Unexpected Magic (58 page)

“Tremath to the Prince! Yield yourselves prisoner.”

T
he day was saved, thanks to Lord Tremath. They discovered later that he and half his army had been close behind them all the way, so close that Lord Tremath had actually seen them ride into the Forest; but his army had been slowed down by the thick wood and had only just arrived in time.

Lord Tremath
had
gone to Gairne after Robert rode away, only waiting to see his son set off safely for Tremath with all the other outlaws. When he came to Gairne, he questioned Robert's spies and arrested all of Towerwood's people he could lay hands on. The spies knew very little, but by threatening Towerwood's men with the most terrible tortures, he found out enough to guess that Everard was in Endwait. He rode that way immediately, so, of course, Lord Darron missed him and it was Aaron, ambling toward Gairne on his donkey, who told him what had happened. Lord Tremath was exceedingly angry that Lord Darron had let the four children ride after Towerwood on their own. He walked up and down on the creaking floor of the hunting lodge, telling them over and over again what he thought.

Everard whispered to Alex: “But he would have let his own son do it. Why not us?”

“Because you are the Prince, my lord,” said Lord Tremath, overhearing him.

They spent the night at the hunting lodge, which was only a hundred yards away. Cecilia did not come out of her faint until they got there, and all that time Alex was afraid he had killed her, although Robert told him six times that his bullet had missed.

As soon as it was plain that Cecilia was unhurt, Everard took Robert and Alex each by an elbow and pulled them away from her.

“Robert,” he said, “I am going to amend two of our laws. I shall abolish the cutting-up of traitors and I shall forbid people to bury suicides in the disgusting way they now do. Will I be right?” He gave Alex's arm a warning twitch as they waited for Robert to answer.

Robert looked sad, sadder and more tired even than Alex had seen him when he first came into their kitchen. He looked from Everard to Alex and then down at the many studs on his swordbelt, and ran his fingers along them. He seemed to be going to speak, and then stopped. Then, suddenly, when Alex thought he was not going to tell them after all, Robert looked at Everard again, as if he were very proud of him.

“Yes, Everard, you will be right. Towerwood had spent the whole night bullying Bertram, and your father and I were trying to calm him in the garden there. Of course, we did not know what Towerwood had said, but we had never seen Bertram so wrought up. He screamed at us to leave him alone and drew his dagger, but I think even then your father would have been safe, if he had not tried to take Bertram's dagger away. Bertram stabbed him during their tussle and then turned on me. He said: ‘I have to kill you too, Robert,' but he killed himself instead.”

“Oh, I see,” said Everard quietly. “We should have thought of that, Alex. Towerwood would obviously be much more afraid of Robert than of me. Oh, Robert, you faced death twice that day. I am sorry.”

“It does not matter now,” Robert answered.

For the rest of the evening everyone was cheerful. Susannah fell asleep smiling and had to be woken up for supper. Harry kept falling asleep too, and then waking up with a start, trying to remember something he had to say to Alex and Cecilia. Lord Tremath took off his armor and recited poems to them—his own, Alex realized, remembering the book he had read in Falleyfell library—and outside the lodge, the soldiers laughed and sang. They were encamped on the lawn at the back, where a hundred years later another army camped in much more desperate circumstances. The people in the lodge had only just enough food for them, but there was plenty of wine. Alex thought that he and Everard at least were a little drunk by bedtime. Their time in the dungeon struck them both as very funny, and they tried to explain to Robert. But Robert seemed sad.

“You are Count of Gairne again now,” Everard kept telling him, to cheer him up, but that seemed to make him sadder than ever.

In the morning, they all rode back to Endwait to give the wheelwright his horses back. Harry, who had quite recovered after a night's sleep, remembered what it was he should have said last night.

“Alex, we must hurry home. Your father will be back from London today, and my father will be tearing his hair.”

Alex knew he was right. He felt cold and sick, suddenly, at the thought of what Josiah might say. “Yes,” he said.

“Oh, we can be hanged for sheep, Harry,” said Susannah. “Now we have disappeared, let us stay disappeared for today.”

“You will have to,” said Robert. “You cannot reach the hardway through the bay until very late tonight, and I think the tide will be in then.”

He, Everard, and Cecilia worked it out, and found he was right. Everard was delighted and arranged for them to stay at Falleyfell that night and cross the bay the following day. So one of Lord Tremath's soldiers went galloping ahead to give Everard's orders, and the others made a wonderful leisurely journey through the Principality in the snow.

They went to Endwait, and there Everard promised the astonished wheelwright and his wife that the deeds of the land should be sent to them in the course of the next three days. Then they went onto Gairne. There Lord Darron met them, and to Cecilia's delight, he did show her one of the warehouses there. She and Susannah went into raptures over the beauty of the cloth.

“I would order bales of this,” Cecilia said to Robert, “if only I could explain to Father where it came from.”

Alex, who was still feeling cold and sick, went to see the castle with Harry and Everard. It was a splendid castle, just like the castle must have been on his island before it was ruined.

“No,” said Everard, “mine is a great deal bigger. I will show you. Are you well, Alex?”

Alex said he was, but he was beginning to think that the way he was feeling could not be merely fear of Josiah.

They went to Falleyfell, later that day, and arrived in time for the small, melancholy funeral of Princess Mathilda, Countess of Gairne. Alex, feeling sicker than ever in the chapel, was thankful that she had a proper funeral and not the kind Everard had described.

“Shall we say my law is already in force?” Everard said later. “I will backdate it.”

They did not see Robert again that evening. Susannah several times demanded loudly where he was, until Lord Darron took her aside and explained that the Princess was Robert's mother. Susannah burst into tears. She would have cried all evening, if the doors of the great square hall had not slammed open at that moment.

“Oh!” she said to Harry. “It's our lady!”

Princess Rosalind ran the whole length of the hall to kiss Everard. The two nuns with her looked a little shocked. When the Princess went on to kiss Susannah, Harry, Alex, and Cecilia, they looked at one another as much as to say, “This lady has no idea of dignity.” Then the Princess kissed Lord Darron and Lord Tremath too and the nuns left the hall.

Susannah remembered Lord Arbard and asked after him. She was told he was in his own mansion in Arbard, and feeling better already.

“I wish
I
was,” Alex thought.

He was a great deal worse the following morning, but he got up grimly, ready to ride home. Cecilia was horrified.

“He is not fit to go,” she said to Princess Rosalind.

Everard felt ill too. “It must have been those icicles we ate,” he said. “You cannot go until you are well.”

Alex insisted on going, though, and Harry backed him up. “It is not far,” they said. “And we must go home before they give us up for dead.”

So they set out for the coast. Robert went with them, still sad, until they reached the beginning of the hidden road. Then he turned back, with the horse Alex had borrowed from Everard, and the four Outsiders went on alone. Alex rode behind Harry. He was very glad to have an excuse to do so, because he felt so ill now that he could not have ridden alone. The brown sands swung and dipped around him and he shivered all the way. Cecilia wept all across the bay, and Harry and Susannah were hard put to it to keep cheerful.

They reached the Hornbys' farm in the early afternoon. Josiah was there, and so was Sir Edmund, come to have the quicksands searched for their bodies. There was the most terrible scene. Alex felt as if he were drowning in a flood or a storm—he could hardly hear or see or feel, and he knew he was letting the others down. They gave up all the various explanations they had discussed on the way home and tried to tell what had really happened. Neither father believed a word.

“Alex,” said Josiah, “I know we'll get truth out of you. Out with it, boy. Where have you all been?”

Alex began to say that what the others said was quite true. It was very difficult because his throat had forgotten how to talk. Then something strange happened. The room turned upside down and Alex was floating on the floor of Josiah's study, looking down at the beams on the ceiling. He saw Susannah and Cecilia whisking about down there, talking to him. He thought they were trying to pull him down off the floor, but he did not want to move. He knew how flies felt walking on the ceiling and it was better than being down there with the others. Then Josiah surged in front of the girls. Alex shut his eyes and waited, but the next person who pulled at him was Miss Gatly. She plucked him down from the floor and carried him off to bed.

The oddest thing was that all the time there was part of Alex, a part just outside his head, over to the left, which knew perfectly well what was happening. This part knew that the terrible scene went on, worse than ever, when they found he was ill. Cecilia was getting all the blame for dragging her brother about in the snow when he had a high fever. Josiah told her he never wanted to set eyes on her again. Alex knew, somehow, that Josiah had made some money for himself in London, as well as some for the Courcys, and that Cecilia was to be sent to a finishing school in Switzerland with what he had made. Until then, she was to stay in her room.

Alex felt this was horribly unfair of Josiah. He tried to tell Miss Gatly what he thought as she fussed and rattled him into his bed. “It was my fault just as much—really.”

“Aye, love, but you mustn't fret yourself. Unfair it may be that you should be the apple of your father's eye and not your sister, but that's how it always has been. Besides, you are sick and she is not.”

Alex gave up trying to protest and went into a long tunnel lined with horrible dreams. He dreamed of school and of Arnforth Hall and of the island, of the hidden road—which vanished and left him in the quicksands—and of Falleyfell and the Endwait dungeon. There, he wrestled for hours with Everard for the clasp-knife, and then, suddenly out in the cold snow, he galloped for hundreds of days after Robert, who was to help him rescue Harry's pistol from Towerwood.

So he was not surprised, late that night, when he heard Robert's voice outside in the farmyard.

“Because I could not stay away.”

He heard Cecilia crying, too, in her room next door to his, before stranger and more horrible dreams came to him. He shouted for Cecilia, but it was Miss Gatly who came, looking very worried and very sorry for him.

Alex was ill for a long time. He knew next to nothing of what went on in the farm. He wanted to see Cecilia, but she was not allowed to see him—he gathered that Miss Gatly had words with Josiah about that, but Josiah won. Alex tossed in bed at night with dreams, dreams often full of Robert's voice and Cecilia crying.

Then, one evening, when Alex was at last getting better, there was an enormous din downstairs. Alex was woken up from a peaceful sleep by his father raging. Josiah was shouting. Alex could hear him throwing things. People were running about all over the house, calling out or shouting too. Whatever it was must have had something to do with Cecilia, because Alex heard Josiah raging at her. Cecilia was raging back, to Alex's horror. It was a row such as he had never heard before in all his knowledge of his father's rages. It was so terrible that Alex found himself getting out of bed, crying because he was so weak and ill, in order to stop it.

He got nearly to the door of his room, holding onto his bed and the wall. Then he had to rest before he went any farther. While he rested the noise stopped—Miss Gatly was talking. He heard Cecilia run along the passage outside and slam the door of her room. Miss Gatly was still talking. She came along the passage too, calling out to Cecilia and back downstairs to Josiah.