She approached the table, narrowing her eyes. ‘That’s cruel of you to say, after my one choice was taken from me.’
‘That is cruel of you to say, after being given a choice to begin with.’
She frowned.
‘What do you want, Lady Pinkerton?’
‘I came to see how you’re faring.’
‘Liar.’ His white teeth flashed in a sardonic smile. ‘You came to see if I’ve gone mad. You want to know you’re not the only one to succumb to the Sisters’ prophecy.’
‘I no longer care about the Sisters’ prophecy.’
‘Convenient,’ he growled, ‘as you’re the one who dragged us back here.’
She clenched her fists. Then slowly unclenched them, smoothing her palms along the stiff fabric of her skirt. ‘Where’s Haigha?’
‘He went to get more tea.’ Hatta picked up his cane and stuck the end through a teapot handle. He lifted it clean off the table and the lid clattered on to a saucer. A few lonesome drops dribbled from the spout. ‘As you can see, we’re out.’
She let out a slow exhale. ‘I half expected you to have gone back to Chess.’
The teapot slid back on to the table and crashed against a cracked porcelain cup. ‘Without either of the Rooks, or the heart we came for?’ One side of his mouth twisted into an ugly grimace. ‘You should be afraid, Lady Pinkerton. You are a queen now.’ He jutted a finger towards her chest. ‘That has value.’
‘I am not afraid of you. Tell me your riddle again, Hatta, and I will tell you that my heart cannot be stolen, only purchased, and mine has already been bought.’
His cheek started to twitch. ‘You want to hear a riddle, you say? I know a very good one. It begins, why is a raven like a writing desk?’
She lifted her chin. ‘Have you gone mad, Hatta? I can’t seem to tell.’
‘They are both so full of poetry, you see. Darkness and whimsy, nightmares and song.’
‘Hatta—’
His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I figured it out, Lady Pinkerton.’
She pressed her lips together and swallowed. ‘You figured what out?’
‘Everything. Peter. The Jabberwock. The Mock Turtle. We are both to blame.’
Catherine gripped the edge of the table, staring at him across the turmoil. The mannequins said nothing.
‘You see, many years ago,’ said Hatta, as if she’d asked, ‘I brought a pumpkin back from Chess. It was going to be a pumpkin hat. A toothless, smiling pumpkin lantern that would light up on the inside. Oh, it would have been marvellous.’ He sung the word marvellous, letting his head tip back over the side of the chair. ‘But the pumpkin kept growing and growing. I couldn’t make it stop. It got to be as big as a goat and no longer fit to be a hat, so I cut it up and carved out the seeds. I took them to the nearest pumpkin patch and asked if they wanted them. Ungrateful wretches they were, the man and his sickly wife. Told me something about wanting no charity, slammed the door on my face. So I tossed the seeds away into a corner of their patch.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I thought nothing more of it after that.’
‘And then they started to grow,’ said Cath.
‘So they did. Lady Peter won a pumpkin-eating contest, did you know? She ate twenty-two of them, they say. Twenty-two bloody little pumpkins. And then she turned into a monster.’ His lips warbled into a mockery of a smile. Cath could see it now, the hysteria lurking beneath his amethyst eyes.
She thought of the destroyed corner of the pumpkin patch. Peter had tried to kill them all, but one seed had survived and grown and thrived.
‘And I made the pumpkin cake,’ she said, ‘and so the Mock Turtle was my doing, and yours, and maybe Peter’s too.’
‘Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,’ Hatta quoted in a sing-song voice, ‘had a wife but couldn’t keep her.’
Cath shuddered. Her gaze traipsed across the mishmash of ornamentation on the table. ‘What else? Have you brought any other dangerous things back from Chess that I should know about?’
‘Only Jest, love. He was dangerous enough for us both.’
Hearing his name opened a crack in her heart that she hadn’t felt in days. She bit her cheek and waited for the pain to recede and dull again.
She started making her way around the table. ‘You lied to me. Your hats are dangerous. We can’t trust anything you’ve brought from Chess.’ She grabbed the chair to Hatta’s right and made to pull it out from the table, but he whapped the cane over its arms. The cane crushed through a chiffon hat and shattered the skull of the clay mannequin underneath. Catherine jumped back.
‘Don’t be rude, Lady Pinkerton,’ Hatta said through his teeth. ‘Look around. There is no room for you at this table.’
Rejection sliced through her. She sucked in a breath.
‘You did not deserve him,’ he said. There was a sadistic glint in his eyes. He was watching her, like he was waiting to see which accusations would make her writhe the most. ‘I’m glad he cannot see you now. I’m glad he’ll never know how quickly you fell into the King’s arms. You couldn’t even wait until the worms had tasted him.’
She clenched her fists. ‘I made a bargain to avenge him. I did it for him, whatever you might think. I loved him. I still do.’
‘If you think you had a monopoly on loving him, then you should be the King’s new fool, not his wife.’
She stared at him. Her thoughts somersaulted, warred with each other – first, a mess of confusion. Then understanding.