Chapter 10 #3
Entering the dining parlour, Mary found Prunella sitting as though she had been turned to stone. The maid was no fool—the door had given way before her hand so easily that it could not have been shut—and she lit the fire in a silence that concealed great agitation of spirits.
The young lady was so very young! What a pity if such a pretty creature were really as wicked as Mrs. Lale said! Mary was sure she saw the poor girl’s lip tremble. Of a certainty she had heard every word.
Mary need not have worried. To Prunella, bred in a setting as near a nunnery as any English establishment could be, the notion that she could be mistaken for a fallen woman was so extraordinary that it could hardly offend.
In these matters she was almost as innocent as Mrs. Daubeney had alleged, and the loss of her reputation for virtue—a weighty matter for any female who had any part in society—seemed so unreal as to occasion, at first, no concern.
After her first internal exclamation (“Why, that woman thinks me some sort of Jezebel!”), she had been struck by the humour of the situation. While Mary knelt by the fireplace with her tinder, pitying the poor young lady, Prunella had been fighting down giggles:
If I sit here shrieking with laughter, they will pass from thinking me a fallen woman to believing me a lunatic, and it will end in my having to sleep in the stables!
After Mary left, however, hunger began to have its effect in sobering Prunella.
Once the first amusement was over she began to see what a shocking position she was in.
What a landlady of a village inn believed of her was of little account, but Prunella could not afford such misunderstandings once she reached London.
That would ruin everything she planned for.
It had not occurred to her before that her olive skin and dark eyes would seem to many an argument for the laxness of her morals. Had she but known it, she might have given serious thought to how odd it would look that she was travelling alone with Mr. Wythe, even accompanied by Cawley.
It is a pity we do not look more alike, or we could have told everyone we were long-lost siblings, and no one could complain of impropriety, reflected Prunella.
How absurd it all is! No one would dream of maligning me so if I were a man.
I might go anywhere and do any magic I pleased if I were Peter, not Prunella.
Mr. Wythe could present me to the world as his apprentice without occasioning the least remark.
Why, there would be nothing to prevent my setting up as a sorcerer, once I had contrived to hatch the eggs!
She spent a full half-minute considering whether she might pass herself off as a man: it would be so very convenient! But she gave up the notion with a sigh.
It might serve for a time, but I could not sustain it for long; indeed, I would not wish to.
I must make as good a fist of being female as I can, and secure my position by the means permitted to my sex.
What could not I accomplish with the support of an indulgent and monied husband?
I fancy I should like patronising a girls’ school.
I could set up as a rival to Mrs. D, and hire poor Miss Liddiard and the rest, and let the girls work as many enchantments as they desired.
The idea diverted her, but she dismissed it to return to the crucial question: But how shall I get myself any sort of husband if everyone thinks me a strumpet?
A poor orphaned female—a native, if you please!
and inconveniently magical to boot—had little hope of accomplishing her aim, even if she managed to preserve her reputation.
Prunella lingered a while in the dining parlour in hope that she might benefit from Mr. Wythe’s appearance to the tune of a mutton joint or cold souse.
But when it became clear that he would not return soon from his mysterious errand, she retired to her bedchamber.
The Lales’ delay in giving her the room was now explained.
They thought I would be sharing his, I suppose!
Prunella was glad no one else was there to see her blush.
I ought to have flown into a passion directly when they did not give me my own room; that would have persuaded them of my virtue.
My being meek and believing the best of everyone has led them to think me a low trollop. I shall not run into that error again!
She rummaged in her valise and brought out the treasures, scattering them upon the bed.
It was now nearly dark, and the fitful light of the taper lent uncertain illumination to the room, but the blue stones seemed to glow like gems. They were hard as gems as well, nothing of the eggshell about them.
She must persuade Mr. Wythe to teach her about familiars’ eggs as soon as she could, thought Prunella.
Her interest in the subject could not draw suspicion, for who would suspect such an absurdity as her possessing seven eggs?
She must take great care to ensure no one ever did suspect: doubtless Jezebels were not permitted to keep familiars’ eggs, even if the eggs were their fathers’ by the ancient right of treasure-seekers.
“I suppose I must resurrect Cawley, so that she can lend me countenance,” Prunella said to the eggs. “But she is so tiresome, and such a drain on one’s magic! I am knocked up from keeping her going for a mere day, and I shall need a chaperone for a great many more days.”
It felt natural to be addressing the eggs. Prunella had a hazy notion that the spirits locked within the eggs had thoughts and feelings of their own, dormant as they seemed—that in some way they were awake to all that passed in the outside world. She was sure the squashes were their doing.
If only she could puzzle out the dratted spell that kept them locked in slumber!
It was true that Prunella had as yet no clear notion what she would do with the familiars’ eggs if she could hatch them, but that they were the key to everything she desired she did not doubt.
She knew she should be able to turn them to account once she fathomed the secret of them.
“What can I do to awaken you? Could I ask Mr. Wythe when he returns from the border? Perhaps I could pretend I’d read about a similar circumstance in a book.”
But even as she spoke, the idea presented itself to her, so simple and obvious that she wondered that she had not thought of it before.
The eggs and the familiars within them were from Fairy—and the border with Fairyland was almost on the doorstep of the inn.
Why should not she take the eggs there, and see how they responded to proximity to their place of origin?
She might kill two birds with one stone, for where better to find magic than the Fairy border, that ultimate source of England’s magic?
There would surely be enough resource there to animate a thousand Cawleys.
Mr. Wythe would not like it, of course. Zacharias had held forth at length on the instability of the border, and the delicacy of his proposed experiment, by way of explaining why he did not think it suitable to bring his new student with him on his errand.
But if Mrs. Daubeney’s school had taught Prunella anything, it was that magical affairs must be conducted in secret.
There was no reason Mr. Wythe need ever know of her excursion.
She would go that evening, telling no one, and bring the treasures with her.
She tied the velvet pouch containing the eggs under her skirts.
Then, on a whim, she drew out from her valise a chain Mrs. Daubeney had given her when she was a little girl, and the carved silver ball that was her only other legacy from her parents.
She would wear the orb on her neck, she decided, in remembrance of her poor father.