Once Upon a Castle - Jill Gregory [103]
Oh, the cowards! she thought, sliding back the secret panel that led to a shortcut. The castle was riddled with many such passageways, a legacy of her great-grandfather’s madness. Trusting no one and fearing assassination, he had built a maze inside these walls. She knew every secret way and in the past had gotten her britches dusted a few times for hiding in them overlong and setting the castle on its ear.
But now the knowledge of these places, where she and Elani had played as children, would serve her well. If only she could get to her father in time to warn him, she could spirit him away to safety through the secret door in the chapel.
She slipped the catch that opened behind the altar. Before it had always amused her that the icon of Saint Ethelred the Dragonmaster hung upon the doorway to the heart of the secret maze. At the moment she had no thought for it.
Her father was on his knees at the altar, looking old and frail in his simple robe and without his emblems of kingship. As he humbled himself before God, his gray head bent almost to the floor, and his coronet caught the light of the tall candelabra.
At any other time Tressalara would have told herself that he was no doubt praying for a virile son-in-law to sire a male grandchild in the years to come. But now was no time to nurture old grievances.
“Father!”
“Tressalara! By all the saints!” Varro roared, taking in her boy’s garb and her unorthodox arrival in one heated glance. “Do you have no sense of what is fitting in this holy…”
“Father, we are under attack! Lector and his men have taken the courtyard and the great hall. Jeday—“She strengthened her faltering voice. “Jeday is dead by an assassin’s hand. Come this way. Hurry!”
Already they could hear the first sounds of tumult from just beyond the thick chapel walls. Voices raised in anger and fear. The clash of steel on steel. Cries of mortal agony.
“Father, come!”
He hesitated as the locked chapel door shuddered from the onslaught. The brass key fell to the stone flags with an ominous clang. The wood cracked and splintered. The king hurried to Tressalara’s side, and she turned down the secret passage, assuming that he meant to follow.
Instead, he wrested her drawn dagger from her hand, then shoved her forward into the darkness with what frail strength he could muster. She fell heavily, skinning her hands on the rough stone floor. The door to the passageway thudded shut behind her.
Jumping up, Tressalara threw herself at the latch, but it refused to give. She pressed her shoulder against the panel, tears of rage and fear for her father running down her cheeks. She knew why she couldn’t open it. Her father had his back firmly to the door, holding it shut so that she could not open it from the inside and reveal her hiding place. He had chosen her life over his.
Tears streaming, she could do nothing but stifle her own sobs and pray. The scuffle of feet and the shriek of metal against stone were plainly audible through the heavy wood, although the assassins’ voices were muffled.
An eternity passed while she waited, hoping in vain that her father would escape yet knowing that he had no chance at all. Vowing, through her anguish, that she would have revenge upon Lector and save the kingdom.
All was suddenly quiet. Tressalara’s blood chilled. She scrabbled at the edges of the wood, trying with all her might to open the panel. It wobbled slightly but did not give. Eons passed while she tried to work it free, and there was nothing but silence from the other side. Then the hidden catch gave, and the panel slowly rolled back.
The chapel was dim. The great candelabra lay on their sides, flames extinguished, among the holy icons broken on the floor. Only the ruby glow of the altar lamp illumined the chamber. “Father?”
Silence. She moved cautiously around