Ghost of a Chance

by Susan Maupin Schmid

  That startled Princess Mariposa. She winced as if she felt a bit guilty—and a little chagrined. She looked as though she might cry.

  But she was a princess through and through. She steadied herself and took off the shoes.

  “Not black,” she said with a weak smile. “Something else?”

  “Matching shoes covered in the brocade?” Marci suggested.

  “Gold dust,” I said.

  “What?” Princess Mariposa’s head came up.

  “Maybe you should have gold shoes,” the Head Seamstress offered from her hiding spot.

  “That might be pretty.” Marci tugged at her scarf.

  “Gold-dusted blue leather,” I said, gathering my nerve. “They would shine every time you took a step. All-gold shoes would stand out against that dark sapphire. They’d be more noticeable.”

  The Princess pressed her lips together, considering.

  “They’d be pretty, but gold-dusted blue shoes would be subtle. More princesslike, Your Highness…” My voice faded under her gaze.

  “That’s an excellent point,” she replied.

  “Shoes like those would be unique,” Marci said.

  “I know the Royal Cobbler would enjoy the challenge,” the Head Seamstress said.

  “Order them,” the Princess said to Marci. And then she turned to me. “Thank you,” she said with a smile.

  My heart sang. She’d smiled at me!

  “I’m really sorry, Your Highness. I only borrowed the book because I wanted to read it. That’s all,” I said, anxious for her to understand.

  A knowing light came into her eyes. “I believe you,” she said. “But there is something you’re not telling me.”

  My face froze.

  “Who did it?” she demanded. “Who took my pin?”

  My pulse pounded in my ears. I twisted my hands together. I tried to say that I didn’t know, but my lips refused to move. I couldn’t lie to her.

  “Darling!”

  “The ghost did it!” I said with a sob.

  There, I’d said it. Now she knew.

  The color drained from Princess Mariposa’s face. She stiffened. “I thought I meant more to you than that,” she said. “I thought I had your respect, the respect due me as your sovereign. I see I was wrong.”

  She turned on her heel and left, closing the dressing room door behind her.

  “A ghost?” Marci exclaimed, cuffing me on the head. “Are you daft?”

  “But I saw it!” I wailed.

  Marci pursed her lips, considering me the way she would an unraveled hem.

  “There are no such things as ghosts,” she replied.

  “But you know there are! There’s that old woman in the south tower and—”

  “That’s just a story,” she said.

  “You made it up?”

  “The story about the old woman’s mysterious disappearance is true, but that doesn’t mean there are ghosts.”

  “But the servants heard her. Saw her. How can you say there are no ghosts?”

  “They heard something. They saw something. And they believed what they heard and saw was a ghost because that’s what they were expecting.” Marci sighed. “I’ve lived in this castle my whole life and never seen a ghost. I don’t believe in them.”

  “But I did,” I whimpered. “The night the pin disappeared, I saw it.”

  “I’m sure you thought you did,” Marci said, patting my arm. “I have to get back to the Princess. Polish the shoes and I’ll see what I can say to Her Highness.”

  Marci tucked a stray lock of hair back into her braids. Steeling herself, she marched back into the dressing room.

  A row of shoes waited for me. I picked one up. Marci thought I imagined seeing the ghost. Princess Mariposa thought I was making it up to avoid telling her what I knew. I dipped the rag in the mink oil. My heart felt torn down the middle. I’d told the truth. I shouldn’t have, because nobody believed it. But I had.

  The truth was the truth; some mean, nasty old ghost was wreaking havoc in the castle. I sat up a little straighter. I, Darling Wray Fortune, Ghost Vanquisher, would hunt that ghost down and prove it was the real culprit. I’d do it if it was the last thing I ever did. And my trusty Stable Boy would help me.

  —

  “You have a plan, right?” I asked Roger at lunch.

  He chewed thoughtfully. I waited on the edge of my seat while my food grew cold. The servants clattered around us, dishing up their food and talking. I’d nabbed a spot in a corner so that we could talk. Gillian was still stuck in the pressing room with Lindy.

  Roger took a swig of milk.

  “Well?”

  “Nope.”

  “No? What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean nope, I don’t have a plan,” he said. “I’m still thinking.”

  I slumped down in my seat. I dragged my fork to my mouth. I had no idea what I ate; I just shoveled it in. I’d counted on Roger to help me. I didn’t know where else to go.

  “Don’t look like that; I told you I’d think of something,” Roger said.

  “When?” I asked. “Her Highness asked me flat out who took that pin and I told her.”

  Every single freckle on his face popped out in disbelief. “You what?”

  “I told her it was the ghost.”

  “Why’d you go and say a stupid thing like that for?”

  “If you could have seen the look in her eye, you’d have told her too.”

  “What’d she say?”

  My eyes stung; I blinked hard.

  “Never mind,” Roger said. “It’s like the Stable Master always says: The bucket has been spilled and that’s that. Only thing left to do is scoop up the oats.”

  “What do oats have to do with anything?” I asked, a quaver in my voice.

  I felt a sob rising up. I groped in my pocket for a handkerchief. Something crinkled under my hand. I drew out a white paper with a jagged edge on top. Iago’s note. I unfolded it. Inside was a portion of a letter.

  Thank you for your advice regarding our unplaced orphans. The child I had in mind, while being well trained, has had difficulties adjusting. We may have to seek a new home for her. Your establishment sounds like an excellent solution. I’ll be sure to inform you as soon as I’ve reached my decision.

  Yours truly,

  Irene Pepperwhistle

  The words orphans, difficulties, and solution flashed before my eyes. Mrs. Pepperwhistle was trying to get rid of me.

  Numb. The hand holding the paper felt numb. Numbness crept through me until I couldn’t feel anything anywhere. I, Darling, the last Wray, was just an orphan who could be sent away.

  I thought I’d already lost everything, but maybe I hadn’t. Maybe there was more to lose. Much more. What would I do without the dresses? And what would they do without me?

  “What have you got there?” Roger asked, pulling the paper out of my hand.

  As he read it, a scowl deepened on his face.

  “That’s a sneaky, rotten thing to do,” he said, and scrunched the paper in his fist.

  Visions of orphanages danced before my eyes. Rows of girls lined up for a bowl of gruel. Drafty dormitories. Cold floors. High, cobwebbed ceilings. Bats.

  Bats!

  Roger waved a hand in front of me. “Are you going to eat that roll?”

  I shook my head, clearing it. “I have a plan,” I told him, banging my fist on the table.

  Roger jumped. And so did everyone around us. I smiled to show everyone that nothing was wrong and then handed Roger my roll.

  “Eat up,” I said. “You’re going to need it.”

  Armed to the hilt, I mounted the stairs to the south tower. I wore my coat and my mittens. I carried a candlestick and wielded Marci’s longest, thickest darning needle as a weapon. My pockets bulged with nuts I’d wheedled out of the Head Cook, in case our search lasted into the wee hours and we grew faint from hunger. And rags tied around the soles of my boots muffled my footsteps. This time the ghost wouldn’t
hear me coming.

  I heard Roger’s soft tread behind me. He wore deerskin boots he’d borrowed from one of the other boys. You couldn’t work around horses in them, but he said they were great for hunting. He carried a lantern in one hand and our ghost-trap jar in the other.

  The glass squeaked in his grip. It was a tall greenish jar, the kind the Head Cook stored pickled beets in. We’d argued quite a while over the contents of our jar. The way I saw it, we had one shot at this. This ghost was foxy. Once it saw the trap, it would either take the bait or run. And if the ghost eluded us once, I reckoned it would be smart enough to avoid capture a second time.

  Guards stood watch all over the castle, everywhere except the unused south tower. And it just so happened that I’d seen proof of the ghost’s presence in that very spot.

  The wind moaned in the pitch blackness above us. My candle and Roger’s lantern provided the only light. The night was so dark that the big arched window at the top of the stairs was invisible. Marci had long since gone to bed. I’d gone, too, only sneaking out once I’d heard her snore. I’d looked for Iago, but only his little mice children were nestled in my lavender socks. He was out doing whatever mice did late at night.

  That hadn’t stopped me. I’d have gone alone if I had to.

  “Maybe we should have waited for Gillian?” Roger said as we climbed.

  I hadn’t seen Gillian since morning. Lindy had closeted herself in the pressing room. As far as I knew, she’d held Gillian prisoner at her ironing board until well after supper.

  “We have no time to waste. What if Pepperwhistle makes up her mind in the morning? Then what? It has to be tonight.”

  “Gillian’ll be sore.” The glass bottle squeaked in Roger’s grip.

  “She’ll understand. She wouldn’t want me to get sent to any dingy old orphanage.”

  “How do you know it’s dingy?”

  “Figures it’d be.”

  Roger grunted in acknowledgment.

  I grabbed the post at the top of the stairs and paused. The main landing was as dark as the far side of the cellar. The tiny light radiating from my candle hardly dented it. Roger’s lantern cast a glow, but not enough to pierce the gloom. It was a great black night, perfect for luring ghosts out.

  “Where should we set our trap?” Roger whispered.

  “Here.”

  “Here? No, higher up. Closer to the bats.”

  “There aren’t any bats.”

  “Sure there are; I heard them.”

  “No, you didn’t. The squeak that night was me.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I saw something that scared me, so I squeaked. Okay? It happens.”

  His brown eyes glowed in the candlelight. “What’d you see?”

  “Ghost footprints.”

  “How do you know they were the ghost’s?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  I let go of the newel-post and slid forward into the room beyond. Roger followed. The other end of the room lay hidden behind a curtain of darkness. My candle’s flame lit each step as I placed one foot directly before the other. Roger’s light splashed around as the lantern swung in his hand. Last time, our steps had echoed through the dark, but now the silence reverberated in my ears. I itched to hear a sound, any sound.

  “There’s the wall,” Roger whispered.

  A vague blankness wavered before me, becoming solid as I approached it. Stepping carefully, I peered down, looking for the footprints.

  “There,” I said, pointing.

  Roger held his lantern out, lighting the blurry prints.

  “Wow,” he breathed. “They walk right into the wall.” He set down his lantern and hunched over the prints.

  “This is where we should set up our trap,” I said.

  “No,” Roger said, shaking his head. “We should put the trap where the ghost came in.”

  “That could be anywhere.”

  “No, we follow the footprints backward.”

  I chewed on that. If I stood on the footprints and walked backward, I’d wind up where I came in. “They lead to the stairs.”

  “Top of the stairs, then. We’ll hide over here and watch.” He traced a print with his fingertip.

  “Does it come off?”

  He held up his finger; it was clean. Well, mostly clean, except for the ground-in grime of working in the stables and a little powdery white dust. He sniffed the dust and sneezed, obliterating whatever had been on his finger.

  “Smelled like sour milk,” he commented.

  “Thanks.” I hadn’t wanted to know. “Let’s get going—it’s late.”

  “I’ll leave the lantern here as a marker,” he said, taking my candle.

  And then he walked back toward the stairs, leaving me in the dark with the ghost’s footprints. Not that I was afraid. Nervous, maybe, but not scared. Not really. I crouched down against the wall with one foot in the lantern light and one foot in the dark.

  Across the room, I saw his hand place the candle on the floor. Then he took two steps forward and set down the jar.

  “How’s it look from there?” he said, stepping aside so I could see.

  A soft glow lit the tip of the candle, spreading warm fingers toward a sparkling pile in the bottom of the jar. The sparkles were broken bits of glass we’d mixed into sand.

  “Don’t put the candle too close. We don’t want the ghost to see what’s in there, just the sparkle.”

  He moved the candle a step closer to me, away from the jar.

  “Now?”

  “Perfect. Get back here.”

  The candle behind him made a shimmering outline around him as he walked. I shivered at the sight; he looked almost ghostly. He came over and sank down beside me. Then he reached out and turned down the wick on the lantern, extinguishing it. I wished he didn’t have to, but it was the only way we could hide in that empty room.

  “Do you think it’s convincing?” I whispered.

  “Looks good to me. That ghost will never know there aren’t any diamonds in there unless it gets close enough to look.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Think the ghost will fit in that jar? Maybe we should have brought a bigger one.”

  “No, this is good. Ghosts are vapor; they don’t need much space.”

  “Sure.”

  “We should be quiet.”

  “Right.”

  We sat side by side in the dark and waited. We waited while the candle burned down and the cold seeped out of the wall behind us and into our backs. The only sounds were the moaning of the wind outside the window and Roger’s breathing. My head drifted to my chest. My heavy eyelids slid down….

  “Hear that?” Roger spoke in my ear.

  “What?” I sat up.

  The candle burned close to the floor; it was almost used up. My feet were blocks of ice. My fist gripped the darning needle, too frozen to turn it loose.

  “Shh.”

  Six and seven, a distant voice mumbled.

  My knees turned to water. The voice did not come from the stairs. It came from behind the walls.

  “Oh my—” I began.

  An echo bounced off the walls.

  Roger clamped a hand over my mouth.

  “It’s behind that wall over there. On the other side of the room,” he whispered.

  “We have to g-get out of here,” I gasped.

  I broke free and scrambled to my feet. Roger jumped up and caught me.

  “No!” he breathed in my ear. “Listen. We need to lure it out into the room. So we’re going to talk, all friendly-like. So it’s curious enough to come out for a look.”

  “Are you crazy?” I whispered back. “It will see us and then—” My throat closed up; I couldn’t imagine what then.

  “No, it will see the light and then the jar and go over there.”

  He pulled me back toward the wall and down to the floor. I slumped into my spot by the extinguished lantern. Had he brought matches? I hadn’t asked before, and now, watching the las
t flickering beam of the candle, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “Good thing nobody knows we put the jewels here,” he said loudly, in a forced cheerful voice.

  I sat there glued to the wall. He nudged me in the ribs.

  “G-good thing,” I sputtered.

  “No one will find them here.”

  “N-no one,” I said.

  The ghost stopped muttering. Silence filled the room, squeezing all the air out of my lungs. A board creaked in the distance. Maybe the ghost was coming up the stairs, after all. Maybe it wouldn’t see us, and maybe it would. Two rats caught in our own trap, with nowhere to run but toward the ghost!

  The candle across the room sputtered out.

  I scrambled along the wall, desperate for somewhere else to go, and dropped the darning needle. It rolled away into the darkness. I wrenched off one of my mittens and groped after it. I felt the baseboard and ran my fingers over it. And then I felt a dip, as if the baseboard sank inward. Odd. It had looked solid enough the other night.

  Well, as solid as it could in the lantern light. Maybe the needle had rolled in there. I probed it. Another creak echoed from the stairs.

  “It’s coming,” Roger whispered.

  I dug in the hollow, frantic to find my needle.

  The baseboard fell under my hand as it suddenly gave way. A low growl sounded behind me. And then the whole wall moved.

  Roger scrambled for the lantern. I heard the scrape of a match. Saw a flare of light. Roger held up the lantern. Behind us, where there had been a wall, there was now an open passage.

  “Oh, man,” Roger said.

  “Hush,” I told him, listening hard.

  I glanced at the darkness by the stairs. Another creak sounded, closer this time.

  Roger was examining the hole with his lantern, running a gloved hand over the baseboard. “It’s a secret passage! There’s a trigger here, under the baseboard.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, still staring at the dark by the stairs.

  “Let’s check it out!” Roger said, grabbing me.

  The passage was every bit as dark as the empty room. Black wandered off into more black. There was enough black in there to fill a whole other castle. He tugged me into the blackness beyond. Another low growl sounded. The wall slid back into place, closing us off from the empty room in the south tower.