Master Roger's bushy eyebrows twitched together ominously. As a classical scholar and a defender of the New Learning, he held the tales of King Arthur and his knights in the deepest contempt, and was always doing his best to root them out of the Princess's household.
"Since the word 'gard' signified a 'castle' in the old days, I have no doubt it was a castle once," he observed severely. "Tom Corget and I were disputing about the 'perilous.' Tom (no scholar) held that it was nothing but a by-name meaning that the place was a strong one — hard to attack, or dangerous to meddle with. It was my contention," went on Master Roger, now well away and settling briskly into the stride of his argument, "that the word 'perilous' was often given in the former age to such places as foolish and superstitious persons chose to believe were of a magical nature. Like the Perilous Chapel in the monkish legend of the Holy Grail; or the Perilous Seat in King Arthur's court where no one except the best knight in the world was able to sit. When I was a boy there was a hill near my cousin's house in Northumbria that was always called the Perilous Hill because it was said that the Fairy Folk used to live underneath it. The story went that they had all been driven away long since; but the country people still go in terror of the place, and the bravest of them would not set foot on it after dark for a hundred pounds. As I told Tom Corget, it was my belief — "
The Lady Elizabeth stirred restlessly in her chair.
"Master Roger," she said.
"Yes, my lady?"
"I was asking you about this house of the Wardens. What were the curious tales Thomas Corget spoke of?"
"Yes, my lady. I am coming to them. As I told Tom Corget, it was my belief that places like the hill near my cousin's house must once have been the centers of some heathen worship in ancient times now forgotten; and the stories of the Fairy Folk living there were only memories of the old heathen gods, overlaid with fantasies and superstitions. When I was young, the country women all believed that the Fairy Folk would steal children away with them if they could; and this — so I told Tom Corget — goes back to the days when the old pagans did take human beings to offer in sacrifice to their gods, like the Druids of Britain and France according to the report of Julius Caesar. Then also the Fairy Folk are said to deck themselves out with gold, and live in great ceremony, dancing and singing, as the heathen gods were accustomed to do. I have never learned the truth of the matter; but certainly, the people near my cousin's house still dreaded the very name of the hill, and thought it was unlucky to go near the place, even by day. Now it came into my mind when I was disputing with Tom Corget that the Perilous Gard might likewise stand near some old center of heathen magic, such as I considered the hill to be. That would account for the name, and also for the curious tales that are told of it. It is a very remote and solitary place, and the Wardens were a strange family, or so Tom said to me. I saw myself when I was a boy what country people can believe in with no more than old rumors and idle tongues to set them going."
"And what were the curious tales they believed in?"
It seemed to Kate that Master Roger glanced at the Princess before replying and very slightly shook his head.
"Oh, much the same foolishness," he answered quickly; "no need to weary you with the ins and outs of the matter. The Wardens are all dead and gone now — Lady Heron was the last of them — and Sir Geoffrey is an honorable man. You may take Thomas Corget's word for that, Your Highness. Mistress Katherine here should find nothing to trouble her at Elvenwood Hall."
"Very well, then." The Lady Elizabeth let the Queen's letter drop from her hands to the floor, and glanced across the room at Kate. "Come here, girl."
Kate detached herself from Alicia and knelt down cautiously by the arm of the great carved chair. Her knees were still shaking, and she was afraid that she might trip over her skirts again.
"This is a hard business," said the Lady Elizabeth. "I will not make it harder with more talking."
"No, Your Highness," Kate replied thankfully. She knew she ought to say something about suffering gladly for the Princess, or acting like a true sister to Alicia, but she could not think of anything to say. She was not suffering for the Princess, and she did not want to be a true sister to Alicia. She was conscious only of a furious irritation at the maddening senselessness of the whole affair.
"You heard what Thomas Corget said of Sir Geoffrey?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
"I shall see that your father hears of it, too. And if I ever have the power I give you my word — " her eyes met Kate's in a long, grave, deliberate look, "I give you my word that I shall send him at once to bring you away."
"But I don't see why Kate should have to go at all," Alicia's voice broke in on them. "Listen, Your Highness! Listen, Master Roger! All I have to do is write to the Queen again and tell her — "
"No," said Kate and Master Roger and the Lady Elizabeth simultaneously.
Chapter II
The Elvenwood
Katherine Sutton reflected gloomily that here she was, like a lady in a romance, riding through the forest on her white horse with a good brave knight to take care of her. At least the horse was white — or as much of the horse as she could see for the mud splashes that covered its hide — a big, lumbering beast of a mare with an infuriating habit of chewing the bit like a cow on a cud. She pulled it up for the fortieth time as it stumbled over a root, and then, straightening her back, lifted her face to look for a break in the sky.
It was raining again, a thin, cold, misty rain that penetrated to the bone. Even under the huge trees there was very little shelter. The rain threaded and beaded every branch and leaf and twig, dripping mournfully at the jarring thud of the horses' hoofs. It clung to the shoulders of Kate's heavy cloak and glistened in the long gray folds of her riding skirt. The instant she raised her head it began to gather on her lashes like tears.
The narrow, leaf-strewn track of a road was thick and sodden with water. The twelve mounted men and the four heavily loaded pack-carts behind her must be beating it into a mire. She was almost the first in line. Ahead of her, there was only the square back of Diccon carrying his master's pennon on a short lance. He and most of the others had soldiered in Ireland with Sir Geoffrey, and even now they looked far more like an armed guard than a troop of ordinary household serving men.
Kate glanced over her shoulder for a moment at the long file of riders, with their heads bent against the rain, and then turned back to watch the clouds again. But it was no use. She could not get even a glimpse of the sky. The great arching boughs of the trees had met overhead and shut it out completely.
Kate had never seen such trees. In her part of the country, the last of the forests had been cleared long before she was born, and there was nothing left of them but open woodlands and hunting parks. This was different. It might have been the wild forest of another age, centuries ago. Except for the sound of the horses' hoofs lifting out of the mud and the faint shivering drip of the rain, it was utterly silent. In the silence, immense, dark, overwhelming, shouldering over the road, towering like castles, the great trees rose and pressed about the horses and their riders, melting away on every side into depth on depth of green shadow that opened a little to let them through and then closed in behind them again.
"They look taller because the road is so low," Kate told herself. "It must be very old." The road could never have carried much traffic — it turned and dodged among the trees like a footpath — but over the years the passing of men and horses had little by little worn it away until now it was far beneath the level of the ground. The bank on her right was nearly as high as the wall of a house, laced and knotted with enormous twisted roots all overgrown with moss and little dripping tongues of fern.
There was a sudden crash and a warning shout behind her, and she reined up. Something was wrong with one of the pack-carts at the end of the line. Heads were turning and shadowy figures running through the mist; she heard the shrill neighing of a frightened horse, and then, riding over the confusion, the
clear stern voice of Sir Geoffrey: "Let be! Give them room: it's only the rope broken. Dirk and Ned, lash those boxes again. Quickly now! We can't spend the night roosting here in the forest. Dismount and rest, you others. There's no harm done."
Everybody halted obediently in a jingling of spurs and a creaking of leather as the men swung down from their saddles. Sir Geoffrey came looming out of the mist, on foot, with the rain blowing about his head, and paused beside Kate's stirrup. He put his hand on the pommel of her saddle and looked up at her. He had a big, craggy face with a jaw like iron, and level, rather forbidding gray eyes.
"How do you, Mistress Katherine?" he inquired stiffly.
Kate lifted her chin and looked back at him.
"I thank you, Sir Geoffrey," she replied. "Well enough."
"Is there anything you want?"
"I thank you, Sir Geoffrey," Kate repeated. "No."
Sir Geoffrey took a step as if to move away, and then swung around on her again, frowning. But he did not appear to be angry. He stood watching her for a long moment, and finally said: "There's no need to cry."
"I haven't been crying," Kate answered indignantly. Her father had said once that thank God, she wasn't always melting into tears like her mother and Alicia; and it had been a matter of pride with her never to let herself cry afterwards. "I haven't been crying," she repeated. "That's only the rain on my face."
The shadow of something that might have been a smile glinted an instant in Sir Geoffrey's forbidding eyes and was gone before she could be sure of it. "Wipe the rain off your face, then," he told her. "And stop trying to look down your nose at me! I've been on the road with you six days now, and all I've had out of you is yes-Sir-Geoffrey and no-Sir-Geoffrey and I-thank-you-Sir-Geoffrey like a stone speaking. Come now, you don't seem to be a fool: deal with me plainly — is there anything you want?" The corner of Kate's mouth flickered suddenly in an answering smile before she could stop herself.
"Indeed yes, if you please, Sir Geoffrey," she replied. "I want a roof over my head and a blazing fire and some dry clothes and a hot roast chicken and a goose-feather bed with three coverlets on it. Will you be so kind as to fetch them at once?"
The glint of amusement deepened in Sir Geoffrey's eyes. "Stay where you are," he ordered, and striding away, returned after a moment with a slab of yellow cheese and a hunch of bread wrapped in a napkin.
"You can have your roast chicken tomorrow when we're safe at the Hall," he said. "Try a bit of this now, and eat as much as you can: you'll need it. We've a long road still ahead of us."
"How long?" asked Kate promptly. Though she had never until now brought herself to put questions to Sir Geoffrey, one of her chief trials during the last six days had been the riding blind into completely strange country. It had not been so bad at first, on the way up from the south, while she could at least recognize the names on the signposts and the towns where they had stopped for the night. The inns had been large and bustling, and there were other travelers on the road. But early that morning they had turned off the road and ridden away over a desolate moor seamed with ridges and outcroppings of rock, as if the bones of the land were forcing their way through it, with nothing alive on the wide gray folds of the hills except for an occasional flock of sheep so far away that it could hardly be told from one of the low drifting clouds. And after they had crossed the moor, it was only to pass through a narrow gap between two stony tors and down deeper and deeper into the forest.
"How long?" Sir Geoffrey shrugged his big shoulders. "If this rain won't stop and the carts go on breaking down, God knows. Not long as the crow flies. We're on Warden land now, in the Elvenwood. It's winding about among these cursed trees that makes the going so slow."
Kate frowned up at the looming green shadows. "Don't they ever cut them down?" she demanded.
"I asked my wife's father that same question once," said Sir Geoffrey, "and he told me it would be a bold man who'd lay an ax to any tree in the Elvenwood."
"Why?"
"I don't know," said Sir Geoffrey. "For then his daughter came into the room, and the matter went out of my mind."
Kate looked from the trees to the road. For a few feet around them it was churned into black mud and hoof-prints where the horses had trampled it; then the leaves covered it again. A few feet more, and it was out of sight.
"Isn't there any other way we could go?" she asked.
Sir Geoffrey shook his head. "We're in a valley between two cliffs," he explained briefly, "and we have to go the length of it to come to the Hall. What's the matter? Afraid of the dark?"
"No," said Kate, rather more loudly than she meant to. It was already dusk on the deep pathway under the overhanging branches, and her eyes were beginning to play tricks on her as the moving leaves wavered and shifted in the uncertain light. There was one old stump covered with ivy at the top of the bank that looked exactly like a hooded figure in a green cloak, leaning forward to listen.
Then, somewhere in the distance, through the trees, she suddenly heard a voice singing. It came blowing towards them on the misty rain — a high clear voice, curiously piercing and sweet. It was singing a verse from the old ballad about the minstrel who met the fairy lady under the elder tree.
Her skirt was made of the grass-green silk,
Her mantle of the velvet fine,
And from every strand of horse's mane
Hung twenty silver bells and nine.
'O harp and carp, True Thomas,' she said,
'O harp and carp along with me — '
"Good Lord, it's Randal," said Sir Geoffrey. "I'd know his voice if I heard it in the Indies. Listen! He's coming this way."
"Who?" asked Kate, bending forward to catch the notes through the rustling of the leaves.
"Randal," repeated Sir Geoffrey. "Old Randal the harper. I wonder where he's been all the winter? I haven't seen him since I came back from Ireland."
"Is he one of your men?"
"He's been known to call himself that when it would keep some town from putting him in the stocks for a vagabond," replied Sir Geoffrey dryly. "And I suppose you could say that he lives with me when he lives anywhere. He's a minstrel — one of the old wandering breed, always on the road. I took him in one harvest time years ago when he came ill with the fever to my door in Norfolk, and he's been drifting back now and again ever since. Don't be frightened when you see him, will you? The fever nearly killed him, and he never got his wits back properly afterwards."
"Do you mean," Kate ventured, "that he's mad?"
"No — only touched in the head, as my old nurse used to say. He can't remember much before the fever, and sometimes he talks a little wildly. You needn't mind that. He's as gentle as a baby, and you can hear for yourself that it did no harm to his voice."
The voice was singing again, higher and nearer. This time it seemed to be a "riddle song," but not one that Kate knew, set to a gay, curiously dancing air:
O where is the Queen, and where is her throne?
Down in the stone O, but not in the stone.
O where is the Queen, and where is her hall?
Over the wall O, with never a wall.
O where are her dancers, and where are they now?
Go out by the oak leaf, with never a bough.
"Randal!" called Sir Geoffrey. "Randal, lad! Come here!"
The air snapped off suddenly in the middle of a note, and a slight figure dressed in rusty brown came scurrying like a dead leaf around the bend of the road. Under one arm, cradled against his shoulder, he was carrying something that looked like a small harp, covered with fine canvas to shield it from the rain. A broken crimson quill-feather dangled from one corner of his battered cap.
"Welcome, Sir Geoffrey," he said, pulling off the cap and somehow contriving to bow gracefully in spite of the harp and the rain. He had a pointed brown face and spoke with a sweet, lilting, musical accent very unlike the harsh Norfolk voices of Sir Geoffrey's other retainers. "It is many and many a day since I saw you riding dow
n the road with all your armed men at your back. Where have you been so long away?"
"Where have you been yourself?" demanded Sir Geoffrey, glancing at the little stream of water that was running off the tip of the crimson feather and splashing down past Randal's knee into the mud of the road. "Put that cap back on your head, man: it's no weather for courtesy. You ought to be sheltering at the Hall. What are you doing here?"
Randal's mouth drooped like a scolded child's.
"I was looking for the way in again," he explained, twisting the cap between his hands. "I knew the way in as well as the door to your house before they took my wits away from me, if I could only call it back to my mind. There is one way in through the stone of the tower, and another way in over the wall by the well, and another way in by the oak leaf, with never a bough."
"No more of that talk!" said Sir Geoffrey. "Do you want to work yourself into the fever again? What you need is a corner by the fire and something to eat. How long have you been starving this time?"
"Not a bit of bread have I had since morning," Randal admitted, "nor," he added winningly, with his eyes on Kate's hand, "any cheese."
Sir Geoffrey smiled and shook his head. "No, that's the last of it," he said. "There'll be more at the Hall. Find Diccon and tell him you're to ride with us in one of the carts when we go."
But Kate had already tumbled the bread and cheese back into the napkin and was leaning down from her saddle. "May I give him the rest of mine?" she asked. "I've had all I want."
Sir Geoffrey nodded. "If you choose," he said. "This is Mistress Katherine Sutton, Randal, and you must play your harp for her one of these days. She is coming to stay at the Hall for a time."
Randal looked up at her, and then suddenly made another of his fantastically graceful bows, the crimson feather fluttering in the rain.
"A blessing on your gentle heart, my lady," he said.