The Little Secret (13 page)

“Know what?”

“It's the old princess,” Twilly whispered. “She … she's dead!”

How dark the room looked suddenly, in spite of the sunbeams that danced around it.

“What? But … but … she can't be! She was so well last night!”

“Yes, and she went to bed as happy as anything — but when Narcas took in her breakfast this morning —” Twilly swallowed another sob. “ — Narcas said she was smiling just like an angel, but she was as dead as the queen's dead heart. You humans do wear out so quick!”

Jane felt her own eyes filling with tears. It was dreadful to think of that sweet old lady dying so far from home. “Poor Narcas,” she said. “And poor you — I know how much you both loved her.”

“That we did, Your Janeship. Just as if she'd been our own granny. You can't think how kind she was to us — she always said we were her children, because she didn't have any of her own.”

Jane thought about what happened at home, in England, when a royal person died. There was bound to be a big funeral, with sad music and everyone wearing deepest black. “Well, we can't go to the Races now,” she said. “The old bag had her bosoms ironed for nothing.”

“Shhh!” Twilly was scared. “The racing is carrying on as usual — the queen says there's not to be any mentioning of the old princess!”

Jane was shocked. “She expects us to dress up and have a good time? That's horrible!”

Twilly whispered, “I think so too, but we can't disobey. The queen's in a terrible mood because of what happened at the ball.”

After the cheers for the old princess, thirty people had been arrested — in full evening dress — and led away by soldiers. It had been impossible to enjoy the ball after that.

“We weren't the only Eckers who loved her,” whispered Twilly. “And loving the princess is the same as hating the queen. Now, please put on your dress for the Races, Your Janeship! I have to take you down to the breakfast barge.”

“The — what?”

“We must be quick.” Twilly blew her nose again and sprang to her feet. She picked up the blue dress. She would not allow Jane to ask any more questions.

Because she did not want to get Twilly into trouble, Jane put on the blue dress, and a huge blue bonnet the size of a dustbin.

“I look absolutely stupid,” she said scornfully, frowning at her reflection. She was starting to think she'd had enough of girls' clothes — especially when they made her look like Little Bo Peep.

Twilly (looking fearfully around her all the time) led Jane through a maze of corridors she had not seen before. They looked like all the other corridors in the castle, but the pictures were different. They passed several pale, empty squares of wall.

Jane asked, “What used to be here? Why were they taken away?”

“Your Janeship, I beg you!” hissed Twilly. “These are the king's apartments, and they were pictures of the old princess — now please stop asking questions!”

“But why did the queen hate her so much that she —”

A terrible voice suddenly shouted, “I don't know why I bother!”

Jane and Twilly jumped like rabbits. It was the voice of the queen, ranting at someone behind a nearby door.

“I'm utterly fed up with the pair of you! You're ungrateful, you're lazy, you're selfish —”

Twilly tugged urgently at Jane's dress. Jane refused to move — she wanted to listen.

Staffa's voice said, “Mother, how could you? How could you do such a thing?”

“I had to act quickly,” said the queen.

“Why?” Staffa cried. “She wasn't doing any harm!”

“Oh, yes she was! She undermined my authority from the moment she came to this castle!”

“Only because she made the people love her! You couldn't stand that, could you, Mother? You were jealous of her.”

Twilly tugged at Jane's skirt so hard that she almost tore it. Jane shook her hand off impatiently. They were talking about the old princess and she was determined to find out why Queen Matilda had hated her.

The queen said, “Oh, stop whining. Quarley's not the only one to make sacrifices. I don't do this sort of thing for fun, you know. Do you think I
enjoyed
killing her? I thought we settled all this sentimental nonsense when I killed your father.”

Jane felt sick. The horror of it took a moment to sink in. It was incredible — but in her bones she felt it was true. The queen had murdered the old princess. She had murdered her own husband. She wasn't even ashamed. She was as wicked as an old witch in a fairy tale, and Jane was sure she had a witch's talent for magic — how else, after all, did you explain a whole world in a painted box? She'd told herself the magic in this place must be good magic. Now she wasn't so sure.

The queen said, “I really haven't time to worry about Quarley's so-called broken heart. And if you don't stop that sniveling, Miss Staffa, you'll be sent off to join him.”

Twilly whispered, “Now you see why it's better not to notice — it's dangerous to know too much.”

Limp with shock, Jane allowed Twilly to drag her away.

Clutching Jane's hand, Twilly led her down some stone steps and pushed open a heavy wooden door. Jane blinked in bright sunlight. She was on the bank of a wide canal. A long, flat barge was on the water, decorated with flags and ribbons that fluttered in the summer breeze. A band played on the deck. There was a large buffet table laden with food — the centerpiece was an entire slug, roasted whole and garnished with the seeds of forget-me-nots.

The fresh air cleared Jane's head. She did not want to stay in this awful country, with the witch-like queen who talked so casually about killing people. She wanted to go home. But how was that to be done? She was impatient to talk to Staffa.

The band, which had been tootling out the hits of Migorn, suddenly switched to a stately march. The queen (in bright red, with a tall hat like a mailbox) stomped onto the barge, followed by Staffa and Captain Hooter. Staffa was deathly pale. She would not speak to Jane, or even look at her.

“Well, Jane,” said the queen, “I'm afraid Quarley won't be joining us today. He's gone to spend a few days at our hunting lodge in the hills — such a healing, restful place.” She frowned down at Jane. “Your dress clashes dreadfully with mine. Hooter — keep her away from me.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Captain Hooter gently pushed Jane to the other side of the barge.

Jane was only too pleased to keep away from the murdering queen. She went up to Staffa — but Staffa hurried away from her. What was going on? Why was Staffa avoiding her? And why had Quarley suddenly gone to the hunting lodge, on the most important day in the social calendar?

She sat on a rather uncomfortable gold chair. Twilly stood behind her, holding a parasol over her head against the sun. The barge set off very slowly. The canal ran through the narrow streets of the city, and she caught tantalizing glimpses of colorful houses and neat shops. Beyond the city, they went through meadows and woods. They passed farmhouses — long buildings made of soil, with flowers growing on the roofs.

At about eleven in the morning, the royal barge arrived at the race course. This was packed with crowds of Eckers in holiday clothes. There were bright little food stalls selling Buttercup Yar and Haw-haw tea and what looked like hard little pies with shiny black crusts. Three bands were playing at once, on strange, buzzing instruments that sounded like insects. It was a cheerful scene, but if you looked closely, nobody was having a good time. The Eckers looked sulky, or scared, or very sad. A few were crying silently into their pies.

And they stared at Jane, in a way that made her very uncomfortable.

“What's the matter?” she whispered to Twilly. “Why is everyone gawking at me?”

“I don't know, Your Janeship,” Twilly whispered. “But something's going on, I can tell — if I get a chance, I'll slip into the crowd and find out what it is.”

“Come, Jane!” boomed the queen, “let us go to the enclosure, to see the spiders — you can get rid of your maid.”

Twilly curtseyed, winked at Jane and trotted away into the crowd.

“Don't stand too close to me, dear,” the queen said. “Ugh, that blue! Would you like a gubb?”

“A — what?” Jane was still following Twilly's curly head through the throng of people.

“Rather vulgar food, I know,” the queen went on, “but very tasty. Hooter! Fetch us a couple of good fat gubbs!”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Captain Hooter pushed through the crowd around one of the stalls selling the hard pies and bought two. They were wrapped in paper and roughly the size of teacups. A hot, heavy gubb was put into Jane's hand. She was shocked to discover that it was not a pie, but a sort of barbecued black beetle. The queen picked off the legs of her gubb and crunched them like pretzels. With her finger, she scooped the gubb out of its shell, swallowed it whole and threw the shell on the ground — which, Jane now saw, was covered with gubb shells. She felt sick.

“Don't you like it?” demanded the queen. “Give it to me.” She gulped Jane's gubb and threw the shell over her shoulder. “Now, let's go and admire those spiders!”

The racing spiders were kept in a large enclosure, behind a tall fence. Jane knew people who were scared of normal-size spiders, and thought how terrified they would have been of these gigantic beasts. Dozens of huge spiders were pushing against one another and trying to scuttle into corners. Their bodies were blotchy. Their legs were long and tough and hairy. They had dreadful, eyeless faces and big, puckered mouths. Each spider wore a saddle of different colored slugskin and had an Ecker jockey crouched on its back.

“Tornado Twenty-three is the one with the blue saddle,” the queen told Jane. “He belongs to Quarley. My spider wears the red saddle, and her name is Deathlegs. I'm extremely proud of her — she's killed four husbands, and she's only three months old.” (Jane, with a deep shudder, thought that Deathlegs and her owner had quite a lot in common).

Queen Matilda bent down and took something from a bucket on the ground — a large chunk of something black that dripped unpleasantly. She tossed it to Deathlegs.

“A bit of fly's leg,” she explained, wiping her hands on the hair of a nearby servant. “Spider racing has a glorious history in our country, Jane. It was introduced by one of my ancestors, King Harpong the Wasteful.”

There were other people in the enclosure — stable workers, jockeys and the owners of spiders. Yet the mood was sober and sad. Nobody was having a good time, except the queen.

“Jane — don't stare at the Eckers, dear. It only encourages them.”

“I'm sorry, Your Majesty,” Jane said, reddening. “I was just … thinking.”

“Thinking about what, dear?” the queen leaned down towards Jane.

Jane felt the queen's curiosity like tentacles trying to slither into her mind. She stammered, “I — I — was just thinking how many of your kings were called Harpong.”

“Oh, yes, dear.” This feeble invention seemed to satisfy the queen. “They were all called Harpong — until the reign of my grandfather, King Harpong the Unpopular.”

She turned her back on the spiders and marched off to the Royal Hut beside the winning post. Jane went after her, looking at the ground to avoid the stares of the crowd. In spite of everything being so strange and scary, she couldn't help being interested. It was such a lively, colorful scene — the bands played and the starting horns blew and the spiders stamped and snorted.

The sight of the giant spiders scuttling around the course was astonishing — simply astonishing. Imagine it, if you can. Jane wished her brothers could see it. The spiders ran around a series of gutters and drainpipes, and two dangerous obstacles that looked like huge plugholes.

“COME ON, DEATHLEGS!” roared the queen.

The first race was called the Batsindo Gong (named after the famous jockey in the queen's song). Deathlegs won, and the queen was so excited that it took her a few minutes to notice the silence of the crowd.

“Dear me, they're sulky,” she remarked, busily counting her winnings (small, stiff bills like train tickets). “I acted just in time.”

Jane looked around the Royal Hut, hoping to see Staffa, but the only other people, besides herself and the queen, were a crowd of Ecker courtiers — who all stared back at her, in eerie silence. She was alone with a murderer, and it made her so nervous that she had to put down her cup of Buttercup Yar because her hands were shaking.

The queen moved her chair closer, and lowered her booming voice. “You know, Jane, there's a lot of ingratitude in this kingdom.”

Feeling that the queen expected some kind of answer, Jane said, “Oh.”

“These wretched people are never satisfied! It was all that Norah's doing.” (Jane remembered that Norah had been the name of the old princess). “She turned herself into a figurehead, you see, Jane — a champion of every malcontent and troublemaker in the land. Did you know that the most dangerous group of revolutionaries actually call themselves ‘the Norahs' after her? Oh, yes! They think they're a secret society — but I'll find the ringleaders!”

“Oh,” Jane said again.

“My big mistake,” said the queen, “was to let her move about freely amongst the people. I should have kept her under house arrest from the very beginning! Well, that's a mistake I won't make again. Do you hear me, Jane? Do you understand?”

Jane didn't really understand a word of it, but the queen loomed over her so forbiddingly that she stammered, “Y-yes, Your Majesty.”

The queen took a large bite of the lump of chocolate on her plate. She smiled, and said, “I've told you all about my little hunting lodge in the mountains, haven't I? Really, at this time of year, it's a delightful spot! I've decided that it would be nice for all of us to visit Quarley up there for a couple of months.”