Lily Read online

  ‘Thank goodness, or they might have recognised us,’ Georgie agreed.

  ‘I wonder who he thought we were, though,’ Lily went on.

  Henrietta sniffed. ‘He was probably more worried about the price he got for his vegetables at the market than he was about two scruffy children.’

  Lily opened her mouth to protest, and then shut it again as she looked at Georgie. Her sister was a sight, and she was sure that she looked just as bad. ‘Maybe we don’t need to worry about Lacefield and the station,’ was all she said. ‘Perhaps no one will care.’

  ‘What they’ll care about is the gold,’ Henrietta snapped. ‘And that it’s in the hands of two little ragamuffins. You’ll have to furbish yourselves up a bit, before you go flashing that purse around.’

  ‘What about the not-talking?’ Georgie said sweetly.

  Henrietta gave a little low growl. ‘There’s no one to see me. Stop talking yourself, and get on with using those housekeeping spells you were boasting about. Get the wrinkles out of your dress, and your sister’s, and for heaven’s sake, girl, do something about your hair. Though I suppose at least it’s clean now, which it wasn’t when I first met you.’

  Georgie flushed pink with crossness, which Lily noticed with surprise made her look much prettier. ‘I was under a spell!’ Georgie hissed.

  ‘Well, that’s your excuse,’ Henrietta retorted, her eyes snapping, and the curl of her tail looking very tight and warlike.

  ‘Can I help with the spell?’ Lily asked hopefully, wanting to distract Georgie and Henrietta from each other.

  Georgie turned and scowled at her. ‘No!’ Then she huffed and turned her back pointedly on Henrietta. ‘Oh, very well, I suppose so. We need something to straighten out. The grass stems will do, can you pick a handful?’

  She pointed at the faded brownish grasses at the foot of the hedge, and Lily, uncertainly, plucked a few stems. She had no idea how this was going to have anything to do with her crumpled dress.

  ‘Scrunch them up a bit in your hands,’ Georgie commanded. ‘I suppose there really isn’t anyone coming, is there?’ she added worriedly. ‘Perhaps just for this bit we ought to hide over by those trees. I can’t guarantee it won’t shimmer.’

  There was a little clump of trees further on, and they scuttled towards it, hurrying into the shadowy dimness, and sighing gratefully. It was still only very early, but the sun was beating down hard already.

  ‘Here, spread them out on my lap,’ Georgie explained, sitting down on a fallen tree. ‘Then listen, and you say it too. I hope I can remember it properly.’

  Henrietta sniffed, but she had jumped up onto the tree too, and was sitting next to Georgie and staring interestedly at the grasses.

  Georgie began to tease the crumpled stems through her fingers, humming in a low tone which Lily hoped didn’t mean she had forgotten the words. Then she began to chant, slowly and sweetly,

  ‘Threads weave and ribbons coil,

  Silks press, linens boil,

  Stitch and sponge, irons from the fire,

  Clean and straighten my attire. You too, Lily!’ she hissed, twitching the grass stems straight in her lap. She glared crossly as Henrietta leaned over and seized a piece of grass in her teeth, pulling it to lie neatly with the others. ‘Say it again!’

  Together they repeated the spell, until all the grasses were lying in smart rows.

  ‘Very impressive. Stand up,’ Henrietta said, sitting down on the fallen tree now, her collar gleaming. It even had little golden studs on the pink leather, which Lily was certain hadn’t been there before. ‘Oh, much better! Even your hair,’ she added to Georgie, with her head thoughtfully on one side.

  Lily agreed with her. Even though Georgie was scowling, her hair was hanging in pretty waves, and her yellow muslin frock was spotless, its frills sharp-edged, as if they’d been ironed by a lady’s maid. Lily twisted, trying to see herself, and then gasped in sudden realisation. The unpleasant tightness round her middle – which she’d been used to for months – had gone. Her dress actually fitted her. ‘You made it bigger!’ she told Georgie admiringly.

  ‘We did.’ Georgie nodded. ‘I’m sure my spells work better when you say them too, Lily. Look, even your boots are polished.’

  Lily pointed one toe out in front of her, admiring the mirror-like gloss. They were quite as good as Mr Francis’s Sunday uniform boots, and he had been in the Seventh Hussars, as he never failed to remind everyone in the servants’ hall.

  ‘We look as though we might be able to afford our railway fares, I think,’ she said happily. ‘The bags look smarter too, not so scuffed. Now we just have to keep ourselves clean all the way to the town.’

  ‘I’ve driven this way with Arabel,’ Henrietta said, nosing out between the trees. ‘I recognise it now. It isn’t far.’ She trotted out onto the lane, and looked back at the girls impatiently. ‘Well, come along!’

  Lacefield was not a large town. But for two girls who had lived secluded on an island their whole lives, it seemed enormous, and frighteningly busy.

  Lily slipped her hand into Georgie’s and stared as a smart carriage rumbled by, drawn by two glossy chestnut horses. There was a coat of arms painted on the door panel – the carriage must belong to some grand family in a big house nearby. Horses were awfully large, she decided, stepping a little further back from the roadway. She hadn’t expected them to be that big, somehow. But so shiny, and the way the harness jingled! She felt like laughing out loud from pure excitement, and she couldn’t help skipping, just a little.

  ‘We’ll have to ask someone where the station is,’ she murmured.

  Henrietta gave a tiny nod. Now that there were people all around, she was obviously trying very hard to be discreet.

  ‘We could ask him,’ Georgie suggested, pointing to a bored-looking boy sweeping the street outside a greengrocer’s shop, although he was more leaning on the broom than actually sweeping with it. He stared at them curiously as they came closer.

  ‘Could you tell us where the station is, please?’ Lily asked him, as politely as she could, but he only gaped at her.

  ‘The railway station?’ Georgie added helpfully, as the silence lengthened, and eventually he nodded, and pointed to the end of the street. ‘Down there, and turn left,’ he muttered.

  ‘Have you noticed,’ Georgie muttered worriedly as they followed his directions, ‘that every other girl we’ve seen has a hat on? And gloves? Perhaps that’s why he stared so.’

  ‘He still is,’ Lily reported, having turned round to check. ‘But I shouldn’t think much that’s exciting happens to such a boring boy.’

  ‘Don’t wave at him!’ Georgie told her, shocked. ‘I’m quite certain that’s unladylike.’

  ‘Well, he went pink and he’s pretending to sweep again now, so maybe,’ Lily agreed. ‘There’s a lot to learn, isn’t there? Do you think there’s anything we can do about the hats? You couldn’t whip up a couple out of dock leaves, or something?’

  ‘Here? Are you mad?’ Georgie hissed.

  ‘No, I suppose not. Well, we’ll just have to be strange then.’ But now Georgie had pointed it out, it did seem that everyone was eyeing them in surprise, and they started to walk faster. ‘I don’t think I’d mind as much if they were talking about us behind our backs because they suspected we were dangerous magicians. But it’s stupid that they’re fussing about hats.’

  ‘Just come on. Look, I can see the station.’ Georgie grabbed her hand and pulled her along, as Lily eavesdropped on two very smartly dressed ladies.

  ‘Are they Mrs Enderby’s granddaughters? I wouldn’t be surprised. Really, the woman has no idea of proper behaviour.’

  ‘I bet I’d like her,’ Lily muttered as Georgie hurried past her and into the little station building, which was red brick with curly white ironwork.

  ‘I suppose we just go and buy a ticket,’ Georgie muttered, looking uncertain. ‘I know I’ve read about tickets in the newspaper. There was a terrible scandal about how e
xpensive they are.’

  Henrietta trotted further into the station, and jerked her head at them meaningfully, clearly pointing out a window where a man in a peaked cap with a lot of silver braid, and a large handlebar moustache, was eyeing them rather distrustfully.

  ‘We’d like to go to London, please,’ Lily said firmly, marching up to the window, and searching in the pocket of her dress for the little bag of stolen gold.

  ‘Indeed.’ The man sniffed disbelievingly. ‘Ten shillings. For first class.’ He glared down at the girls, clearly expecting them to giggle and run away. He looked positively gobsmacked when Lily produced a gold sovereign from her pocket, and handed it to him.

  ‘When is the next train, please?’ Georgie beamed at him.

  ‘In about an hour,’ the man stammered, pulling on his moustache and staring at them as he handed Lily a pile of coins. ‘Platform one.’

  Lily resisted the urge to run as they made their way to the platforms. She had a dreadful feeling that the man was going to run after them, shouting that they must have stolen the money – which of course they had.

  They collapsed, giggling, on a bench on the platform, and Henrietta barked sharply at Lily, demanding to be picked up. Then she snuggled against Lily’s shoulder, so she could whisper unobtrusively in her ear.

  ‘How much money do we have?’

  ‘Twenty of those sovereigns,’ Lily told her. ‘It isn’t a lot, is it? I hadn’t thought much beyond getting away from the island. What shall we do in London? We’ll need more money before long.’

  ‘I think we should worry about getting there first.’ Georgie leaned close, so as to join their whispered conversation. ‘Let’s just get as far away from Mama and Merrythought as possible.’

  Lily nodded. The mad excitement of their escape was fading, for both of them, and the station was growing busier. People were walking down the platforms, and the station staff all wore dark uniforms. Each time a porter appeared, Lily felt her heart shudder, convinced that Marten was after them in her gleaming black dress.

  Georgie shot a nervous glance around the platform. ‘All Mama had to do was create another boat somehow, you know. Or just send Marten. Who knows what that creature can do? Perhaps she can walk on water? If she’s made of spells, she can do anything.’ Georgie shivered. ‘We shouldn’t have stayed on the beach last night. What if she’d come hunting for us over the water? We should have kept going!’

  ‘In the dark? And I shouldn’t think there were trains in the night.’ Lily hugged her sister. Henrietta was right – Georgie was fragile. Too fragile for an adventure like this one. She could feel her shaking. ‘We would have been in just as much danger here.’

  ‘I suppose…’ Georgie pulled away from her quickly, glancing back at the station building. ‘Shhh!’

  A tall, thin woman in a startlingly bright green travelling dress was marshalling a group of children, two servants, and an enormous mountain of baggage, onto the platform. At least three of the children seemed to be determined to throw themselves onto the railway line, preferably taking with them a large red parrot in an ornate golden cage.

  Henrietta stiffened on Lily’s lap, bristling at the bird, which she seemed to regard as an insult. It took one look at her and agreed, letting off a series of ear-splitting shrieks, which ended with what sounded like, ‘Foul mongrel!’

  The three little boys went into fits of laughter, one of them even rolling along the ground, temptingly close to Lily’s foot. She restrained herself, merely patting Henrietta, and murmuring, ‘Horrible mangy thing!’ just loud enough for the parrot to hear. It probably had no idea what it was saying, but still.

  The woman in the bright-green dress, and the girl with her, stared down their remarkably long pale noses – they had to be mother and daughter – at Lily and Georgie, and then smirked at each other in a way that made Lily want to leap up and scream.

  ‘What are they looking like that for?’ she hissed to Georgie.

  ‘Probably the hats again,’ Georgie muttered. ‘I mean look, hers would make at least three hats.’ It was true that the mother’s hat was loaded with so much lace and flowers and feathers, plus a veil, that it must have made her neck ache.

  ‘Shh, I want to listen,’ Lily hushed her. The girl was whispering, but in the loud, hissy sort of whisper that was clearly meant to be heard.

  ‘I don’t think either of them are wearing corsets! And they’ve obviously never even heard of a dress-improver!’ she sniggered.

  ‘What’s a dress-improver?’ Lily nudged Georgie. ‘Is it whatever’s making her bottom stick out like a beetle?’

  ‘She’ll hear you! Oh, Lily, look! The train!’

  Puffing grandly towards them was what looked like a large black and golden dragon, belching out steam, and even sparks, so that it seemed to be surrounded by clouds of fiery smoke.

  ‘But magic isn’t supposed to be allowed!’ Lily hissed to Georgie, her eyes wide with horror, almost expecting a detachment of Queen’s Men to arrest them all on the spot.

  ‘It isn’t magic. It’s all done with pistons – and – and things,’ Georgie muttered, although she was half hiding behind Lily, and she had her hair in her mouth again.

  ‘It looks magic,’ Lily whispered, her eyes shining. ‘I thought it was a dragon. Wouldn’t a dragon be wonderful?’

  ‘No,’ someone muttered very quietly by her shoulder, and Lily scratched Henrietta’s ears. She looked unnerved by the train too, her eyes bulging even more than usual.

  ‘London train! All aboard!’ It was the man from the ticket office, roaring and stomping up and down the platform with a flag. The smart family with the parrot were twittering around, trying to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind, and Lily snatched up her bag, and hurried to one of the black-and-cream-painted carriages. Then she went back for Georgie, who was still sitting open-mouthed on the bench, and hustled her in, shooing her into a little box-like room inside the carriage, so she could collapse onto a velvet-covered seat.

  ‘I never thought trains would be so big,’ Georgie muttered, clutching the edge of the window and looking panicked as the huge machine shuddered and throbbed, and drew away.

  Lily stood in the corridor with Henrietta in her arms, watching as the little station seemed to slip away from them. Henrietta was wheezing with excitement, her little curl of a tail shaking. ‘So fast!’ she muttered. And then she darted her head forward sharply. ‘Look!’

  Lily looked. Standing alone on the platform was a still black figure. The long black dress trailed the ground, covered in a black cloak. Now the black veil was swathed around a close-fitting black bonnet.

  Marten.

  They watched her as the train hurried away, the rhythm of the wheels stilling the racing of their hearts.

  ‘She didn’t catch the train,’ Henrietta pointed out. ‘We can be thankful for that.’

  ‘But she knows where we’re going,’ Lily murmured, her cheek still pressed against the chill glass of the window. Then she straightened up, glancing back at Georgie in the compartment, who was sitting quite upright on the very edge of the seat, staring out of the other window, her teeth biting into her lip. ‘We don’t tell her!’ she hissed to Henrietta.

  The dog eyed Georgie thoughtfully, and nodded. ‘No. Better not.’ She wriggled down from Lily’s arms, and trotted into the compartment, beckoning Lily to follow with a jerk of her head. Then she busily shoved the sliding door closed with her bottom, and turned back to the girls, her eyes sparkling. ‘I do trust neither of you suffer from motion sickness?’ she asked, as Lily lifted her onto the seat, and she sat staring around her regally.

  ‘It can’t be worse than the boat,’ Lily pointed out. ‘I do wish we’d brought sandwiches, actually. I should think London is quite a long way away, isn’t it?’

  ‘There’s just so much of it…’ Lily murmured, staring out of the carriage window as the landscape sped by. ‘I know Merrythought was only a very small island, but I hadn’t thought there’d be so
much of everywhere else…’

  Georgie nodded. ‘All those houses – all those people!’

  They had just wheezed out of another station, in a middling sort of town.

  ‘London is a great deal bigger than that, you know,’ Henrietta pointed out helpfully. She seemed to find their amazement rather funny.

  Lily nodded. ‘I suppose it must be.’ She sank back against the padded train seat, letting the view out of the window become a greenish blur. ‘What are we going to do when we get there?’ she asked, in a small voice. ‘I hadn’t thought much further than getting away from Mama.’

  ‘Well… We’ll have to find somewhere to stay. A boarding house, I suppose,’ Georgie said slowly. ‘And then try to find out where Father has been imprisoned. His letters have a London postmark, but the envelopes have a different handwriting. The Queen’s Men read them before they’re sent to Mama, I suppose, and that means they might have sent them on to London first, and the prison isn’t there at all. But it’s somewhere to start.’ She gave a rather hopeless sigh.

  Lily nudged her. ‘Georgie, don’t be miserable! You can’t – we must be about a hundred miles away from home!’

  Georgie stared at her. ‘I know! That’s why I’m miserable!’

  ‘But aren’t you excited?’ Lily asked her. ‘How can you miss home, when you think about what Mama was planning?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I do.’ Georgie sighed again. ‘I don’t like all this bigness.’

  Henrietta sniffed, and eyed her thoughtfully. Lily saw her give Georgie the same slightly worried look nine hours later, when they stumbled out of the carriage – into the madness of Paddington Station, at five o’clock in the evening.

  ‘The whole of our house would fit in here,’ Lily whispered, staring around at the cavernous building. It was still light outside, but round glass gas lamps were suspended from the delicate iron trellises in the arched roof, burning like a hundred little moons. There were even pigeons flying about under the glass.

  ‘The newspaper said that all the trains into Wales and the West start from Paddington,’ Georgie murmured, her eyes so wide that the whites showed all round. ‘I suppose it would be big. But still…’