Lily (2 page)

It wasn’t the time.

The house was simmering with anger, even more than it had been early in the morning. Lily wasn’t sure what was happening, but when she had stolen out of the orangery earlier, she had seen Mama stalking through the passageways, the gold silk of her dress rustling with fury. Mama always walked when she was angry, swishing along like a battleship in full sail. Lily had ducked back down the tiled corridor just in time. It was safer to stay out of Mama’s way, and leave her the house to rampage around. Her face had been white, and she was muttering under her breath, words that were so strong Lily could almost see them. She thought of warning Georgiana, but she hadn’t seen her sister for weeks. Probably she was in the library. Mama had been coming from that direction, anyway, and Georgiana was almost always shut up in there studying.

Lily allowed herself a moment’s resentment of her sister, for being the clever, special one. But it did only last a moment. Over the past few months she had stopped envying Georgiana quite so much. Lily wasn’t sure that she wanted all her mother’s attention, or even half of it. There were advantages to being the youngest and least interesting; advantages that outweighed too-small dresses and eating in the kitchens.

No lessons, for a start.

Georgiana had lessons all the time, and Lily suspected that Mama’s current fury was due to Georgie not doing well enough at them. Georgie was supposed to be a very powerful magician. When she was born, the seer that their parents had brought over to the island had sworn that she was the one, the child all the old magic families were waiting for. The one who would restore the world to the way it should be – with magic no longer outlawed, and the Powers family out of their miserable exile.

Mama hadn’t summoned a seer for the inconvenient baby that followed Georgiana. Why would she, when they already had dear little Georgie? Lily was only an afterthought, and no one bothered with her. A slightly smug smile pulled up one corner of Lily’s mouth. Being the younger sister of a miracle was easier to bear when the miracle wasn’t quite performing as she should.

But then her smile faded. If it was Georgie that had made Mama look like that…

She was hungry, she realised, staring out of the cracked window panes at the high sun. It had to be lunchtime.

She had left the napkin folded up by the draughty French windows which looked out onto the garden, and now she glanced over at it hopefully. She was so hungry that she couldn’t possibly have eaten all the bread and cheese… But it was dismally empty, and a small, greyish mouse was just seizing the only crumbs left. It froze for a second as it realised Lily was watching, and then dived for a hole in the crumbling wall.

Lily shuddered. The old orangery was infested with mice, like the rest of Merrythought House. Mama’s cats were far too proud and pampered to chase them, and they scurried everywhere, except the library. Lily was sure that not a single mouse would dare even to poke its whiskers in there.

Another flurry of movement made her catch her breath and swing round in panic. But it wasn’t a mouse about to run over her feet. Instead, a tiny brown frog was now sitting in the middle of her charcoal mess, looking doubtful.

Lily smiled to herself. Oddly, although she couldn’t stand the mice – she thought it was because of their naked pinkish tails – she found the frogs funny and charming. They had invaded the orangery earlier in the week, a sudden plague of them, and she was rather hoping they would stay.

The confused-looking frog in front of her was actually sitting on a failed drawing of himself – or one of his hundred brothers and sisters. Lily couldn’t get the legs right, and it was deeply infuriating. If only she could make them work, the magic would happen again, she was sure.

She had thought she was imagining it at first. Perhaps it had been only a trick of the light, something to do with the fingerish stems of the old vine that was growing out of one of the broken window panes, and colonising the roof. They tapped and wriggled and twisted the sunlight. Lily’s charcoal self-portrait – a smudgy picture of a young girl with knotted curly brown hair, and very little nose – had seemed to smile, and half turn her head, as if she were about to say something.

Lily had stared, her heart suddenly squeezing and fluttering inside her. Had that just happened? For a few seconds, the soft charcoal lines had blurred, and thickened, and
moved
, drawing pinkish colour from the cracked terracotta tiles that Lily had been drawing on, and suddenly living.

She had watched it for hours, sitting curled up on the cold floor next to the drawing, until it grew so dark the charcoal lines stole away into the shadows. It hadn’t happened again, so perhaps it had only been her imagination. It had seemed so real, though. For a moment, something else had been in the cold, broken room with her. Some
one
.

Ever since, Lily had been waiting for it to happen again, half-hopeful, half-terrified. Did it mean that she was growing magic of her own at last? She was ten, after all, it was the time when it should be happening. Despite her family, her knowledge of magic was only sketchy. She knew fragments of spells, and odd bits of magical theory, but she had only a few old textbooks, and even in those she had skipped the boring bits.

Her favourite was an ancient copy of
Prendergast’s Perfect Primer for the Apprentice Magician
, with her father’s name,
Peyton Powers
, written in childish handwriting across the flyleaf. It had been jammed upside down in a shelf of books in one of the dustier guest bedrooms in Merrythought, and now Lily treasured it, often tracing her finger over the name and wondering where he was.

She had no memory of him at all. He had been arrested when Lily was only months old for protesting against the Queen’s Decree, which outlawed all magic and all magicians. Lily had wondered how one kept a magician in jail, when presumably they could explode chains, and melt walls, and turn guards to stone, but obviously the Queen’s Men (it was always said in capitals, like the Decree) had managed it somehow, for her father was in one somewhere on the mainland. She hoped that whatever they used to stop his magic didn’t hurt.

One day she might find him. She wasn’t entirely sure how, as her mother never left Merrythought, but did that mean she had to stay there for ever, too? And then she might meet other magicians, like the Fells, or the Wetherbys, or the Endicotts, and perhaps someone would teach her, and she would be able to create amazing spells of her own, and learn to fly, and speak to birds, and straighten her stupid curling hair…

But no. There was no magic now. Only hidden away at places like Merrythought, where the ancient magical families pretended they had given it all up, but taught their children the old ways. Or didn’t, as the case might be. If Lily left Merrythought and the island, she would never see any magic. She would certainly never be allowed to
do
any, or she’d be thrown into jail.

In any case, according to Mr Prendergast, a ten-year-old magician of any skill should be well up to conversing with magical beasts, and conducting ‘simple magical exercises’. Such as making one’s name appear written in the air in golden letters of light. And Lily couldn’t.

Of course, Georgiana had probably been doing that sort of thing before she was out of her cradle. Now that she was twelve, she had graduated to far more difficult things, which was why Lily never saw her any more. As if it wasn’t bad enough just
having
a sister like Georgie, Lily couldn’t help loving her as well. Even when she was little, Georgie was always being summoned away by Mama to learn spells, or magical history – which was mostly about how wonderful the Powers family had been before the Decree made any and all magic a crime. But she had always come back eventually. Lily would usually wander down to the kitchen and pester Martha and the other maids while she waited for her sister. It had been in the kitchens that she learned to read, puzzling away at Mrs Porter’s stained, precious, handwritten recipe books. If the old cook was in a good mood – which was only when the range was drawing properly; she was always cross when there was an east wind, as it blew back down the chimney and put the fire out – she would let Martha make the fragments of pastry into letters for Lily.

Writing she learned later, when Peter first came. He was only a little older than she was, and the only other child on the island. Naturally Lily wanted to talk to him. But he didn’t talk. He didn’t listen, either.

He had turned up on the beach, sitting against a rock looking cold and miserable. Martha had found him when she’d gone down to the jetty to pick up the delivery from the grocer on the mainland. The boat with the provisions always came early, before anyone in the house was likely to be up. The money from Merrythought was too good to turn down, but the family were considered strange. Everyone knew what they were, but no one would ever dare say so. Who knew what they might do? Especially her. That ghost-white girl the family were breeding up. She’d been seen, standing on the top of the cliffs, staring out to sea. Looking at the mainland, the fishermen said. What if she were to swim across, like one of those mermaid things that got washed up dead on the shoreline every few years?

Martha still liked to tell the story every so often. How she was walking along, minding her own business – which Lily immediately interpreted as walking along looking for Sam the second footman. Martha was aiming to go up in the world, and she had Sam on a string.

She had been hurrying to fetch the baskets from the jetty, hardly looking at the beach, when out of the corner of her eye, she had seen one of the rocks move. She had thought it was a seal, until it stood up, and she was rooted to the spot, so she said, too shocked even to scream. Lily was sure she’d seen Peter roll his eyes at this, so she suspected that Martha had screamed, quite loudly, the way she had the time a mouse ran over her fingers in the flour-bin.

She had to bring him back to the house, of course. There was nothing else she could do with him. Merrythought was the only house on the island, and everyone in the house had either been born there, or sent from a particularly discreet employment agency. Even Martha and the other maids had signed year-long contracts before they so much as set foot in a boat. They had to promise not to leave, and consent to having all their letters read. Their wages were rather high in consequence.

So Martha had carried one basket back to the kitchen door, and a small, silent child had carried the other.

Lily had been in the kitchen, begging for breakfast, when Martha and the boy turned up. She had gazed at him in amazement – she had, after all, never seen a boy her own age, or any other child but Georgiana.

Mrs Porter looked as though she might fling the dough she was mixing at Martha. ‘What on earth is that?’ she snapped. ‘I sent you to fetch rice, and the pheasants. Am I supposed to roast this scrawny little thing?’

Martha dumped her basket on the kitchen floor and prepared to argue. She was never afraid of Mrs Porter. ‘Well, what was I supposed to do, leave him there for the seals to eat? And we’ve got the groceries, he’s carrying half of them!’

‘Where did he spring from?’ Mr Francis, the butler, was drinking a cup of tea at the table with his waistcoat unbuttoned. He eyed the boy’s basket. ‘Did they remember the newspapers? She’ll be ringing for them, any moment.’ He beckoned the boy towards him, right past Lily.

Her eyes were fixed on him as he trailed past, still with his skinny arms wrapped round the basket. Smaller than her, or at least thinner, so thin his cheeks had hollow shadows in them. Dark, spiky hair, and light grey eyes that changed colour, like the sea water he’d appeared from.

‘Where did you come from, boy?’ Mr Francis asked, peering at him. ‘You can put the basket down now.’

The boy said nothing, and didn’t put down the basket. He simply stood there.

‘He doesn’t talk, Mr Francis, I tried,’ Martha put in. ‘I’m not sure he can hear either.’

The butler frowned, and patted the table, gesturing to the boy to put the basket there. The child did as he was shown, and rubbed his hands over his arms, as if he were cold.

‘Well, he’s not stupid, even if he can’t speak,’ Mr Francis muttered. ‘We’ll have to keep him, I suppose. He hasn’t been in the sea, his clothes are dry, and no salt stains, so he hasn’t fallen out of a fishing boat.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor little rat’s been abandoned, I should say. Whoever he belongs to didn’t want a mute.’

‘What do we do with him?’ Mrs Porter folded her arms. ‘I don’t want another child cluttering up my kitchen.’

Lily looked at the cook reproachfully, but then tucked her feet under her chair, to make herself smaller.

‘This one you can make wash up. Scrub the floor. Set the mouse traps, whatever you like. No one’s going to complain, are they?’ Mr Francis shrugged. ‘No one else wants him.’

Lily flinched for the boy when Mr Francis said it, but then she realised he was lucky enough not to be able to hear all the things that were said about him.

Mrs Porter sighed expressively. ‘Miss Lily, where’s that slate Violet found you from the nursery? Let’s see if the brat can read.’

Lily fetched the slate from where it was leaning up against the dresser shelf, with the carving platters. Violet, the housemaid, who was just now laying the family’s fires upstairs, thought it was shocking that Lily couldn’t write. Any village child, she pointed out, would have been dragged to school by an attendance officer by now. She was doing her best to teach Lily in the odd moments she could snatch out of her day, but Lily was slow at it, and slipped out of the kitchens when she heard Violet pattering down the stairs.

Mrs Porter snatched it hurriedly out of her hands – her dough needed time to rise – and scrawled
Name?
, before thrusting it at the boy.

He blinked, and produced a crumpled and raggedy piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket. All it said was
Peter.

Mrs Porter nodded grimly, and pushed the plate of bread and butter that Martha had been cutting at him. ‘He’d better eat something before he gets started,’ she muttered, clearly feeling she had to explain her generosity. ‘He looks like he might keel over if I ask him to bring the firewood in.’