Avery turned it over. Red wax.
Kendrick always uses red wax when sealing letters he has written on behalf of the king.
She was about to lift the letter to get a better look at the center of the seal, where an emblem had been stamped, when a voice behind her said—
“Bed already? You’re usually a night owl.”
Avery dropped her pillow and turned to Kate. “I’m just tired.”
“Long day,” Kate said, smiling. “Everyone seemed happy. Today was a win for you.”
Avery nodded. “A win for us. We start again tomorrow!”
She lay back on her pillow wanting nothing more than to tear open the letter. Kate enjoys a surprise as much as I do. But something compelled her to keep the letter a secret. And so she avoided the subject.
“Do you think we’ll be able to maintain the shop?” Avery asked.
“With Angelina’s shifting tastes, we should be in business a long time.”
At least an hour passed before the room finally quieted and the fire in the hearth died away.
Avery thought she might explode if she had to wait another minute. When she was sure she was the only one awake, she slipped out of bed, letter in hand, and tiptoed barefoot in the dark, feeling her way down the hall to the washroom with the copper tub.
Thankful to find a lone match in the box, she lit a candle and sat on the floor, using Kendrick’s technique to soften the seal and open the parcel.
She unfolded the page and smoothed it against her lap, finding one neat, careful line of penmanship:
I could but stay one hundred years if I knew you would stay here, too.
It was unsigned.
Who could it be from?
Chapter 26
Holiday Hope
On Christmas Day the king and queen held an extravagant holiday banquet in the hall where they were married.
All the kids—even those who didn’t normally attend—participated in a chapel service upstairs. Packed like sardines in the tiny space, they lit tall white candles and sang half a dozen songs, including:
Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,
All through the night.
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night.
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
Hill and vale in slumber steeping,
I my loving vigil keeping
All through the night.
Avery expected the chaplain to read from Luke 2 about the birth of Christ, but the boy instead referred to Ephesians 4.
“We are commanded to be kind, tender of heart, and forgiving toward each other. These are the gifts we can give each other throughout the year when the holiday has passed. We are instructed to forgive in the same way Jesus Christ has forgiven us—not halfheartedly or self-righteously, but entirely. Forgiveness is the greatest gift God has given us. We forgive because He forgave.”
Avery could see Ilsa from where she sat. She couldn’t imagine ever being able to forgive her. Not only had she been unkind from day one, but she knew something about the missing necklace, and she had laid claim to Tuck’s heart.
Avery was certain of it.
The kids who were not needed to help with the banquet downstairs spent the afternoon enjoying arm wrestling and chess matches while the kitchen workers brought in silver trays loaded with scraps from the banquet. Only on holidays were the doors to the castle open and the public welcome inside. Rumor had it three hundred people were dining with the king and queen, so they were oblivious to any extra noise the kids were making.
It was a good thing, because the kids were in a festive mood.
Tuck gathered a group in an empty gallery that had a black-and-white checkered floor, chose up sides, and assigned each person a role as a chess piece: two kings, two queens, four rooks, four bishops, four knights, and sixteen pawns.
Then they began a game of human chess.
Tuck was the king of his team with Avery as queen, while Kendrick led the other with Kate as his queen. The kings called out strategic moves and taunted each other when pieces were lost. Friendly insults were tossed back and forth, and strategizing was kicked into high gear.
Several booted pawns stalked off to their bunk rooms.
“If you are my queen, we should make it official, don’t you think?” Tuck asked Avery in the heat of the game.
Avery looked at him, unsure what he meant.
“Hold out your hand,” he said.
Confused, Avery did as she was told.
Tuck dropped something small and shiny into it.
Avery looked down to see a small gold ring, shaped like a crown, with small pointed spikes.
Is this just for the length of the game?
“Merry Christmas!” he said, before making fun of Kendrick for a lousy decision involving his bishop.
“You, too?” she asked as an afterthought. She slipped the ring onto her right hand and suppressed a smile, telling herself, It’s Christmas. He is just being kind. He is my friend, after all. Friends give each other Christmas gifts.
Avery couldn’t remember when she had had so much fun, and it didn’t escape her that Tuck kept smiling at her. Kendrick watched her, too.
Then the old woman appeared. “Avery, you ’ave been summoned to the organ.”
She wasn’t halfway to the door before Ilsa replaced her as queen in the chess game.
And another good thing came screeching to a halt.
As Avery followed the old woman through the stairwell, she whispered, “Where is Henry? Can I at least send him a holiday message? I know you know where he is.”
The old woman looked agitated, but she didn’t deny it.
Avery stopped walking. “I won’t play another note until you help me.”
The old woman laughed. “I could ’ave you exiled or even killed this afternoon for any number of crimes. Rumor is, you were found with the queen’s ruby necklace. You are in no position to barter with me.”
Avery’s stomach tightened and a lump formed in her throat.
“Fine, but you still need an organist. And Angelina doesn’t take no for an answer. If you send me to the Forbidden City, you won’t have anyone to play when she demands it, so your head will be on the chopping block, too.”
Avery and the old woman stood nose to nose in cold silence.
“What message do you want me to deliver?”
“Tell Henry I love him and I am coming for him. And tell him I am so sorry.”
“Fine,” said the old woman. “Only if the king is pleased with how you play.”
“How did you know I had the necklace?”
“You underestimate what I know.”
Lutes played and people laughed below as Avery sat and played every Christmas song she knew. Still, the old woman urged her to continue.
At a loss, Avery decided to play a festive song she had arranged for her parents on their last wedding anniversary. It was a simple tune her mother had sung to her every night before bed. The words began—
Avery, dear, you’re the rose in my garden,
The sun in my sky, and the wind in my sails.
She had barely begun to play when a shriek rose up from the guests.
“Get the medic!” a man called out.
More poison? Another botched assassination attempt?
Avery stopped and turned to see what the old woman wanted her to do, but she had vanished. Avery heard silverware clanking, chairs scraping, and skirts whooshing. Cries rose above the crowd.
“She’s passed out!”
With no one to stop her, Avery tiptoed to the edge of the balcony—which she knew was strictly forbidden—and peered down on the crowd that had gathered around Angelina. Someone held her while others tried to cool her with elaborate handheld fans. Even unconscious, Angelina was beautiful.
“Who played that song?” someone called.
Shouts tore through the crowd.
“That song belonged to Queen Elizabeth!”
“To the organ!”
Avery knew it would be a matter of seconds before adults rushed the stairs and scoured the gallery looking for the guilty musician, so she raced to safety. Into the stairwell and up the steps—two at a time—she went, the train of her dress whipping behind her. She was thankful for her gift of speed and only stopped to catch her breath when she was safely hidden in the children’s quarters.
Later that night in the great room, Avery watched a pair of boys trade jousts with wooden swords, wondering what consequences she might face if she was found out. The old woman certainly wouldn’t deliver the message to Henry now.
She imagined the old woman whisking her to some terrible place.
The Forbidden City? The chopping block?
Avery had learned that the Forbidden City sat a mile and a half offshore and was home to the most offensive criminals or traitors as determined by the king or queen. Because of its extreme isolation from the outside world—it could only be accessed by boat—people who were sent to the Forbidden City were rarely, if ever, heard from again.
Avery wondered if thirteen-year-olds ever constituted offensive criminals or traitors.
“She’s fine,” Kate said, sitting down next to Avery on a plush chair in the great room. “Scouts have been tracking Angelina all afternoon and have sent word that she recovered just fine in the care of her medic. She never passes on an opportunity for drama. You should be able to appreciate that.”
“How could I possibly have known?” she asked Kate for the hundredth time.
Kate had explained that the original lyrics to the fateful song had been:
Elizabeth, you’re the rose in my garden,
The sun in my sky, and the wind in my sails.
“You didn’t know,” Kate assured her, “so don’t worry about it.”
“How do you know that song, Kate?”
Kate shrugged. “I know a lot of castle history.”
I’ve noticed.
Kate was growing more mysterious every day. Only a thirteen-year-old seamstress, yet she had an answer to Avery’s every question. Sometimes Avery created difficult questions just to stump her, but it never worked.
Quietly Avery asked, “If you could return to your old life, would you do it?”
Kate looked suddenly uncomfortable.
She was spared an answer because a boy dressed entirely in black paraded out onto a makeshift stage in the center of the great room. “May I have your attention?” he called.
The room grew quiet as everyone turned to see what he wanted.
“Tonight you will observe the royal wedding as it was meant to be! Please, gather around!”
Curious kids from all corners of the room came to sit around the stage.
Kate grabbed Avery’s arm and tugged her to the circle.
“I love plays!” she said. “Come on!”
From offstage, a group of kids began to sing in exaggerated high-pitched voices, and a girl appeared in an oversize ivory dress, her red hair piled ridiculously high above her head, with a cat—presumably a fake one—resting on top.
“Can you do nothing right?” the girl in the wedding dress asked the singers in a whiny voice as the audience of children laughed and clapped. She took her place on the stage, and a group of boys made exaggerated trumpet sounds with their hands cupped over their mouths.
A boy wearing a heavy purple cloak and a large gold crown entered the room and marched to the stage. Wanting to resemble the king’s large stomach, the boy had stuffed straw under his shirt, but to his dismay, he was losing straw by the handful the longer he stood there. With one hand he held his cloak in place, and with the other hand he desperately held the bottom of his shirt while the children roared with laughter.
“I do take thee to be my wedded wife,” he said as straw spilled out of his shirt, “for worse or for even worse.” More straw spilled around him.
Avery couldn’t remember a time she had laughed so hard.
“Must I do everything myself?” the girl playing Angelina asked, bending over and picking up the handfuls of straw and handing them to the boy, who reached out his hand and lost his grip on the cloak just as the cat from “Angelina’s” hair came tumbling down.
The play went long into the night until a child wearing a funny pointy hat proclaimed the two married, and the room erupted in applause.
Avery wondered what her father and Henry were doing to celebrate the day. She had always complained about what little she received from her parents on Christmas, but now she would trade everything—the dresses, the food, the library—to have her old life back, even for one day.
She could still hear her father’s voice in her head, reading the final line of the Christmas story from the pages of his well-read Bible—
“‘But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.’”
Avery was learning what it was to ponder things.
She was thinking about returning to her room to work on her floor plans of the castle when she caught Kendrick watching her from across the room. He stood by the table of food trays, but he was definitely watching her—something that made no sense. Despite working with him and Tuck and visiting the library with him occasionally, Avery felt she knew little about him. He still refused to look her in the eye when they talked.
But now he mouthed something she couldn’t distinguish and nodded before leaving the room with a pack of boys. Avery noticed a wrapped package at the table where he had stood. Had he meant to leave it behind? If not, she could grab the package and follow after him so he wouldn’t wonder later where he had left it.
There was only one way to find out.
She went to it. On a tiny square of parchment atop it, she found her name in careful script. She untied a golden thread and removed the cloth to find a copy of A Tale of Two Cities. Like the book she had sent Kendrick, it had gold leaf pages and a leather cover clamped with a brass clasp.
He was returning the favor. She had sent him Gulliver’s Travels, and now he was sending her A Tale of Two Cities. Maybe their friendship would work after all. A relationship built on books wasn’t half bad.
Kate reappeared and grabbed her arm. “Quickly, come with me!”
Avery followed Kate into the hallway to the stairwell where they climbed the steps two at a time to a room at the highest point in the castle. Kate ran to the window and pulled the heavy drapes aside, the thin moonlight glowing on her pale, pretty face. Whatever suspicions Avery had of her were gone in a heartbeat.
“Aren’t you going to come see?” Kate asked.
Avery nodded but remained frozen where she stood. Was this the moment she had been waiting for? Would she finally be able to recognize something from the window? Had Kate discovered her father’s whaleboat in the harbor? Christmas would be the perfect day to feel some sort of hope about home.
Finally she forced herself to take slow, deliberate steps to where she could look out over the village, radiant with the Christmas spirit.
Tears welled up in her eyes in anticipation.
Chapter 27
Missing!
Avery scanned the marina, trying to distinguish one boat from the other.
The streets were crowded with the clatter of carts and the clopping of horses on timeworn cobblestones. Fat flakes dusted the roads below like sugar on fried dough.
Tiny wisps of smoke rose from the chimneys, and vessels forged their way through the frigid Salt Sea. How long, she wondered, before the water would be frozen and the crafts would be stowed for the winter?
She pressed her forehead against the window, feeling the cold against her skin.
The inky sky made it impossible to see clearly. “Kate, I don’t see anything I recognize.”
“Just keep looking, Avery.”
She narrowed her eyes and looked again.
Suddenly, the sky exploded with red, blue, and green fireworks, bursts that rocked the village and show
ered trails of glitter to celebrate Christmas.
“Angelina loves fireworks,” Kate said with a sigh, “so the king ordered these for her. Maybe he does love her after all. Isn’t it wonderful? Maybe their marriage will be good for the castle!”
Avery knew with a sinking feeling that this was all Kate had in mind.
No whaleboat. No promise of my father coming to my rescue. No word of Henry’s safety.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” Kate asked, but Avery couldn’t speak.
He is doing fine. He probably spent Christmas with friends in the village.
But Avery knew she should stop being so naive.
No help is on the way. No one is coming to rescue you.
The choice was simple, and the sooner she acknowledged it the better: Run to save your family or stay to save your life.
With nothing to lose, it was time to risk everything.
Late the next afternoon, sitting at the long wooden table, Avery spread a stack of blank pages before her in the otherwise empty dining room and listed what she knew about both the past and current queens, putting a star beside every fact she had learned from Kate.
Seeing it in writing, she realized Kate had been the source of nearly all her information.
Impossible that she would know all of this information just by paying attention.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Tuck said, dropping into a chair beside her. “Do you have a moment?”
How could she refuse? She twisted the gold ring on her right hand nervously. And anyway, she didn’t want to make a show of gathering her papers, so she shrugged and smiled.
“The king has commissioned you to write the theme song for the Olympiad—”
“So you announced. Is that still the plan, considering the fact that I almost killed Angelina the last time I was at the organ?”
The Glass Castle Page 10