Conrad’s Fate

Stallery was in the news around then anyway. Count Rudolf died suddenly. People gossiping in the bookshop said he was quite young really, but some diseases took no account of age, did they? “Driven to an early grave,” Mrs Potts said to me. “Mark my words. And the new Count is only twenty-one, they say. His sister’s even younger. They’ll be having to marry soon to preserve the family name. She’ll insist on it.”

Daisy was very interested in weddings. She hunted everywhere for a magazine that might have pictures of the new Count Robert and his sister, Lady Felice. All she found was a newspaper with the announcement of Count Robert’s engagement to Lady Mary Ogworth in it. “Just plain print,” she complained. “No photos.”

“Daisy won’t find pictures,” Mrs Potts told me. “Stallery likes its privacy, it does. They know how to keep the media out of their lives up there. I’ve heard there’s electrical fences all round those grounds, and savage dogs patrolling inside. She won’t want people prying, not she.”

“Who’s she?” I asked.

Mrs Potts paused, kneeling with her back to me on the stairs. “Pass the polish,” she said. “Thanks. She,” she went on, rubbing in polish in a slow, enjoying sort of way, “is the old Countess. She’s got rid of her husband – bothered and nagged him to death, I’ve heard – and now she won’t want anyone to see while she works on the new Count. They say he’s well under her thumb already and bound to be more so, poor boy. She likes all the power, all the money. He’ll marry that girl she’s chosen and then she’ll run the pair of them, you’ll see.”

“She sounds horrible,” I said, fishing for more.

“Oh, she is,” said Mrs Potts. “Used to be on the stage. Caught the old Count by kicking up her legs in a chorus line, I heard. And…”

Unfortunately, Uncle Alfred came rushing upstairs at this point and upset Mrs Potts’ cleaning bucket and Mrs Potts’ nerves along with it. I never got Mrs Potts to gossip about Stallery again. That was my Fate at work there, I thought. But I got a few more hints from Uncle Alfred himself. With his face almost withered with worry, he said to me, “What happens up in Stallery now, eh? It could be even worse. I mention no names, but someone’s very power hungry up there. I dread the next set of changes, Con.”

He was so worried that he telephoned his Magicians’ Circle and they actually met on a Tuesday, which was almost unheard-of. After that, they met on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and I helped carry up twice the number of dusty wine bottles every week.

And those weeks slowly passed, until the dread day arrived when the Headmistress came and gave everyone in the top class a School Leaver’s Form. “Take this home to your parent or guardian,” she said. “Tell them that if they want you to leave school at the end of this term, they must sign Section A. If they want you to go on to an Upper School, then they sign Section B. Get them to sign tonight. I want all these forms back tomorrow without fail.”

I took my form home to the shop, prepared for battle and cunning. I went in through the back yard and straight upstairs to Mum. My plan was to get her to sign Section B before Uncle Alfred even knew I’d got the form.

“What’s this?” Mum said vaguely as I pushed the yellow paper in front of her typewriter.

“School Leaver’s Form,” I explained. “If you want me to go on at school you have to sign Section B.”

She pushed her hair back distractedly. “I can’t do that, Conrad, not when you’ve got a job already. And at Stallery of all places. I must say I’m really disappointed in you.”

I felt as if the whole world had been pulled out from under me like a carpet. “Stallery!” I said.

“If that’s what you told your uncle, yes,” my mother said. And she took the form and signed Section A with her married name. F. Tesdinic. “There,” she said. “I wash my hands of you, Conrad.”

Chapter Three (#ulink_bf31604f-27f5-59b5-ac54-9e7f6df5713e)

I stood there, feeling utterly let down. I didn’t know what to do, or what to think. Then, when I next caught up with myself, I was racing downstairs, waving the School Leaver’s Form. I rushed into the shop, where Uncle Alfred was standing behind the pay desk, and I wagged the form furiously in his face.

“What the hell do you mean by this?” I pretty well shrieked at him.

A lot of customers whirled round from the shelves and stared at me. Uncle Alfred looked at them, blinked at me and said to Daisy, “Do you mind taking over here for a moment?” He dodged out from behind the desk and seized my elbow. “Come up to my workroom and let me explain.”

He more or less dragged me from the shop. I was still flapping the form with my free hand and I think I was shouting too. “What do you mean – explain?” I screamed as we went upstairs. “You can’t do this to me! You’ve no right!”

When we reached the workroom, Uncle Alfred shoved me inside into a strong smell of recent magic and shut the door behind both of us with a clap. He straightened his glasses, which I had knocked crooked. He was panting and he looked more worried than I had ever seen him, but I didn’t care. I opened my mouth to shout at him again.

“No, don’t, Con,” Uncle Alfred said earnestly. “Please. I’m doing the best I can for you. Honestly. It’s your Fate – this wretched bad karma of yours – that’s the problem, see.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I demanded.

“Everything,” he said. “I’ve been doing a lot of divining about you and it’s even worse than I realised. Unless you put right what you did wrong in your previous life – and put it right now – you are going to be horribly and painfully dead before the year’s out.”

“What?” I said. “I don’t believe you!”

“It’s true,” he assured me. “The Lords of Karma will just scrap you and let you try again when you next get reborn. They’re quite ruthless, you know. But I don’t ask you to believe me just like that. I’d like you to come to the Magicians’ Circle this evening and see what they say. They don’t know you, I haven’t told them about you, but I’m willing to bet they’ll spot this karma of yours straight off. To be brutally frank with you, it’s round you in a black cloud these days, Con.”

I felt terrible. My mouth went dry and my stomach shook, in wobbly waves. “But,” I said, and found my voice had gone down to a whisper, “but what’s it got to do with this?” I tried to flourish the Leaver’s Form at him again, but I could only manage a feeble flap. My arm had gone weak.

“Ah, I wish you’d come to me first,” said my uncle. “I’d have explained. You see, I’ve discovered what you did wrong. There was someone in your last life the Lords of Karma required you to put an end to. And you didn’t. You lost your nerve and let them go free. And this person got reborn and continued his evil ways in this present life too…”

“But I still don’t see—” I began.

He held up a hand to stop me. It was shaking. He seemed to be shaking with worry all over. “Let me finish, Con. Let me go on. Since I discovered what caused your Fate, I’ve done every kind of divination to find out who this person is that you didn’t put an end to. It’s been really difficult – I don’t have to tell you how the magics up at Stallery interfere with spells down here – but it was pretty definite even so. It’s someone up at Stallery, Con.”

“You mean it’s the new Count?” I said.

“I don’t know,” said my uncle. “It’s one of them up there. Someone up at Stallery has a lot of power and is doing something really bad, and they’ve got the exact pattern of this person you should have done away with last time. That’s all I can find out, Con. Look on the bright side. We know where to find him or her. That’s why I arranged for you to get a job up at Stallery.”

“What kind of a job?” I asked.

“Domestic,” said Uncle Alfred. “The kind of thing you’re used to really. The steward up there – butler, whatever – is a Mr Amos and he’s reckoning to take on some school leavers shortly, to train up as servants to the new Count. Day after the end of term, he’ll be interviewing a whole bunch of you. And he’ll take you, Con, never fear. I’ll put a really good spell on you so he’ll have no choice. You don’t need to worry about getting the job. And you’ll be right in the middle of things then, cleaning boots and running errands, and you’ll have ample opportunity to seek out the person responsible for this terrible karma you carry…”

I thought, Cleaning boots! And nearly burst into tears. My uncle went on talking, nervously, persuasively, but I just couldn’t attend any more. It wasn’t simply that my careful Plan had been no use at all. It was more that I suddenly saw where the Plan had been leading me. I hadn’t admitted it to myself before, but I knew now – I knew very fiercely – that what I wanted was to be like Anthea, to leave the bookshop, leave Stallchester, go somewhere quite different and make a career of some kind. I hadn’t actually thought what career, until then, but now I thought of flying an aircraft, becoming a great surgeon, being a famous scientist, or perhaps, best of all, learning to be the strongest magician in the world.

It was like peeping past a door that was just slamming in my face. I could do so many interesting things if I had the right education. Instead, I was going to spend my life cleaning boots.

“I don’t want to!” I blurted out. “I want to go to Stall High!”

“You haven’t listened to what I’ve been telling you,” Uncle Alfred said. “You’ve got to get this evil Fate of yours cleared away first, Con. If you don’t, you’ll die in agony before the year’s out. Once you’ve gone up to Stallery, found out who this person is and done away with him or her, then you can do anything you want. I’ll arrange for you to go to Stall High then like a shot. Of course I will.”

“Really?” I said.

“Really,” he said.

It was like that door softly swinging open again. True, there was an ugly doorstep in the way labelled Bad Karma, Evil Fate, but I could step over that. I found myself letting out a long, long sigh. “All right,” I said.

Uncle Alfred patted my shoulder. “Good lad. I knew you’d see reason. But I don’t ask you to take my word alone. Come to the Magicians’ Circle tonight and see what they have to say. All right now?” I supposed I was. I nodded. “Then could I get back to the shop?” he said. “Daisy hasn’t the experience yet.”

I nodded again. But as he pushed me out on to the stairs, I had a thought. “Who’s going to do the cooking with me gone?” I asked. I was surprised not to have thought of this before.

“Don’t worry about that,” my uncle said. “We’ll hire Daisy’s mother. Daisy’s always telling me what a good cook her mum is.”

I stumbled away up to my room and stared up at Stallery twinkling out of its fold in the mountains. My mind felt like someone in the dark, stumbling about among huge pieces of furniture with sharp corners on them. I kept barking myself on the corners. No Stall High unless I went and cleaned boots in Stallery – that was one corner. The Lords of Karma scrapped you if you were no good – that was another. A person up there among those glinting windows was so wicked they had to be done away with – that was another—and I had to deal with the person now because I’d been too feeble to do it in my last life – that was yet another. Then I barked my mind on the most important corner of the lot. If I didn’t do this, I’d die. It was this person or me, him or me.

Him or me, I kept saying to myself. Him or me.

Those words were going through my head while I helped Uncle Alfred carry the bottles of port up to his workroom that evening. I had to back into the room because I had two bottles in each hand.

“Dear me,” someone said behind me. “What appalling karma!”

Before I could turn round, someone else said, “My dear Alfred, did you realise that your nephew carries some of the blackest Fate I’ve ever seen?”