Unexpected Magic (51 page)

“Stop!” she called. “What have you done with Everard?”

They stared at her beautiful sad face in astonishment. Susannah, in spite of her surprise, sighed with envy of the lady's bright fair hair. Like many dark-haired little girls, Susannah craved to have golden hair and a pink-and-white face.

The lady looked surprised too. “I am sorry. I thought you were the other Outsiders. Where are they?”

“We do not know, madam,” said Susannah. “We are looking for them.”

“Oh, find them—find the boy at least,” implored the lady. “My son is with him. That much I have been told.”

“We are going to find Alex,” Susannah told her grandly, “or die in the attempt.”

“Pray God you succeed,” said the lady. “This realm is in deadly danger while Towerwood has him. And you must find the young lady too. Towerwood is hell for leather after her and Robert, if my messenger is to be trusted.”

“Who is Towerwood?” Harry asked.

“Who is Robert?” Susannah asked.

They did not believe the lady heard them. She talked on, leaning earnestly toward them, with tears running down her face. She talked frantically, as if no one had given her a chance to talk before. Harry and Susannah were awed and appalled, because they had never been beside so much grief before, and their awe was greater because they understood hardly any of what the lady said. She was, Susannah thought, the kind of person who always took it for granted you knew the people she was talking about, and now, in her distress, she mentioned names, places, and happenings all crowded together in a way which quite bewildered the two children.

“And I was not at Endwait, or I might have seen his face and known the truth. Now, surely, it will die with him. Poor Everard is too young to understand, you see—but I know he is not mad. I do not believe he killed Arbard, though as for the other, I am not sure. It is all Towerwood's doing. He has him somewhere, no doubt intending to make him mad indeed. And he knows I know, because Phillippa was standing by when I told Robert to proclaim himself Prince. Towerwood dropped many hints of this last night when he came to Falleyfell and my poor sister-in-law took poison rather than marry him. She is dead, God rest her soul, and I deserve to die too for my deceptions—for I told Towerwood I would marry him so that he could be the Prince, and then when he was gone I ran away rather than take poison too. If you find Everard, tell him I have gone to the nuns of Uldrim. I shall be safe there for a while.”

The lady stopped speaking suddenly, with her blue eyes wide, wide open. They saw she was horrified that she had said so much to two complete strangers. “Tell no one of this!” she said wildly. “Tell only Everard where I am.”

“We promise not to tell a soul, ma'am,” Harry said.

“Not a word,” promised Susannah. They were both thinking that the lady could not have told anyone more likely to keep their promise, since they understood so little of what she said.

“Nor say that you have seen me,” said the lady. They promised again.

“How can we say,” Susannah thought, “when we do not know who she is?”

“Thank you, a thousand times,” said the lady. “I would reward you richly if I could.” Then Princess Rosalind, only they did not know her name, rode quickly away down the road. The Courcys set off up the hill after the hoof-marks again.

Harry inspected his pistol at the top of the hill. “I understood one thing from all that rigmarole,” he said, “and that is that if we meet a man called Towerwood, the best thing I can do is to take careful aim and shoot him between the eyes.”

“Poor lady!” said Susannah, still very awed.

Then for a long time neither of them said anything. They followed the prints across bare snowy uplands for miles. The wind made their eyes water but even so they could see there was not even a shepherd moving. Harry was thinking that this strange country must be very underpopulated, when they came to the place where Towerwood had captured Alex and Everard. Susannah cried out, it was so gruesome.

There was the deeply churned snow leading from Falleyfell. It ended in a wide trampled circle and in the middle of the circle was a great bright splatter of blood. It had been so cold that the blood was still red and there was no mistaking what it was. If Susannah had been Charlotte, she would have offered to faint on the spot.

“Not Alex!” she said.

Harry was as white as a sheet again and wanted to be sick, but he rode over to the place. “Two people have said Alex is alive,” he said, and his voice came out hoarse and squeaky by turns. He had never admired Susannah more than when she came up beside him to look too.

“But,” she said, “whoever it was did not die—or not straightaway. He went after all those horses. Look.”

Harry looked to where the churned snow led away again, where Towerwood had carried the boys off to Endwait. Drips of blood lay among the hoof-marks, and there were dragging footsteps. He took a long, large breath. They would have to go that way too, and goodness only knew what they would come upon.

“He must be horribly wounded,” said Susannah. “We ought to find him, whoever he is. Do come on, Harry.” And Harry thought, as he went on along the line of bloodstains, that his sister was probably the bravest member of the Courcy family.

The trail led into a slight dip. To one side of it was a tiny stone hut, a shepherd's mountain shelter probably. It had a broken chimney, with a wisp of smoke coming from it. The bloodstains led to it, though, of course, the hoof-marks went on. Someone had dragged the wounded man through the door of the hut. They could see by the long trailing mark.

Harry and Susannah looked at one another, and then Harry rode over to the hut and knocked on the door.

“Who be there?” shouted a gruff voice.

“My name is Henry Courcy,” Harry answered, because there seemed no other answer he could make.

The door opened at once. Harry did not know it, but his name was little short of magic in the Principality. Eleanor de Courcy, besides being famously won by Prince Geoffrey, had been a Princess whose praises were still sung, though she had lived five hundred years before. The shepherd who opened the door nodded and smiled. He had expected his visitor to look like an Outsider, and he did.

“What can a poor man do for ye, my lord?”

“Who is the wounded man you have, please? Can you tell us how he came to be hurt?”

“Aye, my lord. It be poor young Lord Arbard. He can tell ye hisself how he come to have his blood spilled, if ye care to step inside.”

Harry, very relieved that he did not have to look upon a corpse, dismounted and went into the hut. Susannah dragged both horses over to the door so that she could see what was going on. Lord Arbard was lying on a pile of sheepskins, very pale and breathing heavily, but, as far as Harry could see, nothing like dead. He had been drinking soup from a wooden bowl.

“A likeness, a definite likeness,” he said breathlessly to Harry. “There is a touch of the Prince about you—not Everard, but William, you know, Prince Everard's father. What can I tell you?”

“Where Alex Hornby is, if you know.”

Lord Arbard told them what he knew, which, of course, was very little, but enough to make Harry more determined than ever to shoot Towerwood if he got a chance. Susannah, listening, took a violent dislike to Prince Everard. She was glad to hear that Alex had blacked his eye and she admired Alex, if possible, more than ever for it.

“Towerwood imagined, thought, knew that he had killed your humble servant,” said Lord Arbard. “He would have killed any other man, but I have a curious, unusual, strange—in short my heart is in my right side.”

“Congratulations,” said Harry. “I wish mine was.” He wondered if that was what made Lord Arbard use three words where one would do.

“But you must hurry,” Lord Arbard said. “You must trace, follow—”

“Yes,” said Harry hastily. “We must. I hope you get well soon.” He backed out of the hut and mounted his horse again. The shepherd came out with offers of soup, but Harry refused. Once he got into a real conversation with Lord Arbard he feared it would last all day, and as far as he could see, they could not afford all day. “We had better hurry,” he said to Susannah. “It was yesterday afternoon that all this happened.”

So they rode on again. Susannah said indignantly: “What a country this is, where someone can carry off the Prince and nobody else does a thing about it!”

“I think it is because their ruler has just died,” Harry answered. “Everything is at sixes and sevens, and there is only us to help.”

“Only us and our pistol,” said Susannah. “God for Harry, England, and St. George!” She went careering off down a hill waving one arm over her head. Harry followed, laughing, but wishing she could take matters more seriously.

After that they met nothing and nobody for the rest of the morning. The tracks were plain and clear in the crisp snow until they led them down to the Endwait road. There, they vanished in a host of other hoofmarks.

“Like a stag taking to water,” said Susannah. “The villain did it on purpose.”

Harry got off his horse and inspected the tracks carefully. It was difficult to see, but he thought the riders must have turned right as they came to the road. One horse might have swung out a little, into less trampled snow, as it turned on the inside of the troop. He was still bending, inspecting the place, trying to decide if it looked like a horse marking time while the others made a wide turn, when he heard the squeaking of wheels. There was a donkey-cart coming along the road, loaded with sacks of vegetables, and on top of the sacks was the body of a man dressed in orange. This one was definitely dead. Susannah turned away. The driver of the cart, a very gloomy man in a blue smock, looked at them with his eyebrows raised.

“I warn ye,” he said, “they'll be on ye if ye waste time searching around here. The battle is lost for all the Perland caves and Howeforce is put to flight. I thought they said ye were locked up for treason, the pair on ye.”

“Oh, no,” said Susannah faintly. “It was not us, sir, but thank you for warning us, all the same. Come on, Harry, please.”

The driver pointed down the road, the opposite way to the one which Harry thought the horses had taken. “Go ahead of me there,” he said. “But ye must not go to Gairne. If ye can get to Arbard ye'll be safe.”

“No,” said Harry. “They went the other way, Susannah. We shall have to go that way, whether or not there has been a battle.” Then he said politely to the driver, “Do you mind telling me who has won the battle? I do not know Howeforce.”

The driver suddenly became surly and gave a frightened look over one shoulder at the dead man on his cart. “Then ye'll be glad to hear Towerwood has won, seeing ye're on his side.”

“That man
again
!” said Susannah. “We are not on his side, sir.”

“Then get to Arbard,” the driver answered, still very suspicious. He would not speak to them again. They watched him click his tongue to his donkey and go slowly wheeling away along the road.

“Oh, dear!” said Susannah.

“It cannot be helped,” Harry said. “I am sure they went this way. Bear up, Susannah. Remember some of this is our fault.”

They came to the Endwait turning half a mile farther on. The road was deserted. They saw that tracks led across the bridge and into the gorge, but there was no means of knowing if they were the right ones. Other people had ridden in and out of Endwait since, and confused the whole thing.

“What shall we do?” Harry said. “I think we must go into the valley and ask. People seem friendly if we say we are not on Towerwood's side.”

Susannah agreed. The two of them were just crossing the bridge, when there were shouts from the hill on the other side of the road. Before they realized what was happening a man in mail thundered up to them and reined his great horse almost onto its haunches beside them. He was all in red and white and shining armor.

“He looks like St. George,” Susannah thought. She thought he had a nice, rather nervous face. “He has taken us for the Hornbys—like the lady!” She was right.

“I beg your pardon,” said the man. “I took you for the other Outsiders. But now I see that you are both too dark, and that the lady is a great deal younger. I am Howard Lord Darron. May I ask your names?”

Susannah happily told him who they were. He bowed like a real knight-errant, and Susannah was so delighted with him that she added, hoping to make him properly their friend: “We are not on Towerwood's side, either.”

“That is very regrettable,” said Lord Darron, “for it would seem that I am. I must ask you to accompany me and for the time being to regard yourselves as under arrest.”