The Perilous Gard (15 page)

She caught her breath sharply. In Master John's world, there were only two possible ways to protect oneself from an enemy, by fraud or by violence; but in the dark world of the Fairy Folk, there was another. She thought of Randal, with his wits shattered into fragments, and Christopher Heron's blind, enchanted eyes turning to his master; and her heart failed her utterly. There were some things she might perhaps bring herself to face, scraping a little courage together in her last need, but not that. She could not bear to have her mind taken away from her. The mere possibility of it was unendurable. She could not bear it. She would rather die.

 — And that, she told herself savagely, was ridiculous. What was the use of proclaiming in a lordly way that she would rather die? Nobody was going to give her any choice in the matter. When the moment came, they would do exactly as they pleased; and she would have to endure it whether it was unendurable or not. What she ought to be thinking of, while she had the time, was how to get out of the evidence room and away from the castle.

She knew that the door to the terrace was locked. She remembered Master John turning the key and putting it into the pouch at his side. She tried the door leading into the great hall. It had been locked too, from the other side. That left the window.

The window itself was simply a common window, with two latticed leaves opening outward on the terrace. The protecting grille of iron bars had been fitted over it, cage fashion, on the inner wall of the evidence room. Like all the rest of Master John's possessions, the grille was in excellent repair, freshly painted and firmly secured: not even a speck of dust fell when she shook it. The most she could do, by thrusting her hand between the bars, was to push one leaf back a few inches and look out at the courtyard. The moon had risen, and the courtyard was swimming in dim silvery light, except where the great black hulk of Lord Richard's tower threw everything into darkness.

In the light a shadowy figure was coming up the steps to the terrace.

For one dreadful moment Kate thought that the gray creature from the Holy Well had trailed them up to the castle, and was hovering about the door. Then she realized that the figure coming up the steps was singing softly to itself, another part of the ballad about the minstrel who had met the fairy lady under the elder tree, the same ballad that she had once heard him singing in the forest:

So they fared on, and further on,
  The steed went swifter than the wind;
Until they came to a desert place,
  And living land was left behind.
For forty days and forty nights,
  They wade through red blood to the knee;
And they saw neither sun nor moon,
  But heard the roaring of the sea.
 

He broke off as he emerged on the terrace, and paused to look about him, his shadowy head turning from side to side. "Where are you?" he whispered.

"Randal," said Kate. In the strain and excitement of the long day, she had entirely forgotten her flurried arrangements to meet him on the terrace that night, when it was dark, and give him the news of her doings that he was to carry to Sir Geoffrey.

Randal took an uncertain step towards the window.

"That's not your own room you're in," he said doubtfully.

"No, but I'm staying here for a little," Kate answered, deciding that it would only waste time and confuse him if she tried to explain any further. She must not waste time, and she must not confuse him — that was what Christopher had told her to remember, it was very important not to confuse him. "See what I have for you, Randal."

She drew the folded paper out of her bodice and shook it free from the coils of the redheaded woman's chain. (What else was it that Christopher had said? Don't use many words. Be very simple and plain. Make sure he knows exactly where he's to go and how soon he has to get there.) "Look! I've written down all the news of my doings for you to carry to Sir Geoffrey. It's a letter."

"A letter?" Randal seemed pleased. "A true letter with a seal on it?"

"No, there isn't any seal on it, but it's a letter, a true letter, and Sir Geoffrey will be very glad to get it," said Kate carefully. "I want you to take it to him at his house in Norfolk. Now. Tonight. See, I'll reach it out to you through the bars just as if I were a prisoner in a dungeon and you were trying to help me. And," she added, "don't show it to anybody else, because it's a secret letter, and that would spoil the secret."

"You forgot to say I was to put it into his own hand," Randal pointed out, like a child insisting that a story should be told in the exact words to which he was accustomed. But he took the letter without any more dispute and tucked it away into the breast of his doublet. Apparently, all her other instructions had been familiar and acceptable to him. "Yes, yes, that's right, you put it into his own hand," Kate hurried to assure him. "And, Randal — there's one thing more I want you to tell him. It's not in the letter. It's a spoken word from me. Tell Sir Geoffrey that something else had happened here" — better not say what the "something" was; it would be too much for Randal to grapple with — "and tell him that he must be back on All Hallows' Eve at the latest. At the very latest. Do you understand that?"

"I can say it all over by heart," Randal informed her proudly. "It's a secret letter for Sir Geoffrey. And I'm to carry it to him at his house in Norfolk. And I'm to put it into his own hand. And I'm to tell him to be back here on All Hallows' Eve."

"By All Hallows' Eve."

"Isn't it the same?"

Kate could have kicked herself. She had been a fool. She ought to have said simply that Sir Geoffrey must come back at once.

"Isn't it the same?" Randal repeated. His voice had begun to waver again.

"Yes, it's the same," Kate answered quickly, terrified that he might become completely bewildered if she argued about the message any longer. And after all, she reflected, it did not make very much difference. Sir Geoffrey would be sure to start back as soon as he had the letter, no matter what Randal told him. "Don't worry your head over the word from me: you have it all fine and clear. Now, go before anyone sees you, and — O heavens! I didn't think! The gates will be locked by this time."

"I don't like having gates locked on me," said Randal, shaking his head disapprovingly. "One night when they were locked on me here, I found a way of my own over the castle wall down back of the stables, for it's an ill thing to stay in a place you can't get out of. That's the way I go now if I don't want anyone to see me. Watch!" and with one of his sudden, fantastic movements he turned and was gone down the steps so quickly and lightly that Kate did not even hear the sound of his feet on the stones.

What she did hear was Master John's voice speaking to someone outside the closed door that led to the great hall.

She had barely time to get back to her old place, kneeling down by the fire, when a key rattled in the lock, the latch was lifted, and Master John appeared on the threshold. Kate had not, after her first moment of panic, really thought that he would swoop down on her with a knife in his hand; but she was entirely unprepared for what followed. He did not even glance about to see where she was. He was half turned away, looking back towards the great hall, his shoulders a little bent in the tag end of a deferential bow. He swung the door open obsequiously, sidling along with it until it stopped against the wall; and then, to Kate's amazement, he went down on one knee and lowered his head, like a court gentleman waiting for the Queen to go by.

The Lady in the Green came quietly past him into the room and stood still, looking down at them both, very much as she had stood that evening on the forest road. She had not changed at all — rather, it was the walls and shelves and windows of Master John's room that suddenly looked changed, unreal and grotesque, as if a young disdainful living tree had sprung up by magic through the flat boards of the floor. The mingled light of the fire and the candles flickered over the long, cloudy dark hair, the glinting bracelet on her wrist, the shadowy greens of her cloak. The cloak was woven in varying shades of leaf color that wavered and shifted continually under the light, oak leaf, willow leaf, holly leaf, ash leaf, thorn leaf, elder and hazel, ivy and moss and fern. The dress under the cloak had been made of the same stuff; and both were cut in strange patterns, the dress all soft flowing lines that clung to the body, the cloak turned back at the throat into great curving folds that were caught on the left shoulder with a long pin of dark bronze. The fluctuating shapes and tints baffled the eye like the interlaced branches and foliage of a thicket. The only thing Kate could really see was the face with its hard delicate bones and faintly amused, disdainful mouth.

"Is that the girl?" said the Lady.

Her voice was lilting and musical like Randal's, but it was not Randal's that sprang into Kate's mind the instant she heard it. It was the royal voice of the Princess Elizabeth. They both spoke with the same clarity, the same inborn, almost unconscious power to command.

Only they were not altogether the same. The Princess Elizabeth's voice could cut like a knife when she was impatient or angry with a maid of honor — but when she called anyone "girl," it had never sounded exactly as though she were saying: "the dog" or "the horse."

"That is the girl, madam," said Master John, with another deferential bend of his head. Master John actually confronting the Lady in the Green was a very different man from Master John talking of reasonable human beings while he sat cross legged in his armchair. Kate could hear his steward's chain give a faint nervous chink as he shifted the weight on his knee against the hard boards of the floor. She suddenly realized that she too was still down on her knees by the fire and scrambled awkwardly to her feet. At least she did not have to stay groveling on the hearth like one of the enchanted pigs in a story about Ulysses and Circe that Master Roger had read to them in the old days at Hatfield.

"Is she always so clumsy?" inquired the Lady.

There was no malice in the question. She was merely running her eye over the lines of the dog or the horse.

"Always, madam," said Master John.

The Lady glanced at Kate's set face.

"And stubborn?" she asked.

"Very stubborn," agreed Master John. "Even if her mind were to be taken away from her — "

"I won't have my mind taken away from me," Kate interrupted him, forgetting that she did not have any choice in the matter.

The disdainful curve of the beautiful mouth became slightly - only very slightly — more pronounced; but when the Lady spoke again, it was still to Master John. "Do you want me to take her mind away from her?" she said.

"Well, madam," replied Master John, "for my own part — so far as I may judge, since you ask it of me — I do not see why you should put yourself to the trouble. I have always been one to hold by the old proverb, 'Stone dead hath no fellow,' and so please you, I would rather it were that."

The Lady glanced at Kate again. It was impossible to tell what she thought of Master John's suggestion. Her face was entirely unchanged. Kate could only stand there and wait for the answer, suddenly and agonizingly conscious of her own living body, the feel of her foot on the floor, the pounding of her heart against her side.

"I see no need of her death," said the Lady indifferently. "She does not appear to me to be of any great value, and in my land she will be worth even less than she is here; but there are certain mortal women that we keep in the Hill for our servants and scrubbers, and if she is taken and trained I think some use may be made of her. Fetch me a — "

Kate did not hear the rest of the sentence. Her foot had lost the feel of the floor; the walls and shelves and windows were all sliding and blurring together, just as they had in her dream. She caught at the back of Master John's armchair and clung to it while the room reeled around her.

When it steadied, Master John had disappeared and the Lady was no longer watching her. She had moved closer to the fire and was unclasping the bracelet from her left arm. On the inner side, where the turn of the wrist had hidden it, was a huge rounded stone, green like an emerald, set in the gold. The Lady touched one of the little claws that held the stone down, and it sprang erect as if it were the lid of a box.

Master John scurried back through the door to the great hall. This time he had a cup in his hand; when he knelt again and offered it to the Lady, Kate could see that there was wine in it. The Lady struck the edge of her bracelet very lightly against the rim. A tiny stream of white powder poured out from under the green jewel and fell over the wine. Then she took the cup from Master John and beckoned Kate to come to her.

"No," said Kate, gripping the back of the armchair. It was as though she were at the Holy Well again, pressed against the sheltering stone, watching the gray creature lean over Christopher with the phial in its hand, seeing once more the blank face and the blind witless eyes. "No," she said breathlessly. "Please. I will go without it. Quietly. Truly I will."

"This drink is not what we gave to the Young Lord, if that is what you fear," said the Lady calmly. "That was something else. This is only what we mingle with the water in the rich pilgrim's cup, to free him from sorrow and pain or the grief of a wound. The mortal women we keep in the Hill drink it every day. It takes away the heaviness of their minds, and makes them peaceful and content." Kate ran her tongue over her dry lips. "I do not want my mind to be taken away," she said.

"It will not take away your mind," said the Lady, "only the part of your mind which sees what is harsh or unpleasing. And who would not be glad to lose that?"

"Well — " Kate ran her tongue over her lips again. "Are you?"

"I?" said the Lady, almost sharply.

"You and the others. Your people. T-the Fairy Folk," Kate stammered. "Do you also drink it every day?"

"We do not need to be eased so," said the Lady. "But you will not be able to endure the nature of my land without it. We do not ask that except of a teind-payer, and even then only if he is a young man strong enough to serve his nine weeks' death-time, as the kings of the land did in the old days."