The Secret Country (11 page)

“Patrick,” said Ruth urgently, “cut it out. It’s me. You know what this is, you idiot, this was part of your coming-of-age, stop it!”

Patrick immediately closed his eyes. “You’re right,” he said. “Come on.” He took one of Ellen’s arms, and he and Ruth dragged her along.

“What’s it doing to
you?
” asked Ruth, who thought that fighting a sturdy twelve-year-old was hard enough without being aided only by someone who refused to open his eyes. “Can’t you look where we’re going?”

“Never mind,” said Patrick.

They caught up with Ted and Laura. Ted had his sword out now. Laura was engaged in a vicious battle with her own hair. Patrick looked behind and saw the guards, the great skulking catlike guards, reach the edge of the grass.

He clamped his arms around Ellen as Ruth let go of her, and was rewarded by being bitten in the shoulder. He pushed her away.

“Ellie, if you don’t cut it out I’ll trample your broccoli when we get home. I swear it. Close your eyes!”

Ellen did so. “Oh,” she said. “They aren’t roaring after all.”

“Ted,” said Ruth, catching at Ted’s sword arm, “you made this up, it’s not real, stop it! Close your eyes,” she added hopefully.

Ted closed his eyes, and opened them again immediately. “It’s worse that way,” he said, “but now that you mention it, it’s not so bad.” He collared his sister. “Shut your eyes!” he commanded.

“They are!”

“Well, open them, then! This isn’t real!”

Laura did as she was told. “Are you sure?
Watch out, it’s coming at you!
”

The guards stepped into the grass and roared.

All five children ran.

“Keep your eyes closed!” hollered Patrick as he stumbled out of the grass and tripped over something at the edge of the lake. Laura fell over him and began beating on him with both fists.

Ruth stepped into the cold water of the lake and involuntarily opened her eyes. Ted came up beside her and attempted to deal with Laura. “That’s Patrick,” he told Laura, “leave him alone.” He tried to pick her up, and she hit him in the eye.

Ellen staggered up in time to help Ruth prevent Ted from hitting Laura back.

“It’s you?” said Laura. “Your bones aren’t coming out?”

“Not yet,” said Ted, trying to get his eye open.

They all stared at one another for a moment, panting. The guards were yelling and cursing on the other side of the field.

“Here’s the bridge!” called Patrick.

They pounded across the bridge, slithered through a muddy space covered inadequately with straw, and leaned on the back wall of the stables, gasping. The noise of the guards did not seem to be coming any closer.

“What was that?” said Laura, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering.

“Why are you cold?” demanded Ellen. “It was like a volcano and the grasses burned our feet.”

“It was wet,” said Laura, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“How do we deal with Benjamin?” said Patrick.

“And all the undergrooms and stable boys and all that,” added Ellen.

“I’ll bet you they’ve gone to see what all the noise is about,” said Laura, more hopefully than firmly. She could not break the habit of deciding what would happen according to the necessity of the moment.

They went to find out, and Benjamin and everyone else had done just that, leaving the stable door wide open.

“He’s not supposed to do that,” said Ellen as they struggled with saddling the horses, which did not like the noise from outside and were not inclined to be forgiving of incompetence. Only Patrick had been taught to saddle a horse, and he was not forgiving either.

“Maybe he recognized our voices,” said Laura, who was standing as far away from the horses as she could get. “He always comes if we’re in trouble.”

“He ought to be right here, then,” said Ellen. “Where does this go?”

“Never mind the saddles, there isn’t time,” said Patrick. “Just do the bridles. Here, Ellie, like this.”

“It’s all slobbery!” said Ellen.

From outside came three splashes and renewed cursing. It sounded much too near. Laura considered hiding in an empty stall.

“Hurry
up,
” said Ruth.

Patrick got four horses bridled, and Laura watched the other four manage to get themselves onto the horses. Then Ted had to dismount and boost Laura, whom everybody had forgotten, up behind Patrick, who was the only one among them with any real claim to horsemanship. They clattered and jingled and creaked out of the stable. The noise from the guards was still going on, but it came from the garden now.

“I bet there
were
rabbit snares in that garden,” said Ted. “Listen to them swear!”

Feet pounded across the stableyard. They took their horses out the southern door of the stable and stopped, staring at the outermost walls that still towered above them.

“There’s a postern at the southeast corner,” said Patrick, neatly turning his horse in that direction. Laura suspected that the other horses followed him because they felt sociable rather than because anybody else knew how to tell a horse what to do. She was already having difficulty staying on the horse, and felt that being caught, even by furious guards, would be more a relief than otherwise.

Patrick’s postern was right where he had said it was. It was bolted on the inside and not very large, but Patrick dismounted and got it unbolted and they all got the horses through it without mishap. The horses needed no encouragement to gallop across the plain, and since Patrick had managed to head his in the right direction, they all went that way. They heard no new outcry behind them, and began to feel hopeful. After a few horrible jolting moments, Patrick even convinced his and Laura’s horse to assume a smoother gait, and Laura thought she might manage not to fall off after all.

They did not really know the way from High Castle to the Well of the White Witch, but the horses did. It seemed a very long ride. Laura knew that four leagues was twelve miles, a distance one could travel in a car in about fifteen minutes. She did not know how fast horses could go.

She tried to look around her. The land was flat and dark. The moonlight laid a skin of silver over it that revealed nothing except an occasional stream or pond. Laura tried the sky instead. The stars were huge. It was hard to be sure with the jouncing of the horse, but she could not find any of the familiar constellations, and the whole of the heavens looked wrong somehow.

“Patrick,” she said, “are the stars right?”

Patrick looked up, bumping her nose with the back of his head. “Heh,” he said. “I don’t think so. Those aren’t the northern constellations. I haven’t really learned the southern ones yet.”

“Does the Secret Country have any constellations?”

“I didn’t make any up,” said Patrick.

Laura spent part of the rest of the trip trying to remember if anyone had, and another part trying not to fall asleep, and suddenly they were there. They slid off the horses and stood around uncertainly. The well glowed a faint pink, but no one seemed to have the strength to remark on this. Patrick pulled the two swords from their hiding place and gave one to Ted. Laura hoped it was the right one.

“What do we do with the horses?” asked Ellen.

“They know their way home,” said Ted.

“How do we tell them that’s what we want them to do?”

There was a brief argument which involved examples from most of the history of the Secret Country; finally Ruth agreed to say a spell over the horses which would make them go home. She whispered sorcerous words into their ears, and they plodded off in the direction of High Castle.

“They don’t act very eager,” said Ellen.

“We didn’t give them any water,” said Ted.

“They’ll survive,” said Patrick. “When and where do we meet again?”

“Here,” said Ted, “but how do we know when we’ll be able to get away?”

“Well, why don’t we try to be here twice a day, at noon and midnight?” said Ruth. “If nobody’s here, wait half an hour and then go home.”

“All right,” said Ted “and the first thing we do is have a conference.”

“Good-bye,” said everyone.

Ruth and Patrick and Ellen went toward the woods where their bottle trees must wait. Laura wondered how a bottle tree liked Pennsylvania weather. Feeling grateful that they did not have to go through the woods in the dark, she followed Ted up the hill to their stream.

“Why don’t you put some water on your eye?” she suggested as they stepped into the stream. “It’s cold enough,” she added.

“Nothing but an ice bag will do any good,” said Ted. “You really hit me, you little beast.”

“Well,” said Laura, “I thought you were a big beast.”

“What did it look like?”

“What did yours?”

“Never mind,” said Ted.

They climbed the other bank of the stream and Ted held out the sword to Laura. They held on to it together and got themselves through the hedge. After some discussion involving whether magic swords rusted, whether anyone would take this magic sword away, and how they could hide it if they took it to the Barretts’, Ted left the sword, belt and all, under the hedge. They walked home slowly. They were so late that there was no use in hurrying.

“What are we going to tell them?” asked Ted.

Laura’s empty stomach felt full of snowballs. “Oh.”

“I don’t suppose we can lie,” said Ted.

“Who could think up a good enough story anyway?”

“I could,” said Ted, stung.

“You don’t know how to make up that kind of story.”

“We’re late and wet,” said Ted. “And beat-up,” he added. “We could say we got lost and were knocked around by some high school kids and had to hitchhike home.” He considered this. “They took us to their clubhouse in the woods and we had to struggle through fields and streams before we found a road.”

“Wouldn’t the people who gave us a ride come in with us and talk to Aunt Kathy and Uncle Jim?”

“Well, maybe,” said Ted, discouraged. “They might call the police too, I guess.”

“I’m not lying to any policeman!”

“Okay, okay.”

There was a terrible scene when they got home. Their aunt, even without tales of high school bullies, had been about to call the police, their three older cousins were combing the neighborhood for the third time, and their uncle was driving around town searching theaters and roller-skating rinks and swimming pools.

All of them descended upon Ted and Laura with the fury of relief, and demanded explanations. Ted told his aunt that he and Laura could not tell her where they had been, and she would just have to take his word for it that it had not been perfidious mischief, and they could not help being late and battered. This line of argument had been known to work with his mother. It did not work with Aunt Kathy. Having been cleaned, dried, and bandaged where necessary, they were sent to bed without supper a second time, which made them even hungrier. They were also grounded for two days. Neither of them knew what that meant. Laura asked Jennifer, who had followed her upstairs to the room they shared and hung around, looking intrigued, while Laura changed into her nightgown.

“It means you have to stay in the house.”

“That’s barbaric!”

“Mom says
we’re
barbaric.”

“Heh,” said Laura.

“Where were you?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Mom sure was mad,” said Jennifer.

Laura shrugged.

“If you do it again she’ll probably write your parents.”

“Oh.”

Jennifer glared at her. “We could try some different games.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Laura, relenting. “We had something we had to do, that’s all. And we hate games, truly.”

Jennifer went away to brush her teeth, slamming the bathroom door, and Laura went to tell Ted what being grounded meant.

“We can’t wait two days!” said Ted. “Benjamin’ll kill us!”

“
They’ll
kill us if we don’t wait two days,” said Laura.

“Maybe we could sneak out at midnight,” said Ted. “Ruth and Ellen and Patrick are more likely to be there then; that’s daytime for them.”

“If we get caught they’ll write Mother and Dad.”

“Benjamin will tell the King if we stay away two days.”

That was clearly worse. “Oh, all right,” said Laura.

They sat glumly.

“I don’t think I like this,” said Laura.

“I know I don’t,” said Ted, with such emphasis that Laura looked at him.

“You look like Randolph,” she observed.

“How the hell would you know?” demanded Ted.

“I only meant,” said Laura, taken aback, “that you look like you do when you’re playing him.”

“Wonderful,” said Ted. “That’s just wonderful.”

“What,” demanded Laura in her turn, “are you trying to decide? That’s Randolph’s problem, trying to decide what to do about the King? So what are
you
trying—”

“Never you mind,” said Ted, firmly; that was one of Randolph’s lines to Princess Laura.

Laura looked at him a little fearfully. She was used to living with Ted, and she could manage with Prince Edward, but she was not sure she wanted to live with Randolph.

CHAPTER 5

LAURA had no trouble staying awake; she was hungry, and she ached. When Ted padded into her room, she sat up so quickly that Ted made a frightened hiss, and Jennifer turned over. Ted backed into the hall, and Laura seized her clothes and followed him.

“You get dressed,” whispered Ted, “and I’ll get some food.”

He creaked off down the stairs, leaving Laura cringing. High Castle was less nerve-wracking than this. She put her clothes on, started down the stairs with her shoes in her hand, then remembered the flashlight under Ted’s pillow. It was half hers, through one of their parents’ infrequent departures from good sense. But since she and Jennifer were obliged to share a room, while Ted had his own, it had been decided that the flashlight would be safer under Ted’s pillow. Laura left her shoes on the stairs, fetched the flashlight, started back down the stairs, and tripped over the shoes.