Lily and the Shining Dragons Page 10

  ‘The spells in the blue bottles, I suppose,’ Georgie said sadly, holding up the skimpy white cotton nightgown she’d been given. Tomorrow they would have to wear the same white blouses and grey pinafore dresses as the other girls, and Georgie was missing the clothes from Aunt Clara’s house already. ‘And perhaps Miss Merganser’s meant to terrify us into giving up magic. It would work on me.’ She looked Lily up and down. ‘That nightdress is horrible.’

  ‘So is yours,’ Lily pointed out.

  Sarah, one of the few older girls, about the same age as Georgie, came in to the girls’ dormitory carrying a huge tray, laden with thick white china mugs. A pleasant smell of chocolate floated across the room, and Lily’s nose twitched.

  ‘Cocoa!’ Sarah yelled, and the girls hurried between the iron bedsteads to fetch their cups.

  ‘You see?’ Lily muttered, frowning. ‘It isn’t like a prison, at all. They’re all lining up to get their cocoa! Cocoa, honestly.’

  ‘Are you really complaining because Fell Hall is too nice?’ Georgie asked her.

  ‘Yes. I don’t trust it.’ Lily sat down on the lumpy bed, and folded her arms. ‘I’m not having any. I’m full, anyway.’ A lifetime of scratched and stolen meals at home meant that a whole dinner – even the solid, uninspiring food at Fell Hall – felt like a feast. The idea of a mug of cocoa on top actually made her feel queasy.

  ‘Well, I’m having some.’ Georgie had a taste for chocolate, from sharing violet creams with Maria and the ballet dancers in the theatre wardrobe. She went to fetch her cup, and came back with one for Lily too. ‘I told Sarah you didn’t want it, but she said Miss Ann – that’s the pasty one who follows Miss Merganser around, isn’t it? Anyway, Miss Ann would fling it at her, she said, if she didn’t give them all out.’

  Lily sighed, and glanced around. Most of the girls were still changing, or sitting drinking their cocoa. Only Lottie was looking at her. She put her finger to her lips, winked at Lottie, and poured the cocoa out of the window next to her bed.

  Lottie giggled, and pattered over to whisper in Lily’s ear. ‘That’s clever. I don’t like it either, but I give mine to Elizabeth. She loves cocoa.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know, Lottie, if there’s anyone hidden at Fell Hall?’ Lily whispered back hopefully. ‘A boy, a little bit older than me? Do they keep people upstairs anywhere?’

  Lottie shook her head. ‘It’s all empty upstairs, I think. But I’ve never been up there.’

  Lily sighed. How could they all be so quiet, and obedient, and just not curious? Maybe it was only that they’d been here so long, she thought with a shiver, pulling her blanket up round her ears. She supposed you could get used to anything. But she wouldn’t…

  Lily lay in bed that night, listening to everyone breathing. She wondered where Henrietta was sleeping. At least it was a warm night. But she missed the solid, wheezing lump curled up in the small of her back.

  The gentle sighing of the sleeping girls was maddening. Lily gave up trying to sleep, and sat up in bed, with the blankets wrapped around her knees. Why didn’t anyone else seem to feel the way she did? She was desperate to escape Fell Hall, but all the others seemed so resigned to being there. Even grateful, almost, that they were safely tucked away!

  She looked across at Georgie, with her long fair hair spread across her pillow. She was smiling in her sleep – dreaming of sewing, probably. Miss Merganser had been graciously approving of Georgie’s needlework – luckily, she hadn’t had time to examine Lily’s.

  Lily scowled. What was Georgie looking so happy for? They needed to be finding Peter and making their escape plans, not sleeping. It wasn’t as if their family would get into trouble if they ran away. Lily sniggered to herself at the thought of the red-faced guard turning up at Merrythought. He would probably come back as a beetle – or inside out, depending on how bad-tempered Mama was feeling. Then she shuddered, remembering that Merrythought had been raided, and Mama was gone. She could be anywhere.

  Lily wondered if her mother could have fought off the bottled magics the red-faced guard had used. They must have something similar to restrain prisoners. Her father hadn’t been able to resist them – unless he hadn’t tried. He had sounded so good in the letter she had read, so very honest. Perhaps he had let them bind away his magic. Until now Lily had wanted to find him mostly for her sister’s sake – her father was the only one they could think to ask to help them remove the buried spells. But now, cooped up in Fell Hall, and not even for a day, Lily knew she had to help him escape. She couldn’t imagine what years of this must feel like. And what if Penelope and Cora decided to make more trouble? There were all sorts of things they could accuse him of. Jonathan Dysart could probably have her father executed, if he wanted.

  Whoever made those spell bottles must have been very strong. Lily folded her arms on her knees, thinking hard. How was it fair to punish her and Georgie and all these other children for using magic, when all the time Miss Merganser and the others were using it too, to keep them shut away?

  Lily sighed, and stretched out her fingers, cautiously. There was a bubbling heat in her blood that made her almost sure her magic had come back. When she’d woken up from the spell that morning, she had thought for several awful moments that it was gone for ever. She couldn’t imagine being without it. Especially after she’d spent a day being told that magic was dirty, and dead. It made her want to fling spells at people, cover them in glittering light, send them flying around the roof of this strange old house. Her fingers burned, and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip, hard. Not yet. She had to be careful.

  Lily was almost sure someone sighed. She glanced suspiciously over at Lottie – had the little girl been awake and watching her? But Lottie was only a hump under her blankets. She must have imagined it.

  What would happen if she did magic here? Were there alarm spells? She couldn’t sense them. But then, they wouldn’t be much use if she could, would they?

  All she could feel was the strange warmth, under the blocking spell. She reached for it, but there was that musty layer in between. Lily hissed with frustration. The spell wasn’t actually as strong as the one Aunt Clara had created back in the London house. Their aunt’s hatred of magic had repelled it like a waterproof cloak. This spell felt old. As though no one had paid much attention to it recently. Lily sniffed. If all the children at Fell Hall were as frightened as Elizabeth and her friends, it was no wonder. No one dared to do any magic here. The spell had nothing to work against. Why would anyone waste time renewing it?

  ‘I wonder how far it goes up?’ Lily muttered to herself. If no one used the attics and upper floors, perhaps the spell didn’t cover them. She would go searching tomorrow, after she had found where they were keeping Peter. It still worried her that he wasn’t with the other boys. What if they had sent him somewhere else after all? She couldn’t think why he should be shut away, separated from all the others. Unless he’d been difficult, and it was one of the other things, the ones that Elizabeth couldn’t bring herself to speak about. Lily shivered. Peter was very determined. And not easily scared.

  What had he done?

  She glanced over at Georgie, but her sister was so sound asleep, it would be a shame to wake her. She would tell her the idea about the spell in the morning, Lily thought sleepily, already half-dreaming.

  She had to be dreaming. For how else would there be that strange, rustly voice in her head, whispering?

  Soon, please! Soon!

  Lily had to be shaken awake the next morning, the last shreds of her dream shimmering away as Georgie muttered in her ear. Scales, glittering in the sunlight – and so much magic.

  ‘Lily!’

  Lily sat up, scowling. ‘I’m awake! Stop shouting at me!’

  ‘You need to be more careful – you were talking in your sleep. About things you shouldn’t have been.’

  Lily sighed. ‘How am I supposed to stop that? I can’t help what I dream about!’

  Georgie shrugged helples
sly. ‘You’ll have to. Come on. We have to do something called drill before breakfast.’

  Lily fought her way into her grey uniform pinafore, splashed her face quickly from the jug of water at the end of the room, and hurried after Georgie and the others to the terrace.

  Further down the gardens, the boys were already lined up in rows, swinging what looked like the clubs the jugglers at the theatre had used.

  ‘Are they doing tricks?’ Lily whispered, surprised. ‘Aren’t they meant to throw them?’

  ‘They’re Indian clubs,’ Lottie told her. ‘It’s an exercise. We aren’t allowed them, which isn’t fair, they look much more fun than drill.’

  Lily was about to ask her what drill actually was, but Miss Merganser marched out to the front of the terrace, wearing a white blouse, and what Lily thought was a rather daring divided skirt.

  ‘That’s improper,’ Georgie muttered, conveniently forgetting that they had worn much more improper costumes themselves. ‘What does she think she looks like…’

  Lily thought she looked quite sensible, but Miss Merganser was already glaring at them, so she didn’t say anything.

  ‘Arms!’ Miss Merganser barked. ‘Right arm. One!’

  Resignedly, the three rows of girls raised their right arm straight out to the side to shoulder height. Lily and Georgie quickly did likewise.

  ‘Two!’

  Everyone put their arms down again.

  ‘Left arm. One!’

  Lily glanced hopefully sideways as she lifted her arm – yes, she was doing it right.

  It went on for ever – or so it seemed. Arms. Legs. At least five minutes of simply turning their heads from one side to the other. Miss Merganser shouted at her, because she didn’t have her hands properly on her waist. Fingers were to face forward. The rest of the class eyed her pityingly.

  ‘Do we have to do that every day?’ Lily whispered to the girl in front of her, as they marched back into the house.

  ‘Drill has been proven effective in occupying restless energies.’ Miss Merganser seemed to have appeared from nowhere. ‘Which you clearly have, Lily Powers. Your display was despicable. You had better miss breakfast. Go and stand outside the schoolroom.’

  Lily sighed, and trudged away. She wasn’t used to that much breakfast at home anyway, even though the food at Aunt Clara’s had been a great deal more plentiful. She would manage.

  She occupied the time trying to remember her dream, as she stared vaguely at the carved wooden staircase in front of her. She hadn’t noticed as she’d been hurrying up and down those stairs – usually with someone shouting at her – but there were creatures carved into the banisters here and there. Strange snakes or lizards hiding in the leafy branches that made up the main pattern.

  Glancing quickly down the passage to the dining room, Lily stepped away from the schoolroom door to stroke the little wooden beasts, tracing her fingers over the carvings. They were definitely lizards, not snakes; they had legs. But there were odd bumps on their backs too. She’d taken them for part of the spray of carved flowers that curled above the creatures, but now she was closer, and it was clear that they were meant to be growing out of the scaly backs.

  ‘Wings,’ she muttered, and smiled to herself. ‘Dragons.’ Had no one else ever noticed them? The portraits of the magicians had been taken down, and the magical books removed. She would have expected that these sly little beasts would have been cut out – or at least had their telltale wings removed.

  As she thought it, she heard a sharp, tapping tread further down the corridor, and she shot back to her place outside the door so quickly that the carvings seemed to move. She could have sworn the wings fluttered in dismay, stretching out as though their owners wanted to check they were still there. Had they heard what she was thinking? But she couldn’t look again to check. Miss Merganser was marching down the passage towards her, and even though Lily had never been to school, she knew enough to keep her head down, and look sorry.

  ‘Well, I hope missing your breakfast has shown you the error of your ways,’ the warden told her sweetly, and Lily shivered. Miss Merganser’s voice had no spells in it to make it so unnerving. It was just her, which made it almost worse.

  She nodded.

  ‘Speak when you’re spoken to!’

  ‘Yes, Miss Merganser.’ Lily glanced up, carefully not looking at the banisters, in case they twitched again.

  ‘Very well. You may go and sit in your place, and wait for the others.’ Her sharp-heeled boots pattered away, and Lily chanced another look at the carvings. But they were still now, even when she touched them. She wondered how old they were. The tops of the banisters were worn into smooth waves with what must be hundreds of years of hands stroking down them. If the staircase was part of the original house, Lily was fairly sure it had been built in the 1500s. There had been a particularly famous Fell, who had been granted the land by the king. She had read about him, hiding from the sea wind behind a gorse bush on the cliffs, back at Merrythought. It had started to rain, though, and Lily wasn’t sure she had ever finished the book.

  Her eyes widened as she remembered the illustrated heading of the chapter on the house of Fell. Richard Fell had been rumoured to own a dragon…

  ‘I thought you were going to lie low!’ A snarl sounded somewhere around Lily’s ankles. ‘We’re not supposed to be drawing attention to ourselves, remember? What are you doing getting yourself into trouble?’

  Lily’s heart jumped inside her, half with fright and half with happiness, and she caught Henrietta up in her arms. ‘You got inside!’

  ‘Sshhh,’ Henrietta said disapprovingly, but she did lick Lily’s ears. ‘Someone left those doors to the terrace open. Now you’d better hide me in this schoolroom she was talking about.’

  Lily nodded. ‘I will. I know a place, there’s a window seat, and wooden shutters you can sit behind. But Henrietta, look at these.’

  She held the little pug up to the banisters, and Henrietta frowned. ‘Dragons. What of them?’

  ‘The Fells are supposed to have had real ones, aren’t they?’

  Henrietta snorted. ‘That’s just a myth! No such thing.’

  ‘These ones moved,’ Lily muttered stubbornly. ‘I saw them.’

  ‘And that spell has addled your wits.’ Henrietta nudged her with a cold nose. ‘Hide me!’

  Lily hurried into the schoolroom, tucked Henrietta at the back of the window seat, and sat down beside her. ‘Where did you sleep last night?’ she asked.

  Henrietta assumed a mournful expression. ‘In a shed…’ she sighed. ‘Arabel never made me sleep in a shed, Lily.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry,’ Lily told her humbly.

  ‘If it wasn’t for the good of the family, I wouldn’t be doing it.’ Henrietta eyed her sternly. ‘I shall expect to be very thoroughly thanked, when we eventually sort all this nonsense out. Maybe even a statue.’ She shifted her paws, and tilted her head a little, and Lily could see that she was practising her statue pose.

  ‘Henrietta, we’ve been shut up in a reform school. We’ve got nowhere finding Peter. Father’s in prison, and everyone in the country either thinks magic is evil, or else they are magical, and they’re plotting to overthrow the government, as far as I can see.’ Lily drew her knees up and tucked them under her pinafore. ‘I’m not saying you can’t have a statue,’ she added. ‘I just think it might take a while…’

  Henrietta sniffed. ‘I can wait. But I shall hold you to it, Lily, mind. Have you managed to do any spells here yet? Is your magic working?’

  ‘I think it will, but there’s a spell that’s meant to stop us doing any,’ Lily explained. ‘It’s old though, almost worn out. If we go exploring up to the top of the house, I think it’ll be even thinner. I’ll be able to get out of it.’

  Henrietta nodded approvingly. ‘Good. This afternoon, then. You’d better go and sit in your place, Lily, I can hear people coming.’

  ‘Be good.’ Lily eyed her anxiously. ‘I don’t think you’
ll like Mr Fanshawe; he’s supposed to be teaching us how awful magic is. He might say things you don’t agree with…’

  ‘You do that all the time,’ Henrietta told her, curling up in a smooth little ball. ‘And I simply ignore you. Don’t fuss, Lily. I can manage to keep myself quiet.’

  Lily spent Mr Fanshawe’s lesson trying to watch Henrietta’s window without being too obvious about it, and flinching every time he said something that she knew the dog would disagree with. Henrietta did manage to control herself, but Lily noticed the shutters shaking a couple of times, particularly when Mr Fanshawe was talking about tainted families, and degenerate magicians.

  She lingered in the classroom as the others hurried outside. Georgie nudged her as the last of the girls raced out of the doorway. ‘Was that Henrietta?’

  ‘Did you see her?’

  ‘No! I saw you! Twitching and jumping all the time. You really couldn’t have looked any more suspicious. We have to be careful, Lily. I’m going to talk to Sarah.’ Georgie sighed crossly, and stalked out of the room, leaving Lily gaping after her. She was sure she hadn’t been that obvious. And why was Georgie so angry?

  Henrietta nosed her way out from behind the shutter, and gazed at Lily, with glinting eyes. ‘This place is working on her already.’

  ‘It can’t be. We’ve only been here a day and a bit! She knows how important it is that we find Peter, and then rescue Father and get those spells out of her.’

  Henrietta stretched out her front paws luxuriously, and yawned. ‘But you’re forgetting, she’s already weakened by the very spells you want her to get rid of. Your mother half-broke Georgie, setting them inside her. I’ve teased her unfairly, I think.’ Henrietta glanced up wickedly. ‘Not that I intend to stop, it’s far too much fun.’

  ‘We really need to get away,’ Lily muttered.

  ‘I shall go exploring upstairs.’ Henrietta jumped down from the window seat. ‘I shall wait for you, somewhere near the top of the third-floor stairs, after your lessons.’ She nudged Lily’s ankle affectionately. ‘I’ll smell you coming, don’t worry.’ She trotted to the door, peered round it, and shot away up the stairs.