Meanwhile

While Eleanor was sick I had plenty of time to think of the many things which had happened to me. I feel a thousand years older than the girl who worked so hard to make the Beetles for the Midsummer Festival.

My father was gone for the better part of the day at the constabulary, trying to convince them to let Ennis go. At the end of the day, he came home to find us sitting around the kitchen table drinking cups of late cha with Ennis' mother and father, who sat stiffly at the table and stood up quickly as my father walked in.

He shook his head tiredly. "They will not hear reason," he said. "There is someone of consequence who has insisted on this, and they cannot go against it, though they are very polite."

"Did you see Ennis?" asked his mother Elsa, a short, lined, impatient woman with a mad sort of humor who had had Ennis later than most.

My father sat down, while my mother brought him a cup of cha.

"I did," he said. "He was doing well enough. They are very kind to him there, treating him with great respect. They told me they had never seen a Festival Device like his."

Ennis' father Mokul, a tall man from the far Eastern mountains, looked as if he did not know whether to look proud or stern. "Yes, well," he said, his face going redder, "I don't know where he got the makings for that. It were, indeed, a wonderous effort. But I'd just as soon that he stayed in the stables, if he's gon' to go and get himself in gaol."

My father cleared his throat. "Well, hmm, I'd meant to talk to you about that. I gave him the tools and the makings for that Device. I saw in him the makings of a great Gear Tournier, and I suppose I became carried away. I apologize for that," he said.

Ennis' father and mother both stared at him with their mouths open, and I saw my father blush, for the first time in my life.

"He did so seem to need it..." he faltered. "In any case, I felt it was my duty to try to get this cleared up."

Mokul stood up, looming over my father, a slow flush spreading across his face, and I was somewhat amused to see a fleeting look of anxiety cross my father's face. But the big man simply seized his hand and pumped it up and down. "Always looking out for him, you was," he said, smiling, his sharp nose wrinkling with glee. "I do have much to thank you for."

My father, looking bewildered now, smiled back. "Well, let us see if I can winkle him out of jail first, shall we?" he said kindly, returning the man's clasp.

"I have no fear for that, sir, no I don't," said the stableman, and with a bow he took his wife and left.

We were all left looking at one another doubtfully.

The next day, my father went to the Palace. Once again, he was gone for most of the day, and we waited fretfully, for it is rare for my father to ask for an audience with the King, though we live so near and my father works so closely with him on the Festivals. This time (I had from him later) he waited a long while, an unusual circumstance. He spent most of it sitting in a small lounge outside the King's personal study while the King met with someone inside.

My father said he heard raised voices inside the room, speaking back and forth for awhile; and then the door opened, the guards stood smartly to attention, and out came his old enemy the Duke of Aneth. He looked at my father with dislike and swept out, leaving a strong smell of fennel behind him.