Goodly and Grave in a Case of Bad Magic

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Books by Justine Windsor (#litres_trial_promo)

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Lucy Goodly dodged sideways. A flurry of sparks whizzed past, just missing her ear. Instead they hit the chimney breast behind her and sputtered out, leaving a faint smell of burning as well as a large scorch mark on Lady Tabitha Grave’s nose. Not the real Lady Tabitha Grave, but her portrait, which hung over the fireplace.

“Excellent!” said Lord Grave. “Your turn now. Concentrate. Create your own attack sparks and return fire!” Bathsheba, Lord Grave’s black panther, blinked her yellow eyes before slinking off behind one of the sofas, as though she understood what was about to happen.

Lucy narrowed her eyes and focused her thoughts on the spell in hand. As Lord Grave had instructed her earlier, she imagined all the warmth in her body rushing towards her fingers. As she did so, her fingertips grew hotter and hotter until they felt as though they would burst into flames. When she felt she couldn’t bear the heat a second longer, she raised her hand behind her head, and then, as if she was throwing an invisible ball, flung it forward. The orange-red sparks that were clustered around her fingers flew off like tiny flies and hurtled towards Lord Grave, who ducked. But he was a smidgeon too late and the sparks grazed the crown of his top hat. Lord Grave whipped it off and beat the sparks out before they could do too much damage. Lucy folded her arms and smiled in satisfaction.

“Impressive!” Lord Grave said. “Now, as I have just demonstrated, you might not always be able to get out of the path of an attack spark. And a magician skilled in this particular art might be able to create a spark that will track you if you try to flee from it. However, there is a technique that—”

There was a knock at the drawing-room door.

“Who is it?” Lord Grave called.

“It’s Violet, sir.”

“One moment!” Lord Grave put his hat back on. Then he hurried over to the window and opened it in order to dispel the smell of burning before calling Violet in.

“Please, sir. Mrs Crawley wants to know if you can spare Lucy for a while. She needs us to fetch some ingredients for the ball,” Violet said shyly. She was a small mousey-haired girl three or four years younger than Lucy, who was twelve. Caruthers, Violet’s knitted frog which she carried everywhere with her, was tucked into her apron pocket.

“Very well. Lucy has finished her … dusting, I think, so she’s free to go.”

“Thank you, sir. Oh my, look at Lady Grave! Her nose has gone all black!”

“What? Oh yes. Don’t worry, Violet, it’s soot from the fire, I expect. Becky can deal with it later. Now, off you go,” Lord Grave said. Of course he couldn’t tell Violet the real reason for Lady Grave’s blackened nose. The little scullery maid had no idea that her employer was a magician – as were most of the other staff at Grave Hall.

“Thank you, sir.” Violet gave Lord Grave a timid curtsey and then the two girls left the drawing room and headed for the kitchen.

“He’s up to no good!” Violet said as they hurried downstairs.

“What do you mean?” Lucy replied cautiously.

“I could smell smoke. He’s been puffing on his cigars in secret, hasn’t he? Master Bertie will be very cross if he finds out!”

Master Bertie was Lord Grave’s son. Surprisingly, Bertie hadn’t inherited his father’s magical ability. In fact, Bertie didn’t even believe in magic, arguing that it could all be explained by science.

Lucy breathed a quiet sigh of relief. She’d worried for a moment that Violet might have seen traces of the attack sparks in the drawing room and become suspicious. Although most non-magical grown-ups wouldn’t have noticed magic if it bit them on the ear, non-magical children were a different matter. Their minds were still developing and much more open, so it wasn’t unknown for them to be able to see spells being cast. Because of this, all the magicians who lived at or visited Grave Hall were careful how they used their talents whenever Violet, and Becky, the under-housemaid, were around.

Down in the kitchen, Mrs Crawley, Grave Hall’s cook-cum-housekeeper, was in a high state of anxiety. Potatoes, carrots, bags of flour and sugar, and a large bunch of stinging nettles were strewn across the huge kitchen table. Mrs Crawley was bent over the cooking range, which crouched in the chimney breast. Today her long beard was fastened in a bun on her chin. It looked like a giant, hairy spot. The reason for this unusual beard style was to stop it trailing in the numerous pots and pans that were bubbling away.

A ginger cat was lying in front of the kitchen range, warming itself. It was not the most attractive of cats with its one and a half ears, missing eye and truncated tail.

“Look at Smell. He’s so lazy!” Violet exclaimed, before going over to tickle the cat under the chin. Smell was named for his unfortunate propensity for producing whiffs that could knock a person out if they got too close. Being a magical cat, he also had the ability to speak, but of course he never did so in front of Violet and Becky, or anyone else non-magical.

The heat in the kitchen was stifling and for once Lucy wished she was wearing a frock instead of her customary breeches, shirt and jacket. Mrs Crawley always said that frocks kept the nether regions cool in a hot kitchen and that was why she preferred to wear them herself, even though she was actually a man. Lucy had been very confused by this when she first met Mrs Crawley but, as Mrs Crawley had pointed out, it wasn’t usual for girls to wear breeches, so she and Lucy had something in common in their unconventional clothing choices. Mrs Crawley’s name was also something Lucy had found puzzling at first. But now she was familiar with Lord Grave’s insistence on sticking with certain traditions, one of them being that the cook should always be known as “Mrs” regardless of marital status or gender.

Vonk, the butler, who was small man, as short as Lucy in fact, was sitting at the kitchen table. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and he was carefully polishing the best silver cutlery. At the same time, he and Mrs Crawley seemed to be having words.

“Mrs C, I really don’t think that’s wise,” Vonk was saying, pointing the tines of the fork he was cleaning at the bunch of nettles that lay on the table. “Lord Grave said no experimental dishes for the feast.”

“Vonk, nettle pudding is hardly experimental. I found the recipe in an ancient cookbook. Many magicians ate it in olden times.”

“Wouldn’t nettle pudding sting your mouth?” Lucy asked.

“A good point!” Vonk replied.

Mrs Crawley chuckled. “Of course it won’t. Cooking takes the sting out of them! I’m sure you girls will like it when you try it!”

Lucy and Violet exchanged disgusted looks. Mrs Crawley was a little too avant-garde at times with her cooking. Only that morning she had tried to tempt them both with bacon and frogspawn for breakfast.

Once they’d obtained the shopping list from Mrs Crawley, Lucy and Violet left their fellow servants to carry on bickering about menus, and set off towards Grave Village. The trees that lined the rough road leading to the village were beginning to look rather bare, their branches dark and spiky against the grey October sky. Lucy and Violet scrunched their way through the piles of red, yellow and purple leaves strewn underfoot. A fine rain began to fall, so they put the hoods of their winter cloaks up. Violet began chattering about the preparations for the ball.

“I wish I was working on the big night. I don’t know why Lord Grave is giving me and Becky the day of the ball off. I hope you’ll be all right on your own.” Violet looked anxiously at Lucy.

“I’ll be fine. Vonk and Mrs Crawley will be here.” Lucy knew that Lord Grave had decided Violet and Becky should be absent from Grave Hall on the day of the ball, in case either of them noticed any magical activity. Lucy really didn’t mind being the only maid on duty. In fact, she couldn’t wait for the ball. Magicians from all over the world were due to attend, and Lord Grave had promised to introduce her to them. According to him, magicians liked to show off and try to out-magic each other at these sorts of events, so the ball promised to be a spectacular affair.

Lord Grave had also told Lucy that the ball was being held to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the defeat of a very wicked magician called Hester Coin, by Lord Grave’s great-grandmother, Lady Constance Grave. Although Lady Constance had successfully vanquished Hester Coin, she had been worried that other corrupt magicians might undertake similar criminal activities in the future. So she’d created Magicians Against the Abuse of Magic, otherwise known as MAAM, to combat such threats.

Since then, the head of MAAM had always been a member of the Grave family, apart from one recent period of a few years when the current Lord Grave had been too sad and heartsick at the disappearance of his son Bertie to bother with MAAM duties. But Lucy had changed all that when she had rescued Bertie from Amethyst Shade, the wicked magician who had kidnapped him. Now Lucy herself was a proud member of MAAM. Of course Violet didn’t know any of this. As far as she knew, the ball was to celebrate Bertie’s return home.

Naturally, Lucy had been very keen to find out exactly what Hester Coin had done that was so bad. However, Lord Grave had refused to tell her.

“She committed so many crimes, it would take too long to explain them all. And, for various reasons, we don’t like her last and most heinous crime to be widely known. She was finally defeated here at Grave Hall, and only we Graves and Lord Percy’s family know the full details.”

Although she was warm and toasty inside her thick cloak, Lucy couldn’t help shivering a little as she remembered the look on Lord Grave’s face when he’d said this. He’d looked afraid. Lord Grave was a courageous man who didn’t scare easily, so Hester Coin must have done something very bad indeed.

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After about an hour, Lucy and Violet reached St Isan’s, the old church that stood at the edge of Grave Village. The church clock began to chime eleven, sending the crows perched on the spire flapping and cawing into the sky. By now the rain had stopped and the sun had come out, although the day was still chilly. The two girls pushed back the hoods of their cloaks as they took a shortcut through the graveyard to reach the high road where the shops were. Violet murmured to Caruthers in a soothing manner as they walked.

“Don’t worry. It’s daytime. All the ghosties will be asleep,” she told him.

The two girls picked their way between the gravestones. Some were very old and spotted with lichen, their inscriptions faded. Violet pointed to a particularly decrepit one, which leaned over at an angle.

“Look, Lucy. When a gravestone’s all lopsided like that it means the person buried under it’s been trying to get out,” she said in a hushed voice, her eyes wide.

“Who told you that?” Lucy asked.

“Becky.”

Lucy sighed. Becky loved to tease and scare Violet. “That’s a load of rubbish! Don’t believe anything she says.”

They left the graveyard behind, and headed through the church gate out into Grave Village high street. It was a bustling place. People hurried to and fro across the cobbled pavements, and horses and carts rumbled along the road. There were plenty of shops to visit. There was a draper’s, where Violet’s mother worked as a seamstress; a candle-maker; a butcher’s and a greengrocer’s. There was also a shop called Busby’s Buns that sold confectionary and cakes. Violet immediately dragged Lucy to the window of this shop where all sorts of delicious indulgences were on display. There were buns oozing cream, tarts with glossy jewel-coloured fruit fillings, as well as chocolate-covered gingerbread men – Lucy’s favourite. Her mouth watered as she imagined the spicy-sweet taste of them.