"There's something I want to ask him. It's great folks' business," Kate added wickedly, "the kind you say that you never want to pry or meddle in. Where is he?"
"I don't know, Mistress Katherine. The last time I saw him he was out looking at the water."
"What water?"
"He said you weren't to be troubled about it until you'd rested."
"Was Christopher with him?"
"The Young Lord? Oh no, Mistress Katherine, how could he be, seeing that he's — but you're not to trouble your mind about him either, Sir Geoffrey says, and it won't take me but a minute to fetch the basket. No, don't, Mistress Katherine, do be quiet, you mustn't — "
She followed Kate to the door and out into the hall, still expostulating, just as Sir Geoffrey emerged from the long gallery and came striding towards them. He was frowning as if something perplexed or troubled him, and the narrow white bandage around his head made him look even grimmer than he usually did. "Be off with you, Dorothy," he said briefly. "Mistress Katherine, I thought you were keeping to your room today. Don't you ever do as you're told?"
Dorothy vanished around the corner in a flicker of skirts, and Kate ran to him.
"Sir Geoffrey, where's Christopher?" she demanded.
"Gone," said Sir Geoffrey.
"Gone where?"
"Away. He left very early this morning, as soon as it was light."
"But he couldn't have — he can't be — " Kate protested. "Why? Why should he go away now?"
"Because I sent him."
"But you can't have! Not now! Surely not now, after all he's — you haven't forgiven him? Even now?"
Sir Geoffrey stood regarding her.
"No, I haven't forgiven him," he replied gravely. "But I asked him to forgive me." The old smile flashed up into his eyes; he put both his hands on Kate's shoulders and very gently shook her. "So you can take that look off your face, and don't let me see it again! I said there was no need for you to trouble your mind about him any longer, didn't I? He's only gone to London to take Cecily to live with her aunt Jennifer, as she ought to have done a year ago, God pardon me for a fool! But yes, I did send him away and I sent Cecily away, and believe me, my girl, if it weren't for the Queen's own strict command, there's nothing I'd sooner do than send you off straight down the road after them."
"But why? I mean, what's wrong? Surely, now that you and your men are here, there's no reason — "
"Oh, but there is," Sir Geoffrey interrupted her, "and a good reason too. Come along with me, and I'll show you." He tucked Kate's hand into his arm and drew her with him back into the long gallery and out onto the battlement walk. "I didn't want to tell you, at least not until you were rested, but — " He checked his long stride as they passed out of the shadow of Lord Richard's tower and stood for a moment looking down at her face in the sunlight. "Saints above, how you've changed, lass!" he said abruptly. "What in the world did they do to you?"
"It's nothing; none of my clothes fit, that's all," Kate answered, flushing. "Sir Geoffrey, will you please tell me — "
"I want you to see something first." He stopped on the walk above the archway, almost where she herself had stood the night before, and pointed over the parapet.
"There," he said.
The fallen torches had been carried away, and all traces of the great fire had vanished. The grass turfs had been neatly laid in again over the burnt earth and the ashes, so that the wide flat stretch of rough lawn between the Standing Stone and the castle wall looked very much as it always had. Beyond the Standing Stone she could see the sharp drop to the floor of the little valley, the great boulders and the rocks below, the thread of a path winding among the litter of stone as far as the last dip down to the cave and the Holy Well — but beyond that last dip the path disappeared. She could make out nothing but a bright line along the ground between the cliffs, shining in the afternoon sun, and glimmering a little as if it were very faintly moving.
"Water coming up out of the Holy Well," said Sir Geoffrey's voice beside her. "They must have broken some sort of dam or known how to block the river so as to flood the caves and the valley if anyone tried to break in, and they had almost an hour to do it. First I was delayed at the foot of the road to the gate when Randal walked out of the trees with Cecily — wanting to know if I was pleased with him now, the poor loon! — and meanwhile Christopher was in the house carrying you up to your bed and finding himself some armor and weapons. Then when we came together at last we began by looking for the secret passage from Lord Richard's tower and searching the whole place for Master John — no, we didn't find him; he must have left by some bolt hole of his own as soon as he heard my horn and knew the game was over. We did find the stairs in the keep, but they were flooded already; and by the time we came to the valley the water was pouring out of the Well cave in torrents and no one could go that way. Christopher thinks they must have escaped from the Hill through some other tunnel and got away into the Elvenwood. But for all I know they're still lurking about there — and that's why I made him take Cecily off to London with a good strong escort so early this morning, and why I came within an inch of sending you with them, Queen or no." He stood looking over the parapet with the troubled frown in his eyes again. "Who's to say what the creatures will do next? They may even feel they've some sort of right to kill the child or my brother."
Kate shook her head. "No, not now," she said. "I know them. They won't touch Cecily now because Christopher paid the teind for her, and they won't touch Christopher because someone was able to lay claim to him. They won't touch anybody. The Lady did say that she'd kill the mortal prisoners if the Hill were attacked, but once they're beaten and driven out of a holy place all they can do is wander away and never come back to it. Gwenhyfara told me so herself. They're probably miles from here by now, looking like gypsies or tinkers, and if they ever meet again, it will only be for a dancing night."
"You're sure of that?" Sir Geoffrey was still frowning. "God knows there's nothing I'd sooner do than let them go. The last thing I want is to raise a stinking scandal about my wife's family and send the whole countryside off in a state of frenzy hunting for witches and heretics. Nine-tenths of the folk they'd rake in and ruin would be real tinkers, or real gypsies, or the miserable castle people. But what am I to do? We have to catch the creatures. Otherwise, they'll be stealing some other child the next time they need a human sacrifice, and — "
"They won't, they won't," Kate insisted. "They can't form a circle of power or pay the teind in any holy hill that's been desecrated or broken, and the Lady said this was the only place left in all England where it could still be done. There won't be any more teinds now, ever again. They're finished."
"You're sure of that?"
"I'm sure of it," Kate replied steadily.
"Very well then," said Sir Geoffrey, and drew a breath so long that he might have been holding it for her answer. "Let them go."
"But can you?" asked Kate, frowning a little in her turn. "I mean, can you keep it a secret? How about your men? They must know what happened here last night. Can you trust them not to tell about it?"
"No," said Sir Geoffrey. "But there's not much they can tell. Remember that we came too late for the teind-paying, and they didn't see you or Christopher in those outlandish gauds you were wearing. All they saw was the castle people sleeping it off after a Halloween bonfire and a drinking party."
"Then why did you ride back so fast when you got my letter? Who's had Cecily all this time? Why aren't you still angry with Christopher? And they must have seen you were hunting for someone when you searched the house and the valley."
Sir Geoffrey laughed suddenly as she had sometimes heard his brother do when the strain broke. "My men and I were hunting for Master John," he said calmly. "And if they end by thinking it was all a plot of his to keep control of the whole estate by making trouble between the new masters, where's the harm? That was a good story he told you about someone stealing the child and then running away rather
than face me when someone else found out the truth and sent me word to ride back. It's such a good story that it seems a pity to waste it — especially as it happens to be perfectly true. We'll only have to change a few of the names."
"And do you think the castle people will believe you?"
"The castle people have had a deal of practice in conniving at whatever belief would do them the most good," said Sir Geoffrey dryly. "All they'll want now is to forget they ever heard of Those in the Well. Though to speak justly, I think they really were terrified of the creatures, and won't shed any tears because they've lost your Lady and her Fairy Folk. If you ask me, nobody's going to miss them." Kate nodded, remembering what Dorothy had said to her. Sir Geoffrey was right, she reflected: nobody was going to miss the Lady or the Fairy Folk, unless — it was a curious notion — unless she herself did. She put the thought away from her, and came back to the point.
"But there's bound to be some talk," she observed doubtfully.
"There's been talk about the Perilous Gard for hundreds of years," said Sir Geoffrey. "A little more won't hurt us. In a month or two, Randal will be making it all into a ballad, and after a while nobody will believe that it was ever anything more than a tale by the fire."
The long bright line across the end of the valley was widening now as the water continued to rise and advance. Kate thought that it must be well beyond the leper's hut already, and the flat rock where she had eaten dry bread with Christopher would soon be gone too.
"Nothing was carried up out of the caverns on the water?" she asked Sir Geoffrey. "Some of them may have been killed or drowned trying to escape."
"No, nothing at all," said Sir Geoffrey. "That's to say, it wasn't a body, exactly. We did find a mass of old bones floating outside the Well cave, wrapped in some kind of thin gray raggedy stuff that was holding them together; but whatever it was had been dead a long time. The men didn't want to touch it, and I can't blame them; it wasn't a pretty sight. In the end we buried it in the ashes down there at the foot of the Standing Stone before we laid the turfs back, to get it out of the — Kate! Hold up, lass! What's the matter? You're as white as a ghost."
"It's nothing." Kate pulled her wits together. "Only, I — that thing you found — you're sure it was dead? It had been dead for a long time?"
"Lord, yes!" said Sir Geoffrey. "Didn't you hear me? There was nothing left of it but — "
He stopped short as a thin wailing cry rose from the archway at the foot of the wall beneath them. It was a cry of such pain and despair that even Sir Geoffrey stiffened, and Kate turned whiter still.
"What is it?" she gasped. "What's that noise?"
"I don't know," said Sir Geoffrey, in his grimmest voice. "But I'm afraid it's another one."
"Another what?"
"I was wrong when I told you that nobody was going to miss them."
The old white-haired pilgrim that Kate had once seen returning from the Holy Well had come back again. As they leaned over to look, they saw him pull himself away from his serving man's arm and plunge down the path to the valley at a hobbling run, rushing to and fro distractedly as he ran, and making sudden darts at the water, like a lost dog in front of an empty house.
"That's the second since this morning," said Sir Geoffrey. "The first one — but never mind that now: I'd better go down and do what I can to keep him from breaking his neck. Get back to your room, Kate. You're shaken enough as it is. You don't want to see any more of this; it's as if they'd run mad."
But Kate only went as far as the door of the long gallery and stopped there, feeling that she could not bear to be shut up again just then, even in her own room. Instead she found a corner of the wall overlooking the courtyard where a stone seat had been built in the old days for a guard or a watchman. The seat was in the sun, sheltered from the wind, and the stone was warm where it reflected the light. The light was so strong that she was aware of it even when she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the warmth of the stone, listening to the murmur of the wind and the slow tick of the castle clock from the courtyard as it measured the time of the world.
In the days that followed, she spent many hours sitting there in the sun or walking back and forth in the high clear air on the battlements. Sometimes she stood looking down at the inner courtyard and the workmen moving in and out of Lord Richard's tower; Sir Geoffrey was giving the grain to the village to replace the crop that had been destroyed in the storm, and there was to be a peal of bells for the church at last. Sometimes she went as far as the stretch of walk above the archway and looked down the valley towards the Holy Well. The flood had stopped rising when it reached the foot of the Standing Stone, and not even an occasional pilgrim was still coming to wander about on the shore. There was nothing to be seen in the whole valley but a lake of deep water, green where it lay under the shadow of the cliffs and blue where it reflected the color of the sky. It might have lain there in unbroken peace since the beginning of time.
Presently, little by little, the sharp images of the old pilgrim, the choked passages, and the floating mass of bones began to recede from her mind.
She was left very much to herself, for Christopher had not returned and Sir Geoffrey was taken up with the work of the estate, but in those days she did not feel a lack of company. She did not even want it. All she wanted was to rest, to be let alone, to walk in the air and the light, or to sit for hours watching the birds wheeling in the great space over her head. The wound in her hand had not festered, but the palm took a long time to heal, and it was even longer before she stopped dreaming at night of flooded caverns where the blind fish nosed in the darkness about the steps leading up to a stone chair, or where Joan and Betty and Marian still lay in their beds, drowned in their enchanted sleep. It was useless to hope that the Lady might have taken the mortal prisoners with her when she escaped. The Lady would not break her given word, and — what was it that the redheaded woman had said to her once? — "The Fairy Folk cannot be moved by pity because they have no hearts in their bodies."
The redheaded woman — her name proved to be Susan — was up at the Hall now with her little boy. There had been no way that Kate could tell her how much she owed to her gift of the cross, but she could at least find out what she wished for the most and try to give her that in return. What Susan wished for the most was very simple: the dream of her life was to learn fine sewing and move from the village to a great gentleman's household. She and Dorothy soon became mighty gossips, with many whispered secrets and interminable confidences as they sat by the fire making over Kate's clothes with their heads together, nodding wisely to one another. Kate did not ask what they were talking about.
The days passed and became weeks: two weeks — three weeks — four. The weather continued to be fair and remarkably mild for the month, one of those rare quiet seasons, the "Saint Luke's summer" that came like a blessing from time to time at the very end of autumn. It was not until almost the first of December that Kate awoke to find that the wind had veered north in the night and the sky was the color of iron.
"There's snow coming," said Sir Geoffrey at dinner that noon. "I knew this weather was too good to last. Christopher had better start back soon if he doesn't want to find the roads blocked."
"He's been gone a long while," said Kate. "I thought he was just taking Cecily to her Aunt Jennifer's."
"He may have business of his own in London. Who knows? Perhaps he's found a girl he fancies at last." Sir Geoffrey pushed back his plate and rose to his feet, smiling down at her. "Would you care to ride over to the Elvenwood with me, Kate? I want to mark some of the trees for felling."
"In the Elvenwood?" said Kate, almost sharply.
"Why not? We're likely to have a great need of ship timber in England if the Queen dies and the Lady Elizabeth isn't fool enough to marry King Philip. That oak in your glade by the waterfall would go near to making a ship by itself."
"Not the dancing oak?"
"It can dance on the waves," said Sir Geoffrey
. "Come along, lass. We won't be more than an hour."
Kate shook her head. She was not superstitious, but she did not want to see the dancing oak marked for felling, and she did not think she would care to put to sea in any ship that was fashioned out of its timber. "I'll keep to the battlements," she said.
But on the battlements it had grown bitterly cold; the stone seat was icy to the touch, and the heavy gray clouds hung so low that they seemed no further off than a roof of moving rock. In the end, for the first time, she was glad to get back to the warmth and shelter of her room, even though Dorothy opened the door as she approached and said in her most old-nursery voice: "Come in, Mistress Katherine, and see what Susan and I have for you to try on."
"I tried on that dress this morning," said Kate. "And it doesn't need anything more done to it."
"Ah, but this isn't the same dress," said Dorothy coyly. "You come and see."
The dress lay spread in splendor on the coverlet of the bed. It was silk brocade, the most beautiful Kate had ever seen, all deep glowing bronze with a sheen of gold where the light caught it, woven in a pattern of birds and acanthus leaves. The bodice was cut square across the breast and closely fitted, but the skirt was wide, falling in folds from the narrow waist and opening like a flower over a petticoat of yellow satin. The brocade sleeves of the bodice were closely fitted too, but dropped away at the elbow into great bell shapes that were lined with golden brown marten fur, turned back and fastened with sapphire clasps to show the fur and big wrist-length undersleeves of the same yellow satin as the petticoat. There were sapphire pins to hold the little square black velvet hood to the hair, and a sapphire pendant on a thin fine gold chain for the throat.
Susan and Dorothy stood beaming delightedly at the look on Kate's face.
"It's from all of us, Mistress Katherine," said Susan. "Dorothy thought of it, and Sir Geoffrey gave us the sapphires for it, d — "
"Aren't you going to try it on, Mistress Katherine?" broke in Dorothy, almost weeping with excitement and self-importance. "No, don't you stir a finger; Susan and I will see to you . . . The brocade and the satin and the fur were laid by in a chest, and I said to Sir Geoffrey . . . Give me that comb . . . 'Sir Geoffrey,' I said to him, 'it's not for me to speak, but I can't bear the thought of all that lying there going to waste, and Mistress Katherine with nothing but done-over clothes to her name.' No, don't look in the mirror till we've finished. I made just such a dress for my own lady Anne years ago when she was a girl your age, and the sapphires are what she wore at her wedding . . . There, Susan! wasn't I right? The bronze color was the one for her hair, and the blue to bring out her eyes. Turn round now, Mistress Katherine, and see how it becomes you before you go show yourself to Sir Geoffrey."