The Perilous Gard (27 page)

"Have you a mother?"

"No," said Christopher.

"Have you a child?"

"No," said Christopher.

"Is there a woman you love?"

"No," said Christopher.

"What holds you back, then?"

Christopher's hand, with the heavy gold armlet on the wrist, went up and touched the jeweled links of the collar around his neck. The torchlight and the firelight and the moonlight ran in a shining wave over the gold and crimson splendor as he moved.

"How can I be nothing," he asked, "with all this upon me?"

"Throw them away, then," said the voice. "Jingle and trumpery: why should they trouble you? Such gauds are valueless. Throw them away."

The last thing Kate saw before she turned and ran down the steps to the courtyard was Christopher slowly drawing the armlet from his wrist. She moved so fast that when she reached the archway it was still in his hand.

The gray creature's voice rose again out of the shadows before he could let it drop.

"Not yet," said the voice. "You have all heard the teind-payer speak for himself. Does anyone here speak for the teind-payer?"

The voice paused; and then, as if with one accord, the Fairy Folk turned their heads away from the golden rider and stood gazing at the ground.

"Once more," said the voice, "does anyone here speak for the teind-payer?"

There was no sound or movement. The whole circle was completely still. Kate, shivering like a puppy in the shadows of the archway, found herself listening frantically for something — anything — to break the stillness: armed men galloping in at the gate, Sir Geoffrey, her father, Master Roger, the Lady Elizabeth —

"Once more, and for the last time," said the voice, "does anyone here speak for the teind-payer?"

Kate thrust her way between two of the torchbearers and ran across the ring to the white horse's side, facing the gray creature, the Lady, and the fire.

"Well, yes," she stammered uncertainly, and braced herself for what was coming.

But nothing came. Nobody cried out in rage or astonishment, nobody so much as turned to look at her. The gray creature remained half lost in the shadows, the Lady hidden behind her veil, the Fairy Folk gazing at the ground. Christopher did not appear to know that she was even there. He went on holding the armlet in his hand, with the golden mask looking away from her, at the fire; and as for pulling him down from the horse, one glance was enough to show her that she might as well try to pull down an equestrian statue.

"Christopher," she said in a desperate rush. "Christopher, listen. Cecily's safe. She's been taken away out of the house and hidden. You don't have to go on with this foolishness."

Only the gray creature answered, and then it was not to Kate that it spoke.

"Teind-payer, teind-payer, do not deceive yourself," the voice murmured. It was not speaking ceremonially now, like a priest, but kindly, persuasively, like an old wise man, a counselor. "Do not listen, do not look aside to the right or the left, fix your mind on what you have chosen, remember the warnings. The King of the land in the old days had many trials to pass through before his death-time was over; and one of them may have been a test of his will, to see if his courage and strength would fail him at the last. I cannot tell you more of this — it is not allowed — but I am permitted to ask you questions. What did you hear? A voice trying to turn you from your purpose? Whose voice was it? A friend's? Someone you know perhaps? Someone you trust? But can you be certain —
certain
— whose voice it was? Our kind are all shape-changers, and they can take on any voice or appearance they please. Can you — "

Questions, thought Kate savagely; why even now couldn't the thing tell a plain lie, like an honest man?

"Christopher, if you think I'm not — " she began indignantly, but the gray creature's voice closed over hers before she could finish the sentence. Whatever strange custom they were following, it evidently obliged the contestants to speak in turn, each waiting for the other; and her turn had gone by.

"Can you even be certain that it was a real voice you heard, and not your own fear of the fire speaking? There are many voices in the mind, and the loudest may be no more than an illusion born of a wish or a fear. You need not tell me what it said to you: I know. How many times have you longed with all your soul that you could hear the child was safe, out of the house, hidden away — and you free to break through the mesh that held you, clear yourself a path to the gate, and be gone? How often have you dreamed that it was true, and then awakened to find it was only a dream? But what you see before you now is not a dream. You are awake. You can ride that horse out of the circle this moment, if you choose, and not one of us will lift a finger to stop you from going. But will you go? Fail your brother again, and go? Leave the child behind to pay the teind in your place, and go? Live with that knowledge for the rest of your life? Or will you hold to your purpose, and come?"

The long bony arm shot out in a curious undulating gesture towards the fire. And as if at some signal, the Fairy Folk lifted their own arms and made the same gesture, the flames of their torches pouring and curving on the air between them. Softly at first and then harder, their feet began to beat the ground; the torches dipped and curved again; the whole circle was dancing. Not wildly and joyfully, as they had around the oak tree, but with a fierce deliberate intensity, the torches making patterns on the air that opened and drew together and opened again, faster and faster, in a curling net of fire that caught at the heart and pulled it irresistibly towards the calling voice. Even Kate found that she had, without knowing it, taken a step in the direction of the fire — and she had not spent a nine weeks' death-time listening to that voice and schooling herself to answer the call when it came.

"Come," said the voice.

But Kate, looking up at Christopher in an agony of fear, saw that for that one moment at least she had reached and held him. He was still silent, turned away from her, gazing at the fire; the golden mask was still as blank as ever; and with his left hand he was still trying to draw the armlet out of his right. But apart from that his whole body was motionless, as rigid as if it were locked in the grip of two equal and opposing forces, contending together, neither able to break free of the other. Nor was there now anything remote or passive in that quiet. The right hand was clenched so hard over the armlet that she could see the heavy metal twisting under the strain.

"Christopher, Christopher, be still," she implored him. "That's all you have to do — be still a little longer; keep yourself from moving. It's almost over. Sir Geoffrey's coming. He's on the road now. Don't you remember? Randal took him the word weeks ago, and he knows, and he's coming."

The gray creature lifted its shadowy head a fraction, and the dance stopped.

"Weeks ago?" murmured the voice. "Why is he not here, then? Ask yourself, teind-payer. Do you in your heart of hearts believe that he will come? Why should he? Has he ever truly cared for you? Why should he? Who killed his mother? Who wrecked the life of his father? Who hated his wife? Who lost his daughter? When have you ever — until now — brought anything to anyone you love except heartbreak and shame? How do you know but that if you go on you may not do it again? One act now, and you are free forever. Why not? What have you to live for? What have you — "

As it spoke, the voices of the Fairy Folk began to rise again, this time not in a cry or a chant, but in one low, sustained, unbearable moan that ran, crawling cold as a snake, through every nerve of Kate's body. The sound mingled with the words of the gray creature, blurring and distorting them, so that for one moment Kate thought first that they were coming from somewhere deep in her own body, and then that it was some other voice speaking — her mother's voice: "Go away, child: I can't bear the sight of you"; her old nurse's voice: "There, there, Mistress Katherine, we can't all be as pretty and loving as your sister"; even Alicia's voice crying sweetly: "O Kate, Kate, I do wish you were like me! Truly I do!" The next moment all the sounds had faded and were lost in a voiceless aching misery that came down on her spirit like the insufferable sense of the earth and the stone pressing about her at an attack of the weight — and then in a rush of shame her thoughts came back to Christopher. If it could do this to her, what was it doing to him?

"And you can be free of the shame and the fear," the gray creature was repeating softly. "One act, and you are free of them, free of them forever. More: you will be honored in your death; it will be a proof of your worth that even your brother will be compelled to understand. What else have you to live for? Ask yourself, teind-payer. What else have you to live for?"

"The manor," said Kate.

"Manor?" For the first time, the voice hesitated, fumbling over the word, and it came to Kate with a strange quick pride that whatever else Christopher might have told it, he had not told it about the manor.

"Yes, the manor," she hurried on. "And the village, and the house, and the ditching and the drainage, and the orchard and the dairy." She was throwing in everything she could think of, frantically, as she might have tried to fill up a broken dike with the first stones that came to her hand. "You never did decide where you wanted to build the new dairy."

But the gray creature had instantly recovered from its slip.

"Manor?" said the voice smoothly. "You? What sort of end is that for a man? To pass your life digging last autumn's rot into the dirt so that this autumn's rot may be dug into it again next spring? Breed animals to use and to kill? Breed like an animal yourself, and rear sons for stronger men to use and kill in their turn? Build a house that may be swept away into ruin by one storm of wind or one lighted candle in the hand of a fool? Tend and guard those who will give you no thanks for it? And all this while with no more to hope for than that at the last you may die of old age, a witless bag of bones drooling on a feather bed? No, Young Lord. That will do well enough for those who are born to be servants and scrubbers. But with some men it is otherwise. They are born great, and if their greatness cannot show itself in their lives because of some curse or affliction, it may yet be made plain in their death. Why else did your poets make the tale of the phoenix, who among all the birds is the only divine, if not because it alone will plunge gloriously into a holy fire and burn its own mortality away to nothing?" The voice had changed again. It was lifting, quickening, breaking into a great triumphant cry that went soaring up and up, so high that for an instant it almost seemed to Kate that something had flashed past her, a golden splendor, forever beyond her reach.

"And why else, when the King of the land paid the teind in the old days, did the people lead him to this place in glory, adorned with gold and precious things like one of the gods, if not to honor and praise him because he alone had the greatness of spirit to spurn this earth out from under his feet, and be free of it like the god he looked?"

"God?" said Kate, revolted. "You don't look like any god to me, Christopher Heron! You look like a piece of gilded gingerbread, that's what you look like, one of those cakes they sell at a fair!"

Christopher stiffened. "That's a fine thing to say to the King of the land at his death-time," he retorted. "Nobody but you would think of such a — O Lord!" She heard him gasp as if she had struck him; then with a sudden movement he thrust the golden mask back from his face, and the white horse reared up, neighing indignantly, as it was wrenched around on a savage rein. His own yellow hair, matted and dark with sweat, lay plastered over his forehead, and he was breathing in great pants, like someone coming up out of deep water; but the eyes he turned on her were alive and furious. "O Lord!" he said again. "It was you! I might have known it! What in the name of all the fiends are you doing here? Run! — Kate, you fool! you pest! you abominable meddling little pumpkinhead! Run, I tell you! I'll hold them off until you get away."

Any reply that Kate might have made was lost in a burst of cries from the Fairy Folk, cries of rage and despair and something that sounded dreadfully like disappointed hunger. The circle broke into a wild confusion of sound and movement. The air was torn with shouts and wheeling lights and high sharp screams like the mewing of seagulls as the Fairy Folk flung down their torches and went flying down the dark gorge to the Holy Well. The wide flat stretch of grass before the fire was littered with torches, burning where they lay. And from somewhere in the distance over the wall there rose a new sound — the far clear note of a horn.

"That'll be Geoffrey." Christopher mopped his wet forehead with his arm and grinned at her shakily. "Shall we go tell him he's come too late for the show? Quick, Kate! Don't stand there gaping like an idiot! I have to get you out of here." He let the battered armlet fall to the grass and reached down an imperative hand to her. "Up, lady! I'm going to carry you off on my saddlebow."

But Kate, to her own astonishment, found that her knees were buckling under her and all the fiery torches on the ground were rushing together and roaring up into darkness. Christopher, flinging himself down from the white horse's back, was only just in time to catch her as she fell.

Chapter XIII

The Changeling

Kate was awakened by a light shining in her face. She murmured sleepily, "Yes, Gwenhyfara," and opened her eyes.

She was lying on the coverlet of a great carved bed, its four towering posts hung about with embroidered curtains which had been drawn to darken the room. But somewhere beyond them the sun was out, and a long ray was slanting in through a narrow gap where they did not quite meet on one side of the bed. She thought, "I'm dreaming," then, reaching dazedly for the pull-ring of the curtains, "No, the other was a dream; it was all only a dream," and fell back with a little cry as a sudden jag of pain ran through her left hand.

The hand was only a paw of bandages, with the pain a jangling throb in the heart of it. The other hand was chapped and reddened from weeks of scrubbing, the knuckles swollen and callouses on the palm. It was covered with spots of blood and candle wax, streaks of grime, soot, and scratches where the twigs along the path had caught at her. The leather sleeve falling away from the wrist was stained and worn, the edge of the fur lining almost rubbed away. But through the gap in the curtains she could see the familiar windows of her own room, a fire dancing on the hearth, and an old woman bent over the fire, stirring something in a bright copper pan.