Rose 4: Rose and the Silver Ghost (11 page)

Gus laid his ears back a little at that, but he didn’t complain. Rose could see that much as he disliked ghosts, he was developing a grudging respect for this one and her loyalty.

‘That’s how Miss Miranda Fell and me, we joined the Pike gang.’ Eliza giggled, but she didn’t sound as though she really thought it was funny. ‘The most bloodthirsty gang of murdering thieves you’re ever likely to meet.’

‘She didn’t – she didn’t work for them?’ Rose asked, her voice horrified.

Eliza sighed irritably, a puff of chilly, silvery not-breath smudging the mirror glass. ‘Of course she did! She hadn’t a choice! Do you not understand anything? They made her do it. I cleaned and cooked and ran errands, and did what I was told, and Miss Miranda did the same. She did what she was told.’ Her shoulders drooped. ‘If it makes you feel any better, miss, I don’t think she ever actually killed anybody.’

Rose gasped. ‘You don’t
think
?’ She shivered, and her fingers seemed to grow cold and dead. And she dropped the mirror.

‘Catch it!’ Bella squealed, and Rose stared at her hands in dismay. She had no feeling in her fingers – it was as if they didn’t belong to her any more. The mirror seemed to spin as it headed for the floor, and a thin, despairing wail floated up.

‘Oh, no, no…’ Rose moaned, as it hit the floor with a thud.

Bella snatched the mirror up. ‘Eliza’s not there, but it isn’t broken!’ she cried thankfully. ‘Oh, Miss Fell would have killed us. Rose, what were you doing?’

‘My mother was working for a bad magician! For a gang of murderers! That’s probably how I ended up in the orphanage, Bella, someone fought back and killed her. She was a criminal!’ Rose stared down at her fingers. They felt just like they usually did, and she clenched them, digging her nails into her palms. She could feel that. She dug in harder, watching red half-moons flower on her skin. It hurt, which was good, because she felt as though things had changed so much in the last two minutes that it might not have done.

Through all her time at St Bridget’s, she had assumed her parents were simply too poor to keep her. She had never, somehow, thought that they might be anything but honest. ‘My fingers stopped working before. When Eliza said…’

‘She did say she didn’t think your mother had killed anyone,’ Freddie reminded her helpfully.

Rose glared at him. ‘Oh, wonderful! Not quite a murderer’s daughter, then!’

Freddie sighed. ‘She didn’t have a choice, Rose. You heard what Eliza said – she was bound into a spell. It sounded like a very clever one, too. She wasn’t used to dealing with other magicians, was she? Not if she’d lived most of her life in the wilds of Derbyshire, with what sounds to me like a mad family. He got her good and proper.’

Rose nodded. She set the mirror down in front of her, and gazed at it, her chin on her hands. She hoped it hadn’t hurt Eliza, being dropped. ‘It’s what Mr Fountain said would happen to me,’ she told them, very quietly.

Freddie blinked. ‘What?’

Gus was eyeing her sympathetically. ‘You see now that he was right, don’t you?’ he asked gently.

‘What did Papa say?’ Bella sounded indignant. She disliked it when other people knew more about her father than she did.

‘When everyone in the kitchens hated me, I was going to run away. Ssh!’ She held up a hand as Freddie and Bella both started to talk at once. ‘I never even tried. Your father stopped me, Bella. Him and Gus. I was going to try to make a living for myself the same way my mother tried to, finding things. Helping people. It seemed such a good idea!’ She laughed hollowly. ‘Gus said someone would cut me up and throw me in the river in a whole set of sacks. Or that I’d be made to work for someone awful. Like Miranda was.’

‘I can’t believe you were going to run away!’ Bella burst out. ‘You never told me!’

‘You hardly ever talked to me then, except to complain that your dresses weren’t properly ironed,’ Rose pointed out. ‘Nobody talked to me, that was the point. Even Freddie was being sniffy because he didn’t want to share being an apprentice.’

‘I’m sure I was not.’ Freddie scowled. ‘Or only a little, Rose, anyway.’

‘I hated it here. I can’t believe the same thing almost happened twice.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Perhaps I am like her.’

‘But
you
have people to watch out for you.’ Gus tickled her cheek with his whiskers. ‘We would not let that happen to you, Rose. We didn’t. Like we said then, we’re responsible for you. Even though we know who your parents are now, you are still Aloysius’s apprentice, and we will always be bound together. We would not let a back-street magician steal one of our children away.’ He sniffed disgustedly. ‘Think yourself lucky, Rose. Those Fells. Obsessed with birth and history and lineage, but not with people. They should not have let your mother out of their hands. Although…’ his whiskers shimmered thoughtfully, ‘it’s highly possible that the girl had more fun in the year she had living in the London slums than she ever did walled up in a draughty mansion in Derbyshire.’

Rose giggled in spite of herself. ‘I wouldn’t let Miss Fell hear you say things like that. She’d have you turned into fur gloves.’

Gus gave her a sharp look, before obviously deciding that this counted as nervous exhaustion and not insolence to cats. ‘Miss Fell might even admit the same. She said it herself – she could not leave the Fell house until she was so angry she made a clean break from the family. I suspect she is infinitely happier for it.’ He thumped Rose’s arm with his lead weight of a tail. ‘Now. Find that girl ghost again. I want to know what happened next, even if you don’t.’

Rose nodded and picked up the mirror, a little gingerly, in case the strange thing happened to her fingers again. ‘I do want to know, I suppose… Oh, of course I want to. I want to know every last bit, but I’m not sure I want to actually hear how she died. I just want to
know
.’ She looked round and saw that Bella and Freddie were frowning, and Gus was giving her the look of an impatient cat, his tail slightly twitching.

‘Just look into the mirror, Rose dear,’ he purred, unsheathing his claws very slightly.

Rose sighed. ‘Sorry.’ She stared into the dark glass, searching for Eliza, but only her own face stared back. The silvery ghost girl had gone entirely. ‘She isn’t coming back.’ Her voice had risen slightly in panic.

Bella peered at the glass. ‘Just do what you did last time.’

‘I did!’ Rose snapped. ‘Nothing’s happening.’

‘Maybe you scared her away, dropping it like that,’ Freddie said, tapping thoughtfully at the glass with one finger.

Rose shook her head. ‘I can’t have done. I didn’t drop it that hard, did I?’ she asked them pleadingly.

Bella shrugged. ‘It looks like you must have done.’

Freddie nodded. ‘It might have felt to Eliza like you did it on purpose,’ he pointed out.

Rose stared into the mirror again, straining her eyes and her mind, but the glass remained obstinately glass. What if Eliza never came back? ‘No…’ she whispered. ‘Please, Eliza, I need to talk to you. I have to know how it ended!’

Gus looked down at the glass, and hissed thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps it didn’t…’

Rose dragged her eyes away from the mirror-glass, and frowned wearily at him. ‘What do you mean?’

Gus went on staring at the mirror, his tail flicking faster now. But he seemed to be angry with himself, for once. ‘We could have been wrong. I’ve heard of the Pike gang. Notorious lot. Very savage. Mixed up in the opium trade too, I think…’ He closed his eyes in a slow blink, and then looked up at Rose. ‘They’re still there. So why shouldn’t she be?’

Rose felt the chair suddenly swing beneath her – as though a rug had been pulled out from underneath it.

‘Rose!’ Bella caught her hands, and rubbed them. ‘She’s like ice. Rose, wake up!’

Rose shook herself. Gus’s words had seemed to send her into a dream – that confused state where nothing is ever certain. The strangest things happen, but no one cares. She swallowed tightly, and whispered, ‘But you said…you all said it. That I was being silly, wishing she were still alive.’

Gus wrapped his tail firmly around his paws, and stared off sideways into the shadowy corners of the room. Clearly he hated having to contradict himself. ‘All I’m saying is, it may not be as much of a certainty as we thought,’ he growled. ‘So look in the mirror, girl.’

Rose snatched it up. Perhaps Eliza had just been shocked when the mirror fell. Surely now they would see her, edging towards them through the mist…

But there was nothing in the glass, not even the slightest silvery shimmer. Rose sat back, staring down at her hands. How could she have been so stupid and dropped the mirror? ‘What am I going to do?’ she whispered, more to herself than to the others.

‘Miss Fell might be able to help,’ Freddie suggested reluctantly. ‘She must have known Eliza, if she was your mother’s maid while she lived at Fell Hall. Maybe she could summon her for us.’

Bella sniffed. ‘I wouldn’t come, if I were a ghost and she summoned me.’

Freddie shuddered. ‘Knowing her you wouldn’t have a choice.’

But Rose shook her head. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea. You saw how much it upset her talking about my mother. What if we tell her all this, and raise her hopes, and then we can’t find her?’ She swallowed. ‘Or worse. If the gang did kill her, and Miss Fell has to find that out. It would almost be worse for Miss Fell than it would be for me. I’ve never even met her. Well, not since I was a baby.’

‘Shouldn’t you be calling Miss Fell Great-Aunt Hepzibah?’ Freddie pointed out, with a sweet smile, but Rose shuddered.

‘No. It would feel too…familiar.’

‘She
is
your family!’ Freddie teased, but Bella interrupted him.

‘We should tell Papa instead.’

Gus nodded. ‘Indeed. The sooner the better. He may even know more about the Pike gang. He has several times consulted for the police, after all.’ He jumped off the table, and looked back up at Rose. ‘And bring the mirror. He may also be able to compel that girl to come back and speak to us.’ He was heading for the door, his tail waving grandly, so he didn’t see Rose clutch the mirror tightly to her.

Rose didn’t want Eliza compelled! She would tell Mr Fountain so, she resolved. It was her mirror now, after all, and her mother they were trying to find. He wouldn’t make her force Eliza out, surely?

But when they trooped down the main stairs – something which still made Rose’s stomach lurch, as she had only been allowed on those stairs to clean them when she was a servant – they saw Mr Fountain fighting his way into his smart caped overcoat. The front door was open, and Rose could just see Bill haring off across the square, presumably to fetch the master a hansom cab.

‘Is everything all right, sir?’ Freddie asked.

‘Another dratted summons to the palace!’ Mr Fountain snapped irritably. Officially his post was that of a magical adviser to the Treasury – which meant that he made gold – but as he was the only magician the king trusted, he tended to be called in for everything. ‘I’m going to have to start getting things wrong – being indispensible is remarkably boring. The Talish really are mounting another invasion, apparently. They’ve been building more ships in secret. Oh, and that’s military intelligence, so don’t tell anyone.’

A battered black horse cab drew up outside the house, with Bill hanging grimly on behind. Mr Fountain eyed it despairingly, and Bill shrugged and rolled his eyes as he ran up the steps.

‘You said to be quick, sir!’ he protested. ‘Matter of life and death, you said. It goes, don’t it?’

‘Does it?’ Mr Fountain muttered. ‘I wouldn’t count on it. Behave, all of you. I may not be back for dinner.’ He sighed. ‘Or breakfast.’

He climbed into the cab, which wobbled worryingly when he slammed the door, and bowled away, leaving the children staring at each other in the hall.

‘Well, that scuppers that then,’ Freddie muttered. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to talk to Miss Fell about it, Rose?’

‘I don’t think giving the house guest a heart attack counts as behaving,’ Rose pointed out.

‘What did you want him for?’ Bill asked, keeping an eye on the green baize door to the servants’ quarters, in case anyone popped out to tell him off for fraternising with the upstairs children.

‘Oh! He might know!’ Bella exclaimed, pointing at Bill in what Miss Fell would have called a most unmannerly fashion.

Freddie nodded. ‘Of course! He knows everything that happens in the square. He talks to all the other boys, the lads from the stables, the delivery boys. Don’t you?’

‘That’s only round here. Just because we came from an orphanage, it doesn’t mean we rub shoulders with thieves’ gangs!’ Rose pointed out. ‘I didn’t know anything about the Pike gang, did I?’

‘Here, don’t you go getting mixed up with them!’ Bill snapped, his eyes widening worriedly.

Bella smiled smugly at Rose. ‘I told you. He does know who they are.’

‘Do you really?’ Rose asked. ‘You’re supposed to be respectable!’

Bill shrugged. ‘Only gossip from the stables, and some of my mates from St Bartholomew’s.’

‘Do you know where we could find them?’ Rose begged, grabbing his arm excitedly.

‘No, I do not, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you lot! Are you asking to get chopped up into sausage-meat patties?’