Zacharias opened his mouth, then closed it, feeling foolish. Mrs. Daubeney had overestimated his worldliness: he had very little to do with women on the whole, and it had not occurred to him that Mrs. Daubeney might expect a chaperone for Prunella.
Prunella was not disconcerted, however. She sat up on her heels, brightening.
“Of course,” she said. “Lady Wythe sent her maid down. She is waiting outside the door, I think, Mr. Wythe?”
“Is she?” said Zacharias, thoroughly confused.
“Cawley,” said Prunella, raising her voice. “Pray come in.”
Into the room lurched a nightmarish vision wearing a human form, but neither human nor alive.
Zacharias blinked. No, it was only a woman of about forty. A solid, sensible-looking female, such as any anxious duenna might be reassured to have as her charge’s companion. Her hair was brown—no, grey—no, chintz—
“Good morning, ma’am,” said the woman, but she had no voice. The words simply appeared inside Zacharias’s head.
Zacharias shut his eyes deliberately. When he opened them again, his mind was focused on the effort of sight, and he observed what he had been missing.
Prunella had constructed a chaperone out of cloth. The body was made of linen sheets, rolled and bound together. The head was a yard of chintz, shaped into an approximate sphere. At the bottom of the swaying, bobbing figure was a pair of men’s shoes.
It was really very difficult to keep the image clear. Zacharias’s mind urgently desired to return to what it was sure was the truth: that before him stood a woman of flesh and blood, who was bobbing and answering Mrs. Daubeney’s questions in a voice that was her own, not Prunella’s.
This was leagues beyond the invisibility spell Prunella had wrought the evening before. In its subtlety it was even more impressive than the ward she had thrown up against the fire. Zacharias could not have so deceived another magician until he had nearly completed his education, after years of study and practise.
“Thank you, Cawley,” said Mrs. Daubeney. When the woman had curtseyed and excused herself, she said:
“That is a good sort of woman. Lady Wythe possesses excellent judgment of character, I am sure. I shall feel quite comfortable leaving you in her care, Prunella. Perhaps”—her voice faltered—“perhaps it is all for the best. You will know what to do for her, Mr. Wythe, as I have never done.”
•••
ZACHARIAS,”hissed Sir Stephen in Zacharias’s ear, “that girl is a humbug!”
Only the strictest habits of self-discipline enabled Zacharias to continue walking towards the door as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Mrs. Daubeney and Prunella had vanished into the upper reaches of the building, to pack what little Prunella planned to bring with her, but it was approaching mid-day, and there was no saying that Zacharias might not meet a maidservant or schoolgirl on his way. Sir Stephen usually exercised more discretion than this.
His importunate spectre continued to hover at Zacharias’s shoulder, however, so that Zacharias was compelled to duck into the kitchen garden, and hope anyone who saw him assumed he was addressing a zephyr.
“Sir, much as I am honoured by the privilege of your visits—”
“Call them visitations, rather! For that is what you think ’em, I know,” said Sir Stephen briskly. “But I cannot hold back when a timely word might avert folly. I know better than anyone that when you have got a maggot in your head you will rush on regardless, but it ought to be obvious even to you, Zacharias, that that chit has no more idea of studying thaumaturgy than I have of being crowned the Queen of Fairyland.”
Zacharias stiffened. “Indeed, sir? And what do you say is her purpose in bearding a strange gentleman in his rooms, and abandoning everything she has known?”
“I do not deny she is a bold-faced hussy,” though Sir Stephen spoke more admiringly than not. “I will not pretend to know her purpose. But it is not difficult to see that a pretty, artful baggage like that might desire to go to town for any number of reasons, none of which is likely to include becoming a thaumaturgess.”
“Miss Gentleman seems to me a pleasant, unaffected young lady,” said Zacharias with dignity. “In any case, whatever might be said of her manners or morals, it is impossible to fault her reflexes. I am in her debt, and I have agreed to instruct her. I cannot very well go back on my word now.”
“From the way you go on, no one would think your hearth-fire had attempted to murder you,” said Sir Stephen testily. “Have not you better things to be thinking of than the education of gentlewitches?”
“A Sorcerer Royal must take assassination attempts in his stride,” said Zacharias. “I had thought something of the sort would happen ever since I succeeded you. We both knew what widespread displeasure my becoming Sorcerer Royal was likely to occasion. What is more natural than that someone should seek to curtail my term of service?”
This observation did not improve Sir Stephen’s spirits. He glared at an artichoke as though it had offended him personally. “Did Leofric say whether your enemy was a thaumaturge?”
“It is scarcely likely to be a strolling magician or a cunning man,” said Zacharias, evading the question. “What reason does anyone but a Fellow of the Society have to desire my extinction?”
“I should have thought your colleagues would at least submit to the constraints of the Charter of the Society.”
“Did you? I was not so sanguine,” said Zacharias. “It is just as well they have acted, though unfortunate that they should have struck when Miss Gentleman was present. Yet who knows? She reacted first, before I had even discerned the peril. We might not be speaking now if she had not been there.”
“That is another thing,” cried Sir Stephen. “That your complaint should have incapacitated you at the crucial moment is another shocking thing. How are you to defend yourself from assassins if you grow regularly faint and aguish? That is contrary to the very principle of the Exchange.”
