Once Upon a Marigold Page 13

  Alarmed, Swithbert hustled into the dressing room and tried the back door out of his suite. It, too, was barred from the outside.

  "We're locked in," Swithbert said. "It has to be Olympia's doing. How in the world—" His eyes fell on the table where he and his daughters had sat, drinking tea and winkling out the whole story of Olympia's treachery. When they had scattered, running from Olympia's knock, they had forgotten about Calista's tiara, Tatiana's scarf, and the sash to Marigold's dressing gown, all left untidily on the chairs. Olympia hadn't missed a thing. She knew they were all there, and now they weren't leaving.

  "Curses!" Swithbert exclaimed. "You can't stage a mutiny in slow motion; we took too long getting organized!"

  They spent the rest of the night pacing, cursing, and trying without success to devise a solution.

  CHRISTIAN SPENT THE NIGHT perfecting his creation. After a while Ed got interested enough to help him. He decided that, by hook or by ladder, he'd do anything to get himself out of incarceration in time for the LEFT Conference. After a reluctant start, Bub and Cate had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the project and were having the time of their lives. Whether it worked or not was beside the point to them, as is usual with dogs.

  19

  Olympia partied. She kissed her guests—some of them more thoroughly than others—and drank some wine and danced with Magnus and tried to figure out what to do about her rebellious family. When King Willie and Princes Teddy and Harry came to her asking where Tatiana, Calista, and Eve were, she shrugged prettily and said they were probably off somewhere catching up on sisterly gossip.

  All she knew for sure was that in just one day, Marigold was going to marry Magnus. Nobody was going to make this queen look like a fool in front of most of the royalty in the known world.

  At dawn Olympia came with a troop of her soldiers to Swithbert's suite. Banging on the door, she called, "Don't bother to prevaricate. I know you're all in there. I want Marigold. It's time for her to get ready for the wedding. If she doesn't come out, there's going to be a terrible tragedy that will wipe out my whole family in one swoop. I'll be an elegant, grief-stricken queen, don't you think? So brave, so resolute, with the kingdom to rule all by myself."

  She could hear frantic whispering inside, and stood her ground confidently. Marigold had no choice but to come out. She wasn't going to sacrifice her father and her sisters just because Magnus wasn't to her taste. Olympia knew it.

  And, of course, Marigold did. What else could she do? If she hadn't come out, she'd have signed all of their death warrants. By marrying Magnus she was signing only her own. And marrying him bought time—with time, maybe they could still find a way around Olympia's wicked plans. She'd just made three new friends—her sisters—and she wasn't willing to let them go so easily or so soon.

  She stood like a big doll while the abigails, under Olympia's instructions, dressed her and did her hair and sprayed her with perfume. Her mind was in her father's suite with him and her sisters, and in the dungeon with Christian and Ed and the dogs. She didn't even know where Flopsy, Mopsy, and Topsy were. Olympia told her that they were just fine—and would stay that way as long as Marigold did as she was told. Fenleigh sprawled luxuriously on the chaise, safe for once from the yaps and nips and chasings of Marigold's three little mops.

  In Swithbert's chamber Denby, under guard, was preparing the king for the wedding ceremony. The triplets had been removed to an adjoining suite to be prepared also. They all felt more as if they were dressing for a funeral. Which indeed they were, even if it would be some time in the future.

  IN THE DUNGEON Christian was saying, "I think we're ready. First the door."

  Among the blacksmith's discards he'd found a small tin of what he suspected—and hoped—was Inflamium. He packed some around the hinges of the cell door. Then he struck a piece of metal against the wall of the cell until he got a spark, which fell into a pile of dog fur he'd collected from Bub and Cate. Cate had thrown a fit of miffed vanity when she'd seen the bald spot the fur-harvesting had left on her leg. But now that she saw what a merry little fire her fur made, she was pleased with her contribution to the escape attempt and swaggered importantly around the dungeon.

  The fur fire ignited a slim stick of wood from the junk pile, which Chris touched to the stuff packed around the hinges. The flame sputtered for a moment, then went out.

  "Rats," Christian said. "I'll have to try it again. Line up, Bub and Cate. I need more fur."

  Cate was even less cooperative this time. She could envision herself being denuded for the sake of an experiment that never worked. But between them, Ed and Christian managed to hold her down long enough to get what they needed. In truth, Chris knew he could have gotten all the fur he needed from shaggy, cooperative Bub. But he also knew that, if the experiment succeeded, Cate would never forgive him for not letting her contribute to what would in time, in her own mind, be her single-pawed role in the saving of all of their skins—if they were lucky.

  Christian went through the routine again. This time when the ignited stuff began to sputter, he blew on the tiny embers, coaxing them into steady burning.

  "Step back, everyone," he said once he was sure the fire wasn't going out. "Turn your backs." He had to lift Cate bodily and turn her from the door.

  They waited.

  And waited. "No peeking," Christian warned, crossing all his fingers and praying that what he'd found really was Inflamium.

  Just when he was about to acknowledge that it wasn't, there was a pop and then a boom! and the cell door blew out into the corridor.

  "Wow!" Ed said.

  Cate and Bub dashed out of the cell, barking excitedly.

  "Quiet!" Christian hollered after them, and then lowered his voice. "Quiet," he whispered. "We have to be very sneaky now."

  "Hey!" called the guard from the next cell. "Let me out, too."

  "I don't think so," Christian said. "We don't want anybody running upstairs and blowing the whistle on us. Where are the keys to the dungeon doors?"

  "Why should I tell you?" the guard pouted, turning his back. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that his breeches hung down a little too far in the rear.

  "Think!" Christian implored Ed. "We've got to get out of here and stop that wedding. Something's gone wrong. I know it, or Marigold and the king would have been here long ago to let us out. Where would the keys be?"

  Without a word, Ed pointed to a hook on the wall by the door. There hung a ring with many keys on it, right where Swithbert had tidily left it.

  "Oh," Christian said, snatching the key ring and beginning to try keys in the big lock. Once, he dropped the ring and couldn't remember which keys he'd already tried, so he had to start all over. "Rats!" he muttered. "Rats, mice, and rodents!"

  The last key on the ring was the one that finally turned in the lock.

  "Hooray!" he said. "Now let's get the machine."

  They wheeled out of the cell the cumbersome machine Christian had constructed, at one point having to turn it on its side to get it to fit through the doorway.

  Dragging it up the steps to the dungeon doors was an even trickier maneuver. Christian was torn between the need to hurry and the need to go slowly enough not to damage the machine.

  While they labored, the imprisoned guard wheedled, "Aw, come on, get me out of here. I can help you. I'm strong. I can get that thing up the stairs. What are you going to do with it, anyway? Looks like something put together by a blindfolded committee."

  That did it.

  Christian, who was very proud of this contraption whether it worked or not, wouldn't let that guard out now if the building were on fire. Well, okay, if the building were on fire. But only then.

  Ed was only minimally more helpful than the dogs, so Christian did most of the heavy lifting himself, finally muscling the thing into the wide corridor outside the dungeon. The corridor was empty, lit with burning torches in wall sconces.

  "Nobody's around," Christian said. "They're not
expecting any trouble from here. They must all be up at the wedding. We've got to find a way to the outdoors without being noticed."

  "Who'd notice a caravan like us—two dogs, a strange machine, and a troll?"

  "What about me, the mad scientist?" Christian asked.

  "All right, a mad scientist, too," Ed added. "Who'd notice that?"

  "Nobody, I hope," Christian said, pushing his machine down the hall.

  20

  Marigold, in her overloaded wedding gown, stood back from the arched entrance to the flagstone terrace, her hand on her father's arm. The wedding guests were seated on the terrace in little gilt chairs, dressed in their dazzling finest, waiting. Calista, Eve, and Tatiana, Marigold's attendants, had already gone down to the altar, which was set up at one end of the terrace under a bower of summer flowers. They stood looking back toward the archway, their expressions anything but joyful. Magnus, on the other side of the altar, exhibited a remarkably similar expression and was unable to keep his knees from knocking rapidly together.

  The chamber orchestra played on and on, and the guests began to shift in their seats. Where was the bride? This was the main event, and they were anxious for it to begin, to see if the wedding lived up to the lavish, no-holds-barred celebrating of the past couple of days. If they noticed how glum the bridesmaids looked or how agitated the bridegroom was, they put it down to wedding jitters.

  Marigold and Swithbert would have stood there in the archway indefinitely if Olympia, carrying Fenleigh under her arm as always, hadn't come up behind them and said, "We're starting a new tradition. Both parents are walking the bride down the aisle. Let's go."

  She took Marigold's other arm and practically dragged her and the king out onto the terrace. The music flared and the guests stood, craning for a look at this unprecedented arrangement.

  Olympia smiled and nodded as she went down the aisle, singling out especially influential personages for her notice. You never knew when you might need a favor, and believe it or not, people remembered even such apparently trivial things as a special nod.

  Marigold and Swithbert weren't smiling or nodding at anybody. They were moving like mechanical toys, stiff and expressionless. Marigold's mind whirled with anxiety. She could think of no other solution but to throw herself over the parapet and down into the river, and she knew she could never do that. Not only would it break her father's heart, it would leave him at the queen's mercy. If going through with this wedding meant being shackled to Magnus for a lifetime—even a very short one—she knew she had to do it to protect her papa.

  Swithbert was feeling like a failure. How had he allowed things to come to such a pass? He thought he'd been a decent king, but apparently he'd only been a weak one. Without his even noticing, Olympia had taken over, getting rid of most of the old familiar retainers at the castle; managing their daughters' lives; turning his soldiers suspicious and paranoid, ready for a fight when there was no good reason for one. Now he couldn't even protect his beloved Marigold from this tangled situation he'd allowed to come about.

  But wait. Maybe he could! When it came time for him to answer the question, "Who gives this woman in marriage?" he could say he wouldn't. Then he sighed. Olympia would be standing right beside him. She'd say he wasn't of sound mind, everyone knew that, and, of course, they both gave up Marigold to Magnus, so proceed with the ceremony, please.

  The opulently robed bishop beamed and began to intone the solemn and frightening words of the wedding ceremony: "in sickness and in health ... until death do you part." Swithbert had never noticed how many ominous words were in the marriage vows— sickness, death, put asunder.

  Suddenly Swithbert heard murmuring behind him, spreading like a wave, becoming louder and louder until it was pierced by a scream and the sound of little gilt chairs toppling over. He turned and saw the wedding guests stampeding out of the way of ... of ... what the heck was that, anyway? It looked like a giant dragonfly, with wings that flapped ponderously up and down, sometimes more quickly than at other times. It weaved, dipping and rising at the edge of the parapet, disappearing below the rim and then coming into view again, seeming to struggle to make it over the terrace wall.

  The next time it rose, Swithbert could see that it wasn't a real bug—it was mechanical. Powered by—could it be ... dogs?—running on a kind of treadmill belt in the center. When the dogs slowed, the flying machine dipped; when they ran faster, it rose. Behind him he heard Marigold cry, "Christian!"

  And Christian yelled back, "You said the only way you could get out of here is if you had wings! I've come to get you and take you away!"

  And overlapping Chris's voice was Olympia's yelling, "Get me Rollo! And all his archers! And hurry up!"

  The wedding guests were panicking, trying to escape by squeezing through the arched doorway to the staircase, pushing and shoving and stepping on each other's ermine-trimmed capes and trailing trains in a most unroyal way.

  As the guests rushed down, Rollo and his soldiers were running up the stairs, trying to reach the terrace. The collision was a terrible mess, but as usual, the group with the weapons won. The soldiers raced out onto the terrace, leaving behind them a trail of upended royalty sprawled on the stairs and on each other.

  Among all the fairies in attendance, only Queen Mab, with her lousy sense of direction, didn't make it down the staircase but remained flitting haphazardly from here to there around the terrace.

  "Shoot that ... that ... thing!" Olympia commanded, as the flying machine edged up over the parapet again. The archers quickly arranged themselves in two ranks, one standing and one kneeling, while Rollo bellowed at them.

  The flying machine sank again and then, with one strong burst, came heaving over the wall just as the archers let their arrows fly. Arrows bounced off some parts of the machine and pierced others as it crash-landed onto the flagstones.

  The dogs jumped off the treadmill and ran yapping hysterically (Hecate) and baying bravely (Beelzebub) straight at the soldiers. Ed untangled himself from the wreckage and ran, too, but in the other direction, down the whole long length of the terrace.

  "Get him!" Rollo screamed. "He's a murderer!"

  Several soldiers took off after him, two of them hindered by dogs attached to their pants legs. Even so handicapped, a young long-legged soldier could outrun an old short-legged troll any day of the week, and so they did.

  While the soldiers grappled with Ed and the dogs, Christian was lying in the crumpled remains of the flying machine—an arrow protruding from the center of his chest.

  Marigold screamed and ran for the wreck, stopping only to throw off her heavy crown and veil, and to rip off the voluminous train of her ridiculous wedding gown.

  "Christian!" she cried, climbing over the broken flying machine. She slid to her knees and took his head into her lap. "Speak to me," she pleaded. "Tell me you're all right."

  He moaned but didn't open his eyes.

  "Papa!" she called. "Help me!"

  "Stay right where you are, Swithbert," Olympia ordered.

  "Or what?" he asked her. "I'm the king, in case you've forgotten. And it's high time I started acting like it."

  "Well!" Olympia said huffily, and stalked away.

  "Denby! Go for the castle doctor," the king ordered.

  "I believe he's at the foot of the stairs, tending to all the people who fell down them on the rush to get out of here."

  "Well, go get him anyway. I'm the king. He has to do what I say."

  With that, Denby headed off and the king made for the pile of broken parts that contained his daughter and Christian.

  Nobody paid the slightest attention to Calista, Eve, and Tatiana except for their husbands, who had rushed up in the midst of all the commotion exclaiming, "Where have you been?"

  "Oh, Papa," Marigold cried when Swithbert reached her. "Do you think he'll be all right?"

  "I'm sure he will," Swithbert reassured her, although he wasn't sure at all. An arrow in your chest didn't seem like a very hope
ful sign.

  "Did you see, Papa?" Marigold asked, her eyes shining. "He was flying! He was coming to fly me away! Don't you think that's amazing? Don't you think that's wonderful?"

  Swithbert waited for a moment before he asked the next question, afraid of the answer. "And why do you think he did that, precious? Why did he go to so much trouble and endanger himself so much? I know I wouldn't want to travel in anything that depended upon dogs for its locomotion."

  Marigold didn't even need to answer. Her cheeks pinked prettily, making her look like the blushing bride she evidently wasn't going to be.

  Christian groaned again just as Denby returned with the doctor.

  "Step back, everyone," the doctor said, carrying his bag full of leeches, bloodletting tools, and trepanning instruments. "Let me have a look at him."

  Marigold didn't move. "You can look at him just fine while I stay here." She held Christian's head firmly in her lap with both hands.

  The doctor shrugged and then knelt, while Swithbert removed himself. Under the bridal arbor stood Olympia and Magnus. Swithbert heard Magnus ask, "Does this mean the wedding is off?"

  "Must you act like such an idiot, Magnus?" Olympia said, and strode away to have a look at Ed, pinned down by several soldiers. The dogs scampered around the group, snapping and growling and eluding the detail that Rollo had assigned to capture them.

  "What's this about a murderer?" Olympia asked sternly. "Don't we have enough problems without that, too?"

  Fenleigh took one look at Bub and crawled up onto Olympia's shoulder, as far away as he could get from that mouthful of big teeth.

  "But this troll is a murderer, Your Majesty," Rollo said. "Remember, years back, when Prince Teddy and Prince Harry's older brother was lost in the forest and never seen again? And everybody decided he'd been eaten by wild animals because no body was ever found? Well, I discovered the boy's clothes in a basket in the troll's cave. He must have done the kid in. The clothes are old and musty, but there are no animal teeth marks on them."