Avery knew that just outside the gate, throngs of penniless celebrants and packs of hungry kids would be waiting like pigeons to peck at the banquet crumbs. She could already hear the roar of the crowd eagerly anticipating the day.
Maybe her father was among them.
“Hope is the greatest gift we have,” her mother had always said.
Avery was finally beginning to understand.
A children’s choir began to sing—their perfect treble voices blending as one.
Whispers tore through the crowd as a glowing Angelina appeared in the ivory silk dress with the tiny pearls that shimmered in the light of the sea of candles. She wore a heavy headpiece with a thick veil that covered her face, and she held the arm of a pudgy, gray-haired man Avery assumed was her father. They traversed the crimson-carpeted aisle to take their place on the makeshift stage.
Trumpets blared and everyone turned as the king marched in, wearing a heavy fur robe, broad gold medallion, and gaudy jeweled crown. He also wore a thick belt and heavy boots. Flanked by spear-bearing guards, neither they nor he showed a hint of a smile as they marched to center stage to join Angelina.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
It sounded to Avery more like a battle procession than a wedding march.
The guests bowed deeply as the king passed.
The ceremony was conducted by a man in a tall, funny hat.
He welcomed the guests and spoke happily for several minutes of the king and Angelina. Soon, he invited the couple to kneel and take their vows as cloaks of royal purple were draped around their shoulders.
The king took his vow first.
“I do take thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part, and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
Avery suspected the words for poorer were mere ceremony. And till death us do part was something he could arrange, if necessary.
Angelina made her vows, and the man with the funny hat proclaimed them married.
The throne room erupted in thunderous applause as the new couple rose and linked arms. And the kids—from each of their grates—dropped handfuls of white feathers that fell like snow onto the unsuspecting crowd.
Avery heard the roar from the throng of visitors outside. A chorus of cathedral bells sounded, and for a moment, all was right in the world because everyone was happy.
To the apparent delight of the crowd, the king pulled Angelina hard into a more informal embrace, and the new queen’s eyes suddenly went wide. The people roared with laughter when she quickly pushed the king away, then they gasped when she clutched herself just below the collarbone with a pained expression.
And suddenly, Avery remembered what she had done.
Angelina reached inside her dress and yanked out a small piece of folded parchment.
Time, for Avery, stood still.
Chapter 21
Poison!
“What is going on?” Kate whispered. “What was in her dress?”
Avery did not—could not—respond. She could barely breathe.
Like everyone else, she watched Angelina unfold the parchment and read. Of course, only Avery knew what the queen saw, written in chalk:
You have secrets I will uncover if you do not let us go.
The new queen’s eyes never narrowed, her brow never furrowed. She did not share the note with her new husband who stood beside her or with one of her ladies who stepped forward to see what Angelina needed. She did not appear at all confused by the words. She merely folded the note, tucked it back into her dress, and smiled—sending chills up Avery’s spine.
“She knows we’re here,” Avery whispered.
“How on earth do you know that?” Kate asked.
When Avery didn’t respond, Kate reached across the grate and clutched her wrist. “Why do you think she knows we’re here?”
“When you’re ready to tell me what you know, I’ll tell you what I know.”
Kate let go of Avery’s wrist, but she did not drop her gaze until the king called—
“And now we feast!”
An hour later, the girls remained at their grate, watching the guests dine enthusiastically on every imaginable delicacy. The guests appeared happy, and the room only fell silent when the king stood. Avery knew, even before the king uttered his first word, that the speech would be filled with the expected platitudes.
A king, after all, belongs to his people.
“Thank you for celebrating with me on the greatest day of my life. You have given Angelina and me the great gift of your presence, and so I would like to offer a gift to you—an announcement you will be the first to hear.”
The crowd cheered in anticipation of this declaration.
“I hold this kingdom and everyone in it dear to my heart. Which is why it brings me great joy to announce that I will host the first ever Olympiad very soon. People will travel far and wide to attend the greatest games on earth, right here in our kingdom. It is my way of honoring you and celebrating my new bride.”
The Great Hall broke into a thunderous round of applause as the king lifted Angelina’s hand and pressed a kiss against her knuckles.
“No expense will be spared! We will hire the best and brightest to build a stadium. Tentmakers will line the streets with colorful expressions of their creativity. We will all be the happiest we have ever been!”
Suddenly the air was punctuated by a shriek, and the crowd turned to see a young man not four feet from Angelina stagger backward, horror spreading over his face. Blood trickled from his nose and ears and streamed down his neck, pooling on his shirt.
“Poison!” someone yelled, and the room filled with screams.
Guards closed in on the king and queen as the young man was yanked from the room and the crowds parted like the Red Sea as shock and fear rippled through the place.
“Did he try to kill the queen?” Avery asked.
Kate shook her head. “He was the queen’s cupbearer. It was his duty to taste everything before giving it to the queen. Someone must have been trying to kill Angelina.”
“Will he die?”
“He’s probably already dead.”
“Already d—?”
“And he was one of us,” Kate added solemnly. “He was a thirteen-year-old.”
Before Avery had time to process this news, a heavy hand grabbed her by the shoulder and lifted her airborne. When her feet hit the ground, she whipped around to see the old woman standing behind her, a scowl etching her face.
“I had nothing to do with this!” Avery said. “I would never harm the queen!”
The old woman put a crooked finger to her lips and then whispered, “Come with me.” Avery threw a helpless look at Kate on her way out the door, but Kate did not follow.
“We ’ave a problem,” the woman said once they were alone in the stairwell.
“I can explain,” Avery said, her mind racing to the note in the queen’s dress. She did not want to be linked to the poison in any way.
“Don’t talk for once; just listen. The king has demanded organ music as a distraction, and none of us play. Angelina fired our chief musician months ago.”
“I play!” Avery said.
“I know. Why do you think I’m ’ere?”
Avery wanted to know how the old woman knew she played the organ, but now was not the time. The king was losing control of his banquet, and an angry king was a threat to everyone.
“Can I trust you to do as I say?” the old woman continued.
Avery nodded.
“Fine. Follow me.”
They walked for many minutes, winding around the stairwell until they came to a thick door with an X where the old woman again put her finger to her lips. “We can’t speak once the door ’ere is opened.”
Avery nodded.
“The pipes from the organ will hide you. Whatever you do, stay ’idden, understand?”
Avery didn’t
respond.
“Do you understand?” the woman pressed.
“I will play the organ for you under one condition: you will tell me where my father and my brother are and how they are doing. Do we have an agreement?”
Avery stuck out her hand the way she saw her father do when making agreements in his shop. Of course, it rarely worked and people hardly remembered to pay their bills.
“Let’s see how well you play first.”
The woman pushed the door open and shoved Avery onto a gallery, following closely.
Step by nervous step, Avery walked onto a balcony that overlooked the wedding party, and a host of butterflies took flight in her stomach. She loved playing, but she had only ever played for church and family. She had never played for royalty. What would please a frantic king and a threatened queen?
Avery looked back at the door, and the old woman pointed to the bench.
“Sit,” she mouthed.
The organ was far bigger and more magnificent than hers at home. She poised her fingers above the keys.
For better or for worse, this was her moment.
Chapter 22
The Breakthrough
The pure and perfect sound that rose from the organ surprised even Avery as her fingers traveled up and down the keys, playing a favorite childhood tune her mother had used to calm her fears and lull her to sleep.
She wondered if she should have chosen something familiar to the guests—more festive perhaps—for the entire room below suddenly grew uncomfortably quiet.
What if the king doesn’t like my music and demands to see me?
What if the old woman is angry and refuses to tell me about my family?
The song grew loud then soft then louder still before ending on a single note.
Avery peeked over her shoulder and was surprised to see tears on the old woman’s face. She motioned for Avery to play another song and then another.
Happy to comply, for those few minutes she forgot the importance of her audience, forgot what the old woman had done to her in the woods, and even forgot her uncertainty over what was to come.
Such was the power of music. Avery felt what others only heard.
When she finished playing, she stood and returned to the stairs, anxious for an answer about her father and brother, but the woman was nowhere to be found. Instead, a lanky scout stood by the door with a single message.
“She said to tell you your brother is alive. She doesn’t know anything about your father.”
That night, more than a dozen girls crowded around Avery to compliment her skill and ask what other instruments she played and whether she would teach them.
Suddenly, she no longer felt useless and talentless, the odd girl out.
She was still homesick and worried to death about Henry, but it felt good to smile again and mean it. When she crawled into bed and pulled the quilt up to her chin, as usual she waited until the room was still before she quietly reached into the torn seam of her pillow to retrieve the ruby necklace.
Tonight she found nothing but feathers.
Avery dug deeper, feeling for the gold chain, the ruby flower. She shook the pillow, feathers flying, hoping to hear a rattle.
Nothing.
Avery whipped off her quilt and dropped to her knees on the cold floor, no longer caring who might be awake or watching. She felt all around by the bed and underneath.
It couldn’t have just slipped out. Someone had to have taken it. But who even knew where she hid it? And did they also know it had once belonged to the queen?
Being caught with royal jewels is punishable by death.
After several more frantic minutes of searching, she crawled back into bed and did the only thing she knew to do. She squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of tears and prayed God would help her find everything she had lost.
The next morning, with puffy eyes and pasty face, Avery knew she needed to appear casual so that whoever took the necklace wouldn’t even know she knew it was gone yet.
She wanted badly to employ Kate’s help, but she wasn’t ready to tell her the whole story yet—especially about what she had seen in the painting of the queen—not without more facts first. Another thought occurred to her—
What if Kate took the necklace?
Avery swatted the idea away. Despite Kate’s many peculiarities, she was a friend.
Yet Avery remembered with clarity her first night in the castle when Kate had removed the necklace after she had passed out. And there was the night Kate watched her stuff the necklace into her pillow. No one else had seen it.
Avery pasted her best smile over her brittle confidence as she entered the dining hall and hoped no one would talk to her during breakfast. She sat and filled her plate when Tuck stood suddenly at his spot at the center of the table and commanded the attention of the crowd.
The whole room quieted.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but I have just received some news I want to share. I know you will all be excited with me.”
Tuck kept looking at Avery, making her wish she felt better than she did. She had to muster all her strength to maintain her fake smile.
“The king was so pleased with the music yesterday that before he and the queen left on their honeymoon, he commissioned the organist”—and here he mimicked the king’s deep voice, “‘whoever he was’—to write the theme song for the Olympiad. Of course, we all know who ‘he was’!”
Tuck gestured for Avery to stand, and he began clapping. Soon the others joined in, and several called out their congratulations. Avery stood, but in a moment that should have been one of the best of her life, she had to fight to keep her eyes wide open so she wouldn’t burst into tears.
At a cabinet meeting later that morning, Avery was surprised to find Kendrick at the table with no sign of Tuck.
Kendrick couldn’t have looked more uninterested as Avery took a seat beside him.
He stifled yawns while she repressed tears.
We make a sad pair.
Today, at least, she was thankful he hated small talk. Kendrick kept his gaze straight ahead, and that was fine with her. Though, the more she thought about it, Kendrick never really looked at her. In fact, he never really looked at anyone.
The silence lay as thick as a blanket as they sat there for five minutes, then ten, and that stretched to twenty.
“Ridiculous,” Kendrick said finally under his breath.
“It’s what we agreed to do,” Avery said in the same tone Kendrick had used with her at their first meeting.
Kendrick smiled, and Avery smiled, too.
They returned to their silence.
So much for trying to break the ice. Avery wished there was something she could say. She knew what it was like to feel isolated. They had at least that much in common.
“You never know what burdens people are carrying,” Avery’s mother had always told her. “Be nice to everyone.”
“Did you know we arrived here the same day?” she asked, wondering if he had struggled the way she had. Maybe he’d left a family member behind. Maybe he, too, carried regrets.
“Yeah, so?”
Avery needed something to keep her mind off of the missing necklace. She had lost too much sleep the night before trying to consider ways she might recover it or at least explain how she got it in the event she was questioned. No easy apology would spare her the gallows.
She would avoid an untimely death and find her necklace by whatever means necessary.
She stood. “I want to show you something.”
He stiffened. “Show me what?”
“Don’t come if you don’t want to,” she said casually, “but it may be the best place in the entire castle.” She moved toward the door and was relieved to hear Kendrick’s chair scrape the floor.
She led him down the hall to the stairs and then up to a landing where Avery pressed her ear against a door without a giant red X. When she pushed it open, she turned to watch Kendrick’s face as he careful
ly stepped inside.
Chapter 23
A Critical Development
Kendrick looked shocked then pleased.
With the help of her mother’s stories, Avery had discovered the library fit for a castle.
Here was the room that had inspired her father to build the library in the tree house. Its floor-to-ceiling shelves contained a vast array of leather-bound, golden-clasped books in every imaginable size. Rolling ladders served as bridges to an entire world of undiscovered information.
Come explore! the books seemed to whisper.
And Avery knew—even if she could read one book a day for the rest of her life—she would barely make a dent in the stacks.
The scent of leather and lemons made her wish she had all the time in the world to travel volume by volume through the entire room. The only thing that would make this moment better would be to share it with someone she loved.
She looked at Kendrick.
Unfortunately, he would have to do.
Avery pointed to the ceiling, which had been painted a most realistic dark blue with golden stars and a huge moon like the one she had seen from the raft on her way to the castle. How strange! Light unmistakably shone through the moon, and Avery felt a breeze on her face.
But she missed her moon and her stars, the ones that had kept her company during many nights in the woods. She stood there bright-eyed and thunderstruck, waiting for Kendrick to ask the obvious questions:
Are we allowed in here?
How did you know this was here?
Should we tell Tuck?
But instead, Kendrick began a slow but deliberate climb up one of the ladders and, with a gentleness that surprised Avery, took a book from the shelf and tenderly opened it. Glancing down at her, he nodded and smiled, and she realized that was as close to a thank-you as she was likely to ever get from him. He was an odd boy, but to his defense, he had selected a book by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the great poet laureate, and she was impressed.
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The Glass Castle Page 8