So the Magician was shut up in an enormously high tower, and allowed to play with magic; but none of his spells could act outside the tower so he was never able to pass the extra double guard that watched outside night and day. The King would have liked to have the Magician executed but the White Witch warned him that this would never do.
‘Don’t you see,’ she said, ‘he’s the only person who can make the Princess beautiful again. And he’ll do it some day. But don’t you go asking him to do it. He’ll never do [p264 anything to oblige you. He’s that sort of man.’
So the years rolled on. The Magician stayed in the tower and did magic and was very bored,—for it is dull to take white rabbits out of your hat, and your hat out of nothing when there’s no one to see you.
Prince Fortunatus was such a stupid little boy that he got lost quite early in the story, and went about the country saying his name was James, which it wasn’t. A baker’s wife found him and adopted him, and sold the diamond buttons of his little overcoat, for three hundred pounds, and as she was a very honest woman she put two hundred away for James to have when he grew up.
The years rolled on. Aura continued to be hideous, and she was very unhappy, till on her twentieth birthday her married cousin Belinda came to see her. Now Belinda had been made ugly in her cradle too, so she could sympathise as no one else could.
‘But I got out of it all right, and so will you,’ said Belinda. ‘I’m sure the first thing to do is to find a magician.’
‘Father banished them all twenty years ago,’ said Aura behind her veil, ‘all but the one who uglified me.’
‘Then I should go to him,’ said beautiful [p265 Belinda. ‘Dress up as a beggar maid, and give him fifty pounds to do it. Not more, or he may suspect that you’re not a beggar maid. It will be great fun. I’d go with you only I promised Bellamant faithfully that I’d be home to lunch.’ And off she went in her mother-of-pearl coach, leaving Aura to look through the bound volumes of The Perfect Lady in the palace library, to find out the proper costume for a beggar maid.
Now that very morning the Magician’s old nurse had packed up a ham, and some eggs, and some honey, and some apples, and a sweet bunch of old-fashioned flowers, and borrowed the baker’s boy to hold the horse for her, and started off to see the Magician. It was forty years since she’d seen him, but she loved him still, and now she thought she could do him a good turn. She asked in the town for his address, and learned that he lived in the Black Tower.
‘But you’d best be careful,’ the townsfolk said, ‘he’s a spiteful chap.’