The Alyssa Chronicle by Michael Strelow

Author:Michael Strelow [Strelow, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78535-836-4
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2018-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

I liked to think of the castle now as my castle. When we had first switched, I’d made it my business to explore every nook and cranny, every passage way and crawl space. And I’d discovered that sometime in the past they had built passageways in the walls of all the important rooms so that the heat of the kitchen stoves could be directed up inside the wall, not to heat the giant rooms, but to warm the food that was often delivered to the rooms and then kept for a while in the cupboards built into the walls. And these passageways were very narrow but, I found, just big enough to fit a farm girl or a princess. Jake would have hated it in there. You couldn’t see. It was close—the opposite of a tree top. It smelled of hundreds of years of being a castle.

The air intake for the wall space was right near my feet in the alcove. And I could hear voices growing louder coming from outside the first set of doors, coming closer to the Council chamber. Without thinking, I pulled the grate out and crept into the space pulling the grate closed behind me. I crouched at first but quickly found I could stand up—sort of. If I bent over I could shuffle through the wall into the Council chamber. I did and suddenly I could hear the voices clearly. With my back against one wall, my knees just rested against the other. It was warm and today smelled like the kitchen’s baking, not at all of stinky castle or dank castle. Except for the darkness so thick I couldn’t see my hand, it was kind of pleasant, if you didn’t mind tight spaces. Sort of like being wrapped in a blanket that smelled like fresh rolls. The voices came to me through a grate at the back of the cupboard.

One old voice announced, “They are happy to contribute from their gardens. I hear from many sources they feel it’s their way of being at the wedding. Think of it as a kind of tax they’re willing to pay gladly.”

Another voice, higher, but deferring to the first voice: “I should think, of course, they would be glad, but I don’t know how much money they will lose if we take the flowers and some of their food for the winter. They sell the flowers, I understand. At markets. Then use that money for…for whatever they need, I suppose.”

Clearly Eugenie was not in the room, or she was controlling herself, waiting for her chance. I couldn’t see anything, just hear.

“On the other hand,” a higher voice chimed in. “All the people in the country deserve a chance to contribute to the wedding that will be bringing together important families, securing our—their!—borders, and bringing peace for them and their children. A few flowers, some crops—these are the least they can give. The only difficult part is making them understand how useful and valuable their contributions will be.

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