And so here the point is, if Max and Valerie sound Jewish, why shouldn’t they? You think a guy named Simon Morgenstern was Irish Catholic? Funny thing—Morgenstern’s folks were named Max and Valerie and his father was a doctor. Life imitating art, an imitating life; I really get those two confused, sort of like I can never remember if claret is Bordeaux wine or Burgundy. They both taste good is the only thing that really matters, I guess, and so does Morgenstern, and we’ll pick it up again later, thirteen hours later, to be precise, four in the afternoon, two hours before the wedding.
“You mean, that’s it?” Inigo said, appalled.
“That’s it,” Max nodded proudly. He had not been up this long a stretch since the old days, and he felt terrific.
Valerie was so proud. “Beautiful,” she said. She turned to Inigo then. “You sound so disappointed—what did you think a resurrection pill looked like?”
“Not like a lump of clay the size of a golf ball,” Inigo answered.
(Me again, last time this chapter: no, that is not anachronistic either; there were golf balls in Scotland seven hundred years ago, and, not only that, remember Inigo had studied with MacPherson the Scot. As a matter of fact, everything Morgenstern wrote is historically accurate; read any decent book on Florinese history.)
“I usually give them a coating of chocolate at the last minute; it makes them look a lot better,” Valerie said.
“It must be four o’clock,” Max said then. “Better get the chocolate ready, so it’ll have time to harden.”
Valerie took the lump with her and started down the ladder to the kitchen. “You never did a better job; smile.”
“It’ll work without a hitch?” Inigo said.
Max nodded very firmly. But he did not smile. There was something in the back of his mind bothering him; he never forgot things, not important things, and he didn’t forget this either.
He just didn’t remember it in time…
At 4:45 Prince Humperdinck summoned Yellin to his chambers. Yellin came immediately, though he dreaded what was, he knew, about to happen. As a matter of fact, Yellin already had his resignation written and in an envelope in his pocket. “Your Highness,” Yellin began.
“Report,” Prince Humperdinck said. He was dressed brilliantly in white, his wedding costume. He still looked like a mighty barrel, but brighter.
“All of your wishes have been carried out, Highness. Personally I have attended to each detail.” He was very tired, Yellin was, and his nerves long past frayed.
“Specify,” said the Prince. He was seventy-five minutes away from his first female murder, and he wondered if he could get his fingers to her throat before even the start of a scream. He had been practicing on giant sausages all the afternoon and had the movements down pretty pat, but then, giant sausages weren’t necks and all the wishing in the world wouldn’t make them so.
“All passages to the castle itself have been resealed this very morning, save the main gate. That is now the only way in, and the only way out. I have changed the lock to the main gate. There is only one key to the new lock and I keep it wherever I am. When I am outside with the one hundred troops, the key is in the outside lock and no one can leave the castle from the inside. When I am with you, as I am now, the key is in the inside lock, and no one may enter from the outside.”
“Follow,” said the Prince, and he moved to the large window of his chamber. He pointed outside. Below the window was a lovely planted garden. Beyond that the Prince’s private stables. Beyond that, naturally, the outside castle wall. “That is how they will come,” he said. “Over the wall, through my stables, past my garden, to my window, throttle the Queen and back the way they came before we know it.”