Wednesdays in the Tower

by Jessica Day George

  “What was that? Sir? I’m very sorry.” Now she was getting embarrassed.

  “I wondered if you might consent to, er, well …” Again with the near whisper.

  “What?”

  “Go up to the highest tower and sketch the roofs for me,” he said in a rush.

  “Me? Go sketch … You’re afraid of heights?” Celie blurted out in incredulity.

  “Yes, Your Highness,” the cartographer said miserably. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “I know it’s shameful, a man of my age and in my line of work … But it’s never been a problem before …”

  “Not to worry!” Celie felt a leap of joy in her breast. To sketch her Castle again! To add to the atlas that she had begun! “I would be more than happy to do it! I know just the tower, too.”

  “Oh! Oh, thank you so much, Your Highness!” The royal cartographer was limp with relief. “I feel terrible asking you to do it, but it’s such a relief to me, you cannot understand!”

  He glanced up the corridor to make sure that no one had seen them, and Celie did, too. She knew, as she was sure he did, that her parents would put a stop to it at once if they found out. Also, it was extremely undignified for the royal cartographer to be asking a little girl to do his job. Even if she was the princess, and even if the job had once been hers.

  “I do understand,” she said. “And I’m happy to help. You go ahead and work on something else; I’ll get you the sketches as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you again,” he said, and bowed deeply.

  He hurried away, and Celie waited until he was out of sight before whisking back into her room, on the chance that Rufus was hovering just inside.

  The griffin was actually across the room at her windows, perched on the long table where she studied and pecking at the latch on the shutters. He hunched his shoulders, hiding beneath the tent of his wings, and she sighed. He’d scraped up the latch, and had almost figured out how to lift it, she could see.

  “Rufus! Get down from there!”

  Celie intended to gather up her pencils and sketchpad as quickly as she could, before someone came along and asked what she was doing. She dumped her school things out on the table beside Rufus—who was taking up most of the table already—and stuffed any spare parchment, pencils, and soft erasers into her satchel.

  Rufus hopped down from the table, snuffled at her bag, and then ran to the door. He looked back at Celie and made a little pleading noise, then turned around and began trying to lift the latch on the door. He was a lot better at this than he was at the window latch, and Celie watched with a plummeting heart as he flipped it up and opened the door.

  “Rufus!” She lowered her voice. “Rufus, get back here!”

  But Rufus crept into the corridor, wings hunched, head cocked to keep an eye on Celie as he went. She threw her satchel strap across her shoulder and headed after him. When she got into the corridor, he was already at Lilah’s door. She grabbed his tail and tried to haul him back to her room, but the Castle closed the door, and she heard it lock.

  “You’re joking,” she said aloud. “I’m supposed to take him with me?”

  No answer except for her door staying locked.

  Celie hesitated, shifting from foot to foot. She hauled Rufus away from Lilah’s door, closer to the stairs at the end of the corridor, but didn’t let him start up. Could the Castle really want Rufus loose? It would do him good: even with his tower to play in, he was bored and frustrated. And the Spyglass Tower would be deserted; he could perch in the windows and look out over the valley with her.

  “All right,” she said at last. “Come along! Hurry!”

  She dropped his tail and started up the stairs, knowing that he’d follow. Sure enough, after a moment of surprise, he started up after her. She could hear his claws clicking and scrabbling on the stone steps, which were the tall and narrow kind.

  But soon they were in another corridor, and another. Celie led him to the Spyglass Tower by the least populated route she could find. Twice she shoved him into a closet or an empty room, hiding with him and trying to keep him quiet while a footman or a councilor walked past. By the time they reached the steps to the tower, Celie was shaking with nerves. She chivied the griffin up the stairs and into the tower, and then leaned her back against the locked door, panting.

  Rufus, on the other hand, was in his element. He squawked with delight over every new thing he found in the Spyglass Tower, from the last few hard biscuits in the tin to the large open windows.

  “Hush,” Celie said, but not with any real conviction.

  She herself was sitting in one of the windows, her legs swinging free in the cold air and her sketchbook propped atop a musty cushion she’d found. She was busily sketching the landscape of Castle roofs, keeping only half an ear on Rufus’s antics. He seemed fairly content to stand on a trunk and cry out, and she was soon taken up entirely in mapping out the top of the Castle.

  It was soothing, really. Like one of the drawing exercises she’d studied in the book Master Humphries had given her a couple of years back, when she’d gotten serious about mapping the Castle. The roofs were all planes and angles; the towers were rectangles and cylinders with cones atop them. The roofscape, as Celie thought of it, was fun to draw—as long as one did not mind hanging out the window of the tallest tower, with cold wind whistling about one’s ears.

  And Celie did not mind. It was beautiful, with the clear, pale winter sky beyond the dark slate roof tiles.

  “What are you doing?”

  Celie nearly fell out of the window. A large hand grabbed the back of her gown and pulled her to safety at the last second. Rufus screeched, and the hand let go of Celie, who tumbled to the floor inside the tower. Looking up, dazed, she saw Pogue trying to fend off Rufus, who was attacking him with his front legs, beak, and wings.

  “Pogue!” Celie wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that it was someone who already knew about Rufus, or angry with him for scaring her like that.

  “Get it off me!” Pogue yelled.

  “Rufus, stop that!” She grabbed the edge of one wing and tugged. “Don’t make me get Flat Squirrel,” she threatened. “You know Pogue, now behave!”

  Rufus couldn’t resist giving Pogue one good bite on the arm, but then he subsided. Pogue rolled up his sleeve, but his tunic was thick enough to have prevented the griffin’s beak from breaking the skin.

  “Ouch,” he complained. “I’m going to have a bruise!”

  “Well, it’s your own fault,” Celie retorted. “What were you doing, sneaking up here and scaring us?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking,” Pogue said, still rubbing his arm. “I was trying to find a place to be alone for a minute, so I came up here. When I saw you, I thought you were about to jump out the window, and I grabbed hold of you.”

  “Why would I jump out the window?”

  “I don’t know,” Pogue said. “What were you doing, anyway?”

  “I was sketching the roofs,” Celie said.

  “Why? I thought that was the royal cartographer’s job.”

  “It is,” Celie said, feeling guilty at revealing the cartographer’s secret. “But he, ah, isn’t quite feeling himself today.”

  Pogue obviously didn’t believe her. He folded his arms and gave her a stern, big brother’s look.

  “He’s afraid of heights and I’m not,” Celie said. “Don’t tell! I wanted to help with the atlas. It’s my atlas, after all!”

  That melted Pogue’s stern demeanor. He uncrossed his arms and looked like he wanted to give her a hug or a biscuit or something.

  “That’s very true,” he said. “It is your atlas. I’m sorry they took that away from you.” He looked over her shoulder, staring out the window as he chewed the inside of his cheek.

  Rufus, bored, started to inspect the corners of the room for more biscuits.

  “What are you doing here, really?” Celie asked.

  Celie had never heard of Pogue wanting to be alone. Ever. When he wasn’t in the smithy,
flirting with the village girls who came by to watch him work with his father, he was at the Castle with Bran or Rolf or Lilah.

  Pogue looked around, and then seemed to realize how silly that was. They were quite plainly alone, in the highest, most remote tower in the Castle. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked uncomfortable.

  “I’m hiding from my father,” he said in a low voice. “So that he won’t make me work the forge today.”

  Celie wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly, so she waited a moment for him to say something else, or repeat himself, or give the punch line of the joke. But he never did. He just stood there in front of her, looking guilty and awkward and not at all like his usual self.

  “Why don’t you want to work the forge?”

  “I hate it. I don’t want to be a blacksmith.”

  Once again she thought she’d misheard. She hurried over to keep Rufus from trying to eat the eastern spyglass, and didn’t see Pogue’s face as he replied. And it was such a startling thing for him to say. But when she turned and saw his expression, she knew that she’d heard right, and that he’d meant it.

  “But … but you … you’ve always …”

  “My father is the best blacksmith for fifty leagues,” Pogue said with a kind of grim pride. “And I am his only son. Of course I’m always at the forge. Of course I’ve been learning the trade since I could hold a hammer. But no one ever asked if I wanted to hold that hammer, and if I wanted to learn that trade.” He smiled, but his face was still grim. “Just like no one ever asked you if you wanted to stop making maps and let someone else find the Castle’s secret nooks and crannies.”

  Celie nodded. She understood completely.

  “I feel like a coward,” Pogue went on, “but I just can’t face my father and tell him that I don’t want to be him when I am older.”

  Pogue sounded young and uncertain, and so unlike himself. But Celie tried to act like Lilah or Rolf or Bran would, and listen to her friend. Even though she now wondered if he thought her a coward for not speaking up and telling her father that she wanted to keep on making maps of the Castle.

  She stopped this uncomfortable line of thought with a question.

  “So what do you want to do, if you don’t want to be a blacksmith?”

  Pogue fiddled with the biscuit tin for a moment. Rufus watched him intently, hoping for another biscuit, and when none was forthcoming, he tried to bite Pogue.

  “Stop that,” Pogue said, twisting out of the way of Rufus’s beak. “Horrible beast!” When he found that Celie was still watching him expectantly, he sighed. “You have to promise not to tell anyone,” he said.

  “Promise,” Celie said, crossing her heart.

  “Well … I wanted to be a wizard, but I don’t have the gift,” Pogue said in a low voice. “So now I’m trying to become a wizard’s assistant, at least. Or maybe a librarian.”

  Celie couldn’t help herself: she laughed. It was just such a startling admission, coming from Pogue Parry. He had already graduated from apprentice to journeyman; everyone said he was even more talented than his father. Aside from blacksmithing, he seemed to like nothing better than to dance with pretty girls at all the festivals. The thought of him sitting in the library, wearing a patched robe and glaring at anyone who dared to smudge the page of a book, was ridiculous.

  But the look on Pogue’s face made her laugh die away quickly. He was hurt, and she felt the blood rush to her cheeks. Hot prickles of embarrassment ran down her sides and back. She reached out a hand to beg for him to forgive her, and ended up rubbing vigorously at the place where Rufus’s feathers turned to fur, which always itched him.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh,” she mumbled. “It was just … I didn’t expect you to say that.”

  “No one does,” he said with a crooked smile. “At least, I’m assuming they won’t expect it. That’s why I haven’t ever told anyone.”

  “Not even Bran?”

  “Well, Bran knows,” Pogue said. “He was there when I applied to the College of Wizardry.” He shrugged. “But anyone can apply, and they promise to not even tell your parents, if you ask them not to.”

  Celie nodded. She knew this well. She’d applied to the College herself once.

  Anyone over the age of five could meet with one of the testing wizards, who traveled all over the world, looking for children with magical gifts. It only took a few minutes; they asked your name and a few questions, but really, they were just seeing if their gift found a spark of magic in you.

  Since Bran had the gift, Celie had wondered if she had it, too, and had met with the testing wizard who stayed at the Castle for a few days when she was six. He’d been very kind, had asked her about her birthday and whether she had a pet, and then smiled gently and told her that he was sorry, that she had gifts other than magic.

  At first she’d been nearly bursting with excitement over the idea that she was special, that she had other gifts even more rare than magic. But over time she’d come to understand that that had just been his way of telling her that she wouldn’t be joining her oldest brother in Sleyne City.

  So she understood Pogue very well. She understood what it was like to have everyone think they knew you, and knew what you liked and what you wanted, but to secretly want other things, want to be different.

  She almost started crying, but instead gave Pogue a tremulous smile.

  “I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine,” she said, waving a hand at her sketchbook.

  “It’s a deal,” Pogue said, offering his hand for her to shake.

  She gave his warm hand two firm pumps, but when she tried to let go, his fingers locked around hers in panic. She looked up, and his eyes were wide, his mouth open. He was staring over her shoulder.

  She wheeled around to see Rufus perched in one of the windows, stretching out his wings. He had to lean far out of the arch in order to get his wings free and extend them all the way.

  “Now we’re in trouble,” Pogue said. “I think he’s trying to fly.”

  Chapter

  16

  I’ll help you get him back to your room,” Pogue said, after he and Celie had wrestled Rufus down from the window-sill. “Will you be all right after that?”

  “I guess so,” Celie said.

  She had both arms around Rufus’s neck, and her heart was still thumping. The Spyglass Tower was at the northernmost point of the Castle, and from the north window, which Rufus had been about to leap out of, it was a sheer drop to a rocky gully. Rufus’s golden body would have been a broken heap on the rocks far below, and it would have taken Celie nearly an hour to reach him. Of course, he might have been able to open his wings all the way and fly, but he was still so young and so clumsy that she doubted it.

  “It’ll be fine,” Pogue said.

  But he said it in a sort of frantic way, as if he were only trying to reassure her before he went off and had hysterics himself. He ran down the stairs ahead of her and Rufus, and checked to see if anyone was in the corridor. When he saw that it was clear, he signaled to her, and she and Rufus hurried after him.

  “I’ll just get you to your room,” Pogue went on, leading them down the corridor at a fast clip. “And then I’m going to see Bran about something.”

  “Oh, okay,” Celie said.

  She felt like she and Pogue had just bonded, and now he was going to leave her? Now that Rufus had gotten the urge to try flying, she didn’t know how she was going to keep him contained and amused, and she had been hoping that Pogue would stick around to play with him until he fell asleep.

  “Don’t worry,” Pogue said as they ducked around a corner and hurried down another staircase. “I’ve got an idea that might help you. And Rufus.”

  And with that he left her at her door and went off to the main hall. Celie took Rufus into her room and locked the door. She went to her table to sort through what sketches she’d been able to make, when she realized that Rufus had gone upstairs to his tower. She couldn’t remember
if the shutters were latched or not, and raced after him to check.

  They were latched, but Rufus was trying his best to get them open. He was ready to fly, and it seemed that nothing would deter him.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “Come here.”

  Something about her voice interested Rufus more than trying to get out of the tower, and he came over and leaned lovingly against her. He was the size of her old pony now, and she put her arms around his neck and sighed. If he grew as big as the griffins in the tapestries they’d found, he would be large enough for even a grown man to ride, and as difficult as a horse to hide.

  “What am I going to do with you?” she murmured.

  “You’re going to train him properly,” Bran said.

  Celie wheeled around, clutching her chest. “Why does everyone keep sneaking up on me?”

  “Sorry!” Bran said, almost as startled. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

  Rufus looked at Bran over Celie’s shoulder and hissed.

  “I didn’t mean any harm,” Bran said to Rufus. He held up his hands in a placating gesture.

  “How are we going to train him?” Celie asked, surprising herself when she had to choke back tears. “What are we going to do? He needs to fly, but I’m so scared!”

  “It will be all right,” Bran said. He tried to hug Celie, but Rufus hissed again and he drew back. “Pogue found something that might help you, and he’s working on it right now.”

  This diverted Celie from her tears. “What is it?”

  “He’s found a harness among the things in the Armor Gallery that we’re certain is for a griffin,” Bran said eagerly. “It looks exactly like the one the griffin is wearing on those cushions from Rolf’s room that you showed me. But it’s a bit big, since it’s for a full-grown griffin, so Pogue took it to the forge to see if he could cinch up some of the straps and repair a broken buckle.”

  “A harness?”

  “You can use it like a leash and collar, to guide him,” Bran began, and then his face scrunched up. “Aaaaand … it looks like they also used it like a saddle … but at the very least we can guide him better.”