A Tale of Two Castles(26)

Question everything. Could he get stuck inside an animal? Could magic force him into a shape and keep him in it?

“Is it strange to be yourself again after you’ve been a monkey?”

When the sack was almost flat, he drew out the small packet and opened it. Marchpane! I made out the shapes—strawberries, roses, tiny apples, daisies.

“May I sample one?” I heard awe in my voice.

He twittered. I took that as consent. If he’d snatched the packet away, I’d have taken that as consent as well and snatched it back.

I picked a rose and nibbled it. Oh, heaven. Father! I’m eating marchpane that no one stepped on.

I held the remainder of the rose out to the monkey, who took it and gave me an apple. Soon we finished the marchpane between us. Despite his ogre’s appetite, he let me have most of it. When all was gone, he lay back and stared up at the stars.

“Can you find the constellations?” I lay back, too. “They’re all from mansioners’ tales, you know.” I pointed as I spoke. “There’s Cupid as a cherub and Thisbe’s apple and Zeus’s lightning rod.”

The monkey chittered.

I let out a long breath. “Your Lordship, I came here to become a mansioner, and I will still be one someday.”

He panted softly, perhaps chuckling at my ambition.

“I will be. Albin says I have a gift, and he mansioned everywhere, before counts and kings, although not King Grenville or you.” I was off, telling a monkey about Albin and Mother and Father and Lahnt and the geese, telling him more than I’d told Masteress Meenore, despite ITs endless curiosity.

When my life’s story ran out, I just watched the stars and smelled the earth around us until, not meaning to, I fell asleep.

When I woke, I smelled stone and saw darkness. Terrified, half asleep, I raised my arms. My fingers encountered only air. Ah. I had not been entombed. My fingers discovered that I lay on a pallet bed. A woolen blanket covered me from neck to toe. No, three blankets. My nose and ears were cold, but the rest of me was cozy warm. Whoever put me here—the monkey? the ogre? a servant?—had considered my comfort.

My eyes adjusted to the dark. I found my satchel a few inches from my head. Nearby, someone snored a barrel-chested snore. A woman’s voice mumbled from a dream.

The room was vast, vaulted, Count Jonty Um’s great hall, no doubt. I hadn’t been in a castle since I was a baby, when Mother and Father presented me to the earl of Lahnt, but Albin had performed in castles. I had his descriptions to draw on. Although each castle was unique, he said, they resembled one another, like cousins in the castle family.

In the dimness, I surmised I lay among the servants’ pallets, with my pallet in the middle of the group. The best places clustered close to the hearth, where a few embers still glowed. Against the opposite wall, another hearth also smoldered. High above us, slitted windows made a dotted line near the ceiling. From my low vantage point, I saw small squares of blue-black sky.

There would be lower, larger windows, too, recessed into the wall of the inner ward, the courtyard at the heart of the castle, but I couldn’t see them from here.

My mind refused to return to sleep. The pallet next to mine might be occupied by His Lordship’s enemy, the dog thief and poacher. Or the snorer might be the one. Or the mumbler. In some neglected castle nook, Nesspa might be whining and gnawing at the bars of a cage.

What better time than now to look for him?

I rose to my knees and found that I had been sleeping in my cloak. At the foot of the pallet, my shoes pointed away from me. I pulled them on, stood, and threaded my way between the sleepers.

As I walked, the rushes scattered across the floor swished, but no one stirred. I sniffed the air. The rushes had been strewn with bay leaves. How rich! How like a castle!

I paused to decide where to go. During the day, as I’d been told, the emptiness would be filled by trestle tables and benches and bustle. But now the furniture leaned against the wall. Ahead, in a row on a dais, stood three chairs, two human sized, one built for an ogre. Of the two, one chair gleamed silver, the other gold. The third, barely visible in the gloom, was wood.

Three doors always exited a great hall. One, at the end of the wall on my left, would lead to a tower, which would hold a donjon for supplies on the lowest floor and a residence above on the next two stories. The door on the wall to my right would open into the inner ward. The third door I couldn’t see, but it should be behind the screen in the corner ahead, and this would take me into the kitchen, across which I would find another door to another tower.

Where to hide a dog? Perhaps in a tower or in the stables.

Statues win no races and find no dogs. I should decide and go.

The towers adjoining the hall would be most convenient to search, but also most dangerous in case I made a noise. I rejected them for now. Tonight I’d investigate the kitchen tower.

I tiptoed behind the screen to the door, which groaned as it opened. I stopped breathing and waited, listening for sounds of waking.

What would they do if they caught me?

Silence. I slipped through and left the door ajar, so it wouldn’t groan on my return.

Now I was in a short passageway; castle walls are so thick that rooms are separated by little tunnels. I entered the enormous kitchen, only slightly smaller than the great hall.

Door on my right, but not the tower door. Dimly outlined shapes of tables, stools, benches, buckets. At last, to the left of the sink, the tower door.