At this point there was a burst of applause, and Dad had to pause for a moment before continuing. “Not only are we one of the best and most famous schools in the world: We also take the health of our students extremely seriously. Particularly during the autumn and winter months, when outbreaks of cold and flu are rife, our standards of hygiene are…”
I raised my eyebrows at him; Dad got the message and cleared his throat. “Anyway … I am very glad so many of you have been able to join us this evening, and I hereby declare this year’s Stolzenburg Autumn Ball officially … open!” He clambered down onto the dance floor, where Mrs. Bröder-Strauchhaus was waiting for him to make his customary old-fashioned bow. “May I have this dance?” he asked.
The orchestra was already playing the first waltz, and the two of them went gliding off across the floor (as they did every year) in perfect synchrony. After a few minutes, lots of other couples joined in, and soon the room was full of twirling dancers. I’d decided to leave Frederick hanging for a while, and I was about to step in and ask Mrs. Bröder-Strauchhaus if I could take over from her, when suddenly all hell broke loose on the dance floor. My dad’s secretary, Mrs. Schnorr, came barreling across the room like a charging bull; Sophia in Year 9 (who was wearing a Versace gown—I knew this only because she’d been telling everyone about it for weeks, whether they wanted to hear it or not) was forced to leap out of the way, and only just managed to rescue her train. Completely out of breath, Mrs. Schnorr held out a phone to my dad. “It’s the European Commission!” she panted, in a voice so high-pitched it was practically a squeak. “They want to give you the International Educational Achievement Prize. You! For your work here at Stolzenburg!”
My dad took the phone. “Dr. Morgenroth speaking,” he said, and paused for a moment. As he listened to the voice on the other end of the line, his eyes filled with tears. “What a … what a very great honor,” he stammered. “Would you … would you excuse me for one moment? I’ll be with you in just a second, and then we can discuss the details.”
He quickly handed his dance partner over to Dr. Meier and hurried out of the ballroom. I, meanwhile, had decided not to keep Frederick waiting any longer. He was still standing with Helena on the edge of the dance floor, grinning at me over the top of the dancers’ heads. I smiled back and nodded, waiting for him to make his way across the room toward me … but instead he turned back to Helena and said something that made them both giggle.
“Would you like to dance?” asked a voice from beside me.
“Sure,” I said without thinking. I was still staring at Frederick and Helena, who were now making themselves comfortable on a little sofa.…
“Nice dress, by the way,” said Toby as he led me out onto the dance floor.
“Thanks,” I replied. “Have you seen Charlotte’s?” Toby didn’t answer; instead he started to whisk me across the floor in a series of complicated steps that I found very difficult to follow. Usually I wasn’t a bad dancer, but at this speed it was all I could do not to trip over my own feet. “Um—you know this is just a waltz, right? It’s not about who can get around the room the fastest,” I informed him, as Sophia in her Versace gown was obliged to leap out of the way again.
“I know that,” said Toby. “What I don’t know is why, since yesterday afternoon, Darcy has suddenly turned into the most antisocial person in the world.”
“Well, perhaps you didn’t notice it until yesterday afternoon, but—” I got no further, however, because Toby suddenly gave me a shove that sent me staggering off the dance floor. What did he think he was doing? That was no way to treat a lady!
“You two should talk,” said Toby, and I didn’t even have time to ask him what on earth he was playing at before I collided with a tall, dark-suited figure wearing an even bigger scowl than usual.
“What are you doing?” growled Darcy, but Toby had already turned his back on us and was fleeing the scene as quickly as he’d arrived. Oh, great!
“I don’t know what you said to Toby, but—”
“Nothing,” Darcy interrupted me, his face darkening still further.
“No?”
“I’m guessing he’s put two and two together and made five. We don’t need to talk—we’ve already said everything we had to say.”
“I agree.”
“Good.”
“Well then.” I turned to go, but suddenly we found ourselves boxed in by a crowd of waltzing Year 7s, and I had to stand there and wait for them to disperse.
Darcy sighed. “At first it was just a misunderstanding,” he said from behind me.
“What was?” I asked without turning around.
“Charlotte,” said Darcy. “Do you remember the night I threw you out of the library?”
“You really think I could forget?”
“After you’d gone, Frederick turned up and—well, he threatened me, tried to get me to leave Stolzenburg. He said he’d heard me yelling all the way from the tower room in the east wing, where he’d been waiting for his girlfriend. Which was ridiculous, obviously—I wasn’t that loud.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, then shook my head and turned to face him. “I ran into Frederick on the stairs—I told him what you’d done. We were supposed to be meeting up that evening.” The Year 7s around us had now embarked on what looked like some sort of synchronized group dance.
“I see,” said Darcy, putting his hand on my elbow and steering me through the Year 7s and out onto the dance floor. As he turned toward me, his left hand slipped automatically into my right and he put his right arm around my waist. “Anyway, I thought Frederick was talking about Charlotte—that is her room, isn’t it, the tower room?” he continued, as if the fact that we were now gliding slowly around the room in a close embrace was completely normal. “I thought she was his girlfriend. So I felt I should warn Toby and tell him to be careful.” He sniffed. “I know now that it was a misunderstanding, and that you shouldn’t believe everything Frederick says. He talks a lot of crap, if you ask me, and—”
“Hang on—first of all, I’m curious as to how you know where Charlotte’s bedroom is,” I interrupted him. “And second of all, why are you still trying to keep her and Toby apart, even now that you know she’s not with Frederick?”
Darcy pressed his lips together for a moment. “First of all,” he replied, “I happen to know this old place like the back of my hand, and second of all, Charlotte’s been acting rather strangely these past few weeks. She’s been doing some detective work.”
“Detective work? What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve run into her in the west wing quite a few times recently. She seems very interested in the paintings in the portrait gallery. And the books in the library. She’s been sneaking in there at night and looking through them one by one and … to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one who trashed the place.”
I gasped, furious, but before I could say anything, Darcy went on: “I know she’s your best friend, Emma, but she was here four years ago when Gina went missing. I can’t help feeling she might be mixed up in it all somehow. So I told Toby to keep his distance until we knew whether we could trust her or not.”
“That’s ridiculous. How could you not trust Charlotte? She’s the nicest, most honest person I know. She would never have trashed the library. And I very much doubt that she abducted Gina at the tender age of twelve!” I shouted. I tried to pull away from Darcy, but he held me tight. “What are you doing?” I hissed. “And would you kindly stop insulting my friends?”
“Fine,” said Darcy. “If Charlotte’s as honest as you say she is, I’m sure she’s already told you what she’s been looking for in secret all this time.”
“Not exactly,” I admitted. “But I’m sure she has a perfectly good explanation.” I bit my lip. Why on earth was Charlotte keeping secrets from me all of a sudden? What was going on? What was she doing poking around the west wing at night? I needed to talk to her, ASAP.
Darcy nodded. “I
hope so,” he said, letting go of me at last.
I resisted the urge to run off and find Charlotte immediately. Instead, I studied Darcy for a moment. “Since you’re feeling so talkative tonight,” I said, “perhaps you could enlighten me: What exactly have you got against Frederick?”
“Frederick,” Darcy spat, making it sound more like a swear word than a name, “was a little too friendly with my sister. She had a crush on him, but she was very shy and—well, I think he enjoyed messing with her head.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve talked to quite a few people about Gina over the past few days, and some of them said she’d mentioned something about Frederick—something about him being an enchanted prince. A mythical being who needed her help.”
My mouth went dry. “She … she thought Frederick was the faun?” I stammered. “Do you think that might have had something to do with—?”
“Yes. I do,” Darcy retorted. “And now I really have said everything I had to say.” He bowed, the way I imagined the men here had bowed to their dance partners 190 years ago, and then he disappeared into the crowd.
* * *
I found Charlotte standing in a corner with the Berkenbecks. They were reading her the email from their dear Marie for what must have been the fourth time that evening. I grabbed her firmly by the wrist and dragged her away.
“Thanks,” said Charlotte, the moment we were out of earshot. “Hannah escaped to the bathroom about ten minutes ago, but I didn’t know how to get away from them without being rude.…”
“It wasn’t you, was it? That trashed the library?” I asked quickly.
Charlotte’s eyes widened. “No!” she cried. “Why would you even think that?”
“Darcy says he’s seen you sneaking around the west wing at night, looking at the portraits, going through the books.…”
Charlotte’s sigh told me there must be at least a grain of truth in these accusations. I looked closely at her. “What are you looking for?” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Another chronicle?”
Charlotte tilted her head. “I have to tell you something,” she said at last, slipping her arm through mine. “But not here. Come on.”
The huge ballroom took up almost the whole of the first floor of the west wing—the only other room on this floor was a long narrow corridor that also served as the portrait gallery. Generations of the Stolzenburg and de Winter families looked down from the walls, watching the guests come and go. Charlotte led me past Darcy’s great-uncles and great-aunts (who all had the same long, straight nose as him) right down to the far end of the corridor. We stopped in front of a portrait of a man who must have been one of the very first residents of the castle. He was wearing a ruff and what looked like the breastplate from a suit of armor, and he peered down at us over the top of his curled mustache.
“Is that the lord of Stolzenburg?” I asked. He didn’t look like a madman. Although with a mustache like that, he couldn’t have been entirely sane.
“No,” said Charlotte. “That’s his great-great-great-grandfather, Earl Clovis of Stolzenburg, born 1566, died 1605. He was the one who built the castle.”
“Oh.”
Charlotte stepped in between me and the painting and looked me squarely in the face. “Listen,” she said, “of course I’ve been doing some research! You didn’t think I was going to sit there and do nothing while my best friend started messing around with what I’m pretty sure is some kind of occult artifact, did you?”
“Hmm,” I said. In fact that was exactly what I had thought Charlotte was doing when, having warned Hannah and me about the chronicle so many times, she’d suddenly stopped mentioning it altogether. I’d assumed that Charlotte was too rational to accept what the book was really capable of—that she couldn’t bring herself to believe in its magical powers—and that she’d found it easier to just ignore the whole thing and bury her nose in Westwood Abbey instead.
“So Darcy really did see you in here, and in the library. At night. On your own,” I murmured.
Charlotte nodded. “There’s all sorts of evidence about the history of the castle: actual chronicles, paintings, letters, old maps, and architects’ drawings. And most of it’s just lying around in the west wing, in boxes and dusty bookcases.”
As I wondered why it had never crossed my mind to do some research into the book’s origins myself, Charlotte continued: “I spent days (and nights) working my way through piles and piles of the stuff. Most of it wasn’t very interesting—in fact, hardly any of it was. That’s why I haven’t said anything about it till now. But a couple days ago I was reading this old letter, and it mentioned something about a legend dating back to the sixteenth century. Old Clovis’s time…” She gestured at the painting behind her. “Back then, the monastery in the woods was still up and running and the monks had decided to build a paper mill there, to bring some extra money in. But no sooner had the building work begun than things started going wrong: The foundations collapsed into the mud, wooden beams snapped in half for no apparent reason, some of the builders were injured, and the first time the mill was used, one of the monks fell under the mill wheel and was crushed to death. A few days later, both the mill and the monastery caught fire during the night and were almost burned to the ground. The monks managed to make seven books out of the paper they’d already produced, and they gave them to the Earl of Stolzenburg as a gift.”
Charlotte turned to the painting. “See the top right-hand corner, in the background?”
“Yes,” I said, stepping back to get a better view of the pile of dark-colored books she was pointing to. (Why were old paintings always so dark? Did the paint change color over the years or did painters in those days just have a thing for doom and gloom?) “But there are only six books there, not seven.”
“I know—I wondered about that, too, at first,” said Charlotte. “But then I read in another letter that the earl gave the first of the seven books—the prototype, if you like—to his steward, and the other six to his wife as a present when their second son was born. Apparently all seven of the books had the same power: the ability to make anything you wrote in them come true.” Charlotte’s voice was so soft now that it was almost a whisper. “At first the books brought the earl and his family great power and boundless wealth, but as time went on their luck seemed to turn. They couldn’t control the consequences of what they wrote in the books, and they found themselves getting more and more hopelessly entangled in the situations they themselves had created, until one day—so the story goes—it cost the earl’s wife and children their lives. After that, the earl threw all the enchanted books into the river to break the curse. But the seventh book, the one he’d given to the steward, couldn’t be found and was never seen again.”
“You’re saying the books were cursed?”
“According to the legend, the monks had built their paper mill on top of a hidden palace that belonged to a fairy queen. In revenge for what they’d done, she put a curse on the mill, the monks, and the paper they produced.” Charlotte looked piercingly at me. “Now do you see how dangerous all this is? Your chronicle is the seventh cursed book! The steward’s book, the one everybody thought was lost!”
I blinked, slowly, then reached for Charlotte’s hands and clasped them tightly in mine. “So … now we not only believe in magic and quite possibly a mythical faun, but also in fairy queens and ancient curses?”
Charlotte shrugged. “I don’t know what I believe,” she said. “Perhaps all these stories are just stupid fairy tales. But I’m still worried about you, Emma.”
“Thanks,” I said quietly, giving her a hug. “Thanks for sitting up at night researching all this stuff.”
“I haven’t been able to sleep much anyway, the past few weeks,” said Charlotte as we moved apart. She was wearing her trying-not-to-think-about-Toby smile.
“I’m sure things with Toby will sort themselves out,” I said. “I think it was all just a misunderstanding.” A misunderstanding that was en
tirely Darcy de Winter’s fault.
Charlotte blinked back tears. “Anyway. Shall we go back in and have a little dance?” she asked with forced cheerfulness.
I nodded.
The ballroom was heaving. Miss Berkenbeck glided past us in Dr. Meier’s arms; the Year 7s had formed a circle and were taking turns dancing in the middle; and my dad was back from making his phone call and was dancing with Mrs. Bröder-Strauchhaus, who wanted to know all about his prize and what the lady from the European Commission had said.
Charlotte and I made a quick detour via the buffet to stock up on canapés and orange juice, then we wandered around the room for a while mingling with the other guests. We talked to Miriam and John in Year 13 about the choice of music (classical, but actually pretty good), the amount of people in the room (definitely too many), and the most bizarre dresses (an imitation snakeskin ball gown, seriously?!). Eventually we ran into Miss Whitfield in the crowd, though I didn’t see her at first because she was bending down to pick something up.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, rubbing my hip where I’d walked into her.
“No harm done, my dear,” she muttered absently, slipping something small and silver into the pocket of her dress. Then she turned away from us and peered into the middle of the dance floor, where a boy and a girl were dancing the Hustle. I followed the direction of her glance, and a moment later I nudged Charlotte in the ribs. Frederick didn’t seem to know the steps: He was laughing and making them up as he went along, while his partner tried valiantly to show him how the dance was meant to go.
“There she is!” Charlotte exclaimed. “I was starting to think she was going to spend the rest of the night hiding out in the bathroom.”
The Forgotten Book Page 15