The Secret Country (17 page)

“Yes,” said Laura, and went back down a step.

“Handful of moonlight, huh?” said Ellen.

“Why should Fence care what happens to the West Tower?” wondered Patrick.

“Maybe it’s not Fence’s beast,” said Ellen.

The beast made a sudden sucking noise and they all jumped.

“Are you Fence’s beast?” Ellen asked it.

The beast was quiet.

“Whosever you are, we’d be obliged if you’d let us by.”

The beast made precisely the same noise that the other beast had made at Laura and Ellen, folded and swirled in on itself like water going down a narrow space, and disappeared. Patrick leaned over and put his hand on the steps where it had been.

“Not wet,” he said.

“Let’s go,” said Ted.

“I want to know whose fault that was.”

Ted started up the steps, carrying the lantern with him. Ruth followed. Patrick stood between them and Ellen and Laura, still holding the sword and staring at the empty steps under the torch.

“Move, please,” said Ellen.

“I bet you made this up.”

“I did not. Move.”

Patrick flattened himself against the wall, Ellen went by him after the rapidly diminishing glow of Ted’s lantern, and Patrick looked at Laura. “Did you make this up? It’s your tower.”

“It’s not my tower!” said Laura, feeling that the one thing worse than that oozy beast would be to be blamed for its existence. “I don’t make up beasts. I don’t like them. Can we go up?” she added, trying to behave like Princess Laura. “They’ll find the ring, and it’s my job to find the ring.”

“You’re all crazy,” said Patrick, sheathing the sword, and he went ahead of her up the steps.

They went around and around, past the open doors of the rooms with old clothes and old weapons, up to the third landing. Laura wished for a quiet afternoon to rummage. It seemed unlikely that she would ever get one, if quiet meant not having to worry about some grown-up, somewhere, who would yell at her when she came back. There was a bench on the landing and another torch on the wall above the bench. Ellen was sitting on the bench, and Ted and Ruth were having an altercation about the door, which was shut.

“What’s going on?” said Patrick. Laura sat down next to Ellen.

“Door won’t open,” said Ted. “There’s no lock or handle on this side and it won’t open.”

“It’s supposed to be open,” said Laura.

“What do they need a beast for if the door won’t open anyway?” said Ellen.

“Why is everything around here three times as hard to do as it should be?” said Ted, leaning on the door. Laura looked at his tired face in the torchlight and was still reminded of Randolph, whom she still had not met. She and Ellen had seen only Benjamin and Agatha, and a few amused guards, since they came to High Castle.

“Why don’t you ask it to open?” she said to Ted. “The beast moved when Ellen asked it to.”

Ted rolled his eyes at the ceiling, turned his face against the carved wooden surface of the door, and addressed it sarcastically. “I prithee open,” he said.

And fell into the darkness of the West Tower’s third room, dropping the lantern. The lantern rolled in crazy circles exactly as a dropped flashlight will do, went out, and clanged against the far wall. Laura and Ellen held each other, and Ellen laughed until the tower echoed, and Laura pretended that she had not been scared half out of her wits.

“Shut up,” said Patrick, taking Ted by an arm and hauling him up again.

Ted shook himself free and advanced upon Laura menacingly. “Very funny, Laurie,” he said. “You made this up, didn’t you?”

“No,” said Laura. “This isn’t supposed to be a magical castle and I didn’t make up any of this.”

“Leave her alone,” said Ruth.

“I thought you thought this was real,” said Patrick, “so how can she have made it up anyway?”

Ted wheeled on him. “I do think it’s real. I also think we made it up. It’s real now. Somehow, things got out of hand. And once they did, then things could start happening that we
didn’t
make up.”

“And you say I have silly theories.”

“We have a ring to find,” said Ruth.

Ted turned away from Patrick as if Patrick were something he had decided not to buy. “Laurie, where’s the ring supposed to be?”

“It’s in a casket.”

“What?”

“In a lead casket,” said Laura, stubbornly.

“She means like in
Merchant of Venice,
” said Ellen. “A box, is all.”

“I wish we’d never heard of Shakespeare,” growled Ted as he stamped into the tower room and retrieved the lantern. He stood on the bench, displacing Laura and Ellen rather roughly, lit the lantern from the torch, and handed the lantern down to Ruth. Then he took the torch from its socket. “Where is this casket?” he asked Laura.

“In a niche in the north wall.”

Ted strode into the tower room, trailed by the others, and made a minute inspection of the north wall. It was empty except for three arrow slits.

“Are you sure it’s north?”

“No.”

Ted made for the west wall, muttering.

“Watch out, you’ll set the tapestries on fire,” said Ruth as the light of the torch showed up a crowd of colors and shapes.

“Give me the lantern,” said Ted, thrusting the torch at her, and disappeared under the tapestries.

“Why’s he so grumpy?” Ellen asked Laura.

“He’s always grumpy.”

“But Prince Edward is meek and gentle.”

“Heh,” said Laura.

They watched the disturbance under the tapestries that was Ted looking for the niche. It came around to the door, and Ted emerged, looking ruffled and indignant. “There’s not a darn thing under there,” he said. “You’re crazy, Laurie.”

“I am not.” She was sure she had remembered properly. She felt indignant herself; somebody had tampered with her tower.

Ted crossed to the south wall, disappeared under the tapestries, and came out where they stopped for the east wall. “Not there either,” he said. “Lead casket indeed.”

Laura eyed him, but he did not seem disposed to come at her menacingly again.

“Now what do we do?” he said, sitting on the floor. Then he stopped. He held the lantern closer to the floor, and Laura saw something glitter faintly. Ted moved the lantern, and more glitters sprang up. “Oh, God,” said Ted, in such heartfelt tones that no one reproved him.

“What?” said Ruth.

“Look at the floor,” said Ted, tragically. “‘Unvalued Gold.’ ”

They all stooped and looked at it in the light of Ruth’s torch. Embedded in the smooth gray stone were rings, dully gleaming brass rings, hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands, patterning the floor in circles, in diamonds, in cloverleafs, in scallops and whorls.

“Whose idea was this?” said Patrick, and he sounded almost as terrible as Lady Ruth.

“I’m not sure it has to be anybody’s,” said Ruth.

“Of course it does,” said Patrick. “They’re just scared to admit it.”

Everybody looked at Laura.

“It’s not mine!” she said. “I told you mine, and it’s all messed up.” They all stood and glared at one another in the flaring light.

“Well,” said Ted, “I guess we’d better start looking. Just hope it’s good and loose, wherever it is.” He took himself and his lantern back to the door, got down on his hands and knees, and began methodically sweeping his hands across the floor.

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Patrick, arresting the other three in the act of joining Ted.

“Well?” said Ruth.

“This is clearly not a place for storing old jewelry,” said Patrick. “There’s none here. So if there’s no old jewelry here, probably Shan’s Ring isn’t here either.”

“The old clothes were in the right place,” said Laura.

“And there are brass rings here,” said Ruth, “and Shan’s Ring is a brass ring.”

“We might as well keep looking,” said Ted. “We can’t do anything else tonight.”

He went back to his task. Ruth held the torch for Ellen and Laura, and they crawled doggedly across the floor, one on either side of her, picking at myriads of brass rings. Laura, scraping her fingertips and acquiring little round imprints on her knees and the heels of her hands, began to feel put upon.

They had advanced about two feet across the floor in this fashion when Patrick, who had been standing and watching them, spoke again.

“Wait a minute,” he said.

Laura stopped crawling and began rubbing her knees.

“What now?” said Ruth, without stopping.

“Assuming Shan’s Ring is here,” said Patrick, “there must be a pattern to this.”

Ruth sighed audibly, and Patrick went on. “You always hide things with a pattern. You don’t just dump them down somewhere and hope you remember where you put them.”

“
You
don’t,” muttered Ruth, sitting back on her heels. But he had caught Ted’s interest.

“What kind of pattern?” Ted asked him, still on the floor with his lantern.

“In the riddle,” said Patrick, promptly. Laura, catching the pleased note in his voice, guessed that he had figured the whole thing out before he spoke. Just like Patrick, she thought.

“ ‘I am a trinket in the world,’ ” quoted Ted. “Well?”

“Maybe it’s an acrostic,” said Patrick. “Or maybe it has a code in it. We should write it out and work on it.”

“That could take weeks,” said Ruth.

“Well,” said Patrick, still with that pleased note in his voice, “maybe there’s a clue in the riddle about where on this floor Shan’s Ring is.”

“Patrick,” said Ruth, “did
you
make this up?”

“No, I did not.”

“What are you so happy about, then?”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Patrick, “and observing, not grubbing around on the floor, and I think there’s a connection between the riddle and the tapestries.”

“I thought you didn’t believe—” began Ruth, and was interrupted by Ted.

“What is it?” he said.

“There’s a map of the Secret Country on that wall,” said Patrick, waving at the south wall of the room. “I think that’s for the first line, for the world.”

“Why shouldn’t it be a picture of a trinket?” said Ted, but he had straightened up on his knees and was regarding Patrick hopefully.

“Too vague,” said Patrick.

“Just because you think—”

“Let him finish, Ruthie,” said Ted. “What about ‘unvalued gold and sullen stone’?”

“Well,” said Patrick, wilting a little, “that one I couldn’t figure out.”

“Well, what’s next, then?” said Ted. “ ‘I am a trinket in the world, unvalued gold and sullen stone; but outside power is unfurled when outside Power I am hurled, and Time awry is blown.’ ”

“Well,” said Patrick, “there’s a dragon—I thought that could be the outside power being unfurled.”

Ted stood up with the lantern. “Where?”

Patrick took him over to the middle of the north wall, stepping around Ruth and Ellen and Laura with a certain disdain, like a cat, thought Laura, walking on a wet floor. His shadow and Ted’s blotted out what they were looking at.

“Huh,” said Ted. “It’s even unfolding its wings. ‘Outside power is unfurled.’ Okay. What next?”

“‘When outside Power I am hurled,’” said Laura, who was becoming interested.

“I couldn’t get that one either,” said Patrick. “But over here,” and he led Ted and the lantern along the north wall to its western edge, “there’s a tremendous storm, and it’s overturned a sundial, see?”

“ ‘Time awry is blown!’ ” cried Laura, scrambling to her feet.

“That’s only three lines,” said Ruth, “and even if—”

“I couldn’t see a lot of the things on the tapestries,” said Patrick.

Ted handed him the lantern, and Ted and Laura hovered along behind him as he inspected the hangings. He had to tell them several times to get their shadows out of his way. Ruth and Ellen stayed where they were, murmuring to each other.

“Outside Power I am hurled,” muttered Patrick, moving light along a dismaying wealth of pictures.

“The tapestries,” Laura observed after a time, “go all the way up to the ceiling.”

“They wouldn’t put clues above eye level,” said Patrick.

“Yes, but whose eye level?” said Ted. “They’re all very tall.”

“Ruth,” said Patrick, “come over here, please. You’re not Benjamin but you’ll have to do.”

“This is crazy,” said Ruth, but she came over. Ted gave her the lantern, taking the torch from her and finding it a socket in the wall.

At the west corner of the north wall, she discovered a subsidiary tapestry, a long narrow one. It was hung over the main tapestry, which at that point was frayed and ragged. It contained nine panels, bordered with a design of climbing plants and an occasional animal of some indeterminate type between cat and rabbit. In the first panel, a young man in disheveled clothes, and with what Laura thought of as decided eyebrows, sat at the feet of an old man. The old man was clearly a wizard. He had beard, robe, staff, and an assortment of peculiar instruments that Patrick said were astrological but that looked to Laura like Patrick’s own chemistry lab.

In succeeding panels, the young man changed his disheveled clothes for a wizard’s robe and staff and began taming animals. In the third panel he enchanted a cat, in the fourth he and the cat collared a dog, in the fifth the three of them acquired a horse, in the sixth they subdued an eagle. In the seventh they spoke with a unicorn, but in the eighth the unicorn was not there. Man and animals stood around something which looked more like a hole in the tapestry than part of the weaving. This appearance may have been due to the light, which was wavering more than ever now because Ruth’s arm hurt.

The man held his staff pointed at the hole, and red fire leaped from its tip. The cat’s tail was fluffed, the eagle’s beak opened in a scream. Every other animal had its ears flat to its head.

In the ninth panel, the man was gone, with a lightning bolt where he had been standing. All the animals were bounding away from the hole in the tapestry as hard as they could go.