House of Many Ways (14 page)

“Probably not,” said the King. “But my daughter is partial to murder mysteries too. Perhaps you should ask her.”

“Thank you. I will,” Calcifer said, and vanished.

The King shook his head and went back to his diaries. And, as if Calcifer had given Twinkle’s spell a jog, Charmain instantly noticed that the diary the King was flipping through was glowing a faint, pale green. So was the next thing in her own pile, which was a rather squashed scroll, done up with tarnished golden tape.

Charmain took a large breath and asked, “Anything interesting in that diary, Sire?”

“Well,” said the King, “it’s rather nasty, really. This is the diary of one of my great-grandmother’s ladies-in-waiting. Full of gossip. Just now, she’s dreadfully shocked because the King’s sister died giving birth to a son, and the midwife seems to have
killed the baby. Said it was purple and it frightened her. They’re going to put the poor silly soul on trial for murder.”

Charmain’s mind flew to herself and Peter looking up “lubbock” in Great-Uncle William’s encyclopedia. She said, “I suppose she thought the baby was a lubbockin.”

“Yes, very superstitious and ignorant,” the King said. “No one believes in lubbockins these days.” He went back to reading.

Charmain wondered whether to say that that long-ago midwife may have been quite right. Lubbocks existed. Why not lubbockins too? But she was sure the King would not believe her, and she scribbled a note about it instead. Then she picked up the squashed scroll. But before she unrolled it, it occurred to her to look along the row of boxes where she had put the papers she had already read, in case any of them glowed too. Only one did, quite faintly. When Charmain pulled it out, she found it was the bill from Wizard Melicot for making the roof look like gold. This was puzzling, but
Charmain made a note about that too, before she finally undid the tarnished gold tape and spread the scroll out.

It was a family tree of the kings of High Norland, rather scribbly and hasty, as if it was only a plan for a much more careful copy. Charmain had trouble reading it. It was full of crossings out and little arrows leading to scribbled additions and lopsided circles with notes inside them. “Sire,” she said, “can you explain this to me?”

“Let’s see.” The King took the scroll and spread it out on the table. “Ah,” he said. “We’ve got the fair copy of this hanging in the throne room. I haven’t properly looked at it for years, but I know it’s much plainer than this family tree—just names of rulers and who they married and so on. This one seems to have notes on it, written by several different people by the looks of it. See. Here’s my ancestor, Adolphus I. The note beside him is in really old writing. It says…hmm…‘Raised walls to the towne by virtue of the Elfgift.’ Not much sign of those walls nowadays, is there? But they say that
Embankment Street down beside the river is part of the old walls—”

“Excuse me, Sire,” Charmain interrupted, “but what
is
the Elfgift?”

“No idea, my dear,” the King said. “I wish I knew. It was said to bring prosperity and protection to the kingdom, whatever it was, but it seems to have vanished long ago. Hmm. This is
fascinating.
” The King ran his large finger across to one note after another. “Here, beside my ancestor’s wife, it says, ‘Was Elf-woman, so called.’ They always told me that Queen Matilda was only half elf, but here is her son, Hans Nicholas, labeled as ‘Elf childe,’ so maybe that’s why he never got to be King. Nobody really trusts elves. Great mistake, in my opinion. They crowned Hans Nicholas’s son instead, a very boring person called Adolphus II, who never did anything much. He’s the one King on this scroll who doesn’t have a note beside him. Tells you something. But
his
son—here he is—Hans Peter Adolphus, he has a note that says, ‘Reaffirmed the safetie of the realm in partnership with the Elfgift,’
whatever that means. My dear, this is so interesting. Would you do me the favor of making a good readable copy of all these people’s names and the notes beside them? You can miss out cousins and things if they don’t have notes. Would you mind very much?”

“Not at all, Sire,” Charmain said. She had been wondering how she could write all this down secretly for Sophie and Twinkle, and this was how.

She spent the rest of that day making two copies of the scroll. One was a muddly first draft, where she was constantly having to ask the King about this note or that one, and the second copy was in her best writing for the King himself. She became as interested as the King was. Why did Hans Peter III’s nephew take to “banditry in the hills”? What made Queen Gertrude “a witche to be feared”? And why was her daughter Princess Isolla labeled “blueman lover”?

The King could not answer those questions, but he said he had a good idea why Prince Nicholas Adolphus was labeled “drunkarde.” Had Charmain looked at where it said the prince’s father, Peter
Hans IV, was called “a dark tyrant and a wizarde besides”? “Some of my ancestors were not nice people,” he said. “I bet this one bullied poor Nicholas horribly. They tell me it can be like that when elf blood goes sour, but I think it’s just people, really.”

Quite late in the day, when Charmain was down near the bottom of the scroll, where nearly every ruler seemed to be called Adolphus, or Adolphus Nicholas, or Ludovic Adolphus, she was fascinated to come upon a Princess Moina who “married a great Lorde of Strangia, but died giving birth to a loathesome lubbockin.” Charmain was sure Moina was the one in the lady-in-waiting’s diary. It looked as if
someone
had believed the midwife’s story. She decided not to mention this to the King.

Three lines farther down she came upon the King himself, “much lost among his books,” and Princess Hilda, “refused marriage with a kinge, 3 lordes, and a wizard.” They were rather squeezed to one side to make room for the descendants of the King’s uncle, Nicholas Peter, who seemed to have had a great many children. The children’s children filled the
whole bottom row. How on earth do they remember who is which? Charmain wondered. Half the girls were called Matilda and the other half Isolla, while the boys were mostly Hans or Hans Adolphus. You could only tell them apart by the tiny scribbled notes, calling one Hans “a great lout, drowned” and another “murdered by accident” and yet another “died abroad.” The girls were worse. One Matilda was “a tedious proude girl,” another “to be feared like Q. Gertrude,” and a third “of no good nature.” The Isollas were all either “poisoned” or “of evil ways.” The King’s heir, Ludovic Nicholas, stood out from what Charmain began to think was a truly dreadful family, by having no note beside him at all, like the dull Adolphus of long ago.

She wrote it all out, names, notes, and all. By the end of the afternoon, her right forefinger was quite numb and blue with ink.

“
Thank
you, my dear,” the King said as Charmain handed him her good copy. He started reading through it so eagerly that Charmain was easily able to gather up her scribbly copy and her other notes
and cram them into her pockets, without the King seeing. As she stood up, the King looked up to say, “I hope you will forgive me, my dear. I shall not be needing you for the next two days. The Princess insists that I come out of the library and play host to young Prince Ludovic this weekend. She is not at her best with male visitors, you know. But I shall see you again on Monday, I hope.”

“Yes, of course,” Charmain said. She collected Waif, who came pottering toward her from the kitchen, and set off toward the front door, wondering what to do with her copy of the scroll. She was not sure she trusted Twinkle.
Could
you trust someone who looked like a little boy and obviously wasn’t, quite? And then there’s what Peter said Great-Uncle William said about fire demons. Can you trust someone that dangerous? she thought unhappily as she went.

She found herself face to face with Sophie. “How did it go? Did you find anything?” Sophie asked, smiling at her.

It was such a friendly smile that Charmain
decided she could trust Sophie anyway. She hoped. “I got some things,” she said, pulling papers out of her pockets.

Sophie took them even more eagerly and gratefully than the King had taken his good copy. “Marvelous!” she said. “These should at least give us a clue. We’re really in the dark at the moment. Howl—I mean, Twinkle—says divining spells just don’t seem to work here. And that’s odd, because I don’t think either the King or the Princess do magic, do you? Enough to block a divining spell, I mean.”

“No,” Charmain said. “But a lot of their ancestors did. And there’s more to the King than meets your eye.”

“You’re right,” said Sophie. “Are you able to stay and go through these notes with us?”

“Ask me things on Monday,” Charmain told her. “I have to go and see my father before his bakery closes.”

The shop was closed when Charmain reached it, but she could see, dimly through the glass, someone moving about inside, cleaning up. Charmain rapped on the door and, when that did no good, put her face to the glass and shouted,
“Let me in!”

The person inside at length shuffled over and opened the door enough to put his face round it. He proved to be an apprentice about Peter’s age whom Charmain had never met. “We’re closed,” he said. His eyes went to Waif in Charmain’s arms. The open door had let out a gust of recent doughnut
smells, and Waif had her nose into it, sniffing rapturously. “And we don’t allow dogs,” he said.

“I need to see my father,” Charmain said.

“You can’t see anyone,” the apprentice said. “The bake house is still busy.”

“My father is Mr. Baker,” Charmain told him, “and I know he’ll see me. Let me in.”

“How do I know that’s the truth?” the apprentice said suspiciously. “It’s as much as my job’s worth—”

Charmain knew this was the sort of time when she needed to be polite and tactful, but she ran out of patience, just as she had with the kobolds. “Oh, you silly boy!” she interrupted him. “If my father knew you weren’t letting me in, he’d sack you on the spot! Go and fetch him if you don’t believe me!”

“Hoity-toity!” said the apprentice. But he backed away from the door, saying, “Come in, then, but you leave the dog outside, understand?”

“No, I don’t,” Charmain said. “She might be stolen. She’s a highly valuable magical dog, I’ll have you know, and even the
King
lets her in. If
he
can, so can you.”

The apprentice looked scornful. “Tell that to the lubbock on the hills,” he said.

Things might have become very difficult then, if Belle, one of the ladies who served in the shop, had not come in through the bake house door just then. She was tying on her headscarf and saying, “I’m leaving now, Timmy. Mind you wash down all the—” when she saw Charmain. “Oh, hallo, Charmain! Want to see your dad, do you?”

“Hallo, Belle. Yes, I do,” Charmain said. “But he won’t let me bring Waif in.”

Belle looked at Waif. Her face melted into a smile. “What a sweet little creature! But you know what your dad thinks of dogs coming in here. Better leave her in the shop for Timmy to look after. You’ll take care of her, won’t you, Timmy?”

The apprentice made a grudging noise and glowered at Charmain.

“But I warn you, Charmain,” Belle continued in her usual chatty way, “they’re very busy through there. There’s an order on for a special cake. So you won’t stay long, will you? Put your little dog
down here and she’ll be quite safe. And, Timmy, I want those shelves cleaned down
properly
this time, or I’ll have words to say to you tomorrow. Ta-ra, night-night!”

Belle swept out of the shop and Charmain swept past her into it. Charmain did have thoughts of sweeping onward into the bake house with Waif, but she knew Waif’s record with food was not good. So she deposited Waif beside the counter, gave Timmy a cold nod—And he’ll hate me for the rest of his life, she thought—and stalked on alone past the empty glass cases and the cool marble shelves and the clusters of white tables and chairs, where the citizens of High Norland were accustomed to sit for coffee and rich cakes. Waif gave a desperate whine as Charmain pushed open the bake house door, but Charmain hardened her heart and pushed the door shut behind herself.

It was busy as a hive in there, and tropically hot, and full of scents that would certainly have driven Waif mad with greed. There was the smell of new dough and dough cooking, the sweet scent of buns
and tarts and waffles, overlaid with savory smells from pasties and quiches, which were all overlaid in turn by strong odors of cream and flavored icing from the large, many-layered cake that several people were decorating on the table nearest the door. Rosewater! Charmain thought, inhaling those scents. Lemon, strawberry, almonds from south Ingary, cherries, and peaches!

Mr. Baker was striding from worker to worker, instructing, encouraging, and inspecting as he went. “Jake, you have to put your back into kneading that dough,” Charmain heard him saying as she came in. And a moment later, “A light hand with that pastry, Nancy. Don’t
hammer
it, or it’ll be like a rock.” A moment after that, he was off down to the baking ovens at the other end, telling the young man there which oven to use. And wherever he went, he got instant attention and obedience.

Her father, Charmain knew, was a King in his bake house—more of a King than the real King in the Royal Mansion, she thought. His white hat sat on his head like a crown. It suited him too,
Charmain thought. He was thin-faced and ginger-haired like she was herself, though much more freckly.

She ran him down by the stoves, where he was tasting a savory meat filling and telling the girl making it that there was too much spice in it.

“It tastes
good
, though!” the girl protested.

“Maybe,” said Mr. Baker, “but there’s a world of difference between a good taste and a perfect one, Lorna. You cut along and help them with the cake, or they’ll be at it all night, and I’ll have a go rescuing this filling.” He took the saucepan off the flames as Lorna hurried off, looking mightily relieved. He turned round with it and saw Charmain. “Hallo, sweetheart! I wasn’t expecting
you
!” A slight doubt came over him. “Did your mother send you?”

“No,” Charmain said. “I came by myself. I’m looking after Great-Uncle William’s house. Remember?”

“Oh, so you are,” her father said. “What can I do for you?”

“Er…,” Charmain said. This was hard to say
now that she had been reminded what an expert her father was.

He said, “Just a moment,” and turned to search through rows of powdered herbs and spices on a shelf beside the stoves. He selected a jar, uncapped it, and shook just a sprinkle of something into the saucepan. He stirred the mixture, tasted it, and nodded. “That’ll do now,” he said, putting the saucepan down to cool. Then he looked questioningly at Charmain.

“I don’t know how to cook, Dad,” she blurted out, “and the food for the evening comes raw in Great-Uncle William’s house. You don’t happen to have any instructions written down, do you? For apprentices or something?”

Mr. Baker pulled at his freckly chin with his clean, clean hand, thinking. “I always told your mother you’d need to know
some
of those things,” he said. “Respectable or not. Let’s see. Most of what I’ve got will be a bit advanced for you. Patisserie and gourmet sauces and such. I expect my apprentices to come to me knowing the basics, these
days. But I think I still may have some of the elementary,
simple
notes from back when I started. Let’s go and see, shall we?”

He led the way across the bake house, among the thronging, busy cooks, to the far wall. There were a few rickety shelves there, piled higgledy-piggledy with notebooks, pieces of paper with jam stains on them, and fat files covered with floury fingerprints. “Wait a moment,” Mr. Baker said, pausing by the leftovers table beside these shelves. “I’d better give you some food to go on with, while you’re reading up on it, hadn’t I?”

Charmain knew this table well. Waif would have loved it. On it were any pieces of baking that had not turned out quite perfect: broken tarts, lopsided buns, and cracked pasties, together with all the things from the shop that had not been sold that day. The bake house workers were allowed to carry these home if they wanted. Mr. Baker picked up one of the sacking bags the workers used and began swiftly filling it. A whole cream cake went in at the bottom, followed by a layer of pasties, then buns,
doughnuts, and finally a large cheese flan. He left the bulging bag on the table while he searched about on the shelves.

“Here we are,” he said, pulling forth a floppy brown notebook, dark with old grease. “I
thought
I still had it! This was from when I started as a lad in the restaurant on Market Place. I was as ignorant as you are then, so it should be just what you need. Do you want the spells that go with the recipes?”

“Spells!”
said Charmain. “But, Dad—!”

Mr. Baker looked as guilty as Charmain had ever seen him. His freckles, for a moment, were drowned in redness. “I know, I know, Charmain. Your mother would have seventy fits. She will insist that magic is low, vulgar stuff. But I was born a magic user and I can’t help myself, not when I’m cooking. We use magic all the time, here in the bake house. Be a good, kind girl and don’t let your mother know. Please?” He pulled a thin yellow notebook off the shelves and flapped it wistfully. “These, in here, are all plain, simple spells that work. Do you want this?”

“Yes,
please
!” Charmain said. “And of course I won’t say a word to Mother. I know what she’s like as well as you do.”

“Good girl!” said Mr. Baker. He swiftly slid both notebooks down into the bag beside the cheese flan and passed Charmain the bag. They grinned at one another like conspirators. “Happy eating,” Mr. Baker said. “Good luck.”

“You too,” Charmain said. “And
thank
you, Dad!” She stretched up and kissed him on his floury, freckled cheek, just below the cook’s hat, and then made her way out of the bake house.

“You lucky thing!” Lorna called out to her while Charmain was pushing open the door. “I had my eye on that cream cake he gave you.”

“There were two of them,” Charmain called over her shoulder, as she went through into the shop.

There, to her surprise, she found Timmy sitting on the glass-and-marble counter with Waif in his arms. He explained, rather defensively, “She was really upset when you left her. Started howling her head off.”

Perhaps we won’t be lifelong enemies after all! Charmain thought, as Waif leaped out of Timmy’s arms, shrieking with delight. She danced about Charmain’s ankles and generally made such a noise that Timmy evidently did not hear Charmain thank him. Charmain made sure to give a great smile and to nod at him as she went out into the street, with Waif frisking and squeaking round her feet.

The shop and bake house were on the other side of the town from the river and the embankment. Charmain could have cut across to there, but it was shorter—with Waif having to walk, because Charmain was carrying the bulging bag—to go along High Street instead. High Street, although it was one of the main streets, was far from seeming that way. It was twisting and narrow, with no sidewalks, but the shops on either side were some of the best. Charmain walked slowly along, looking into shops to give Waif time to keep up, dodging late shoppers and people just strolling before supper, and thinking. Her thoughts were divided between satisfaction—Peter has no
excuse
now for making any more
horrible food—and amazement. Dad is a
magic user
! He always has been. Up until then, Charmain had felt a lot of hidden guilt at the way she had experimented with
The Boke of Palimpsest
, but she found that had gone now. I think I may have inherited Dad’s magic! Oh,
great
! Then I know I
can
do spells. But why does Dad always do what Mother says? He insists on me being respectable as much as Mother does. Honestly,
parents
! Charmain found she was feeling very jolly altogether about this.

At this point there was a tremendous clatter of horse hooves coming up behind her, mixed with rumbling and deep shouts of “Clear the way! Clear the way!”

Charmain glanced round and found riders in some kind of uniform filling the street, coming so fast that they were almost on top of her already. People on foot were flattening themselves against shops and walls on either side of the street. Charmain whirled round, reaching for Waif. She tripped over someone’s doorstep and half-knelt on the bag of food, but she got Waif and managed not
to drop the bag. Holding Waif and the bag in both arms, she backed against the nearest wall, while horses’ legs and men’s feet in stirrups pounded past in front of her nose. Those were followed by a whole string more of galloping horses, shining black ones in long leather traces and a whip cracking across their backs. After them a great colorful coach thundered by, glinting with gold and glass and painted shields, with two men in feathered hats swaying on the back of it. This was followed by yet more uniforms on horses, galloping deafeningly.

Then they were gone, away down the street and round the next bend. Waif whimpered. Charmain sagged against the wall. “What on earth was
that
?” she said to the person flattened against the wall beside her.

“That,” said the woman, “was Crown Prince Ludovic. On his way to visit the King, I suppose.” She was a fair and slightly fierce-looking lady, who reminded Charmain just a little of Sophie Pendragon. She was clutching a small boy, who might have reminded Charmain of Morgan, except
that he was not making any noise at all. He looked to be shocked white, rather the way Charmain felt herself.

“He ought to know better than to go that fast in a narrow street like this!” Charmain said angrily. “Someone could have been hurt!” She looked into her bag and discovered that the flan had broken in half and folded up, which made her angrier than ever. “Why couldn’t he have gone down the embankment, where it’s wide?” she said. “Doesn’t he care?”

“Not a lot,” said the woman.

“Then I shudder to think what he’ll be like when he’s King!” Charmain said. “He’s going to be
dreadful
!”

The woman gave her a strange, meaningful stare. “I didn’t hear you say that,” she said.

“Why?” asked Charmain.

“Ludovic doesn’t like criticism,” the woman said. “He has lubbockins to enforce his feelings.
Lubbockins
, you hear, girl! Let’s hope I was the only one who heard what you said.” She heaved the little boy higher in her arms and walked away.

Charmain thought about this as she trudged through the town with Waif under one arm and the bag pulling at the other. She found herself hoping hard that
her
King, Adolphus X, would go on living for a very long time. Or I might have to start a revolution, she thought. And, my goodness, it feels a long way to Great-Uncle William’s house today!