The passage made a sharp turn, and went on for a long way before turning again, but there was still no door to let them out. It was very dark, and Celie was starting to feel sick and panicky as they walked on and on. What if they never got out? What if she and Rufus were trapped in the walls of the Castle forever? Celie always knew which direction north was, or she had until now, and the realization that she didn’t know which direction she was facing or where in the Castle she was made her feel like screaming.
Right before she gave in and started to scream or cry, she heard her mother’s voice. A sharp tug on Rufus’s wing pulled him up short. He carked softly, and Celie shushed him.
“. . . certainly annoying,” Queen Celina was saying. “But hardly a catastrophe.”
“Our finest aged cheese!” Cook said indignantly.
“But no one was hurt,” the queen said. “Or put to sleep.”
There was silence, and then Ma’am Housekeeper spoke.
“Can the Royal Wizard not find a cure?”
“He’s working on it,” Queen Celina said. “I expect he’ll find the counterspell any minute now. I’m helping as well as others.”
“Oooh, I’d like to get my hands on that Arkwright,” Ma’am Housekeeper said. “First he attacked my girl Maisy, then the king himself! And those poor guards!”
“And let us think it was the griffins, poor things,” Cook added.
Celie’s heart warmed. Dear Cook. She was a woman of few words and great skill with spatula and knife. She had accepted the griffins as a matter of course, though she refused to make them special treats, much as she refused to make special treats for Lulath’s dogs, or indeed, any human diners.
There was another silence.
“Cook,” the queen said finally. “There is something that I need you to help me with. We’re going to need to keep the strength up for those who have been struck down. We’ll need to feed them . . . something.”
“Beef broth,” Cook said immediately. “With red wine for the blood. And girls to feed them, one drop at a time.”
“Yes, exactly,” Queen Celina said.
“I have a pot on the fire now, Your Majesty. Just waiting.”
“Excellent! Come with me, please.”
Celie hadn’t thought about that. The sleepers had no way of eating, and if they didn’t eat, and starved to death while Bran tried to find a counterspell . . . she didn’t want to think about it! Thank heavens her mother and Cook were taking care of matters.
But they were also leaving the room on the other side of the wall, heading to the kitchens.
“Mother! Mummy!” Celie called out. “Mummy?”
“I’m confident that we will find Arkwright very soon,” Queen Celina said, her voice fading as she moved away from the wall. “In the meantime, I think I’ll have guards posted in the kitchens. It’s difficult to be clever when you’re hungry.”
“Mummy!” Celie shouted as loudly as she could.
There must be tiny holes in the rock, or cracks in the mortar, for her to hear them so clearly. Her mother had probably been checking on the plans for dinner when Cook had come to report that there was a cheese missing.
The talk of cheeses and starving Arkwright out of the walls made Celie’s stomach growl loudly. She pounded on the wall with her fist and shouted for her mother again, with Rufus joining in, but to no avail.
They just couldn’t hear her. Or if they did, they probably thought it was rats.
Celie thought again about the scratching in the walls, that day in her mother’s solar when she’d been talking with Queen Celina and Lilah, and a chill swept through her. While she’d been sobbing over the new-found figurehead, Arkwright had been watching her, listening to her and her mother and sister. How many other private conversations had he eavesdropped on? Was she standing now where he’d been that day, and did her mother think she was just another rat in the walls?
Celie ran her hands over the wall but couldn’t find any sign of a latch, or even a crack where she could pry her fingernails between the stones. There must have been some kind of spell that enabled her to hear what was happening but muffled the sound coming from her.
“This is probably how the Arkish spied on the Hathelockes, before they took over the Castle,” Celie said to Rufus. “But that doesn’t help us!”
She even took the lockbox out and ran it over the wall to see if it stuck to anything, but it didn’t so much as twitch. She and Rufus moved on at last, reluctant to leave the soothing sound of the queen’s voice, but desperate to get out of the passageway.
With a great deal of effort, Celie calmed herself and took hold of Rufus’s wing again. She thought very carefully. Her best guess was that they were in the north wall of the queen’s solar. And if that were true, then all she had to do was follow the wall past her parents’ and Rolf’s bedrooms to the corridor with the linen closets. That was where she and Pogue and the others had gone into the passages to find her father. This passage had to connect . . . if not to the linen cupboards, then to something. No one would bother to make a passage this long that had only one door. Not even an Arkish spy!
After a minute of walking, which still didn’t lead her to any doors, Celie had to let go of Rufus’s wing and push him along with her hands on his hindquarters. He didn’t like the narrow passage or the darkness, and though he had been putting a brave face on it before, guarding Celie by walking ahead, she could feel tremors running through her dear griffin’s muscles. They were moving at a snail’s pace, which didn’t much help Celie with her claustrophobic feeling.
“I know, darling, I know,” Celie said. “It’s dark, it’s cold, we’re hungry. But we’ll get out of here soon.”
Another turn and Celie felt a breeze. She put her hands to the wall and soon found a wooden door. With a wordless cry of triumph, she fumbled the latch open, but it was still dark. Celie put out a hand and felt fabric.
“It’s a tapestry!” She almost screamed the words, she was so relieved.
She knew exactly where they were now. She thrust out an arm and flipped the tapestry out of the way, and she and Rufus stumbled into the corridor outside the winter dining hall, just a stone’s throw from Rolf’s bedchamber.
“Yes!” Celie yelled. “We did it!”
Rufus screamed as well, shaking himself and holding his wings out wide in relief. Celie quickly slammed the door and put the lockbox to it. The door came away from the wall so fast that Celie dropped it. It snagged the tapestry on its way down and ripped a long tear before hitting the floor with a crash. As the crash echoed through the corridor, Celie felt the twist in her head, and then an even stronger sensation that made her feel queasy. There was a grinding sound, like stones grating together, which brought two soldiers, a maid, and Bran running.
“Celie!” her brother cried, scooping her up in his arms.
“Oh, Bran!” Celie threw her arms around his neck and burst into tears, not caring who was watching.
“You foolish girl,” he said. “You took the lockbox, didn’t you? I’ve just ordered the guards to search!”
“It’s all right, I’m all right,” Celie said, trying not to sob as she spoke.
“Arkwright might have gotten you,” he said severely, setting her down and giving her shoulders a gentle shake. “I can’t believe you did this!”
“I just . . . we have to close the doors,” Celie said.
“Your Highness, it does appear to be working,” one of the soldiers said. He had set the door upright and was investigating the wall behind the tapestry. “There’s no sign of a passageway here at all.”
“Y-Your High Wizardness?” the little maid said in a shaking voice.
“Yes, dear, what is it?” Bran said gently, turning to her.
“What was that noise? It sounded like . . . like the time the princesses and the Crown Prince went away.” She looked at Celie with big eyes.
“I heard it earlier as well,” the soldier offered.
“It happens when I close
a whole passageway,” Celie said. “Well, that’s what I’m guessing that sound is.”
“You’ve closed an entire passageway?” Bran said in disbelief.
“Yes,” Celie said with pride. “Two, in fact.” She decided not to say that she’d seen Arkwright, and that he knew about the lockbox. “And this one”—she pointed to the blank wall—“actually had some spell on it. When I walked past Mummy’s solar, I could hear Mummy and Ma’am Housekeeper and Cook talking, but they couldn’t hear me. The Arkish must have used it to spy on the Hathelockes.”
“I wonder if I could feel for it,” Bran mused.
He moved to the wall, and the soldier stepped aside, holding the tapestry even higher so that the young wizard could put his hands on the bare stone. King Glower, with the crown and rings of the Builder of the Castle, could probably have laid one hand on the wall and gotten a feel for things immediately, even though he was still learning how to use the magical tools that Celie and the others had brought back from Hatheland. Bran had only his own magic, but still, that was formidable. Bran had graduated from the College of Wizardry two years earlier than most student wizards, and was well respected by all who knew him.
Bran stood for a long time with his hands on the wall. Celie, the two guards, and the maid all held their breath and watched him. Rufus preened his feathers for a while, then got bored and lay down. After a minute, Celie quietly sat down next to him. It had been a very exciting day, and Celie wasn’t sure how much longer she could remain upright.
“There’s nothing there,” Bran said finally.
“No, sir?”
The soldier holding the tapestry waited for Bran’s signal and then lowered it back into place. It was hanging crooked now: a bit of the top had also torn, and the rip near the bottom gaped, showing the stone wall behind.
“I mean, there’s no passage,” Bran said in wonder. “Before, when I was walking through some of the passages with the guards, I could sense the passages around me, feel when a turn was coming. But there’s nothing there.” He looked down at Celie. “You’ve gotten rid of the entire passage,” he said.
“No,” Celie said. “Our mother has.”
“Yes,” her brother said. “I must—” He stopped, and glanced at the guards and the maid. Then he went on, regardless of their watching eyes. “I must apologize to Mother. This little invention of hers may be our salvation.
“Thank you for being brave enough to make use of it.” Then he frowned. “But I still may ask Mother to punish you. If for nothing else, then for sneaking into my room!”
Celie yawned hugely, and the movement made her mouth water. “That’s fine. Even though now there’s one less place that Arkwright can hide. Well, two.” She put one hand on her middle as her stomach growled. “Oh,” she said, remembering. “Just keep an eye on the tunnel under Mummy and Daddy’s room! I can’t lock it, and now Arkwright knows about it.”
“He does?” Bran said in horror. “How?”
“He saw me climbing out of the door after I’d swum up the stream,” Celie said. “But I got rid of that door, too.”
“He saw you? Cecelia!” Her brother lunged forward and took her hands. “Are you all right? Where on earth have you been today?”
“All over the Castle,” Celie said, her stomach growling again. “But before you punish me, could I please have something to eat?”
Rufus screeched in agreement.
Chapter
17
When Celie woke up, she was so hungry she thought she might start chewing her own sheets. And they were her own sheets, though she didn’t remember getting into them. Someone must have carried her to bed after she and Rufus had gotten some food. The last thing she remembered was drooping over a bowl of cauliflower soup in the Heart of the Castle while Bran gave orders to Sergeant Avery.
She hoped that her brother hadn’t asked one of the guards to carry her. It was embarrassing enough that she’d fallen asleep right in front of them, without having to be carried like a child through the corridors of the Castle.
She sat up and looked around. There were cracks of light between her curtains; bright enough that she knew it was well into the day.
“I’ve missed breakfast and probably lunch,” she deduced.
At the sound of her voice, Rufus stirred. He was draped across the end of her bed, and he sat up and began to shake and scratch as he did every morning. This process, followed by a thorough grooming to make sure all his golden fur was smooth and every golden feather was in place, would take some time, so Celie got out of bed to get dressed. She was rather proud of the fact that she, a twelve-year-old girl, took less time to get ready in the morning than an animal.
As she went to her wardrobe, she saw a folded scrap of paper on the floor just inside her door. She picked it up and had to rub her eyes a few times before she was awake enough to make sense of it.
I have the lockbox. Yes, we will use it. No, you may not steal it and use it alone again. Get some rest.
Bran
“Get some rest?” Celie looked at the note in disbelief. “Get some rest indeed!”
Rufus stopped his grooming regimen to look at her, then went back to worrying at his hind claws with his beak, unconcerned with Celie’s anger.
“Not a ‘Thank you, Celie’?” she said to her closed door. “No, ‘You did a good job’?” She crumpled the note and threw it on the floor. “No one even asking if I want to come along?”
Her voice was rising, but she didn’t care. Who would hear her, anyway? They were all off using the lockbox themselves, as though she weren’t capable of closing more passageways, just the way she had yesterday!
“I am so tired of being babied,” Celie ranted. “I’m so tired of all my discoveries being taken from me! I’m so tired of doing all the work, and getting none of the thanks!”
She shook her fist at her bedroom door, imagining her family all tiptoeing past her room like she was an infant taking a nap. Meanwhile they went about the business of hunting Arkwright and building the ship to put her figurehead on.
The door swung open.
Celie was in her nightgown, but she decided that if the Castle didn’t want her to get dressed, she wasn’t going to waste time doing so. She put on her slippers and grabbed a shawl from the foot of her bed.
“Come along, Rufus,” Celie called. “You can finish grooming later.”
Rufus leaped off the bed to follow with only a small squawk of protest.
The Castle was eerily quiet. It felt like the middle of the day, but there was no one around. Celie didn’t know which way to go, so she went to the main hall. The front doors were open, as they always were, and there were two guards standing there. They both saluted when they saw Celie, and didn’t appear to notice that she was in her nightgown. The golden light pouring in from outside told Celie that it was late afternoon.
Her stomach gave a painful growl. She was sure that even the guards heard it, and they were paces away. The Castle didn’t indicate any other direction for Celie to go, so she went to find some food.
The kitchens were nearly deserted, which shocked her. Usually they were full of scullery maids and undercooks and the formidable presence of Cook herself. There was a pair of spit-boys turning a large roast over the central hearth, and two girls shaping dough for the small dinner loaves, but everyone else was gone.
“Oh, Your Highness!” One of the girls saw Celie standing in the doorway and wiped her hands on her apron, bobbing a curtsy as she did so. “What can we do for you?” She nudged the other girl, who turned, flustered, and curtsied.
“I—I just wanted something to eat,” Celie said.
“Of course! What would you like, Your Highness?” The first girl bustled around, opening dishes and showing Celie berries, half a roast chicken, and some carrots. “I could make you a sandwich . . . ?”
“That would be fine,” Celie said. “I’d like to just . . . take it with me.”
She used to eat in the kitchens all the time,
but hadn’t done so in a while. Celie had spoken to this girl who was offering her food on several occasions, but she was embarrassed to realize that she couldn’t think of her name now. There had been so much lately, so many adventures (which had turned out to be horrible, rather than exciting), that she hadn’t visited the kitchens, or ridden her pony, or done any of the things that had once filled her days.
Rufus butted her in the back.
“Oh, and something for Rufus, please?” Celie said.
She rubbed his head fondly. She felt a little guilty admitting it, but Rufus was much more fun than a pony.
“Of course, Your Highness!”
The other kitchen maid stepped closer to Rufus, working up her courage. Celie nodded encouragement, and the girl held out her hand.
“My brother is a guard,” she said softly. “He’s put in his name to have a go at an egg.”
“That’s wonderful,” Celie said.
“They’re not half so scary, up close,” the girl said, giggling a little as Rufus sniffed her hand. “Like a dog and a pony together.”
“More or less,” Celie said.
“What do you think your griffin would like to eat, Princess Cecelia?”
The first maid had quickly assembled a sandwich and some fruit on a tray, and was now looking around, a little confused. Ethan was the one in charge of the griffins’ food, along with a team made up of stable hands and two under-assistants to the Master of the Hounds.
“Oh, hmm,” Celie said. “I’ll just have a look in the pantry.”
Celie stepped into the big room, a shiver running through her. The room was always cold, even in the summer, and Celie was never sure if it was magic or just good engineering. She moved around the shelves, looking for something Rufus might like.
There was a scuffing noise, and an intake of breath from around the corner of the shelves.
“Hello?” Celie called. Apparently the kitchens weren’t as empty as she’d thought. But whoever was in here certainly had been standing in the cold for a long time! “Do you need some help? Hello?”