Free The Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett Page A

London — just like you did, May! Did you come up on the train?”
    “They brought us here against our will —”
    “Against our will!” snapped the youngster, like a turtle. “I yelled and kicked and fought and screamed, I didn’t want them to take us anywhere! But nobody cared.”
    “And now they’re keeping us here, in this nowhere place, as if we are nothing but — prisoners.”
    “I saw grumpy children like you at the station,” Cecily reminisced. “I wondered if you were running around on the train like wild dogs. It was sad to leave home, I know that, but London is in danger . . .”
    “London has dangers,” the elder agreed.
    “My daddy will make it safe again, though,” Cecily couldn’t help adding. “May’s dad, too. Is your father fighting in France?”
    “Our father is dead,” said the boy.
    “Oh!” May clutched her hands. “Did he die in the war?”
    “No. He survived all battles where mere men were his adversary.”
    It sounded impressive, but the small child was grudging. “He shouldn’t have died. He should have lived. Everything went wrong after Father died. Now the bad men have sent us to this place, and I don’t know where Mother is, and nobody is a friend of ours, and these horrible peasant-girls are here! Everything’s wicked! Wicked!”
    This was the last straw for Cecily. Staggering to her feet she shouted, “You don’t understand anything! It’s all for your own good, you stupid boys! My daddy will save you and us and everyone, and then you’ll be sorry for saying what you just said! Come on, May, let’s go. I’m going to tell Uncle Peregrine these stupid boys are here, and he’ll come and chase them off with a gun!”
    “How dare you!” bellowed the child, darting back and forth with a robin’s agility. “How dare you shout at us! How dare you call us names! Get away from us! You’re wicked!”
    In the excitement Byron started barking, a sound fearsome enough to make trees sway and land slide; he lunged threateningly at the strangers, who disappeared into the ruins like smoke up a chimney. “Byron, no!” May cried, but the boys had already fled: she stared after them with puzzlement, like a puppy left on the side of the road. She turned to Cecily, however, a face pinched with anger. “Now look what you did!”
    “They were rude to us! They were rude about Daddy!”
    “Oh, your daddy! Your daddy wouldn’t care what two boys said! They were frightened!”
    “I don’t care — I hope they never come back! Do you hear me, stupid boys? I hope you
go away and never come back
!”
    Her voice sheared off the walls of the castle,
go away, never come back:
both girls felt certain she’d been heard. May stared into the ruins forlornly, her hands fallen to her sides. A pair of larks flew by, slinging toward the river. Byron’s gaze followed them. “They were just frightened,” muttered May.
    She swung away and stalked out from the shadows, leaving the plate where it lay. She passed her frowning hostess sporting an impressive furrow of her own. The sight of it pierced Cecily with an arrow of dismay. “Only you and I are allowed to play in the castle,” she said, but the establishment of this exclusive club failed to right what had gone wrong. Distressed with herself as she so frequently was, Cecily hurried after her evacuee. She ploughed through swampy puddles, ignored the vicious spikes of thistle. They reached the gully where the river ran without exchanging a word, and gazed down at the water.
    “. . . Shall we ask Mama to take us into the village today? I have money.”
    May shrugged, refusing to be drawn. The water surged over the stepping-stones; May did not offer to carry her companion across. She forded the current like an Amazon, leaving Cecily to scramble from shore to shore with a hand on Byron for balance. Water got into her shoes and somehow into her eye. By the time she dragged herself up the far bank, Cecily was utterly crushed. “I’m