“The funny thing is, I remember being really happy here,” he said softly.
“Me too,” Chip said. “Everybody at Ludlow Castle was always pretty nice to me.”
“Well, duh,” Jonah said. “They knew you were going to be their king.”
“No,” Chip said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t just that. It was … we all belonged. We all had a place.” His voice got husky. “This probably sounds stupid, but I wanted to make my family proud of me. It’s not like in the twenty-first century, when Mom and Dad … uh … well, you know. It always seemed like they had their own lives that had nothing to do with me. And my life had nothing to do with them.”
Jonah didn’t know Chip’s parents very well. But he knew that they hadn’t even bothered telling Chip that he was adopted until he guessed it.
“Chip,” Jonah said. “Nobody in the twenty-first century ever tried to murder you.”
“JB did, by sending me back in time,” Chip said.
“JB isn’t from the twenty-first century,” Jonah said. “He’s from the future.”
“What’s it matter?” Alex asked, poking uselessly at the Elucidator again. “It’s not like we have any control over anything.”
“We are going to convince the queen that you two are dead,” Katherine said stubbornly. “And then we’re going home.”
Home, Jonah thought longingly. He refused to think about how hard it might be to get there.
“Do you suppose it’s dark outside yet?” he asked.
“I’ll go check,” Alex said.
“No. We go together,” Katherine insisted.
Nobody argued with her.
It was barely dusk when they poked their invisible heads out of a side door of the cathedral, but they agreed that that was dark enough. The crowd from the coronation had melted away.
“I bet they’re all feasting now,” Chip said bitterly. “Feasting on the foods that were ordered for my coronation.”
Jonah refused to think about food.
Go haunt the queen, he told himself. Then go home. The words seemed more like a prayer than a plan. Please let it work that way. Please let it be that easy.
“Um,” he said, a new thought occurring to him. “The queen’s not at some castle five days away, is she?”
“Nope,” Alex said. “She’s right in there.”
He pointed at a squarish stone building that looked more like a fortress than a castle. It was practically within spitting distance of the cathedral door.
“She was there the whole time the coronation was going on?” Katherine asked, horrified. “Within earshot? When everyone was shouting … did King Richard know that?”
“Oh, yeah,” Alex said grimly. “He knew.”
“But—why?” Katherine asked. “Why wouldn’t she go somewhere else? For the day, anyway …”
“Because she’s in sanctuary,” Chip said.
“I thought the coronation was in the sanctuary,” Jonah said.
“No, no,” Alex said. “Not that kind of sanctuary. She’s in political sanctuary. After Gloucester—Richard—had her brother arrested and took control, she moved in there, where she’d be safe. Where he couldn’t arrest her.”
“But—she’s his own sister-in-law,” Jonah objected. “Right?”
“So?” Chip said.
Jonah decided he didn’t like Chip’s fifteenth-century family any better than he liked Chip’s twenty-first-century parents.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Katherine objected. “Why would staying in that building make any difference if someone wanted to arrest her?”
“Because it’s sacred ground,” Chip said. “Church property. Even a king has to bow to church authority.”
Jonah was about to say, “What about the separation of church and state?” Then he realized that that would sound really, really stupid. This wasn’t America. This wasn’t the twenty-first century.
“I was staying there with her,” Alex said softly. “Until Gloucester came and said he wanted me to be with Chip for Chip’s coronation.”
“So he tricked her into letting you go?” Jonah asked.
Alex shook his head slowly.
“No,” he said. “She’s really smart. She knew what she was doing. That’s why I was sure she had a plan to rescue us. Me and Chip both.”
“Well, let’s go pay her a visit,” Katherine said grimly.
They tiptoed across a stone path, though there was no one nearby to hear them if any of their shoes squeaked. They rounded the corner of the stone fortress and discovered two guards in front of the only door.
“Now, how are we going to get past them?” Jonah muttered.
“I have an idea,” Alex said.
He tiptoed close to the guards, but Jonah couldn’t really tell what he did after that. He seemed to be lifting his arms over the guards’ shoulders. Was he dropping something on them? What good would that do?
Moments later a cluster of large black crows swooped down from a nearby tree and began to peck at the guards.
“Begone!” the guards screamed. “Shoo!”
The birds flapped their wings in the guards’ faces; the guards separated from their tracers to wave their arms and spin around, trying to shove the birds away.
“Now!” Alex whispered. “Hurry!”
While the guards were fighting with the crows, Alex shoved in through the door. Jonah walked right behind him, with Chip and Katherine on his heels.
Once the door creaked shut, they found themselves in a small alcove outside a dark chapel.
“How did you know that would work?” Jonah asked.
“Think about it,” Alex said. “I was stuck in this building with my mother and sisters for a month and a half. Don’t you think I had to figure out a way to get in and out?”
“But what did you put on the guards?”
“Bread crumbs,” Alex said, grinning triumphantly.
Jonah thought about asking why Alex was carrying bread crumbs around in his pockets, but that reminded him of food, which he really shouldn’t be thinking about, because it made him too hungry. He wished he’d thought to bring some of the bread crumbs in his own pocket. He wouldn’t have wasted it on birds.