Wednesdays in the Tower (5 page)

Then, when she finally got to the schoolroom, Lilah and Rolf were both there. Celie took a step back and
looked around, wondering what they were doing there. Had they gotten lost on their way to someplace else in the Castle? Lilah looked distinctly put out, but Rolf seemed eager enough. He waved cheerfully to Celie and stretched, resting his hands behind his head. Celie put down her books on the end of the long table, still feeling muddled by her roundabout journey to the schoolroom.

“What are you doing here?” Celie asked, her voice coming out a little harsh as she looked at her brother and sister.

“
I
am learning Grathian because it will help me be a better king,” Rolf said easily. “But Lilah is learning Grathian because she’s being punished.” He grinned at Celie.

Lilah slammed closed the book she was holding. “I am not being
punished
!” She tossed back her long, dark hair. “It is also important that I study the languages of some of our allies, even though I am too old for the schoolroom,” she said in lofty tones.

“Father caught her flirting with Lulath one too many times,” Rolf said in a stage whisper. “So he’s pretending that he believes her story that she was really trying to learn Grathian.”

“But what about Pogue?” Celie asked Lilah.

“What
about
Pogue?” Lilah threw her hands in the air. “Can’t I just have friends? Can’t I enjoy talking to my … friends?”

“There’s talking, and then there’s
talking
,” Rolf said with a snicker.

“And then there’s listening to your instructor,” Master Humphries said as he entered the schoolroom.

He shook his head, running an ink-stained hand through his graying hair. When he looked at the three of them sitting in a row he let out a puff of air. Celie had a feeling that he wasn’t amused to find that he now had two more students, and one of them sent there as punishment.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Master,” Celie said. “There’s a huge room full—”

“Of fabrics,” Master Humphries finished. “Yes, thank you, Your Highness. I am late myself for that very reason. And so is your new Grathian instructor.”

All three Glower children looked at their tutor in shock. Master Humphries had taught all their lessons since he had come to the Castle to instruct the then five-year-old Bran. If they needed to learn something that he did not already know, he took great pains to master the topic himself before guiding his charges through it. He was overly fascinated by ancient peace treaties (in Celie’s opinion) and could be a bear about punctuality, but was a respected scholar and a fine tutor.

“Your instructor in Grathian will be—” Master Humphries began.

“I am all the excitement,” Prince Lulath shouted as he practically leaped into the schoolroom. “Please to forgive that I so the very late; there is but a great many makings of clothes now in the place where there was used to having a stairs.”

“I want to die,” Lilah said in a strangled voice.

“This is going to be terrific,” Rolf said under his breath.

“Lulath!” Celie cried in delight. “
You’re
going to teach us?”

Celie stared at the Grathian prince. He had all four dogs in tow, the satin bows around their necks matching his elaborate layers of clothing. His sleeves hung to his knees, and one of his dogs became entangled in the trailing ends of the laces that ran up the sides of his breeches. His blond hair was fancifully styled, and his teeth showed very white as he beamed at them.

“Yes, indeed, Your Highness,” Master Humphries answered her, forcing a smile. “As my Grathian is limited to reading and writing, Prince Lulath has nobly agreed to teach you how to speak it. It was the suggestion of the king himself.”

Rolf snorted.

Lulath’s dogs scattered. One of them trotted around the room, sniffing everything as if seeking a place to relieve itself. Two others, JouJou and Niro, ran to Celie and Lilah, who were their favorite people. Lilah hid her blushing cheeks by leaning over to pick up Niro, but Celie just rolled JouJou over with her feet and rubbed the dog’s belly with her toes.

“I have given each of the students a Grathian language primer,” Master Humphries said in a desperate attempt to bring things to order. “If you’re having trouble getting started, I’m sure that I can—”

“It would be so much nonsense to think I could not tell
to them my language,” Lulath said exuberantly. “Come, let us speak to each one another in the Grathian!” He held his arms out wide as if to embrace them all, and smiled in his usual faintly daft way. Then, so abrupt that it was startling, his expression sobered. He picked up another primer and announced crisply, “We begin with
minou
.”

And to the utter shock of Celie, Rolf, Lilah, and Master Humphries, Lulath began to teach them with cool competence. He ignored his dogs and his students’ complete amazement as he took them through the basic greetings and then taught them how to introduce themselves in Grathian.

Two hours later, when a maid came bearing a lunch tray, they were still stunned. Lulath instantly became a dandy once again, and after turning up his nose at the ham sandwiches on the tray, he gathered up his dogs and left, promising to return the next day and teach them more.

Rolf and Lilah left after lunch, and Celie and Master Humphries were soon hard at work. She was supposed to be practicing her calligraphy by copying out a poem from a book so old it was nearly unreadable. It had been Master Humphries’s choice, and his taste in poetry always ran toward the epic, with lots of names and battles mentioned, but not described in half as much detail as Celie would have liked. Consequently, she was halfway through it when she found the word “griffin” and realized that the poem was about a mighty battle between the griffins and an army that Celie had never heard of.

“What are Hathelockes?” Celie asked.

Master Humphries, who was flipping through a book and seemed to have forgotten that Celie was there, nearly dropped what he was reading. He blinked at her owlishly.

“The what?”

“Hathelockes,” Celie repeated. “It says that the griffins and the people of the griffins were making war upon the Hathelockes. I’ve never heard of them.”

“Oh, er,” Master Humphries began, attempting to read the faded poem upside down. “This is an old and rather fanciful poem,” he told her. “Notice the presence of mythical animals in it? I’m sure that the Hathelockes are also merely the construction of the poet’s mind.”

“But the griffins might be real,” Celie protested.

“My dear princess, they most certainly are not.”

Celie gave up, but she carefully copied the rest of the poem and took it with her. She wanted to read it aloud to Rufus, to teach him about his noble heritage. She also wanted to show it to Bran. She tried to take the book as well, but Master Humphries had taken it from the oldest section of the Castle library and promised to return it directly after lessons. Celie had to make do with copying down the title and author of the book, and hoping that Bran would be able to find it himself.

She made the long journey back to her bedroom, wondering if the Castle would send her a snack as well as Rufus.

“Rufus,” she called as she opened her bedroom door. “Rufus! I have something to read to you!”

There was no answer. Rufus was gone.

Chapter
8

Celie looked in the wardrobe and under the bed, but she knew that Rufus wasn’t there. He would have come when she called if he could hear her, he always did. She tossed the parchment with the poem on it onto her bed and hurried back out of the room.

A quick glance told her that he wasn’t in the main hall. There were members of the court milling around there as usual, and guards posted at the front door. Someone would have seen Rufus as soon as he set a foot in that direction, and the resulting hue and cry would have brought the entire Castle running.

Instead she raced down the corridor in the opposite direction. At the end of the corridor was a long flight of steps, the same one that she had come down to bring the newly hatched Rufus to her bedchambers. The steps were steep and narrow, the stone slick. She didn’t think Rufus
could have made it up them, not without being seen by a maid or a courtier.

Celie walked back along the corridor, heart racing. She tried listening at Bran’s door, but her breathing was too loud for her to hear through the heavy oak. Bran always locked his door anyway, and Rufus couldn’t undo a lock. With a sick feeling, she remembered pulling her own door closed, but not locking it when she left for her lessons that morning. Since Bran had put the spell on her door, she had been overconfident that no one would go in. She had never thought that Rufus would find a way to get out.

Her heart pounding even harder, she went across the corridor to Lilah’s door. She turned the latch and it opened; Lilah never locked her door. Celie stepped inside, holding her breath.

Lilah’s room was beautiful: everything neatly in place, furniture gleaming with polish, and pillows plumped. Lilah had hung long silk scarves and sashes from a rack in the corner like a captive rainbow, and the windows were thrown open to show the stunning view of a landscape that did not exist. It was like a living painting that the Castle had provided just for Lilah.

Celie let out her breath. “Rufus?” she called softly.

Lilah’s room was empty. Celie’s heart calmed down, and she started to turn away. Then something gold on the floor caught her eye. She thought at first that it was a belt or sash that had fallen off the bed; then it moved, and she realized that it was Rufus’s tail. She hurried around the
side of the bed and found him crouched over one of Lilah’s brand-new dancing slippers, gnawing away.

“Bad boy! Bad boy! Drop it!”

Celie shook her finger at him, and saw a look of distinct guilt in the griffin’s eyes. Even so, she had to pull the mangled slipper out of his beak. It was in pieces, the beads hanging by threads or scattered over the floor, the silk lining in shreds, and the leather scored and torn.

“No, no, no,” she scolded him in a whisper. “If Lilah asks, we think Niro did it,” Celie told him conspiratorially. She felt guilty, but she could hardly confess to Lilah and take the blame herself. After all, she wasn’t prone to eating people’s shoes, and Lilah would never believe her. “Now, come on!”

When Rufus seemed reluctant to follow, Celie grabbed hold of his long tail and threatened to haul him backward.

His tail was very long and dragged on the ground, looking almost like it had been tacked on. Bran said this was evidence that Rufus still had a great deal of growing to do, especially since his paws were also enormous when compared to his lanky body. He was now as tall as Celie’s hip and weighed almost as much as she did, but he still moved like he wasn’t sure how to coordinate his four legs, and his wings were constantly getting caught on things.

Getting Rufus back to Celie’s room was not going to be easy.

Celie peeked out of Lilah’s door with Rufus hidden behind her skirts, then closed the door quickly as a maid
went by. Once she had counted to twenty, she opened the door and looked again. The corridor was empty. Celie got a firm grip on Rufus’s tail and dragged him out of Lilah’s room. She shut the door so quickly that she nearly closed it on Rufus’s rump, and then she hustled him down the corridor.

She reached the door to her own room just as she heard heavy footsteps and men’s voices coming from the main hall. She shoved Rufus inside, leaping in after him and slamming the door. Sweat was sticking her curly hair to her forehead.

“You are a very bad griffin,” she told him again, panting.

Someone knocked on her door, and Celie let out a small scream and nearly fell over Rufus. She managed to get a grip on herself and bundled Rufus into her water closet before answering the knock, still panting and sweating but without a griffin scrabbling at her skirts.

“Celie!” Queen Celina was clearly startled by her youngest child’s appearance. “Are you all right?”

“I just … the Castle changed and I couldn’t get to the schoolroom … and then on my way back … I had to use the water closet …”

“Oh, I see,” Queen Celina said, her expression clearing. “Well, if you’re … freshened up … after your lessons, I want you to come with me.”

Celie could hear a scrabbling sound coming from her water closet.

“Why?” She edged toward the door of her room, hoping to press her mother back into the corridor as casually as she could. “Is something the matter?” she asked in a loud voice, to try to cover Rufus’s noise.

“Not at all, but you’ve seen the room full of fabrics?” The queen was smiling now and didn’t even wait for Celie’s nod. “Of course you have: you had to go through it to get to the schoolroom! Well, Bran has looked it all over and said that it’s quite safe. I’ve called in the seamstresses, and we’ll have our new gowns made from these goods. Some of the things are spoiled, but most of it is still in perfect condition, and there are some lovely silks.”

“Oh, yes, let’s go, then,” Celie said loudly. She continued to back her mother out of the room as a loud scrabbling noise came from the water closet.