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“This is demeaning,” Guildford says, for the fourteenth time.
Jane ignores him, as she has been, and continues her preparations.
“I won’t do it,” he insists.
“Do you have a better idea on how we can acquire money? While we’re on the run, and having to hide our identities until we can meet back up with Archer and Edward and figure out what we’re going to do about Mary?”
He thinks for a long while, but is forced to admit, rather petulantly, “No.”
Jane nods, once, and adds to the large flourish she is currently placing on the sign she’s been working on for over an hour.
Guildford comes to stand behind her, frowning. “Can’t I at least have a better name? Brownie is so . . . commonplace.”
She turns her head up, smiling fondly at his annoyance.
“It can’t be anything too identifiable. You don’t want Mary or Seymour to be able to track us down as we—”
“Scam the proletariat?”
Jane elbows him in the stomach. “Ensure our survival,” she corrects him.
He catches her arm and turns her to face him, the smile on his face matching hers. “Ensure our survival,” he repeats dutifully, before leaning down to kiss her.
“Enough of that,” she says, pulling away, as much as she doesn’t want to. “We need to get to the fair before all the good spots are taken. You’d better change now, or you’ll give the game away.”
Guildford sighs. “No one is going to fall for this,” he grouses, for the twelfth time, but dutifully (adorably, Jane thinks) scrunches up his face and changes, trotting forward on delicate hooves before looking back and jerking his head toward the town, letting out an impatient whicker.
Hurry up, he seems to say.
“Hold your horses,” Jane says, and manages not to laugh.
After carefully slipping the scrounged rope halter over his head and throwing their scant few possessions over his back, she emerges from the thick forest, leading her husband toward the ramshackle crowd of entertainers making their way toward the charter fair.
The spot they’d scoped out yesterday (at an intersection, good view over the hill) is unfortunately already filled with a performing pig, but Guildford tugs her over to an empty space in between some kind of herbalist and a leek seller, with loose dirt aplenty for their needs.
“The . . . Amazing Brownie. What does he do?” comes from the leek side as she places her hard-worked sign down.
“He can see the future,” Jane says, and sets about decorating their stall.
There is an unspoken rule, far and wide, across England and further asea, based on mutual respect, that all performing animals should not be Ethians in disguise, as to keep the performing animal trade unsullied and pure.
There is also a law.
Jane and Guildford, however, do not have the luxury, the time, nor the willingness, to acquire their own performing horse.
Guildford will have to do.
“At least the penalty for False Animal Impersonation is only life in prison,” Jane says brightly, stroking her husband gently down his nose. “No more beheadings or burnings at the stake for us.”
Jane lets herself remember for one moment the terror she’d felt, the sharp rush of air across her neck as the axe raised high, the mad dash across the courtyard, scraping ineffectually at Guildford’s bonds with her hairpin—then shakes her head, banishing the thoughts. They made it out. They’re free. They’re together.
And they’ll most likely starve or freeze, unless they can find a friendly ally willing to shelter a refugee Queen from Mary’s reformed Kingsland Guard. Or, perhaps an easier task, find a place to hide out and scrape together some money to live off of while they wait to hear from Edward. (Guildford had suggested selling his mother’s earrings. Jane wouldn’t hear of it.)
And thus Operation: Magic Horse was born.
Unfortunately, of the two members of Operation: Magic Horse, one is required to be a magic horse.
The other has to be a showman.
Showwoman, even.
“Step right up!” Jane cries, startling the crowd of leek enthusiasts at the stall next door. “Come and see The Amazing Brownie! Marvel as he predicts the future! Watch as he tells of events yet to come!”
A passer-by slows, looking vaguely confused. “What do you mean, the future?”
Guildford bobs his head, looking knowledgeable.
Jane smiles at the man, and produces a basket from behind her back. “Not all can be privy to the secrets of The Amazing Brownie! Only those generous enough to prove their commitment to him will be allowed to be amazed by his predictive prowess!”
The man scoffs. “So you’re a thief, and a liar to boot.”
She gasps, loud and high and shocked. “A thief, good sir? I reject the notion! I offer you something no one has ever seen—a horse that can see into the hours yet to come, for a few mere coins, and you call me thief and liar?”
“How do we know it’s not an Ethian in disguise?” he asks, looking around at the crowd that has begun to form, drawn by her affronted tones. “Obviously, you’re trying to trick us.”
There are a few murmurs of agreement.
Jane places her hand to her chest, mock offended. “An Ethian? You think I would flaunt the law, and the respect of my fellow performing animal fellows by trotting an Ethian out to fool all you respected people? Besides, what Ethian do you know that can see the future? All they can do is turn into animals.” She shakes the basket. “He is obviously a magic horse.”
Guildford nods, to underscore her point.
“Prove it,” the man spits. “Prove the horse can tell the future.”
Jance glances back, meeting Guildford’s eyes. Eye, really.
Here we go, she thinks. No turning back now.
With a flourish, she tosses the basket on the ground. “Proof, this good man asks for! Well, proof we shall give you. But if you find The Amazing Brownie impressive, please, give generously, for once we do provide you with said proof, he will predict something greater! Something amazing, nay—”
“Neigh,” says Guildford.
“—nay, more than amazing, something incredible!”
She turns to the doubter. “Sir—may I call you sir?”
“You can call me Rufus,” Rufus says.
“Rufus, then. Rufus, may I ask you to think of a number between one and ten?”
Rufus frowns. “How is this predicting the future?”
Jane stares at him. Surely he can’t be this thick? “Because in the future, you will confirm your number. And The Amazing Brownie,” she gestures behind her, “will have already seen it. He will know the number you choose before you do.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she notices more than a few faces in the crowd nod along in agreement, and she breathes a small sigh of relief. Maybe they will be able to pull this off. She turns her gaze back to Rufus.
“Have you picked your number?”
Rufus nods, imperiously.
“And now!” Jane pitches her voice to carry to the back of the rapidly growing crowd. “I give you, The Amazing Brownie!”
Guildford pauses, for dramatic effect.
The crowd holds its breath.
The horse paws at the ground, once, twice, thrice.
Rufus scoffs. “It’s not three—”
Guildford continues, to a cheer from the crowd. Four more times.
And stops.
Rufus looks dumbstruck.
Jane stifles a laugh, and announces with glee, “The Amazing Brownie has seen the future! He has seen that Rufus has chosen the number seven! Rufus, was that your number?”
Rufus nods, weakly.
The crowd erupts.
Money fills the basket.
(“How on earth can you know what number some random will pick?” Guildford had asked.
Jane grinned. “It’s always seven.”)
Having sufficiently whetted the crowd's appetite, Jane goes in for the kill. Glancing up at the sun, she determines it close enough to noon to start her pitch.
“Good friends!” she shouts, flattering the already receptive audience. “You have seen what The Amazing Brownie can do! Now, he will do more than tell us a number! He will tell us a future—our future! He will tell of portents yet to come!” She passes through the crowd, holding the basket in front of her, smiling at hands throwing money in, glaring at those that don’t.
Guildford preens, trotting forward and allowing his adoring fans to give him pats.
When the basket is, Jane judges, sufficiently full, she pushes back toward where Guildford stands, giving him a small wink.
She doesn’t think horses have the ability, but she thinks he might wink back.
“So what’s he going to predict next?” pipes up a small child in the back, with perfect timing. Jane holds for a moment, to build the suspense, before turning around in a whirl of skirts and hair.
“What is he going to predict? I cannot tell you! Only The Amazing Brownie can.”
A jeer from another doubter. “What’s he going to do, speak?”
Jane glares at the woman and lets out a hearty scoff. “Of course not, he’s a horse. But he will draw what he sees.”
The crowd aahs in approval.
They had practiced in the woods. It had taken hours of sweat (on Guildford’s part), and tears (also on Guildford), but he’d finally managed to scratch passable depictions of the events to take place by the day of the fair—the day of the event in question. The event he was about to predict.
The crowd quiets as Jane sweeps the dirt in front of them clean of foot and hoofprints and any obstacles in case things go wrong and they need to make a quick getaway, but Guildford has them eating out of the palm of his hand—a reversal of the usual horse/human relationship. They’ll believe anything at this point.
And Jane knows what’s about to happen.
He begins with a circle, and the crowd stars calling out guesses as he paws lines around the side. Jane wills him to hurry up—they’re running out of time.
“A plate!”
“A coin!”
“The sun,” someone in the back says, hesitantly.
Guildford bobs his head up and down, letting out an affirmative whinny. There are noises of disagreement, but also scattered sections of applause. Jane shoots him a look, then glances skyward—this is the moment of truth. The shadows are already far too long on the grass.
He waits one more moment, then steps forward, stomping each of his hooves across the circle on the ground, enjoying it, Jane thinks, perhaps a little too much.
Gasps and cries of dismay arise from around them. “He’s going to kill the sun!”
And with timing better than even Jane could have predicted, the world goes dark around them.
From across the fair, there are screams—people fleeing, although to where, Jane has no idea. Where would they go, to escape the absence of a constant? Around Guildford, the crowd sinks to its knees, begging the horse to bring back the sun, to banish the darkness.
Now, Jane thinks.
Slowly, deliberately, Guildford draws a single circle over the mess of hoofprints.
One minute later, sunlight returns to the world.
It takes them hours to slip away from the fair, a combination of the crowd surrounding Guildford and the necessity to source another purse to store the amount of coins they’ve received. There’s no sign of the sun by the time they reach the thick of the forest, where Jane deems it safe enough for Guildford to change back.
There’s a ripple across his shoulders, and then her husband is standing in front of her, on two legs instead of four, a wide grin on his face as he sweeps her into his arms.
“I know you explained it to me, but how could you know?! When it went dark, it was like . . . well, like magic.”
Jane smirks, twining her hands around his neck. “It’s all in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.” Off Guildford’s knowing glare, she capitulates, “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Copernicus. A definitive work. You should read it!”
“Pass.”
“Although, I was mostly inspired by Anaxagoras’s theory of the solar eclipse.”
“Whatever you did, it was brilliant. How much did we scam out of the countryside?”
“Enough,” Jane says, “at least to keep us housed and fed for at least a fortnight. And hopefully Edward will have revealed himself by then, and we can go back to staying in the custom to which we are acquainted.”
“Mooching off our rich relatives,” Guildford says, knowingly.
“Exactly.”
He knits his eyebrows together, looking thoughtful. “It’s not so different from this. When’s the next one of these? We could make a killing.”
Jane thinks for a moment. “If my calculations are correct, January. Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
“Might be a little difficult to get a crowd going, but I’m game if you are,” Guildford shrugs. “If anyone can make it happen, it’s my brilliant wife.”
“I couldn’t do it without my talented husband,” Jane says. “Now, come along. We’ve enough for a room at an inn, with a proper bed.” She tugs at his hand, pulling him along with her.
“A proper bed?” Guildford sighs, allowing himself to be led. “Even with all that drawing I had to do, that makes it all worth it.”
They walk in silence for a moment, their fingers intertwining, the moon shining through the leaves, before he breaks it. “I did wonder,” Guildford says ponderously, “what would happen if the sun had disappeared like that when I was still . . . stuck. When I couldn’t control the change. Would I become human again for that minute? Or would I stay the way I was?”
Jane stops walking, her mind whirling. Guildford looks back at her.
“Jane?”
“I’d never even considered that! Was it the actual act of sunrise and sunset that triggered the change, or was it just the sight of it? Why didn’t we perform any experiments under controlled circumstances? What happened when you were kept in a dark room?”
She finds she’s talking quicker and quicker, even as Guildford watches her worriedly.
“Jane, I’m fixed, remember? I can change at will now?”
“But we lost out on some valuable opportunities! If only I hadn’t been made queen, I could have planned out a series of tests that would have shone a light on the process behind the change itself. I could have written my own definitive work!”
She looks up at him. “Do you think you could get stuck again?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But it’s for science!”
“Jane.” Guildford takes her hands into his then, holding on tight, looking deep into her eyes, unable to stop himself from smiling. “I love you. More than the sun, or the moon. More than all the stars in the sky.”
“Actually the sun is a star—”
Seeing the look on his face, Jane stops talking.
“But if you do not get me into the proper bed that was promised to me, I may be liable to turn into a horse for the rest of time. I can sleep standing up that way, you know.”
“Oh all right,” Jane says, rolling her eyes. “But just know that I could have been famous.”
“You were literally the Queen of England for over a week. We’re being hunted by the Kingsland Guard. You’re already famous. I’m sure someday there will be books—no—definitive works written about you.”
Jane looks thoughtful. “Well, if that’s the case, I hope they include my scientific discoveries.”
“And what about scamming the countryside?” Guildford says with a laugh.
“I successfully predicted—down to the moment, mind you—a solar eclipse. I’ll be disappointed if it’s not included.”
“And what about your talented assistant? Will Guildford Dudley make it into the book?” he asks, sounding hopeful.
She looks at him sideways. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. The only assistant I had today was The Amazing Brownie.”
Jane wipes the offended look off his face with a kiss.