The Crown (16 page)

While her learning had increased tenfold, her patience with lessons and the daily routine of the castle had ceased to exist. Suddenly she could not stand the long introductions, the formality of the court, the ridiculous routines and practices that took up more than half the day.
For gods’ sake
, she thought, taking a gulp of tea,
it takes me two hours or so to eat breakfast and get dressed. So much could be done in that time.

As if he could read her thoughts, Harris began picking up the books and putting them back on the bookshelves that lined Dinah’s walls. “I see Your Majesty is in no mood for lessons today. Are you sure that nothing is bothering you? You have been sullen and withdrawn lately, which is not very princess-like behavior, especially with your coronation coming up in a few weeks.”

Dinah simply shook her head. She could tell no one about what she had seen. This kind of news would surely kill Harris, who had slowed down in recent years. And while she trusted her twitchy tutor, she loved him too, and she would never drag him into something dark.

“Thank you, Harris. I’m just tired. And I long to begin my rule.”

“Do not wish that too early, Your Majesty. Once you begin it, you may long for your childhood days once again.”

I’ll never have those again
, thought Dinah,
not now that I know what lingers beyond the palace.
Dinah stood up and brushed off her maroon-and-white-striped dress. “I think I’m going to visit Charles this morning. Please tell the servants to pass the message along.”

Harris clapped his hands. “That sounds like a brilliant idea. Please tell Lucy and Quintrell that I send my regards.”

Dinah nodded absently as she fiddled with the small bird in her hair. Emily walked up behind her and clipped it firmly to the side of Dinah’s head. “That looks lovely, My Lady.”

Dinah made a rumbling sound in her throat. No matter how much she tried, she could not bring herself to care about Wonderland fashion.

She walked briskly through the palace. Everywhere she went, her pace was now brisk, now that she had two Heart Cards trailing her every move.
This is how it feels to be Queen,
she told herself
, so I better get used to it
. The click-clack of boots behind her reminded her with every step that she was never truly alone.

Quintrell was waiting for her outside Charles’s door. “My Queen!” he bowed.

“Not yet,” smiled Dinah. “How is he today?” she asked.

“Strangely melancholy,” he replied, relieving the Cards and ushering Dinah inside. “This last week he has not been himself. His mood is one of despair, and most of the time Lucy finds him weeping in corners or screaming at the walls. He seems fascinated with stars and shadows, though his work has been focused solely on the concept of shadows, all black and shades of gray. It’s hard for us to see him this way. It has resulted in some of the most beautiful hats I’ve ever seen, though.” He let out a defeated sigh. “The Mad Hatter has never been more exceptional in his talent, but our Charles is strangely detached.”

Dinah rested her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for telling me. I’m so grateful that Charles has such loving servants.”

“Wait until you see what he has made for your coronation.”

One month
, thought Dinah.
Only one more month until I will rule beside my father.

Charles’s crooked quarters were more disarrayed than normal. Dinah waded through ankle-deep hats to reach the stairwell on which Charles precariously sat. One leg dangled off into nothing, and he seemed intensely focused on a tooth he held in one hand. Dinah winced.

“Hello, Charles. Is that your tooth?”

Charles blinked several times, his green eye staring at her while his blue one wandered to the right. His mouth was bloody. She gently wiped his lips with the sleeve of her dress as he grinned at her. “Two tooths too many to bite.”

She shook her head. He leapt up, and Dinah steadied herself on a twisted wicker railing that looped overhead.

With wide eyes, he stared at her. “Do you know what the whispering mountains cry? They scream for their freedom! Then it’s goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, all of Wonderland in a steaming pile.” Charles flung his tooth off the ledge and danced down the stairs before her. As they reached the bottom, his face went from enchantment to hysterics. “Tooth! I need it, I need it, fiddle dee, tooth for tooth!” He began to search frantically in a pile of hats, which flew overhead as he tunneled beneath them.

“It’s here, Charles.” Dinah had seen the tooth land on a pile of spotted teal feathers. She plucked it up and scrubbed it with a piece of sunrise-colored silk. He snatched it out of her hand and held it up to the light. “Ivory. Bone. Black on black texture with the teeth of different animals. A hat for a horde. A hat for a—” he did a little jig, “a warrior! A man that carried heads in a bag!”

He wrapped his hand around Dinah’s. It surprised her a little. Charles reluctantly let her touch him sometimes, but he was never the instigator. His mismatched eyes looked up into hers. “Come and see. Come and see,” he whispered, repeating the phrase over and over. He led her under the maze of staircases into a small backroom. This was where he usually stored buttons of every size and make, but the room had been cleared, and it was empty.
Empty except for a crown.

It sat on a wooden stool, and an open window filtered in just enough light so that it glittered and shimmered in the sun. Dinah felt the air whoosh out of her lungs. It was magnificent, a work of art of the highest order, unlike anything she had ever seen. The thick base was of brushed silver, inlaid with thousands of tiny white diamonds, all in the shape of hearts. Individual tree branches rose up from the hearts, leaping and twisting into a solid second circle that finished the top of the crown. The detail became more incredible the closer Dinah looked. The branches, when inspected, were patterned into tiny faces, their flowered mouths open in a scream. Stars, flickering in the light, hung from thin bands of silver among the creeping branches. Four Card symbols connected the vines from the sides of the crown to the top, where a diamond heart inlaid with a bird in flight sparkled in the light. The heart, she could see, had been cut in half and reassembled so it sat a tiny bit askew.

She was speechless. It was not only ten times her crown; it was ten times her father’s crown. Nothing like this had been made in Wonderland, not ever. It was the most astonishing crown she had ever seen, truly a combination of art and extraordinary skill. It blazed in the sunlight.

“Charles . . . I cannot accept this. This is. . . .”

She looked over at her brother. He was still, for once, watching her with puzzling sadness. She gave him a kiss on the forehead. He made a face.

“Thank you. I shall wear it every day when I am Queen.” Her own crown, a tiny ring of rubies, now seemed sad and pathetic by comparison. She reached out to touch the diamond heart.

“No!” Charles screamed, throwing himself on the floor, where he began flailing. His body gave a jerk and a spasm rippled up his legs. Dinah knelt on the floor next to him, wrapping her arms around his painfully thin frame.

“Charles, breathe. Charles, calm down, I won’t touch it, not yet.”

She shouted for Lucy, and Quintrell flew around the corner. His face dissolved into fear for the little prince. “Hold him tight. Here, put this in his mouth.” He gave Dinah a stick of hard wood. “I don’t want him to bite off his tongue.”

Dinah gently placed the stick into Charles’s mouth and held him until the seizure passed.

“I’ve got him,” she told Quintrell.

He gave her a gentle smile. “What do you think of your crown?”

Dinah looked back at it. It was no less beautiful from below. “I can’t believe he made that. I knew he did metal and gemstone work sometimes, but this. . . .”

“He’s been working on it for years,” Quintrell whispered. “We never wanted to spoil the surprise. The day it graces your head will be a glorious day for us, for Charles, for Wonderland. I have faith that you will be a great Queen.”

Dinah looked down at her tiny brother, his limbs quivering under her hands. Her arm was heavy under his shuddering spine.
Two broken children
, she thought,
waiting for a mother who would never return.
She looked into Charles’s eyes and stroked his hair. His body went slack in Dinah’s arms, he was finally still and quiet. “The crown should have gone on his head,” she replied. “If he weren’t mad, Charles would have been the heir, the King of Hearts.”

Quintrell dropped his huge hand against her black hair. “It was never meant to be, Your Grace. Shall I take him from you?”

Dinah shook her head. “No, I’ll stay. Would you mind bringing me some pillows?”

Charles’s small mouth opened and shut as his eyes flickered beneath pale eyelids. Dreaming of hats, she prayed. Hats and trees and tarts. She snuggled in beside him, his greasy head resting against her shoulder. They rested together, brother and sister—Charles finally sleeping soundly after his seizure ended, and Dinah staring in wonder at the crown, watching how the changing light played over its features. She stayed with him for a few hours until Lucy stepped into the room, tucking in her lacy apron.

“Dinah, Charles should be put into his bed now. Quintrell can carry him there. After his seizures, he sleeps for about two days. It’s the most sleep he ever gets, so we take advantage of it and attempt to categorize and clean his materials and living space.” She looked at the small, empty room. “At least we don’t have to clean this room anymore.”

Dinah carefully shifted Charles off her hip and let Quintrell take him. Charles was so thin Quintrell could cradle him like a child.

“I’ll come back later this week,” said Dinah, sliding her feet back into her jeweled slippers. She bent over Charles and kissed his forehead lightly, lingering on his smell of unwashed skin, sun, and fabric. “I’ll see you soon,” she whispered. On her way out, she stole another glance at the crown. The afternoon sun was heavy, and the rays of Wonderland’s beaming light rippled across the jeweled surface.
I’ll be back for you
, she thought.

Dinah walked swiftly down the stone hallway that wound around the Royal Apartments. A poof of a white bird was following her. These petite, perfectly beaked creatures ran rampant around the castle. Dinah turned and scooped it up in her hands. The bird gave a surprised squawk and then nuzzled against her ribs. Dinah let her fingers lightly play over its downy-soft feathers as she walked. Her mind wandered and jumped, replaying all that Faina Baker had said and done. It wasn’t hard. Dinah wouldn’t forget what she had seen and heard in the Black Towers, not ever—Faina’s sunken beauty, Cray’s scheming boyishness, Yoous’s lazy brutality. Wardley hadn’t spoken to Dinah since then, and Dinah was afraid of what he might say when he did. Surely, he resented her for dragging him there, to a place of nightmares.

Her mind kept wrapping and unwrapping itself around Faina’s words.
“She’ll wear the crown to keep her head.”
She had obviously been talking about Dinah. But why would she lose her head? No one would dare kill a Royal, unless it was a Yurkei assassin, or a family next in line to the throne, but her father had all but eradicated those.

“He came on a devil steed, looking for something he would never have again.”
That didn’t make sense either. Faina had talked of the sea, but her father had battled the Yurkei tribes in the East, up against the mountains. That was where he conceived Vittiore. And Cheshire, the whisperer of secrets—he was tied up in this as well, not that that was a surprise. Dinah had always loathed him, but now she had even more reason to make sure that her first days as the Queen of Hearts were his last as the King’s advisor.

The bird gave another loud squawk and turned over in Dinah’s hands. She looked around in surprise. She had been wandering for a while, lost in her thoughts. She was now on the King’s end of the castle—the west-side Royal Apartments. Dinah rarely ventured here, for fear of running into her father. She glanced back. Her Heart Cards were behind her, looking bored and annoyed that she had wandered so long. She began walking again.
Let them follow
, she thought,
that’s their job.
The late-afternoon light bathed the castle in a lovely golden glow. Her eyes lifted to a red stained-glass window, wall-sized and made of hundreds of tiny hearts. When the sun rippled through fat clouds outside, the heart appeared to be alive, a beating organ with a thousand moving parts. She sighed. Wonderland Palace was so beautiful, so ancient. Sometimes she forgot how lovely it was, how much she loved it.

“Dinah?”

The sound was so soft it made her jump; she dropped the bird. It gave Dinah an angry peck on her shin before scuttling down the hall. Vittiore stood behind her, a layered peach gown on her thin frame. Her blond curls were pulled to one side and clipped with a pale-pink rose. Her two lady’s maids flanked her sides, as they always did. They wore matching dresses—red-and-white stripes with blue piping, like frosting on a cake. They were identical twins, born of a Ms. Dee, a striking lady of the court who stood in high favor—too high, Dinah suspected—with the King.

Dinah’s eyes narrowed. “That rose was my mother’s clip.”

Vittiore raised a flustered hand to her head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t. . . .”

Palma, the quieter of the twins, stepped forward. “What the Duchess wears is no business of yours.” She gave a silly giggle that made Dinah grind her teeth together. “It’s not like you care about the fashion of Wonderland. Your mother had much better sense than you ever will.”

Nanda, her second lady-in-waiting and the meaner twin, let out a derisive laugh. “Don’t blame the Princess—it’s not her fault. Emily has no sense how to dress people, or what a lady should wear. She’s of common birth, it’s well known.”

Dinah clenched her teeth. “Do not speak of Emily; she is a loyal servant and a more than suitable maidservant. I require more of my servants than simply dressing me like an overstuffed bird.”