Naturally there was a long, steep, winding staircase to Lucy's bedroom.

"Clarissa and I sleep in one of the towers," Lucy explained on the way. "Bernard and Pip have another tower, Mummy and Mama have one, and then the boys are all in together."

Eden didn't reply. She was too tired, clinging to Lucy's hand like a sleepy child.

There had been two guards at the bottom of the stairs, who allowed them to pass. Eden thought there was something decidedly odd about a young girl needing to get past large men in order to reach her bedroom, but Lucy hadn't seem bothered at all.

"Good evening, Hawkins. This is Princess Eden, who is staying with us for Yuletide. Does your shift finish at midnight? Oh well, not long to go now. Martinez, bring the baby up to the castle to see us. He must be so big now!"

At last Lucy opened the heavy oakwood door, to reveal a bedroom that temporarily left Eden speechless. Everything in the room seemed to be either pink, gold, or white, from the gilt-edged white ceiling to the pink panels on the white and gold walls to the carpets with pink and gold roses threaded into the design.

"It's very ... very pink," Eden said at last.

"Clarissa chose the colours," Lucy said quickly. "Mummy said after she gets married next year we can have the room redecorated to my taste."

"I like the view," Eden said.

There were in fact two views – one looking south down at the river, the other facing north towards woods and forests. Eden held aside the pink velvet curtains and pushed her nose against the cold glass to see better, just as someone entered the room through an internal door. She was a pretty young woman with long dark hair in a neat braid, wearing a trim black housemaid's uniform.

"Good evening Miss Lucy, good evening Miss Eden," she said with a little curtsy.

"Hello, Nalini," Lucy said, and Eden mumbled a greeting.

"I've unpacked for you, Miss Eden," Nalini said, opening the wardrobes and drawers to show Eden her clothes and shoes had been put away tidily, her possessions arranged on the bedside table with immaculate precision.

As Eden thanked her, she understood that her trunks and cases had not been lost after all, although she still had no idea where they were.     

"I have also drawn you a hot bath, Miss Eden. Miss Lucy, would you like me to undress you for bed?"

"No thank you, Nalini," Lucy said. "Thank you so much for everything, but Eden and I can take care of ourselves now."

"If you're quite sure, Miss Lucy, I will retire for the evening," Nalini said. "Please ring should you require anything in the night."

⋆⋅•⋅⊰∙∘⋆ ❆ ⋆∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋆

The hot bath by candlelight was luxurious. Eden closed her eyes and leaned back in the water, feeling the smooth marble edge of the bath against the nape of her neck. Nurse Melia never put anything in the bath for her except bitter mineral salts for health, or wintergreen if she had a cold. This bath was redolent with the sweetness of lavender, orange, and rose oil, and soothed away much of Eden's fatigue and soreness.

After drying herself on a fluffy towel, Eden pulled on her winter nightgown and a woollen wrapper Nurse Melia had made for her. She blew out the candle before going back out to the bedroom.

Lucy was sitting on her bed with what looked like a heavy book, wearing a white silk nightgown trimmed with lace and ribbons, and a deep red velvet dressing gown spread out around her.

"I know you must be terribly tired, Eden," Lucy began eagerly, "but please may I thank you for the lovely present you sent for my birthday? It's absolutely gorgeous."

Eden sat down as Lucy held up a thick manuscript book bound in pale blue leather with gilt edging on the pages.

"Did it arrive on time?" Eden asked. "I posted it before we left for Camden, but the mail is so unreliable at this time of year."

"A week early," Lucy beamed. "It was so hard to wait! And look, I've already started writing a new story in it."

She pushed the book across to Eden with the pleading, hopeful, tremulous expression of every author showing the first draft of their story to its first reader. Eden flipped it open to the first page.

Lily Lucas was a perfectly ordinary girl of but fourteen summers, and nothing of interest had ever happened to her. She was so perfectly ordinary, you see. Her height was somewhere betwixt tall and short, she was neither plump nor thin, and her hair was of that indeterminate shade that fails to be either light or dark, so that observers usually compare it to rodent vermin by pronouncing it to be 'mousy.' Her features were not noticeably pretty, but could not be considered ugly, and although far from clever, she was some distance away from stupid.

There was only one thing about Lily that was in any way out of the usual, which was that she secretly yearned to travel the world and have a life filled with adventure. These wild dreams filled her head so that she could not apply herself to her school books, or dawdled over her daily tasks until she was sharply reprimanded. Whenever she could spare the chance, she wended her way to the harbour at Lighthaven, and there she gazed out to sea, her eyes fixed on the far horizon that seemed to beckon her onward, over the curve of the earth, to the ends of the world and beyond.

Eden read both paragraphs through several times from beginning to end, then closed the book and said, "That's very good. Is there any more?"

"I only started a few days ago," said Lucy. "I'm trying to write a proper grown up book, and it takes ever so long to look up all the words in the dictionary."

"I think I'll like reading about Lily," Eden said, "but isn't it hard writing about an ordinary person when you're – well, not ordinary?"

"I write from my imagination," Lucy said, as if considering this for the first time, "but I think I am ordinary in a lot of ways."

"You're a princess living in a palace, dressed in silk and velvet," Eden said, thoughtfully rubbing the train of Lucy's dressing gown between her fingers. It was unbelievably soft.

Lucy flushed before saying, "Clarissa likes beautiful clothes, and Mummy buys the same for both of us. It would cause a lot of gossip in the court if people said that Clarissa is always dressed in fine clothing, but anything is good enough for plain little Lucy."

"You're not plain," Eden said without thinking, before adding, "and you're not little. You're taller than me now."

"I mean, it's tricky because Clarissa isn't a princess, and I am, so it wouldn't be considered suitable for her to be better dressed than me," Lucy said. "I'd much rather be in our comfortable bandit clothes, sailing on the lake or running around Castle Avalon."

"It isn't too small and old for you, is it?" asked Eden.

Her tone must have been nastier than she'd realised, because Lucy looked as if she'd been slapped.

"What do you mean?" she asked. "I love Castle Avalon. You know that."

"Otto said you told everyone it was a funny, quaint, little old place," Eden said. "He said that's exactly what you wrote."

"Oh the silly ... he's got things all wrong," Lucy said in frustration. "That's not the way I said it. Look, Clarissa has a letter from me in her top drawer. I'll show it to you."

She went to Clarissa's side of the room to search for it, as Eden said in horror, "I can't look at your sister's private things!"

She had been taught it was very wrong to read other people's letters – worse than eavesdropping, which might be done inadvertently, or even forced upon you by someone with a loud voice.

"If Clarissa were here, I know she would let you read it," Lucy said, as she brought the letter over. "There's nothing personal in it. Just read the first part. Please."

Eden couldn't bring herself to even touch the letter, but read it while Lucy held it out to her.

Darling Clarissa,

I am in the prettiest country you ever saw, so lovely it seems magical. We are beside a beautiful lake that is pink and gold at first light, pearly grey when the mist lies upon it, and a deep clear blue on a sunny day. Castle Avalon is the most enchanting place, a dear, quaint, funny little old-fashioned castle, just like something out of a storybook. Eden is so much fun, and we spend all day sailing, swimming, and fishing  ...

Eden read it as quickly as possible, and then dropped her eyes. "Otto was telling the truth," she said, with such a pang of disappointment that she realised she'd been hoping he would be proved a liar.

"Yes, but he didn't tell the whole truth," Lucy said. "Boys hardly ever pay attention properly. Isn't there a difference between what he said, and what I wrote?"

"There's a lot of difference," Eden said justly. "I wouldn't have minded so much if I'd read this first. Is Castle Avalon really so funny and old-fashioned?"

"I only meant on the outside," Lucy said patiently. "You can even see the storybook castle I was thinking of, if you want."

She walked over to a small book case, producing a slim volume with The Clever Goose Girl written on the cover. The picture on it showed a determined looking dark-haired girl in peasant costume, driving her geese through a meadow, with a fairy tale city in the distance.

Lucy flipped through the pages. Towards the back of the book, she said, "There! Now, doesn't the castle in the book look a little like Castle Avalon?"

The illustration was of a plump, round castle of smooth yellowish stone, with square battlements and fetching little pointed turrets. Swans were swimming in the surrounding moat, and golden roses bloomed around it.

Eden look at it carefully, before admitting, "It does, rather. I mean, it looks like an illustration of Castle Avalon, if they put it in a picture book."

"This was my favourite book as a child," Lucy said, with all the wistful nostalgia of someone who has reached the great age of fourteen mere days ago. "It was like a dream seeing it come to life – only a thousand times better, because it was beside a magical lake."

"Oh you and your magic," said Eden tolerantly. "Sorry I made such a fuss."

"Anyone would be upset thinking their home was made fun of," Lucy reassured her. "And you're very tired, I shouldn't have kept you up for even one minute. Let's go to sleep right now."

The two girls said their goodnights and snuggled under the pink satin quilts before Lucy turned the lamp down. The bed was the most comfortable Eden had ever been in, with delicate linen sheets and soft thick blankets. A housemaid had run a pan filled with hot coals between the sheets, so that Eden's feet went straight from her slippers to toasty warmth.

Eden had been up before five, and had travelled all day. She was in a warm, comfortable bed after a hot scented bath and a good meal. She should have fallen asleep the instant her head hit the pillow. Instead she lay in the dark, her head filled with a myriad of images from her arrival in Camden.

Everything had been difficult, Eden thought, from getting through the city gates to being left in the palace grand entrance hall. She had quarrelled with Lucy and made herself look ridiculous, and she thought she hated Lucy's brother.

Everything at Camden Palace was too big, too rich, too plush. It was too well heated and there were hundreds of stairs and thousands of portraits of royalty staring down at you like nothing so much as a bunch of dead fish. Everyone was far too tall, and Lucy's sister was ludicrously beautiful, which for some reason made Eden furious.

Eden longed to be at home in her own bed and her own castle and her own country. She could feel an ache in her heart as if Avalon was calling her home, an atavistic urge as primal and impossible to ignore as it is for a wild animal feeling the pull towards the safety  its own distant den, no matter it be only a hole in the ground hidden by leaves.

The ache spread to her throat and her tight, unhappy face, until a few tears rolled down her cheeks. Eden angrily brushed them away, but the ache was in her eyes now, and weeping silently into the pillow was the only thing which brought relief. It was weak to cry like this, and she was far too old, she told herself severely, but still the tears came.

To her horror, she heard herself give a low sob, which she stifled into the pillow as best she could. Then she felt a hand on her head, and a soft voice saying, "Eden, what's wrong?"

"I'm ... I'm homesick," Eden said pathetically, wiping her eyes on her hand.

"But your father is here, and Nurse Melia," Lucy said. "You're not alone. Everyone you love is right here with you."

"I miss the lake," Eden said. "I miss knowing it's right there, and I miss knowing I can take a boat out whenever I want."

"Isn't it all frozen now?" Lucy asked.

"It's a huge lake, it doesn't get frozen solid all in a big lump," Eden said impatiently. "I still go rowing and fishing even in the middle of winter, and there's ice sailing and skating and tobogganing."

"That sounds wonderful," Lucy said, her voice filled with that tone which Eden knew meant she was imagining things all over the place. "Snow sparkling from the trees, and the lake like glass under a silver moon."

"Snow doesn't sparkle in the dark," Eden argued. "And I miss Castle Avalon. You might think it's a funny little joke castle in a picture book, but I love it. I know it's not a grand palace like this, and it isn't filled with priceless artworks, and it doesn't have miles of corridors and stairs all over the place and white marble bathrooms, but it's my home."

She began sobbing in earnest then, her thin chest shaking with each paroxysm of grief, her face buried in the pillow.

Lucy stroked her hair gently, speaking to Eden in her own language, the few words that Lucy had learnt when she was in the Lakelands.

"Cara kar, moi chalon," she whispered (which means Dearest friend, my darling one). "Piedwich a crio. Eth caru." (Please do not cry. I love you.)

Lucy soon ran out of words, until she was down to, "Gwurk march, lox y lidan dubr" (which means Nice horse, a lake is a wide water), which made Eden giggle through her tears.

"Eden dear, you mustn't think I've been despising Castle Avalon when I love it so much," Lucy said quietly. "And Camden Palace might seem grand to you, but it's barely even a home".

"Of course it's your home," Eden said. "You live here!"

"It's for running the country, and for storing national treasures," Lucy explained. "We don't really own very much of it, and our family only gets a few rooms to live in. I can't go outside without a grown up, I eat most meals with hundreds of people, I have to dress up all the time. Everything is run like clockwork, so that a visitor can't even turn up early at dinner time without throwing everything into chaos." 

"I didn't know all that," said Eden humbly. "That sounds horrible."

 "I've only ever had one summer of freedom," Lucy told Eden. "You've had years and years of it." 

"You can stay with me every summer if you want," Eden promised. 

"I'm glad you're here," Lucy said, wrapping her arms around Eden as she curled up against her. "I'll stay with you until you fall asleep."

And with the comforting feeling of a friend at her back, and the knowledge that Lucy's life wasn't all glamour, Eden's tears soon dried as she fell into slumber. The extremely comfortable bed probably helped too.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

LINDENSEA LORE

The Clever Goose Girl is a much loved fairy tale from the famous collection by The Jolley Sisters, about a brave, clever goose girl named Griselda who must protect her geese from a wicked wizard. Children of all ages will love hearing of Griselda's courage, and how she uses her wits to defeat the wizard, save her geese, and be rewarded with the hand of charming prince. 

This edition, retold by Heidi Caroline Amundsen, introduces a new generation to the classic story. Beautifully presented, it is charmingly illustrated throughout by award-winning children's artist Mr Kit Greenacre, and would make a perfect Yuletide gift for boys and girls everywhere. 

Advertisement in New Books This Month magazine, December 1446 of the Saxon Era