Диана Уинн Джонс - Дом ста дорог [with w_cat]

[576] She arrived in Royal Square as the big clock there began to chime the half hour. Charmain was pleased. But, as she crossed the square to the booming of the clock, she was somehow not pleased, and not hot anymore either. She was cold and small and insignificant. She knew she had been stupid to come. She was a fool. They would take one look at her and send her away. The flashing of the golden tiles on the roof of the Royal Mansion daunted her completely. She was glad of Waif's small warm tongue licking her chin again. By the time she was climbing the steps to the heavy front door of the Mansion, she was so nervous that she almost turned round and ran away.

[577] But she told herself firmly that this was the one thing in the world she really wanted to do—even though I'm not sure I do want to now, she thought. And everyone knows that those tiles are only tin enchanted to look like gold! she added, and she lifted the great gold-painted knocker and bravely hammered on the door with it. Then her knees threatened to fold under her and she wondered if she could run away. She stood there quivering and clutching Waif hard.

[578] The door was opened by an old, old serving man. Probably the butler, Charmain thought, wondering where she had seen the old man before. I must have passed him in town on my way to school, she thought. "Er…," she said. "I'm Charmain Baker. The King wrote me a letter—" She let go of Waif with one hand in order to fetch the letter out of her pocket, but before she could get at it, the old butler held the door wide open.

[579] "Please to come in, Miss Charming," he said in a quavery old voice. "His Majesty is expecting you."

[580] Charmain found herself entering the Royal Mansion on legs that wobbled almost as badly as the old butler's did. He was so stooped with age that his face was on a level with Waif as Charmain wobbled in past him.

He stopped her with a shaky old hand. "Please to keep tight hold on the little dog, miss. It wouldn't do to have it wandering about here."

[581] Charmain discovered herself to be babbling. "I do hope it's all right to bring her, she would keep following me, you see, and in the end I had to pick her up and carry her or I'd have been—"

[582] "Perfectly all right, miss," the butler said, heaving the great door shut. "His Majesty is very fond of dogs. Indeed he has been bitten several times trying to make friends with—Well, the fact of the matter is, miss, that our Rajpuhti cook owns a dog that is not at all a nice creature. It has been known to slay other dogs when they impinge upon its territory."

[583] "Oh, dear," Charmain said weakly.

[584] "Precisely," said the old butler. "If you will follow me, miss."

[585] Waif squirmed in Charmain's arms because Charmain was clutching her so tightly as she followed the butler along a broad stone corridor. It was cold inside the Mansion and rather dark. Charmain was surprised to find that there were no ornaments anywhere and almost no hint of royal grandeur, unless you counted one or two large brown pictures in dingy gold frames. There were big pale squares on the walls every so often, where pictures had been taken away, but Charmain was by now so nervous that she did not wonder about this. She just became colder and thinner and more and more unimportant, until she felt she must be about the size of Waif.

[586] The butler stopped and creakily pushed open a mighty square oak door. "Your Majesty, Miss Charming Baker," he announced. "And dog." Then he doddered away.

[587] Charmain managed to dodder into the room. The shakiness must be catching! she thought, and did not dare curtsy in case her knees collapsed.

[588] The room was a vast library. Dim brown shelves of books stretched away in both directions. The smell of old book, which Charmain normally loved, was almost overpowering. Straight in front of her was a great oak table, piled high with more books and stacks of old, yellow papers, and some newer, whiter paper at the near end. There were three big carved chairs at that end, arranged around a very small charcoal fire in an iron basket. The basket sat on a kind of iron tray, which in turn sat on an almost worn-out carpet. Two old people sat in two of the carved chairs. One was a big old man with a nicely trimmed white beard and—when Charmain dared to look at him—kindly, crinkled old blue eyes.

She knew he had to be the King.

[589] "Come here, my dear," he said to her, "and take a seat. Put the little dog down near the fire."

[590] Charmain managed to do as the King said. Waif, to her relief, seemed to realize that one must be on one's best behavior here. She sat gravely down on the carpet and politely quivered her tail. Charmain sat on the edge of the carved chair and quivered all over.

[591] "Let me make my daughter known to you," said the King. "Princess Hilda."

[592] Princess Hilda was old too. If Charmain had not known she was the King's daughter, she might have thought the Princess and the King were the same age. The main difference between them was that the Princess looked twice as royal as the King. She was a big lady like her father, with very neat iron-gray hair and a tweed suit so plain and tweed-colored that Charmain knew it was a highly aristocratic suit. Her only ornament was a big ring on one veiny old hand.

[593] "That is a very sweet little dog," she said, in a firm and forthright voice. "What is her name?"

[594] "Waif, Your Highness," Charmain faltered.

[595] "And have you had her long?" the Princess asked.

[596] Charmain could tell that the Princess was making conversation in order to set her at her ease, and that made her more nervous than ever. "No…er…that is," she said. "The fact is she was a stray. Or…er…Great-Uncle William said she was. And he can't have had her long because he didn't know she was…er…a bi…er…I mean a girl. William Norland, you know. The wizard."

[597] The King and the Princess both said, "Oh!" at this and the King said, "Are you related to Wizard Norland, then, my dear?"

[598] "Our great friend," added the Princess.

[599] "I—er—He's my aunt Sempronia's great-uncle really," Charmain confessed.

Somehow the atmosphere became much more friendly. The King said, rather longingly, "I suppose you have had no news of how Wizard Norland is yet?"

[600] Charmain shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Your Majesty, but he did look awfully ill when the elves took him away."

[601] "Not to be wondered at," stated Princess Hilda. "Poor William. Now, Miss Baker—"

[602] "Oh—oh—please call me Charmain," Charmain stammered.

[603] "Very well," the Princess agreed. "But we must get down to business now, child, because I shall have to leave you soon to attend to my first guest."

[604] "My daughter is sparing you an hour or so," the King said, "to explain to you what we do here in the library and how you may best assist us. This is because we gathered from your handwriting that you were not very old—which we see is the case—and so probably inexperienced." He gave Charmain the most enchanting smile. "We really are most grateful to you for your offer of help, my dear. No one has ever considered that we might need assistance before."

[605] Charmain felt her face filling with heat. She knew she was blushing horribly. "My pleasure, Your—," she managed to mutter.

[606] "Pull your chair over to the table," Princess Hilda interrupted, "and we'll get down to work."

[607] As Charmain got up and dragged the heavy chair over, the King said courteously, "We hope you may not be too hot in here with the brazier beside you. It may be summer now, but we old people feel the cold these days."

[608] Charmain was still frozen with nerves. "Not at all, Sire," she said.

[609] "And Waif at least is happy," the King said, pointing a gnarly finger. Waif had rolled over onto her back with all four paws in the air and was basking in the heat from the brazier. She seemed far happier than Charmain was.

[610] "To work, Father," the Princess said severely. She fetched up the glasses hanging from a chain round her neck and planted them on her aristocratic nose. The King fetched up a pair of pince-nez. Charmain fetched up her own glasses.

If she had not been so nervous, she would have wanted to giggle at the way they all had to do this.

[611] "Now," said the Princess, "we have in this library books, papers, and parchment scrolls. After a lifetime of labor, Father and I have managed to list roughly half the books—by name and author's name—and assigned each a number, together with a brief account of what is in each book. Father will continue doing this, while you make yourself responsible for my main task, which is to catalog papers and scrolls. I have barely made a start there, I'm afraid. Here is my list." She opened a large folder full of sheets of paper covered in elegant spidery writing, and spread a row of them in front of Charmain. "As you see, I have several main headings: Family Letters, Household Accounts, Historic Writings, and so on. Your task is to go through each pile of paper and decide exactly what every sheet contains. You then write a description of it under the appropriate heading, after which you put the paper carefully in one of these labeled boxes here. Is this clear so far?"

[612] Charmain, leaning forward to look at the beautifully written lists, was afraid that she seemed awfully stupid. "What do I do," she asked, "if I find a paper that doesn't fit any of your headings, ma'am?"

[613] "A very good question," Princess Hilda said. "We are hoping that you will find a great many things that do not fit.

When you do find one, consult my father at once, in case the paper is important. If it isn't, put it in the box marked Miscellaneous. Now here is your first packet of papers. I'll watch as you go through them to see how you go on. There is paper for your lists. Pen and ink are here. Please start." She pushed a frayed brown packet of letters, tied together with pink tape, in front of Charmain and sat back to watch.

[614] I've never known anything so off-putting! Charmain thought. She tremulously unpicked the pink knot and tried spreading the letters out a little.

[615] "Pick each one up by its opposite corners," Princess Hilda said. "Don't push them."

[616] Oh, dear! Charmain thought. She glanced sideways at the King, who had taken up a wilted-looking soft leather book and was leafing carefully through it. I'd hoped to be doing that, she thought. She sighed and carefully opened the first crumbly brown letter.

[617] "My dearest, gorgeous, wonderful darling," she read. "I miss you so hideously…"

[618] "Um," she said to Princess Hilda, "is there a special box for love letters?"

[619] "Yes, indeed," said the Princess. "This one. Record the date and the name of the person who wrote it—Who was it, by the way?"

[620] Charmain looked on to the end of the letter. "Um. It says 'Big Dolphie.'"

[621] Both the King and the Princess said, "Well!" and laughed, the King most heartily. "Then they are from my father to my mother," Princess Hilda said. "My mother died many years ago now. But never mind that. Write it on your list."

[622] Charmain looked at the crumbly brown state of the paper and thought it must have been many years ago. She was surprised that the King did not seem to mind her reading it, but neither he nor the Princess seemed in the least worried.

Perhaps royal people are different, she thought, looking at the next letter. It began "Dearest chuffy puffy one." Oh, well. She got on with her task.

[623] After a while, the Princess stood up and pushed her chair neatly up to the table. "This seems quite satisfactory," she stated. "I must go. My guest will be arriving soon. I still wish I had been able to ask that husband of hers too, Father."

[624] "Out of the question, my dear," the King said, without looking up from the notes he was making. "Poaching. He's someone else's Royal Wizard."

[625] "Oh, I know," Princess Hilda said. "But I am also aware that Ingary has two Royal Wizards. And our poor William is ill and may be dying."

[626] "Life is never fair, my dear," the King said, still scratching away with his quill pen. "Besides, William had no more success than we have had."

[627] "I'm aware of that too, Father," Princess Hilda said as she left the library. The door shut with a heavy thud behind her.

[628] Charmain bent over her next pile of papers, trying to look as if she had not been listening. It seemed private. This pile of paper had been tied into a bundle for so long that each sheet had stuck to the next one, all dry and brownish, like a wasps' nest Charmain had once found in the attic at home. She became very busy trying to separate the layers.

[629] "Er-hem," said the King. Charmain looked up to see that he was smiling at her, with his quill in the air and a sideways twinkle at her from above his glasses. "I see you are a very discreet young lady," he said. "And you must have gathered from our talk just now that we—and your great-uncle with us—are searching for some very important things.

My daughter's headings will give you some clue what to look out for. Your key words will be 'treasury,' 'revenues,' 'gold,' and 'elfgift.' If you find a mention of any of these, my dear, please tell me at once."

[630] The idea of looking for such important things made Charmain's fingers on the frail paper go all cold and clumsy. "Yes.

Yes of course, Your Majesty," she said.

[631] Rather to her relief, that packet of papers was nothing but lists of goods and their prices—all of which seemed surprisingly low. "To ten pounds of wax candles at two pennies a pound, twenty pence," she read. Well, it did seem to date from two hundred years ago. "To six ounces of finest saffron, thirty pence. To nine logs of fragrant applewood for the scenting of the chief chambers, one farthing." And so on. The next page was full of things like "To forty ells of linen drapes, forty-four shillings." Charmain made careful notes, put those pages in the box labeled Household Accounts, and peeled up the next sheet.