"Kate, I can't stay." He was throwing the words over his shoulder now, straining against her hold. "I have to go find Master John. We never really searched that chasm under the Well. There must be a hidden way into it somewhere, and with every man from the castle and the village — "
"Have you gone mad?" Kate interrupted him. "Look at the castle! How much help can we get from there? Christopher, don't you see? Whatever it is, they're all in it together — Master John and old Dorothy and the others."
Christopher's eyes followed hers up to the line of walls and towers stretched like a protecting arm across the entrance to the valley, with the great blackened hulk of Lord Richard's keep shouldering over the rest. Then, slowly and reluctantly, the straining grip on her hand slackened.
"Yes, you're right: I must have gone mad," he said. "I wasn't thinking. What do we do now?"
"Talk," said Kate. "And would you mind if we sat down and ate a bit of your bread while we're talking? I don't know about you, but it must be almost noon by the sun, and I haven't had any breakfast."
"I might have known that would be the first thing you'd say," murmured Christopher; but he went over to the hut for his knife, and they hacked the loaf into shares and settled down together on the edge of the flat rock to eat it. The sun was now nearly overhead, and the whole valley lay in clear light from the archway in the distant wall to the dark mouth of the cave among the rocks.
"Master John is the one to reckon with," said Kate.
"I can't see Master John as the King of the Fairy Folk," remarked Christopher dryly.
"Neither can I, but he must be working for them, the way he did for the old lords. I wonder if even the old lords ever did anything but work for them. All they seem to have done for hundreds of years is stick to this place as if they were stewards or bailiffs or — "
"Wardens," said Christopher. "Guard the valley, get in the food, keep the world out of here, hold off the Church — and take their pay for it. Oh yes, it hasn't been just a matter of putting out a bowl of milk on the doorstep every night for the Little People. Or believing in the heathen gods either, perhaps. If there is anyone lurking down in that chasm to catch up the gold and the precious things the pilgrims throw into the Well, the creatures must be able to pay a fortune for whatever help or protection the castle gives them. Geoffrey never could understand where Anne's father got all the money he had to spend on long galleries and Italian paintings and tapestries and other gear. I'm glad she didn't tell him."
"I think she must have wanted to break away from them," said Kate, remembering the book she had found in the long gallery, and some of the other things she had learned about Lady Heron.
Christopher paused a moment before he answered.
"Yes, poor Anne," he said. "God forgive me, no wonder she was so set on getting Geoffrey out of the country! Can you imagine telling Geoffrey that your family belonged to a heathen cult that paid teinds to hell, and he would have to connive at it? Geoffrey, of all men?"
Kate thought of Sir Geoffrey's stern face, the iron mouth, the level implacable gray eyes. She shook her head. "Even old Dorothy told me you could never teach him the way of the land," she said, and added: "I suppose that was why they had to steal Cecily."
"Why they had to steal Cecily?"
"They'd want her for a hostage."
"Hostage?"
"To bargain with." It seemed to Kate that it was taking him a long time to see something so simple and obvious. "How could they know that you'd shut yourself up here and he'd go off and leave the place to Master John again?" she asked impatiently. "They must have had some other plan when they took her. Tell me, what would Sir Geoffrey give them to keep her safe?"
"Geoffrey," said Sir Geoffrey's brother, "would give them the castle and the Elvenwood and the last drop of blood in his body before he'd let them harm a hair of her head."
"There, then!" said Kate. "What did I tell you! It would be the first thing they'd think of."
"Yes," said Christopher slowly. "It would certainly be the first thing they'd think of, if — "
"If?"
Christopher's eyes went from the archway in the castle wall back to the dark entrance of the well cave.
"If they think of it as we would."
In spite of the noonday sun and the warm rock Kate suddenly felt as if a cold finger had reached out and touched her.
"What do you mean?" she asked sharply.
"I mean we're not dealing with just Master John or old Dorothy," said Christopher. "They're only on the edge of the circle; they're people like ourselves. But we can't be sure about Those in the Well. I'm not saying they're gods or anything of the kind. It's that we don't know how their minds work. We can't judge them by ourselves. Whatever they are, they're different. They live by another rule. We may think that the only way they could use Cecily would be as a hostage, to give them power over Geoffrey. They may think they could get far more power by using her for something else."
"But what else?" cried Kate, almost angrily, because she was so frightened. "What else could it be?"
"You heard what Randal told us," said Christopher grimly. "I don't know whether the seven years are past or not, but surely they must have come to 'the time of great need' that he was speaking of? They've lost the Wardens; Anne never even tried to teach Geoffrey the way of the land; everything's turning against them. And now this last week the harvest has failed too. You and I may say that it was only the chance of a bad storm coming after a wet summer. But don't you understand how it must seem to them?"
Kate gripped her hands together.
"Randal said they would always take a man to pay the teind when they could," she protested.
"Yes — when they could," retorted Christopher. "He also said that they've had to be satisfied with a child for a long while now."
"I don't believe it. I don't believe it, I tell you. They must be keeping her for a hostage. I'm sure they only want her for a hostage."
"We can hope so, certainly. But how much would you be willing to risk on the chance?"
"She was still alive when Randal saw her. They hadn't done her any harm."
"That means nothing. They may be waiting for some particular time or feast day. In the tales they're supposed to be very scrupulous about forms and observances and keep to the exact letter of any bargain they make." He paused, frowning.
"That ballad about Tam Lin," he said abruptly. "The one Randal was singing. How does it go on? What night did he tell his sweetheart that he would have to pay the teind?"
"I never heard Tam Lin before. I don't know."
"It was All Hallows' Eve," said Christopher. "I remember now.
The night is Halloween, my love,
The morn is Hallows' Day —
All Hallows' Eve. That's the night before All Saints' Day, the very end of October. So if they follow the same rule here, it would mean that we still have a little time."
"More than two months," said Kate, the blood coming back to her heart. She had been thinking of the very next night, or the night after that. By comparison, the end of October seemed blessedly far away.
"Yes," said Christopher. "The trouble is, we can't be sure they follow the same rule here. We can't even be sure that All Hallows' Eve is the right time. Two lines from a ballad aren't much to go by. Ballad singers are always changing verses about and forgetting them and putting in new ones." He slipped to his feet and walked restlessly away from her to the verge of the path, where it began to climb up steeply towards the Standing Stone.
"What we ought to be thinking of," said Kate, "is how to get hold of Sir Geoffrey."
"Geoffrey?" Christopher had his back to her now, and was looking down the path in the direction of the Holy Well.
"That's the one thing we can be sure of," said Kate, a little impatiently. All this hazy discussion of uncertainties and possibilities was beginning to grate on her nerves. It made her feel as though she were moving about in a fog, through which dim shapes kept looming up only to disappe
ar or shred away into cloud when she tried to grasp at them. She wanted to see a line of good, solid, heavily armed men who had soldiered in Ireland ride down the road from Norfolk with Sir Geoffrey at their head. Then at least they would have something to rely on. "How much time would it take you to get to your home and fetch him here again?" she demanded eagerly.
"That would depend on what this storm's done to the roads and the fords," said Christopher, without turning to face her. His voice sounded troubled and uncertain. "And if the floods are out in the fen country too — call it a week at the very best. Two, more likely."
"What's the matter?" asked Kate. "Wouldn't that be enough? If we have until All Hallows' Eve — "
"I may be wrong about All Hallows' Eve."
"You don't know you're wrong."
"And I don't know I'm right either. That's what the matter is. Neither of us knows. I'd only be gambling on my own convictions, and — and it isn't even my own money I'd be playing games with, if you want to put it that way. I can't risk Cecily's life for this kind of chance. Suppose I'm wrong, and something happens to her while I'm God knows where looking for Geoffrey? He may not even be at home when I get back."
"Well, I don't see what good you can do by just staying here," Kate pointed out tartly. "Do you think you can fight your way into the Queen's hall and save Cecily with your single arm, like King Arthur in a romance?" There was a long pause, while Christopher went on gazing down the path and Kate at his unresponsive back. She could not tell what he was thinking. She had never met anyone like him before, not in her own world, the London world of trade and law and merchant-adventuring and the fire-new court of the Tudor kings and queens, who had (when all was said and done) been nothing but adventurers themselves only eighty or ninety years ago. The Herons, she reflected bitterly, had probably been knights and ladies when the Suttons were still hauling up nets on a fishing smack. She wished nevertheless that she had not said what she had about King Arthur. It came to her suddenly and a little frighteningly that perhaps King Arthur had looked like that once — not the great King, the Lord of the Round Table, but the young Arthur, standing troubled and uncertain with his head lifted to read his fate written in the carved letters over the sword in the stone.
Then Christopher swung around to face her, and she saw to her relief that he was simply looking resigned, even a little amused. "Very well, madam," he said. "Your gentle words have touched me to the heart."
Kate let this piece of deliberate provocation go by her; she would have put up with much worse in return for winning the argument. "Master John won't stop you from leaving, will he?" she asked eagerly.
"Stop me? He'd give me a golden horse with a silver bridle and ten trumpeters to play me down the road if he thought there was the least hope of getting rid of me," said Christopher. "I'll tell you how we'll manage it. You go back to the Hall now and have your dinner before he and old Dorothy start wondering what's become of you; and afterwards you find a hidden corner in some obscure room and write me out a full account of this whole matter to take to Geoffrey."
"What!" It was so unexpected that for a moment Kate could only stare at him. "But Christopher, I can't do that! Suppose they catch me at it!"
"Surely you won't let them catch you at it? A clever girl like you."
"But why do it at all? Your word must be just as good as mine. Don't you think Sir Geoffrey's going to believe you?"
"I may fall sick or be thrown from my horse somewhere along the road," said Christopher persuasively. "We ought to get all the evidence down in writing, as soon as we can. I'd do it myself, but I've no ink or paper here at the hut; and if I start asking for them about the house, Master John may get wind of it."
Kate hesitated. Hovering uneasily at the back of her mind was an odd and remarkably clear recollection of herself sending Randal off up the same path only a short while before, inventing a little plan to keep him happy, a little secret business that he was to carry out for her, a little something she had scrambled together to get him out of her way so that she could turn her thoughts to quite another matter which she had no intention of confiding to him.
She looked at Christopher very hard, but there was no protest she could reasonably make. She could see that the letter might be very useful. She did have to get back to the house. Master John or old Dorothy would certainly be wondering what had become of her by this time.
"Christopher," she said, almost appealingly. "Christopher, what are you going to do while I'm up at the Hall?"
"What do you think I'm going to do?" asked Christopher. "Throw another penny into the Holy Well and tell them that I didn't really mean what I said the first time? You run away to the Hall now like a good girl and have your dinner and write that letter for me."
Chapter VII
The Evidence Room
To eat dinner and write a letter afterwards should have been easy enough. In actual practice it turned out to be surprisingly difficult. When Kate got back to the house — inconspicuously, by way of the stairs up to the battlement walk that ran around the old curtain wall — the dinner hour was past; and as she emerged from the long gallery, she was pounced on by old Dorothy, in a very bad temper after her attack of rheumatism, scolding and wanting to know where she had been, why she was so late, and what, Those in the Well be good to us! had she done to her clothes? — the second dress she had ruined in a week, covered with mud, Mistress Katherine, covered with mud the whole front of the skirt, and half the sleeve ripped out at the elbow.
Kate tried to placate her by explaining what had happened to the little boy, but Dorothy refused to be placated. She merely observed that it would not be a great matter if all the village brats were drowned together like kittens in a sack; that was no reason why castle folk should miss their meals and destroy good gowns playing about on the banks of dirty rivers. She then marched the culprit down to the great hall, and flounced out to the buttery to get her a plate of fruit and cheese with her own hands, pointedly remarking that she did not like to give the servants trouble on a day when everyone had so much work to do after the storm. By way of emphasis she limped about the table on her poor aching feet throughout the meal, with unnecessary dishes and paring knives, muttering under her breath about fine London manners. When Kate had finished, she drove her upstairs again, and fetching the sewing basket, sat faithfully beside her while the muddy skirt was sponged and brushed and the sleeve mended as well as it could be. Kate, always clumsy, had never been deft with her needle like Alicia, and she was obliged to pull out her stitches and reset the sleeve and sew it up again more than once before the task was completed to Dorothy's satisfaction. Her only answer to any protest was to purse up her lips and inquire ominously whether Mistress Katherine would like her to put the matter before Master John?
The huge and inordinately expensive new castle clock which the late Lord Warden had installed over the main archway to the outer courtyard was striking four when she finally closed the sewing basket and grumbled herself out of the room. The next problem was to get ink and paper to write with. There was plenty of ink and paper in the little whitewashed chamber off the great hall, the "evidence room" where Master John did the business of the estate; but the last thing Kate wanted to do at that moment was to attract Master John's attention to herself or give him any reason to wonder why she needed ink and paper at all. In the end she returned to the long gallery, where she came at last upon a quill pen and an inkhorn covered with gold filigree work among the curiosities in one of the cabinets. The ink in the horn was dried hard and had to be thinned with water, and the only paper she could discover was a blank page at the end of Anne Warden's old Lives of the Saints.
The sun was dangerously low in the sky by the time she finished the last of the letter, folded it up, and hid it under the bodice of her dress, catching her finger on the crooked bar of the redheaded woman's cross in her hurry. She shook it free with an exclamation of annoyance. Five o'clock supper would soon be on the table, and with old Dorothy in her p
resent mood, it would never do to be late for that as well. She thrust the cross hastily down again among the folds of the letter, and made her way back to the great hall just as Master John took his place by the cupboard and the serving men began to file into the room.
Supper was a less ceremonial meal than dinner, but it took a great many dishes to feed the entire household on what was left over from the high table, and courtesy required that all the dishes should at least be offered to the high table first, even when there was only one girl sitting there to pick and choose between them. Kate did not dare to choose less or even to eat a little more quickly than usual, though the food choked her and she felt as if the procession of venison pies, stewed pigeons, hot mutton with caper sauce, grilled chicken, roasted plums, sallets, custards, and sweet cakes was never going to come to an end. Christopher would be waiting for the letter to Sir Geoffrey; if it did not reach him soon he might not be able to set out with it until morning, a whole night wasted; and all she could do was sit in the great hall with Humphrey bending over her shoulder to offer her cream for her roasted plums. The only blessing was that Master John seemed thoughtful and preoccupied, and scarcely glanced in her direction after he had bowed her into her customary seat. When the supper was over he went straight back to the evidence room, taking old Dorothy with him.
Kate rose from her chair and sauntered over to the doorway. The evening was a fine one, with a brilliant sunset, and it was only natural to stroll out on the terrace and then wander quietly down the steps into the courtyard. She did not even have to wait for a loitering groom or page to get out of her way; there was nobody in sight. She turned the corner by Lord Richard's tower and melted thankfully into the shadows of the passage.
Christopher was waiting for her by the Standing Stone. She had just crossed the flat wide stretch of rough grass beyond the archway when she heard a low voice say, "Kate!" and looking around, saw him leaning against the great rock on the side away from the castle. He reached out his hand and pulled her over to him.