Unexpected Magic (46 page)

“Towerwood,” said James of March.

“Surely,” Robert agreed. “Now my eyes are opened to that man, I believe him capable of anything.” Then he laughed. “Then I was called before the Princess, and she and my mother were unspeakably indiscreet. And there stood Phillippa of Towerwood hearing every word.” He turned to Cecilia. “Did you notice how indiscreet they were?”

“No indeed,” said Cecilia. “I—I was angry at the way they thought it was all your doing. How were they indiscreet?”

“Perhaps it was not so obvious then,” he said. “I hoped it was not, since I can do little for them and Towerwood can do them much harm. The Princess as good as told me to declare myself Prince before Towerwood seized the coronet for himself.”

“You should take her advice,” said James of March. “You are next in succession, and you are of age.”

Robert laughed, as if his squire had said a very stupid thing. Cecilia liked him enormously for the way he laughed. It made her trust him at last, completely. “Oh, James,” he said, “let us have no more troubles than we already bear. Poor Everard is no doubt finding enough heaped on his head, as it is. Now, let us eat. Cecilia, I cannot offer you tea.”

Cecilia laughed and blushed. They had an excellent meal at a proper table in the cave, with a charcoal brazier to warm them and wine to drink. While they ate, Cecilia had to explain tea to Lord Strass, who seemed serious-minded and anxious to learn. While she explained, there was constant coming and going, and Robert left to give orders about spies to go to Gairne.

“We should know by the morning,” he said, when he came back.

Then Cecilia became very sleepy, what with the wine and with her day's adventures. She wondered what she would do for a bed. The cave was bare and rocky, with rushes on the floor. She hoped fervently that she did not have to sleep on rushes. It seemed, from what they said, that the outlaws all did. But then she found, rather to her embarrassment, that most of the coming and going had been to make ready a tent, entirely for her.

“I wish,” said Robert, “that we could provide you with a maid, but you are the only lady here.”

“Good heavens!” said Cecilia. “I have no maid at home! Why should I need one here?” She could have bitten her tongue off after she said that. In her anxiety to seem pleased with all they were doing for her, she had embarrassed Robert again, just as she had on the farm. The light was too poor for her to see whether or not he was blushing, but he did not seem to know what to say. All the others, seeing that he was put out, were embarrassed as well, except James of March, who scowled at her. The rest of them all looked at the cave roof, or out of the entrance at the frosty stars, until Cecilia hardly knew what to do with herself.

“May—may I see the tent?” she said at last.

“I will show you there,” Robert answered, and things seemed all right again.

Cecilia was delighted with her tent, and was careful to tell Robert so. They had found a camp bed and a mirror for her, and a bowl to wash in. There were a great many blankets and an orange cloak in case she was cold. There was a carved ivory comb for her hair, and even a spray of evergreen leaves in a little clay vase. “This is extremely kind,” she said. “What trouble you have gone to.”

When, however, she was left to herself in the tent, she found it more difficult to go to bed in than she had expected. She had never slept in a tent before. The nearness of people outside frightened her, until she realized that what she could hear were four guards walking up and down to keep her safe. Then, although she had no maid at home, there was always Miss Gatly to help. When it came to undressing, Cecilia found she could not bear to try, all by herself. They had not found any nightclothes, either, so she would have had to sleep in petticoats.

“My habit will be ruined,” she thought, “but it will just have to be. And my hair will be wild in the morning, although it curls of itself.” At home she had Mary-Ann, who was good with hair and was called in by the Gatlys too for big occasions. “After all,” said Cecilia, “this is camp-life.”

So she went to bed and slept at last, very uneasily, with wild dreams of danger to Alex and to Robert. Her worst nightmare was almost at dawn, when she dreamed that Conrad of Towerwood was walking toward her with a saber like a Saracen's, and driving her into the quicksands in the bay. She stepped backward and backward, whatever she did, and, just as the quicksands closed softly over her head, she awoke to hear trumpets blowing. She sat up, hot and frightened from her dream. People were running about. She heard horses neighing. Then someone came to the door of her tent.

“Cecilia.”

She recognized Robert's voice. “Yes,” she said.

“Will you come out as fast as you can? Conrad of Towerwood is riding up to attack us and you are not safe there.”

A
lex saw little of Endwait. It was nearly dark when they came out into the valley beyond the gorge, so that all he gathered was the vaguest impression of a deep enclosed space. Somehow, he knew that it was a cultivated, fertile valley, full of fruit trees and prosperous cottages, and he heard the noise of the waterfall which shone in the snow at the other end. It was not so cold in the shelter of the hills. The snow had scarcely settled on the road through the village, nor much on the boughs of the great trees beyond. Under the trees it was dank and un-echoing and Alex's heart sank. Then he saw a house, set back under the hills, a large house, or a small castle, he was not sure which.

“A castle,” he decided, as they halted outside. It had a dark, glinting, unfrozen moat, and people inside were lowering a drawbridge. The clank and rattle of the chains on the bridge made Alex so frightened that his teeth chattered. They reminded him of all he had ever read of dungeons, fetters, and racks.

The drawbridge went down, with a crash, leaving open a dark archway lit by a flaming torch in a bracket. The Count of Gairne and his soldiers rode with them, thundering, into the archway, past the flare, and into a tiny dark courtyard. Behind them, gates were banged and the drawbridge came clanking up again.

The soldier behind Alex dismounted and roughly pulled at Alex's leg. “Get down, ye Outside thing, ye.” Alex slid off the horse as well as he could, using his elbows for balance because his hands were tied. All around him soldiers were coming off horses in a clashing and jangling of mail. He had a glimpse of Prince Everard being pulled down by the scruff of his neck. Alex stood in the dark among the soldiers, shaking with cold, while other people led away the horses. He could see the Count of Gairne a little way off, under a light, giving orders. Then the Count came striding back toward them. Alex tried to stop shaking.

“They will think I'm frightened,” he thought, “and I am not—I am
not.
”

The Count said: “They have the dungeon ready. Take them away.”

The soldiers wheeled and marched, away from the light, into a deep dark archway. There were stairs almost at once, and Alex stumbled. Someone lit a lantern, which swung great shadows around on thick stone walls. There was a massive door unlocked downstairs ahead, and when they came through that, more stairs. This time the light glistened on the walls, streaming wet from the moat outside. Then there was a lower, narrower door, which took time to unbar. The soldiers did not go inside. Two of them took Alex, untied his hands, and pushed him through. Alex, remembering that dungeons were always deep, had the presence of mind to jump as they pushed him. He landed on his hands and knees in damp straw some three feet lower down and had to scramble hurriedly out of the way as they pushed the Prince in after him. Above them, the door thumped shut. Bolts screeched home, and the chains of padlocks rattled. Then, very faint and distant, Alex heard the feet of the soldiers marching away.

He stood up then, and felt his way across the dungeon. It was quite spacious, some five long strides to the end from where he had been kneeling, and the floor was deep in fresh-seeming straw. The wall, when he reached it, was wet, much wetter than the walls they had passed earlier, and, since it was so cold outside, the water running down was icy. Alex took his hands away with a shudder and turned around again.

It was lighter than he had expected. High out of reach in a side wall, there was a tiny grating which must have been just above water-level beside the moat. Alex guessed this, because the light it let in was a vague beam of moonlight which wavered and moved on the wet wall. It was not the direct light of the moon, but its reflection in the moat. And it allowed him to see the paleness of the straw and the black figure of Prince Everard, his white hair and his whiter face.

The Prince was standing leaning against the wall near the door, as if he had hardly moved since the door closed. Alex realized—suddenly, as if someone had pushed a cold sponge into his face—that, while his own position was desperate enough, the Prince's was not only hopeless but horrible. His father had been killed, and killed, it seemed, in this very place; his friend had just been murdered before his eyes; and, since the Count of Gairne was able to do this to him, it looked as if he had not another friend he could rely on in the whole Principality.

“How terrible!” Alex thought. “I can at least think of home, or school or the Gatlys. I can think of father, or even the Courcys, but I should not imagine he can have a pleasant, homely thought in his head.” He felt so strongly sorry for the Prince, that he tried to think of something comforting he could say. This was difficult, though, since, now he came to think about it, he scarcely knew him. A remark on the dungeon might have to serve, he supposed, and he was just about to say how damp it was, when the Prince spoke.

“If only,” he said, “if only I did not dislike you so much, I could bear all the rest.”

All Alex's sympathy vanished. He put his hands in his pockets and strolled under the grating. “You sound as if you want another black eye,” he said. “Or would you prefer me to punch your nose?”

“Boast away,” said the Prince. “The advantage is yours, but if they had not taken my sword away, it would be mine.”

“Oh,” said Alex nastily, “I have a clasp-knife in my pocket.” He waited to see if the other boy would make peace at that, but he said nothing. So Alex added airily: “I will lend you it, if you like, but I would still beat you.”

The Prince did not answer. Alex turned around from the grating and saw that Everard had his arms against the wall and his face in his arms. Again Alex felt sorry for him, and was irritated that he should feel sorry. He sat down in the straw, with his chin on his knees, and concentrated on feeling sorry for himself. He was badly off enough. His father returned from London in two days' time, and by that time everyone would have given Alex at least up for dead. Then, suddenly, it struck him that they would probably be right to give him up for dead, and he found that he was going to be in tears any second. He would have cried his eyes out then, with Everard standing there, if someone had not begun unbarring the door.

Alex jumped up at once. The Prince came quickly away from the wall and they both, as if they were guilty, turned to look up at the door. It swung open, and the Count of Gairne stood above them, holding up a lantern whose feeble flame dazzled them both. Alex put his fingers hopefully round his clasp-knife, but when he saw soldiers behind the Count, he let it go again.

The Count looked at the Prince and spoke as if Alex were not there. “Your Highness, I have come to explain what you have to expect at my hands. I felt I should do you this courtesy before I go to make an end of your cousin Howeforce.”

“And what have I to expect?” Everard asked.

The Count smiled his terrible smile. “This, Your Highness—certain starvation.”

The Prince looked at Alex. “But he—”

“Precisely,” said the Count. “While you both live, you shall be given just so much food as will keep one of you body and soul together. Not a crumb more. If you take food, then the Outsider will have died at your hands, to the ruin of the whole realm. Will you take food, Your Highness?”

One of the soldiers came into the doorway carrying a plate and a tiny mug.

“Take it, Alex Hornby,” said the Count. “This is all you will get until tomorrow.”

“You fiend!” said the Prince. “You monstrous devil! Fetch it, Alex, in heaven's name, fetch it.”