The Perilous Gard (7 page)

"She said — " Kate suddenly realized just what was coming and tried to stop; but it was too late: the words were already out of her mouth. "She said you'd killed Sir Geoffrey's daughter to get the whole inheritance for yourself — I didn't believe her," she added hastily.

Christopher Heron only shrugged his shoulders.

"Why not?" he asked. "It makes a far better tale than what really happened."

Kate frowned at him. She had always detested being laughed at, and the mysteries and uncertainties of life at Elvenwood Hall were becoming more than she could bear.

"What did happen?" she demanded bluntly.

The look that came into Christopher's eyes made her regret the question the instant she asked it. They were no longer amused, or contemptuous, or even angry — only cold, level, and as implacably stern as his brother's. He stood there before her in silence for a long moment, while the question — which seemed to Kate to grow louder and ruder with every passing second — hung unanswered in the air between them. Then he said, very slowly and deliberately:

"I'll tell you."

And Kate realized with a start that the look in his eyes had not been meant for her at all. It was himself that he had considered and judged. The "I'll tell you" did not mean that he liked or trusted her, only that he had passed a sentence on himself.

"No!" she said sharply. "Don't! I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you."

Christopher Heron went straight on without heeding her.

"There is one thing you ought to hear first," he said, in that deliberate voice. "It is what Geoffrey did for me. I am twenty years younger than he is. My mother was too old to have another child: she died when I was born, and my father never forgave me for it. He could no more bring himself to look at me or speak to me than — than Geoffrey can, now."

"Do you mean to say," Kate asked incredulously, "that your own father never spoke to you at all?"

"Well, I remember him telling me once that I was born damned," said Christopher calmly, "but he didn't live long enough to see how right he was. Geoffrey was the only one who cared for me. He saw to it that I got some learning, and gave me a horse — not a pony, a proper horse — and taught me to ride himself. He was a stern man in many ways, but a very kind brother too. If it hadn't been for his wife — "

"What was wrong with his wife?"

"Nothing — as far as I can tell. I never saw much of her. He didn't have a wife until five years ago, and then he married Anne Warden, God knows why. She was a little sickly thing, always ailing, and afraid of her own shadow; but Geoffrey thought the sun rose and set in her. She made him leave home and take that post in Ireland: I know she did."

"It was Queen Mary who sent Sir Geoffrey to Ireland."

"There were plenty of other men she could have sent to Ireland instead. Geoffrey didn't have to go: he went because Anne wanted it so much. For some reason she was bound and determined to get him out of the country and away from us all."

"You didn't like her, did you?"

Christopher paused, and then went on as if he had not even heard the question. Whatever sentence he had passed on himself, there were evidently some things that it did not bind him to tell her; and the nature of his private feelings was one of them.

"They stayed in Ireland until she died, and Geoffrey came home with the child. That was last winter. Cecily was four then."

This time Kate knew better than to ask him whether he had liked the child.

"Geoffrey was still grieving for Anne, and very concerned to keep Cecily happy. My sister Jennifer — she's married and lives in London — wanted to take her to bring up with her own children; but Geoffrey couldn't bear to part from her. We were afraid she'd miss her mother, and her old home, and — well, I suppose the truth is that we both fell into the way of making too much of her. Jenny said that if we didn't take care we'd ruin her between us; but Geoffrey had seen too much of taking grief out on a child, and so had I ... Then this April, Lord Warden died too, and we had to come down and settle what was to be done with the estate. Cecily ought to have stayed at home with her nurse; but she kept crying and crying to go with us, and we didn't reckon on what she might do when she got here. It was bad enough the first night, when she wouldn't go to sleep without one of us on each side of her bed singing her lullabies; but it was worse in the morning. Geoffrey had to be off by himself, working on accounts, so he gave her over to me and told me to take care of her until it was time for dinner. I didn't mind that. But there was one game she wanted to play — a silly thing we called Cecily-is-lost. I'd look away and count to a hundred while she hid somewhere, and then run up and down calling
OCecilyislostwhereisCecily?
until she jumped out and laughed at me. I wouldn't have cared if we'd been alone to ourselves, but we were out on the terrace by the hall, and half the household was hanging out the windows to see what the new young master would do next. I told her to come indoors and be quiet, but she only stuck out her tongue and ran away — she was very quick on her feet and harder to catch than a butterfly — and a fine fool I felt, my first day at the place, chasing her around the courtyard with Master John and old Dorothy and all the rest of them looking on and snickering up their sleeves at me. As if that mattered!"

Kate bent to pick a flake of wet moss from the folds of her skirt. She supposed that the whole thing had served Christopher right — he and his brother must have spoiled Cecily outrageously, but . . .

"Tell me," she said irrelevantly, "did she have golden eyes? Big golden eyes, almost the color of honey?"

"Cecily?" Christopher looked puzzled. "No: her eyes were gray, like Geoffrey's and mine. Why? What has that to do with it?"

"Nothing," said Kate. "I'm sorry: go on. What happened then?"

"By that time I didn't care what happened. All I wanted to do was to be rid of her. I shouted to Master John to see to the child — she'd ended up hiding behind him in one of the doorways — and went away by myself to walk it off by going to look at the Holy Well. Randal was always talking of the Holy Well, and old Dorothy had been crooning to Cecily about it too, the night before, while we were trying to put her to sleep.

"When I was past the Standing Stone I saw that she'd gotten away from Master John somehow and was following me. She was keeping behind the rocks, ready to run if I started after her, but I didn't. I went on to the Well without looking around, and threw my penny in the water, and had my drink; and when it came to speaking my troubles aloud, I called out that Cecily Heron was a pestiferous brat and I wished that somebody else had the charge of her. I could see her out of the corner of my eye, over by the spring, peeping between those two big stone slabs, and I knew she was listening; but I was still so angry that I didn't try to go after her. I only sat down by the edge of the path with my back turned, and waited for her to come to me. I was sure she'd come to me sooner or later if I didn't pay any heed to her, and it was better to have her up here than playing off any more of her tricks down at the Hall. I thought it was perfectly safe, too. There were the cliffs on both sides of us, and I was sitting by the path, and the curb of the well was — how did you put it? — nearly five feet off the ground. Even when I looked for her and didn't see her, I couldn't believe it. I only thought she'd found an especially good place, and was hiding again."

"You — you mean she slipped past you?"

"No. I was watching for that. She was behind me all the time. If she went anywhere, it was — " He turned his head and looked at the narrow dark opening among the rocks.

Kate caught her breath.

"But she couldn't," she said desperately. "She couldn't — it's not possible. She couldn't have climbed up and fallen. She could not have climbed up there. The carving isn't deep enough to give her a hold. I had to catch at the rim before I could get any grip myself."

Christopher Heron put his hand into the breast of his smock and held something out to her. It was a very small slipper, made of fine leather, bright crimson, the toe scuffed, and a loose lace trailing from a broken eyelet at the ankle.

"I found that on the lip by the edge of the shaft," he told her. "The lace had caught between two of those flat stones. She must have climbed up somehow and torn it off when she fell. We never got her body back. Master John says that no one knows how deep the Well is. It goes down into a chasm below the rocks, some sort of underground river. The water runs very strong there; didn't you hear it? Everything you throw in gets carried away. They call it 'being taken by the Well.' That was what old Dorothy kept screaming — 'The Well's taken her! You let the Well take her!' over and over again."

Old Dorothy screaming, feet running, the empty gaping circle of stones with its wet lip like a mouth, the useless torches and ropes, the shouts, the questions, the crowd of faces, Sir Geoffrey's face, Christopher Heron's —

Kate's eyes went from the narrow dark opening among the rocks to Christopher Heron, standing by the spring with his back to the cliff wall. He was still looking at the entrance to the cave, steadily, and without moving.

"Well?" he said.

Kate lifted her head, groping among her scattered wits for one fragment of the story that had puzzled her.

"How did Master John know that there was a chasm under the rocks?" she inquired shakily.

"Lord, girl!" Christopher Heron was startled out of his immobility. "Is that all you can say?"

"I-I'm sorry," Kate stammered. "I was only wondering — "

"I didn't murder anyone to inherit Elvenwood Hall. The whole of the Elvenwood can sink in the sea before I'd lay a finger on it. But what old Dorothy said to you was true. I killed Cecily. She was the dearest thing in the world to Geoffrey, and he trusted her to me, and I brought her to this place, and I killed her. Is that clear?"

"Yes, but — "

"And you want to know why Master John thought there was a chasm under the rocks?"

Kate flushed. What had he expected her to do? Start screaming at him, like old Dorothy?

"Yes," she repeated stubbornly.

Christopher Heron shrugged his shoulders again.

"I can't tell you why Master John thought so. From what I've seen of Master John, I should say he was down in the chasm trying to fish out some of the pilgrims' gold. Master John doesn't strike me as the sort of man to let a little thing like superstition stand in the way of his picking up an honest penny."

"Could he do it?" asked Kate promptly.

"No. The current down there would carry anything away. I only said he might try. It must go to his heart to see all that good money lost in the water."

"Does it really cure sorrow or pain and the grief of a wound?" said Kate, frowning a little.

"The water, or the money?"

Kate decided to ignore this frivolity. "Dorothy sounded so certain that it did," she persisted.

"I don't know. I never tried."

"You told me you drank some of the water. What did it taste like?"

"It tasted like water to me," said Christopher Heron. "Cold plain water. But old Dorothy would certainly tell you that that was because I only gave a penny to the Well."

"Why?"

"The story goes that the more you cast in, the stronger the water you draw out will be. A penny only brings you luck. A silver piece, and the cup will cheer you. To cure sorrow or pain and the grief of a wound, it has to be gold or precious stones. Pure gold and rubies are the best, but any small diamond or pearl you may happen to have about you — "

"You're laughing at me," Kate interrupted him. "That can't be true."

"I didn't say it was true. I said it was the way the story went."

Kate sighed. She had thought there was a chance that the water might actually be medicinal, like the mineral springs at Buxton — she had passed through Buxton on her way north with Sir Geoffrey — and instead it was only a pother of outlandish magical nonsense like something in a romance.

"What's the matter now?" asked Christopher Heron. "Are you suffering from sorrow or pain and the grief of a wound? Throw a diamond or a ruby into the Holy Well, and that will ease you."

"I'm not a heathen savage," said Kate. "Diamonds and rubies! I never heard such foolishness."

"What a good clear mind you have."

"It doesn't take a very clear mind to keep from throwing diamonds and rubies down a hole in the ground. As if anyone would!"

"Anyone? What about old Dorothy?"

"Anyone who had a diamond or a ruby to spend wouldn't be a poor ignorant creature like old Dorothy."

"Oh, would they not!" Christopher's mouth twisted wryly for an instant. "In the last four months I must have seen almost fifty pilgrims go up to the Well. About half looked to be charcoal burners or gypsies or servants from the Hall with a penny to spend for luck. The other twenty-five or so were rich folk, no mistaking it — what our old bailiff in Norfolk would call 'gentry born': velvet and fur and Master John to escort them, big purses at their belts and big rings on their fingers and big clinking gold chains around their necks. When they come down from the Well, the chains are gone and their hands are bare and the purses are flat — and it isn't only for the one time, either. Some of them come back over and over again. Did you see the old gentleman who was here this morning?"

"Yes," said Kate reluctantly.

"That was the third time he's gone up to the Well since I've been here. Then there's a woman in mourning black — she comes very often, almost every two weeks — and a dark girl with some sort of scar or blotch on her face, and a one-armed man, and five or six others, all holding wet branches and bottles of water to their bosoms, happy as drunkards, the poor ignorant creatures."

"Are you sure?" Kate could still hardly believe it.

"Certain. One of the Wardens about a hundred years ago had a son called Henry who was a leper. They built a hut for him to live in down yonder among the rocks. You can watch the whole valley from there. Nobody could go by on the path without my seeing them."

"Why?"