Tuesdays at the Castle

by Jessica Day George

  “Princess Celia?” Khelsh laughed. “Princess Celia where? And Princess Dellah? None has seen them!” Another nasty laugh. “You are alone. Your Grath friend cannot save you. The Castle is mine! Sleyne is mine!”

  Celie held her breath, waiting to hear Rolf’s reply, or Lulath’s, but instead she heard a funny snuffling noise. Then the tapestry in front of her moved, and there was the sound of excited barking. She looked down and saw JouJou, Lulath’s caramel-colored dog, burrowing under the heavy cloth to get to her.

  “What’s this? It looks like your dog has found a rat, Your Highness,” came the Emissary’s amused voice.

  The tapestry was whipped back, and Celie stood blinking in the doorway, with JouJou dancing around her feet in oblivious delight. Celie glared at the Emissary, and reached down to pick up the little dog without taking her eyes off the tall man.

  “Celie! Are you all right?” Rolf leaped off his stool and came toward her with outstretched hands.

  “Yes!” She tried to run to him, but the Emissary clamped his hands on her shoulders and held her back.

  “How wonderful,” he purred. “I’ve been longing to speak to you for days, Princess Cecelia.”

  “And I’ve been longing to kick you in the shins for days,” Celie retorted, and heard Prince Lulath give a short laugh. “But I had to settle for putting manure on your shoes.”

  Khelsh roared and lunged for her. Celie dropped JouJou, who landed on her feet like a cat and began to yap, while Celie twisted free of the Emissary and ran for the doors.

  “Rolf! Lulath!” she called over her shoulder.

  She burst through the doors, knocking both guards down, and ran as fast as she could across the main hall. She went through an archway, then immediately turned right and went into the first room she came upon. Rolf and Lulath followed her, panting, but she didn’t stop even when Lulath closed and locked the door behind them.

  “I’m sure Khelsh saw us come in here,” Rolf whispered.

  “Probably,” Celie replied.

  She was already on the far side of the room, opening the shutters. The window looked out over the courtyard. She waved a hand to Lulath, who was fussing over JouJou, and felt a pang of guilt at dropping the dog.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt her, but you’ve got to get out of here,” Celie said. “Please hurry!”

  “She is fine,” Lulath said. He crossed the room in a few long strides. “You first, little Celie, and I hand you dog.”

  “I’m not going,” Celie said.

  Rolf expelled his breath in a puff. “I knew you were going to say that! We don’t have time, Cel, you and Lulath get out of here and—”

  “Lilah is trapped in the Spyglass Tower,” Celie interrupted. “I have to go back for her.”

  From the corridor, they could hear the voices of pursuit. The young men exchanged uneasy looks.

  “I’ve sent all the staff away,” Celie said. “I told them to summon anyone who can fight to lay siege to the Castle. But Rolf, you and Lulath need to rally the army. We need Grath and even Vhervhine, if the king will stand against his own son. No one is going to follow me into a battle, but they will follow both of you.”

  Again Rolf and Lulath looked at each other.

  “It’s my Castle,” Celie said. “I plan on being the last one out.”

  “How will you get out of here?” Rolf’s face was strained and he gestured wildly around the room. They could hear someone just outside the door.

  “There’s a trapdoor under that sofa,” Celie said, pointing. “It drops into the seamstresses’ rooms.”

  “All right,” Rolf said. “See that you use it, then.” He dropped a swift kiss on her cheek, took JouJou from Lulath, and scrambled out the window.

  “We will win,” Lulath said, holding up a fist in a victorious gesture. He also kissed her cheek, then followed Rolf.

  “Go through the stables,” she called after them in a low voice.

  The latch rattled violently, but the lock held. Celie skittered under the sofa, lifted the trapdoor as far as she could, and slid through it backward. She dropped down onto a table in the seamstresses’ main sewing room, the bang of the trapdoor hidden in the crash as one of Khelsh’s men broke down the door.

  The seamstresses’ rooms were dark. Celie clambered off the table and fumbled her way over to the door. Out in the corridor, she took the nearest oil lamp from its niche and carried it with her, not knowing whether the lamps farther along would still be lit.

  She made her way to the kitchens, and then had to balance the lamp carefully on top of the food hamper, which had to be lifted with both hands. Some of the oil spilled out onto the lid of the hamper, and she hoped that the flame wouldn’t find it and set the entire thing alight. Her heart beat harder than it had so far, as she made her unwieldy way through the passages toward the Spyglass Tower.

  If she ran into Khelsh or the Council or any of their men, she didn’t know what she would do. She supposed she could throw her burden toward them, splattering flame and lamp oil, but the very thought of such a thing terrified her. And if the oil splattered on her … she decided it best not to contemplate.

  Instead she kept to the narrowest and least-used passages, taking a very roundabout way toward the Tower. And it was good that she did, for when she took a shortcut through the laundries, she found a huddle of laundresses hiding among the great copper boilers, all holding hands and praying aloud for help.

  “I can help you,” Celie said, putting down her hamper on a folding table.

  There was a general gasp and several cries of thanks to heaven.

  “Your Highness!” The chief laundress recognized Celie and curtsied deeply, nudging the young girl next to her until all the laundresses hurried to rise and do the same.

  “Hello … ma’am.” Celie couldn’t remember the woman’s name, and a wave of exhaustion crashed over her. “Rolf—King Glower—has dismissed all the staff. We want everyone loyal to Sleyne and our family to leave at once. Our loyal soldiers, led by Rolf—King Glower—are going to lay siege to the Castle and flush Khelsh and the Council out.”

  “Then Prince Khelsh is behind all this?” The chief laundress gestured to the room around them, but Celie took it to mean the deadness of the Castle.

  “Of course.”

  “I never liked him,” the chief laundress announced.

  “That’s good,” was all Celie could think to say. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the way out of the Castle.”

  “A little slip of a thing like you, Princess Cecelia?” The chief laundress shook her head. “I wouldn’t dream of it! We’ll make our own way and—”

  But now Celie was shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but it’s too dangerous. If you get caught trying to leave … I honestly don’t know. I’ll lead you to one of the secret exits.”

  Her heart quailed at the thought, but she tried not to show it. If they were caught … she really didn’t know what sort of punishment Khelsh would find for them. Still, there really was nothing else to be done.

  While the laundresses gathered their things, Celie took her hamper, the mirror-wand, and the lamp and went to the front of the hushed group of women. They crept slowly out of the laundries with Celie using the mirror to check around every corner.

  It seemed like hours before they finally staggered out of a small door near the midden and stood there blinking in the waning sunlight. It was long past suppertime, and Celie wondered how frantic Lilah was by now, and if Rolf had managed to round up many soldiers.

  “If you hurry straight across to the stables, you can go out the back way, through the pastures,” Celie told the chief laundress.

  “Thank you, Your Highness.” The woman gave her another low curtsy.

  “There they are!”

  The laundresses all screamed as a Vhervhish soldier came around the corner of the Castle wall and saw them.

  “Run!” Celie shouted.

  She didn’t stop to think of the consequences, she just threw
her lamp at the soldier, splattering oil all over the stones of the courtyard. This close to the stables, the stones were littered with bits of straw. The straw caught fire and the laundresses screamed again.

  “GO!”

  Celie snatched up her hamper and ran back into the Castle as quickly as she could. She hated to leave the laundresses, but she had Lilah to think of. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the panicked soldier running to get something to douse the fire, and hoped it would buy her enough time to get clear. She barred the little door behind her, and then hurried along the darkened passageway as fast as she could, the unnatural darkness and stillness of the Castle pressing in on her from all sides.

  It was slow going indeed. Once she got into the more familiar areas of the Castle, Celie moved with great care, and consequently, great slowness. She crept along each passageway, setting down her hamper well away from the turnings and cross-passages, and then stole forward to look with the mirror-wand. If the way was clear, she would hurry back, snatch up the hamper, and continue on, more slowly still, because the hamper seemed to be growing heavier each time she lifted it.

  She was almost to the room where she could climb from balcony to roof to tower, when she suddenly didn’t need to look with the mirror to know that someone was coming. She could clearly hear the voices of the two soldiers marching down the next passage. They were speaking Vhervhish, so she knew that they weren’t Castle guards who had gotten lost.

  Celie looked around, frantic, but there were no doors nearby where she could hide, and only a long staircase behind her, one that she knew she wouldn’t be able to descend in time, with or without the hamper.

  While she was frozen in indecision, the men came around the corner. Celie stood her ground as they shouted in excitement and rushed toward her. She suddenly felt quite calm, as though the stones of the Castle were giving her strength just as they always had before.

  The first man to reach her got jabbed firmly in the back of his hand with the pointy end of the mirror-wand.

  While he screamed and clutched at his wounded hand, Celie grabbed his elbow and swung him around her, as though they were dancing. He tripped on the hamper and fell down the stairs.

  His fellow came after, with hands outstretched to fend off the wand. She snatched a biscuit from her sash, crumbling it into hard, grainy bits that she threw into his eyes, blinding him with crumbs and bits of coarse sugar sprinkles. Howling, he joined his companion at the bottom of the stairs after Celie stuck out her foot and tripped him.

  She stuck the mirror-wand back in her bodice, grabbed hold of the hamper, and ran the way the soldiers had come: around the corner and down the passage that led to the balcony room.

  Out on the balcony, Celie faced another problem. There was no way she could carry the hamper across the roof, even if she could get it up onto the tiles to begin with. Grumbling at the foolishness of not thinking to look for more rope or a ladder, she took out all the food and tied as much of it as she could into bundles with napkins. She hung the bundles all around her waist and shoved a flask of apple cider down the front of her bodice, grateful that the maid’s gown had considerably more room in the bodice than her own did.

  Thus encumbered, and with her knees shaking from tiredness and everything else she had done that day, she clumsily made her way to the balcony railing, then from that onto the edge of the roof. She lay there for a while, uncomfortable on the sharp-edged tiles and with a wedge of hard cheese digging into her lower back, and looked up at the stars. It was very dark, with only a sliver of a moon.

  Celie longed to turn herself into a bird, or a bat, or even a dragon, and fly far away. She wondered if the stars were as cold as they looked, and wondered what it felt like to touch one. She nearly fell asleep, but then a loud gurgle from her stomach reminded her that she was carrying food, and lying on the roof, and that Lilah was probably beside herself from fear.

  She rolled over and crawled on her hands and knees across the roof, banging her head on the Tower wall when she finally reached it.

  The rope was hanging down, and she tugged it several times. Nothing happened, so she used it to hoist herself to a standing position and stared up at the little window, only faintly lit by what looked like a single candle.

  “Lilah! Lilah!” Celie called for her sister quietly at first, and then louder and louder until at last a dark head blocked out more of the faint light.

  “Celie! Oh, darling, are you all right?”

  “Yes, but I’m so tired,” Celie said, plucking at the rope with fingers that still ached from clutching the hamper. “I don’t know how I’m going to get up.”

  “I’ve made a sort of pulley system with the table legs,” Lilah said. “Tie the rope under your arms again, and I’ll pull you up.”

  Celie tied the best knot that she could, and Lilah began to tug her up the side of the Tower. Celie’s face scraped against the rough stones, and her knees banged painfully against a protrusion of rock, so in the end she braced her feet against the wall and tried to walk up while Lilah pulled.

  When she reached the window, she lost one of the food bundles climbing in, and the flask tumbled out of her bodice and landed on one of Lilah’s feet, making her sister gasp with pain.

  “Sorry,” Celie mumbled. Then she collapsed onto the floor.

  Lilah exclaimed in concern, and Celie moaned in reply. She was barely aware of her sister removing the various bundles from her person, plus the mirror-wand, the broken bits of biscuit, and the atlas. Lilah gently undressed Celie and helped her into a clean shift, washed her face and hands, and then had her lie down on their makeshift bed. She brought her some only slightly crushed tarts and a slice of bread with ham and hard cheese on it.

  Celie managed to eat while lying down, then she told Lilah everything that had happened since she’d climbed down out of the Tower. Lilah’s white-faced horror as Celie told her about her several near misses with Prince Khelsh and the soldiers made her realize how great the danger truly had been.

  “I need to sleep now,” she mumbled when she was done. Her eyes closed and she fell into a dreamless sleep before Lilah could reply.

  Chapter

  23

  In the morning, Celie was stiff all over and could hardly move. When she at last rolled out of her blankets, it was to find Lilah trying to get dressed with similar stiffness.

  “I can’t lift my arms over my head,” Lilah confessed with a little half-hysterical giggle. “They’re so sore from pulling you up!”

  “I wish I’d found a rope ladder,” Celie apologized. “But I completely forgot.”

  “It’s all right,” Lilah said. “I don’t know where you would have found one, anyway. And you were busy helping everyone else.”

  Celie helped Lilah dress, and then Lilah helped her. They feasted on apple cider, tarts, and sausages while they planned what to do.

  “Clearly we have to get out of the Castle,” Lilah said. “There’s no help for it. Hiding here like rats isn’t going to win any battles, and by now Khelsh and the others will surely know that everyone else has left.”

  Celie felt the floor plummeting out from beneath her. They couldn’t leave the Castle, not when the Castle needed them the most! She looked up at Lilah, her eyes wide and her mouth already forming the protest.

  “Don’t even give me that look,” Lilah said. “I mean it.” She held up a hand as though warding off Celie’s expression. “Celie, there is nothing more we can do. Yesterday I thought that it would be best for us both to stay here, hiding in the Castle until help arrived. But now I just don’t think so. The Castle is dead, and—”

  “But what if it isn’t?”

  “What?”

  “What if it isn’t dead?” Celie felt her heart expanding with the very idea. “I mean, yes, Khelsh did that horrible spell, but … what if there is some way we can undo it?” She remembered the feeling she had had when the guards had come toward her the night before. The feeling like the Castle’s strength was surging a
round her again, just for a moment.

  “All right, all right, I understand,” Lilah said. “But we can’t do any of that from in here! We need to get out, and summon the Wizards’ Council, and find Mother and Father and Bran. Stuck in here, Celie, I just don’t think there’s anything else we can do.”

  At last Celie nodded. She couldn’t bring herself to agree out loud.

  “Let’s see what’s going on outside, anyway,” Lilah said.

  Brushing crumbs from her hands, she went to the window that faced the front of the Castle. She looked through the spyglass and then let out a gasp. Celie got up and joined her at once.

  Looking through the spyglass, Celie gasped as well.

  An army had gathered on the plain in front of the Castle. There were tents, and ranks of men and horses, and cooking fires, all evenly spaced. She couldn’t pick out individual faces, but she could see that some of the men were in the bright yellow tunics of the royal army, while others wore the simple clothing of farmers, shepherds, and other common folk. There was also a bright blue tent flying the falcon flag of Grath, and a plum-colored tent with the twin trees of Vhervhine. And proudly, above it all, was the flag of Sleyne: green with a golden griffin above a silver tower.

  “That was quick,” Celie said. “How did they all get here so fast?”

  “It must be because of Lulath’s letter, the one he sent last week,” Lilah guessed. “They must have started out then, to get rid of Khelsh.”

  “Well done, Lulath,” Celie breathed, looking through the spyglass again. The great road was dark with horses and men, all coming toward the Castle as more allies joined the siege. “Oh, well done!”

  “Now you see that we’ve got to get out there,” Lilah said, rubbing Celie’s back.

  “Yes,” Celie said more eagerly.

  They filled a knapsack with food, the flask (now mostly empty), the beautiful velvet cloak that Lulath had given them, the atlas, and the mirror-wand. Celie shoved Rufus down the front of her bodice, for lack of a better place to put him, and Lilah kindly didn’t comment. Lilah put on the knapsack, and used her system of ropes and table legs to lower Celie down to the roof below. Once Celie was down, Lilah drew the rope back up, and tied it even more firmly to the table and then around her own waist, climbing down with much grunting and squeaking.