"I — I — " she stammered. "If you would take a gift from me, my lady? I can't rightly thank you, and — and it's an ill thing, living up at the castle. I'd feel easier to know you had a bit of the cold iron about you."
It was a little cross strung on a chain, such as peddlers sold to country women, and remarkable only because it appeared to be made of steel rather than the usual brass or silver. The workmanship was of the crudest kind, and the righthand bar was so skewed and bent that it looked ready to snap off at a touch.
"Thank you," murmured Kate, feeling a little as she had on the day that Alicia had come running out after Sir Geoffrey's horses, all in tears, and holding up her own most precious possession — a feather fan with a mirror set in it — for Kate to take on her journey. Then, seeing the anxious question in the woman's eyes, she added impulsively: "I shall wear it always. I promise you that I will. See!" She put the chain around her neck and thrust the cross down safe under her bodice.
The redheaded woman drew a long breath of relief and satisfaction.
"And you'll be sure to lay your hand upon it if the Lady in the Green ever comes nigh you again?" she begged. "There's a great virtue in the holy sign and the cold iron, and my grandmother always said — "
"Yes, I want to hear all about your grandmother when I come for the cloak," Kate interrupted her. "I have to get back to the castle now. There's — " and she too drew a long breath of relief and satisfaction, "there's something I ought to be doing."
Chapter VI
The Leper's Hut
Kate had somehow expected that Christopher Heron would be standing and looking at the dark entrance to the Holy Well, exactly as she had left him, but he was not there. Half an hour later, much discouraged and painfully aware of her feet, she was still searching the valley for some trace of him. He was not in the Well cave or by the spring or anywhere near the Standing Stone, and it was only when she left the path and began threading her way through the masses of tumbled stone along the cliff wall that a distant flicker of white caught her eye.
It was the napkin-wrapped bundle she had seen swinging from the page's hand earlier that morning; but the page was gone and the bundle was lying in a hollow on the top of a broad flat slab of rock. Just beyond, a little way up the valley, more rocks had been dragged against the cliff face to form low walls which had been roofed over with rough-cut stone. A wooden door had been fitted into one of the walls, but it was so gray and weather-beaten that even near at hand the leper's hut could easily have been mistaken for a broken fold in the cliff itself.
The door was open, and there was nobody inside. Along the back cliff wall ran a long low shelf of rock which in Henry Warden's time had probably been softened by cushions and blankets from the castle; but there was nothing on it now, only the bare rock. In the right-hand wall was a crude fireplace of blackened stones with not even the ashes of a fire on the hearth. The only sign that the place was still inhabited was an ironbound chest set against the left-hand wall, with Christopher's gold-hilted hunting knife flung down carelessly on the closed lid. Otherwise, a cell or a tomb could hardly have been more desolate; and after one quick look Kate turned aside and went back to wait in the sun on the flat rock beside the bundle of food. He would certainly come for it sooner or later; meanwhile she could only hope that he had not been watching the path and was deliberately keeping out of her way.
The knot that secured the napkin was loose, and without lowering herself so far as to pry into the bundle she was able to see that it contained nothing except a half-loaf of coarse kitchen bread, at least a week old and harder than a billet of wood. She turned it over with one distasteful finger.
"Hungry?"
Kate swung around, too taken up with the loaf of bread even to be annoyed by the tone of the voice. "Is this all you get to eat?" she demanded accusingly.
"I might have known that that would be the first question you'd ask me," said Christopher Heron, standing over her. He had certainly been tramping about in the rain, just as she had thought he would; the old tattered blue smock was now hardly more than a sodden mass of rags. His face was set in the mask of contemptuous amusement which of all his masks was the one she disliked the most.
"What's the matter?" he inquired. "You're smirking like somebody with a sweet for a child: 'which will you have, the right hand or the left one?' Stop hovering, can't you? I don't care which hand it's in; and whatever it is, I don't want it."
Kate hesitated, and then made up her mind to tell him the whole story of the morning, step by step, exactly as it had happened. She wanted to see his face change while she told it.
"I was walking down by the river today — " she began.
Christopher listened without interrupting until she came to the end. His set face did not change at all as she went on. It only became slightly more set and contemptuous.
"And what made you trouble yourself with that old wives' tale?" he demanded curtly.
Kate flushed. She felt as if one of the splendid racing clouds overhead had suddenly begun to dissolve into a shower of cold rain. "But I saw the Lady in the Green," she protested. "I saw her with my own eyes."
"You saw a woman standing on the bank," Christopher corrected her. "She didn't have to be the Queen of the Fairies to look down at my brother's men as they went by on the road. Be reasonable, can't you?"
"I am being reasonable," Kate insisted. "And the curbstone of the Well is nearly five feet off the ground."
"O Lord!" said Christopher wearily. "Do we have to go over all of that again? I know, I know, you don't believe Cecily could have climbed up there; but it's a deal easier to believe in than a pack of bogles lurking down in a cavern to steal children! And I thought you had such a good clear mind!"
"You didn't see her fall. You said yourself you couldn't find out what became of her. Haven't you ever thought that she might still be alive somewhere?"
"Oh yes, often," said Christopher. "Very often. When I was a boy in Norfolk we had an old serving man who'd lost one of his hands. He told me that for a long time afterwards he kept thinking the hand was still there, he could feel all the fingers, it was so real to him that sometimes he'd wake on a cold winter morning and start trying to light the fire with it — before he remembered — "
"I don't see what that has to do with Cecily," said Kate stubbornly.
"It was by way of being a parable or fable," said Christopher. "Now in my case — " He broke off in the middle of his sentence and said: "Listen! What's that?"
Somewhere above them, on the path that led down from the Standing Stone, a voice was singing. It was a high, familiar voice, curiously piercing and sweet:
It fell about the winter time,
A cold day and a snell,
That as I to the hunting rode
That from my horse I fell —
The tune suddenly curved over, sweeping down on a sort of low mournful cry:
And the Queen of the Fairies took me,
In yon green hill to dwell.
"Randal," said Christopher, with a jerk of his head. They could see the small brown figure now, flitting along the path between the rocks. "Have you ever heard him talking of the Fairy Folk? He says they took his wits away from him. That's what comes of meddling in such foolery. You'll end wandering about the country too, with a harp over your shoulder, looking for the way in again, if you're not careful."
"The way in where?" asked Kate.
"God knows," said Christopher. "I was only repeating the words after him. The way back into his right mind again, perhaps, poor soul."
Randal had seen them. He had left the path and was making his way towards them down the slope, pausing as he approached to bow and flourish the battered cap. The feather had now broken off altogether, and only a small crimson tuft remained in the band.
"That was the ballad of Tam Lin I was singing down there, but it was wrong of me," he remarked a little anxiously, as if apologizing for some carelessness. Then he looked at Kate, and his whole face lit
up like a delighted child's. "I know you well; the lady who gave me the bread from her hand one day in the forest. There are words for you from Sir Geoffrey. He came safely to his home in Norfolk, and said I was to carry him news of your doings when I went back again. To his brother," he added, in a rather puzzled voice, "Sir Geoffrey sent no word."
"Why was it wrong of you to sing the ballad of Tam Lin?" Kate cut in. She cared nothing for the ballad of Tam Lin — Alicia was the one who liked ballads — but any question was better than letting Randal talk any more about Sir Geoffrey's feelings for his brother.
"It's not a song to sing so close to the Queen's hall," said Randal, shaking his head. "Surely they'd never show me the way in again if they heard me. For it tells of the lady who rescued her lover out of the fairy land, and that's a story they wouldn't care to remember; and in it the teind is openly spoken of, and that's a thing they would choose to have for a secret."
"Teind?" asked Kate. She had never heard of a "teind" before: it might be a treasure, or a hiding place, or even a ceremony of some sort, for all she knew.
"It's a word they use in the north country," said Christopher's voice from behind her. "Meaning a tax — the sort of tax you pay to the Church. Like tithes."
"Yes, yes," Randal nodded eagerly. "That was the very same as Tam Lin said to the lady in the ballad." He began to sing again, softly this time, almost under his breath:
And pleasant is that fairy land,
To them that in it dwell,
But aye at the end of seven years
They pay a teind to hell:
And I'm so fair and fu of flesh,
I fear 'twill be mysel'.
"He means," said Christopher's voice behind her, "that the gentleman feared that he was to be put to death as a kind of sacrifice because he was tall and handsome. Don't ask me why."
"They would always take a man for it if they could," said Randal. "A young man of high degree, strong and with no blemish about him, like Tam Lin in the ballad — for he would be the one to have the greatest power in his spirit and his blood. I've heard it said that there was a time once when they might take the king of the land himself if it pleased them. But that was in the old days, a long time past, a long, long while ago. The king is beyond their reach now, and it's been many and many a year since they could lay their hands even on a man. I never saw a man in keeping for the teind among them, not any of the nights I've been in the Queen's hall."
"Where?" asked Kate sharply.
It was a mistake; she knew it before the word was even out of her mouth. Randal drew back as if she had struck him, and gave her a vague, confused look. The sudden question had been too much for him. "Yes, my lady?" he mumbled. "What did you say?"
"Nothing," said Kate. She settled herself on the flat rock again, and stretched out one casual foot to study the tip of her shoe. "I only wanted to know how you came to be in the Queen's hall."
Randal twisted his cap nervously between his hands.
"I-I found the way in once," he stammered, "and by their law they can never use a singer to pay for the teind, so — so they took my wits away, to keep me from telling their secrets, and then they turned me out into this world again. But some nights ..."
"Some nights?"
"Some nights they let me come back to them."
"To see the teind paid, no doubt," murmured Christopher's voice behind Kate's shoulder.
"I never saw the teind paid," said Randal. "It's not a thing they do except when the seven years are past, or else during a time of great need, when the harvest fails or an enemy has broken into the land. No, no, if they let me come back, it's only to play my harp for them on a night when they are dancing." His whole face suddenly lit up again, and when he spoke it was as though he were lost in some dream. "O the dancing!" he whispered. "The cup that I drink from, and the singing and the gold! I've seen them strip the crowns from their heads and the jewels from their hands and throw them to me like pennies at a fair for a tune that pleased them; and then I think sure they will keep me forever, but they never do, they never do." He shook his head mournfully. "For at the last I always fall asleep, and when I awake I am lying out on the cold hillside again, and all that I have in my hand — "
He knelt down with one of his quick, fantastic movements, and taking the leather pouch from his belt, emptied something out over the stones at Kate's feet. It was a cluster of brown oak leaves and a little circlet of dead wildflowers, the blossoms so withered and dry that they had begun to fall from the stems. One or two were caught by the air and went floating away on the wind.
Randal watched them go with miserable, bewildered eyes.
"Did you ever see the like of that?" he said.
"No." Kate had never heard Christopher use that voice before. She would not have believed that he could speak so gently. "No."
"But, Randal — " she began.
Christopher dropped one hand warningly on her shoulder. "No," he repeated. Randal had picked up the cluster of oak leaves and was looking at it doubtfully. "I keep thinking maybe they'll turn back to the gold some day, but they never do, they never do," he said with a long sigh, putting the cluster down and fumbling in the pouch again. "It's always so when I wake. There was a little yellow-haired girl who gave me the slipper from her own foot, all made of butterfly wings it was, but when I awoke all that I had in my hand — "
He drew the hand from the pouch and held something else out to them. It was a child's slipper which had once been fine leather, bright crimson, with a lace at the ankle, exactly like its mate that Christopher had found on the curbstone of the Holy Well — but this one was stained and faded and worn almost to rags.
The hand on Kate's shoulder closed suddenly and gripped it to the bone. "What little girl?" said Christopher in a harsh, tearing whisper.
Randal was busy gathering his treasures back into the pouch, and did not even glance at him.
"A little girl," he said vaguely. "A little yellow-haired girl dancing in a ring with the others. On a dancing night they make no difference between their own kind and those they have taken. It's not as it was in the old days. I've heard it said that in the old days they might take the king of the land himself to pay the teind if it pleased them; but now the best they can hope for is to find a child that's run away or been left to roam, and steal it away with them."
Kate felt Christopher behind her draw a deep, gasping breath; and for an instant she thought her shoulder would break as the hand that gripped it suddenly took the whole weight of his body. Then, just as suddenly, the hand was gone; and she heard his feet stumbling away blindly among the rocks.
"Where is he going?" asked Randal, getting up and turning his head to look. Kate lunged to her own feet and swung him around by the arm. "There's a matter he has to see to," she gabbled, improvising wildly. "We've all of us been talking too long, look at the sun, it must be almost time for dinner, you ought to get back to the castle, Sir Geoffrey won't like it if he finds out you aren't having any food or rest. Don't you remember what he told you?"
"He told me to carry him news of your doings," said Randal conscientiously, "and also that I was to play on my harp for you."
"Yes, yes, that was very kind of him," said Kate. "I'll tell you what we'll do now. You go down to the castle and have your rest, and tonight when everyone's asleep you come up on the terrace by the great hall and I'll whisper you the news of my doings out of a window. That way it will be like having a secret. None of the others will know. No one will know but you and me."
"No one but you and me," said Randal, nodding and putting his finger to his lips. He slung his cloak around him with a great air of secrecy, as pleased as a child with a new game, and then stood hesitating. "There's somebody weeping up there in the little house," he said. "Can't you hear him?"
"No," said Kate. "That's only the water from the spring by the Well, running over the rock."
"The water springing out of the rock, and a man weeping for joy up there in the little house," sa
id Randal. "I can hear him. Don't you want to go over and see?"
"No!" said Kate. "It's nothing to trouble for. Show me now how you can go away very quietly without his catching you. Remember that no one must know you're coming up on the terrace tonight but you and me."
Randal nodded again, "Nobody but you and me," he agreed happily and went tiptoeing off up the path with all the stealth of a Robin Hood.
Kate, taking care not even to glance at the door of the leper's hut, went back to the flat rock and fixed her eyes and her mind deliberately on the walls and towers that rose into the sky at the far end of the valley. She remembered the redheaded woman saying, "They know it well enough up at the castle," and old Dorothy on the battlement walk telling her how Lord Richard's wife had taught him the ways of the land, "and he reared his sons according to the custom at the Gard; and for many and many a hundred years they held the Elvenwood and kept it free and safe from all the world." She had thought at the time that Dorothy was only boasting of the family's dignity, but now —
There was a sound as if a door had slammed open somewhere behind her, and then feet among the rocks again — very quick feet this time: running. Christopher had come out of the leper's hut and was hurtling like a comet up the slope to the pathway.
Kate caught at his hand as he shot by her.
"Where are you going?" she demanded.
The comet paused for an instant in its burning flight through heaven.
"To get her back," said Christopher, in a dangerously reasonable voice. His eyes were still wet, but they looked as though they had seen the Resurrection itself, and his whole face was dazed and radiant. "Kate, did you hear him? Did you hear what he said? She's alive in there somewhere. O merciful God, Kate, she's alive!"
"Of course she's alive!" said Kate. "What did I tell you! But as for getting her back — "