The Tale of Mally Biddle (26 page)

Galen nodded and hurried back to give him another pot of tea. Bob waved merrily to Mally. His cheeks were flushed and the twinkle had returned to his eyes.

On her way back to the castle, Mally deliberately took a detour. She stood in the central square, looking at Bosc Bell Tower. She stared at it in curiosity. A knight leaned against the bolted door, picking at his teeth.

Bob had wanted to take back some power … had wanted to take back something that had once been his—had once been the people’s. It might have been done in a foolish drunken state of mind, but the desire was real. Mally suddenly wondered if there was something in the tower that Molick didn’t want anyone seeing. But that seemed silly. What would Molick hide in a bell tower that could endanger him if discovered? And what
would
endanger Molick? The only thing he was concerned about was keeping the people too scared to fight against him. And one way to do that was to lock people out of places that had once been peaceful safe havens … places that were once very important to the people … places like …

Mally gasped so loudly that the knight sitting at the tower’s e
ntrance stared at her. The bell tower wasn’t the only building that had been locked up. How could she have overlooked it? She spun around and ran to the castle. It took her nearly twenty minutes to find Lita and when she finally did she dragged her into a broom closet.

“Mally—what—Mally, what’s wrong with you?” Lita e
xclaimed as she was crammed against pails and mops.

“The catacombs.” Mally was so energized she could hardly stand still, but to keep from showering Lita in dust rags, she tried to contain herself. “
The princess’s tomb is in the catacombs
.”

Lita froze.

“But—but what would we learn by going in there?”

“We’d know once and for all if she’s dead,” Mally said in a rushed undertone.

“But it’s locked,” Lita argued, staring at Mally as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “Molick and King Salir are the only ones with the key.”

“We’ll just have to get it from one of them, then.”

Lita looked at her, stunned, before saying, “Do you have any idea what you just said?”

“Yes.” Mally was startled at the conviction in her own voice. “It’s time we found out.”

“But there’s no way of getting in!” Lita hissed, now looking sick. “We’re never going to get that key from either one of those men!”

“We’ll find a way,” said Mally firmly. “We’re going to the ca
tacombs.”

27
The Catacombs

Sir Illius Molick was a man of habit. Order was soothing. Calming. Disorder was not. That was probably why the few su
ccessful revolts by the rebel group had upset him so deeply. Sir Illius Molick simply did not approve of disorder. 

But a man of habit was a man easily led into a trap.

Every night after dinner, Molick joined King Salir in His Highness’s chambers to discuss who knew what—though Mally suspected the conversation revolved around his number one problem: the rebels. Then, at precisely ten o’clock, Molick would join his favorite knights in his personal study. They talked, smoked and drank. It was this nightly gathering that Mally and Lita began to consider seriously.

Mally and Lita spent a whole week planning. Mally wasn’t even bothering to kid herself. If they were caught trying to steal the key from Molick, they wouldn’t receive a short trip into the dungeons. Stealing something off Molick’s person would be a serious crime.

The only reason they had focused on Molick instead of King Salir was because Molick required that his favorite drink be brought to him during these nightly gatherings. King Salir had his own private stock of wines to choose from in his chamber, leaving him in no need of a servant to pour him a goblet full.

Nathan always handled Molick’s wine.

“He’s going to be really suspicious that we want to take the wine this one night,” said Lita in a hushed undertone as they walked to the Servants’ Chamber for breakfast. “Should we tell him why?”

Mally shook her head.

“He’ll ask too many questions,” Mally whispered, though the idea of Nathan joining them was highly tempting. “We’ll just have to insist. ‘You’ve been working so hard, Nathan. Let us take this one and you turn in early.’ Things like that.”

“Things like that,” Lita repeated nervously.

Mally shot Lita what she hoped was a confidence-boosting smile, but the only thing that changed on Lita’s pale face was her mouth tightening.

They entered the Servants’ Chamber and easily found Nathan sitting beside Gerda. Seeing the two of them together sparked an idea in Mally’s brain.

“Good morning, Nathan,” Mally greeted him cheerfully. She buttered him a muffin.

“Thank you,” said Nathan, his eyebrows rising in mild surprise.

“Say Nathan, Lita and I were thinking, why don’t you let us take care of Molick’s wine tonight?” Mally said nonchalantly.

Nathan’s eyebrows rose into his hair. Gerda stared at Mally. Lita shuffled her feet.

“Why would you want to do that?” Nathan asked.

“It’s our treat. You and Gerda hardly get to spend any time alone together.” Mally stopped there, hoping that Gerda grabbed hold of her hint.

Gerda’s eyes widened dramatically and she said eagerly, tur
ning to Nathan, “Oh, let them do it, Nathan. Just for tonight.”

Nathan couldn’t begin to argue, with Gerda smiling so brightly, and he nodded to Mally and Lita.

“He always takes a bottle of black currant wine.”

“At ten o’clock?”

Nathan nodded.

Jubilant, Mally turned on her heel and walked away from N
athan and Gerda. She wound her arm through Lita’s and whispered in her ear, “Now we get some dreamless sleep.”

It could have been that the reason Lita was so pale was that she had agreed to cause a major distraction in Archie’s kitchen, something that was just as dangerous as stepping on a knight’s toes. Upon entering the kitchen, Lita quickly scanned the busy room until her eyes landed upon a giant stack of apples, piled precariously on a table. Shooting Mally a knowing glance, she strode straight toward the mountainous stack.

“Hello, Archie!” she said so loudly that Archie and Rosa flinched. They hadn’t heard them enter. Lita slapped Archie on the back.

“Good morning,” Archie replied, his mustache twitching peevishly.

“Say, this is quite the pile of apples,” Lita commented. “What are you going to do with all of them?”

Sensing the impending explosion, Mally began to inch slowly backwards toward the cabinet where Rosa kept her herbs.

“Be careful around those!” Archie yelled, but it was too late. Lita had ‘accidentally’ bumped into the table, sending the mou
ntain of apples rolling. Like a waterfall, they cascaded onto the floor, covering every inch of stone.

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry!” Lita kept repeating as Rosa and Archie dove for the table, trying to catch the ones that hadn’t yet fallen.

Quick as a flash, Rosa and Archie fully occupied, Mally yanked the cabinet doors open, found the jar labeled ‘Dreamless Sleep’ and poured a good handful of the tea mixture into a very thin sack. She replaced the jar, closed the cabinet, pocketed the sack, and spun around to see Lita, Archie, and Rosa on their hands and knees retrieving apples. Somehow, all the apples Lita touched went sailing across the room.

“Out! Out! OUT!” Archie screamed, looking more and more like a raging bull. Lita stumbled in her haste to follow Mally out of the kitchen.

“Did you get it?” Lita asked breathlessly, her cheeks flushed from the excitement of goading Archie and living to tell about it.

Mally patted her pocket and nodded.

“So all we have left to do, is put this into the bottle and wait for them to fall asleep,” said Mally confidently.

The grin upon Lita’s face faltered slightly.

“My aunt always told me, ‘Never poke a sleeping cat in the eye.’ I wonder if she would say the same thing about Molick?”

A quarter of an hour before ten that night, Mally and Lita once again entered Archie’s kitchen. At the sight of Lita, Archie’s eyes narrowed and his mustache bristled.

Lita calmly glanced around the kitchen.

“I see you’ve cleaned up the apples,” she observed cheerfully.

Archie’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“Rosa,” Mally said quickly, afraid Archie was about to knock Lita atop the head with a skillet. “We need Molick’s wine.”

“You’re taking it?” Rosa asked in surprise. “Nathan always does.”

“We’re doing it for him tonight,” Mally explained.

“Nathan and Gerda are having a romantic evening to the
mselves tonight,” Lita explained. Her lips twitched. “And no knights are allowed.”

“A date? How wonderful! I always thought those two would do well together.”

Rosa handed Mally the dusty bottle that was sitting on the countertop.

After they had closed the kitchen door, they hurried to Molick’s study with seven minutes to spare. The study was empty.

“Molick must be with the king,” Mally said quietly, tip-toeing into the room.

“Hurry,” Lita whispered tensely, peeking into the corridor.

Mally uncorked the bottle and poured it into its decanter. She then withdrew the tea bag with the dreamless sleep tea from her pocket and lowered it into the wine by its thin string.

Mally only had to wait five minutes before Lita rushed to her from the door.

“He’s coming,” she hissed.

Heart racing, Mally pulled the stained bag back out of the wine and put it once more in her pocket. Mally and Lita both curtsied deeply when Molick entered the room. For a moment he frowned at them and Mally wondered fearfully if he would ask them why Nathan was not there. But instead, he turned his back to them and withdrew a fat cigar. Seconds later, a group of knights marched through the door, not sparing a single glance at Mally and Lita except for three of them: Sir Brian, Gibbs, and Bayard.

Lita handed Mally the crystal goblets and Mally tried to pour the dark wine without it spilling due to her suddenly trembling hands. 

“Where is Anon?” Molick asked the group of knights, as Mally and Lita passed out the goblets.

“It doesn’t look like he’s coming tonight,” said Gibbs with the tone of a tattle-tail, drinking deeply from his goblet. He frowned slightly and looked at his glass. Mally stiffened and shot a nervous glance at Lita. The tea
did
taste strong …

Gibbs shrugged and took another swallow.

“I shall inform him in the morning that my orders are mandatory,” said Molick.

Gibbs finished his glass and raised the goblet into the air. Lita quickly refilled it.

As time ticked by, Mally started to feel sweat bead upon her forehead. Was it going to work? When she had taken the dreamless sleep tea, the effect had been almost instantaneous. Had they steeped it long enough? Did it even work in wine?

Lita glanced at Mally, her eyes mirroring her own fears.
What if they didn’t fall asleep?

But then quite suddenly, Molick’s hand twitched. Gibbs yawned widely. Bayard’s head drooped. And before Mally’s eyes, the knights all fell fast asleep. Vinsus was slumped in his chair. Sir Brian’s feathered hat had tumbled off his head.

Carefully, Mally and Lita stepped through the splayed legs and dropped goblets to Molick. The spilt wine looked like blood on the rug. Even in her tense state, Mally wondered how badly Meriyal would react to the dark stains.

They had never decided who would be the one to actually
take
the key, but it was clear that Lita had no such intention.

“Go on,” she hissed.

Taking a deep breath, Mally pulled Molick’s coat more open and froze.

“
Which key?
” Mally moaned.

Lita, looking horrified, stared at the dull, iron ring attached to Molick’s belt. Some twenty keys dangled from it.

“Take all of them,” was her hoarse reply.

Hoping desperately that the catacomb key would be amongst them, Mally gently removed the key ring from Molick’s hip. She nearly jumped out of her skin as he grunted in his sleep. Lita had retreated to the door and was frantically waving for Mally to move quickly.

Once she had closed Molick’s study door, Mally expelled a shaky breath and leaned up against it. But Lita pulled at her arm.

“Come on!” she insisted. “We don’t know how long that tea will last!” 

They used the shortest route they knew to the catacombs, which were located far below the castle, like the dungeons.

The catacombs had been banned from public visitation when Mally was five. She remembered not understanding why her father was so upset by the news, and when she had asked why she had been even more baffled. Tombs? Visiting the dead? It terrified her. But now she thought she understood better: the knights had already closed off Bosc Bell Tower and had begun changing the laws. Sealing the catacombs was just another part of their new regime. But was there more to it? Mally couldn’t help but wonder. Had there been another reason for Molick to lock the catacomb’s door? Had someone suspicious tried to pry open the young princess’s casket?

They traveled down a long, narrow set of stone stairs, worn and misshapen from years of use. The air grew steadily colder, and their breath came out in a misty vapor before their eyes. Lita had grabbed a burning candle on the way and it threw valuable light on the increasingly dark stairwell. Finally, the erratic candlelight illuminated a large wooden door with heavy ironwork at the bottom of the stairwell.

Mally and Lita stopped. They glanced at each other, each s
ilently encouraging the other, as Mally inserted the first key on the ring into the door’s lock.

It didn’t fit. Fumbling, she tried the next. And the next.

Beginning to panic, Mally asked, “Do you have any idea what it looks like?”

“No, I’ve never seen it. Shaped like a skull, perhaps?” Lita o
ffered unhelpfully.

Mally bit back a grumble and pushed her sixth key (a large, heavy brass one) into the lock.

The loud
click
that reverberated around them made both of them jump. Swallowing with difficulty, Mally pushed the heavy door open. Lita helped her—the hinges had rusted. They gritted their teeth as the door moaned and groaned loudly enough to wake the dead. Finally, they shoved it open enough that they could squeeze through, and Mally and Lita stepped into the royal catacombs.

The entire royal family was housed here as well as the knights, their bones always connected to Bosc Castle. Mally’s first impre
ssion was one of dread. The catacombs were huge. The walls were thirty feet high, at least. Hundreds of caskets, some huge, others pushed into compartments in the dirt walls with silver plaques above them. Mally couldn’t see the end of the room, though she hoped that was really the fault of the darkness. She didn’t want to dwell on just how big the catacombs were. They needed to get back to Molick to return the key ring before he woke. 

But there was the
dust.
There was so much dust—surely she’d suffocate. A disgruntled gasp made Mally turn. Lita’s hand covered her mouth.

“Let’s find it quick, so we can breathe,” said Mally, and though she knew they were quite alone, her voice was low and hushed.

Lita nodded—her nose wrinkled in distaste, she raised the candle higher so that they could see a bit farther ahead. Mally closed the door and for a moment considered locking it, but decided against it. There was no reason for anyone to try to enter the catacombs. Molick was insensate in his study and the king—well, hopefully the king was in bed.