Unexpected Magic (42 page)

“Leave us alone, can't you? What do you want?” he shouted.

“Stand back,” someone said. “Let him quiet that vicious jade before you take him.” He saw it was the stout man in black. One look was enough to plant that man's face in his mind for the rest of his life. He hated that face absolutely and unconditionally, right from that first look—a fat, evil face with large mauve lips, a nose that was both fat and hooked at once, and dark, unfeeling, unscrupulous eyes. Beside Alex's hatred of that face, his hatred of the Courcys and the boy in black was like nothing or less than nothing.

“My goodness!” he thought. “If this is what people are like here, no wonder they made Robert an outlaw. He must be the only nice one there is.”

His horse was easy to quiet. Trim Jim was not in the least a vicious or nervous horse—Josiah had seen to that—only alarmed by the sudden appearance of steel men waving sticks all round him. In a matter of seconds, he was standing calmly, blowing, shaking his ears because of the snow, ready to go where Alex wanted. The soldiers at once closed in around, and around Cecilia too.

The stout man looked haughtily down at them from his tall brown horse. The other man in black blinked at them nervously, full of curiosity.

“Who are you?” said the stout man. “What are you doing here?”

“Riding peacefully along,” said Cecilia, “when suddenly people start galloping after us as if we were thieves. Will you kindly let me and my brother ride on at once, please.” She felt very brave and very angry and very responsible for Alex.

“That answer is nothing to the purpose, my lady,” the stout man said coldly. “I asked your name and your business and it were best for you if you answer me truly.”

Cecilia flung back her head and glared at him. He simply waited, in the softly falling snow, looking at her face with those black, unfeeling eyes. And Cecilia was terrified of him. Inside her clothes, she shook with great shudders, and she knew she had gone pale. She was afraid she was going to break down, or faint or scream, and then this man would start looking at Alex and terrifying him. So she pulled herself together, because she was the elder one and she should be in charge.

“Our names are Alex and Cecilia Hornby,” she said bravely.

The other man in black, who was thin and excitable, and older than the stout man, old enough to be losing hair at the front of his head—which gave him a high-headed, startled look—turned to the stout man with an unbelieving smile. “I think they are Outsiders, Towerwood.”

The stout one went on looking at Cecilia. “I think they are, Darron. I think they are. Which makes it all the more curious that they should ask the way to Gairne.” He said to Cecilia: “My lady, I insist that you tell us why you are bound for Gairne. What business have you there? I demand to know. I am the Count of Gairne.”

That shook Cecilia badly, and Alex too. They should have known, from many stories, but they had forgotten, that if a man is outlawed, he loses his lands and someone else is given them. What upset them most was that it should be this hateful man, of all people.

“But he is exactly the kind of man who
would
grab land,” Alex thought while Cecilia was still dumbfounded. He said to the Count, politely but defiantly: “We asked for Gairne out of interest. We wanted to see what it is like,” and guessing completely, he added: “Is it not a famous place?”

The man who seemed to be called Darron nodded eagerly. “Yes indeed. Famous throughout the Principality for the two hills and the Hornets and for fine woollen cloth and—”

“
But,
” said the Count loudly, so that Darron jumped, “but you cannot ride there today. Nor can you till the New Year is a week old, by a decree of the Prince in Council. No one rides out until then, unless on the strictest business. Your business is nothing, mere sightseeing, and so we stop you in the name of the Prince.”

Cecilia had recovered a little by then, enough at least to be angry at the way the Count cut short the other man, who had seemed so friendly and eager to please. “How could we know that?” she said. “We do not belong here. And besides”—looking at Darron—“I am fond of fine woollen cloth.”

He bowed in his saddle and smiled at her. “I too, my lady. Visit us later and I will be delighted to escort you to the warehouses of Gairne. But now, unfortunately”—he looked at the Count nervously—“since you were found violating the Prince's decree, it is our duty to escort you to Falleyfell, there to learn the Prince's pleasure.”

“But I don't think you can do that,” Alex said, very alarmed now that this polite man was turning out to have the same intentions as the other one. “I'm sure you can't. We have nothing to do with your Prince. We are subjects of Queen Victoria.”

“That may be,” the Count told him, as if the Queen were the smallest and most uninteresting monarch on the face of the globe, “but you are aliens here, in the Prince's realm, and must come before him to give account of yourself.” Then, as if the matter were quite settled, he called out orders to the soldiers and rode away in front toward Falleyfell. Darron, bowing again to Cecilia, rode after him. The soldiers fell in all around the two Outsiders. One looked at Alex and jerked his head after the two men in black. There seemed to be nothing to do but ride where they were taken.

“My word!” said Cecilia, “if they do not let us go at once when we have seen this Prince, I shall give someone a piece of my mind.”

I
t is always depressing to have unexpectedly to go back the way one has just come. It is even more depressing to have to go surrounded by soldiers with hard, jeering faces and confront an unknown Prince given to ordering everyone to stay at home.

“He must be the most appalling tyrant,” Cecilia thought. “Fancy every poor housewife having to give an account of herself every time she goes shopping, just because the Prince has said so! What a terrible country this is! I shall certainly never come here again.”

She looked at Alex, quietly raging beside her. He was so annoyed and alarmed at being arrested—for that was what it must be—that the skin had tightened over the high bridge of his nose. Cecilia nearly smiled at him because he looked so exactly like Josiah. Alex, who thought she was trying to comfort him, stuck out his lower lip at her crossly.

The Gairne road wound back again into the upland. For a minute they rode where they could see hills dimly behind twirling dark snowflakes, and then the soldiers swung around to the right, into that gap in the hills, between crags looking dirtily dark under snow, and out at the top of a long shallow valley.

Cecilia and Alex stared between steel helmets at the great building standing halfway down the valley below them. It was a huge fortified mansion, with castellated walls and innumerable courts and gardens. It could have been a small city, mapped out in charcoal on white paper, with towers drawn jutting and leaping and graceful on every hand. From the highest tower flew the only touch of color, a green flag with some white device, and half the flagstaff stuck darkly up beyond the green.

The soldier who had jerked his head at Alex nodded down at the mansion. “Falleyfell,” he said.

Alex's stomach went tight in a way that nearly made him sick. He could hear Miss Gatly's voice as clearly as if she were riding beside Cecilia: “And Falleyfell is a kingdom out in the bay. So dangerous is it that he who sees it is as good as dead.” It helped him not at all to see that the soldiers all made faint blue shadows in the snow, or that they rode making real hoofprints. He could feel the warmth of them about him, horses and men, but that only made it the more sinister. As they went down and down into the valley and the walls of that mansion rose up vaster and vaster in front, Alex was more and more terrified.

They stopped in front of great double gates. People looked down from a gatehouse overhead and seemed surprised because the men in black and the soldiers had returned so quickly. Then the great gates opened. Everyone rode through by threes into one of the biggest courtyards Alex and Cecilia had ever seen. They rode straight across it, with odd muffled echoes, up to the main grand part of the mansion. The men in black dismounted onto a great flight of steps leading to a big door with a snow-crusted coat of arms above it. Both of them turned and waited for Alex and Cecilia to dismount too. Cecilia thought Darron would have helped her down, had not the Count of Gairne held him back. So she looked at them both very haughtily, before she dismounted by herself, and then she picked up the long side of her riding habit with her most queenly air.

“Up here, my lady,” said the Count, not in the least impressed. He and Darron went one on either side of Alex and Cecilia, and two of the soldiers came clinking slowly after.

“Abominable man!” Cecilia thought. “It seems I am everyone's lady here—it must be the custom. How I wish I had not been so nasty to our outlaw about it.”

Beyond the steps and the door was a hall, a great square light hall, chilly and gloomy and full of silent people in black. “The court, I suppose,” thought Cecilia. Black cloth was hung over the walls, and it, together with the bleak snowy light from the high-up windows, made their eyes ache.

They walked slowly down the hall. At the other end was a raised dais where two women sat, wearing the deepest mourning. The older one was dark, with a white, white face and huge hollow dark eyes, with a strange, wild, and beautiful expression. The younger was one of the loveliest ladies Alex had ever set eyes upon. She was so fair her hair was almost white, and everything about her was delicate and small and adorable. She was the kind of lady who is petted and pampered by everyone and too sweet to be spoiled by it all. And yet she was miserable. She sat gazing at nothing, as if someone had put her in her chair like a doll, and she looked so lost and lonely that both Alex and Cecilia wanted to run and kneel beside her and pet and pamper and amuse her.

Neither lady seemed to notice them being brought down the hall, but most of the other sad, black-dressed people did. Ladies stared at Cecilia in an outraged way. Cecilia, flushed with embarrassment and with the cold air outside, tried to look loftily ahead. Alex noticed that most of the men seemed to be trying to catch her attention, to bow and to smile and to nod. They seemed delighted to see her and full of admiration. Alex wondered how they could admire Cecilia, when they had two such women on the dais. He looked irritably at Cecilia. Her riding habit was lavender blue, to match her eyes. Her ringlets were as brightly fair as the younger lady's and her face was not only rosy and young and happy, it was every bit as worth looking at as either lady's on the dais. For the first time in his life, Alex began to suspect that his sister was growing up into a raving beauty, and it alarmed him. It was one more frightening thing about this sinister black and white place. He glared at all the men who were bowing and smiling in that stupid, admiring way. He wished that he had a sword, as they all did, so that he could put a threatening hand on its hilt.

There was some whispering and quiet bustling. Alex gathered that the Prince was not there and that he was being respectfully fetched. They had to wait for him, just in front of the dais, with the two ladies at eye level. The younger one did not seem to notice them. The older one gave them several quick, wild glances as if she were afraid of staring too long. Alex became more and more frightened, embarrassed, and impatient. He took to looking at his feet, and poking one or two lumps of snow from his boots with his whip.

At last he heard mutters of “The Prince,” “His Highness, the Prince,” “Your Highness,” and looked up at the dais. The boy he had fought on the island was standing there, with his hands on his hips, looking down at him in astonishment.

“You again,” said the Prince.

He had the most beautiful black eye. Or rather, by this time it was not black any longer, but blue and purple and yellow, with red around the edges. “My goodness,” Alex thought, “I did hit him perfectly.” Most of his fear and embarrassment vanished. He was so pleased with that eye that he smiled, broadly, and put his hands on his hips too. “Yes,” he said. “Me again.”

“Good!” said the Prince. “
Good.
” To Cecilia he sounded quite murderous. He stared at Alex in a dreadful, satisfied way, which turned Cecilia cold and faint. Alex stared back, admiring that black eye, cocking his head sideways, almost as if he had painted it on the Prince's face with the finest of brushes.