The Secret Country (6 page)

“It was a hasty summons,” she told him happily, “in the dead of night. I was reading in my chamber, and a white bird fluttered through the window and flew three times around my candle and made great shadows on the wall.” Laura began to feel a little better. “And it spoke with a voice like the Green Witch’s, and it said to me—”

“Ruth,” said Patrick, “don’t.”

“ ‘There is great peril from across the sea,’ ” said Ted with alacrity, “‘and by the oaths ye swore when Shan the first wizard delivered you from—’ ”

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” shouted Benjamin. He was once more of a ruddy complexion. Laura’s stomach clenched itself tight. Ruth looked appalled.

“Why are thy tongues not black in thy conniving heads!”

“I knew it!” said Patrick, not appalled at all, but extremely angry at Ruth.

“And where,” Benjamin demanded of him, “were thy wits that thou still dangled after, if thou knewest so much?”

Patrick had nothing to say. Laura did not think this as funny as she might have expected.

Benjamin flung his hands out in a gesture that rejected all of them. “I’ve no words for you,” he said. “I must take you all home and you shall go to bed without supper; when I myself have supped and can, perhaps, bear the sight of you again, we shall see what’s to be said and done.” He turned away from them, and Ted and Ruth followed him to the horses, which had been munching grass all the while.

“What’d we do?” whispered Laura to Ellen.

“Ted and Ruth,” said Patrick quietly on her other side, “are Romeo and Juliet. We are all the old nurse.”

“I went to bed early when they read us that one,” said Ellen. “I hate love stories. When did we act this out, anyway?”

“You and Laurie had the mumps,” said Patrick. “Summer before last. The King had Ruth betrothed to Lord Randolph when she was just a baby, but Ted and Ruth want to marry each other.”

“How boring,” said Ellen.

“Benjamin doesn’t think so,” said Patrick. “He thinks we are all scheming, and he thinks Ruth lied to him about the ceremony of the Green Caves so she could—”

“Come your ways!” called Benjamin, and they hurried over to the horses.

Laura stood and watched Ellen and Patrick struggle onto their horses. Their difficulties did nothing for Benjamin’s temper. He scowled at them and then looked down at Laura.

“Well?” he said.

Laura, who did not like the way the horses smelled, the way they moved sideways as if they wanted to go somewhere very fast, or the way they eyed her, looked straight up at Benjamin and was speechless.

“I’ll have none of your big blue eyes,” said Benjamin sharply, and he picked her up as if she were a much smaller child than she was, and put her on the black pony.

After she had fallen off it for the fifth time, he hauled her up by an elbow with considerably less care than he had exhibited the first four times, and boosted her up in front of Ruth, who was almost unseated herself by this sudden maneuver. Benjamin looked at her for a moment as if this were more than he was prepared to manage, then turned and busied himself with Laura’s pony.

“You okay?” whispered Ruth.

“Sure,” said Laura; it was, after all, no worse than mistiming a jump from a swing in the school playground. Of course, she had never misjumped four times in a row. But the first grateful moment of stillness, when you were lying on a piece of ground that wasn’t going anywhere, was almost worth the pain of the bruises.

Laura settled herself as securely as she could in Ruth’s trembling grip and took her first good look at where they were heading. She was too outraged to speak, which was no doubt just as well. High Castle—if it was High Castle—looked like a piece of peppermint candy, concentric rings of pink and white. It was supposed to be a square white—or maybe gray—fortress with towers at its corners and a moat around it. Laura drew in a breath to protest to Ruth, and let it out again suddenly as the horses began to move. Benjamin set a much slower pace than he had tried earlier, but it was still far from comfortable.

The flat plain was not really flat, but full of small rises and falls of ground. As they came down the rise from which Laura had first seen High Castle, it lost its aspect of peppermint and became simply a line of pink barring the way before them. Behind it the land rose again in long slopes of dark green forest, and beyond those were misty humps that Laura at first took for clouds on the horizon. It was not until Ruth said in her ear, “The Mountains of Dusk” that she realized what they were. She had never seen mountains, and these did not look as they ought to. She had imagined sharp dark triangles standing up out of a flat green plain like something in a pop-up book. She squinted at the betraying cloudy masses, and thought she saw hints of blue and purple in them, and an underlying solidity not owned by clouds; she was not comforted.

That first pink wall of High Castle turned out to be immense, six stories tall or more. Most of the stones that made it were longer than Laura was tall. They were smooth and sharp edged, and looked very new. The wall had a tower on each corner and three more along its length, and two smaller ones flanking its gate. The gate was open, which confounded Laura almost as much as the color of the walls. They passed into a short, wide tunnel lit from above and paved in the pink granite, with another gate at its far end, which was also open. There were, at least, two guards at this gate, and they even had long spears. They did not, however, leap up and bar the way with these spears. On second reflection, Laura was just as glad that they had not.

They did stand up, looking remarkably as if they were trying not to laugh, and bowed briefly. Benjamin got down from his horse. So did Ted and Ellen. Ruth gave Laura a small shove, so Laura slid down haphazardly and sat down hard on the cold stone. Ted picked her up quickly. Patrick dismounted with a show of ease that made Laura want to hit him. A number of young men who had appeared through the gate took the horses away. Benjamin marched between the guards as if he were daring them to say a word, and the five children followed him onto a wide space of short grass.

This looked a little more like High Castle. There was the moat, just as it ought to be, sailed on by white swans and cluttered with lily pads, and holding upside-down a perfect glassy image of the white walls and towers on its far side. The drawbridge was directly before them; it was down. Patrick muttered something about this, but nobody cared to answer him with Benjamin so close. There were still too many towers in the white wall, and it was circular, not square.

They went over the drawbridge, past two more amused and easy guards, and were confronted by yet another pink wall. The stones of this one were rough and pitted, but the wall itself was, at least, properly square, and had towers only at its corners. Between it and the previous white wall was a huge and somewhat untidy rose garden, on the left, and on the right a herb and vegetable garden that looked as if it had been laid out on a gigantic piece of graph paper.

Laura wondered if the respective gardeners glared at one another over the pink marble path that separated their domains. As far as she knew, High Castle had only one gardener, a dour and silent man named Timothy. But one look at the vast stretch of these gardens told her that there must be more than one person to care for them. Even in the rose garden, the grass had been mowed and most of the weeds hacked from around the white stone seats. Laura craned her neck longingly after the rose garden, with its mossy paths and mysterious nooks, but the thought of being lost in this enormous and unfamiliar labyrinth of castle walls made her hurry after the others.

They went through the open gate in the pink wall and into a small paved yard. And there before them, finally, was the High Castle of Laura’s mind, white towers and red roofs and bright banners flying.

“Page!” shouted Benjamin, at the top of his considerable voice.

Laura saw Ellen leap forward, then stop and look furious. Benjamin had not noticed her. A yellow-haired boy perhaps a few years younger than Laura came hurrying across the yard to them, and bowed to Benjamin.

“Fetch me Agatha,” said Benjamin, much more kindly than he had spoken to any of the five of them.

“My lord,” said the page, and went away again.

There followed a very uncomfortable interval. Benjamin had turned his back on them, but was far too close to permit the kind of outraged conversation they needed to have. Laura occupied herself with staring at High Castle, and almost forgot to worry. Aside from the moat’s being two walls back, everything was perfect. She admired the narrow windows, the moss growing between the cobbles of the yard they stood in, and even the distant blue of the mountains still visible over the wall. The lake that fed the moat was on the other side of the castle, and so was the room shared by the princesses Laura and Ellen. Ted and Patrick’s room, though, should look out on this very courtyard, and Ruth’s—

“Suffering, deception, and mercy!” said a vigorous voice behind them.

Laura jumped, bumping Ruth, who took no notice of her. They all turned around, and there, larger than life and half as natural, stood Agatha. There was nothing right about her except her voice and her gray dress. She was plump where she should have been bony, young where she should have been old, pretty where she should have been dignified, and she had a great deal of straight, smooth black hair that ought to have been white.

“You may well say so,” said Benjamin to Agatha, over their five heads. “Take you these four, and I’ll manage His Highness.”

“Come then, my lords and ladies,” said Agatha, in a tone of faint mockery. And she ushered Ruth, Patrick, Ellen, and Laura into High Castle, leaving Ted to stand with Benjamin in the courtyard.

CHAPTER 3

BY the time Benjamin got the five of them back to High Castle, Ted was too battered to be exasperated and too tired to be thoughtful. He was beginning to be afraid instead. Benjamin was too big, the horse was too big, High Castle itself was too big, too high, and too grim. Benjamin had said they were all treacherous, and he had sounded as if he meant it. Ted kept remembering that this was a country in which a page could be hanged for mouthing off. Nobody had mouthed off to Benjamin on the way back, but Benjamin had looked at Laura every time she fell off that pony as if he would have liked to hang her for that. And as Agatha led the other four off into High Castle, Benjamin stood looking at Ted as if he would still like to hang somebody.

“I’d give thee worse than bed without supper,” he said, “hadst thou chosen thy time differently.”

“What?” said Ted. Benjamin’s face took on an expression common to grown-ups everywhere, and Ted added, “Sir.”

“What is the date, then?” Benjamin asked him.

“I think—I think it’s June the fourteenth. Sir.”

“Think!” said Benjamin. “If thinking made things so, things would be otherwise.”

Ted, trying to remember what date it was and why it should matter, only looked at him, and wished he would back away a little. He was taller than Ted’s father, who was not a small man.

“Has that child bewitched all of you?” demanded Benjamin.

“What?” asked Ted, giving up.

Benjamin flung up his hands. “The King thy father,” he said, “was to hold a council at midday today, and thou wast summoned to’t.”

Already, thought Ted. We’ve missed the whole beginning of the game. While Laurie and I were playing tag and everybody else was running around looking for us, they started the game. That doesn’t make any sense; how could they start it without us? It is us. “Heh,” he said.

“Didst remember, then?”

“No! I mean—”

“She hath bewitched thee.”

“Who has?”

“Thy spitfire cousin!”

Who’s my cousin here? he thought. Laura and Ellen. My spitfire cousin. Does he mean Ellen? Ruth’s the only one who can bewitch anybody, but she’s not my cousin. Minions of the Green Caves have no family save the leaves.

Benjamin, in a tempestuous motion like that of a startled man trying to catch a falling vase, came to his knees in front of Ted and took him by the shoulders. “Look at me,” he said.

Ted blinked at him.

Benjamin stared him in the eyes for much too long. Eyes like Benjamin’s could find out anything. Ted tried to back into the cold stone of the wall, and a cardinal whistled the first three notes of its call somewhere over his head. Ted jumped; Benjamin let go of him, but did not get up. Ted looked gratefully at Benjamin’s shirt lacings.

“I never thought to say so,” said Benjamin, still too close for comfort, “but I would Fence were here. I have sorcery in my blood and my bones, but none in my learning; I will not come between the cardinal and its charges. If thou art one. If thou art.” He put a hand under Ted’s chin and made Ted look at him again. “Edward—”

“Benjamin,” said Ted, who understood none of this and was not sure he wanted to, “you’re getting all muddy.”

“I am fresh laundered next to thee,” said Benjamin, “and the King’s council is in a quarter of an hour. Come away.”

He let go of Ted and stood up, and they started across the yard.

“I thought it was this morning?” said Ted, too bewildered to be cautious.

“It was planned so,” said Benjamin, “till I found thee gone. I contrived to change the time and came ahunting thee. Thy father knows nothing of this, yet.”

“Oh,” said Ted.

“I would not trouble him with more troubles than he hath withal,” said Benjamin.

“Oh.”

“But I can deal with thee myself if the occasion warrants.”

“I don’t think it warrants nearly as much as you think it does,” said Ted.

“No doubt,” said Benjamin, dryly.

“Ruth hasn’t bewitched me,” said Ted, “and I don’t want to marry her.”

“Oh, excellent,” said Benjamin. “ ’Twill do thee no great hurt to forgo her company, then.”