Chapter 5 #2
The young lady did not regard this. She was engrossed in blocking the hexes flung by another girl, who stood in the middle of the classroom screaming curses, her eyes blazing with red light, and all her red hair standing on end.
Mrs. Daubeney looked for a moment as if she considered fainting, but the situation was too dire for that. She gasped:
“Prunella! What is the meaning of this?”
“Oh, Mrs. Daubeney!” said the young lady.
“Pray summon one of the mistresses! If someone could deflect Miss Midsomer’s hexes, I would be able to deal with Henrietta in a manner less injurious to her dignity.
There, Henny, I know it is provoking, but I cannot very well release you, for you know you will try to strike Miss Midsomer dumb, and that would not be at all gentlemanly! ”
“Mr. Wythe, I do not know what to say,” stammered Mrs. Daubeney. “What you must think of us!”
Zacharias stared. Prunella was light enough for exertion to lend her cheeks a brilliant colour, but that she was not of wholly European extraction was clear from the warm hue of her skin and the profusion of dark curls tumbling over the back of her drab brown dress.
Her small, three-cornered face was screwed up in a look of intense concentration that did not injure its beauty.
But it was not this alone that fixed Zacharias’s attention.
Prunella was stopping Henrietta’s mouth not only with her hand, but with a spell—a spell hastily cobbled together, but of such ingenious construction that he would not have expected to see it from anyone but a trained thaumaturge.
That she was contriving to maintain the spell while blocking Miss Midsomer’s hexes—which were also more advanced than Zacharias would have expected from a schoolgirl—was nothing short of extraordinary.
Prunella cried in vexation:
“Oh, don’t flap! Is that the Sorcerer Royal you have got there? He might be so good as to put a stop to Miss Midsomer’s antics, and grant me some respite!”
“To be sure!” said Zacharias, starting. “I beg your pardon.”
It was simple enough for him to draw a barrier around Miss Midsomer to contain her endeavours, but in fact it was not needed, for both girls suddenly lost their appetite for battle at the words “Sorcerer Royal.” Miss Midsomer stopped mid-screech and stood staring at Zacharias with a purple face, as though she had swallowed one of her own curses.
Henrietta tore Prunella’s hand from her mouth, shrieked, “Oh, it is not!” and swooned to the floor.
“Good gracious!” said Prunella. She added, in a tone of reproach:
“If you were going to strike anyone down it should have been Miss Midsomer, for she was most provoking, and she knows perfectly well Miss Stapleton cannot help doing magic when she feels strongly on any subject.”
“Prunella!” said Mrs. Daubeney chidingly, but Zacharias was bending over Henrietta.
“This is Miss Stapleton?” he said. “Miss Henrietta Stapleton? But I know her father.”
“I do not see how that helps matters. I expect he will be very cross to hear you have hexed his daughter,” said Prunella severely.
She knelt and raised her fallen friend’s head with all the gentleness her manner towards Zacharias had lacked: “Poor Henny! To think that you were defending the Sorcerer Royal, only to be so served out by the wicked creature!”
“I did not—” Zacharias began, but he had no opportunity to complete his defence, for Henrietta sat up and said:
“Prunella, if you do not stop upbraiding Mr. Wythe, I declare I really will faint, and I expect I will do myself an injury, and then you will be sorry for being so shrewish!”
Whereupon she burst into tears.
· · ·
PRUNELLA was more relieved than not to be sent to her room in disgrace.
She had not a high tolerance for sentiment, and within five minutes of Henrietta’s dissolving into tears, half the class had followed her.
Prunella had been rather enjoying herself till then, but when faced with a class of upset girls the fun of the affray had drained out of her, leaving her cold and uncertain.
She had been in scrapes often enough, but she had never seen anything quite like the look on Mrs. Daubeney’s face.
She was uneasy as she let herself into her little room, tucked in the draughty east wing of the school.
On any ordinary day she would have taken advantage of the unexpected luxury of leisure to take a nap: sleep could not be overvalued by one who rose at five and often did not get to bed till eleven.
But she was too restless. The look on Mrs. Daubeney’s face would recur, though of course Mrs. Daubeney could not blame Prunella for her students’ bad temper—could she?
“She ought to pick better-humoured girls to instruct, or at least teach them to avoid politics once she has them,” Prunella said to herself.
“Mrs. D is always saying that a female ought not to know what to think about anything, but ought to do that prettily. Not but what she is shockingly bad at that herself!”
As she paced her room she caught a glimpse of herself in the small, cracked green looking glass on the wall. Her dress bore grey patches of dust, which must have been acquired in the attics. Clothed in this, she had appeared before the Sorcerer Royal!