The Key & the Flame Read online

  “The main gatehouse is round the other side,” Everett said, “but it’s tricky to get to from here.” He led them along the wall to a sudden break, where it looked as if a wrecking ball had pushed through it. “Easier to get in this way.”

  Holly stepped through into a wide, enclosed courtyard. Arched cloisters ran along two sides, and the remains of short stone stairways dotted the corners. “It’s built sort of in layers,” Everett said. “So that if invaders penetrated the outer walls, the family could retreat to the inner keep.” He pointed to a massive, squarish structure in the center of the courtyard.

  “It’s all crumbly,” said Ben. “Not like a real castle.”

  “Don’t be rude,” Holly told him.

  “It’s not like the one at Disney World,” Everett said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  Ben shrugged to show that was what he meant.

  “Those posh manor houses were built later. Darton was built in the 1200s. It’s a fortress, not a fairy tale.” Everett led them across the courtyard. “Over that wall you can see the fields. There was a big peasant revolt there back in 1207, during one of the tournaments. The Great and Lesser Halls are in the keep.”

  “You know a lot about this castle,” Holly said, to make up for Ben.

  “I’ve read all sorts of books about the Darton family. They were lords of the castle and barons of Hawkesbury from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries.” Everett led them through an open doorway into the keep.

  At once, the sun blinked out and Holly shivered. She ran her fingers over the rough stone walls that yawned above her into the darkness. Deep-set window openings lit their way as Everett led them through a warren of small, empty rooms. The dank air settled like cold fingers on the back of Holly’s neck, and she was relieved when they reached a broad set of stone steps that led into an airy space about the size of her classroom at school. “We know the most about Henry, the fifth Lord Darton. He kept lots of journals and things,” Everett explained. “This was the Lesser Hall, where Darton received guests and so on—like a foyer.” Even this hall, despite several tall windows, was rather dark. In one corner was a low, arched doorway. “That’s one of the stairways up to the Great Hall.”

  “It’s freezing! How’d they ever keep it warm enough?” Ben asked.

  “I’ll show you the fireplace.” Everett started toward the far end of the Lesser Hall, but Holly wandered over to the little doorway. Light shone through it, and she saw when she went in that a deep window was set in the wall, overlooking the southern courtyard. Before her was a steep, tightly spiraled stone staircase.

  Holly took hold of a rusty handrail and started to climb. Each step was crescent-shaped, worn down in the center. It was strange to think how many thousands of feet had tread these stairs over the past eight hundred years.

  After climbing several minutes, Holly thought she must have somehow passed the Great Hall. At the next landing, she looked out a window and saw the courtyard at least a hundred feet down. She turned to find her way back, and as she descended, she heard voices from below.

  At first, Holly thought it was the boys, having entered the Great Hall from the main staircase. She followed the voices until she found a side doorway she’d missed on the way up. She walked through it into one end of a large hall.

  But the boys weren’t here. Somehow she had stumbled onto a private party—a costume party, by the look of it. The women wore long, high-waisted gowns, and the men wore capes draped over knee-length tunics and what looked like tights or hose.

  She tiptoed inside, her palms tingling. It was a strange place to hold a party, and something about it sent a chain of goose bumps skittering down her arms. Unlike the empty caverns downstairs, this room was alive, as if real things happened in it every day, squabbles and music and boring dinners and loud banquets. The people clustered in the center of the room were too busy laughing and talking to notice her. Enormous firelit lamps were set in the wall every few feet, and beeswax candles lit the long tables, which stretched down the hall toward a raised dais, where a much grander table draped in red silk was set crosswise to the others. In the wall to her left a fire blazed in a hearth big enough to stand up in. Heavy scarlet and gold tapestries hung on every wall, and beneath her feet, something rustled. Holly bent down and picked up a long, dry stalk of something, like a reed or piece of hay.

  What was going on?

  Then she remembered something. A long time ago, her family had taken a trip to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. It was a whole town made up to look like it had in the 1600s, with people in costumes doing things like baking bread and making horseshoes. Her father had called it a living museum.

  Of course, that’s what this must be—a living museum. People had dressed in clothes from the Middle Ages and made up this room so that tourists could see what life was like back when the castle had a lord and lady to run it.

  Holly shrugged off the goose bumps. Now she was interested. She noticed the tables were really just long planks of wood set up on things that looked like sawhorses. Huge pewter serving platters with bones and half-eaten joints of meat covered each one. Holly turned away from the partly eaten pig’s head. She walked closer to talk to one of the actors.

  But an odd thing happened. The closer Holly got, the quieter the group of people became, as if she were walking in the wrong direction. They had been loud and boisterous, but now their voices were fading away.

  And they looked different too. Something about the light? The people were nearly . . . transparent.

  Holly’s neck prickled. This room still didn’t feel right, not even her idea about the living museum. Everett hadn’t said anything about it, and shouldn’t someone have been downstairs selling tickets? A faint buzzing vibrated in Holly’s pocket, as if a bug were trapped inside. It was the key. She slipped her hand in and closed her fingers around the cold iron. It made her feel calmer—even warmer, oddly. She drew it out and held it in front of her.

  Immediately the crowd grew louder, as if Holly had turned up the volume. And now, as she gazed at different people—a young woman in blond ringlets and a golden gown, a young man in a purple doublet—they solidified. The odd faintness was gone.

  The next instant, a blast of heat billowed from the fireplace. The smell of roasting meat filled the air. The candles on the table blazed. The woman in the golden gown stared at her, open-mouthed. The man in the doublet followed her gaze. He reached out a hand and said something.

  Was it like the oak tree in the forest? Was the key opening something, like Mr. Gallaway had said? Holly took a few steps toward the party, and now everyone was looking at her, pointing. Their excited murmurs grew louder, almost panicked. They pulled away from her, clustering toward the far end of the room, pushing one another against the walls, staring at her in horror. They cleared a path between the feast-laden tables, flooding onto the dais and crowding around the high table. Between them Holly could see a blond boy at the center, dressed in a heavily embroidered scarlet cloak. He paled at the sight of her.

  Holly opened her mouth to speak, but her throat had gone dry.

  At once a tall, bearded man leaped in front of the blond boy and pulled something from his belt. A sword? He jumped off the dais, advancing. Holly pulled back, afraid now, and glanced back at the high table. Through the crowd she could just see a small face next to the blond boy, but that couldn’t be—Ben?

  Then, behind her, a sharp voice. “There you are!”

  Startled, Holly dropped the key to the stone floor with a clatter. A cold wind swept through the hall and the party in front of her vanished.

  Everything was gone—the fire, the dais, the man with the sword. Her brother. The hall was empty and dark. She spun around.

  Everett stood at the central staircase with Ben, who was puffing again. “We couldn’t find you,” Everett said. “You oughtn’t wander off like that.”

  “What’s this place?” Ben asked.

  “It’s the Great Hall,” Everett said,
“where the baron of Hawkesbury served meals. He also held big parties and banquets here.”

  Holly gazed back down the length of the room. The colorful tapestries had disappeared. She looked back at the boys. “What . . . What are you guys doing? Weren’t you just . . . Didn’t you see them?”

  “See who?” asked Everett.

  “The living-museum people. They were just here. And Ben was . . . ” Even as she spoke, she knew how odd she sounded.

  “The living what?”

  “For the tourists.” She ran to the fireplace, but the grate was swept clean. The dais was empty. Ben couldn’t have been sitting there.

  “There’s nothing for tourists here,” said Everett. “Did something scare you?”

  Holly wasn’t about to admit to that. “You must have seen them,” she said, trying to steady her voice. “There was a whole party of people in costume, royalty or something, with a table and food and a big fire. Like Colonial Williamsburg.”

  Then Holly thought about the movie theaters at home. The projector was always set high up in the wall in the back. Above her head, in the wall where the narrow staircase was, she saw a tiny window. “Look! Someone was showing a movie from up there!”

  “I’m quite sure no one else is here,” Everett said calmly.

  She didn’t stop to listen to him. She dashed back up the spiraling staircase, even forgetting to grab the handrail. In a few moments, she’d found the small room at the top of the keep.

  But the room was bare and cold. How could it be? She raced across to the window overlooking the Great Hall. Below, Everett and Ben were shrugging to each other. “There’s nothing up here!” she called down.

  “I told you,” said Everett.

  She started down the stairs, holding the railing tight to steady her wobbly knees. None of this made any sense. When she reached the Great Hall, still deep in thought, Ben said to her, “Hey, what’s this?”

  He had picked up the key where she had dropped it.

  “That’s mine!” She ran up and snatched it.

  “Okay, chill. I just wondered. Where’d you get it?”

  Holly didn’t answer. The key, once back in her own hands, vibrated faintly. Far away, she heard excited shouts and talking. And lute music.

  She raised her eyes to the Great Hall.

  There they were—the lords and ladies and dresses and food and fire and roasted pig. But the shapes were dim, like a bleached-out photograph. She could barely hear them. The boy on the dais—Ben, it certainly was—stood up, pointing at her, shouting something, and the man with the sword bounded toward Holly down the aisle between the tables. “Stop! In the name of the crown!” he shouted. As he neared her, his form sharpened, and she heard the clinking of chain mail even above the frightened shouts of the crowd.

  The man raised the sword above his head as he fought his way through the crush, barking at the people around her. Holly stumbled backward onto the floor; then she remembered the key and shoved it into her pocket. The man’s beefy arm reached out to grab hers, but then the scene flickered before her eyes. In a moment, it winked out of existence altogether.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ben asked. “And what’s that big key for?”

  “I want to go home,” she said in a shaky voice. She turned to Everett. “I don’t feel good.”

  “Course, no worries.” He looked at her oddly. “Let’s go.”

  Holly wasn’t lying; her legs shook as they made their way back down the staircase to the ground floor, and her stomach churned with every step. Her hands felt cold and clammy. How could it be? How could she have seen Ben?

  “Shall I call your mum to come get you?” Everett asked as they started down the hill. He pulled a phone out of his pocket.

  “I’m okay. I can make it home,” Holly said.

  “Aw, man! Your parents let you have your own phone?” Ben forgot all about Holly and her key.

  “Have a look. It even has games.” Everett pushed a few buttons and handed the phone to Ben. He fell behind them, and Everett extended a hand to help Holly down the hill.

  “You did see something there, didn’t you?” he whispered.

  “I—I don’t know. Probably just something like, I don’t know, the light.”

  “The light. The light made you see lords and ladies and a fire in the fireplace?”

  Holly didn’t answer.

  “And that key. That’s the same one you had in the wood before.”

  “Yes! Got him!” shouted Ben, behind them.

  “Holly?”

  “So what if it is?” She knew she wasn’t being very nice, but it was her key, after all.

  “You saw something in the wood, too, didn’t you?”

  Holly pretended to watch her step as they reached the bottom of the hill, and then Ben provided the perfect diversion by tumbling headfirst off the steps behind them.

  Holly saw at once that he had fallen into a soft mound of heather, but Everett helped him up and kept asking him if he was all right. “Where’s the phone? Is it okay?” Ben asked.

  “It’s fine,” Everett said, scooping it up from the grass. “But maybe I’d best put it away for now, yeah?”

  “I guess. Thanks for letting me see it, though.” Ben picked himself up without his usual whining, though as he walked past Holly he whispered, “That really hurt.”

  Holly stayed behind him in case of another fall as they climbed the hill to their cottage. Everett hung back with her but didn’t say anything until they reached the top. He caught her arm before she went through the garden arbor.

  “Look, Holly,” he whispered, “I don’t know what’s going on with that key. But I know a lot about Darton Castle. It’s a funny sort of place. Maybe because there’s all those hundreds of years built up on each other. Sometimes, I almost think—”

  He broke off as Holly’s mother appeared in the back garden and greeted Ben.

  “You think what?” Holly prompted.

  Everett hesitated, then shook his head. “Sorry. Never mind. It’s just—maybe I’d believe a lot more than you’d think.” He let go of her. “If you ever want to tell me what’s really going on.”

  “It’s just that I don’t feel well,” she said, backing away from him. “Look, I have to go.” She turned and stepped through the arbor. Holly knew Everett didn’t believe her, and she didn’t believe herself. But whatever had happened, it belonged to her, and Everett annoyed her anyway, with his smirking and refusing to mind his own business. The only person she could think of who she could really talk to about what had happened was Mr. Gallaway.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  Number Seven, Hodges Close

  It wasn’t easy to get permission to go and visit Mr. Gallaway. Mrs. Shepard was of the opinion that Holly “had done enough running around for one day,” and she had pressed the back of her hand against Holly’s forehead when she saw how pale Holly was. But Holly insisted she was fine, and then, feeling desperate, she told a very big lie about Mr. Gallaway’s daughter visiting with her kids, and wouldn’t it be good to get out and meet new people, and finally her mother said she supposed it would. She gave Holly her phone and told her to call as soon as she got to Mr. Gallaway’s, so she could “touch base with his daughter.”

  Holly sprinted out of the house with the phone in her pocket. Her cheeks burned. She’d only ever told the garden-variety kind of lie about homework and missing cookies. She would talk to Mr. Gallaway very quickly, and then call her mother and say no one was home.

  Mr. Gallaway said the key unlocked things, but to Holly it seemed more like the key made you see things—things that couldn’t possibly be there. Why would he give her something like that? It was almost like he didn’t mind if she were scared or hurt. What if the man in the castle had stayed solid enough to run his sword through her? She paused, not sure now that she was at his door if she really did want to talk to Mr. Gallaway.

  And in any case, no one looked to be home, even when Holly knocked, just to
be sure. She wandered around to the back of the house to see if he was in the garden. That seemed a less scary place to talk to him anyway, rather than inside his house.

  A tiny screened-in porch extended from the back of the cottage. It was crowded with empty flowerpots and garden tools. Holly ventured inside and peered through the kitchen window. The house was deserted.

  Disappointed, she turned to go, but something caught her eye. One long oak table on the porch held seedlings and a thick stack of garden catalogs, but another was bare except for a large iron box. It was perhaps the size of Holly’s school backpack and it had a bowed top, like a treasure chest. Serious-faced suns and moons were etched all over it, and on the front was the figure of an oak tree inlaid with silver. The keyhole for the chest was right in the center of the tree’s trunk.

  Holly did not usually open things that were not hers, and what would Mr. Gallaway say if he found her here? But the oak tree with the keyhole . . . It had to have something to do with the present he had given her. She placed her fingers on the chest’s cold lid and tried to lift it.

  Locked, of course. Without thinking, Holly pulled the iron key out of her pocket and fitted it into the lock. The chest opened silently on well-oiled hinges.

  Inside were dozens of keys, each in its own velvet-lined pigeonhole. Some were etched with strange scratchings, like the runes she’d seen on the trees in the glade. Her fingers tripped lightly over the pigeonholes. One of them was empty. She was quite sure that her own key belonged in that spot.

  “What’ve you got now?”

  Holly was so startled she nearly dropped the key into the chest. She whirled around to find Everett standing just inside the screen door. “Oh—hi. What are you doing here?”

  He walked in. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was . . . returning something.”

  “That’s the key Ben picked up at the castle. Did you pinch it from this box?”