Once Upon a Marigold Read online

  "Ed!" Chris cried. Even encumbered as he was by the dogs, he threw himself on Ed, trying to hug all three of them at the same time.

  "Help!" Ed cried. "Get off me!"

  Bub barked his brains out directly into Chris's ear, and Cate howled and yowled and flung herself about.

  "It's me—Christian!" Chris yelled over the tumult.

  Ed pulled himself back out of the melee. "Christian?" he sputtered. When he'd assured himself that it was indeed Christian, he threw his arms around him. "Thank goodness you're still alive! Are you in here because you hugged the princess?"

  "Did you get all my p-mail?" Christian asked.

  "I think so. Lots and lots of little pieces of paper. I was hopping up and down waiting for the next twelve lines."

  "Then you know what's going on here. And now they think all those messages we were sending were something about planning an attack on the castle."

  "You're joking," Ed said, ready to laugh. "Two guys and two dogs were going to attack the castle?"

  "I'm not joking. That's why we're all in here. But it also prevents us from interfering with Princess Marigold's wedding to that oaf, that brainless boob, Magnus."

  "You don't like Magnus, huh?" Ed asked.

  "Well, I told you all that in the messages. And every time I think of him with Marigold, I—well, I feel a way I've never felt before. A way so strong it hurts, right in the corner of my heart."

  Uh-oh, thought Ed. He'd felt that way himself, and he knew what it meant. He felt that way every year at the LEFT Conference when he saw the red-haired troll maiden. From time to time she smiled at him, but whenever she did, she was dragged off by her father, who wanted better for her than a common forest troll who lived off other people's castoffs and didn't have an ODD Medal. And every year at the conference, he had to brace himself before he found out whether she'd gotten married since he last saw her. So far she hadn't, but the conference was coming up again in a week. So he knew what a breaking heart felt like.

  "We have to stop that wedding," Christian said. "We have to."

  "Any suggestions?" Ed inquired. "We're not exactly in a good position to do that."

  "I know it looks bad right now—"

  "Bad ?" Ed said. "You know that saying about how it's always darkest just after the lights go out? That's what it looks like to me."

  "No, I don't know that saying," Christian said. "But I'm not giving up as long as I have a breath in my body." He gestured to the scrap heap. "Look at all that junk. Maybe there's something in there we can use."

  "Use for what?" Ed asked. "I hate to be a wet blanket in the mud, but haven't you noticed? We're locked in."

  "Don't be so negative. Help me look." Christian began digging into the pile, running to the little window in the door for enough light to see everything he dug up.

  14

  In Marigold's chamber were two dressmakers, four maids, one page boy, three dogs, one ferret, and her mother. While Marigold was the focus of all their attentions, it was the princess, not the person preoccupying everyone.

  "No!" Olympia cried, pacing around her daughter, with Fenleigh, growling softly, clutched under her arm. Flopsy, Mopsy, and Topsy growled back, wishing they could get that creature away from Olympia for just a few minutes. "No bows on the front! I want them all on the back! Pearls and brilliants and lace and embroidery on the front. Bows on the back. Can't you get that straight?" She snatched a bow pinned to the bodice of the wedding gown and threw it onto the floor.

  One of the dressmakers, her lips compressed as if she were struggling not to bite Olympia, picked up the bow and fastened it at the back of Marigold's waist.

  "Much better," purred Olympia. Fenleigh purred, too. "Now the veil—"

  And so it went, all afternoon, with Marigold nothing more than a breathing mannequin for everybody in the room. But she was doing more than breathing. She was thinking.

  How to stop this wedding? How to free Christian? How to find a way to go see Christian again in the dungeon? Was it really drugs—or worse: poison—that were making Papa so befuddled and vague?

  Lots of questions. No answers. Except how she would see Christian again. She just would, that's all. She was a princess, wasn't she? And a future queen. And she knew how to act like one.

  "Enough," she said. "I've stood here long enough while you've treated me like a pincushion. This dress is getting even uglier, and I can't stand to wear it for one more instant." She began pulling it off her shoulders, pins and bows popping everywhere. The alarmed seamstresses scurried around her, trying to minimize the damage.

  "Oh, Marigold," her mother said impatiently. "Stop that! You're ruining this gown and you're acting like a child. You have a duty to do, and I'm here to see that you do it. Now, behave yourself."

  "I should remind you," Marigold said, stepping out of the dress on the floor and standing in her chemise and petticoat, "that you're talking to the future queen. And I won't be spoken to that way."

  "Well!" Olympia huffed. And then, with steel in her voice, "We'll just see about that. And let me remind you that you're speaking to the present queen, and I won't be spoken to that way."

  They faced off while the seamstresses and maids, dogs and page boy, took careful, silent steps backward until they bumped against the walls.

  "I'm not marrying Magnus," Marigold said firmly. "I know it would make Papa happy, and I know it's something you want, too, albeit for reasons completely different from his, but I won't do it. He's unacceptable to me."

  "I don't know what you can mean," Olympia said. "He's a very handsome man, and you're lucky that, plain as you are, you can get any man interested in you. As for my reasons for wanting you to marry Magnus, I have no idea what you're talking about. Your future well-being is my only concern." She took a quick look around at her audience, a look that said: Can you believe what this silly girl is saying?

  "My future well-being is even more of a concern for me than it is for you," Marigold said, "and that's why I'm not marrying Magnus." She reached out and grabbed her mother's hands, holding tightly even when her mother tried to pull away. Then Marigold gasped, snatched her dressing gown from the hands of the startled page, and dashed out the door. As she ran down the long carpeted hallway in her stocking feet, past the guards, pulling her dressing gown on as she went, she could hear Olympia's voice behind her. "Prewedding jitters, that's all. Just ignore her. But"—and her voice raised—"follow her!"

  Marigold heard the guards running to keep up, but she didn't slow down. She ran all the way to the dungeon.

  Christian was under the window, holding something up for identification—a spring? a ratchet?—when Marigold's face appeared, blocking his light.

  "Precious!" he exclaimed. He thought he heard Ed groan behind him.

  Chris couldn't know how long Marigold had wished for someone besides her papa to call her that. Her heart melted and then froze right up again, like a pond in the terrible kingdom of Isobaria, where the temperature never could make up its mind.

  Loving a doomed person was a pretty foolish thing to do. She knew that, but she couldn't seem to help it. She pressed her hand to her chest. It felt as if a tear had opened in the corner of her heart.

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "I'm fine," he said, without adding, "so far." "I've even got company. Ed and Bub and Cate are here."

  "Here? What are they doing here?"

  "Rollo went over and found them. Because of that invasion we're planning, you know."

  "Oh no! I'm so sorry."

  "Sorry? I'm glad. They're my family. I've missed them terribly." Their fingers entwined through the cell's bars. "Are you all right?" Christian's voice softened.

  "Yes. Now." She gazed at him and said sadly, "You should see my wedding gown. You'd hate it."

  "I'd hate anything you wore to be married to Magnus."

  "I'm not going to marry him," she declared.

  "You're not? How will you avoid it?" Hope rose cautiously in his heart. "Ha
ve you figured out a way to run away?"

  "I don't know how I'll avoid it," she said. "I'm still thinking. I just know I can't do it. I'd rather be dead. And you were right about my mother. I touched her hands—and now she knows I know."

  "Then you're in more danger than ever," Christian said, alarmed.

  "I don't care." Marigold's chin trembled. "Maybe then you and I can be together. Remember Andromeda and Perseus up in the sky, together forever?"

  "I'd rather be together on the ground. You're not forgetting, are you, that I'm only a servant, the ward of a forest troll, with nothing to offer a princess?"

  "Why should you offer anything but yourself?" she replied a bit tartly. "That's what I'm most interested in. I've already got everything else any sensible person could want. More doesn't mean better. Enough is as good as a feast, you know."

  "That's what Ed always says. Or, what he says is, too much of a good thing is as good as a feast, but that's what he means. I think. With Ed it's sometimes hard to know. But, of course, I don't want you to marry Magnus any more than you want to. There's a solution, I'm sure there is, so don't worry."

  She shook her head in disbelief, a faint smile on her lips. "Don't worry?" she repeated.

  "Oh, I know it looks serious, but what good is worrying? It just gets in the way of thinking."

  "Marigold!" came her mother's imperious voice. "I forbid you to speak to that traitorous servant. Come here this instant."

  Marigold tightened her grip on the bars. "If I ever get to be a queen, I'm never going to use that tone of voice with anybody."

  "You don't think being imperious is one of the requirements for being a queen?" Christian asked.

  "Certainly not," Marigold replied. "It doesn't work, anyway. It just makes people feel worthless, and then they get angry. And eventually you've got a rebellion on your hands. My mother's been talking to me that way all my life and I can tell you, I'm angry. I'm ready for a rebellion." She turned to look at her mother standing at the top of the stairs, Fenleigh on a leash at her feet. "I'm not coming!" she shouted. "And I'm not marrying Magnus."

  "That's what you think," the queen said. She pointed an extremely imperious finger at Marigold and said to the guards nearest her, "Lock her up." And then, to the guard standing a ways down the corridor, "Help them if she tries to get away."

  Before Marigold knew what was happening, she was grabbed from behind, wrested away from her hold on the bars to Christian's cell, and pulled backward to the cell next door.

  Christian heard the key rattle in the lock, accompanied by sounds of struggle and of Marigold saying, "I will not go! I will not!"

  But, of course, she did. The strongest will in the world is no match for brute force, whatever satisfaction may be gained from having resisted. Christian heard the cell door bang shut and the keys rattle again as Marigold's voice became muffled, even as she kept refusing to go.

  "I'll be back to let you out an hour before the wedding," Olympia said. "You can even get dressed in there. I'm not taking any chances on you messing this up." She pointed at a guard. "You stay here. One guard will be enough to keep things under control down here. I need the rest of you to come upstairs and keep a lid on the partying. Some of those wedding guests are getting quite out of hand."

  "Send Papa to see me!" Marigold called. "I must see Papa!"

  "We're not going to disturb your father with this little problem." Olympia's voice faded as she turned her back and walked away. "He's old and tired and needs his rest. Fenleigh thinks so, too."

  "Get him down here!" Marigold yelled.

  "Sorry," Olympia said gaily, and then the heavy door to the dungeon clanged behind her and her guards.

  There was silence for a moment before Christian said, "Marigold, I'd like you to meet Ed. Ed, say hello to Marigold."

  "Your Majesty," Ed said meekly.

  "Oh, for heaven's sake," Marigold said from next door. "Call me Marigold."

  It was strange for Christian to talk to her when he couldn't see her, but it reminded him of all the years when he'd watched her through his telescope and imagined knowing her. And of the year of their p-mail correspondence. He'd talked to her then, in his imagination, when she was almost too far away to be seen. This was better. He could hold her image in his mind while he spoke. And she could answer.

  "How about Princess Marigold?" Ed suggested. "I've lived a very quiet forest life, and I've suddenly got a lot of new things to get used to. I don't want to push my own self even farther out of my comfort zone."

  "All right," Marigold said. "But don't forget I'm pretty far outside my comfort zone, too." She made sure the guard was down the hall, out of earshot, before asking, "Do we have any ideas about how we're going to get out of here?"

  "Chris is working on something. Maybe." Ed tried to be reassuring. "We've got some time."

  THEY WERE SO far down in the bowels of the castle that they could get no hint of what time it was or what was happening above them.

  It was this: a three-ring circus of cooking in the vast kitchens to feed the throngs of royalty pouring in from scattered kingdoms, as well as efforts to cook ahead for the blowout, every-man-for-himself, all-you-can-eat feeding frenzy that would occur on the wedding day itself.

  A polka dance of maids, domestic and imported, do-si-do-ing between bedchambers, trying to keep up with the gowning, hairdressing, and miscellaneous grooming needs of the flocks of women guests.

  A hurricane-flapping of fans by a phalanx of young page boys to keep at bay the clouds of smoke from items—pipes, cigars, and hookahs—in use by the gentlemen wedding guests as they clustered around the billiard tables, library corners, and brandy bottles scattered throughout the castle.

  A symphony of nail pounding as the castle carpenters hurried to construct extra tables and benches for the outdoor reception, gazebos for the ceremony and the cutting of the wedding cake, and collapsible tenting to be popped up like a giant umbrella over all the guests on the terrace in case of bad weather on the wedding day.

  As far as Ed, Christian, and Marigold were concerned, it was already a very bad weather day.

  15

  Christian's experiments came to naught. He'd tried building a battering ram from old metal parts, but it fell apart as soon as it hit the door. He'd tried to cut a hole in the door with a rusty saw, which had crumbled to orange dust in his hand. He'd tried to take the hinges off the door with a bent lever, which snapped in two on the first try.

  "There's plenty more stuff in the pile," he said, trying to keep his voice bright. "I'll find something I can use."

  Bub raised his great shaggy head from his paws and uttered a thin whine. Ed sat on the floor, resting against the damp wall, Cate's trembling muzzle in his lap. He stroked her ears and murmured to her, for once not considering her emoting to be an exaggeration. Personally, he thought Chris was barking up a dead tree.

  "Oh, I wish I could see what you have in your pile," Marigold said. "Maybe I could think of something."

  "I could describe some things to you."

  "Total waste of time," Ed grumbled. "No point to that." He sighed. "I'll never get a share of the tooth fairy business now. Mab'll go on being inefficient and disappointing little children every night, and all the support I was gathering for a showdown at the conference next week will have been for nothing. When I don't show up, nobody'll know what happened to me. And nobody else will take up my cudgel and mantle and challenge her." He sighed again, a gusty, despairing sigh.

  "Please, Ed," Christian said, "I wish you'd try to keep a more positive attitude. We're not finished yet." He rummaged through the pile until he found a new piece, then carried it to the door and held it to the light. "Marigold, I have a thing about a foot and a half long with a wheel on one end and a two-pronged gizmo on the other. Any ideas?"

  "No," she said. "But go get another thing. I think the trick will be to build something, not to use the pieces individually. So we have to find pieces that'll fit together."

  He
found another part. "All right. Here's one that's thick and round like a wheel with no spokes. It has two little holes in the middle and hooks all around the outside edges."

  "Will the two prongs on the first thing fit into the two holes in the middle of this thing?" Marigold asked.

  Christian tried it. "Yes!" he said triumphantly. "It does fit!"

  "Wonderful," Ed grumbled. "Now you have a bigger thing that still doesn't do anything. Don't you know we're up against a creek with no paddle?" But he remembered how stubborn Chris had been as a child, so he didn't really expect him to pay attention. And Christian didn't.

  Hours later, when a guard came with the thin gruel and hard bread that were passing for breakfast—or maybe supper—Christian and Marigold had put together a construction as big as a catapult that looked like nothing anybody had ever seen before. But all the parts seemed to fit together as if they had been designed to do so, and it was hard to resist continuing to build something that appeared to have a purpose, even if they couldn't figure out what that purpose might be.

  As they ate their gruel and bread, Christian studied the contraption he'd built. "It looks like it should move," he said to Ed. "Like it's some kind of vehicle."

  "You'd need a horse to pull it," Ed commented. "And we got no horse."

  "I don't think this thing is supposed to be pulled," Christian said. "I think it's supposed to move under its own power. I just don't know what its power is."

  "Bunch of nonsense," Ed muttered into his gruel.

  "Marigold," Christian called. "Tell me every way you can think of to make things go."

  "There's only pushing or pulling," she said. "Or throwing. Things can be pushed by people or horses or mules or oxen. Things can be pulled by people or horses or mules or oxen. Or dogs, I suppose. Dogs aren't good at pushing, but they can pull."

  Christian sat up suddenly and snapped his fingers. "Dogs!" he said, closely examining Bub and Cate who, seeing his look, gave each other a quick glance and began skulking off to a dark corner of the cell. "Oh no, you don't," he said, getting up to go after them.