Castle of Shadows (2 page)

Charlie squeezed her eyes shut and tried to grow into the back of the chair. She heard Watch sniffing, and in her mind she saw all too clearly his nose twitching and snuffling.

Watch hunted largely by scent. He had a nose like a bloodhound, Maria said, and could smell out a fruit cake be it wrapped in ever so many layers of greaseproof. Charlie thought of the contents of the pencil tin and was almost sick with relief that she had emptied it. Watch would have sniffed her out and taken her straight to O’Dair. As it was…she crouched, barely breathing, listening to Watch shuffle further into the library. What was keeping him? Did the tin still reek? Could he smell it?

She heard the sound of springs groaning. A muttering, a shuffling and squeaking. Long minutes dragged by. Charlie didn’t dare move. She spent the time thinking of twelve very unpleasant things she would do to Tobias the first chance she got.

The silence was splintered by a gasping, rasping snort. Then another. Inch by inch, she pulled herself up and peeked over the back of the chair. There, on a long leather sofa, stretched the lanky figure of the night watchman.
Snores burbled out of his nose. His kerosene lantern sat on the floor beside him and hissed in unison. Watch had settled in for the night.

Drat the lazy gannet! Why did he have to choose the library for his midnight nap? Charlie waited for her heart to slow down, then stood, clutching Tobias’s book to her chest. This was all his fault! She stepped from behind the chair and tripped over her candlestick. As Charlie tumbled backwards, she watched
One Thousand and One
Arabian Nights
fly from her arms, arc through the air and crash to the floor with an almighty thud.

She scrambled to her feet, scooped up the book and raced for the darkest corner of the library. Watch spluttered and rolled off the sofa with an oath. He staggered up, grabbed his lantern and swirled it round, raking the room with light. He was sure to find her now. Even Watch would soon figure out that there were two people in the library – she had left the candlestick behind.

Charlie shoved
Arabian Nights
on top of the nearest row of books, stubbing her fingers on the shelves which rose like rungs in a ladder. She tucked her skirts into her drawers, her hands reached high, her toes scrabbled and pushed. She climbed quickly. When her head bumped, she bent over and climbed higher still, until her back pressed against the ceiling, and she was crouching twelve feet above the floor, clinging to the bookshelf like a squirrel on the side of a tree.

She couldn’t see Watch – but she could hear him. He
must have found the candle, because he was searching now. The yellow gleam of the lantern strode up and down the rows, approaching ever nearer. It turned the corner, and Watch stood below her.

He held the lantern high, and the light shone about his head and puddled onto the floor. It did not reach the curtain of darkness at the top of the room. Watch turned away. The lantern continued its circuit of the library, then dithered for a moment in the middle of the room. ‘I knows you’re in here!’ His voice creaked into the silence. ‘Might as well come out now, you little snip, from wherever you be hiding!’ The voice grew wheedling. ‘If you comes now, I’ll not fetch Mrs O’Dair. I’ll let you nip off to bed and no one the wiser.’

Charlie scowled at the yellow glow. Watch was a terrible liar. O’Dair would give him double rations of beer for a week if he caught Charlie out of her room at night – and they both knew it. ‘Right then, you little devil! I’m locking you in here and off to fetch the missus. She’ll sort you!’ The lantern swayed from the room, and Charlie, left in darkness, heard the door slam and the key rattle.

She was at the bottom of the shelves in two seconds. She had decided what she was going to do, and she needed to do it quickly, before fear changed her mind. She found Tobias’s book and tucked it beneath her arm – it had cost too much to leave behind now. Her pewter candlestick glinted in the moonlight. She scooped it up, broke the candle off and shoved both in her pocket. She
climbed onto one of the window seats, opened a casement window, squeezed through and jumped. Gravel crunched beneath her feet, and she stretched up and pushed the casement shut. With any luck, no one would notice it wasn’t latched. Charlie turned and ran.

Her heart was banging in her chest. Now that it was happening, she couldn’t believe she was doing this. The Castle hounds roamed the grounds at night. If they caught her they wouldn’t stop to ask if she was a princess of Quale. They would tear her to pieces, and O’Dair would be delighted to attend her funeral!

She skirted the Castle at full pelt, making for the scullery door. Its lock had been broken ever since she could remember. It wasn’t far – it had seemed no distance from inside the library. But she had forgotten about the hedges to squeeze through, the weeds that entangled, the roots that tripped. She was taking too long.

Charlie had spotted the yew hedge surrounding the kitchen yard when a deep-throated bay boomed out of the darkness to her left. Then another. Then there was nothing but the sound of her own rasping breaths and the crash of heavy bodies hurtling through vegetation. She dived forward and wriggled between two thick trunks of shaggy yew, banging her head and scraping her knees, tucking her feet as jaws snapped, snaking after her. Large bodies thrashed and scrabbled as the hounds tried to push into the gap. Then a mournful howl rose into the night air.

She stumbled across moonlit cobbles, pushed the door open and threw herself inside. She slid to the floor, and Tobias’s book fell with a thump beside her. As she leant against the wall, panting for breath, Charlie thought of twelve new and even more unpleasant things to do to the gardener’s boy.

She slipped through the door of the summerhouse and crunched into a hillock of leaves. The morning sun slanted through the broken windows. Charlie swept a window seat clear of frozen leaves and shattered glass and curled up to read Tobias’s book. There was no telling how long he would be.

As she read it, Scheherazade’s tale of
Ali Baba and the
Forty Thieves
swam up through her memory to greet her, the words spoken by a voice that made her heart thump and her throat seize tight. A draught rustled across the floor, and she looked up to see Tobias step inside the summerhouse. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and left a streak of mud on his forehead.

‘You’re not touching this book with hands like that!’ Charlie’s eyes were burning with unshed tears. She grabbed her anger in relief.

‘Morning to you, too.’ He scooped a handful of leaves from a bench and rubbed them to powder between his palms. ‘Never washed me hands in leaves before. But it seems to work. Any trouble getting it?’

‘Enough.’

‘Good book, is it?’

‘Yes. I want it back when you’ve finished. Don’t you forget!’

He grinned at her. ‘Don’t get in one of your snits, Charlie. I always give ’em back. There. Clean enough?’ He held out his hands.

‘Barely.’

‘Give us the book then.’

‘In a minute.’ She clutched it to her, not wanting to give it up, making herself concentrate on the other reason she had risked the dark and Watch. She frowned at Tobias. ‘You live in the City, don’t you?’

‘So?’ His smile faded. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

‘You must hear things.’

‘What sort of things?’

Now that it came to it, it was hard. She had never before asked Tobias for anything. But the image of her father kneeling before the guillotine refused to go away. Putting manure in Alfie Postlethwaite’s boots wasn’t going to stop him and others from thinking that her father was a bad king. Charlie studied the floor. ‘Rumours. Gossip. What people are saying in the City.’ She looked up at him. ‘About my father.’

‘Oh.’ His eyes grew wary. ‘I don’t listen to gossip. You shouldn’t either.’

‘But it isn’t just gossip, is it? I know about the recession. I know that crops have failed for the second year in a row and there are food shortages. The
Republicans and Radicals want a revolution, like they had in Esceania. I need to know how much support they have. How much people are blaming my father… Tell me what they’re saying. Please!’

He looked at her, a slight frown between his eyes, and she felt a flair of hope. Tobias shook his head. ‘I got no time for this. Fossy’ll be looking for me any minute. Give me the book.’

It was no use. She should have known. Tobias Petch kept himself to himself, and he wasn’t about to change just to help her. Disappointment turned to anger. ‘Right!’ She jumped up from the window seat and threw the book at him. It whirled through the air in a flurry of pages. He caught it in one hand.

‘Missed.’

She glared at him. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to tell me! You can get out of the Castle. I can’t.’

He sighed. ‘Forget it, Charlie. There’s nothing you can do about any of it.’

‘Would you forget it? If it was your father?’

‘I ain’t got no father.’

She hadn’t known. For a moment she felt a tug of sympathy. ‘I’m sorry. What happened to him?’

‘None of your business. Now, I got to get back to work.’ He turned to go, and all her sympathy vanished.

‘You’re selfish, Tobias Petch! You’re a grubby, ignorant guttersnipe! I hate you!’

He turned back. To her fury, he was grinning. ‘And
you, Princess, are an ugly little goblin. I reckon the fairies stole the real princess at birth, and you’re nothing but a changeling. Maybe that’s why you never learnt to smile.’

She had nothing left to throw, so Charlie charged at him, fists flying. She got in one good punch before he shoved her into the pile of leaves. He stood looking down at her, rubbing his shoulder where she had hit him. He wasn’t grinning now. ‘You and your flaming red hair! I’ll give you this much help, Charlie. It’s time you learnt to control that temper of yours. You ain’t some snarky little kid no more.’ He turned on his heel and left.

She scrabbled upright, trying to think of something cutting to shout after him. But he was already gone. Charlie sighed, rolled onto her knees and saw something white poking from the leaves. A piece of paper. One of the pages of the book must have fallen out when she threw it. But as soon as she touched it she knew it wasn’t a page from the book. The paper was too thin.

Almost, she tossed it back to the leaves. It would be some old love letter or a laundry list or a receipt for making lemon curd. Idly, she turned it over and over. Her anger had vanished along with Tobias. He had refused to help her. Well, she had been a fool to expect anything else. She had always had to help herself. That was not going to change. Her fingers unfolded the paper.

It was a letter after all. Or the beginning of a letter, for it ended halfway down the page, in mid-sentence. But it wasn’t a love letter. And although it was unsigned, she
knew the handwriting – each sloping, spidery curl. At one time, Charlie had collected every scrap of it she could scavenge – although this sample seemed to have been written in haste and the familiar loops were uneven. She heard the voice again, as if her mother were sitting beside her, reading
Arabian Nights
once more, as she had done all those years ago. Only this time, her mother’s voice read out the words of her letter: 

And there the letter broke off. Charlie stared at the scratchy handwriting, shivering as the meaning of the words sank in.

When her mother disappeared, strange men had invaded the Castle, asking questions, peering and poking and prying. She later learnt that they were private enquiry agents hired by her father when the police and army failed to find the Queen. But the enquiry men failed too. No clue about where the Queen had gone or why she had left had ever been found. Until now.

She sank back into the leaves. Melting frost soaked into her stockings and the skirt of her dress, but she hardly noticed. A stray breeze crept through a broken window, stirring the leaves. Thoughts chased themselves, round and round.

Her mother must have run away because of something to do with her science. Once, Charlie had dared the trip to the north attics, hoping to explore her mother’s old laboratory. But the door had been locked. Was the answer
to her mother’s disappearance somewhere inside that locked room?

Who was Bettina? Had her mother run away to her? If Charlie could find Bettina… Her heart skipped a beat. Her eyes scanned the paper, devouring the words over and over:
‘…my two dear ones…my greatest joy…’

Charlie never cried. Crying didn’t help. It hadn’t brought her mother home. Something round and wet plopped onto her mother’s letter. Charlie blinked and wiped her face with her sleeve. She folded the letter and hid it in her pocket.