The Secret Country (20 page)

Ted, wiping a sweaty hand across his sweatier forehead, grinned and was silent.

“Patrick,” said Randolph, “what surprises hast thou in store?”

“None, my lord, save that I have not practiced,” said Patrick. Ted could tell by his tone that this was one of his lines; somewhere, sometime, they must have played a lesson in which Randolph asked Prince Patrick that question.

“Do so now, then,” said Randolph, a little grimly, and tossed Patrick a sword.

Patrick caught it neatly and then stood at a loss. Randolph went toward him. Ted stood where he was, equally at a loss. Their masquerade would not survive Patrick’s failure any better than it would have survived Ted’s. Patrick was beginning to look a little sick; perhaps he could use that as an excuse. Or perhaps Ruth could wriggle out of an accusation of sorcery better than Patrick could explain a display of ignorance. Ted was not even sure that a sorcerer of the Green Caves could make anyone forget something. He should have asked Patrick instead of arbitrarily dismissing the suggestion. Now that the dream had done its job, he realized that he had expected too much of it. It had solved his problem; it had not solved theirs.

Randolph’s sword achieved a whistle as he saluted Patrick.

“Well?” said Randolph.

And the cardinal whistled yet again from the fir trees.

“Oh, come on!” said Ted, involuntarily, as if Laura or Ellen had suggested this way out and he thought it was too easy.

Randolph merely rolled his eyes again. “I knew ’twas folly to allow rival magics in this castle,” he said. “Patrick—”

“I didn’t ask them to!”

“Canst ask them not to?”

The cardinal sang shrilly.

“Next time maybe?” said Patrick. He looked half unbelieving and half smug.

Randolph fixed him with a look not at all angry, but worse than a glare. “There will be war in this kingdom,” he said, “long ere thou canst so much as call the winds. And if thou spendest thy time on learning to call the winds, thou wilt have neither sorcery nor swordsmanship that shall survive that war. If thou canst forget thy sorcery, thy sword may be good enough.”

“When?” said Patrick. “By when?”

“September at the latest,” said Randolph.

“How do you know?” said Ted.

“Thou’lt know that when thy father does.”

“Does he know this much?”

“Oh, aye,” said Randolph; he sounded as if he would have liked to add, “For all the good that does.”

“Well,” said Patrick, “I’ll remember that, but for today I think—”

“Go thy ways,” said Randolph.

Patrick put the sword back. Randolph stopped Ted as he went to do the same.

“For the next lesson, pray, the left hand,” said Randolph. Ted stared at him, formulating wild plans for spraining his left wrist, and Randolph added, “Thou canst no more spare time for the right than thy brother for his sorcery.”

“What about
your
sorcery?” asked Ted, who was immensely curious about why Randolph had worn the circlet to a fencing lesson but not to a king’s council. The circlet meant that he was a journeyman wizard; in High Castle, that meant he was of Fence’s party. Wearing the circlet to the council would have been another way of defending Fence, but wearing it to a fencing lesson would only, as far as Ted could see, make it harder to fight.

Randolph’s eyebrows rose. “Mine,” he said, “may be of some use to me. I have been at it these five years. And how long hath young Patrick studied thus?”

“My lord, I don’t know,” said Ted, not altogether truthfully. He was quite sure that Patrick had never studied magic at all. He could not remember whether Prince Patrick had done so, but he doubted it. It would not be like him. Patrick and Prince Patrick had a lot in common.

“That is why the Green Caves mislike me,” said Randolph, rattling his sword into the rack. “A great huggermugger of secrecy, and for what?” He turned to Ted, and the rising sun struck gleams from the stones in his circlet. He looked very tired and a little desperate, and Ted was afraid again.

“I don’t know,” he said, with entire truthfulness.

They left the yard together, and caught up with Patrick in the hall before the kitchen door.

CHAPTER 10

LAURA missed Ellen that night. Their room was too big for one person. The dark was much darker than it would have been in a normal house: There were no streetlights outside, no yard lights, no car lights. The air of the room moved and rustled. Laura remembered unhappily that there was no glass in the windows. She had noticed all these things the night before, but with Ellen there they had not mattered.

It took her a long time to get to sleep, and when she did sleep, she dreamed. She dreamed that she stood in the shallows of a lake and spoke to something she could not quite see. The whole outside was damp and misty, but the mist was not the problem. No matter how she turned her head, no matter how she squinted, she could glimpse the thing to which she spoke only out of the corner of her eye.

She could hear it much better than she could see it. It had a clear and piercing voice, like the sound of a flute. But Laura could not understand a word it said. It was very important that she tell it something and have its answer. When she spoke to it it seemed to take no notice.

While she struggled with these things, the mist slowly brightened, until suddenly the sun sprang red before Laura and a freezing wind whipped the mist away.

The lake stretched like a bloody mirror before her, and where it met the sun at the burning horizon, she saw, for the barest instant, fleet white shapes that might have been horses, bounding into the sun.

She stood there, hoping they had not been horses, until the wind rose to a howl and drove lake water into her face. She put her hands up to stop it, and woke up shivering.

The window was a pale square in the moving dark, birds were muttering outside, and Ellen had not come back.

Laura flung herself out of bed, charged over to the window, and leaned upon the broad sill. Cold shot through her from stone sill and stone floor. The outside air of early morning was warmer than her room. She did not like to think about what High Castle would be like in the winter. Perhaps they would not have to be here in the winter. The story they knew ended in September. She did not like to think about its ending, either.

The outside was like her dream. The grasses were dull with dew, the lake scummed with mist. The western sky was gray, the mountains almost lost in cloud. But watch though she would, no things almost seen plied the misty air, no voices piped. Even the birds were silent now. Nothing moved in earth or sky. And the only sun she would ever see from this window would be setting. Laura began to shiver again. Almost anything could have happened to Ruth and Ellen in a place that had such dreams and such mornings.

The bedroom door opened heavily behind her. Laura jumped, banging a hipbone and an elbow on the stone, and craned her head over her shoulder. Agatha, immensely irritating in her reality and her wrongness, stood there. She had a tray in her hands.

“An thou hangst out a window in thy nightgown,” said Agatha, “thou’lt catch thy death.”

“Better than it catching me,” said Laura, and was immediately ashamed of herself. This was what she had thought up, after years of exasperation, to say to her grandmother, who had used to tell her that doing anything Laura particularly wanted to do would make her catch her death. She had hoped she could make her grandmother laugh and give up saying it. But her grandmother had died just after Laura had thought of the answer.

“It matters not who shall start that duel,” said Agatha, putting the tray on the bed, “’Tis thou wilt lose it. Drink thy chocolate. And dress thyself.”

She had gone and shut the door before Laura had finished turning around.

Laura took an enormous mouthful of the hot chocolate, sputtered, and spewed it all down the front of her white nightgown. It was dreadfully bitter. Laura stared at the cup, aghast. Someone must be trying to poison Princess Laura. She bolted for the bathroom, whimpering, and rinsed her mouth, finding time to hope that, whatever Lord Randolph gave King William, it would taste better than this. When she showed no immediate signs of dying, she drank water till her stomach sloshed; she had some vague memory that this was what you were supposed to make babies do if they swallowed poison.

After this she put her clothes on, muttering fiercely at the unfamiliar buttons and laces, and went to find Ted and Patrick.

They were not in their room. Laura noticed that they had already managed to make it into a mess, and headed downstairs. She had no very clear idea of where she was going, but she wanted to find Ted and Patrick and tell them about the poison and ask about Ruth and Ellen.

She turned corners and pushed through doors at random; she had no idea where they would practice fencing. People kept saying good morning to her, men-at-arms, people hurrying past her carrying things. She would have liked to ignore them, but princesses were more polite than that. She knew that it was polite to courtesy to people, but it seemed that there was too little room, and that they were all in a hurry. So she grinned at them and went faster. The water sloshing in her stomach was beginning to make her feel sick. She wondered whom she should tell if she were poisoned. At home you called an ambulance.

The more Laura thought about this and the more strangers she had to grin at, the unhappier she got, and the faster she went, until she ran smack into a man in gray, and burst into tears.

“Heaven and earth!” exclaimed this person, dropping to his knees in the passageway and taking her by the shoulders. “Hast thou fallen, then?”

He sounded as if he were talking to a five-year-old, and to her fury Laura found herself behaving like one and wailing, as her grandmother used to say when Laura was really five, as if someone were burning her alive.

The man in gray evidently did not see it that way. “An thou canst caterwaul so, thou’rt hale enough,” he said, sitting down on the floor and taking her in his arms. “Now what tempest of the spirit is this? Hush, thou’lt crack the stones w’ that noise. And though I’ve no doubt thou’lt argue that the castle be hideous and its people fools, yet wouldst destroy all my work as well? I taught thee thy letters; wilt not spare mine, then?”

Laura pulled her head out of his shoulder and looked at him; yes, he had red hair. The pleasure of discovery made her stop crying.

“You’re Matthew!” she said.

Oddly, he looked a little hurt, but he nodded.

“Now what’s the matter, Princess?” he said. A woman with an armful of bright red cloth came by and gave them a curious look, but Matthew paid no attention.

Laura, casting about her for a plausible lie, looked at his kind face and interested eyes and gave up. “I can’t find Ted and Patrick,” she said.

Matthew cocked his head at her; he looked unconvinced. But all he said was, “That’s easily remedied. They will be either at their fencing or at their breakfasts, and knowing how late Randolph and I sat over our wine last night, I’ll wager he has let ’em off easy. Come, let’s go to breakfast; have you had yours?”

Laura shook her head. He stood up, and helped her up, and stood looking at her.

“If you will, permit me,” he said, and handed her a handkerchief. It was very large and very white and felt more like a festive gown, Laura thought, than like a handkerchief. She scrubbed her face on it, but it seemed wrong to blow her nose with it. She handed it back to Matthew, forgetting to say thank you. He took her by the hand, which, now that she was recovered, she was not sure she liked, and led her along the passage.

The men-at-arms and passersby gave them indulgent looks; Laura began to feel embarrassed. She could not remember how old Princess Laura was; she could do a lot of things very well for her age, but what the age was was another question. It occupied her until Matthew led her into a high hall wherein five or six people were clustered at one end of a long table, eating and laughing. Laura saw that Ted and Patrick were there, looking very still and alert, but managing to eat a great deal nevertheless, if they themselves had emptied all the empty dishes in front of them.

Then she saw the man between them, and if Matthew had not gone on walking, and had not held her hand, she would have stood still with her mouth open. The rushes on the floor slid and crunched under her feet. A dog yelped as she trod on its tail, and a cat butted its head against her ankle. She paid them no attention.

It was not that he looked like Ruth and Ellen, although that was startling. It was not that he had about him a settled wariness, like that of a cat asleep in a forbidden place, although that was intriguing. It was that she knew him. She had figured out Benjamin, Agatha, and Matthew, but she knew Randolph.

“Good morrow,” said Matthew, to the group generally; then he looked at Randolph, who was buttering a slice of bread with a dagger.

Laura’s gaze rested on the dagger and froze there. The hilt was set with blue stones. Randolph, spreading the butter with the care it deserved, but which grown-ups so often did not give it, moved his hand through a shaft of sunlight, and the colors it struck from the stones made Laura blink.

In the space of that blink she saw, very quickly and very clearly, the woman with the broom from the secret house. The woman sat peering with great seriousness into a mirror which did not reflect her. Laura, having opened her eyes before what she had seen registered, promptly closed them again, and saw only darkness with red pinpricks.

“Aren’t you awake yet?” Patrick’s voice said querulously.

Laura gave up and opened her eyes.

“Thou wouldst not be awake thyself, hadst thou thy way,” said Randolph, biting into his bread. “Make room for thy cousin,” he added with his mouth full.

Ted slid over on the bench, and Laura went around the table and sat between him and Patrick. Matthew had found room across from them.