Bee was outraged. “Late? It’s not even noon. We’ve been working since sunup!”
The guard bent down a little and said, in a very low voice, “When Master Joris wants his pastry and doesn’t get it, it can be very … unpleasant.”
“Oh,” Bee said. “In that case, you should let me in right away. I have some treats that should settle him down.”
“Quite so.” The guard straightened up again, knocked his lance on the ground twice, and stood aside. Bee walked through the iron gate and found herself in a paved courtyard with a circular drive before great iron doors. This, she imagined, must be where carriages stopped to let out lords and ladies for the parties and balls that took place in the palace. Only there was grass growing between the cobblestones, and some of them were a little catawampus, sticking up in a way that could be hazardous to horse hooves or ladies’ slippers. It was clear that little time or money was spent on repairs and upkeep.
She walked up to the doors and struggled to balance her baskets while she lifted the heavy iron knocker and let it go again. It landed with a great clank. No one came. Bee’s arms were getting terribly tired, and she nearly lost the Bouts Buns when she lifted the knocker a second time. Clank.
The doors swung open with a creak that was almost a wail, and Master van Campen, the pig-nosed butler, stood there with his arms crossed.
“You’re late,” he accused.
Bee rolled her eyes and said, “I’m here now. Please, can I put these down? They’re very heavy.”
“Follow me.” The butler turned and, striding quickly, led the way through a hall with an enormously high ceiling painted with cherubs and fluffy clouds. Bee almost fell over trying to see it clearly. There was little else in the room—a wicker table, some faded wall hangings, long windows covered with heavy, rather dusty-looking curtains. As they passed a doorway, Bee noticed a glass cabinet that seemed to be filled with small frames, but van Campen was moving her along too fast to make out what they contained. She promised herself that she would look more closely on the way out.
Along twisting corridors and down narrow staircases they sped, Bee trying desperately to keep up and not drop the baskets. Finally they reached the kitchen. It was far older, darker, and dirtier than the bakery kitchen. The cook, a tired-looking woman with a face like a vanilla pudding and a striped kerchief around her head, sat on a stool drowsing in the heat from the hearth.
Panting, Bee laid the baskets on the marble-topped table. The cook startled upright and said, “Don’t put those there. This is my kitchen!” At her words, the butler turned and walked out quickly.
“And these are my pastries,” Bee said. “They’re for Master Joris.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” The cook leaped to her feet and came around the table.
“I just did,” Bee retorted, exasperated at the staff’s rudeness, but trying to hold her tongue as Master Bouts had requested.
“Master Joris has been awaiting his breakfast for hours,” the cook said, untying the ribbon that held the baskets together. “And when Master Joris has to wait … well, it is most disagreeable.” First unpleasant, now disagreeable. Bee wondered exactly how disagreeably unpleasant the mage was. She was beginning to hope she didn’t have the opportunity to find out.
The cook opened the top basket. “Ooooh,” she said, eyeing the Bouts Buns. “Those will do very well.”
“There’s tarts and a cake as well,” Bee said.
“Girl, give me a hand, will you? Find a plate and a fork. We’ll make him up a nice tray so he forgets how hungry he’s been.” The cook pointed to a tall stack of dishes by the sink, and Bee ran over and took a small plate from the top of the pile. The dishes were all the same—white with an edging of tiny gilt-painted tulips—so there was no opportunity to match the plate to what it held as she liked to do. Next Bee rummaged through a drawer that held a haphazard heap of forks, knives, and spoons. She pulled out a tarnished fork. All the silver was tarnished.
“Is this all right?” she asked.
“We’ve nothing else,” the cook said, shrugging.
“What about something to make it look pretty? A flower in a vase, maybe?” Bee suggested.
The cook shook her head. “Flowers are only for selling, Master Joris says. He doesn’t care about pretty, unless it’s one of his collections. And even then he just cares about how rare the objects are, not so much what they look like.”
“His collections?”
The cook gave Bee a dark look. “You’ll see them all around. Bugs, rocks, snow globes … he’ll collect most anything. He’s been known to spend a thousand coppers on one of his rocks. On a rock! It’s a disgrace is what it is. Here, find a tray in that cupboard.” She waved Bee toward a closet. When Bee pulled the door open, a broom handle popped out, smacking her hard on the shoulder. Directly behind that came a mop handle, which she managed to dodge, and then a pile of dust cloths fell from a shelf onto Bee’s head. A cloud of dust poofed up around her, and she danced around wildly, coughing as she swatted the dust away.
“Don’t be so clumsy, child!” the cook admonished her.
Bee clenched her fists, tossed the rags to the floor, and rummaged in the overflowing closet until her hand closed around a ceramic tray. She pulled it out, dusted it off with one of the dirty rags, and carried it triumphantly to the table.
“It took you long enough,” the cook grumbled. She placed a Bouts Bun on the plate, then cut slices of tart and one of cake and slid them beside the bun. Then she cut another slice of each and reached for a bun.
“What are you doing?” Bee demanded.
“Taking some for me,” the cook replied.
“That’s not for you. It’s for the mage—and the princess.”
“The princess! Well, I never.” The cook looked quite scandalized. “The princess doesn’t eat sweets.”
“Everybody eats sweets,” Bee contradicted.
“I’ll tell you what,” the cook said craftily. “If you don’t say anything about me taking my share, I’ll let you bring some to the princess, and you can ask her yourself.”
Bee narrowed her eyes. She didn’t think the cook deserved a slice of tart, much less a Bouts Bun. But then she realized she’d just been given permission to see the princess. And no one ever saw the princess.
“That sounds fair,” Bee said. She took another plate and put a slice of each treat and a bun on it. Then she said, “Where do I find the princess?”
“Bring the master his first,” insisted the cook.
“Fine,” Bee said. “Where is he?”
“In his study, of course.”
“And where, if you would be so kind, is that?” Bee gritted her teeth.
“Do you know nothing, child?” The cook snorted, and Bee had to restrain herself from throwing the tray at her. “Up the stairs, down the first hall, fourth door on the left. Leave the tray outside the door. Three knocks, no more, no less. You don’t want to find out what he does to frivolous knockers.”
“And the princess? Where is she?”
“Well, that’s anyone’s guess,” the cook said. Then she plunged a fork into the cake and took a bite. Her eyes closed in ecstasy, and Bee picked up the tray and marched out.
CHAPTER 5
The halls were dark, and Bee moved cautiously up the stairs and down the corridor. She counted off four doorways on her left. Each had a closed door with an iron outer edge and a center of smoked glass with wrought iron leaves and flowers climbing up and around it. At the fourth, she placed the tray carefully on the floor and picked up the second plate. After a moment’s thought, she switched the plates, taking the one with the larger, nicer slices of tart and cake to give to the princess. Then she knocked sharply on the metal edge of the door, three times. She decided to trust the cook and not risk a fourth knock.
She was torn between curiosity and fear of the mage. Sh
ould she stay, meet him, find out what he was like? Shifting anxiously from foot to foot, she listened for a sound from behind the door. But there was only silence. A minute more, and then she turned and headed back down the hall. She had no idea where to find the princess. She passed door after closed door, each with a unique, beautiful wrought-iron decoration. At one she stopped and knocked, but there was no answer. Cobwebs hung from some of the iron curlicues on that door, and in the center of one web, a spider sat. Bee shuddered when she noticed it. She hated spiders.
The corridor twisted and turned, and other hallways branched off it. She climbed a stairway and then another, and wandered down a hall. Every so often, she stopped and knocked, but there was never an answer, never a sound from behind the doors. Eventually she found herself at the end of a passageway. A long window, streaked with dirt, rose above a window seat. Bee was exhausted, and she sank down onto the cushions, sneezing as dust rose around her. She found it very strange that the palace was so ill tended. Even her foster mother, as coarse and careless as she was, had kept a tidy home.
When the dust settled, Bee put down the plate and turned to look out the window, but it was too filthy. Everything was blurry and smeared. She rubbed a clean spot on the glass with the edge of her skirt and peered out. There seemed to be a garden below. It must have been the back or the side of the palace, for she had seen no garden in front. She could make out hedges, some roses, and an oddly tall, flowered bush that intrigued her. Then she saw movement and rubbed harder at the window.
It was a girl. It had to be the princess.
Bee snatched up the plate and ran back down the hall to the stairs, down one flight, then two. She tried to turn down the corridor in the same direction she’d taken two flights up, but the palace interior was so disorienting that Bee couldn’t tell if she was moving to its back or its front. She passed a long, narrow room with a checkerboard tile floor. This room led to another, and then another—and at the far end of the third room, she could just make out what looked like shrubbery beyond the glass door. With any luck, that door would open onto the garden.
Bee turned into the first room where, despite her hurry, a trio of glass cabinets caught her eye. She paused before the first cabinet. It looked like it was filled with animals. Were they children’s toys? There was a sweet-looking rabbit. A mole. A squirrel. In the second cabinet, lots of birds—a bright red one, a blue one, one with a black and red breast. A fox. But then Bee looked more closely at figures in the cabinets, and she began to realize what they really were. These were not toys. These were actual animals, dead and stuffed! Their eyes had been replaced by glass beads, and their fur and feathers were in various states of molting. The fox was patchy on one leg; the red bird had lost a few feathers on its tail. She shuddered, turned, and stepped into the next room.
This chamber was a little nicer, or so it looked at first. There were glass-topped tables scattered around it. Bee went over to one of the tables and rested the plate on it, but an instant later she snatched it up again. The glass top covered a selection of insects that lay pinned to mats underneath. Some of them were beautiful—dragonflies with vivid, iridescent wings, beetles with bright stripes or spots or long curved horns—but all were dead, the sheen of life gone from them.
Bee backed through the open doorway into the last room. Ah, this was better. The open shelves that lined the walls held dozens of glass globes. As Bee came closer, she could see that each globe showed a scene within. There was a mountainscape, a group of children skating on a pond, a horse-drawn sleigh crossing a meadow. All the scenes were snow dusted. Without quite meaning to, Bee reached out and picked up one of the globes. Gently, she tilted it upside down, then right side up again. Snow seemed to fall on the scene inside. It was beautiful. She tilted all the globes then, one after another, watching as the snow drifted down on the skaters, the skiers, the mountain peak. How she would love to have one of the globes for her very own!
Reluctantly, she set down the last of the globes. At the far end of the room was the door she’d seen from the hall. Through the glass she could make out the wavering image of a tall hedge. She pushed open the heavy door and slipped out.
The hedge was made of dense evergreen bushes, far taller than Bee, and she could see no opening. She darted along it until she came to a place where she could press through. Now she was in an evergreen corridor, the bushy branches nearly meeting over her head. It twisted and turned, much like the hallways in the palace. She walked and walked, but the corridor didn’t seem to lead anywhere. She noticed a yellowed section of bush that she was sure she’d passed before. Was she walking in circles?
“Help,” she said tentatively. The bushes swallowed her voice. “Help!” she said again, louder. “Help! Help! I’m lost in the bushes!”
“That’s because it’s a maze,” a voice said. It was a girl’s voice, high and musical. But there was no girl in sight.
“Where are you? You have to help me!” Bee cried.
“Walk forward,” the girl said. Bee did, and came to a turn. “Are you at a turn? Then go left.” Bee obeyed. “Now right. Straight for twenty paces, then right again.”
Bee counted off the twenty paces, turned right, and found herself at an opening in the hedge. In front of her was the garden she’d seen from above, with a fountain tinkling in the center and rose bushes all around. And sitting on a stone bench beside the fountain was the princess.
Her back was to Bee. She had long, wavy red hair, and her dress was blue silk. Red hair was a rarity in Aradyn, so to Bee she looked exotic and unique, exactly the way a princess should. Bee moved forward, still clutching the plate of pastry. Suddenly she felt very nervous. What was the right thing to do when meeting a princess? Should she curtsy? She didn’t really know how.
The princess turned. She was older than Bee had thought. She was surprisingly plain; her forehead large, her chin tiny and pointed, her mouth and eyes a smidge too big. But then she smiled at Bee, and her face was transformed.
“How do you do?” she said. “I’m Anika. Who on earth are you, and what are you doing astray in my maze? And what are those exquisite things on your plate?” Anika seemed to bubble over with questions, and Bee didn’t know which to answer first. She gulped and then tried to curtsy. The tart slices slid across the plate.
The princess giggled. “That was the sorriest curtsy I’ve ever beheld,” she said. “Take care—you don’t want to drop those pastries!”
“They’re—they’re for you, Your Highness. Your Majesty. Your Ladyship.”
The princess laughed again. “Anika will suffice. And you are … ?”
“Bee. I’m Bee.”
“What a superlative name! Perhaps I should be A for Anika, then?”
“It’s not an initial. It’s short for Beatrix,” Bee said, blushing.
“Oh dear. Then certainly you should be called Bee. And what have you brought me, Bee?”
Bee moved forward, and the princess patted the bench next to her.
“Sit, and divulge.”
“Divulge?”
The princess smiled. “Tell me.”
“It’s a layer cake, and a raspberry tart, and a lingonberry tart. And a bun. I made the tarts.” Carefully, Bee lowered the plate and set it on the bench, and then sat herself.
“Did you really? How remarkable to be able to make such luscious-looking comestibles!”
“It’s nothing,” Bee said modestly. She assumed comestibles must be a fancy word for pastries. Then she realized: “Oh no, I forgot to bring you a fork!”
“Why ever would I need a fork?” the princess asked. She picked up the slice of cake and took a huge bite, smearing frosting on her face and hands.
“Mglumph,” she said, her eyes widening.
“Excuse me?”
The princess chewed and swallowed, then licked the frosting from her fingers and around her mouth. “Oh my. That is super
b. It might be the loveliest cake I’ve ever tasted!”
“Master Bouts made it,” Bee said. “But the cook said you don’t like sweets.”
“I never come upon the opportunity! Our cook doesn’t bake at all, and when we obtain cakes from the bakeries, Uncle Joris usually finishes them off before I can procure a single morsel.” The princess picked up the slice of raspberry tart and bit off the end. There was a momentary silence.
“Oh my, my, my,” she said at last. “Spectacular. Scrumptious. It tastes like … well, it tastes like nothing I’ve ever tasted before!” She ate another bite, and another. “How do you do this?”
Bee felt her cheeks redden. “I’ve been practicing.”
“You’re very skilled indeed,” the princess said. “It doesn’t just taste marvelous, it makes me feel marvelous. Like singing. Like dancing!” She jumped up from the bench and twirled in a circle, then sat again. “I cannot believe I’ve been deprived of such magnificence all these years.”
Bee had to pick through the words the princess used to be sure she understood them all. Perhaps, she thought, it was how royalty spoke. “Well, this is the first time we’ve baked for Master Joris. Usually he uses another baker.”
“Not anymore,” Princess Anika declared, and Bee clapped her hands with glee. Master Bouts would be so pleased!
“So … ,” Bee said, when the princess had finished the tart, “Master Joris is your uncle?”
“Not really,” the princess replied softly. Her happiness seemed to vanish. “He’s the kingdom’s mage, and my guardian. I’m too young to rule—I’m only sixteen. And I don’t have any parents.”
“Nor do I,” Bee said.
Princess Anika put a hand over Bee’s. “I was sure there was something.”
“Something?”
“Some way we were kindred spirits. I feel a true connection with you.”
“You do?” Bee asked shyly.
“We shall be great companions, I can tell.” Princess Anika rose from the bench and pulled Bee up. “Let’s perambulate—I’ll show you the garden.”
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