Read Snow White and Rose Red Online
Authors: Patricia Wrede
Snow White and Rose Red (30 page)
THE EVIDENCE OF FAERIE INTEREST IN DEE’S HOUSEHOLD increased John’s certainty that it held the solution to Hugh’s enchantment, and he redoubled his efforts to slip inside. He was unsuccessful, and in desperation he decided to use the only piece of powerful magic he had been able to bring with him out of Faerie.
Late one afternoon, early in July, he visited the Widow’s cottage to explain his reasons and his strategy to her and her daughters, and to enlist their help. He had not previously told them of his attempts to search Dee’s house, and the girls listened with absorption to his account.
“And you will try again?” Rosamund said. “But how can you now succeed, having failed so often?”
“I have a ring, which three times confers invisibility,” John said. “I’ve used it twice: once long ago in a Faerie war, and once to follow you out of Faerie when the border was closed to me. I am determined to use it for the third and last time in this endeavor.”
“‘Tis good of thee, to use thy ring in thy brother’s behalf,” Blanche said softly.
John shrugged. “As may be. I’ll have but one chance, and then the ring is useless. I’ve come to you for help, that we may wring the most advantage from this effort.”
“What is it that thou wantest of us?” the Widow asked cautiously.
“‘Tis completely safe, I warrant you,” John said reassuringly. “I’ve found a spell that will allow your daughters to see me from afar, and I would have them sit with Hugh and watch me as I search. ”
“What, and you invisible?” Rosamund said.
“An the scrying spell doth not show me, ‘twill show at least the rooms I pass through and what occurs around me,” John said. “And if you’re with Hugh, you may see some change in him that doth correspond to something where I am, which I could never tell. So we may learn something of use even if I fail.”
“‘Tis a good idea,” the Widow said, much relieved to learn that this half-Faerie man did not intend to take her daughters with him to the sorcerer’s home. “When wilt thou make this attempt?”
“Tomorrow,” John answered. He frowned. “Hugh’s been peevish and unquiet these last few days; I think delay might be unwise.”
Rosamund and Blanche exchanged glances. “Then give us your scrying-spell to study,” Blanche said for both of them, “and we’ll be ready on the morrow.”
Furgen’s plans to best Madini had at first gone smoothly. The water creature had had no difficulty in abstracting Dee’s lamp from Madini’s quarters. It then went swiftly through the streams and rivers to a shadowed, silent pool deep in the Faerie forest. There it stood, waist deep in the mirror-dark water between the shining blooms of the water lilies, waiting for Dee and Kelly to try to use their crystal.
For seven hours Furgen crouched, motionless and silent, while dawn brightened into daylight and minnows nibbled at the webs between its toes. At last Ned Kelly’s face appeared in the side of the lamp. Furgen waited a moment longer, hoping Dee would come as well, but he did not, for Kelly’s quarrels with his partner had reached the point where Kelly had at last decided to continue his experiments in gold-making alone. Furgen had hoped to snare both the wizards, but it was tired of waiting, so with a flick of its long, grey fingers it set its carefully crafted enchantment in motion.
The faint glow of the lamp dimmed and turned from gold to tarnished silver. Kelly’s eyes, staring from the side of the lamp, went wide, and he tried to draw away. The picture on the lamp followed him, and Furgen smiled with all its pointed teeth. The link was now established, from Furgen through the lamp and crystal straight to Kelly. “Come,” the water creature whispered. “Come to me, and bring the crystal.”
“Be gone, foul spirit!” Kelly said hoarsely, his words echoing along the intangible link.
Furgen chuckled. So long as Kelly bent his mind to dismissing it, the water creature was entirely safe, for it was not present. “Come to me,” it said again, and in the Mortlak study the words seemed to issue from the air at Kelly’s shoulder. “Bring me the crystal; come.”
To Furgen’s surprise, Kelly did not move. “Come out,” Furgen spat. “Come to the river, and bring the globe.”
“I adjure thee, in the name of God: be gone, and trouble me no more!” Kelly cried, raising his fists to his temples.
“Come,” was Furgen’s answer. Its cold hands stroked the lamp gently, and Kelly shuddered convulsively.
“No! Go hence, go away, be gone!” Kelly cried. He pressed his palms over his ears, then suddenly turned and all but ran from the study.
Furgen hissed in annoyance. Kelly was stronger than it had anticipated, and it was plain that the water creature’s spell would not quickly force the mortal to bring the crystal out from behind Dee’s protective spells. Now that the link was established, however, there was no need for Kelly to be present in the room where the crystal stood; Furgen could reach him anywhere. “Come,” the water creature repeated with monotonous insistence. “Come to the river, with the crystal. Come.”
The struggle between Furgen and Kelly was the direct cause of the distress that John had noted in the bear. The power of the crystal was Hugh‘s, and its every use touched him, no matter where he was or what his condition. The mortal spells of Dee and Kelly had affected him very little, but Madini and Furgen were of Faerie, and each time they used the link between the lamp and the crystal Hugh felt a little more of himself being chipped away. Soon there would be nothing left but the bear.
By the time Rosamund and Blanche arrived, Furgen and Kelly had been locked in a battle of wills for nearly four days, and the bear was whining and pacing constantly back and forth between two trees. The girls soothed him as best they could. When he was calmer, they laid out the tools they had brought for the scrying spell: a flat bowl, a flagon of rosewater, a sachet of violets, and a small, silver mirror. Blanche put the bowl on the ground, wedging it carefully with stones and small twigs so that it would not tip. Rosamund poured the violets into the bottom of the bowl and set the silver mirror on top of them. Then, while Blanche whispered the words of the spell, she let the rosewater run down the side of the bowl until the mirror was just covered.
The mirror dulled, then brightened, and the two girls bent over it eagerly. John stood in the narrow passageway between Dee’s house and the next, turning a small ring over in his hand and watching the entrance of the passage. Suddenly he vanished, and the girls gasped, but the vision in the mirror remained otherwise clear. The picture began to shift, as if it followed someone, and Blanche let out the breath she had been holding. The two girls watched in fascination as the miniature scene moved through the kitchen garden to the door above the water stairs.
John had to wait until someone left the house; the Dee household was far too conscious of spirits for him to risk a cook or manservant sighting a door opening and closing by itself. The wait was not a long one, for Mistress Dee kept an exemplary household and the servants were constantly coming and going, fetching herbs for the cook, dumping buckets of dirty scrubwater into the river, running in and out of the house on a thousand different errands. John slipped inside with one of the kitchen maids and began methodically searching the house.
The kitchen, buttery, and larder were unlikely places to find evidence of spell-working. John gave them each a cursory look and went on toward the front of the house. The great hall was all but empty; a settle with its back to the fireplace, three joint-stools shoved against the wall, and a faded hanging of ancient lineage were the sum of its furnishings. In one corner a heavy wooden staircase led upward. John gave a cursory look behind the hanging, then crossed to the stairs and started up to the second floor.
The gallery above looked as if it would take more time to search. John went to the first of the chests that stood along the walls, but as he opened it, he heard voices from the next room. Carefully, he closed the lid, then walked the length of the gallery to the door at the opposite end. Just before he reached it, the door flew open, and Ned Kelly’s voice came clear and loud through the opening.
Once Furgen’s spell was cast, it did not matter whether Kelly was gazing into the crystal or not. Furgen’s whispers followed him wherever he went, so long as Furgen continued to focus his attention on the lamp. At first, Kelly had been able to keep Master Dee unaware of his difficulties, but his irritability and unusually preoccupied state of mind finally drove Dee to confront him.
“What ails you, Ned?” Dee demanded with, for him, unusual force. “And say not that ‘tis naught; you’ve been unlike yourself these four days past.”
“‘Tis more than nothing, true,” Kelly answered with a sigh, “but I know not how best to say what ’tis.”
“Tell me howe‘er you can,” Dee said.
“I am ... most sorely troubled by some spiritual creature,” Kelly admitted after a moment’s pause. His eyes avoided the gazing table and the crystal resting in its center. “It sitteth on my left shoulder, here, and whispers ‘come’ and gurgles of the river. Methinks it calls me on to drown myself.”
Dee stared at him with an appalled expression. “Nay, Ned! You must not do so! ‘Twere deadly sin to kill yourself.”
“To kill is deadly? Never say so,” Kelly responded sourly. “Be sure that I’ve no wish to, but this creature’s whispering’s like to drive me mad.”
“Resist it!” Dee said, growing more agitated. “Think of our work!”
“Thinking’s been no help to me,” Kelly said, irritated. “My need’s to rid myself of this tormenter, not to think on’t.”
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