Дом ста дорог

[628] Charmain bent over her next pile of papers, trying to look as if she had not been listening. It seemed private. This pile of paper had been tied into a bundle for so long that each sheet had stuck to the next one, all dry and brownish, like a wasps' nest Charmain had once found in the attic at home. She became very busy trying to separate the layers.

[629] "Er-hem," said the King. Charmain looked up to see that he was smiling at her, with his quill in the air and a sideways twinkle at her from above his glasses. "I see you are a very discreet young lady," he said. "And you must have gathered from our talk just now that we—and your great-uncle with us—are searching for some very important things.

My daughter's headings will give you some clue what to look out for. Your key words will be 'treasury,' 'revenues,' 'gold,' and 'elfgift.' If you find a mention of any of these, my dear, please tell me at once."

[630] The idea of looking for such important things made Charmain's fingers on the frail paper go all cold and clumsy. "Yes.

Yes of course, Your Majesty," she said.

[631] Rather to her relief, that packet of papers was nothing but lists of goods and their prices—all of which seemed surprisingly low. "To ten pounds of wax candles at two pennies a pound, twenty pence," she read. Well, it did seem to date from two hundred years ago. "To six ounces of finest saffron, thirty pence. To nine logs of fragrant applewood for the scenting of the chief chambers, one farthing." And so on. The next page was full of things like "To forty ells of linen drapes, forty-four shillings." Charmain made careful notes, put those pages in the box labeled Household Accounts, and peeled up the next sheet.

[632] "Oh!" she said. The next sheet said, "To Wizard Melicot, for the enchanting of one hundred square feet of tinne tilings to give the appearance of a golden roofe, 200 guineas."

[633] "What is it, my dear?" the King asked, putting his finger on his place in his book.

[634] Charmain read the ancient bill out to him. He chuckled and shook his head a little. "So it was definitely done by magic, was it?" he said. "I must confess I had always hoped it would turn out to be real gold, hadn't you?"

[635] "Yes, but it looks like gold anyway," Charmain said consolingly.

[636] "And a very good spell too, to last two hundred years," the King said, nodding. "Expensive as well. Two hundred guineas was a lot of money in those days. Ah, well. I never did hope to solve our financial problems that way. Besides, it would look shocking if we climbed up and stripped all the tiles off the roof. Keep looking, my dear."

[637] Charmain kept looking but all she found was someone charging two guineas to plant a rose garden and someone else getting paid ten guineas to refurbish the treasury—no, not someone else, the same Wizard Melicot who did the roof!

[638] "Melicot was a specialist, I fancy," the King said, when Charmain had read this out. "Looks to me like a fellow who went in for faking precious metals. The treasury was certainly empty by that date. I've known my crown was a fake for years. Must be this Melicot's work. Are you getting peckish at all, my dear? A bit cold and stiff? We don't bother with regular lunch—my daughter doesn't hold with it—but I generally ask the butler to bring in a snack around this time.

Why not get up and stretch your legs while I ring the bell?"

[639] Charmain stood up and walked about, causing Waif to roll to her feet and watch inquiringly, while the King limped over to the bell rope by the door. He was decidedly frail, Charmain thought, and very tall. It was as if his height was too much for him. While they waited for someone to answer the bell, Charmain seized the chance to look at the books in the shelves. They seemed to be books about everything, higgledy-piggledy, travel books next to books of algebra and poems rubbing shoulders with geography. Charmain had just opened one called Secrets of the Universe Revealed, when the library door opened and a man in a tall cook's hat came in carrying a tray.

To Charmain's surprise, the King nimbly skipped behind the table. "My dear, pick up your dog!" he called out urgently.

[640] Another dog had come in, pressed close to the cook's legs as if it felt unsafe, a bitter-looking brown dog with gnarly ears and a ratty tail. It was growling as it came. Charmain had no doubt that this was the dog that slew other dogs, and she dived to pick Waif up.