Read Online Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Catherine Gilbert Murdock
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MAKE SEVERAL UNUSUAL DISCOVERIES
SIX
Coward that I am, I squeezed my eyes shut, and so experienced intensely the sensation of cool silk. Finding myself on the far side of the portal, puffing in relief at the stone beneath my feet, I forced one eyelid open. Before my nose was another wall of stone. Reaching out, I touched rough-hewn masonry and crudely applied mortar, all blanketed with the dust of age. In fact, excepting the dust it matched exactly the walls of the staircase from the queen's reception room to my cell. With a jolt, I realized that just as that horrid stair occupied the tight space between two walls, so did this most peculiar roomlet.
Dim moonlight filtered through the secret portal. On the far side of the doorjamb my cell and bed appeared clear as day. As I peered about the roomlet's gloaming, I espied an ascending flight of steps built between the walls, so matched in appearance and construction to the staircase from the
queen's reception room to my cell that without question they had been constructed by the same hand. Yet
whereto
did this flight lead? My tiny cell occupied the highest floor of the highest tower of Chateau de Montagne. Above was naught but slate roofing and sky.
For some time I chewed my lip. It made some sort of sense—should something as irrational as this experience ever be labeled
sensible
—that a doorway such as this would lead to a secret corridor, and what else is a staircase but a corridor improved by elevation? The dusty little roomlet in which I now stood otherwise served as no more than well-disguised closet. Dearly might an emperor or Midas pay for a closet so perfectly hidden from spies and thieves, but it had no purpose in a barren cell. No, doorway and staircase were but a conduit to the unknown.
I had come this far. I began to climb.
Within a half-dozen steps, the sparse moonlight dissipated so completely that I was ascending in total darkness. Timidly I probed and tested each step and riser before settling my weight. Swollen and aching though my fingers were, still they swept the jagged stones, verifying the solidity of my surroundings. Ever higher I mounted. Then my vision, overwhelmed with strain, began to mislead me, for steps and
walls, ghostly in a pale white light, appeared. I turned my head upward, and my heart froze, for light—ever stronger and whiter—drifted down from above.
Though I stood as a statue for some time, my ears ringing with the effort of my concentrated listening, I could discern no footstep or rustle, no indication that the space above was occupied by a human ... or other presence. Again gathering my scanty resolve, I resumed my creeping journey.
Mounting the last steps, I could now make out a tiny chamber, as neatly designed as a cut gem, tucked beneath the conical roof of the tower. Strong moonlight poured through four diminutive dormer windows, as though the round panes of glass had magnified the faint beams tenfold. Just as a lighthouse via mirrors and lenses transforms the flame of a single candle into a powerful beam, so, too, apparently, did these windows work with moonlight: a lighthouse turned in upon itself.
In this enchanted light I perceived a space such as I had never known. Odd cabinets with peculiar locks lined the walls. A cobwebbed mirror hung above a workbench blanketed in a jumble of unidentifiable objects. A lectern displaying an open book, an unlit candelabra to one side, stood in the room's center. Every item—I cannot emphasize this
strongly enough—was shrouded in dust more than a finger width deep, accented by bird droppings powdery with age; bird nests crumbled in the turret's peak. Mice had left an otherworldly maze of trails on the floor, which was so thick with dust that it felt as soft as carpet.
I stole toward the lectern, small eddies of dust rising about my ankles. Once arrived, I had another fright, for the mighty tome resting there, though obviously ancient with its yellowed pages and aged leather
SIX
Coward that I am, I squeezed my eyes shut, and so experienced intensely the sensation of cool silk. Finding myself on the far side of the portal, puffing in relief at the stone beneath my feet, I forced one eyelid open. Before my nose was another wall of stone. Reaching out, I touched rough-hewn masonry and crudely applied mortar, all blanketed with the dust of age. In fact, excepting the dust it matched exactly the walls of the staircase from the queen's reception room to my cell. With a jolt, I realized that just as that horrid stair occupied the tight space between two walls, so did this most peculiar roomlet.
Dim moonlight filtered through the secret portal. On the far side of the doorjamb my cell and bed appeared clear as day. As I peered about the roomlet's gloaming, I espied an ascending flight of steps built between the walls, so matched in appearance and construction to the staircase from the
queen's reception room to my cell that without question they had been constructed by the same hand. Yet
whereto
did this flight lead? My tiny cell occupied the highest floor of the highest tower of Chateau de Montagne. Above was naught but slate roofing and sky.
For some time I chewed my lip. It made some sort of sense—should something as irrational as this experience ever be labeled
sensible
—that a doorway such as this would lead to a secret corridor, and what else is a staircase but a corridor improved by elevation? The dusty little roomlet in which I now stood otherwise served as no more than well-disguised closet. Dearly might an emperor or Midas pay for a closet so perfectly hidden from spies and thieves, but it had no purpose in a barren cell. No, doorway and staircase were but a conduit to the unknown.
I had come this far. I began to climb.
Within a half-dozen steps, the sparse moonlight dissipated so completely that I was ascending in total darkness. Timidly I probed and tested each step and riser before settling my weight. Swollen and aching though my fingers were, still they swept the jagged stones, verifying the solidity of my surroundings. Ever higher I mounted. Then my vision, overwhelmed with strain, began to mislead me, for steps and
walls, ghostly in a pale white light, appeared. I turned my head upward, and my heart froze, for light—ever stronger and whiter—drifted down from above.
Though I stood as a statue for some time, my ears ringing with the effort of my concentrated listening, I could discern no footstep or rustle, no indication that the space above was occupied by a human ... or other presence. Again gathering my scanty resolve, I resumed my creeping journey.
Mounting the last steps, I could now make out a tiny chamber, as neatly designed as a cut gem, tucked beneath the conical roof of the tower. Strong moonlight poured through four diminutive dormer windows, as though the round panes of glass had magnified the faint beams tenfold. Just as a lighthouse via mirrors and lenses transforms the flame of a single candle into a powerful beam, so, too, apparently, did these windows work with moonlight: a lighthouse turned in upon itself.
In this enchanted light I perceived a space such as I had never known. Odd cabinets with peculiar locks lined the walls. A cobwebbed mirror hung above a workbench blanketed in a jumble of unidentifiable objects. A lectern displaying an open book, an unlit candelabra to one side, stood in the room's center. Every item—I cannot emphasize this
strongly enough—was shrouded in dust more than a finger width deep, accented by bird droppings powdery with age; bird nests crumbled in the turret's peak. Mice had left an otherworldly maze of trails on the floor, which was so thick with dust that it felt as soft as carpet.
I stole toward the lectern, small eddies of dust rising about my ankles. Once arrived, I had another fright, for the mighty tome resting there, though obviously ancient with its yellowed pages and aged leather
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