The Secret Country (28 page)

“Well,” said Patrick, “what’ll we tell Fence? We don’t know anything, really.”

“Well,” said Ellen, “since it worked out all right—I said we were Fence’s spies and sure enough we
are
—we should just tell him what I made up for us to tell him. It should be all right.”

“Yeah, and what if it’s not? Tell him we didn’t find out anything. I think it would be refreshing to tell the truth for a change.”

“No!” said Laura, surprising herself.

“Why not?”

Laura sloshed the wine around in her cup. Its faint sour smell came up to her, altered a little by the spices. She wished for a cup of cocoa.

“Fence’ll be disappointed,” she said.

“Who the hell cares?”

“Besides,” said Laura, trying to think like Patrick, “what if he needs to know something Ellen made up?”

“If pigs had wings,” said Patrick, bitterly, “they’d be pigeons.”

“Come on,” said Laura to Ellen. “Tell us what we should tell Fence.”

 

Ted came breathlessly into the Council Chamber and was relieved to see that it was only half full. Benjamin was lighting torches. Claudia and Andrew stood together, speaking quietly. Matthew slumped in his chair, glowering at Claudia. The King sat straight. He wore the dark blue robe of the council. Ted, in his workaday tunic, felt the heart-stopping panic that usually came of forgetting his homework, until he realized that neither Benjamin nor Matthew had put on a council robe.

He made his way to his own chair and thumped into it gratefully. There was no telling what was going to happen, and the thought of all the things that might was making his knees uncertain.

Matthew looked over at him expectantly.

“I want to thank you,” said Ted, realizing only as he said it just what he owed Matthew. “And I regret . . .” he added, and stopped. He was not sure what he regretted or whether he ought to admit it.

Matthew shook his head. “They say the ass is known by his ears.”

That sounded insulting, but before Ted had decided what to do about it, Matthew added, “He who cannot keep a temper must temper a knife to keep him. Where have you kept so hot an anger these seventeen years?”

Ted, closing his mouth on his reaction to being seventeen, shook his head. He still wondered what was going on. The fault seemed to lie not in his having jumped at Andrew and broken a lot of valuable glassware, or even in disrupting a banquet, but in what he had not done with a knife he did not have. Surely they hadn’t expected him to kill Andrew in the middle of a feast? Andrew had had to give his knife to the King, so drawing during a feast must be frowned upon. But the King had also seemed to frown upon Ted’s not drawing. You the artistic type, Ted thought, and not drawing. Tsk. He almost giggled, and began to wonder seriously what was wrong with him tonight.

“For all our sakes,” said Matthew, “curb thyself or find the means to curb others.”

“Did I get you in trouble too?” What he means, thought Ted, is that you’d better decide whether you’re Ted or Edward.

“By the letter, aye,” said Matthew. “By the spirit, thou hast done me some good. Thy father is of too many minds to be altogether displeased by aught that may happen.”

Benjamin passed behind them with his taper, and bent down to Ted. “What is this they babble of thee?”

“I lost my temper with Andrew,” said Ted.

“Well and good. What is this mouthing of knives?”

“I didn’t have one.”

“Dear heaven,” said Benjamin. “Thou unweaned whelp. Where have thy ears been?”

“I didn’t expect to need it!”

Benjamin and Matthew exchanged a glance that made Ted apprehensive.

“And thou?” said Benjamin to Matthew.

Matthew shrugged. “A hand on the dagger suffices with Andrew.”

Benjamin looked as if he had heard as much as he could take. “So he would have thee think. One day thou wilt so think and ’twill not be so. Shan’s mercy, are we all children here?”

Matthew turned red. Benjamin, grumbling, went on lighting torches. The room had filled and quieted as they talked. Ted looked to see where they had put Claudia. She was in Randolph’s place, on the King’s right. Randolph was not to be seen.

“Hey!” said Ted, outraged, and turned to Matthew, who had jerked open a drawer in the table and was pulling out his pen and ink and parchment. Matthew looked up and froze.

“Where
is
Randolph?” said Ted.

Matthew slammed the drawer, and the King looked inquiringly in their direction.

“Off on some fool’s errand,” said Matthew, furiously. “This is a very midsummer madness upon all of us.”

“Where’s Fence?”

“Aiding Randolph in what he needs no aid to do.”

Ted worked this out silently, and could not help grinning. The King rang a bell, and everyone still talking shut up.

“My lords,” said the King. “We are met with ye this twenty-first day of June, in the forty-sixth year of our reign, the four hundred and ninetieth year since King John vanquished the Dragon King, that ye may hear the report of our most honored lord and sorcerer Fence and advise me touching it.”

There was a pause, during which Ted leaned over to Matthew and whispered, “What’s the use of starting a council because Fence is back, without Fence?”

The door to the room swung open, and Randolph strode in, followed by a shorter man in black robes. The robes were dotted with galaxies and nebulae, and in the dim light of the torches they drew Ted’s eye like a hypnotist’s crystal.

“That he might be late to’t,” said Matthew in Ted’s ear.

Ted hardly heard him. The short man had moved so that Randolph could shut the door, and stood under a torch. He looked down the table and caught Ted’s eye. Ted gasped and sat up. He felt as if he had gone from a stuffy room into sub-zero sunny weather. Neither was comfortable, but the outside was cleaner. If this were Fence, maybe he
could
make everything all right.

Randolph came to stand on the King’s right, with Fence behind him like a shadow. Randolph, too, had not put on his counselor’s robe.

“I crave pardon for my lateness,” he said, and stopped. He had seen Claudia in his chair. She smiled at him, which made Ted shiver, and Randolph smiled back, which made Ted want to be somewhere else. Fence blanched, and then he scowled, and then he smiled too. He looked like someone who does not understand something but is very pleased by it anyway.

“My lord Benjamin,” said Randolph, very gently, “I beg to point out that there is an insufficiency of chairs in this chamber.”

“My lord, there is,” said Benjamin. “I was told that some would be absent and the visitors accommodated thereby.” His glance at Andrew was withering. Andrew wore the “Who, me?” look of a cat asleep by a broken milk bottle.

Randolph bowed to Benjamin.

Benjamin said to the King, “By your leave, Sire.”

The King nodded at Benjamin, who stood up and went out. As he passed the short man, he put a hand on his shoulder in a gesture that might have been to welcome or to move him aside. Fence took two steps out of his way, and the corner of his mouth quirked.

Then he looked at the King. “Will his Majesty receive my greeting?”

The King turned in his chair and held out a hand. Fence knelt and kissed it. Ted admired them both. He would have looked and felt foolish in either position, but they did it as a matter of course, the King elegantly and Fence simply; they did it as if they meant it, although it was clear that the King was angry with Fence and Fence with the King.

Randolph moved suddenly to open the door, and Benjamin came through it with a heavy wooden chair, like the others in the room, in each hand. He held them as if they were wine bottles. Randolph and Fence got out of his way. Benjamin, with no hesitation, set one chair on either side of the King, a little back from the table, and looked at Claudia. Randolph slid behind Fence and caught Benjamin’s sleeve.

“My thanks to you,” he said, and sat on the King’s right, between Claudia and the King. Fence’s mouth quirked again, and he came around Benjamin and behind the King to sit on the King’s left. Benjamin rolled his eyes to the ceiling as if he were giving up on two children, and took his own seat.

“Randolph,” said the King, “wherefore art thou late?”

Ted saw Fence turn his head and stare at the King. Randolph merely looked resigned. “Sire, I was but arranging to hold harmless Lady Claudia,” and he bowed in her direction, “who tried to stab Fence on the stairs.”

Ted almost fell out of his chair. The King simply became very still, as if he were listening for something. Andrew slammed his hand down on the table. “You’re mad!”

The King looked toward Claudia, who sat very straight in Randolph’s chair with her hands relaxed on its arms. She looked back at him gravely. Ted saw the way her hair fell over her neck, and found himself blaming Randolph a little less, even if she had tried to stab Fence on the stairs.

When she did not speak, the King looked back at Randolph. “Thou hast not succeeded?”

“It appears not, Your Majesty.”

“Is this business more urgent than that which called us here?”

“Only,” said Randolph dryly, “in that it puts the Lady Claudia’s presence under most grave doubt.”

The King hesitated. “Who brings the accusation?”

“I do,” said Fence, so quietly that Ted could barely hear him. Everyone else’s voice carried well. Ted wondered if Fence was unaccustomed to speaking in council. Fence puzzled him. Nobody who looked and acted so ordinary should be able to make one feel so—so effervescent.

“Who are thy witnesses?” said the King.

“Lord Randolph,” said Fence. He paused, and just as Andrew’s hand moved on the table he added, “Prince Patrick, Princess Laura, Princess Ellen.”

Ted jerked upright and banged his knee on the table leg. How had they managed
that?
He saw Benjamin cover his eyes with one hand in a gesture of despair, and grinned. Four of the five of them had been in some sort of trouble this evening. He wondered where Ruth was.

“Children,” said the King.

“Children have eyes, my lord,” said Fence, rather sharply.

The King’s eyebrows went up. “I said not otherwise, my lord.”

“Your pardon,” said Fence, tranquilly.

“Lady Claudia,” said the King.

“Sire?” Ted hoped she had strep and pneumonia. “Answer you this accusation?”

“Not presently,” said Claudia.

“Leave you then our council. Your honor hath been questioned. The witnesses thereto were better in their beds. Therefore, until you challenge and prove trusty, you are barred from our council and our person.”

Ted was taken aback by the harshness of this speech. Claudia did not seem upset about it, which was only to be expected. No one else seemed surprised by it either, so perhaps the words were just a formality.

“Our lord Jerome,” said the King.

A large, blond, gloomy man whom Ted did not recognize stood up. Claudia stood up too, and they both came to stand at the door.

“Take your privilege,” said the King to Fence.

“My lord, I humbly thank you,” said Fence, “but naught I can conceive may bind her. She must go whither she will.”

Benjamin and Randolph grimaced at each other. The King looked mildly surprised, and fumed in his chair to speak to Jerome. “The South Tower, then,” he said.

“Your Majesty,” said Jerome. He took Claudia’s arm. The door boomed shut behind them.

There was an extended silence, during which the King stared over Ted’s left shoulder in a way that made Ted itch to look behind him, and nobody fidgeted. Ted saw that Fence kept his eyes on the King, in the manner of one who is watching the sky, waiting for a falling star. Randolph sat on the edge of his chair as if he were impatient to be out of it.

When the King stirred, it was to look at Randolph’s empty seat. “Take thy place, Randolph,” he said.

Fence’s mouth quirked. Randolph did as he was told. The King turned to Fence.

“My lord, this council hath swollen since last you sat on’t. For the present, you may take Jerome’s seat.”

Fence did so. This put him on Ted’s left, two spots away. Matthew grinned at him, and he shook his head.

The King repeated the opening speech, and looked at Fence. “Will’t please you to make your report.”

“Good my lord, it will.”

Fence stood up, somehow managing not to scrape his chair on the floor. He leaned the palms of his hands on the table and stood there, looking unconcerned.

“My lords, the Outside Powers are rising again,” said he.

Ted grew cold. Their story had no Outside Powers in it; but the Riddle of Shan’s Ring did. What if they had read it all wrong in their ignorance, and made this happen?

He had no idea what the announcement meant to the others, but nobody looked pleased. Their expressions filled the range between Benjamin, who looked as if he were going to faint, and Andrew, who looked as if the waiter had brought him the wrong order for the third time. To Ted’s dismay, the King’s expression was much closer to Andrew’s than to Benjamin’s.

“The scouts’ reports you have already,” said Fence. “Seeing with different eyes and a greater knowledge, I have found worse than they. The further south, the sharper the country; on our borders the Dragon King hath set a sword in every blade of grass. Many wizards I sought have vanished from the land. Those I found told me that all signs in heaven and earth spell disaster.”

He pushed a piece of ill-cut hair off his forehead and continued. He was still speaking quietly, and a little dreamily, as if he were talking to himself. “There is a most precise correspondence between events in the south and what King John’s Book tells us of the signs which foretold the coming of the Dragon King. Now the Dragon King is the yeast of the Outside Powers. But other signs I saw in the south, and in other books than John’s are written tales of the greater powers and the signs that come before them.”