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“Next!” called the clerk, and Frances gathered up her bag and all her courage and approached his desk.
“Miss Bellingham again, is it?” droned the clerk without looking up at her. “He’ll see you now.”
Frances made herself smile despite the sudden knot of anxiety that had just formed in the pit of her stomach. “Thank you.”
The door creaked terribly as she opened it, and Frances stepped inside, forcing her shoulders down and her head high and uncomfortably aware that her posture made her look as stiff as a scarecrow. It was better this way, though; if she couldn’t affect confidence, she would at least not betray her cowardice.
Five men sat at a table before her, which was a surprise; Frances hadn’t dared hope they’d call the ministers down to the Castle quite so soon. But while all five respectfully stood and inclined their heads at her entrance, only one gave her a smile that was at all sincere.
For a man whose job she was actively campaigning to take, Frances had always been fond of the Chrestomanci. Her mother knew him better; she called him quiet little Eric Chant, who blushed whenever asked for a dance, and currently maintained (very loudly, frequently after one too many glasses of sherry) that if meekness were any measure, her daughter could be the only possible successor to him.
But her liking was born from more than that fellow feeling: Frances remembered meeting him as a very young girl. He’d been a slight, fair-haired man whose gray suit, though beautifully tailored, looked rather as though it didn’t fit him quite right, and his expression—well, drained had really the only word for it. He’d knelt down, though, the better to look her directly in the eyes, and had gravely introduced himself as Mr. Cat; and then he told her a silly story about a violin he’d enchanted into feline shape, or perhaps the other way around until she giggled despite herself.
When people asked how she’d become interested in the post in the first place, Frances usually lied and said it was because of the hero worship inspired by that five-minute interview. It was much easier to understand, and made for a more sympathetic story in the papers.
But it was so much more than that. True, if it hadn’t been for trying to work out why shy, sweet Mr. Cat was looked on with such dread and respect by most other magic workers she’d met, Frances likely wouldn’t have done any investigation into what exactly being a Chrestomanci involved. She had soon found, however, that she found magic genuinely interesting on its own merits.
By the time she was nine, she had picked apart the Carol O'Neir dream pillow Papa had bought her as a present and put the spell back together again. By the time she left for school, her tutors swore that whatever else happened, she’d be head of the class when it came to magic at least. And she was; good enough at least that she took the Millicent DeWitt prize for Enchantments, and drove her spellcasting instructor to tears upon refusing a seat at a respectable ladies’ university in favor of independent study into far more dangerous and disreputable fields.
Frances had begun to suspect then, idly, that it might be nice to have a say in how the government treated magic. Everywhere she looked, people were either abusing their magic terribly, or losing it to other people, or blindly obeying what other people told them. Even her own research, harmless as it was, found no backers, while far more terrible spells met with the approval of all and sundry.
Truly, though, it was the unfortunate incident at her presentation at Court concerning a poorly affixed chandelier and Frances happening to be standing at the wrong place at the wrong time that settled her fate.
Chrestomanci had been at Court as well that day; Frances had him to thank for the fact that she was laid in a bedroom to sleep off her temporary death rather than buried to wake in an untimely grave. He must have guessed, even before then, what she had the potential to become. She’d confronted him with the fact, afterwards, sitting up in bed with the hot chocolate his sister (or not quite—but both Chrestomanci and Janet Chant insisted it was too long a story to explain whenever Frances) had brought her.
Frances had sipped chocolate serenely as Mr. Cat—Chrestomanci by then, even though he’d never spoken so many words to her since he’d been just kind Mr. Cat—explained what had happened, with frequent interjections on Janet’s part. After he’d finished, she took one final gulp before stammering: “So I suppose—that is, if I’m not mistaken—that it’s possible I’m a nine-lived enchanter.”
Chrestomanci, hands awkwardly in his pockets, echoed: “I suppose it is. You are.”
“I read that er, only nine-lived enchanters could become the next Chresomanci.”
“That’s true,” said Janet sharply, tossing her golden hair.
“I hadn’t—I hadn’t heard that you’d found anyone else to train as your replacement,” Frances said, “in all the Nine Worlds.”
Janet began to smile. Chrestomanci gave her a sharp look, but in the end, the corners of his lips went up, as well. “I have not.”
“I’ll have a copy of the petition to you by tomorrow,” Janet said, now looking quite smug, “and my friend Olivia read law at Oxford, and if Julia won’t pull strings with her father to have you seen within the week, I shall never speak to her again!”
Chrestomanci had gone back to leaning against the wall and apparently pretending he was not really there, but, Frances reasoned, if he’d had any complaints, he would have voiced them; he was quiet in the face of his sister’s exuberance but by no means intimidated. Frances, for her part, found herself ignoring Janet despite herself in favor of steeling herself against all the questions she’d have to answer when she went back downstairs.
That had been the easy part, as it turned out.
The learned Olivia had done her part, and Julia (the Julia Bedford née Chant, as it turned out) as well, and Janet more than any of them; but the government did not take kindly to the first female applicant for the position of Chrestomanci.
Her first hearing had been a joke; she’d been inside and out before she’d been really sure what happened, and all she’d been conscious of was an overwhelming terror. She’d prepared better before the second, Janet and Julia training her ruthlessly until she could answer the most difficult question, and still they’d sent her away.
She might have given up then. It would have been easier, at least; not to use her parents’ grand parties simply as opportunities to find new advocates for her cause, not to send off letters to every official she could think of until the Post Office knew her by name, not to tolerate the most disgusting slanders to her name–but Frances, for all she was shy and mild-mannered, had never cared much for easy. It was yet another trait she shared with Mr. Cat.
Ten years it had taken until today, when they’d called her to Chrestomanci Castle once again. Chrestomanci had forced their hands at last; after years of observing that nine-lived enchanters were simply not as common as the Government seemed to think, he had at last declared that he had no intention of looking for any others. Frances Bellingham would be the next Chrestomanci, he said; or no one.
(“Jolly good of him,” Janet had said with a snort when she’d heard the news, “but I should think Cat could have made his stand years ago!”
Frances had said nothing. She was simply too relieved, and too grateful, to have one more chance.)
And so here she was, clutching her bag and her paperwork, terrified almost out of her mind but all too conscious that more people than just herself Janet and Julia and the learned Olivia and even Mr. Cat depended on what would happen here today. Herself she could disappoint, but not them—never them.
“Gentlemen,” Frances began, for the third and last time, “I have a proposition for you.”