Chapter Twenty-Four: Into the Madness
Conny, Lucy, Jon, Rissa, Gil and Tilda were the first to arrive at breakfast and the first to leave, before even the most peppy morning person had the chance to grab some muesli. The table was tense, everybody sharing this enormous and dangerous secret. There was a definite crackle of excitement in the air, too, as the group slid through the fake wall into the abandoned classroom.
Conny, whose stomach was full of somersaulting pixies, surveyed her motley crew. They were all changing into their period clothes, Tilda fretting over her mish-mash of stitching fraying. Gil was handsomely clothed as befitted a footman's pageboy, and she realized that very soon he was going to grow into his bulky frame and be a whole different boy. Rissa was helping Lucy into her scullion's dress; herself dressed opulently as a visiting lady in waiting (only Rissa was classy enough to pull off pretending to be upper class). Conny pulled the rough clothes over her underwear and not for the first time felt stupid. Everyone was chatting like they were getting into their costumes for a school nativity play, not as though they were going to die. Not that Conny knew they were going to die for sure, but if the dark wizard didn't get them, the dissolving world inside the painting would soon after. She wasn't brave enough to tell them just how terrible her spellwork was; Lucy had convinced her she could do it, but the more she glanced at the circle, the weaker she realized the runes were. However good Rissa was, an excellent potion catalyst is only a catalyst.
Conny smoothed down the long, dull skirts of her dress and took a moment to breathe. She slipped her wand into a concealed pocket, along with the demiguise fur bracelet. Rissa and Gil had the others, as they had greater access to the castle, and Jon had the thought-reading quill.
"I find this incredibly racist on behalf of medieval welsh Arabs everywhere." Lucy said as Tilda daubed another layer of beige foundation on her face. The good thing was, Madam Meticulous's All-Day Tan and Tone Foundation was made specifically to look like real skin. Tilda had chosen the palest brand, which was about the colour of Conny's skin, and as she spread it over Lucy's face the makeup took on the appearance of real human skin. It did make Lucy's nose slightly larger, but overall the effect was amazing.
"Lucy… you're white." Gil gawped. "I can't deal with it."
"I feel like a ghost." She complained, touching her cheek experimentally. "How do you people cope being this pale? I'm getting snowblind from my own face."
"Hey." The Caucasian contingent of the room took comedic offence. Tilda, whose colouring was more Mediterranean than the rest, merely chuckled. Conny had never asked, but she thought one of the Tirias twins' parents might be Greek.
"Tch. Right, is that everything ready?" Lucy asked, shoving her old clothes into a corner. "Conny, your stuff?"
"Yep." She said with more confidence than she had a right to pretend to have. Gods, if she killed anybody today, she'd never live it down. "Um, do we really want to do this?"
"Of course. Stop being a pansy, let's go."
"On your head." Conny shrugged. "Okay, everybody get into the circle with all of our stuff. Don't you dare move anything."
"It's all tingly." Jon giggled, shivering as he stood inside the thrumming circle.
"It's like getting lots of tiny electric shocks." Conny agreed, before realizing that none of the people she was with knew what electricity was. "Er- never mind. Rissa, you need to pour the potion onto the painting after I say this recitation-"
Conny gestured to the piece of parchment upon which she had written all the incantations. "Okay." Rissa nodded.
"Right. We all sure?"
"For the bazillionth time, yes." Lucy jigged her leg up and down impatiently, stretching her neck. "This makeup is going to give me a rash."
"You can stay here and be rashless?"
"Not happening. Say the Latin, Conny, and let's get this started."
Conny gulped and looked down at the paper. She was never sure how you were meant to pronounce Latin. Lots of common spells, since they were used often, had been calculated and honed to death. This meant that they could be said in just a couple of focus words, some even one. But this spell wasn't your average incendio or wingardium leviosa. In fact, it was crazy. Crazy complicated.
"Aperiatur nobis in opera huius rei simile hominis desperati," She began, wincing as everyone blanched at the terrible pronunciation. "Nos quaerere peregrinari inter mundos. Aperire!"
Rissa's cue came, and she splashed the phial of potion catalyst all over the painting. The paint seemed to run, down the canvas, and pool past the frame, oozing onto the ground. It ran around their feet and filled the floor of the circle, stopping only at the edge of the circle. The rune plates flared into life, cutting through the air with lances of bright light. The paint on the floor rippled and congealed, whorls of colour becoming the outlines of rocks, or the blue shadows of mounds of snow. Trees laden with ice and green with fragrant needles came solidified around the periphery.
Conny lurched, feeling like she was going to fall, and nearly forgot to say the last word of the spell. She'd realized that the spell needed a focus word, a joining integral, but there hadn't been one on the original document, so she'd had to make it up. Several pages of calculations later, she'd done it, but…
"Perclausta!"
Her wand exploded with a ring of sizzling heat, and then the floor fell out from under them.
Lucy swore loudly, but it was covered by Gil's high-pitched girly scream as they plummeted downwards. Conny's gaze snapped up and she saw in the sky a hole through which the ceiling of the classroom was visible. Then, she hit the snowy ground with a painful, frozen thud.
"Mrrfflllgh." She said, spitting snow out of her mouth and sitting up. Beside her, Tilda brushed pine needles and snow off her dress and shivered before helping Rissa to her feet.
"Wow." Lucy said, climbing up onto a rock. "Guys, look. Look at the view from here."
They joined her on the rock. It was the exact same view that Caradoc had painted, down to the fluttering flags and the bright castle in the distance. Amazing. Conny's stomach turned, and she realized they were really here. In the painting. In Caradoc's world.
"Can anyone hear that?" Gil asked suddenly, frowning.
"What?"
"It's like… a buzzing."
They examined the silence. Yes, it was there… it was a low buzz, like a little, almost silent niggle at the very back at your mind. "It's probably nothing. Let's get going."
The group walked towards the castle. Though the main gate was heavily guarded and the moat around the rest should deter any other intruders, Conny's gamble had paid off. The moat was frozen over. Not thick enough for a grown man to walk across carrying weapons or armour, but just right for a group of children. Gil, who was bulky, cracked the ice at one point and had such a hissy fit that he sprinted to the other side faster than Lucy could pocket your best cutlery.
The next thing to do was scale the wall. While the castle of Gwent was impressive, it wasn't new. The wall had handholds aplenty, and they all climbed up until they were peeking over the top of the wall.
"There's a lookout in each of the observatory towers, and archers by the slitty windows."
"It's called a balistraria." Gil mentioned.
"Will knowing what it's called stop us being skewered by Robin Hood and his merry men?" Lucy hissed, ducking as a chainmail-clad sentry walked by on the battlements.
"Yes, it will." Gil said sarcastically. "And if you know that where the sentry's walking is called the crenellations, he won't see you."
"Brilliant. I don't know why we bothered dressing up or bringing wands." Lucy rolled her eyes.
"Stop. Arguing." Conny said, glaring at them. "Let's get down there and start doing this damn thing."
Jon pulled a length of rope out of its concealed compartment underneath his tabard and tied it to a metal stake Gil had driven into the stone at the top of the outer wall. He went down first once they were sure the sentry had left, and held the rope taut for the others. Conny, last, untied it from the stake and jumped down using her carom boots. It was so easy when she was using the magical boots to jump amazing distances and land perfectly. Those who hadn't seen them work before - Gil, Tilda and Rissa – oohed appreciatively at the feat.
"I want a pair of them." Gil said, looking green.
"Well, you've got a sexier outfit and you'll have to deal with that." Lucy replied, her whitened skin itching like crazy. "So, what's the plan?"
Conny led them to the shadow of the battlements - the crenellations, whatever – and took out the parchment upon which she had her plan of attack. "Right. Gil said that the feast won't be until tonight. The position of the sun tells us that it's early morning, maybe… eight o'clock? So, we need to see if we can find Caradoc and warn him before the feast."
"What about our jobs?"
"You might have to do them. The castle will already be up getting ready. Just do as you're told, don't act suspiciously."
"Point of order, I always look suspicious." Lucy said, grinning, but they ignored her. "Eesh, just trying to lighten the atmosphere."
"You're doing great." Conny said acridly, giving her the 'shut up' look. "As I was saying, if you have the chance, find Caradoc. If not, we're rendezvousing every two hours… where was it, Gil?"
"The linen room. It's where they wash everything and heat the water up, so it's really steamy and loud."
"Where is it? For those of us that don't know the blueprints of every medieval castle in our brains." Lucy asked.
"It's on the basement floor, through the kitchens and down the spiral staircase on the left."
"You have a career as the St. Mungo's welcome wizard ahead of you, Gilly."
Gil huffed and looked away. Lucy really wasn't in a good mood today, and this wasn't a great environment for her to vent her spleen.
"Lucy and me will get to the kitchens, check out the scene there. Gil and Jon, you know what to do, and Rissa, Gil explained when you have to appear, right?"
"He did indeed." Rissa smiled, brushing fluff off her lovely dress.
"Okay then. So, phase one is a go-go. Good luck, team."
They all nodded, hesitated a second, and then ran off in their separate directions.
-0-
Lucy was the first to find their base: the kitchens. It was amazing in there, and revolting at the same time. Tens of scullions bustled around; yelling and hollering in old welsh. A burly butcher and his two bearded sons were unloading seven whole pigs. Equal to those, seven spits were being prepped by seven scrawny boys. Wicker baskets the size of ponies were everywhere, stuffed with potatoes, vegetables, freshly picked herbs and above all, salt. There was enough salt to feed a small army.
It stank to high heaven.
Hundreds of chickens and pheasants hung from lines of rope and poles above them, dripping blood and all sorts. A dead fox was being skinned in the corner by a greasy-looking man in a leather hat; a line of girls and boys worked at a frenzied pace plucking pigeons, supervised by a short, fat woman with astonishingly little hair on her head, but curiously a fairly impressive grey moustache.
She spotted them.
"Chuey ynao! Hin yur yudyuch yun ey weneu! Dudyuchwellid iyrr gwaith!"
"Shit." Lucy replied. "Me no speaky welsh."
Matron Moustachio was pointing furiously to the line of pigeon-pluckers, and Lucy did, however, speak international point-and-shout. She bowed low and scurried back to join the end of the line, next to a boy with dirty fingernails and a dirtier grin on his face. Lucy panicked and picked up a spare pigeon. She needed to be able to speak welsh, and fast, or she was going to get found out pretty quickly.
Just as she was about to do something stupid and Conny-esque and mumbled some bad Latin to make up a spell, she caught sight of a line of runes in nearly invisible thread sewn onto the inside of her sleeve cuff. As she watched, the runes flared briefly white and, with an earsplitting shriek that sounded oddly like her grandmother, Lucy suddenly understood everything.
"I dun care who ye're, ye're facked pretey." The boy said, showing a mouth devoid of the presumably important feature of teeth. He grabbed Lucy's bottom with his bloodied hand, and she immediately slapped him away out of reflex.
"Geroff!" She hissed, plucking the pigeon hurriedly as Matron Moustachio walked past. "Don't touch me!"
"But…" He said, looking crestfallen. "Ye're so pretey. An' ye got so many teeth, m'lord…"
Lucy considered sniping at him, but realized that she needed allies. "Yeh. Yeh, I am pretty, aren't I? Tell you what… what's your name?"
"They call me Badan, 'cause I'm strong as a boar!" He flexed his muscles and gave that awful grin again. "An' you? I ain't seen ye in the village."
"I'm… er, I had the pox?"
"Ye dunt look like ye had pox."
"My mum was… er, a very skilled healer. But she died healing me. So me and my… older brother came to the castle, because we heard there was work."
"Ah! Same ere, I norm'ly do the shite rounds in the village."
What interesting work. Lucy bet the interview was harsh for that job. "Great. So, what're we preparing for?"
"Welcoming feast t'night, innit?" Badan said, moving onto another pigeon. "I 'erd the king's comen. Fink it, the king in our castle!"
"The king? Wow. Who else, ey?"
"How'm I ter kno?" Badan asked. "Ey, wait'er second. I'll betcha penny that Lynna know, she's up wit' te gossips. EY, LYNNA!"
One of the girls who were peeling potatoes turned around. "Wassat, Bad?"
"Whose elses lords and ladyfolk comin' ter the castle?"
"Mighty me, all'em, I's reckon. Table-knights, all, an that awfy handsome new feller."
"Oo's sat?"
"E's from the Wiltshires, they say. Small ret'inue, big purse."
"What's his name?" Lucy asked, dreading the answer.
"Sir Malfoy 'f Salisbury. Ooh, e's a pretty'un." Lynna grinned, batting her eyelashes. "I'd give me two front teef to serve 'im 'is dinner."
"You don't got yer two front teef since ye wer twelve, Lynna." Badan joked, finishing another pigeon. Lucy was still on her first one. Then, he did a double take. "Sweet lord in 'eaven."
"Wat?" Lynna turned to follow his gaze, over to where a tall man was holding the door open to someone. It was Conny.
They hadn't quite considered how healthy and pretty they'd be compared to medieval peasantry, and of all of them, Lucy probably fitted in best, with her gaunt features and pasty skin. Conny, however, was flush with health and… ample. Even in her peasant dress, her breasts were prominent and the growing curve of her hips underneath visible. The man who was opening the door for her obvious was taking advantage of Tilda's selective tailoring, which made her assets stand out. Conny looked older than she was, and stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the thin, weedy peasantry.
"I'd give all me teeth fer her. No 'ffence, poxy." He nudged Lucy, who just nodded with acceptance. Conny saw her and shared a glance, but she was busy holding a large dirty pot of water. It was probably heavy for the malnourished servants that usually held it, so she managed fine.
"Look at 'er, all glowy, makin' us rest look like mangy dogs." Lynna whined. "Bet she's one of them witches."
Lucy froze. "Witches?"
"Oh, ay. Yanno, Merlin's sort, an Morganaspawn. They'm all beautiful an' powerful, but they'm evil. Monsters."
"Monsters?"
"Oh, ay. Ye never 'erd the tales? Tha' girl may look beautiful, but when she gets a man in 'er trap, she'll turn into a lamia!"
Phew. Lucy exhaled and took another pigeon, glad that it was just fanciful tales. Unless Conny really was a Lamia, which, while totally cool, would be a worrying development. And a bit of a stumbling block in their friendship, too. Lucy giggled quietly, imagining Conny and Az kissing, and then suddenly Conny turning into a snake-woman.