"No, there isn't any seal on it, but it's a letter, a true letter, and Sir Geoffrey will be very glad to get it," said Kate carefully. "I want you to take it to him at his house in Norfolk. Now. Tonight. See, I'll reach it out to you through the bars just as if I were a prisoner in a dungeon and you were trying to help me. And," she added, "don't show it to anybody else, because it's a secret letter, and that would spoil the secret."
"You forgot to say I was to put it into his own hand," Randal pointed out, like a child insisting that a story should be told in the exact words to which he was accustomed. But he took the letter without any more dispute and tucked it away into the breast of his doublet. Apparently, all her other instructions had been familiar and acceptable to him. "Yes, yes, that's right, you put it into his own hand," Kate hurried to assure him. "And, Randal — there's one thing more I want you to tell him. It's not in the letter. It's a spoken word from me. Tell Sir Geoffrey that something else had happened here" — better not say what the "something" was; it would be too much for Randal to grapple with — "and tell him that he must be back on All Hallows' Eve at the latest. At the very latest. Do you understand that?"
"I can say it all over by heart," Randal informed her proudly. "It's a secret letter for Sir Geoffrey. And I'm to carry it to him at his house in Norfolk. And I'm to put it into his own hand. And I'm to tell him to be back here on All Hallows' Eve."
"By All Hallows' Eve."
"Isn't it the same?"
Kate could have kicked herself. She had been a fool. She ought to have said simply that Sir Geoffrey must come back at once.
"Isn't it the same?" Randal repeated. His voice had begun to waver again.
"Yes, it's the same," Kate answered quickly, terrified that he might become completely bewildered if she argued about the message any longer. And after all, she reflected, it did not make very much difference. Sir Geoffrey would be sure to start back as soon as he had the letter, no matter what Randal told him. "Don't worry your head over the word from me: you have it all fine and clear. Now, go before anyone sees you, and — O heavens! I didn't think! The gates will be locked by this time."
"I don't like having gates locked on me," said Randal, shaking his head disapprovingly. "One night when they were locked on me here, I found a way of my own over the castle wall down back of the stables, for it's an ill thing to stay in a place you can't get out of. That's the way I go now if I don't want anyone to see me. Watch!" and with one of his sudden, fantastic movements he turned and was gone down the steps so quickly and lightly that Kate did not even hear the sound of his feet on the stones.
What she did hear was Master John's voice speaking to someone outside the closed door that led to the great hall.
She had barely time to get back to her old place, kneeling down by the fire, when a key rattled in the lock, the latch was lifted, and Master John appeared on the threshold. Kate had not, after her first moment of panic, really thought that he would swoop down on her with a knife in his hand; but she was entirely unprepared for what followed. He did not even glance about to see where she was. He was half turned away, looking back towards the great hall, his shoulders a little bent in the tag end of a deferential bow. He swung the door open obsequiously, sidling along with it until it stopped against the wall; and then, to Kate's amazement, he went down on one knee and lowered his head, like a court gentleman waiting for the Queen to go by.
The Lady in the Green came quietly past him into the room and stood still, looking down at them both, very much as she had stood that evening on the forest road. She had not changed at all — rather, it was the walls and shelves and windows of Master John's room that suddenly looked changed, unreal and grotesque, as if a young disdainful living tree had sprung up by magic through the flat boards of the floor. The mingled light of the fire and the candles flickered over the long, cloudy dark hair, the glinting bracelet on her wrist, the shadowy greens of her cloak. The cloak was woven in varying shades of leaf color that wavered and shifted continually under the light, oak leaf, willow leaf, holly leaf, ash leaf, thorn leaf, elder and hazel, ivy and moss and fern. The dress under the cloak had been made of the same stuff; and both were cut in strange patterns, the dress all soft flowing lines that clung to the body, the cloak turned back at the throat into great curving folds that were caught on the left shoulder with a long pin of dark bronze. The fluctuating shapes and tints baffled the eye like the interlaced branches and foliage of a thicket. The only thing Kate could really see was the face with its hard delicate bones and faintly amused, disdainful mouth.
"Is that the girl?" said the Lady.
Her voice was lilting and musical like Randal's, but it was not Randal's that sprang into Kate's mind the instant she heard it. It was the royal voice of the Princess Elizabeth. They both spoke with the same clarity, the same inborn, almost unconscious power to command.
Only they were not altogether the same. The Princess Elizabeth's voice could cut like a knife when she was impatient or angry with a maid of honor — but when she called anyone "girl," it had never sounded exactly as though she were saying: "the dog" or "the horse."
"That is the girl, madam," said Master John, with another deferential bend of his head. Master John actually confronting the Lady in the Green was a very different man from Master John talking of reasonable human beings while he sat cross legged in his armchair. Kate could hear his steward's chain give a faint nervous chink as he shifted the weight on his knee against the hard boards of the floor. She suddenly realized that she too was still down on her knees by the fire and scrambled awkwardly to her feet. At least she did not have to stay groveling on the hearth like one of the enchanted pigs in a story about Ulysses and Circe that Master Roger had read to them in the old days at Hatfield.
"Is she always so clumsy?" inquired the Lady.
There was no malice in the question. She was merely running her eye over the lines of the dog or the horse.
"Always, madam," said Master John.
The Lady glanced at Kate's set face.
"And stubborn?" she asked.
"Very stubborn," agreed Master John. "Even if her mind were to be taken away from her — "
"I won't have my mind taken away from me," Kate interrupted him, forgetting that she did not have any choice in the matter.
The disdainful curve of the beautiful mouth became slightly - only very slightly — more pronounced; but when the Lady spoke again, it was still to Master John. "Do you want me to take her mind away from her?" she said.
"Well, madam," replied Master John, "for my own part — so far as I may judge, since you ask it of me — I do not see why you should put yourself to the trouble. I have always been one to hold by the old proverb, 'Stone dead hath no fellow,' and so please you, I would rather it were that."
The Lady glanced at Kate again. It was impossible to tell what she thought of Master John's suggestion. Her face was entirely unchanged. Kate could only stand there and wait for the answer, suddenly and agonizingly conscious of her own living body, the feel of her foot on the floor, the pounding of her heart against her side.
"I see no need of her death," said the Lady indifferently. "She does not appear to me to be of any great value, and in my land she will be worth even less than she is here; but there are certain mortal women that we keep in the Hill for our servants and scrubbers, and if she is taken and trained I think some use may be made of her. Fetch me a — "
Kate did not hear the rest of the sentence. Her foot had lost the feel of the floor; the walls and shelves and windows were all sliding and blurring together, just as they had in her dream. She caught at the back of Master John's armchair and clung to it while the room reeled around her.
When it steadied, Master John had disappeared and the Lady was no longer watching her. She had moved closer to the fire and was unclasping the bracelet from her left arm. On the inner side, where the turn of the wrist had hidden it, was a huge rounded stone, green like an emerald, set in the gold. The Lady touched one of the little claws
that held the stone down, and it sprang erect as if it were the lid of a box.
Master John scurried back through the door to the great hall. This time he had a cup in his hand; when he knelt again and offered it to the Lady, Kate could see that there was wine in it. The Lady struck the edge of her bracelet very lightly against the rim. A tiny stream of white powder poured out from under the green jewel and fell over the wine. Then she took the cup from Master John and beckoned Kate to come to her.
"No," said Kate, gripping the back of the armchair. It was as though she were at the Holy Well again, pressed against the sheltering stone, watching the gray creature lean over Christopher with the phial in its hand, seeing once more the blank face and the blind witless eyes. "No," she said breathlessly. "Please. I will go without it. Quietly. Truly I will."
"This drink is not what we gave to the Young Lord, if that is what you fear," said the Lady calmly. "That was something else. This is only what we mingle with the water in the rich pilgrim's cup, to free him from sorrow and pain or the grief of a wound. The mortal women we keep in the Hill drink it every day. It takes away the heaviness of their minds, and makes them peaceful and content." Kate ran her tongue over her dry lips. "I do not want my mind to be taken away," she said.
"It will not take away your mind," said the Lady, "only the part of your mind which sees what is harsh or unpleasing. And who would not be glad to lose that?"
"Well — " Kate ran her tongue over her lips again. "Are you?"
"I?" said the Lady, almost sharply.
"You and the others. Your people. T-the Fairy Folk," Kate stammered. "Do you also drink it every day?"
"We do not need to be eased so," said the Lady. "But you will not be able to endure the nature of my land without it. We do not ask that except of a teind-payer, and even then only if he is a young man strong enough to serve his nine weeks' death-time, as the kings of the land did in the old days."
"You live without it," Kate insisted.
"We are not of your kind," said the Lady. "Do you think you could live as we do?"
Kate stiffened. She did not mind the question: it was the tone of the voice that stung her past bearing.
"I don't know how you live," she retorted. "But why should your land be any more dreadful to me than it is to you?"
"You would find that out soon enough if you tried it," said the Lady. "And then you would come to me crying and begging for what I have offered you freely."
"Well, couldn't I have till then?" asked Kate doggedly.
"Do not be impudent, girl!" said Master John. "Madam, if you want her to drink it, I can easily — "
The Lady did not even glance at him. Her eyes were still on Kate's face, and they as well as her mouth now looked very faintly amused.
"You may have till you please," she replied. "It will all be the same in the end." She set the cup down on the little table beside the platter of fruit and drew a narrow strip of green silk from somewhere under her cloak.
"What is that for?" inquired Kate, apprehensively.
"To tie over your eyes," said the Lady. "And in this I can give you no choice, for you must not see the way that we are going."
The last thing that Kate actually did see, with curious distinctness, was the cup standing on the little table and gleaming softly in the light of the fire. It was a plain silver cup, one of a set that were used every day at the high table. The next instant it disappeared as the silk closed over her race. A breath of cold air from the terrace door blew against her cheek.
"Take hold of my cloak," said the Lady's voice.
Kate clutched at the fold of cloth that was put into her hand, and feeling ridiculously like a puppy on a lead, stumbled behind the Lady down the terrace steps and across the familiar paving stones of the courtyard. Presently they paused; there was a creak of hinges, and when they began to move again it was over a rough board floor. The air was suddenly close and heavy with the dry sweet smell of stored grain.
For a moment Kate could not tell where they had gone; then she remembered all the times she had seen carters unloading sacks of corn at the dark arch across the courtyard from her window, and understood. They were in Lord Richard's tower. The secret way that they were to follow must begin there.
She took a quick, excited step forward, and was told to keep herself further back.
Kate fell back obediently. It did not matter. She had the answer now to a number of questions that had been puzzling her — why Master John sent so many household supplies to the old tower, instead of the cellars in the new wing; why there was never any other outward evidence of his trade with the Fairy Folk. A secret entrance to the castle storerooms would allow them to come and go and take what they chose even at times when they could not show themselves openly.
"There is a stair here," said the Lady's voice. "Put your free hand on the wall to your left, and stay as close to it as you can."
Kate would have fallen otherwise. The stair was a spiral one, very steep, its stone treads uneven and worn hollow from centuries of use. She had to struggle and fumble for almost every step, lurching on her awkward feet and clinging helplessly to the wall. The spiral swung around and turned and swung around on itself again, coiling down and down, until she felt as if her brains were beginning to turn with it by the time they reached a level place and there was another pause. The air was still very close, but it had become bitterly cold and she thought they must be a long way under the ground. Then there was the faintest possible touch of warmth on her right cheek, as though the Lady had lighted some sort of lamp or a candle.
"Walk slowly now," said the voice. "Keep your head and your shoulders down, or you will hurt yourself. It is all stone here, and the way in is narrow and low."
They went twenty steps and turned sharply to the left; then thirty-four steps and turned right; ninety-five and then left again; a hundred and two —
"A hundred and three, and a hundred and four, left," Kate whispered to herself, hanging desperately to the count. It was at least no worse than the terrible games of blindfold chess her father had once made her play with him, as a way of training her mind and memory. If she could only keep the exact pattern of turns and the number of steps between them clear in her head, there was a chance — a very faint chance — that she might be able to find the way out again to Lord Richard's tower when the time came.
It was her own physical clumsiness that defeated her. Everything was going well when the Lady's voice said: "Take care; there is slime on the path here," and for the next five minutes .she was too occupied with keeping her feet under her to mark the turns or make an accurate count of the steps they had taken. When they got to better ground at last, she was lost.
Once she noticed that the air was growing much warmer and very damp, almost steamy; but she could not tell what had caused the change, and after a while it was cold again. Later still, she began to hear a sound in the distance. At first she thought it was thunder, and then realized that it could not be: they were too far under the ground. It was the roar and crash of water, a cataract or a river in flood, booming and echoing through the depths of a chasm. In the beginning it came from a long way off, but as the path twisted and turned, it drew nearer, rising louder and louder, until she could feel even the wall of the passage quiver with it under her hand.
Then suddenly the wall was gone and they were walking straight into the noise — into it, over it, as though they had come out and were making their way along a ledge or a bridge somewhere high above the chasm, and the pealing echoes were all around them, splitting, shivering, reverberating from rock to rock over the hiss of driven spray and the insufferable clamor of the water plunging down coigns and archways and masses of fallen stone far below. Then, just as suddenly, they seemed to be in a passage again. The rock closed down over her head, brushing against her hair, and the noise from the chasm dwindled and died away behind them like light at the end of a tunnel.
The new passage was straight and very smooth, and grew rapidly high
er and wider; in a few minutes she could no longer touch the wall with her free hand or feel the rock pressing down above her. But after the uproar in the chasm its stillness was unnerving. The uproar had at least given Kate some idea of space and location, by which to judge the direction in which they were moving and the distance they had come. Here she had nothing to go by, only her hold on the Lady's cloak and the whisper of the Lady's feet on the path ahead of her.
They went on and on and on, one slow, monotonous step after another, through the smooth unbroken dark.
Kate never knew just how long they went on; it seemed like hours. The dark and the sense of her own blind helplessness became more and more painful. In spite of the constricting bandage around her eyes, she found that she was making frantic efforts to see. "I can't bear any more of this," she thought, "I can't bear it," and then realized that the feet ahead of her had stopped moving and the cloak was being pulled out of her hand.
"You will stay here," said the Lady's voice. "There is a place for you to sleep on the floor behind you."
"Can I take this thing off now?" asked Kate. She plucked at the band of green silk over her eyes. "I want to see."
It was a moment before the Lady answered; and when she did, her voice was soft and very faintly amused, as it had been when she let Kate have her own way in the matter of the cup.
"Do as you please," she said. The next sound was the murmuring rustle of her feet moving away again over the stones.
The strip of silk was too tight for Kate to pull over her head, the knot that tied it too subtle for her clumsy fingers. It was only after a bungling struggle that she finally felt the thing come loose and drop away in her hand.
It did not make the slightest difference. There was no flicker of light anywhere, no faintest outline of wall or roof or door, nothing but the same black darkness, unbroken, impenetrable, and absolute. Somewhere in the distance she could hear water running, a spring? a brook? a little stream of water? — but she could not see. All she could do was stand still, the strip of silk in her hand, gazing blindly and helplessly around her.