by Heide Goody
“Yes, he was. I definitely received and understood that message. Unfortunately I have forgotten the way there.”
“And this is a problem?”
“Well yes, of course it’s a problem,” said Ella. “If I can’t remember where it is, I might accidentally go there. Do you see my dilemma?”
Cheeky brushed flour from his hands. “So you wish to be reminded of the way so that you can avoid it?” he said slowly.
“Yes please.”
He looked at her levelly for a long time and then said, “Come this way if you please, Miss Hannaford.”
Ella dawdled as she followed Cheeky (she couldn’t think of him as Ernst and feared it was only a matter of time before she called him Cheeky out loud). She had the man with the key and they were off to the forbidden south tower but that was as far as her current plan went. She hoped that if she played for time a brilliant stratagem would spring to mind.
“You have known Mr Dainty for a long time?” she said.
“Indeed, miss.”
“He mentioned that the two of you were involved in an assassination attempt on your country’s president?”
Cheeky gave her a sideways look but said nothing. They were passing through a dining room, and Ella thought she heard movement from one of the walls ahead.
A tiny voice was just audible.
“‘e’s bigger than I thought, ‘e’s bloomin’ stuck! You push an’ I’ll pull.”
Ella straightened and tried to gauge exactly where the voice was coming from. A dumb waiter plinked open halfway up the wall directly ahead of them.
What she really wasn’t sure of was why a horribly deformed sheep’s head was leering at them from the opening. Cheeky saw it and immediately made a complicated ritualistic signing across the front of his body.
“Ovcá?” he whispered.
He approached the sheep with tentative steps.
“Ovcá, mi dhënë grije rukavice tij ruke svojom ne srce,” said Cheeky, going down on two knees before his sheepy goddess.
And then, like a cork from a champagne bottle, the wolf, complete with the sheep carcase that he clearly wasn’t ready to give up burst from the dumb waiter. The teapot and Oscar the orphaned table tumbled after him but Cheeky was oblivious to this as the wolf had knocked him clean off his feet and cracked his head on the edge of a sideboard.
“Right princess, where’s this henchman you need help with?” asked the wolf.
“You’re sitting on him,” Ella said.
The teapot looked down and regarded the unconscious Cheeky. “Think we’ve got the situation under control here.”
Ella unclipped the fat bunch of keys on Cheeky’s belt.
“So we’re off to this forbidden tower,” said the wolf, as he took a bloody gobbet of flesh from the sheep’s innards.
“My mum’s there,” said Ella and hurried onward.
The wolf abandoned his woolly prize to catch up with her. Oscar was maintaining pace, with the teapot riding the little table like a bareback circus rider.
“It’s a good job then,” said the wolf, “that I created that wonderful diversion to get the lord of the manor and his armed gorillas out of the castle.”
Ella gave him a withering look.
“Don’t pretend you were thinking with anything other than your stomach.”
The south tower was a short distance away and the teapot corrected Ella when she made her one and only wrong turn.
“We just need to find the door,” said Ella, tapping the wooden panelling.
She tapped, felt and peered at every panel, looking for a keyhole, but she couldn’t see where the door was.
“Cuppa might be nice at this point,” said the teapot. “You’ve been on yer feet for a good while now.”
“I just need to get in there, then I’ll have some tea,” said Ella.
“Oh. Right you are,” said the teapot, and disappeared into the skirting board. Moments later a door swung open towards them, and the teapot looked extremely pleased with itself as it stood in the opening. “Tea first!”
Ella regarded the keys and sighed. She took the tea and necked it in record time, then she hurried through the door and up the spiral staircase.
“Well, this is far from natural,” she said as she squeezed through creepers and brambles that crowded the tower.
“Lots of old buildings are covered in ivy and stuff,” said the wolf.
“Not on the inside.”
The stairs came to a stop at a stout wooden door. Ella looked at the teapot in case it was going to circumvent this door too. The teapot gave an improbable pottery shrug so Ella cycled through the keys to find one that fit. Her hands were shaking.
The door unlocked with a loud thunk and swung open of its own accord. The room within was circular with a conical ceiling. The arrow-slit windows were crazed with cobwebs and mildew.
Ella was drawn to the raised stone dais in the centre of the room. A large patterned rug lay across it and, on top of that, a glass coffin. An actual coffin made of glass, held together with iron brackets and window lead. The glass coffin was, in sharp contrast to the rest of the room, pristine.
Ella looked down through the lid at the young woman sleeping inside. Ella felt a void of feeling open up inside her. It was as powerful as any positive emotion. She recognised the twenty-something woman from old photos and more recent videos. She knew who this woman was and yet…
“She’s younger than me.”
“That’s the power of the spell that is,” said the teapot.
Natalie Hannaford’s chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly. The skin of her face and her crossed hands was as pale as dried bone.
“She was twenty-six years old,” said Ella. “Barely an adult, really. Frozen.”
“It’s just cruel,” said the wolf.
Ella nodded.
“Putting the meat behind the glass,” he said. “Tantalising.”
“That’s my mum!”
“I know,” said the wolf. “I’m just saying she looks tasty.”
“That’s still my mum!”
“What? It’s a compliment.”
Ella had no idea what to do next. She tried gently rapping on the glass.
“Mum. It’s me, Ella.” Nothing happened. She knocked again, louder. “Wake up!”
Again, no response. Ella ran her fingers around the lid but could find no handle, clasp, hinge or seam.
Her investigation was interrupted by a wooden clattering. Oscar had made an exciting discovery on the far side of the dais. Two tables — two familiar looking tables — stood beneath a window. They creaked and slowly came to life, struggling as though emerging from a deep, drugged sleep.
“Tony!” shouted the teapot. “Persephone!”
The largest table stumbled and tripped on its three legs and Oscar quickly inserted himself under the legless corner to offer Tony some support. There was a green cloth-bound book resting on Persephone. With a nod of thanks to the table, Ella picked it up. It was, she knew before she even saw the gold embossed title, a copy of Solomon Re-examined.
“Oh! I see!” said the teapot as though it had just concluded a lengthy conversation with the tables. “So, you were trapped in here when the girl pricked her finger? And because you couldn’t get out the tiny windows you broke your own leg off and threw it out as a cry for help, like a message in a bottle?”
Ella flicked through the book, looking from the pages to her mum and then back again.
“We thought you’d been murdered. Trapezicide,” the teapot told the furniture. “Oscar here swore to avenge your deaths. He’s built himself an army an’ everythin’. You’d be dead proud.”
“So,” said Ella, “my mum already had a copy of this book before she came here but it’s also the same copy that’s missing from the library. That doesn’t make sense.” She put her hands on the coffin. “And this is clearly the Glass Coffin Gambit. That’s Snow White, right? But the Spinning Wheel Gambit is something completely different. I mean
, is she meant to be dead like Snow White or asleep like Sleeping Beauty.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” said the wolf.
“Get what?”
“This happy ending you’re so keen on avoiding. It doesn’t care. I told you it was like rainwater running off the hillside. When you tell Lord Euro-Villain you don’t want to marry him, you block the happy ending off. It’s like putting a dam in its way. But the water’s still coming. It works its way round, princess. Your carriage breaks down, then you’ll get a magic pumpkin carriage. Your dad dies and leaves you penniless, then your boot-wearing moggy will find you a new one. You prick your finger or eat poisoned apple, then a bloody prince will pop up out of nowhere and kiss it all better. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense. The world will bend and break and mash every possible story together until you get what you deserve.”
“To hell with that,” said Ella.
The edge of the rug fluttered briefly as though blown in a breeze.
“We’re getting out of here.” She put her hands on the coffin. “The Glass Coffin Gambit probably needs love’s true kiss or something but does that mean I have to take the coffin and everything? Surely I could smash it open or something?”
“What if it’s the coffin that’s keepin’ her alive?” said the teapot.
“What?” said the wolf.
“You know, like Sigourney wossname in that Alien film.”
“I’m at the highest point of a castle that’s filled with stairs,” said Ella. “My car’s gone missing and I’ve got to get her and me far from here before Mr Dainty notices.” Ella tried to lift one end of the glass coffin and was able to shift it by about an inch before she had to put it down again with a grunt. “Well one thing’s for sure, I’m not putting it under my arm and carrying it out.”
There was a small cough, and Ella turned to look at the teapot.
“What are you looking so smug about?”
The teapot stepped aside with a brief ta-da. The three nesting tables had arranged themselves into a line in front of the dais.
“They can carry it?”
“And we have a bajillion tables waiting to help downstairs.”
Ella took one corner of the rug the coffin rested on and the wolf took another in his jaws and, together, they slid the carpet and coffin off the dais and onto the tables. The nesting tables were, by their very nature, different heights and Tony struggled on only three legs but the tables coped and, with much banging and rejigging, were able to get the coffin down to the lower floors and the secret door.
Tables were already waiting for them there, lined up to make a giant wooden centipede. With a buck of their table tops, Tony, Persephone and Oscar heaved the rug and coffin on the next table. It in turn, kicked up its rear legs and propelled the coffin further forward along the table-top conveyor belt.
“Hop on!” said the teapot, jumping onto the coffin.
“What?” said Ella.
“You’re out of time!”
Ella jogged to catch up with the accelerating coffin, grabbed the leading edge and flung her legs astride the glass box. The wolf ran to keep pace with some difficulty. With the Makepeace Alexander book still clutched under her arm, Ella gripped the edge of the coffin with her free hand, slippery as it was. She just about managed to stay on as they landed on another table, and another, and another. Down the stairs they slid on a series of tables, Oscar bounding around and directing their progress, making sure that the furniture lined up to receive them. The tables pitched themselves at an angle on corners to keep them on course. On stairs the coffin and carpet fairly flew but on the flat corridors their progress was only slowed, not halted, as the taller tables made way for lower tables, chairs and stools, always making sure that the coffin would keep moving.
Several more flights of stairs fell away beneath them on the gut wrenching ride, and Ella dared to hope that maybe today wasn’t the day when she would be killed by being crushed beneath her mother’s coffin.
“Traitor!”
Mr Dainty was ahead, advancing up the grand staircase with rifle in hand and animalistic fury on his face.
Interesting, thought Ella, that the man was more concerned with notions of personal betrayal than with a giant table/coffin toboggan. It wasn’t every day that one encountered such things.
He raised the rifle. The table beneath Ella bucked reflexively and other tables ran to position themselves as the coffin swung round and away along the long north-south corridor. There was gunfire and a puff of exploding plaster that was quickly far behind them.
There was a doorway and open sky ahead and — she could plainly see — not enough tables to carry them much further.
“Maybe we ought to stop,” she said.
“It’ll be fine!” shouted the teapot beside her, its lid rattling.
“Er... no,” she said.
The leading edge of scrambling tables, the ragged end of the slide before them, ploughed through the doorway and onto a wide balcony. Beyond, there was only the night and sea.
“Stop!” yelled Ella. “For fuck’s sake!”
As the tables banked and tried to divert the glass coffin, some force from below flung rug, coffin, teapot and Ella up into the air and over the cliff edge. They pitched forward and down, towards the rocks and the surf far below.
Chapter Twelve
In the vast kitchen of The Bumbles, Roy built himself a tower stack sandwich of cold meat cuts, deli relishes and a token leaf of iceberg lettuce. Every third slice of meat was casually tossed to Buster the dog who made sure that not a one reached the ground.
Buster back-flipped to catch a slice of glazed venison.
“Show-off,” said Roy.
“If I may continue,” said his father’s secretary, holding a handful of messages.
“Sorry,” said Roy, waving a mayo-streaked knife at him. “Do go on.”
The secretary read. “The chairs are already out and the tables are arriving at seven a.m. The woman from The Wild Bunch —”
“The Wild Bunch?”
“The florist. She wants to set up at seven a.m. also but I’ve held her back until eight. The balloon unicorn will be assembled in the marquee as soon as the staging area has been wrapped in silk, at seven forty-five. And there has been a telephone message from Mr Liddell-Grainger.”
“Wilbur? Is it about his court date?”
“No. He says he’ll pick you up from the Hannaford’s house in…” The secretary consulted the clock. “Twenty minutes.”
Roy put the final slice of bread on top of his massive sandwich.
“Pick me up?”
“In his helicopter.”
“Helicopter?”
The secretary looked at the piece of paper and read. “‘Got your message. Always happy to help a damsel in distress.’”
Roy licked a smidge of tomato relish from the edge of his thumb.
“Did he sound drunk?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” said the secretary. “What does he sound like when he’s sober?”
Ella felt wet sand on her face and sat up suddenly.
Had she been unconscious? Had she blacked out? She could remember only the fall from the balcony, the rush of the air and then...
She put her hand to her head. No pain, no bump. She looked up. The light of day was almost gone and she could only see how far she had fallen by the height of the lights in the house far above.
“No way should I have survived that,” she said. “Not that I’m complaining,” she told the world at large.
She was sitting on the woven rug which itself was draped across the edge of a rock and a sliver of sandy beach with one edge trailing in a rock pool. Waves broke against more prominent rocks a few yards further out from the cliff. Glass shards were sprinkled around her like so much razor-sharp confetti.
“Oh, no!”
The wreck of the glass coffin was off to one side and Natalie Hannaford lay, limbs splayed, in the midst of it.
; Ella scrambled wetly over to her mum and took her face in her hands. Natalie’s skin was cool but not cold. Ella frantically felt for a pulse at the young woman’s wrist and had to check once, calm herself and check again to be certain that, yes, she was still alive.
There was shouting above. Ella looked up. There were the silhouettes of men on the cliff top. Cautiously, the silhouettes began climbing down the cliff face.
“Okay,” said Ella (who recognised that things were patently not okay). “Tiny beach, middle of the night. Cliff on one side, sea on the other. A comatose mother, no way out and less than twenty-four hours to stop my dad committing bigamy. Have I missed anything?”
Ella had been talking to herself but the fact that there was no response made her look around with concern.
“Teapot?”
And then Ella saw the broken shards on a nearby rock. Not glass, but china, the shattered remains of the lid from a rare Wedgwood teapot.
“Oh, crap,” she said.
In the rock pool, the carpet rippled.
When Roy arrived at Gavin Hannaford’s house in Nether-cum-Studley, the back door was open and raised voices could be heard from upstairs. He entered the kitchen and called out a hello but, getting no response, proceeded upstairs.
“No daughter of mine — or her idiot friend — is wearing a veil to my wedding!” said a firm and implacable voice.
“Mrs Hannaford?” called Roy. “I mean, Ms Whuppie?”
“We can’t go looking like this!” said a despondent, near tearful voice.
“Petunia?” said Roy.
“Everyone knows that mango is good for the skin,” said a third voice: Lily.
“Agreed,” said Myra stridently. “However, one cannot simply slap it all over and then sit out in the garden for the afternoon and expect to be unmolested by flying insects.”
Roy reached the top of the stairs.
“You’ll just have to put on some foundation and make the best of it,” said Myra.
Roy knocked on the door. “Ladies?”
“Who is that?” demanded Myra.
“Roy. Roy Avenant.”
Lily shrieked. “You can’t see us the night before the wedding.”