The Secret Country (9 page)

“So Shan said,” said Andrew, one hand under his chin and the other in his lap.

“Cease,” said the King, more sharply this time.

Andrew bowed his head. “Your pardon, Sire,” he said; he did not sound sorry.

“Matthew, write not that remark,” said the King. “Randolph, pray continue.”

“Sire, I would prefer to let it remain,” said Randolph, “and I yield to Andrew that he may have said it.”

“As you will, then,” said the King. “This courtesy among my counselors is more strange than Fence’s reports, I think. I prithee, say on.”

“Sire, I cannot see that there is anything more to say,” said Randolph. “If there is a conspiracy of wizards against us, then whatever we say, Andrew will but answer ‘so say they.’ To prove him wrong, we have history, which may be lies; eyewitnesses, who may have been deceived by illusion; and Fence, who may be a traitor. I would follow Fence to war with a child’s hoop for my weapon, if he told me ’twould serve me best. He is my master and my friend, and I think that, were he treacherous, it must have shown itself to me in some way in the years we have worked together. But unless you trust my judgment, Sire, which Andrew will say may be overturned by spells of illusion, nought that I say can help you. Andrew has no proof except to say, if things are as he says they are, then indeed there would be no proof. We have no proof of which he cannot say ‘this is illusion.’ If we march to meet the Dragon King with the weapons and strategies which will vanquish men, we will have our proof when we are vanquished by monsters. And that will be too late.” He took his hand from the table, in a motion so final that Ted shivered again.

Matthew put his hand down.

“Matthew,” said the King.

“My lord Andrew,” said Matthew, “granted that your view of the nature of wizards answers all our arguments, what reason do you have for such a view? Why should there be such a conspiracy? What would it profit them? Why have none discovered it earlier? Can you at least show that what you say is probable?”

“Andrew?” said the King.

“My lords,” said Andrew, “it is more probable than the opposite view. It is more probable than the existence of magic.”

Benjamin, Randolph, Matthew, Ted, and someone Ted did not recognize and who had not spoken, all put their hands down at once. The King sat still, studying them.

“My lords,” he said, “this is not a conference of philosophers. We do not see the profit in wrangling, and that is what it would come to should we let ye speak. I will ponder what has been said here. Any of ye who yet hath arguments to make, when the blood hath cooled a trifle, speak to Lord Matthew, and he will see that ye have audience with me. I thank ye for your aid.”

He stood and bowed to them. With a tremendous scraping of chairs, they stood and bowed back to him. He gestured to Benjamin, shook his head at Randolph, and swept from the room. Ted, even in his consternation, wished he could manage his own robe like that.

The room erupted into babble. Matthew turned to Ted. “I thank you for your help,” he said. “I had not known that anyone had doubted the generals’ writings, let alone who or why.”

“I’m afraid Andrew turned the information to his own ends,” said Ted; he was much too angry to be worried about what he said.

“That is the way of Andrew,” said Randolph, behind Ted. Ted nearly jumped. Randolph edged himself between Ted and Matthew, dropping a hand on Ted’s shoulder. Ted did jump.

“I cry you mercy,” said Randolph, letting go of him. “So you are nervy after all. How many times have I sat in council, knowing what you knew well enough to see it should be said, but not well enough to say it; how often have you avoided my eye? When you spoke today, I thought my praise of your fencing had suddenly made you fearless.”

“Not that,” said Ted. “I didn’t even know whether to believe you. It was Andrew; he made me angry.”

“He makes me angry thrice a day,” said Randolph, dryly, “but it does not start me from my accustomed way.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Ted, rendered reckless by a desire to impress Randolph, “that you always let Benjamin keep you from speaking in council.”

Matthew, who had been gathering up his writing paraphernalia, laughed. “A hit, Randolph, a very palpable hit.”

Randolph eyed Ted with a curiosity that made him uncomfortable. “It’s true enough,” said Randolph, “I do not.”

“Randolph,” said Matthew, serious again, “does he believe what he says, think you, or is it he who is the traitor?”

“Mind your tongue,” said Randolph. “I do not know, but you should not make that accusation lightly.”

“Andrew accused Fence!” said Ted. This had not happened in their play, and he was both dismayed and furious.

“He may well pay for it,” said Randolph.

“Not ‘he will’?” asked Matthew. He looked over his armful of paper and pen and ink at Randolph, and Ted saw that they understood each other and that they were afraid.

“My prince,” said Benjamin from across the room.

“Sir?”

“A word with you.”

“Please excuse me,” said Ted to Randolph and Matthew, his Secret language having deserted him. He went to Benjamin. Everyone else had gone.

“I fear thou must share the fate of thy brother and thy cousins,” said Benjamin. “To bed with thee; may thy hunger sharpen thy wits for the future.”

“But—”

“I have gi’en thee as much aid as I have stomach for; away wi’ thee.”

Ted, remembering suddenly that he and his companions had to get home before their other set of grown-ups was as angry as Benjamin had been at the well, nodded. He hoped that all the royal children were, in fact, quartered in the east wing (where the game had put them). He bowed to Benjamin and again to Matthew and Randolph. Benjamin scowled. Matthew and Randolph bowed back. Ted went away quickly.

CHAPTER 4

ELLEN and Laura sat in the room they shared. Exploring it had occupied them for some time. It was as large and as green carpeted and as hung with tapestries as it ought to have been. They had delved into large cedar and oaken chests and pulled out odd underwear packed with sweet herbs, and thick woolen blankets, and quilts worked with dragons and unicorns and foxes and flutes and stars. They had opened the enormous oak wardrobe and stared half in delight and half in horror at the far-too-many, far-too-lacy dresses and the velvet cloaks and feathered hats. They had subjected the tapestries to a historical scrutiny that left Ellen with very little to complain about. Laura objected to one tapestry because it was full of white horses, but Ellen reminded her that the Princess Laura loved horses, and Laura had to shut up.

They had found a bone flute, a wooden lap harp, three daggers, about two dozen rag-and-china dolls, and a pile of sloppy-looking embroidery spotted with what Ellen said were Princess Ellen’s bloodstains, Princess Ellen having little use for the domestic arts. They had bounced on the feather bed and discovered that it had no springs, but that the feather pillows worked far better in a pillow fight than foam or Dacron polyester. They had crawled over their green carpet, admiring the blue birds and curlicues it was worked with. They had found their bathing room, which had a tub about the size of a normal bathroom, with all its bronze fixtures in the shape of dragons. Laura was taken aback by the realization that this really was a bathroom, nothing more nor less, but then Ellen found its other half, lavishly done in some carved golden wood. Ellen announced with considerable delight that this was a garderobe. It was slightly smelly but a considerable improvement over the latrines at Girl Scout camp, and therefore not to be complained of. On a shelf in the garderobe they had found a black cat that refused to wake up and pay attention to them.

But they were not happy now. They had been sent to bed—where they had not gone, except for the pillow fight—without any dinner. Laura was hungry. Ellen was hungry and sleepy both, because dinnertime in the Secret Country was breakfast time in Australia and she had, by her reckoning, been up all night. She was nervous because soon her mother would be coming to wake her and she wouldn’t be there. Laura sat envisioning the Barretts’ frantic search of the library, and nursed her bruises. Only the dolls surprised her; she did in fact feel at home in this room. But she had too many things to worry about to enjoy the feeling.

They were locked in, and even if they had not been, they had no idea where any of the others were. They were especially worried about Ted, because Benjamin had kept him in the courtyard.

“We have to get out of here!” said Ellen.

Laura rattled the heavy door for the fourth time, and then went over to the window and knelt on the cushioned seat. This time she spared no notice for the red fox worked on the blue cushion, but just opened the shutters. They opened outward; there was no glass in the window. It was tall, deep and narrow, and narrower at the outside than at the inside.

“Ellen!” said Laura, staring. “Come look.”

Ellen uncurled herself from the enormous bed and stalked over to the window, pushing handsful of hair out of her eyes. “What?”

Laura pointed. “Down by the lake.”

“It’s a horse,” said Ellen. “Drinking. So what?”

“That isn’t a stupid
horse.
Wait till it’s finished.”

“I thought you meant the view at first,” said Ellen, obligingly fixing her eyes on the animal. “It’s pretty.”

“I’ve never seen real mountains before,” said Laura.

She was still not sure she liked them. They floated over their reflections in the glassy lake like drifts of snow, as if they might melt by morning and flood the castle. Their trees were as tiny as the little curly weeds that grow between cracks in the sidewalk and look like forests seen from a long way up. Laura did not recognize them at all.

“This must be the famous view the famous artist came to paint, and we had to go live in Ruth’s room,” said Ellen. They giggled.

The animal drinking at the lake raised its head. Its long horn was red in the light of sunset.

“Oh,” said Ellen. Then she frowned. “I thought they lived in the Enchanted Forest. What’s it doing in our backyard?”

“That
is
the Enchanted Forest, where the mountains turn west,” said Laura. “This was Princess Margaret’s room, remember, and she looked out at the Enchanted Forest all day and wrote songs about it, because her father—”

“I still don’t think it belongs in our backyard.”

“Well, if you can call that a backyard—”

“I bet it Means Something,” said Ellen.

“I hope not,” said Laura, her pleasure in the animal considerably diminished.

The door clanked and rattled and scraped, and they jumped. The door opened, and Ruth and Patrick came in. Patrick wore a leather belt with a scabbard on it around his waist. The scabbard was empty, but he seemed to have trouble walking with it.

“You could have knocked,” said Ellen. “We might have been timid ladies-in-waiting or spies plotting or anything, for all you knew.”

“Where’s Ted?” said Laura.

“He’s attending a council,” said Patrick. “It was supposed to be this afternoon, but of course they couldn’t find Ted.”

“Which was why Benjamin was angry even before he thought that Ted and I were plotting to elope,” said Ruth, sourly.

“And we did too know it was you in here,” said Patrick, “because in my room there’s a historical map of High Castle. I know your room used to be Princess Margaret’s chamber, and Ruthie’s was where Mad John hanged himself after—”

“I can’t imagine,” said Ruth hastily, “what made me think it would be fun to live in a haunted room.”

“You don’t like it,” said Patrick, “but Lady Ruth of the Green Caves loves it.”

“Lady Ruth of the Green Caves is a weird person.”

“Well, you’d better start acting weird, then.”

Laura wished she had only to be a weird person, instead of an expert horsewoman and the best dancer in six kingdoms.

“Are you and Ted planning to elope?” said Ellen to Ruth.

“No,” said Ruth, “and I ought to slap your face for even asking.”

Laura looked at her with admiration. She had always liked Ruth’s sorceress voice, as long as the Lady Ruth and Princess Laura were on the same side.

Ellen gaped at her sister, who had never hit anybody in her life. But she recovered quickly. “You touch me, milady,” she said, “and I’ll speak to my undergardener about that hemlock.”

“Cut it out,” said Patrick, earning himself three scandalized looks. “We have to decide how to escape. Ted’s coming here when the council’s over—or I hope he is. I left him a note in our room.”

“How’d you get out?” said Ellen.

“I got him out,” said Ruth, sitting in their rocking chair. “Lady Ruth has a set of all the keys in High Castle. She’s trusted.”

“If she’s so trusted,” said Patrick, maneuvering himself and his scabbard onto the bed, “how come Benjamin can send her to bed without dinner?”

“I think Benjamin might have overstepped himself,” said Ruth; she sounded smug. “I have a lady-in-waiting, or a chambermaid, or something—not Agatha, somebody else—and when I told her what he’d done, first she thought I was joking and then she was shocked. She was the one who mentioned the keys.” Ruth patted the waistband of her skirt, which jingled.

“If you’d wear pants like a normal person,” said Ellen, “you could just keep the keys in your pocket.”

“Don’t start that,” said Patrick. “How are we going to get out of here?”

“Yes,” said Ellen, “we must finish our interrupted ceremony before the Spirit of the Green Caves blights all our—”

“Cut it out,” said Patrick. “This is serious. Good grief, we’re stuck in a magical country and we have to sneak past the best guards in it and ride four leagues in the dark and then sneak back into our houses—isn’t that enough? Do you have to play too?”

Ellen and Ruth looked at Patrick. Laura looked at the floor.

“Which door,” said Ruth at last, “is the least guarded?”