“Eh, so yeh have some of your father’s fiery blood in you then, do you?”
Dinah scowled at him. “Speak to me again and I’ll have you sent to the Black Towers in a coffin. What is your name?”
The man paled. “I was just joking, Yer Highness; please don’t report me to the King.”
“I said, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”
His dirty hands wrung together. “Gorrann. Sir Gorrann.”
“Well, Sir Gorrann, I will not report you to the King this day. But if you ever insult me again, I will just have your head. No need to involve the King.”
With a hard look she brushed past them, her black cloak trailing behind her. As soon as the red-glass palace doors closed behind her, Dinah plunged into an empty corridor off the main hall. Her lips parted in a soft cry, but she steeled herself from the shame. Victorious, she clutched the wooden seahorse in one sweaty hand and wiped the tears from her face with the other as she made her way to the Mad Hatter.
Chapter Four
Charles’s quarters were located in the western tower of the Royal Apartments, situated neatly above the castle’s kitchens. Her father had given in building materials what he never gave Charles in life. The King showed no other sign of love, affection, or even duty to his son. Charles’s room, as a result, was one of the strangest places in the entire palace. Huge white columns inlaid with red hearts twisted up to the ceiling where they met an expansive fresco featuring all the creatures of Wonderland. Hornhooves, gryphons, birds of all types, great whales, white-striped bears, and four-winged dragons danced across the ceiling in rich paints.
It would have been lovely—a gorgeous work of art—if crudely drawn hats had not been scribbled across the creatures in black charcoal. The animals now wore ugly slashes of feathers, top hats, and huge fedoras, in wavy, messy lines that ran from one to another without stopping. The hats were richly detailed, the lines between them angry slashes—the art of madness.
Sad, Dinah thought as she gazed upward, her hood falling back onto her neck, that madness and genius were always melded together in this room.
The room itself was a testament to Charles’s obsession. Racks upon racks of hats rose up from the floor, twisting and circling between rickety, half-built staircases that led to nothing but air. Doors had been attached to the hat racks, swinging open and shut with the cold air blowing in from a large open window at the top of the main staircase. This staircase was Charles’s favorite, covered with hundreds of bolts and swatches of fabric. Piles of melting snow were accumulating on the window ledge in little drifts. Dinah gave a sigh and climbed up one of the rickety staircases, shutting the window firmly and securing the clasp. She heard a skittering of tiny feet below.
“Charles. You cannot leave the window open when it’s snowing outside. It’s bitterly cold in here, and the snow will get all over your new hats. We’ve talked about this.” She dusted off a sturdy gray fedora with orange canary feathers embroidered into a sun and stars. “You have to be careful with them.”
At her feet, a matted head of dirty, yellow hair rose up in a space between the wide stair treads. “Pink snow on pink hats makes the walrus dance, he dances on the sea, heehee!”
Charles leapt out from under the staircase. Dinah gasped as he fell to the floor, somersaulting on his rough landing and leaping up into a kicking dance. “Snow on the hat, snow on the hat, black like your Cheshire Cat!”
He gave a high-pitched giggle and Dinah laughed with him. Charles was younger by only two years, but in his madness he was practically ageless. He was a genius, a savant, a helpless infant and naughty child, all mixed into one tiny boy. He had been born mad—a squealing infant who never slept, a silent toddler who would bang his head against the wall, a curious boy who once ate glass and loved nothing more than to look at the stars. Davianna, Dinah’s mother, had loved her crazed son fiercely and was best at dealing with him. When she curled her arms around him, clutching him to her chest as though she could squeeze the madness out, he relaxed and was content, even as he babbled nonsensically. With his mother’s intense love and focus, Charles seemed to be improving, step by tiny step. When she died, he went completely maniacal, and never returned.
He was regularly found wandering around the castle, a dead bird in one hand and a tart in the other. It was as likely that he had taken a bite out of one as he had the other. He once walked off the Great Hall balcony, breaking both legs on the marble steps below. After that, his walk consisted of short steps and a trotting leap—the grotesque gait of the permanently insane.
Then he stopped eating for a while. Not even Dinah, his beloved sister, could get him to eat. Barely more than a child herself at ten years old, she pleaded with him as she tried to pry a tart, soup, quail, anything into his open mouth. He grew weaker, retreating completely into his own wondrous world, and the entire kingdom dressed in black, awaiting the death of the little Prince of Hearts.
On what surely could have been one of his final nights, Dinah brought in a trunk full of their deceased mother’s clothing. She tucked it all around him, her dresses, slips, and socks, so that he might be comforted on his journey to another place. Charles’s fingers had found one of her mother’s bejeweled hats, the one she had worn for All Tea’s Day the year before—a gorgeous plum hat with a tall plume, plump and glittering in his small hand. An absurd smile played across his translucent skin as he turned the hat over and over in his hands, a look of fascination on his face. He then turned to Dinah and simply asked for a biscuit.
“My Dinah,” he had whispered with a smile, his small hand tracing her chin. “Biscuit?”
She saw it in his eyes that day—he had decided to stay, just like that. That was seven years ago. Since then, Charles never left his room. He watched the world from his windows, where he occasionally threw his lavishly made hats down onto adoring townspeople. A hat created by Charles, the so-called Mad Hatter, was worth more than any piece of clothing in Wonderland. His creations were inspired works of skill and insanity. Unapologetically whimsical, rich in every color found in nature and some that weren’t, they were a testament to Charles’s lunacy.
He rarely slept or bathed. His two loyal servants, Lucy and Quintrell, saw to all of his needs. They kept his chambers from falling into disrepair but allowed his mind the freedom to create in the wild lunacy that he fostered. Tapestries and huge rolls of fabric covered the ground and most of the walls. Narrow walkways had been created for the servants, but Charles simply danced over the rainbow floor, his feet barely brushing the patterned fabrics of amethyst, pumpkin, taupe, and lapis.
Charles looked up at Dinah, still standing in the stairway. He giggled and sang, “A ribbon across their necks, one, two, hearts. Check and check!”
She looked down at the tawny head and the mismatched blue and green eyes that stared back at her wildly. “Do you remember my name today?”
“Dinah, rhymes with lima, beans and more beans, growing up and up, over the hills into the pale white, like sugar on a pie, die, die. . . .”
Dinah gave him a proud smile. “That’s right Charles, Dinah. Your sister. I brought you something today.”
His right eye blinked twice. “Something? Something like the sun, inching closer every day. It will burn us, uh-oh, it will.”
“Not quite the sun, but something really special.” Dinah reached into her cloak and pulled out the tiny wooden seahorse. Charles’s eyes widened, and he took it in his slight, feminine hands. Wardley had carved swirls into its curving back and blackened its long nose with smudged charcoal.
“It’s from Wardley. Remember him? What do you say?”
Charles repaid Dinah with a huge smile that showed his misshapen teeth. “Blue horse, swimming on a long field. Tasty shrimp inside his ribs, I can taste it, yes I can!”
“I’m glad you like it.”
Charles held the carving up into the light as he made it swim through the air. “Sea birds, shimmering scales, black eyes. . . .”
He dashed away from her
and began riffling through the fabrics, muttering to himself. Dinah had seen this a hundred times before. The inspiration for a hat had taken root in his mangled brain—a creative, aggressive root that was spreading its joy and poison through each and every secret path of his mind. Dinah descended the staircase to speak with the servants who were waiting patiently near the door.
“How is he doing this week?” she asked.
Lucy gave a deep bow. She was the gentlest woman Dinah had ever known, a grandmother of three with rosy cheeks and white hair that glowed a pale blue in the harsh winter light. Age lines rippled out from her eyes and down her neck into her modest white gown. On her head sat an enormous felt whale, embroidered with swirling pink blossoms. Charles loved her dearly, in his own way, and Lucy was his most devoted servant.
Quintrell was her assistant—a strapping lad who handled the physical labor involved with Charles’s care. He wrestled Charles into the swan-shaped tub once a week and scrubbed him down with hedgehog skins while the boy screamed and writhed. He was also the only one who could force Charles to eat when he was in one of his hat-making furies. Charles periodically went through long periods where he saw nothing but fabric and stitching—fits of wild, brilliant mania that would last for days. Dinah had no idea how Lucy and Quintrell dealt with Charles day in and day out, but they seemed content. Other than Dinah, they were the only ones who truly loved him.
Though he was her brother, Dinah felt that she floated in a strange emotional fog with Charles—she loved him dearly, but her love was always tinged with confusion. She couldn’t deal with him the way Lucy and Quintrell did. Charles recognized her most weeks, but when he didn’t, Dinah felt betrayed, even more alone than usual. Dinah watched in amazement as Lucy wrinkled her face, even more than it already was, as she sorted buttons. She cleared her throat, preparing to respond to Dinah’s question. “How is he doing, Your Highness? Well, he has created two hats in the last twenty days, which is fast for him—the fuchsia beret with swallow’s eggs, and the Gryphon top hat, which will be delivered to the Lord and Lady Clutessa next week. Both works were inspired by the birds that have nested just outside of the window.”
Dinah nodded. Working for Charles had turned both Lucy and Quintrell into hatters as well—they were as skilled and knowledgeable as any milliner in town could ever be.
“They sound beautiful. But, I was asking about Charles. Has he been well?” Quintrell fidgeted nervously. Dinah smiled. “Well, out with it.”
“Your Grace, three nights past, I woke up to loud giggling coming from the atrium.” Quintrell glanced nervously at Lucy. She placed her withered hand on his arm and nodded for him to continue. “When I came out into the room, Charles was up on one of the staircases. He . . . ,” Quintrell’s voice caught in his throat.
Lucy stepped forward. “Charles had one of the stitching needles dug into his arm. He was squeezing the blood out and letting it drip onto the mulberry silk.”
A painful gasp escaped from Dinah’s lips. “Why, why would he DO that?”
Lucy refused to meet her eyes. “He said the dye wasn’t the right shade of red. He was fixing it. We tried to get the needle away from him, but he was on the edge of the staircase, so. . . .”
“So you let him do it, rather than risk him falling.”
They both nodded. Dinah was tempted to rage at them the way she had raged at the Spade, but it was no use. She knew Charles, and she knew that he couldn’t be controlled, bottled, or taught. His mind worked a different way—short flashes of brilliance followed by dark plunges into his macabre imaginary world.
“Did you take away all of his sewing needles?”
“Yes, Your Highness. We only let him use the small needles now, which have actually led to the production of some very detailed, elaborate work.”
Dinah looked over at Charles, who was gleefully slashing apple-green taffeta into thin ribbons with his long fingernails. She walked over and kissed him on the side of the head. His dirty hair, ever matted and wild, always smelled a bit like her mother.
“I have to go now, but I’ll be back in a few days,” she told him.
Charles whipped his head around to stare at animals on the ceiling and began singing. “Days and nights, the King sings. Tusks and musks and wooble fire. He sings with a black tongue, fire in his lungs, his lungs.”
“Where did the seahorse go?” Dinah asked.
Charles opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, stroking it slowly. “Down, down, down the rabbit hole!” he crowed.
Dinah shut her eyes.
“Not to worry, Your Highness; we’ll find it,” Lucy promised, before she returned to sorting buttons.
Charles was still singing when Dinah walked out of the atrium, her heart compressing with each step as the song, so lovely and mad, followed her down the marble hallways as she walked back to her chambers.
Lying in front of her door was an elaborately folded invitation—her summons to the Royal Croquet Game. It had already been opened, the seal of the King broken. With a sigh, she untied the seven pink ribbons that held the card in place. Something was leaking through the envelope—ink? Dinah pulled the card out and tilted the elaborate calligraphy into the light.
Your presence for the Royal Croquet Game is requested. The Princess will play in the final game, her opponents, the Duchess and the King of Hearts.
Dinah felt the air whoosh out of her lungs. She had never played against her father before, ever. She was always set against a lady of the court—someone she could easily beat, and the King was always paired with Xavier Juflee, The Knave of Hearts.
The black liquid dripped again, this time landing on her shoe. Dinah turned the envelope upside down with a shake. The head of a white mouse, severed at the neck, fell out of the envelope and bounced on the floor. Dinah leapt back with a shriek. Shaking, she turned the invitation over, but there was nothing on it. Kneeling, she touched the mouse head with the end of a trembling finger. A new feeling shot through her, and she felt wide awake as she stared at the tiny lips of the mouse, pulled back in a macabre smile. Dinah was both fascinated and afraid, devastated that there was even more reason to dread tomorrow.
Chapter Five
Dinah spooned plum pudding over her flat fig biscuits as Harris hopped back and forth in front of her, wine dashing out from his large goblet. “You are going to be late, late, late for the Royal Croquet Game. We cannot be late, Your Highness.” Harris shuffled around the table, his long checkered robe flapping after him.
“I would rather get run over by Hornhooves than play croquet with Vittiore today,” grumbled Dinah, draining a glass of juice. The mouse head still weighed heavily on her mind, and she couldn’t shake the image of it bouncing across the stone floor.
“That may be the case, Princess, but you still must go. It is the precursor to All Tea’s Day, and it is expected of the royal family to not only be in attendance, but to play after all the townspeople have finished their games. This tradition goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. . . .”
Dinah gave a groan and interrupted Harris’s rambling. “Starting with the Seventh King of Hearts, Doylan the Great, the Royal Croquet Game has established the game’s rules and etiquette. It has made the Royal Family of Hearts synonymous with croquet, forever entwined in its grand traditions and all it stands for,” Dinah said and smiled coyly. “You give me the same speech every year. I remember. Contrary to what you believe, I listen to you. Now, may I please read in peace?”
One of her largest history texts, The Great Crane, sat open in front of her, a large silver book with worn pages. It was a rare book, and a fascinating fictional history of the Yurkei religion. Harris flung wide the doors to the courtyard, letting a swirl of pink snow into the room.
“Please close that, I’m freezing,” mumbled Dinah.
The old man ignored her. “Croquet!” he boomed. “The very name conjures a vision of Wonderland excellence, aristocracy, and grace.”
Dinah let out a sigh and gently shu
t her book, balancing her face on the palms of her hands.
“The Royal Croquet Game sets the tone of the next year’s fashion, manners, teas, and style. It is an opportunity for the Royal Family of Hearts to show their unity, their athletic prowess. . . .”
Dinah’s head jerked up with her laugh, a smudge of plum pudding across her upper lip. “Athletic prowess? Harris, we are hitting balls with sticks. Unity? My father HATES me, and Vittiore—”
“Is a lovely, innocent girl,” finished Harris.
Dinah shot him a nasty look, “—is a venomous wench snake,” she replied. “The very sight of her makes me ill. She may be my sister by my father’s unfaithful blood, but she is NOT my sibling. Only Charles is my true sibling. Who, may I remind you, is never invited to the Royal Croquet Game!”
Harris adjusted his spectacles. “Dinah, you know very well why Charles is never invited.”
“Because he’s an embarrassment to my father?”
“Because he cannot be controlled, and the Line of Hearts must appear strong and unbroken. The history of the Royal Croquet Game is filled with political pandering and glorious grandeur, and it’s no place for someone who is mad.”
Dinah brought her knife down through the biscuits onto the table.
“He may be mad, but he is my BROTHER. And he’s the son of the King. If he wasn’t mad, he would be the rightful heir of Wonderland and every Card would bow before him.”
Harris reached down and wiped Dinah’s lip with his white handkerchief, a tiny heart embroidered on the corner. “That is certainly true, Princess. No one grieves the loss of the prince’s mind more than I. I was there when he was born, as I was with you. I held his red squirming body in my hands, wrapped him up in fur and blessed him in the name of the Wonderland gods. I love Charles, but even I know that he cannot be included in royal events. He makes the crown look weak, and it draws attention to the fractures in your family.”
Queen of Hearts (The Crown) Page 5
