boils.” Henry smiled, eyes agleam. “Yes, this will do to charge him on some count,” he went on. Lord Geoffrey’s daughter and his ill-treated horse might be avenged after all, God willing. And Armand, rest his soul. “Princess Petronilla’s testimony will not be discounted as in parte insana, not with the evidence of the elixir.”

  “It’s my word against his,” said Petra. “Judgment runs deep as the Severn,” she added, “and rumor stinks as strong.”

  Everyone reluctantly agreed.

  “But we have no other proof of Lord Geoffrey’s crimes,” said Bertram, “excepting the word of a bandit.”

  “Whom you kilt!” said Bilious to Minka.

  At this a head turned, unnoticed: a woman with a long, dark braid.

  “For your sake I done it!” Minka exclaimed. “Would that I’d known he’d be of use!”

  “Dear, foolish woman,” Bilious muttered, and pulled Minka to his side.

  The braided woman turned and disappeared into the alehouse.

  “Emma, would you be so good as to fetch the sheriff to the castle?” said Henry.

  “My pleasure, to be sure,” Emma said, eager to add dog-kicking to the list of Lord Geoffrey’s crimes.

  “Tell him he’ll find the body of a thief outside the gate,” added Minka. “The law might do well to hire me on,” she said, to no one.

  Emma went off to locate the law, and Bilious went with her, on account of Minka and the matter of John Book.

  Brother Henry shook back his cloak and cracked his knuckles with enthusiasm. “Bertram? Let’s go see a man about a horse.” Off they went toward the castle, and Lord Geoffrey.

  The masked companions went out again and after a while found themselves on Smithen Street, where smiths practiced their trade, and merchants sold items of quality both delicate and brute. Margaret glimpsed through the slits in her mask a wild-looki
ng blacksmith raising his hammer high and bringing it down with a clang. Her thoughts went to the wild-eyed man, and, first noting the location of her friends browsing trinkets at a stall some paces away, she slipped the mirror from her satchel, turned her back on the street, and peered into it. Hello, there he was.

  “Watch out” and “step lively” came shouts from nearby, and Margaret glanced up to see the cause of the small commotion: a pony coming up Smithen pushed the foot traffic to the sides of the street. Someone passing jostled Margaret from behind, and into the mirror rippled a vision that replaced the wild-eyed man: a gray-headed woman at play with a sturdy child—a little girl—dressed in a gown of green velvet.

  Margaret’s breath caught in her throat. Green dress, green velvet—who had caused this vision in the glass?

  She pressed the mirror to her chest and, darting round, caught sight of an old woman, stooped but nimble…the madwoman? Lucy? Yes, it was she.

  Confused, Margaret looked again into the mirror, but the vision had gone. She stuffed the glass into her satchel, adjusted her crutch, and beckoned to her friends. “Quickly! Follow me!”

  They made a strange parade: a girl with a crutch and a painted cloak, followed by a robust matron with a squashed hat, one girl dressed in a grain sack, and another in soiled silks, all in masks of varying ilk, and all hurrying to catch up to a crone—stooped but cursed fleet.

  As she kept Lucy in sight, Margaret told the others what she’d seen in the mirror.