“Dressed in white?” Chris echoed. He understood Master Leggitt's fears. If there was any way out, then they must look for it.
The girl waved a hand. “We have sheets in plenty; they can be made into cloaks.”
“And your guide? Your menfolk have made off—”
“Me,” she answered simply. “Remember, master, I have a quarrel with this Havers, too. I am Nan Mallory, and near a year agone—”
“Just so.” Master Leggitt nodded. “But a young maid—no.”
“Yes,” returned Nan as if she were bracing herself for some effort. Chris saw that her hands were tightly clasped over the band of her apron.
“I cannot let—”
“You have no choice this night!” Her voice held almost the same ring of authority Chris had heard from the woman with his father.
“I'll go"—Chris found his own voice—"if she can show me the way. Sergeant Johnston knows my voice; he might not listen to a stranger out of the dark.”
“I do not like it.”
“We may have no other choice!” Chris returned. Nan looked from one to the other. “I shall get the sheets,” she said.
But she was far from feeling brave as she slashed holes in the sheets so these could serve as cloaks. Somewhat to Nan's own surprise Aunt Prudence had favored her plan, but she had insisted that they venture no farther than the crossroads, circling around toward that from the woods.
“You know the danger in this?” she had asked Nan privately. “Havers and his henchmen—”
“I have seen what they do,” Nan found courage to answer. “They may try to burn the Red Hart. And no one in this village will come to help.”
“If you will go, then be quick and also careful.” Aunt Prudence turned her head to speak to the boy. “Try no heroical attacks; it is enough for both of you to carry the message.”
Nan watched the boy. There was little likeness in his face or coloring to the wounded man. He had light hair tied back with a cord, and his skin was brown as if he were much out of doors. He could have been Matt or Noel or any of the stableboys she had seen come and go, save that there was a look about his mouth and a square set to his chin which was different in a way she could not describe.
Now here she was cutting up good sheets while he stood talking to Master Leggitt, who was impressing this and that piece of caution on him.
With one corner of sheet tied over their heads to form hoods, and the rest bundled and looped about them, they slipped through the window where Master Leggitt stood on guard, ready to snap shut the shutter as soon as he saw them safely into the berry bushes beyond.
Nan's heart beat so heavily that she found it hard to breathe. The worst was to expect any moment to hear a cry out of the shadows, maybe even the roar of a pistol. As they reached the poor shelter of the bushes, with the orchard snowbound beyond, she felt weak with relief.
Here she had to take the lead, slipping from one tree to the next; then came the hedge. Beside that, they went to hands and knees, crawling along, halting and flattening themselves in the snow at any sound.
At the break in the hedge, Nan forced her way through, holding branches so these would not snap back in Chris's face. She had heard nothing but the small sounds of their own passage and the moan of the wind.
They were in the wood now, along the edge of the Manor land. This was no night for a gamekeeper to be on patrol, and if they could follow to the drive, it would be easy to reach the crossroads. Nan knew that they must hurry. The dragoons had not been too far behind Chris Fitton when he had left them earlier that morning to ride ahead.
Gasping and stumbling, she forged on, holding up the folds of the sheet with one hand, fending off branches with the other. It seemed forever, but at last they came out upon the drive. Nan had no breath left in her for words, so made a gesture toward the left.
Chris took the lead now, she wavering behind. He never looked back to see how she fared but kept at a steady jog while the distance between them lengthened. Then Nan heard the sound of horses. Chris put on an extra burst of speed as she floundered miserably, the snow packing on sheet and skirt until she could hardly keep her feet.
Chris reappeared, behind him a line of dark figures, who, once within the Manor lands, slid from horseback. The dragoons!
“Now then, missy"—one of them, evidently a sergeant, took her firmly by the arm—"if you can just show us this path.”
Nan turned around to lead them back. She heard a mutter or two, quickly broken off at a hiss from the man who now helped her along. But she was so weary that the last part of the journey seemed a bad dream. They could see the rise of the inn, a black fortress without any lights; then there was the roar of a musket.
“Well now, that's done it!” said her companion. “All right, boys"—he did not raise his voice very high—"we'll just go in and show this hedge-lurkin’ scum what they's got to face. Missy, you stay here! Come on, boys!”
Nan crouched in the drift where she had half fallen as he let go of her. A moment later another hand fastened on her arm jerking her up again.
“I'll get you in!” It was Chris Fitton. “I'm going to see that Havers’ men don't get in to m’ father—if the Sergeant can't stop ‘em!”
He half dragged her back, and they found the shutter which Master Leggitt had closed but not barred. Chris boosted her in the window. Soaked and chilled, Nan collapsed on the floor, hearing shouting and the crack of shots. With a little cry of fear the girl put her hands over her ears, tried to shut out the sounds of battle. Whatever courage had sustained her deserted her now—leaving her very much afraid.
6
“Get Rid of It!”
Nan's eyes were squinted as tightly shut as she could hold them, her hands covering her ears, as she cowered down in a nest of sheets and blankets—
Sheets and blankets?
But she had been on the floor of the old inn, still under the window, just where Chris had pushed her. And the smugglers—!
Nan opened her eyes, blinked at the morning light. For an instant or so she could not believe what she saw. She was not at the inn, but back in her own bed, in Aunt Elizabeth's apartment.
Her hand went out. The inn squatted on her bedside table. It looked dark and ugly. She wanted to sweep the model to the floor, smash it. But somehow she could not complete the swing of hand to do just that.
Nan slipped out of bed on the opposite side, keeping as much room as possible between herself and the Red Hart.
All at once she felt cheated. This dream had ended as so many dreams did—in the middle. She wanted to know if the dragoons and the Excisemen had won that battle she had heard in progress. Memory made vivid pictures in her mind: Aunt Prudence sitting by the wounded Lieutenant, the heavy pistol laid out near to hand in the candlelight—the look on Mr. Leggitt's face—Chris—What had happened to them all in the end?
And had it all happened once, a long time ago?
Nan dressed, glancing now and then at the model warily. As her first flash of fear faded, curiosity grew stronger. What had happened afterward?
Chris lay looking up at the ceiling. He did not try to move yet, though he knew that he was back in his own room, awake. He had been there again. But not with Master Bowyer this time—with his father!
He turned his head on the pillow to look at the picture frame on the chest of drawers. That was Dad—not that stranger who had lain muttering in fever. Yet even now one face seemed to slide over the other—dream over picture— leaving him still confused. Was he, Chris, sliding over the other Chrises in the same way?
The last moments of that dream—they were all mixed up. He thought he could remember men running away from the front of the inn as there was the heavy roar of pistols and muskets from the lower windows of the building. But—Chris sat up and pounded his fist down on the bed beside him—he did not know! Had that other Chris and his father been saved or not? What was real? He had never had such a dream except for the first time at the inn. They were like TV
plays—only he was part of them, not just watching the action.
And Nan had been a part of this last dream, too. He remembered how wrapped in sheets they had crept through the woods and down the lane by the Manor. She had used her head, thinking of the sheets, that other Nan, he decided reluctantly.
He had just crawled out of bed when he heard a knock at his door. Not Aunt Elizabeth—she always just called. Chris opened it a crack. Nan stood there, with the inn in her hand. She thrust it toward him.
“Take it!” she said. “I don't want it. I don't want to see it—ever!”
“You said you'd keep it—”
“I never! You just told me to! I think you'd be better off if you just smashed the crazy thing. Get rid of it! It's—it's bad.”
“How?”
“You know how!” She sounded as if she were working up for a regular fight. “It makes me dream—”
“Then you were there—when the smugglers trapped us?”
Her expression changed a fraction when she asked, instead of answered his question, “What happened at the end? I woke up just after you got me in the window. Did the dragoons win?”
Reluctantly Chris shook his head. “I don't know. I remember running down the hall, getting into the room where my father was in bed. The inn woman was there—she had a pistol. And there was a lot of noise and shooting—”
“I wish we did know—how it all came out, I mean,” Nan said slowly. “It isn't fair just to know part of it this way.”
Chris had taken the inn from her. Now he studied the model. “Maybe we could try again—dreaming, I mean.”
Nan whipped her hands behind her back and pulled away as if he might force her to handle the model once more.
“I don't ever want to dream like that again!” she declared. “You'd get rid of it, if you've got any brains.”
Then she was gone, hurrying into her own room and shutting the door quickly behind her.
Chris stood staring down at the inn. There were parts of that dream which he did not want to lose. The Chris Fitton who had brought the dragoons, who had come to help his father—that Chris made him somehow proud. He was a different Chris, one he wished he really was.
It was plain Nan was not going to keep the inn for him. He looked around the room, hunting for a good hiding place. At last he rolled it in a T-shirt and put it at the bottom of his dresser drawer, piling all the rest of his wardrobe on top. That was the best he could do for now.
Then he heard Aunt Elizabeth calling impatiently and huddled on his clothes in the usual scramble.
“I can walk, truly, Aunt Elizabeth.” Nan was sitting at the breakfast table. “Most of the girls do. You needn't worry.”
“I don't like it,” Aunt Elizabeth returned, shoving her coffee mug back and forth and frowning into it. “You aren't used to city traffic and—or are the girls going to stop by for you?”
For some reason Chris noticed Nan's face redden, but Aunt Elizabeth had not looked up. He sensed that Nan found that question a difficult one to answer, and before he had thought out properly the consequence of such an offer, he spoke up, “We go the same way, don't we?”
Nan glanced at him in open surprise.
Now Aunt Elizabeth looked up, as if he had surprised her, too. “Well—that might be good, Chris. But you'll have to hurry if you are going to walk.”
Nan said nothing more at all until they had gone down in the elevator, through the lobby, and were out on the pavement.
“Why did you say you'd walk with me?” she demanded bluntly.
Chris shrugged. “She had you in a corner, didn't she?”
Nan glanced away. “Well—yes.”
“All right, so I got you out.” He added nothing to that but squished along through the dirty slush, looking as sullenly aloof as he always did. Though sometimes, when Nan looked at him, she had the strange feeling that he was another person—two other persons, both of whom she had met in those disturbing, alarming dreams.
Nan dared at last to break the silence between them. “You don't like being here, do you?”
“It's all right.” Chris kicked at a lump of gray-coated snow.
“Well, I don't! I wish I was back in Elmsport. I—” She stopped. You could not go on talking to someone who would not look at you, who made it so plain he did not care what you said, or felt.
“Look here,” Chris said after a long moment, “we didn't ask for this, either of us. That right? So—well! we have to take it—at least for a while.”
Nan seized on that “for a while.” Did Chris have some plan which would get him out of Aunt Elizabeth's care? If so, perhaps she could use a similar one.
“What are you planning to do?” she asked.
Now he did look at her, his glasses making him seem to be wearing some kind of a mask. “I don't know what you mean.”
“You said ‘at least for a while.’”
"They have to come back sometime,” he muttered.
Nan knew what he meant. “She never stays—”
They did not mention names; there was no need. Nan looked down quickly at the pavement. She was not going to let him see what remembering meant to her.
"He said that this was the last out-of-the-country job.”
Did Chris believe that? That his father would come back for good? Maybe it might be true for him, but for her—There was only one home—Grandma's—and that was gone now.
She did not answer or question his statement. They were very near the Academy. She could see three boys standing by the gate watching them. And she did not like their expressions at all.
“Here's old owl-eyes!” The tallest one moved out a little.
Nan did not see Chris flinch or look any different from the way he always did, but somehow, inside her—just as that feeling had come to the Nan who had searched for the inn secrets—she felt his fear. He—he hated these boys, was afraid of them, too. But he would never let anyone know. She stared defiantly at the trio.
“Got a chick—old owl has,” commented another.
They were all grinning in a nasty way, she thought.
“How come you rate a chick?” The tall one blocked their way.
Nan stiffened. Just as she knew Chris's inner fear, so now she read his stubborn refusal to give into it.
“This is my sister, Canfield.”
Nan lifted her chin, her own defiance sharpened by his. She stared straight into the grinning face of the leader. He started to laugh and stepped farther out, so that Nan could not get around him.
Then Chris's book bag swung, hitting the other on the arm.
“Sorry"—Chris's voice held to its usual sullen monotone— “I must have slipped. See you later, Nan.”
She did not want to go and leave him—not with those three. But she also knew that she must not stay. This was Chris's trouble, and he would have no part of her in it.
“Good-bye.” It was not what she wanted to say, but it was all she could think of. And she made herself walk slowly. Maybe if she was still there, they would not gang up on Chris. Because that's what they were going to do.
“Good morning, Canfield, Rocklyn, Fitton—”
She dared to look over one shoulder just as she neared the corner. There was a man standing in the yard, watching the boys. And they were filing past him. Nan drew a breath of relief. Chris might not be free of them, but for now he was safe.
“We're going to have a word with you, man.” Canfield crowded against Chris as they started in the door. “You've got an in with the Batman, and you're going to work it—or else!”
He slammed the palm of his hand hard between Chris's shoulders. But if he had thought to send the shorter boy sprawling, he did not succeed. Chris had known enough of Canfield's methods to brace himself.
The bell was ringing for assembly. At least Canfield and his not so merry men—the crowd who followed him all the time—would be in another section. Chris drew a short breath of relief and plodded to his own assigned seat.
So
he had an in with the Batman, Chris thought ruefully; that's all they knew about it. Mr. Battersley had a reputation of being tough, but he knew his stuff. And Chris was glad of one thing, that he had managed to keep up in class well enough not to pick up any F's. The Batman did not play favorites; he was impartial about grading. What marks you got in his class you earned, and you did it the hard way.
English Lit was not a class where you goofed off and then passed because you were on some team or your folks came and made a scene in the Head's office. Chris guessed that the Batman could even handle such parents if it came to that.
He was not listening to the droning voice from the front of the room. Rather he was impatient with himself. Why had he ever marched Nan into plain sight? That would give Canfield a lever to get at him, or at least shoot off his mouth a lot. He had been ready to do it before Nan, too. And Chris knew well how nastily Canfield and his gang could talk when they wanted to. At least Nan had not heard any of that.
He was out of morning assembly and nearing English Lit when Canfield stepped in front of him. Chris stopped and stood stolidly still. He had learned long ago that one of his best weapons of defense was to be simply a rock of silence, to stand expressionless and let the other guy wear himself out trying to provoke a fight.
“Owl, you're getting too smart.” Canfield grinned at him. “I get some very bad vibes from you. Now we can't have that.”
“We sure can't, Canny,” shrilled the most outspoken of the backers.
“No, so we're going to let you do the right thing for once, Owl. The Batman is going to run a quiz on Tuesday. He's got it all worked out. So you're going to get a copy by Monday. Then we'll all make A and knock Batman for a goal—Understand?”
When Chris did not reply, Canfield's grin grew wider. He reached out to grab a fistful of Chris's T-shirt, jerking the other toward him.
“I said, ‘Understand?’ We got gym this afternoon, Owl. I think you need to shape up—we can help you. We want you to be very fit, Owl—fit enough to get that exam sheet. We're your friends, Owl. Aren't we?”