Rose (8 page)

“What did you do?” Freddie demanded. He sounded furious, and he looked as though he'd rather like to grab Rose and shake the truth out of her. But he still couldn't move properly. Whatever the mist creature had done to him and Gustavus was taking time to wear off.

As soon as the creature had disappeared, Rose had run toward them, wanting to help, but now she took a doubtful step back. “I—I don't know,” she admitted. “What was it, anyway? Where'd it come from?”

“None of your business!” Freddie shouted. His face was white but with angry red spots on his cheeks, and his dark eyes were glittering angrily—as though he was trying not to cry from embarrassment and rage.

Rose had to try hard not to smile. He couldn't stand her seeing him like this, couldn't bear it that she, an ignorant little servant girl, had actually rescued him. She almost felt sorry for him, but not quite.

“Frederick, she just saved us,” the cat said reprovingly. He was now sitting on the big table again, as he had been that morning, and frantically washing. He only took his paw away from his mouth for a few seconds, then he was back to licking and swiping. Rose could understand why. She felt as though she was covered in a strange, sticky, prickly film herself, and she didn't have fur.

“No, she didn't!” Freddie had himself more under control by now, and he was no longer shouting. He spoke quietly, but his voice was frozen with fury. It made Rose shiver.

“Of course she did!” Gustavus actually stopped washing for long enough to glare at him this time.

“All she did was walk in and distract it,” Freddie insisted. “We saved ourselves. And don't talk in front of her; she's a servant!”

“A servant who can hear me,” the cat pointed out. “All the rest of them would think they heard a cat mewing. Which just goes to show, doesn't it?” He rubbed his paw over his ear roughly, muttering disgustedly to himself.

Freddie looked around the room desperately while he tried to think what to say. “So she can understand cat,” he said at last. “That doesn't mean anything…”

Rose wished they would stop talking as though she wasn't there, but she didn't dare say anything. Freddie was Mr. Fountain's apprentice, and Gustavus was his spoiled pet. If they complained of her, she might be sent back to the orphanage.

“She just interrupted that creature when it was weak from binding us, that's all,” Freddie said more confidently. “It was nothing to do with her, really.”

Rose watched Gustavus give Freddie a considering look, then the cat turned his particolored eyes on her. “Where did you learn to hear cats talk, girl?”

Rose shook her head. “I don't know. I never knew they could. The cat at the orphanage never said anything, not that I heard. You just talked to me about the cream that first morning I saw you. Last week.”

The cat sniffed. “Who knows? You wouldn't expect a servant child to have magic—”

“Magic!” Freddie interrupted scornfully. “Of course she doesn't have magic. Little guttersnipe. Like I said, it was luck. Coincidence. And maybe she stole something from in here that made her understand you. Yes, I bet that's it! What did you take, girl?” He rounded on her, working himself into a rage to beat down his fear.

Rose stood her ground. “I never stole anything, and you know it!” She was past the point of not wanting to get on his bad side by now. It was too late, and she hated him too much to hold back anyway. “And if you say I did”—Rose leaned forward and jabbed a finger in his chest—“I'll tell your master what I just saw, because I'll bet my year's wages you weren't supposed to be messing with that mist thing.”

Freddie gaped at her. He clearly had no experience of servants talking back. They usually just moaned about him once he'd gone. “You wouldn't dare,” he hissed, but with an edge of doubt.

Rose raised an eyebrow at him, and the cat sniggered. “She's got you there, Freddie.”

“You helped,” Freddie retorted. “And Fountain will know that; he knows I couldn't do that spell on my own. I could hardly even see the thing this morning.”

“You
brought
it here?” Rose asked disgustedly. “What on earth were you thinking?”

“We were experimenting,” Freddie told her in a lordly way. “Testing our power, as is natural for those who hold the secrets of the mages. Which you would know if you had any magic at all,” he added, suddenly sounding much less grown up. “I don't know how you can talk to Gustavus, but apart from that, you're the least magical person I've ever met.”

“Really? Are you sure?” Rose asked hopefully. She wanted to believe him so much. She wanted to be safe downstairs in the warm kitchen, away from buzzing things, with everyone else who thought those magicians were more trouble than they were worth. She did not want to be one of the troublemakers.

“It was coincidence, that's all. Like I said,” Freddie told her firmly. A little bit of Rose couldn't help wondering if he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to persuade her. But he was a magician's apprentice. He could summon monsters, even if he did have to be rescued from them afterward. His dark eyes were wide and sincere now, and Rose felt herself wrapped in their velvety blackness. He looked so certain. He must know. He
did
know.

Rose dropped a little curtsy. “Thank you, sir,” she murmured. “I'm so sorry to have interrupted your…studies.” She couldn't quite hold back a laugh on the last word, but she was staring at her boots, like a model servant.

Freddie glared at her, his fingers clenched into fists, but he said nothing.

“Thank you, girl!” the cat called after her as she opened the door. “I'll be down for some salmon later, if you please!”

Rose clicked the door shut and leaned against it for a second. That hadn't been what she planned to happen, not at all. But at least she knew it wasn't magic that was making all these strange things keep happening to her. Magic was messy and difficult and not her place to know. She was having nothing to do with it.

So
how
do
you
make
pictures
on
bathtubs?
a little voice demanded in her head.
And
pour
treacle
on
men
on
big
horses? And why can't Bill and the others hear the cat?
But Rose was very carefully not listening. It was too nice, knowing that she was normal after all. She didn't want anything to spoil it.

***

By the time she'd helped Bill fetch all the shoes for cleaning and taken Miss Anstruther her bedtime cocoa (Mrs. Jones had laced it with brandy), Rose was exhausted. Even her pretty china candlestick felt too heavy to carry up the shadowy stairs. She was too weary to care if the steps stretched and weaved beneath her. It was only that she was tired, and the candle flame was flickering. She was imagining it, like Bill had said. All she wanted to do now was get to her little room and sleep.

She jerked awake sometime in the blackest part of the night, quite certain that someone was in the room with her. She could hear breathing. At once, she was convinced that it was the mist creature back again—she could feel it. It was swirling over her face, coiling around her throat, about to rush into her mouth and nose and suffocate her—

“She's going to scream,” an interested voice remarked from next to her left ear.

“Don't!” This voice was panicked and familiar. Freddie.

“What are you doing in my room?” Rose hissed angrily. She was quite shocked. The matrons at St. Bridget's would have had fits about this, and she couldn't imagine Miss Bridges being very happy either.

“It's all right, I brought Gustavus as a chaperone,” Freddie explained reassuringly. There was a rustling noise, which turned out to be Freddie getting a candle stub from his dressing gown pocket and blowing on it. It flared at once, lighting up Freddie's pale, ghostly face, and the white cat perched on the edge of Rose's pillow.

“A chaperone? He's a cat! And nobody else can hear him!” Rose snarled. Somehow Freddie's easy, thoughtless display of magic made her hate him even more. “Get out! And how did you get in, anyway?” she added, imagining them flying in through the window on a magic carpet. But the window was shut.

“We walked up the stairs and opened the door,” Gustavus said wearily.

“Actually, I carried you because you were moaning so much. And he's awfully heavy. Can I sit down?” Freddie made to sit on the end of her bed.

“NO!” Rose pulled the bedclothes up to her chin in horror.

“But we need to talk to you, and I can't stand up for much longer. There isn't room. I'm practically sitting in your washstand at the moment. Your bedroom is
tiny
.”

“You get out of it, and it'll be just right!” Rose snapped.

“Oh, let him sit, girl. He'll just whine otherwise.” Gustavus yawned, showing rows of white toothlike needles. “He's come to apologize, you know,” he added persuasively.

“Have you?” Rose asked, forgetting to be cross. She was too surprised.

“Only because Gus said he'd tell if I didn't,” Freddie muttered, tucking himself onto the end of the bed.

Rose nodded. She would have been suspicious of any other answer. “What're you apologizing for? Calling me a thief? Or for making me sweep that floor over when it was spotless first time around?”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Tell her,” the cat insisted.

“All right!” Freddie glared at Rose and Gustavus.

“I lied to you. You did save us. There, happy now?” he asked the cat.

“No,” Rose and the cat said it together, and the cat added, “You should grovel. Make him grovel, girl, you saved his skin.”

Rose shook her head. “No, I just interrupted that—thing. That's all. You said so.”

“And I was lying, like I said.” Freddie looked up at her, the candlelight making great shadows around his eyes. He clearly hated to admit it. “You did save us by magic. I don't know how,” he added grudgingly.

“I didn't!” Rose protested. “How could I? I don't know anything about magic. And you were so sure. You said I was the least magical person you'd ever met.”

“Well, you are.” Freddie shrugged. “But you still did it. We were trapped, and you rescued us.”

“It must have been a coincidence, like you said,” Rose said hopefully. “I didn't actually do anything. I can't.”

Freddie sighed irritably. “Look, I know I lied, and I suppose I did do a little bit of a persuading spell on you back in the workroom, but now I promise I'm telling the truth. It
was
you, and you used proper magic. Lots of it. More than I've ever managed to find. Oh, come on, how can you not
know
?”

Rose just stared at him silently. She couldn't think of anything to say, apart from no, and he didn't seem to be hearing that.

Freddie huffed a long, grumpy breath. “Why are you so stubborn? I'll prove it, look.” He kneeled up on the bed and reached over to the little shelf where Rose's candle sat in its china holder. Then he hurled it against the far wall of her room.

Rose gasped and tried desperately to catch it, but she had no chance. She was all tangled up in the bedclothes, and she was still half asleep, and there was no time anyway.

She waited miserably for the smash, and Susan's angry scream from next door. But it didn't come, and there were no pretty flowered fragments on the floor.

She was holding the candlestick.

Rose looked up at Freddie, and he smiled triumphantly.

“See?”

Rose gaped at the candlestick. She was very glad it wasn't broken—she would have hated to explain to Miss Bridges that she'd smashed it in only her second week in the house, and breakages had to come out of her wages. But it
should
have smashed. There was no way she'd caught it. So what was it doing in her hand?

Suddenly she smiled at Freddie. “That was a spell, wasn't it?” she asked, in a relieved voice. “You went and mucked about with my mind again. You made me think you'd thrown it, but actually you just handed it to me.”

“No! Look, why would I want to make you think you can do magic when you can't? I just want you back in the kitchens where you belong,” he muttered resentfully.

He sounded very honest. Much more honest than he had earlier on, Rose had to admit. Now she thought about it, it was obvious that he had put some sort of deceiving spell on her before. And it had worked beautifully because she had wanted to believe him so very much.

Freddie rolled his eyes impatiently, and Gustavus sniggered. “He isn't that good at sleight of hand, my dear. Elementary conjuring—it still haunts me what came out of that hat…” He looked at Rose eagerly and seemed to be hoping she would ask him what he meant, but she was hardly listening. She kept running her fingers over the little painted flowers on the candlestick, as though they might tell her what was happening. Then she shuddered. Maybe they would. If cats could talk, who was to say candles couldn't?

At last she looked up at Freddie and the cat. “Don't worry,” she said calmly. “That's where I'll be, just the same as usual.”

“Where? What are you talking about?” Freddie said, glaring at her. He still seemed to be taking her magic as a personal insult.

“In the kitchens, where I belong. I don't want to have magic in me,” Rose insisted. “I don't like it. Maybe if I just ignore it, it'll go away.”

“It's not some little creature that's taken up residence inside you for the moment, girl!” Gustavus told her testily. “It
is
you! You've got it. It doesn't go.”

“It might,” Rose said stubbornly.

Freddie was staring at her as though she was a dangerous lunatic. “But—don't you want it?” he asked, his voice dazed. “I thought you just didn't understand. Don't you know how
lucky
you are?”

“Yes,” Rose hissed. “Yes, I do know! I've got a job! A week ago I went from being an orphan with no proper name to being somebody who earns money.
That's
lucky! That's what I wanted! Not spells and misty monsters leaping at me!”

“It was an elemental spirit, actually,” Freddie said under his breath, as though he couldn't help putting her right.

“Whatever!” Rose snapped. “I still don't want anything to do with it.”

Freddie gave Gustavus a hopeful look. “I don't suppose she could give it to me, could she? Old Fountain would have a heart attack.”

Gustavus glared at him. “Don't be any more stupid than you have to, boy,” he growled. “The power is hers, and that's the way it stays—whether you both like it or not. I'd still like to know where you got it from, though,” he added, in a much less grumpy voice. “Is there any magic in your family?”

Rose shrugged. “How should I know? I'm an orphan, remember?”

“You really don't know anything about your parents?” Freddie sounded disbelieving.

“Do you think I'm making this up?” Rose asked wearily. “I don't
like
being an orphan! All I know is they dumped me in the churchyard. In a fish basket,” she added very quietly, because she knew Freddie would laugh.

He did, but Rose and Gustavus gave him such a dirty look that he stopped quite quickly.

“Fish is very good,” the cat told her consolingly. “Quite my favorite food.”

It didn't help, but Rose appreciated that he was trying to be kind and smiled at him.

Gustavus swayed slightly and blinked, his whiskers trembling. “Charm,” he muttered to Freddie. “You see? It gets you a long way. Look after that smile, child. Tooth-cleaning powder…Where was I?”

“Being bewitched by little Miss Perfect's smile,” Freddie snapped. “Don't ever teach her to flutter her eyelashes. And don't worry,” he warned Rose, “it definitely won't work on me. Gus is a soppy old fool. So what are we going to do?”

“Do?” Rose looked at him with dislike. “I'd like to go back to sleep, please. Some of us have to be up at six to light
your
bedroom fire. Which you could very well do by yourself. You wouldn't even have to get out of bed.” Freddie ignored her.

“When are we going to tell old Fountain?” he murmured. “I suppose I'd better come too, or he'll never believe you. And you, Gus.”

“No!” Rose squeaked in horror. “I'm not telling anyone, and neither are you!”

“But you need to tell him. He'll have to train you, I should think, since you were discovered in his house. That's how it works with new magic, isn't it, Gus?”

“Mmmm. One of the basic responsibilities of a magician.” The cat nodded, his whiskers waving regally. “Training. She'll probably have to be another apprentice.”

“Oh, excellent! She can do all the measuring!” Freddie looked distinctly more cheerful at the thought of having someone to boss around.

“Did he discover you, then?” Rose asked curiously.

Freddie shook his head. “No. Fountain was at the university with my father. He took me as a favor. Most magicians have at least one apprentice, and they agreed it when I was born, I think. Probably my father will train Isabella if she's any good. It's harder to tell with girls. Usually. Isabella has an unnatural talent for torturing governesses, but that may be all she's good at.”

Rose nodded. “Well, I don't want to be trained, so it doesn't matter. You're not telling him.”

Freddie shrugged. “You can tell him if you like, but I don't think he'll believe you. Look, I'm sorry to say this, but you're a servant. Servants don't do magic. No one's going to believe that you can. Fountain will think it's some sort of trick. He'll probably sack you on the spot.”

“No, he won't, because I'm not telling him either,” Rose explained patiently. “Like I said, I'm not telling anyone, and neither are you.”

Freddie narrowed his eyes. “You mean, you're just going to carry on being—a skivvy? When you could be a magician? Are you insane? Do you know how much a certified magician
earns
?”

“No,” Rose admitted. “But I know how to scrub floors, and I don't know anything about magic. And I don't want to!” she added stubbornly. “It's scary and difficult, and like you said, I'm a servant and I'm not supposed to do it. So I won't.” She eyed Freddie thoughtfully. “Unless you tell someone, in which case I will do something, and I don't know what and it'll probably go very wrong and no one will be able to fix it, so just don't. All right?”

Freddie held his hands up. “Fine! I won't mention it. You can just let it all go to waste, and we won't say a thing.” He slid off the bed and stood up, scooping Gustavus into his arms. “Come on, you.” He stomped the two steps to the door, then he paused and looked back. “Just this once, I'll do the fire tomorrow,” he allowed her grudgingly.

Rose smiled as he closed the door.
My
magic
must
be
powerful
, she mused sleepily.
He
wouldn't do that unless he really was impressed.