The Magic Mirror Page 5

  “I’ll pay you two pence and not a penny more.”

  “I’ll take a halfpenny and nothing less,” countered Bilious, generously.

  Within moments they had struck a bargain in her favor, and then off they went in the wrong direction.

  Margaret hunkered lower in the tinker’s cart. Every so often she peered out to determine where she might have come to on the road. She did not know the distance between Lesser Dorste and Knightsbridge, nor where she should depart the wagon. But the east-west road would surely lead there.

  She knew next to nothing of the royal city. She’d heard of the princess who would one day rule, when she was of age. The princess was a motherless girl, like Margaret herself, and for a time, when she was much younger, Margaret had liked to imagine that she and the princess were sisters who didn’t even mind having no mother, because they loved each other that much.

  She heard the occasional horseman galloping by, followed by a period of long quiet pierced with birdsong. Every so often she heard the rushing water of a stream or river, and she longed for the driver to stop so that she might steal out and drink. But he did not stop. The wheels kept up their grumble and creak, the horses their faithful clop, the birds their song.

  Then she heard another song. Curious, she drew back her covering. At first she saw only the country: the fields with the beginnings of wheat, oats, and barley, some goats and sheep. Then the cart overtook a group of people on foot. Pilgrims. She’d seen pilgrims before in Lesser Dorste, stopping over for lodging in homes and in the churchyard.

  A boy was singing with obvious delight at a volume all could hear. He was taller than most of his twenty-odd companions, and his dark hair curled merrily into glossy swirls and peaks. As the wagon rolled slowly by the traveling party, Margaret forgot herself and watched the boy. Head high, he smiled as he sang, and by his easy stride and swinging arms seemed to have not a care in the world.

  “Oats and beans and barley, oh!

  Do you or I or anyone know,

  How oats and beans and barley grow?”

  Suddenly the boy tipped his head to her as if he’d known all along she was watching. Their gaze caught, held. She put a finger to her lips. He winked. She yanked the tarp over her head.

  From under her cover, Margaret heard the boy’s song carry on.

  “Oats and beans and barley, oh!

  Dance your partner to and fro.

  Someone spies where someone hides,

  Oats and beans and barley, oh!

  So now you’re married you must obey,

  You must be true to all you say.

  Someone knows where someone goes,

  Oats and beans and barley, oh!”

  Margaret lifted the cloth and peeked again. The boy waved, and now he threatened with a bagpipe he produced from over his shoulder. He screwed a pipe deftly into the body of the instrument and blew into it, inflating the bag.

  Someone spies where someone hides! Would this bad-mannered boy expose her? Well! She pulled the cover over her head once more and prayed he’d keep her secret.

  The boy’s bagpipe, bleating sourly, offered no promise whatever.

  The wagon rolled on. Margaret thought of the boy—that wink!—and then opened her satchel to pull out the small curved comb, and fixed back a lock of hair. She smiled to feel the pretty trinket in her hair; it was a triumph of a sort that she’d managed to steal it back from Minka along with the mirror. She had always imagined the dainty ornament had belonged to her mother.

  Margaret slipped the mirror from its green velvet wrapping and peered into it. The surface of the mirror shone dull gray. Then, as she watched, an image formed. There again was the wild-eyed man. Again he was working with a large disk of glass, taking its measure with a rule. He set down the rule and picked up the glass, peering at it intently.

  All at once, a hawk flew over and its cry pierced the air; Margaret jumped. At the same time, in the magic mirror a great flock of blackbirds erupted from the spires in the distance behind the wild-eyed man. The man looked up in terror at something or someone outside the frame; the glass disk slipped from his hands and shattered at his feet.

  The mirror went dark.

  In a glass glimmering, a green-eyed man awaits, the soothsayer had told her. Seek him, but soft! Was the man in the mirror “touched by death,” as the seer had said? Was he in danger?

  Later, Margaret stirred to the sound of water rushing, and shortly the wagon stopped and the driver got out, murmuring to the horse. Her heart beat faster; would he come around and discover her? She peeked from under the canvas. She slid out and crouched. No sign of the tinker.

  Margaret stumbled and ducked behind a briar patch. She spied the driver off in the other direction, his back to her, apparently answering the call of nature. She pulled up her skirts and crouched to do the same. The sun felt good on her face, and she shut her eyes and listened to the birdsong and wondered at her bravery thus far. She had left Lesser Dorste! For better or worse, she sought the wild-eyed man. She was on a journey sure as any pilgrimage. No more Margaret the Crutch, she thought. No more little Maggot. Why, she’d give herself a new name. Margaret the Brave. Margaret the Strong. Something befitting such a take-charge, clever sort as she.

  A noise roused her from her reverie. The cart! The wagon was pulling away without her! She lurched out of the briar patch after the cart. The wagon drew farther away. With no prayer of catching even the slowest of plodding horses, Margaret threw all care to the wind and yelled.

  “Wait! Wait, good sir! Wait for me!” she shrieked, stumbling, dragging her crooked leg, but the cart driver did not hear her over the creak and rumble of the wagon and the rushing of the river. Her foot caught on a stone; she staggered and fell to the dirt, crying, “Stay! Stay!” He did not hear. He did not turn. He did not stop.

  Margaret pulled herself to standing. The wagon grew smaller and smaller to her eye; soon it was very small. Then, as she watched, the cart rode up and over a hump in the road and disappeared, and with it, she realized only then, went her satchel. The magic mirror was gone.

  Margaret the Dull. Margaret the Moronic. What would she do now? She was alone and unprotected, and night would fall, and it would be cold, and all hope of discovering who she might be and where she belonged seemed gone away with the magic mirror.

  She touched the horn comb in her hair—the only belonging she had left.

  Margaret’s thoughts did not fly straight, but darted and twitched like sparrows. She stood in the middle of the road with her shadow short beside her and looked back the way she had come: back to the churchyard where she’d been left a foundling child, back to her pallet in the attic with the rain her good companion, back to the streets she knew by every clump of crutch and slide of foot, back to the hunchback, the town boys, and Minka. All in that direction was known to her, and there was comfort in knowing, even if what she knew was bad.

  She faced the hummock beyond which the cart had disappeared. In that direction were only questions: Why did the wild-eyed man appear in the mirror? What or whom did he fear? Was he somehow what her heart longed for? And why? Was she addlepated, to run away on nothing but the magic of a gap-toothed peddler? Yes, that was it. Margaret the Addlepated.

  A quail with quaking plume started out from behind a tump of grass, leading the way for seven trusting babies, which sped across the road after her. If only she, too, had someone to follow. She hadn’t sure feet to carry her; she hadn’t any guide. She watched the birds until all she could see was the mother’s plume amidst the reeds, and then that, too, disappeared.

  After a few moments she stepped to the side of the road and rooted around the ditch till she found a stick. She tested it; it was not of hard wood, but neither would it yield like a willow wand. Not a crutch, but a walking staff to help her move along.

  Margaret raised the staff and with it struck the road. She would simply have to pretend to be the mother quail, leading her own self. She turned away from Lesser Dorste and walked
on, clump-slide, clump-slide, traveling west toward Knightsbridge, the way of the setting sun.

  Margaret walked and walked, stumbling and lurching till she thought her legs would snap and her feet would turn to pudding. Hunger gnawed at her stomach. She might have asked for food and drink—she met a few people coming and going—but she knew she was in danger, traveling alone, and feared to speak to anyone. She walked with purpose, and kept her head low.

  By late afternoon, the weather had changed. Storm clouds approached from the north, bringing with them a chilling overcast. Shadows disappeared with the sun, and Margaret was all alone on the road. When the rain began to fall in earnest, she shuffled to a sheltering grove of ash trees, pulled her hood up over her head, and settled herself to wait out the storm. Thoughts of Minka and of the magic mirror were pushed aside by baser senses: Hunger. Thirst. Cold.

  When a magpie soared overhead, Margaret searched the surroundings for the bird’s companions, the old counting rhyme running through her mind like a town boy’s taunt: One for sorrow, two for mirth. Three for a wedding, four for birth. Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret not to be told. She looked around, rubbing from her upper arms a crawling dread. There. Another bird flew up from the branch of a linden. Eight. Eight for hell, and—there, another—a ninth magpie flew up and followed the others. Margaret felt the damp and chill creep about her throat, and clutched her cloak more tightly.

  And nine for the Devil’s own self.

  Having departed from Lesser Dorste late in the day, Minka and Bilious bickered and bungled, traveling east toward the middle of nowhere until dark threatened, and it was then that Old Penelope threw a shoe.

  “Bad luck, that,” said Minka, looking gloomily at the slumped and sagging horse. She glowered at their bleak surroundings. “We are neither here nor there, and wherever we are, it’s some distance from a farrier. At this rate of travel we shall never catch up to Mags. Though a cripple and a half-wit, she’s a sharper one than you, I’ll wager,” she said, pointing with her chin at Bilious.

  Bilious scratched his stubble and eyeballed the toolbox, the horse, and Minka’s stout figure in the gathering darkness.

  “What are you looking at?” Minka screeched.

  Bilious gave a loud sigh. “I was only thinking of my dear wife, God rest her soul. She could fell an oak, chop it up, and lay a fire, quick as lightning.” He wiped a tear from his eye.

  Minka humphed. “I whittle a fair toothpick.”

  “Ah, but the wife!” Bilious groaned. “She were handy with the hammer and horseshoe.”

  “Do you not think I can wield a brute tool?” Minka huffed. With that she pushed up her sleeves, thrust her arms elbow-deep into the toolbox, and tugged out rasp and hammer, nail cutters and clinchers. Soon enough she’d got the shoe nailed back on, and Old Penelope was happily munching from a feed bag.

  Bilious set up a simple camp. “We’d best stay here tonight and make our way onward on the morrow. We’ve lost the light.”

  Minka nodded. She was, in fact, quite tired from wrestling with Penelope’s shoe.

  “My wife,” Bilious said, eyes misty once again.

  “What is it now?” Minka snapped.

  “She could cook a meal fit for a king, is all, out of two stones and a burdock root!” Bilious shook his head sadly. “Fine woman.”

  “God’s wounds!” Minka exclaimed. “Such a woman never walked the earth,” she muttered, but soon had cooked a meal of fried rabbit and tender shoots of spring nettle.

  “Have you no children to aid and assist you?” she asked, after they’d supped and passed a jug of ale between them. Bilious was reclined against one end of a fallen log, and Minka sat primly at the other end of it.

  Bilious frowned. “Never had any offspring. Not for lack of trying!” he said, leering comically. “But God did not see fit to bless us with a child.”

  “Pity,” Minka said. “Bad luck, that.”

  “And you? Have you no issue?”

  “Naught but the one we seek,” Minka said. “I cared for her all her life.” She sniffed. “Pretty as a pink piglet.” How Minka had loved to cradle the little thing on her lap, and rub ointment of radish and bishop’s-wort on her poor little leg. How Mags had clapped her wee hands with happiness when Minka sang a ditty as she worked the wool or brewed the ale on brewing day.

  Bilious cleared his throat, and Minka brought herself back from the past. “But as she grew, I did not want to grow overfond. She were bound to leave, and then what?” She saw in her mind’s eye Margaret’s face—the shock!—when she announced the betrothal to Hugo the hunch—the woolmonger. And though Minka’s stomach soured to see Margaret’s horror again in her mind, she adopted a bluffness. “I arranged a marriage for her, to both our advantage. And now she has run off, as I knew she would all along.”

  “Everyone leaves,” Bilious said. “Leaves or dies. That’s the way of it.”

  “I know that well enough, don’t I? I need only that magic mirror now,” she said, and sniffed loudly. “I’ll not be soft of heart again and suffer for it.”

  “Then you’ll not live a proper life,” said Bilious.

  “So be it.”

  “So be it.”

  Minka seemed to be done with the subject, and Bilious made to rise from the fire ring.

  “I’d sooner hit her than hold her in my arms,” Minka said. Her voice climbed up the sentence like a ladder, and quavered at the top.

  Bilious sat back down.

  Minka went on, now arguing with herself. She spat impressively into the fire, and Bilious raised his eyebrows. “Bah. I made it easy for her,” she said, reaching for the jug of ale. “I toughened her hide. She’s bound for bad luck, what with the crippled leg, and dumped as she was in the churchyard like a sack of onions.”

  Minka swigged from the bottle, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and straightened her back. “She’ll do well to be hard of heart, as I am,” she said. “By my own example I’ve taught her well.”

  Bilious sat quiet, seeing in his mind the girl’s balled-up fists in a show of bravado at the boys’ taunts, and remembering, too, the tender way she had patted his arm when he’d told of his dear wife. How she’d spoken a volume of sympathy with her simple touch. Bilious grinned. Hard of heart—ha!

  “Minka, my good woman,” he said, “you have failed.” Then he laughed out loud. “You’ve failed miserably!”

  When it came time to bed down, Bilious climbed in the back of the wagon with Minka; a moment later, he tumbled out. He made a bed on the ground beneath the wagon, grumbling but smiling.

  The storm passed; night fell. Miserable and afraid, Margaret made her way deeper into the woods, well away from the dangers of the road at night, she hoped, and tucked herself in between a pair of boulders before which a tangled lilac grew. People lived in the woods, she knew, mostly honest folk who meant no harm, but who had no homes and no means and so were unwelcome to stay the night without sponsor in cities or towns. But roving in the woods too were wicked outlaws and bandits, and they were what Margaret feared. At first alert to every sound, gradually her body relaxed; at last she slept.

  She dreamed of Beady Bone. Always, when the dream began, Margaret saw a bent figure in the Potter’s Field. Mist covered the field, slithering and coiling like eels. She hobbled nearer to the figure: a girl, no taller than herself, dressed in grain sacks, her feet wrapped up in rags instead of shoes. The girl was doubled over, urgently searching for something.

  Dream–Margaret spoke, her words muffled and indistinct. What do you seek, Beady Bone, Beady Bone?

  The girl unfolded, turned. Her face was hideously scabbed with sores and filth. She did not answer, but moved as if by flight to stand before Dream–Margaret, grabbing her hand in her own. And then, as it always did, the face of Beady Bone began to change, and it was Margaret’s own face then, upon the bent figure.

  It is the truth I seek, whispered the poor beggar.

  Then there was a burning smell, and the sound
of crackling and hissing, like the fires of hell.

  Margaret woke to the sound of a guttural oath. Alert to danger, she leaned forward, her head close to the ground. Only luck and a dark-colored cloak had kept her hidden. Through the branches of the lilac she could see a crackling fire and a group of men—she counted eight—setting up camp. Their movements, animated by dancing firelight, were jerky and exaggerated, like those of puppets at the fair.

  One of the men tripped and fell into another; that one whipped a knife from his belt, and in a moment he had the man in a hold from behind, knifepoint at his neck. But the next moment, the man with the knife laughed roughly. “Back to work, Robert, you lousy sluggard,” he said, pushing away the one called Robert. Robert staggered and nearly fell into the fire. These were no rough boys who would taunt and jab, but men with sharp knives and dull wits.

  A woman came into the clearing, bearing a brace of skinned rabbits. She was the only woman in sight. She worked the game onto a spit and set it over the fire, then huddled apart from the men, alternately stepping close to turn the spit and stepping away again, worrying at the long, dark braid that fell thick as rope to her waist.

  Margaret was seized by several instincts at once. She wanted to flee, to get far away from these rough men. She needed to eat, and there was food. She needed to drink; there were leather bottles and ale. She needed shelter; there were hides and covers. She would wait and watch.

  As the night wore on and the men drank, Margaret quaked to hear boasts of cruel capture, thieving, and plunder: all in a day’s work for this crew. The one the men called John laughed and cheered at their bounty of the day, a haul taken from a merchant on the east-west road. Another, the man who’d earlier held his mate at knifepoint, replied, “He’ll tell no tales, that one, John Book.”

  Margaret’s heart beat like wings of magpies in her chest. It was the thief John Book and his band. John Book, who had killed Bilious’s dear wife.