Norton, Andre - Novel 23 (32 page)

 
          
 
Damaris did not turn to the house but kept a
course which led to the courtyard with its cluster of small buildings, all
designed for special uses. There were two lighted lanterns set up on posts, but
luckily the circles of radiance about them were not great.

 
          
 
The younger girl, still hand clasped with
Saranna, made her way to the spring house. She pushed upon the door and slipped
inside.

 
          
 
"Now," she told Saranna. "I
have to feel my way, and I have to use both hands. You hold on to my skirt,
tight. And we have to go slow—it's all dark here."

 
          
 
They shuffled along against a damp, cold wall
where Saranna's shoulder brushed the stone blocks of its building. "Stop
here," Damaris ordered.

 
          
 
That dark was so
utter
Saranna could not see anything of the younger girl, but she did hear a series
of scratching noises.
Then a faint grating sound.

 
          
 
"Stoop down—way down," Damaris said.
"Then come up—slow."

 
          
 
Saranna did as she was ordered. Now both
shoulders brushed against walls as she moved forward half-crouched.

 
          
 
"Wait here. I have to close the
door."

 
          
 
Damaris squeezed back by her in a space so
narrow that Saranna's breath came faster, her fear of being shut in some kind
of box was awakening. Once more Damaris pushed past her.

 
          
 
Holding tightly to the girl's skirt, Saranna
crept
forward step by reluctant step.

 
          
 
"You can straighten up now,” Damans'
voice echoed hollowly. "And I'll tell you when the stairs start—“

 
          
 
Stairs?
A secret way into Tiensin?

 
          
 
"Right here," Damaris spoke with the
confidence of one who had made this trip before. "We have to go down—
twelve steps—"

 
          
 
Saranna felt cautiously with the toe of her
shoe. She began to count in her head as she went down.
Twelve—then
another flat surface.

 
          
 
"Straight ahead now—until we go up
again—" Damaris said.

 
          
 
"What is this—a passage?"

 
          
 
"A secret," Damaris replied.
"It's a secret I promised not to tell. But we have to use it. Anyway, she
don't
know about it. Nobody in Tiensin did after the workmen
went back to
China
, nobody but Grandfather and me. He never even told my father. Straight
ahead—and it won't be too far, I promise, Saranna."

 
          
 
As Saranna climbed the second flight of
stairs, she was completely confused. Why had this hidden way been fashioned to
Captain Whaley's order? Had he feared some vengeance and so set up a way of
secret escape? And where within Tiensin would they emerge?

 
          
 
"Wait!" Saranna had counted only
five steps when Damaris' voice brought her to a halt. "Now I have to open
the other door."

 
          
 
There were sounds probably magnified by the
darkness in which they stood. Then light burst upon them. Those beams were
faint enough but seemed dazzling to Saranna after her long (for it seemed very
long) period in the total dark.

 
          
 
Against that light showed Damaris’ silhouette.
Then the younger girl climbed a step or two and vanished. Saranna followed as
quickly as she could, so eager to be out of that black passage that she did not
fear what might lie ahead.

 
          
 
However, this room she entered through a
trapdoor was no part of Tiensin she had ever seen. And piled around its low
walls were those wicker hampers she herself had helped to pack on the night of
the storm. A single lantern hung from a hook in the ceiling right above the door.
This was plainly a storeroom, but how near those ordinarily used by the
household, Saranna wondered?

           
 
Damans appeared fully at ease, showing no
wariness. She lowered the trapdoor, which moved easily as if designed to be
handled by one without great physical strength. Then she walked confidently to
the door.

 
          
 
"You wait here—just a minute," the
younger girl ordered, slipping through the narrowest crack she could manage.

 
          
 
As she stood there, Saranna's nose twitched.
There were strange odors in this place. Not the damp of underground,
nor
the familiar mustiness of most storerooms. The scent she
picked up was spicy, a little like perfume. She knew it of
old,
this was the same smell she had caught in Damaris' bedchamber. Also in its
concentration was a mingling of those pleasant perfumes from the chamber behind
the moon door. Had the secret way brought them so into the domain of the Fox
Lady?

 
          
 
Saranna was given little time to speculate.
The door opened as softly as Damaris had closed it. Now the child had returned
followed by that old woman who so noiselessly and deftly served the tea and
played the lute in the moon house. The ancient one studied Saranna and gave a
tongue-clicking sound which could only express dismay.

 
          
 
"It is all right," Damaris said.
"You must go with A-Han. The Princess cannot be disturbed while she summons
the forces. But afterward, she will need us."

 
          
 
A-Han came to Saranna. Gently she took the
girl's scratched and grimed hand, patted it reassuringly. Smiling she drew the
older girl with her, out of the door into a courtyard around which stood the
four walls of a building. Gleams of lanterns shown through latticed windows,
diffused by those blinds to dim radiance.

 
          
 
With A-Han, Saranna stepped up on a narrow
terrace and entered a shadowy room. The servant pushed her down on a chair,
hurried to light another lantern, this covered with pale golden silk so that
its light was golden, too. She scurried about at a pace which belied her
age-marked face, bringing first a large but low tub, then an array of pots and
jars, and lastly an armload of what could only be towels.

 
          
 
There was a scratching at the door, a low
word. A-Han opened a sliding panel, brought m a huge pitcher from which steam
curled, after that two buckets, the contents of which she splashed into the
tub, adding the heated water more slowly with much testing by her fingers.

 
          
 
Saranna lay resting, half drowsing, on a low
divan sometime later. She had been bathed as if she were a child, then her body
rubbed with a fragrant oil to ease her aches. Tea had been brought her and
small cakes which were not sweet but crisp and filled with a paste of meat and
vegetables. She wore not her torn and shabby clothing, but rather a long robe
styled much as that she had seen last on the Princess. This thick brocade was a
rust-brown red in color, and it was overpatterned with fine embroidery in a
design of pine branches and cones—the cones being picked out with threads of
gold, so her every move awakened a spark or two of glitter.

 
          
 
Her hair had been smoothed with a comb dipped
in scented liquid between each stroke and then formed into a soft coil at the
nape of her neck into which pins with flower heads had been skillfully placed
to hold safely. In all her life, even during the good days in
Boston
, Saranna had never known such care, or been
surrounded by such luxury and beauty,

 
          
 
A-Han's hands had somehow driven even the ache
from her head, as the old woman had kneaded and worked upon the girl's neck and
shoulders. She drifted now on a sea of drowsy contentment. Those dangers and
fears which had driven her for hours seemed very far away and of little matter.
She did not even ask for Damaris who had vanished again. No, it was enough to
lie here in the golden light of the lantern, to feel clean and safe—

 
          
 
Saranna's eyes drooped shut, and she must have
slept. Then into that sleep
came
a summons which she
knew she must obey.

 
          
 
"Younger sister, it is now the hour!”

 
          
 
Saranna stirred. She tried to cling to
slumber; there was something waiting for her when she waked—something she dared
not—

 
          
 
"Younger sister, wake!"

 
          
 
That command she could not withstand.

 
          
 
She opened her eyes. The golden lantern no
longer glowed. Instead, sunlight struck across the floor. Full in the path of
that natural light stood one she knew.

 
          
 
A robe of blue-green, so stiff with silver
embroidery that it was like armor rather than any conventional dress, covered
this woman from throat to floor. Above the high collar the fox face turned
toward her, and above that an awesome headdress of what must be royal rank.

 
          
 
The Fox Lady raised her hand, beckoned.
Saranna struggled free of the last dregs of her sleep and arose. Then she saw
that a little behind the impressive figure of this ruler of the hidden garden
was Damaris.

 
          
 
Even as Saranna, she wore an
embroidered robe, her hair nearly all hidden under a small crown of filigree
and flowers.
She held her hands stiffly before her, carrying, as if it
were a small shield for her breast, a round piece of polished metal. Nor did
Damaris give any greeting as Saranna moved to join them. Her expression was one
of concentration, as if she were intent upon some serious act for which she
alone was responsible.

 
          
 
The Fox Lady passed into the courtyard beyond
the room where Saranna had lain, and the girls followed behind her. They
crossed a pavement between tubs m which small flowering trees and shrubs were
rooted, and entered yet another door. Here was the room Saranna had seen twice
before, that which was the chamber of the Fox Lady.

 
          
 
Incense curled before a statue in the comer,
the statue of a woman who held within her arms, as she might a nursing child, a
fox cub. While from the folds of her carven robe, where the long skirt trailed
a little on to the base supporting her hidden feet, were the heads of other
cubs, their sharp muzzles a little elevated as if they sniffed the air,
something very alert and waiting about them.

 
          
 
Before the statue, the Fox Lady bowed her
head. Her voice arose in a sing-song chant. From beneath the concealing length
of sleeve, her hand advanced to pick up a small carven stick lying at the feet
of the statue. With this the Fox Lady struck a jade ring hanging suspended to
her right. The chime of the sound seemed to fill the room, roll out across the
garden with all the power of a thunderclap, musical as the note was.

 
          
 
That must have been a signal, for, beyond the
moon door, from the terrace without, there now began the slow beat of a drum,
low, almost muffled. Saranna felt the rhythm through her body as if the soft
beat kept time to the beating of her own heart. The Fox Lady bowed once more to
the statue and then paced, as one heading a formal procession, through the moon
door onto the terrace.

 
          
 
This time they walked into the full light of
day; no moon helped to make the world a mystery. Yet here were also the foxes
gathered in a line which extended from one end of the terrace to the other.
Motionless they sat so. They might well have been carved from red stone. Save
for the larger two just before where the Fox Lady came to a halt. That pair was
silver-white, larger than their fellows.

 
          
 
There were men stationed behind that gathering
of foxes —four, two on either side. They, too, had the appearance of strange
dream creatures, for their bodies were entirely encased in armor. And those
helms which completely covered their faces were giant fox heads wrought in
burnished and lifelike painted lacquer. Their hands were closed upon the staffs
of banners at the folds of which the wind tugged fitfully.

 
          
 
Saranna could now see the drummer, a man with
a face as aged as that of A-Han, a man with a whisper of white beard on his
chin. He tapped out that monotonous beat with the fingers of his right hand,
holding the drum before him as he sat cross-legged on the terrace. There were
two others beside him, older women, one A-Han, the other even more aged and
bent. Together they tended a brazier. Incense smoke arose in great gray curls
from its pierced top.

 
          
 
Beat—beat—the drum rhythm was the only sound.
The rise and fall of those fingers which induced it the only
movement now among the party on the terrace.
They all faced in quiet
watchfulness the direction of the path down which Saranna had twice found her
way.

 
          
 
There was a distant shout, a crashing, Saranna
started, then noted that those with her betrayed no such sign of surprise. They
seemed fully ready to confront what came in their own fashion. Not even one of
the foxes showed any uneasiness.

 
          
 
A second crash, then the sound of trampling
through bushes which the low beat of the drum could neither disguise nor cover.
Saranna's heart beat faster than the drum now. She guessed what was happening;
the men Honora had planned to bring from the city must be here, already
beginning their destruction of the hidden garden. Yet those on the terrace did
not move—they waited.

 
          
 
There followed sounds of crashing stone, of
splintering and chopping, which made Saranna sick. Still the Fox Lady faced
unmoved, as far as the girl could perceive, the source of those sounds.
However, now her hands reached forth— pushing free of those long sleeves—one to
Damaris, one to Saranna. And the older girl knew instinctively what was
expected of her at this moment. She clasped the left hand of the lady with her
right,
those nail coverings cold and hard in her grasp.
While Damaris, now holding the round piece of metal with her right hand, took
the lady's with her left. So linked, they stood, still impassive.

 
          
 
A bush was shaken furiously, dragged free of
the soil, and tossed aside. Into the open crowded a crew so ugly that Saranna
wanted to shrink away, only to understand that at this moment she could and
dare not. But, having broken into the open before the terrace, the men stopped,
amazed at the party waiting to receive them. Saranna saw uncertainty cross the
faces of the foremost. Then their party parted to give Honora passage.