The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle (12 page)

Howl

W
HEN KAT HEARS
the clock chime midnight, a low howl comes from outside her window, the moaning howl of a pressing wind, and the glass panes rattle. Rain patters at the window and she misses Amelie's warm body.

And then a new noise, a rasping, wheezing noise, emerges from the wall behind her bed. She shuts her eyes tight and clutches her sheets, and a lead weight settles on her limbs and she's drowning in a half-sleep, locked in a horrific nightmare that is much too real.

Something moves into the room, shuddering and clinking like metal chains, a monster made of pins and cogs and long thin blades.

The clicking and rasping slides to her bedside and hovers,
and she's so cold, so cold, and then it slips past her bed and out again, and in her petrified stupor she's sure it moves right through the wall into the next room, where Isabelle and Amelie sleep drugged as Kat lies helpless and rigid as stone in her locked room.

Kat comes out of the stupor but remains still and silent, trying to calm her pounding heart.

Yes, her heart is pounding, and not only for fear; it's pounding out of guilt, too. Had her door been unlocked, she isn't sure she would have gone next door to help Isabelle and Amelie. She isn't sure she's brave enough to protect them from whatever it is. And she doesn't think she'd go help Peter and Rob, either. Father asked her to look after them, and she can't. She lies stiff in her bed, hiding, fearful, and ashamed.

No, there's no sleeping for Katherine Bateson this night, though by morning her memory is cloudy and she can't be certain of anything.

Except for a sense of guilt. That is clear as glass.

Tim, and Kat's Chatelaine

T
IM IS IN
the room when the big man enters, so he hides.

Tim's only come back for his polishing cloth, the one he lost when the children surprised him in their room. He doesn't like this big man named for nasty weather. This Storm.

Tim peers through the crack in the door. He watches as Storm searches the room. He's terrified Storm will search the bathroom, too.

But Storm doesn't need to search for long. He finds what he wants when he opens the dresser drawer. He holds it up, and Tim's breath snags in his throat.

Storm dangles the silvery thing, and his wide mouth opens in a terrible grin as the silvery thing begins to glow with a strange blue light.

Oh, it is so beautiful!

That's why Tim follows Storm, follows the man to his room, watches where Storm puts the thing, watches as Storm leaves the room, then takes the silvery thing for himself.

Yes, Tim has it now. He polishes it with reverence. After all, it doesn't belong to Storm.

Tim loves the chatelaine so much, he thinks he will give it to the beautiful lady saint who watches over the children.

Yes. He holds it up in the candlelight. He will give this chatelaine with its three dangling charms to the Lady.

Exhaustion

“H
AVE YOU SEEN
Colin? I haven't seen him since lunch.” Robbie stood splay-footed, facing Kat with glowering eyes, as if the fact that Colin was missing was her fault. It was Friday, and Storm had let them out early, thank goodness, for it was the end of another very long and tiring week, a week in which Kat had gotten little sleep.

The only saving grace with her nightly hauntings was that the memory of them faded with the dawn, so she remembered only snapshots—a blade, a grinding noise, the stench of something rotten . . . and a gnawing fear.

She couldn't help her temper. “I haven't seen him, and you don't need to suggest it's my fault,” she snapped. “Honestly, Rob, I don't know what's gotten into you lately.”

“We were going to have a go at swords today, me and Colin,” he said. “You don't like me playing at swords, do you?”

“Not when you could kill someone,” she shot back. “It's not play, Robbie.”

“When did you get so mean?” he said. “You're lucky Father isn't around. You're a mean monster.” Robbie turned on his heel and stormed away.

Kat leaned back against the wall and wrapped her hand around the watch. Maybe she
was
lucky Father wasn't here to see her act like this. After all, Rob was learning a skill and loving it. Amelie and Isabelle had become fast friends, sharing Isabelle's room now. None of the others seemed to be having nightmares, thank goodness. Her brother and sister were safe, and wasn't that all Father had asked of her?

Yet everyone in the castle was on edge with exhaustion. For the past week the students, minus the still-missing Jorry, had been in the classroom all day, with breaks only for meals. Kat had turned a corner after breakfast yesterday to find Gumble and MacLarren huddled together in conference, and they scuttled away from her acting fearful that she'd overheard them. Storm grew increasingly strange, as if he was drinking some of their hot chocolate or too much claret, and had begun lecturing on random historical half-truths.

She couldn't remember when she'd been so tired before. She pushed away from the wall and climbed the
stairs, her feet feeling like they were encased in lead.

Each morning, after a sleepless night, her clock was stopped, and she couldn't seem to figure out why, which added to her frustration. And Amelie was behaving more and more like a spoiled child, while the Lady Eleanor prowled around like a thief.

Just the day before, as Kat made her way alone back to her room after lunch, she turned a corner to spy the Lady alone with Amelie at the foot of the great stairs. The Lady spun around, as if Kat's sudden appearance was an unpleasant surprise, and clutched her fist to her chest.

“What are you doing wandering about?” she snapped at Kat.

“I'm going back to my room,” Kat answered.

The Lady opened her mouth, then hesitated, and smiled. “Yes. Of course you are. Amelie and I were having a chat. Weren't we, my dear?”

Amelie said nothing, confusion in her wide eyes.

Kat and Ame walked upstairs together, the Lady watching them. “She was about to give me something,” Ame said, grouchy now. “A treasure, she said, for when Issy and I play dress-up. You spoiled it. You're always spoiling things.”

Kat wanted to tell Ame to stay away from the Lady, that she was a bad influence, but she held her tongue.

Now, Kat thought about Peter. They hadn't had a chance to speak, but she assumed from his deepening dark circles that
he, too, shunned the chocolate and lay awake hearing . . . what?

Her throat constricted at the thought.

She reached their hallway and found Peter's door and knocked.

“What?” came a shout, and a few seconds later the door flew open.

Kat stepped back. Peter looked like he would bite her head off. Tears started to her eyes. “You don't need to be rude,” she said.

His eyes softened and he ran his hand over his unruly hair. “Sorry. Since you told me about the chocolate, I haven't been drinking it, and I haven't really been sleeping. I'm about out of my mind I'm so tired, and I lay down and thought I might take a nap—”

“I'm sorry,” Kat blurted, interrupting him. “I'm sorry about the time we met Lady Eleanor on the stairs. I didn't mean to get her riled up against us.”

The corners of his mouth lifted in a smile. He shook his head. The lock of hair fell across his forehead and he leaned against the door frame. “You remind me of Dodger.”

“Who?”

“My dog. The most scrappy, stubborn mutt you've ever seen. But smart as a whip. I swear he could do sums in his head. When I counted he'd nod along.”

“Oh.” Kat tilted her head. The sadness of his loss was
palpable. “Is he the one you had to leave behind in America?”

Peter looked away. “Yeah.” He scuffed his feet. “So.”

“So,” she echoed. Kat twisted her watch. “I've heard noises in my room. Though I can't remember much about them, it feels like I'm having a whole string of nightmares. They started when we left London.”

“Yeah,” he said, and his shoulders slumped. “Last few nights, I've been having weird dreams, too. I think this place is haunted. I think I've been seeing that Lady Leonore.”

“Everything here is wrong. The hallways that seem to change. The children who wander about. Storm and his artifacts. The noises and nightmares. It's all making me feel . . .” Then Kat straightened, as a new thought came to her. “Crazy. That's it. That's what she's up to. She's making us all crazy.”

“Who is?”

“The Lady,” Kat answered stubbornly.

“Why would she bother?” And Peter laughed. It was good to hear him laugh. And it felt even better to have a good, clear reason for all this peculiar stuff happening.

“Be logical for a minute,” said Kat. “It's perfect, don't you see? If we try to report to the authorities or our parents that we think there's a spy here, we'll all sound completely mad and they won't believe a word we say. Ghosts and sleeping potions and crazy nightmares and magical artifacts and a
hidden wireless and mysterious illnesses . . . It would make us sound loony.” Kat took a breath. “It does sound loony, don't you think?”

“Yeah. But how would someone go about making us crazy?”

“By putting something in the food? We might not drink the chocolate, but we have to eat. Why, that would even explain why Storm is so odd and getting odder.”

Peter chewed his lip. “You've got a point,” he murmured. “Maybe there is something planned to all this.”

“It makes much more sense than evil magic or ghosts,” Kat said, feeling better and better. Logic. Things that made sense.

Not magic. Not like Great-Aunt Margaret had said.

Which made her think,
I
should check on the chatelaine. Make sure it's safe
.
It was a precious gift, after all, even if her aunt was a bit confused about it.

But she didn't have the chance, not then. She and Peter heard Robbie coming from a mile away. He ran thumping up the stairs, so he was breathless and panting hard when he reached them. His face was beet-red, and his eyes were wide with fright.

“Take your time,” Peter said, patting his back. “That's better. Now, what's wrong?”

“Colin's gone. Gone. Completely missing. And Isabelle and Amelie, too. I lost them in the old part of the castle. In the keep.”

“You lost them?” Kat asked. Her heart hammered, and she didn't think she could breathe.

Rob nodded. “And, and—” Robbie stopped and swallowed. “I've seen a ghost, a real one, a real honest-to-goodness ghost for sure.”

The Keep

“S
LOW DOWN, ROB,”
Kat said, her hand on his trembling shoulder. “Try again.”

It turned out that the three of them—Robbie and the girls—believed that Colin had wandered into the old part of the castle, and they had tried to find him. Robbie had been the leader until the three had gotten lost in one of the odd passageways, and when they were separated and Robbie was alone he'd come face-to-face with “a ghost, I swear. He was tall and pale and had this awful look in his eyes and . . . and he
moaned
.”

Robbie was a great storyteller, but he was white as snow and shaking so badly, his teeth chattered. This was no story. Kat went down on one knee before Rob, trying to make sense of things.

“And Ame and Isabelle?” she asked, her heart pounding. “Tell us again where you lost them.”

“I don't know. They turned a corner and vanished, like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And I tried and tried to find them, and kept hearing them calling, but they were always on the other side of the wall, a wall with no doors, and then I saw the ghost and I ran. I just ran.”

He said the last with such a miserable tone that Kat knew he felt bad. Even so, she was furious with him.

“I don't even know how I found my way back. It's so dark and twisty in there, and there were all those noises and that, that
thing . . .
”

“Honestly, Rob,” Kat said. “You shouldn't have led them in there.”

Robbie's face flushed. “We were trying to find Colin, remember? It's not like you'd have done it. You're too scared to admit you're scared.”

Heat flooded her cheeks.

As if Robbie could read her mind, he said, his fists clenched, “I'm betting you don't even want to go after them now.”

That did it. She had no desire to go into the scary old keep, especially since she'd only barely convinced herself that there was a logical explanation for everything. That there were no ghosts. But she had a responsibility to Ame. She stood up and exchanged looks with Peter.

Peter nodded and said, “We're going to need a good flashlight.”

“Cook,” she answered. “I'll bet she'll have one. Or at least candles.”

“I'm taking a sword,” said Robbie, sounding stouter again.

Cook was not in the kitchen. A stew bubbled gently on the stove, fragrant and rich, but they didn't want to wait for her to return. They searched the kitchen and came up with two candles and some matches, and then Peter discovered a flashlight in a cupboard. He turned it on, testing.

“Batteries are low, but between this and the candles at least we'll have some light.”

“Lead the way, Rob,” Kat said.

As they passed by the great dining hall, Robbie stopped and took a broadsword from the grip of a knight's fists. “This is the one I've used,” he said, and he hefted it with two hands.

Kat was impressed he could lift the thing, much less wield it. “Just be careful you don't point it in the direction of any of us.”

“It's for the ghost,” he said, but he sounded as if he'd like to use it on Kat.

“Don't think a sword will do much against a ghost,” Peter murmured.

Kat didn't want to even acknowledge the possibility, but she said, “Whatever you saw is probably something worse than
a ghost, like a crazy villager holed up against the cold.”

“Wait till you see him, Kat,” Rob said. “You'll see how wrong you are.”

The old and new parts of Rookskill Castle were joined by a long, crumbling, covered-parapet walk. Through the narrow windows they could see the courtyard, or bailey, below on their left. Dusty cobwebs draped the corners and what remained of the roof. The furnishings, if there had been any, were long gone, and the walls were exposed stone, cold and damp to the touch. Kat wished she had her coat, and the thought of Amelie and Isabelle shivering in this chill made her pick up her pace.

The ancient keep was as big as the new part of Rookskill Castle. It was a tall, odd structure. From outside it looked rectangular. But inside, as they found now, it was all stairs and angles and rooms and hallways jutting off into nowhere, and they'd open a door from one hallway to find another blank hallway, or worse, to find open air in a windowless shaft. Like the newer part of the castle, there was something at work inside this keep that made no logical architectural sense, a complex network of passages and stairwells.

More than once Peter grabbed Kat's elbow, or Kat snagged Robbie's shirttails, in the nick of time, before one of them fell into darkness.

“Ame!” Kat yelled into the hollow space, and heard only echoes. “Isabelle!”

“I wouldn't do that,” said Robbie, his voice low. “That's how I saw him—the ghost. Because I was yelling like that.”

Kat turned. “Rob, please. Quit talking about ghosts.”

“You know what?” he said. “I can't wait until you're scared out of your wits.” He held the sword pointed tip down in front of him, his knuckles white.

Peter panned the flashlight from corner to corner. “Rob, do you have any idea which way they might have gone?”

“There was this one stair, and we were going up because we heard something and thought it might be Colin, and that's when it all happened. I think it started when we went through this door.” Robbie gestured. A crest carved into rock formed the keystone of the door arch, and Rob nodded. “Yeah. See that nick in the crest? That's it, all right. Come on.”

Robbie impressed Kat with his bravery, but then, he did have a sword.

They stepped into the stairwell. Peter moved the flashlight up and then down. And then they heard it.

Singing. Wordless, sweet, voices that wove threads of tunes in and out together. Kat would have thought only angels could make such music.

“That's the sound,” whispered Rob. “That's what we all heard. Right before they disappeared.”

Peter and Kat exchanged a glance in the shadowy light. They'd heard that singing before. It sounded exactly like the voices that came from the sea. Only now the singing came from above them, no question.

“I'll lead,” Peter said.

“No, let me,” said Rob. “You can shine the light from behind.” He started up the steps.

The steps themselves were crumbling beneath their feet, chunks of old stone breaking and cracking, and the tower almost felt alive, as if it was heaving and sighing with their presence, and it was so dark, the light from the flashlight was swallowed up ahead in the shadows. The singing drifted down from above them, drawing them on.

And then several things happened at once. The singing stopped. A new noise filtered through the stone wall to their left, the sound of voices calling, as if from a great distance. Girls' voices: Amelie and Isabelle.

Then the flashlight died. But before everything went black, something floated suddenly in the gloom ahead of the tip of Robbie's sword, and Kat saw it, suspended as though disembodied: a white face, a man's face, framed with dark hair, and eyes that glittered blue and blank and lost.

Kat screamed.

Robbie let out a mighty yell, and Peter grabbed Kat's arm. It was black as pitch, but she heard Robbie's sword clang as he
must have flung it back and forth at the ghostly face and the sword ricocheted from left wall to right. Kat staggered back and, trying not to run over Peter, fell hard against the wall on her left.

Which gave beneath her weight.

Kat almost screamed again, but this time she swallowed it as her eye caught the sight of light: a thin bead of daylight now sliced vertically along the wall just where she'd fallen against it.

“Robbie! Peter! Quick!” Kat pushed against the wall and the bead widened to a crack, and then she could see it—the outline of a door.

Peter was beside her, and he said, “Push!” and they pushed together, and the door slid open with the harsh grating sound of stone on stone.

The light that flooded into their dark hallway blinded them. Kat covered her eyes and squinted. She turned back and saw Robbie's pale and sweaty face, and Peter's.

There was no sign of the ghost.

“You see, Kat?” asked Rob, panting a little. “I told you!”

Kat couldn't get words out, her chest was squeezed so tight, but she nodded, meeting Rob's triumphant look.

There was no logical way to explain what she'd seen.

The three of them pushed through the door and landed in a chamber filled with windows. Even though it was gray and cold outside, the dim light, by comparison to the dark hall, was
most welcome. They stood rubbing their eyes, and then Kat heard a familiar squeal.

Isabelle and Amelie threw their arms around Kat.

“We were lost!” Isabelle cried. “We couldn't find Rob, and this place is so confusing.” Amelie stuffed her face into Kat's stomach and held her tight. Then she pulled away.

“Did you see him?” Ame asked.

Kat stroked Ame's hair and scolded, “You shouldn't wander off alone.”

“Let's get out of here, okay?” said Peter. “Where does the stair go?”

“We only went partway down,” Isabelle said. “You know what they say when you're lost in the woods, that you should stay put, yes? So your rescuers can find you. That's what we did.
Mon dieu,
what a time we have had.”

“How did you get in here?” Kat asked.

“There was a door and a hallway, and we slipped through, and it closed behind us as if someone pushed it . . .”

And as if the walls had ears, the door through which they'd just come slid, grating, shut.

“Magic,” whispered Amelie.

“Interesting,” said Peter.

“Most likely a counterweight,” Kat said, “that worked when we stopped pushing. Clever.” Peter gave her an odd look. “We'd better find out which way to go.”

“I think those stairs,” Peter said.

“I'll lead the way,” said Robbie, lifting his sword.

Kat went to one window of the tower and looked out. They were not at the top of the keep; she reckoned they were about halfway up. That was the good news. The bad news was that she couldn't see the bailey from this lookout. Their balcony—that's what it was—seemed to jut over the old castle entrance and the ruined drawbridge and moat.

“Down it is,” Kat said.

Rob led the way down; it grew darker as they left the windowed aerie, so Kat and Peter lit the candles. The steep winding stairwell was only wide enough for one at a time. Kat kept one hand on the wall and counted the number of steps as they went.

“Stop, Robbie,” Kat said. “I'm betting we should be at the level of the parapet.” In fact, they had arrived at a landing barely large enough to hold them all.

They clustered together. The stair went on down, but that wasn't the way Kat thought they should go.

“How do you know where we are?” asked Peter.

“Each step is about twenty centimeters, so it would take us twenty steps to cover the distance to where the parapet meets the tower. I was counting.”

By the light of their guttering candles Kat could see something of Peter's expression. His eyebrows were up and his mouth formed a small “oh.”

“But there's no door,” Isabelle said, a wail creeping into her voice.

“Let's try the walls,” Kat said.

“Right,” said Peter. “If there's one hidden door, there are bound to be others.”

They spread out along the walls, pushing, until sure enough, Peter found the opening, right into the covered parapet back to the new castle. It opened with their combined effort, and shut behind them on its own, just as the other had.

They made their way back through the parapet. The familiar passage, cobwebs or no, was a great relief.

By the time they reached the entry into the new castle, Isabelle and Amelie were practically running.

“Hold on, you two,” Kat called, but it was no good. They were weary of being trapped in the crumbling old keep.