Chapter 5
ICANNOT BEGIN to describe our gratification at your condescension, Mr. Wythe,” declared Mrs. Daubeney. “No Sorcerer Royal has ever showed any interest in the magical education of females. The girls feel the honour of your visit extremely, I assure you.”
Mrs. Daubeney was not at all what Zacharias had expected. Knowing what he did of feminine magic, he had envisioned a grey-haired, discreet sort of woman, wise in the ways of girls—horsey, perhaps—but certainly not magical.
Instead Mrs. Daubeney possessed all the glamour that the ignorant layman might have ascribed to her.
She was tall and handsome, with silver-streaked black hair and a nose tending towards the beaky.
She dressed in a picturesque style, with a great deal of purple and velvet.
If spells could be cast by pure drama of gesture, she would have been a veritable sorceress.
She was perfectly fitted for running a school for gentlewitches, however, for she did not in fact appear to have any magical ability whatsoever.
What she did possess was a brain as keenly alert to the main chance as any politician’s.
“Of course, dear Sir Stephen—what a loss to the nation!” Mrs. Daubeney’s voice dropped, and she looked solemn.
“And yet, you know, he visited the thaumaturgical schools at Seaton and Yarrow, but never seemed to think of our magical girls. I am glad you recognise their importance, Mr. Wythe, for if we continue to neglect our girls, the nation will suffer for it!”
Zacharias had been brooding on the challenge awaiting him at the border, and the troubles he had left behind him in town, but this embarrassed him out of his abstraction.
He muttered some civil platitude: he believed the magical education of females deserved more attention—commended Mrs. Daubeney for her sterling work.
“It is a shamefully neglected subject, and I fear we will repent of our inattention,” said Mrs. Daubeney.
“What sad tales have I not heard of females driven mad by their magic!
Of the sorrow they have caused their unfortunate family and friends!
Yet what do we do to prevent these tragedies?
We scold our girls if we catch them in spell-casting; we forbid them from reading grimoires—but we do no more, and are shocked when we find they have learnt night-spells from Nurse, and cantrips from Cook.
“If a girl-child makes her dolls dance, her parents admire her cleverness, and say it is of no account, for little Susan will soon outgrow such amusements. If, when she is turned fifteen, she is discovered in charms to curl her hair or brighten her eyes, she is reproved for her vanity, and told she must stop, lest she is thought fast. But no effort is made to make her understand the seriousness of her breach, and she comes to womanhood believing there is no harm in indulging in minor magics, provided she does it discreetly. And what is the result?”
Zacharias was at a loss for a reply. He knew, of course, what the Society would have him say.
Magic was too strong a force for women’s frail bodies—too potent a brew for their weak minds—and so, especially at a time when everyone must be anxious to preserve what magical resource England still possessed, magic must be forbidden to women.
Yet Zacharias had seen too many hags in kitchens and nurseries, too many herbwomen and hedgewitches in villages around the country, not to know that women were perfectly capable of magic—at least, women of the labouring classes.
Among their betters it was genteel to turn a blind eye to such illicit activities.
One would not like one’s own wife or daughter to indulge in witchcraft, but it did not serve to be overscrupulous when feminine magic could prove so convenient in one’s servants.
Fortunately Mrs. Daubeney was ready with her own answer.
“In consequence of our criminal lenience, our girls are committing acts of magic every day!” she said impressively.
“You may think I exaggerate, sir, but we see it in all our new arrivals. They are so accustomed to easing their way with little charms and devices, they cannot easily leave off. It is no small matter, changing a girl’s fixed habits, but we have learnt a great deal about how the change may be effected. ”
“Indeed?” said Zacharias. “How—”
“I had hoped you would ask!” exclaimed Mrs. Daubeney, delighted.
“But stay—why should I bore you with explanations, when I can show you? We have a class in session at this very moment, a class of our eldest girls, to whom we have imparted such a sense of their duty of restraint, as I believe you will not find in any other crop of magical females in this country.”
She leapt to her feet as though the idea had just occurred to her, though in fact she had been resolved upon it from the moment she heard of the Sorcerer Royal’s visit. For Mrs. Daubeney had grand plans for her school.
Miranda Daubeney had begun life as rather a silly woman, and she might have continued as such if not for the lucky turn, twenty years ago, of her husband’s dying and leaving an encumbered estate.
She had been compelled to advertise for paying lodgers, and it was this necessity, painful as it had been at the time, that transformed the entire course of her life.
Mr. Hilary Gentleman had seemed a dubious proposition when he first applied for lodgings—haggard and tanned from his roving life in India, with a child tucked under his arm and a wicked-looking old leather valise he would never put down for a moment.
But he had offered such a substantial sum that Mrs. Daubeney could not turn him away, and when she came to know him better, she did not regret her decision.
In time she had begun to nurture a secret hope that she might become something more than a friend to dear Gentleman.
She had even grown fond of his child, despite the dusky tint to its skin, and its unfortunate predilections.
Even then Prunella had begun to show troubling signs of being magical—signs which she needed the help of a mother to curb.
Mrs. Daubeney would not have objected to being called upon to discharge that responsibility, but alas! It was not to be.
Mrs. Daubeney would never know what had driven Gentleman to drown himself, for the brief note he left, confiding Prunella to her care, explained nothing.
She could not bring herself to send the child away: it would have to go into the poorhouse, or be boarded with some poor widow and like as not die of neglect, for Mrs. Daubeney could not find out that Gentleman had possessed a relation in the world.
But Prunella could not have an ordinary nurse, who would be frightened by her making little people out of soot, and drawing birds upon the wall that flapped and squawked as though they were alive.
Mrs. Daubeney was puzzled to know what to do with her, when by chance she made the acquaintance of a village woman who had formerly been employed in a lord’s nursery.
Prunella’s eccentric ways disconcerted Mrs. Tomlinson not at all: “She’s an uncanny creature, but then so was my lord’s second girl, Annabel, and I never had any trouble with her.
You need only be firm with them, ma’am, and show you won’t stand for their wickedness, and they will settle down soon enough.
Annabel is a great lady now; she married a lord herself, and you may trust she never thinks of doing any magic now she is grown. ”
Mrs. Tomlinson had proved so capable in caring for Prunella that when the squire’s wife confided in Mrs. Daubeney that her cousin Stapleton was sadly troubled by her daughter’s propensities—“she acts strangely at times, and they fear it may be magic”—Mrs. Daubeney had no hesitation in suggesting that this cousin should send her daughter to Mrs. Daubeney, who would see to it that the child’s propensities were checked.
For Cousin Stapleton had married a man with twenty thousand a year.
It soon became evident that Mrs. Daubeney could not rely on Mrs. Tomlinson alone to educate the Misses Stapleton of the world.
She found herself mistresses from the ranks of impoverished gentlewomen who knew from bitter experience how to suppress and conceal their talents from a world that wanted none of them.
To Mrs. Daubeney’s own surprise, it seemed she had a remarkable facility for management, and eventually she found herself in possession of a small but thriving girls’ school.
Five years after she had taken in Prunella, she refused an offer of marriage from a widowed thaumaturge with three daughters, and only regretted that her decision was likely to deprive her of three potential students.
She was no longer content with being mistress of a small school, however. Mrs. Daubeney dreamt of an establishment for the education of magical females on an unprecedented scale, and she had every intention of making the Sorcerer Royal’s visit count to that purpose.
“Miss Liddiard is teaching our oldest girls the Seven Shackles today,” she announced when they arrived at the classroom door.
“If practised regularly, the exercise will extinguish seven of the most common types of magic of which the mortal frame is capable. It is an admirable device, and I beg you will not be misled by its appearance. We shall find the girls droning on together, looking half-asleep, but you must not think our girls are usually so dull!”
She flung the door open with a flourish, revealing a scene of utter pandemonium.
A cluster of girls clutched at one another, shrieking in dismay.
At the other end of the room, a young lady crouched behind a barricade of desks.
She had one arm wrapped around a wriggling girl’s neck, and a small hand clamped over the girl’s mouth, stifling protest (which the captive nonetheless continued to issue with unabated vigour).