CHAPTER 34

THE HEAVY WOODEN DOOR TO THE DEEPEST dungeon in the Tower of London clanked open. Inside, Aunt Ariadne, Uncle Tiberius, and Great-aunt Petronella looked up hopefully as a fiery torch flickered in the passage. But their hearts sank when Cordelia was thrown inside by the guards.

The door slammed shut and the iron key rasped in the lock.

Cordelia raised her head—and the Hatmakers realized it was not Cordelia!

“Hallo, Uncle!” the stranger who was not Cordelia said brightly. “Hallo, Aunt and Great-aunt!”

The Hatmakers stared back at her in complete confusion. Then the stranger who was not Cordelia slid her eyes sideways toward the grate in the door, where the dark outline of a guard loomed.

“Ah—Cordelia! Hello!” Uncle Tiberius said loudly.

“Cordelia,” Aunt Ariadne whispered. “You’re looking … well.”

Great-aunt Petronella watched the stranger with eagle-sharp eyes. The stranger glanced back at the guard’s shadow outside the door, before peering at the crusts left over from the Hatmakers’ sad supper of dry bread and water.

“Ya gonna eat those?” she asked.

Aunt Ariadne shook her head.

The stranger devoured the crusts in two bites.

“Best get some sleep,” she advised, settling down in a corner. She winked and added, “Busy day tomorrow.”

Aunt Ariadne and Uncle Tiberius exchanged amazed glances, but when they turned back to the stranger she was asleep and gently snoring.

Great-aunt Petronella smiled.

By moonrise, three black-clad highwaymen were galloping south on the road from London.

They rode three swift dark horses. Silk scarves the color of midnight disguised their faces, and they wore coal-black capes and tricorn hats. One of them had insisted on adorning his hat with a stylish black ostrich feather.

“It gives an air of mystique and aplomb,” he had explained.

By moonrise, three black-clad highwaymen were galloping south on the road from London.

If you had looked carefully, you would have seen that they were not, strictly speaking, three highwaymen. There was one highwayman, one highwaygirl, and one highwayboy. And one horse was, technically, a donkey.

That same night, Le Bateau Fantastique sailed out from the shore of France on a stiff breeze. The French king sat in the cabin of his royal vessel feeling slightly seasick as the waves buffeted the bow. He wondered if anything Princess Georgina could say the next day would change his mind about her. After all, she had sent him so many unforgivably rude letters.

The princess sat perfectly straight and still in the royal carriage as it trundled through the night. She barely blinked and the glistery crown on her forehead shed a strange light on her face. Opposite her, Lord Witloof checked his glass pocket watch. He smiled as he did sums in his head.

“STAND AND DELIVER!”

The tallest highwayman pointed his pistol, glint-eyed and menacing in the moonlight.

“Stand … and deliver?” the highwayboy repeated, somewhat fearfully.

“No, no, no! STAND—it has to come from your belly, from your guts! STAND AND—go on, you try.”

“STAND AND … deliver?” the highwayboy tried again.

“DELIVER!” The highwayman delivered, as though he were on stage at the Theatre Royal.

“De-LIVER?” the highwayboy shouted.

“Excellent! Now, you have a go.” The highwayman waved his pistol at the highwaygirl.

“Don’t point that at me!” she cried.

“Sorry,” he replied. “Though it is only a prop.”

The highwaygirl pointed her pistol at the highwayman and said ferociously, “STAND AND DELIVER!”

“Tremendous!” the highwayman cried. “We are ready for the great performance! On we ride!”

They spurred their horses up over the crest of the hill and, on the silvery road winding below them, they saw a gilt carriage glinting as it trundled along.

“Only two outriders,” the highwayman muttered. “This will be very easy.”

He turned in his saddle to address his comrades.

“Right. Here’s the plan,” said the highwaygirl quickly. “We stop the coach—”

“I’ll do a speech,” the highwayman interrupted.

“All right,” the highwaygirl agreed. “Then we get the princess out, give her the Peace Hat and then escort the coach all the way to the royal galleon.”

“I shall do some more speeches on the way, if Her Highness would like it,” the highwayman put in.

Before they could answer, he gave a very dramatic “YAH!” and galloped down the hill. The highwaygirl and highwayboy followed.

They reached the silver road just as the carriage rounded a bend and came rolling toward them. If the driver of the carriage had been keen-eyed, he would have seen the highwayman throw several bangers on the ground as he fired his pistol into the air. But the gunshots cracked and echoed between the hills and the driver only saw the flash of the highwayman’s teeth, the mystique of the ostrich feather in his hat, and the whites of his rearing horse’s eyes.

“STAND AND DELIVER!” the highwayman cried.

“STAND AND DELIVER!”

“Stand and de-LIVER?”

Two smaller, slightly less intimidating highwaymen echoed his cry, waving their pistols.

The driver wrenched the carriage to a halt in a cloud of dust. The two outriders on their pure white horses hung back. The tallest highwayman pointed his pistol at them.

“On the ground, lads!” he ordered.

The trembling riders slid off their horses and dropped to the ground. The highwayman smacked the white horses on their shiny flanks and they bolted off down the road.

“You too!” the highwayman barked at the driver.

He clambered off his seat and lay face down on the ground next to his colleagues.

“Keep your pistol on them. If any of them moves so much as a finger, shoot ’em,” the highwayman snarled to the highwayboy.

The highwayboy pointed his pistol at the three men. If any of them had looked up (which, luckily, none of them dared to do), they would have seen the pistol trembling. They might also have noticed that the pistol was made of wood, painted silver.

The highwayman jumped nimbly off his horse.

“Ho, Sally,” he said, to nobody in particular, though possibly it was to the horse.

He strode around to the side of the carriage and knocked, rat-a-tat-tat, on the door.

“Princess,” he pronounced, “I give you my word as a gentleman of the highway, no harm shall befall you!”

There was silence from inside the carriage. Not even a curtain twitched.

“Do not fear, O Highness!” the highwayman continued, as the highwaygirl dismounted and walked around the carriage, trying to peer inside. “I would sooner harm a rose in full bloom or a little leaping lambkin than hurt so much as a single royal hair upon your princessly head.”

There was nothing but silence from the carriage, and the highwayman began to look a bit peeved. He was not used to his speeches receiving so little reaction.

In a slightly louder, less chivalrous tone, he added, “But it really is rude to keep a man waiting for too long.”

The highwaygirl, sensing something was amiss, pulled open the carriage door. She immediately gagged.

“Zounds!” the highwayman cried, as stinking air billowed out.

It was the same foul smell that had surged through the Guildhall the night before.

Through watering eyes, the highwaypeople saw a lone woman sitting inside the carriage. She held a silver needle poised in the air and she was surrounded by an ugly mass of pelts from scabby beasts, severed claws and yellow fangs, tarry feathers and a tangle of putrid animal guts. She was in the middle of sewing a live, writhing millipede onto the brim of a cadaverous black hat.

The highwaygirl gaped at the woman.

“You’re not the princess!” the highwayman barked, disappointed.

Indeed, it was not the princess. It was—

“Miss Starebottom!” the highwayboy gasped, poking his head between the highwayman and highwaygirl to peek into the carriage. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same question, Lucas Bootmaker,” Miss Starebottom snarled through a dangerously curled lip. Both her eyebrows were at full-menace height.

The highwayboy (Goose) gulped.

“Hatmaker and Bootmaker are still friends, I see!” Miss Starebottom sneered. “So, the handkerchief didn’t work.”

The highwaygirl (Cordelia) gasped.

“It was you!” she cried. “You put my handkerchief on Goose’s floor after the Bootmakers were robbed!”

The realization set her mind twisting like a Whorlpod. She was dizzy with indignation.

“W-why would you do that?” Goose spluttered.

“I lent you that handkerchief when you were sad about your suitor waiting ages to propose …” Cordelia muttered.

Everything was beginning to make a horrible sort of sense.

“But he wasn’t your suitor, was he—the man in the boat in Hyde Park? It was Lord Witloof! You’re working together!”

“If only you were this clever in your lessons,” Miss Starebottom taunted.

“So it was you at the Guildhall last night!” Cordelia breathed. “And all these things—they’re from the Guildhall Menacing Cabinet you opened!”

The governess laughed her longest and pointiest laugh as Cordelia stared in horror at the revolting contents of the cabinet. Beneath black spikes of sea urchins and a heap of poison-green toadskins, Cordelia saw—

“Clothes! You’re making clothes!”

Miss Starebottom struck like lightning, her cane flashing through the air.

The highwayman shrieked, “Gad-ZOOKS!” as the cane slashed in front of his face.

“YAH!” The carriage gave a great jerk and all three highwaypeople leaped backward as a wheel threatened to roll over their feet.

“By Iago!” the highwayman cursed as the carriage lurched away, the driver and outriders clinging to the front bench and whipping the horses into a panicked frenzy.

“Goose!” Cordelia cried. “You were meant to be guarding the driver!”

“I’m sorry, Cordelia!” Goose said shakily, tearing off his silk handkerchief. “I wanted to see who was in the carriage!”

“I told you both! Never break character halfway through a scene!” wailed Sir Hugo, throwing his ostrich-feathered hat to the ground.

Cordelia’s brain was whirring faster than a wound-up watch. The stink still lingered in the air as the second-best royal carriage disappeared around the bend in a plume of dust.

“They’ve probably been planning this for ages!” she muttered.

“Planning what, exactly?” asked Goose.

“Can somebody please tell me what in Othello’s name is going ON!” Sir Hugo bellowed.

Cordelia checked the Peace Hat. It was snug in the hatbox, which was tucked inside her father’s jacket. There was enough room in the voluminous jacket for Cordelia and the hatbox, though the hatbox made her a rather strange shape. She turned to Sir Hugo.

“That woman is working for the enemy,” Cordelia explained. “She’s Making clothes for the princess to wear at the peace talks, but they’re made out of Menacing ingredients. Things that will fill her with hate.”

“Ah! A villainess! A vile saboteur!” Sir Hugo cried.

“What?” said Goose.

“She’s going to ruin the peace talks,” Cordelia translated. “She’s Making … sort of Rage Clothes. They’ll make Princess Georgina declare war against France!”

For an awful moment, all Cordelia could see was roiling sea, overrun with battleships and thrashing with cannon fire. Her father would have no hope of surviving it. He would be gone forever beneath the churning waves.

Cordelia! His voice echoed in her head and his arms reached for her desperately, flailing in a violent sea.

“NO!” she shouted.

Goose and Sir Hugo stared at her.

Cordelia stared back. Looking into Goose’s frightened eyes, she realized that if war came, it would not only mean that she would never find her father. Thousands of children just like her would lose their fathers too.

“We can’t let it happen,” she said. “We have to stop it.”

“How?”

“We have to get our Peace Hat to the princess! If she’s wearing it, she won’t be able to declare war! It’s the only way.”

Sir Hugo snatched up his hat and vaulted back onto his horse. Cordelia and Goose scrambled back onto their steeds and, giving very dramatic YAH’s, they all galloped down the road after the second-best royal carriage and the villainous governess.