Rose 3: Rose and the Magician's Mask (10 page)

The thought of Gus brought her voice back.

‘What? What do you want? We haven’t any money. Leave us alone!’ She knew they couldn’t understand her, but it felt better than being silent.

The boys crept closer, their masks eerie, all the more so for being battered and dirty instead of gorgeously painted. It looked like they lived in them.
People who
never take them off,
Rose thought, her heart beating in sickening thuds.
What do they look like underneath?
Horrible images of blackened, rotted flesh crept unbidden into her mind.

‘Oh, Rose, Rose, they’ve got knives and I’m too frightened to scream!’ Bella whispered, clutching Rose’s cloak around her too.

The knives were held in front now, shining and
vicious, and Rose closed her eyes for a second in fierceconcentration, summoning her picture magic.

The blades were at once covered in shimmering visions, and Rose shuddered, seeing what she had created. She hadn’t meant them to drip with blood, but perhaps that was what the metal remembered. She hoped it was only from hunting rats, and nothing larger.

Two of the boys screamed, and flung their knives down, haring off back down the alley, but there were still three left, and one of them, the ringleader, only smiled at his bleeding blade – indeed he looked as if he rather liked it. He stepped even closer, waving the blade like a weaving snake’s head in front of Rose and Bella, and laughing, the noise so much worse coming from under his pointed fox mask.

Rose thought frantically through the spells she had learned so quickly at the king’s palace, when she was being trained as the princess’s bodyguard. But she had no firelight to fling at them, and the crumbling grey stones were so much more theirs than hers that she couldn’t think how to use them. At last she seized on the mist insinuating itself in wisps along the darkening alley, and cast it as ghost streamers swooping around the boys’ faces. Then she ran again, hauling Bella with her.

They were almost at the mouth of the alley when Rose felt one of them grab at her cloak again, and this time she simply turned and hit out at him angrily, seizing the side of his ugly mask and pulling.

‘I shall report you to the British Ambassador!’ shescreamed. ‘And the duke. You shan’t hide behind that horrible mask!’ And she tried to tear it off, wrenching at it with her nails under the side. But the boy howled in agony, dropping his knife and raising his hands to scrabble her away, and then dropped back, still crying.

Rose fell back against the wall, shuddering in disgust, and Bella leaned over her anxiously. ‘Rose, what is it? They’ve gone, you sent him running.’

‘It wasn’t a mask,’ was all Rose could whisper. ‘It was fixed. It was grown on, Bella. I was trying to tear away his face.’

‘Girls!’ It was an English voice, and Rose lifted her head. ‘Are you all right? Did those young ruffians hurt you? Is she fainting?’ she added to Bella.

‘No, no, I’m not.’ Rose levered herself away from the wall, her limbs shaking, and looked over to the mouth of the alleyway, where an elderly lady was signalling them from her gondola. She began to climb out, carefully leaning on her umbrella, and hurried towards them, trailing long black silk skirts. She was dressed
in a rather outdated fashion, with a lace fichu and mittens, and a little cap under her bonnet. But there was something about her that made Bella curtsey very promptly, and even Rose managed to bob her shaky knees.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am, we’re quite all right,’ she stammered.

‘You most certainly are not,’ the old lady stated. ‘Come and sit down in my gondola, it’s quite comfortable, and I have some butterscotch. Clearly you need something.’ She leaned down to peer short-sightedly at something on the ground. ‘Did you drop that paper, dears? Is it something important?’

Bella picked it up. ‘No. I don’t think so— Oh, Rose! It’s you!’ She held it out, her eyes like circles.

Rose swayed again, and the old lady put a hand on her elbow, and steered her to the gondola. ‘Sit down, child.’

‘It is. They were carrying a drawing of me…’ Rosewhispered, as she sat down under the canopy. It was a very comfortable gondola, with mauve cushions, and there was a bag of knitting next to the old lady’s seat.

‘This is really most interesting.’ The old lady tweaked the drawing out of Bella’s hand. ‘Yes, most definitely it’s you. Do you have any idea why?’ She was staring at Rose now, and frowning, looking from her to
the drawing and back again as though something was itching at her.

‘No!’

‘It’s Gossamer, it must be,’ Bella suggested, and Rose tried to hush her. Surely they shouldn’t be talking about him, even in front of this sweet old lady.

But the sweet old lady sat up ramrod straight and glared at Bella. ‘Gossamer! That felon! What have you two to do with him?’ Then she peered even more closely at Rose, frowning. ‘Are you
that
child? Fountain’s protégée? The one who rescued the little princess?’

Rose only nodded, but Bella smiled smugly. ‘Yes, she is, and I helped her.’

‘Then is Aloysius Fountain in Venice?’

‘You know my father?’ Bella asked, sounding unsure if this was a good thing or not.

‘Fountain’s child, and Fountain’s apprentice…’ The old lady eyed them disapprovingly. ‘You are a pair of very silly little girls. What are you doing wandering round this city, of all places, without anyone to protect you?’

‘Not a little girl,’ Bella muttered crossly, but Rose was too sure that the old lady was right to object.

‘It was just a short walk,’ she excused herself limply.

‘Don’t,’ the old lady snapped. ‘Take a gondola, and guards. Clearly someone is looking for you already,
and it’s likely that little Miss Fountain is right – Gossamer is on your trail. That foul man. I had suspected… The city has seemed darker, these last few weeks, and colder, but I had hoped it was only my imagination…’ She looked up sharply. ‘Does anyone know you’re here?’

‘We went to the palace…’

‘The whole of Venice, then. Really, Aloysius has no sense.’

‘Are you a magician too, ma’am?’ Rose asked politely.

The old lady looked at her sharply, and nodded. ‘Indeed. I suppose you haven’t met a great many lady magicians. My name is Miss Hepzibah Fell.’

Bill and Freddie were waiting outside the embassy for them as Miss Fell’s gondola pulled up with a showy swirl. The boys ran over to the gondola, both looking furious.

‘Where have you been?’ Freddie snapped.

‘We looked all over the house!’ Bill yelled at Rose. ‘I never thought you’d be as stupid as to go out without us!’

Miss Fell chuckled. ‘I see you do have guards, after all. Tell your father I shall pay a call on him very soon, dear.’

The boys dragged Rose and Bella out of the gondola, and Miss Fell spoke to her gondolier in what sounded like fluent Venetian, and waved her umbrella at them as she sailed away.

‘What’s that?’ Bill asked Bella, staring suspiciously at the piece of paper.

She held it out reluctantly. ‘Some boys chased us, and they dropped it.’

Bill cursed quite graphically, and Bella gave him anadmiring look. ‘Don’t you repeat any of that!’ he snapped at her. ‘Someone’s after you, Rosie. Didn’t take ’em long.’

‘What on earth would they want Rose for?’ Freddiemuttered, taking the drawing and scowling at the real thing.

Bella suddenly seized the drawing from Freddie. ‘Don’t you see, Rose? I hadn’t realised until now, but look!’ She pointed at the drawing.

‘It’s Rose.’ Freddie rolled his eyes. ‘We know it is, Bella, keep up!’

‘The paper, idiot!’ Bella twisted the thick, creamy paper and at last the others saw what she meant. Woven into the threads of the paper was a faint silvery shimmer. ‘You see? Gossamer! His mark!’

She was right. The paper was scattered with tiny silver snowflakes.

Freddie snatched the drawing back, his face worried.‘Already? That was quick.’

‘They knew we were coming, remember,’ Rose reminded him, as she trailed up the steps to the front door. ‘The master said they saw him. And that he was still angry about what happened at the palace.’

‘Why you, and not all of us?’ Freddie sounded quiteinsulted.

‘She was the one that bested him, wasn’t she? He wants his revenge.’ Bill shoved a chair at Rose as they tiptoed into one of the golden salons. ‘Sit down, before you keel over, do. What happened to you?’

Rose sank onto it wearily, and let Bella tell the others about the masked boys, while she sat shivering.

‘I don’t like this place.’ Bill was pacing round the room, occasionally kicking at table legs, and muttering. ‘Too wet and too slippery, all of it. I got lost trying to find the necessary last night – it’s like a rabbit warren below stairs, all these nasty damp cellars everywhere, and odd little doors all over the place. And I swear, half of them lead straight onto the water! Like there’s rivers flowing through the middle of the house, secret ones. The whole city’s full of nasty little dark secrets.’

‘All hidden in masks,’ Rose giggled, and then she looked up as Bill leaned over her. ‘Don’t slap me!’

‘Stop that laughing then!’ Bill glared at her. ‘Now’s
not the time for getting all missish and hysterical, Rose.’

Privately Rose felt that she ought to be allowed a mild fit of hysterics after being set upon by a gang of masked ruffians, but Bill was eyeing the vase of flowers on the nearest table, and she knew he’d pour it over her head if she argued.

‘I’m not hysterical. But don’t you see? That boy’s mask was part of him. It has to be because of this ritual. I wish we knew what they actually do. How can they make masks stick to people’s faces? It’s all wrong.’ She stared round at them anxiously. ‘We can’t let Gossamer be there for the ritual. If he ends up stuck to that mask, no one will ever be able to stop him.’

Mr Fountain was furious when Bella and Freddie dragged Rose up to his room, but not with them.

‘Lies, all of it,’ he snapped. ‘All that sweet chatter. Every word the duke said. He pretended he’d never even heard of Gossamer. I cannot believe that from someone so tied to the magic of the city – and that’s what it is, he’s woven into it. I can feel him at the centre of it all, as though his bloodline holds it all together. I simply refuse to believe he didn’t know as soon as Gossamer arrived. Or at least as soon as he startedemploying gangs of little Venetian ruffians!’

‘What will you do?’ Rose asked. She still felt trembly.

‘I shall go back there, tomorrow.’ Mr Fountain
scowled, his moustache quivering. ‘As a representative of the British Crown. And I shall ask His Grace just what he thinks he’s doing, allowing Gossamer to go around kidnapping people.’

‘I don’t think His Grace can do anything more than smile and nibble sugared almonds.’ Gus strolled along the back of an elegant, narrow sofa, and Mr Fountain sat down next to him, as though his legs had given way.

‘That bad?’ Mr Fountain sank his head in his hands. ‘Why ever didn’t you say so before?’

Gus laid his ears back slightly. ‘I was considering. And it was a very powerful spell. Extremely well hidden. I had to think about it.’

‘You were enjoying the fuss he made of you so much you couldn’t think straight.’ Freddie smirked, and Gus’s tail twitched angrily. Then he sighed.

‘True. I should have seen it at the time.’

‘Was it the brother? Girolamo? He made my skin crawl, but I don’t know if that means it was him…’ Rose shivered.

Mr Fountain smiled wearily at her. ‘I don’t know, Rose. But you should go and lie down. Get them to bring you supper in bed, child. And Bella, stay with her.’

Gus rubbed his chin against his master’s shoulder, and then jerked his head at the door. It was obviously
a dismissal, and Freddie helped Rose up, and beckoned Bill and Bella after him.

Mr Fountain appeared at breakfast the next morning –kippers and crumpets, and tea that Lord Lynton sighed over disgustedly – looking positively confident, and Rose watched him worriedly. Did he know what was going on at the palace, or was it all an act? Freddie had sworn to her that half of what made their master such a brilliant magician was his ability to make people think what he wanted them to.

‘Gus was right. There must be an enchantment on the duke. I need to go and test it further. See if I can work out who laid it on the poor man, and when. I shan’t take you with me.’ Mr Fountain crunched his toast delicately. ‘No, not you either, Gus. Too much of a distraction. Stay in the house,’ he warned them. ‘Especially you, Rose. After what happened yesterday,we can’t risk anything. I’m afraid Gossamer must have his people watching the house.’

Gus draped himself protectively over Rose’s shoulders, like a furry white scarf, and nipped her ear. ‘I shan’t let her go anywhere.’

But even Gus was pacing irritably by that evening. They had spent the whole day cooped up, arguing with each other. Rose had gone so far as to hurl the travelling
chessboard at Freddie’s head, after he patronisingly tried to explain the rules to her
just one more time
.

‘Well, it’s plain to see you’ve forgotten all about being in service,’ he snarled nastily, and Rose flinched. It was true. A good servant would never even have thought of such a thing.

‘Shut up, Freddie. She isn’t a servant.’ Bella put an arm around Rose’s shoulders. ‘You like her being an apprentice when it means her sharing the work, but then you fling that in her face. It’s cruel!’

‘She’s always a servant when you want your hair curling!’

‘Stop sniping at each other!’ Gus came stalking back to them from the window, his tail lashing to and fro.‘Something’s wrong. Why is he not back? He cannot still be closeted with the duke, I refuse to believe it. He should be back.’

‘You don’t think – a long meeting? There was so much to talk about, with the mask… They might even have gone off to find Gossamer,’ Rose suggested.

‘The duke would not spend all this time with one envoy. And Aloysius would have sent for us, if it was to be a chase. Or for me, at least.’ Gus ran his claws into the silk carpet in frustration. ‘They’ve got him,’ he spat bitterly. ‘We let him walk off into a trap. I should never have let him go alone.’

Lord Lynton, when they interrupted him in his study, was not helpful. He regarded them as mere children – and an animal. He paid no mind to their magic, and merely suggested that Mr Fountain might have met with some acquaintance.

‘He would have sent a message, though, surely.’ Rose was staring into the prettily framed mirror in her room, trying desperately to see something, anything. But she could only see herself.

‘Of course he would!’ Freddie was gazing anxiously out of the window at the small stretch of canal he could see. He was trying to sound brave – he was the oldest after all, or claimed he was, and it was hard for Rose and Bill to argue – but he was turning something over and over in his fingers, as though hecouldn’t bear to be still. It took Rose a few turns to realise that it was the marble he had made in Miss Sparrow’s cellar, all those months ago. The soft light glowed through his fingers. Freddie saw Rose watching him, and slid the marble swiftly into his pocket. ‘Lynton’s an idiot. Do you think we should go after him?’

‘Not in the dark.’

The children turned to look at Gus in surprise. Usually, he had a cat’s natural love of night-time prowling.

‘Not here.’ Gus jumped up onto the dressing table, and put his front paws against the elaborate glass-flower mirror frame, so he could see into it too. He flicked his whiskers irritably as nothing more than a plump white cat appeared in the mirror. ‘Not even a hint of him. Gossamer’s magic is too strong. Have you noticed that it’s snowing?’

Freddie flung the window open, hanging out to see. Rose stared across the room, shivering in the sudden cold, and saw that Gus was right.

Silently they watched the flakes twirling lazily down. They were cruelly clear in the light of the lamp, shining from the wall on the other side of the canal.

‘It could just be snow,’ Bella whispered, but she didn’t sound as though she believed it.

‘It isn’t. I can feel him in it,’ Gus hissed.

‘Sorry,’ Rose whispered, and he stood on his hind legs to rub his face against hers.

‘It isn’t your fault, dear Rose. We couldn’t see him last time either. And his magic is so powerful here. I can’t understand how Gossamer caught Aloysius again – we were so careful! He was laden with protective spells!’

‘But Gossamer has the mask now,’ Rose reminded him sadly. ‘It’s making him stronger already.’ And Gus laid his paws on her shoulder, resting his head
there for a moment, as though he couldn’t bear to think of it.

That was when Rose began to be very, very frightened.

When Mr Fountain had still not reappeared the next morning, Lord Lynton agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to take Rose, Freddie and Bella to the palace with him. They could think of nothing else to do, and the palace was at least the last place they knew Mr Fountain had been. Surely the duke would have to talk to them?

Bill followed them out of the embassy, dutifully carrying Lord Lynton’s cloak, in case he should want it, and the ambassador didn’t send him away. Indeed, he looked at Bill thoughtfully – it seemed the servants he had originally brought from England had liked Venice even less than he had, and they had all gone home years ago.

But as they approached the huge audience chamberthrough the chains of interlocking rooms, Lord Lynton was pounced upon by a masked courtier, who led him away, talking very earnestly about who knew what.

The children stood gaping after them as they hurried away, and Bella sat down with a flounce on a gilded chair. ‘Whatever that man just said was all a lie, I swear. Someone just wanted to distract Lynton from asking
anything difficult, and get rid of us. What are we to do now?’

A pair of courtiers entered the room, deep in conversation, almost arguing, they thought. Freddie stepped forward politely to ask where they should go, but the men simply veered round him, and disappeared out of the far door.

‘They’re pretending we’re not here.’ Rose went over to the window and peered out, trying to see where in the palace they actually were. Not that it made much difference, but she had to do something, or scream. Suddenly, she turned back from the blurred glass, smiling enough to show her teeth. ‘I feel quite worried. We’ve been most rudely abandoned in the middle of the palace, and we have simply no idea at all where we are. I feel as though I ought to go and look for someone to help us, don’t you, Freddie?’

‘Rose, stop play-acting! Whatever’s the matter with you?’ Freddie scowled at her, and went back to staring at the door in the hope that someone might walk through it.

‘Oh!’ Bella gasped. ‘Oh, yes, Rose. I think we should. I think we should look
all over the palace
!’

Gus purred lovingly at them, so much so that Rose could see his sides shaking, and Bill chuckled. At last,
even Freddie’s eyes widened, and he stared at Rose insurprise. ‘Oh, I see! Yes.’ He nodded frantically. ‘Only because we don’t know what else to do, of course.’ He looked all round the corners of the room, as though the listening spells might gather there, and nibbled on his thumbnail. ‘There really isn’t anything else we can do…’ he added to the ceiling, as they scuttled out of the room.

They felt so much like spies and conspirators that it was almost galling when the hurrying courtiers took no notice of them, even when Rose flattened herself against the wall every time anyone went by.

‘Stop that!’ Gus hissed. ‘You look dreadfully guilty. Just walk. And for heaven’s sake smile.’

‘Where are we actually going?’ Bill demanded, ten minutes later, as they came into yet another room, this one full of portraits of staring dukes.

‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ Rose glared at him. ‘Somewhere. Anywhere’s better than spending the day waiting for them to bother to notice us. He could still be here, hidden away. He might be in the very next room, as far as we know!’ She flung out an arm dramatically, pointing at the door at the end of thegallery. Then she stopped, staring.

‘Look!’ Gus bounded forward, his whiskers bristling, and Rose gasped. ‘It’s them! Should we chase them?’

‘They’ve seen us.’ Freddie had already started running.

At the end of the long, windowed gallery stood a man in a mask – a strange one, with a long, beaked nose. Girolamo, the duke’s brother.

But it was the men with him that had set Freddie and Gus and the others racing down the gallery, even though they had no idea what would happen if they caught them.

Chatting idly with the second-most powerful man in Venice was Gossamer, a pale mask dangling from his fingers, and beside him, in a strange, golden chair, was his accomplice, Lord Venn.

It was Venn who saw them coming, and now he was tugging at the skirt of Gossamer’s coat, and mouthing something strangled. As she ran closer, Rose saw with horrified fascination that he could not speak. She was not even completely sure that he could move any more than his fingers. His chair was like the wicker bath chairs used by invalids at watering places, but this one was all metal, with a glossy golden finish. Even that wouldn’t have made it so very strange. The problem was that it was hard to see where the chair ended and Lord Venn began.

Images flashed in front of Rose’s eyes, of the little golden bird that Venn had presented to her when they
met before, a living creature encased in metal. It seemed a terribly fitting punishment that Lord Venn should have shared the bird’s fate.

Gossamer looked up at last, and smiled, a triumphant, knowing smile, and with insulting slowness he waved his companions through a door at the end of the gallery. Girolamo stepped out obediently, like a trained dog. Venn’s chair glided like a gondola after him, smooth on greased wheels. Roseshuddered when Lord Venn’s dreadful rolling eyes caught her own as she raced the last few steps to catch them. He looked desperate.

And the door swung shut with a satisfied little click.

‘What
was
that thing?’ Freddie asked, as they sat leaning against the door, panting.

The door had remained obstinately closed, however hard they rattled the handle, and even after Freddie and Bill tried to charge it, and fell over each other.

‘It was nasty.’ Bella shook herself. ‘It was part of him – like that boy’s mask, Rose,’ she added – reluctantly, as if she didn’t want to remind her.

‘How did it move?’ Rose asked. She was huddled close between Bella and Bill, and Gus was sitting on her lap, leaving hairs on her good cloak, she noted wearily.

Freddie shrugged. ‘Magic. I don’t know which spell.Something linked to his mind, I suppose. I don’t think he could move for himself.’

Gus snorted. ‘I’m not sure he had much mind left, either. He was half-dead when you poured your power into him before.’

‘Rose did for him good and proper.’ Bill sounded smug, but Rose gave him a horrified look.