“Jen!” Sam gasped.
“Sam. No time to explain. Small gold pyramid. Very, very important. We have to find it. It’s somewhere in the Palace.”
“Where in the Palace?”
“Sam, if I knew that I wouldn’t be looking for it, would I?”
Sam looked at his little sister. “It’s really important, isn’t it?” he said.
The enormity of the search almost overwhelmed Jenna. “Oh, Sam . . . yes, it is. I don’t know how I’m going to find it. I really don’t.”
“I’ll get the boys. We’ll find it.”
“I gotta go and check somewhere out first, Sam. I’ll be back here in ten minutes, okay?” Jenna rushed off.
In the Queen’s Room Jenna and the ghost of her mother had another confrontation.
“Ah, the little gold pyramid. So heavy for something so small,” said Queen Cerys.
“Where is it?” Jenna asked.
“Where is it what?”
Jenna took a deep breath and counted to ten. “Where is it, please.”
“Where is it, please what?”
Another count to ten. “Where is it please, Mama.”
“Daughter, you cannot have everything at once. This mystical treasure is for Queens only. You must wait until you are crowned.”
With great difficulty Jenna subdued the urge to jump up and down screaming.
“Mama. This is not for me. It is for the Castle. If we do not have it now, then there may not be a Castle by the time I am crowned.”
“Daughter, do not exaggerate.”
Jenna took yet another very deep breath and said in a barely controlled voice, “I am not exaggerating. Mama. Please. Do you know where the little gold pyramid is?”
“I know where I left it,” said Queen Cerys. “But given the disgusting mess, I could not say where it is now.”
“So where did you leave it?” asked Jenna.
“I shall tell you where when you are Queen. And not before.”
Desperately, Jenna tried another tack. “Is Grandmamma here?”
“No, she is not. You will have your little pyramid when you are crowned and I shall say no more on the subject until then. Now, daughter, go and calm yourself.”
Jenna gave up the struggle. “Aaaaaaaargh!” she yelled at the top of her voice and rushed, screaming, out through the wall.
Sam had rounded up Sarah and the boys, and they were waiting for Jenna in the entrance hall.
“No luck?” Sam asked, although Jenna’s face already told him the answer.
“Nope.”
“Oh, dear,” said Sarah. “If Queen Cerys doesn’t know where it is, I don’t know what we can do. It could be anywhere.”
Jenna sighed. “It could be anywhere” was another of Sarah’s phrases when she was looking for something—but a much less hopeful one than “it must be somewhere.”
“Oh, but she does know where it is,” Jenna said angrily.
Sarah brightened. “Well, that’s wonderful.”
“But she wouldn’t tell me.”
“She wouldn’t tell you?”
“Not until I’m Queen.”
Sarah was appalled. “Even though you told her how important it was?”
“Yup. She said that she knows where she left it, but given the disgusting mess everywhere, she could not say where it is now.”
“Well, that’s it!” said Sam. “She’s told you where it is.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jenna.
“Think about it—where is the one place that Cerys has seen that is a disgusting mess?”
“Oh, wow! Sam you are just brilliant! It must be in—”
“Mum’s room!” chorused Jenna, Sam, Edd, Erik and Jo-Jo.
Sarah Heap looked offended. “I know it’s a bit lived-in, but I think calling my little sitting room a disgusting mess is going too far.”
Some minutes later, Sarah’s little sitting room was even more of a disgusting mess. The efforts of four heavy-footed Forest Heaps plus a frantic Jenna and an embarrassed Sarah (who was trying to clear up little dried mounds of duck poo as they went) had reduced what fragile order there had been to a massive pile of what Jenna called “stuff” in the middle of the room. And on top of the stuff sat Ethel the duck, roosting like a wild turkey on its nest.
Jenna looked around the unusually empty room in despair. “It’s not here,” she said. “Mum, are you sure you’ve never seen it?”
“Never,” declared Sarah. “And I know I would have remembered a little golden pyramid. It sounds so cute.”