The Glass Castle (11 page)

Of course, that would mean she would need the courage to actually approach him. Even looking at him made her nervous lately.

“We should go,” Kate said. “We’ve seen enough for one day.”

Avery wanted to protest.
Is that even possible?

The castle contained enough rooms to fill a month of exploring—maybe more.

And I still need to find the tunnels.

Avery caught sight of a painting framed in gold leaf and half hidden beneath a blanket. She saw just enough of a woman’s face—smooth and exotic—to compel her to see more. She took a few careful steps over stacks of fragile china and crates of marble then pulled the blanket far enough down to bring the face into view.

Beautiful eyes, distinct as they could be, one blue and the other brown.

Impossible.
Avery tried to shove the thought aside.

One of her mother’s songs came flooding back:

“This is the queen,” Avery whispered.

“What did you say?” Kate asked, coming to stand beside her.

“This must be the king’s first wife.
She
must be Queen Elizabeth!”

Kate didn’t respond.

“I bet everything in this room belonged to her,” Avery continued. “After she died, the king must have moved all of her things into this room.”

“We really need to go back to our quarters,” Kate said. “Let’s go.”

The king and Angelina are keeping the first queen’s secrets. What on earth could they be? And what if we could find the answers in this room?

The treasures in the room whispered for her to stay.

“You go ahead,” Avery said. “I’ll be right there.”

“Don’t be long,” Kate said as she left. “I’m sure we’re not supposed to be in here.”

Avery nodded, never taking her eyes off the painting, the blanket now bunched beneath the woman’s chin. As soon as Kate was out of sight, Avery yanked the blanket entirely away. And when she did, what she saw made her blood go cold.

The queen was wearing a necklace with a large ruby flower.

Chapter 18

King versus Queen

At her first cabinet meeting, Avery found Tuck deep in conversation, appointing kids one at a time to important castle duties.

“You are now Junior Keeper of the Great Seal,” he said to a boy who beamed.

Is there truly such a thing?

The line of kids waiting to talk to Tuck was at least twenty deep; and of course, he was speaking kindly to each one of them, making every person feel valued and needed.

“We’ll be here all day,” Avery said, flopping into a chair at the table beside Kendrick.

Kendrick didn’t look up from signing his way through a mountain of paperwork. He had perfected the signatures of several castle dignitaries and was able to sign important deeds without hesitation.

“It’s what we agreed to do,” he said.

Avery’s hand went to the ruby necklace that now seemed to weigh a thousand pounds around her neck. After seeing it in the painting of Queen Elizabeth, she kept it hidden beneath her dress or buried in her pillow. Being caught with royal jewels was punishable by death. She wondered, though, how her mother had come to own the necklace and why she had given it away. Her mother was growing as mysterious to her as the castle had become.

“Hello,” Tuck said finally, when the line had cleared. “We have a lot to do. Let’s get started.” His voice was gentle and his eyes were kind.

As he spoke about the kids and the responsibilities of the council to meet their needs, Avery tried not to notice that his eyes twinkled or that he seemed to genuinely like the people he served. He assigned Kendrick to intercept the daily mail coming to and going from the castle so they could become more familiar with the goings-on of the king. And he charged Avery with designing “a crest, a unifying emblem—something we can rally around.”

Avery nodded, smiling.

Maybe she had finally found a place where her gifts would be useful.

He then talked for the next hour or so about the complexities of parliamentary process and the details of domestic and foreign policy, but Avery didn’t hear a word he said.

And that was just fine with her.

Late that night, Tuck introduced a new activity. The kids met in the large hall on their side of the stairwell for chess tournaments. Winners would receive passes from chores like dishwashing and mopping, while losers would be assigned the most mundane tasks.

The tension was intense from the moment the pairings were announced and the players began arranging their pieces.

Winners were treated like heroes.

Losers sulked until bedtime.

Brawls often broke out, especially among the boys, until someone—usually Tuck—broke them up and sent the rivals in opposite directions to cool off.

Two boys lost teeth, their bloody gums less of a concern than their ruined brackets.

When the kids weren’t playing chess, they were discussing strategies and making plans.

Breakfast gossip generally revolved around the previous evening’s results.

Friendships were forged or frayed over a single tournament.

The best moments of the day were when the kids were deep into their matches, tensions high and moods volatile. A single move across the checkered board could result in half a dozen bloody lips or swollen eyes by lights-out. More than one board was swept clean by the forearm of an angry opponent.

Avery enjoyed the matches so much that when she was watching she actually liked living in the castle—felt like she belonged.

Late one night, several weeks since she’d arrived at the castle, Avery stood watching a pair of players arrange their pieces in preparation for a game.

“Do you play?” a voice behind her asked.

She turned to see Tuck and shook her head.

“I find it interesting,” he said, his voice low, “that the king is the most prized and protected piece, yet also one of the weakest.”

Avery smiled, remembering the king giving in to Angelina’s demands for a marriage proposal. But Kate had been adamant that they not mention it to anyone, so she didn’t share this thought with Tuck.

A signal was given and the children began poring over their boards, chess pieces clanking as pawns were collected.

“Rumor has it,” Tuck said quietly, “the king is dying.”

Avery looked at Tuck in confusion.

“Everything he is doing right now—including his plan to marry—is because he needs an heir. Time is of the essence. If he dies with no legitimate heir, his name will die with him.”

“There are worse things,” Avery whispered.

“Not for a king.”

A question burned on the edges of Avery’s mind, and she wasn’t sure she had the courage to voice it. She had already made a fool of herself so many times in Tuck’s presence.

“Tuck, what if the king’s first son didn’t die?”

“Then he’d be next in line to the throne.”

“No,” Avery pressed. “What I meant is—what if the king’s son is alive?”

Tuck didn’t respond, but it was clear he was thinking about it as they moved from game to game, following the tournament well into the night. When Avery finally excused herself to go to her room, Tuck asked, “Did you notice the queen is the most powerful piece on the board?”

She smiled but did not turn around.

In chess, at least, it’s because the queen never rules with her heart.
She, however, did not have that luxury.

She knew it was time to find the courage to talk to Tuck alone.

Chapter 19

Pinned

Avery sat in the bunk room with her slender reeds of charcoal and blocks of colored chalk, staring at blank sheets of sketch paper. They were the nicest tools she had ever been given. Yet for days, she had been unable to draw.

Once she had no supplies with an endless source of inspiration.

Now she had the very best supplies with no vision.

It had been too long since she had breathed fresh air, heard leaves crunch, or smelled the smoke of a crackling bonfire. She wanted so badly to hear the snap of clean laundry on a clothesline or to see the face of her silly, dumb dog.

She was beginning to forget her mother’s voice.

She wondered how much older Henry looked. Little boys could grow up overnight.

Give her the perfect spot under one of her trees and she could create a dozen sketches by evening. But on a borrowed mattress in an empty room in a cold castle—

She threw her sketch paper into the air.

I want to go home.

Her small house had a wide cobblestone walk in front and an unreliable garden in back where her father spent his evenings tending his vegetables obsessively and training his carrier pigeons for who knew what purpose. Wherever her father and brother were, she prayed they were safe. She prayed, too, that God would help her complete the crest. For whatever reason, Tuck believed in her, and she didn’t want to fail him.

She picked up a piece of sketch paper and tried again.

“There is a shield in every family crest,”
her father had told her.

Avery had been bored by his random history lessons back then, but now she wished she had asked more questions.

She drew the shield with small, careful strokes.

“Every crest represents what the family loves,”
he had said.

So she drew green and yellow butternut tree leaves—dozens of them—sprouting from the shield. In the center she outlined the perfect dark cherry tree, the kind her father used to build clocks or shelves or furniture in his shop.

Next, she drew swirling ribbons through the leaves that extended from the shield, representing her mother’s love of sewing. She could still hear the whisper of the fabrics she brought home, could see her mother in the corner late into the evening hand-stitching a work shirt for her father or a dress for one of her father’s customers.

“Every crest has a motto.”