The Palace Library
The
Palace Library
by
Steven Loveridge
Copyright
© Steven Loveridge 2012
All
Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any
form or by any means without written permission of the author.
For
Edward, Luli and Anouska
23. Tea with Great Uncle Jasper
Grace knew she wasn’t allowed in
the Long Gallery. She also knew she would be late for tea. But it
looked far too much fun. The room was vast, with old tapestries lining
the walls. Most of all, the floors were made for running and sliding.
Grace sped along the old carpets, then she skidded along the floorboards
between them.
At
the end of the room, Grace was surfing at high speed along the last piece of
polished floor and tripped on the edge of the carpet. She fell on her
face with a thud and tried not to cry out in case she was heard. Then she
saw the dog. Huge, like a giant hairy greyhound and at least as tall as
Grace, it seemed to be snarling. She did the only sensible thing she
could think of. She shut her eyes tight, held her head in her hands, and
hoped it would go away.
What
seemed like an age later, she opened one eye and saw the dog was just a picture
on a tapestry, not a real dog at all. “Silly me! You can’t be
frightened of a picture,” said Grace to herself, finding her own voice
reassuring, even though she did not really feel it. She looked at the
tapestry again. The dog was actually a deerhound, and seemed much happier
than the snarling vision Grace thought she had seen. She stood up and
gently touched the woven fabric of the tapestry to check, stroking the dog’s
shoulder as if it was real. The picture leapt to life. The dog
emerged from the tapestry, wriggled and turned on its back with a gentle whine,
as if it wanted to be stroked more.
This
was quite enough for Grace. She leapt up, ran to the side of the Long
Gallery and stood with her back to the wall, breathing very quickly and
unsteadily. This time she kept her eyes open. Once again, the
tapestry became quite normal, but the picture had changed. The dog was
now lying on its front, looking at her.
Grace
slowly pushed herself along the wall, trying not to be noticed. It was
then that she discovered the door. She could have sworn the door had not
been there before. Grace was only eight years old - nearly nine, she told
people - so she really noticed this door. It was exactly the right size
for her and had a round stone arch over it with a zigzag pattern. Adults
would have had to bend nearly double to get through, so maybe it was just a cupboard.
But it didn’t look like a cupboard and it looked very old. It was made of
heavy dark wood and it fascinated her.
All
Grace’s instincts told her to run away from the scary tapestry, but the door
seemed to say to her: “Come on. Try me.”
She
drew in a big breath, shut her eyes tight and counted to 10. Opening her
eyes again the tapestry still seemed normal, so she decided to turn the handle
on the door and try pushing it. It seemed locked. She tried again
without it working. It still wouldn’t move. Then, she gave it a big
shove and it opened so quickly that Grace slipped and fell on her face again.
After a pause, there was a thump and then another thump and then three more in
quick succession. Thump… thump… thump! This time Grace had kept her
eyes open. What she saw was quite unexpected. She was looking down
at the floor of a huge library from the very top of a bookshelf. This was
no ordinary bookshelf. It was a very tall bookshelf, and the door had opened
directly onto it. The thumps were books that had fallen off and were
lying on the floor beneath her. They looked miles away. As Grace
looked around the room, she saw it was full of thousands and thousands of old
books. The odd thing was that it was full of sunlight. Yet Grace
knew that outside it was grey and raining. Terrified, whilst holding onto
the shelf and trying not to fall, she noticed a very old man with a white
beard, wearing a magnificent blue tailcoat covered in gold swirly brocade.
“Hello
there,” the man said cheerfully, in a slightly bumbling way. “I wasn’t
expecting you. No one’s used that door for years. Hold on and I’ll
find you a ladder.”
Grace
couldn’t move. Her fingers gripped the shelf so hard that her knuckles
went white. The man pushed a huge ladder on wheels towards her. It
was like a very smart wooden fire engine ladder, but it was so tall that the
top swayed madly from side to side. She thought it might hit her.
This
was definitely too much for Grace. She picked herself up and quickly ran
back down the Long Gallery the way she had come. Just before she left the
room, she turned and everything seemed normal. She thought she would just
check on the weather outside again, so she stood on tiptoes to see out.
Sure enough, the rain was battering on the windowpanes.
Then
the man with the white beard poked his head through the tiny door and looked at
her. Towering over him was the dog. “There’s no need to run
away. I’ve put the ladder up now. Do come back.”
Grace
saw the sun shining through the door and couldn’t understand it, so she ran
from the corridor as fast as she could. The best thing to do would be to
tell her cousins Harry and Eleanor. They could explore together and maybe
Harry, who was 12 and the oldest of the three, would have an explanation.
2. Chocolate Cake
The problem with The Palace
Library is that no one knows where it is. In fact, very few people know
that it even exists. Of the very few people who know it exists, very few
know how to find it. Grace had discovered it and was longing to share her
news and find out more.
Unfortunately,
before she could do that, Horrible Hair Bun found her and shouted at her.
The children used this name for the housekeeper when they knew she couldn’t
hear. Her grey hair was always tied up in a very tight bun at the back of
her head. It had wispy bits sticking out, which matched the curly bits of
hair on her chin. The children just wished they could pluck them out,
especially when she kissed them goodnight and they tickled and prickled.
Grace
was late for tea. She was made to sit in silence and watch Eleanor and
Harry eat their chocolate pudding while she was only allowed dry spaghetti
without sauce.
Grace
could hardly contain herself, but whenever she tried to talk, Horrible Hair Bun
just shouted, “Quiet.”
Eventually,
just before bedtime, Grace explained to Harry and Eleanor what had happened.
Harry
was rather abrupt. “Don’t be silly Grace. You’re making it
up. There’s no such thing as a magic room with magic dogs. Anyway,
I’ve been in Great Uncle Jasper’s library. It’s full of books for sure,
but it’s not that big.” Then he went off to his own bedroom.
Eleanor
looked at Harry as he left and thought he was being rather mean. It
wasn’t really like him. She realised that they had ignored Grace all
day. Eleanor saw a lot of her brother Harry, but not so much of her
cousin. It was their chance to catch up and play since they were all
together for the summer holidays at Great Uncle Jasper’s house. And they
ought to be nicer to Grace. She’d been an orphan since her parents had
died in a car crash several years earlier. Being together was the whole
point of coming to their uncle’s house after all. They could get together
and enjoy being outside in the vast gardens and grounds, especially since Harry
and Eleanor’s house only had a tiny back yard.
The
problem was that there was so much rain that August, everyone was
miserable. They couldn’t go outside. Water was
seeping
in through the window frames and Horrible Hair Bun
had placed buckets to catch drops coming through the ceiling. Everyone
was bored and there was nothing to do but stay inside.
Grace
had been very fed up earlier that day. Harry and Eleanor weren’t being
deliberately mean to her, but it felt as if they were. They were ignoring
her and playing without her. That was when Grace had begun to explore
different parts of the house on her own. It was big enough.
Eleanor
tried to make Grace feel better, but even she added, “Magic isn’t real,
Grace. Why not go to bed now and maybe you can show us the big room in
the morning.”
Grace
began to wonder if she had just imagined it after all. Never mind.
She would check tomorrow - but when the others were not looking, so that she
could be sure.
The next afternoon, Grace told
Harry and Eleanor that she was fed up with the game they were playing and she
slipped away. They both seemed to have forgotten about the night before
anyway. Feeling very nervous, Grace went back to the Long Gallery and
found the door again. She looked at the tapestry outside the door and
thought it was strange that the dog woven into the pattern seemed to be
sleeping, and was not snarling or smiling. This time she certainly wasn’t
going to touch it. Grace hesitated at the door, and then pushed it.
The
door opened easily enough this time and she found the funny ladder she had seen
swaying the previous day, but now it was fixed to the top of the
bookshelf. The steps were steep, made of highly polished wood with a
brass handrail on one side. Grace realised it would have been more
sensible to have gone down backwards, but then she might have missed everything
there was to see. So she went down very gingerly, step by step, and
enjoyed looking at the sun shining on all the leather bound books. There
were 29 steps in all. Grace counted them out loud as she went. At
the bottom the cheerful man in the blue tailcoat and white beard appeared from
nowhere and said, “Hello. I’m so glad you have come back. Welcome
to The Palace Library. It’s time for tea, I think. Shall we have
chocolate cake?”