The White Mountains (The Tripods)

by John Christopher

  Henry and Beanpole disagreed as to what we should do. Henry wanted to stay, where there was an assurance of some kind of food at least, and wait for the chance to get at it; Beanpole was for pressing on, hoping to find something else, or something better, in the couple of hours’ light that remained. I got no pleasure, this time, out of their opposition—I was feeling too heavy and ill to bother. I supported Henry, but only because I was desperate for the rest. Beanpole gave in, as always with a good grace, and we settled down to let the time pass.

  When they tried to rouse me to go with them, I paid no heed, being too sunk in lethargy and general wretchedness, and eventually they left me and went off on their own. I had no idea how much later it was that they came back, but I was aware of them trying to rouse me again, offering me fruit and also cheese, which Beanpole had managed to steal from the dairy which abutted on the farmhouse. I could not eat anything—could not be bothered to try—and for the first time they appreciated that I was ill, and not merely sulking. They whispered together, and then they half-lifted, half-dragged me to my feet and hauled me away, supporting me between them.

  I learned later that there was an old shed at the far end of the orchard which did not seem to be in use, and they thought it best to get me there: rain was threatening again and it did rain during the night. I was aware only of stumbling and being pulled along, and at last being allowed to collapse on an earth floor. There were more sweating sleeps after that, and more dreams, from one of which I emerged shouting.

  The next thing I realized with any precision was that a dog was growling nearby. Shortly afterward, the door of the shed was flung open, and a shaft of hot sunlight fell on my face, and I saw the dark outline of a gaitered man against the light. It was followed by more confusion, by loud voices in a strange tongue. I tried to struggle to my feet, but fell back.

  And the next thing after that, I was lying in cool sheets, in a soft bed, and a grave, dark-eyed girl, in a blue, turban-like cap, was bending over me. I looked past her, in wonder, at my surroundings: a high white ceiling, worked in arabesque, walls of dark-paneled wood, hangings of thick crimson velvet around the bed. I had never known such luxury.

  Henry and Beanpole had realized, the morning after my collapse, that I was not well enough to travel. They could, of course, have left me and gone on by themselves. Barring that, they had a choice either of dragging me farther away from the farmhouse, or of staying in the hut and hoping not to be observed. As far as the first was concerned, there was no other shelter in sight and, although the rain had stopped, the weather was not promising. And the hut did not look as though it were used much. Anyway, they decided to stay where they were. In the early morning they crept out and got more plums and cherries and returned to the hut to eat them.

  The men with the dogs came an hour or two later. They were never sure whether this was by accident, whether they had been seen earlier and their return to the hut marked, or whether Beanpole had left signs of his entry into the dairy and, with the cheese missing, the men were making a routine check of the outbuildings. What mattered was that the men were at the door, and a dog with them—an ugly brute, standing as high as a small donkey, its teeth bared in a snarl. There was nothing they could do but surrender.

  Beanpole had previously worked out an emergency plan for a situation such as this, to get over the difficulty that neither I nor Henry spoke his language. We were to be cousins of his and both deaf-mutes—we were to say nothing, and pretend we could hear nothing. This is what happened; simple enough as far as I was concerned since I was unconscious. It had been Beanpole’s idea that this would allay suspicion so that, even if they kept us prisoner, they would not put too strong a guard on us, giving us a better chance of escaping when opportunity offered. I do not know if it would have worked—certainly I was in no state to make an escape from anything—but it fell out that things took a very different turn from anything we had envisioned. It just so happened that, on that particular morning, the Comtesse de la Tour Rouge was making a progress through the district and called with her retinue at the farm.

  Care of the sick, and the distribution of largesse, were customary with ladies of the nobility and gentry: when Sir Geoffrey’s wife, Lady May, was alive, she used to do this around Wherton: one of my earliest memories was of receiving from her a big red apple and a sugar pig, and touching my cap in reply. With the Comtesse, though, as I grew to know, generosity and care of others was not a matter of duty but sprang from her own nature. She was a gentle and kind person in herself and suffering in another creature—human or animal—was a grief to her. The farmer’s wife had scalded her legs weeks before and was now quite recovered, but the Comtesse needed to reassure herself of that. At the farm she was told of the three boys who had been caught hiding—two of them deaf-mutes and one of those in a fever. She took charge of us all right away.

  It was a sizable company. Nine or ten of her ladies were with her, and three knights had ridden out with them. There were also esquires and grooms. Beanpole and Henry were put up in front of grooms, but I was set on the saddle-bow of one of the knights, with his belt tied around to keep me from slipping off. I remember nothing of the journey, which is perhaps as well. It was more than ten miles back to the castle, a good deal of it over rough country.

  The face bending over me when I awoke was that of the Comtesse’s daughter, Eloise.

  Le Château de la Tour Rouge stands on high ground, overlooking a confluence of two rivers. It is very ancient, but has had old parts rebuilt and others added from time to time. The tower itself is new, I fancy, because it is of a strange red stone quite unlike the stones used elsewhere in the building. In it are the staterooms and the rooms of the family, where I was put to bed.

  The tower is freestanding on the side that looks down to the river and the plain, but other buildings adjoin at the rear and on either side. There are the kitchens, storerooms, servants’ quarters, kennels, stables, forge—all the workaday places. And the knights’ quarters, which are well-kept and decorated houses though at this time only three unmarried knights were living in them, the rest having their own houses within easy reach of the castle.

  Part of the knights’ quarters was given up to the esquires. These were boys, the sons of knights mostly, who were being trained to knighthood, and Henry and Beanpole, by the orders of the Comtesse, were put among them. They quickly realized that there was no immediate danger of being taken for Capping, and decided to wait and see what happened.

  For me, meanwhile, there was the confusion of sickness and delirium. They told me later that I was in a fever for four days. I was aware of strange faces, particularly of the dark-eyed face beneath the blue turban, which gradually became familiar. My sleep, by degrees, became more restful, the world into which I awakened less incoherent and distorted. Until I awoke, feeling myself again, though weak, and the Comtesse was sitting beside my bed, with Eloise standing a little further off.

  The Comtesse smiled, and said, “Are you better now?”

  A resolution I must keep … Of course. I must not talk. I was a deaf-mute. Like Henry. Where was Henry? My eyes searched the room. At the high window, curtains moved in a breeze. I could hear voices from outside, and the clang of iron.

  “Will,” the Comtesse said, “you have been very ill, but you are better now. You need only to grow strong.”

  I must not talk … And yet—she had called me by my name! And was speaking to me in English.

  She smiled again. “We know the secret. Your friends are all right. Henry and Zhan-pole—Beanpole, as you call him.”

  There was no point in going on pretending. I said, “They told you?”

  “In a fever, it is not possible to control one’s tongue. You were determined not to talk, and said so, aloud. In the English speech.”

  I turned my head away, in shame. The Comtesse said, “It does not matter. Will, look at me.”

  Her voice, soft but strong, compelled me to turn my head, and I saw her properly for the
first time. Her face was too long for her ever to have been beautiful, but it had a gentleness that was lovely, and her smile glowed. Her hair curled around her shoulders, deep black but touched with white, the silvery lines of the Cap showing above the high forehead. She had large, gray, honest eyes.

  I asked, “Can I see them?”

  “Of course you can. Eloise will tell them to come.”

  They left the three of us alone. I said, “I gave it away. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

  Henry said, “You couldn’t help it. Are you all right now?”

  “Not bad. What are they going to do with us?”

  “Nothing, as far as I can see.” He nodded at Beanpole. “He knows more than I do.”

  Beanpole said, “They are not like the villagers, or townsmen. The villagers, finding us, might have called the Tripods, but these not. They think it good for boys to leave their homes. Their own sons go far away.”

  I suppose I was a little confused still. I said, “Then they might help us!”

  Beanpole shook his head, sunlight flashing from the lenses in front of his eyes.

  “No. After all, they are Capped. They have different customs, but they obey the Tripods. They are still slaves. They treat us kindly, but they must not know our plans.”

  I said, with a new alarm, “If I talked … I might have said something about the White Mountains.”

  Beanpole shrugged. “If so, they have thought it was a fever dream. They suspect nothing, believing only that we are wanderers, you two from the land beyond the sea. Henry took the map, from your jacket. We have it safe.”

  I had been thinking hard. I said, “Then you’d better make a break for it, while you can.”

  “No. It will be weeks before you are fit to travel.”

  “But you two can get away. I’ll follow when I am able. I remember the map well enough.”

  Henry said to Beanpole, “It might be a good idea.”

  I felt a pang at that. For me to suggest it was noble self-sacrifice; having the proposal accepted without demur was less pleasant. Beanpole said, “That is not good. If two go, leaving the other, perhaps they will start to wonder. They may come hunting for us. They have horses, and enjoy to hunt. A change from deer or foxes, no?”

  “What do you suggest, then?” Henry asked. I could see he was not persuaded. “If we stay, they’ll Cap us eventually.”

  “That is why staying is better for now,” Beanpole said. “I have been talking with some of the boys. In a few weeks there is the tournament.”

  “The tournament?” I asked.

  “It is held twice a year,” Beanpole said, “in spring and summer. They have feasts, games, contests and jousting between the knights. It lasts five days, and at the end is their Capping Day.”

  “And if we are still here then …,” Henry said.

  “We are offered for Capping. True. But we will not be here. You will be strong by then, Will. And during the time of the tournament there is always much confusion. We can get away, and not be missed for a day, perhaps two or three. Also, having more exciting things to do here at the castle, I think they will not trouble to hunt us anyway.”

  Henry said, “You mean, do nothing till then?”

  “This is sensible.”

  I saw that it was. It also relieved me from the thought, more terrifying the more I contemplated it, of being abandoned. I said, trying to make my voice sound indifferent:

  “You two must decide.”

  Henry said reluctantly, “I suppose it is the best thing.”

  The boys came up to me from time to time, but I saw more of the Comtesse, and Eloise. Occasionally, the Comte looked in. He was a big, ugly man, who had, I learned, a great reputation for bravery, in tournaments and at the hunt. (Once, unhorsed, he had met a huge wild boar face to face, and killed it with his dagger.) With me he was awkward but amiable, given to poor jokes at which he laughed a lot. He spoke a little English, too, but badly, so that often I could not understand him: mastery of other tongues was regarded as an accomplishment better suited to the ladies.

  I had known very little about the nobility before this. At Wherton, the servants from the Manor House kept to themselves, not mixing much with people from the village. Now I saw them at close quarters and, lying in bed, had time to think about them, and particularly about their attitude toward the Tripods. As Beanpole had suggested, it was not, in essence, different from that of humbler people. Take, for, instance, their tolerance of boys running away from home. This would not have been the case with villagers, either here or at Wherton, but that was because their lives were of another pattern: the sea captains at Rumney took to the notion well enough. To the nobility, it was right that ladies should be gracious and accomplished in certain things, and that men should be brave. There were no wars, as there had once been, but there were a number of ways in which courage could be shown. And a boy who ran away from his humdrum life, even though not noble, in their view displayed spirit.

  The bitter thing was that all the spirit, all the gallantry, was wasted. For even more than their inferiors, they accepted and looked forward to being Capped. It was a part of becoming a knight, or of turning from girl to lady. Thinking of this, I saw how good things could be meaningless in isolation. What value did courage have, without a free and challenging mind to direct it?

  Eloise taught me how to speak their language. It was easier than I expected; we had plenty of time at our disposal, and she was a patient teacher. Pronouncing the words gave me the most difficulty—I had to learn to make sounds in my nose and sometimes despaired of getting them right. Beanpole’s name, I learned, was not Zhan-pole, but Jean-Paul, and even those simple syllables took some mastering.

  I was allowed up after a few days. My old clothes had disappeared and I was given new ones. These consisted of sandals, undergarments, a pair of shorts and a shirt, but they were of much finer material than I had been used to and were more colorful; the shorts were a creamy color and the shirt, on that first day, was dark red. I found to my surprise that they were taken away each night for laundering and replaced by fresh.

  Eloise and I wandered about the rooms and grounds of the castle contentedly. At home, I had not mixed much with girls, and had been ill at ease when I could not avoid their company, but with her I felt no strain nor awkwardness. Her English, like her mother’s was very good, but soon she insisted on speaking to me in her own tongue. By this means, I picked up things quickly. She would point to the window, and I would say, “la fenêtre,” or beyond, and I would say, “le ciel.”

  I was still supposed not to be well enough to join the other boys. If I had made a fuss, I imagine I might have been permitted to do so, but I accepted the situation willingly. Being docile at the moment would improve our chance of escaping later. And it seemed ungenerous to rebuff Eloise’s kindness. She was the only child of the Comte and Comtesse remaining in the castle, her two brothers being esquires at the house of a great Duke in the south, and she did not seem to have friends among the other girls. I gathered she had been lonely.

  There was another reason, too. It still rankled that Henry should have displaced me with Beanpole, and when I ran into them I had an impression of a companionship, a complicity, which I did not share. Their life, of course, was quite different from mine. It is even possible they were a little jealous of the cosseting I was getting. What was certain was that we had little to talk about as far as our present existences were concerned and could not, for safety, discuss the more important enterprise which we did have in common.

  So I willingly turned from them to Eloise. She had, like her mother, a soothing gentleness. Like her, she had a deep feeling for all living creatures, from the people about her to the hens that scratched in the dust outside the servants’ quarters. Her smile was her mother’s, but that was the only real physical likeness. For Eloise was pretty, not only when she smiled but in the stillness of repose. She had a small oval face, with an ivory skin that could flush a strange, delicate color, a
nd deep brown eyes.

  I wondered about the color of her hair. She always wore the same turban-like cap, covering her head completely. One day I asked her about it. I put the question in my halting French, and either she did not understand me, or affected not to; so I asked her bluntly, in English. She said something then, but in her own language and too fast for me to grasp the meaning.

  We were standing in the small triangular garden, formed by the castle’s prow where it jutted out toward the river. There was no one else in sight, no sound except from the birds and some of the esquires shouting as they rode across the tilt-yard behind us. I was irritated by her evasiveness, and I made a grab, half-playful, half-annoyed, at the turban. It came away at my touch. And Eloise stood before me, her head covered by a short dark fuzz of hair, and by the silver mesh of the Cap.

  It was a possibility that had not occurred to me. Being fairly small of stature, I had the habit of assuming that anyone older than myself must be taller, and she was an inch or two shorter than I. Her features, too, were small and delicate. I stared at her, dumbfounded, blushing, as she was, but fiery red rather than the faint flush of rose.

  I realized from her reaction that I had done something outrageous, but I did not know how outrageous. For girls, as I have said, Capping was a part of the process of becoming a lady. When she had recovered herself, and wound the turban back on, Eloise explained something of this, speaking in English so that I would be sure to understand her fully. Here girls wore turbans for the ceremony, and were returned by the Tripods still wearing them. For six months after that, no one, not even the Comtesse, was supposed to see her naked head. At the end of that time, a special ball would be held, and there, for the first time since the Capping, she would show herself. And I had torn the turban from her, as I would have pulled off a boy’s cap, fooling about in school!