Wrede, Patricia C - Mairelon 01 (22 page)

           
"But,
Mr. Laverham--"

           
"Don't
argue, my dear, just
do
it." Dan studied Mairelon
for a moment,
then
smiled unpleasantly. "You'll
have to be tied, of course," he said to the magician. "I'm not fool
enough to leave you free with the carriage as crowded as it's going to be.
Kim!"

           
Kim
jerked, startled by the unexpected command. "What?"

           
"There's
a bit of rope under the seat." Dan pointed with his left hand. "Get
it and tie your companion's hands. And see you do a good job of it. I
won't--"

           
The
carriage door swung open, and Jack Stower shoved the unfortunate Jonathan
forward, so that he staggered against the step. "Where do you want him,
Mr. Laverham?" Jack asked.

           
"In
a moment, Jack," Dan replied. "Tie him, Kim."

           
Remembering
suddenly that she was supposed to be under Dan's spell of control, Kim bent and
rummaged under the seat for the rope. She straightened and turned sideways to
face Mairelon. "Hold out your hands," she said in a flat voice.

           
Mairelon
did so, his gaze fixed on Kim's face. Kim dropped her eyes, wondering whether
Mairelon knew she was faking. Well, he'd figure it in another minute. She
looped the rope around his wrists and pulled hard for Dan's benefit, then fed
the ends through the complex pattern Mairelon had shown her on their first day
out of
London
.

           
When she
finished, she looked up. Mairelon was still staring fixedly at her face, his
expression unreadable. "There," Kim said. "You won't get out of
that
in no hurry."

           
"No?"
Mairelon said. He looked down at last, and went still as he recognized the
trick knot. He raised his head to look at Kim again and said very deliberately,
"I see."

           
"Kim
learned to tie knots down on the docks," Dan said, misinterpreting
Mairelon's reaction. "Now, Jack, let's have the druid highwayman."

           
Jack
shoved Jonathan again, and it was more by luck than planning that this time
Jonathan stumbled up the step and into the carriage. He was hatless, one of the
capes on his coat was torn, and there was a reddened area on his left cheek
that would make a splendid bruise in another day or so. His awkward progress
was due to the sock he had used as a mask. At some point during his encounter
with Dan's men, the sock had slipped to one side, and the holes Jonathan had
cut in it were now centered over his nose and right temple. Kim almost laughed
aloud.

           
"This
is entirely unnecessary," Jonathan said in a calm voice, but his hands
shook as he raised them to pull the sock off his head. "I'm Jonathan. It
was just a bet, and--" He stopped short as the sock came off and he saw
the occupants of the coach.

           
"I
see you weren't expecting us," Dan said, pointing his pistols impartially
at Jonathan and Mairelon. "Not that it matters. Tie him, too, Kim."

           
"What?"
Jonathan stared as if he couldn't believe what he had just heard. "You
don't mean it! Look, my name's Aberford; if you stop at the next house, they'll
vouch for me. You don't have to bring a magistrate into it."

           
"I
don't intend to," Dan said. He lifted his pistol again for emphasis and
added, "Just hold still while Kim works."

           
"What's
going on here?" Jonathan demanded, finally taking in Mairelon's bound
hands and rumpled appearance. "This is an outrage!"

           
"No
more so than a holdup in the middle of the morning," Dan said.
"You're hardly in a position to criticize. Jack!"

           
While
Jonathan spluttered and Kim repeated her performance with another piece of
rope, Dan held a brief conversation with Jack through the open carriage door.
According to Jack, Jonathan had come galloping out of the trees, blazing away
with his pistol. The frightened carriage horses had reared, tangling their
harness and causing the coach to bounce to a halt. When Jonathan, with typical
single-mindedness, had turned his back on the coachmen in his eagerness to open
the carriage door, Jack had jumped him.

           
"Not
badly done," Dan said. "However, we've wasted enough time here. Go
help Ben with the horses."

           
"I
ain't
no
horse coddler," Jack grumbled, but did
as he was told, and in a few minutes the coach began to move again.

           
Now, Mr.
Aberford," Dan said, settling back against the rear wall of the coach,
"tell me what you thought you were going to accomplish with your little
masquerade. And please, don't try to put me off with that tarradiddle about a
bet. What were you really after?"

           
"I
had a bet," Jonathan repeated doggedly.
"With--with
Robert Choiniet.
He said I couldn't pull it off without being
recognized."

           
"He
was right," Mairelon murmured.

           
"Quiet,"
Dan said. "I'm afraid I don't believe you, Mr. Aberford. I think you were
after something else.
The Saltash Platter, perhaps?"

           
"The what?"
Jonathan's puzzlement was unfeigned.
"I've never heard of it."

           
"You
call it the Sacred Dish," Mairelon put in.

           
Jonathan
jerked upright in his seat as if someone had stuck a pin in him, banging his
head against the roof of the coach. "What do you know of the Sacred
Dish?"

           
"Not
nearly as much as I'd like," Mairelon said. "For instance, how did
you and your druids get hold of it? And how does it happen that you don't have
the smallest notion what it really is?"

           
"I
told you to be quiet," Dan said.

           
"When
Queen Dick rules," Kim muttered, her annoyance with Mairelon momentarily
getting the better of her fear of Dan. She was as curious as Mairelon about the
druid's behavior, but
she
knew enough to keep her mouth shut when
someone had a pistol pointed at her.

           
Dan gave
her a piercing look, but just then the coach slowed and lurched through a sharp
turn, distracting him. He leaned sideways and peered out the window. "It
doesn't matter now. We appear to be arriving."

           
"Not
quite yet, but soon," Mairelon said. "The lodge is around the back
side of the hill."

           
"You
aren't--you can't--what are you going to do?" Jonathan said.

           
"Look
for something I . . . mislaid a few years ago," Dan answered. "And
you are going to help."

           
Jonathan's
jaw tightened. "No. I won't. I won't let you desecrate our meeting
place."

           
"Let?
My dear boy, how do you propose to stop me?" Dan said, shifting his pistol
just enough to call attention to its presence.

           
"Yes,
and what do you expect us to do?" Mairelon asked Jonathan in tones of
great interest. "Or to put it another way, just what would 'desecrate' a
place where you and your friends drink, dice, and wench until almost
dawn?"

           
Jonathan
turned a dull red and did not answer. The coach bumped to a stop and Dan
reached through the window and unlatched the door. "Out," he said.
Mairelon shrugged and climbed out, steadying himself awkwardly with his bound
hands. Jonathan sat back, looking stubborn.

           
Dan sighed.
"Don't be foolish, dear boy. If you stay here, you have no hope of keeping
me from doing whatever outrageous things you think I am planning. And I assure
you that if you decide to be obstinate, I shall make it a point to think of
something particularly outrageous."

           
Jonathan
hesitated,
then
gave in. Wearing a ferocious scowl, he
crawled out of the coach. Kim started to follow, but Dan put out an arm and
blocked her. "After me," he said. "And from now on, you are to
do nothing and say nothing unless I tell you. Do you understand?"

           
"I
understand," Kim said sullenly.

           
"Good.
Now, after me."

           
When Kim
came blinking out into the light, she saw Jack Stower holding his pistol on
Jonathan Aberford while Dan kept Mairelon covered. She glanced longingly at the
woods, but she did not try to run. There was no cover close by, and Dan
wouldn't
so
much as pause to consider before shooting
her. Even the unexpected failure of his control spell wouldn't slow him down.
She'd stand a better chance of nicking the Queen's garters at high noon on the
steps of
Buckingham
Palace
than she would of getting away now. Reluctantly she joined the others.

           
"Ben,
you wait for us here," Dan commanded. "The rest of you will come
inside and help look for the platter.
You first, Mr.
Merrill."

           
Mairelon
walked over to the door of the lodge. "It's locked."

           
"It
shouldn't be. We never--" Jonathan stopped short and pressed his lips
together, as if he were afraid he was giving vital secrets away to an enemy.

           
"No
matter," Dan said. He waved his free hand in a sweeping invitation.
"Kim! Open the door."

           
Even more
reluctantly than before, Kim walked forward and pulled her bit of wire out of
her pocket. As she knelt in front of the lodge door, Mairelon gave her an
encouraging wink. She did not dare respond, for Dan was watching her, but her
hands did not shake at all as she inserted the wire in the keyhole and began
wiggling it against the tumblers.

           
The lock
was nothing special, but Kim took her time with it. After her experience with
Mairelon's magic trunk, she was not inclined to take chances, particularly
since this lodge also belonged to a bunch of frog-makers. Then, too, she didn't
much want to flaunt her skill in front of Dan. It'd only give him another
reason for wanting to get his dabbers on her.

           
"Losing
your touch, dear boy?" Dan said. "I hope not."

           
The
threat below the words was plain. Kim gave her wrist a final turn, wondering as
she did whether Dan had forgotten that she was supposed to be acting under his
command or whether he just enjoyed threatening people. "It's open,"
she said, rising.

           
"Good.
Mr. Merrill?" Dan nodded toward the door. Mairelon gave him an ironic bow,
shoved the door open, and went in. Jack followed, at Dan's direction, then
Jonathan and Kim. Dan himself came last.

           
The interior
of the lodge was dark and smelled of smoke and old wine. "Who's pulled the
shutters to?" Jonathan demanded. "Blast it, can't anyone do anything
right?"

           
"I
fail to see--" Dan began, when a voice from the far corner of the room
interrupted him in mid-sentence.

           
"Jon?
That you?
Well, of course it is. Nobody else would be
so put about by a little thing like shutters. It's all right, Marianne, it's
only Jon."

           
"Freddy!"
said an agonized female voice in a piercing whisper.
"Sshhh!"

           
"But
it's only Jon," the first voice said, and a shadowy male figure rose from
behind a clump of high-backed wing chairs. He stepped forward, peering through
the gloom, then stopped short and said with considerable indignation, "I
say, Jon, who
are
all these people you've brought
along? Not the thing, old boy, not at all the thing. This lodge is supposed to
be private, y'know."

           
"Meredith!
I might have guessed," Jonathan said in tones of loathing. "What are
you doing here?"

           
"Might
ask you the same thing," Freddy pointed out. "
I
ain't the one
who came barging through a locked door with a country fair's worth of
people."

           
"That
door isn't supposed to be locked! The Sons of the New Dawn should be free to
come and go as they please; we agreed on that at the very beginning!"

           
"This
is all very interesting," Dan said in a bored voice, "but I do have a
few things to do here, and time presses. If you--and your no doubt charming
companion--will just join the others here, Mr. Meredith, we can begin."

           
"Who's
this?" Freddy said without moving.
"Some jumped-up
Cit?
Really, Jon--"

           
"Freddy!"
The female whisper was, if possible, more agonized than before. "Make them
go away!"

           
Freddy
turned his head back toward the corner. "I'm trying, Marianne. But it
ain't an easy sort of thing. Jon's a stubborn fellow. Maybe he would if you
asked him," he added hopefully. "I mean, favor to a lady and all
that. Jon's a gentleman, after all."

           
"But
I can't! Oh, I can't!"

           
"The
lady doth protest too much," Mairelon murmured.

           
"It
doesn't matter," Dan Laverham said, ignoring Mairelon. He seemed a little
put out by Freddy's determined thickheadedness. "Mr. Aberford isn't the
one you have to convince. Do as I tell you."

           
Freddy
looked at Dan with an expression of polite hauteur that changed quickly to
incredulity. "Jonathan! That fellow has--" He broke off and glanced
back over his shoulder, then lowered his voice and continued, "I think
that fellow has a gun."

           
"He
certainly does," Jonathan said, disgusted. "And only a sapskull like
you would take ten minutes to notice it."

           
"Enough
of this nonsense," Dan said. "Kim, find something to tie them with,
and open the shutters while you're about it. We can't hunt for the platter in
this light. Jack, get that blithering fool and his doxy over with the rest of
them."

           
"Right,"
Jack said with an evil smirk, while Freddy spluttered a halfhearted protest. He
sidled between a settee and a low, solid-looking table toward the darkened
corner from which Freddy had emerged. Kim threw back the first pair of
shutters, letting the dusty grey sunlight light up another cluster of chairs
and a side table stacked with cards and mother-of-pearl marker chips.

           
A moment
later, there was a quavering feminine shriek from the far corner.
"A pistol!
Oh, it isn't loaded, is it?"

           
"Be
a lot of use that way, wouldn't it?" Jack sneered. "Move it."

           
Kim
glanced back as she opened a second set of shutters, and her eyes widened in
surprise. The distraught and somewhat disheveled young woman whom Jack was
pulling, with evident relish, from her hiding place was the lovely blonde who
had been with Lady Granleigh in the carriage at the inn, that first day in
Ranton Hill. Kim cudgeled her brain and summoned up the girl's name: Marianne
Thornley. She blinked as a few other bits of information came together in her
head, and almost smiled. So this was the heiress Lady Granleigh intended for
her scapegrace brother! From the look of things, Jasper wouldn't have much
luck, no matter how persuasive his sister was. Miss Thornley seemed to have her
own plans.

           
"My,
my," Dan said. "Gently, Jack; it's not a doxy, it's a lady."

           
"Miss
Thornley!" Jonathan gasped. "Freddy, have you run mad?"

           
"Freddy!
Oh, Freddy, do something!" Marianne cried. With a sudden spurt of
strength, she jerked her arm from Jack's grasp and ran to Freddy, where she
wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her head in his shoulder,
effectively preventing him from doing anything even if he had wanted to.

           
"Now
see what you've done," Freddy said reproachfully to Dan. He patted
Marianne's shoulder in awkward and meaningless reassurance.

           
"Kim,
where's that rope?" Dan called.

           
"There
ain't none," Kim said, throwing open a third set of shutters. Even with
three windows uncovered, the room was not well lit, but at least it was now
possible to move around without tripping over a footstool or a bench. From
where she stood, she could even make out the wreaths carved into the mantel
above the big fireplace, if she squinted.

           
"Well,
find something! And hurry it up." Dan's temper was beginning to fray.

           
"Are
you quite sure you want to keep on with this?" Mairelon asked with an air
of polite concern. "You're accumulating rather a lot of witnesses, you
know, and these three"--he indicated Jonathan, Freddy, and the shrinking
Marianne with a theatrical wave of his bound hands--"will be missed before
long."

           
Marianne
looked up, as if she were about to say something, but before she could speak,
the door behind Dan swung open. "Good day," said Gregory St. Clair.
"I hope I'm not interrupting, but I was getting tired of waiting."

           
In the
momentary silence, St. Clair stepped into the lodge and pushed the door closed
with his silver-headed walking stick. He was dressed for
all
the
world as if he were paying a morning call at the height of the
Season in
London
:
Wellington
coat, striped pantaloons, and Hussar buskins. His cravat was a snowy expanse of
starched linen, and his gloves were grey kid. Looking at him made Kim's fingers
twitch acquisitively.