the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (best detective novels of all time .TXT) 📖

question, and the royals could barely get enough. The Grand Hall was filled to the brim full of people, Belinda and Alexander being the chief crowd pleasers with their laughter sounding like a pony and a dog blaring with ecstasy.
That day, the winner was crowned in the palace under the custody of his majesty King Alexander and his spouse the Queen Sieglinde. If Belinda’s appearance had been grand at the opening, Nomed was even grander about his own significance. Belinda played along with Cretan’s scraping, bowing and agreeing every time when he said what a genius she was. Steven knew that she only tried Cretan to see how far he would go.
Now, Nomed was another matter entirely. He arrived in a gilded coach with two servants holding up the doors. He had a wolf as a companion on a diamond leash. Once the crown was put on his head for Prosperanian Performance Player of the year he paraded the Grand Hall with his lute in hand and held an hour-long elegy on Clurafarian ardency and vigour. It seemed almost too emotional.
That day, too, finished with excessive dancing and the horde marching around the Grand Hall, Nomed at the forefront laughing himself silly with his lute and joy in spirit, serum in body and jest in fortitude. He had something to laugh about, having been awarded fifty thousand guldens and a red coach with two white horses and a personal driver.
It was obvious that Nomed’s victory brought Clurafar something it had never seen before to this extent. It brought them temporarily peaceful euphoria. How they danced on his victory concert.
Morgana even seduced Nomed back at The Rose whilst Richard spent an evening with Patricia at Main Iuventus, talking about wines. Whilst Steven was out riding the steeds, Morgana was riding Nomed. Alexander loved Nomed and asked if he would become his personal advisor.
Even Lancelot loved Uncle Nomed and asked him to perform little tricks and teach him how to do them. Nomed had only been there two weeks and he was already the most popular man in town.
It had not been long ago that Belinda had been attacked and the fear was still there. So why was she overcompensating it? She was happy, yes, but that fear of what had happened was still there.

Saturday, August 8th, 1422 A.D. – 66 days left

The first week of August Nomed entertained at every ball and must’ve played at four weddings. He was the toast of the town and was even invited at the political town meetings. Cretan wrote him into the book of the Capital and gave him the key to the city. He even accepted the invitation to join the wedding ceremonies as official speaker. It was Nomed’s victory dance. The superiority of the municipality had arrived. When the first week was over, on August 8th 1422, Nomed was allowed to play alongside Bantrard at every occasion in the castle.

Sunday, August 9th 1422 A.D.

That day, she had attended some meetings with her father. Then made sure that the guest list for the wedding coincided with the messanger responses they had received as to who was coming. But all the time she kept on thinking of that blissful morning with her beloved. Toward the afternoon there were some private audiences to hold: a young mother with her three children and the son of a Senator.
Somehow, this day she had a feeling. She needed to go up to her old cabinet on the third floor and see what was there for her to find. She had felt so blissful the last few weeks since the encounter with the angelic creatures in the cathedral. She loved feeling this way. Why was her mind warning her to feel good? Maybe among her old papers there would be an answer, a clue, something that would give her a direction, something to go for from a time when she had been more innocent.
No one knew of her plans and when she had an hour off she took a lantern and walked up to the side room next to the third landing kitchen. Rolf had taken old wooden and gilded toys and put them in this little room, after Belinda found no use for them. There were old parchment papers from her schooling years with Penderesci.
One work was about the history of writing, where Belinda had written meticulously about the fact that it had originated in ancient Greece and that the original tools had been metal, bone and ivory.
Sitting there cross-legged on the attic floor, the princess found herself in her mind floating back to a time before the attack, a time when her fears had not been afraid of anything at all.
She remembered sitting in the chapel with this genius that had painted countless paintings for official places in Clurafar and hearing how ink was a Chinese invention and how the quill pen was introduced around 700 A.D. She would go up with him to the hill and hear about how the first Prosperanian Opera was written in 1203 on the basis of the Ancient Hellenistic drama. Those days were innocent, filled with learning and simple pleasures.
It seemed to her those six months that she spent as a prisoner of polish in the kingdom of the mischievous sprite changed her forever. She was never the same. She was captured on June 4th and was saved on November 4th and this left a lot of time for her father to find her. The fact that her father had searched himself crazy as to the whereabouts of the castle was a thing she never understood, let alone why it took him six months to save her.
She had never asked him why, but it seemed to her that she had existed only in another place in time. Her father had searched the entire area, a company of soldiers nearby and spent the entire summer looking for her.
Messengers crisscrossed the land in search of that castle, but it seemed to be gone. Not until her father decided to try again to find it and did in November, this time with the hardest soldiers of the bastions of the empires of the world.
These were the thoughts that went through her head under the flame torch, sitting on the floor.
She wondered why she had turned so moody since she had been kidnapped. One time depressed and the other happy.
Jealousy followed by ecstasy. That was the moment that she found a black book that she had not opened since for eleven years.
On its brown cover was written, in black ink:


DIARY
1411
Belinda

Was this the clue that she looked for? She took a brief look at it, opened and read.
She read the following lines after this and could clearly recall being told the secrets that this book revealed. She turned a few pages and read on what she had written a week later.
Quickly, Belinda closed the book and threw it back where she had found it. She rushed out and locked the door to the room she had opened. She locked the door to the dungeon in her heart and pretended that she never had opened the gate. There was a clue there for her to find. She had found it, but wished that she had never even looked.
Running down to the kitchen, she ordered for Rolf to give her and Steven a large meal in the Grand Hall. Soon enough, they were sitting there with Bantrard playing songs, eating fresh fish, Steven all the time wondering why his girl was so miraculously giddy.


Wednesday, August 26th, 1422 – Evening

Sitting in the Grand Hall that night and eating herself silly, it struck Belinda that she was afraid and was pretending not to be. It seemed that Nomed’s entrance into the life of the royal court had somehow made her feel too calm, too reassured, too lulled into a fake sense of peace. It was completely silly, but true.
Her father turned 54 years old and as a present he had received a beautiful stallion. He had ridden it all afternoon along with Belinda, Steven and a few others. What surprised even Bantrard and Rolf was that Morgana and Patrick had taken their horses out for a ride, as well.
There was music and wine and song and food and entertainment. There were new golden tapestries in the Grand Hall for this occasion delivered by artists from Mustafus’ court. They depicted glorious victories in history and literature. Belly dancers from the Ottoman Empire had been brought in and there was a magician from Hispania who waltzed around, showing the guest how to make a dove appear out of one’s hat.
1422, was this to be the year of infamy?
The king was enjoying his birthday. Belinda thrilled watching him enjoy it and took another sip of her rich wine, urging the dancers to shake their bells a little faster this time.

Monday, September 21st, 1422 A.D. – Evening – 23 days left to go

Tom Barnes had returned. The man with the large tooth gap and the throaty laugh had once been considered unwelcome. After all, he had left Belinda alone in the field of sunflowers back in 1411. The reason had been simple: she had chosen Steven and not him as a dancing partner for a feast. He had left her in spite of strict orders from the king not to let the princess out of sight.
Lucinda soon had Belinda on her carriage. Belinda was abducted as a result of the negligence.
Tom was back in their lives and it seemed that all trespasses were forgiven. Steven and he were again drinking together and Belinda was happily listening to his jokes. Even the king spoke nothing of the occurrence.
An old friend of Tom’s was in town. Well, he was more like an acquaintance. Tom had served with him in a training camp for elite soldiers. Tom had never been elite. The only reason why he had taken on the course was to win the heart of a girl in town that was the son of the head legionnaire. The relationship with the girl lasted a month, but a friend came out of the time training on horseback. That so called friend was in town and Tom had arranged for a men’s feast to celebrate freedom before freedom was taken away from him.
William Zebulon was of course happy to spend a day drinking with the prince. He had wanted to feast through the night before the wedding, but Steven had said no categorically to have a hangover on that day when his life was to change forever.
“What other way is there to celebrate?” the tough sailor had said, but finally consented on the 21st. Belinda didn’t like the idea, but knew that men were men and hoped that Steven would not be prompted to hop into the feathers with any filly. She had only met Bill Zebulon once and she disliked him already. She had called him “a senseless arse that spends all his time crossing his arms, raising his eyebrows and laughing at strange royalty.”
That day they left Iuventus Sacrum with false beards, the three of them, at midday. Bill Zebulon had taken them to an inn called the “Sheepskin Rug” where they were served peacock with lemon sauce, salty truffles and apple mead. By three in the afternoon, old Zebulon had already finished his first bottle of Rum and Steven was working on his seventh mead.
Stone drunk, the three went on to spend early evening in another pub where live music was being