The Hidden Land

by PAMELA DEAN

  “So’re we,” said Patrick shortly, as he jerked a sword out, and danced away across the sand. “Come on.”

  Ted’s fencing was better than his chess had been. But after less than an hour, Benjamin interrupted their labors by grabbing Ted’s tunic collar and scolding him roundly for not having heard him coming. He then scolded Patrick for not having warned Ted.

  “A milliard of years ye have had for swordcraft,” he said when he had finished with that, “and ye needs must leave it all for coronation morning. Thou,” he said to Ted, “with me, and thou,” to Patrick, “to the West Tower.”

  The woman with the scar grinned at them as Benjamin hustled them through her door.

  “My lord Benjamin,” was all she said.

  “Celia,” said Benjamin, fixing her with his glare, “thy children have ridden Lord Conrad’s new horses six times round the lake and done them no small damage.”

  Ted watched in fascination as Celia’s face struggled to encompass worry, mirth, and respect all at once.

  “My lord, you must speak to my husband,” she said, her voice a little stifled. “I am at my work this fortnight.”

  “Oh, aye,” said Benjamin, “and when, in all this hugger-mugger, I shall find time to catch thy husband, ’twill be, ‘Speak to Celia, for I am at my work.’ Meanwhile, those brats must take this castle stone from stone and use it to play at conkers.”

  “Are they worse than us?” asked Patrick.

  “No fear,” said Benjamin. “They are but three, and no twenty children are worse than ye. To the West Tower, go.”

  Patrick went.

  Ted looked over his shoulder at Celia as Benjamin pulled him along, and was rewarded with a wink and a salute. He frowned, and suddenly remembered. Unless Celia were a common name at court, this was the person Matthew had wanted to ask about the fire-letters: the most accomplished musician.

  “What’s she doing guarding?” he said aloud.

  “Who else should do’t, all thy father’s men being suspect?”

  Comprehension dawned. The first women in mail, or with weapons, Ted had seen in High Castle: standing at the door of the Council Chamber after the King had been poisoned. Neither the King’s, nor men. That explained it.

  “Am I suspect?” he asked.

  “Didst not spill the bottle from Randolph’s hand, to Andrew’s sorrow?”

  Ted was too startled to lie. “Yes, but—” Now who had told them that? Andrew, perhaps.

  “Cease thy foolish questions,” said Benjamin. “Princes are foolish, but kings must be canny. Best begin now. Thou art as foolish a prince as I have seen.”

  Despite these dampening remarks, Ted felt more cheerful. Benjamin would rant, whatever happened. Maybe being king would not be so different from being Prince Edward.

  Becoming king could, however, accurately be described as a royal pain. Ted had chosen to laugh at this thought at an inauspicious moment, and had a scratch from the tailor’s shears for his trouble. The tailor had apologized, but without being in the least abject. It was clear from Benjamin’s expression that, if he had thought there was time to spare, he would have spent it in making Ted abject instead.

  The scratch was not a bad one, but the sweat caused by his coronation clothes made it sting. It was one discomfort too many. Ted was hot; the banquet hall was airless and crammed with people; they were all making a noise like twenty kindergarten classes let out to recess; and the musicians were making sounds like a restive zoo.

  Ted held his arms out to his sides, hoping for some air to creep under the loose sleeves of his under-tunic. He had four layers of clothes on, two of them velvet and all of them cumbersome. The colors went together nicely, and he was pleased to have a white and purple unicorn on his front and a black and red dragon on his back instead of the usual running fox. But he felt more suited to Arctic exploration than to a formal ceremony.

  “Except if I moved I’d fall down,” he said aloud.

  “If thou movest thou destroyest the ceremony,” said Benjamin into his left ear. “They come to thee, not thou to them.”

  Ted looked out over the brilliant, shifting crowd and was not at all sure he wanted any of them to come to him.

  Randolph appeared from their midst and sprang, like a child playing kangaroo, onto the platform where Ted and Benjamin stood. Despite his apparent energy, he looked exhausted. Ted thought he was thinner than he had been. He had blue smudges under his eyes. Ted stared at these for a moment. Ellen had managed to produce a very similar effect with the juice of smashed mulberries and a little cornstarch, to decorate a weary Lady Ruth after she brought Ted back from the dead. The rest of them had laughed at her, saying that nobody ever looked like that really. But Randolph did now.

  “Benjamin,” said Randolph, a little breathlessly. “Where are Matthew’s children?”

  Benjamin looked sour. “Seek them in the stables, or at the bottom of the lake.”

  Randolph pushed irritably at his hair, and Benjamin appeared to relent. “They need not attend; they are not of age.”

  “Margaret hath speech and reason.”

  Benjamin shrugged. “ ’Twill not be noticed in her.”

  Randolph went still, reminding Ted of Fence. “Benjamin,” he said. “I will have every wight of useful age in this castle swear fealty to Edward if it is my last act.”

  Benjamin put a hand on Randolph’s forehead, more as a calming gesture, thought Ted, then as if he were checking for fever.

  “I will have no more like Melanie,” said Randolph.

  Benjamin sighed. “There was never yet coronation in this castle that began at its proper time. I will hold them ’til you come again.”

  Randolph slid down into the crowd and was gone.

  “You mean all that rush was for nothing?” demanded Ted.

  “It was not,” said Benjamin.

  Ted decided not to pursue this. “What did he mean about Melanie?”

  “You need have no fear of Margaret,” said Benjamin.

  “I don’t. What’d he mean?”

  “Consider your history,” said Benjamin, and Ted shut up and wished for Ellen. Some five hundred years ago, Melanie had spent her childhood in High Castle until she got into trouble with the unicorns, but he did not know what this had to do with coronation oaths.

  Having nothing else to do, he considered his history further; and suddenly he had it. Melanie had not sworn fealty to the King of the Secret Country because she was so young; she had then gotten into trouble, and gone away for a time. When she came back, she was a powerful sorceress, and still had not sworn fealty to the King of the Secret Country, and caused a great deal more trouble than she had gotten into, because everybody assumed that she had sworn fealty. Randolph must think Margaret wild enough to do likewise. Ted was so pleased to have figured out anything at all that he grinned at Benjamin.

  “Having this time at our disposal,” said Benjamin, “we would do well to speak of thy counselors. Wilt thou keep all thy father’s?”

  Ted, having had no idea that there was any choice in the matter, goggled at him. “Well,” he said, “I don’t trust Andrew.”

  “Better to have him under thine eye, then.”

  “But I don’t like being under his. Anyway, does that mean I should have Claudia, too?”

  “If thou wilt so blithely break with tradition, ’twere better thou hadst Agatha.”

  “Agatha?” said Ted, thoroughly confused.

  “She served thy mother well, a most astute tactician.”

  Ted shook his sweaty hands in the air and felt the beginnings of outrage rise in him. Every time you got used to this place it hit you with something new. “What’s she doing carrying cocoa to little girls in the morning?” he demanded.

  “What doth Celia guarding safe doors?” Benjamin mocked him. Ted felt himself growing redder than the heat in the room had made him. “What doth Suzanne spying in the South and Meredith waiting on late councils?”

  “Did Wil—did my father kick th
em off the Council, then?”

  “Every last one,” said Benjamin.

  “But he put you on? And what’d they do?”

  “Thou hast had nose in thy books too long,” said Benjamin. “I served thy grandfather, and thy mother also. She was not so great a fool as thy father, to turn her back on gathered wisdom.”

  “You think my father was a fool?” Ted was enthralled.

  “In some matters, aye—take him for all in all, certainly he was not.”

  “Well,” said Ted. He was torn between asking about his mother and deciding whom he wanted on his council. It sounded as though his mother had been Queen, and William had become King on her death, which was rather strange. But he found deciding about the council more appealing, as well as more likely to be useful. “I want you, and I want Randolph and Matthew. And Fence.”

  “Fence will be no counselor. He will advise thee at his whim, not thine. It was ever so with sorcerers, save Shan; and he rued it.”

  “Who else should I keep? Can I only have twelve?”

  “Kings have had more,” said Benjamin. “They proved but cumbersome.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Ted, thinking of the uproar only twelve could create.

  “I favor Conrad and Jerome,” said Benjamin. “Nor is Andrew without merit.”

  “That’s only six. Maybe I should see what Randolph thinks. Is Julian good for anything?” Ted paused. “Won’t the rest of them be mad if I get rid of them?”

  “They have guarded safe doors before,” said Benjamin. “King or Queen’s Counselor is the most uncertain of professions.”

  “I guess I’d better think on it.” Ted felt a pleased excitement, as if he and Ruth and Ellen were devising some new twist to the plot. It had not really occurred to him before how many things he could now do as he liked.

  Randolph came to the edge of the platform, flushed and panting. “Benjamin, you may begin. The stable it was.” He wore his blue counselor’s robe now, and used the steps to join them on the stage. His hand came down on Ted’s shoulder for a moment. Ted’s stomach clenched itself in answer.

  “I will stand at thy right shoulder,” breathed Randolph. “Shouldst thou forget aught of thy speeches, but pluck me by the sleeve and thou shalt have the words.”

  Ted, who had found memorizing speeches while having clothes made on him less than easy, was swept by a fierce gratitude. By the time indignation had begun to overtake it, Benjamin had signaled to the musicians and he had no time to indulge his feelings.

  The musicians were playing the minstrel-boy song. Ted sighed. How had that come to the Secret Country? It was all very well to say that the five of them had had the Secret Country put into their heads, rather than inventing it on their own. But that song was an old one. He supposed the Secret Country could have put it into the head of whoever wrote it, but that raised more questions than it answered.

  The crowd before him shifted and parted, and Fence came up the newly opened aisle, his robe striking a hundred bewildering sparks, a crown in his hands. It was the same intricately twisted silver as Ruth’s ring, Randolph’s dagger and circlet, and Fence’s key. But the five stones in it were red. Ted looked at it with dismay. Red stones meant Claudia to him, and he did not like to think what it might mean that they were in the crown. Crowns shouldn’t have anything to do with magic anyway, he thought grumpily.

  “Benjamin,” he breathed, “is that crown magic?”

  “Certainly not,” said Benjamin. “Hush.”

  Ted was a little comforted.

  Fence stopped before the stage and looked up at Ted. The crowd hushed as swiftly as if it had heard Benjamin. Benjamin and Randolph moved a little backward, and Ted felt suddenly idiotic, standing all by himself so high above them all. He hated looking down at Fence.

  “Edward Fairchild,” said Fence. “I am about to confer upon you the powers, privileges, and obligations of Prince of the Enchanted Forest, Lord of the Desert’s Edge, Friend to the Unicorns, and King of the Hidden Land. Are you willing to be so invested?”

  When Fence put it that way, Ted was not at all willing. What was the Hidden Land, anyway? It must be the Secret Country, but then why didn’t they say so? Fence stood looking at him, unmoved, but he heard Benjamin make an impatient noise behind him, and gave up.

  “I am willing,” he said.

  “Do you solemnly swear, in the tradition of John, by the mercy granted to Shan, in accordance with the laws of the Hidden Land and the dictates of Chryse, to honor and protect the people in your power; to deal lightly in the exercise of your privileges and straitly in the fulfillment of your obligations; to reward valor with honor, service with service, oath-breaking with vengeance?”

  Ted was petrified. He did not know what he was doing. What tradition, what mercy, what laws and dictates? Oh, God, he thought, we’ve got to find the real Edward quick. Fence’s steady gaze still held him, more daunting than any sign of impatience or bewilderment.

  “I do so swear,” he said.

  Fence turned his back on him and addressed the crowd. “If any wight in this gathering knoweth of any impediment to this coronation, let him speak now or be forever silent.”

  No one said a word. Fence gave them a good long time, during which the sweat ran down Ted’s neck and he refrained from fidgeting.

  Fence faced Ted again. “My lord Regent,” he said to Randolph, “knowest thou of any impediment to my performing this act?”

  “My lord, thou art suited to’t,” said Randolph.

  Fence nodded to Ted, who knelt down and began to shake.

  “In the names of John and Chryse, I call thee King,” Fence said, and set the crown on Ted’s head. It was heavy, and too large. Fence tilted it back a little. “Move gently,” he breathed. Ted did not dare to nod, but he raised his eyes to Fence and tried to look intelligent. Fence held out his hands to Ted, who stared for a moment and then took them between his sweaty ones. Fence’s were like iron.

  “I, Fence, sorcerer, of no land, within the confines of my judgment and the needs of my knowledge, do become your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship, and faith and truth will I bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folk.”

  Ted’s eyes stung and his throat clogged. Behind him Randolph’s voice said, “I, Edward, do become your liege lord.”

  “I, Edward,” said Ted, wishing his name were anything else, “do become your liege lord of life and limb, and of earthly worship, and that faith and truth I receive of you, that I will requite.” Well, he thought, you’ve done it now.

  Fence kissed him on the mouth. Ted did not mind that particularly, but he had a fleeting hope that everyone in the room would not do the same.

  “Stand up,” said Fence, kindly. Ted did; and remembering his instructions now, he backed to the far side of the stage. Randolph knelt and swore fealty to him, with a grim emphasis on the words “faith and truth” that made Ted shiver. Randolph must have sworn the same oath to William, but his hands between Ted’s were quite steady. Saying, “that I will requite,” Ted thought of the rose garden and shivered again.

  “Put thy mind at ease,” said Randolph before he kissed Ted; “all may yet be very well.” He dropped down from the front of the platform and joined the crowd.

  Benjamin swore next; he seemed delighted, which was comforting, if not understandable. Then people began coming out of the crowd. Ted was glad it had not been his task to figure out what order they should come in. For some time he did not know any of them: men, women, children his age and younger. He began to wonder what Randolph had meant by “useful age.” Most of them did not kiss him. In the midst of a group of girls who looked as if they would have liked to, Ruth showed up; she was grinning so hard she looked as if she might cry any minute. She did kiss him; the crowd chuckled a little. Over her bowed and braided dark head, Ted saw Randolph set his mouth, and wished she had not done it.

  After Ruth, more and more of the faces were familiar. Ted’s counselors—or William’s
, really, he thought—began to show up, most of them with people Ted took to be their wives and children. Matthew, Celia, and a yellow-haired girl around Ellen’s age came together. She must be the notorious Margaret, and Matthew and Celia must be married. Ted felt like congratulating them, but restrained himself. He was getting a little light-headed. Andrew came and went, so quietly and gracefully that he was an insult, and Ted no longer found it hard to believe that he was Claudia’s brother. He looked for Claudia, but she did not come. Ellen came after Andrew, doing everything with a demure flourish that made Ted grin, and saying her oath as if she meant it, which made him nervous.

  Ted wondered where Laura was. Perhaps she was not of useful age, poor kid. Or maybe it wasn’t “poor kid.” She probably wouldn’t take kindly to swearing to obey him; she would be sure that he would take advantage of it when they were back home. And it would, in fact, be tempting. Ted felt a little cold. He should not have let Ruth and Ellen swear fealty to him. No one except Fence had mentioned any titles in the oath: it was just, “I, Ruth, do become your liege man”; and he had not accepted the oaths as King of the Hidden Land, but only as Edward.

  Walking very tall in his green tunic and white cloak, Ted’s cousin Patrick came up the room, knelt, and bowed his head—which, Ted noted, somebody had made him comb—and held his hand up for Ted’s.

  Ted caught him by the wrists and said in an urgent whisper, “Don’t do that!”

  Patrick looked up at him with the startled and irritated expression of someone who has been interrupted in the middle of a good book. “What?”

  “Stand up!” hissed Ted, pulling at him. He most emphatically did not want to be Patrick’s liege lord.

  Patrick got reluctantly to his feet. “What’s wrong?”

  “Shhh! I don’t want you doing this!”

  “I have to,” said Patrick, practically, just above a whisper. “It’ll look funny.”

  “I guess I can favor my younger brother if I want to.”

  “Younger brothers are usurpers,” said Patrick. “I don’t want to be poisoned for my own good.”