Chapter 6: The Kitchen

For one second the tablecloth glowed.

Then Rupert stood up and knocked over the wine.

It was a big clay jug, full to the brim.

Red wine poured across the white cloth, over the light, over the potato salad, into the King's lap.

"Oh no," Rupert said, with no feeling at all. "Clumsy of me."

Everybody jumped up.

I yanked my wrist free, and the glow went out under a spreading purple stain.

The King was mopping his apron. My mother was laughing for the first time in a week.

Sybil hadn't moved.

She sat with her wineglass in her hand and looked at the wet cloth where the light had been.

Then she looked at me.

Rupert caught up with me in the hall afterward.

"You owe me another box of maple bars," he said.

"I owe you a dozen."

"I'd like them fresh this time."

At midnight I couldn't sleep, so I went down to the kitchen for water.

The kitchen was the best room in the house, big and plain, with copper pots on hooks and a scrubbed table you could have laid a horse on.

I was in a huge borrowed T-shirt that said MARCHMONT HALL ROWING and a pair of sleep shorts.

No gloves.

I was filling a glass at the sink when the back door opened.

Leander came in out of the dark.

His shirt was torn at the collar.

His right hand was bleeding all over the floor.

We looked at each other.

"Sit," I said.

"It's fine. It'll close by morning."

"Sit down before you drip on the cook's floor."

He sat on the edge of the big table.

I got the kit from under the sink, the one every kitchen should have and this one did, and pulled a chair up between his knees.

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