Here There Be Dragonnes (25 page)

"So, let it be: he'll return to plain fare soon enough . . ."

After I was reconciled to all this—superficially at least—there was still the wonderment of realizing where men and women fitted into each other like mortice and tenon, their bodies tongued and grooved and dovetailed like fair furniture. But I had not thought that this coupling could be a thing of such violence, of cries and tearings, of hurt and passion. Still, it was interesting, just the same, and I thought about it at intervals for quite some time. The only sure thing in all this cogitating was that a body such as mine, all humps and crookedness, would need a very fine carpenter indeed to marry the parts to another.

Of the strange noises in the hall, the feelings of terror and despair, Snowy at least was positive something should be done. The trouble was, we did not know whether there was anything actually underneath the floor, as I suspected, though when I went back later and stamped, quietly, I reported back that there seemed to be an echo of sorts beneath my feet.

"Sounds like a cellar," said Puddy. "Or a dungeon."

Something tickled at the back of my mind: hadn't the Lady Adiora said something about a dungeon? But my thoughts were going back farther than that.

"The castle seems to have been built on the foundations of a large Roman villa," I said slowly. "And if I remember—if I recall—someone must have told me that those old villas had great storerooms underneath, and lots of pipes and channels for a hot-water warming system; sometimes these cellars extended even beyond the foundations of the house itself if there wasn't a ready supply of water adjacent—"

"The lake!" said Corby. "But they don't use it now: go a half-mile for fresh water from a river through on the other side of the woods. Heard one of the nags grumbling 'bout doing the journey three times a day or more when there's company."

"Water in that lake looks dead," said Puddy. "Can't have been alive for years."

"We must take a look," said Snowy. "All that you have said, Thing, makes me believe that there is something gravely amiss here. A larger amount of fodder than is necessary for the beasts here is collected daily, and some of it carried outside the castle walls. As far as I remember there are no outer stables, nor any cattle grazing . . . I think, friends, it is time we took some exercise."

So it was that I rode out of the stable, Moglet and Puddy inside my jacket, Pisky's bowl slung round my waist and Corby wobbling on my shoulder, to ask the soldiers on duty that the main gate be opened.

We were greeted by a shout of laughter. "Call that thing a horse?" guffawed one of the gate-guards. "And as for that tatty bird . . . Any more in the travelling circus?"

I frowned most dreadfully, and I could hear Corby grinding his beak, but Snowy behaved just like the clown they believed him: stumbled a little, flicked his ears back and forth, swished his tail and gave me some good advice in the midst of all this as well.

"Go easy, Thing dear: every human likes to laugh, and the more they despise us the more ready they will be to disregard us as a threat to whatever they are hiding. Play as silly as me, there's a good girl. And, wise crow, fall off your perch and try and look ridiculous, if you can . . ."

So we found ourselves outside the gate, with a good deal of chaffing on the guard's part, and a secret rage in my breast. I turned Snowy's head eagerly towards the side of the castle nearest the lake, but quite unexpectedly he stopped suddenly and lowered his head and I slid gracefully down his neck to land on the turf in a heap. I got to my feet, spilling cats and toads and fish all over the place.

"What on earth did you do that for?" I demanded furiously, but even as I asked I heard the sound of laughter carried from the gateway, and turned to see them all still watching us.

"That was the reason," said Snowy. "So, today we shall not go near the lake, but shall rather ride innocently through the forest for a while. Get up again, Thing: I promise none of this will be wasted."

So that day we rode the perimeter of the castle, but some hundred yards hidden in the forest. We found neither bird nor beast to disturb its stillness, but we did find another exit. We had originally approached the castle from the east, joining the woodland ride that approached it from the south; but running near north there was another ride that ended on a knoll looking over a swift-running river, which was obviously where the household water was collected each day. Beyond this was a wooden bridge, a small village on the other bank, and thick forest. We followed the ride back towards the castle, and found that we emerged some quarter mile from the strange enclosed space at the back of the building, and even as we watched from the shelter of the trees we could see that the pavilions inside were being enlarged and painted, and at one time someone opened the bolted wooden gates and we could see the gravel within being meticulously raked into formal patterns and the tubs of shrubs being moved to the sides.

Snowy sighed, and I could feel him shiver beneath me. "I think we are almost too late: tomorrow and the day after it will rain, and then I think they will leave it till the full moon . . . We have five days. Tomorrow we shall have to risk going by the lake. It is too soon, I fear, but it is a risk we shall have to take if we are to free them."

"Them?" I echoed, but he only shook his head, and carried us swiftly back through the rest of the semicircle of forest.

The next morning we were out again, but this time attracted far less attention from the guards, as Snowy had predicted. Again as he had promised the sky was overcast and a little warning wind rattled the flags on their poles, then died away.

I had attended supper again the previous night in the great hall, and had had to face once again the sight of Conn, utterly besotted, eyes only for the Lady Adiora. Upstairs there had been castle servants who shouldered me out of the way when the bathing-water was produced, and there were others to air his new clothes—russet and green, fine wool and silk—and make up the bed, so I was largely redundant as far as I could see. We had only exchanged a couple of words, when he had fallen over me in his hurry to bathe and change and then, as I had apologized for being in the way, he had looked at me with an air of puzzlement as if he did not recognize me, and had merely asked, after a moment, if my room were comfortable. I had said yes, of course I had, for it was obvious that he had forgotten about the rest of us, or at least put us to the back of his mind for the time being. So I had not reminded him I had been banished to the stables, had not told him our fear of what the dungeons held, and most of all had not let him know how I hated the Lady Adiora for stealing him away and despised him for letting her. In all this, of course, I was forgetting Corby's wise words, but solecisms and banalities, however true they may be to the objective eye, are no use at all to one who is subjectively green with jealousy all over like an unripe apple, even if that one has absolutely no right to be . . .

So, as I said, we went out that next morning to spy out the land on the lakeward side of the castle. I dismounted on the other side of a clump of sear and withered reeds and tipped Puddy and Pisky into the waters to see what life there was, if any, and Moglet was detailed to work her way around the edge, keeping as far as possible out of sight. Corby was set as lookout and Snowy was to crop aimlessly towards the castle and an interesting-looking dark, gullied gateway set in the castle wall. I was the distraction: if I thought anyone was watching I behaved like the village idiot, capering around and turning somersaults and picking daisies for a chain.

We agreed a sun-time, which I reckoned would be near enough an hour, and it must have been near midday when we met again, casually enough, behind the clump of reeds. Pisky and Puddy were last at the rendezvous and I had to haul them both out of the water, gasping and distressed, all too ready to blurt out their joint discoveries.

"It's all dark and lifeless and choking and black with slime and mud and there are no fish—"

"Water's stagnant, been like that a long time. Once connected to the castle. Long pipe, blocked up with mud. Tried to get down it but failed."

"Pipe is all choked up with clay and dead bones and gravel—"

"Could be cleared. Water level is above pipe-mouth."

"—and nasty, smelly, stinking water. A hand beneath the water and you can't see a fin in front of you. No water-bugs, no snails, no red bottom-worms even, no nothing . . ."

"There's something like a sluice gate above that pipe," said Moglet unexpectedly. "I've seen something like that before: the wood is sound, but it looks as though it hasn't been used for many years, and would need a good greasing before it would shift. The rest of the lakeside is barren, and there is very little cover."

"The Romans' water system worked something like that," I said, still wondering how I knew. "Water from an outside source ran through pipes that were heated in cavities under the house. A—a hypocaust . . ."

"Well," said Snowy. "I've been cropping grass till I'm swollen-bellied, but I still can't see a way into the dungeons, or whatever they are, to find what I know is there. There is nothing but that barred gate to see."

"That pipe runs right beneath the grass and through that gate," said Corby. "The grass is a different colour. Dug years ago, but you can always tell."

"But the water can't get through," I objected. "Moglet and Puddy and Pisky said so. It can't have anything to do with floods or things drowning—"

"'Ware strangers!" hissed Corby, and we all ducked down behind the reeds except Snowy, who was too big.

From the front of the castle came half-a-dozen or so stable-hands carrying sacks and fodder and as we watched they moved, bowed with the weights, to the dark gateway in the wall. One man took out a large key and unlocked it and they passed inside—and out from that unlocked gate flowed such a miasma of fear and despair that it crawled as palpable as a fog to where we lay hidden, and such overwhelming sorrow struck my heart that I beat my hands against invisible bars and sobbed out my prisonment.

"Shut up, Thing!" warned Corby. "They're coming out again."

And as we watched the stable-servants emerged with baskets of ordure and cast them into the cesspit beyond the lake and rapidly infilled with fresh earth, but as they did so Moglet and Snowy sniffed the wind.

"Deer, boar . . ."

"Hare, coney?"

"Bear? Wild pony, certainly."

"Badger."

"We must get in there somehow," said Snowy urgently. "My nose tells me that there are dozens of animals in there, and we still don't know why!"

The idea seemed ridiculous to me. Why keep animals imprisoned underground? If one wanted meat one either grazed cattle or hunted, that was part of life. Why keep them fed and watered underground, when it was so much cheaper to let them roam free? Deer and boar were plentiful, at least outside this forest, and so were the smaller game. Everywhere else but here: was that the answer? Was that why they stored them? But what of the absence of any kind of life: no birds, no hedgepigs, no mice, no rats? And the overwhelming fear that overlaid all? But why,
why?
There must be a simple explanation . . . A feast and a fair, that was it! They had some deer, boar and hare for the feast, ready for easy slaughter when the time was ripe. And the others were for the usual tainted entertainment this place seemed to afford. The smell of badger that Moglet had detected in the droppings must mean that one comer of that enclosed space they had been tidying and gravelling yesterday would be reserved for baiting, and the bear must be a tame one, trained for dancing. The wild ponies? Those I supposed would be for the lady's horsebreakers to show off their arts. If the general standards of entertainment in this place were anything to go by, this was an improvement: better than the stupid torturing pleasure they usually seemed to take with strange, twisted things like me . . .

"No," said Snowy, who had obviously been reading my thoughts. "No, there are too many, dear child, and their fear has infected all the land around. It is more than mere sport or entertainment."

"Then what?"

"I am not sure. Not yet . . . But one of us must get in there to find out."

It started to rain, quite heavily. One of the men carrying over more hay looked up and saw us.

"Hey you: Crookback! Yes, you . . . Bring that nag of yours over here and make him useful, otherwise we'll all get soaked."

I would have refused, but Snowy spoke urgently. "This is just the chance we have been waiting for! Take me over . . ."

"You're not a beast of burden at the beck of anyone!"

"Don't argue, for once. Just do as I say."

So I left the others sheltering as best they could and led Snowy over. "You want to borrow the pony?" I asked, sounding, and looking too, I suppose, like a halfwit.

The stable-hand grabbed Snowy's bridle and thwacked his rump. "C'mon, you bag-of-bones!"

I watched him load up, noted Snowy's meek head hanging down, saw him led down a slight incline to the mouth of a tunnel that revealed itself now I was nearer to the barred gate, then made my way back to the others.

Puddy and Pisky were fine, revelling in the warm summer rain, which was coming down faster now, but Moglet made a wild leap at me, burrowing under my jacket and proceeding to soak us both, and Corby, nothing loath, tried to huddle under my cloak. We made our way back to the castle, more or less together, and I stowed away the others, for I could not know how long Snowy would be. Then, as luck would have it, I ran straight into Conn and the Lady Adiora.

We had obviously missed their riding out, for they were now returning wet with rain, Conn mounted on a beautiful strawberry-roan Apparisoned with red velvet, both now dark with rain. I rushed over to clutch at his bridle but he looked down at me as though I were a stranger, all the while listening to the lady's prattle.

" . . . but because of the weather we had better postpone it. My weathermen say it should clear up by New Moon, so probably four days hence. You will have to practise your archery, meanwhile—What is that dirty creature doing?" In a different voice. I was frantically pulling at Conn's bridle to try to gain his attention. "Send it away! That part of your life is gone, my love, but if you still have a fondness for the creature I will find it work in the kitchens . . ."