Castle of Shadows Read Free

medicine. I insist you come and take it now. And then you must rest.’
    Her father sighed and began the climb down. Charlieblinked back tears. Hatred burned like a lump of coal in her throat. She swallowed it and edged past the housekeeper towards the door. A hand the size of a dinner plate shot out and grabbed her shoulder.
    ‘ What is that awful smell?’ Mrs O’Dair’s large nose curled in disgust.
    Too late, Charlie remembered the pencil tin. Still full of manure. Still in her pocket. She had lived with it so long she no longer smelt it. Thoroughly warmed, the contents of the tin exuded odour with renewed vigour. The smell was richer, deeper, exquisitely pungent. Charlie stank.
    ‘It’s um…it’s only…’
    ‘You filthy little—’ The hand on Charlie’s shoulder tightened like a vice.
    ‘What’s all this?’ The King leapt to the ground. He peered at the air beside Mrs O’Dair’s left ear. ‘Is there a problem?’ he asked.
    ‘No, Your Majesty, not at all,’ soothed Mrs O’Dair. ‘Merely that I believe Princess Charlotte to be in need of a bath.’
    The King’s gaze hovered over Charlie’s head. He sniffed the air. ‘Oh dear,’ he said and cleared his throat. ‘You are somewhat…fragrant, child. Perhaps a bath––’ ‘I shall see to it myself,’ Mrs O’Dair said. ‘Once you have taken your medicine.’ Her grip slacked. Charlie flinched away and dodged out the door, the housekeeper’s hiss of anger hard on her heels. But even as she fled, she knewher escape was temporary. Mrs O’Dair might forget to feed Charlie or give her new clothes. She never forgot to punish her.
     
    Scrubbed raw as a new potato, her stomach a knot of emptiness, Charlie lay in bed and hated Mrs O’Dair. Then she hated Alfie for wanting to cut off her father’s head. Finally, she settled down to hate Tobias Petch. She had plenty of practice.
    Charlie had woken one morning, soon after her sixth birthday, to find that her mother had disappeared. Weeks later, when she was able to notice things, Charlie found that Foss had a new gardener’s boy. Although she knew it was stupid, she couldn’t help connecting the two: her mother’s departure and Tobias’s arrival.
    It didn’t help that from the very first he had refused to play with her when she managed to escape into the gardens. Or that he was a year older and thought he was cleverer. Or that when she told him her secrets, he never told her anything at all. All of that made it easy to hate Tobias Petch, but the thing that made it easiest of all was his mother.
     
    In the months following the Queen’s disappearance, Charlie’s life had changed completely. Her father hid himself away in his private apartments and began his first, tiny card castle. Courtiers and guests vanished from the Castle, along with most of the servants. Soon afterwards,the housekeeper dismissed Nurse and banished Charlie to the east attics, where she was expected to stay out of sight and hearing. Charlie grew larger, but her meals did not grow with her. If she demanded more, she was locked in her room with nothing to eat except stale bread and cabbage water.
    At the end of that first, horrible year, despite everything, Charlie had grown so much that she struggled to get into her clothes, and O’Dair had grudgingly sent the Castle seamstress to her attic room. The woman uncurled her tape measure and stretched it around Charlie’s chest and waist, and along her shoulders and arms. ‘Oh dear,’ said the seamstress, as she jotted down the measurements.
    ‘Is something wrong?’ Charlie liked this woman. She was gentle and nervous, with dark hair the colour of conkers and sad brown eyes. She had curtsied to Charlie and called her ‘Your Highness’ – something Mrs O’Dair and her new servants never did.
    ‘Don’t mind me, ma’am,’ the seamstress said. ‘It’s just that you’re so very thin. You need to eat up more, if you don’t mind my saying so. Why, my Toby would make two