Conrad's Fate (30 page)

“Gabriel de Witt's in there, isn't he?” somebody whispered.

I shot sideways and saw Millie pressed against the wall beside the door. She looked almost as terrified as I was.

“And the house is full of policemen,” she said. “Help me get away, Conrad!”

I nodded and tiptoed toward the service stairs. I told myself Millie would be much more frightened if I said why I needed to get away even more urgently than she did. I just whispered to her as she followed me, “Where are they mostly, these policemen?”

“Collecting all the maids and the kitchen staff and taking them to the Banqueting Hall to be questioned,” she whispered back. “I kept having to hide.”

“Good,” I said. “Then we can probably get out through the undercroft. Can you make us both invisible?”

“Yes, but a lot of them are wizards,” Millie whispered. “They'd
see
us.”

“Do it all the same,” I said.

“All right,” she said.

We tiptoed on. I couldn't tell if we were invisible or not. I think we must have been, though, because we passed the lift before we got to the stairs and a policeman came out of it, pushing Mrs. Baldock and Miss Semple in front of him, and none of them saw us. Both housekeepers were crying, Mrs. Baldock in big, heaving sobs and Miss Semple noisy and streaming. “You don't
understand
!” Miss Semple wept. “We've both worked here most of our
lives
! If they turn us off over this, where do we
go
? What do we
do
?”

“Nothing to do with me,” the policeman said.

Millie and I dodged around them and fled down the stairs to the ground floor. I pushed the green cloth door open a fraction there. There was a lot of noise in the entrance hall, where more policemen seemed to be marshaling gardeners, stablemen, and chauffeurs up the main stairs. Most of them were protesting that only Family were allowed to go up this way. I let the door shut itself, and we scudded away, down to the undercroft.

I had never seen the undercroft so deserted. It was dim, empty, and echoing. I could almost believe that the probability fault had already swallowed all the life down here. I led Millie as fast as I could toward the door between the kitchens and the cellars where the gardeners usually brought their vegetables and fruit.

This bit was not empty. Light was shining up the cellar steps from the open door at the bottom. There were sounds of people busy in the cellars. Millie and I both jumped violently when a strong, wizardly voice shouted upward, “Go and tell him that shift key is completely stuck at
on
! If I turn the power on, we'll have changes all over the place again. Go on. Hurry!”

I nearly laughed. Christopher stuck that key down! I thought. But somebody began coming up the steps at a run. Millie seized my wrist, and we sprinted past the top of the stairs and into the produce lobby, before the person could get to the top of the cellar steps and see us. I opened the door, and we tiptoed out. Really out, outside into the gardens.

I was very dismayed to find that it was pitch-dark out there, but I said, “Now, run!”

Actually we went at more of a lumbering trot, with our arms out in case we hit something, trying to follow the pale lines that were probably paths. I think that misled us a bit. We may have been following things that were accidentally pale. At any rate, after lumbering for what seemed half an hour, we found ourselves bursting out beyond some midnight black bushes into the wide-open spaces of the park, not the garden as I had expected. It seemed much, much lighter out there.

“Oh, good, we can
see
!” Millie said.

And
be seen! I thought. But we had to get outside the grounds somehow. I began to run, quite hard, toward where I thought the main gate was, taking a straight line over the driveway and across the mown turf of the parkland. I felt I couldn't get away from Stallery fast enough.

There was a deep
woof!
somewhere near us, followed by the pounding of mighty paws. I had forgotten Champ. I said a bad word and slowed down. So did Millie.

“Is that a guard dog?” she asked. She sounded even more nervous than I felt.

“Yes, but don't worry,” I said, trying to sound thoroughly confident. “He knows me.” And I called out, “Champ! Hey, Champ!”

We could trace Champ by the paws and the enormous panting at first. Then his huge dark shape appeared out of the gloom at a gallop. Millie and I both panicked and clutched at each other. But Champ simply swerved toward us, showing us he knew we were there, and went hurtling on, uttering another deep
woof
.

A second later there was the most terrible noise in the distance. Champ burst out barking, a deep, chesty baying, like thunder. Another dog joined in, this one high and ear-piercing, and yapped and yapped and yapped, making even more noise than Champ. A horse started whinnying, over and over, madly. Mixed in with the animal sounds were human voices shouting, some high, some low and angry. We had no idea
what
was going on until another human voice shouted ringingly.
“Shut up, the lot of you!”

There was instant silence. This was followed by the same voice saying, “Yes, Champ, I love you, too. Just take your paws off my shoulders, please.”

Millie shouted,
“Christopher!”
and ran toward the voice.

When I caught her up, she was hanging on to Christopher's hands with both hers, and I think she was crying. Christopher was saying, “It's all right, Millie. I only had a little bother with the changes. Nothing else was wrong. It's all
right
!”

Behind them, looming against the dark sky, was a Traveler's caravan drawn by an irritated-looking white horse. Beyond its twitching ears and flicking tail I could just see a man on the driving seat. His skin was so dark that I never saw him clearly. All I saw were his eyes, looking from me to Millie. The small white dog sitting beside him was much easier to see. Last of all I picked out the faces of a woman and two children looking at us over the man's shoulders.

Here the small white dog decided I was an intruder and started yapping again. Champ, on the ground beside me, took this as a mortal insult and replied. The two yelled abuse at each other, fit to wake the dead.

“
Do
shut them up!” I bawled across the din. “The mansion's full of lawyers and police!”

“And
Gabriel's
here!” Millie yelled. She seemed to be having some kind of reaction to our narrow escapes. Anyway, she was shivering all over.

Christopher said to the dogs, “Shut
up
!” and they did. “I
know
he's here,” he said to us. “Gabriel and his merry men were all over the towers and empty castles yesterday, having a good look at the changes. I had an awful job keeping out of sight.”

“We
have
to get away,” Millie said.

Christopher said, “I know,” and looked up at the Traveler driving the caravan. “Is there any chance you can take us all a bit farther?” he asked.

The man gave a sort of mutter and turned to talk with the woman. They spoke quickly together in a language I had never heard before. When the man turned back, he said, “We can take you down to the town, but no farther. We have a rendezvous to make just after dawn.”

“I suppose we can get a train there,” Christopher said. “Fine. Thank you.”

The woman said, “Climb in at the back, then.”

So we all scrambled into the caravan, leaving Champ as a melancholy dark hump in the middle of the parkland, and the Traveler clicked to his horse and we drove away.

It was strange inside the caravan. I never saw
it properly because it was so dark in there, but it seemed much bigger than I would have expected it to be. It was warm—at least it was warm to me, but Millie kept shivering—and full of warm smells of cloth and onions and spiciness, with a sort of tinny, metallic smell behind that. Things I couldn't see kept up a tinkling and chiming from somewhere in the walls. There were what seemed like bunks to sit on, where Christopher and I sat with Millie between us to keep her warm, looking across to the two children, who had hurried inside to stare at us through the dimness as if we were the strangest things on earth. But they wouldn't speak to us whatever we said.

“They've gone shy again. Take no notice,” Christopher said. “Why are
you
fleeing Stallery, Grant?”

“I'm a murderer,” I said, and told him about the ghost and the camera.

Christopher said, “Oh,” very soberly. After a while, he said, “I could really almost believe you
do
have bad karma, Grant, although I know you don't. You certainly have vilely bad luck. Maybe it was the magic—Did you know you were absolutely covered in spells when I first met you? One of them
may
have been a death spell. But I thought I took them all off you while we were walking through the park.”

It was my turn to say, “Oh.” I explained, rather angrily, “One of those spells was supposed to make Mr. Amos give me a job.”

“I know,” Christopher said. “That's why I took them off you. I wanted the job. What was Gabriel doing in Stallery—besides looking for me and Millie, that is?”

“Arresting Mr. Amos,” I said. “Did you know he was my uncle?”

“Gabriel
can't
be your uncle,” said Christopher. “He comes from Series Twelve.”

“No, stupid—Mr. Amos,” I said. “My mother said she was married to Mr. Amos's brother.”

“That usually does make a person your uncle,” Christopher agreed.

“And Mr. Amos is really Count of Stallery,” I told him. “Not Count Robert.
His
father was an actor called Mr. Brown. The Countess is really plain Mrs. Brown.”

Christopher was delighted. “Tell me all, Grant,” he said. So I did.

Millie said, with her teeth chattering, “Did they arrest that witch, too—Lady Mary?”

“I don't think so,” I said, “but they may have been going to arrest Mr. Seuly.”

“What a pity,” Millie said. “Lady Mary
ought
to be arrested. She uses magic in the vilest way. But—No, shut up, Christopher. Stop making clever remarks, and tell me what happened to
you
now. How did you end up with the Travelers?”

“By using my brain,” Christopher said, “at last. Before it rotted and fell out of my head. I confess that I got really stuck, out in all those empty towers and mansions. Every time there was a change—and there were plenty of those—I seemed to get farther and farther off from Stallery, and half the time there didn't seem to be a way to get anywhere, even when I went outside. I got really tired and hungry and confused. I was in a giant building made entirely of glass, when the whole scene suddenly filled with Gabriel's people. Have you ever tried to hide in a glass house? Don't. It can't be done. And they were between me and the way to the roof, so I couldn't go up there to wait for another change. So I panicked. And then I thought, There must be another way! Then I thought of Champ. Champ was never allowed into the house—”

“Just like Mr. Avenloch and Smedley!” I said. “The changes happen out in the park, too!”

“They do, Grant,” Christopher said. “The probability fault has two ends, but one is out in the middle of nowhere, and nobody notices it. As soon as I realized that, I dodged out of the beastly greenhouse and went chasing out into the moors to look for the other end. But I don't think I'd ever have found it if the Travelers hadn't come through more or less as I got there. They gave me some food, and I asked them to get me to Stallery—I hoped you were there by then, Millie—and they didn't want to do that at first. They said they would come out in the middle of the park. But I said I'd get them out through the gatehouse, so they agreed to take me.”

“How
do
we get out through the gate?” I asked.

The words were hardly out of my mouth when the regular clop of the horse's shoes stopped. The Traveler leaned back from the driver's seat and said, “Here is the gatehouse.”

“Right.” Christopher got up and scrambled to the front of the caravan.

I don't know what he did. The horse started walking again, and after a moment the inside of the caravan went so dark that the kids opposite me gave out little twitters of alarm. The next thing I knew, I was looking out of the back of the van at the tunnel of the gateway, with its gates wide open, and the horse was turning out into the road. I heard its hooves bang and slide on the tramlines as Christopher came crawling back, and then it must have found the space between the rails, because its feet settled into a regular clopping again.

“How did you do that?” Millie asked. It was a professional, enchantress sort of question, even though her teeth were still chattering.

“The gatekeeper wasn't there,” Christopher said, “so it was easy to short out the defenses. They must have arrested him, too.”

It was a long way down to Stallchester, and the horse went nothing like so fast as the tram. The slow clopping of its feet was so regular and the inside of the caravan so cozy that I fell asleep and dreamed slow cloves-and-metal-scented dreams. From time to time I woke up, usually on the steep bits, where the horse went slower than ever and the Traveler put on the brake with a long, slurring noise and called out to the horse in his foreign language. Then I went to sleep again.