Guster pressed his face up against the limo window so he could see better. The roots were connected at the bottom. There must have been a set of hidden hinges mounting the entire assembly onto the trunk of a nearby tree. On the other side of the secret gate was a steep dirt road that veered off through the forest. It was all very clever: a road hidden in the trees for emergencies.
Felicity and the Lieutenant pushed the shrub gate open until it was wide enough to drive through. She motioned the limo driver and the four jeeps through, the Lieutenant’s copilot driving the first jeep while the Lieutenant took a dead branch and wiped away the tire tracks in the dirt. He swung the bushes closed again.
They jumped back into their vehicles, and the line of cars drove down the bumpy dirt road into the forest. Bare branches from the bushes reached out from the forest, scraping at the limo like skeletons’ fingers. It looked haunted, like it belonged in a Halloween movie, or had something dangerous to hide. Zeke looked scared.
“Kill the lights again. We’re getting close to the house,” said Felicity into the intercom after another minute of driving. The beams illuminating the forest disappeared, and all was dark. Guster’s eyes raced back and forth anxiously across the woods. He couldn’t pick out the trees from the shadows. It was uncomfortable, knowing that anything could sneak up on them now.
A half mile later they came to a small clearing. There was a stone well in the middle. “Park here,” said Felicity. The convoy stopped.
“The Chateau de Dîner was built seven hundred years ago,” she said clicking off the intercom. “The nobility who lived here never knew when they might have to escape from a jealous king or rebellious peasants, so they built a passage into the well as a means of getting out undetected. Now we’re going to use it for the opposite reason — getting in without being seen.”
“And once we’re inside?” asked Mom.
“Fortunately for us, the whole castle is riddled with secret passageways. We should be able to move around freely and observe our unwanted guests without them knowing.”
“Cool,” squeaked Zeke. Guster could tell he was nervous. Guster was too. It would have been different if they weren’t trying to sneak into a place where people were waiting to kill them.
Jar of sugar in hand, Felicity climbed out of the limo. Guster and Mariah hauled the ice chest out between them. The mercenaries followed Felicity to the well. “Sergeant, fetch the harnesses,” she ordered. The Sergeant fetched a tangled armful of webbing from the back of the closest jeep.
His hand still on the handle of the ice chest, Guster peered over the ancient stone brim of the well. A rope hanging from a small wooden roof on top descended into the darkness until it disappeared far below. “Lieutenant, the cable,” said Felicity. The Lieutenant pressed a button on a winch on the front bumper of his jeep, unwinding several feet of cable. He hooked the looped end of the cable around a metal carabineer. Mom’s eyebrows bent her soft face with worry.
“You don’t have to go in there,” said Felicity.
“Excuse me?” said Mom, straightening her face. She looked like she’d been challenged.
“I’m doing this because this is my life’s quest, and because there is nothing else. You are a housewife. You’ve got obligations to your children. This may not be a place you want to take them.”
Mom forced a chuckle at Felicity. “After all the places we’ve been! I believe you when you say that this won’t be a picnic, Felicity Casa, but the Johnsonvilles started out this journey together, and about two and half continents ago, it became clear to me that this family needs to stick together like cinnamon rolls fresh from the oven.” She looked sympathetically at Guster. He knew why she was doing this: she was thinking of his cure — a cure he needed worse than ever. “So we’re going inside that castle,” Mom said folding her arms over her apron, “And we’re going to see to it that that One Recipe gets made, no matter what.”
“Good,” said Felicity. She looked pleased, like she knew what Mom would say before she said it. Had she been taunting her? She had to have known that Mom wouldn’t turn back.
“Put these on,” said the Lieutenant taking the harnesses from the Sergeant and handing them out. He helped Guster step through the straps and cinch up the waist, then put one on Mariah, then Zeke, and finally strapped one on himself. Felicity cinched one around her waist too. Mom put Henry Junior on Mariah’s back while Mom strapped on her own harness.
“We’ll lower you down, one by one,” said the Lieutenant.
Just then there was a roar of something mechanical and a burst of heat as the entire clearing lit up bright orange. Two huge flames shot out of the bushes, straight for the Sergeant’s head.
The Lieutenant was lightning quick. He leapt out of the way, throwing Guster and Mariah to the ground. The Sergeant wasn’t so lucky. His uniform caught fire, the flames spreading wildly across his back. He rolled to the ground, screaming in pain.
Too many things happened at once for Guster to process it all. His ribs hurt from being thrown down. He heard a gunshot. The mercenaries spread out, some taking cover behind the jeeps, others diving for safety behind the well. Guster tried to find Mom in all the commotion. There were more shots.
The Lieutenant was on the ground, blasting his handgun into the bushes. It wasn’t the hissing of tranquilizer darts this time, but the crack of live ammunition. There was a thump and a rustle in the foliage. Two chefs in red aprons leapt into the clearing, blasting thirty foot spurts of fire from flame throwers strapped to their backs.
“Gastronimatii!” screamed the Private.
Guster thought of one thing: the silver ice chest. He had to get back to the well where he’d left it. His eyes darted frantically between the jeeps looking for an opening in the crossfire. Felicity had taken cover behind one of wheels.
He ran for it, staying low as fire blazed overhead, when two more Gastronimatii burst out of the bushes, cleavers in hand. The one on Guster’s right threw his knife. It spun until it struck the jeep’s tire, inches from the Lieutenant’s head. The Lieutenant turned and fired, dropping the chef to the ground. Six more stormed out of the bushes after him.
The Lieutenant grabbed Guster by the waist and yanked him back. Not now, thought Guster as the Lieutenant clipped a loose cable to Guster’s harness.
“Go,” he shouted, shoving Guster back toward the well. Another flame shot between them, blocking his way. There was no time to argue. He threw his leg over the stone lip of the well and dropped over the edge. The cable caught him. He floundered, scrambling with his arms to gain some kind of control. He tried to grab the ice chest. His fingers brushed it, then the Lieutenant lunged for the button on the winch and smashed it down.
Guster dropped into the darkness. Ten. Twenty. Thirty feet. Then whump. He hit the ground feet first and fell back onto his rear, jarring his back hard. The cable had slowed his fall just enough.
The ingredients were still up above — too far to reach.
There was another zipping noise, and the dark blue spot of sky far above filled with black for a second. Something slammed into the ground beside him. “Ouch,” said Mariah.
“Mom!” cried Guster. There was a whine of cable scraping against rock. Mariah grabbed his arm.
“Help me!” she said. “They’re pulling me up! Get this cable off.” Guster fumbled to find it in the dark. The Gastronimatii must have engaged the winch. He couldn’t lose Mariah now too. He didn’t want to be alone. He snatched the cable. “It’s caught. It’s too tight,” she said.
Guster got down on one knee. “Step on me,” he said. Mariah stood on his leg and the cable loosened. He unclipped it, and it whipped upward. Mariah fell back. Then there was crying.
Guster felt panic well up inside him. It sounded like a tiny boy. “That’s not — Henry Junior is it?” he said. The last thing he wanted was for his baby brother to be stranded in a dark tunnel.
“Better down here than up there,” said Mariah. Guster reached out. Sure enough, there
was Henry Junior, strapped to Mariah’s back. It only made their predicament worse. How was he going to get himself out of there, let alone his sister and baby brother?
There were shouts above. It sounded French, which could only mean that the Gastronimatii were winning. They had to get moving before they came down the well after them.
The black outline of a head with a bun on top thrust over the lip of the well. “Run!” echoed Mom’s voice. Her shadow was yanked backward. A flame shot across the opening.
“Let’s go,” said Guster, grabbing Mariah’s hand and stumbling into the dark. He could only hope that flame hadn’t hit her. He hated to leave Mom and Zeke, but there was nothing else they could do.
Mariah switched on a flashlight. Trusty Mariah. She was always prepared.
The beam shone on a tunnel as wide as a doorway, the sides supported by rectangular, rough-hewn stone bricks. As soon as Guster could see, he started to run.
He could hear Mariah’s panting and Henry Junior’s crying right behind him as the tunnel rose slightly, their feet splashing through a trickling stream. It would only take moments for the Gastronimatii to drop down the well and be on their heels. He had to put as much space between them and the well’s opening as possible.
The tunnel forked; Guster took the right path. It was only a guess, but there was no time to weigh the options.
The tunnel forked again. This time they went left. If they were lucky, they could throw the Gastronimatii off their trail.
Henry Junior started to wail louder than ever as they ran, dashing Guster’s hopes of evading anyone as the eerie echo of his screams bounced across the tunnel walls. The crying was a dead giveaway. How was it that Mom had always managed to keep him so quiet?
There was no time to console his baby brother now. They had to keep moving.
Water dripped on his head as he ran. The tunnel had a musty smell about it, like it was very old. They came to a hole in the floor where the stream flowed from underneath a rocky outcropping. After that there was dry earth under their pounding feet.
“Guster,” gasped Mariah, “I need to rest.”
“Okay, but only for a second,” he said, reluctantly slowing his pace. There was no way to tell how far they’d come.
The ground sloped upward, steeper than before, until they turned a corner and the tunnel dead ended at an old, heavy wooden door.
A rat scurried across the floor and under a gap beneath the door. Henry Junior stopped crying, apparently distracted from their grim predicament. “Mow mow,” he said, pointing.
Grateful for the quiet, Guster grasped a thick iron ring that hung in the center of the wood and pulled. “Help me,” he said. Mariah grabbed hold and yanked with him, until the door, groaning, opened slowly on its rusty hinges.
On the other side was a narrow stone staircase that spiraled upward into a tower. “We must be under the castle,” said Mariah.
Guster had no idea where to go from here. What were they going to do once they were inside anyway? All he knew was that they couldn’t allow themselves to be followed. He yanked on the door until it closed, then stopped to listen. The slow, rhythmic drip of water plinked on the rocks on the other side. If they were behind them, the Gastronimatii were being very sneaky about it.
He and Mariah mounted the stair and climbed upward. If only Zeke were here, thought Guster. And Mom. She always knew what to do. But they weren’t. They’d been attacked by the Gastronimatii, and as far as he knew, only he and Mariah had escaped. Mom could be hurt — or worse.
Guster shook his head; he couldn’t think about that right now. He had to concentrate on the moment. He had to find a way out of this, if not for him and Mariah, at least for Henry Junior.
He guided himself along the cold stone wall of the spiral stair with his hand. The next twenty steps took them upward almost two full turns inside the tower. A straight narrow hallway branched off from the staircase. Mariah shined her light inside. It was uninviting — cobwebs strewn across the narrow gap waited like wispy nets to trap them.
Guster urged her up the steps. They passed three more hallways as they ascended the stair. The staircase dead ended at the fifth one. With nowhere else to go, Guster turned and squeezed himself into the passage, his back up against the wall.
“Guster, wait,” whispered Mariah, handing Guster the flashlight. She took Henry Junior off her back and held him on her hip so she could shimmy her way in too. Henry Junior buried his face in her neck.
The passage curved, like it was going around the perimeter of a larger tower. There was a faint slit of light up ahead on the left wall no thicker than a dime. As Guster got closer, he could see a tiny door only one inch tall and six inches wide mounted on the wall just above his head. If there was light coming through, maybe it could help them find a way out.
Guster pulled on the knob and swung the tiny door open. There were two remarkable things about the other side: the first was a set of holes, one for each eye, that let light stream through into the tunnel; the second was a pair of eyes painted on the inside of the wood.
Guster clicked off the flashlight — he didn’t want it shining out — and put one finger over his lips so Mariah would keep Henry Junior quiet — if that were possible. They’d been lucky so far.
Guster stood on his tiptoes and peered through the eyeholes. On the other side of the stone wall was a wide hallway with a blue throw rug running down its length, several golden tapestries hanging on the walls, and electric chandeliers lighting up the otherwise dim interior. They were definitely inside now.
He felt around for a lever or switch. If there was a way to see into the castle hallway, there had to be a way to get out of the secret passage too. He fumbled with a wooden beam hanging from the ceiling, but nothing happened.
“Try this,” whispered Mariah. She pushed on a brick protruding from the wall only a few feet from the eyeholes. It groaned, and a column of bricks barely wide enough to fit through swung slowly inward, grinding across the floor beside them.
Mariah’s eyes brightened. Guster shut the tiny eyehole door and squeezed stealthily through the opening into the hall.
He turned off the flashlight and gave it back to Mariah. On this side of the wall where the eyeholes would have been was a life-size portrait of a man holding an old hunting musket, his face painted exactly at eye-level. That’s what those eyes on the inside of the door are for, he thought. He looked closer, and sure enough, there was a thin, almost invisible line around the man’s eyes where the painting had been cut.
If Zeke was there, he would definitely think that was cool. The thought pained Guster. He tried to shove it out of his mind.
He helped Mariah put Henry Junior back in the toddler backpack then led them left. Walking was easier now that they were inside the castle, but it made Guster feel exposed; they no longer had the advantage of secrecy.
They passed tapestry after tapestry. The hallway finally ended at a large stone archway that opened into a spacious banquet hall. “Let me go! I’ll pay my own ransom!” whined a voice inside.
Guster motioned for Mariah to stay close to the wall. He recognized the voice. It sounded like Aunt Priscilla. He crouched low and peered into the room.
Sure enough, Aunt Priscilla was tied to a chair at the end of a massive oak table on the far side of the hall. She was blindfolded, her nose still as red as a tomato, though slightly less swollen. “They must have taken her after we left Key West,” Guster said.
Two Gastronimatii came through an open archway behind her. They were both dressed in their red chefs’ garb. “We should’ve gagged her,” said one Gastronimatii to the other.
Guster grabbed Mariah’s hand and doubled back into the hallway. They couldn’t risk being seen. They were just short of the painting of the hunter when there was a scuffling of feet and a low voice from behind. The two Gastronimatii were coming down the corridor from the banquet hall.
There was no way to make it back to the secret passageway in time, even if
they ran their hardest. He looked frantically around for a chair or a vase they could hide behind, but the hallway was bare.
The voices were getting closer when Mariah pulled Guster by the arm over to one of the tapestries. She slid behind it, pulling him in with her. It was dark, and his feet were probably showing, but it was better than nothing.
The footsteps got louder as the Gastronimatii began to run. Guster held his breath. They couldn’t be discovered now. The footsteps came a few feet from the tapestry, then the chefs passed right by, their voices eager. Guster sighed.
“Ba!” said Henry Junior, tapping Guster on the shoulder. Guster shot a glance out into the hall, certain that the noise had been enough to give them away. The two Gastronimatii were running, their backs to Guster, apparently in such a hurry they hadn’t even noticed the toddler’s cry. He felt a wave of relief.
“They must be going somewhere important,” whispered Guster.
“Maybe they know where Mom is,” said Mariah. Guster nodded. If Mom’s alive, he thought.
“What should we do about Aunt Priscilla?”
Guster shook his head. “Nothing right now. We’ve got to find a way out of this first.”
He grabbed Mariah’s hand and tiptoed after the Gastronimatii. They passed the portrait of the hunter again and followed the voices until the hallway came to a T. Guster peeked carefully around the left corner, waited until the two chefs descended a set of stairs, then followed after them.
They never reached the stair. Something far more important caught Guster’s attention: dancing firelight and shouts pouring in from a balcony on the left. Something was happening in the courtyard below — something big.
Guster motioned to Mariah. “Stay here,” he said and crept onto the balcony so he could peer over the edge of the stone railing without being seen.
The balcony gave an excellent view of the castle’s inner courtyard. He felt his throat tighten again — it was a view he did not want to see: down below were more than a hundred members of the Cult of Gastronimatii, all dressed in red, holding shining knives and burning torches above their heads and shouting into the night.
Evertaster Page 21
