Christopher Heron put his hand into the breast of his smock and held something out to her. It was a very small slipper, made of fine leather, bright crimson, the toe scuffed, and a loose lace trailing from a broken eyelet at the ankle.
"I found that on the lip by the edge of the shaft," he told her. "The lace had caught between two of those flat stones. She must have climbed up somehow and torn it off when she fell. We never got her body back. Master John says that no one knows how deep the Well is. It goes down into a chasm below the rocks, some sort of underground river. The water runs very strong there; didn't you hear it? Everything you throw in gets carried away. They call it 'being taken by the Well.' That was what old Dorothy kept screaming — 'The Well's taken her! You let the Well take her!' over and over again."
Old Dorothy screaming, feet running, the empty gaping circle of stones with its wet lip like a mouth, the useless torches and ropes, the shouts, the questions, the crowd of faces, Sir Geoffrey's face, Christopher Heron's —
Kate's eyes went from the narrow dark opening among the rocks to Christopher Heron, standing by the spring with his back to the cliff wall. He was still looking at the entrance to the cave, steadily, and without moving.
"Well?" he said.
Kate lifted her head, groping among her scattered wits for one fragment of the story that had puzzled her.
"How did Master John know that there was a chasm under the rocks?" she inquired shakily.
"Lord, girl!" Christopher Heron was startled out of his immobility. "Is that all you can say?"
"I-I'm sorry," Kate stammered. "I was only wondering — "
"I didn't murder anyone to inherit Elvenwood Hall. The whole of the Elvenwood can sink in the sea before I'd lay a finger on it. But what old Dorothy said to you was true. I killed Cecily. She was the dearest thing in the world to Geoffrey, and he trusted her to me, and I brought her to this place, and I killed her. Is that clear?"
"Yes, but — "
"And you want to know why Master John thought there was a chasm under the rocks?"
Kate flushed. What had he expected her to do? Start screaming at him, like old Dorothy?
"Yes," she repeated stubbornly.
Christopher Heron shrugged his shoulders again.
"I can't tell you why Master John thought so. From what I've seen of Master John, I should say he was down in the chasm trying to fish out some of the pilgrims' gold. Master John doesn't strike me as the sort of man to let a little thing like superstition stand in the way of his picking up an honest penny."
"Could he do it?" asked Kate promptly.
"No. The current down there would carry anything away. I only said he might try. It must go to his heart to see all that good money lost in the water."
"Does it really cure sorrow or pain and the grief of a wound?" said Kate, frowning a little.
"The water, or the money?"
Kate decided to ignore this frivolity. "Dorothy sounded so certain that it did," she persisted.
"I don't know. I never tried."
"You told me you drank some of the water. What did it taste like?"
"It tasted like water to me," said Christopher Heron. "Cold plain water. But old Dorothy would certainly tell you that that was because I only gave a penny to the Well."
"Why?"
"The story goes that the more you cast in, the stronger the water you draw out will be. A penny only brings you luck. A silver piece, and the cup will cheer you. To cure sorrow or pain and the grief of a wound, it has to be gold or precious stones. Pure gold and rubies are the best, but any small diamond or pearl you may happen to have about you — "
"You're laughing at me," Kate interrupted him. "That can't be true."
"I didn't say it was true. I said it was the way the story went."
Kate sighed. She had thought there was a chance that the water might actually be medicinal, like the mineral springs at Buxton — she had passed through Buxton on her way north with Sir Geoffrey — and instead it was only a pother of outlandish magical nonsense like something in a romance.
"What's the matter now?" asked Christopher Heron. "Are you suffering from sorrow or pain and the grief of a wound? Throw a diamond or a ruby into the Holy Well, and that will ease you."
"I'm not a heathen savage," said Kate. "Diamonds and rubies! I never heard such foolishness."
"What a good clear mind you have."
"It doesn't take a very clear mind to keep from throwing diamonds and rubies down a hole in the ground. As if anyone would!"
"Anyone? What about old Dorothy?"
"Anyone who had a diamond or a ruby to spend wouldn't be a poor ignorant creature like old Dorothy."
"Oh, would they not!" Christopher's mouth twisted wryly for an instant. "In the last four months I must have seen almost fifty pilgrims go up to the Well. About half looked to be charcoal burners or gypsies or servants from the Hall with a penny to spend for luck. The other twenty-five or so were rich folk, no mistaking it — what our old bailiff in Norfolk would call 'gentry born': velvet and fur and Master John to escort them, big purses at their belts and big rings on their fingers and big clinking gold chains around their necks. When they come down from the Well, the chains are gone and their hands are bare and the purses are flat — and it isn't only for the one time, either. Some of them come back over and over again. Did you see the old gentleman who was here this morning?"
"Yes," said Kate reluctantly.
"That was the third time he's gone up to the Well since I've been here. Then there's a woman in mourning black — she comes very often, almost every two weeks — and a dark girl with some sort of scar or blotch on her face, and a one-armed man, and five or six others, all holding wet branches and bottles of water to their bosoms, happy as drunkards, the poor ignorant creatures."
"Are you sure?" Kate could still hardly believe it.
"Certain. One of the Wardens about a hundred years ago had a son called Henry who was a leper. They built a hut for him to live in down yonder among the rocks. You can watch the whole valley from there. Nobody could go by on the path without my seeing them."
"Why?"
"I told you why," said Christopher impatiently. "The man was a leper. He had to stay where he could see people coming if he was going to keep out of their way."
"No, no, it isn't that. You said, without your seeing, nobody could go past without your seeing them. As if you were there all the time. As if — " An appalling thought suddenly flashed into Kate's mind. "Sir Geoffrey doesn't make you live in that place, does he?"
"Geoffrey has nothing to do with it," said Christopher Heron. "He hasn't concerned himself with me or my affairs for a long time now, any more than my father did. I live as I please."
"In that place?"
"I go back to the Hall whenever Geoffrey comes."
"But when he's away you live in that place?"
"I have to live somewhere."
Kate looked up the narrow valley with its litter of fallen stones and the bare rock shutting it in on either side. The gray clouds that had filled the sky all morning had begun to close down and were pouring over the cliffs like smoke. "But surely you haven't any need — " she began.
"No: Henry Warden saw to all that," Christopher cut in before she could finish the sentence. "It's not far to the spring, and there's a flat rock by the door of the hut where a boy from the castle could come and leave food without troubling him."
"I don't care what Henry Warden did," said Kate fiercely. "You aren't a leper like Henry Warden."
"No, I'm not. He shut himself away before he could kill anybody."
"You didn't kill Cecily."
"Why is she dead, then?"
"You didn't mean to kill her. Any more than you meant to kill your mother."
"I could have kept her safe at the Hall, I could have tried to catch her on the path, I could have gone to look for her sooner, I said I wanted to be rid of her, perhaps in my heart I always wanted to be rid of her without knowing it. How c
an you tell what I meant to do? How can I? How can anyone? I think the damned souls in hell must spend half their time wondering what it was that they really meant to do."
"If you think the damned in hell spend their time doing that, then you can't know very much about the damned in hell," Kate retorted furiously. "I am utterly at squares with this childish dealing. Why in the name of heaven don't you go down to the village and make a proper confession to the priest and let him tell you what penance you ought to be laying on yourself? You aren't one of the damned in hell. We're all of us under the Mercy."
"I'll lay my own penance on myself," said Christopher Heron. "And I wasn't born under the Mercy . . . Good lord, it's starting to rain again! Look at that sky."
Kate disregarded the sky. "You could at least go away somewhere else where you wouldn't have to think about her all the time," she suggested, as a last resort.
"I could go digging for pearls in the ground too, and much good that would do me," said Christopher Heron. "Must you leave now?"
"I wasn't leaving."
"Oh yes, you are," said Christopher Heron. "Leaving to my great regret because I don't want you to get caught in the rain and die of a cold or ague. How otherwise could I courteously put an end to this stupid and profitless conversation? I told you what I did because I laid it on myself to do it, but I've told you now and it's over and done. Why should we go on quacking over the way I feel — or the life I lead — or anything else I may choose to do? Be off with you."
He said it very quietly, without stirring a step, but something in his voice swung Kate around like a hand on her shoulder and sent her almost running up the path back to the castle. She was halfway to the Standing Stone before she paused and glanced back.
Christopher Heron was still standing where she had left him. He had turned his head again and was looking through the rain at the dark opening in the cliff wall.
Chapter V
The Redheaded Woman
The rain lasted three days. By the time Kate went to bed, it was falling steadily, and by midnight it was coming from the northeast in great gusts that lashed against the windows and made it impossible to rest. She lay awake a long while staring into the dark and wondering how far a leper's hut that had been deserted for a hundred years would serve to keep out the weather or shelter anyone, even supposing that anyone had sense enough left to get under shelter. He had more likely laid it on himself to tramp about in the rain.
She sat up, punching her down pillow vindictively into shape. It was all very well for a hero in a romance, like Sir Launcelot, to break his heart and — how did it go? — "run mad in the wilderness"; but in her opinion Sir Launcelot had behaved very foolishly. Somebody ought to have stopped him.
But who was to stop Christopher Heron from doing as he chose?
For one instant, she had a brief dazzling vision of Katherine Sutton back in the valley again, facing Christopher Heron with cool certainty, winning all the arguments, reducing him to a state of stammering admiration and apology; but this dream did not survive a moment's inspection: it would have to be somebody else. Not Master John — if it suited Sir Geoffrey's heir to spend his days repenting in a leper's hut while Master John went on ruling over the whole estate, Master John would doubtless be only too pleased to oblige him. Sir Geoffrey? Sir Geoffrey was far away out of reach in Norfolk, but when he returned in November — ? When he returned in November, Christopher would come back and stand in the great hall again, with his fine green suit and his hand on the gold-inlaid hilt of his hunting knife, to keep his brother from knowing where he had really been spending his time. It might be a foolish proud way to act, but it was his last dignity, the only one that was left him, and how was it possible to tell Sir Geoffrey without stripping him even of that? She could not do it. She could not, as a matter of fact, do anything at all.
The worst of it was that she kept having a strange, restless feeling that there was something she ought to be doing. She could not think what it was, but there was something, flickering at the back of her mind where she could not get at it, like a mote on the edge of her eye. Even when she finally drifted off into a half-consciousness filled with the sound of falling rain, it was only to hear Master Roger's voice again, as she had on her first night at the Hall, very faint and far off, telling her to listen, there was something she had forgotten, something urgent, listen, there was something she ought to be doing, but though she listened frantically all that came to her was a confused echo of more voices, Randal's voice singing,
O where is the Queen, and where is her throne?
Down in the stone O, but not in the stone,
and mingled with it another voice, a child's voice crying pitifully, "O Cecily is lost! Where is Cecily?" over and over, until she woke shivering with the room still dark and the rain tearing at the windows.
The morning was no better. The storm had risen higher during the night, turning to gales that ripped along the roofs and sent tiles and chimney pots crashing down in fragments over the stones of the courtyard. By noon they were having trouble with all the fires, and dinner was a matter of bread and cheese and lukewarm broth and yesterday's roast duck cold. Pages and menservants with errands to do stood huddled in the doorways, eyeing the sky like uneasy animals before they pulled their cloaks over their heads and darted out into the rain.
Kate spent most of the day wandering restlessly about the house. She hated storms, and the queer sense that there was something she ought to be doing still nagged at her. Old Dorothy had taken to her bed with the rheumatism, and that meant she had no one to talk to. There was a great carved case full of books in the long gallery, but most of them seemed to be ancient manuscripts of works on alchemy and medicine, illustrated with obscure designs and written in languages that she could not read. She finally stumbled on a small, badly printed Lives of the Saints in English, thrust away behind the others. It had apparently belonged to Anne Warden; her name, looking oddly familiar, was written on the title page in a thin, delicate hand. Kate riffled over the leaves idly, catching at a passage here and there:
. . . and then came a night of great rains and wind, and in the midst of it the ferryman was awakened by a child's voice crying pitifully, "It is very late, and I am lost far away from my home, O come and carry me over the river." So he arose, and took his staff in his hand, and set the child on his shoulder, and went his way into the water; but ever as he went that water rose higher, and he felt the burden of the child grow heavier and yet heavier, as though he were carrying the whole weight of the world on his own back, until he cried out, "It is more than I can bear!" and then — and then she broke off without finishing the story. She knew how it ended, it was one of the most familiar of all the legends, the sudden radiance of light surrounding the Child at the end of the crossing, the divine voice saying, "And your name henceforth shall be Christopher, the Christ-bearer, because you were moved by pity to carry your Lord tonight." But that had been in the morning of the world, when miracles rose out of the wayside grass as easily as larks; it was not to be expected that such a thing would happen again. She closed the book and went over to the window to see if the storm showed any signs of slackening off.
The wind had quieted a little, but the rain was falling harder than ever. The line of stone discharge-spouts jutting from the roof gutters was choked and strangling with water. More water was running from every slate and tile and pane, sheeting down walls and buttresses, gathering in streams among the rocks of the hill, making its way to the flat lands around the village in the valley. The tranquil little river that wound through the corn fields to feed the mill weir had become a raging brown torrent.
By the second day, the damp was steadily eating its way into the house, and a finger touching the velvet of a cushion left a spot. The rain continued to fall. Down in the valley, the river had swept away the mill weir and was pouring in floods over the fields through the broken bank. From the long gallery, Kate could see figures, dwarfed by the distance, toiling like ants wit
h rocks and hurdles and logs and sacks of earth to close the gap and save what was left of the standing crops. There was no telling what might have happened in the little valley where the Holy Well lay, on the other side of the castle. The battlement walk that opened off the long gallery ran all the way around the old curtain wall until it joined the walk above the archway that overlooked the valley; but when she made her way there, staggering under the wind, it was only to find that the whole gorge was so full of mist and rain that she could not see beyond the Standing Stone.
The third day the wind shifted towards the end of the afternoon, and the rain began to fall more and more softly, but by that time the change was too late to be of any use to the village. The waters were still coming down from the hills in floods, tearing out hurdle and log and earthwork, and spreading in a great widening sheet further and further over tile wreck of the grain.
The morning of the fourth day was different. All that was left of the storm was a fleet of huge white clouds racing like splendid ships over the flawless blue of the sky, with their shadows racing below them on the drowned fields that sparkled in the sun. Elvenwood Hall threw open its windows and began to sort itself out in a fine bustle of kindling fires, flourishing brooms, running feet, and chattering laughter. Kate was forgotten in the confusion; nobody had any time to think of her. She took a breakfast apple from a fruit dish on the high table, and slipped through the door out onto the terrace.
She glanced at the walk leading past Lord Richard's tower as she crossed the courtyard, and then turned aside — she was not wanted up at the Holy Well; and even if she had been, she could not have gone there: one of the castle pages was loitering about the overgrown passage, whistling and swinging a bundle wrapped in a white napkin. She went instead to the outer gate and dropped down the path towards the village.