“Where d’you want this?” he grunted, and I pointed to the opposite corner of the room where some of the older boys were carrying in tables one by one and some younger girls, directed by Helena, were decorating them with elaborately folded napkins. That was where the cake buffet was going to be laid out the next day, and the huge vase of roses would make the perfect centerpiece (even if the flowers had only come from the castle grounds, and not been handpicked by a royal florist).
“Okay,” said Frederick, lurching off toward the other side of the room with the vase. I forced myself to stop gazing at him and, before Hannah could ask when Frederick and I were finally going to get around to having our first kiss, I hurried over to Miss Berkenbeck. She’d just returned from the kitchen with a plateful of steaming doughnuts. “You really didn’t need to do this,” I said out of politeness, though I knew full well that resistance was futile. “The name tags are already back in order, look.”
“Now, Emma, I won’t take no for an answer!” Miss Berkenbeck said firmly, gesticulating wildly with her free hand. “Somebody’s got to test them, haven’t they? As they always say on the Bake Off…”
A heavenly aroma wafted through the dining hall. The doughnuts were plump and golden-brown and dusted with icing sugar that looked like the first snow of winter settling on the castle battlements. My mouth started to water as I imagined the sugar melting on my tongue.
Miss Berkenbeck held the plate under my nose. “Here,” she said, and I breathed in the delicious fresh-baked smell.
“No awkward questions sounds good to me,” said Hannah, reaching for a doughnut. “Fanks,” she mumbled with her mouth full.
I couldn’t resist any longer. With a sigh, I, too, picked up a doughnut and bit into it. The sweet, buttery flavor was incredible—they tasted even better than they smelled.
While we chomped away happily on our doughnuts, something happened that caught everyone’s attention and even succeeded in distracting Hannah from the fascinating topic of me and Frederick. In amongst the stream of boys carrying tables into the dining room, Toby and Darcy appeared, holding a heavy claw-foot desk between them and advancing inch by inch across the room. It was a miracle that they’d managed not only to lift the thing, but to lug it all the way down here from the west wing. Red-faced from the effort, they finally reached the corner where the cake buffet was to be served and set the desk down. But Helena did not look at all pleased to see it. “What’s that?” she asked with a hint of irritation.
“We couldn’t just stand by and watch while two twelve-year-olds nearly killed themselves dragging this thing along the corridor,” said Toby. “So we took pity on them and brought it down here ourselves. We didn’t want you to have to serve your buffet on the floor.”
“Well, there must have been some kind of misunderstanding,” said Helena, putting her hands on her hips. “This is much too high and too wide, we can’t possibly use it. Anyway, we’ve got enough tables already.”
Darcy and Toby exchanged a glance that said there had been no misunderstanding whatsoever: The twelve-year-olds had clearly played a trick on them, and a pretty blatant one at that. And they’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. I grinned into my half-eaten doughnut.
“We were only trying to help,” said Darcy.
“Well, thanks,” said Helena, “but what would really help me is if you’d take that desk away and put it back where it came from.”
Toby snorted.
While the two boys went on talking to Helena, I watched Charlotte out of the corner of my eye. Every time she’d run into Toby over the past few days, she’d plastered on a smile that was presumably supposed to look happy and carefree, but which couldn’t hide the fact that she actually wanted to burst into tears. Today was no exception. Something really did seem to have gone badly wrong between them. The night we’d run into him at the ruins, Toby had told Hannah that for a few days he’d been under the (false) impression that Charlotte was playing games with him—that she was already Frederick’s girlfriend. He wouldn’t say where he’d gotten this ridiculous idea from, or why he still didn’t want to go out with Charlotte even now that he knew the truth.
Charlotte had told me everything was fine and that what had happened with Toby really wasn’t a big deal, but I didn’t believe a word of it. She never mentioned him anymore, and most of the time she acted as though he didn’t exist: That alone was a sure sign that it was a big deal. In fact, it was almost on a par with “the incident.”
“Take it away! It’s blocking the fire exit!” Helena was saying.
“Do you have any idea how long it took to get this thing down the stairs?” Toby demanded. His blond hair was plastered to his face with sweat.
Darcy looked exhausted, too; there were dark circles under his eyes again. He’d pointedly turned his back on Frederick and was now looking gloomily down at the heavy desk in front of him. I’d hardly seen him since last Sunday, the day we’d found the lord of Stolzenburg’s secret laboratory. For almost an hour we’d searched every inch of the laboratory and the secret tunnels for Darcy’s sister. But there had been no sign of Gina, nor any clues as to her disappearance, and eventually Darcy’s phone battery had run low, too, and forced us to give up. Since that day, he’d been even more elusive than before, and I increasingly found myself wondering what exactly it was that he and Toby were up to in the west wing.
“Taking it upstairs will probably be even harder,” said Helena, smiling sweetly. “But at least it’ll keep you fit.”
The napkin-folding girls, meanwhile, had been busy moving the other tables around to try to make space for the enormous desk, casting shy glances at Darcy as they did so. When he looked up at them, two of the girls blushed to the roots of their hair and a third tripped over a table leg and fell onto the display of folded napkins, squashing most of them flat. Darcy seemed to feel he’d been caught out, and immediately resumed his usual expression of sullen aloofness. “This desk is not moving,” he told Helena, folding his arms across his chest.
“I think you’ll find it is,” said Frederick, coming to stand beside Helena. “Otherwise we might all die in a fire, or the inevitable stampede when the food starts running out.”
“Don’t you have some flowers to arrange?” said Darcy, taking a step toward him.
Frederick drew himself up to his full height. He was half a head shorter than Darcy, but much stockier—all that gardening work had left him with a pretty impressive set of muscles. “The flowers are all done, thanks,” he hissed. “But you guys carry on; I’m sure the twelve-year-olds have a few more tricks up their sleeves. Now get out of here and take your massive table with you!”
Darcy glared at him, his face scarlet with rage. But Frederick merely grinned. “Touched a nerve, have I?” he snorted, and now he, too, took a step forward. “You think I ought to show more respect to a spoiled little prince like you?”
Darcy stared at him silently for a moment. “Get out of my sight,” he said at last, in a quiet but menacing voice. His fists were clenched, and he looked dangerously close to punching Frederick.
Frederick backed off a little, but probably only to position himself for the counterattack.
“Perhaps we could use the desk as our registration table?” called Hannah. She hadn’t caught much of what had passed between the boys: She’d been too busy polishing off another of Miss Berkenbeck’s doughnuts.
“That’s a great idea,” exclaimed Toby, laying a hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “Come on, Darce, give me a hand.”
Darcy glared at Frederick a moment longer, then turned on his heel and lifted one end of the desk so roughly that it gave a loud creak. He and Toby lugged it across the room toward us at the same snail’s pace as before, while Frederick grinned again and started distributing single red roses to Helena and the napkin girls.
Although I was glad the boys hadn’t ended up having a fight and that nobody had been hurt, I was surprised to find that part of me felt a tiny bit disappointed.
&nbs
p; Anyway, Hannah’s idea had been a good one: Ten minutes later, once we’d moved everything over onto the stately desk, our registration table looked a lot more impressive.
“Th-thanks,” said Charlotte to Toby.
He nodded. “No problem.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other with the same I-feel-like-crying-but-I’m-pretending-everything’s-fine smile as Charlotte.
Charlotte lowered her eyes.
Toby cleared his throat.
Oh, man, what was going on here?
I’d just opened my mouth to tell the pair of them to stop beating around the bush and go and talk about it over a cup of coffee, and Hannah, too, had piped up, “Seriously, you two?” when Toby heaved a sigh and shook his head. He glanced over to where Darcy was standing. “I—I’m sorry,” he said. “Have fun with the heaviest desk in the world, yeah?” And he hurried out of the dining hall.
I looked at Darcy, who was clearly in a world of his own. Had he not even noticed Toby leaving? “You’re forgetting to frown again,” I called over to him.
Darcy started, looked around for his friend, muttered something unintelligible, and followed Toby out of the dining hall.
“What was all that about?” said Hannah.
I shrugged. “Strange,” I said, while Charlotte, still trying to muster a smile, started humming to herself in a quavering voice as she laid out the last of the name tags.
“Typical Darcy,” said Frederick, sauntering over to us. “Would any of you ladies like a rose?” He held out three long-stemmed flowers. The bunch of roses in the big vase was now looking somewhat depleted.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I just don’t understand why Toby’s being such a douche,” Hannah murmured.
“Oh, Toby’s all right,” said Frederick. “It’s just the company he keeps. You’ll never guess who it was that told him to stay away from Charlotte.”
“No way!” I exclaimed.
Frederick nodded.
* * *
The next day, Stolzenburg played host to more than two hundred families from all over the world who were thinking of sending their offspring to the school the following September. The place was crawling with children, and their parents subjected my dad and the other teachers to a constant barrage of questions. Prospective students trotted along beside their parents as I led them on guided tours of the school. I’d been allocated five different tour groups throughout the day, and I showed each of them around the classrooms, the bedrooms, the dining hall, the sports hall, the swimming pool, the tennis courts, the imposing ballroom (which was already being set up by an events company for tomorrow night’s ball), and, of course, the grounds. Each of my tours was better than the last: I embellished them with anecdotes about the school and the castle and, for my grand finale, I recited Eleanor Morland’s story about the lonely faun. All in all, it was a triumph.
Until the last tour of the afternoon, anyway.
Up to then everything had gone so smoothly. I’d been feeling positively jubilant when I’d set off with the final group. And right up until just before the end, it had been the most fantastic tour any visitor to Stolzenburg had ever had (in my opinion). But then, out on the lawns beside the fountain, everything started to go wrong. I’d just finished the part of the tour where I talked about the landscape architect who’d restored the fountains fifty years earlier, and the visitors were hanging on my every word, when a group of alumni came streaming out onto the lawn. Most of them were young men who’d probably left the school only about three or four years ago. Now they were milling about, laughing, greeting each other with funny handshakes, and generally making lots of noise. I raised my voice to make myself heard above the din as the ex-students drifted closer and closer to our little group.
“The writer Eleanor Morland,” I said loudly—I was getting to the highlight of my talk now—“stayed here at Stolzenburg for several months. During the summer of 1794 she often went walking on the castle grounds, and they inspired her to write one of her first short stories, a fairy tale that I recently…”
The ex-students suddenly roared with laughter—one of them had just told a hilarious joke, by the sounds of it—and I had to shout even louder to drown them out as I launched into the tale of the faun and the fairy. But it didn’t matter—my listeners were enjoying the story. Weren’t they?
“… and so the faun set off in search of his true love. Some say he still hasn’t found her, and that to this day he wanders the secret tunnels beneath the castle looking for her. At midnight, if you are very quiet, you can still hear his footsteps echoing through the walls. And that is the end of our little tour.”
I waited for the customary applause, but instead I heard an angry voice right by my ear exclaim: “What are you talking about, Emma?”
Startled, I took a step backward, tripped over the base of the fountain, teetered, and lost my balance.
Damn it!
For a fraction of a second my arms flailed wildly as I tried to stop myself from falling. A hand shot out and tried to catch my elbow, but I slid out of its grasp and toppled backward into the fountain. I tried to grab hold of the edge of the basin, but my hands slipped on the algae and I sank farther into the water. My head went under.
Icy cold water enveloped me, soaking through my clothes, blinding me, filling my ears and nose. I opened my mouth as I thrashed around, accidentally swallowing a mouthful of water. I’d lost my bearings now—I didn’t know which way was up. The fountain was no more than about three feet deep. It couldn’t be that difficult to get out of, surely? Unfortunately, my body seemed to have other ideas. My lungs screamed for air, my eyes blinked helplessly in the murky green water, my limbs were paralyzed by the cold, and I was seized by the irrational fear that I was going to drown.
But all this lasted only a few moments: Then I felt somebody climbing into the fountain beside me, grabbing my shoulders, and pulling me back up to the surface.
Gasping for breath, I coughed and spluttered for a moment as the shocked faces of the families around me came into view. I heard the ex-students chuckling, and I could clearly make out Helena’s tinkling little laugh.
The hands grabbed hold of me once more and lifted me onto my feet. I slipped again on the slimy bottom of the basin, but this time the arms wrapped themselves around me and held me up.
“Are you crazy? You nearly made me jump out of my skin!” I yelled, wrenching myself free. The water sloshed and gurgled as I waded to the edge of the fountain.
“How was I supposed to know you were going to go down like a sack of potatoes?” said Darcy, clambering out of the water behind me. He, too, was drenched: His shirt was plastered to his body, his trousers were dripping wet, and he had half a waterlily stuck to his shoulder. And I looked even worse; my shirt was coated in a layer of slimy green stuff, I’d managed to lose my left shoe, and I was pretty sure my mascara was running all over my face. Shivering, I wrung out my ponytail.
“How about a thank-you?” Darcy had the audacity to ask.
I glared at him.
Helena’s giggles grew louder. “Looking good, Emma!” she cried. “That would be a nice color for the new uniforms, too!” The families from my tour group allowed themselves a little grin at this, and even Darcy looked as if he was trying not to smile.
I sniffed. “Thanks for listening,” I said to the families. Water ran off me in rivulets as I took a bow. Then I turned on my heel (the one that still had a shoe on) and stormed off.
In hindsight it probably would have been better to storm back to the castle rather than into the woods, so I could’ve had a hot shower and changed into some dry clothes. But I was too irate to think clearly. I went striding off into the trees and I didn’t stop until I reached the ruins. Shivering and gasping from the cold, I leaned against one of the broken pillars and gazed into the undergrowth for a while, trying to calm myself down.
A moment later, I got another shock—Darcy had followed me into the woods and was now walking toward me through
the trees.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You know I didn’t mean to make you fall in the water.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t have pushed me, then.”
“I didn’t—”
“I know.” I folded my arms across my chest and tried to stop myself from shivering, while Darcy stood there shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Listen,” he said at last, “I didn’t mean to make you jump, either.”
“Right,” I said again.
“Do you want to put my shirt on?”
“No, thanks. Your shirt’s wet, too.”
“Fine. Whatever.” Darcy came to lean against the pillar beside me. For a minute or two we both stared angrily into the trees without saying a word. Then Darcy said, “What was that ridiculous story you were telling them? It sounded like the sort of story my sister used to have nightmares about.”
“You sound like one of those people who think we should ban fantasy novels in case kids start thinking magic is real.”
“Of course not.” He made a dismissive gesture. “It’s just … I was talking to some of the guys who were in my year here, and they’d just started telling me what they remembered about the night Gina went missing, when you came along and—”
“When I came along and gave an informative and entertaining speech to the next generation of Stolzenburg students? How rude of me! You were quite right to tip me into a fountain full of icy water.”
“I told you: I didn’t mean to. And I’d been standing behind you for ages, I thought you’d noticed.” Darcy ran a hand over his face and massaged his temples for a moment. “Oh, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Perhaps I’m just finding it hard to come to terms with … with the fact that those legends about the faun must have had something to do with Gina going missing,” he murmured. “It’s a ridiculous idea. I thought so at the time, too. But my sister’s been gone four years. And I’ve spoken to so many people over the past few days who’ve told me that … that before she disappeared, she kept talking about a ‘creature’ living in the cellars of Stolzenburg. I can’t ignore it any longer.” He sighed. “Where did you come across that story about the faun?”
The Forgotten Book Page 13