Sent

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “Indeed,” the old monk agreed, sounding calmer now.

  “Perhaps we should remove her from the cathedral during this sacred ceremony,” Alex said. “We apologize for any disruption we have caused.”

  Still clutching Katherine’s arm, he bowed low and backed away, off to the side.

  Jonah decided it was probably wise to follow. He grabbed Chip’s arm, just in case Chip was prepared to start arguing where Katherine had left off. But Chip came along dazedly.

  Ahead of them Katherine struggled with Alex as he pulled her into the shadows.

  “Come on,” Alex was murmuring. “Argue with me later. It isn’t safe here. …”

  Jonah picked up his pace.

  He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, to see if any of the monks were following them, but they’d already been engulfed by a whole new crowd of monks, coming up the same stairway that Jonah and the others had used. The man whose voice Jonah had heard before was calling out, “Move along! We are supposed to be taking our positions. …”

  Alex was almost running now that he was out of sight of the monks. In the near darkness Jonah was having trouble keeping track of him.

  “Wait for us!” Jonah hissed. “Where are you going, anyway?”

  “I know this part of the cathedral,” Alex whispered back. “I just figured out where we are. I used to play here sometimes—I know a crypt where we can hide until the crowds clear out.”

  A crypt. Great. That sounded like a wonderful place to go.

  TWENTY

  The crypt turned out to be just a dark space with pillars in the bowels of the church. Jonah couldn’t see any bones or dead bodies lying around, like he’d half expected. The dead bodies were probably tucked away behind the stone tablets on the walls, but Jonah was not going to ask about that.

  He couldn’t have gotten a word in edgewise anyway. Katherine, freed from the need to be careful around the monks, was all but screaming at Alex.

  “How dare you!” she spit out. “Saying I’m feebleminded? Saying it’s because I’m ‘womenfolk’? ‘Womenfolk’—bleh! Just the word is sexist!”

  “Katherine, calm down,” Alex said, sounding amazingly calm himself for someone getting his ears blistered. “I don’t think you’re feebleminded. I don’t think girls in general are feebleminded. That was just the only thing I could think of to say to keep them from stringing us all up as heretics. I knew that’s what those monks believed, anyway, that females are stupid.”

  “And you think that makes it all right?” Katherine complained. “It’s okay to perpetuate a stereotype if the people you’re perpetuating it to are already idiots?”

  Whoa—“perpetuate a stereotype”?—Katherine really was mad.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” Alex said pleadingly. “It’s not my fault 1483 wasn’t a great time to be female. Those monks don’t really think of girls as human beings, exactly. Men in 1483 think of women more as just … uh …” His voice trailed off.

  “What?” Katherine demanded.

  “Uh … breeding stock,” Alex said apologetically.

  Katherine kicked one of the tablets in the wall.

  “I am so getting out of here,” she said. “I am not spending my whole life in this godforsaken time. And don’t any of you correct me! This is a godforsaken time if women are just treated like breeding stock.”

  She kicked the wall again.

  “It’s not really such a great time to be a male, either,” Chip said weakly. “Remember? Somebody tried to murder me and Alex last night. My own uncle cheated me out of my crown. And it sounds like the whole country’s letting him get away with it.”

  Dimly, distantly from up above, they could hear the cheers of the huge crowd. Either Richard III had just had the crown placed on his head, or he’d just walked out in front of his subjects, or …

  It didn’t really matter. Either way Chip wasn’t king anymore.

  Chip kicked the wall just as angrily as Katherine had.

  “I still don’t understand,” Jonah admitted. “What’s that whole story about your father being ‘pre-contracted’ to someone else before he got married? What’s that got to do with anything? Who cares?”

  “It’s just a lie,” Chip said bitterly. “An excuse.”

  “Well,” Alex said. “Maybe … knowing our father … maybe he was engaged to someone else before he married our mother.”

  “So what?” Katherine said, still sounding angry. “Maybe the woman dumped him. Don’t tell me women aren’t allowed to do that in the fifteenth century!”

  Even in the dim light of the crypt Jonah could tell that Alex was frowning.

  “Um … kind of not,” Alex said. “For someone who’s the king of England, it’s not like getting married is a romantic thing. It’s strategic, all about uniting powerful families, getting the rights to land and titles. Except our father, Edward the Fourth, he did have this thing about falling for women. And he might have promised to marry someone that he never married. And making that promise, it would be legally binding.”

  “So when he married our mother, it would be like bigamy,” Chip said gloomily. “Not a legal marriage. So we wouldn’t be legal, legitimate offspring of the king. So Alex and me—neither one of us could inherit the right to be king.”

  Jonah thought about that. Being adopted, he’d always kind of figured that his birth parents weren’t married when he was born. He didn’t care. It wasn’t like it was his fault.

  But in 1483, people must have cared about that kind of thing a lot, if it determined who became king.

  “So if everybody was saying that you weren’t king after all, why’d they bother throwing you out the window?” Jonah asked.

  “Just because Richard can convince everyone that I’m not the king now, that doesn’t mean that he can keep them convinced,” Chip said. “Any time he does something people don’t like, they can start plotting to get rid of him. As long as I’m alive, they could say, ‘Oops, we were wrong. Edward’s parents really were married after all. He’s the real king! Let’s get rid of that Richard guy!’”

  Jonah thought about this. Being king didn’t sound so great, really. It sounded like you’d spend your whole time worrying that someone was going to knock you off.

  “Oooh,” Katherine said. “It’s just like fifth grade.”

  “What?” Jonah said.

  “Remember?” Katherine said. “Last year when Kelly Todd was kind of the queen of all the fifth-grade girls? And then Courtney LaRosa moved in from California, and everyone thought she was really cool, being from California and all. But that wasn’t enough for her, and she had to make sure that everyone started hating Kelly Todd too, so it wouldn’t be like Kelly ever got back her power. And then—”

  “Katherine! The royal family in England is not like a bunch of stupid fifth-grade girls!” Jonah said.

  “But it is!” Katherine said. She sounded excited now. “See, Chip, this is what ended up working for Kelly, what you ought to do about your uncle. You should—”

  “He shouldn’t be trying to get the throne back,” Jonah said sternly. “We’re supposed to be making everyone think that he’s dead. Remember?”

  “Oh. Yeah,” Katherine said.

  They all fell silent for a moment. Jonah could hear the cheers from up above again.

  “We must have convinced Richard that Alex and I are dead,” Chip said. “Since he didn’t chase after us. Do you think that’s good enough?”

  “Our mother needs to think that too,” Alex said forlornly.

  It was funny how Alex could sound so sure of himself, so expert when it came to talking about scientific facts or details about 1483. But whenever he talked about his mother, the queen, he sounded like a little boy again.

  “So we figure out how to turn invisible again,” Jonah said. “We go haunt your mom. Do you think that will fix time enough? Do you think after that we can just go home?”

  To his embarrassment, his voice broke on the word “home.” He wasn’t going
to be like Katherine. He wasn’t going to think about how much nicer it would be to go back to a time when people didn’t consider you heretics just because you dressed a little funny. He wasn’t even going to think about how nice it’d be to have a thick, juicy twenty-first-century cheeseburger right about now.

  But when Alex said, “Why don’t we all look at the Elucidator now?” Jonah had it out of his pocket instantly.

  TWENTY-ONE

  They decided to wait until dark to leave the crypt. It seemed safer that way, even though Alex figured out how to make them all invisible again.

  Oddly, that was just about all they could figure out about the Elucidator. None of them could get the Elucidator to show the long list of choices they’d seen before. No matter how much they poked, prodded, pressed, rubbed, turned, tossed, or even shouted at it, the Elucidator’s screen showed only one option: INVISIBILITY? Y/N.

  “Maybe it caught a computer virus, going through time?” Alex suggested, his voice thick with frustration.

  “Or maybe it’s still broken from Chip throwing it at the ground,” Katherine said.

  “It said the restoration was complete,” Chip argued.

  “At least the invisibility works,” Jonah said, trying to calm everyone down. He amused himself by pressing the Y, then the spot on the screen where the N had been, when it was visible. Then Y again. … He could feel himself turning invisible, then visible, then invisible.

  “Stop that!” Katherine said. “Now you’re going to break it!” She swallowed hard. “And … turning invisible, going back and forth—that makes me feel sick.”

  “Really?” Jonah asked. He resisted the urge to hit N again, just to show her that he could.

  “Timesickness, remember?” Katherine said. It was dark enough in the crypt that Jonah couldn’t be entirely sure, but he thought he saw her stick out her tongue at him. She went on in a scolding tone, “And what if there’s a limit to the number of times we can become invisible? What if you run down the batteries—or whatever that runs on—and then it doesn’t work when we need it to?”

  “Stupid thing doesn’t work very well anyhow,” Alex muttered, taking the Elucidator from Jonah, turning it upside down, and shaking it. He turned it over once more—the screen still said, INVISIBILITY? Y/N.

  “Maybe you’re just doing it wrong,” Chip said, jerking the Elucidator away. “Let me try.”

  Pizza, Jonah thought. If we just had a big pizza in front of us, this wouldn’t seem like such a big problem. Or a big bowl of spaghetti. Or lasagna.

  Maybe his true identity, whatever it was, had something to do with Italy, since all he could think about was Italian food?

  Alex was yanking the Elucidator back away from Chip.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “You’ll just end up throwing it on the floor again.”

  “Stop it!” Katherine said. “Stop fighting! If we’ve got any hope of getting out of this place, we’ll all have to work together.”

  “Fighting? Who’s fighting?” Chip said.

  “Squabbling, then,” Katherine said. “You know what I mean.”

  “We’re in the fifteenth century. In 1483 even squabbling involves bows and arrows or giant spears,” Chip said harshly.

  “Or lances,” Alex said.

  “Swords,” Chip said.

  “Battering rams,” Alex said.

  “You’re not making me feel any better about the fifteenth century,” Katherine said.

  Alex stopped shaking the Elucidator for a moment.

  “The funny thing is, I remember being really happy here,” he said softly.

  “Me too,” Chip said. “Everybody at Ludlow Castle was always pretty nice to me.”

  “Well, duh,” Jonah said. “They knew you were going to be their king.”

  “No,” Chip said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t just that. It was … we all belonged. We all had a place.” His voice got husky. “This probably sounds stupid, but I wanted to make my family proud of me. It’s not like in the twenty-first century, when Mom and Dad … uh … well, you know. It always seemed like they had their own lives that had nothing to do with me. And my life had nothing to do with them.”

  Jonah didn’t know Chip’s parents very well. But he knew that they hadn’t even bothered telling Chip that he was adopted until he guessed it.

  “Chip,” Jonah said. “Nobody in the twenty-first century ever tried to murder you.”

  “JB did, by sending me back in time,” Chip said.

  “JB isn’t from the twenty-first century,” Jonah said. “He’s from the future.”

  “What’s it matter?” Alex asked, poking uselessly at the Elucidator again. “It’s not like we have any control over anything.”

  “We are going to convince the queen that you two are dead,” Katherine said stubbornly. “And then we’re going home.”

  Home, Jonah thought longingly. He refused to think about how hard it might be to get there.

  “Do you suppose it’s dark outside yet?” he asked.

  “I’ll go check,” Alex said.

  “No. We go together,” Katherine insisted.

  Nobody argued with her.

  It was barely dusk when they poked their invisible heads out of a side door of the cathedral, but they agreed that that was dark enough. The crowd from the coronation had melted away.

  “I bet they’re all feasting now,” Chip said bitterly. “Feasting on the foods that were ordered for my coronation.”

  Jonah refused to think about food.

  Go haunt the queen, he told himself. Then go home. The words seemed more like a prayer than a plan. Please let it work that way. Please let it be that easy.

  “Um,” he said, a new thought occurring to him. “The queen’s not at some castle five days away, is she?”

  “Nope,” Alex said. “She’s right in there.”

  He pointed at a squarish stone building that looked more like a fortress than a castle. It was practically within spitting distance of the cathedral door.

  “She was there the whole time the coronation was going on?” Katherine asked, horrified. “Within earshot? When everyone was shouting … did King Richard know that?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Alex said grimly. “He knew.”

  “But—why?” Katherine asked. “Why wouldn’t she go somewhere else? For the day, anyway …”

  “Because she’s in sanctuary,” Chip said.

  “I thought the coronation was in the sanctuary,” Jonah said.

  “No, no,” Alex said. “Not that kind of sanctuary. She’s in political sanctuary. After Gloucester—Richard—had her brother arrested and took control, she moved in there, where she’d be safe. Where he couldn’t arrest her.”

  “But—she’s his own sister-in-law,” Jonah objected. “Right?”

  “So?” Chip said.

  Jonah decided he didn’t like Chip’s fifteenth-century family any better than he liked Chip’s twenty-first-century parents.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Katherine objected. “Why would staying in that building make any difference if someone wanted to arrest her?”

  “Because it’s sacred ground,” Chip said. “Church property. Even a king has to bow to church authority.”

  Jonah was about to say, “What about the separation of church and state?” Then he realized that that would sound really, really stupid. This wasn’t America. This wasn’t the twenty-first century.

  “I was staying there with her,” Alex said softly. “Until Gloucester came and said he wanted me to be with Chip for Chip’s coronation.”

  “So he tricked her into letting you go?” Jonah asked.

  Alex shook his head slowly.

  “No,” he said. “She’s really smart. She knew what she was doing. That’s why I was sure she had a plan to rescue us. Me and Chip both.”

  “Well, let’s go pay her a visit,” Katherine said grimly.

  They tiptoed across a stone path, though there was no one nearby to hear them if any of their shoes squeake
d. They rounded the corner of the stone fortress and discovered two guards in front of the only door.

  “Now, how are we going to get past them?” Jonah muttered.

  “I have an idea,” Alex said.

  He tiptoed close to the guards, but Jonah couldn’t really tell what he did after that. He seemed to be lifting his arms over the guards’ shoulders. Was he dropping something on them? What good would that do?

  Moments later a cluster of large black crows swooped down from a nearby tree and began to peck at the guards.

  “Begone!” the guards screamed. “Shoo!”

  The birds flapped their wings in the guards’ faces; the guards separated from their tracers to wave their arms and spin around, trying to shove the birds away.

  “Now!” Alex whispered. “Hurry!”

  While the guards were fighting with the crows, Alex shoved in through the door. Jonah walked right behind him, with Chip and Katherine on his heels.

  Once the door creaked shut, they found themselves in a small alcove outside a dark chapel.

  “How did you know that would work?” Jonah asked.

  “Think about it,” Alex said. “I was stuck in this building with my mother and sisters for a month and a half. Don’t you think I had to figure out a way to get in and out?”

  “But what did you put on the guards?”

  “Bread crumbs,” Alex said, grinning triumphantly.

  Jonah thought about asking why Alex was carrying bread crumbs around in his pockets, but that reminded him of food, which he really shouldn’t be thinking about, because it made him too hungry. He wished he’d thought to bring some of the bread crumbs in his own pocket. He wouldn’t have wasted it on birds.

  “Come on,” Alex said. “Our mother’s chambers are upstairs.”

  They tiptoed up a dark, winding staircase—were all the stairways in the fifteenth century like that? Jonah wondered. He thought about what it would be like to be trapped in this dreary building for a month and a half.

  “No TV, huh?” he whispered to Alex. “No video games?”

  “Are you kidding?” Alex whispered back. “We just got the printing press in England six or seven years ago. We barely have books!”