The Perilous Gard (5 page)

"Sir Geoffrey — " Kate began tentatively.

"And whoever heard of Sir Geoffrey before he came thrusting himself in where nobody wanted him?" old Dorothy snapped, with another contemptuous toss of her head. "My lady — she was young, and full of fancies, and she could twist her father around her thumb whenever it pleased her. Nothing would do but she must marry the man, and he no more than a beggarly knight who came to the door when he was lost in the Elvenwood. 'Let her alone, let her alone,' was all my lord would say. 'She can teach him the way of the land too, when I'm dead and gone; and better this one than another, for he loves her.' I told them what would come of it, over and over again I told them. You could never teach him the way of the land. They're all soft, the Herons."

"Soft?" Kate's chief impression of Sir Geoffrey had been that he was made entirely out of granite and steel.

"Big and soft and stupid," said old Dorothy, viciously. "Haven't you eyes? You saw him with his brother."

"What brother?"

"Christopher Heron." Dorothy spoke the name almost as though she were spitting it out of her mouth. "You saw him. He was over by the window while you were eating your bit of a dinner."

"That was Sir Geoffrey's brother?" Kate knew now what the height and the thick tawny hair had reminded her of. "B-but why does he treat him so, then?"

"Because he's softhearted, I said! It was his own child — his own child, the only child my poor lady had; and Christopher Heron was crazed with jealousy of her, wanting the whole inheritance for himself. He's always been mad to have land of his own. Any of Sir Geoffrey's men will tell you that."

"Are you saying," Kate demanded incredulously, "that he killed her?"

"I'm not saying it; he says it himself. What more do you want? There's some that will make another tale of it, but don't you believe them. I know what I heard with my own ears. 'I killed her,' he said to his brother, standing there before all of us as white as his shirt; and not a thing did Sir Geoffrey do but turn his back on him and walk away. They say he has a great name for justice in his own country. Justice! What he ought to have done was tie his hands behind his back and hang him to a — "

"Dorothy."

Sir Geoffrey had opened the door from the gallery, and was standing at the end of the walk, Master John at his shoulder. Dorothy stopped short, and in spite of her belief in his soft-heartedness, made a noise like a frightened hen.

"You can go now, Dorothy," said Sir Geoffrey. "You're wanted in the hall. John here will take you down." He did not raise his voice, and it was impossible to tell from his face just how much he had overheard, but Dorothy went scuttling past him as if in a high wind, Master John kindly taking hold of her arm to steady her through the doorway. Kate thought she saw the fat white fingers close very hard in the flesh of the arm as he did so, but they were both gone so quickly that she could not be sure. She and her guardian were left facing each other along the line of battlements.

"Come here," said Sir Geoffrey.

Kate went. She hoped that she did not actually scuttle, like Dorothy, but it seemed a long way.

There was a pause, while Sir Geoffrey regarded her grimly and she felt herself slowly shrinking to the size of a very small pebble that lay on one of the stone corbels near to his hand. It must look so dreadfully as if she had gone sneaking off to whisper scandal in a corner the minute he let her out of his sight.

"Sir Geoffrey — " she began, stiffly.

Sir Geoffrey apparently did not even hear her.

"Mistress Katherine." It was the same level voice he had used with old Dorothy. "Before I go to Norfolk, there is something I have to make clear to you."

Kate waited helplessly for the storm to break.

"Did the Queen tell you the terms on which you are to live here?"

"T-the — the — " Kate stammered. "No."

Sir Geoffrey picked up the little pebble and stood for a moment turning it over in his fingers, and looking down at the courtyard. Kate, following his glance, saw that Christopher Heron had come out of the door to the hall below and was crossing the pavement. His head was bent; the afternoon sun glinted on the thick tawny golden hair. He went on past the dark archway to Lord Richard's tower, turned around a corner, and disappeared from view.

"Her Majesty was very plain with me," said Sir Geoffrey, still in that level voice. "You are to be lodged and served like a lady of your rank, but not to go out of the park — there's no park, so we'll call it the village and a mile from the house. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, Sir Geoffrey."

"You are not to send or receive letters for any reason whatsoever."

"Yes, Sir Geoffrey."

"Your friends and your family are not to visit you, and you may not have other company except in my presence and with my express leave. That," Sir Geoffrey added, "means, at this time, Master John's leave. It will be his business to see to you as long as I am away. If you're in any doubt as to what you can do, go to him and he'll tell you."

Kate swallowed hard. After her day in the forest, she felt no particular desire to go anywhere further than the village and a mile from the house — but the thought of being told what she could or could not do by Master John did rather stick in her throat.

"When are you coming back?" she inquired hopefully. It might not be so bad if it was only for a couple of weeks.

"Some time after All Saints' Day," said Sir Geoffrey, flicking the little pebble across the courtyard.

All Saints' Day was the beginning of Advent, the first day in November, just after the harvest festival, and half the summer away.

"Yes, Sir Geoffrey," she said, swallowing again.

The old reluctant hint of a smile came slowly back into her guardian's eyes.

"That will be enough of the yes-Sir-Geoffrey," he informed her. "And I don't want to hear any more of the no-Sir-Geoffrey or I-thank-you-Sir-Geoffrey either, my girl! I know I'm in a foul humor, but I'm always in a foul humor these days, and it's nothing to do with you. There! Now give me your hand and cry friends with me, can't you?" 

Kate took an awkward step towards him. "I hadn't meant to gossip with Dorothy," she ventured to apologize. "It was only — "

"I know that too." The big hand closed over hers and held it. "All I'm asking of you is to be a good lass while I'm away and mind your book and don't go cumbering your head with other folks' troubles. You know the old proverb that there's no sense meddling in what you can't mend? — Didn't your father ever say that to you?"

Kate nodded a little doubtfully. "Well," she began, "he — "

"Then you take his advice if you won't take mine. He has the name of being a wise man, your father."

The corner of Kate's mouth quivered very slightly as she followed him meekly through the door of the long gallery. She had often heard her father quote that proverb; he said it was invented by fools to save them the trouble of thinking. " 'Don't meddle in what you can't mend!' " he would growl at her. "And how do you know it's past mending? There'll be time enough not to meddle after you've looked into the matter. At least you could try to satisfy your mind first."

Chapter IV

The Holy Well

Kate was sitting by the window in the long gallery, with her hands clasped about her knees, watching old Dorothy mend the frayed edge of a tapestry on the wall. Old Dorothy was a wonderful needlewoman, and in spite of her age did a great deal of work that she might better have left to the sewing maids, if, as she was complaining at the moment, they hadn't been a pair of young slatterns, barely able to hem sheets. Now back in her lady's time, before Sir Geoffrey —

She stopped short with a jerk of her thread.

"Yes, Dorothy?"

"No matter," said Dorothy, rather flurriedly. "Never you mind. I'll thank you for that ball of silk, Mistress Katherine. The green one in the basket, next to your hand."

Kate bent to pick up the ball with a little sigh. She had been at the Perilous Gard now for over a week, and she was no nearer to knowing the true state of affairs there than she had been on the day of her arrival. Whatever Master John had said to Dorothy on their way down from the battlement walk — and Kate had the clearest possible memory of the fat white fingers sinking into the old woman's arm — it had cut off any more talk about her lady and Sir Geoffrey and Christopher Heron as clean as a knife. Kate could do nothing with her. Dorothy would only turn flustered or stubborn, and go scuttering away from anything that looked even remotely as if it might be dangerous ground. But at least Kate was allowed to follow her about and pick up an occasional ball of silk or a crumb of conversation, though the conversation was now made up entirely of complaints about the younger servants or long rambling tales about dead-and-gone Wardens, all tiresome. The Wardens had certainly been great builders and lived richly as dukes, but they did not seem to have done much of anything else. They had not gone crusading; they had somehow contrived to stay out of the wars of the Roses; the unending aristocratic struggle for power, rank, office, court favor, and advantageous marriages appeared to have passed them by. They had evidently wanted nothing, fought for nothing, and occupied themselves with nothing except what was necessary for the maintenance of the Perilous Gard. They stood almost as aloof from the world as if they were members of some religious order — but there was no sign that they had ever been religious; they did not even keep a household chaplain of their own, like other noble families. So much and no more Kate had learned — and even the learning of that much, she reflected bitterly, was beginning to seem like a feat to be proud of.

It was not that Master John treated her badly. To Mistress Katherine Sutton, once a royal maid of honor, Master John was always smiling and affable, with a bow and a sympathetic glance whenever he was obliged to refer to Sir Geoffrey's orders from the Queen, or his own orders from Sir Geoffrey. She was not locked up, or insulted, or abused. She was only quietly and deftly shut out of the life of the castle. With its foresters, clerks, grooms, and serving men, its falconers and dog boys, its cooks, panders, and scullions, its chambermaids, sewing women, laundresses, pages, and all the other ragtag and bobtail of a great household, Elvenwood Hall was a community in itself; but Kate was almost as alone as though she had actually been chained up to the wall in the black dungeon of Alicia's imagination. From her windows she could sometimes see a couple of grooms saunter across the courtyard, or carters carrying another consignment of stores into Lord Richard's tower, or the porter lumbering up from the gate; but as soon as she appeared the grooms would be sure to move off, the carters vanish around a corner, and the porter go by her in a great hurry to see to some business of his own. When she came upon a maid dusting one of the rooms, the girl would hardly wait to drop a curtsy before whipping away like a mouse; and she never saw the serving men or pages except while she was eating her meals in the great hall under the cold eye of Master John, humbly erect in his proper place by the cupboard. Randal had gone back to Norfolk with Sir Geoffrey, and Christopher Heron she had not met at all. She thought she had caught a glimpse of him once, through the archway that led to the outer bailey court and the main gate; but when she ran out there was nobody in the court but Master John, who merely smiled and remarked that it was a fine evening for a walk, did she mean to go as far as the village?

Kate, strong in Sir Geoffrey's ruling about the "village and a mile from the house," had nodded and marched rather defiantly past him out at the gate. That was on the first day after her arrival, before she had seen the village or had any real taste of Master John's quality.

The village proved to be only a scattering of stone cottages about a green, with a tiny alehouse at one end and a very small, tumble-down church at the other. Beyond the church, there was a mill clacking away by a little river, and corn fields carefully shared out into long strips for planting, according to the old custom. The sun had just begun to set; a handful of men were gossiping with the priest by the church porch, and a mother or two had already come out on her doorstep to call the children in to their beds. A last game of tag was dashing and shouting around the green.

It all looked so pleasant and so blessedly ordinary after the Perilous Gard that Kate paused to watch for a moment at the turn of the path. Nobody saw her: she was in the shadow of a high stone wall, and the village was wholly taken up with its own affairs. The racing line of children wheeled nearer; one little boy, running wildly, swerved, collided against her, and went down on the grass almost at her feet. Kate stooped to pick him up. He was a very small boy with a shock of dirty hair, and a drip at the end of his nose.

"There, you're not hurt," she said quickly. "Don't be afraid; it's only — " and suddenly realized that something was wrong.

A redheaded woman drawing water at the well had straightened up and was staring at her. Everybody was staring. The men by the church porch had broken off their talk, the children had stopped playing and were huddled uneasily together, all staring at her with hostile, terrified eyes. The little boy tore loose from her hold and darted frantically across the path to the redheaded woman.

Kate stared back at them in bewilderment. The village was so far off the beaten road that she would not have been surprised to find the people shy of outsiders — silent, awkward, suspicious even — but she was entirely unprepared for the sort of fear and hatred that had swept over their faces when they saw her with the little boy. "He isn't hurt," she repeated, taking a step forward. "I didn't mean — " but the woman only caught the child up in her arms and began backing away. The other men and women scattered to let her through. The next instant there was nobody left on the path except Kate herself and the priest, still standing his ground by the church porch. He was an old man, with a careworn, gentle look; but he held himself very straight, and his faded blue eyes met hers sternly, full of repudiation and horror. Then he raised his hand and made the sign of the cross on the air between them.