The Perilous Gard

  The second girl rounded up the three women and took them off by the door to the right. Gwenhyfara beckoned to Kate and led the way back through the one on the left, into the room beyond.

  This was a large chamber in the form of an L, with the door at the end of the long stroke and another door at the end of the short one. It was evidently the place where the food had been dished and prepared, though anything less like the kitchens or buttery in her father's house Kate could hardly imagine. There was no fireplace, no proper salting trough or log box or chopping block, no pots or cleavers or spits hung up on hooks, no baskets for vegetables or poultry, no hams or strings of onions dangling from rafters, no stir or bustle or smoke or confusion, no pages or kittens running about underfoot. Here everything was fastidiously ordered and very bare. In the longer arm of the room were two charcoal braziers that held burnished copper pots; and opposite them, a fountain of hot bluish water gushing from the wall into a wide carved basin of stone. In the shorter arm of the room, the used horns and bowls had been set in careful rows down a stone table, the four golden ones at the far end, some distance from the rest. Underneath the table was a rack carrying a line of swabs and copper basins.

  Gwenhyfara told Kate to stand still by the door at the foot of the table, and then went out of the room, only to return almost at once carrying a last food bowl made of bronze, which she put down between the lowest of the wood and the highest of the gold. Then, under her direction, Kate brought water from the fountain in one of the copper basins and washed all the cups and dishes clean, drying them with the towel at her belt and laying them out again along the table in readiness for the next meal. The bronze bowl still held a few flakes of the sodden grain that the Fairy Folk ate; and Kate rinsed the stuff out hurriedly, thinking of the gray creature she had seen at the mouth of the Well cave. Apparently it took its food alone by itself, for which she was thankful: not even in the solemn assemblies of that underworld would it have seemed right for anyone to sit down and eat in its company.

  By the time she had finished her work, the second girl was back with Joan and Betty and Marian. They too were supplied with swabs and basins of water; and then all of them went into the great cavern, where Gwenhyfara and the second girl stood ceremonially at the doors holding lights while the others washed down the candle stains from the walls, and after that scrubbed the bench-ledges, the steps of the dais, and finally every inch of the floor.

  It was long and tedious work, all reaching, stooping, kneeling, dragging the swabs over interminable stretches of stone, breathing the damp chill of the wet rock, running back to rinse out and refill the basins the instant the water grew cold or dirty — why in the name of heaven, Kate reflected bitterly, could they not at least supply the servants and scrubbers with proper brushes and pails and mops! But Joan and Betty and Marian did not seem to care. They were now in the highest spirits, fairly crowing and giggling with happiness, dabbling their fingers through the water as if it were perfume, and sloshing away at the floor with great exhilarated sweeps of their arms. From time to time they would raise their heads one after another and gaze blissfully about them, though as far as Kate could tell, there was very little to see. The clusters of candles were still burning on the dais wall behind the stone chair; but without the Lady, even the dais appeared bleak and empty. She edged closer to the fair-haired woman and said in a whisper: "What are you looking at?"

  The woman stared at her and then broke into a peal of joyful laughter.

  "Isn't it wonderful?" she answered, pointing towards the echoing darkness over her head. "O wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!"

  "What's so wonderful?" asked Kate.

  "Be silent," said Gwenhyfara.

  They scrubbed down the rest of the floor in silence, and afterwards the floor and walls of the food place (for kitchen Kate could not bring herself to call it); and when that was done, Gwenhyfara bowed gravely to the second girl and led her four charges out through the door at the short end of the room. This brought them back into the passage down which they had come earlier; Kate recognized the dark narrow opening in the wall to her right, and the two closed doors where the steps began further on.

  The three women were more subdued now, and seemed to be growing drowsy. There were yawns and stumbles behind her all the way along the passage; and by the time they reached the stable, it was as much as they could do to huddle out of their clothes and collapse wallowing into the down and velvet of the beds. The wallowing passed into heaves and gurgles, and the gurgles into loud contented snores. Gwenhyfara lifted her branch of candles and turned to go.

  "Why are you standing there?" she asked.

  "Can I come with you?" Kate inquired hopefully. She did not want to be left shut up in the dark listening to Joan and Betty and Marian.

  "No," said Gwenhyfara. "Take off your dress and lie down."

  "When do we get up?" asked Kate, unclasping the gold-studded belt reluctantly.

  "When I call you."

  "When will that be?"

  "When we have need of you."

  Kate folded the skin robe away and lay down, wishing that she did not feel so much like a horse being backed into a stall until it was time for her to be harnessed and fed and watered and worked again. "Can I have one of your candles to keep by me?" she asked, adding hastily, "Just for the light."

  "No," said Gwenhyfara. "Light is precious here, and we do not use it except when we must have it for our work or to find our way by the signs through the secret passages, or to honor the Lady and the gods. Also, the weight may be coming upon you, and that is a thing which it is easier to bear in the dark."

  "What do you mean?" Kate asked, caught by the word "signs." It had sounded as if the passages must be marked somehow so that anyone who had the secret could move freely about in the Hill — but if that was true, Gwenhyfara would certainly not tell her the secret for the asking, and it might be better to keep her from knowing that Kate even thought there was a secret at all. She changed the question hurriedly to: "What do you mean by the weight?"

  "That is our name for it," said Gwenhyfara. "I do not know if it has a name in your world."

  "But what is it?" Kate insisted. "Where does it come from?"

  "There," said Gwenhyfara, and lifted her candle to let the light pour along the mass of rock over their heads. Then she turned without another word and went out through the archway, the darkness closing in behind her as she disappeared down the passage.

  Kate, for the first time, was almost glad of the darkness. When she had asked Gwenhyfara to let her have one of the candles, she had not been looking up at the rock. Even now, she could not get that last glimpse of it out of her mind, the great mass hanging in huge pendulous folds which had appeared more than ever to be sagging and bulging as if under the pressure of some enormous weight.

  She told herself not to be a fool, and fumbled under the lid of her bed-chest for a loose ribbon from her own old gown. Then she drew the redheaded woman's cross from its hiding place, and, settling back doggedly against her pillows, began to twist the ribbon around it. That would serve both to protect the weakened crossbar and keep Gwenhyfara from finding out that Kate had a bit of the cold iron about her. A bit of the cold iron — ! She thought of the redheaded woman's eager, anxious voice saying, "I'd feel easier to know you had a bit of the cold iron about you," and hunched one shoulder ruefully in the dark. It would need more than a bit of the cold iron to get her safely away from the Fairy Folk, but the little gift was at least a friendly thing to have in her hand as she lay there under the weight of the rock, the great mass hanging in —

  She told herself again, furiously this time, not to be a fool.

  The huge pendulous folds were nothing but flow-patterns left by the water that had cut the cave out of the rock, centuries ago. She knew that.

  The dead weight of the earth and the stone lying above was not forcing them down. She knew that too. If she would only think clearly of the place as it really was —
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  And then suddenly all that she knew of the place as it really was came rushing over her. The earth and the stone; the blind passages worming their way under the ground; the slippery paths with the slime underfoot; the cold air and the darkness; and always, everywhere, pressing about pit and cavern and passage, the incalculable weight of the rock. Her breath was coming quickly now, in light shallow gasps, as if she had no room to draw it. The fear that the cave roof was bulging and collapsing had been a fear of appearances, something she could argue away. The agonised horror she felt now was of the reality of the Hill itself — the tons and tons of actual earth and stone lying above her, closing down on her, shutting her in. It was like some suffocating dream of being buried alive; or rather it was like the moment of awakening from that dream to find that it was true.

  At last, very slowly, the horror receded; the sense of the weight lifted; and she sat up dizzily, pushing back the wet hair matted against her forehead. Joan and Betty and Marian were still grunting and flopping in the darkness, but the redheaded woman's cross had slipped from her hand and was gone. She groped about for it uncertainly — her fingers seemed to have no strength in them — and somehow or other found it on the floor and pulled the chain over her head. She was too spent even to think why she wanted it: she only felt empty and worn out, as if from a long fit of vomiting. Her last hazy recollection was simply of shutting her eyes and drifting off into an exhausted sleep.

  When she awoke, Gwenhyfara was bending over her again with the branch of candles in her hand. "Did you feel it?" she inquired composedly.

  Kate nodded. "Yes," she said: and then: "Do you ever feel it too?" she asked. "The weight?"

  "It comes from knowing the nature of this land," said Gwenhyfara. "How should we not feel it? But our kind can endure that knowledge without easing. Your kind are too weak. Even for us it is not a light matter. Be wise, and do not seek for your own sorrow. Entreat the Lady, and she will take it from you."

  Kate thought of herself kneeling on the floor of the great cavern and grinning blissfully up at the rock over her head, the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful rock.

  "No need," she said. "It has passed by."

  "It will return," said Gwenhyfara.

  "When?"

  "At its own time," said Gwenhyfara. "Get up and dress yourself now. We must go."

  "Go to do what?"

  "What you have done already."

  This proved to be literally true. The new day — Kate could not stop herself from thinking of it as the "day" — was exactly like the one before it. She followed Gwenhyfara down the same passage to the great cavern, stood in the same place while the Lady dealt with Joan and Betty and Marian, watched the same line of figures enter the door, ate from the same golden bowl, cleaned the same dishes afterwards, scrubbed down the same interminable stretches of stone, and was finally led back to lie in the same stable with the same company under the same overhanging rock, only to get up when Gwenhyfara called her and go through the same business the next "day," and the next "day," and the next "day," and the next. At first she tried to keep a count of them, but after a while she gave up trying. What was the use? Even supposing that the "days" and the "nights" never varied in length (which was by no means certain), it would still be impossible to say how much earthly time had gone by without some way of telling the exact number of "days" and "nights" it took to make up twenty-four hours according to the heavens. Down in the enclosed world of the Fairy Folk, life was only a timeless, endless, monotonous round that was broken by nothing but the attacks of the weight.

  These alone were completely unpredictable. They never came except during the "nights" — the time she spent lying in the stable under the rock — but apart from that she never knew when they would strike her. Sometimes for whole "nights" running she would be free of them; on others, the horror would suddenly descend without warning and batter her to pieces. It was as if her misery and revulsion against the land piled up in some inaccessible region of her mind until the accumulated pressure became too great for it to bear any longer; but she never learned just when the attacks would break out nor how long they would last when they did. The discovery that her mind was not wholly under her own control frightened her more than anything else, but it also made her cling with furious stubbornness to the one moment of independent choice that was left her: the moment when she stood behind Gwenhyfara in the cavern every "morning" without following Joan and Betty and Marian up to the Lady's chair. Whether the Fairy Folk were similarly tormented she could not tell. Gwenhyfara had not spoken of the matter again, and Kate knew better than to ask her. Gwenhyfara did not waste words on the mortal women. She would answer questions, but always briefly, and only when she thought that it was necessary. She would say very little about the Fairy Folk, and nothing at all about Christopher Heron.

  Christopher had to be somewhere in the Hill — that much Kate was sure of — but she could not find out where he was kept or what was being done with him. He was never at the gatherings in the great cavern, and she was never close enough to the Fairy Folk to hear any talk concerning him. The Lady she saw only at a distance, from the far end of the hall; and the Lady in her turn did no more than glance at her every "day" after she had finished with Joan and Betty and Marian. The four children who brought the mortal prisoners their food only stood and watched her as they did the others; and the rest of the Fairy Folk ignored her completely. Joan and Betty and Marian could give her no help. During the "days" they were always deep in enchantment, and they spent the "nights" sleeping so heavily that she could not rouse them.

  It was sometimes possible to get a few coherent words out of them at their first waking, before Gwenhyfara came in; but then they were invariably dazed and stupid, and for the most part would only whimper and complain of the cold. With Betty and Marian she could make no headway of any kind. Joan — the fair-haired woman — was quicker and more talkative, but very vague. She once spoke of a house where she had had a fire on the hearth and a baby in a cradle, but not as though they were real things she had lost, only fleetingly, almost indifferently, like someone remembering a pleasant dream. It was the same with the life that she lived in the Hill. She did not know exactly where she went every day after she left the great cavern; it was all lovely white linen towels that she washed and hung up to dry, lovely white linen towels, lovely. She could not say if she had seen a tall young man with yellow hair who did not look like one of the Fairy Folk. She might have. Or then again, she might not. There was so much to see, and all of it wonderful.

  "Yes, but what do you see?" Kate insisted desperately one "morning." Compared to Joan, even Randal, with his shattered wits, had begun to seem to her like a miracle of wisdom and understanding. "Do you ever see anyone go by you carrying a bowl of food? A gold bowl with meat in it, like ours? He must eat somehow. They can't be letting him starve."

  "Oh yes," said Joan. "They carry the gold bowls out of the room with the beautiful warm blue water, and then they carry them back again. I have a gold bowl, and you have a gold bowl, and Betty has a — "

  "No, no, not those," Kate interrupted her. She knew all the bowls that were carried into that room: the four for the mortal women, the twenty-seven for the Lady and the Fairy Folk, and the one bronze bowl for the creature in the Well.

  "Gold for the maids, and wood for the masters," said Joan dreamily, "and one bronze bowl for the King of the land, at his death-time."

  "Who told you that?"

  "I don't know," said Joan, yawning. "But isn't it a beautiful saying? Beautiful, beautiful, beauti — "

  "There's no King of the land now," said Kate. "That bowl is for someone else."

  "Then isn't the saying true?"

  "It can't be."

  Nevertheless, when she did the washing that "day," she rinsed out the bronze bowl slowly, turning it in her hands and looking at it carefully for the first time. It had certainly been used to hold the boiled grain and milk and honey that was reserved for the P
eople of the Hill. Neither was it made of gold, like the mortal prisoners' dishes; nor was it ornamented with animal heads, but only with an intricate embossed design of bird shapes falling and rising in and out of a circle of flames. "It can't be," she repeated to herself. "It can't — " Then suddenly the answer came to her. Joan had been right. Contempt for ordinary human comfort and delight was drilled into the People of the Hill from the time they were children, old enough to stand in the great cavern and watch the mortal women making pigs of themselves out of riches and art. All their kind, even the Lady, ate from plain wood. No member of that community, however strange, could possible count it a privilege to have his food served to him in a splendidly ornamented bowl of metal, any more than if it had been a swill pail or a chamber pot. A bowl like that would be given only to a mortal prisoner. A mortal prisoner — Kate set the bronze bowl in its place on the table and went to fill her basin at the fountain — but not a common mortal prisoner, one of the servants and scrubbers? This one was fed on what the Fairy Folk surely regarded as worthier food; and the bowl was finer too, less precious and not so heavily or scornfully decorated. Gwenhyfara always went to fetch it herself, as she did the Lady's own dish, and put it down carefully separate from the others: below the wooden ones, to be sure, but well above all four of the gold. Evidently, then, the mortal prisoner was someone of dignity, set apart from the rest, almost as if — in Joan's words — he were the King of the land at his death-time. She could think of only one mortal prisoner that the People of the Hill might treat like that, only one. And that one could not be very far away. It never took Gwenhyfara more than a few moments to go and bring back the bowl through the door at the short end of the food place.