“You will do perfectly well,” said Prunella, not unkindly. She could afford to be generous, now that she was so close to departure. Her wrongs began to recede into the distance, with the prospect of her escape so comfortably imminent.
To her surprise Prunella found that she was still attached to Mrs. Daubeney. She would never trust her again—no! But one could nonetheless be very fond of someone in whom one had no confidence whatsoever.
“As well as you did before you ever thought to burden yourself with me,” she said. “Or my father.”
She looked wistfully in Mrs. Daubeney’s face, wondering if Mrs. Daubeney might finally impart some insight regarding her father—betray an old tenderness, or reveal a hidden connection—which would give Prunella some clue to her origins.
But Mrs. Daubeney only said:
“I never regarded it in the least, my dear! Remember you are to write to me every day, and pray give my regards to dear Lady Wythe, and thank her for her care of you. And if you should find an opportunity to send me the latest fashions, Prunella, I might find the time to look at them. Not that I am one to peacock myself, but it is just as well not to appear a laughingstock in the parents’ eyes. We see some very modish mothers at the school, you know, Mr. Wythe. Oh! You have not forgotten Cawley?”
Prunella sat back. She was grateful for Mrs. Daubeney’s ready supply of conversation, for it gave her the space she needed to put away her disappointment. Still, she was not quite natural when she spoke.
“Indeed, no!” she said, her voice quavering. She cleared her throat. “How could we? She is coming out now.”
Sure enough, Cawley came, lurching out from the vestibule where Prunella had left the bundle of old linens in preparation. Cawley’s gait was imperfect, but it grew steadier as she walked, and she ascended the step to the chaise with hardly a wobble. By the time they reached London, thought Prunella, no one would ever tell what she had been before.
10
THEBORDERWITHFairyland was not much to look at, being marked by nothing more than a hedgerow straggling along the outskirts of Fobdown Purlieu. The village had been known in former times for its peculiarly magical quality: its visions of hunters and black dogs, its rains of frogs and the regular addition to its population of changelings, who grew into fey children and vanished in various outlandish ways.
Such oddities had fallen off in recent times, however. There was now little to distinguish Fobdown Purlieu from any other village in England, save the curious, pretty customs conducted at christenings and funerals to prevent fairies’ stealing the souls of the newly living and the freshly dead.
The border itself had shrunk in proportion to the Fairy Court’s affection for Britain, so that though the hedgerow ran along the whole length of the field in which Zacharias stood, the border itself only covered a section no more than twelve feet wide. To those with thesight to see it, the border appeared as a bilious green shimmer above the hedgerow, rippling gently like a sheet caught by a breeze.
“Of course, Fairclough calculated that there were three hundred and seventeen paths to Fairy,” said Sir Stephen. “But I do not know that one can rely upon Fairclough’s arithmetic. A man of great parts, but if he could tell you he had ten fingers and ten toes that was quite as much as he was capable of.”
“Certainly his method has its flaws, but having attempted the calculations myself, I should not have thought there were any fewer than two hundred and fifty ways into the Other Realm,” said Zacharias. He shaded his eyes as he looked up, the light of the border imbuing his aspect with an eerie green glow, so that he looked no less the spectre than Sir Stephen. “It is a pity we have not discovered more of them.”
This twelve-foot stretch of wavering light was the only formal border between Britain and Fairyland, and one of the few portals to that land English thaumaturgy had discovered. In days past there had been considerable traffic across the border: adventurous villagers and ambitious thaumaturges alike had made regular visits to Fairy, while a continuous flow of familiars had rushed in from the opposite direction, seeking novelty and excitement in the mortal world.
It had used to be that a magician seeking elevation need only scramble across the border and inveigle a magical creature into entering his service, and he would return a sorcerer, covered in glory. Reading of such exploits in his youth, Zacharias had admired their daring, but Sir Stephen had pooh-poohed all this:
“Yes, they believed themselves vastly clever, I do not doubt! I suppose they thought their familiars went with them out of pure good nature, but you may be sure they were disabused of that notion quickly enough. There is a reason sorcerers look such glum fellows in their portraits. And they were not the only ones to be punished for their folly. As if one could rob one’s neighbour time and again, andstill expect to be invited to dinner! Everyone suffered from their rapacity, in the end.”
The days when a thaumaturge could make his career by a single visit were long over—which accounted, in some measure, for the poisonous resentment of Zacharias among his peers. The Fairy Queen and King had in time found their numbers so reduced—so many of their most agreeable courtiers kidnapped (for it was invariably the most amiable that succumbed to the thaumaturges’ importunities)—that they had instituted a ban upon mortals’ crossing the border from England, unless they did so with a special invitation from the Court.
Such invitations were not precisely uncommon: they were granted to a few goodly young men in each generation, for the Queen could never do without a handsome young mortal or three in her retinue. But the invitations were hardly an unalloyed honour. An invitation from the Queen of Elfland could not be refused, and one’s prospects of ever going home again were unpromising. Geoffrey Midsomer was unusual in having returned.
The Court’s subjects were also prohibited from crossing into England. As sorcerers died, their familiars left for Fairy and did not return. There had not been a new familiar in England in half a century.
Still, despite the uneasy relations between the two kingdoms, the border remained porous, open to the fluxion of magic, if not to the passage of mortals or fairies. From the border flowed magic to the rest of Britain.
It was not such a setting as was likely to forgive any mistake. A fumbled formula or misspoken verse might have grave consequences so close to the border. Zacharias occupied himself for a time with preparing the ground for his enchantments, casting spells of concealment and confusion.
Sir Stephen was nobly silent for a full half hour, but as the light began to change, and their shadows grew long on the grass, his patience wore out.
“What are you about, Zacharias?” he said. “It is getting late, and you know you ought not to be essaying upon perilous new magics on the edge of Fairy at sunset.”
“It would be imprudent to put my plan into effect without taking steps to conceal it. The Fairy Court is unlikely to look kindly upon my endeavours.”
“It is imprudent to implement your plan at all,” said Sir Stephen sharply. “I could wish you had had time to refine your formulae—I do not like how you have cobbled together Bascombe’s declining with Gascoyne’s loop. Since your hand has been forced, however, it is best to get it over with. You will hardly wish to be here as dark falls.”
Everyone knew there were times of the day that were more magical than others: the deep heart of the night, and the times of transition, at sunrise and sunset. Even twenty years ago thaumaturges would avoid casting their spells at the witching time of night, for the surplus of magic at that time, and the attentiveness of ghosts and spirits, lent any enchantment an unsettling volatility.
This was no longer a concern, however. Nowadays magicians anxious to ensure their success might well wake after midnight to take advantage of the thinning boundaries between the worlds. Sunset was not quite so perilous a time—but so near Fairyland, and with untried spells, it was as well to be cautious.
Zacharias sighed. “I suppose I ought to have a look at the other side before I begin.”
