A Tale of Two Castles

  Princess Renn would certainly check on me soon. Wait, Your Highness, I pray you. Do not come yet.

  Noisily I pulled the chair and table to the window and climbed up but didn’t leave the purse there. Next, I hurried to the bed and closed the drapes around me. I lifted the mattress and let it fall, smoothed out the bedding, and then—silently—inserted the purse into the hole I’d made in the drapery.

  After slipping out between the bed-curtains, I stamped to the case of shelves, which I moved away from the wall, paused, pushed back. I opened the wooden box, then closed it with a loud click. I dragged the table and chair to the middle of the room, laid a fresh log on the fire, and announced in my witch’s voice, “There, my sweetlings.”

  Master Onnore, who was tall enough not to need the chair, shoved the table against the wall and climbed up. He ran his hand along the windowsill, although he could see there was no purse. He looked back to make sure I hadn’t left. Then he peered down, seeking the purse below in the outer ward.

  Master Dure stood at the shelves, opening the box, looking in the bowl, feeling under each shelf. He, too, glanced at me after every few seconds. Finally he moved the case of shelves aside and slid his dagger between the floorboards.

  Master Onnore rushed to the fireplace and used the poker to assure himself I hadn’t tossed the purse in there. He would have been comical if the circumstances hadn’t been so dire.

  Together they advanced on the bed and drew open the curtains. After a minute or two of carefully shifting bedclothes and looking at me, they ripped open the mattress and forgot me in pawing through the feathers. I counted to a hundred, then inched the door open, slowly, slowly, until I had just enough room to slip out, and slid it closed behind me—

  And heard the princess from below. “I’ve come with a refreshment for the poor girl. I will take this one to her as well.”

  My heart pounded, but I fitted the key into the lock and turned, hearing a quiet clink. Then, key still in my right fist, I lifted my skirt and started up the ladder to the wall walk above the tower.

  “La! I can climb stairs unaided.”

  I saw the glow of a torch on the staircase walls below. With all my strength, I raised the trapdoor, climbed out—

  And faced low boots and stout calves.

  The guard pulled me up by my armpits. I passed a big belly, saw a red beard, green eyes. “Be still. I’ve got you.”

  “Her Highness is hurt!”

  Princess Renn cried from below, “La! Help! Oh, la!” She had discovered the locked door.

  The guard grabbed my left hand and started down. I bent over but didn’t step back on the ladder. Other cries rose from below.

  “Come.” He let go my hand and reached for my ankles.

  I jumped back.

  The cries continued, the princess’s most shrill of all.

  Would he come up for me or go down to her?

  He descended. I tossed the key over the battlements and raced away. The rain had become fog. If more guards were on the wall walk, the mist might hide me.

  The king’s chambers were in the northwest tower, on the other side of the gatehouse wall walk.

  Let them not expect me to go there. And let me not be too late.

  I didn’t think His Highness’s trapdoor would be guarded, and it wasn’t. Why guard it without a prisoner inside? I raised it a crack. Guards would certainly be posted inside or outside the king’s chamber, or both.

  Luck was with me. No guards on the landing. I lifted the trapdoor just enough to admit me and then gentled it back into place and stole down the ladder. The king’s bed hadn’t been in the room I’d visited or on the story below, so it had to be in the top chamber, as my prison bed had been.

  The tower seemed to sway. I put my hand on the doorknob to steady myself. I swallowed repeatedly before I knew I could speak.

  “La, Father! Here I am. . . .” I turned the knob and opened the door. “La! I have extraordinary . . .”

  I ran in. An impression of startled faces. “Your Majesty . . .” I fell on my knees—and was lifted by two guards the instant my knees touched the floor. They began to drag me out.

  “I didn’t poison you, but I know who did. She’ll do it again.”

  His Highness held up his hand. “How fortunate I am that prisoners break in to bring me truth.” His voice had diminished to a whisper. “Pray tell, who?”

  Goodwife Celeste sat on a stool near the king’s bed. “Elodie!”

  Sir Misyur turned away from tending the fire. “Elodie?”

  Master Dess sat in the window recess, stroking a small dog in his lap. A third man, likely Sir Maydsin the physician, held the king’s wrist, taking his pulse.

  The guards loosened their grips but didn’t let me go.

  His Highness leaned forward. “Name the lady you wish to put in your place.”

  Say it! I told myself. He may kill me, but say it! “Has . . .” I had to catch my breath. “Has your daughter given you food today?”

  “My daughter?” He laughed. Coughed. Laughed again. “You may release her.”

  The guards obeyed but remained close.

  “Master Dess!” I cried. “Beyond the eastern outer curtain, Masteress Meenore lies wounded. IT may have an arrow in ITs belly.”

  “Your Majesty . . .” Master Dess bowed and hurried from the chamber.

  “Misyur, will you be so kind as to find my daughter, and don’t tell her what this is about. This girl is always droll. Renn will be amused. We’ll hold the trial here.”

  Sir Misyur bowed and left.

  “My daughter did share with me a delicious rabbit pie.” He addressed himself to Goodwife Celeste. “She came after you left me for my nap. She is always welcome, but especially when she brings food.”

  Goodwife Celeste looked startled.

  How much poison in the pie? How soon would it strike?

  “Now, while we wait, the girl will mansion the tale with the snake.” He waved the guards away. “Give her space.”

  How could I mansion now? I didn’t want to!

  Goodwife Celeste nodded at me. I began by turning my cap backward for the bad sister. The imaginary moonsnake oozed slowly from my mouth. How hard it was to concentrate.

  When the snake had emerged, I leaped from side to side to get away from it.

  The king laughed. The guards laughed. The king coughed. Goodwife Celeste frowned.

  After an especially wide leap, I turned my cap to the front to be the kind sister.

  “La, Father!” The princess entered with Sir Misyur and two guards, neither of them Master Dure or Master Onnore. “Ehlodie?”

  The king patted the bed next to him. “Sit by me. The girl is even more diverting than I thought. She claims you poisoned me.”

  “La!”

  “It is in her left sleeve! You’ll see. She tried to poison me, too.” Oh no! “She was bringing me—”

  “My dear, oblige me by holding out your left arm.”

  I was frantic. “If the guards eat my meal, they’ll die!”

  “Make her quiet,” King Grenville said.

  A guard put his hand across my mouth.

  “Father! You mistrust me?”

  “I trust you. You are my beloved daughter, but hold out your arm.”

  She held it out. He rolled up the long sleeve inch by inch. No poison.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  It had to be there. What had she done with it?

  “The other arm,” the king said. “I will be thorough.” He revealed her right arm to us all. No poison.

  I bit the guard’s hand. He squawked and let go. “Her purse!”

  The guard covered my mouth again.

  The king laughed. “She is so funny. Your purse, my love.”

  The purse contained only keys.

  “That is enough. I am tired of this sport. We cannot keep girls who won’t stay in their guarded towers. Tomorrow—”

  Keys! I’d put the tower key in my shoe. I bit the guard again,
and he let go again. “Look in her shoes! I’m—”

  The guard muffled me again.

  “Father!”

  “Dear, you needn’t remove your shoes. Tomorrow the girl will die. Poison will be her—” He coughed and put his bedsheet to his mouth. It came away stained with blood, and blood etched a line down his chin.

  The guard dropped his hand from my mouth.

  What would she do now?

  “Father, are you ill again?” She began to untie his cap, a daughterly gesture.

  He turned frightened eyes to Sir Misyur. “Look in her shoes.” The inside of his mouth was bright red.

  She jumped off the bed and stood.

  “Your Highness,” Sir Misyur said, “take off your shoes.”

  She stamped. “I will not.”

  Sir Misyur nodded to a guard, who approached her.

  “You see . . .” She laughed awkwardly. “There is a darn in the heel of my hose. I would not have you see it.”

  “Beg pardon, Your Highness.” The guard knelt at her feet. He lifted her right foot by the ankle.

  A pouch was in the toe of the right shoe.

  “Let me have it.” Goodwife Celeste took the pouch and sniffed inside. “Eastern wasp powder.” She looked at Sir Maydsin. “Deadly.” She rushed out of the chamber, crying, “I have a remedy. I’ll fetch it.”

  “La!” Her Highness pulled herself to her full height. Her voice achieved extraordinary heights as well. “I was kind enough. . . . I was kind. . . . I am kind. . . .” Her eyes swam, and her nose reddened. She buried her face in her long sleeve. “Alack!”

  Sir Misyur told the guards to take the princess to the tower where I had been kept.

  “If the guards there ate my food, they’ve been poisoned, too.”

  “Send them here,” Sir Misyur said.

  The princess was escorted out, bent over, sobbing.

  “Pardon . . . may I leave to find my masteress?”

  Sir Misyur nodded.

  A Lepai finch flew in the window and landed between Sir Misyur and me. It fluttered its yellow feathers, then began to vibrate—and grow.

  I saw Sir Misyur’s smiling face and his tears. I wept and smiled, too.

  What brought him back now? Where had he been? What had he been?

  Sir Misyur removed his cloak and draped it around the ogre as he became himself again. “Welcome home, Your Lordship.”

  I heard distant barking. Nesspa had sensed his master’s return.

  “Thank you. Elodie, your masteress wants you.”

  “Is IT injured?”

  “The animal physician is with IT.”

  I ran out of the room and pelted down the tower steps. The day was ending, and the rain had resumed. With my feet squelching in mud, I raced across the inner ward, between the inner gatehouses and the outer, across the drawbridge, along the moat, around the outer northeast tower. And there IT lay sprawled, ITs belly and legs on a mound of hay, ITs head and neck extending across the ryegrass.

  Master Dess sat on the hay mound, dabbing ITs belly with linen.

  “Elodie!” IT lifted ITs head. White smoke rose in spirals. “You escaped! I congratulate you.”

  “Master Dess, is my masteress badly hurt?”

  IT began to rise, stopped, and asked Master Dess if IT might.

  “Yes, honey, honey. Elodie, I wish all my patients would pull their arrows out with their teeth and then eat them. I stopped the bleeding. Took just a moment.”

  IT sat up, looking pleased with ITself. “Pine arrows and quartz arrowheads. Quite tasty.”

  I marched straight to IT and hugged ITs front thigh. Leaning my face into ITs belly, I inhaled sulfur. Lambs and calves, IT stank! Heavenly.

  “Mmm,” IT said. “Mmm, Lodie. If you must. Mmm.”

  Finally I stood back. “Her Highness signaled the cats and poisoned the king and mauled the ox and tried to poison me.”

  “Honey!”

  “The whited sepulcher,” IT said. “The poison was secreted on her person?”

  “In her shoe.”

  Of course I bathed before entering the lair. IT toasted skewers for me and then insisted I sleep, despite my protests that I wasn’t tired and had much to tell and much to ask.

  In the morning IT declared a holiday. After breakfast I sat on a pillow on the floor, and IT reclined on ITs side before me, ITs right arm bent at the elbow, ITs big head resting on ITs right claw—a feminine pose, I thought.

  “Did you put out your cap to call me? I hoped to approach close enough to see and then fly off again if all was well.”

  I nodded. “I was watching when you were struck. I thought . . . I couldn’t tell. . . .” If IT had been slain.

  “Elodie, I told you to stay out of the window.” IT touched my shoulder gently with the flat of ITs left claw. “Princess Renn must have suspected I would come to you. Hence the archers.”

  In a shaky voice I said, “They would have been considerate if they’d shot straight into your mouth.”

  Enh enh enh.

  “I wonder why His Lordship arrived at the castle when he did.”

  “There is nothing to wonder at. I found him.” ITs smoke curled in a lazy spiral. “Logic took you to the menagerie, Elodie. Logic took me there as well. My first two visits bore no fruit, but two failures did not rule out future success, and indeed His Lordship arrived there last night. I discovered him as an additional monkey and brought him here, where he became himself again. Do you know that he had been poisoned, too?”

  “I thought he might have been.”

  “I didn’t know. May I enter?” His Lordship stood in the doorway, carrying a large basket, Nesspa at his side.

  My masteress heaved ITself up and invited him in.

  The count let Nesspa’s chain go, and he ran to me, tail wagging. I patted the top of his big head.

  With the help of His Lordship, IT moved the table—His Lordship’s bench—back to the hearth. I put pillows on top while he placed the basket on the fireplace bench, now our low table. Then he seated himself carefully and removed delicacies from the basket. I toasted skewers. When all was ready, I perched on my stool at one end of the table. My masteress sat at the other. Nesspa stationed himself at the count’s leg.

  IT and I had just eaten, but we feasted anyway and shared according to custom, with no danger of poison. Nesspa was too polite to beg, but hospitality was extended to him, too, from my hand and His Lordship’s, but not from my masteress’s claw.

  I had almost the appetite of an ogre, and this ogre had brought marchpane. Still, I finished before him.

  When even he finally put down his knife, I said, “You didn’t know you were poisoned?”

  “No.” His ordeal had not made him more talkative.

  “But you were ill?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “His Lordship has told me some of this, Lodie. Until last night he was in a mouse hole in his bedchamber wall, at first ill almost to death, then improving slowly.”

  “Why didn’t the poison kill him?” I turned to him. “Kill you, I mean. You were so tiny!”

  “I am strong, even when I’m a mouse.” He made a fist and held it up.

  “Did you run to the menagerie as a mouse?” And no cat caught him?

  “As a flea. At the menagerie I became a monkey.”

  “Your Lordship . . .” I hesitated. “Pardon my questions.”

  “People don’t ask enough questions.” He shrugged. “They just guess.”

  Encouraged, I said, “Can you change whenever you want, to whatever you like?”

  “Unless there are cats.” He patted Nesspa’s head. “Then I can’t resist becoming a mouse.”

  I had been curious about this ever since I first saw him as a monkey: “Are you yourself inside the animal?”

  He stared at the ceiling and said nothing for a minute. “I am thinking.” He was quiet again. “Are you yourself inside a dream? The monkey is a happy dream.”

  IT said, “Mmm,” but not I
Ts usual Mmm. This one was softer, a feeling Mmm, not a thinking one.

  “I wake up inside the beast from time to time, to decide if I want to shift back. When I was the mouse, I was awake because I was sick.”

  “Your Lordship,” IT said, “did you realize Her Highness had signaled the cats?”

  He shook his head.

  I dared to ask the question I most wanted to know. “Your Lordship . . . er, did you love her?”

  He blushed. “I did not.”

  Good!

  He went to the middle of the lair, where he paced in a small circle. Nesspa followed him, whining uneasily. After a few minutes His Lordship stopped and Nesspa nuzzled his legs. “I should not have agreed to the marriage . . . but I wanted to be king so people would learn an ogre can be good.” He paced again and spoke while walking. “I liked Her Highness. I thought she loved me. I was grateful.” He went to Masteress Meenore. “I am to blame.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Enh enh enh. “And I am to blame for lighting the forge of a dishonest smith, although I was unaware of his dishonesty, and Lodie is to blame for allowing herself to be the victim of a thieving cat.”

  I smiled, but His Lordship looked puzzled.

  IT continued. “I suppose that your cook is to blame for preparing food that could be poisoned.” Enh enh enh. “Perhaps the builder is at fault for building the castle you would eventually hold a feast in.”

  I don’t think His Lordship had ever graced my masteress with his full, sweet smile before, but he beamed it on IT now. ITs white smoke curled into spirals, and I understood what spirals meant—dragon happiness.

  “Elodie,” IT said, “I have not yet told you all. His Lordship was with me, as a flea again, when I was shot. He returned to the castle to plead your case after Dess told us where you were.”

  “Thank you, Your Lordship.”

  He inclined his head. “I knew you would not poison anyone.” He stood. “I must leave. Misyur worries if I am gone too long. Meenore, I owe you payment.” He untied a brocade purse from his belt. “What is your fee?”

  Promptly IT said, “Ten silvers.”

  Astounded, I blurted, “So many?”

  IT glared at me.

  His Lordship counted out coins into ITs claw. “And a silver for—”