While Arlen made the tea, Peyna went about the task of putting this frightened--no; this terrified--young man at his ease. He asked after Dennis's mum. He asked if the drainage problems which had so plagued the castle of late had improved. He asked Dennis's opinion on the spring plantings. He steered clear of any and all subjects which might be dangerous . . . and little by little, as he warmed, Dennis calmed.
When Arlen served the tea, hot and strong and steaming, Dennis slurped half the cup at a gulp, grimaced, then slurped the rest. Impassive as ever, Arlen poured more.
"Easy, my lad," Peyna said, lighting his pipe at last. "Easy's the word for hot tea and skittish horses."
"Cold. Thought I was going to freeze coming out here."
"You walked?" Peyna was unable to conceal his surprise.
"Yes. Had my mother leave word with the lesser servants that I was home with the grippe. That'll hold all for a few days, it being so catching this time of year . . . or should do. Walked. Whole way. Didn't dare ask a ride. Didn't want to be remembered. Didn't know it was quite this far. If I'd known, I might have taken a ride after all. I left at three of the clock." He struggled, his throat working, and then burst out: "And I'm not going back, not ever! I seen the way he looks at me since he come back! Narrow and on the side, his eyes all dark! He never used to look at me that way--never used to look at me at all! He knows I seen something! Knows I heard something! He don't know what, but he knows there's something! He hears it in my head, like I'd hear the bell ringin' out from the Church of the Great Gods! If I stay, he'll get it out of me! I know he will!"
Peyna stared at the boy under furrowed brows, trying to sort out this amazing flood of declaration.
Tears were standing in Dennis's eyes. "I mean F--"
"Softly, Dennis," Peyna said. His voice was mild, but his eyes were not. "I know who you mean. Best not to speak his name aloud."
Dennis looked at him with dumb, simple gratitude.
"You'd better tell me what you came to say," Peyna told him.
"Yes. Yes, all right."
Dennis hesitated for a moment, trying to get himself under control and to arrange his thoughts. Peyna waited impassively, trying to control his rising excitement.
"You see," Dennis began at last, "three nights ago Thomas called me to come and stay with him, as he sometimes does. And at midnight, or sometime thereabouts--"
84
Dennis told what you have already heard, and to his credit, he did not try to lie about his own terror, or gloss it over. As he spoke, the wind whined outside and as the fire burned low Peyna's eyes burned hotter and hotter. Here, he thought, were worse things than he ever could have imagined. Not only had Peter poisoned the King, Thomas had seen it happen.
No wonder the boy King was so often moody and depressed. Perhaps the rumors that passed in the meadhouses, rumors that had Thomas more than half mad already, were not so farfetched as Peyna had thought.
But as Dennis paused to drink more tea (Arlen refilled his cup from the bitter lees of the pot), Peyna drew back from that idea. If Thomas had witnessed Peter poisoning Roland, why was Dennis here now . . . and in such deadly terror of Flagg?
"You heard more," Peyna said.
"Aye, my Lord Judge-General," Dennis said. "Thomas . . . he raved quite some time. We were closed up in the dark together long."
Dennis struggled to be clearer, but found no words to convey the horror of that closed-in passageway, with Thomas shrieking in the darkness before him and the dead King's few surviving dogs barking below them. No words to describe the smell of the place--a smell of secrets which had gone rancid like milk spilled in the dark. No words to tell of his growing fear that Thomas had gone mad while in the grip of his dream.
He had screamed the name of the King's magician over and over again; had begged the King to look deep into the goblet and see the mouse that simultaneously burned and drowned in the wine. Why do you stare at me so? he had shrieked. And then: I brought you a glass of wine, my King, to show you that I, too, love you. And finally he had shrieked out words that Peter himself would have recognized, words better than four hundred years old: 'Twas Flagg! Flagg! 'Twas Flagg!
Dennis reached for his cup, got it halfway to his mouth, and then dropped it. The cup shattered on the hearthstones.
The three of them looked at the shards of crockery.
"And then?" Peyna asked, in a deceptively gentle voice.
"Nothing for a long, long time," Dennis said in a halting voice. "My eyes had . . . had gotten used to the darkness, and I could see him a little. He was asleep . . . asleep at those two little holes, with his chin on his breast and his eyes closed."
"And he remained so for how long?"
"My Lord, I know not. The dogs had all quieted again. And perhaps I . . . I . . ."
"Dozed a bit yourself? I think it is likely, Dennis."
"Then, later, he seemed to wake. His eyes opened, at any rate. He closed the little panels and all was dark again. I heard him moving and I drew my legs back so he would not trip over them . . . his nightshirt . . . it brushed my face. . . ."
Dennis grimaced as he remembered a feeling like cobwebs drawn in a whisper over his left cheek.
"I followed him. He let himself out . . . I followed still. He closed the door so that it looked like only plain stone wall again. He went back to his apartments and I followed him."
"Did you meet anyone?" Peyna rapped so sharply that Dennis jumped. "Anyone at all?"
"No. No, my Lord Judge-General. No one at all."
"Ah." Peyna relaxed. "That is very well. And did anything else happen that night?"
"No, my Lord. He went to bed and slept like a dead man." Dennis hesitated and then added, "I didn't sleep a wink, meself, and haven't slept many since, either."
"And in the morning he--?"
"Remembered nothing."
Peyna grunted. He steepled his fingers and looked at the dying fire through the little finger-building he had built.
"And did you go back to that passageway?"
Curiously, Dennis asked: "Would you have gone back, my Lord?"
"Yes," Peyna said dryly. "The question is, did you?"
"I did."
"Of course you did. Were you seen?"
"No. A chambermaid passed me in the hallway. The laundry is down that way, I think. I smelled lye soap, like my mum uses. When she was gone, I counted up four from the chipped stone and went in."
"To see what Thomas had seen."
"Aye, my Lord."
"And did you?"
"Aye, my Lord."
"And what was it?" Peyna asked, knowing. "When you slid aside those panels, what did you see?"
"My Lord, I saw King Roland's sitting room," Dennis said. "With all them heads on the walls. And . . . my Lord . . ." In spite of the heat of the dying fire, Dennis shuddered. "All of them heads . . . they seemed to be looking at me."
"But there was one head you didn't see," Peyna said.
"No, my Lord, I saw them a--" Dennis stopped, eyes widening. "Niner!" He gasped. "The peepholes--" He stopped, his eyes now almost as big as saucers.
Silence fell again inside. Outside, the winter wind moaned and whined. And miles away, Peter, rightful King of Delain, hunched over a tiny loom high in the sky and wove a rope almost too fine to see.
At last, Peyna fetched a deep sigh. Dennis was looking up at him from his place on the hearth pleadingly . . . hopefully . . . fearfully. Peyna bent forward slowly and touched his shoulder.
"You did well to come here, Dennis, son of Brandon. You did well to make a reason for your absence--quite a plausible one, I think. You'll sleep here with us tonight, in the attic, under the eaves. It'll be cold, but I think you'll sleep better than you have of late. Am I wrong?"
Dennis shook his head slowly once, and a tear spilled from his right eye and ran slowly down his cheek.
"And your mum knows naught of your reason for needing to be away?"
"No."
"Then the chances a
re very good she'll not be touched by it. Arlen will take you up. Those are his blankets, I think, and you'll have to return them. But there's straw above, and it's clean."
"I'll sleep just as well with only one blanket, my Lord," Arlen said.
"Hush! Young blood runs hot even in its sleep, Arlen. Your blood has cooled. And you may want your blankets . . . in case dwarves and trolls come in your dreams."
Arlen smiled a little.
"In the morning, we'll talk more, Dennis--but you may not see your mum for a bit now; I must tell you that, although I suspect you already know it might not be healthy for you to go back to Delain, by the look of you."
Dennis tried to smile, but his eyes were shiny with fear. "I had thoughts of more than the grippe when I came here, and that's the honest truth. But now I've put your own health in danger as well, haven't I?"
Peyna smiled dryly. "I'm old, and Arlen is old. The health of the old is never very strong. Sometimes that makes them more careful than they should be . . . but sometimes it makes them dare much." Especially, he thought, if they have much to atone for. "We'll speak more in the morning. In the meantime, you deserve your rest. Will you light his way upstairs, Arlen?"
"Yes, my Lord."
"And then come back to me."
"Yes, my Lord."
Arlen led the exhausted Dennis from the room, leaving Anders Peyna to brood before his dying fire.
85
When Arlen came back, Peyna said quietly: "We have plans to make, Arlen, but perhaps you'll draw us a drop of wine. It would be well to wait until the boy is asleep."
"My Lord, he was asleep before his head touched the hay he had gathered for his pillow."
"Very well. But draw us a drop of wine anyway."
"A drop is all there is to draw," Arlen said.
"Good. Then we'll not have to set out with big heads tomorrow, will we?"
"My Lord?"
"Arlen, we leave here tomorrow, the three of us, for the north. I know it, you know it. Dennis says there's grippe in Delain--and so there is; one who would grip us if he could, anyway. We go for our health."
Arlen nodded slowly.
"It would be a crime to leave that good wine behind us for the tax man. So we'll drink it . . . and then take ourselves off to bed."
"As you say, my Lord."
Peyna's eyes glinted. "But before you go to bed, you'll mount to the attic and get the blanket you left with the boy, against my strict and specific instructions."
Arlen gaped at Peyna. Peyna mocked his gape with uncanny aptness. And for the first and last time in his service as Peyna's butler, Arlen laughed out loud.
86
Peyna went to bed but could not sleep. It wasn't the sound of the wind that kept him awake, but the sound of cold laughter coming from inside his own head.
When he could stand that laughter no longer, he got up, went back into the sitting room, and sat before the cooling fireplace ashes, his white hair floating in small clouds over his skull. Unaware of his comic look (and if he had been aware of it, he would have been unmindful), he sat wrapped in his blankets like the oldest Indian in the universe and looked into the dead fire.
Pride goes before a fall, his mother had told him when he was a child, and Peyna had understood that. Pride's a joke that'll make the stranger inside you laugh sooner or later, she had also told him, and he hadn't understood that . . . but he did now. Tonight the stranger inside was laughing very hard indeed. Too hard for him to be able to sleep, even though the next day was apt to be long and difficult.
Peyna was fully able to appreciate the irony of his position. All his life, he had served the idea of the law. Ideas like "prison break" and "armed rebellion" horrified him. They still did, but certain truths had to be faced. That the machinery of revolt had come to exist in Delain, for instance. Peyna knew that the nobles who had fled to the north called themselves "exiles," but he also knew that they were edging ever closer to calling themselves "rebels." And if he were to keep that revolt from happening, he might well have to use the machinery of rebellion to help a prisoner break out of the Needle. That was the joke the stranger inside was laughing at, laughing too loudly for sleep to be even a remote possibility.
Such actions as the ones he was now thinking about went against the grain of his whole life, but he would go ahead anyway, even if it killed him (which it just might). Peter had been falsely imprisoned. Delain's true King was not on the throne, but locked in a cold two-room cell at the top of the Needle. And if it took lawless forces to put things right again, so it must be. But . . .
"The napkins," Peyna muttered. His mind circled back to them and back to them. "Before we resort to force of arms to free the rightful King and see him enthroned, the business of the napkins should be investigated. He'll have to be asked. Dennis . . . and the Staad boy, perhaps . . . aye . . ."
"My Lord?" Arlen asked from behind him. "Are you unwell?"
Arlen had heard his master rise, as butlers almost always do.
"I am unwell," Peyna agreed gloomily. "But it's nothing my physician can fix, Arlen."
"I'm sorry, my Lord."
Peyna turned to Arlen, and fixed his bright, sunken eyes upon the butler.
"Before we become outlaws, I want to know why he asked for his mother's dollhouse . . . and for napkins with his meals."
87
Go back to the castle?" Dennis asked the next morning, in a hoarse voice that was almost a whisper. "Go back to where he is?"
"If you feel you can't, I'll not press you," Peyna said. "But you know the castle well enough, I think, to stay out of his way. If, that is, you know a way to get in unnoticed. To be noticed would be bad. You look much too lively for a boy who is supposed to be home sick."
The day was cold and bright. The snow on the long, rolling hills of the Inner Baronies threw back a diamond dazzle which made the eyes water before long. I'll probably be snowblind by noon, and it'll serve me right, Peyna thought grumpily. The stranger inside seemed to find this prospect hilarious indeed.
Castle Delain itself could be seen in the distance, blue and dreaming on the horizon, its walls and towers looking like an illustration in a book of fairy stories. Dennis, however, did not look like a young hero in search of adventure. His eyes were full of fear, and his face bore the expression of a man who has escaped from a den of lions . . . only to be told he's forgotten his lunch, and must go back in and get it, even though he's lost his appetite.
"There might be a way to get in," he said. "But if he smells me, how I get in or where I hide won't matter. If he smells me, he'll run me down."
Peyna nodded. He did not want to add to the boy's fear, but in this situation, nothing less than the truth could serve them. "What you say is true."
"But you still ask me to go?"
"If you can, I still ask it."
Over a meager breakfast, Peyna had told Dennis what he wanted to know, and had suggested some ways Dennis might go about getting the information. Now Dennis shook his head, not in refusal but in bewilderment.
"Napkins," he said.
Peyna nodded. "Napkins."
Dennis's fearful eyes went back to that distant fairytale castle dreaming on the horizon. "When he was dying, my da' said if I ever saw a chance to do a service for my first master, I must do it. I thought I'd done it coming here. But if I must go back . . ."
Arlen, who had been busy closing up the house, now joined them.
"Your house key, please, Arlen," Peyna said.
Arlen handed it to him, and Peyna handed it to Dennis.
"Arlen and I go north to join the"--Peyna hesitated and cleared his throat--"the exiles," he finished. "I've given you Arlen's key to this house. When we reach their camp, I'll give mine to a fellow you know, if he be there. I think he will be."
"Who's that?" Dennis asked.
"Ben Staad."
Sunshine broke on Dennis's gloomy face. "Ben? Ben's with them?"
"I think he may be," Peyna said. In truth, he knew perfec
tly well that the entire Staad family was with the exiles. He kept his ear firmly to the earth, and his ears had not grown so deaf that he was not able to hear many movements in the Kingdom.
"And you'd send him down here?"
"If he'll come, aye, I mean to," Peyna replied.
"To do what? My Lord, I'm still not clear about that."
"Nor am I," Peyna said, looking cross. He felt more than cross; he felt bewildered. "I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on intuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludicrous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer."
"I don't understand you, my Lord."
"Neither do I, Dennis. Neither do I. Do you know what day this is?"
Dennis blinked at this sudden change in direction, but answered readily enough. "Yes--Tuesday."
"Tuesday. Good. Now I'm going to ask you a question that my cursed intuition tells me is very important. If you don't know the answer--even if you are not sure--for the gods' sake, say so! Are you ready for the question?"
"Yes, my Lord," Dennis said, but he wasn't sure that he really was. Peyna's piercing blue eyes under the wild tangle of his white brows had made him very nervous. The question was apt to be very difficult indeed. "That is, I think so."
Peyna asked his question, and Dennis relaxed. It didn't make much sense to him--it was only more nonsense about the napkins, as far as he could see--but at least he knew the answer, and gave it.
"You're sure?" Peyna persisted.
"Yes, my Lord."
"Good. Then here is what I want you to do."
Peyna spoke to Dennis for some time, as the three of them stood in the chilly sunshine in front of the "retirement cottage" where the old judge would never come again. Dennis listened earnestly, and when Peyna demanded that he repeat the instructions back, Dennis was able to do it quite neatly.
"Good," Peyna said. "Very, very good."
"I'm glad I've pleased you, sir."
"Nothing about this business pleases me, Dennis. Nothing at all. If Ben Staad is with those unfortunate outcasts in the Far Forests, I mean to send him away from relative safety and into danger because he may be of some use to King Peter. I'm sending you back to the castle because my heart tells me there's something about those napkins he asked for . . . and the dollhouse . . . something. Sometimes I think I almost have it, and then it dances out of my grasp again. He did not ask for those things idly, Dennis. I'd wager my life on that. But I don't know." Peyna abruptly slammed his fist down on his leg in frustration. "I am putting two fine young men into terrible danger, and my heart tells me I am doing the right thing, but I . . . don't . . . know . . . WHY!"