“Chantel.”
“Shon-tell,” the woman repeated. “Hm. I think you’re the one they’ve been waiting for.” She got to her feet and peered at Chantel closely. “You are tall and black. You are neither shamefast nor biddable. Yes, Chantel. But you have no snake.”
“No,” said Chantel, rather taken aback. She was not about to say the snake was inside her. This woman was sharp and brusque and did not invite such confidences.
Besides, the fact that she’d been expected was somehow not at all comforting.
“I’ll go see what’s wanted.” The woman left through a wicket embedded in the huge oaken door of the castle.
Chantel waited impatiently.
After a while the great door was flung open. A man appeared, dressed in a white uniform so clean and crisp that Chantel felt sorry for his laundress. He had a high, fluffy white hat with a long feathered plume, and a sword at his side. He marched out, stopped in front of Chantel, clicked his heels together, and saluted.
Chantel curtseyed.
“You are Chantel?” He looked down his nose, which was nearly rectangular and sat over a trim little mustache.
“Yes,” said Chantel.
“The king desires that you be brought into his presence.”
“Thank you,” said Chantel. “That’s what I’m here for. I want to tell him—”
“You are far too quick to speak,” said the man. “You must be meek and biddable. You will tell him nothing until spoken to. Do you know how to make a court curtsey?”
“No,” said Chantel. “But I need to tell him—”
The man turned and snapped his fingers. The knitting woman came up.
“Teach her to do a court curtsey, Lady Moonlorn,” said the man.
And so Chantel, who was burning to just go in and talk to the king, had to practice doing a court curtsey under the watchful eye of the knitting woman and the man in white. It involved crossing her ankles, bending her knees outward, and going right down to the ground and staying there, neck bent, until bidden to rise. The really hard part was the rising.
Finally, with very sore ankles, Chantel was deemed good enough. She followed the man in white into the castle, into a high room with an arched ceiling painted with scenes of battle. Chantel craned her neck to look at them.
But the man in white hurried on.
“You ought to have done a court curtsey to me,” he said, “as I myself am a prince. I am My Royal Highness, Prince George. But as you didn’t know, I shall be lenient.”
“Thank you,” said Chantel, annoyed at having to thank him for nothing.
They passed through a hallway in which the paintings reached down to the floor. Chantel stopped to look at a picture of a woman being chased from the city by what looked like wild dogs—only they were the size of horses. The woman, terrified and bloodied, was fleeing through the city gate, pursued by the beasts.
“What’s this?” Chantel asked.
“The Exile of Queen Haywith,” said the prince. “A very famous painting by a noted artist of the last century.”
“Are you sure? That it’s Queen Haywith, I mean?”
“Of course I am sure, girl,” said the prince.
Chantel kept staring at the painting. The woman was wearing what was left of a flowing white gown. She had clouds of red-gold hair, and her eyes, wide with terror, were green.
“Was there more than one queen named Haywith?” Chantel asked.
“Of course not. Who would name a girl after a traitor? Now come along. You are keeping the king waiting.”
They walked on, although Chantel kept looking back at the painting, which looked nothing at all like the Queen Haywith she had met in the Ago. And Miss Flivvers had said she’d died in the castle.
The prince held up a hand to stop Chantel, walked through an archway, and shouted ringingly, “My lord King! The girl Chantel!”
He stepped aside and nodded, and Chantel went in.
The enormous, octagonal room was painted red all the way up to its high, groined ceiling, with details picked out in gold. In the center of the room, pacing around a small table, was a tall man in green velvet.
He stopped pacing when he saw Chantel.
“Curtsey!” the prince reminded Chantel in a loud whisper.
Oops. Chantel crossed her sore ankles and sank to the floor, her robes spread around her. She bent her neck until her nose almost touched the tiles. They had little dragons painted on them.
“The king is signaling for you to rise,” said the prince. “Approach him, but do not sit.”
Chantel got to her feet. Her legs were trembling, as they hadn’t been when she’d met Queen Haywith. Fortunately her robes hid this. She stopped halfway to him, as the knitting woman had instructed her, and waited.
“So. The girl Chantel comes to us.”
King Rathfest’s voice was fruity and rich, and Chantel found it oddly comforting. But his eyes and mouth narrowed into a smile that struck her as smug.
“We expected you to come bearing a snake.”
Chantel felt the snake inside her twitch uncomfortably.
“You are surprised to find we were expecting you, no doubt,” the king continued. “And that we set our own mother to watch. She has been waiting out there for a week, in fair weather and foul, during which time she’s knitted seven scarves and a mitten. You took your time, girl. We almost grew impatient.”
“Oh,” said Chantel, nonplussed. “Er. Do you know why I’m here then, er, Your Majesty?”
“We do,” said the king. “But it would amuse us to know why you think you’re here. Please sit down. We shall sit first, as is proper.”
The king sat, and looked at Chantel expectantly.
Chantel cast a nervous glance at Prince George, in case he disapproved, and then sat on the velvet-cushioned chair the king indicated.
King Rathfest turned to the prince. “Do bring us some refreshments, George, Your Highness, won’t you? The sort of thing girls like.”
The prince sniffed, nodded haughtily, and left.
“Now then.” The king smiled encouragingly at her. “Tell us your story.”
So Chantel did. She talked about the disappearance of the sorceresses, and about her visit to the patriarchs. But when it came to her flight through the catacombs, she decided not to say that she had ended up outside the wall. She felt it would merely complicate matters.
She did not mention Franklin.
She wondered what terrible dangers he was facing, while she sat on a velvet cushion and talked to a king.
The prince came back, wheeling a little cart that rattled across the tiles.
“Excellent, Your Highness,” said the king. “You may leave us now, as we discussed. Will you be so good as to serve, Chantel?”
The prince bowed and withdrew.
Chantel got up and took the things off the cart, managing to do it quite gracefully thanks to her deportment. There was a pot of tea, and two extremely breakable-looking cups of breath-thin china, and a plate of little cakes with pink icing, and another of raspberry and blueberry tarts. Chantel tried not to stare in disbelief at these delicacies.