CHAPTER 11
ON 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.”
“Would he have killed—” began Ted, thinking
aloud with his mouth full of apple tart, and then he clamped his
mouth shut abruptly. He had been about to ask if Edward would have
killed Randolph in the rose garden. It was such a relief to talk to
somebody who knew he was a fraud, he had forgotten she did not know
quite everything.
“Well?” said Celia.
Ted ostentatiously finished chewing his mouthful,
and then said, “Would he have killed somebody in a battle, or in a
private duel, when the time came?”
“Very like he would. The wonder of so lovely a
fight had held him, until the end, and that end duty had forced him
to. He had a great regard for duty, which Randolph taught
him.”
That was ironic, thought Ted. He remembered Edward,
in that shadowy realm of forgetful ghosts, saying to him, “Avenge
our foul and most unnatural murder.” As the game predicted, he
would want vengeance for his father’s too. In the kindly warmth of
the Dragon Hall, Ted shivered, and Laura looked at him.
“Since you speak of duty,” said Celia, “have you
fulfilled your own, and read on what I did give you?”
“Yes,” said everybody, overlapping.
“How sorteth it with your imagining?”
“Pretty well,” said Patrick. “Ellie’s the history
expert.”
“Well?” said Celia, looking across the table at
Ellen.
Ellen stopped making little pillars of the carrot
slices she had picked out of her beef pie, and said, “There was a
lot more to the story of Shan. We didn’t know about his animals,
and we didn’t know he lived for hundreds of years, or about his
killing the unicorn. We didn’t know Melanie lived for hundreds of
years, either. And we knew that Melanie lived at High Castle when
she was little; but we certainly didn’t know that she got
long life from a unicorn her brothers killed by treachery.”
“We didn’t want to know it, either,” said Laura,
feelingly.
“How so?” said Celia. “Melanie is no friend of
thine?”
“No, she’s been dead too long; nobody ever played
her. But,” said Laura, “it’s a much nastier story than
ours.” This remark gave Ted some obscure comfort.
“And that,” said Celia, standing up, “no doubt
explaineth how it hath prevailed, for all thy sorcery.”
“We don’t have any sorcery,” said Ruth; she had
said it so often recently that she had ceased to say it with any
heat.
“You know none,” said Celia, picking up the skirts
of her blue gown and stepping neatly over the bench. “You may
have’t nonetheless.”
“It is the little rift within the lute,” said
Patrick, catching Celia’s eye across the cluttered table with a
look that made Ted nervous, “that by and by will make the music
mute.”
Celia’s hands tightened on the folds of her skirt.
She said, “ ‘And ever widening slowly silence all.’ ”
“Who said that?” Patrick asked her.
“Melanie,” said Celia.
“Tennyson,” said Ruth to Patrick.
Celia opened her hands and made a violent gesture,
like somebody telling a rambunctious class of third-graders to sit
down now. “Another play-maker?” she said. “With how
many of this pestilent breed is your country cursed?”
“Thousands,” said Ruth, “but we don’t count it a
curse. And I don’t think Tennyson wrote plays; just poetry.” Her
gaze shifted over Ted’s shoulder, and fixed. She looked
appalled.
“Give you good even,” said a sharp, clear voice
behind Ted.
Ted dropped his spoon in his lap and felt it slide
to the floor. He turned his head slowly. Yes, it was Andrew, tidy
and amused. What the hell did he want?
“You also,” said Celia, in a pleasant tone that was
nevertheless not normal. She might speak just so to a child who was
trying to lie by omission. She sat down again where she had been,
between Ruth and Ellen.
“Hello,” said Ellen, alertly.
Patrick and Laura mumbled something at about the
same moment.
“Good den,” said Ruth, in the flat voice of
despair.
“Won’t you join us?” said Ted, crazily.
Andrew smiled and sat on the empty stool between
Ted and Laura. Laura leaned away from him, and almost fell off her
stool. Luckily, Andrew was looking at Ted.
“By your gracious leave,” Andrew said. Ted suddenly
felt as if he had invited a fairy over his threshold, and was about
to be visited with untold disasters. Andrew said to Celia, “What
dost thou with this motley brood?”
He had said something similar about them once, to
Fence and Randolph. He had said, “Strange company,” to which
Randolph had replied, “’Tis strange to thee,” leaving the honors,
Ted supposed, about even. It had been clear, by the way Andrew
spoke, that he disliked both Fence and Randolph. It was not at all
clear that he disliked Celia; he sounded more as if he were
commiserating with her for having to put up with their company. Did
Andrew ever do anything except bait people?
Celia said, “Their other mentors are engaged, save
Agatha. For that she’ll have the care of mine own brood when I am
gone, I’d thought to give them some days in one another’s company.
Thereby they may discover their grossest points of grievance while
I am by to mend them.”
Ted saw that Andrew was not interested in this
account, and that Celia knew he was not. He hoped she was enjoying
herself. Her neat-boned face with its scarred forehead and
uninformative eyes was as bland as custard.
“Yours do stay, then?” said Andrew.
“Of a certainty,” said Celia. “Wherefore should
they go?”
“Wherefore should these?” said Andrew.
Celia looked at Ted in mild inquiry, as if Andrew
had asked her what the flowers were in the jug in the middle of the
table, and she thought Ted ought to know.
“I,” said Ted, clearing his throat, “am the King,
and it’s my duty to go. Not much of a King, you may say,” he added
as Andrew opened his mouth, “but the best you’re going to
get.”
This last remark seemed to him, on reflection, to
be ill-advised; but it appeared to take Andrew aback. “A King with
teeth,” Andrew said, without any sarcasm that Ted could detect.
“Mean you, my prince, to close them upon me?”
Ted had no idea what he meant. “Not,” he said, more
or less at random, “if you stay outwith my range.”
“I am within it,” said Andrew, still as if he spoke
to an adult whom he took seriously, “by blood, by circumstance, and
by appointment.”
Ted felt outmaneuvered, and thought before he spoke
again. “Therefore,” he said, “the range wherein I’ll snap at you is
lessened. It is your deeds, my lord, and not your coign of vantage,
that will determine if I snap at you.”
“I am well warned,” said Andrew. He stood up.
“Celia,” he said, “have a care. Being children yet, they shall do
damage though they will it not. Farewell.” He looked thoughtfully
into Celia’s steady eyes, bowed generally to all of them, and
left.
“Ted!” said Ellen. “What did he mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Ted. “I don’t even know what I
meant.”
“No, about doing damage.”
Laura said, “He knows the Crystal of Earth got
broken. I saw him looking at the pieces, on our way home from the
battle.”
“But does he know we did it?” said Ted.
“What did you mean, Ted?” said Laura.
Ted took a deep breath, leaned an elbow on the
crumby table, and looked at his sister. She had lost her left-hand
hair ribbon; the right-hand one, a yellow silk with black and
scarlet flowers embroidered on it, had been retied by somebody with
great vigor and little grace; probably Ellen. She had pastry crumbs
on her forehead. She looked intent and a little worried, as she
would when she made a mistake in a coloring book.
“Okay,” said Ted. “When I told Andrew I was the
best King he was going to get, I think he took it as a threat. So I
tried to tell him how much of a threat I was.”
“Or how little?” said Celia.
“Do you think,” said Ruth, “that he knows you know
he’s a spy of the Dragon King?”
“I want a word with Fence, touching these matters,”
said Celia. “Can you refrain from mischief these few hours?”
“Don’t you think,” said Patrick, looking up from
his plate, “that you’d better let us make mischief now so we can be
good when we’re traveling with you?”
“No,” said Celia, standing up again. “Meseemeth
rather, an thou practiseth not thy goodness now, thou’lt have no
skill at it when most thou needst it. Good even.” She went out
briskly in a billow of blue.
“Touché, Patrick,” said Ruth.
“Listen, all of you,” said Ted, very quietly.
“Andrew thought it was a threat because he thinks I helped Randolph
kill the King. If anybody finds out for sure Randolph did it,
they’ll have to deal with him; and we need Randolph. And Edward
will need him, if we restore Edward.”
“Do you think we will?” said Patrick.
“I don’t know,” said Ted.
“We have to,” said Ellen.
“Have to’s harrow no fields,” said Patrick, in
excellent imitation of Benjamin.
“Don’t they?” said Ruth.