The Whim of the Dragon (16 page)

Matthew was putting saddlebags on the horses and doing, Laura thought, a very good job of pretending that his youngest son, Mark, was helping. John really was helping Margaret with the same task. Benjamin moved from horse to horse, talking to them. They were remarkably quiet for horses in such a turmoil.

Fence went up to Benjamin and began walking around with him, talking also, but not, from his tone, to the horses. Laura made sure that the two bags Agatha had packed for her and Ellen were there. She wondered if only the six of them were going, or if there would be men-at-arms. She knew nothing of the lands east and north of the Hidden Land, and very little about what dangers might lurk in the Hidden Land itself. The Hidden Land had not seemed, on their journey south for the battle, to be very heavily populated; but neither had there been bears or wolves or even any deer. Maybe there would be deer in the north, and, if they traveled quietly, they would see some.

It began to rain harder. Matthew came over to them, his fair skin flushed and the red hair sticking to his brow.

“Is anybody else coming with us?” asked Laura. She realized that this was not what her fifth-grade teacher would have called a clearly phrased remark, but Matthew seemed to understand.

“No,” he said. “We must go swiftly; and the librarians of Heathwill frown on parties o’er-large.”

“Aren’t there bandits?” said Ellen.

Matthew laughed. “In Fence’s Country?” he said.

“Well, but before we get there?”

Matthew laughed again, a little more exasperatedly. “None,” he said. “There are farmers and traveling merchants.”

“Why?” said Ellen; she was disappointed.

“Because,” said Matthew, kneeling in a puddle without seeming to notice it, and looking first Ellen and then Laura soberly in the face, “that is the country of the unicorns, where even the innocent may come to grief. The guilty have no more joy there than a lump of butter in a hot pan.”

“Matthew!” said Ellen, and Laura saw on her face a look of unholy glee, like the one she had had the day she let all Ted and Patrick’s frogs loose. “Are we going to travel through the Enchanted Forest?”

“Thy geography is without fault,” said Matthew. “Now mind thy face.”

He stood up and returned to the packing. Everything was loaded, including the people, and Celia still had not arrived. Mark, John, and Margaret hung around looking glum. Benjamin stood behind them looking glummer. Matthew dismounted twice to tell them good-bye. Laura sat behind Patrick on a black horse with one white leg. Patrick’s pack was going to bump her under the chin once they started, but it was still better than riding a horse by herself. The rain had settled into a steady drizzle that seemed capable of going on all day and got you much wetter than it looked as if it could.

Celia finally came trudging over the pink paving, lugging a bulging, misshapen pack. She hugged her three offspring, and said something to them that Laura couldn’t hear. They nodded, resignedly, and opened the little door of the postern. Celia patted Benjamin on the shoulder and swung briskly onto her horse.

They rode out the postern one by one, Celia, Patrick and Laura, Ellen, and Matthew, who was leading the pony with the luggage. Laura turned and waved, and the three yellow-haired children whose parents she was stealing waved dutifully back. Laura had thought, the first time she saw them, that they looked just as children in a fairy tale ought to look; and they still did, even wet and gloomy-faced. Behind them, Benjamin raised his hand and waved too; Laura felt absurdly better. The three children disappeared behind the door and slammed it. Laura heard the bolt snick shut, and felt desolate. She turned around, and hit her nose on Patrick’s pack.

They rode down a long, shallow slope toward the edge of Stillman’s Wood. It bordered on the Enchanted Forest, but did not itself look enchanted, or at least not in any appealing way. Its oaks were a dark, grim green that the wet only made worse. The beeches had been a pleasant coppery color all week in the sunlight, but now looked like dried blood. They rode along the edge of the woods until Celia found the path. It was narrow and clogged with ragged brown leaves, which, stirred up by the horses’s hooves, smelled musty.

The dull spaces of the woods were misty with rain. Laura remembered her dreams with longing. Either of them had been better than this. They rode on further. Laura began to think she recognized this stretch of path. They had come this way for the King’s funeral. It had rained then too.

Behind them, Matthew began to whistle, and the words slid upward from the bottom of Laura’s mind.
O Westron wind, when wilt thou blow, the small rain down can rain?

But that was for spring, thought Laura; and this was autumn.

W
HEN the army of the Hidden Land had come south in August, it had stopped at the Well of the White Witch for a ceremony. Ted assumed, without thinking about it, that his party would do likewise. But the horses and wagons ahead of him went on by the Well, which sat squatly in the sad, wet grasses, its lid tightly in place, its pink stone darkened with rain, and glowed not at all. Ted looked to his right, through the trees, to where Claudia’s house loomed. Its gray stone walls were muted by the rain, and its red tile roofs showed sharply against the dark forest and the pale sky.

There was a light in the window of the smaller tower. Ted reined his horse abruptly, and she responded with a very good grace. “Ruth!” said Ted. Ruth pulled her horse to a stop; Andrew stopped too. They sat there in a row, all looking sideways. Randolph rode up beside Ted. “Look,” said Ted, and looked, himself, at Randolph.

Randolph stared past Ted and Ruth and Andrew, and his eyes opened wide, in an expression of startlement very unlike him. “Shan’s mercy,” he said. “What sorcery is this?”

“I’ve never seen a light in that house,” said Ted. “Hadn’t we better take a look?”

Randolph, his astonished gaze still on that vivid yellow line high up in the dark of the woods, said, “Thou art the King. If thou shouldst choose to delay thy embassy in searching out this riddle, who shall gainsay thee?”

“Well, you’d better stop the rest of them before they disappear,” said Ted, not entirely pleased to have had his question answered with another. Randolph rode off.

“Good grief,” said Ruth, in a voice where Ted heard exasperation warring with nerves, “didn’t anybody think to search here, after Claudia disappeared?”

“Oh, aye,” said Andrew. “Fence did order the lords Jerome and Julian to do so; but they found nothing.”

Randolph came back, followed by the wagons and the little clump of men-at-arms. The latter began dismounting.

“I have given orders, my prince,” said Randolph to Ted, “that food be prepared. Who shall accompany thee?”

“You,” said Ted. “And Ruth and Andrew.” He hesitated. “Do you think men-at-arms would do us any good?”

“No,” said Randolph, “but thou mightst do them good to ask them.”

“Okay, find two, could you please?”

Randolph dismounted; so, after a pause, did Ted and Ruth and Andrew. Some of the soldiers came up and took their horses. Two of them bowed to Ted and intimated that they were at his service. One of them had a mallow embroidered on his sash; he had been in the battle. His name was Stephen, that was it; it was he who had told Ted that Conrad was sore hurt. He was tall, thin, fair, and amiable-looking. The other was a young woman with a peony on her sash. She was a stocky person with sleek brown hair who seemed nothing like a peony.

They all stood expectantly and looked at Ted. He felt like Captain Kirk at the outset of some hazardous mission, which did not help in the least. “This is a sorcerer we call upon,” he said, “but, should she prove troublesome, remember that a goodly anger can break a spell of stillness, and that, do you move quickly enough, she can be surprised with simple force.” That was all he knew that might prove useful, and magic probably didn’t make these people half as nervous as it made him. “Let’s go,” said Ted, and started up the hill. They followed him.

As he stopped at the little wooden bridge, Ruth caught him up. “Just how goodly an anger?” she said, quietly.

“Very goodly,” said Ted. “Remember the time Ophelia had kittens on your green velvet dress.”

“You’re on the wrong track,” said Ruth. “That was profound sorrow, tempered by an awful desire to laugh.”

“You could’ve fooled me,” said Ted, only half attending. He was discovering in himself a craven desire not to go one step nearer that house. He and Laura had burned it down, in Illinois. He wondered if he would have to burn it down here, and on the shores of the twisty lake Laura had seen in her dream; he wondered how many such houses there were, and if Claudia would await him in each one, with her husky voice and her matter-of-fact recital of the things she had done and her offer to allow him to help her go on doing them. He had not been tempted, but he might be next time; and, quite apart from anything she might be able to do to him, he was afraid of her.

The rest of his party came up behind them. Ted turned around and gestured at Randolph, who came forward. “I might feel happier with a few drawn swords,” said Ted.

“As you will,” said Randolph, and drew his.

The Peony and the Mallow looked at each other, and drew theirs also. Ted’s was in his baggage. He started abruptly across the bridge, the rest of them clattering hollowly behind. Having crossed, they were obliged to go single-file along the narrow space between the edge of the stream and the beginning of the brush. The haphazard undergrowth gave way to the hedge, and Ted found with no trouble the gap one could crawl under.

“I wonder,” he said, “if it would be better to use the gate.”

“It’d be more dignified, certainly,” said Ruth. “But the gate’s been locked whenever we looked.”

“I keep the key of it,” said Andrew’s precise voice, from somewhere behind Randolph and the Peony.

Ted looked up at Ruth, whose face was as surprised as he felt. Ted leaned around Ruth to examine Randolph’s reaction. Randolph was astonished, so it was probably safe to ask questions. “By whose leave?” said Ted.

“By King William’s,” said Andrew.

That surprised Randolph too. There was something in Andrew’s voice that warned Ted to be careful. “Do you keep it for me also,” he said. “But now, of your gracious will, lend the use of it to me.” That last sentence he got from Edward; it was the way in which the King asked for things nobody had the right to deny him.

The key was on a silver chain that looked too fragile to hold it. The chain was warm; Andrew had probably been wearing it around his neck. The key was wrought iron with a tree-and-leaf pattern, like the gate, and as cold as clay. Ted walked along the hedge to the brick arch with the gate in it and fitted the key into the lock. It turned silently, and the gate, as heavy as it looked, moved inward before he began to lean on it. Ted hastily pulled the key out of the lock, and the gate went on swinging until it bumped gently into the hedge. The blue-gray flagstones of the walk, swept clean of their maple seeds, were slick with rain.

“How about somebody with a sword up here?” called Ted.

Randolph, Ruth, and Ted walked together up the flagstone path to the steps of the porch, followed by the others. Ted did not remember very clearly the porch of the Illinois house: he and Laura had walked up to it not because they wanted to but because Claudia’s spell had made them. But this porch seemed tidier than that one. It was newly painted, in a pleasant red that matched the roof.

He climbed the steps and went across the porch. The double doors were carved around their edges with the same old story. The right-hand one had an iron knocker in the shape of a cat’s head. The ring in its teeth with which you hit the door was, Ted discovered as he dropped it against the wood, actually a very long, thin, iron rat with its tail in its mouth.

“Cute,” he said to Ruth.

“Verily,” said Ruth.

Nobody answered the knock. Ted looked up at Randolph and said, “I’m not sure why I think we ought to be polite. Shall we just go in?”

“You’ve given fair warning,” said Randolph.

Ted put both hands on the damp wood of the doors, and pushed. They opened as easily as the gate had, and a warm gust of cinnamon-scented air swept out onto the dripping porch. Claudia’s other house smelled like this too. Ted said to Randolph, “Should we leave somebody to guard the front door?”

Randolph, maddeningly, did not answer him. Ted looked at the Peony and the Mallow. Stephen, the Mallow, looked hopeful, as if he were curious about the house. On the other hand, Ted didn’t know the Peony’s name.

“Stephen,” he said, “will you forego this exploration and guard the door?”

Stephen bowed, smiling, and went to stand on the steps. Ted walked into Claudia’s front hall, and Ruth and Randolph and Andrew and the Peony came with him. There was a perfectly standard Oriental rug on the polished floor. Before them on the left was a narrow flight of steps, carpeted in red, and on the right the long hall hung with odd dark pictures down which Claudia had led Ted and Laura, in another house.

“I think,” said Ted, in response to a kind of stirring at the back of his mind, “that to get to the smaller tower we go up the stairway as far as we may, bearing always to the left.” He looked at Randolph. “You’re my general; why don’t you make the dispositions?”

“As you will,” said Randolph; he did not, to Ted’s relief, sound displeased. Nor did Andrew or the Peony look as if Ted had said anything out of the way.

Andrew, on second glance, did not look as if he had heard anything since he stepped inside. He seemed to be listening for something behind the voices and the drip of rain and the profound stillness of the house; and he looked as if all the hair on the back of his neck were standing on end. Ted wondered how much Andrew knew about his own sister, and whether he was fond of her. He wasn’t sure he could imagine anybody at all being fond of Claudia. Even Randolph had implied that he was not so much fond of as bewitched by her.