The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle (16 page)

Rob continued in a coarse whisper, “I got down to that ledge, and that's when I found the cave.”

“Cave!” said Peter.

“There's a cave there, right in the cliffs. And, well, that's where I found the machines.”

The six of them surged into the dining hall, where the teachers and Lady waited at the head table. They stopped in a rough heap, trying to smooth ruffled hair and rumpled clothes.

The Lady drew herself up, examining them all, but especially the dirt-smeared Rob. “You are late.”

They ate in silence. Kat stole glances up at the head table. MacLarren and Gumble were stiff and careful; Storm looked odder than ever, thin—yes, thin!—and drawn, muttering to himself and glancing through narrowed eyes at everyone around him. The Lady seemed shrouded in a dark cloud.

When they finished dinner, the children trooped upstairs and gathered in a circle in the hallway. Kat asked Rob for more details.

“I know it was dumb to go alone,” Rob said, “but when I woke up and looked out and saw that guy in the black overcoat I remembered what you said and I had to follow. Especially
since the wireless was missing and all. I thought maybe I was onto the spy. And I was, wasn't I?”

“I'm just glad we found you in one piece,” Kat said. “And really, Rob, I should be mad, but I'm proud of you.”

Rob looked surprised, and then gave Kat a big smile.

She asked, “But what's this other machine you saw?”

“I don't know,” said Rob. “It's like a typewriter of some kind. It has a keyboard and it was inside a wooden box with a lid, and above the keyboard were wheels and gears with numbers, and I couldn't see where you'd put in paper like in an ordinary typewriter.”

Peter let out a low whistle and Kat rocked back. She knew what that machine was, and clearly Peter did, too. “An encryption machine,” she whispered.

“What's that?” asked Colin.

“It's a code machine,” Kat said. “Spies use them to translate things into code. So they can send information back.”

“Could it be that the spy, he is on our side?” asked Isabelle.

Peter shook his head and said, “Not likely. Why hide it in a cave? No, it's probably the enemy. Kat, you were right all along. The Germans do have a spy here.”

Kat shivered. Somehow, she didn't feel happy she was right.

“If you ask me,” said Robbie, “a Nazi spy is worse than a ghost, any day. But at least I can truly use my sword on a spy . . . Oh, no!” Robbie's eyes grew round and he stood up.

“What, Rob?” Kat asked.

“My sword,” he said, his voice expressing his horror. “I left my sword—the castle's sword—in the cave. The spy will know someone from the castle has been there.”

They all exchanged wide-eyed glances.

“We'd better get back there tomorrow,” said Peter. “We'll want to get at that code machine anyway.”

“A code machine,” said Amelie. Her round cheeks were pink, her eyes bright. “A machine that makes new words and sends them away over the air. That sounds like magic.”

Kat stared at her sister. A mathematical device that translated letters into numbers and was made of pins and cogs and wheels, that was magic? “Well, until you unravel the secrets, I guess it is magical, a bit, Ame. But it's really only a big and complicated puzzle. Once you figure it out, it's not so magical after all.”

Amelie shook her head, curls tumbling. “It turns shadows into light.”

Kat opened her mouth and then closed it again. She was beginning to realize that there were times when Amelie spoke the truth. Kat leaned back against the wall. Was Rob right? Was a Nazi spy worse than some evil monster possessed of dark magic? That's what she'd thought, at the beginning. Now she was not so sure. A spy was solid, real. Magic, well, that was still something slippery to Kat. Solid things first.

Solid things including her missing chatelaine. First thing in the morning she'd begin a concerted search.

If Kat had known that something in Rookskill Castle stole the souls of children, she might have changed her priorities.

Ice

K
AT
IS DRIFTING
into sleep when they arrive: grinding, moaning, shivering sounds, slithering from one side of her bed to the other, and she lies still as death, trying not to cry out, trying to keep her face a mask. As the monster slides away she hears the soft
shush
as if a door closed.

She doesn't move for what seems hours. And unlike the other times she'd heard the noises and thought she might have dreamed them, she does not fall asleep, but lies awake.

Moonlight streams through the curtains. The clock on the mantle, the one she has fixed and restarted so many times, has stopped again, the hands poised at ten past midnight.

Whatever that thing is, it has the power to stop clocks.

And the room is frigid.

The Seventh Charm: The Dog

T
HE LADY ELEANOR
of Rookskill Castle catches Colin out before breakfast. She will not be interrupted this time, as she was with little Amelie. Eleanor, done with pretense, finished with kindness, won't be stopped or delayed any longer.

“
Tsk
,” Eleanor says to Colin, scolding. “You know the rules. You've seen what happens. You should not be wandering about.”

Colin's face drops; Eleanor is pleased. She's planted such perfect seeds. “I was only . . .” His voice trails off. His eyes study the ground. He waits.

“There, now.” She pauses. “I think I have a suitable punishment. Do you like dogs?”

Colin's face lifts again. For a moment he looks suspicious, and then his eyes brighten and he nods so hard, he might rattle apart.

“My favorite hound has whelped and her pups need attention. You can take care of them.”

It's clear that this is anything but punishment to Colin. He dances around her as they walk. The chatelaine thumps against her hip; she has the dog charm clutched in her fist, ready.

Eleanor pushes the barn door aside, then closes it behind. “This way,” she says. She leads him past the empty stall to where one is dimly lit. Cats scatter into shadows as they pass.

Colin jumps and skips. To him, the barn smells of damp and hay. Maybe they were wrong about the Lady, if she loves dogs.

As they step around the stall door they see the slender hound and a pile of mewling puppies.

Eleanor reaches down and lifts up a puppy and hands it to Colin. She wipes her hand on her black coat, disgust filling her. To her, the barn smells of feces. The hound bares her teeth but doesn't dare bite her mistress, a mistress now made more of metal than of soft flesh, metal that would cause great pain to the hound and her babies.

Growl at me, you filthy cur,
thinks Eleanor.
You'
ll be sorry when I throw your pups into the
well and turn you out into the snow.

But Colin is in heaven, cuddling and cooing. The pup's eyes are still closed and it's a small brown-and-white ball in his arms. Colin turns his bright eyes to Eleanor, talking baby talk to the wee thing.

It's perfect: she slips the silver chain with its small dog charm over Colin's head and whispers the accursed words.

Your life will linger dark and deep.

She's seen the change six times before: the cry of pain and then the jaw gone slack, the eyes that dull, the vacancy as the boy's soul leaves his body and becomes hers.

Hers.

Her chest grows tight and she closes her eyes. The boy's soul is joined to her thirteenth charm, held there with a bond formed of dark spells. Eleanor swells with the power of it, feeling the bliss surge through her as it has before, each time more strongly, and she tilts her head back and laughs out loud.

Her laughter rolls through the barn, shrill and piercing. The living things scatter before the sound as if it contaminates the very air.

The hound bares her teeth again and her throat fills with a growl, as the boy Colin sinks to his knees, clutching the pup, sinks to the mother and her other babies, and becomes one with them, acting like a whining, whimpering puppy, accepted by the hound as another of the forlorn creatures of the barn.

Eleanor draws herself upright, her metal arm's gears whirring and clicking. She points her claw finger at the hound and says, “I will take care of you before the end.”

Her thirteenth charm now carries the weight of seven souls, and Eleanor bears it, limping, staggering, bending, but also with dark joy.

The Cave of Plato

“J
UST WHAT YOU'D
expect from a ghost,” said Rob when he and Kat and Peter gathered in the hallway before breakfast.

“I don't want to scare them,” Kat said of the younger children. “I don't want them to know.”

Peter and Rob, who didn't drink the chocolate either, had heard it in their room, too. “Pretty awful,” was Rob's understatement.

“It makes me feel like I can't move,” said Peter. “And I don't want to open my eyes. And it gets so cold in the room.”

“I think it's using secret passageways,” Kat said.

“I know what I have to do,” said Rob, straightening his back. “I've got to go back for my sword.”

And Kat had to find her chatelaine. She'd had time when
waking up to take her room apart piece by piece. But after a fruitless search Kat sank back on her heels, exhausted. Her room was a shambles, all of her and Amelie's clothes dumped on the floor and the bedclothes rumpled and every object turned upside down or inside out, and still no chatelaine. She wanted to cry, but that wouldn't do any good.

Stolen,
was her next thought. Someone must have taken it from her dresser. But who? And did they know that it might contain magic, and how to use it?

As they sat down to breakfast, Rob asked, “Where's Colin?”

“In his room?” Isabelle said hopefully.

But after breakfast he didn't answer the knock on the door, and his room was locked.

“He must be here,” Kat said, a knot of worry forming in her stomach. “Maybe he's getting some extra sleep.” They were all exhausted.

Miss Gumble told them they were taking a test and had to compose an essay on the spot, and she handed around a paper with a question at the top. Kat hoped she had enough energy to write something decent.

And then she read the question:
Compose a
three-page essay on the Allegory of the Cave in
Plato's
Republic
, and, using examples, relate the allegory to
your own efforts to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Kat sat back in the chair. This question was far too close to
her recent experiences. Was it coincidence? She looked up at Miss Gumble and was met with a hard stare.

“Miss Bateson, do you have a question?” Miss Gumble asked.

“Um,” Kat said, “well, I guess that I'm surprised, because we read that section about Plato's cave a while back.”

“And?”

“I just thought . . .”

“You thought I was going to test you on more recent reading. As in something you should have read last night.” Miss Gumble seemed to be trying not to smile. “You all need to think about deeper meanings. Plato, of course, in Aristotle's voice, was addressing ideas about illusion. What might be real and what might not. That seems to me a worthy exercise. Now, please begin your essay with a précis.” Miss Gumble picked up a book and buried her face behind its covers.

Kat and Peter exchanged a glance; the others were already writing. Kat set to work, and decided not to hold anything back.

In maths MacLarren changed focus entirely from what they had been working on for the past weeks.

“Something a bit different today,” he said. He handed each of the children a stack of puzzles, of varying degrees of difficulty according to each student's abilities, and asked them to solve the puzzles during class.

The puzzles he'd given Kat were difficult mathematics equations that worked on permutations of numbers to letters. The question posed on each of the five puzzles was the same:
Given
the variables, how many different solutions are possible?

MacLarren stood over her with his hands clasped behind his back. “Yes, lassie? Are we having difficulty?”

“It's just that this looks like, well, it's a bit like . . .”

“A code?” he prompted, his voice unnaturally soft. He'd leaned over her so that none of the others could hear.

She nodded.

“Then best get to it, eh?”

She nodded again.

Kat finished in record time, and she approached the desk where MacLarren sat with his feet propped up, his head back against the chair, and his eyes closed. She coughed.

He opened one eye. “Let's see, lass.” He reached out his hand.

He took her papers, glanced through them, and nodded. “Care to try the next step?” he asked.

Kat lifted her brows and smiled.

The next step was a translation exercise involving one of the puzzles. Kat was given a key and had to create the algorithm that would translate the numbers to letters.

She didn't move away from MacLarren's desk this time, but pulled a chair up and created the equation while he watched.
“Good,” he said softly. “Very good.” It was the first time he'd praised her skill. He raised his voice, the old MacLarren back in full force. “Now, lass, go work on those algebra problems you got wrong last week.”

Kat smiled to herself as she returned to her desk. One small victory in the midst of confusion.

“They know,” said Peter. “Gumble and MacLarren. That's the only explanation.” Peter and Kat had lingered behind the others after lunch. “It's like Gumble knows we're trying to work out what this terrible dark magic is.”

“And MacLarren has some idea there might be an encryption machine,” said Kat. “Father suggested them to the Lady. Maybe they really work with him.”

“With him? What, MacLarren and Gumble, spies?”

Kat chewed her lip. “Even if they aren't, they seem to be on our side.”

“Wonder what they'd think if they heard those sounds,” Peter said with a shudder.

“I wonder what they think of Lady Eleanor.”

Peter grabbed Kat's elbow and gave her a look.

From behind her Kat heard, “You two. Don't you have another class?”

The Lady. Kat and Peter hustled to the classroom.

“How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!” Kat heard her father's voice in her head, repeating one of his maxims. He would then put one finger to his forehead, while pinning Kat with his stare. “Caution, my dear. Keep calm.”

In history, Storm acted as if he was tipsy. He staggered from topic to topic, lecturing randomly, referencing everything from the Napoleonic Wars to the Russian Revolution. Kat stopped taking notes when she could no longer make sense of the line of discussion. Storm walked back and forth, faster and faster, sweating. He'd lost so much weight in only a few weeks, and he was pale, and even his hair had changed, now dark and sparse. He paced and wheeled and paced as the sweat dripped from him; at one moment when his back was turned, Isabelle, who had been sitting in the front, moved into a seat a row back, as if fearing that he might drip directly onto her.

“Disgusting,” Isabelle muttered, wrinkling her nose.

“The artifacts!” Storm said abruptly. He stood still, his eyes darting from one corner to the other. “Where did it go, that chatelaine?” And he glared at Kat so fiercely, she shifted away from his glance.

Kat waited for more, but with a blink Storm looked confused, and then moved on to some obscure and random historical details.

Except that when his gaze had stopped on Kat, she'd
remembered, a sudden sharp realization. She'd seen Storm in the hallway outside their rooms, and wasn't that just after she'd last seen her chatelaine?

Could Storm—a treasure hunter, according to Peter—have stolen her great-aunt's chatelaine?

When the children were dismissed from history, they had about two hours before dinner. Kat, Peter, and Rob made for the kitchen.

“Don't know where Hugo went,” said Cook. “It may be that her Ladyship went off on one of her errands in the village and needed him to drive.” As she said this, Cook's face went dark.

Peter asked for some rope, and Cook bustled out to one of the storerooms.

As the three of them left the kitchen, Peter said, “I think I'm tall enough to get down that cliff face and up again.”

Kat hoped Peter was right.

He was.

Peter's long arms were just long enough so that he could lower himself over the edge of the cliff onto the ledge.

“Wow! What a cave.” Peter's voice came up as a thin echo. “It would be a great hiding place.”

“No time to look around,” Kat called. “Get those things out so we can get back.”

The hard part was hoisting the two machines up the cliff, but Cook had given them stout ropes.

Kat and Rob pulled the first box over the edge. It was polished oak with brass hinges and latches, and she had to open it. Inside was an encryption machine.

She could have run her fingers over the mechanism for hours, but there was no time. The wireless came up next, and then the sword, and then she and Rob had to lie on their stomachs to help Peter gain footing so he could climb back up.

They'd also brought a pair of backpacks, and were able to shove the encryption device and the wireless inside. Rob carried one backpack, and his sword, and Peter carried the other.

They bolted across the landscape, already shadowed with the approaching sunset.

“We're late,” Peter panted. “And we've got to hide these before we can get in to dinner.”

Rob stopped abruptly. “What's that? It's not Colin, is it?”

Kat and Peter drew up, Kat squinting against the shadows and the setting sun. Rooks circled high above them, calling,
Off, off, off!

At the far end of the allée of trees someone—something?—was moving back and forth, directly in their path, and dancing like the devil.

“What
is
that?” Kat whispered.

“I think . . . ” Rob began, his hand shading his eyes against the red strip of sunset. “No, it can't be.”

“What?” Kat pressed. She wanted to run backward, away. Whatever it was, it was moving, agitated, like a puppet, shadowed black against the light.

“It looks like Jorry,” Rob said.

“Jorry!” said Peter. “Jorry? After all this time? But what in the heck is he doing? Dancing?”