The Wonder Tales

1

1

Beyond the mirror was no cellar room, like the one Florian had just left. He fetched up instead somewhere very high up, though he could not immediately have said how he knew anything about his relative elevation, for there were no windows. He was in somebody’s wardrobe, the kind that consists of a smallish room lined wall-to-wall with cupboards. Some of the doors hung open, affording Florian a view of many racks of garments, all sumptuously coloured and finely made.

He could not find the door.

There were mirrors, though, mirrors aplenty. At least three at first count, not including any that might be concealed behind the carved, dark wooden cupboard-doors that all hung open. Was that a lazy habit, or was somebody in the process of choosing—

‘Another one,’ said a deep voice, and Florian, with a sinking heart, discovered himself to be correct upon the latter point. Spinning about in search of the source of those low, pleasant tones, he saw a tall gentleman with the silvery-white hair of advanced age, though his face did not look so very old, nor was his posture that of an elderly man. Prematurely white, perhaps; it happened to some. He was in the region of fifty, maybe fifty-five. His cool grey eyes were fixed upon Florian with a questioning look, and his mouth was rather grim. He was a well-groomed specimen, and appeared to be changing his dress, for a reddish-purple velvet coat was in the process of being returned to a nearby cupboard, and his dark silken waistcoat was unbuttoned.

‘Another one?’ Florian echoed. ‘Is this, then, what became of Oriane?’

The gentleman did not immediately answer, being engaged in laying his coat very tenderly upon a hanger carved of wood, and depositing it into the dark, welcoming recess before him. This done, he removed his waistcoat and gave it the same treatment, then turned a stern eye upon Florian. ‘Madame Travere is here, yes,’ he finally replied. ‘I can answer for it that she was well, perhaps an hour or two ago.’

Florian felt a flicker of excitement, and congratulated himself for his good fortune. To tumble, quite by chance, through the very same portal which had stolen Margot’s friend! Perhaps he would be the means of shepherding her home again, and would find himself in high favour as a consequence. These pleasing thoughts warmed his heart, and he answered in high good cheer: ‘Excellent! If you would be so kind as to direct me to her, Seigneur, then neither of us shall much longer impose upon you.’

The gentleman looked at him strangely. ‘You have a way, then, of returning yourselves to Argantel?’

‘Why,’ said Florian, experiencing for the first time a whisper of doubt, ‘One of these mirrors was the means of getting me here, wasn’t it? I should think it would work in reverse?’

A glint of cool grey amusement was his answer, and his confidence faltered. ‘Do, by all means, experiment,’ said the stern gentleman, and turned his attention back to the contents of his cupboards. ‘It would be best to get the matter over with at once.’

Florian mustered his resolve, and turned to the nearest mirror. It ran from floor to ceiling, an expanse of cold, glittering glass cradled in an ornate bronze frame. He touched it, and felt only unyielding smoothness under his fingers; no promising insubstantiality, no watery vagueness. He tried the next, a smaller silver-framed thing a few doors down; the same result. Three more there were, clad in gold, crystal and wood respectively, and none of these would oblige him either.

The last was bordered in copper, the metal poorly maintained, for it had turned greenish. In this the stern gentleman was checking the result of his selections. He adjusted, minutely, the hang of his indigo brocade coat, a handsome creation which spilled to his ankles in a flow of silver-traced cloth. His waistcoat was the other way about, silvery etched in indigo; his shirt was the kind of bright, pristine white that Florian’s could only dream of. He wore dark breeches, white stockings, silver shoes and a fall of lace at his throat, and all in all made a fine figure of envy. For a moment Florian forgot the matter of the sixth mirror, so absorbed was he in admiration.

When at last he noticed himself observed, the gentleman moved away from the mirror, with a cordial gesture of invitation. ‘Do, please, try not to get fingerprints upon the glass. I have but just had them all buffed.’

Florian scrubbed his fingers upon his trousers as he approached, though without hope of its availing him much, for they were as dirty as his hands. He did not, by now, expect that the mirror would oblige him, any more than the other five had, but he dutifully set his fingers to the glass. ‘I don’t suppose,’ said he nonchalantly, ‘that you are informed as to some other means of escaping this place?’

‘If I were, I should have long since made use of it,’ came the unpromising reply.

Florian digested that in discouraged silence. ‘I suppose it is in your power to tell me where I am got to, at least?’ he tried.

‘You are in the valley of Arganthael,’ said the gentleman. ‘The house of Laendricourt, therein, and I do not particularly recommend your going much beyond the gardens.’

Arganthael? Laendricourt? The words were so similar, and yet so different. Intriguing. ‘Why should I not go past the gardens?’ Florian protested. ‘Somewhere out there may be the way home!’

‘There is not. Believe me, I have explored the possibility, and at considerable risk to my life.’ The gentleman, being now pleased, apparently, with his appearance, turned to give Florian the full benefit of his regard, and what he saw did not please him. His brows came down, and the flickering of candlelight reflecting in his cold grey eyes gave him a most uncongenial look. ‘Those will not do, here,’ he said, indicating Florian’s grubby and worn attire with a gesture both languid and dismissing. ‘You will stand out a mile, and beside that you will undoubtedly freeze. I had better lend you something.’

Florian’s hand went to his bare throat. ‘I had the perfect neckcloth for the occasion, for a little while. What a pity that I ever gave it up.’

This earned him a sharp look, but no response. The gentleman was busy in his cupboards, rooting among an array of waistcoats, and he did not emerge for some time. When at last he turned back to Florian, he was laden down with at least three waistcoats, two coats of similar length and magnificence to his own, a shirt of moon-silver silk tissue, a pair of pale trousers and four neckcloths, all of them lacy in appearance. Florian could not for so much as an instant imagine himself thus arrayed.

He was not immediately given the clothing. ‘Who are you?’ said the gentleman, pausing to fix him with a look of strange intensity. ‘That hair… I do not quite understand it. You have never been here before?’

Florian made him a bow, the most elegant one he could manage. ‘I am Florian Talleyrand, of the Chanteraine Emporium in Argantel.’ He did not want to admit that he was only a shop boy, and saw no occasion for doing so.

What he had said to discomfort the fine gentleman he did not know, but there came a snapping together of the brows, and he repeated: ‘Chanteraine?’

‘The Chanteraines are the last word in both convenience and wonder,’ said Florian dutifully, wishing yet again that he could, by now, count himself among them.

‘Hm.’ The gentleman did not comment, but filled Florian’s arms with the heap of garments and stepped away. ‘You may make your own selections, I suppose?’ he said distantly, and then he was gone, though by no visible means, for Florian still could not see a door.

‘Wait — who are you?’ began Florian, but it was too late, and no response came. He fell instead to examining the beautiful things he had been given, with delight and not a little trepidation. What did he know of finery? How was he to determine which waistcoat would look well with which coat, or neckcloth? He puzzled over it for some minutes, feeling somewhat trepid, until he summoned back his usual insouciance and dismissed the matter. If the high-and-mighty gentleman was displeased with his choices, no doubt something would be said.

He made a strange discovery, during the removal of his own clothes. Tucked into one of the deep pockets of his own shabby trousers was a tiny book, which he unearthed from beneath the candle-stub, the tinderbox, the pencil and the couple of handkerchiefs he normally carried about with him. He had taken its weight and shape for his own little pocket-book at first, but upon drawing it out found it to be peacock-blue instead, arrayed in silk, and quite obviously not his pocket-book at all. It was the book Pharamond Chanteraine had tried to bestow upon Oriane, though how it had got into his pocket he could not imagine, for he distinctly remembered leaving it in a store-box at the emporium.

Curious.

But if Oriane was somewhere hereabouts, it was for the best that he had it; he could at last fulfil his master’s order of giving it into her own hands.

Shortly after, Florian stood arrayed in shades of green, though none quite matched the vibrancy of his hair. He had a dark green coat with a tall collar and wide sleeves; a waistcoat rather brighter, all stitched about with swirls; the pale silvery shirt and pale trousers; a spill of pewter-coloured lace at his throat; and a pair of boots sturdier than they appeared, in steel-grey. He looked with new regret at his begrimed hands, and settled for hiding them in the pockets of his coat.

The gentleman came back. A swift, surveying look, and he seemed satisfied, for his brow cleared and he made no comment.

‘Thank you for the loan of your wonderful clothes,’ Florian said.

‘I shall expect them back, and unharmed.’

Florian nodded.

The gentleman’s attention was fixed again upon Florian’s hair. ‘Your mother and father,’ he said, musingly. ‘They have not… do either of them have similarly…?’

He did not complete the sentence. ‘Mad-coloured hair?’ Florian said cheerfully. ‘Oh, no, and neither of my siblings either. I have often been accused of dying it, but that, I assure you, is never the case.’

‘No,’ came the thoughtful reply. ‘I can see that it is not. I am Ghislain,’ he added, whether in belated answer to Florian’s apparently unheard question or at random, Florian could not determine.

‘Ghislain…?’ Florian invited.

Ghislain did not immediately reply. Instead he pointed one long finger at some point over Florian’s shoulder; upon turning, Florian found, to his surprise, a frosted glass door. Had it always been there, or was it this moment appeared? Florian made for it very willingly, and only when he had set one foot over the threshold and was halfway through transferring the other did he receive a response.

‘Ghislain De Courcey,’ said the gentleman, and a sensation of shocked recognition arrested Florian’s progress on the spot. But too late, for he was over the threshold, and the next thing he heard was the resonating sound of the door slamming closed behind him.

When he turned back, it was to find that the door was gone again.