Thrice Upon a Marigold Read online

  Phoebe imagined Vlad had smuggled some of it, as well as other toxic mixtures, into exile with him, just as Boris had done with some of his own tools of the trade. It had been a happy day when evil Queen Olympia had fallen into the river, after which King Swithbert had put a stop to all the poisoning and torturing that Olympia had encouraged, and then exiled the perpetrators. Phoebe knew she could never forgive her father for all the terrible cruelties he had inflicted—the damage he had done to her own life was nothing compared to that—and she also knew she never wanted to see him again.

  As she put away the books she had been reading, she realized it had been almost three weeks since Sebastian had borrowed the King Arthur book. She hoped he would bring it back on his own, because she didn’t want to have to track him down to retrieve it; he might be living in Vlad’s previous quarters. They were certain to be nicer than her own inherited rooms (Vlad loved fine things, while Boris could care less), yet she didn’t want to set foot in a place where poisonous vapors had once floated.

  She trudged homeward, thinking, Maybe he’ll return it tomorrow.

  After a consultation, the wizard Wendell had said he believed he could determine if any of the fairy gifts were dangerous—on purpose or inadvertently—and Marigold hoped this was true.

  She wished she didn’t have to have the Welcome Party at all. She wanted only to be with Christian and Poppy, in their private quarters, reading and talking, telling elephant jokes and playing together. She must remember to include the dogs, too. She knew Flopsy, Mopsy and Topsy were unhappy about being relegated to their floor pillows and, come to think about it, she hadn’t even seen Bub and Cate in a long time. Oh, it was wicked of her to have neglected them so. But having Poppy had preoccupied and distracted her, and she knew she wasn’t paying as much attention to a lot of other things as she was to Poppy, even though there was a nursemaid to help with the baby.

  Marigold liked the nursemaid, a comfortably upholstered lady named Mrs. Sunday, but she would have preferred to have only herself and Christian caring for Poppy. It was unreasonable for a queen to think that way, she supposed, but that’s just how it was. There was another new servant just to do the baby’s washing—who knew such a little person could produce such heaps of laundry?—and still another new servant to keep track of the baby presents pouring in from all over the known world, and to draft thank-you notes. Marigold couldn’t possibly write all the notes herself, but she did want to see them, just to make sure they were properly appreciative and respectful, and to personally sign them before they were p-mailed.

  The queen was having more trouble than she’d anticipated getting her routine in order.

  3

  THE FINAL COLD RAIN of winter—or maybe the first one of spring—flung itself against the library windows, as if it were angry at not being allowed in where the fire hissed and crackled in the chimney corner and candlelight glossed the warm colors of the book bindings.

  Phoebe ignored the rain as she concentrated on the book she was reading. It was full of interesting facts, ones she’d probably never get to tell anybody else, but she liked to think that she was nevertheless keeping her mind well-furnished. Wasn’t it nice to know that robins could live twelve years, and that your fingernails could grow two inches in one year, and that most rats were right-handed?

  She closed the book. Who but she would ever care about such things?

  She jumped when the door opened and Sebastian came in, shaking off his umbrella and propping it by the door.

  “I brought back the King Arthur book.” His tone suggested she might not have expected him to.

  “That . . . that’s good. Do you want to renew it?”

  “No. I got what I nee—”

  Just then there was a terrific thud. Sebastian had been facing the window. “I think that was a p-mail pigeon! The storm must have blown him into the glass.” He turned and ran for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out to get him! There’s a shortage of them already, you know. We can’t afford to lose one. And he may be carrying an important message. Get a towel ready for him!” And he dashed out, forgetting his umbrella.

  A towel? Where did he think she would find a towel in a library? And who did he think he was, ordering her around like that? And what did a poisoner’s son care about a battered pigeon, anyway?

  While Phoebe was thinking all these thoughts, she was nevertheless scurrying around looking for something like a towel. She settled for one of the cloths she used to dust the books, which she found just as Sebastian came racing back, soaking wet and shivering, with a limp pigeon in his hands.

  My turn to give orders, Phoebe thought. “Get over there by the fire,” she commanded. “And wrap him in this.” She handed Sebastian the dust cloth. “And here. This is for you.” She flung her shawl across his dripping shoulders—big broad ones, she couldn’t help noticing. “Is it alive?”

  “I think so.” He wrapped the cloth around the bird and set it on the hearth, rubbing it gently. “But look. The cylinder’s broken open.”

  “Well, read the message,” Phoebe said. “It’s got to be important. Who would send a p-mail in this kind of weather if it wasn’t? And this pigeon’s not going to be delivering any messages in his condition. You may have to do it.”

  “You keep massaging the pigeon, then,” Sebastian said.

  Phoebe took the bird in her hands and felt the fast beat of its tiny heart under her fingers. “Come on, birdie,” she whispered. “Don’t give up.”

  Sebastian worked at unrolling the wet paper. “The ink is running, but I think I can make it out.” He spread the strip of paper on the hearth and read:

  M. Do not wait. Take the baby instantly.

  Leave the ransom note.

  We will wait in the agreed-upon place.

  B. and V.

  “Whoa!” he said, sitting back on his heels. “Look at this. What do you think it means?”

  Phoebe bent over the note, the pigeon still in her hands, and read the blurry words out loud. “Oh, my,” she said. “Is that what you read, too?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “Which is the only baby in the kingdom worth kidnapping?”

  “Princess Poppy, you mean?”

  “Can you think of another one worth a ransom?”

  “But who’s M.? And who are B. and V.?” She felt a terrible sense of dread.

  “I don’t know who M. is, but I’m pretty sure who B. and V. are. I told you who my father is, and he’s probably part of this. He wants revenge. He was pretty outraged that he was exiled.”

  After a long pause, Phoebe said quietly, “So was mine.”

  Sebastian gave her a close look. “Why would your father be outraged about my father’s exile?”

  “He wasn’t outraged about your father,” she said, unsure why she was telling him this. “He was outraged about himself.” The pigeon began to stir in her hands.

  “You mean . . . you mean, your father is Boris? As in ‘B.’?”

  She nodded, trying to soothe the pigeon, who was struggling to work his way out of the cloth wrapped around him.

  “Your father is Boris, the torturer-in-chief?” Sebastian sounded unbelieving.

  “Yes, yes,” she affirmed. “Do you want to make something of that?” Maybe telling him had been a mistake. She unwrapped the pigeon, who was beginning to move his wings.

  “No. Not at all. I’m just . . . surprised. I knew he had a daughter. We may even have played together a few times when we were little. But I never knew what happened to you.”

  “I’ve kept a low profile. Like you have. My father wasn’t the most popular person in the kingdom, you know. And the library was perfect for me. I love to read and I needed a job where nobody would have to work with me. People are scared of me.”

  “I do know. I know all about that. Even if you’ve never done anything to make anybody fear you, they still do. Just because of what someone else has done.”

  They studied each other, f
orgetting all about the pigeon, who was rapidly regaining his strength and fluttering his wings.

  “You do know,” Phoebe murmured, almost to herself.

  With a great flapping, the pigeon rose into the air and flew around the library, the open message cylinder hanging from his leg.

  “Oh, no!” Sebastian yelled, reaching toward the fire and then yanking his hand back.

  “What?”

  “When the pigeon took off, his wings blew the p-mail message into the fire.”

  “But isn’t that a good thing?” Phoebe asked. “Now M., whoever that is, won’t get the message and so won’t kidnap the baby.”

  “Maybe not tonight,” Sebastian told her. “But do you think that will stop B. and V.? We need to report this, but now we have no proof to take to the captain of the guards.”

  “We can just tell him. Can’t we?”

  “Even if we could get in to see him—which is doubtful, considering who we are—why would he believe us without any evidence? We don’t have much credibility, thanks to our fathers.”

  “But a threat against Princess Poppy—he’d be crazy to ignore that.”

  “Then, I suppose we have to try.” Sebastian shivered and handed her back her shawl. “And we should do it right now. There’s no time to waste.”

  Phoebe flung the damp shawl over her shoulders, grabbed her own umbrella, and left with Sebastian, locking the library door behind her and leaving the pigeon flapping around the high ceiling. She hoped there wouldn’t be too much cleaning up after him to do when she got back, and then felt petty for worrying about that when the princess’s life was at stake. But practicalities have to be tended to, even during emergencies.

  They rushed through the downpour, across the deserted town square, to the guard quarters, then stood for a moment outside the heavy closed door. They looked at each other, nodded, and then Sebastian raised the big iron knocker and pounded.

  A beefy guard with a tankard in his hand and the top button of his uniform undone opened the door and peered out. “What is it?” he demanded.

  “We have a possible kidnapping to report,” Sebastian told him.

  “A kidnapping? Don’t tell me. You suspect somebody wants to grab Princess Poppy. Right?”

  “Yes! Right!” Sebastian exclaimed. “How did you know?”

  “Because we’ve been getting at least one report like that every day since she was born. Seems like everybody in the kingdom thinks there’s kidnapping plans afoot. Usually to be committed by a neighbor they’ve recently had an argument with.”

  “But this one is—” Sebastian began.

  The guard opened the door wider. “Come on in. I’ll let you fill out a form, just like everybody else.” They stepped inside, politely leaving their dripping umbrellas propped inside the door. “Of course, we’ll need your evidence.”

  “We had some,” Phoebe said. “But it burned up.”

  “Funny how often that seems to happen once people have a form to fill out.” The guard pointed them to a table and sailed a form at them. “There’s quills and ink on the table. Go to it.”

  “Is the captain around?” Sebastian asked. “I think he should hear this.”

  “Yeah, Rollo’s here. But he hates to be interrupted when he’s eating. Who should I say wants to see him?”

  “My name’s Phoebe. I work in the library.” Librarians were supposed to be respectable and harmless, weren’t they? And who would remember that Boris, the torturer-in-chief, had a daughter named Phoebe? He’d been gone for more than two years.

  “And I’m Sebastian.”

  “You’re kidding me, aren’t you?” the guard said. “You’re not really the kids of Boris, the torturer-in-chief, and Vlad, the poisoner-in-chief. This is some kind of joke, right? Or a scheme to distract us, get us working on some fake crime while you’re off committing something else?”

  “Of course not,” Phoebe said indignantly. “Why would we do that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the guard said, rolling his eyes. “Because your fathers were the two nastiest, scariest, most devious brutes this kingdom has ever seen, and were more than capable of cooking up some elaborate ruse so suspicion would never fall on them. The nuts don’t fall far from the tree, as my pal Edric would say.”

  “Do you mean you don’t believe us? That you’re not going to let us talk to Rollo?”

  “Get out of here,” the guard growled. “Your ‘report’”—he made quotation mark signs with his fingers—“is one I can be certain is a fake. And I sure don’t have to bother Rollo with your fairy tale.”

  “But—” Sebastian began.

  “Get out! Before I lock the two of you up for false—well, false something. Go!” He put down his tankard, grabbed each of them by an arm, and hustled them to the door. “And don’t come back.” He flung them into the rain, without their umbrellas, and slammed the door behind them.

  “I told you,” Sebastian said.

  “That’s helpful,” Phoebe said, crossing her arms and turning her back on him.

  “Well, what would be helpful? And what do we do now? We’ve got a credible threat that no one will believe, no evidence of it, and a princess in jeopardy. We can’t do nothing.”

  “We also can’t stand here arguing about it. We’re getting soaked and cold, and that pigeon is probably pooping all over my books. Let’s talk about this in front of a fire.”

  They hurried back across the square to the library, where, yes, the pigeon had left his mark on a significant percentage of the library. At least he seems to be fully recovered from his smash into the library window, Phoebe thought as she mopped up the droppings. Unfortunately, it was still raining too hard to open that same window and toss him out.

  Sebastian stood in front of the fire, dripping. “There’s only one thing to do,” he said. “We have to go to the king and queen.”

  “Oh, right,” Phoebe said. “We couldn’t get even one slovenly guard to pay any attention to us, never mind Rollo. How do you think we can get in to see the king and queen?”

  “Aren’t we supposed to be the descendants of the two wiliest, cleverest brutes this kingdom has ever seen? Surely we can think of something.”

  “You think. I’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.”

  “I need to get into some dry clothes. I’m freezing. And you must be, too.”

  She was, but she didn’t want to admit it. “Well, keep thinking while you go change. Because I can’t figure out any way to solve this, no matter how clever a brute I’m related to.”

  Sebastian stopped at the door, his hand on the knob. “I don’t care how clever and wily my father was. He was also just like that guard said—nasty and scary, too. And I hope with everything I can hope with that there’s not one bit of him in me. I’m going to have to be clever and imaginative on my own.”

  He went out and shut the door very quietly. It was as effective as if he’d slammed it.

  Phoebe stood, the cleanup cloth in her hand. What he’d said was so exactly what she thought about Boris, her torturer-in-chief father, that she felt like crying. She wished she’d been able to tell Sebastian one of her odd facts in gratitude. Maybe how most people’s ears don’t match.

  The pigeon finally got tired of circling the library and settled on a stack of folios, tucked his head under his wing, and went to sleep.

  Phoebe wrapped her spare shawl around her wet shoulders, plopped down in her chair, put her chin in her hand, and tried to do some clever and imaginative thinking herself while she listened to the evening crier.

  “Princess Poppy has learned to roll over and may be cutting her first tooth!Abnormally early, I know, but we didn’t expect our little princess to be an ordinary baby, did we? Of course not! And she is not! Her Welcome Party is scheduled for five weeks hence! Invitations were sent by p-mail today!” He coughed. Being a crier, especially in bad weather, required a certain vocal stamina not everyone had. “More news at ten! Learn who was caught stealing apples from the castle storeroo
m! Hear how many trees the dragon ignited today!” He coughed again. “And if you haven’t already noticed, it’s windy and pouring rain, even though it’s supposed to be spring!”

  4

  AS MUCH AS MARIGOLD didn’t want to start being queen again, she knew she had to. That was one of the problems with being a responsible regent—sometimes it was nothing but a big drag. What she wanted to do was hang around the nursery, elbowing Mrs. Sunday out of the way. She loved it when the laundress came in with a pile of Poppy’s little clothes. She couldn’t help herself—she just had to oooh over how adorable they were. And she hated it when the secretary came in with a pile of thank-you notes to go over. She couldn’t do that in a hurry. After all, she really was very grateful for the outpouring of love and generosity from her subjects (even though there might have been an element of self-interest involved; someday when they needed a favor from the queen, they could remind her of the cunning little blanket they had knit with their very own arthritic hands) and wanted to be properly appreciative.

  And before you knew it, Mrs. Sunday was the one holding Poppy and fussing over her, and Marigold was back to being more queen than mommy.

  “Go on now, Your Highness.” Mrs. Sunday smiled at Poppy, who giggled back at her, making Marigold want to snatch the baby away—and to push poor innocent Mrs. Sunday out the window. She knew it was good for Poppy to be loved by many people and to love many people, too. But Marigold could hardly stand it.