The Secret Country

by PAMELA DEAN

  Randolph’s eyebrows rose. “Mine,” he said, “may be of some use to me. I have been at it these five years. And how long hath young Patrick studied thus?”

  “My lord, I don’t know,” said Ted, not altogether truthfully. He was quite sure that Patrick had never studied magic at all. He could not remember whether Prince Patrick had done so, but he doubted it. It would not be like him. Patrick and Prince Patrick had a lot in common.

  “That is why the Green Caves mislike me,” said Randolph, rattling his sword into the rack. “A great huggermugger of secrecy, and for what?” He turned to Ted, and the rising sun struck gleams from the stones in his circlet. He looked very tired and a little desperate, and Ted was afraid again.

  “I don’t know,” he said, with entire truthfulness.

  They left the yard together, and caught up with Patrick in the hall before the kitchen door.

  CHAPTER 10

  LAURA missed Ellen that night. Their room was too big for one person. The dark was much darker than it would have been in a normal house: There were no streetlights outside, no yard lights, no car lights. The air of the room moved and rustled. Laura remembered unhappily that there was no glass in the windows. She had noticed all these things the night before, but with Ellen there they had not mattered.

  It took her a long time to get to sleep, and when she did sleep, she dreamed. She dreamed that she stood in the shallows of a lake and spoke to something she could not quite see. The whole outside was damp and misty, but the mist was not the problem. No matter how she turned her head, no matter how she squinted, she could glimpse the thing to which she spoke only out of the corner of her eye.

  She could hear it much better than she could see it. It had a clear and piercing voice, like the sound of a flute. But Laura could not understand a word it said. It was very important that she tell it something and have its answer. When she spoke to it it seemed to take no notice.

  While she struggled with these things, the mist slowly brightened, until suddenly the sun sprang red before Laura and a freezing wind whipped the mist away.

  The lake stretched like a bloody mirror before her, and where it met the sun at the burning horizon, she saw, for the barest instant, fleet white shapes that might have been horses, bounding into the sun.

  She stood there, hoping they had not been horses, until the wind rose to a howl and drove lake water into her face. She put her hands up to stop it, and woke up shivering.

  The window was a pale square in the moving dark, birds were muttering outside, and Ellen had not come back.

  Laura flung herself out of bed, charged over to the window, and leaned upon the broad sill. Cold shot through her from stone sill and stone floor. The outside air of early morning was warmer than her room. She did not like to think about what High Castle would be like in the winter. Perhaps they would not have to be here in the winter. The story they knew ended in September. She did not like to think about its ending, either.

  The outside was like her dream. The grasses were dull with dew, the lake scummed with mist. The western sky was gray, the mountains almost lost in cloud. But watch though she would, no things almost seen plied the misty air, no voices piped. Even the birds were silent now. Nothing moved in earth or sky. And the only sun she would ever see from this window would be setting. Laura began to shiver again. Almost anything could have happened to Ruth and Ellen in a place that had such dreams and such mornings.

  The bedroom door opened heavily behind her. Laura jumped, banging a hipbone and an elbow on the stone, and craned her head over her shoulder. Agatha, immensely irritating in her reality and her wrongness, stood there. She had a tray in her hands.

  “An thou hangst out a window in thy nightgown,” said Agatha, “thou’lt catch thy death.”

  “Better than it catching me,” said Laura, and was immediately ashamed of herself. This was what she had thought up, after years of exasperation, to say to her grandmother, who had used to tell her that doing anything Laura particularly wanted to do would make her catch her death. She had hoped she could make her grandmother laugh and give up saying it. But her grandmother had died just after Laura had thought of the answer.

  “It matters not who shall start that duel,” said Agatha, putting the tray on the bed, “’Tis thou wilt lose it. Drink thy chocolate. And dress thyself.”

  She had gone and shut the door before Laura had finished turning around.

  Laura took an enormous mouthful of the hot chocolate, sputtered, and spewed it all down the front of her white nightgown. It was dreadfully bitter. Laura stared at the cup, aghast. Someone must be trying to poison Princess Laura. She bolted for the bathroom, whimpering, and rinsed her mouth, finding time to hope that, whatever Lord Randolph gave King William, it would taste better than this. When she showed no immediate signs of dying, she drank water till her stomach sloshed; she had some vague memory that this was what you were supposed to make babies do if they swallowed poison.

  After this she put her clothes on, muttering fiercely at the unfamiliar buttons and laces, and went to find Ted and Patrick.

  They were not in their room. Laura noticed that they had already managed to make it into a mess, and headed downstairs. She had no very clear idea of where she was going, but she wanted to find Ted and Patrick and tell them about the poison and ask about Ruth and Ellen.

  She turned corners and pushed through doors at random; she had no idea where they would practice fencing. People kept saying good morning to her, men-at-arms, people hurrying past her carrying things. She would have liked to ignore them, but princesses were more polite than that. She knew that it was polite to courtesy to people, but it seemed that there was too little room, and that they were all in a hurry. So she grinned at them and went faster. The water sloshing in her stomach was beginning to make her feel sick. She wondered whom she should tell if she were poisoned. At home you called an ambulance.

  The more Laura thought about this and the more strangers she had to grin at, the unhappier she got, and the faster she went, until she ran smack into a man in gray, and burst into tears.

  “Heaven and earth!” exclaimed this person, dropping to his knees in the passageway and taking her by the shoulders. “Hast thou fallen, then?”

  He sounded as if he were talking to a five-year-old, and to her fury Laura found herself behaving like one and wailing, as her grandmother used to say when Laura was really five, as if someone were burning her alive.

  The man in gray evidently did not see it that way. “An thou canst caterwaul so, thou’rt hale enough,” he said, sitting down on the floor and taking her in his arms. “Now what tempest of the spirit is this? Hush, thou’lt crack the stones w’ that noise. And though I’ve no doubt thou’lt argue that the castle be hideous and its people fools, yet wouldst destroy all my work as well? I taught thee thy letters; wilt not spare mine, then?”

  Laura pulled her head out of his shoulder and looked at him; yes, he had red hair. The pleasure of discovery made her stop crying.

  “You’re Matthew!” she said.

  Oddly, he looked a little hurt, but he nodded.

  “Now what’s the matter, Princess?” he said. A woman with an armful of bright red cloth came by and gave them a curious look, but Matthew paid no attention.

  Laura, casting about her for a plausible lie, looked at his kind face and interested eyes and gave up. “I can’t find Ted and Patrick,” she said.

  Matthew cocked his head at her; he looked unconvinced. But all he said was, “That’s easily remedied. They will be either at their fencing or at their breakfasts, and knowing how late Randolph and I sat over our wine last night, I’ll wager he has let ’em off easy. Come, let’s go to breakfast; have you had yours?”

  Laura shook her head. He stood up, and helped her up, and stood looking at her.

  “If you will, permit me,” he said, and handed her a handkerchief. It was very large and very white and felt more like a festive gown, Laura thought, than like a handkerchief. She scrubbed
her face on it, but it seemed wrong to blow her nose with it. She handed it back to Matthew, forgetting to say thank you. He took her by the hand, which, now that she was recovered, she was not sure she liked, and led her along the passage.

  The men-at-arms and passersby gave them indulgent looks; Laura began to feel embarrassed. She could not remember how old Princess Laura was; she could do a lot of things very well for her age, but what the age was was another question. It occupied her until Matthew led her into a high hall wherein five or six people were clustered at one end of a long table, eating and laughing. Laura saw that Ted and Patrick were there, looking very still and alert, but managing to eat a great deal nevertheless, if they themselves had emptied all the empty dishes in front of them.

  Then she saw the man between them, and if Matthew had not gone on walking, and had not held her hand, she would have stood still with her mouth open. The rushes on the floor slid and crunched under her feet. A dog yelped as she trod on its tail, and a cat butted its head against her ankle. She paid them no attention.

  It was not that he looked like Ruth and Ellen, although that was startling. It was not that he had about him a settled wariness, like that of a cat asleep in a forbidden place, although that was intriguing. It was that she knew him. She had figured out Benjamin, Agatha, and Matthew, but she knew Randolph.

  “Good morrow,” said Matthew, to the group generally; then he looked at Randolph, who was buttering a slice of bread with a dagger.

  Laura’s gaze rested on the dagger and froze there. The hilt was set with blue stones. Randolph, spreading the butter with the care it deserved, but which grown-ups so often did not give it, moved his hand through a shaft of sunlight, and the colors it struck from the stones made Laura blink.

  In the space of that blink she saw, very quickly and very clearly, the woman with the broom from the secret house. The woman sat peering with great seriousness into a mirror which did not reflect her. Laura, having opened her eyes before what she had seen registered, promptly closed them again, and saw only darkness with red pinpricks.

  “Aren’t you awake yet?” Patrick’s voice said querulously.

  Laura gave up and opened her eyes.

  “Thou wouldst not be awake thyself, hadst thou thy way,” said Randolph, biting into his bread. “Make room for thy cousin,” he added with his mouth full.

  Ted slid over on the bench, and Laura went around the table and sat between him and Patrick. Matthew had found room across from them.

  Laura looked dubiously at the food on the table. None of it looked like breakfast to her.

  “You’re early,” said Matthew to Randolph.

  “My students are handy today,” said Randolph, not shortly at all, but Matthew looked at him and changed the subject.

  “I have been translating the journals of Shan,” he said, helping himself to what looked like a chicken drumstick.

  Randolph’s head came up. “Which of them?”

  “Those dealing with his travels in the south.”

  “What say they? Aught to the purpose?”

  “Perhaps,” said Matthew. The two young men on either side of him looked at each other over his head, drained their mugs, and stood up. Laura did not recognize either of them, but they looked as if they were good-tempered.

  “We are not speaking secrets,” said Matthew to them.

  “Nor are you speaking aught to keep us awake,” said the one to Matthew’s right.

  “It may yet keep you alive,” said Randolph. The two young men gave each other the kind of look that Laura and Ellen would give each other about Patrick, bowed, said, “Our duties to Your Highness,” in the general direction of the children, and went out.

  “The meat pies are all right,” said Patrick in Laura’s ear. “The ale is awful.”

  “Well, could you pass the bread?”

  “Not speaking secrets?” said Randolph to Matthew.

  “Those men are none of Andrew’s.”

  “They are none of ours.”

  “Sits the wind in that quarter, then?” said Matthew, with a glance at Ted, Patrick, and Laura. Laura saw that Patrick was steadily eating bread and honey, and that Ted held a forgotten slice halfway to his mouth. The honey was running down his arm.

  Laura saw Randolph’s look slide over Patrick and herself and rest behind her, on Ted. “Art thou any of mine, Edward?”

  “Sir,” said Ted, with no discernible hesitation, “all I know you have taught me.”

  Something made Laura look at Matthew, and she surprised on his face the same faintly hurt look that had been there when she told him who he was. She remembered that he had tutored the royal children when they were younger. That would account for his not liking what Ted had said. But that did not explain why he should have been hurt when she said, “You’re Matthew.”

  “Maybe,” said Randolph. “But the disciple has ever left the master before the master thought him ready.”

  This gave Ted pause, but not for long. “As you have left Fence?” he said. He sounded as if he were joking, but there was something a little odd in his voice, and Laura saw Patrick stop chewing. Randolph frowned.

  “Randolph, is that not answer enough?” said Matthew.

  “The question was thine,” Randolph told him, reasonably.

  “I say all here are ours, then,” said Matthew, flushing a little. “My lords and lady, I ask your pardon,” he added.

  Laura blinked, Patrick said, “Sure,” and Ted nodded.

  “So,” said Randolph, “what of these journals?”

  Matthew picked up the heavy pitcher and poured himself a mug of ale. “’Tis the group with the doubtful handwriting,” he said, clearly enjoying himself.

  “Your handwriting would be doubtful also, had you spent four years in the service of the Dragon King,” said Randolph.

  “That is my view,” said Matthew. “But there are those who hold that Melanie, not Shan, wrote these journals; in which case one cannot trust ’em.”

  “But if she wrote them for her own use?” said Ted. He sounded terrifyingly grown-up, but the honey was still running down his arm.

  Matthew shrugged. “If she had, why write them after the style of Shan?”

  “What other teacher had she?” said Ted.

  “What,” said Randolph to Matthew, “of the journals?”

  “Shan’s order of sorcerers wielded no arms save their magic,” said Matthew. “Not until he entered the service of the Dragon King, whose minions would as soon kill one another as eat their dinner, did he need true weapons. His magic was less than theirs, you will understand, for his came by craft and theirs by nature. And because he needed to battle such creatures as the Dragon King uses, he learned what weapons vanquish them.”

  “That were a boon indeed,” said Randolph, slowly. “Is the translation complete?”

  “So much as I can do,” said Matthew, looking rueful. “There are passages that need the wisdom of Fence.”

  Randolph’s brows drew together. “Is there help in them in their present state?”

  “I would have you look at them, if you will.”

  “Gladly,” said Randolph, rising and thrusting the buttery dagger into his belt. “And as soon as may be. Have you eaten enough?”

  “As much as I have stomach for,” said Matthew, rising too. “My duty to Your Highness,” he said to the children, and moved for the door.

  “Edward, if you would eat with the proper hand,” said Randolph. He stopped, and sighed. “I will impart to you what we discover,” he said, pulled Laura’s hair, and followed Matthew.

  Patrick looked at Ted, and snickered. “You might as well have been eating with your left hand, the mess you’ve made,” he said.

  “Do you know a good way to sprain a hand?” Ted asked him.

  “Where’s Ruth?” Laura demanded of Ted.

  “I wish I could get a look at those manuscripts,” said Ted, gazing into the depths of his mug as if it were a crystal ball. He picked it up, took a large swallow, a
nd made a face.

  “You could have asked,” said Patrick.

  “Where’s Ruth and Ellen?” said Laura.

  “If you’ve finished eating, we can check the stables and Ruth’s room,” said Patrick.

  “Let’s go,” said Laura. The water was still sloshing in her stomach. She got up. “Agatha tried to poison my cocoa,” she said as they went out the door.

  “What?” said Ted, pleasing Laura immensely. She did not really think that it had been Agatha, but she had wanted to get Ted’s attention.

  “How do you know?” said Patrick. Laura told him. Patrick leaned on the passage wall and howled. “You crazy kid,” he said when he was finished laughing. “It’s bitter because they don’t put sugar in it, that’s all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Same reason people don’t put it in tea and coffee, I guess.”

  “That’s stupid,” said Laura, knowing full well that Patrick thought it was she who was stupid.

  Ruth and Ellen were not in Ruth’s room nor in Ellen and Laura’s, and they were not in the stable. It was a sunny day, cooler than the weather had been since they had arrived, and still a little misty. After some discussion the three of them decided to sit on the outer wall of the moat on the west side of High Castle, where they could watch for Ruth and Ellen’s approach and feed the swans at the same time. High Castle was situated on rising ground, so that from the moat’s wall they could see quite easily over the high pink outer wall.

  They went back to the hall where they had eaten. There were several lords and ladies, dressed in what looked like hunting garments, eating there, but nobody remarked on Patrick’s taking a loaf of bread. They crossed the drawbridge, being greeted by name and with apparent affection by both the guards there, and settled themselves on the sun-warmed wall of the moat.