Every Maker in London crowded into the gallery above Parliament, ready to cheer when the king announced that Making was, at long last, free for all.
Cordelia and Sam wove through chattering Makers to hug both sets of Glovemaker twins and squeeze Hop Watchmaker hello. Charity Cloakmaker was nattering happily to Tick, while Delilah Canemaker eagerly searched the throng below to spot canes she had made.
‘Where’s Goose?’ Cordelia asked Mrs Bootmaker. She was desperate to tell him what she had learned from Sir Hugo about the words ‘double, double’ being suspiciously linked to causing ‘toil and trouble’.
‘Lucas is sulking,’ Mrs Bootmaker sniffed. ‘He’s refusing to come out of his room as he wasn’t allowed to go so foolishly to sea.’
Her eyes were red-rimmed. Cordelia immediately decided to make Cheering Caps for Mrs Bootmaker and Goose before Little Bear set sail next week. They would both need them.
Cordelia adjusted her shell necklace, which she had worn today because it contained a tiny portrait of her mother, and she wanted the memory of her mother to be part of this important day. Cordelia and the smiling portrait around her neck peered over the railing.
Beneath an ugly chandelier made of overwrought pewter, Parliament appeared to be two opposing walls of white wigs and pale faces. This group of well-educated men who decided everything for everybody seemed very ordinary to Cordelia. From one section of Parliament, the Sensible Party were throwing poisonous glances up at the Makers in the gallery. They had failed in their attempt to sway the king and were now shuffling resentfully, waiting to bray their dismay when Making was made available to all. Cordelia waved merrily at Doctor Leech, who scowled back so hard his eyebrows and moustache nearly met.
Lady de Sneer, being female and therefore deemed by Parliament unable to make important decisions, was the lone sour face in the gallery. Around her, the Makers were bright with excitement.
‘A historic occasion!’ Prospero grinned, shouldering his way through the crowd towards Cordelia.
She grinned back at her father. He had delayed stocking Little Bear with food and water that day, so that instead he could come and witness history being made. It had been two hundred and fifty years since the freedom to Make had belonged to everybody. It was time things returned to how they ought to be.
It was also time for a certain mind to be changed.
Cordelia had sent the Mind-Changing Tricorn to Princess Georgina the day before, tied securely in a box, complete with secret instructions. She hoped the princess had successfully hidden the small hat inside the king’s sizeable crown.
Cordelia felt in her cloak pocket for the vial she had hidden there. It contained several notes of pure dawn birdsong, humming slightly under her fingers.
Good, she thought. I’m ready.
Sir Hugo, dressed in a regal ensemble of purple and gold, strode on to the gallery floor and planted himself in the middle of everyone. He looked ready to be wed to a princess right then and there. Cordelia caught his eye, and he tapped his chest significantly. From this, she understood that he had his half of the Lenity Lodestone under his frothy cravat. She nodded at him once.
Sir Hugo’s ready too.
‘What’re ya up ta?’ Sam asked, squinting at Cordelia.
Cordelia turned an innocent face to Sam; Sam’s face was vivid with suspicion. They stared at each other for a long moment.
‘It’s best you don’t know,’ Cordelia said eventually. ‘But everything will be fine.’
Before Sam could launch a full investigation, trumpets sounded below, and a voice rose above the hubbub: ‘Lords, ladies and gentlemen! Pray be upstanding for His Majesty King George! And Her Highness Princess Georgina!’
Every wig turned towards the door.
The royals were arriving.
First, several men staggered up the aisle carrying a large golden throne. They set it down in the centre, in front of the Speaker’s chair, and the Speaker tried his best not to look peeved.
Then came the king himself, crown wedged on his head. He moved slowly, laden with heavy golden chains, as though he was some kind of valuable prisoner.
The princess appeared, tottering behind the king in a heavy dress. Her searching gaze found Cordelia and she gave a small smile. It was a smile of triumph.
The hat is in position. Sir Hugo is in place.
Cordelia returned the princess’s smile. The king would soon change his mind. Then the princess would arrange for Master Ambrosius to be freed by royal decree.
The air bristled and hummed with pent-up energy. The speech that would change everything was about to begin.
The vial of birdsong quivered in Cordelia’s fist as she worked her thumb under the lip of the cork. As the king got ready to speak, she popped the cork.
Several notes of dawn chorus rose through the room, arcing over the churn of voices like the first beam of sunlight.
The king twitched. He adjusted his crown to scratch under his wig and shook his head slightly, as though he was shaking a fly off his nose. This was a good sign: the birdsong had awoken the piece of dawn on the Mind-Changing Tricorn. Everything was going as planned.
‘Today!’ the king proclaimed. ‘The freedom to Make –’
The Sensible Party seemed unable to help themselves; their simmering opinions bubbled up.
‘Bah!’
‘Boo!’
‘Foolhardy!’
The king’s crown quivered, and His Majesty tugged it firmly down on his head, glaring at the Sensible Party. Cordelia frowned. Nothing she had put into the hat should have caused it to quiver like that, even amid the bray of opposing voices. Her heart pounded as she quickly tried to figure out if she had made a miscalculation with the hat. No, I’m sure it was absolutely all right –
Suddenly the king snapped his head up to stare at Sir Hugo. The actor clapped his hand to his chest in surprise, arranging his face into an expression befitting a future prince, but the king just glowered at him.
Cordelia gripped the gallery railing so hard her knuckles shone white.
‘THE FREEDOM TO MAKE –’ the king repeated, louder.
The Sensible Party let out hisses and boos. The king snapped his head towards them. Some clamped their mouths shut, but Sir Piers bleated sourly, ‘Shame!’
The king snapped his head back and forth between the Sensible Party and Sir Hugo like a weathervane in a high wind.
‘MY MIND IS MADE UP!’ he shouted. ‘MY MIND IS MADE UP!’
Something had gone very wrong.
‘Cor, what’s goin’ on?’ Sam muttered.
‘I – I don’t know!’ Cordelia admitted.
‘I HAVE DECIDED,’ the king went on, ‘THAT MAKING – MAKING –’
‘This is madness!’ Sir Piers yelled.
‘MAKING IS BANNED FOR EVERYONE!’ the king roared. ‘FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN!’
There was a second of shocked silence before an explosion of noise – horrified wails spiked with spiteful cheers. Cordelia saw, in a blur of confusion and dismay, the Makers staring at the scene below, as appalled as the chorus of a Greek tragedy.
‘AND SIR PIERS IS PRIME MINISTER NOW!’ the king yelled.
‘You can’t do that!’ the Speaker of the House shrieked, sticking his head out from behind the throne.
‘OH YES I CAN!’ the king crowed. ‘I’m the one with the shiniest hat!’
He seized the Speaker’s gavel and banged it against his crown.
The crown tumbled to the floor in a dazzle of gold and diamonds – and a green tendril as thick as a snake slithered out of it.
The gasp from the crowd was like the sea sucking in before a tidal wave.
‘A Turbidus Vine!’ Prospero whispered.
‘MAKER TROUBLE!’ Sir Piers screeched, pointing dramatically at the crown.
Chaos erupted in the chamber.
‘No!’ Cordelia shook her head desperately. ‘This wasn’t supposed to –’
The vine whipped back and forth, seeking out its next victim. It snapped tightly around the king’s ankle, and he fell like a tree. Politicians danced out of the way.
‘The Makers did this!’ Sir Piers claimed, as King George groaned on the floor. ‘I’ve always said they have too much power! Now they’ve attacked the king himself – TREASON! CONSPIRACY!’
‘That wasn’t us!’ Makers protested.
But the seething vine swelled before their eyes, tugging Cordelia’s Mind-Changing Tricorn out from inside the crown.
The crowd gave a horrified hiss.
The vine had tangled itself in the delicate mechanism Cordelia had made. It looked like an evil device: a mess of metal snarled in creeper.
‘I am prime minister now!’ Sir Piers bellowed – he had already somehow wrested the wig off the ousted prime minister, who lay dazed on the floor behind him. ‘ARREST THEM!’
The upswell of noise was deafening. Somebody seized the king’s sceptre and swung it; someone else hurled the orb – it smashed through a window. Boots clattered up the gallery stairs as the guards came to arrest the Makers. All of them, innocent and confused, would be dragged off to the Tower and punished for treason they had not committed.
Cordelia could not let that happen.
She clambered up on to the ledge, clinging to a pillar for support. The chamber floor was dizzyingly far below.
‘IT WAS ME!’ she yelled, her lungs burning.
The noise bubbled away as every face turned towards Cordelia.
‘Miss Hatmaker!’ sneered Sir Piers. ‘The girl who refuses to be quiet!’
‘None of the other Makers knew!’ she said as loudly as she could, swaying on jelly knees. ‘I made that hat myself. But I didn’t mean it to –’
‘You ADMIT you committed this vile act?’ Sir Piers interrupted.
She heard the soft wisp of her aunt’s voice – Cordelia, no! – but she pushed it away. Princess Georgina’s face blazed up at her with terrified eyes. What would the punishment be for the princess if she was revealed to be behind this conspiracy?
‘I DID IT!’ Cordelia insisted. ‘I did it – alone.’
Cordelia saw Princess Georgina blink, tears spilling down her cheeks.
‘You plotted to poison the king’s mind with your Maker magic?’
‘It wasn’t a plot!’ Cordelia replied. ‘It was a – a plan.’
‘BAH! TREASON IS TREASON, WHATEVER DISGUISE IT WEARS!’ Sir Piers screamed. ‘AND IT’S WEARING MAKER CLOTHES TODAY! ARREST THAT GIRL!’
Cordelia swung round to see every Maker in London close ranks around her.
‘Let us past!’ barked a guard, trying to push through.
But the Makers made themselves into a wall. Each Glovemaker balled their fists. The Watchmakers stood steadfast as though time itself could never move them. The Cloakmakers spread their cloaks in a dense wall, as Mrs Bootmaker stamped her feet, bawling, ‘You’ll never take our Cordelia!’
But Cordelia was trapped in the gallery: the only way out was crammed with guards and their forest of glinting weapons. They pressed forward, swords drawn. Makers shrieked as they were forced aside and a cold claw grabbed Cordelia’s wrist.
‘I’ve got her!’ Lady de Sneer snarled.
A strong arm wrapped round Cordelia’s waist.
‘Dilly – hold on!’
It was her father, grasping her tight to his chest.
Her stomach swooped like a kite in a gale and she was dragged from Lady de Sneer’s brittle clutches. The chandelier jerked and danced above her as Prospero grabbed it with one hand, swung and let go. They dropped like stones, landing together on the empty throne.
The tide of the room turned, a sea change that swirled around and crashed on Cordelia. Black and white capes and wigs lunged at her from every direction. And she was being dragged towards a plane of light, over velvet benches and through a cacophony of politicians as a frenzied faction of the Sensible Party came after them.
The light was jagged and sounded like glass. There was a hitch of heels and hopes – an airborne moment – then Cordelia fell heavily into a scrunch of green.
‘Come on!’
Her father pulled her out of the boxwood bush.
They were in the gardens of Parliament.
Prospero had hurled them both out of the window into the bushes. The golden orb that had shattered the window lay like a planet on the grass. Sounds of pandemonium blared through the broken window.
Her father pulled her in the opposite direction.
‘We’ve got to run!’