CHAPTER NINE
The last time the children had gone up through the forest they had been running in fear from the wolf. Now they went with Wolf himself for their guide and guardian. At first they could see very little, and went cautiously, waiting till their eyes grew used to the darkness. Once Margaret stumbled over a tree root and would have fallen, but the wolf was close beside her, and she only went to her knees, saving herself with an arm flung over his back. After that she kept a hand on his ruff. He, being a creature of the night, could see in darkness as well as any cat or owl.
The track turned uphill. They scrambled past the fallen pine, and soon after that came out into the white moonlight. There was the picnic place, and the tree stump where the signpost had stood. The children neither hesitated nor spoke, but John did give one swift, sidelong look at the tree stump, as if expecting to see something there. His look was more puzzled than curious, but next moment he had forgotten what had puzzled him, and trotted on with the others.
Presently they came to the place where the way to the castle left the upper road.
The wolf stopped, and the children with him.
They stood bewildered. If the castle had been whole and lighted, and buzzing with activity, they would not have been surprised. But it was not. It was a ruin, just as it had been before.
And this was the castle that Wolf wanted them to enter for him, to find its Duke, and plead with him for his friend's life? The two children stared in amazement at the empty shell of stone on its distant hill. Then looked at the wolf, in pity and in dread.
Then something happened that really did bring the gooseflesh out along their skin. The wolf sat down, lifted his grey head towards the moon, and once more let out that long, terrible howl. The sound spoke of grief and terror and immense loneliness, and it filled the night. The children, clutching one another's hands, found themselves backing away from the savage sound.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.
Wolf fell silent once more, and got to his feet.
His head was up and his ears alert. He threw them a look over his shoulder, then trotted forward. He seemed undismayed by what they had seen. Margaret whispered: "It must be part of the enchantment. He forgot to tell us," and then they followed him down the track until it brought them almost to the edge of the moat.
Here Wolf stopped again. They waited.
Nothing moved. There was no sound or sign of life. Margaret looked across the reedy mud of the moat at the rocks out of which the castle walls seemed to grow like cliffs. The place was a deserted ruin. There were eyeless windows where saplings grew, and stars showed through the arches of some tower that must once have been the bell-tower of a chapel. The castle's turrets still thrust up against the sky, some of them broken, but others still showing the pointed witches' hats of their roofs gleaming to the moon. The castle's great gate gaped open, giving on a deserted and rubble-filled courtyard. In the top of the archway showed the rusting spikes of a portcullis. Approaching this, a narrow wooden causeway led across the mud of the moat. It looked rotten, and in places had crumbled to nothing. It stopped some twenty feet short of the gateway. There had once been a drawbridge across the gap; now there was nothing but a pair of snapped and rotting chains.
The wolf moved. He slipped silently off the track, which was here banked up for the approach to the causeway, and slunk, low to the ground, into the deep shadow under the bank.
The children followed him, not understanding the need for caution, but crouching down and moving carefully. When all three were hidden in the shadow below the bank. Wolf led them forward, right to the edge of the moat. He did not pause there, but, throwing another glance over his shoulder at the children, inched forward into the reeds.
It was an unpleasant crossing. The wolf went ahead, trying the surface and showing them the way, but still they got their feet soaked and their hose muddy, before at length they scrambled out on the far side. Here Wolf turned sharply away to the left, into the shadow of a crumbling buttress. They followed him, scrambling up to the very roots of the castle wall.
Clinging to the rough stones, they crept on round the foot of the wall, until at length Wolf stopped once more, and crouched, waiting.
When they came up with him they saw that beside him, half hidden by a tangle of ivy and elderberry, was a barred window. It was only a foot or so above ground level. It was the kind of half-window that one can sometimes see throwing light into a basement. This must be the window to Wolfs secret room. His yellow eyes were fixed on them, gleaming in the moonlight. He panted with tiny whining sounds, as if he could not help himself. They could guess, from the way he looked at the window grating, then back at the children, that once more he was suffering from the helpless frustration that tortured the once powerful Lord Mardian.
John fell on his knees by the window, and laid hold of the rusty grating. Margaret ran to help him, but there was no need. In a couple of tugs the grating came loose, as if, without the rust to hold it in place, it might have fallen from the frame long since. It lifted out cleanly, like a square of trellis. John laid it aside. Wolf went past him like a shadow, and vanished into the black gap.
With the barest hesitation, John followed, and then Margaret heard him whisper: "Come on. It's all right. There's nobody here."
As if he needed to tell me that, thought Margaret, as she in her turn crept through the window frame. John reached to help her. She wriggled through, reached the floor, and stood up.
Then she saw what John meant. The ruined castle they had seen, the crumbling causeway, the empty moat–all these were, indeed, part of the enchantment; an enchantment that stopped at the walls. Now that they were inside, the castle was complete, occupied, furnished, just as the real Mardian had known it. The secret room, though dusty and apparently unused, was dry and showed no signs of decay. As her eyes grew used to the dark she could see a table in the middle of the room, a chair and a stool, some empty shelves, and a big cupboard like a wardrobe. And in a corner of the opposite wall, a door, with a heavy iron latch.
Wolf gave one look round the room, as if remembering things long forgotten, then ran straight to the door. He flung that look of command at John. The boy lifted the latch, and carefully began to open the door, waiting all the time for the betraying creak of unused hinges.
But there was none. The door opened quietly.
Cautiously the children peered out. All was well. Wolf had told them that the secret room opened into the castle cellars, and now they found themselves looking out between the shapes of two enormous vats of wine. A ladder stood against the nearer of the vats, showing where the cellarer had been up to lift the lid and test the contents. Dust was thick on the floor boards, and cobwebs hung festooned everywhere. The walls of the cellar were lined with wooden planks roughly pegged together, and the outside of the secret door was covered with these, so that, when it was shut, there was nothing to betray its existence but the thin cut in the planks across the top of the door. There was no handle, only a knothole in the wood, where a finger, inserted, could find the peg of the latch.
The door was placed between the two vats farthest from the window, so that even when the cellarer came with his candle or homed lantern, the vats threw shadows so big and black that no secret door could be suspected.
Wolf had told them that the cellars and storerooms stretched right under this part of the castle. They could see, dimly, that the place was very big. It was in plan like a huge stable, with stalls twenty feet wide and as deep again, bay after bay of barrels and bottles and jars, and locked chests of grain and salted meat. The place was a silent, echoing vault of darkness, smelling deliciously of wine and grain and spices. Somewhere a tub of yeast scented the air. Faint scurrying told of the presence of mice, and perhaps (thought Margaret, with a quickening pulse) rats. Once, when there was a scurry and a squeak near at hand, she felt the wolf beside her tense and crouch; then he relaxed, she could imagine how sheepishly, and became Wolf again, leading them forward past the
bays of chests and bales and bottles.
They turned a comer, and there ahead of them was a wide stone stairway lit by another half-window, with its grating still in place. There was no glass. Cool night air came in, and with it the rays of the moon, lighting the steps.
At the top was a big door, which was shut. They ran up the steps, and John took the great iron handle in both hands. He had to use a fair amount of strength to lift it.. Like the door of the secret room, this one opened silently. Again, the children peered through.
They saw what Wolf had told them to expect: a wide stone corridor, lit by a torch which hung, smoking and spluttering a bit, in an iron bracket. There were doorways to left and right, but the doors were all shut. Beyond the torch they could see, faintly, that the corridor was barred by another door. This would open into the lobby between the kitchens and the great hall. It was the way they would have to go tomorrow.
But tonight they must stay hidden. They turned to go back to the secret room. This time the wolf did not go ahead to guide them. He lingered for a moment, looking back at the shut door of what had once been his familiar home.
Then, slowly, he began to follow the children down the steps. He reached the window. He stopped abruptly in the patch of bright moonlight and sat back on his haunches. His head went up.
"Quick! He's going to howl!" gasped John.
In a flash Margaret was on her knees beside Wolf, and her arms were round his neck. "Wolf! Wolf, dear! Hush! You must not!"
She could feel the dreadful sound welling up in the wolf's throat, as if from some deep spring of grief in his body. Then he checked, swallowed, and his teeth clicked shut on the sound before it was born. The grey head moved, the tongue licked Margaret's cheek like a kiss, and he ran down ahead of them, out of the moonlight, and back through the dark cellar.
The three of them slipped through the narrow gap between the sixth and seventh vats. The door of the secret room shut behind them. Wolf ran to the window, and paused with his paws on the sill, ready to leave them.
"We'll remember everything," promised John.
"We'll be all right, really, sir."
"We'll be terribly careful," Margaret assured him, "and the spell's sure to work beautifully, so please don't worry."
"And don't try to come back in daylight, whatever happens," added John. "I'll put the grating back now, and we'll come down here every night if we can, and let you in."
"And perhaps quite soon," finished Margaret softly, "the Duke himself will be here with us, waiting for you. Dear Wolf, take care. We really will do just as you told us."
The wolf slanted one long, last look at them, then turned and leaped through the window, and was gone. John climbed to the sill, leaned out and lifted the grating, and wedged it back into place. Seconds later, from somewhere not far off, they heard the long, sobbing howl of the wolf in moonlight.
"Goodness! Look!" exclaimed John.
Margaret knelt on the sill beside him, and they looked out together.
The moon, high and full, lighted the steep rocky slope down to the moatside. But where they had picked their way across through the mud and rushes, there stretched, now, a wide expanse of shining water, girdling the castle.
The causeway, unbroken, led across it, to disappear from their sight behind the castle buttress.
They were safe within the castle–within the spell. For them, at last, the world of Mardian and Duke Otho was complete. Though it was out of their sight they knew that the drawbridge, whole and new, would be drawn up against the gleaming portcullis. There would be flags flying from the towers, and gilded weathercocks catching the moonlight. There would be lights in the windows, and bustle in the courtyard. But for Wolf-Mardian, back on the far side of the moat, alone in his cruel enchantment, the palace of his lord had once more vanished, to be replaced by a wasted ruin.
They turned back and began to unpack the things they had brought. They dared not light a candle, but the glimpses of moonlight showed them enough. They found some bread and raisins, and ate them, each took a swig of the strong, sweet drink from the flask Mardian had given them, then they wrapped themselves in their warm cloaks, and resigned themselves to waiting till morning.
CHAPTER TEN
They had not thought they could sleep, but the excitement and strain of the day, and perhaps the enchantment, too, told on them. They fell soundly asleep, curled there on the floor, and slept until the morning sun sent a bright slanting beam through the window, and woke them.
John sat up, stretching, and yawned, then jumped up and ran to the window. Outside, bright in the sunlight, glittered the wide water of the moat, and across the causeway, clattering and calling, came carts and people.
"Like a market," said Margaret, at his elbow. "They're bringing things in to sell to the castle people, eggs and vegetables and things. There's a donkey with panniers, and big jars in them. I wonder what's in the jars? And look, there's a peddler, with a tray slung round his neck."
"And a cart with oxen," said her brother.
"And–oh, here's the hunt coming back! They must have been out again at dawn. We never heard them. I wonder–I suppose they were after Wolf again."
Both children craned to look. The market people were making way for the gay troop of riders who clattered now over the causeway. There were the hounds, there the chief huntsman on his big bay horse, and there was the same lady dressed in green. "And the prince," said Margaret. 'That must be the prince. See, on the white horse. He's awfully like his father–the young man on Wolfs amulet. Well, they haven't caught Wolf. They've got nothing with them. We'd see easily from here, if they had."
And if they have killed him down there in the forest, thought John, we shan't know until tonight, when he doesn't come back here to the window. And by then it may be too late for us.
But he said none of this aloud. He turned from the window, and began to tidy his clothes. "We'd better get out of here. Everyone's around now, and if there's a crowd it'll be easier to mix in and not be noticed. Did you say you'd brought a comb? After you. Thanks. Now, we'd better go if we want something to eat. Remember, Wolf said everyone got up terribly early, and they have dinner at about nine, and then nothing more till suppertime. I wonder what they have? I'm hungry enough to eat anything."
"Probably just as well. It'll be things like herring pie and lampreys and boars' heads and small beer," said Margaret.
"Whatever it is, I hope there's lots of it. And large beer, too, for choice. Let's go, then. We've got it all straight, haven't we? If we get separated, or if things get tricky, we meet again here. And back here at night, anyway, if it's possible. Right?"
"Right. Let's get it over, and the sooner the better. I'm starving... Only," added Margaret, "let's find what Wolf called the privy chamber first, shall we? I've forgotten which door it was on the plan."
"The third, in the passage upstairs. It'll only be a hole in the floor, if it's anything like ones I've seen in mediaeval ruins before. Margaret–"
"What?"
"It's queer, isn't it, the way we can be still ourselves–you know what I mean, looking at all this as if it was still something in a storybook–and yet at the same time we sort of look right and we know how to talk, and more or less what to expect... And have you more or less forgotten what happened before we met Wolf? I have, just about. I do remember something about a note left on a tree stump..."
Margaret nodded solemnly. "It's the same with me. I don't remember any note, but there was a blanket on the grass somewhere, and we found a sweetmeat–chocolate, that's it–and...and that's about all I do remember. It must be an awfully powerful spell. Which is just as well," she finished, "because it's got to stop anyone in the castle guessing about us, and it's my guess this is going to be a pretty difficult day."
"You're telling me," said her brother. "Well, come on, let's get started. If we don't go now there'll be nothing till supper, remember!"
They peeped out of the secret door. There was no one about, no sound, n
o movement. They made their way through the cellar, up the steps, and out into the deserted corridor beyond. They found the privy chamber–which was, indeed, just a tiny stone room with a hole in the floor leading down, presumably, into the moat–and then tiptoed along the corridor, and let themselves cautiously through the second door.
And here their luck ran out. They turned a corner to find themselves face to face with a man in a long blue robe, who wore a flat cap with a silver buckle, and carried a parchment roll and a bunch of keys. Behind him were two other men, young, in plain russet clothes that looked like servants' livery. The eagle badge was worked in yellow on the breasts of their tunics.
The children stopped dead. So did the man, looking at them in surprise. At least, thought John, bracing himself for what was to come, it isn't the enchanter. Wolf told us he looked exactly like him, like Mardian. And it can't possibly be the Duke. More like a steward or something, and on his way to the cellars for the small beer... He wanted to laugh, and this stopped him from being frightened. He took Margaret's hand and looked up at the man, half laughing, half scared–exactly the look of a boy caught out in some not very bad mischief.
This was how the steward, for such he was, read it.
"What are you doing here, boy?" he asked sharply. "Why are you not in the hall with the rest? God's wounds, is there not enough work for you all, with the serving? And my lords just back from hunting, and hungry enough to eat their horses?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I was just on my way. And did–and did the hunt find their quarry?"
"The great wolf?" The man laughed. "Not they. No sight of him this dawning, so they say. So he still roams the woods, my young cockerel, to eat disobedient children. Where have you been? And what is this wench doing here?"
"Please, sir, she is my sister."
At that moment a large lady in black, with a headdress homed like a Highland cow, swept into the corridor, saw Margaret, and gave a little scream, half of anger, half of shock.