The Secret Country

  “Why would Claudia make it cold anyway?” he asked the gray walls. He found it hard to think without the others clamoring at him. They were a nuisance, but at least they asked the right questions.

  The tower shook again, more gently. Ted burst through the door at the bottom and ran along the passage. He stopped at the next door and looked back. He knew that in an earthquake one was supposed to go outside, but he was not sure that there had been an earthquake. The torches still burned in their sockets, and now all was quiet. If he went outside he might miss Fence returning.

  He perched himself on the sill of one of the windows that looked upon the inner courtyard. The stone was cold, but in the new heat of the air this was pleasant. A green smell came through the window, and behind it a faint scent of lilac. It seemed to go well with the purple torches.

  Ted was almost asleep when Fence came trudging along the passage. Nobody looked his best in that light, but Ted, knuckling his eyes and shaking the blood back into the foot he had been sitting on, thought that Fence looked as though he were sleepwalking.

  “Sir?” said Ted.

  Fence blinked, and focused on him. “Where is Randolph?”

  “He’s upstairs,” said Ted. “I wanted to speak with you alone.”

  Fence came and sat next to Ted. “Well, then?”

  “Did Ruth take care of Claudia?”

  “Oh, aye.” Fence fixed him with a glare. “Hast forgotten all thy courtesy?”

  Ted, who could make no sense of this remark, suppressed the desire to ask whether Shan’s Ring was part of the Green Caves magic. In the first place, Fence might think that rude too; in the second, it might give everything away.

  “Is there aught else, my lord?” Fence asked him. Ted could not tell whether he was being polite to soften the fact that he wanted to get away, or whether he was angry and therefore being formal.

  “Yes,” said Ted, recklessly.

  Fence nodded at him.

  “I fear me,” said Ted, “that if we do not convince the King that Andrew is wrong, that he must make sorcerous preparations, then Randolph will kill the King to keep us all from being destroyed.”

  Fence did not move for what seemed a very long time. Ted became aware of the singing of summer insects in the courtyard, and of the autumnal smell that hung about Fence.

  “Are you mad?” said Fence at last. Randolph, asking the same question, had sounded furious; Fence sounded stricken.

  “No,” said Ted, wondering how Patrick would answer that.

  “Hath he spoken of this, then?”

  “Well, no. I tried to bring up the subject, but he put me off.”

  “So,” said Fence.

  “He did say we probably couldn’t convince the King.”

  “Probably we cannot.”

  “But Fence, if we can’t, what else is there to do but kill him?”

  “What is the matter with you? We will do our best in the battle, and live or die as it falls to us. There was never kingdom that did not end at last, and to hear you, one would think this one’s ending delayed o’er long.” His look at Ted, even in the uncertain light, was formidable.

  “But—”

  “Why Randolph?” asked Fence.

  “Claudia,” said Ted.

  “Well, you are not so mad as you might be,” said Fence. “She hath no doubt embittered him and may have dulled his wits, but none could so change him that he would do what you accuse him of planning. Lords of darkness,” said Fence, vehemently, “I am weary of accusations.” He put out a hand, suddenly, and took hold of Ted’s chin to make Ted look at him. “Why Randolph?” he repeated.

  “He’s my regent, isn’t he?” said Ted, feeling on firmer ground. “He’d have the power to do what he wants done, then. He’s my teacher—he knows I’m safe—and not a match for him,” said Ted, grumpily. More and more he chafed under the restraints of Edward’s personality.

  “Any man in council knows thy mind, and Randolph’s,” said Fence.

  “But if anybody else killed the King, Randolph would get him,” explained Ted.

  Fence put a hand to Ted’s forehead, and dropped it with a sigh. “I had hoped you were feverish,” he said. “Does not the fact that Randolph will deal with any man who does the deed show that he would not do’t himself?”

  “He’ll get himself too,” said Ted, a little desperately. “He’ll admit it after the battle.”

  “None of this,” said Fence, as if in spite of himself, “regards the fact that Randolph is not of the temper which does such things.”

  Ted felt a sort of gleeful shock; just so had he sounded himself when his sister and his cousins used to draw him into heated discussions of the ridiculous.

  “You’ve been gone a long time,” he said. “Maybe he’s changed.”

  “You have been by him,” said Fence. “What think you is the instrument of such a change?”

  “Claudia,” said Ted, with considerable force. Claudia certainly was an instrument of change, and even though she was providing a convenient excuse at the moment, he hated her.

  “We have had that already,” said Fence. “Nohow save by sorcery could she force him to such an unnatural deed as kill a king, and there is no sorcery at work in him. Besides, as Ruth has disposed her, she cannot reach him now.”

  “Can’t you ask him?” said Ted. “He’ll have to tell you the truth, and then you’ll know, and that might stop him. Or you could stop him.”

  Fence’s hand came down on the stone they sat on. “Why didst thou not ask him thyself?”

  Ted considered, while Fence’s eyes caught a gleam of light from somewhere and seemed to bore into him. Ted tried to distract himself by wondering how anyone could smell like burning leaves, but it did not work. He was forced to the dismal conclusion that he had not asked Randolph himself, first because he was afraid to, and second because he had not decided beforehand what he was going to do, but had acted without thinking.

  He did not much want to tell these reasons to Fence. But the recklessness which had possessed him for some time was still working, and he recognized now that part of it was a spirit of experimentation. For all his belief that the Secret Country was real, still he felt the impulse to see how far he could push in how many directions, and what would happen if he did. The thought of the sword sat in the back of his mind like a refuge: Even if it were all real, they could go home if it got too bad, and he could not see that they would have made things any worse.

  He answered Fence’s question.

  “Ministers of grace defend us,” said Fence. Ted thought that things could not be too bad if Fence did not call on the angels too. He found that he had to choke back a giggle at this piece of wit.

  “Thou?” said Fence. “Thou! Thou whose main fault is that of thinking so precisely on the event that thou dost it not?”

  “See?” cried Ted. “See! I’ve changed. Maybe Randolph has too.”

  Fence was silent a moment. “I will go so far with thee,” he said, “as to watch for some change in him. The question is not one to be asked by friend of friend, or even by master of pupil. But I will watch for any change—the more so,” he added, chuckling, “for that I see already how he watches for any in me.”

  “Thank you,” said Ted.

  “Get thee to bed,” said Fence.

  CHAPTER 17

  FENCE had brought presents for each of his spies, and he gave them out the next day. He gave Ellen a leather pouch full of packets of seeds from all the strange plants he had seen in his travels. Ellen was intrigued but nervous. (“He’ll expect me to plant them,” she said to Laura, “and I don’t know how.” “Isn’t it the wrong time of year for that?” said Laura. “Depends on what they are,” said Ellen, “and that’s what I don’t know.”)

  He gave Patrick a bronze knife with bats and snakes on its greeny hilt. Patrick was fascinated but wary. Laura caught him practicing with it several times, but he became sullen when discovered.

  He gave Laura an ivory unicorn that f
it in the palm of her hand, with beryls for eyes. (“Which is not according to nature,” he told her, “for the eyes of the unicorn are violet. But there is more virtue in the beryl than in the amethyst.” Laura was enchanted. “I’ll lose it,” she said. “So you will not, then,” said Fence, “for I have put on it a spell of finding and returning.”)

  Ted and Ruth, to Laura’s great amusement, were irked that Fence had brought them nothing. Ruth seemed merely to want something exotic; Ted was hurt that Fence did not think enough of him to bring him something. Patrick pointed out that none of the gifts would survive the return trip anyway, a remark which reduced Laura to tears and reopened the discussion of whether Ted’s flashlight had really turned into a lantern.

  “If it did,” said Patrick, testily, “then Ellie’ll end up with a bag of petunia seeds, and Laurie’ll have a plastic horse, and I’ll have a Swiss Army knife or something. But it won’t work that way, actually, because these aren’t real objects. The flashlight was; it came from the other side, you see.”

  “Like your watch, I suppose,” said Ruth.

  This occasioned an argument which got them nowhere but shortened tempers considerably. None of them seemed to be feeling well after the rigors of the night before. Laura was sleepy. She thought Ted looked as if he had a headache. Ellen looked sick to her stomach. Ruth and Patrick merely looked grouchy. The weather was grouchy as well. The morning had dawned clear, but by noon the sky was the color of the water used for a long session of painting with watercolors, and little bouts of wind blew the dust from the dry paths into every corner of the rose garden.

  Then Ted brought up the matter of Shan’s Ring and the Outside Powers. Nobody seemed to find his theory convincing. Ruth was furious with him for, as she put it, trying to ruin her position as a sorcerer by preventing her from doing the only thing she had been able to think of doing. Ted accused her of wanting to show off no matter what happened. This occasioned another argument which got them nowhere but made them thoroughly sick of each other’s company.

  Sick though they might be, they had still to hear Ellen and Laura tell them about the door to Fence’s tower, and Fence’s dishes. Nobody had any idea what the original tapestry meant or why it was duplicated all over Fence’s possessions. Ted made the mistake of using this fact to reopen the argument with Patrick over whether what was happening to them was real. He elicited only the theory that they were making it up as they went along, as if they were dreaming it. Patrick sounded a little desperate as he propounded this idea, but he stuck to it stubbornly.

  After that it was still necessary for Ted and Ruth to explain all the things they had been doing. Nobody but Laura approved of anything Ted had done. All the others felt that they should have been consulted. Ted’s explanation that he would have told Randolph the whole truth if he hadn’t wanted to consult them did not make them any happier. When he explained his idea that they would be treated as spies if they tried to tell the truth, everyone (except Laura) was even madder.

  Then Patrick asked them about the Crystal of Earth, and they all looked at him as if he were crazy. Laura did not like the sound of the Crystal of Earth. She did not like to think that someone could break it like a cereal bowl and the Secret Country would disappear. Being wrought up and tired, she began to cry again.

  Ruth said emphatically, “There is no such thing. It’s just a product of Patrick’s perverted mind. Did you look for it, Pat?”

  Patrick looked secretive, hesitated, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s not where I dreamed it was.”

  “I wonder what’s with these dreams,” said Ted. “Has anybody else had any?”

  “Not like that,” said Laura. “But I see things in—”

  “Hey, that’s weird,” said Patrick. “If this is a dream, should we dream that we’re dreaming?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Ruth. “I’ve had about enough of this.”

  They left one another with relief and wandered about desolately on their own, brooding.

  Ted and Patrick expected their fencing lessons to begin again two days after the banquet. They had not practiced. Ted had kept hoping for more dreams, and Patrick affected, at least, not to care what might happen.

  They both overslept that morning, and hurried down to the practice yard assuring each other that Randolph would have overslept, too. Castle gossip had him and Fence closeted in the North Tower day and night, either making battle plans or concocting arcane spells, depending on whom you listened to.

  In fact he was not in the yard when they arrived. There were several other people off at the far end of the yard practicing exotic-looking maneuvers with short curved swords. Ted got from them the information that Randolph had not been there since they began, at dawn.

  “He’ll be here any minute, then,” said Ted. “Let’s practice what we can.”

  “I’ve been wondering what would happen if we didn’t,” said Patrick, picking up a sword and putting it down again. “Whether the cardinal would rescue us again.”

  “Randolph’ll have a fit even if the cardinal does rescue us,” said Ted. “He’ll probably go ask its owner what he thinks he’s doing, and then he’ll find out we don’t have anything to do with the cardinals and we’ll be in for it. Come on.”

  “What makes you think we don’t have anything to do with the cardinals?”

  “What makes you think we do?”

  Patrick acquired his secretive expression. Ted had never seen it until they came to the Secret Country, but he was already as tired of it as he had ever been of Patrick’s other habits. A natural desire to make Patrick as tired of him caused him to remember something.

  “You know what,” he said. “It was a cardinal that got us into this. If Laurie hadn’t heard one singing, she wouldn’t have dived into that hedge.”

  Patrick looked intrigued.

  “Did you hear a cardinal when you were fooling around in the bottle-tree thicket?”

  “There aren’t any cardinals in Australia,” said Patrick, in his most patient scholarly tones. “They’re a North American bird.”

  “Come on,” said Ted, defeated.

  Ted’s dream had remained clear in his mind—clearer, in fact, than he really liked to have it. Although the fencing moves were useful, he hated remembering Randolph’s face. But he was able to show Patrick a few things, of the when-I-do-this-you-do-that variety; by assuming a stance without thinking about it and then looking at what he had done, he was able to show Patrick how to salute, stand, move, and hold his sword.

  He thought Patrick did very well for someone who had never liked any activity except that required to get him from one place to another.

  They worked for an hour, and Randolph did not come.

  “I don’t like this sword,” said Patrick suddenly.

  “I don’t like mine either,” said Ted, dropping its point to the ground. “But that’s because I dreamed about a better one. Did you?”

  “I also,” said Patrick, “don’t like the way those people are looking at us.”

  Ted considered them. “They don’t look threatening to me.”

  “No, just curious. What if they come over to see what Randolph’s so proud of teaching you?”

  “Well, we could quit.”

  “What I want to do,” said Patrick, “is go get our swords and find somewhere private to practice.”

  “Our—?”

  “The ones we got here with!”

  “Are those for fighting?” said Ted, uneasily.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, they’re magical.”

  “They sure are. They make these look like sticks of wood.”

  “That’s all we used to have,” said Ted.

  Patrick squinted at him in the sunlight. “Come on.”

  They ended up in the rose garden. Nowhere else seemed free of people. Ted was not altogether pleased with this. He saw laid over the brilliant sun and precise red and green of daylight the silver garden of his dream, like something in a d
ouble exposure.

  The magic sword did feel better in his hand than the practice sword had. To his considerable relief, it did not fit like the dream sword.

  “Pat, I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said. “These are sharp. We could hurt each other.”

  “We don’t have to do the whole sequence,” said Patrick. “Just the initial stuff. I think we should get used to handling these swords. We should have them with us all the time, really; they’re our way home.”

  Ted reluctantly fell in with this plan. There was no wind. On the thick moss of the garden their feet were soundless. A great silence hung from tree to sky. The swords burned in the sunlight, throwing back blue and green so sharp that the garden seemed to pale and shrivel. They left great shining swaths in the clear air, like fireworks but unfading. Ted caught at the names of their motions as they fled under his mind: bind, double bind, circle parry, riposte.

  “Cease!” said a voice, at an enormous distance.

  Cold seized Ted’s fingers, and the sword drooped slowly and slid to the moss. The sword paths dimmed and tattered like smoke in a wind, and as they went out the color came back to moss and rose and stone. Ted saw Patrick standing stock-still, his pale brown hair brilliant, his white tunic dazzling. His face was horrified; he was looking at something over Ted’s right shoulder.

  Ted found that he could move, and swung around. Randolph stood a few yards away, lowering his arms. He came and took Ted by the shoulders. “What in heaven’s name!” he said, and his voice shook. He was very pale.

  “We were practicing,” said Ted. “You didn’t show up.”

  Randolph stooped for Ted’s sword, and a flash of blue light pained their eyes as he touched it. Randolph said something Ted did not catch, and the light dwindled.

  “Patrick,” said Randolph, “bring me thine.”

  Patrick’s face acquired a stubborn set, but he obeyed. Randolph held one sword in each hand and stared at them for some time. Ted looked at Patrick, who shook his head ruefully. He was very pale and sweaty. Ted felt pale himself.