She felt a slight resistance as she stepped across the threshold into the hall, as if the air had gathered itself together and pushed back at her. She paused and looked up, as Narl had looked up.
It was dark in the hall, and darker still above the door; but Eskwa glittered in the darkness.
Eskwa both binds and cuts. If you have need of either, he will answer to your hand.
She could barely reach the lower edge of the blade, even standing on tiptoe; she would need a stool or something to stand on, to unhook it from whatever held it. But as she thought to go in search of the stool, the sabre came softly away from the wall and slid into her hands. She stood staring at it; swords and sabres were outside her practical experience. “It will do as a lamp,” she said, turning the blade a little as one might turn a faceted gem in candlelight, “even if I don’t know anything else to do with it. Do you?”
Narl shook his head. “I have no warrior training. And it is your hand it came to.”
No one awake,
their footsteps seemed to say to her as they descended again. She had loosened her belt and cautiously tucked Eskwa through it, and the blade laid a little track of light in front of their feet.
No one awake. No one awake.
No one awake but Narl and me. No one awake. Down they went, down and down, as they had gone up, with no other sound but their footsteps, until they heard the soft tidal sound of hundreds of people breathing in their sleep as they turned onto the final flight of stairs.
They paused at the foot of those last stairs. To their right ran a corridor and a series of smaller parlours Lady Pren had set up as places where weary and overwhelmed party-goers might retreat; by the faint moan of breathing, some people had. To the left were the series of corridors that led at last to the kitchens and cellars. Rosie dreaded reentering the Hall, but that was where the main doors were. “I suppose we should try the front doors first? It doesn’t seem very likely, but it . . . who knows what the rules are in a fairy tale?”
Narl nodded, and they made their way as quickly as possible across the floor, Rosie half trying not to look at any of the figures she scuttled round, half hoping to see Aunt, or Barder, or even Ikor or Rowland. Or Sigil. She did see Lord Prendergast, inelegantly sprawled, one leg somehow thrown over the body of someone who could only be one of the royal magicians, and an important one, too, by the jewels at his breast, and the beribboned gold chain in his hair. One of the ribbons had fallen into his open mouth, and he made a slight gagging noise as he breathed. Rosie stopped and brushed it clear.
Their path did not take them near the dais where the king and queen had still been standing when Pernicia appeared; Rosie would have avoided it even if that had been the shortest way.
Despite icy-dank early-spring draughts (and a collision of incompatible smoke-suppressing spells that caused great ashy belches from one of the enormous fireplaces) the huge central doors of the Hall had been left open since the official beginning of the ball, so that people could come and go as they pleased, including members of the royal family walking out to the tents in the park. (Ikor had hated this, but agreed that it was the sort of thing the princess they had created would do.) The big doors, which opened outwards, were now closed; slammed shut, Rosie wondered, by the force of an explosion of rose stems? The doors might now as well have been walls; they barely creaked when Narl and Rosie pushed unhopefully against them. There was a small door cut out of one of the big ones, which opened inwards, and it still opened, but outside the rose stems were so thick not even sunlight could break through. Rosie looked at Eskwa, as if the sabre might tell her what to do, but it said nothing; and she did not wish to try Ikor’s blade against Woodwold’s defence. It wasn’t till then that one more implication of the breathing silence came to her: Woodwold itself was asleep. There were no whispers of
Rosie
. The doors were sealed against them as well as against Pernicia. No one awake.
As Rosie turned away from the doors, she saw something in the corner of her eye, and saw Narl’s head begin to turn just as she snapped her own round. Movement.
Someone was staggering to his feet. Not two feet, but four. Hroc. And then Sunflower, the spaniel bitch. Then a lower, lurching, drunken shadow: Flinx.
“Flinx!”
said Rosie. “What are you doing here? Did you come with Kat? Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”
But Flinx sat down at some distance from Rosie, with his back to her, and tried to wash a front paw; and promptly fell over. He hissed, furiously, and his hair bushed out; but that didn’t work right either, and some of his hair stood on end and some didn’t, giving him a look both rakish and clownish. He hated it, and hissed again, ears flat back and eyes like midsummer bonfires.
“Flinx, I’m sorry,” said Rosie. “I’d stroke you, but you’d only bite me, wouldn’t you? In the temper you’re in. And if you missed, you’d only be angrier.” She spoke aloud, for she knew her words were more for her comfort than for Flinx’s; but she knew, by the angle of his back-turning, that he was listening to her, and that her placatory tone would be registered.
Several more sighthounds had woken up: Milo, and Tash, and Froo. Tash had lain by Rosie’s chair every evening since she had come to Woodwold and, when the draughts were bad, across her feet. Froo was a romantic, and loved Rosie because she was the princess; he reminded her a little of Ikor.
And Spear: she hadn’t known Spear had come to the ball, nor how he might have done so; he did not stray far from his pub any more. He appeared out of the darkness in the back of the Hall, his wiry half-long coat, dark during Rosie’s childhood, now almost as white as the merrel. He placed each foot with utter deliberation. He of them all walked the most steadily, as if he were habituated to overseeing mere physical unreliabilities, and the aftereffects of poisoned sleep were no worse than the standard infirmities of old age. He came straight up to Rosie and with no apparent hesitation, reared himself (a little stiffly) on his hind legs and put his front paws on her shoulders, which had been his standard greeting since she was ten years old and strong enough to bear his weight. He did this with no other human; but then no other human had taken her first steps clinging to his tail.
When he dropped back to the floor again, Rosie saw one more approaching shadow over his shoulder. This one was very small and low to the floor—less than half the size of Flinx. Throstle.
Throstle was moving slowly, but he did not stagger. He walked up to Rosie and put his head on her foot. He weighed so little she wouldn’t have known it was there if he hadn’t caught her eye first; but he hadn’t been a sleeve dog most of his life without learning a good deal about how to make his presence felt, even among people who couldn’t talk to him as Rosie could.
She and Narl and their ragged, wombly, teetery crew stood still in the middle of the scene of desolation and tried to think about what came next. The dogs, without seeming to organise themselves, had meandered round till they were all facing more or less in the same direction. There was a tiny bump against Rosie’s ankle, a meek plucking at the floppy top edge of her boot, and she leaned down (carefully, on account of Eskwa) to scoop up Throstle: and discovered two mice looking at her beseechingly.
Us too,
they said.
Uss tooo.
Their silent voices were familiar.
You’re from Foggy Bottom,
said Rosie.
How did you get here? Where are your brothers and sisters and cousins?
They are still in Foggy Bottom,
they replied.
We came in your—your box.
(There was at this point a vivid mouse-eye view of the inside of a box full of not-very-well-packed bits and pieces moving at speed on the back of a coach.)
When you came here.
Why?
To be near you, Princess,
they said, surprised that so obvious an answer needed to be supplied.
We all wanted to come. But we thought it would not . . . do you a service with the humans here if there were . . . suddenly many more of us in this other place. So we . . . chose.
Throstle wagged his tail. “Oh well,” said Rosie, “if they’re friends of yours. I wonder if Lady Pren knows?” And she dropped Throstle into her biggest pocket, offered the palm of her hand to the mice, and, when they had ticklingly climbed onto it, dropped them on top of Throstle.
Flinx had already set out, toward the stairs at the back of the Great Hall, making a determined, if still slightly unsteady, way through the sleepers. “That way?” said Rosie.
“I don’t know any reason why not,” Narl said.
Flinx led the procession through the corridors away from the formal parlours, and down wide, worn stairs into the kitchens, where the fire slept with the cooks and the men and the maid and the spit boy. And the cat. Flinx looked at the sleeping kitchen cat with disdain. Rosie paused long enough to shift the spit boy, who, if the fire woke up before he did, was going to be himself roasted, as Narl saved the cook from drowning slowly in her bowl of batter. “I don’t suppose we dare touch any of the food?” said Rosie; Narl shook his head. Then they went on.
Flinx led them steadily, walking more strongly, and Spear walked beside him through the kitchens. But as they went down another flight of stairs, they descended into darkness, darkness so heavy that Eskwa faded to a ghostly crescent shape, and cast no light. There would have been torches on the walls, but they had no fire to kindle them with. “Oh, but—” began Rosie.
Narl, a step below her, reached up and took her hand. “I can lead you through the dark,” he said. “This dark, anyway.” She curled her fingers round his wide palm and followed. The animals all moved together, close enough to touch their neighbours, so as not to lose each other. Just before the darkness became absolute, Hroc dropped back from Spear’s heels to insinuate his head under her other hand. They reached the bottom of the stairs and went on. The flooring was rough stone, and Rosie picked up her feet like a carriage pony. Her nose and ears and skin could sense the openings of other passages; she wondered if Flinx and Spear were still at the head of the procession, and if Narl was following them.
She felt, strangely, perfectly safe, her feet taking slow, careful, blind steps into the dark of an unknown tunnel underground. She felt wistful about all the other underground ways she would have liked to learn more about. Here were the roots of Woodwold, here were the first founding places; she might have been able to hear . . . to hear some buried, secret language telling her what she needed to know, some old but mortal trick she might use against Pernicia, some trick so ancient Pernicia would have forgotten it: some trick Narl’s fore-bear might have left for their aid, eleven hundred years ago.
By now the pitchy blackness was thick and tangible enough to prove a fifth element, unjustly omitted from the usual list: not air or water, not earth or fire, but dark. She stopped, and listened, and her companions stopped, too, and, with the sharpening of the other senses blindness provokes, she could feel them turning their heads, searching for what had disturbed her.
But all was silence. Woodwold was asleep, too; down here Rosie was sure she could have heard what she had had only echoes of in the walls upstairs. Pernicia had sent even Woodwold to sleep. But Narl was awake, and had woken her. And Hroc was awake, and Milo and Tash and Froo, and Flinx and Spear, and Sunflower and Throstle and two mice from Foggy Bottom. And what about the rose hedge?
She stood a minute longer, listening, waiting; the others stood patiently, for she was their princess.
The dogs picked it up first, of course; she felt the ears pricking, the heads—and the hackles—rising; and she could feel the buzz of an inaudible growl through the top of Hroc’s head. Then she and Narl, too, could hear the soft pat-pat of small feet in the silence of the corridor.
Fox. Even human noses can recognise that smell. It stopped at some little distance from them, and said,
I have come to be near the princess. Will you let me pass?
The dogs made no move as it approached, neither making way for it nor barring it. Rosie felt soft padded forefeet touch her knee, and a cold nose her wrist.
Zel,
she said.
You jumped into Peony’s arms, that night. Ikor looked at you and . . . But where have you come from?
I don’t know,
he said.
I have just woken up. It was dark. And then I heard your company. May I come with you?
Yes,
said Rosie,
but do you know where we are going?
Pernicia,
sighed all the silent dog-voices around them.
Pernicia.
Zel was silent for a moment, and then he said,
I am here. I will come.
They went on, and then the dark began to grow a little less, and Rosie could see dog-heads and dog-backs, and then a smaller puff of darkness became Flinx, still in the lead; and then there were stairs again, and they went up. The smell told them where they were before they reached ground level: the smell of very well-kept horses, and of the bins of corn in the storage room the stairs led to.
The long stable was in twilight, rose stems growing over the windows. The door to the courtyard at the end of the central corridor stood open, but there was little more light through it; although the immediate way was unblocked, there were thorny branches hanging down from the lintel and curling round the side posts, and a tangly greeny-grey of hedge not far beyond.
The horses, too, were asleep, and grooms lay in the aisles, some of them fallen down on the harness or horse rugs they were carrying. Rosie looked anxiously at the row of pitch-forks hanging on the wall, but the only one missing was found slid harmlessly from the lax hand that had held it.
All the horses were asleep. She had no reason to expect otherwise. Nor had she led the little party here; Flinx had, or Spear, or Narl. Perhaps this was merely the shortest way back to the surface from the kitchen cellars. Perhaps they would have to go back down into the darkness and try the other tunnels. Try them for what? A way out? She doubted that Woodwold’s underground maze ran any farther than Woodwold’s hedge of briar roses.