Tuesdays at the Castle

by Jessica Day George

  One of the maids caught them at it, and with a giggle she agreed to help.

  “I already short-sheeted all the beds this morning,” she told them then, covering her mouth to smother a laugh.

  “You did what?” Celie blinked at her, but Rolf started laughing.

  “I folded the sheets in half and tucked them in real tight. So that when you put your feet in, you get caught,” the maid explained.

  “Oh, I’d like to have seen Lord Feen’s face,” Rolf said, smothering another laugh with his hand.

  Celie’s eyes widened as she imagined it, and then she giggled as well. She had an idea for the maid, and for any of the other maids who might be willing to help.

  “Do you empty the chamber pots?” Celie asked.

  “Yes,” the maid said. “Some of them. And Bessy and Suze do the rest.”

  “Would they be willing to help?”

  “They might,” the maid said slowly. “If you—”

  “You have my solemn promise,” Rolf told her, “as do all the maids, cooks, footmen, and stable hands, that if you are fired trying to help us sabotage the Council, I will rehire you as soon as I get rid of Khelsh.”

  “Very well,” the maid agreed. “What did you have in mind, Princess Cecelia?”

  “What if all the chamber pots just … disappeared?” Celie asked, her head cocked to one side and her mouth twitching with a smile.

  The other girl’s eyes and mouth went round, and then she was covering her own mouth again to muffle her laughter. “We take them all down to the scrub room to be washed,” she said when she’d stopped giggling. “It will be quite simple to make the Council’s disappear. And that awful foreign prince! I’ll take care of it tomorrow morning!” She pursed her lips in thought. “What about that other prince? The one from Grath?”

  “Oh, he’s all right,” Celie was quick to assure her. “In fact, if you need help, you can go to Prince Lulath. He’s definitely on our side.”

  The maid nodded. “I’m glad. He’s been very nice. I mean, he’s got those dogs and always seems to be ringing for food for them, or extra towels or clean sheets, but I suppose it’s more because he’s spoiled than because he’s bad.”

  “Just so,” Rolf said, his eyes twinkling at this description of Lulath. “Now we’d better all be about our business, before it gets light out.”

  “Your Majesty,” the maid said, curtsying. “Your Highness.”

  “Good-bye, and good luck,” Celie said cheerfully.

  Rolf and Celie quickly finished spreading the manure around, leaving the last of it under the table in the Council’s chamber. Rolf took the wheelbarrow back to the stables, and Celie went to her bedchamber to see about getting some clean stockings, since she had accidentally taken an odd number when she had packed before. To her irritation, there was a large padlock hanging off of her door now, and she had no doubt that the key was with Prince Khelsh. She slipped along the corridor to check Lilah’s room, and found the same thing.

  Muttering darkly, she went down the corridor, looking for the stairs to the Spyglass Tower. Her mind turned over and over what they had already done, and wondered what else they could do to sabotage the Council.

  “Celie!”

  She turned a corner and there was Prince Lulath. He smiled at her, and snatched one of her hands to squeeze it. She smiled back, and reached out with her free hand to pet the dog he was holding.

  “I am this glad that I have found you,” he said, lowering his voice. “I wanted to tell: I have written to my father, and written also the letter to Khelsh’s father. The very day of our talk.”

  “Oh, thank you!”

  “And I have carried this, to find you.”

  The prince shrugged the strap of a large leather carryall off his shoulder and set it on the floor between them. Celie looked down at it, and then up at Lulath, eyebrows raised. The prince smiled charmingly.

  “I thought that there would be things you have not with you in your … place …” He trailed off, looking slightly embarrassed.

  Celie bent down and looked in the bag. There was a cake of scented soap wrapped in paper, a bundle of clean, pressed handkerchiefs tied with a ribbon, a couple of books, a box of imported Grathian sweets, and a small bit of mirror on a long brass wand.

  “What’s this?” Celie pulled out the mirror and looked at it.

  “It is for … for checking in the corners. The corridors. The corners of corridors,” Lulath told her. Seeing her continued bafflement, he took it and walked to the end of the corridor, showing her how it could be positioned so that she could see down the other corridor. “It is really a tool for … tooth doctors?”

  “Dentists?”

  “Yes!” He beamed. “But I borrow for you. I thought to help you with your sneaking.”

  “This is brilliant,” Celie told him. She took the wand and peered in the mirror, practicing angling it so that she could see different views of the corridor beyond. “Thank you so much!”

  “You are very much welcome!”

  “I should probably warn you,” Celie said, putting the mirror-wand in the bag and heaving it onto her shoulder. “We just talked to one of the maids. She’s going to hide the Council’s chamber pots tomorrow, but just in case she forgets and hides yours, too …” She made a face.

  “Ah, I shall be warned,” Lulath said. Then he laughed. “Very clever!”

  “Thank you,” Celie said, blushing. “Also, we’ve slit some of the seams of their clothes, and dipped their sleeves in ink. And Rolf and I just got done putting manure on the bottoms of all their shoes.”

  Lulath clapped his hands together softly, shaking his head and snorting with laughter. “You will have them run soon, I hope,” he said.

  “That’s what we hope as well,” she said fervently.

  Lulath bowed to her, and Celie just nodded, rather weighed down by the bag. She went around the corner then and found the door to the Spyglass Tower and trudged up the stairs. Rolf had already popped in, Lilah told her, and then left to sleep in his own bed. Celie showed her sister the things that Lulath had given her, and discovered the reason that the bag seemed so thick: the bottom was lined with a heavy velvet cloak the same dark peaty color as the leather of the bag.

  “Oh, this is beautiful,” Lilah said, stroking it. She held it up, and it was just the right length to fit her.

  “Pogue will be jealous,” Celie said, her eyelids drooping. She swayed a little where she stood, and then shook herself.

  “Don’t be silly, it’s just— Oh, you poor darling!”

  Lilah finally noticed how tired Celie was, and led her over to their nest of blankets. She took off Celie’s shoes and stockings and helped her get comfortable, spreading the velvet cloak over her.

  “You take it for now,” she said generously.

  “Save some of the sweets for me,” Celie mumbled.

  “Yes, yes,” Lilah said, tucking her in as best she could.

  “I hope Pogue finds Mummy and Daddy and Bran soon,” Celie mumbled as she fell asleep.

  “I hope he does, too,” Lilah whispered, and kissed Celie’s forehead.

  Chapter

  20

  This 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 seamstres
ses 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.