The Palace Library Read online

  The Palace Library

  by Steven Loveridge

  Copyright © Steven Loveridge 2012

  stevenloveridge.com

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  For Edward, Luli and Anouska

  Table of Contents

  1. The Palace Library

  2. Chocolate Cake

  3. The Leaking Book

  4. The Great West Door

  5. Three Magical Books

  6. Harry’s Story

  7. Queen Eleanor

  8. The Stuffy Carriage

  9. The Prophecy

  10. Eleanor’s Book

  11. The Blacksmith

  12. The Healer

  13. Dragons’ Bane

  14. The Saint George

  15. The Storm

  16. The Navigator

  17. Hell’s Bay

  18. Volcano’s Edge

  19. Nightmare

  20. Treachery

  21. Dragons’ Lair

  22. Traitors’ Gate

  23. Tea with Great Uncle Jasper

  1. The Palace Library

  Grace knew she wasn’t allowed in the Long Gallery. She also knew she would be late for tea. But it looked far too much fun. The room was vast, with old tapestries lining the walls. Most of all, the floors were made for running and sliding. Grace sped along the old carpets, then she skidded along the floorboards between them.

  At the end of the room, Grace was surfing at high speed along the last piece of polished floor and tripped on the edge of the carpet. She fell on her face with a thud and tried not to cry out in case she was heard. Then she saw the dog. Huge, like a giant hairy greyhound and at least as tall as Grace, it seemed to be snarling. She did the only sensible thing she could think of. She shut her eyes tight, held her head in her hands, and hoped it would go away.

  What seemed like an age later, she opened one eye and saw the dog was just a picture on a tapestry, not a real dog at all. “Silly me! You can’t be frightened of a picture,” said Grace to herself, finding her own voice reassuring, even though she did not really feel it. She looked at the tapestry again. The dog was actually a deerhound, and seemed much happier than the snarling vision Grace thought she had seen. She stood up and gently touched the woven fabric of the tapestry to check, stroking the dog’s shoulder as if it was real. The picture leapt to life. The dog emerged from the tapestry, wriggled and turned on its back with a gentle whine, as if it wanted to be stroked more.

  This was quite enough for Grace. She leapt up, ran to the side of the Long Gallery and stood with her back to the wall, breathing very quickly and unsteadily. This time she kept her eyes open. Once again, the tapestry became quite normal, but the picture had changed. The dog was now lying on its front, looking at her.

  Grace slowly pushed herself along the wall, trying not to be noticed. It was then that she discovered the door. She could have sworn the door had not been there before. Grace was only eight years old - nearly nine, she told people - so she really noticed this door. It was exactly the right size for her and had a round stone arch over it with a zigzag pattern. Adults would have had to bend nearly double to get through, so maybe it was just a cupboard. But it didn’t look like a cupboard and it looked very old. It was made of heavy dark wood and it fascinated her.

  All Grace’s instincts told her to run away from the scary tapestry, but the door seemed to say to her: “Come on. Try me.”

  She drew in a big breath, shut her eyes tight and counted to 10. Opening her eyes again the tapestry still seemed normal, so she decided to turn the handle on the door and try pushing it. It seemed locked. She tried again without it working. It still wouldn’t move. Then, she gave it a big shove and it opened so quickly that Grace slipped and fell on her face again. After a pause, there was a thump and then another thump and then three more in quick succession. Thump… thump… thump! This time Grace had kept her eyes open. What she saw was quite unexpected. She was looking down at the floor of a huge library from the very top of a bookshelf. This was no ordinary bookshelf. It was a very tall bookshelf, and the door had opened directly onto it. The thumps were books that had fallen off and were lying on the floor beneath her. They looked miles away. As Grace looked around the room, she saw it was full of thousands and thousands of old books. The odd thing was that it was full of sunlight. Yet Grace knew that outside it was grey and raining. Terrified, whilst holding onto the shelf and trying not to fall, she noticed a very old man with a white beard, wearing a magnificent blue tailcoat covered in gold swirly brocade.

  “Hello there,” the man said cheerfully, in a slightly bumbling way. “I wasn’t expecting you. No one’s used that door for years. Hold on and I’ll find you a ladder.”

  Grace couldn’t move. Her fingers gripped the shelf so hard that her knuckles went white. The man pushed a huge ladder on wheels towards her. It was like a very smart wooden fire engine ladder, but it was so tall that the top swayed madly from side to side. She thought it might hit her.

  This was definitely too much for Grace. She picked herself up and quickly ran back down the Long Gallery the way she had come. Just before she left the room, she turned and everything seemed normal. She thought she would just check on the weather outside again, so she stood on tiptoes to see out. Sure enough, the rain was battering on the windowpanes.

  Then the man with the white beard poked his head through the tiny door and looked at her. Towering over him was the dog. “There’s no need to run away. I’ve put the ladder up now. Do come back.”

  Grace saw the sun shining through the door and couldn’t understand it, so she ran from the corridor as fast as she could. The best thing to do would be to tell her cousins Harry and Eleanor. They could explore together and maybe Harry, who was 12 and the oldest of the three, would have an explanation.

  2. Chocolate Cake

  The problem with The Palace Library is that no one knows where it is. In fact, very few people know that it even exists. Of the very few people who know it exists, very few know how to find it. Grace had discovered it and was longing to share her news and find out more.

  Unfortunately, before she could do that, Horrible Hair Bun found her and shouted at her. The children used this name for the housekeeper when they knew she couldn’t hear. Her grey hair was always tied up in a very tight bun at the back of her head. It had wispy bits sticking out, which matched the curly bits of hair on her chin. The children just wished they could pluck them out, especially when she kissed them goodnight and they tickled and prickled.

  Grace was late for tea. She was made to sit in silence and watch Eleanor and Harry eat their chocolate pudding while she was only allowed dry spaghetti without sauce.

  Grace could hardly contain herself, but whenever she tried to talk, Horrible Hair Bun just shouted, “Quiet.”

  Eventually, just before bedtime, Grace explained to Harry and Eleanor what had happened.

  Harry was rather abrupt. “Don’t be silly Grace. You’re making it up. There’s no such thing as a magic room with magic dogs. Anyway, I’ve been in Great Uncle Jasper’s library. It’s full of books for sure, but it’s not that big.” Then he went off to his own bedroom.

  Eleanor looked at Harry as he left and thought he was being rather mean. It wasn’t really like him. She realised that they had ignored Grace all day. Eleanor saw a lot of her brother Harry, but not so much of her cousin. It was their chance to catch up and play since they were all together for the summer holidays at Great Uncle Jasper’s house. And they ought to be nicer to Grace. She’d been an orphan since her parents had died in a car crash several years earlier. Being together was the whole point of coming to their
uncle’s house after all. They could get together and enjoy being outside in the vast gardens and grounds, especially since Harry and Eleanor’s house only had a tiny back yard.

  The problem was that there was so much rain that August, everyone was miserable. They couldn’t go outside. Water was seeping in through the window frames and Horrible Hair Bun had placed buckets to catch drops coming through the ceiling. Everyone was bored and there was nothing to do but stay inside.

  Grace had been very fed up earlier that day. Harry and Eleanor weren’t being deliberately mean to her, but it felt as if they were. They were ignoring her and playing without her. That was when Grace had begun to explore different parts of the house on her own. It was big enough.

  Eleanor tried to make Grace feel better, but even she added, “Magic isn’t real, Grace. Why not go to bed now and maybe you can show us the big room in the morning.”

  Grace began to wonder if she had just imagined it after all. Never mind. She would check tomorrow - but when the others were not looking, so that she could be sure.

  The next afternoon, Grace told Harry and Eleanor that she was fed up with the game they were playing and she slipped away. They both seemed to have forgotten about the night before anyway. Feeling very nervous, Grace went back to the Long Gallery and found the door again. She looked at the tapestry outside the door and thought it was strange that the dog woven into the pattern seemed to be sleeping, and was not snarling or smiling. This time she certainly wasn’t going to touch it. Grace hesitated at the door, and then pushed it.

  The door opened easily enough this time and she found the funny ladder she had seen swaying the previous day, but now it was fixed to the top of the bookshelf. The steps were steep, made of highly polished wood with a brass handrail on one side. Grace realised it would have been more sensible to have gone down backwards, but then she might have missed everything there was to see. So she went down very gingerly, step by step, and enjoyed looking at the sun shining on all the leather bound books. There were 29 steps in all. Grace counted them out loud as she went. At the bottom the cheerful man in the blue tailcoat and white beard appeared from nowhere and said, “Hello. I’m so glad you have come back. Welcome to The Palace Library. It’s time for tea, I think. Shall we have chocolate cake?”

  Since Grace had missed her chocolate pudding the day before, she said, “Oh yes please.” Suddenly the man and The Library did not seem so scary at all.

  “Come on then. The cookery section is around the next corner.”

  “Do we need a recipe to bake it?”

  “Not exactly, Grace,” said the old man. “This is a library after all, not a kitchen, but everything is in the books.”

  Grace wondered how he knew her name, but found that grown-ups often knew her name without asking.

  They walked around the corner to a shelf of books that were very nearly as tall as Grace. “Here we are,” said the old man. “Best Baking. I’ll need your help, please.” The book was rather large - over four feet high and two feet wide, and they struggled to place it on the table. “Page 36 if I remember rightly, but it’s a long time since I’ve had this cake. I don’t get much company anymore.”

  He opened the book and there was a huge picture of a fantastic looking cake with gorgeous icing. It was covered in chocolate buttons. The extraordinary thing was that as Grace looked at the picture, it stopped being a picture and turned slowly into a real cake. “I think this one must be a quick-bake recipe,” said the old man with a chuckle. “Let’s tuck in.”

  As they ate the cake, the man asked Grace about her friends and said she ought to bring them back to tea another day. She finally plucked up the courage to ask him his name. “Most people just call me the Librarian, but perhaps you could call me Edgar. They used to call me Edgar once and I rather liked it.”

  “Is that Mr Edgar then?” Grace asked politely. “I am always being told I should call grown-ups Mr or Mrs something.”

  “No,” said the old man. “Just Edgar. I’d prefer it that way. Now run along or you’ll be late for your proper tea.”

  Just as Grace got to the ninth step on the ladder, Edgar called to her. “Borrow this book. You might enjoy it. Be sure to bring your friends back and tell me whether you liked it.”

  “Thank you,” said Grace. She looked at the cover and saw it said The Owl and the Pussy Cat. “It’s one of my favourites.”

  “Ah yes, but the pictures in this one are particularly good,” said Edgar with a twinkle in his eye. “Just mind you keep it closed at night. It does have a tendency to leak. Goodbye.”

  Grace had never heard of a book leaking before.

  3. The Leaking Book

  Grace was sent to bed early by Horrible Hair Bun. Try as she might, Grace was unable to eat her tea after all the delicious chocolate cake in The Palace Library. Even now, no one believed her about her discovery of the magical library. So when Horrible Hair Bun frogmarched her to the bedroom and turned the key in the door, she settled into bed, somewhat sad and lonely. Being an orphan Grace was rather too used to being sad and lonely. She wished she could remember her parents better. At least she was excited about reading the book that Edgar the Librarian had lent her. She fell asleep with it, and it lay open on the bed beside her all night.

  The next morning, the shimmer of light breaking through badly drawn curtains woke Eleanor. “At last,” she said to herself, seeing the bright sunlight, “we can go and play outside and explore the gardens.” She knew it was very early, but she wanted to find Grace and tell her the good news. She had missed Grace the night before and felt guilty about not being kinder to her. The bad weather really had made them all grumpy.

  The floorboards in the old house squeaked. Along the corridor towards Grace’s room, Eleanor crept and nervously stretched her toes to remembered places on the floor in a well-practised routine. A week in the old house ensured the journey was silent so that she did not wake up any adults. She quietly turned the key in the lock outside Grace’s room. Horrible Hair Bun had left the key in the door. She jumped on Grace’s bed and said, “Wake up! Wake up! It’s sunny at last. Let’s go outside and play.”

  Grace was pretty sleepy, but she soon woke up. Soon enough to hear Eleanor’s next words properly: “Yuck, Grace. You’ve wet your bed.”

  Grace was cross at that. She never wet her bed. But she had an answer: “Don’t be silly, Eleanor. The book has leaked. I was reading it and left it open when I fell asleep.”

  Eleanor was nearly a year and a half older than Grace and reckoned herself to be considerably wiser, so she was able to say with a certain authority that, “Books most certainly don’t leak, Grace. You’re the one being silly.”

  Grace wasn’t going to let her get away with that, so she held the book up above the blankets “This one leaks. The Librarian told me it might, but I don’t know what to do about all the water.”

  Eleanor looked in astonishment at the page of the book that Grace was holding up. She could read the words, “The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat,” but what amazed her was the way the pictures moved, not like a television programme or like a cartoon, but in a way that made you think you were really at sea with the Owl and the Pussy Cat. Then she realised what Grace meant. The pages were dripping water on the bed. The girls looked at each other and giggled.

  Then Eleanor looked seriously at Grace. In a very nice, civilised and grown up way, she said, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about The Palace Library, Grace. I should have known you wouldn’t lie.” Then the girls giggled again and Eleanor jumped under the covers with Grace. They read the whole of Edward Lear’s famous poem with all the pictures again, even though the bed sheets were a bit damp.

  When they had finished, Eleanor said to Grace, “What on earth are we are going to say to Horrible Hair Bun about the sheets? She’s so strict and she’ll never believe us about the book leaking. I don’t want you to be in any more trouble.”

  They were worried and sat up to th
ink about it, closing the pale yellow cover of the book as they did so. With the cover shut, the book began to draw all the water out of the sheets. It was like someone sucking up a drink with a straw and using blotting paper all at the same time. Moments later, the sheets were completely dry. The girls looked at each other in awe and then giggled again.

  Grace thought for a moment: “Shall we go and give the book back to the Librarian and tell him what fun it was? Maybe he’ll lend us another one if we show him we can look after it?”

  Then Eleanor added, “Shall we ask Harry to come too?”

  4. The Great West Door

  The girls decided that if they tried to get dressed, they would make too much noise. They also thought that if they went to wake Harry, they would make even more noise and anyway, Grace still thought he would be mean to her. So they put on their dressing gowns and crept along the corridors avoiding as many of the squeaking floorboards as they could.

  Grace stopped suddenly and put her hand on Eleanor’s shoulder.

  “What is it?” Eleanor whispered.

  “I think we should get Harry after all,” Grace replied.

  “Are you sure?” replied Eleanor, but she smiled thinking it was the right decision.

  “Yes. If he doesn’t believe me then that’s too bad, but it would be a pity not to tell him where we’re going.”

  When they turned to go back the way they had come, they were less cautious about the floorboards and several squeaked. They seemed extra loud passing Horrible Hair Bun’s room, but they stood still and listened carefully holding their breath. Nothing. So they turned the corner to Harry’s room.

  Harry’s door was wide open with the lights blazing. It was a mess. It was as if Harry had dressed very quickly and left everything else on the floor. Now if it had been at home, Eleanor would not have been surprised. Her brother’s room was a mess all the time there, but here at Great Uncle Jasper’s house, it was different. Horrible Hair Bun was so strict that they kept all their rooms pristine.