The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle

by Janet Fox

  Kat blurted, “We believe there’s a spy in residence. A German spy.”

  His face darkened. “Do you now?” he said softly.

  Kat’s heart pounded.

  Then MacLarren seemed to retreat, and he began to talk to himself. “Just as he feared. Involving the children, too. In which case, it’s double the difficulty here.” He rubbed his chin, looked between Kat and Peter with bright eyes, and lifted his voice. “And what’s your evidence?”

  Kat and Peter exchanged a glance, and they went for it.

  Taking turns, they told him the entire spy story: the hidden room with the wireless, someone sneaking around in a black overcoat, Rob’s discovery in the caves.

  MacLarren’s eyes grew brighter still and he leaned forward as Kat described the code machine.

  “As suspected,” he muttered, standing and pacing the room, his hands clasped behind his back. “Jack was right. Must report he sent good information. And the details. Well, well. We’ll find them now.”

  His reaction made Kat feel instantly better. They could trust MacLarren. And it sounded like he wasn’t entirely surprised, maybe even expected it.

  He looked at Kat and Peter. “I’d like to bring Miss Gumble in on this, if you don’t mind,” MacLarren said. “She’s gifted with languages and might be a help. And good work, you two. I could tell you were clever bairns.”

  Kat sensed Peter stood a little straighter. She did, too.

  MacLarren looked around the library. He lowered his voice. “We’d best not meet here, or in any of the public rooms, for that matter. I think your headmistress doesn’t like your wandering about untethered, eh?” He grinned. “You know a private place we could have a look at your findings?”

  Kat and Peter exchanged another glance. Kat said, “What about the secret room on the landing, now that it’s empty?”

  MacLarren rubbed his chin. “The secret room, eh?”

  “It must have served as a linen closet at one time,” Kat said. “Now there’s a table and wiring. And it’s very hidden.”

  “Just the ticket,” he said. “Tell me how to find it.”

  Kat and Peter went off for the backpacks while MacLarren went to fetch Miss Gumble. The children had to evade Marie by hiding behind a column, but there was no sign of the Lady.

  “What do you suppose he meant, double the difficulty?” Kat asked as they waited on the landing. She shifted the pack on her shoulders. She carried the encryption device, and it weighed a ton.

  “What?” Peter said. He’d been bent over, tugging on his chain, opening the hidden door.

  “MacLarren. When we told him about the spying he said, ‘In which case, it’s double the difficulty here.’” She’d dropped her voice to sound like their teacher.

  Peter stared at her. “You have a memory like that, do you?” He shook his head. “I had a friend back home with a photographic memory. It was uncanny what he could recall. He told me there are people who have memories like that but for the things they hear. You have that, don’t you?”

  Kat blushed. She shrugged best she could under the weight of the pack.

  Peter said, “I don’t know what MacLarren could have meant. Except it sounded like he wasn’t really surprised about the spying.”

  Kat said, “And I wonder who Jack is.”

  “Who?”

  “He said, ‘Jack was right.’”

  Peter nodded. “Jack might be a code name.”

  Kat turned that idea over. “A code name.” She shuddered. A code name for a spy, like her father. If Father had been captured, why, he might already be dead. She’d been angry at him last night. Now the anger was gone, replaced by longing and worry and fear and anger at herself. He was doing what must be done. Kat swallowed hard as her throat and eyes burned.

  “It seems to me,” Peter went on, oblivious, “MacLarren is already pretty well informed.”

  Kat swallowed again. “That’s true,” she said. “I wonder if we should have mentioned the ghostly things. The magic.” Her right hand—her transformed hand, her terrible hand—went into her pocket and found her great-aunt’s chatelaine. She pulled it out, lifting it up between them.

  “What’s that?” Peter asked.

  “It’s a chatelaine my great-aunt gave me. She said it was magic.”

  “A chatelaine? Like the thing Storm has been going on about? Is that what you and Ame fought over?”

  She nodded, miserable.

  Peter reached for it, but before he touched it they heard a noise. Someone was coming up the stairs, and Kat and Peter were in the open on the landing. They exchanged a glance; Peter’s eyes grew round and he put his finger to his lips.

  “How do we know it’s them and not her?” Kat whispered.

  “We don’t.”

  Up, up, up came the footsteps.

  “We should’ve arranged a signal,” Peter whispered.

  The footsteps were two turns below them now, and still coming.

  They had no choice: they slipped into the hidden room and shut the door as quiet as could be. They couldn’t be caught out, especially not with the code machine and wireless in their possession.

  Kat still clutched her chatelaine in her fist. From between her fingers she saw it: a blue glow.

  44

  Spies

  IT WAS VERY dark inside the hidden room under the stairwell with the door closed. Kat opened her fist, and the chatelaine shone with a soft blue light. Kat’s eyes met Peter’s as his grew round.

  Was this magic?

  Scuffling noises filtered through the wall from the landing. Kat pressed her ear up against the thin crack that outlined the door. Someone coughed outside on the landing, and then they heard the gruff voice: “Lassie?”

  Relief surged through Kat, and as she stuffed her chatelaine back into her pocket, Peter opened the door to reveal a startled MacLarren and Gumble, who were looking almost everywhere but at them.

  “That is a hidden room, for certain,” said Gumble, tucking stray strands of gray hair back into her bun. She ran her fingers over the door frame, as if measuring the wall. “Quite nicely done.”

  Peter fumbled for the overhead light chain and the four of them shut themselves inside the small room. Kat and Peter emptied their packs, placing the wireless and code machine side by side. MacLarren murmured in appreciation as he examined the code machine.

  “’Tis a remarkable device, is it not?” he asked. “What do ye think, Beatrice?”

  “I don’t see how we can use it. We must have the key.”

  “Ah,” he said, “but we do. Thanks to Jack, before he was picked up. This came today.” He pulled a thin sheet of paper from his pocket.

  “That Jack,” said Gumble. “He is a credit to our nation. Pray that he returns to us safely.” She glanced quickly at Kat and then away.

  “We can make sure of that now we have this machine,” MacLarren replied. “I think we can fool them on the other side into thinking—”

  “Angus,” Miss Gumble said, her voice a warning. “I suppose the children ought not hear every detail.”

  Kat spent half a minute thinking about her instructors’ first names and their familiarity with each other, and another half a minute thinking about the suggestion that they knew something about spying. And then she focused on the key.

  Kat asked, “You have the key? Isn’t that all we need?”

  “’Tis a start,” MacLarren said. “Now we must crack the code, by finding the correct solutions.” He raised his eyebrow at Kat.

  “May I see?” Kat asked, reaching out her hand.

  MacLarren grinned and handed her the paper. “I was hoping you would want to tackle it, lass.”

  Kat examined the key. It was a complex algorithm.

  “So we can send a message, then. Falsify something,” murmured Gumble, tapping her lip w
ith one finger. “That might help Jack as well as our side.”

  “The double agent strategy, perhaps?” said MacLarren.

  “Yes. Good one. And the short-wave, too, we can use that.”

  “Aye. But the first thing is to discover this object they seek. If Godfrey is correct, it may be a powerful weapon, this artifact . . .”

  “Careful, Angus,” Gumble interrupted, eyeing Kat and Peter.

  But Kat started. Artifact? Weapon? What did Gumble and MacLarren know?

  “We’re not going to say anything,” said Peter, who seemed not to have heard. “We’re patriots. I mean, I’m American, but us Americans, we’re on your side. Even if we’re not in the war, but, still.”

  “‘We’ Americans, Mr. Williams, not ‘us’ Americans,” said Gumble.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  For a moment Kat thought about mentioning magic and artifacts, and felt the weight of her chatelaine in her pocket, but something held her back.

  Gumble said, “In any case, we must get this information and these pieces of equipment to Godfrey, and then hope they can fill in the blanks for us.”

  MacLarren said, “I’d like to spend a few days with the encryption machine before we send it on, since we have the key and all. I’d like to give this girl a chance to crack the code. That all right with you, Beatrice?”

  “Well,” Gumble murmured, “I don’t—”

  “Lass,” MacLarren said, interrupting Kat’s thoughts, “what do you think, eh? Think you might be able to break it?”

  Kat glanced from the algorithm to MacLarren’s face and back again. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I think I can.”

  Peter and Kat hid the machines back in the kitchen right before supper. They didn’t dare leave them in the room on the landing, fearing the spy would return there to look when he found them missing from the cave. It was raining hard now, coming down in sheets against the great windows. As Peter and Kat went back up to their rooms, Kat’s earlier misery crept through her again. She flexed the fingers of her terrible right hand.

  She found Amelie in Isabelle’s room. Both girls stiffened and looked away when Kat stood at the door.

  “Ame, I’m so sorry.”

  Amelie’s arm was wrapped in a tight bandage. She didn’t look at Kat as she lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

  “I didn’t mean . . . ” Kat said. “I was upset.”

  Amelie lifted her face. Her eyes were red from crying. “You hurt me.”

  “I know. I’m really, really sorry.”

  There was a long silence, and then Ame rose from the floor and flew across the room and into Kat’s arms. Her words were muffled because her face was buried against Kat’s stomach. “I love you, Kat.”

  Kat stroked Ame’s hair, unable to speak. She hugged her sister tight.

  Isabelle stood up and said, “Well. Apology accepted.”

  Colin’s empty place at the dinner table next to Jorry’s was like a dark omen.

  It was Peter who ventured at last, raising his hand as Marie brought in the dessert, a berry compote. “My Lady, where’s Colin?”

  Lady Eleanor peered at him as if she could not see him well. “Who?” she asked.

  Both MacLarren and Gumble turned to look at her; Storm stared at his plate, muttering darkly.

  “Colin,” Peter repeated, louder, and he pointed to Colin’s empty chair.

  “Ah,” she replied. “He has decided to return home.”

  “No he hasn’t,” said Rob loudly. “We were having a fine time. He would have said something.”

  The Lady stood. With a start, Kat realized that she leaned as if her hip was out of joint.

  She gave Rob a long, cold stare. “Colin has left. Now you will excuse me,” the Lady said, and she limped down the hall and out the door.

  “He hasn’t left,” Rob repeated. “He would have said.”

  No one ate the dessert.

  Kat, Peter, Rob, Amelie, and Isabelle sat on the hallway floor.

  “One by one,” Peter said, echoing Kat’s thoughts. “Something’s happening to each of us, one at a time.”

  “Colin wouldn’t leave like that,” said Rob. “Not without saying good-bye.”

  “The Lady has to be in on it,” said Kat.

  “Perhaps Colin is a ghost now, too,” murmured Amelie. “Like the fishing girl, and the crippled boy.”

  Kat shivered. “Cook said something about someone hiding in the barn. We can’t go there now, but maybe in the morning.”

  “And the keep,” said Rob. “There’s lots of places to hide there.”

  “We haven’t really looked through the entire castle,” said Peter. “I say we work our way through everything.”

  Kat stood up and brushed her skirt. “We’re in for the night, so it’ll have to wait.” She sighed, biting her lip. “Well, I’m going to play with math.”

  “Play with math?” Rob snorted. “Good one, Kat. I’ll be worrying about Colin, myself.”

  “So will I, Rob,” Kat said, touching his arm. “So will I.”

  For the next several hours, Kat sat on her bed and worked on the algorithm. She created several tables and found one string that seemed to work, but ultimately she had to abandon it. Still, she felt she was closing in on the solution when she looked up and realized that it was nearly midnight.

  Kat put her papers aside and crawled beneath the covers. Her great-aunt’s chatelaine was clutched in her fist. A glowing fire burned in the hearth.

  As she lay in her bed, she thought about poor Colin. Such a sweet boy. Whatever was happening to the children of Rookskill Castle, it was now circling closer and closer to Kat and her brother and sister. Maybe instead of searching the castle grounds she and the remaining children should run away.

  But that was hopeless. They were stranded in the bitter and desolate Scottish highlands.

  She drifted toward exhausted sleep, and without prompting her father’s voice echoed in her head. Keep calm.

  And carry on.

  Yes, that’s what she had to do, despite the fear, the cold, dark magic, the spies, and despite her terrible self-doubt: carry on.

  45

  The Eighth Charm: The Bell

  THE LADY STANDS in the dark, frigid room, surveying. The clock has stopped; the fire is cold ash.

  The Lady taps her metal finger against her lips. Raw energy courses through her. She likes it, the strength of the body the magister has made for her, now that it is complete, and she stretches her arm over Isabelle and Amelie, who lie breathing deeply side by side. The gears in her arm whir and sing and she flexes her clockwork hand and smiles.

  She leans over Isabelle.

  “Belle. Belle means beautiful. Like you are, ma petite belle.”

  Isabelle’s eyes flutter open.

  “Hello, Isabelle,” she says, so soft it is like rose petals falling on the coverlet. “May I call you Belle?”

  The girl nods, eyes open in wonder. Perhaps she thinks she sees an angel. Amelie sleeps on.

  “I have something for you. Something that is a token of your name. Something that will echo your beauty.” The Lady holds up a silver charm on a silver chain. “You see? It’s a bell. A bell for Belle.”

  Isabelle’s eyes grow wide.

  The Lady leans close. “But shh. You mustn’t tell her. You must not tell a soul. It’s our secret, yes, ma Belle?”

  Isabelle’s hand lifts off the coverlet, reaching for the charm.

  “Oh, no,” whispers the Lady. “Let me put it about your neck myself.”

  Something crosses Isabelle’s face then, some note of alarm, and she withdraws her hand as if remembering something, something to do with charms and necklaces and children, and it is not nice, not nice at all . . .

  The Lady watches this mental transformation, and she moves swiftly. As Isab
elle opens her mouth to scream she also sits bolt upright, and the charm is over her neck and the cursed words spoken, and Isabelle gives a cry and then is lost, and she sinks back into the bed while Amelie whimpers in her sleep and turns away.

  The Lady lifts Isabelle from the bed and seeks the hidden door in the wall. Oh, how strong and beautiful her arms are now, so that she can carry this child, Isabelle, as if she weighs no more than a feather! Soon she’ll discover the other magic in the castle that has something to do with Katherine, but still eludes Eleanor. Eludes her for now.

  The Lady leaves Amelie behind. But not for long.

  46

  Spies and Magic

  “AMELIE, WHAT DO you mean, she’s gone?” Kat thought she might be sick.

  Amelie’s eyes were bright with tears. “When I woke up. Isabelle’s gone and I can’t find her.”

  “Like Colin,” Rob said.

  The four of them stood grim-faced in the hallway in the dim morning light. It was snowing, and the wind rattled the panes.

  “Right,” said Peter. “That’s it, then. We’ve got to get out of here. I say we head for the train station at once.”

  Kat nodded, grateful. But then, “But what about the spy? I’ve almost cracked the code.”

  “The spy’s the least of our worries,” said Peter. “How does a girl like Isabelle disappear from a locked room in the middle of the night when Amelie is right there with her? First Jorry, then Colin, and now Isabelle. And we’ve seen what happened to Jorry.”

  “Downstairs, now,” said Marie. Once again she appeared out of nowhere. “Breakfast.” She folded her arms and waited until they began to move.

  Peter whispered to Kat, “We’re getting out of here.”

  Kat nodded, but she chewed her lip. She wanted to finish the algorithm. She wanted to catch the spy. For her country. Father would want her to make a difference, just as he was trying to make a difference.

  If the children weren’t uneasy enough, breakfast made them even queasier.

  Neither Mr. MacLarren nor Miss Gumble was present.

  The Lady wore a gown utterly inappropriate for daytime that made it look like she’d stepped from a medieval tapestry.