Thrice Upon a Marigold by Jean Ferris
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Read More from the Marigold Series
About the Author
Copyright © 2013 by Inter Vivos Trust of Alfred G. and Jean S. Ferris
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
Harcourt Children’s Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
www.hmhbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-547-73846-8
eISBN 978-0-547-86873-8
v1.0413
For E.J., with love from Mimi
1
IT WASN’T EVERY DAY that the citizens of the kingdom of Zandelphia-Beaurivage woke up to such startling news from the town crier. Usually what they heard was whose cows had gotten out, or who had found someone else’s lost shovel, or the fact that it was raining, when anyone who had eyes could see this for themselves.
But that morning the crier had plenty of news.
“Good morning, citizens! At last the news that we have all been waiting for! It’s a girl for Queen Marigold and King Christian! Her name is Princess Poppy Allegra April Rosemary and she arrived at 11:20 last night. The new grandfathers, retired King Swithbert and the troll Edric, will treat everyone to mead and larks’ tongues all day today in the castle courtyard! The nursery has been transformed into a bower of yellow—Queen Marigold’s favorite color—and purple, King Christian’s favorite! This might not be to everyone’s taste, but royal personages are not like the rest of us!” (Sometimes the crier got off on tangents.) “Personally, I would have preferred green, but nobody ever asked me! I’m sure that at some point I will be able to announce the date for the Welcome Party, but worrying about that right now is premature!”
He cleared his throat.
“In other news, Farmer Dudley’s cows got out early this morning and consumed half of Farmer Eldon’s haystack! Farmer Eldon is seeking recompense—preferably in the form of one of the cows who is now carrying around his hay in her stomach!
“Looks like another chilly day, but spring is on the way and soon we should be able to take off the woolen long johns we’ve been wearing all winter!
“Stay tuned for more announcements!”
He rang his bell, signaling the end of his newscast.
Some days later, Phoebe stood at the leaded-glass window of the library, watching the festivities in the town square. She was sure she was the only subject of Queen Marigold and King Christian who wasn’t out there celebrating the long-awaited arrival of the baby princess. But it couldn’t be helped. Given her own fearsome history as the daughter of Boris, the exiled torturer-in-chief of the kingdom of Zandelphia-Beaurivage, Phoebe kept to herself.
She turned away from the window and went back to cutting sheets of paper into thin strips. The cutting tool had been invented by some clever person over in the blacksmith shop and had made her task much easier than when she’d had to use the clumsy short-bladed scissors. The strips were essential for the kingdom’s communication by p-mail, as they fit into the cylinders on the legs of the carrier pigeons. The volume of p-mails was increasing every year, and had spread to so many neighboring kingdoms that there was a shortage of trained pigeons and a constant demand for the p-mail paper that the library supplied. It was ironic that Phoebe, the one responsible for providing the paper for so many p-mail messages, had no one to send any p-mails to.
She was filling the supply basket outside the library door with the paper strips when a young man came striding around the corner, startling her so that she upset the basket.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think there’d be anybody here.” He bent to help her gather up the spilled strips. “I thought everybody would be out there, as they’ve been for days now. Jubilizing.”
Jubilizing? Phoebe thought. She’d never heard anyone use that word before, and she believed that she, the court librarian, knew more words than anybody else in the kingdom.
She gave the young man a closer look; he was familiar, though she couldn’t quite place him. “Of course I’m here. I’m the librarian. Why aren’t you out there?”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, I’m not—I mean, it’s so—oh, you know . . .”He trailed off, leaving her as uninformed as before.
“All right, then,” she said briskly. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh. Well. I need a book.”
“I would say you’ve come to the right place,” she said. “But why now if you thought no one would be here?”
“Oh, that. Well, I just took a chance, I guess. I wasn’t going to take the book without permission or anything like that. I just hoped someone would be on duty. And there wouldn’t be any lines.”
“There are never lines, I’m afraid. Our kingdom hasn’t been much for reading books ever since p-mail got so popular. Now, I’ll need a little more information if I’m going to be able to help you.” It came out more brusquely than she had meant it to. With such a solitary life, Phoebe often felt that she was losing the habit of knowing how to talk to people.
“Um, I’d like a book about King Arthur. If that’s okay with you. And his knights. The ones of the Round Table.”
“I’m pretty sure those are the only ones he had.”
“I can probably find what I want by myself if you’ll just tell me where to look. I don’t want to inconvenience you if you’d like to join the celebration.”
“No,” Phoebe said, a trifle too strongly. She moderated her voice. “No. I’m happy about the little princess, of course.” She didn’t want him to think she wasn’t. “But my duties are here.”
“That’s very . . .” He paused. “Punctilious.”
Punctilious? Is he making these words up? As usual when Phoebe didn’t know what to say, she spouted one of the odd facts that she had gleaned from her long days reading in the library.
“Did you know that a hogshead is a wooden cask holding sixty-three gallons? It’s bigger than an ordinary barrel, you know.”
“Yes,” the young man said. “I do know. I work in the blacksmith shop. We make the iron bands that hold them together. For the cooper.”
“Oh.” This was the first time anyone had responded to one of her odd facts with anything but a puzzled stare. Once again she didn’t know what to say. Just as she was about to give him another fact, she remembered what he wanted. “Oh. Your book.”
Phoebe went to the stacks and ran her finger across the spines of several volumes until she found the one she wanted and plucked it off the shelf. “I like this one especially well,” she said. “The drawings are very nice.” She knew the purpose of a library was to lend books, but it was hard for her to let go of them.
Gently he took the book from her hands. “I’ve had one book about King Arthur since I was little and it’s still in perfect condition. I’ll take very good care of this one, I promise.”
It was as if he knew what she was thinking. Reluctantly she opened the ledger where she kept track of the checked-out books, all the while keeping an eye on how
“My name? Why do you need my name?” He hugged the book to his chest.
“It’s the rules. I need to know who has that book. Rules are important, don’t you think?” She dipped her quill into the ink pot and waited.
“Yes, of course they are. But could I just tell you where I live?”
“I’ll need that, too. In case I have to come retrieve my book. I mean the book.”
“You won’t. I promise.”
She shook her head and waited. The silence lengthened.
Finally he took a deep breath and said, “Sebastian.”
“Have we met before?”
He swallowed. “I doubt it. I don’t go out much. And Maurice, the main blacksmith, handles all the business of dealing with the public. I just make things.”
“Okay. But I need more than just a first name. Who is your family?”
He made a small sound in his throat. Then he took a deep breath, exhaled, and said wearily, “My family? I don’t have much family, but everyone knows of my father. He’s Vlad.” And then he squared his shoulders and raised his voice. “Yes, that’s right, Vlad. The exiled poisoner-in-chief under Queen Olympia. The creator of the Dragon’s Sweat poison.”
“The creator of the Take Seven Steps and Die poison, too?” Phoebe asked carefully.
Sebastian nodded. “The very one. Can I still have the book?”
How could she, the daughter of the exiled torturer-in-chief, say no to him, even though she was now afraid, and very, very sorry she’d been unpleasant? She knew she was nothing like her own feared and hated father, even if no one else seemed to believe that. Who was she to judge?
Nobody, but it was pretty hard not to. Even for her.
She cleared her throat. “Of course,” she said, ducking her head so he couldn’t see her flushed cheeks. As she made an entry in her ledger, her hand shook and she made a blot over his name. Not that she was likely to forget it.
“How long can I keep it?” he asked.
She was tempted to say forever, just so he’d never come back. But she had a librarian’s duty to treat every patron the same, and to safeguard the books. “Three weeks. But you can renew it for another three weeks if you haven’t finished.”
“Three weeks should be sufficient,” he said, then turned and left, closing the door behind him.
Phoebe put down the quill and pressed her shaking fingers to her cheeks. Sebastian had seemed familiar because Vlad and her father, Boris, had been close friends, had collaborated on various horrible projects, had consulted with each other on their individual gruesome enterprises. Certainly she had heard Sebastian’s name before. They might even have played together as children.
But why wasn’t Sebastian in exile with Vlad? Why was he tucked away in the blacksmith shop? Had he and Phoebe both been spared from exile because they had never done anything wrong, in spite of their fathers’ efforts to have them follow in their rotten paternal footsteps? She herself had been judged mature enough to decide if she wanted to accompany her exiled father, out of loyalty, or to remain in the kingdom. She hadn’t needed a second to think about it. Living in virtual hiding was vastly preferable to spending another day with the father who had always frightened and repelled her. Perhaps Sebastian had been given the same choice.
If that was true, she should have been much nicer to him. Oh, why didn’t she think more before she acted?
She turned to the window, through which came the sounds of singing and laughing and clapping to music, and knew that even if she were out there in the crowds, there would be an empty space all around her. And the same was doubtless true for Sebastian.
Oh, dear. She definitely should have been nicer to him.
2
QUEEN MARIGOLD, KING CHRISTIAN, and former King Swithbert—the queen’s father and now royal grandfather—sat in rocking chairs in the nursery, passing a sleeping baby Poppy from one to the other like a football. They all wanted to hold her, but didn’t want to appear too greedy or selfish about her.
The little rag-mop dogs, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Topsy, kept trying to get into Marigold’s lap. They had always done so, before this squalling red creature had shown up, but were now being told—over and over—that they had to lie on their floor pillows. They were not taking this news gracefully. There had been a few accidents that the castle chambermaids had had to clean up, and Marigold’s favorite pair of slippers had been mysteriously chewed to pieces.
Big, shaggy Bub had gotten the message the first time he had stuck his giant muzzle into the cradle and been shooed away by Christian. Christian, whom he had loved and protected throughout his entire life! Bub was now spending most of his time forlornly under a bed in a far bedroom. Spoiled, petite Cate, whose fanciest tricks and most dramatic hysterics had been almost completely ignored, was there with him, pouting and seething while he moped.
“Does she look like I did when I was a baby, Papa?” Marigold asked, brushing Flopsy’s paws off her skirt. Flopsy went off to chew up a stuffed lamb that Poppy had kicked out of her cradle onto the floor.
“I believe she does,” Swithbert said, prolonging his turn at holding Poppy by pretending to scrutinize her features. “And every bit as pretty and smart, too.”
Marigold laughed. “How can you tell she’s smart?” she asked, even though she was positive he was correct, since Poppy was obviously the best baby to ever have been born. She just wanted him to keep going on about this exceptional child.
“I can tell by the way her eyebrows are twitching, even in her sleep,” Swithbert said. “Mrs. Clover says that’s a sure sign of intelligence in babies. And very rare.”
Mrs. Clover was the head housekeeper of Zandelphia-Beaurivage castle, and the object of a romantic tug of war between Swithbert and Wendell, the retired wizard who now lived at the castle along with his huge white elephant, Hannibal, with which Marigold was endlessly fascinated. Swithbert worried that Wendell had the upper hand with Mrs. Clover, mainly because of his fabulous elephant, but also because Swithbert himself was nothing but a has-been king now that he had retired so Christian and Marigold could rule.
King Christian tried to keep from grinning extravagantly as Swithbert finally handed Poppy to him, but he couldn’t help himself. The little princess was such an unfathomable miracle, such a promise to the future, such a fascination, that she seemed almost as if she were a mythical creature.
“When do you think you’ll be having the Welcome Party?” Swithbert asked his daughter.
A cloud passed over Marigold’s face and she cast an anxious glance at Poppy. It was at Marigold’s own Welcome Party that she had been bestowed by an overzealous (or perhaps careless) fairy with the very unwelcome gift of being able to read people’s thoughts. Marigold had overcome it by now, but she never wanted such a thing to happen to Poppy.
“Do you think it would be rude, Papa, if I asked the fairies not to bring gifts?”
“I’m afraid it would be, precious. It’s traditional, you know, for them to give something special to each new royal baby.”
Marigold frowned. “Maybe I could have Wendell check out each gift before it’s actually given away. He’s still enough of a wizard to do that, isn’t he?”
Swithbert hated to consider that Wendell could do things that he himself could not—especially if Mrs. Clover was watching—but he had to be fair. Reluctantly he said, “He very well could be. You should ask him.”
“I will. Now I’m going to tell you one more elephant joke and then it’ll be my turn for Poppy.”
Inwardly Christian groaned. He hated Marigold’s elephant jokes almost as much as he had hated her previous obsession, the very confusing knock-knock jokes.
“What time is it when ten elephants are chasing you?” Marigold asked.
“I don’t know,” Chris said. “Too late?”
“No, silly.” She giggled in advance of her punch line. “It’s ten after one. Get it? Ten after one?”
“Now hand her over.”
Phoebe opened the library’s leaded-glass window just enough to let in a solid wedge of cold air, and to hear the evening crier out in the square yelling the latest news. (There had been a recent eruption of smoke and flames from the dragon, who had been rather quiet for most of the winter; Maeve the unicorn had had twins, one pink and one blue; on Market Day the stalls doing the biggest business were those selling the little striped squashes, the detail-perfect miniatures, the glass-bead necklaces, and the least stinky cheeses, though the crier himself preferred the ones that smelled like old socks. Not everyone’s taste, he knew, but anyway . . . Extra firewood could be picked up outside the cooper’s workshop.)
Winter was on the way out. Soon darkness would fall later, there would be no ice in the morning washbasin, and there would be even fewer visitors at the library. Phoebe thought summer was always the perfect time to sit out in the sunny gardens, reading, but the problem seemed to be that people stayed out in the gardens doing something else—weeding? games? courtship?—and didn’t want to tear themselves away long enough to come into the quiet, orderly library. Even Queen Marigold and King Christian, normally big readers, were reading less since Princess Poppy had shown up. The servants who usually came in to borrow books for the royal family hadn’t been by for weeks.
Phoebe shut the window and burrowed into her shawl. She should be closing up and going home, but she liked the library better than the dank stone quarters that had been Boris’s. She’d had nowhere else to live after her father’s exile, so she had scrubbed and painted and brought in colorful fabrics and pillows. But certain nasty stains proved impossible to remove, and she remembered all too well the torture devices that had once stood where she now had her little kitchen table and her wardrobe, and her rocker and footstool.
Boris’s instruments of torture had been ordered to be destroyed when he was sent away, but Phoebe was pretty sure he had managed to take his favorites with him—the Tongue Tearer, the Roman Pincers, the White-Hot Mitt, and the Dragon’s Teeth. Boris especially loved the Dragon’s Teeth. He had invented it because he loved dragons—their size, their ability to throw flames, their armor-plated scales. All of it fascinated him. It was a passion he shared with Vlad, but Vlad, who was of a different sensibility than Boris was, loved dragons for their cleverness, their wiliness, their beautiful iridescence. And he, too, had an invention that honored the dragon: the infamous and dreaded Dragon’s Sweat poison.