The Secret Country (21 page)

Laura looked dubiously at the food on the table. None of it looked like breakfast to her.

“You’re early,” said Matthew to Randolph.

“My students are handy today,” said Randolph, not shortly at all, but Matthew looked at him and changed the subject.

“I have been translating the journals of Shan,” he said, helping himself to what looked like a chicken drumstick.

Randolph’s head came up. “Which of them?”

“Those dealing with his travels in the south.”

“What say they? Aught to the purpose?”

“Perhaps,” said Matthew. The two young men on either side of him looked at each other over his head, drained their mugs, and stood up. Laura did not recognize either of them, but they looked as if they were good-tempered.

“We are not speaking secrets,” said Matthew to them.

“Nor are you speaking aught to keep us awake,” said the one to Matthew’s right.

“It may yet keep you alive,” said Randolph. The two young men gave each other the kind of look that Laura and Ellen would give each other about Patrick, bowed, said, “Our duties to Your Highness,” in the general direction of the children, and went out.

“The meat pies are all right,” said Patrick in Laura’s ear. “The ale is awful.”

“Well, could you pass the bread?”

“Not speaking secrets?” said Randolph to Matthew.

“Those men are none of Andrew’s.”

“They are none of ours.”

“Sits the wind in that quarter, then?” said Matthew, with a glance at Ted, Patrick, and Laura. Laura saw that Patrick was steadily eating bread and honey, and that Ted held a forgotten slice halfway to his mouth. The honey was running down his arm.

Laura saw Randolph’s look slide over Patrick and herself and rest behind her, on Ted. “Art thou any of mine, Edward?”

“Sir,” said Ted, with no discernible hesitation, “all I know you have taught me.”

Something made Laura look at Matthew, and she surprised on his face the same faintly hurt look that had been there when she told him who he was. She remembered that he had tutored the royal children when they were younger. That would account for his not liking what Ted had said. But that did not explain why he should have been hurt when she said, “You’re Matthew.”

“Maybe,” said Randolph. “But the disciple has ever left the master before the master thought him ready.”

This gave Ted pause, but not for long. “As you have left Fence?” he said. He sounded as if he were joking, but there was something a little odd in his voice, and Laura saw Patrick stop chewing. Randolph frowned.

“Randolph, is that not answer enough?” said Matthew.

“The question was thine,” Randolph told him, reasonably.

“I say all here are ours, then,” said Matthew, flushing a little. “My lords and lady, I ask your pardon,” he added.

Laura blinked, Patrick said, “Sure,” and Ted nodded.

“So,” said Randolph, “what of these journals?”

Matthew picked up the heavy pitcher and poured himself a mug of ale. “’Tis the group with the doubtful handwriting,” he said, clearly enjoying himself.

“Your handwriting would be doubtful also, had you spent four years in the service of the Dragon King,” said Randolph.

“That is my view,” said Matthew. “But there are those who hold that Melanie, not Shan, wrote these journals; in which case one cannot trust ’em.”

“But if she wrote them for her own use?” said Ted. He sounded terrifyingly grown-up, but the honey was still running down his arm.

Matthew shrugged. “If she had, why write them after the style of Shan?”

“What other teacher had she?” said Ted.

“What,” said Randolph to Matthew, “of the journals?”

“Shan’s order of sorcerers wielded no arms save their magic,” said Matthew. “Not until he entered the service of the Dragon King, whose minions would as soon kill one another as eat their dinner, did he need true weapons. His magic was less than theirs, you will understand, for his came by craft and theirs by nature. And because he needed to battle such creatures as the Dragon King uses, he learned what weapons vanquish them.”

“That were a boon indeed,” said Randolph, slowly. “Is the translation complete?”

“So much as I can do,” said Matthew, looking rueful. “There are passages that need the wisdom of Fence.”

Randolph’s brows drew together. “Is there help in them in their present state?”

“I would have you look at them, if you will.”

“Gladly,” said Randolph, rising and thrusting the buttery dagger into his belt. “And as soon as may be. Have you eaten enough?”

“As much as I have stomach for,” said Matthew, rising too. “My duty to Your Highness,” he said to the children, and moved for the door.

“Edward, if you would eat with the proper hand,” said Randolph. He stopped, and sighed. “I will impart to you what we discover,” he said, pulled Laura’s hair, and followed Matthew.

Patrick looked at Ted, and snickered. “You might as well have been eating with your left hand, the mess you’ve made,” he said.

“Do you know a good way to sprain a hand?” Ted asked him.

“Where’s Ruth?” Laura demanded of Ted.

“I wish I could get a look at those manuscripts,” said Ted, gazing into the depths of his mug as if it were a crystal ball. He picked it up, took a large swallow, and made a face.

“You could have asked,” said Patrick.

“Where’s Ruth and Ellen?” said Laura.

“If you’ve finished eating, we can check the stables and Ruth’s room,” said Patrick.

“Let’s go,” said Laura. The water was still sloshing in her stomach. She got up. “Agatha tried to poison my cocoa,” she said as they went out the door.

“What?”
said Ted, pleasing Laura immensely. She did not really think that it had been Agatha, but she had wanted to get Ted’s attention.

“How do you know?” said Patrick. Laura told him. Patrick leaned on the passage wall and howled. “You crazy kid,” he said when he was finished laughing. “It’s bitter because they don’t put sugar in it, that’s all.”

“Why not?”

“Same reason people don’t put it in tea and coffee, I guess.”

“That’s stupid,” said Laura, knowing full well that Patrick thought it was she who was stupid.

Ruth and Ellen were not in Ruth’s room nor in Ellen and Laura’s, and they were not in the stable. It was a sunny day, cooler than the weather had been since they had arrived, and still a little misty. After some discussion the three of them decided to sit on the outer wall of the moat on the west side of High Castle, where they could watch for Ruth and Ellen’s approach and feed the swans at the same time. High Castle was situated on rising ground, so that from the moat’s wall they could see quite easily over the high pink outer wall.

They went back to the hall where they had eaten. There were several lords and ladies, dressed in what looked like hunting garments, eating there, but nobody remarked on Patrick’s taking a loaf of bread. They crossed the drawbridge, being greeted by name and with apparent affection by both the guards there, and settled themselves on the sun-warmed wall of the moat.

“At least nobody’s missed them,” said Patrick.

They had fed the swans perhaps a quarter of the loaf of bread, and begun an argument about what Matthew had meant when he had said, “Sits the wind in that quarter?” when they saw the distant figures of horses plodding over the plain. They scrambled from the wall and ran through the front gate to greet them.

Ruth would not say a word until they had turned the horses over to a groom, and then she would say only that she wanted some breakfast. She and Ellen seated themselves in the rose garden, and Ted and Patrick and Laura all went back to the breakfast hall once again. It did not need three of them to bring Ruth and Ellen breakfast, but none of them felt able to stay in the garden with Ruth and Ellen while Ruth and Ellen were not talking.

A flurry of cats leaped from the table when they came in, and some of the dishes had already been cleared away. So they bundled bread and drumsticks and a lump of butter and a honey pot into a tablecloth, and hurried back to the garden. It was starting to get hot.

“Did it work?” asked Ted.

“We had the most awful time,” said Ellen. Her hair was full of leaves and her face scratched, but she sounded complacent.

“Did it work?”

“Our sword does so work on your hedge,” said Ellen to Laura.

Patrick yelped. “It can’t!”

“It was probably Shan’s Ring that let it,” said Ted. “Did it work, Ruth?”

“Why should Shan’s Ring let it?” bristled Patrick.

“Shut up and let her talk. Ruth, did Shan’s Ring work? Did you change the time?”

“Yes,” said Ruth.

Ted and Patrick immediately looked happier. Laura’s stomach contracted. She had hoped that, if it did not work, they would have to go home. Now they were stuck. And what did Ted look so pleased about, anyway? He was the one who’d been so upset, and hollering that nobody understood. Laura felt deserted.

“So how?” said Patrick.

“Not the way we thought,” said Ruth. She was cleaner than Ellen, but she still looked draggled. She picked a yellow rose and sniffed it thoughtfully. “We tried the Ring at the bottle trees and not a darn thing happened. So we finally thought we might as well at least look at the hedge. It was on the way home anyway, and we thought the horses could drink at the stream.”

“They wouldn’t, though,” said Ellen.

“So we tried to get through the hedge into the yard, and it worked,” said Ruth. “There were streetlights on the other side of the hedge, instead of the stream, and cars parked. So then I tried all the things I’d tried by the bottle trees.”

“Did you throw the ring in the air and say the verse?” asked Patrick. “I thought of that when it was too late.”

“Didn’t work,” said Ellen.

“I tried everything,” said Ruth. “So finally I thought I should throw it over the hedge. So I tried standing in the stream and doing that, and Ellie stood in the yard to catch it.”

“You could’ve lost it!” said Patrick, furiously.

“Well, we didn’t,” said Ruth, with the kind of patience usually reserved for very small children. “So then I stood in the street and Ellie stood in the yard.”

“I didn’t like that,” said Ellen. “There was a light in the attic window, a purple one.”

“And I threw the ring over the hedge and said the verse.” Ruth paused.

Laura could see that Ted would not give her the satisfaction of being prompted, but Patrick was too wild to care about that. “Well?” he said.

“There was a very bright flash of purple light,” said Ruth, “and a big space opened in the hedge, and I could see the Secret Country in it. Ellen had the sword, so I thought I should go on through. I did, and I was back here, but Ellie wasn’t. I’d just been looking around for a moment, when I heard a splash in the stream.”

The three members of the audience looked at Ellen.

“I saw the purple light too,” she said. “It hurt my eyes, and I couldn’t see where the ring fell. And while I was waiting for the spots to go away, I looked at the house, because the whole hedge was lit up. All the lights in the house went on, and the front door burst open and there was a lady with a broom just screaming her head off.”

Ted and Laura looked at each other.

“What’d she say?” asked Ted.

“ ‘Aroint thee,’ ” said Ellen. “And she called us something like ‘onions,’ but it can’t have been. I wish all these people didn’t talk so weird.” She pushed her hair away from her eyes. “So I wanted to get out of there, and I ran for the hedge and the hedge went out—I mean it wasn’t glowing anymore—and the sword pulled me and I fell down.”

“How pulled?” said Patrick.

“It pulled,” said Ellen. “It made me lose my balance. So I fell down and right in front of my nose was the ring, shining.”

“Shining how?”

“Shining,” said Ellen. “Anybody’d think you don’t speak English. The gold was all yellow—”

“It’s brass,” said Patrick.

“—yellow, like sunshine, okay? So I grabbed it, and the sword let me up.”

“What do you mean, let you up?”

“It stopped pulling,” said Ellen, dangerously, and waited for her brother to say more, but he was silent. Laura thought he looked like somebody doing mental arithmetic in front of a crowd of parents.

“So,” said Ellen, “I got up and got through the hedge and fell in the water.”

“Now I thought,” said Ruth, “that what Ellie said happened with the lady took more time than the time between when I got back here and when I heard Ellie fall in the water. But I wanted to make sure.”

“And I wasn’t going back in there,” said Ellen.

“So I did,” said Ruth. She paused again, twirling the yellow rose.

“Come on,” said Patrick. He snatched the rose from her.

“I took the ring,” said Ruth, “but not the sword. Just to see what happened.”

“Well?” said Ted.

“I wasn’t back in your town, because the streetlights and cars weren’t there.”

“
Well?
”

“But I wasn’t just in the Secret Country, either. Ellie wasn’t on the other side of the hedge. It was daytime, and there was an army all over the plain.”

“Camped?” said Ted.

“Moving.”

“What’d it look like?”

“Well, it looked like the Secret Country, more or less. I mean, the Well of the White Witch was there, and there was a cardinal singing like mad in the yard. I got out of there fast.”

“Why?” said Patrick.

“It felt wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

“The air was like a sheet of glass,” said Ruth, helplessly. “And I felt too small and the sky was the wrong color. I don’t know, Patrick. It just was.”

“I’m going to have to check this out,” said Patrick. “Go on.”

“I came back and got the sword from Ellie,” said Ruth, “and ended up in the right place when I used the ring and the sword to get through. The lady had gone in, there was just the light in the attic again. So I just sat and waited for a few minutes. I got chomped by mosquitoes, and there was a cat in the yard that hissed at me.”