Tuesdays at the Castle (12 page)

Chapter

20

T
his is very, very bad,” Celie said, but the muffling cloak absorbed all the sound before it even reached her own ears. “Very bad indeed.”

It had been a week since what Rolf called the Night of Manure Mayhem. The next day had been a delight, as the members of the Council tottered around with expressions of disgust, looking askance at everyone they spoke to, until they realized that the smell was coming from
them
. The howls for footmen to come and scrape their shoes had positively echoed throughout the Castle, and Rolf had gotten quite a laugh out of covering his nose with a handkerchief and pretending to be too delicate to stay in the same room with the Council and their befouled footwear.

Since then, a number of chamber pots had disappeared, as had replacement chamber pots the maids had luckily “found” in a little-used closet the next day. The seamstresses were kept busy repairing robes that mysteriously tore again at the seams only a few hours later, and the windows of the Councilors’ bedchambers had all been left open during a rainstorm, filling the rooms with puddles and spoiling a number of books and papers.

The second chamber pot disappearance and the open windows had been purely the will of the Castle, and the Glower children had thanked it repeatedly for what it had done. It renewed their energy, and let them know that the Castle not only approved of what they were doing, but was constantly ready to help.

The Councilors had also awoken the morning after the Night of Manure Mayhem to find that their rooms were in a row in one corridor, with their privy chamber now at the end. This did not bother them at first, until the realization came that they were now as far away as it was possible to be from both the throne and dining rooms. Also, most of their rooms were significantly smaller than they had been before, and only seemed to have windows when it was raining.

Any worry that Lilah might have had about the Council taking out its anger on Rolf or the staff proved to be unfounded. Khelsh immediately started roaring about the filthy Castle playing tricks. Some of the Councilors, to Celie’s satisfaction, looked downright frightened at the prospect of the Castle playing tricks on them, and had been seen speaking together in odd corners, their voices hushed and their eyes darting about.

This was exactly what the Glower children had been hoping for, and so Celie had come to the little spy closet outside the privy chamber to watch the Council squirm while she thought up new ways to punish them. Instead, she found that Khelsh had decided it was time to put a stop to the sabotage.

To put a stop to the Castle itself.

“Ever since I come this place,” Khelsh said, “my wizards try control monster you call Castle Glower.”

“What do you mean, Your Highness?” the Emissary asked, looking nervous.

Anyone who had been born and raised in Sleyne, as the Emissary had been, had a great deal of respect for the Castle. A respect that Khelsh was clearly lacking.

“I mean stop grow, or make smaller, or move doors. No more stupid hiding pee pots.” Khelsh’s heavy face glowed with smugness.

On the table in front of him was a lumpy bundle tied with a silk cord. Khelsh undid the knot and let the fabric fall aside. He gestured with obvious pride at its contents, but the rest of the Council merely looked baffled.

Celie didn’t know what it was, either, but she thought she felt the Castle shudder, just slightly. Lord Feen noticed it, too, and looked around uneasily.

“What do you have there, Your Highness?” The old man’s voice quavered even more than usual.

“Dust,” Khelsh said, running his fingers through it. “Just dust. And some … things only wizards know.
My
wizards.” He smiled with fierce pride and held up a bit of something gray that was slightly larger than most of the particles in the cloth. “You know this dust?”

“Is that a bit of the Castle?” The Emissary looked pale, as though he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Da!” Khelsh smiled even more broadly, showing a gold tooth. “Dust of Castle. Hard to get. Now we finish what wizards begin, and we see how our boy prince … Oh! Our King Glower!” He sneered. “We see how he can be when his Castle is dead stones!”

Prince Khelsh pulled a small black bottle out of the pocket of his robe. He shook it in the Emissary’s pale face. “Please, make free to join chant:
Macree, salong, alavha
!

“
Macree, salong, alavha, macree, salong, alavha
,” he said over and over again.

And as he said the words, with a few of the Council tentatively joining in, he uncorked the little bottle and poured the glutinous contents over the dust on the cloth. It made a nasty-looking mud that he stirred with a small silver wand he took from his pocket until the whole thing was a thick, gluey lump.

“
Macree, salong, alavha, jenet!
”

A mighty groan suddenly seemed to emanate from every stone of the Castle, and every wall shifted a bit before settling back with a screech. At the same moment, a great pain ran through Celie, as though something had struck the top of her head and the blow had jolted the nerves all along her left side. She reeled and fell against the wall.

And it was dead.

Celie didn’t know how she knew, but there was the strangest feeling that something, some part of the stones, was just
gone
. The Castle was no longer alive, no longer listening to her, no longer waiting to stretch or change. It was gone, dead.

“No!”

Celie tore up the stairs to the Spyglass Tower, screaming.

Lilah couldn’t hear her because of the sound-muffling cloak, so when Celie burst out of the door at the top of the stairs and flung herself at Lilah, her sister let out a scream of her own.

“Celie? What’s wrong?” Lilah held her, stroking her back until she calmed down, and helping her out of the cloak so that she could speak.

“They’ve killed it! They’ve killed the Castle!”

“What? I don’t—” Then Lilah fell silent, and turned her stricken face to look around the tower. “It just … Did it feel as though something ran through you?” Lilah put one hand on top of her head, pressing down on her hair in remembered pain.

“Yes,” Celie sobbed. “Prince Khelsh had a spell, a spell that killed the Castle!”

“What are we going to do?” Lilah, her arms shaking, pulled Celie even closer. “What are we going to—” She stopped suddenly. “The door!”

Both sisters turned, horrified, to look at the wall where the door normally appeared. It wasn’t there. All the doors except the one that led to the peephole into the privy chamber were gone.

They were stuck in the Tower.

Celie’s body went limp, and she found that she could hardly lift her head. Her parents were missing, the Castle was dead, and she and Lilah were trapped in a tower. Tears ran down her cheeks and dripped off her jaw.

“Celie? Celie?” Lilah laid her down gently on their nest of blankets and shook her shoulders. “Celie!”

“We’re going to die,” Celie whispered.

“Celie, don’t talk like that,” Lilah said, but her voice wasn’t very convincing.

“We’re trapped here. The Castle is dead,” Celie said, her voice still the faintest of whispers.

“What did Khelsh say?” Lilah looked into Celie’s eyes intently. “Did he say he was going to kill the Castle? What did he do?”

Celie had to think: she could hardly remember what had happened.

“He said … he said they could stop it moving, and changing. That means it’s dead, doesn’t it? I can feel that it’s dead!”

There was a strangeness inside her. It was like being hungry, except the thought of food made her ill. Her parents were gone, but she had never truly believed them to be dead. But now the Castle was dead, its stones nothing more than stones; the sense of warmth, of listening, was no longer there, and the silence of it echoed in her ears and hollowed her out.

“Wake up, Celie!” Lilah shook her again, with more force. “Don’t do this to me!”

More tears pattered onto Celie’s face, but this time they were Lilah’s. The sisters were huddled on their makeshift bed, with Celie draped across Lilah’s lap, and Lilah was trying to lift her to a sitting position with shaking hands.

“Don’t you feel it, too?” Celie still could not seem to raise her voice above a whisper.

“Of course I feel it,” Lilah sobbed. “The Castle … isn’t here anymore. It’s all just stones and slates and
things
.” She sniffed and wiped her face on her sleeve. “I’d like to give Khelsh a piece of my mind,” she said in a hard voice. “No. I’d like to find the biggest pile of manure in the stableyard and shove him into it.”

Celie sat up.

“I don’t want to die here,” she said to Lilah.

“I’m glad,” Lilah said with a little laugh that was more like a sob. “I don’t want to die here or anywhere else.”

“I want to make Khelsh and the Emissary pay for this,” Celie said. “No more ink stains on sleeves, I want them out of the Castle so we can”—she stopped and gave a little sob of her own—“so we can mourn properly.”

“All right,” Lilah said. “But how? We have a little food, so we won’t starve … at least not today. But there’s no way out.”

Celie clambered to her feet, accidentally stepping on one of Lilah’s hands as she went.

“Sorry.”

Lilah just shook out her hand and then got to her feet as well.

“Do the spyglasses still work?”

Celie put her eye to one while Lilah went to another.

“Well, only like normal spyglasses do,” Celie said after a moment, answering her own question.

She looked through each of them just to make certain. They hardly ever used the one that pointed north since there was nothing in that direction but some fields and, beyond that, mountains. But as she moved away from that spyglass, Celie noticed something out of the window.

There was a roof about twelve feet below the tower on the north side. It was fairly flat, and there was a balcony farther along. It didn’t look like it would be hard to slide down from the roof to the balcony. The trick would be getting out of the Tower.

“What are you looking at?” Lilah joined her at that window. She looked down and gasped. “Celie, no! It’s much too far to jump!”

“I’m not going to jump,” Celie said reasonably. “You’re going to lower me down.”

“Lower you down? With what?”

“With the rope that the Castle put here, when it first made this room!”

Celie had almost forgotten about the things that were in the Spyglass Tower when she first discovered it. The Vhervhish phrase book had been one of them, along with the tin of hard biscuits that had been kicked into a corner and left there. And a rope. A coil of rope that had been put away in the big chest by Lilah in an effort to tidy up, and then promptly forgotten by all of them.

“I think the Castle knew this was going to happen,” Celie said, and felt two more fat tears run down her cheeks.

Chapter

21

I
don’t know if this is a good idea,” Lilah dithered.

“Lilah,” Celie said patiently, shaking out the rope to see how long it was, “you just said you wanted to find some manure and push Khelsh into it! How can we do that if we’re trapped in here?”

Lilah tugged at her gown, straightening it, and then adjusted the lace sleeves. “All right,” she said finally. “One of us has to go. I’ll—”

“No, it has to be me,” Celie interrupted her. “I’m not strong enough to lower you down, but you could lower me,” she pointed out.

“But …” Lilah studied the rope and the window. “I was going to tie it … There’s nothing to tie it to,” she said in a defeated voice.

Celie just nodded. She’d already seen that. The table wasn’t heavy enough, and there was nothing else in the room but the trunk, and that was barely heavier than the table.

“All right,” Lilah said, her hands on her hips. “You’ll have to go. But be extra careful. Don’t confront Khelsh, just find Rolf and see what’s going on. And if you have a chance to bring back some food, take it.”

“Of course,” Celie said. “It might be the last food we get in a while,” she agreed as she looped one end of the rope under her arms and tied it in front of her chest.

“I know; it’s much too dangerous for you to do this every day,” Lilah said, coming forward to help her tie a more secure knot.

“And I’m going to dismiss the staff,” Celie told her.

Lilah gasped. “All of them? Why?”

“All of them,” Celie said firmly. “Every maid, stable hand, and footman; I want them all to quit and walk out. We’ll see what Khelsh does with no servants to order around.”

Lilah’s eyes shone. “Brilliant,” she breathed.

Celie tugged at the knot. “All right, let’s try this.”

Gathering up a few things, like her atlas and Prince Lulath’s mirror on its wand, Celie wished she had some boys’ clothes to wear, but it couldn’t be helped. At the last minute, she put some of the hard biscuits in her sash, in case she couldn’t find anything better to eat. Then she hiked up her skirts and sat on the windowsill. The roof looked a long way down, and the rounded red tiles were probably very treacherous to walk on, but they had no choice. There was no ladder, the only stairs led to a dead end, and she couldn’t possibly lower Lilah down.

“Um, can you turn, and um, hang by your hands?” Lilah took hold of her shoulders and tried to help her move around. They were fortunate that the windowsill was quite wide. “If you slip, I don’t think I can hang on.”

Celie got herself up on one hip, her body completely twisted and her palms sweating. “Wait! Loop the rope around the leg of the table, and use it to sort of … winch me.”

“Winch you?”

“Like a mountain climber,” Celie said, trying to remember the book she’d read about mountain climbing once. She’d begun it because it had been Bran’s favorite book when he was ten, but Celie had found it to be quite boring. She remembered something about winding the ropes around spikes, though, so that the climber’s weight was supported by something other than his companion. “Twist a loop around one leg,” she said again. “So that it doesn’t pull your arms out of your sockets when I go down.”

“I’ll try it,” Lilah said doubtfully. She hurried and wrapped the rope around the nearest leg of the table, her brow creased in concern. She wound the rest of the rope around her fists, holding it tight, and braced her feet. “Slowly, please,” she said to Celie.

“All right,” Celie grunted.

She turned herself around so that her stomach pressed against the sill. Her skirts were hopelessly tangled around her legs, and she hoped that no one looked out a window in their direction. Wriggling her legs, she edged out until she was clinging with her arms. Then she let herself slide a bit more, until just her hands were clamped on the edge of the sill, her entire body hanging down the side of the Tower. She let out a faint scream.

“Are you dead?” Lilah’s voice was nearly a scream as well.

“No,” Celie panted. “I’m going to let go on the count of three.”

“All right.”

“One. Two.” She let out another scream. “Three!”

It actually took her a minute more to let go. Her fingers were frozen in terror and wouldn’t release the stone windowsill. But the rope yanked taut as Lilah struggled with it, shrieking inarticulately all the while, and Celie decided it was better to let go than hang there all day. And so she did. Sweat broke out all over her body, and the pain as the rope caught her under her arms made her whimper. The rough stone of the Castle wall scratched her cheek, and she tried to cling to it with her fingers and toes as Lilah lowered her down in jerky inches.

When her feet touched the tiles of the roof below, Celie let out a cheer. Lilah ran to the window and looked down, letting the slack rope slither down on Celie’s head.

“Ow! Careful!”

“Whoops!” Lilah grabbed the rope and pulled it back toward her. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m all right,” Celie said.

But her knees buckled and she sank down on the roof. She slid a little as she did so, and had to jam her feet into the tarnished copper rain gutter to stop herself from sliding right off. Above her, she heard Lilah say something she must have learned from one of the stable boys, or Pogue, but she was too busy getting her breath under control to care much.

“Are you all right now?”

“Yes,” Celie croaked.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Lilah announced.

“Don’t,” Celie said. She untied the rope from her chest. “I’m fine. Tie the rope to the table leg, and I’ll yank on it when I’m ready to come back up.”

“Be careful,” Lilah said for the hundredth time.

“I’ll tell everyone where you are,” Celie said. “Just in case something happens to me. The servants can get you out.”

“You’ll be fine,” Lilah said, putting on a brave face. “Good luck!” She waved awkwardly.

Celie waved back, and then got to her feet. She did it slowly, with one hand on the stones of the Tower wall, praying silently the whole time. But she didn’t slip, and the tiles didn’t go slithering off the roof the way her mind kept trying to tell her they were going to, either. Turning slowly, and walking with the hunched posture of a very old woman, she made her way along the roof to the bit that hung over the balcony.

She was concentrating hard on putting her feet just so on the tiles, and when Lilah called out to her, she startled and nearly fell.

“Oh!” Lilah let out another shout. “The balcony is right under you,” she called.

“Thanks,” Celie called back without turning her head.

Lowering herself to a crouch with extreme care, she crawled to the edge of the roof and gripped the rain gutter. Looking past it, she could see the flagstones of the balcony. She scooted on her bottom until her feet were hanging down, then she pushed off with her hands. The back of her skirt caught on the rain gutter and ripped with a
whoosh
ing noise. She stumbled and fell, bruising her kneecaps and scraping the skin on her palms as she landed.

“Ouch! Blasted, stinking—”

“Your Highness?”

Celie jerked upright, frightened, as the tall door that opened onto the balcony swung toward her. There was a maid in a long white apron with an equally white face standing there.

“Oh.” Celie sat back on her heels, pushing her torn skirts down over her bruised legs. “Hello.”

“Your Highness!” The maid dropped the basket she was carrying and threw herself at Celie, hugging her around the neck and sobbing. “We thought you were dead!”

“No, I’m not,” Celie said, gently detaching her. “Not at all. Nor is my sister.”

“Oh, saints be praised!” The girl raised her eyes to heaven and muttered a prayer. She was about Lilah’s age, and Celie thought she was one of the chambermaids. “None of us had seen you in days, and then when the Castle … stopped … we just thought the worst!”

“Lilah and I were trapped in a tower,” Celie told her. “I managed to get out, but I’ve got some things I need to do.”

“Of course,” the maid said, recovering quickly. She got up, straightened her apron, and then helped Celie up. She clucked her tongue when she saw the back of Celie’s gown. “It’s quite ruined,” she said. “Here, why don’t you put on my best gown?” She moved through the door and picked up the basket she had been carrying, offering it to Celie.

“Why are you carrying around your best gown?” Celie took the basket and looked inside. “Why are you carrying all your things?” She looked up at the maid.

The older girl’s cheeks colored, but she looked back with a defiant expression. “I’m going home to my mother,” she said. “I won’t stay here with that horrible foreigner in charge, not when the Castle’s gone all funny and still. I gave my notice to Ma’am Housekeeper, and so did three other girls.”

“Good,” Celie said, startling the maid. “That’s what I was coming to tell everyone. I want every member of the staff out of the Castle by night. You should all leave. Ma’am Housekeeper, too.”

“We should?”

“Yes. We’ll see how Prince Khelsh likes it when there is no one to cook him supper or light the fire in his room.”

The maid grinned with delight, and then helped Celie out of her torn gown and into the other one. It was plain, but a pleasing color of blue, and only a bit too long.

“I’ll just be off, then,” the maid said, her voice uncertain. “Do you know how I can get out?”

“I think so.” Celie pulled her atlas out of the bodice of her shift. “I’ve been mapping the Castle for some time now.”

“Coo-ee, you’re a clever one,” the maid said, her eyes round. Then she remembered herself and bobbed a curtsy. “Your Highness.”

“I think if you go left at the next passageway,” Celie said, hiding her pleasure at the compliment, “you can go straight down the main stairs to the stable. If you pass any other servants, be sure to tell them they can leave.”

“Yes, Princess Cecelia,” the maid said, curtsying again. She scurried off.

At the next passageway, Celie turned in the opposite direction she had sent the maid, and then followed her atlas toward the kitchens. She went down several staircases and through a large room she thought might have been a portrait gallery at one time, but now it only held some rusty armor piled in one corner. Two right turns and a spiral staircase brought her to the kitchens.

Heaving a great sigh, imagining the warm smell of bread and the welcome she would receive from Cook, Celie pushed open the door.

And found total chaos.

The maids were crying. The knife boy was shouting something, and there was even a dog in one corner howling along. Something was burning, and there was a great pile of potato peels in the middle of the floor. Celie stood on tiptoe to look for Cook, whom she finally spotted sitting in the far corner with her apron over her head, rocking back and forth.

Hauling up her skirts, Celie stepped onto a stool and then one of the long wooden tables. She shouted for quiet, but no one heard her, so she picked up a large copper pot and a wooden spoon and began banging them.

“Be quiet!”

A hush fell over the kitchen at last, broken only by the occasional sniffle. Even the dog stopped abruptly to gape at her.

“Princess Cecelia!”

Cook rushed across the kitchen and yanked Celie down off the table to hug her tightly. Her face pressed into the woman’s formidable bosom, Celie patted Cook on the hip, the only thing she could reach.

“He didn’t kill you!” Cook’s stoic voice broke on the words.

“No,” Celie said, not needing to ask who “he” was. “Lilah and I are very well. Rolf, too, I hope.”

“Is your hiding place still safe?”

“Yes,” Celie said, which was mostly true.

Cook pushed Celie away and dusted her hands. “You’re starving. Food for you. And your sister.” Cook noticed the chaos of her realm for the first time, and her face purpled. “Clean up this mess! Stop moaning!”

The kitchen maids scrambled to do her bidding, and Celie tugged on Cook’s sleeve. “Pardon me, Cook? I don’t want— All right, I do want food. But something else, too.”

“Anything,” Cook said absently. She was briskly slicing thick pieces of bread.

“I want you to leave the Castle. All of you.”

The long knife paused, and the maid who was scooping up potato peelings from the floor nearby froze.

Cook turned slowly to look at Celie.

“You all need to leave,” Celie repeated. “Every person loyal to Castle Glower should get out.” She smiled at the big woman. “Khelsh won’t have many people to lord over if the Castle is empty of everyone but the Council.”

“What about you and your sister?” Cook’s voice was sharp.

“We’ll still be here,” Celie said, quailing a little. “We have to find a way to stop Khelsh.”

“How?”

“We’ll find a way,” Celie said with a grim confidence that she didn’t really feel.

She could see that Cook wasn’t convinced, so she tried another tactic. “It will be easier if we’re not worried that he’s going to punish you in order to get to us.”

“My girls can go,” Cook said grudgingly. “But I was born in the Castle.” She held up the long serrated bread knife, and Celie gulped.

“I know—that’s why I need your help,” Celie told her, suddenly finding inspiration in the candlelight gleaming off the blade.

Cook cocked one eyebrow, her enormous arms folded over her bosom, the knife pointing upward.

“I want you to gather every loyal soldier and every farmer and shepherd who can wield a pitchfork or shoot an arrow,” Celie said, feeling her shoulders straighten and her face brighten as she warmed to her new idea. “I want messages sent to all of Sleyne, and all our allies outside of Sleyne. Grath. Keltin. All of them. You’re all needed to lay siege to the Castle.”

Shaking her head, Cook went back to slicing the bread. “The Castle cannot be seized,” she said.

“Not when the Castle was alive,” Celie said, trying not to choke on the words.

Putting down the knife, Cook turned to look at Celie again. She put her big hands on each side of Celie’s face, and her blue eyes bored into Celie’s.

“Nothing can defeat Castle Glower,” she said.