House of Many Ways (19 page)

By the time she reached the town, Charmain was as hot as Waif, so hot that she almost wished she had a tongue to hang out like Waif’s did. She had to drop to a brisk walk, and even though she took the shortest way, it still seemed to take forever to reach Royal Square. At last she swung round the corner into the square and found her way blocked by a staring crowd. Half the citizens of High Norland seemed to be gathered there to stare at the new building standing a few feet away from the Royal Mansion. It was almost as tall as the Mansion, long and dark and coaly-looking, and it had a turret on each corner. It was the castle Charmain had last seen floating vaguely and sadly away across the
mountains. She stared at it in as much amazement as everyone else in the square.

“How did it get here?” people were asking one another, as Charmain tried to push her way toward it. “However did it
fit
?”

Charmain looked at the four roads that led into Royal Square and wondered the same thing. None of the roads was more than half as wide as the castle was. But there it sat, solid and tall, as if it had built itself in the square overnight. Charmain elbowed her way toward it with growing curiosity.

As she came close under its walls, blue fire leaped from one of the turrets and plunged toward her. Charmain ducked. Waif wriggled. Someone screamed. Everyone in the crowd backed away in a hurry and left Charmain standing there on her own facing a blue teardrop of flame hovering just level with her face. Waif’s frayed tail pounded on Charmain’s arm, wagging a greeting.

“If you’re going into the Mansion,” Calcifer crackled at them, “tell them to hurry it up. I can’t keep the castle here all morning.”

Charmain was almost too delighted to speak. “I thought you were dead!” she managed to say. “What
happened
?”

Calcifer bobbled in the air and seemed a trifle ashamed. “I must have knocked myself silly,” he confessed. “I was under a heap of rocks somehow. It took me all yesterday to worm my way out. When I did get out I had to find the castle. It had gone drifting off for miles. I’ve only just got it here, really. Tell Sophie. She was supposed to be pretending to leave today. And tell her I’m almost out of logs to burn. That should fetch her.”

“I will,” Charmain promised. “Are you
sure
you’re all right?”

“Just hungry,” Calcifer said. “Logs. Remember.”

“Logs,” Charmain agreed and went up the steps to the Mansion door, feeling suddenly that life was very much better and happier and freer than it had seemed before.

Sim opened the great door to her surprisingly quickly. He looked out at the castle and the staring crowd and shook his head. “Ah, Miss Charming,”
he said. “This is surely becoming a rather difficult morning. I’m not sure that His Majesty is quite ready to begin work in the library yet. But do please to come inside.”

“Thanks,” Charmain said, putting Waif down on the floor. “I don’t mind waiting. I have to speak to Sophie first anyway.”

“Sophie…er…Mrs. Pendragon, that is to say,” Sim said as he heaved the door shut, “seems to be some of the difficulty this morning. The Princess is highly put out and—But come this way and you will see what I mean.”

He shuffled away down the damp corridor, beckoning Charmain to follow. Before they even got to the corner, to the place where the stone stairs came down, Charmain could hear the voice of Jamal the cook, saying, “And how is a person to know what to cook when guests are always leaving and not leaving and then leaving again, I ask you!” This was followed by fruity growls from Jamal’s dog and quite a chorus of other voices.

Sophie was standing in the space below the stairs,
holding Morgan in her arms, with Twinkle clinging anxiously and angelically to her skirt, while the fat nursemaid stood by looking useless as usual. Princess Hilda stood by the stairs, more intensely royal and polite than Charmain had ever seen her. And the King was there too, red in the face and obviously in a right royal rage. One look at all their faces and Charmain knew that there was no point in mentioning logs here yet. Prince Ludovic was leaning on the end of the banisters, looking amused and superior. His lady was beside him, looking disdainful, in what was very nearly a ball dress, and to Charmain’s dismay, the colorless gentleman was there too, respectfully beside the Prince.

You wouldn’t think he’d just been robbing the King of all his money, the beast! Charmain thought.

“I call this an utter abuse of my daughter’s hospitality!” the King was saying. “You had no right to make promises you don’t intend to keep. If you were one of our subjects, we would forbid you to leave.”

Sophie said, trying to sound dignified, “I
do
mean to keep my promise, Sire, but you can’t expect me
to stay when my child has been threatened. If you’ll let me take him away to safety first, then I’ll be free to do whatever Princess Hilda wants.”

Charmain saw Sophie’s problem. With Prince Ludovic and the colorless gentleman standing there, she dared not say that she was only pretending to leave. And she did have to keep Morgan safe somehow.

The King said angrily, “Don’t give us any more false promises, young woman!”

By Charmain’s feet, Waif suddenly began growling. Behind the King, Prince Ludovic laughed and clicked his fingers. What followed took everyone by surprise. The nursemaid and the Prince’s young lady both burst out of their dresses. The nursemaid became a burly purple person with glistening muscles and bare, clawed feet. The Prince’s lady’s ball dress peeled away to show a thick mauve body in a black leotard that had holes cut in the back to make room for a pair of useless-looking small purple wings. Both lubbockins advanced on Sophie with big purple hands outstretched.

Sophie yelled something and whirled Morgan away from the clutching hands. Morgan yelled too, in surprise and terror. Everything else was drowned out by the high yapping of Waif and immense fruity growls from Jamal’s dog as it charged after the Prince’s lady. Before the dog could get near either lubbockin, the Prince’s lady, little wings whirring, had dived on Twinkle and snatched him up. Twinkle screamed and flailed blue velvet legs. The nursemaid lubbockin put herself in front of Sophie to stop her trying to rescue Twinkle.

“You see,” Prince Ludovic said, “you
are
leaving, or your child suffers.”

“This,” said Princess Hilda, “is an outra—”

She had got this far when Twinkle somehow got away. He twisted out of the lubbockin’s purple arms and went racing away up the stairs, shrieking, “Help! Help! Don’t let them touch me!”

Both lubbockins pushed Princess Hilda aside and charged upstairs after Twinkle. Princess Hilda reeled into the banisters and clung there, red in the face and suddenly far from stately. Charmain found herself racing upstairs after the lubbockins, shouting, “Leave him
alone
! How
dare
you!” Afterward,
she thought it was the sight of Princess Hilda looking like an ordinary person that did it.

Down below, Sophie hovered a second and then shoved Morgan into the arms of the King. “Keep him safe!” she gasped at the King. Then she hauled her skirts up and raced upstairs after Charmain, shouting, “You just stop that! Do you hear!”

Jamal loyally labored up after them, yelling, “Stop—thief! Stop—thief!” and panting hugely. Behind him clambered his dog, as loyal as its master, uttering huge rasping growls, while Waif ran backward and forward at the bottom of the stairs making a soprano thunderstorm of barking.

Prince Ludovic hung over the banisters opposite Princess Hilda and laughed at the lot of them.

The two lubbockins caught Twinkle near the top of the flight, in a blur of uselessly fanning wings and shiny mauve muscles. Twinkle surged and kicked mightily. For a moment, his blue velvet legs seemed to be big, strong man-sized legs. One big leg landed hard in the nursemaid lubbockin’s stomach. The other came down on the stairs and braced him while
Twinkle’s right fist landed on the second lubbockin’s nose with a meaty man-sized
smack.
Leaving both lubbockins in a heap on the landing, Twinkle sped nimbly on upward. Charmain saw him look earnestly backward and down as he whirled on to the next flight of stairs, making sure that she and Sophie and Jamal were still following.

They followed, because the two lubbockins picked themselves up with incredible speed and pelted upward after Twinkle. Charmain and Sophie pelted upstairs too, and Jamal and the dog toiled on behind.

Halfway up that next flight, the lubbockins caught Twinkle again. Again there were hefty smacking sounds and Twinkle got loose once more and once more sped upward, into the third flight of stairs. He made it most of the way to the top of those, before the lubbockins reached him and threw themselves on top of him. All three went down into a walloping, writhing heap of legs, arms, and fluttering purple wings.

By this time, Charmain and Sophie were flagging
and nearly out of breath. Charmain distinctly saw Twinkle’s angelic face emerge from the tangle of bodies and watch them carefully. When Charmain had toiled across the landing and started on that flight, followed by Sophie, who was clutching a stitch in her side, the bundle of bodies suddenly exploded apart. The purple bodies rolled aside and Twinkle, loose again, went fleeting up the final flight of wooden stairs. By the time the lubbockins had picked themselves up and started after him, Charmain and Sophie were not far behind. Jamal and his dog were a long way in the rear.

Up the wooden stairs they clattered, all the front five. Twinkle was climbing quite slowly now. Charmain was fairly sure this was artistic. But the lubbockins gave shouts of triumph and put on speed.

“Oh no! Not again!” Sophie groaned, as Twinkle banged open the door at the top and shot out onto the roof. The lubbockins shot out after him. When Charmain and Sophie toiled their way up there and stared out through the open door while they tried to
get their breaths back, they saw the two lubbockins sitting astride the golden roof. They were about halfway along and looking very much as if they wished they were anywhere else. There was no sign of Twinkle. “
Now
what is he up to?” Sophie said.

Almost as she said it, Twinkle appeared in the doorway, flushed and laughing angelic laughter, with his golden curls in a windblown halo. “Come and thee what
I’ve
found!” he said gleefully. “Jutht follow me.”

Sophie clutched her side and pointed out at the roof. “What about those two?” she panted. “Do we just hope they fall off?”

Twinkle grinned enchantingly. “Wait and thee!” He cocked his golden head, listening. Down below, the growling and scrabbling of the cook’s dog was getting louder. It had overtaken its master and was now snarling and clattering its way up the wooden stairs, panting horribly. Twinkle nodded and turned toward the roof. He made a small gesture and muttered a word. The two lubbockins perched out there suddenly shrank, with an unpleasant squelching
sound, and became two purplish small flopping things, wagging about on the ridge of the golden roof.

“What—?” said Charmain.

Twinkle’s grin grew, if possible, even more angelic. “Thquid,” he said blissfully. “The cook’th dog will thell itth thoul for thquid.”

Sophie said, “Eh? Oh, squids. I get you.”

The cook’s dog arrived as she spoke, with its legs going like pistons and drool hanging from its gnarly jaws. It shot out of the door and along the roof like a brown streak. Halfway along, its jaws went
snap-crunch,
and then
snap-crunch
again, and the squids were gone. Only then did the dog seem to notice where it was. It froze, with two legs on one side of the roof and two legs stiffly on the other, and whined piteously.

“Oh, poor thing!” Charmain said.

“The cook will rethcue it,” Twinkle said. “You two follow me clothely. You have to turn left through thith door before your foot toucheth the roof.” He stepped through the door leftward, and vanished.

Oh, I think I understand! Charmain thought. This was like the doors in Great-Uncle William’s house, except that it was unnervingly high up. She let Sophie step through first so that she could catch hold of Sophie’s skirt if Sophie went wrong. But Sophie was more used to magic than Charmain. She stepped left and vanished with no trouble at all. Charmain had a distinctly wobbly moment before she dared to follow. She shut her eyes and stepped. But her eyes shot open of their own accord as she went, and she had a sideways, sliding view of the golden roof giddily blazing past her. Before she could decide to scream “Ylf!” to invoke the flying spell, she was elsewhere, in a warm triangular space with rafters in the roof.

Sophie said a bad word. In the dim light, she had stubbed her toe on one of the many dusty bricks piled around the place.

“Naughty-naughty,” Twinkle said.

“Oh, shut up!” Sophie said, standing on one leg to hold her toe. “Why don’t you grow up?”

“Not yet. I told you,” Twinkle said. “We thtill
have Pwinthe Ludovic to detheive. Ah, look! Thith happened when I wath here jutht now too.”

A golden light was spreading over the largest pile of bricks. The bricks picked up the light and glowed golden as well, under the dust. Charmain realized that they were not bricks at all but ingots of solid gold. To make this quite clear, a golden banner appeared, floating in front of the ingots. Old-fashioned letters on it said:

“Huh!” Sophie snorted, letting go of her toe. “Melicot must have lisped just like you. Proper soulmates, you and he would have been! Same size in swelled heads. He couldn’t resist having his name up in lights, could he?”

“I don’t
need
my name up in lighth,” Twinkle said, with great dignity.

“Doh!” said Sophie.

“Where are we?” Charmain asked quickly,
because it rather looked as if Sophie was going to pick up a golden brick and brain Twinkle with it. “Is this the Royal Treasury?”

“No, under the golden roof,” Twinkle told her. “Cunning, ithn’t it? Everyone
knowth
the roof ithn’t really gold, tho nobody thinkth of looking for the gold here.” He tipped up one golden brick, thumped it on the floor to knock the dust off, and dumped it into Charmain’s hands. It was so heavy that she nearly dropped it. “You carry the evidenthe,” he said. “I think the King ith going to be very glad to thee thith.”

Sophie, who seemed to have recovered her temper a little, said, “That lisp! It’s driving me crazy! I think I hate it even more than I hate those golden curls!”

“But think how
utheful
,” Twinkle said. “Nathty Ludovic tried to kidnap
me,
and forgot all about Morgan.” He turned his big blue eyes soulfully up at Charmain. “I had a mitherable childhood. Nobody loved me. I think I have a right to try again, looking pwettier, don’t you?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Sophie said. “It’s all a pose. Howl, how do we get out of here? I left Morgan with the King, and Ludovic’s down there too. If we don’t get back downstairs quickly, Ludovic’s going to be thinking of grabbing Morgan any moment now.”

“And Calcifer asked me to tell you to be quick,” Charmain put in. “The castle’s waiting in Royal Square. I really came to tell you—”

Before she could finish her sentence, Twinkle had done something that made the dusty loft rotate around them, so that they were once more standing beside the open door to the roof. Beyond the door, Jamal was lying on his face along the roof ridge, shaking all over, with one hand stretched out, clutching his dog’s left hind leg. The dog was growling horrendously. It hated having its leg held and it hated the roof, but it was too frightened of falling to move.

Sophie said, “Howl, he’s only got one eye and he’s not balanced at all.”

“I know,” Twinkle said. “I know, I know!”

He waved a hand and Jamal came sliding backward toward the door, towing the snarling dog. “I may be dead!” Jamal gasped, as the two landed in a heap by Twinkle’s feet. “Why are we not dead?”

“Goodneth knowth,” Twinkle said. “Excuthe uth. We need to thee a King about a thlab of gold.”

He went pattering away down the stairs. Sophie raced after him and Charmain followed, lumbering rather because of the weight of the gold brick. Down they rushed, and down, and down again, until they swung round the corner at the top of the final flight. They arrived there just at the moment when Prince Ludovic shouldered Princess Hilda aside, barged past Sim, and pulled Morgan out of the King’s arms.

“Bad man!” Morgan boomed. He seized Prince Ludovic’s beautifully curled hair and dragged. The hair came off, leaving the Prince’s head smooth, bald, and purple.

“I told you so!” Sophie screamed, and seemed to take wing. She and Twinkle raced down the stairs side by side.

The Prince looked up at them and down at Waif, who was trying to bite his ankle, and tried to drag his wig out of Morgan’s hands. Morgan was beating Ludovic’s face with it, still screaming “BAD MAN!” The colorless gentleman called out, “This way, Highness!” and the two lubbockins raced for the nearest door.

“Not in the library!”
the King and the Princess shouted with one voice.

They meant it so much and were so commanding that the colorless gentleman actually stopped, turned, and led the Prince off in another direction. This gave Twinkle just time to catch up with Prince Ludovic and hang on to the prince’s trailing silken sleeve. Morgan gave a yell of delight and threw the wig down on Twinkle’s face, more or less blinding him. Twinkle was towed helplessly along to the next nearest door, with the colorless gentleman sprinting ahead and Waif chasing, barking up a shrill tempest, and Sophie behind Waif, shouting, “
Put him
DOWN
or I’ll
KILL
you!”
Behind her, the King and the Princess gave chase too.

“I say, this is a bit much!” the King called out. The Princess simply ordered them to “Stop!”

The Prince and the colorless gentleman tried to fling themselves and the children through the door and slam it in the faces of Sophie and the King. But the moment it slammed, Waif somehow burst the door open again and the rest of them came chasing through.

Charmain was last, with Sim. By this time her arms were aching. “Can you hold this?” she said to Sim. “It’s evidence.”

She passed Sim the gold brick while he was saying, “Certainly, miss.” His hands and arms went right down with the weight of it. Charmain left him juggling with it and scuttled into what turned out to be the big room with the rocking horses lining the walls. Prince Ludovic was standing in the middle of it, looking very strange with his bald purple head. He was now holding Morgan with one arm across Morgan’s neck and Waif was jumping and dancing round his feet, trying to reach Morgan. The wig was lying on the carpet like a dead animal.

“You’ll do what I say,” the Prince was saying, “or this child suffers.”

Charmain’s eye was caught by a sudden plunging blue flash from the fireplace. She looked and saw it was Calcifer, who must have come down the chimney in search of logs. He settled in among the unlighted wood there with a sigh of pleasure. When he saw Charmain looking at him, he winked one orange eye at her.

“Suffers, I say!” Prince Ludovic said dramatically.

Sophie looked at Morgan wriggling about in the Prince’s arms and then down at Twinkle, who was just standing there, staring at his fingers as if he had never seen them before. She glanced across at Calcifer and seemed to be trying not to laugh. Her voice came out wobbly as she said, “Your Highness, I warn you, you are making a big mistake.”

“You certainly are,” the King agreed, panting and red in the face from the chase. “We in High Norland do not as a rule go in for treason trials, but we shall take pleasure in trying
you
.”

“How can you?” the prince demanded. “I’m
not one of your subjects. I’m a lubbockin.”

“Then you cannot, by law, be King after my father,” Princess Hilda stated. Unlike the King, she was quite cool again and very royal.

“Oh, can’t I?” said the Prince. “My parent, the lubbock, says I am to be King. It intends to rule the country though me. It got rid of the wizard so that nothing can stand in our way. You must crown me King at once, or this child suffers. I’m keeping him as a hostage. Apart from that, what wrong have I done?”

“You’ve taken all their money!” Charmain called out. “I saw you—
both
you lubbockins—making the kobolds carry all their tax money to Castel Joie! And you’re to let that little boy go before he strangles!” Morgan’s face was bright red by then, and he was struggling frantically. I don’t think lubbockins have any real feelings, she thought. And I don’t understand why Sophie thinks it’s so funny!