The Secret Country (7 page)

Ted was furious, and speechless. He was afraid to say too much. Benjamin might ask just what the five of them had been doing out by the Well of the White Witch, if they had not been arranging a secret meeting between Ted and Ruth.

They came through the last set of doors, past yet two more unconcerned guards, and into a high dim drafty hall strewn with what Ted supposed were rushes. Three dogs lay by the fire, and Ted almost tripped over a cat, but there were no people there, and almost no furniture. It felt like a place where you waited.

“Well,” said Benjamin, “go dress thyself as well as thou canst, and I will do likewise.”

Ted froze. He had only a vague idea of where his room was, or wherever it was he should go to dress himself. Nor was he sure what he should dress himself in. He looked at Benjamin hopelessly, and Benjamin scowled at him.

“Now, Edward, what’s the matter?”

“Well.”

“Last time,” said Benjamin, “’twas stuffing it up the chimney to stop the draft. And the time before that ’twas using it as a lake for thy sister’s dolls to play at swimming in. What is it now?”

“What?” said Ted.

“Plague take thee!” said Benjamin, and catching his arm, hustled him through the hall into an even draftier stair. “I thought as much! An it were not my ears as well as thine would ring with thy father’s wrath, I’d leave thee to it.”

“But what are you going to do?” said Ted feebly.

“Hide thy scrapes, as always,” said Benjamin; he sounded cross, but not actually furious anymore. “Thou shalt wear one of the robes i’ the West Tower, and drown in it, and look a fool, and serve thee right.”

“The dolls didn’t drown,” said Ted, tentatively.

Benjamin cuffed the side of his head, and Ted shut up. The blow did not feel unfriendly, but it did hurt. He began to wonder whether, when Benjamin had said their ears would ring with the King’s wrath, Benjamin meant more than that the King would yell at them.

“While I have thine ear,” said Benjamin over his shoulder, “how didst thou come by that outlandish garb, and what perversity led thee to wear and not burn it?”

Ted produced the reason which explained more sins than any other. “We were playing a game,” he said, “about people who wear outlandish garb.”

“ ’Twas sweet and commendable in thee,” said Benjamin, in a tone Ted did not like, “to find time to play with thy cousins.”

“Thank you,” said Ted, trying not to grin.

“The devil damn thee black,” said Benjamin. He said it mildly, about in the tone Ted’s mother might have used to say “You are a nuisance,” but Ted was shocked into stopping. This was what the lady with the broom had said, back at the secret house.

“What?” he said.

“I do not want,” said Benjamin, stopping, turning, and taking hold of Ted’s T-shirt as if it were a dead spider, “to see any of these garments again.”

“Yes, sir.” Wonderful. We can go back home in whatever they give us to wear here. And
they
may not tell us they never want to see those garments again, but they’ll sure want to know where they came from. Or we can—

“Tell thy brother and thy cousins likewise.”

“Even Ruth?” said Ted, daring.

“The Lady Ruth is not dressed so. The Lady Ruth,” said Benjamin grimly, “knoweth better than to irk me in small matters.”

“She doesn’t mean to irk you in large ones,” said Ted.

Benjamin snorted. “Do not tell me,” he said, “that any minion of the Green Caves doth what he meaneth not.”

Ted decided that anything he said would make things worse.

Benjamin hurried him down several windy passages, up a winding staircase, and into a high room which even in the dim dregs of the sunset glowed with color. It was hung and draped and piled with clothes. Ted could see a sleeve here or a collar there, but for the most part nothing looked like anything he had ever worn or seen worn or imagined wearing. The room smelled of cloves and dust. Ted sneezed.

Benjamin turned his back on him and began burrowing in a mound of blue. He shook out several massive robes of velvet, scowled at them, and flung them down again. Finally he thrust one at Ted, who pulled it over his head, sneezed again, and sat down on the floor, the weight of the material having upset his balance. He sat there in the stuffy spicy dark, feeling the cold of the stone floor seep through his jeans, and wished he were playing tag.

“One would think,” grumbled Benjamin’s voice above him, “that thou hadst never worn a robe in thy life. Up with thee.” He parted the material and briskly thrust it down over Ted’s shoulders, and Ted blinked at him and stood up, staggering a little. “Thank you,” he said.

Benjamin jerked and tugged at the heavy folds of the garment, straightening it on Ted’s shoulders and turning up the sleeves for him. Ted stood meekly, trying not to sneeze again as Benjamin stirred up more dust from the velvet, and feeling as if he were Laura’s age and being dressed for Halloween. If only that were all it was.

“This was Lord Justin’s robe,” said Benjamin, shaking a sleeve, “and even when thou hast thy full growth, ’twill be too large for thee.”

Ted scowled. Who had Lord Justin been? He could not remember. Maybe Ellen would. She was the one who had written down all the history.

He watched Benjamin pull a robe over his own head. Why would Benjamin keep his robe up here in the dust, even if people didn’t sneeze here?

“Hey,” said Ted. “Where’s your robe?”

“Lord Randolph hath the loan of it,” said Benjamin shortly.

“And where’s his?”

Benjamin did not smile. “He hath lent it to thy cousins—”

“For their dolls to play at swimming in?”

“E’en so.”

Benjamin still did not smile. Ted tried not to. He was delighted and afraid at once. He had gotten the better of Benjamin. But this was no scene he had ever played in the nine summers of the Secret. He had never thought of Lord Randolph, brilliant counselor, apprentice wizard, King’s man, and murderer, as the sort of person who would lend his counselor’s robe to anybody to play dolls with. Ted felt that things were getting away from him.

“Why can’t he have one of these old dusty ones, then, and you wear your own?”

“What will pass muster in me and thee, my young lord, will not so in Randolph. Come away; by now the council stays for us.”

Outside it was dark now, and although Ted saw sockets for torches set in the walls every few feet, most of them were empty. Benjamin strode along as if he were in broad daylight, his robe floating behind him, and Ted stumbled in his wake, clutching handsful of his own heavy velvet, and fuming. The floors and steps near the tower room were rough, and invited one to trip. As they came back to the central part of the castle, the floors, worn with greater use, became smooth, and invited one to slip. Ted began to feel like Laura.

They came up one last flight of stairs. There was a door at the top of it, and a man-at-arms before the door. There was a torch above his head and a short sword in his hand. His shadow, in the pulsing light of the torch, clawed at the ceiling. Ted gaped at him under Benjamin’s elbow. He had never seen a man-at-arms—the casual guards at the gates did not count—and he wished the light were better.

“Good even,” said Benjamin to the man-at-arms. “Is the King before us?”

“No, my lord,” said the man, “you’re safe. Neither the King nor Lord Randolph is there yet.” He did not speak as Benjamin did, which Ted found a relief. Benjamin was hard to keep up with; if everyone talked like that, things here would be even harder than they already were.

The guard pushed the heavy door open for them, standing aside to let them through. Light and a clamor of voices poured down the stairs and engulfed them. It was much warmer in this hall, and torches blazed from every socket. Ted noticed for the first time that they smelled like turpentine.

He and Benjamin went down the hall toward the voices and light that spilled from a wide doorway. Ted would have liked to inspect the carving of the double doors, which had been his idea and which he had even drawn in pen and ink, with great care, for Ellen’s history. But Benjamin hustled him on into the room. Like everything else, it was too big.

So were the people in it. They all knew him, and he recognized none of them. He looked up, grinned, and murmured, “My lord, good even, my lord,” at a series of faces, some bearded and some smooth, mostly young, and thanked his stars that Prince Edward was shy and scholarly and not good for much. He had not started out that way, but Ted and the others had soon discovered that there were not enough of them to play more than a few interesting characters. Ted had had to play the King, until the King was poisoned. Then Prince Edward could be dragged out of his library and become interesting, but right now he was of little account.

As soon as he and Benjamin had greeted everyone, the clamor began to settle, as noise in a classroom subsides just before the bell rings. People began to take their places. Ted, backed against a tapestry he had not had time to look at, felt his stomach lurch as he realized that he could not remember where he should sit. He had played the King in this scene. When Patrick or Ruth got tired of being counselors, he had played himself so one of them could play the King. He had also played Lord Andrew, the Secret Country’s villain. He could not remember, in this room that could hold a table big enough for six games of hopscotch, swimming with torchlight, where any of them was supposed to sit.

He scowled. King William always sat at one end of the table, with Lord Randolph on his right and Benjamin on his left. Prince Edward sat at the other end of the table. If only Benjamin or Randolph would sit down. But Benjamin, across the table, was talking to a thin man with an elegant moustache, who might be Lord Andrew, although Ted would not have wanted to bet on it. And the man-at-arms had said Randolph was not here yet.

The man with the elegant moustache was trying to convince Benjamin of something, and it was clear to Ted that Benjamin did not want to talk to him at all, let alone be convinced by him. The moustached man began to look a little tight around the mouth, and over Benjamin’s face settled the lowering anger that had been there when he found the five children at the well.

Get mad and sit down, Ted begged him silently. Benjamin went on getting angry, but he did not sit down. Ted became aware, in the quieting room, that he was not the only one watching them. Ted was reasonably sure by now that the moustached man was in fact Andrew. The man did not look like Andrew, but he acted like him. His voice was becoming steadily more unpleasant. Head after head turned in his direction, and voice after voice petered out, until Ted could hear him clearly.

“No evidence,” he was saying, “neither in action nor in reason nor in philosophy.”

My God, thought Ted, he sounds just like Patrick.

“Nor in magic?”

Andrew snorted.

“So,” said Benjamin, in a tone that stilled the last murmurs, “now we come to’t.”

Ted, who did not remember this scene, struggled to make sense of it. Andrew, he knew, did not believe in magic. Patrick had fought bitterly against this, maintaining that, in the Secret Country, not believing in magic was about as sensible as not believing in the law of gravity. Ellen informed him that she did not, in fact, believe in the law of gravity. Patrick said that he had hoped for a villain who was smarter than his sister, Ruth made him shut up, and Andrew had continued to disbelieve in magic.

Ted wondered if Benjamin was just now finding this out. Even if he was, should he be so upset? What had he said in the courtyard? I have magic in my blood and my bones, but not in my learning . . . I will not come between the cardinal and his charges. Oh, of course. Benjamin came from Fence’s Country, where, instead of keeping little kids from falling into puddles, you had to keep them from summoning thunderstorms. He, too, would probably think that disbelieving in magic was about as sensible as disbelieving in the law of gravity. Although, come to think of it, he probably didn’t even know about the law of gravity.

Ted was lost in this swamp of thought, and Benjamin and Andrew were still looking at each other like two cats deciding whether to fight, when the double doors opened, sending in a draft that slanted every flame, made Ted abandon his thoughts, and caused Andrew and Benjamin to jump guiltily.

Two men came into the room. The first was clearly the King. He did not look much as Ted had imagined him, perhaps because the torchlight did strange things to people’s faces. But he was old and he wore a crown. Ted was reminded, by something about his eyebrows, and the way he fixed Benjamin and Andrew with his stare, and the way he held his head, of Patrick.

Well, he
is
Patrick’s father, thought Ted. I guess he should look like him. He’s my father too; I wonder if he looks like me. He’s awfully old to be either of our fathers. I wonder how old
we
are? I forget.

Finding this direction of thought unsettling, he looked from the King to the second man, and could not breathe. This was Lord Randolph. He was taller and thinner than Ted thought he should be, and he resembled Ruth and Ellen to an alarming degree, much more strongly than the King resembled Patrick. But Ted was certain that this was Lord Randolph, and something in the look of him almost stopped Ted’s heart. He was smiling, and everyone in the room except Andrew smiled back at him. Even Benjamin, whose furious scowl had smoothed to a sort of blank inquiry when the King came in, smiled at Randolph.

“So here be our truants,” said Benjamin.

Randolph made him a bow, a very brief and tidy one, and Ted blinked. That bow meant things, among them that Randolph liked Benjamin very much, that he had no intention of telling Benjamin why he and the King were late, and that he was tired. He reminded Ted of an actor, whose every move meant something.

And how do you know what that bow means? he demanded inwardly. Have you ever seen any other bow that you thought meant anything at all?