But Flagg’s judgment was right. Instead of freezing or going for water, Dennis reached in and beat the flames out with his bare hands. It took less than five seconds, and Dennis was barely singed. The doleful squeaking went on, and the first thing he saw when he had waved the smoke aside was a mouse, lying on its side. It was in its death agonies. It was only a mouse, and Dennis had killed dozens of them in the line of duty without the slightest feeling of pity. Yet he felt sorry for this poor little bugger. Something terrible, something he could not even begin to understand, had happened to it and was still happening to it. Smoke rose from its fur in fine ribbons. When he touched it, he drew his hand back with a hiss-it was like touching the side of a tiny stove, such as the one in Sasha’s dollhouse.
More smoke drifted lazily from an engraved wooden box with its lid slightly ajar. Dennis lifted the lid a little. He saw the tweezers, the packet. A number of brownish spots had flowered on the packet and it smoldered sluggishly, but had not burst into flame… nor did it now. The flames had come from Peter’s letters, which were, of course, not enchanted at all. It was the mouse that had set these alight with its fearfully hot body. Now there was only the sullenly smoldering packet, and something warned Dennis not to touch it.
He was afraid. There were things here that he didn’t under-stand, things he was not sure he wanted to understand. The one thing he knew for sure was that he badly needed to speak to his father. His father would know what to do.
Dennis took the ash bucket and a small shovel from beside the stove and went back to the secret panel. He used the shovel to pick up the smoking body of the mouse and drop it into the ash bucket. He wet the charred corners of the letters once more, just to be sure. Then he closed the panel, replaced the books, and left Peter’s apartments. He took the ash bucket with him, and now he did not feel like Peter’s loyal servant but like a thief-his booty was a poor mouse that died even before Dennis got back out the West Gate of the castle.
And before he had even reached his house on the far side of the castle keep, a horrible suspicion had dawned in his mind -he was the first in Delain to feel this suspicion, but he would not be the last.
He tried to push the thought out of his head, but it kept coming back. What sort of poison, Dennis wondered, had killed King Roland, anyway? Exactly what sort of poison had it been?
By the time he got back to the Brandon house, he was in a bad state indeed, and he would answer none of his mother’s questions. Nor would he show her what was in the ash bucket. He told her only that he must see his father the moment he came in-it was dreadfully important. Then he went into his room and wondered exactly what sort of poison it had been. He only knew one thing about it, but that one thing was enough. It had been something hot.
35
Brandon arrived just before ten o’clock, short-tem-pered, exhausted, and in no mood for foolishness. He was dirty and sweaty, there was a thin cut across his forehead, and cobwebs flew from his hair in long strings. They had found no sign of the assassin at all. His only news was that preparations for Peter’s coronation were going full speed ahead in the Plaza of the Needle, under the direction of Anders Peyna, Delain’s Judge-General.
His wife told him of Dennis’s return. Brandon’s brow darkened. He went to the door of his son’s room and rapped not with his knuckles but with a closed fist. “Come 'ee out here, boy, and tell us why you come back with the ash bucket from your master’s study.”
“No,” Dennis said. “You come in here, Dad-I don’t want Mother to see what I’ve got, and I don’t want her to hear what we say to each other.”
Brandon barged in. Dennis’s mother waited apprehensively by the stove, expecting it was some sort of semi-hysterical foolishness which the boy had thought up, some ill-advised monkeyshine, and that very soon she would hear Dennis’s wails as her tired and distraught husband, who must begin today at noon to buttle not a prince but a King, took out all his fears and frustrations on the boy’s backside. She hardly blamed Dennis; everyone in the keep seemed hysterical this morning, running around like crazy people just let out of bedlam, repeating a hundred false rumors, then taking them back in order to repeat a hundred new ones.
But there were no raised voices from behind Dennis’s door, and neither of them came out for more than an hour. When they did, a single look at her husband’s white face made the poor woman feel like fainting dead away. Dennis scurried along at his father’s heels like a scared puppy.
Now Brandon was carrying the ash bucket.
“Where are you going?” she asked timidly.
Brandon said nothing. It seemed that Dennis could say nothing. He only rolled his eyes at her and then followed his father out the door. She saw neither of them for twenty-four hours, and became convinced that both were dead-or even worse, that they were suffering in the Dungeon castle.
Her dire thoughts were not so unlikely, either, for those were a terrible twenty-four hours in Detain. The day mightn’t have seemed so terrible in some places, places where revolt and up-heaval and alarms and midnight executions are almost a way of life… there really are such places, although I wish I didn’t have to say so. But Detain had for years-and even centuries-been an ordered and orderly place, so perhaps they were spoiled. That black day really began when Peter was not crowned at noon and ended with the stunning news that he was to be tried in the Hall of the Needle for the murder of his father. If Detain had had a stock market, I suppose it would have crashed.
Construction on the dais where the coronation was to take place began at first light. The platform would be a jury-rigged affair of plain boards, Anders Peyna knew, but he also knew that enough flowers and bunting would cover the rude spots. They had had no warning of the King’s passing, because murder isn’t a thing that can be predicted. If it could be, there would be no murders, and the world would almost certainly be a happier place. Besides, pomp and circumstance wasn’t the point-the point was to make the people feel the continuity of the throne. If the citizens got the feeling that everything was still all right in spite of the terrible thing that had happened, Peyna didn’t care how many flower girls got splinters.
But at eleven o’clock, construction abruptly ceased. The flower girls were turned away-many of them in tears-by the Home Guards.
At seven that morning, most of the Home Guards had begun dressing in their gorgeous red ceremonial uniforms and their tall gray Wolf-Jaw shakos. They were, of course, to form the cer-emonial double line, an aisle down which Peter would walk to be crowned. Then, at eleven, they received new orders; strange, unsettling orders. The ceremonial uniforms came off in a blazing hurry and their dull, dun-colored combat uniforms went on instead. The showy but clumsy ceremonial swords were replaced with the lethal shortswords which were everyday equipment. Impressive but impractical Wolf-Jaw shakos were cast aside in favor of the squat leather helmets that were normal battle dress.
Battle dress-the very term was distressing. Is there such a thing as normal battle dress? I do not think so. Yet soldiers in battle dress were everywhere, their faces stern and forbidding.
Prince Peter has committed suicide! That was the most common rumor which went flying about the castle keep.
Prince Peter has been murdered! That one ran a close second.
Roland was not dead; it was a mistaken diagnosis, the physician has been beheaded, but the old King is insane and no one knows what to do. That was a third.
There were many others, some even more foolish.
No one slept as darkness stole over the confused, sorrowing castle keep. All the torches in the Plaza of the Needle were lit, the castle blazed with lights, and every house in the keep and on the hills below showed candles and lanterns, as frightened people gathered to talk about the day’s events. All agreed wild work was afoot.