Conrad's Fate

by Diana Wynne Jones

  We both said, with real gratitude, “Thank you, my lord.”

  Count Robert smiled. There was a sad sort of look to him, smiling. “No problem. Here, Champ!”

  Christopher let go of the neckcloth. It was an ex-neckcloth really, more of a dirty string by this time. Champ immediately sprang to his hind legs and attempted to put both his paws on the shoulders of the Count’s evening jacket. The Count caught the paws just in time, in a way that showed he had had a lot of practice, and said, “No, down, Champ! I love you, too, but there’s a time and a place for everything.” He put Champ down on all four feet and took firm hold of the ex-neckcloth. “Off you go,” he said to us.

  We scurried away to the attic stairs. I looked around as we went and saw Count Robert using one of his gleaming shoes to urge Champ into the Family lift. “Get on, stupid!” he was saying. “It’s quite safe. Or do you want to meet Amos in a rage?”

  Christopher was very excited as we sped back to the clothes store. “My guess was right, Grant! You heard the Count, did you? There are lots more places beside those two frightful towers. Millie must be in one. Will you come with me to look for her tomorrow on our morning off?”

  Well, of course I would. I could hardly wait to explore. Next time, I thought, I would take my camera with me, too, and collect some real evidence of other worlds, or dimensions, or whatever they were.

  Before that, of course, we had to get into new clothes, hide the gunky ones in an empty room, and rush off to our supper. Then we had to stand by the dining room wall with those stupid cloths over our arms while Mr. Amos, Andrew, and two other footmen served the Family with their Dinner. Neither of us dared do a thing wrong. Mr. Amos was still in a rage. Whatever Count Robert had said to him, fury about it was bottled into Mr. Amos, so that he was like a huge pear-shaped balloon full of seething gas. Andrew and the other two tiptoed around him. Christopher and I tried our best to look like part of the wall.

  The Countess was in a rage, too, but she wasn’t doing nearly such a good job of bottling it as Mr. Amos was. I suppose she had no need to bother. Nothing was right for her that evening. There was a thumbprint on her wineglass, she said, a speck of dirt on her fork, she said, and iron mold on her napkin. Then she found a smear of pink polish on the salt cellar. Each time one of us was sent whizzing away to fetch a new one of whatever was wrong, and then, while she waited for it, she turned to Count Robert, opened her eyes wide, and did her “Why?” at him. When I came back with a shiny new salt cellar, she was saying, “Really, darling, you must grow out of this habit of only pleasing yourself.”

  Count Robert stood up to it better than I would have done. He smiled and said, “But you asked me to arrange it, Mother.”

  “But not now, Robert. Not when we’ve got company coming to celebrate your engagement!” the Countess said. “Amos, this plate is dirty. See this speck on the edge here?”

  Mr. Amos leaned over her shoulder and inspected the plate. “I believe that is part of the pattern, my lady.” He shot Count Robert a mean look while he said it. “I’ll have it replaced at once,” he said, and snapped his fingers at Christopher.

  By the time Christopher whizzed back with a fresh plate, Count Robert was really getting it in the neck. “And you haven’t even considered where this hireling of yours will eat,” the Countess said. “When I think of all the trouble I went to, to teach you that a gentleman should consider others, I quite despair of you, Robert! You behave like a greedy child. Greedy and selfish. Me, me, me! Your character is so weak. Why can’t you learn to be strong, just for once? Why?”

  Christopher rolled his eyes at me as he took up his place by the wall again. And it really was amazing the way the Countess went on at Count Robert, who after all owned Stallery, as if he were about six years old, just as if there were no footmen standing like wooden statues, or us listening to her, or Mr. Amos by the serving table looking meanly glad that the Count was in trouble. I was quite embarrassed. But I was also pretty curious to know what Count Robert had done to annoy the Countess and Mr. Amos so.

  By this time the Countess was on about the way the weaknesses of Count Robert’s character had shown up when he was a toddler and kept reminding him of bad things he had done when he was two and four and ten years old. The Count just sat there, bearing it. Lady Felice kept her head down over her plate. But the Countess noticed her, too.

  “I’m glad to see that your silly little eating disorder is over, dear.”

  “It was nothing, Mother,” Lady Felice said.

  So then the Countess decided that the fish was overcooked and told Mr. Amos to send it back to the kitchen. Mr. Amos snapped his fingers at me to take it. “And be sure,” he said, handing me the loaded tray, “to tell Chef exactly what her ladyship found wrong with it.”

  I missed the next bit, while I went away through the hall and the swing door, down the steps to the undercroft, and on to the kitchen, but Christopher said it was just more of the same. In the kitchen the Chef put his hands on his hips and stared at me humorously. All the footmen called him the Great Dictator, but I thought he was quite a nice man. “And what’s supposed to be wrong with it?” he asked me.

  “She says it’s overcooked,” I said. “She’s in a really bad mood.”

  “One of those evenings, eh?” the Chef said. “Slimming spells disagreed with her, and she’s saving herself for the roast, is she? All right, get back and tell her that yours truly grovels all over the carpet and you needn’t mention that this fish was perfect.”

  Back I went, all the way to the dining room, where I managed to go in almost exactly as I was supposed to, slipping in sideways with nearly no noise. Mr. Amos was waiting there for me. Behind his bulky pear shape the room felt like a thunderstorm. “And what has Chef to say for himself?” he demanded, low and urgent.

  “He grovels on the carpet and I’m not to say the fish was perfect,” I said.

  That was stupid of me. I think it was Christopher’s influence that made me say it. Mr. Amos had the perfect opportunity to get rid of some of his bad temper on me. He gave me a glare from his stone-colored eyes that made my knees go weak. Luckily for me, Lady Felice chose that moment to jump up from her chair and fling her big white napkin onto the table. Two wineglasses went over.

  “Mother!” she said, almost in a scream. “Will you stop going on at Robert as if he’d committed a crime! All he’s done is hire the librarian you asked him to hire! So leave him alone, will you!”

  The Countess turned to Lady Felice. Her eyes went wide, and her lips began shaping the “Wh—” of one of her dreadful “Why?”s.

  “And if you say, ‘Why, dear?,’ once more,” Lady Felice screamed, “I shall pick up this candlestick and brain you with it!” She gave out a sound like a laugh and a sob mixed, and rushed for the door. Mr. Amos and I both had to dodge. Lady Felice stormed past us and crashed out of the room like a warm, scented hurricane and slammed the door behind her.

  In the rest of the room she left a feverish dead silence. Andrew and the other footmen sprang into action, silently and on tiptoe, mopping up spilled wine, taking away the fallen glasses, and whipping away all the knives, forks, and spoons still there at Lady Felice’s place. The other two at the table simply sat there, while—just as if nothing had happened—Mr. Amos walked around to speak gently in the Countess’s ear.

  “Chef sends his profound apologies, my lady, and says it will not occur again. Allow me to bring on the next course, my lady.”

  The Countess, in a frozen way, nodded. Because the footmen were still busy wiping up wine, Mr. Amos beckoned Christopher and me over to the food lift and passed us tureens and sauceboats to carry over to the table. I was not sure where to put things, but Christopher whirled everything across and dumped them any old where and then bowed and patted the mats with both hands, as if he knew just what he was doing. Mr. Amos glowered at him over his shoulder as he picked up a massive platter piled with meat.

  The Countess, still looking frozen, said to Count Ro
bert, “Felice is so tiresome these days. I think it’s high time she was married. I shall invite that nice Mr. Seuly to dinner with our other guests. I feel sure I can induce Felice to marry him.”

  Count Robert said, “Are you making some kind of a joke, Mother?”

  “Not at all. I never joke, dear,” said the Countess. “Mr. Seuly is Mayor of Stallchester, after all. He is wealthy, and widowed, and he has a very respectable position in life—and it’s not important who Felice marries, the way it is for you, dear. You are engaged to a title, but—”

  “Give me patience!” Count Robert suddenly shouted out. He leaped to his feet, whacked his napkin on the table and—like Lady Felice—made for the door with great strides just as Mr. Amos arrived with the platter of meat.

  I never could work out how Mr. Amos missed Count Robert. The Count did not seem to see either Mr. Amos or the meat. He just charged out through the door and banged it shut behind him. Mr. Amos somehow managed to raise the vast platter above both their heads and then to twirl himself away. The Countess sat, still frozen, watching Mr. Amos waltzing around with the great steaming dish.

  When at last he stopped twirling, she said, “I don’t understand, Amos. What is making my children so very tiresome lately?”

  “I believe it is their extreme youth, my lady,” Mr. Amos replied, laying the platter reverently down on the table. “They are mere adolescents, after all.”

  Christopher’s eyes swiveled to mine in amazement. As he said to me afterward, you called people adolescents at his age and mine. “Lady Felice has come of age,” he said, “even if they did have to cancel the party for it. And Count Robert must be in his twenties! Grant, do you think that the Countess is mad and Mr. Amos humors her?”

  He said that much later, though. At that time we had to stand there while the Countess obstinately plowed through three more courses, half a bottle of wine, and dessert, and looked angrier with every mouthful. Mr. Amos’s bottled rage grew so huge that even Christopher hardly dared move. The footmen all pretended they were invisible, and so did I.

  And it did not stop there. The Countess laid down her napkin and went to the Grand Saloon, telling Mr. Amos that the Improvers could bring her coffee there. This meant that Christopher and I had to race upstairs after her with trays of comfits and chocolates, while Mr. Amos followed us with coffee, herding us like a rather heavy sheepdog.

  The Grand Saloon was vast. It stretched from the front to the back of the house and was full of things to fall over, like golden footstools and small, shiny tables. The Countess sat in the middle of it, where Christopher and I had to keep dribbling coffee for her into a cup so small that it reminded me of the crucibles Uncle Alfred did his experiments in. I drizzled in coffee, and Christopher dripped in cream, while Mr. Amos stood by the distant door, rocking on his small, shiny feet and waiting for us to make a mistake so that he could vent some of his rage on us. We knew that the very least that could happen was that Mr. Amos would cancel our morning off, so we were very, very careful. We tiptoed and poured for what seemed a century, until the Countess said, “Amos, I wish to be alone now.” By that time my arms were shaking and my calves ached with tiptoeing, but we hadn’t made any mistakes, so Mr. Amos had to let us go.

  “Whew!” I said when we were safely out of hearing. “What has Count Robert done to make them both so angry? Did you find out?”

  “Well,” Christopher said, scratching at his head so that his sleek hair separated into curls, “you probably know as much as I do, Grant. But while you were away with the fish, the Countess did say something about hiring penniless students to catalog the library here. Though why that should make anyone angry, I haven’t a clue. After all, she’s supposed to have asked Count Robert to hire someone. The Librarian at Chrestomanci Castle says you have to have a proper list of the books you’ve got or you can’t find any of them. And I can’t see why that should make Mr. Amos angry as well.”

  I felt suddenly full of an idea. “Could it be,” I said, “that they have secret books in there? You know, books about pulling the possibilities or explaining how to work the changes at the top of the house?”

  Christopher stood still in the passage outside our room. “Now that is a notion!” he said. “Grant, I think we ought to take a look at this library when we’re free tomorrow morning.”

  Twelve

  Naturally that next morning we went to look at the top of the mansion first. Christopher was seriously anxious about this girl Millie, and I was really excited about what we’d see there next. We went to the attics as soon as we were free.

  On the way, I dodged into our room and got my camera. I wanted to have proof that we weren’t imagining the strange towers. As it was a dull sort of day, with fog down in Stallchester valley and only Stall Crag sticking up out of it, I made sure the flash was working.

  Christopher jumped at the sudden brightness. “Don’t count your chickens, Grant,” he said while we crept along to the streak of paint on the wall. “You may not have anything to photograph.”

  This made me sure that my bad karma would cancel out any chance of the mansion changing. But we were in luck. Just as we passed the stripe of paint, there was the most almighty sideways wrench. Christopher and I were thrown against each other and sort of staggered around in a half circle, with me hanging on to Christopher’s neckcloth for balance. And as soon as we were facing the other way, we realized that the passage we had just come through was now a tall pointed archway made of stone. Beyond it was somewhere so shadowy and stony that I was glad I’d remembered my camera flash.

  “Looks like that tower we hauled the dog up again,” Christopher said as we went through the archway.

  It was nothing like the slate tower. The archway opened into a stone-floored gallery held up on one side by fancy stone pillars, each pillar a different shape. The roof was a basketwork of stone vaulting, and the other wall was blank stone. The vaulting and the carvings on the pillars must have been picked out in gold paint once, but a lot of the gold had flaked off, leaving the patterns hard to see. From the space beyond the pillars there came vast, soft, shuffling echoes. It felt huge out there, but not as if people were living in it. It was more like the time my school had gone around Stallchester Cathedral, when the guide had taken us up into the passages in the dome.

  Christopher said, “Millie’s here! Quite near!” and set off at a run to the other end of the gallery, where the gloomy light came from.

  I raced after him with my camera bouncing on my chest. The gallery opened into a big curving stone staircase, leading down into the gray light. Christopher went plunging down the stairs, and I followed. And as soon as we came around the first curve, we realized we were on an enormous spiral—a double spiral, we realized after the next curve. There was another staircase opposite ours, sort of wrapped around the one we were on. When we leaned over the high stone side, we could see the two staircases spiraling down and down. When we looked up, we saw the inside of a tower overhead. It had fancy windows in it, but they were so dirty that it was no wonder the place was in such gloom.

  Footsteps rang, like an echo of ours. We looked over at the other staircase, and there was a girl there, hurrying down to get to the same level as us. “Christopher!” she shouted. “What are you doing here?”

  It was hard to see what the girl was like because of the gloom and because the staircases were so big and so wide apart, but her voice sounded nice. She seemed to have a rounded face and straight brownish hair, but that was all I could see. I swung up my camera and photographed her as she dashed down opposite us, which made her stop and try to cover her eyes.

  “Meet us at the bottom!” Christopher shouted at her. His voice boomed around in a hundred echoes. “I’ll tell you then.”

  In fact he tried to tell her as we dashed on down and around, the two of us circling around Millie and Millie circling around us, while the space rang with our hurrying feet and the voices of the other two. They kept shouting at each other as they went, trying
to explain what they were doing here, but I don’t think either of them could hear properly because of the echoes. I could tell they were truly glad to see each other. I took several more photos as we went. It was such an amazing place.

  I think Millie shouted something like “I’m so pleased you came! I’ve been having such a frustrating time! This house keeps changing, and I can’t seem to get out!”

  “Me, too!” Christopher bellowed back. “I had to take a job as a lackey. What do you get to eat?”

  “There’s always food downstairs,” Millie yelled in reply, “but I don’t know where it comes from.”

  “How did you get in?” Christopher roared. The echoes got worse and worse. Neither of us could hear what Millie shouted in answer to this. Christopher roared again, “You know the main changes happen at the top of the house, do you?” I think Millie yelled back that of course she did, she wasn’t a fool, but she never seemed to get anywhere. And she seemed to try and describe her frustrations as we all hammered down several more spirals. Then Christopher began bellowing, across her description, that one of the places was bound to be the perfect place for the two of them to live in secret—but we shot down the last curve at this point, and there was ceiling over the staircase. The echoes quite suddenly cut off. And we found ourselves in a plain stone hallway. Christopher stopped shouting and turned to me. “Quick, Grant. Where’s the other stairway?”

  We both ran along the hall to the place we thought the other spiral ought to come out, but there was only wall there. It had little windows in it that looked out on to woodland, so it was obviously wrong.

  “We got turned around,” Christopher panted, and he dashed back the other way so fast that I could barely keep up.

  There was a door at the end of the hall that way. Christopher thundered through it and on into the middle of a largish room, where he stopped dead beside a pile of sofas and armchairs with a sheet draped on top of them. Beyond that, big windows showed a garden that was mostly weeds. Rain was falling on the weeds. There were more windows, showing more weeds, in the left-hand wall, a harp or something in one corner, and nothing but a big empty fireplace in the right-hand wall.