The Perilous Gard (11 page)

"To see the teind paid, no doubt," murmured Christopher's voice behind Kate's shoulder.

"I never saw the teind paid," said Randal. "It's not a thing they do except when the seven years are past, or else during a time of great need, when the harvest fails or an enemy has broken into the land. No, no, if they let me come back, it's only to play my harp for them on a night when they are dancing." His whole face suddenly lit up again, and when he spoke it was as though he were lost in some dream. "O the dancing!" he whispered. "The cup that I drink from, and the singing and the gold! I've seen them strip the crowns from their heads and the jewels from their hands and throw them to me like pennies at a fair for a tune that pleased them; and then I think sure they will keep me forever, but they never do, they never do." He shook his head mournfully. "For at the last I always fall asleep, and when I awake I am lying out on the cold hillside again, and all that I have in my hand — "

He knelt down with one of his quick, fantastic movements, and taking the leather pouch from his belt, emptied something out over the stones at Kate's feet. It was a cluster of brown oak leaves and a little circlet of dead wildflowers, the blossoms so withered and dry that they had begun to fall from the stems. One or two were caught by the air and went floating away on the wind.

Randal watched them go with miserable, bewildered eyes.

"Did you ever see the like of that?" he said.

"No." Kate had never heard Christopher use that voice before. She would not have believed that he could speak so gently. "No."

"But, Randal — " she began.

Christopher dropped one hand warningly on her shoulder. "No," he repeated. Randal had picked up the cluster of oak leaves and was looking at it doubtfully.  "I keep thinking maybe they'll turn back to the gold some day, but they never do, they never do," he said with a long sigh, putting the cluster down and fumbling in the pouch again. "It's always so when I wake. There was a little yellow-haired girl who gave me the slipper from her own foot, all made of butterfly wings it was, but when I awoke all that I had in my hand — "

He drew the hand from the pouch and held something else out to them. It was a child's slipper which had once been fine leather, bright crimson, with a lace at the ankle, exactly like its mate that Christopher had found on the curbstone of the Holy Well — but this one was stained and faded and worn almost to rags.

The hand on Kate's shoulder closed suddenly and gripped it to the bone. "What little girl?" said Christopher in a harsh, tearing whisper.

Randal was busy gathering his treasures back into the pouch, and did not even glance at him.

"A little girl," he said vaguely. "A little yellow-haired girl dancing in a ring with the others. On a dancing night they make no difference between their own kind and those they have taken. It's not as it was in the old days. I've heard it said that in the old days they might take the king of the land himself to pay the teind if it pleased them; but now the best they can hope for is to find a child that's run away or been left to roam, and steal it away with them."

Kate felt Christopher behind her draw a deep, gasping breath; and for an instant she thought her shoulder would break as the hand that gripped it suddenly took the whole weight of his body. Then, just as suddenly, the hand was gone; and she heard his feet stumbling away blindly among the rocks.

"Where is he going?" asked Randal, getting up and turning his head to look. Kate lunged to her own feet and swung him around by the arm. "There's a matter he has to see to," she gabbled, improvising wildly. "We've all of us been talking too long, look at the sun, it must be almost time for dinner, you ought to get back to the castle, Sir Geoffrey won't like it if he finds out you aren't having any food or rest. Don't you remember what he told you?"

"He told me to carry him news of your doings," said Randal conscientiously, "and also that I was to play on my harp for you."

"Yes, yes, that was very kind of him," said Kate. "I'll tell you what we'll do now. You go down to the castle and have your rest, and tonight when everyone's asleep you come up on the terrace by the great hall and I'll whisper you the news of my doings out of a window. That way it will be like having a secret. None of the others will know. No one will know but you and me."

"No one but you and me," said Randal, nodding and putting his finger to his lips. He slung his cloak around him with a great air of secrecy, as pleased as a child with a new game, and then stood hesitating. "There's somebody weeping up there in the little house," he said. "Can't you hear him?"

"No," said Kate. "That's only the water from the spring by the Well, running over the rock."

"The water springing out of the rock, and a man weeping for joy up there in the little house," said Randal. "I can hear him. Don't you want to go over and see?"

"No!" said Kate. "It's nothing to trouble for. Show me now how you can go away very quietly without his catching you. Remember that no one must know you're coming up on the terrace tonight but you and me."

Randal nodded again, "Nobody but you and me," he agreed happily and went tiptoeing off up the path with all the stealth of a Robin Hood.

Kate, taking care not even to glance at the door of the leper's hut, went back to the flat rock and fixed her eyes and her mind deliberately on the walls and towers that rose into the sky at the far end of the valley. She remembered the redheaded woman saying, "They know it well enough up at the castle," and old Dorothy on the battlement walk telling her how Lord Richard's wife had taught him the ways of the land, "and he reared his sons according to the custom at the Gard; and for many and many a hundred years they held the Elvenwood and kept it free and safe from all the world." She had thought at the time that Dorothy was only boasting of the family's dignity, but now —

There was a sound as if a door had slammed open somewhere behind her, and then feet among the rocks again — very quick feet this time: running. Christopher had come out of the leper's hut and was hurtling like a comet up the slope to the pathway.

Kate caught at his hand as he shot by her.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

The comet paused for an instant in its burning flight through heaven.

"To get her back," said Christopher, in a dangerously reasonable voice. His eyes were still wet, but they looked as though they had seen the Resurrection itself, and his whole face was dazed and radiant. "Kate, did you hear him? Did you hear what he said? She's alive in there somewhere. O merciful God, Kate, she's alive!"

"Of course she's alive!" said Kate. "What did I tell you! But as for getting her back — "

"Kate, I can't stay." He was throwing the words over his shoulder now, straining against her hold. "I have to go find Master John. We never really searched that chasm under the Well. There must be a hidden way into it somewhere, and with every man from the castle and the village — "

"Have you gone mad?" Kate interrupted him. "Look at the castle! How much help can we get from there? Christopher, don't you see? Whatever it is, they're all in it together — Master John and old Dorothy and the others."

Christopher's eyes followed hers up to the line of walls and towers stretched like a protecting arm across the entrance to the valley, with the great blackened hulk of Lord Richard's keep shouldering over the rest. Then, slowly and reluctantly, the straining grip on her hand slackened.

"Yes, you're right: I must have gone mad," he said. "I wasn't thinking. What do we do now?"

"Talk," said Kate. "And would you mind if we sat down and ate a bit of your bread while we're talking? I don't know about you, but it must be almost noon by the sun, and I haven't had any breakfast."

"I might have known that would be the first thing you'd say," murmured Christopher; but he went over to the hut for his knife, and they hacked the loaf into shares and settled down together on the edge of the flat rock to eat it. The sun was now nearly overhead, and the whole valley lay in clear light from the archway in the distant wall to the dark mouth of the cave among the rocks.

"Master John is the one to reckon with," said Kate.

"I can't see Master John as the King of the Fairy Folk," remarked Christopher dryly.

"Neither can I, but he must be working for them, the way he did for the old lords. I wonder if even the old lords ever did anything but work for them. All they seem to have done for hundreds of years is stick to this place as if they were stewards or bailiffs or — "

"Wardens," said Christopher. "Guard the valley, get in the food, keep the world out of here, hold off the Church — and take their pay for it. Oh yes, it hasn't been just a matter of putting out a bowl of milk on the doorstep every night for the Little People. Or believing in the heathen gods either, perhaps. If there is anyone lurking down in that chasm to catch up the gold and the precious things the pilgrims throw into the Well, the creatures must be able to pay a fortune for whatever help or protection the castle gives them. Geoffrey never could understand where Anne's father got all the money he had to spend on long galleries and Italian paintings and tapestries and other gear. I'm glad she didn't tell him."

"I think she must have wanted to break away from them," said Kate, remembering the book she had found in the long gallery, and some of the other things she had learned about Lady Heron.

Christopher paused a moment before he answered.

"Yes, poor Anne," he said. "God forgive me, no wonder she was so set on getting Geoffrey out of the country! Can you imagine telling Geoffrey that your family belonged to a heathen cult that paid teinds to hell, and he would have to connive at it? Geoffrey, of all men?"

Kate thought of Sir Geoffrey's stern face, the iron mouth, the level implacable gray eyes. She shook her head. "Even old Dorothy told me you could never teach him the way of the land," she said, and added: "I suppose that was why they had to steal Cecily."

"Why they had to steal Cecily?"

"They'd want her for a hostage."

"Hostage?"

"To bargain with." It seemed to Kate that it was taking him a long time to see something so simple and obvious. "How could they know that you'd shut yourself up here and he'd go off and leave the place to Master John again?" she asked impatiently. "They must have had some other plan when they took her. Tell me, what would Sir Geoffrey give them to keep her safe?"

"Geoffrey," said Sir Geoffrey's brother, "would give them the castle and the Elvenwood and the last drop of blood in his body before he'd let them harm a hair of her head."

"There, then!" said Kate. "What did I tell you! It would be the first thing they'd think of."

"Yes," said Christopher slowly. "It would certainly be the first thing they'd think of, if — "

"If?"

Christopher's eyes went from the archway in the castle wall back to the dark entrance of the well cave.

"If they think of it as we would."

In spite of the noonday sun and the warm rock Kate suddenly felt as if a cold finger had reached out and touched her.

"What do you mean?" she asked sharply.

"I mean we're not dealing with just Master John or old Dorothy," said Christopher. "They're only on the edge of the circle; they're people like ourselves. But we can't be sure about Those in the Well. I'm not saying they're gods or anything of the kind. It's that we don't know how their minds work. We can't judge them by ourselves. Whatever they are, they're different. They live by another rule. We may think that the only way they could use Cecily would be as a hostage, to give them power over Geoffrey. They may think they could get far more power by using her for something else."

"But what else?" cried Kate, almost angrily, because she was so frightened. "What else could it be?"

"You heard what Randal told us," said Christopher grimly. "I don't know whether the seven years are past or not, but surely they must have come to 'the time of great need' that he was speaking of? They've lost the Wardens; Anne never even tried to teach Geoffrey the way of the land; everything's turning against them. And now this last week the harvest has failed too. You and I may say that it was only the chance of a bad storm coming after a wet summer. But don't you understand how it must seem to them?"

Kate gripped her hands together.

"Randal said they would always take a man to pay the teind when they could," she protested.

"Yes — when they could," retorted Christopher. "He also said that they've had to be satisfied with a child for a long while now."

"I don't believe it. I don't believe it, I tell you. They must be keeping her for a hostage. I'm sure they only want her for a hostage."

"We can hope so, certainly. But how much would you be willing to risk on the chance?"

"She was still alive when Randal saw her. They hadn't done her any harm."

"That means nothing. They may be waiting for some particular time or feast day. In the tales they're supposed to be very scrupulous about forms and observances and keep to the exact letter of any bargain they make." He paused, frowning.

"That ballad about Tam Lin," he said abruptly. "The one Randal was singing. How does it go on? What night did he tell his sweetheart that he would have to pay the teind?"

"I never heard Tam Lin before. I don't know."

"It was All Hallows' Eve," said Christopher. "I remember now.

The night is Halloween, my love,
  The morn is Hallows' Day —

All Hallows' Eve. That's the night before All Saints' Day, the very end of October. So if they follow the same rule here, it would mean that we still have a little time."

"More than two months," said Kate, the blood coming back to her heart. She had been thinking of the very next night, or the night after that. By comparison, the end of October seemed blessedly far away.

"Yes," said Christopher. "The trouble is, we can't be sure they follow the same rule here. We can't even be sure that All Hallows' Eve is the right time. Two lines from a ballad aren't much to go by. Ballad singers are always changing verses about and forgetting them and putting in new ones." He slipped to his feet and walked restlessly away from her to the verge of the path, where it began to climb up steeply towards the Standing Stone.