Fence gave her a considering look, and she wished she had not tucked her feet up under her skirts. Lady Ruth was dignified. “And thou,” said Fence, unsmiling, “hath an outward show very like thy other, but art somewhat softer i’the’center.”
“I am not,” said Ruth, severely, “a chocolate-covered marshmallow cookie.”
Ellen choked.
Fence made a face. “’Tis too sweet a combination,” he said. “You mistake me. The Lady Ruth made never a sweet show.”
“No wonder she and Meredith got along,” said Ellen.
Fence did smile at that.
“I can’t wait to get out of here,” said Ruth.
“I would be gone also,” said Fence, “but there are preparations cannot be hurried.”
“It’s just that between Benjamin and Agatha and Randolph—and this betrothal—”
“Is Andrew better?” said Fence.
“Yes!” said Ruth. “Andrew doesn’t love us; we never even pretended to love Andrew.”
“Ruth,”
said Ted, with an appalled gaze that had nothing of Edward in it.
Ruth gulped. Now
she
was doing it. You jerk, she thought to herself. It must be the mental equivalent of wanting to pick off a scab; except it isn’t
your
scab.
“Trouble not,” said Fence, kindly.
“You keep saying that,” said Ruth.
“Well,” said Fence, “you are all so sensible that, did it not sort so ill with my presentiments, I’d think you conscience-scathed, and eager to amend it.”
Sensible? thought Ruth. Sensible to sight as well as hearing? Sensitive? She opened her mouth, but Ted was quicker.
“We
are
conscience-scathed,” said Ted. “Claudia made it sound as if we had some hand in all your misfortunes. We didn’t know we were affecting real people, when we played our game; but we did play it. It’s as if,” said Ted, suddenly inspired, “we had shot an arrow o’er the house, and hurt our brother.”
“No more but so?” said Fence.
“Well,” said Ruth, in response to Ted’s helpless glance, “it argues a sort of carelessness in us, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not just
conscience
,” said Ellen, suddenly. “We’re
sorry.
Not because we did it, but because it pains us to see you in evil straits.”
“I know it,” said Fence. “Why?”
“Because we’re so sensible, I suppose,” said Ruth, dryly. “Don’t the evil straits of strangers pain you, Fence?”
“Of a certainty; but not in this wise.”
“That’s it,” said Ted. “You’re strangers, and yet you aren’t.”
“And you,” said Fence. “So are you to us.”
“And that,” said Ruth, “is why I want to go. We’ll be doing something to make restitution.”
Randolph came in without knocking, shut the door, and leaned on it. He looked harassed.
“What did I tell you?” said Ruth. “Around and around in your head for weeks afterward.”
“Nay, hours merely, I’ll wager,” said Randolph, with a very brief smile.
“Do you want some more cordial?” said Ruth, offering him her untouched glass. “You look as if you needed strengthening.”
Randolph smiled again. “I thank you, no. The deed’s done; you are free of the Green Caves. But free upon condition.” He exchanged a long look with Fence, the meaning of which escaped Ruth. Randolph seemed resigned; Fence, after a blank moment, cast his eyes to the ceiling and let his breath out in a sound that might have been a snort, or an aborted chuckle.
“Don’t be so
dramatic
!” said Ruth, losing patience. “What do I have to do? Dress in sackcloth and ashes? Promise her my firstborn son? Set the sun, the moon, and the stars in the sky? Sort innumerable bushels of mixed wheat, barley, and rye into their separate piles? What? I can’t wait.”
Randolph, grinning as Ruth had never seen him grin, came forward and knelt at her feet. Ruth wished he wouldn’t.
“No,” said Randolph. He looked up at her with a face not much altered from the one she saw in her mirror every morning. If she had had a brother who resembled her, instead of taking after her father’s side of the family, he would have looked like Randolph. “No,” said Randolph again. “If that’s what thou hast stomach for, this stricture is bare of substance as the air.”
“Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,” said Ruth, unable to resist.
Randolph frowned, and looked at Fence, who said, “Is this thy play-maker again?”
“Yep,” said Patrick from the bed. “Shakespeare.
Romeo and Juliet.
And you know what he said right after that? ‘My mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date / With this night’s revels and expire the term / Of a despised life closed in my breast / By some vile forfeit of untimely death.’ ”
This precise and unemotional recitation was accorded a polite silence. Ruth glared at her brother. That was Romeo’s speech, just before he went off to crash the Montagues’ party and meet Juliet and begin the love affair that would kill him. Patrick thought she needed a warning. He was an idiot.
“Would you mind telling me, my lord,” she said to Randolph, “what is this stricture?”
“’Tis merely,” said Randolph, “that we wed before a year is out.”
“Well, you’re right, that’s no problem,” said Ruth, over a very uncomfortable jolt in her stomach. “We should be finished with this business, one way or the other, long before a year is out.” Oh, Lord, she thought, what a thing to say. He’ll probably be dead.
“Did you give her your word?” said Fence to Randolph.
There was another silence, not a polite one. Ruth was amazed. She watched Randolph turn red and then extremely white, and then sit back on his heels and look squarely at Fence.
“I did so,” he said. “So you see, my lord wizard and my lady play-maker, you need have no fear of me; for that I promise, I do not perform. I beg your gracious leave.” And he stood up, with considerable grace, and went at a measured pace out of the room. He closed the door so gently that all they heard was the little click of the latch.
“Well!” said Patrick. “Tact isn’t
your
middle name, is it?”
“Shut up,” said Ruth. Had Fence known what he was saying? By killing the King, Randolph had broken the most solemn oath he would ever take, and he was painfully conscious of it. Could Fence possibly have made such a wounding remark by accident?
“I meant Fence,” said Patrick.
“Shut the hell up!” said Ruth.
“Spare him thy ire; he hath the right of it,” said Fence. He slid off the table, looking very tired. “And so hath Randolph also. Give you good day.”
And he, too, went with a certain stateliness, his hands buried in his black, star-shimmered robe, to the door, and went out, and closed it quietly.
“Patrick,” said Ruth. “Don’t do that.”
“All I did,” said Patrick, “was make an observation. It was Fence who asked the wrong question.”
“Don’t argue,” said Ted. “Things are bad enough without it.”
Nobody contradicted him. Ruth put the glass of cordial to her mouth and drank its contents in three gulps. It tasted beautifully of blackberries; and enticingly, just a little, of alcohol; and even less, but unmistakably, of dust.
CHAPTER 11
O
N the day before they were to leave High Castle, they sat in their favorite spot on the wall above the moat, throwing biscuit to the swans, who ignored it. Some of it was snapped up by large, unidentified fish, and some of it sank soggily. The moat was flat and glassy, except where their exertions had disturbed it. Beyond the last wall, the huge plain had turned brown, but behind them in the garden late roses, limp, bright, and fragrant, spilled everywhere and climbed the wall and scratched Laura. Ted had given her his handkerchief to tie up the scratch, and she had dropped it into the water, where it, too, sank soggily.
“Ruth,” said Ted. “What’s it to Meredith if you and Randolph get married?”
Ruth let her breath out explosively and looked at him past Patrick and Ellen. “What’s it to anybody?” she said. She sounded a great deal fiercer than was usual with her. “But when did
that
stop anybody in this abominable castle from having an opinion on the matter?”
“It’s a political issue, Ruthie,” said Patrick. “That’s why they all have opinions.”
“What I meant,” said Ted, “was why should Meredith think she could make Randolph promise he’d marry you—her—before a year is out?”
“Presumably,” said Ruth, “because, if he didn’t mean to marry her, then he didn’t have any business taking her away from Meredith. So Meredith made him promise, to test his sincerity.”
“And,” said Ellen, “if Meredith taught Claudia, maybe she knew Randolph was dangling after Claudia—”
“Or Claudia was dangling after Randolph,” said Ruth.
Ellen shrugged. “So Meredith suspected Randolph didn’t mean to marry Lady Ruth.”
“
Did
he mean to?” asked Laura.
“God knows,” said Ruth, in a tone of complete disapprobation.
Ted thought of asking her what the matter was, and decided not to. She probably felt that Randolph had treated Lady Ruth shabbily; and he had. Except that the hints they had received of unexpected, possibly unsavory, depths in Lady Ruth’s character made it more difficult to feel defensive on her behalf. Then again, Lady Ruth was Ruth’s other self. Ted felt protective of Edward, and hoped not to find out anything unpleasant about him.
He said suddenly, “I wish we didn’t have to split up.”
“I wish,” said Ruth, “that the three younger ones weren’t going off on their own with nobody to keep them in line.”
“Celia’s going with us,” said Patrick, interrupting an indignant exclamation by Ellen.
“She doesn’t know you,” said Ruth, darkly.
“She knows her own kids,” said Ellen, “and they’re much worse.”
“They’re worse than you and Laura,” said Ruth. “But nobody and nothing could prepare her for Patrick.”
“What the hell do you expect me to do?” demanded Patrick.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” said Ted. “I really do fear some consequence yet hanging in the stars.”
“For whom?” asked Ruth, leaning around her sister and brother again and looking distinctly alarmed.
“I don’t know!” said Ted, irritably. “I just feel uneasy.”
“Did Edward have visions?” asked Laura.
“I doubt it,” said Ruth. “We could ask Fence at supper.”
“I’ll see you then,” said Ted, who knew from experience that they would all go on arguing about what Fence might say. He climbed down from the wall and trudged along the winding, mossy path that would take him back to his part of High Castle.
In the little courtyard where the fountain was, he stopped to look at it, thinking of the play that had been performed here the night of his coronation. Randolph had taken the part of Shan, and, in a gesture Ted both hoped and feared was merely symbolic, Ted had given Randolph long life, whether Randolph chose it or not. Ted realized that, in all the tapestries that told the story of Shan’s animals, there was a unicorn. But there had been no unicorn in the play.
Ted sat uncomfortably on the narrow, rounded edge of the fountain. A crisp yellow elm leaf eddied by on the rolling surface of the water. Ted scooped it out. Ellen came around the bend of the path, skidded to a stop in front of him, and said, “Whose untimely death do you fear?”
“Nobody’s,” said Ted. “Just something bad.”
“Well, who do you think it will happen to?”
“Laura, I suppose. It’s always Laura.”
“I’ll take care of her,” said Ellen, quite seriously.
Ted looked at her. She meant it, and she was not offering the way she usually offered to do things, because she thought they would be easy.
“Can you?” said Ted. “Because that
is
part of my misgiving. She can’t ride all that way; she’ll pitch on her head at the first rough terrain. And none of them will watch out for her.”
“I can tell Fence and Matthew
and
Celia,” said Ellen. “Mark’s always falling down; she’ll understand.”
“Mark’s only six,” said Ted, gloomily. “You expect it when they’re six.”
“What else do you want me to do?”
“Make her tell you those visions. Any time she clams up on you, she’s had one. And tell them to Fence.”
“Okay,” said Ellen. She shoved both hands through her hair and made a face. “You like her a lot better than Patrick likes me,” she said.
“Well, you and Ruth gang up on him.”
“We
have
to,” said Ellen.
“Yes, I know, but you can’t expect him to like it.”
“Well, you don’t
like
it when Laura breaks things,” said Ellen. “But you like Laura.”
“Patrick likes you,” said Ted; it seemed the only thing to say, although he had no idea if it was true. He had never known Ellen cared about such things. He added, thoughtlessly, “If he likes anybody.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” said Ellen.
Fence was not at supper; neither was Randolph, or Matthew. The five Carrolls ate with Celia at one of the smaller tables off in a corner. Celia, when Ted asked her, said that she doubted Edward had had visions, because if he had shown any sign of magical talent he would not have chosen to be a warrior.
“I thought he never took his nose out of a book,” said Ted.
“That’s true,” said Celia, removing a mug of ale from the path of Laura’s elbow. “But the books our Edward had’s nose in were all of war and weaponry, strategies and histories, the most dry and lucid accounts of any battle he could hear tell of.”
“Randolph said he was good with the sword,” said Patrick.
“So he wasn’t a milksop?” said Ted.
“No,” said Celia. “But a was gentle in’s heart; and a scholar. The art of war, the fine points of a sword fight, liked him well. He had not, look you, fought any battle; and Matthew thought it had liked him but ill, had he come to’t.”