by D D Croix
“Well, that was unexpected,” Marlie said, dropping the cheerful act but only slightly.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “You could have been hurt. We both could have.”
“I hardly think so,” she said.
I started to argue but stopped. I couldn’t tell her what I suspected, not without raising questions. “Why are you here?” I said instead. “I mean, how did you know I’d be here?”
She jutted her chin in the snoring cook’s direction and jerked her head toward the hallway. “We should go before Pierre wakes up.”
It wasn’t an answer, but I followed her anyway into the dark corridor. At Mr. MacDougall’s door, she stopped, produced a key from her pocket, and slid it into the lock. I heard the tumblers turn. “After you.” She held the door open wide.
I stared. “Is Mrs. Crossey with you?” I looked both ways along the hallway, searching for the woman. “I was supposed to meet her.”
Marlie stepped into the office and gestured for me to follow. “I know you were.” When we were inside, she set the jar on a side table and scratched a match against its box before lighting a stub of a candle that was sitting there. The small light bathed the office in a dim amber glow. “She told me to get you.”
“She did?” Was Marlie part of Mrs. Crossey’s scheme, too? Then a more terrible thought struck. “Why isn’t she here? What happened to her?” Had she been attacked? Had someone else?
“Nothing happened to her. She’s fine. She just wanted to get things started. So everything would be ready when you arrived.”
I looked around the office, confused. “Then where is she?”
“Come here and I’ll show you.” She moved behind Mr. MacDougall’s massive desk and set the candle on the mantel, then squared herself to the overhead mirror. She glanced back at me. “You’re going to want to watch this.” She placed both hands atop the left dragon’s snout and pressed down with enough force to break it.
“Marlie!” I scrambled forward to stop her, but it was too late. The wood snapped. I stared, horrified. “You broke it.”
“Don’t be silly.” She was practically laughing.
I looked more closely, and she was right. The snout wasn’t broken, just bent as though attached to a hinge.
Then she pressed both hands against the mantel’s long shelf and pushed. Incredibly, the entire structure, from floor to ceiling, slid back into the wall and pivoted to reveal a slender opening.
“What is that?” I didn’t know whether to be amazed or frightened but couldn’t help feeling a bit of both.
“C’mon, we need to hurry. Don’t touch anything.” She grabbed the candle and motioned for me to follow as she slipped into the dark crevice.
Reason told me to stay put. How could I trust that Marlie was telling me the truth and who knew what was on the other side of that wall? The smart thing to do would be to go back to my room and forget about hidden passageways and this midnight rendezvous. There was no way secret protectors were operating in this castle, and certainly no way that I could be one of them. It was all part of some elaborate prank.
That would be a more logical explanation, but where was the logic in what happened to me beyond the wall? The attack by the tree and the fainting. That dark figure with the glowing red eyes and the girl. That dead girl from the Slopes.
Maybe there was a rational explanation for all of it.
Maybe I only had to follow Marlie to find out what it was.
I peered inside and saw the candle’s hazy glow and Marlie’s silhouette descending a spiral stone staircase.
“C’mon,” she whispered, her voice urgent.
I didn’t move. Everyone knew castles had secret passages. Why should Windsor be any different? It was no reason to be alarmed.
So why couldn’t I force my feet to move? As unlikely an ally as Marlie was, I never knew her to be malicious. Aloof, maybe, but not malicious. I couldn’t believe she’d lead me astray.
I poked my head farther into the darkness. “Where are you going?”
If she answered, it was lost among a sudden thunder of footsteps and men’s voices in the hallway.
“They came this way? Are you sure?”
“That’s what he said.”
I didn’t recognize the voices, but I knew that distinctive clamor of swords knocking against buckled boots. It was the castle guards.
Someone pounded on a door near enough to make the office walls shake.
“Anyone in there?”
I heard a door open and more footsteps.
“What’s that noise?” Marlie called up.
“The guards are in the next room.” I stared at Mr. MacDougall’s door. Had Marlie locked it? “What should I do?”
A distant door slammed, and the footsteps grew closer.
If they found us, how could I explain any of this? My heart thundered in my chest.
“Get in and close the mantel,” Marlie demanded. “Just push it back until it’s back in place. Hurry.”
When the office door rattled from a guard’s pounding, there was no more time to hesitate. I ducked into the dark space and pressed my weight against the wood. To my surprise, it glided easily and came to a soft stop against the wall.
I heard more pounding, but it was muted now. “Anyone in there?” came the question before the door burst open.
“No one here, either, Captain.” A guard’s voice was muffled but clear.
After a moment, I felt the shudder of the door when they slammed it shut.
We were safe. For now. It was my only thought as I leaned against the wall and tried to steady my breath. I didn’t notice Marlie coming back up the stairs until she was beside me, her candle casting its soft light on what appeared to be a stone-block room barely large enough for us to stand side by side.
“Are you all right?” Uncertainty laced her voice.
I honestly didn’t know, but I nodded anyway.
“Good,” she said. “Because there’s a lot to do, and we’re already late.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Firmly gripping my skirt, I followed Marlie down the corkscrew staircase. My wariness grew with each descending step. Where was she taking me? A cellar? A dungeon? My mind raced with possibilities, each more unsettling than the last. When I tried to ask, she cut me off with an emphatic shhhh!
So, I swallowed my words, followed her lead, and counted each step as though my life depended on it. Ten, eleven, twelve…
Down we went, and nothing changed. Not the bare stone walls or the ragged slate steps. Not the blackness that swallowed where we had been or the void that hid what still lay beyond. Not the back of Marlie’s head, with her neat knot of hair beneath her bonnet, or the scuff of her boots and mine. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…
The only thing that was changing as we made our way down to wherever we were going was the temperature. It continued to drop and raise goosebumps across my arms and along my spine. By the twenty-fourth step, I could see my breath like a hazy cloud before me.
At the thirty-second step, Marlie paused and looked back. Not at me, but past me, to the darkness above. Her eyes flashed with concern. She whispered, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention the guards to Mrs. Crossey. I promised her I could manage this, and, if it’s all the same to you—”
“I won’t say anything,” I whispered back, surprised by her timidity. “You have my word.”
Her brightness returned. “Thank you. You know, I’m glad she’s finally told you, about you know. It’s been dreadfully hard not being able to say anything about it. Sometimes I thought I might burst. But Mrs. Crossey said it was important not to say anything too soon. So, I didn’t, but now that you know I hope we can be proper friends.” She flashed a toothy grin and waited.
I forced a smile in return. “Yes. Of course.” She wanted to be friends now? After all this time? But she wasn’t moving. She was still staring, so I added, “I’d like that.”
At that, she grinned wider and ma
de a happy shrug with her shoulders. “I’m glad.”
I had no idea what to say or to think so I just counted. Eight more steps brought us to the last stair.
Marlie lifted her flame and cast its scant light across what appeared to be a stone cellar. I couldn’t judge its size because the far wall was set too far back in the shadows. Each step revealed a few more paces of the same side walls, the same floor, but no end. Only darkness. “Where are we?” I whispered, gazing into the void.
She walked past me with a mischievous grin. “We’re almost there.”
Before I could argue, Marlie ventured deeper into the tunnel, her candle casting its sphere of light against the crude stone walls.
I paused. The smart thing to do would be to climb back up the stairs to a world without hidden passageways, underground tunnels, or secret agendas.
Back to a world I recognized.
Marlie turned back, her candle held high. “Are you coming?”
I stared up at the dark space above me. Mr. MacDougall’s mantel was up there, lost in the shadows. In front of me, Marlie’s flickering light illuminated the spattering of freckles on her nose.
To think I’d thought I understood this girl, a girl no older than myself who I had worked beside and slept beside all these months. The roommate who kept to herself, as I did, and seemed no more remarkable than a loaf of bread.
But just as Mrs. Crossey and Mr. MacDougall had shown themselves to be something more than what I knew, Marlie Carlisle was proving there was more to her as well. Was she also a Fayte Guardian?
Ahead, Marlie lifted her candle again. “Well?”
I stared into the subterranean void that stretched behind her. It would be foolish to forge ahead without knowing where the tunnel led, but I had come too far to go back without answers. I steeled myself and lifted my chin. “I’m coming.”
If she noticed the fear in my voice, she didn’t show it. She only said, “Good,” with a distinct note of relief.
And with that, she resumed the underground journey and her recitation of all the trouble there would have been if the guards had found us, which led to anecdotes about the times she’d been caught after curfew and a number of uncomfortable discussions in Mr. MacDougall’s office.
At least I think that’s what she was saying because I was hardly listening.
Instead I was concentrating on the tunnel and searching each new length of stone wall and flagstone path the candlelight revealed. Who could have built this place and why? And where on earth were we going?
I lifted my collar over my nose to lessen the rank smell of moist earth and mildew that was so thick at times it choked me. The extra layer didn’t help much, but at least the stench dissipated as we moved deeper along the path.
“Is it far?” I asked.
“Not really.”
I took her answer to mean we weren’t close, either.
When we approached a door of rustic wood and heavy iron hinges, I stopped.
But Marlie didn’t. She didn’t even slow. Apparently, this wasn’t our destination.
“How much farther?” I asked as I hurried to catch up to her.
“Not much.”
She wasn’t convincing.
When another door came into view, I brightened again.
But again, she didn’t stop. The other doors—I counted ten in all—I passed without excitement or expectation.
Instead, I hugged myself for warmth and wished I had brought a coat. The air that had already been cool and damp at the beginning of the tunnel was downright cold now and the air was filled with the scent of forest trees and underbrush.
We walked in silence, with only the scrape of our boots against the flagstones, but by the time we reached the thirteenth door, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Where do all these doors lead?”
“All over,” Marlie answered. “Some to places inside the castle, some elsewhere. But no one uses them. They haven’t been needed for ages.”
Needed for what? I was about to ask, but Marlie stopped and held out a hand to stop me. “Rat.”
I looked down as a brown rodent scurried across our path a few paces ahead. I tensed despite myself. A single rat hardly posed a danger, but I still didn’t like them. When the animal disappeared into a crevice on the other side, Marlie pulled her hand back and resumed her pace.
Now the walls began to change. The large, sharply cut stones gave way to a smaller, less uniform variety. Some were thin and narrow, others thick and wide. The variety created sloping, uneven layers that made the walls appear to undulate. It was a wonder they stood upright at all. “How long has this tunnel been here?”
“As long as the castle, I suppose. Maybe longer.”
“It looks so old. The stones...” I trailed a fingertip over the worn edge of one that protruded beyond the rest. I was tempted to remove my gloves. Could there be memories locked in these stones? I was mulling the possibility when I stumbled into Marlie’s back. She had stopped when I wasn’t looking.
Marlie scowled over her shoulder. “Please watch where you’re going.”
“Sorry.” I shuffled back and realized the tunnel had come to an end.
Before us stood a wide door, wider than the others and made of a finely polished cherrywood that narrowed to a point like a leaf’s apex ten or so feet above our heads. Twin pillars of a whitish stone flanked it, and upon each was engraved a winding vine of chiseled symbols.
“Take this.” Marlie thrust her candle at me.
I took it, and she grabbed the door’s scrolled brass handle in one hand and pressed a lever above it with the other. From somewhere deep in the stones and the wood, something clanked and clicked, and the door groaned open.
She entered, and slowly, reluctantly, I followed.
It was as if we’d stepped into a cathedral. Above us, the vaulted ceiling was supported by pillars that soared far above our heads. Thirty feet, maybe forty, all terminating in an arched ceiling framed with heavy beams. The polished marble beneath our feet reflected and amplified our candlelight, though I could also see small blazes in the mouths of stone dragon heads set into the walls at intervals around the room. Between the stone dragon heads hung tapestries, mounted cross swords, daggers, and medieval crests.
“What is this place?” I murmured, my voice low and reverent.
“Officially, it’s the Great Hall of the Windsor Order of the Fayte, but we usually call it the Library. This part anyway.” Marlie set the candle on a wooden pedestal beside the door.
The Library. It was an apt name. Ahead of us six curved wooden towers formed a circle that stretched almost to the ceiling. Each tower was divided into dozens of shelves. Some were stuffed with books and boxes, tattered scrolls and loose pages. Others looked as though they’d been scraped bare.
Gazing up, I wondered how anyone could reach the highest shelves until I noticed a scaffold contraption made of brass ladders and pipes, pulleys and levers, all cobbled together with caster wheels at the bottom and handles at the sides so the entire structure could be pushed from one tower to the next along a brass rail that connected the towers like a shiny necklace.
“Robes, Marlie. Don’t forget the robes!”
I knew that voice booming from somewhere farther ahead, somewhere deep within this mysterious hall. It was Mrs. Crossey.
Marlie rolled her eyes and mumbled, “Of course, I wouldn’t forget the robes.”
She blew out her candle as the Library’s light was sufficient and looked at me. “Pick any one you like.”
I followed her glance back to the door and saw behind us a tidy line of indigo robes hanging from their hoods.
When I didn’t move, she grabbed the closest one from its hook and thrust it at me.
“You have to put it on.” She wrinkled her nose in apology. “Everyone has to wear them. It’s a rule.”
There was that word again. “Who is everyone?”
“The Fayte Guardians, of course.” She shook the robe, urging me to take it.
<
br /> The Fayte Guardians. But who were they? I didn’t voice the question. I lost my nerve and stuffed it back into the pit of my stomach. I took the robe.
She grabbed another and slid it around herself, lifted the hood over her head, and tied the laces at the collar.
I followed her example, shrugging the soft linen over my shoulders and lifting the hood over my head.
She nodded her approval. “Are you ready?”
“How would I know?”
She chuckled as though I were joking. I wanted to tell her my reservations were real, but she was already striding down the aisle that divided the ring of bookshelves.
I swallowed hard and fell in step behind her.
Within the ring were four sturdy tables. The two to my left were bare, but one on the right was piled with books. One massive tome lay open, as if someone had just stepped away from it. It looked remarkably like the one I’d seen in the vision I’d pulled from Mrs. Crossey’s memories. I moved closer to try to make out the brown-ink scrawl, but I couldn’t decipher a word.
“You’re familiar with ancient Gaelic, then?” Marlie asked.
I stiffened, chastened that I’d been caught snooping. “Not really. Is that what this is?”
She nodded. “Just some old recipes.”
“What sort of recipes?”
“I was looking for something medicinal for the Queen,” she added. “For her stomach.”
It was no secret that since Her Majesty had returned from Balmoral Castle, she had eaten little more than a smidgen of semolina pudding and tidbits of bread. Such a development ordinarily sent Chef into fits, but even he knew that when the Queen passed on her usual feasts, she was likely suffering. Perhaps from a toothache or a digestive complaint, though she never complained outright.
But what aid could Marlie find in such an old book? “Did you find anything?”
“Thankfully, I did. The Council cleared our shelves of the oldest volumes a few years ago to be stored at Balmoral, but I hid this one among the assignment records because it’s one of my favorites. There’s a recipe for every ailment you can imagine. That one there is a delightfully spiced carrot soup with the soothing qualities of chamomile. I was thinking one could easily add a touch of white willow bark to relieve aches and pains as well.”
