The Perilous Gard (14 page)

Kate stared at him, her wits scattering like sheep. Dishonest trading of this scope and quality was something she had never met with before. It had simply not occurred to her it was possible. "That's a very unlikely story," she said, but her voice only came out as a sort of whisper because her throat was so dry.

"Not altogether likely, perhaps," Master John admitted, shaking his head. "In my opinion, it would be far more reasonable to take the child straight back to the Hill tonight (she can always be used for a hostage if the worst comes to the worst) and tell Sir Geoffrey that his brother had grown weary of his coldness and gone off to seek his fortune in the Indies. Unhappily, Those in the Well are very strict about keeping to the exact letter of any bargain they make, and the exact letter of this bargain was that the child should go safely back to her father. Still, such as it is, the story should do well enough. Certainly it should do."

"Sir Geoffrey won't believe it."

"Why won't he believe it?" inquired Master John, cutting another slice from the pear.

"Nobody could believe it — nobody who knows Christopher, He almost tore himself to pieces over what happened to Cecily."

"I wonder just how well Geoffrey did know his brother?" asked Master John softly. "I judge that he was at one time deeply attached to him, but he's been away from him in Ireland for the past five years, and as for knowing him — it isn't so easy to know Christopher Heron, not with all his fine talk and his tongue like a skinning knife: haven't you seen that for yourself? He might tear himself to pieces, if you choose to put it so extravagantly, but it would go very hard with him to make a display of the pieces: haven't you seen that too? He used to come back to the house when Sir Geoffrey was here and stand about the great hall looking as if he'd never seen the inside of a leper's hut in his life; and his appearance was so cold and callous that Sir Geoffrey must be to some extent prepared to believe he never truly cared for the child at all. I'm not saying it won't be a blow to Sir Geoffrey, mind you. He was, as I told you, deeply attached to his brother. Indeed, he still is so deeply attached to him that in the future he may find Elvenwood Hall even more unbearable than he does now. When the Herons find anything unbearable, Mistress Katherine, their way is to repudiate it — withdraw themselves from it — leave it — go."

"Why hasn't Christopher gone, then?"

"Because to stay was the worst punishment he could lay on himself," Master John pointed out unanswerably. "Sir Geoffrey won't feel called upon to do that. Why should he? No, Mistress Katherine, I don't think we'll see much of Sir Geoffrey at Elvenwood Hall after this. It isn't as though he needed to be here, or trouble himself over the estate — not while he can trust it to me. Bless you, I don't intend to rob him. I've never touched a penny from the farms or the rents or the woolpack or anything else that could rightly be called his. The Queen's Lord Treasurer himself would be welcome to go over my account books."

"You're still running a great risk," Kate argued stubbornly.

"What risk?"

"The village is suspicious already. They know there's something wrong with the castle."

"A pack of country folk full of old wives' tales, and a poor unlettered priest who can hardly read the words in his mass book? Who'd listen to them? Oh no, Mistress Katherine, I can deal with the village."

"There must be at least fifty people up here at the castle, too. That's a good many to be in on a secret."

"Mistress Katherine! Mistress Katherine!" said Master John, almost affectionately. "What makes you think that more than one or two of them are in the secret? The old lords were no fools, and neither am I. There was a serving man once who started prying about Lord Richard's tower, and sneaking off to walk in the Elvenwood; but — " said Master John, peeling another slice of his pear, "he was lost there on a dark night, and he never found his way out again. That was twenty years ago, and I don't remember anyone trying it since. They know better."

"Dorothy — "

"Dorothy doesn't know the whole of the truth; and if she tried to tell Sir Geoffrey the little she does know, he'd soon find out that she's nothing but a silly babbling old woman. And she won't tell him. I can make her keep her mouth shut."

"Randal — "

"Randal's mad."

"Cecily — "

"Cecily is only four years old. By the time she sees her father again, in three months or more, she won't remember much about Fairy Folk. No, Mistress Katherine, you and I will have to come to the point. There is only one person in this whole house who is likely to put the slightest difficulty in the way of Sir Geoffrey believing anything I may choose to tell him. Surely you agree with me?"

Kate looked around her at the quiet room, the big table with its inkhorn and papers, the account books standing in line on their shelf, the one window thoughtfully provided with a grille of iron bars, the closed door leading to the terrace, the closed door leading into the great hall. Then she lifted her chin and surveyed Master John in her stoniest manner. She knew it was ridiculous — a mouse driven into a corner might just as well have tried to stand on its dignity with the cat — but it was all she could do. "Yes," she said. "That's true."

Master John ate the slice of pear.

"I take it," he remarked gently, "that Christopher Heron was depending on you to give Sir Geoffrey a true account of the matter? Or even to get him word so that he could come back in time to make trouble before the ceremony? Yes, I thought so. It was a very fortunate chance that I saw you following him up to the Holy Well as I came through the archway."

"That wasn't a chance," said Kate bitterly. "It was a judgment on me for behaving like a fool. If I'd done what he told me — "

"Don't blame yourself overmuch," said Master John in the kindest way. "These things happen, you know. It's of no importance, no importance at all — except, as I was telling you, that it puts me in a very trying and painful position."

"Not your conscience grieving you, surely?" asked Kate, deciding that it was all the same whether she was eaten for a shrew or for a mouse.

"I can't afford to keep a conscience," said Master John, looking rather taken aback, as though she had asked him why he did not keep a coach or ten horses. "Who do you take me for — Christopher Heron? And considering what that one of his has cost him — ! No, Mistress Katherine. My conscience wasn't what I was thinking of."

"Yes," said Kate. "Were you by any chance thinking that I am one of the Princess Elizabeth's ladies, and that Sir Geoffrey made you answerable for my safe keeping until he comes back again?"

"That is what makes it so trying," confessed Master John. "What am I to say when he asks for you? I suppose I might put you under some sort of oath or vow never to reveal the truth to him, but I couldn't trust you to keep to it, and I should think you were an idiot if you did. You must understand: there's nothing I can do but take the risk and dispose of you somehow. I put it to you, as one reasonable human being to another, that I haven't any choice in the matter."

He paused to remove an infinitesimal brown speck from another slice of pear with the point of his knife. There was very little left of the pear now, only enough for about two more good mouthfuls.

"After all," he remarked thoughtfully, "when everything is said and done, Sir Geoffrey's a just man. He won't hold me accountable for more than flesh and blood can be expected to do. How was I to know that you'd fall secretly in love with Christopher Heron and run away with him when he fled from the castle?"

"What!" Kate jerked bolt upright, her wits scattering again.

"I shall, of course, conduct the most rigorous search for you both," Master John assured her. "But no one will care if it comes to nothing. Sir Geoffrey will be glad in his heart to have his brother escape the blow of the law; and do you think Queen Mary is likely to make any great stir over losing you? I understand you have never been what might be called a favorite of hers."

"B-b-but — " Kate stuttered furiously, "I'm not in love with Christopher Heron! How could I be in love with Christopher Heron? I've only talked to him twice in my life!"

"In this sad age," said Master John, "a young and ignorant girl like you can go astray very quickly: everybody knows that. Don't you trouble yourself, Mistress Katherine. The blame of it is sure to be laid chiefly on Christopher Heron, not on you or on me; and he is going to have so much to answer for by that time that a trifle more here and there should hardly make any difference to him — and in any case, what's a good name to the dead? You must perceive that I could never tell Sir Geoffrey that you had simply died of an illness or disappeared of your own accord. It would be entirely too strange and remarkable to have the both of you vanishing separately for different reasons at one and the same time. As it is, the only problem will be why I failed to discover what was happening, but that would have meant keeping my eye on you every minute of the day and — "

"Never mind," Kate interrupted him. She did not want to hear any more about Master John's difficulties. "Just answer me this, will you? You said you were going to dispose of me. How are you planning to do it?"

Master John finished the last thin delicious slice of his pear in a leisurely manner.

"I can't tell you," he replied. "That isn't altogether for me to decide. There are various ways to dispose of you. Some you may have thought of already. Others will no doubt occur to you." He strolled over to the door leading into the great hall and opened it. "If you won't mind being left alone for a little, Mistress Katherine?" he inquired courteously. "I will come back as soon as my associates and I have considered the matter."

Chapter VIII

The Lady in the Green

The door closed demurely behind Master John, the latch clicked and Kate was left staring at the neat little pile of peelings and seed that lay among the pears and cheese on the dish by the armchair. From the dish her eyes went again, slowly, almost unbelievingly, to the account books, the money chest, the polished candlesticks, the quiet walls and shelves and windows of Master John's private room.

She had had a nightmare once when she was a child. She could still remember it, a nightmare in which solid, familiar objects — like walls and shelves and windows — had begun to slide and blur, to dissolve, to lose their true shape and turn into something else, the same and yet not the same as they were in reality. It was like that now. Master John's room was the kind of place she had known all her life. It was part of her own world, the world she had always lived in, her father's world and her grandfather's — and yet suddenly it seemed stranger and more terrifying than even the dark world of the Fairy Folk. At least the Fairy Folk wanted the reality of Christopher Heron, to get for themselves the qualities of spirit and body which he actually had. Master John did not so much as want that. In his world, Christopher also would lose his true shape and be turned into something else, the blurred distorted figure of a thief and a coward, entirely unreal; but to Master John that would not matter one way or the other: "What's a good name to the dead?"

She rose to her feet in a sort of bewildered outrage, her eyes going back to the dish of fruit by the armchair; and more than anything else on earth at that moment she wanted to snatch it up and fling the whole tidy abominable platter with a great satisfying crash down the smooth whitewashed wall over the pens and papers and the account books spread out on the work table. The platter would be broken to pieces; the fat pears would burst and spurt, and —

And Master John, quite unperturbed by such childishness, would send for Tom or Dick or Humphrey; the fragments would be swept away and the walls covered with more whitewash, the stained pages of the account book would be copied out fresh, the table scrubbed clean. By the time Sir Geoffrey saw the room again, the little difficulty would be completely disposed of.

Disposed of.

The good, hot, comforting wave of fury that had swept over her broke and drained away, leaving her empty.

If Christopher was caught in the nightmare, so was she. She could not break out of it, any more than he could. It was useless to pretend that anyone who was capable of destroying a Christopher Heron without a second thought would hesitate for an instant to dispose of a Katherine Sutton. That at least she could be absolutely sure of.

She looked at the closed door leading to the great hall. In a little while it would open again, and Master John would come through it with a knife, a small silver knife like the one he had used to cut the pear to pieces, and then he would kill her.

No, he would not. She might be frightened, but there was no need to be foolish. Master John was the last man on earth to commit a murder with his own hands, particularly a murder in his own private room, overturning the furniture, making a nasty mess of the sweet smelling, herb strewn floor. That would be too "trying" and "painful" even for him. It was much more likely that he would have the castle people take her and do whatever had to be done out of his sight and a long way off.

No, not that either. Not the castle people. The castle people — or at least the "one or two" who were in on the secret — could be trusted to support Master John against the outside world on any ordinary occasion; but he would never trust them with anything like this. Master John was not, after all, one of the old Wardens, the lords of the manor. Sir Geoffrey was coming back after All Saints' Day, and then Master John would have enough trouble on his hands without taking chances on any possible carelessness or disloyalty or panic. Master John was not the sort of person to take chances except when he had to; and this was certainly one chance that he did not have to take. If all he wanted was somebody who would dispose of her out of his sight and a long way off —

It was a long way down the black, echoing shaft of the Holy Well, into the unknown caverns and passages and hidden places that lay under the Hill and the dark interlaced trees of the Elvenwood. Anyone who escaped from the creatures who lived there might perhaps wander until he dropped and died without ever finding his way out again. And even if he did find his way out, he might no longer be in a state where it would make very much difference whether he did or not.