The Mirror's Tale (Further Tales Adventures) (2 page)

eISBN-13: 978-1-439-11307-3

ISBN-13: 978-1-416-91251-4

www.SimonandSchuster.com

CHAPTER 1

“I
t was just a trick,” Bert offered. Beside him, his brother nodded vigorously.

“Just a trick!” Baron Charmaigne roared. He swung the fire poker and smashed the burning logs. A thousand sparks flew up and winked out, and a handful of orange embers rolled out of the hearth and onto the stone floor of the great hall. The baron crushed them under his boot.

Bert stole a glance at Will, who stared at their father with widening eyes while his fingernails dug into his knees.

“Let’s talk about this
trick
of yours,” Baron Charmaigne said, stabbing the air with the poker. “Margaret! Do you know what they did?”

“No, my lord,” Margaret said quietly. Besides the baron and his sons, the old servant was the only one in the room. She stood with her wrinkled hands clasped and her gaze fixed on the fireplace.

“Of course you don’t. That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you. The victim
this
time was a gullible farm girl whose family just moved to the village.
Apparently as she was shooing birds from the seeded fields, a boy carrying a large basket approached and offered to show her ‘a fine surprise.’ The girl described him as ‘a pale but handsome lad with wide, blue eyes and a wild, black mane.’”

Bert reached up to smooth his unkempt hair, then checked his laughter as he noticed Will doing the same. It wouldn’t be wise to laugh at this moment.

“This black-haired villain then sat and covered himself with the basket,” the baron said. He put his back to the others and spoke into the flames. “A moment later, the girl said, there was a tap on her shoulder. To her everlasting horror the boy now stood
behind
her. The same pale, blue-eyed boy in the same clothes, she said. Then he walked to the basket and turned it over to reveal its emptiness. And, of course, she ran off screaming, sending the entire village into an uproar.” The baron turned to face the boys again. His face had gone purple with rage.

“It was us, Father,” said Will looking paler than usual, if that was possible. He appeared to be shrinking.

“I bloody well know it was the two of you!”

Bert sat up straight and cleared his throat. “I crept out from the basket and hid when she turned around to look at Will.”

“But we didn’t expect her to run off screaming about witches and the devil,” Will said to the floor.

The baron gritted his teeth and pressed his palms against his temples. “I’m doubly angry!” he cried. “Angry
once because this is more of the foolishness, the horrid behavior that your mother and I have scolded you for from the moment you monsters reared up on two legs. And angry again because you’ve stirred up all the fears we’ve tried to put to rest. Half these peasants still believe those ridiculous stories about the Witch-Queen!”

“But Margaret says they’re true—” Bert cut himself off, instantly regretting the words. Margaret seemed to wilt as the baron’s anger turned toward her like the door of a furnace swinging open.

“Margaret. We’ve asked you to watch the twins. To help shape them. To do something about their behavior, for heaven’s sake. But instead you fill their heads with these foolish stories.” The baron paused to think. He sounded weary when he spoke again. “We’ve given you a dozen years with them, Margaret, but they are falling far short of my expectations. Your service here is over. I want you to leave Ambercrest. By tomorrow.”

“Father, no!” the boys said as one. Bert tried to leap off the bench, but Will grabbed his sleeve and held him down.

Margaret could have said so many things at that moment to deflect the barons anger back toward the boys, to help him understand that they simply refused to be tamed. But she only whispered, “Yes, my lord. It has been my honor to serve you,” and quietly left the room.

“It’s wrong,” said Bert, pacing back and forth across the floor of Margaret’s tiny room.

“It’s completely unfair,” said Will. He sat with his back against the wall and bounced his head gently against the stone.

“I won’t be alone. I have a niece who serves at a manor not far from here, and I can stay with her.” Margaret was packing her frocks and aprons with a few other modest possessions into a small chest.

“Here, Margaret. We want you to have this.” Bert tugged a thick-banded ring of gold off his finger and held it out to her.

Margaret’s eyebrows rose and fell. “I cannot possibly accept that.”

“I wish you’d take it,” said Bert. “It’s my fault you’re being sent away. Because of what I said. It is true, though, isn’t it? About the Witch-Queen and Snow White?”

“There is some truth in it, for sure. And my grandmother heard the story from the princess herself before she died. She told me that even as an old woman you could look at Emelina—the one they called Snow White—and know that she was fair beyond description.” Margaret smiled at the twins. “There’s plenty of Snow White in the two of you, that’s plain to see, even after so many generations. That skin, those eyes …” She sighed and closed the lid on the chest. “Young men, I’m afraid your parents will do something far more drastic if you disobey them again. Promise me you’ll try to be good.”

“I promise,” Will said quietly.

Bert grunted. “When I’m baron, the first order I give will be to bring you back.”

“I didn’t know your father had named his successor,” Margaret said, looking from Bert to Will.

“It’ll probably be me,” said Bert. “Will doesn’t even want the barony. That’s what he always says. Right, Will?”

“I guess,” Will said to the floor. His face reddened.

“Now, Bert, don’t underestimate your brother,” Margaret said. “He’s got a good heart and a lot of wisdom in that head. But no matter what happens, the most important thing is for the two of you to stay friends.”

“Of course we will!” said Bert. Will nodded.

“Well, I don’t know which of you will grow up to be baron,” Margaret said, “but I’ll try to live long enough to see that day. Until then, good-bye.” The twins hugged her. A servant came in and carried the chest away, and then Margaret was gone.

“I wish she’d taken the ring,” said Will.

“I stuck it in the chest when she wasn’t looking,” said Bert.

CHAPTER 2

M
argaret rode in the wagon that the baron’s courier, Parley—dear, kind, funny Parley, who had somehow managed to make her smile even on this terrible day—had arranged for her. She took a final look at Ambercrest. As the road bent around the forest, a green curtain was drawn across the castle that had been her home for so many years.

The lines in her face deepened as she thought back to the cold, winter night she saw the omen.

It was thirteen years ago on a night as dark and cold as a crypt. She remembered how she shivered in her bed, and then heard someone awake in the inky halls of Ambercrest, hours before sunrise. Not the stomping boots of a guard, but the silky shuffle of slippers. A pale, orange light appeared in the slender space at the bottom of her door. She was already there with a hand on the knob when the rapping began.

It was the baroness. “Margaret, I am with child,” she said. “I’m certain of it now.”

“Wonderful news, my lady. The baron will be pleased” Margaret noticed that even at this late hour,
with no one about, the baroness had taken a moment to compose her hair.

“Yes,” the baroness said uncertainly. “They say a woman’s face glows with beauty when she is with child. Let us hope that is true.”

There was a soundless interlude, and Margaret worked her jaw sideways and pressed her gums together to suppress a yawn. “May I be of service to you, my lady?”

“Of course. I must have something to eat. And it must be … eggs. That’s what the child wants, I feel.”

“Right away, Baroness.”

With a lamp to light her way, Margaret went down the wide stone staircase, through the great hall and the dining room, and out the door of the keep into the bitter cold. The short walk across the courtyard and into the kitchen tower sent needles of pain into her joints.

“No sense waking the cook for this, I can manage it,” she muttered. The eggs were kept in a wooden bowl on a shelf. Only one was left, but it was a goose egg and quite large. She picked it up, but her fingers were still numb from the frigid air. The egg slipped from her grasp and broke with a splat on the stone floor.

Margaret sighed. She knelt to see if enough of the egg could be preserved. Holding the lamp close by, she stared at it for a long while, wondering. She shivered again, but not from the cold this time.

Spilled from the single shell were two yolks, like golden islands in a clear sea.
This can only mean one thing,
she thought. But then her smile settled into a thin frown.

One yolk remained whole, but the other had not survived the fall. Its fine skin had split, and the inner yolk oozed out, slowly and shapelessly.

CHAPTER 3

B
ert sat on the stone sill of the window and dangled one leg outside. He had a disk of polished tin in one hand and was staring at his reflection, searching for any sign of whiskers on his narrow chin. It struck him that looking in the little mirror was just like looking at his brother. “You know,” he said, “I might be Will and you might be Bert.”

“What do you mean?” Will asked. He was lying on his bed, propped on his elbows.

“Don’t you remember? Mother and Father could never tell us apart. They still can’t. They kept a ribbon tied around my ankle—or
your
ankle—when we were babies. But, remember, Margaret said she once found us both playing with the ribbon that I had untied. Or that you untied. So we may not be who we think we are. Either one of us could be firstborn, so either one of us could be baron.”

“I’m sure it’ll be you, Bert.”

Bert couldn’t suppress a smile. “That’ll be up to Father. But I wouldn’t mind—Hey, what’s going on out there?” He peered down into the courtyard. One of the
baron’s men had thundered through the gates on horseback. He thrust the reins into a stable boy’s hands and strode toward the great hall, nearly breaking into a run. “It’s Edward, the smelly one. Something urgent, I don’t know what. Should we find out?”

Will didn’t say a word. He just sprang from his bed and followed Bert out the door. Soon they were at the balcony overlooking the great hall, where their father had already received Edward. The boys lay flat on the floor with their heads raised just high enough for spying, and strained to hear the conversation.

“I can hardly believe it,” the baron said. “After so many years. There is no doubt it was them? Not simply poachers or some band of ruffians?”

“Please understand that I did not witness it with my own eyes, sire. But John did. Although it was from a distance, he is certain. They were gone by the time we rode up. No trace of them at all.”

“They can do that. Disappear on you just like that.” Baron Charmaigne snapped his fingers. “Well, I want those hills searched, every rock turned over, every crevice explored. If they’ve come back, I’ll have their heads, I promise you that. Come, I want to talk to John myself” Edward followed the baron out of the room, but neither said anything the boys could hear. Bert and Will looked at each other and shrugged.