The Crown (6 page)

“Are you okay?” he’d asked, holding her leg in his large hand. Dinah gave him a brave smile, though she felt like sobbing. She didn’t want Wardley to see her cry, even though he had several times—like when Vittiore had a costume ball thrown in her honor, when Harris began teaching Vittiore in the evenings instead of Dinah, or when her father had forgotten to send her tea on All Tea’s Day.

Wardley wiped his hand on the Julla Tree’s fuzzy trunk, looked deeply into her black eyes, and kissed her. His lips were cool and soft, and his mouth tasted like lemons. Dinah leaned in, but he had pulled back, resting his hands on her flaming cheeks, his eyes filled with curiosity as he took in her face. He was trying to understand something; she could see it in his eyes. Dinah gasped, purely out of shock at the sudden heat rushing through her veins, and Wardley gave an easy shrug. “Just wanted to see what it felt like.” He swung himself back into the Julla Tree with a laugh, and Dinah walked, dazed and giddy, toward the castle.

A year had passed since then, and Dinah could still feel the touch of his lips upon hers as she wound her way out of the stables. Layers of pink snow dusted the swirling gold spires of Wonderland Palace, and the entire kingdom seemed to hold its breath with a still glow. A large group of Spade Cards was lounging near the red-glass doors that led into the palace. Dinah pulled her cloak over her head, hoping to hide her face, but her lips gave an uncertain jerk as she grew closer to them. They stood with an exaggerated ease, snickers escaping their blackened mouths. She HATED the Spades.

“Your HIGH-ness.” They gave slight bows.

As she passed, she heard one of them murmuring under his breath: “The King’s daughter, disgrace to the throne. Looks nothing like her mother.”

“Recard,” whispered another.

Dinah’s heart was flapping wildly now. An uncontrollable rage started at her fingertips and worked its way into her chest. She stumbled, and the tiny wooden seahorse that Wardley had given her dropped from her hand. It rolled to a rest against the steel-tipped boot of a Spade.

“Aye, what’s this?” He bent down and picked it up, the figure minuscule against his large hand. “A toy? Aren’t yeh a bit old for toys, Princess?”

“It’s a seahorse, and it’s MINE. Please give it back.” Dinah raised her eyes to meet his, hoping her trembling lip wouldn’t betray the shame she felt. “Please.”

The Spade gave Dinah a hard look. “Come and get it, Yer Majesty.”

His eyes were a mottled gold, she noted with surprise. It was such a stark color against his black-on-black uniform, his long gray hair, and the black symbol of a spade tattooed underneath his right eye. The other Spades remained motionless, half-bowed, as Dinah took a timid step toward him. She started to extend her left hand for the seahorse and then thought better of it.
I am a Princess of Wonderland,
she told herself.
Remember what Harris says. Someday, I will be Queen.

“No.”

The Spades jerked their heads up with curiosity.

“I am the Princess of Wonderland, and you will put it in my hand.”

The gold-eyed Spade gave a deep hoot. “Aye, indeed you are, although the other princess has the look of one. If it were up to me, pretty Lady Vittiore should be the one getting the crown. . . .”

Rising anger burned her spine. With a swift movement, Dinah reached up and struck the Spade, hard across his face. One of her pearl rings left a thin trail of blood across his left cheek. He lunged at her, only to catch himself, his fist inches from her face. Dinah reveled in his shock.

“The Lady Vittiore is not a princess, she is only a duchess. Now, you will put the toy into my hand.”

The Spade gave her an amused smile. “No problem, Princess.” He reached out.

“No. My other hand.”

He looked down with a grimace at her other arm, tucked firmly within her cloak. She made no move to pull it out for him. The other Spades watched in shock as he tried in vain to get the seahorse into her hand without groping her, an action surely punishable by death. Dinah watched the farce silently, as if her arm was detached from her body and she was merely a spectator to this man fumbling around her cloak. Finally, the ashamed Spade pressed the toy into her palm, and Dinah closed her fist around it. The Spade walked back to the barrel he had been sitting on and leaned over it, peering at Dinah. A keen interest now replaced what had been mockery on his face moments earlier.

“Eh, so yeh have some of your father’s fiery blood in you then, do you?”

Dinah scowled at him. “Speak to me again and I’ll have you sent to the Black Towers in a coffin. What is your name?”

The man paled. “I was just joking, Yer Highness; please don’t report me to the King.”

“I said, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”

His dirty hands wrung together. “Gorrann. Sir Gorrann.”

“Well, Sir Gorrann, I will not report you to the King this day. But if you ever insult me again, I will just have your head. No need to involve the King.”

With a hard look she brushed past them, her black cloak trailing behind her. As soon as the red-glass palace doors closed behind her, Dinah plunged into an empty corridor off the main hall. Her lips parted in a soft cry, but she steeled herself from the shame. Victorious, she clutched the wooden seahorse in one sweaty hand and wiped the tears from her face with the other as she made her way to the Mad Hatter.

Chapter Four

Charles’s quarters were located in the western tower of the Royal Apartments, situated neatly above the castle’s kitchens. Her father had given in building materials what he never gave Charles in life. The King showed no other sign of love, affection, or even duty to his son. Charles’s room, as a result, was one of the strangest places in the entire palace. Huge white columns inlaid with red hearts twisted up to the ceiling where they met an expansive fresco featuring all the creatures of Wonderland. Hornhooves, gryphons, birds of all types, great whales, white-striped bears, and four-winged dragons danced across the ceiling in rich paints.

It would have been lovely—a gorgeous work of art—if crudely drawn hats had not been scribbled across the creatures in black charcoal. The animals now wore ugly slashes of feathers, top hats, and huge fedoras, in wavy, messy lines that ran from one to another without stopping. The hats were richly detailed, the lines between them angry slashes—the art of madness.

Sad
, Dinah thought as she gazed upward, her hood falling back onto her neck,
that madness and genius were always melded together in this room.

The room itself was a testament to Charles’s obsession. Racks upon racks of hats rose up from the floor, twisting and circling between rickety, half-built staircases that led to nothing but air. Doors had been attached to the hat racks, swinging open and shut with the cold air blowing in from a large open window at the top of the main staircase. This staircase was Charles’s favorite, covered with hundreds of bolts and swatches of fabric. Piles of melting snow were accumulating on the window ledge in little drifts. Dinah gave a sigh and climbed up one of the rickety staircases, shutting the window firmly and securing the clasp. She heard a skittering of tiny feet below.

“Charles. You cannot leave the window open when it’s snowing outside. It’s bitterly cold in here, and the snow will get all over your new hats. We’ve talked about this.” She dusted off a sturdy gray fedora with orange canary feathers embroidered into a sun and stars. “You have to be careful with them.”

At her feet, a matted head of dirty, yellow hair rose up in a space between the wide stair treads. “Pink snow on pink hats makes the walrus dance, he dances on the sea, heehee!”

Charles leapt out from under the staircase. Dinah gasped as he fell to the floor, somersaulting on his rough landing and leaping up into a kicking dance. “Snow on the hat, snow on the hat, black like your Cheshire Cat!”

He gave a high-pitched giggle and Dinah laughed with him. Charles was younger by only two years, but in his madness he was practically ageless. He was a genius, a savant, a helpless infant and naughty child, all mixed into one tiny boy. He had been born mad—a squealing infant who never slept, a silent toddler who would bang his head against the wall, a curious boy who once ate glass and loved nothing more than to look at the stars. Davianna, Dinah’s mother, had loved her crazed son fiercely and was best at dealing with him. When she curled her arms around him, clutching him to her chest as though she could squeeze the madness out, he relaxed and was content, even as he babbled nonsensically. With his mother’s intense love and focus, Charles seemed to be improving, step by tiny step. When she died, he went completely maniacal, and never returned.

He was regularly found wandering around the castle, a dead bird in one hand and a tart in the other. It was as likely that he had taken a bite out of one as he had the other. He once walked off the Great Hall balcony, breaking both legs on the marble steps below. After that, his walk consisted of short steps and a trotting leap—the grotesque gait of the permanently insane.

Then he stopped eating for a while. Not even Dinah, his beloved sister, could get him to eat. Barely more than a child herself at ten years old, she pleaded with him as she tried to pry a tart, soup, quail, anything into his open mouth. He grew weaker, retreating completely into his own wondrous world, and the entire kingdom dressed in black, awaiting the death of the little Prince of Hearts.

On what surely could have been one of his final nights, Dinah brought in a trunk full of their deceased mother’s clothing. She tucked it all around him, her dresses, slips, and socks, so that he might be comforted on his journey to another place. Charles’s fingers had found one of her mother’s bejeweled hats, the one she had worn for All Tea’s Day the year before—a gorgeous plum hat with a tall plume, plump and glittering in his small hand. An absurd smile played across his translucent skin as he turned the hat over and over in his hands, a look of fascination on his face. He then turned to Dinah and simply asked for a biscuit.

“My Dinah,” he had whispered with a smile, his small hand tracing her chin. “Biscuit?”

She saw it in his eyes that day—he had decided to stay, just like that. That was seven years ago. Since then, Charles never left his room. He watched the world from his windows, where he occasionally threw his lavishly made hats down onto adoring townspeople. A hat created by Charles, the so-called Mad Hatter, was worth more than any piece of clothing in Wonderland. His creations were inspired works of skill and insanity. Unapologetically whimsical, rich in every color found in nature and some that weren’t, they were a testament to Charles’s lunacy.

He rarely slept or bathed. His two loyal servants, Lucy and Quintrell, saw to all of his needs. They kept his chambers from falling into disrepair but allowed his mind the freedom to create in the wild lunacy that he fostered. Tapestries and huge rolls of fabric covered the ground and most of the walls. Narrow walkways had been created for the servants, but Charles simply danced over the rainbow floor, his feet barely brushing the patterned fabrics of amethyst, pumpkin, taupe, and lapis.

Charles looked up at Dinah, still standing in the stairway. He giggled and sang, “A ribbon across their necks, one, two, hearts. Check and check!”

She looked down at the tawny head and the mismatched blue and green eyes that stared back at her wildly. “Do you remember my name today?”

“Dinah, rhymes with lima, beans and more beans, growing up and up, over the hills into the pale white, like sugar on a pie, die, die. . . .”

Dinah gave him a proud smile. “That’s right Charles, Dinah. Your sister. I brought you something today.”

His right eye blinked twice. “Something? Something like the sun, inching closer every day. It will burn us, uh-oh, it will.”

“Not quite the sun, but something really special.” Dinah reached into her cloak and pulled out the tiny wooden seahorse. Charles’s eyes widened, and he took it in his slight, feminine hands. Wardley had carved swirls into its curving back and blackened its long nose with smudged charcoal.

“It’s from Wardley. Remember him? What do you say?”

Charles repaid Dinah with a huge smile that showed his misshapen teeth. “Blue horse, swimming on a long field. Tasty shrimp inside his ribs, I can taste it, yes I can!”

“I’m glad you like it.”

Charles held the carving up into the light as he made it swim through the air. “Sea birds, shimmering scales, black eyes. . . .”

He dashed away from her and began riffling through the fabrics, muttering to himself. Dinah had seen this a hundred times before. The inspiration for a hat had taken root in his mangled brain—a creative, aggressive root that was spreading its joy and poison through each and every secret path of his mind. Dinah descended the staircase to speak with the servants who were waiting patiently near the door.

“How is he doing this week?” she asked.

Lucy gave a deep bow. She was the gentlest woman Dinah had ever known, a grandmother of three with rosy cheeks and white hair that glowed a pale blue in the harsh winter light. Age lines rippled out from her eyes and down her neck into her modest white gown. On her head sat an enormous felt whale, embroidered with swirling pink blossoms. Charles loved her dearly, in his own way, and Lucy was his most devoted servant.

Quintrell was her assistant—a strapping lad who handled the physical labor involved with Charles’s care. He wrestled Charles into the swan-shaped tub once a week and scrubbed him down with hedgehog skins while the boy screamed and writhed. He was also the only one who could force Charles to eat when he was in one of his hat-making furies. Charles periodically went through long periods where he saw nothing but fabric and stitching—fits of wild, brilliant mania that would last for days. Dinah had no idea how Lucy and Quintrell dealt with Charles day in and day out, but they seemed content. Other than Dinah, they were the only ones who truly loved him.

Though he was her brother, Dinah felt that she floated in a strange emotional fog with Charles—she loved him dearly, but her love was always tinged with confusion. She couldn’t deal with him the way Lucy and Quintrell did. Charles recognized her most weeks, but when he didn’t, Dinah felt betrayed, even more alone than usual. Dinah watched in amazement as Lucy wrinkled her face, even more than it already was, as she sorted buttons. She cleared her throat, preparing to respond to Dinah’s question. “How is he doing, Your Highness? Well, he has created two hats in the last twenty days, which is fast for him—the fuchsia beret with swallow’s eggs, and the Gryphon top hat, which will be delivered to the Lord and Lady Clutessa next week. Both works were inspired by the birds that have nested just outside of the window.”