Rose 4: Rose and the Silver Ghost (19 page)

Rose reached back, suddenly ashamed of her dry, stained hands, and held it, and felt it still, and heard her mother sigh.

Miss Fell stared at them, her eyes glittering and hungry. ‘I was right. Ever since I saw you in Venice that day, Rose, running along the quay. I should never have doubted it – look at the pair of you! I told you, Rose, didn’t I, that I thought I would have known if Miranda had died? You found her for me, after all this time…I should have trusted my instincts better.’

‘Aunt, what is happening?’ Miranda’s voice was husky, as though she had hardly used it over the years. ‘The streets were dead. Fear seems to be seeping into the air.’

‘It’s definite,’ Mr Fountain said flatly. ‘The Talish are bringing the invasion force to Cormanse. They’ve been constructing barges – dreadful, flimsy things, but then, they only have to make one journey. Now they’re waiting for a clear day to make the crossing. February – stupid time to do it, of course. But the Talish emperor has his spies everywhere, and I think the agreement I made for the king in Venice wasn’t as secret as it was meant to be. Clearly the emperor didn’t want us having any extra help.’

Rose gasped. ‘Sir, did we stop you fighting it? We had to go, I’m so sorry.’

Mr Fountain sighed, and sat down on one of the brocade sofas with Bella in his arms. ‘I don’t think it made much difference that I had to leave, Rose. I’d gathered as many magicians as I could – old friends – and we’ve managed to keep the channel too rough to cross. But we can’t do that for ever. The Talish magicians are so strong, so many of them, and we’re worn out.’

‘You can’t give up.’ Freddie stared at him, horrified.

Mr Fountain smiled sadly. ‘I’m not giving up, Freddie. I collapsed. Since Gossamer stabbed me, I don’t have the same strength. They brought me home. Then when I got back here I discovered that you were all missing. Since then I’ve been trying to scry for you. I found you in some dank warehouse, but then you were on a boat – it was all muddled, and the wound kept making me lose the vision.’ He hid his face in Bella’s hair for a moment. ‘I don’t know if we can disturb the sea again.’

Miss Fell glared at him. ‘Aloysius Fell, get up, and stop mooning about. Don’t you realise what you have here?’ She swept a hand around the drawing room. ‘Three generations of the strongest magical talent in Europe. Plus Isabella, who may be objectionable, but is capable of screaming down buildings. And Frederick, who probably could too, if only he would make the effort.’

Freddie shrugged crossly, but Rose thought he was secretly rather pleased.

‘Tell His Majesty that magicians cannot work in that dead stone monstrosity of a palace,’ Miss Fell commanded. ‘The sea spells are still working, are they not? The invasion cannot be for a few more days, surely?’

Mr Fountain shook his head dumbly.

‘Then we must move somewhere more suitable. Your gathering of magicians from the palace, too.’ She searched Miranda’s face anxiously. ‘Dearest, I must tell you…your parents…they died, a few years back.’

Miranda swallowed. ‘I wondered,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know if I could have gone back and seen them, not even now.’

‘The house will be yours,’ her aunt pointed out gently. ‘And Rose’s.’

Gus mewed irritably. ‘It won’t be soon! A bunch of Talish officers will be using it for a billet if we don’t do something!’

‘Quite,’ Miss Fell told him frostily. ‘We need every advantage we can get, so the Fells will gather at Fell Hall. Miranda, you will have to be strong. Once this is all dealt with –’ she waved a hand dismissively, and Rose had to stifle a little snort of laughter, for Miss Fell looked as though she was having problems with a lippy second footman, not an invasion – ‘then you and Rose will be able to go wherever you like. But for now, we need the house on our side, my dear.’

Miranda nodded – and Rose noticed that her hand was shaking again.

Miss Fell stood up, in a grand sweep of stiff silk. ‘William, send for the carriage, and tell the admirable Mrs Jones that we need provisions for a journey to Derbyshire.’

‘So many of them…’ Rose murmured, peering out of the carriage window. She and her mother were sharing a carriage with Miss Fell, and Gus, who had apparently abandoned his master for the sake of better gossip in Rose’s party. ‘They look exhausted already. They must have been marching for days.’

The column of soldiers stumbled past, their weapons jingling. But the polished swords were dusty, and the men themselves were no better. They hardly glanced up as the carriage sped past. ‘Are they going to the coast?’ Rose asked. ‘In case – in case the plan doesn’t work?’

Miss Fell nodded grimly. ‘Or perhaps to the manufacturing towns. There are metalworks around here. It would be disastrous if the invading force should seize those.’

Rose watched the tail end of the dusty column disappearing behind them. They didn’t look capable of defending a great deal. The plan had to work – or she could imagine the Talish forces simply sweeping their way across the country.

Miss Fell’s determination that morning had seemed to fire Mr Fountain up. He’d slid Bella, who was now fast asleep, worn out by her destruction of the warehouse, off his shoulder, and lain her on the sofa, while he paced up and down the drawing room.

‘You’ve never worked together, of course,’ he’d muttered, suddenly glaring at Rose and her mother. ‘And no time to test it. But three Fells, as you say… Immensely powerful.’ He stared at his perfectly shiny shoes for a few seconds, and glanced up. ‘If we were to gather the whole invasion fleet close together – all those hundred barges that our agents have been gabbling in panic about – could you destroy them? With my help, and the other magicians I’ve recruited?’

Rose had simply stared at him, and then glanced up at her mother, and then her great-aunt, with her mouth half-open. But Miranda had wrinkled her nose and nodded, and Miss Fell had sniffed. ‘Undoubtedly. Rose, well-bred young ladies do not sit around like frogs after flies. Close your mouth, dear.’

Mr Fountain had hared off to the palace without even putting on an overcoat, and demanded an immediate Council of War, at which he outlined the plan. It was a neat little trap, sending the major part of the British Navy off to rendezvous with the Venetians, and leaving the Channel hardly guarded. The Talish emperor and his generals would be forced to make a rather hasty decision. The whole invasion force, hopefully, would embark at once, straight into the hands of the waiting magicians.

It was all very well setting a trap – now Rose and the others had to spring it, and if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be a trap at all. It would simply be the most disastrous defeat. One that had been predicted by the Admiralty and the Horse Guards. Every senior military commander present at the king’s council had threatened to leave the service, but as the king had declared that he was willing to entrust the fate of the nation to a handful of unreliable magic-workers holed up in a crumbling old house in the wilds of Derbyshire – as the First Lord of the Admiralty had put it before he actually did resign – there was very little they could do, short of forcing him to abdicate.

As the last jingling noises of the troops died away behind them, Rose shivered a little. The Talish soldiers probably wouldn’t look so different. They would be tired too, after marching to Cormanse to embark on the barges. And they might well be seasick, some of them, perhaps even as bad as Bella.

It was the only thing that disturbed her about the plan. She was almost sure that Miss Fell was right, and they would be able to destroy the invasion force, even though she didn’t feel like the blood of centuries of seers and mages was flowing through her veins, as Miss Fell had assured her it was. It would work. Hopefully.

But if it did, she would be as much a murderess as her mother.

‘Rose, wake up.’

Someone was shaking her. Rose sat up, and winced. They had driven through the night, stopping only to change horses. She had been sleeping slumped against the someone’s shoulder, she realised, and now she ached.

Her mother looked down at her, smiling a little. ‘We’re almost there, and it’s getting light. So I thought you’d like to see…’ She closed her eyes for a second. ‘I wanted you to see it with me,’ she added in a whisper.

Rose nodded, and crept one gloved hand around her mother’s sleeve. She was wearing one of Miss Fell’s travelling cloaks, a gloriously old-fashioned one with masses of capes around the collar, and a hat that trailed feathers. She looked very small and slight underneath it, and terribly frightened.

Miss Fell was glaring out of the carriage window – she was sitting facing the horses, of course. She had pulled an eyeglass out of her bag, and was examining the trees on either side of the drive.

‘Bad pruning. Quite obvious. Really, I shall have to speak to Moffatt… And just look at those weeds in the drive!’

Rose thought it all looked immaculate, and she couldn’t suppress a gasp as they finally drew up in the carriage circle in front of the house. She had seen it before, of course, but only in a painting, and that had been the terrace view. The front was even more impressive. The house was built of honey-coloured stone, not the gleaming white of the building she’d seen in the painting. The only thing that was familiar were the peacocks.

‘This is the older part of the house,’ Miss Fell explained, and even her voice had a slight crack to it, as though she too found it hard to be back. ‘Built in the seventeenth century, by our ancestor, Richard Fell.’

Rose nodded. She wondered if he was the one Freddie had mentioned, and where he’d kept his dragon. The house looked as though it could house a whole colony of dragons – they could quite easily sleep in that little arched part over there. Rose blinked as they descended stiffly from the carriage, and the blinding winter sun seemed to catch a glinting scale, and perhaps a twitch of scaly claw. She really hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep, it was clear.

‘I didn’t believe I would ever come back.’ Rose’s mother was sitting on the marble terrace, with Rose beside her, both wrapped in layers of shawls. Rose kept looking around, frowning. It felt so very odd, as if she was inside that painting she had tried to copy. Or perhaps an illustration from a fairy tale, with the peacocks sweeping haughtily past.

‘Are you happy – to be here?’ she asked hesitantly.

Her mother stared out across the velvet green expanse of lawn. ‘It’s full of old ghosts. I’m not sure I could live here again.’

Rose nodded, a little relieved. They were still feeling their way around each other, but she supposed she belonged to her mother now. She knew she didn’t want to live here either. She liked towns. The countryside was strangely empty, and still felt like something that ought to stay in pictures. The house itself was amazing, though – as steeped in spells as Mr Fountain’s house, but about a hundred times larger and older. And she was almost sure the dragons had been true. She could
feel
them, something old and sly and wise that seemed to dart around the corners just ahead of her.

Freddie was finding it impossible to concentrate on the spells they were supposed to be planning. He kept disappearing on the way from one room to another, to be routed out an hour or so later by a polite servant, his eyes saucer-like, sure that he had only missed seeing one by inches.

Gus strolled up to Rose and her mother, leering at a nervous peacock, and leaped onto the arm of the bench.

‘You should go back inside,’ he yawned.

‘Oh! Is it time?’ Rose’s heart thudded.

‘Soon.’

In the drawing room behind them, there was a whispering of silk dresses and a smoothing of coat-tails, as forty people set down their afternoon teacups, and exchanged last nervous, encouraging glances.

Miss Fell’s skeleton staff had risen to the challenge of their mistress and the cream of magical society descending on them for an unexpected house party. As Rose had suspected, the house was immaculate, and all the housekeeper had done when the news was broken to her was to purse her lips very slightly.

Miss Fell was sitting in a straight-backed wing chair, upholstered in purple damask, which had been placed just to the right of the fire. Mr Fountain was close by, and Miranda and the children were seated on stools around her. The other magicians were in chairs scattered throughout the room, but all facing Miss Fell, and close enough that everyone could clasp hands.

Rose could feel the ancient magic that filled every stone of the house. It whispered and called to her, stroking tiny fingers over her skin.

‘Where are they now?’ Mr Fountain asked a young man in a damson velvet jacket, with what Rose thought was a ridiculous mauve-spotted cravat. He was seated at a small wooden table with a map spread out in front of him. One hand was laid flat on the map, and his eyes were half-closed.

‘Here. Approaching Dover.’

‘Are there balloons?’ Bella asked, her high voice clearly audible in the nervous hush.

‘Ssshh, Bella,’ Rose and Freddie hissed, but the man in the velvet jacket laughed.

‘No, that was only a rumour in the newspapers. The flotilla of barges only. The sea is very rough, the waves are almost swamping them already.’

‘This is so risky,’ a young woman seated close to Rose whispered. ‘They should not have let them get this far. What if it goes wrong?’

Rose turned and glared at her, but she stared back hard-eyed, and Rose shivered. If it went wrong, they would have exposed England to a Talish invasion.

‘Are they close enough together?’ Rose’s mother asked.

The velvet-jacket man nodded. ‘Very close. It should work.’

It had been Rose and Freddie’s idea to adapt Mr Fountain’s protection spell into a trap for the invasion fleet, veiling them in a sudden, soundless bubble. Then the magicians together would drag the fleet under the waves, sinking it, and drowning the entire invading army. That part had made Rose run into the gardens to be sick in the shrubbery. Freddie had pointed out that it was only what the invasion force were intending to do to
them
, after all.

Rose could see his point, but it seemed so brutal. She had wanted to break the barges apart somehow, to at least give the soldiers a chance of being washed up onshore, and imprisoned.