It seemed that while Miss Davenport had been upstairs with Count Karlstein, a very watery gentleman had turned up at the castle gate, dripping and shivering and leaking badly—and clinging tightly to a chilly little girl. Herr Snivelwurst, clambering painfully out of the rocky torrent I’d shoved him into, had seen Charlotte emerging from the woods. He’d never have caught her if he’d given chase; but he had the presence of mind (and absence of decency) to lie down and yell….

And she, seeing what looked like a sorely distressed traveler at the side of the road, remembered the story of the Good Samaritan and came up to help; and found a fishy hand tight around her wrist and an oily grin of triumph leering up at her. And so he’d brought her back—but apparently she’d said nothing about where Lucy might be, or about why they’d gone in the first place. And Herr Snivelwurst was now sitting with his bony feet in a bowl of hot water by the fire in Frau Muller’s private parlor, with a blanket around his skinny shoulders, bright-eyed with heroism and brandy. Pity I didn’t push him under with a stick, I thought, while I had the chance.

Charlotte had been locked in the lumber room beneath the count’s study—as a punishment, Frau Wenzel said, for wickedness. And did I have a moment to get up there? I did not. Frau Muller kept me busy all the rest of the morning. My spirits lowered with every minute that passed, and as soon as lunch was over she set me the task of cleaning all the silver—even the great soup tureen, ornamented with lumpy dolphins and fat little mermaids, that had never been used since I’d been at the castle. It all came out of its baize and sat depressingly on the kitchen table, and I sat in front of it and rubbed away with the fine sand until every little speck of tarnish had disappeared. I knew where it had gone, too—my heart was as dull and dark as the silver itself had been, by the time I’d finished.

And when I’d wrapped the silver up and put it away again, there was Frau Muller’s parlor to dust and sweep; and then she pretended she’d got to sort through all the last year’s menus, and gave me the job of putting them in order—scrappy, dusty, tom things, of no use to anyone. I could see quite plainly what she was doing: keeping me busy, of course, and away from Charlotte. All afternoon she stood over me, while thoughts of Charlotte locked in the tower and Lucy wandering over the mountains on her own, and Miss Davenport close enough to help but quite ignorant of their trouble, went round and round in my head like cats fighting in a bag.