Diane Davidson - Sticks & Scones

No, that’s stupid, I corrected myself. This castle is enormous. You could hide something in a million places.

With trembling fingers, I shoved aside the rapidly softening sorbet and reached for the key ring where the team moms had left it, on the counter. Swiftly, I sorted through the keys, heart pounding, until I found the tiny skeleton key used for the kitchen preserves cupboard. Maybe… I thought. Tom was at the airport with his high-school sweetheart, thirty-some people were waiting for me to provide dessert upstairs, my son and Julian were racing to the doctor, and I intended to solve a major murder case by ransacking shelves of… jelly?

Tomorrow might bring better ideas, but for now, I moved in rows, holding each jam jar up to the light. Currant. Blackberry. Cherry. Blueberry. Marionberry. All these preserves were just what the labels said they were. Orange, Fig, and Grapefruit Marmalade, ditto. Feeling increasingly foolish, I began lifting the last row of jars: Strawberry Jam. Nothing.

I hastened into the buttery/dining room. The antique wine cabinet, an elegant mahogany piece with diamond. shaped leaded glass, had a tiny keyhole. I thought back. Julian had come in here, probably with the keys in his pocket. He’d only taken a moment to locate the mint and sherry jellies. I tried the smallest key on the ring. After a minute of my jiggling it in the lock, the glass door popped open.

The light in the dining room was dimmer than in the kitchen. I stared hard at each jam jar as I held it up to the light. Mint Jelly, Sherry Jelly, Pear Chutney. I was beginning to feel stupid. I started on the last row of jars, Lemon Curd.

On the tenth jar, I inhaled sharply. Pay dirt? Instead of being filled with pale golden curd, this jar was lined with… paper. I unscrewed the top and peered inside.

Clear plastic envelopes. I pulled out one and detected the unmistakable homely profile of Queen Victoria.

Unfortunately, before I could shout “Eureka” or even “God save the Queen,” the floor in the hallway creaked ominously. The hairs shot up on the back of my neck. As I pivoted toward the sound, Michaela burst into the kitchen, then ran into the dining room. She was clutching a saber.

“Where are they?” she demanded. She was enraged. Her white hair, lit from behind, made her look like a banshee.

“Where are who?”

Michaela’s wild eyes fastened on the jar in my hand. “What is that? What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out why you put the stamps in here.” I took a deep breath. “It’s because you want Eliot to get caught, isn’t it? I know you hate him. I saw you fighting - “

She burst into a humorless laugh that was more like a cackle. “You don’t know anything! I don’t hate Eliot! Quite the opposite!”

At that moment, the lights in the kitchen and dining room went out. In the hazy light cast by the hall sconces, I could see only the silhouette of another human form, holding a glinting sword aloft. I heard two people grunting, fighting, pushing furniture over, whacking each other, shouting whenever they were hit.

Time to scram, my brain screamed, and I obeyed. I shoved the precious jam jar in my sweater pocket, pushed blindly forward, fell onto the dining-room table, then scrambled upright, knocking over a chair. The combatants in the kitchen barged into something. The crash of exploding glass shattered the darkness.

Run, I ordered my frozen legs. I groped out in the darkness; my knuckles whacked the china cupboard. Where was the door to the dining room? Run. I stumbled forward.

Someone was in the dining room with me. A sword slashed the air, with the sound of a cold wind. I screamed and reached out again. My hand closed around something - one of Eliot’s wine bottles. Again the rapier hissed, this time closer. I whirled and parried hard with the bottle. It broke as it smashed on my attacker’s shoulder. Whoever it was went reeling backward.

I had seconds to move. I stumbled. Found the edge of the dining-room door. Slipped through and ran for my life.

Down the hall, into the well tower, past the well and garderobe, into the spacious living room. Run, Run, Run, my mind screamed. The cell phone and jar of stamps I bobbled around in my sweater pocket. I was still clutching the neck of the broken bottle. It would be little use against a sword. I had to get away from that slashing weapon, had to get out of the castle, had to escape.

Behind me, footsteps pounded. Whoever it was could move, I’d give ‘em that. Run, I told myself. Run faster. I slammed through the glass doors to the gatehouse, punched the code into the security keypad, and waited I for the portcullis to rise. Panting, I grabbed the front door.

Behind me, there were no more footsteps. Had whoever it was given up? Or had my attacker gone to get a confederate? I stared at the front door, wheezing. What next? It was cold outside, and I had no car keys. I had no car: What was I going to do - run all the way into town? Whoever was chasing me was in much better shape than I could ever hope to be.

I whirled and looked across the courtyard. Just a couple of hundred feet away were parents who could help. Should I chance it? Or should I run out into the night, over the causeway spanning the moat?

Indecision is the enemy of mortality. Overhead, there was a clunk. Without warning, a splash of boiling liquid bit into my skin. I screamed as pain flared from my shoulder to my elbow. I jumped out of the way of the steaming cascade.

“Help!” I yelled as I jumped aside. More boiling water poured implacably down. “Help!”

The water was coming through the arched ceiling, through the ancient murder holes. My elbow and left arm were alive with agony. From the floor above came a woman’s scream. I looked up and saw blond hair, a pretty child’s face. Then I heard a thwack, and another, followed by more struggling and crashing. I was shaking, trying to open the front gatehouse door. My skin was on fire. I couldn’t turn the knob.

“Flee, cook!” a child’s voice hollered over the din above me. “Flee!” There was the sound of whacking, followed by grunts. “We tried to warn you not to come!”

And so I ran, back the way I’d come, my arm on fire, my skin melting. Dear God, I prayed, help me.

And then, like a miracle, I had a vision of pulling Sukie to the sink when she’d burned her hands trying to rescue the scorched coffee cake. Water. Cold water:

I was slowing down. Could my attacker have made it back to the kitchen? I was going to faint. I was going to die from my burns. I’d never see Arch or Tom or Julian again.

I was sobbing now. My body was a current of liquid fear and pain. Water. The top of the well was sealed tight with canvas. Water. I was going to die if I didn’t find it. I unbolted the seat to the garderobe, yanked it up, and scrambled up on the ledge. Then I dropped feet first, down, down, down the latrine shaft. My feet whacked a grille and it gave way.

The shock of the icy moat was such an instant relief that I shouted with joy - underwater. I was rewarded with a choking lungful of creek water. Heaving and gasping, I flailed my way to the surface. Just as I thought Grab the cell phone and jar of stamps, I felt them fall away from my sweater pocket and drop, along with my shoes, deep into the dark water.

My head bumped against something and I recoiled. A duck? A fish? A rat? What else was there in this damn moat? I blinked, moved my arms and legs, and shoved through the icy water. The spotlights from the castle revealed what I’d bumped into. The missing sorbet carton.

Huh? Swim. Suddenly I was so deathly cold I knew I was going to sink to the bottom. Swim, paddle, kick, do some damn thing, I commanded myself. And, miraculously, my body obeyed. A hundred feet away, I could see the edge of the moat. A swimming-pool length. No sweat. I lunged through the water. Swim. Kick. Move your arms.