The Dastardly Deed

by Holly Grant

  The Loondorfers both curtsied to Wiggy, and then they swept from the dining hall with nary a backward glance.

  “Anastasia,” Penny said, “you mustn’t feel bad about wearing that coat.”

  “But I do,” Anastasia quavered. “I’ve been wearing it for almost two whole months.”

  “And it kept you warm and cozy. I’m sure that the Morfo who lost it would be glad to know this coat helped a victim of CRUD,” Baldwin said.

  “Binkley, remove this coat,” Wiggy said softly, and a footman darted forward to whisk away the fur. The queen turned her strange eyes to Anastasia. “You must be tired, my child. Let’s summon your bat-in-waiting, and she can show you to your cavern.” She whistled. “Your bat-in-waiting, Anastasia, will henceforth accompany you everywhere.”

  “Is she like a pet?” Anastasia, lover of all creatures great and small, perked up.

  “No; your bat-in-waiting is your companion. Your lady. These bats are my ladies.” She indicated the fuzzy brood hanging from the chandelier.

  “Were the bats in Ludowiga’s wig her—um—ladies?”

  Wiggy nodded. “The bats-in-waiting descend from the Great Bat of North Cave, a noble line renowned for dignity and grace—good heavens!” She broke off as a brown puff catapulted over her crown and crash-landed in the middle of her plate. “Gracious. Anastasia, allow me to present your bat-in-waiting, Pippistrella.”

  Pippistrella rustled her wings. “Squeak!”

  The princess studied her scruffy lady in mute admiration. She reminded Anastasia, somehow, of Muffy. Was Pippistrella prone to revenge pooping, too? Were bats-in-waiting allowed to revenge-poop? Anastasia’s heart warmed as Pippistrella capsized a goblet, splashing root beer across the tabletop. A clumsy damsel! In that respect, they were two peas in a pod.

  Anastasia smiled.

  “Pippistrella will guide you to your chamber. It’s your father’s old room.” Wiggy rustled in the folds of her skirt and withdrew a key, which she pressed into Anastasia’s palm. It was heavy and gold and capped with a large purple crystal.

  “While Pippistrella understands English, she obviously can’t speak it,” Wiggy went on. “You’ll begin Echolalia lessons soon, but in the meantime you’ll just have to work out some form of communication.”

  Anastasia turned the key over in her hand. Keen as she was to see the room that this glorious key would unlock, she did not relish the prospect of wandering through a spooky underground palace. “Well…good night.” She hugged Penny, and then she hugged Baldwin. After a moment’s hesitation, she aimed a curtsy in Wiggy’s direction.

  Pippistrella peeled herself from the queen’s plate and flapped from the dining hall, and Anastasia hurried after her into a grand hallway chockablock with glass globes. They were snow globes, Anastasia saw. She drew her nose close to one, peering at the tiny drowned world: a Japanese pagoda clasped between miniature cherry trees. The next one: a dinky village of houses no bigger than thimbles. Was it Dinkledorf? Beneath her gaze, the artificial snowflakes began to quiver and flurry, and then they whirled. She twisted to behold the other globes and saw that they, too, churned with their individual blizzards. Magical!

  As she watched the swirling twinkles, Anastasia’s memory spun back to the frosty pictures she had puffed—or fancied she had puffed—upon panes of glass at St. Agony’s Asylum. Penny and Baldwin reckoned Anastasia’s addled noodle had projected the delicate designs upon her shadowy prison. Her brow crinkled. Was her imagination really so dextrous, so nimble?

  “I didn’t want to discuss Fred in front of Anastasia.” Wiggy’s murmur floated from the dining room. “Have you heard anything? Found anything?”

  Hark! All of Anastasia’s fine eavesdropper instincts galvanized. Holding her breath, she rotated her ear toward the hushed voices.

  “No, Your Mommyness,” Baldwin said. “He just disappeared.”

  “Is there a hope—the faintest hope—that he’s alive?” Wiggy asked.

  Anastasia’s pulse pummeled her ribs. The snow globes quaked, their Lilliputian tempests building.

  “There is a chance,” Penny finally said. “We have our top agents hunting for him, but you already know that.”

  “If only Nicodemus were here!” Wiggy lamented. “He could find Fred. His blood-and-ink compass never fails; never. Of course,” she added sadly, “the chance of finding Nicodemus is even slimmer than that of finding Fred.”

  The globe by Anastasia’s elbow rattled dangerously near the edge of its pedestal. She swooped it to her chest, straining her eardrums for any last dribble of secret conversation. But it seemed Dr. Lungwort had arrived, and the discussion turned to medicine and pus. Crumbs! She fumbled the snow globe back to its ledge and turned to follow Pippistrella.

  They zigzagged down a maze of craggy hallways, passing doorways to candlelit galleries of statues, parlors populated with humpbacked harps, and salons abloom with phosphorescent moss. Pippistrella kept a brisk pace, so these wonders flashed by in dreamlike glimpses until they reached a heavy wooden door hinged with gold. “PEEP.”

  “Is this it?”

  “Squeak!”

  Anastasia removed the golden key from her pocket. “Well, let’s see my dad’s—I mean, our—room.”

  The chamber included everything needed for the comfort of a Cavelands royal:

  One cavern, its walls freckled with crystals: check.

  One merry fire blazing in an amethyst-encrusted cranny: check.

  Two plush rugs to protect genteel toes from chilly marble floors: check.

  One wardrobe, extra-large: check.

  One four-poster bed, canopied with thick curtains: check.

  One pair of flannel pajamas (pink plaid), folded on the pillow: check!

  Anastasia scrounged her imagination for an image of her father spending his boyhood days in the baroque cavern, but she came up blank. Her shoulders slumped. It was impossible to envision Mr. McCrumpet as a child, let alone a princeling lolling on a velveteen mattress. “Well, I guess I’ll unpack.”

  She upturned her satchel, spilling out Mr. Bunster and her tattered sketchbook and a few marble eyeballs pilfered from the asylum’s taxidermied menagerie. A silver timepiece slithered into the jumble: a pocket watch purloined from a hatbox once belonging to Prim and Prude’s great-aunt Viola.

  Anastasia closed her fingers around the watch, waiting for a telltale tingle: an itch, a rash, some welter of silver allergy. Nothing happened. She shoved the clock back into her bag. Would she never manifest her Morfolkiness? Ludowiga’s barb niggled her memory: “Anastasia is a Halfling.”

  Sighing, she grabbed Mr. Bunster. Too weary to shuck off her muddy snowsuit, she ignored the pink pj’s and crawled into her canopy bed. “Good night, Pippistrella.”

  “Crrr-peep.” Her bat-in-waiting zipped around the cavern, squeaking out candles with huffy little bat breaths, one by one by one.

  Anastasia’s limbs sank leadenly into the squishy mattress, but questions flurried her mind as fast and wild as the wintry flakes whirring Wiggy’s snow globes. Who was Nicodemus? What was a blood-and-ink compass? And why was he missing? Had CRUD snatched him, too?

  And could he really find her dad?

  6

  The Royal Toilette

  DING DING DING ding ding!

  Anastasia burrowed her nose into her duvet, sleep fuzzing her thoughts. Dingalingaling! What was that noise? Quentin sometimes wore a bell; the kidnappers had attached one to him at the asylum, in much the same way one links a chime to a cat’s collar. Quentin and Ollie! She cracked her eyelids, expecting to find herself in St. Agony’s; expecting to find her two best friends.

  Instead, a blur of strange faces stared down at her.

  Anastasia jozzled awake, remembering in a rush that she was in Cavepearl Palace. “Who are you?” She recoiled from the gang of women silently crouched around her bed. “What are you doing in my room?” Had the nefarious agents of CRUD tracked her to the Cavelands to snatch her anew? She leapt to her feet and
flung Mr. Bunster at the nearest assassin.

  “Eeeek!” the woman wailed. “My wig!”

  “Princess,” snapped a figure near the fireplace, “these are your Royal Maids.”

  Anastasia peered across the cavern to Ludowiga, perched on one of the chairs and fluttering a lacy fan.

  “Maids?” she echoed.

  “But of course. You’re a princess, and a princess needs maids.”

  Anastasia stared. The intruders, she fathomed, were not crouching for attack. They were curtsying.

  “I’m Lady Lumpkin, Maid of the Royal Morning Alarm,” proclaimed a maiden in a pink wig, brandishing a little bell. Tingalingaling! “Time to get up! Rise and shine!”

  “They’re here to help with your toilette,” Ludowiga said.

  “My toilet? They’re plumbers, too?”

  “Your morning toilette, you ignoramus,” Ludowiga said. “They’re here to bathe and dress you.”

  “But I don’t need help.”

  Ludowiga shook her head. “Wiggy entrusted me with the arduous duty of making you as presentable as possible. It’s your first day in the Cavelands, and you’ll be going out as a princess and therefore as a face of the royal family. A freckled face, unfortunately, but that isn’t my fault.”

  “We have a nice bath drawn for you, Princess,” chirped the victim of Anastasia’s catapulted bunny. “I’m Lady Vowels, Maid of the Royal Sponge. WHEELBARROW!” she hollered, and two more bewigged women bustled into Anastasia’s chamber, rolling forth a bathtub on wheels. Foamy water sloshed over the edge.

  “Um.” Anastasia scratched her elbow. “Thanks. You can go now.”

  “But, Princess!” cried Lady Vowels. “How will you scrub the back of your neck? It’s ever so difficult to reach! Surely you need help with that.”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “Clearly you do, Princess. Your hygiene is atrocious,” Ludowiga said. “When was the last time you bathed?”

  Anastasia scrunched her face, thinking hard. “I guess October.”

  Lady Vowels clutched at her chest. “This isn’t the fifteenth century, Princess!”

  “I don’t want you to see me in my birthday suit,” Anastasia stammered.

  “Ugh!” Ludowiga said. “Only peasants bathe in the altogether. You’ll wear this bathing gown, of course!” She held up an old-fashioned cotton nightie.

  “Why on earth would I wear clothes to take a bath?” Anastasia objected. “That’s seems silly.”

  “You’re the one being silly,” Ludowiga retorted. “You don’t want your maids to see you au naturel, correct?”

  “Come along, Princess,” coaxed Lady Vowels. “And your bat needs a bath, too.”

  Anastasia sighed and poked the snoring puffball nested in the canopy’s swag. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  Pippistrella rustled and stretched her wings.

  “We’re supposed to get baths,” Anastasia informed her.

  Pippistrella squeaked in dismay.

  “Um, Ludowiga?” Anastasia asked, clambering from her bed. “Where is the—er—chamber pot?”

  Ludowiga grimaced and pointed to a narrow gap in the wall, and to this gap Anastasia pranced a little I-have-to-go-to-the-bathroom jig. She froze, eyeing the tiny nook. Her latrine was smaller than a broom closet, lit by one candle stumped on a jag of cave bacon. A gurgling gray bump swelled from the floor. There was an opening in the top, and wisps of fog wafted from this opening. It resembled the model of a volcano Anastasia had once made for the Mooselick Elementary School science fair.

  “Is this volcano thing supposed to be a toilet?” she called.

  “Yes! Hurry up and go!”

  After a clammy experience indeed, Anastasia donned her bathing gown and hopped into the tub. The maids launched their attack.

  They scoured her armpits!

  They savaged her head with perfumed glop!

  The Maid of the Royal Nose plunged Anastasia’s nostrils with a tiny brush. “Stop! That tickles!”

  Pippistrella screaked angrily as a maid assaulted her with shampoo. “But, Lady Bat, don’t you want your fur to smell of roses?”

  “On to Phase Two,” Ludowiga barked.

  “Phase Two?” Anastasia exclaimed, galumphing from the tub and into a robe.

  They combed her eyebrows.

  They bombarded her with powder puffs.

  They wrestled her into silk tights and ruffled pantaloons and a fluff of petticoats. Lady Puddingbilge, an especially muscular damsel, hefted a wire dome over Anastasia’s head.

  “Is that a cage?” Anastasia yelped.

  “No, you dolt. It’s a crinoline,” Ludowiga said.

  Lady Puddingbilge yanked the contraption down and cinched its top around Anastasia’s waist.

  BLLLLLLLLLLT!

  Anastasia froze. Ludowiga froze. Everyone froze, with the exception of the Maid of the Royal Nose. This quick-witted hero leapt to pinch Ludowiga’s nostrils shut.

  “Princess!” Ludowiga quacked. “Was that a fart?”

  Anastasia crimsoned. “The crinoline squeezed it out.”

  “That’s no excuse.” Ludowiga unfurled her fan and flapped it wildly. “Princesses never toot.”

  “But, Aunt, everyone toots!”

  “We do not,” Ludowiga intoned. “A royal’s bottom must be three things: proper, prudent, unimpeachable. Otherwise, our subjects get nervous. If we can’t control our flatus, they lose all confidence that we can control a queendom!”

  As the maids at last fastened the final clasp on Anastasia’s new pink gown, she wriggled from their clutches to grab her galoshes. “Thanks for the help!” she called over her shoulder, dashing from her cavern. Pippistrella squeaked after her.

  “Anastasia!” Ludowiga shrilled. “We’re not done here!”

  “You may not be, but I am,” Anastasia muttered. “Come on, Pippistrella. Let’s get breakfast.”

  “Gadzooks! Good morning, fancy pants!” Baldwin whooped as Anastasia hustled into the dining hall. “What a vision!”

  “You’re both pretty fancy, too.” Anastasia smothered a giggle. She was accustomed to seeing Penny in cardigans and penny loafers, but her aunt now wore a midnight-blue frock trimmed with a gold braid and twinkling with brass buttons and foaming with lace at the cuffs and collar. She looked swashbuckling, like some sort of librarian-pirate-adventuress. If Penny hadn’t been sipping her tea so very primly and smiling so very sweetly, Anastasia could have imagined her aunt hollering, “Avast, ye scurvy swine, and use yer library voices!”

  Baldwin also wore a gold-studded coat and a vest shot through with shiny thread. Every gilded stitch and glinting nub underscored his usual dapper magnificence.

  “What’s that?” Anastasia eyed the necktie jutting beneath her uncle’s manly chin.

  “A cravat.” He sawed into his stack of pancakes. “A cravat should be crisp, Anastasia. Folded just so, like origami.”

  Anastasia squashed into a chair, her crinoline bulging around her thighs. She pulled on her galoshes, noticing that the bottoms of her silk stockings were black with cave dust.

  “Princess Anastasia!” Ludowiga stamped through the door. “Galoshes are not suitable cave wear.”

  “On the contrary, Loodie,” Baldwin said, “galoshes are perfectly suited for stomping around the Cavelands. I’m wearing boots, myself.”

  Ludowiga stared daggers at him. “Fine. But the princess will need wigs, you realize. I’ve already sent a courier to Sir Marvelmop, telling him to gird his hairbrushes.”

  “Sir Marvelmop?” Baldwin said. “That crazy old goon?”

  “Sir Marvelmop is an artist,” Ludowiga retorted. “A creative genius. The Michelangelo of wigs!”

  “He’s barmy as a bedbug!” Baldwin said.

  “Anastasia, are you hungry?” Penny cut in. “Look at all these pancakes! And your breakfast is ready, too, Pippistrella.”

  Two footmen scampered from the alcoves. The first lifted the lid on his platter to reveal a single jar, and the second p
icked up this jar and unscrewed the lid, releasing a dark flurry.

  MOTHS!

  Before she could think twice about it—before she could consider that, perhaps, princesses did not scramble atop tables, toppling glasses and trampling bacon—Anastasia found herself crouched amidst the flapjacks, cramming a moth into her mouth.

  “ABOMINATION!” Ludowiga screamed, and then she keeled over. A cloud of alarmed bats rocketed from her wig.

  “Royal down!” bawled a servant. “Fetch the smelling salts!”

  An attendant dived from the corner and stuck a little bottle beneath Ludowiga’s nostrils. The princess sputtered and sat bolt upright.

  “Clearly,” she smoldered, “we have much work ahead of us. Your first finishing lesson, Anastasia, is at one o’clock this afternoon. By order of the queen.” She glared at the coterie of gawking servants. “Well? Lift me, you fools!”

  Two butler types hoisted Ludowiga up by her armpits. She straightened her wig, and then she stalked from the dining hall, bats in tow.

  “Bosphorous!” Baldwin muttered. “No wonder Dewey Loondorfer spends so much time ‘away on business.’ With a wife like Ludowiga, I’d find myself a job at a space station!”

  Anastasia backed off the table and plopped into her chair, her cheeks burning.

  “My dear child!” Penny said. “Have you eaten moths before?”

  Anastasia winced. “At the asylum. I was just so hungry—”

  “Why!” Penny thrilled. “That’s wonderful!”

  “And such quick reflexes!” Baldwin declared. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “That we can save on pancake bills?”

  “No! That you’re going to metamorphose soon! And it seems you’re going to be a bat!” Penny beamed.

  “Oh, you lucky child,” Baldwin said. “You’re going to fly!”

  Anastasia gazed at them in wonderment. Up until that moment, her penchant for moths had been her shameful secret. She had considered it a nasty habit, like picking one’s nose or digging in one’s ears. But, she realized now, it was a harbinger of incredible things to come.