CHAPTER 18
AFTER two days of fruitless discussion, several unsuccessful attempts to catch Fence’s door open, and a Council which confirmed Ted’s guess that the weapons with which Fence meant to bribe Chryse and Belaparthalion were indeed Shan’s and Melanie’s swords, they decided to try stealing Fence’s keys again.
Their only other hope seemed to be to wait for the last moment and somehow waylay the expedition to take the swords to Chryse. They thought that that seemed even less likely to succeed than using the keys again. Besides, since the entire business with the swords and Chryse and Belaparthalion was not in the game, they did not know whether it would take place before or after the revelation to Fence of Randolph’s crime. Ted was sure that this unhappy event ought to happen in October. But he was no longer willing to put much faith in what ought to happen; and when he discovered that Ellen thought it happened in September and the others seemed not to have any idea of its date, he wanted to hurry.
He and Ruth and Patrick came to this conclusion in Ruth’s room, and they had just begun to discuss when Patrick should make his attempt when Laura and Ellen burst in on them.
“Ruth!” said Ellen. “Fence and Randolph are in the Mirror Room; we went looking for Agatha and they were polite but they hurried us out and Randolph looks awful. I think this is it.”
Ted and Patrick leaped for the door and pounded down the hall.
“Should we go back, too?” said Ellen.
“We’re not there in the real scene.”
“Neither is Patrick,” said Ellen.
“I don’t want to see it,” said Laura.
“But if there’s one more chance to stop it—”
“I don’t think,” said Ruth, “that anything can stop Randolph once he makes up his mind.”
The door to the Mirror Room was closed. Ted and Patrick looked at one another, put their shoulders to it, and burst into the room. Fence and Randolph faced one another over a carved chest against the outer wall. The draperies were drawn over all the mirrors and windows; the room seemed dark and close.
“Fence!” said Ted, although both of them were already looking at him.
“What’s the matter?” said Fence, coming forward.
“Not the matter, exactly,” said Ted, and went on with the first thing that came into his head. “I just remembered that I never asked Randolph to tell me about the Council I missed, before we marched back, and—” He had no idea what to say next, but Randolph came forward, too, with a wry look.
“You come most carefully upon your hour,” he said. “Fence and I were speaking of that Council even now.”
He gestured at the only chair in the room, and Ted found himself sitting down in it. Patrick came and sat on the floor next to him. Fence and Randolph faced one another in the middle of the room, and seemed to forget about the two boys.
“Well?” said Fence to Randolph; in his face was a challenge, but in his voice a plea. Ted sat forward: he thought he knew what that Council had been about, and that he had delivered them all into Randolph’s hands.
“Do you truly say to me,” said Randolph, “that all the Council could make nothing of this matter? That none among them hath a thought upon it save that they know not what befell? Not one hath the glimmer of a thought?”
“Some have,” said Fence, reluctantly.
“What is this glimmer, then?”
Fence scowled, and then ruined the effect by sitting on Agatha’s sewing table and swinging his legs. “Their thought considers the matter too loosely,” he said. “Where did the plot begin, and how long was it in the making? They have left unexamined the vintner, the merchant, the wine cellar, the butler, the kitchen, the page.”
“Forget not the cupbearer,” said Randolph.
Fence glanced at him and smiled, but Ted thought the smile looked more hopeful than confident. “Thou hast heard the whispers, then,” he said. “ ’Twill be easy enough to stifle such talk; trouble not thyself. I will see to’t.”
Ted stood up quietly and backed for the door. He felt trapped and frozen, and could think only of getting out. Patrick looked at him in surprise.
“Consider first, my lord,” said Randolph, “whether such talk ought indeed to be stifled.”
Patrick stood up, too, not quietly enough.
“What ails the two of you?” demanded Fence.
They looked at him.
“There’s no need,” Randolph said to them. “If you know, what will it avail you not to hear me say it? If you know not,” he added, as Ted tried to say something, “what do you fear?”
“Randolph,” said Fence, who had stopped swinging his legs and was looking a little pale.
“Could vintners and merchants distill such poison?” said Randolph. “Could butlers, pages, cooks know its secret? You taught me the use of my wits: now where are yours?”
Patrick walked over and stood beside Ted, bumping shoulders with him. He was shaking. So was Ted.
“Tarry but a moment longer,” said Randolph, not looking at them.
Fence slid down from the table, and as the folds of his starry robe fell into place again he seemed suddenly to dwarf the room. “If my wits are addled,” he said, “I needs must make do with thine. Make them to work for me, Randolph.”
“I know the truth,” said Randolph. “I need not my wits to discover it. And knowing it already, how can I tell you in what way you should work your wits to discover it yourself?”
“Tell me this truth, then,” said Fence.
“No, indeed I will not,” said Randolph. “I would not betray your teachings thus. How many times, knowing the truth, have you made me dig it out for myself? Can I do less for you?”
“Knowest thou,” said Fence to Randolph, “why I did thus?”
“I do,” said Randolph. “It was that I might believe the truth when I saw it. For truth hath strange and terrible shapes.”
“And this truth,” said Fence, “a most terrible one.”
“I will not hear these things,” said Ted, as the game dictated he should; but he was far too late. They did not heed him. They saw only one another.
“Say it,” said Randolph.
“Randolph,” said Fence. In his round face the bones showed clearly. “You have betrayed all I ever taught you; you have betrayed your liege lord and your solemn word; all this besides with the lowest and cruellest of all weapons, a weapon of cowards. You poisoned King William.”
“Well done,” said Randolph. “The master is yet master, and not pupil.”
“Had the master been truly master,” said Fence, “the pupil had not done what is done.”
“He didn’t!” cried Ted, hardly knowing what he said. “How could he have? I knocked the bottle out of his hand; I took the cup from him and brought him another; how could he have done it?”
Randolph looked over at Patrick. “Thy royal brother,” he said to Ted, “following the philosophy of Andrew and scorning magic as tricks only, hath set himself to learn such tricks as, he thinketh, account for the doings of sorcery. And in an idle moment of the dull winter, he did teach some few of those tricks to me; and so I had them to hand when thou, Edward, took from me the cup I had prepared.”
“But why did you have two doses of poison, that doesn’t make sense!” said Ted.
“The second was for mine own use,” said Randolph; he turned back to Fence in time to catch the look on his face. “I regret it most heartily,” he said to him.
He looked at Ted again. “I thought thou knewest, and didst keep me here for thine own ends, fearing thy lack of skill.”
Ted could not answer him.
Fence was so still that all his previous stillnesses would have seemed fidgety by comparison; he spoke very quietly and with no expression. “You must return what you have forfeited,” he said.
Randolph took the circlet from his head and the ring from his finger as he walked across the room, and laid them upon the carved chest. Fence, following, took up the circlet. He turned it in his hands and said three words under his breath. It broke in pieces, and the pieces crumbled to dust, and the dust, floating down, was gone before it could touch the floor. Fence took up the ring. “And what of this,” he said, without inflection.
“That too is forfeit,” said Randolph; but now he, too, looked pale.
Fence closed the ring in his fist, and opened his hand again. Something glittered in his palm like a jewel, but he slid it into his robe too quickly for Ted to see what it was. They could have left now, without being noticed, but there seemed no point now in escape, or in anything else.
“Randolph,” said Fence, “I am sorry I have so failed you.”
“So even that is denied me,” said Randolph.
“It is you who have denied it,” said Fence. “Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, that not your trespass but my ruling speaks.”
Randolph, suddenly and incredibly, smiled at him. “Thou seest, then,” he said, “thou hast not failed me. To deny me all I have denied, in the courage of that is not failure. Hadst thou been kinder, Fence, that had been failure indeed.”
“Carrion comfort,” said Fence, as if he were reading a road sign, and he turned and went straight between Ted and Patrick and out of the room. Ted’s throat swelled and closed.
Randolph leaned on Agatha’s table, as if his legs had failed him suddenly. Now he was very pale.
“My lord,” he said to Ted, “you had best set the trial soon.”
“No,” said Ted.
“My lord, I had thought to spare you.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Choose your weapon, then,” said Randolph, “and your time; but I beg you, my lord, that it be soon. And disgrace not your teacher.”
He, too, went out.
“I told you!” said Ted, almost crying. “I told you!”
“Ted!” said Patrick. “He said, choose your weapon.”
“So—oh!” said Ted. He knew Patrick’s mind as if it were his own, and the relief was almost more than he could stand.
“Come on quick, and catch Fence!” said Patrick.
They caught up with Fence at the door to his tower.
“Fence!” shouted Ted. “Fence, wait!”
Fence turned to them a face like an accurate but uninspired statue of himself, and Ted’s words clogged in his throat.
“He’s come to choose his weapon for the duel,” said Patrick.
Fence’s aimless green gaze sharpened briefly. “Edward, is this wise?”
“I think so,” said Ted. “It’s quicker. Fence—just for this one thing, may Randolph and I use the swords of Shan and Melanie?”
Fence was silent, staring at the floor. “Shan’s mercy indeed,” he said at last, “but how dearly that would please Chryse.”
“Well, that’s all to the good, then, isn’t it?” said Ted, hating himself.
“And it would comfort Randolph, maybe,” said Fence. This made no sense to Ted at all, but since it seemed to be on his side, he said nothing.
“Wilt thou undertake that the bout is quickly over?” Fence asked him.
Ted saw no way that he, or the real Edward either, could undertake any such thing unless Randolph helped him, but it did not matter. “I will,” he said.
“And return the swords without demur, when thou hast done?”
“What would I want them for, after that?” burst out Ted.
“Very well, then,” said Fence. “When wilt thou—”
“This evening,” said Ted. “May I have them now? Randolph should have a little time to accustom himself to the blade, shouldn’t he?”
“Bide thee here,” said Fence, “and I will bring them.”
He went slowly up the stairs.
Ted sat down on the floor, as Randolph had leaned upon the table. “Oh, dear heaven,” he said. “I think we’ve done it.”
“I’ll get the girls,” said Patrick. “And we should dress in our old clothes.”
“No, someone might see us. We’ll just take them with us. Can you and Ruth write the note to Fence? And, look, tell her to find a page and ask him to give it to Fence at five.”
“No fear,” said Patrick, and ran down the passage.
Ted leaned his head against the purple-stained stone wall and closed his eyes. He felt like someone who truly has to be home at five, but has had the misfortune to be given this instruction on the day his team is losing badly whatever game it might be playing. He was leaving behind a broken friendship, a shattered trust, an empty throne, a kingdom without an heir, and a snarl of riddles. And he still felt that all of it was somehow his fault.
“Here are thy weapons,” said Fence’s voice over his head.
“That was quick,” said Ted, blinking and getting up. His foot was asleep.
“Thy thoughts have sped the time,” said Fence. He still spoke without expression, but he was beginning to look less stony and more crumpled. Ted wanted to do something for him; but if someone’s excellent good friend and first apprentice was a traitor both to his King and to his friend’s own teaching, what could you say to him? Especially when you had once thought that his pain made a wonderful story.
“I prithee heed this warning,” said Fence. “The sword of Melanie, that which gloweth green, doth enhance the skill of him that wields it; but the sword of Shan, that gloweth blue, doth increase the skill of him that it fights; for she was a warrior, but he was a teacher.”
“So if I use Melanie’s sword and he uses Shan’s,” said Ted, longing to get away but feeling it better to play his part to the hilt, in the little time remaining him, “I’ll have my own skill enhanced and also get some of his?”
Fence nodded. “It will be quicker so.”
“My skill is his anyway,” said Ted.
“Oft do our gifts come back in strange guise,” said Fence, with bitter meaning.
“Fence,” said Ted, “it isn’t fair!”
“What is foul today may be fair tomorrow,” said Fence. He held out the swords, still in their sheaths and tangled in their belts. Ted took the awkward bundle, and the power of the swords shivered up his arms and prickled the hair on his neck.
“If thou wilt tell me the place of thy choosing,” said Fence, “and what men thou wilt have for witnesses, I will arrange these matters for thee.”
“The rose garden, I think,” said Ted, whose composure was dwindling rapidly, “and—and choose what witnesses you will.”
“And the hour?”
“Five o’clock,” said Ted.
“It shall be done, my lord.”
They looked at one another in the sickly light.
“Would a trial have been better?” Ted heard himself asking, as if he were indeed Edward, as if it mattered.
“No,” said Fence. “He hath injured thee; let thy hand give him his reward.”
“He’s injured you more!”
“For that,” said Fence, “he hath his reward already.” He turned in a flurry of galaxies and went back up the staircase. When Ted could see again, he ran for the stables.
Patrick intercepted him in the courtyard. “The girls have four horses down by the moat,” he said. “Come on.”
“That was fast work,” said Ted.
“Well, the grooms did all the saddling. Ellie spun them some story about how she and Laura and Ruth were going to pick so many wildflowers that they’d need an extra horse to carry them back on. I don’t think they thought she’d manage it, but they gave her the horse. That child is becoming dangerous.”
Ruth, Ellen, and Laura stood without speaking in the shadow of the four horses. They looked depressed. Ruth had the pack she had carried on the march; it bulged with their old clothes. She handed it to Ted and gave Ellen a boost onto her horse. Ted and Patrick scrambled onto their horses; Ruth helped Laura up behind Ted and mounted the remaining animal. They rode away from High Castle.
It was a clear, bright day, cooler than it had been for some time. Ted thought he could smell autumn coming. He wondered whether, in the woods where they had hunted the unicorn, it would smell like the soul of autumn, as when he had come there it had like the soul of summer. He sighed; and as if in answer Laura clutched at him and cried, “My flute!”
“We can’t go back,” said Ted.
“But I need it!”
“It’s not yours, Laurie.”
“But it will save us at the end!”
“Not us; them. We won’t need saving where we’re going.”
“He gave it to me, not her! She’s dead!”
“We can’t go back.”
Laura was silent, but a hot wet patch spreading through the back of Ted’s tunic told him that she was not resigned.
They left the horses at the Well. Ellen wanted to water them, but Ruth refused to have anything more to do with the Well, and the horses showed a definite disinclination to go into the woods where the stream was. Ruth whispered sorcerous words in their ears again.
“Did you remember that with the back of your mind, too?” asked Patrick, and received no answer.
The horses went loping back toward High Castle, looking as if they were enjoying themselves.
“I always meant to get to know mine better,” said Ellen, “and develop a wonderful bond with it.”
They trudged through the woods, where the bushes and saplings were reddening and goldenrod thronged the clearings, and tramped hollowly across the wooden bridge. The stream was low, and the cracked mud revealed by its sinking reminded Ted unhappily of the desert where they had fought.
They came to the hedge before the Secret House, and stood silently in a circle. Laura was going to cry; it was just a question of when. Ellen looked solemnly furious, as if somebody had played a practical joke on her and she meant to get even. Ruth wore an air of vague irritation, as she would when she tried to make cookies and Patrick and Laura stole bits of the dough. Patrick seemed pleased, but was managing not to smile; probably, Ted thought, because he knew somebody would slug him if he did.
Ruth pulled a wad of crumpled clothing out of her pack and handed it around. The skirt that had reached her ankle when she came to this country now came to the middle of her calf. Ted’s jeans were too short. He had grown, after all. He looked at his sister, whose shirt was too tight in the shoulders. He hoped Aunt Kathy and Uncle Jim were not observant, or, if they were, they lacked the imagination and the knowledge to figure out what their observations must mean. Ruth, quite uselessly, packed their tunics and dresses and velvet caps and the odd linen underwear into her pack, and laid it on the bank.
“Don’t forget to throw your sword back through,” said Patrick to Ted.
“Ruth,” said Ted, “what’d you do with Shan’s Ring?”
“I sealed it up with the note.”
“All right, then.”
“Let’s all leave at the same time,” said Ellen. “We’ll go along to our bottle-tree, and I’ll yell, ‘On your mark, get set, go!’ ”
“We’ll write to you,” said Ted.
“See you next summer,” said Ruth, and walked away. Her brother and sister followed her. Ted and Laura watched them slither along the bank of the stream until they went around a bend.
“Better get ready,” said Ted. They crouched before the gap in the hedge, holding their sword. It sent up Ted’s arm the strongest prickling he had yet felt, almost a pain. He saw by the flinching in Laura’s face that she had felt it too.
“On your mark!” came Ellen’s voice, a little wavery. “Get set! Go!”
Ted and Laura ducked under the hedge and stood up in the weedy yard of the Secret House. It was a clear, cool day there, too; but the sky was duller, the air heavier. Ted could smell cars, and dust, and rubber, and a whole collection of things he had almost forgotten about.
He held the sword up into a shaft of sunlight, and for the first time since they had found it, the runes they could not quite make out ran down the blade. This time, the back of Ted’s mind knew them, and he read aloud:
“All may yet be very well.”
“What a weird thing to put on a sword,” said Laura; her voice wavered even more than Ellen’s had.
“Help me throw it back,” said Ted.
Laura put her hand on the hilt, and, awkwardly but with considerable strength, they swung their arms backward and forward, and hurled the sword through the gap in the hedge. Ted half expected to hear it clatter on the sidewalk. But there was only a brief rustle as it went through the leaves; a flash as a bit of sun hit it; and shadows; and nothing but hedge.