The Hidden Land

by PAMELA DEAN

  When the coffin came to rest it made a mushy, sucking thud that sent shivers through Laura, and she saw Ted blanch. Randolph picked up another handful of mud and dropped it into the hole. He looked almost as unhappy as Ted. Conrad and Benjamin and Ted in turn dropped a handful of earth and stepped backward.

  Then the whole crowd pushed forward, and the air was full of flowers. Laura flung hers with abandon, and they landed at Randolph’s feet. Laura froze, her hand still out. Randolph froze for a moment himself; but then he bowed to her, scooped up the flowers, and scattered them across the grave with a gesture that was like a salute. Laura grinned at him in her relief, but he did not smile back.

  “For shame, child,” said Agatha, her voice still shaky.

  Laura promptly lost sympathy for her.

  Benjamin and Conrad had fetched shovels from somewhere, and began filling in the grave. Laura saw Patrick eye-ing the shovels, and guessed that they must be different in some way from ordinary ones. But they looked like shovels to her.

  The pressure of the crowd was forcing her away from the side of the grave, and she was just as pleased to go. Ellen squelched up beside her, indignant.

  “They should have put the flowers on top of the dirt,” she said. “This way they’re just wasted.” Her hair was so wet that it lay flat on her head, and she did not look like herself.

  “There’s flowers on the other graves,” said Laura. “Maybe they put more on later.”

  “They still wasted the ones in there.”

  “I wonder if Ted and Patrick saw the other side of the coffin,” said Laura.

  “And that’s another thing,” mourned Ellen. “It was so pretty; why did they have to bury it?”

  “Milady,” said Fence, behind them, “that you might remember that what they buried with it was infinitely more precious.”

  Ellen and Laura both jumped, and Ellen was silent. Fence went ahead of them through the gate and was submerged by the crowd.

  It began to rain harder, and by the time they were halfway back to High Castle, the path had turned into a stream on which six-inch dolls could have canoed with great danger. Laura had scorned dolls for a long time; they were not nearly as exciting as playing the Secret Country with her cousins and brother. Now she wondered if she had made a mistake. Even if all your dolls came alive and began walking about, they could hardly land you in a situation like this one. She was soaking wet, and every now and then a branch would whack her in the face. She had the distinct impression that the forest was troubling them for their presumption in walking through it. She felt put upon and profoundly depressed because she was not unhappy enough about the King. Ellen was brooding too, probably because Fence had scolded her.

  “That was a silly funeral,” she informed Laura as they came through the clearing where they had feasted after the Unicorn Hunt. Laura thought of the exuberant people in their red and green; of the humorous, catlike stare of the unicorn; of the long head and gossamer mane laid like an apron in Ellen’s lap. She said nothing, but followed the black-clad horde over Conrad’s Bridge and through the garden gate.

  “Maybe it’d have been better if we could have understood what they were saying,” she ventured.

  “Well, it was stupid that we couldn’t,” retorted Ellen.

  Agatha caught them just inside the South Door and told them to go change for the feast. They dripped upstairs.

  “Whoever heard of a feast after a funeral?” demanded Ellen, her head in their wardrobe.

  “Funeral baked meats,” said Laura, foggily.

  “Heh,” said Ellen.

  They had a brief argument over what to wear; their only black dresses were the sodden ones they had on. Ellen favored white, and Laura yellow.

  “We don’t have to dress alike all the time, you know,” said Ellen.

  “It makes me feel safer,” said Laura. “Besides, Agatha thinks it’s cute.”

  “So what?”

  “I think she’s less trouble when she thinks we’re cute.”

  “She’d be less trouble if she was at the bottom of the moat,” grumbled Ellen.

  Laura stared at her, and felt a mischievous impulse. “How do you know?” she said. “Have you ever known anybody at the bottom of a moat?”

  Ellen threw a white dress at her. “Come on,” she said, “before they eat everything.”

  Ruth, also in a white dress, met them at the door and dragged them briskly through the crowd to a corner, where they found Ted, Patrick, and an enormous collection of food. Ted and Patrick wore their usual dark-blue tunics, and Laura could see that they had been wearing these particular ones for longer than Agatha would like, if she found out.

  “We have to decide what we’re doing,” Ted told them.

  “First,” said Ellen, “I want to ask you boys something. Did you look at your side of the coffin?”

  “It had that same story on it,” said Patrick.

  “But was it the sun or the hole, at the end?”

  Ted and Patrick looked at one another, and shook their heads.

  “The last panel wasn’t on our side,” said Ted. “The last one we had was the young wizard pointing his staff at the hole.”

  “It couldn’t be there, Ellie,” said Patrick, with the patience that was far more exasperating than derision. “That tapestry had nine panels, and there were only four on each side of the coffin. Four and four is—”

  “What about the end?”

  “Flowers,” said Patrick.

  Ellen made an inarticulate growling noise and chomped into a chicken drumstick.

  “Anyway,” said Ted, “we have to decide what to do.” He pushed his damp hair out of his face.

  “Why don’t you get your hair cut?” said Laura wickedly.

  “Tomorrow is the coronation,” said Ted, taking no notice. “The day after that’s a council, where we make final battle plans, and have some sort of hearing about the King’s death, and then we run around for three days doing this and that, and then we march.”

  “Do girls get to go?” demanded Ellen.

  Ted looked taken aback. “I never thought of that,” he said. “Ruthie has to or she can’t do her sorcery on me.”

  “Why her, when there are so many better ones?” said Ellen.

  “Green Caves sorcerers don’t go to war,” said Ruth slowly. She looked suddenly frightened.

  “So why did Lady Ruth go?” Ted asked her.

  Ellen snickered. “Probably because she’s in love with Edward. You dress in men’s array, Ruthie, and quickly heal his wounds.”

  “And you and Laurie can dress in men’s array and carry the bandages,” said Ruth, absently; she still seemed worried.

  “We’ll carry your books of sorcery,” offered Ellen.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Laura, who had no desire to go to a battle if she could avoid it.

  Ted sighed. “If we’re all going,” he said, “and if we can get the swords back from Fence, then we could make a break for it when we pass the Well and the House.”

  There was a long silence. The clatter of tongues and dishes surrounded them. Laura looked out across the crowd and saw Randolph, still in his black clothes, talking to Claudia. Claudia wore red, as always, and the smile she was turning on Randolph made Laura’s stomach cold.

  “Ted!” she said.

  “She’s been out for a couple of days now,” said Ted. “I forgot to mention it.”

  “You are crazy,” said Ellen.

  Laura privately agreed with this. Ruth said nothing, but now she looked terrified.

  “She wasn’t at the funeral, was she?” said Laura.

  “We’re getting off the subject,” said Ted. “Do we want to make a break for it?”

  “No,” said Ellen. “If I do get to go to the battle, maybe I can finally do something besides flounce around in frilly dresses and eat.”

  “You captured the unicorn,” said Ruth.

  Ellen was silent.

  “It seems to me,” said Ted, “that the
only good we could have done around here was to keep Randolph from killing the King, and we didn’t, so we might as well go home now. Randolph can run the war better than Edward, let alone me. They don’t need us.”

  “Who’s going to be King, then?” said Laura.

  “Patrick’s next, but if he’s gone, I don’t know.”

  “Fence told us once,” said Ellen, scowling. “Patrick the elder. Anna. Justin the Younger. Who are all those people anyway? I’ve never met any of them.”

  “They’re in Fence’s Country, I think,” said Ruth. “And Benjamin’s here.”

  “It’s not our problem who’ll be King,” said Patrick.

  “I don’t know,” said Ted. “Maybe it’s our job to find the real Edward.”

  Patrick opened his mouth, looked at Ruth, and took a bite of apple.

  “Shan’s mercy,” said Ellen, “we never thought of that.”

  “Ellie, don’t say that,” said Ted. “I think it means something.”

  “When are we going to have time to find the real Edward?” said Ruth. “We leave in less than a week. If I’m to get you back from the land of the dead, I’ll have to study. That’s advanced sorcery. I don’t know anything about it except what Ellie and I made up, and how do we know that’s right? I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t like it?” said Ted. “You aren’t the one going to be stuck down there with all the ghosts.”

  “I used to be a ghost,” said Ellen wistfully. “That was one of my favorite parts.”

  “I’ll let you know how you compare to the real thing,” said Ted tartly. “If we do go through with this story and everything works out, the game ends after we get back from the battle and I kill Randolph—which I won’t—but anyway, the game is over then, so we should have more time to do things. We could look for Edward then. I’ll be King: I could just order people to do whatever we think we need.”

  Laura doubted this. She could not imagine Benjamin and Agatha meekly obeying Ted’s orders, even if he were King.

  “If you come back alive,” muttered Ruth.

  “Maybe you won’t even get killed,” said Ellen. “Seems like nothing ever happens the way it’s supposed to, unless we try to stop it.”

  “Yes, he will,” said Laura. Ted looked at her, and she swallowed. “At the funeral, I saw it in Fence’s robe.”

  “Saw what?” said Ted.

  “You were lying on the ground with blood all over your chest, and Randolph was looking unhappy.”

  Ted looked more than unhappy. “I thought I was supposed to be killed by sorcery,” he said. “That sounds like it’ll hurt.”

  “Probably it’ll be too quick,” said Ellen.

  “Are you sure it was the battle, Laurie?” said Ruth. “Maybe it was the fight in the rose garden.”

  “I didn’t see any roses,” said Laura, doubtfully. “It looked like a desert.”

  “I don’t intend to have a fight in the rose garden, anyway,” said Ted. “Well, we don’t have to decide until right before we leave. Why don’t you study what you can, Ruthie, and tell us on the night before the march whether you think you can do it? Let’s all meet in the rose garden around midnight.”

  “What exactly have we decided?” said Patrick.

  “If Ruthie thinks she can bring me back,” said Ted, “then we go to the battle and go through with the story and, after it’s over, try to find the real Edward—and the real Patrick and Laura and Ruth and Ellen, I guess. If she doesn’t think so, or if Laurie sees something really awful, or if—well, if we decide it’s not a good idea to stay, we go home when the army passes the Well and the House. We’d better figure out how to get those swords.”

  “Maybe we could get out using Shan’s Ring,” said Ellen.

  “I’m not so sure I trust Shan’s Ring,” said Ruth, “not if it let Claudia out.”

  “I don’t think that’s the ring’s fault,” said Ted. “I think Claudia’s a very good sorcerer. Fence acts like there’s nothing he can do about her.”

  Laura thought that Fence acted far more as if he did not need to do anything about Claudia, but held her tongue.

  “Well, then,” said Ellen, “maybe we could use Shan’s Ring to get Ted back? Isn’t the Judge of the Dead an Outside Power?”

  “Now that’s an idea,” said Ruth. “I always knew there was some reason for keeping such a brat around.”

  Ellen dropped a plum down the neck of her sister’s dress, and the resulting wrestling match ended the discussion.

  Laura, backed into a corner, wondered which would be worse: dressing in men’s array and going to a battle, or staying behind at High Castle and not knowing what was happening. Then a stray grape, thrown by Ted, hit her on the nose. She hurled a meat pie at him and caught Patrick neatly behind the ear, and ran as fast as she could out of the hall and into the rose garden. It had stopped raining. Agatha was going to kill the rest of them, she thought gleefully. Then she sat down on a stone bench, sobered. It was not Agatha who would do the killing.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE coronation was to be at two in the afternoon. At seven that morning, Ted and Patrick, having been unable to sleep, sat on their bearskin rug, playing chess. It was one of Claudia’s mornings. They had pulled the shutters over the windows to keep the fog out, and lighted a lamp. It looked and felt like the middle of the night, and their game had the flavor of conspiracy.

  “Check,” said Ted.

  “Bishops move diagonally,” observed Patrick.

  Ted scowled in spite of himself, and put his bishop back. It occurred to him to wonder why there were bishops in the game when there was no Catholic church in the Secret Country. He did not care to ask Patrick. “Where’s my knight, then?”

  Patrick picked it out of the pile of Ted’s pieces he had accumulated, and put on his face of exaggerated patience.

  “Maybe if we played something that doesn’t have kings in it?” said Ted. Everything seemed conspiring to remind him of the coronation, and the mere thought made him itch.

  “Let’s go practice fencing,” said Patrick. “It’s not long until the battle.”

  “You think we’ll be going, then?”

  “You see any chance of getting those swords before then?”

  “I don’t have time!” said Ted, his irritation rising. “I have to spend the whole blasted morning from nine o’clock having a lot of clothes made right on me, and the whole afternoon being crowned, and the whole night—”

  “Do you think it’s a good idea to be crowned here, when you’re not really Edward?”

  Ted stopped putting the chess pieces away. “You believe this now?”

  “I’m just trying to play the game right.”

  “That’s new,” said Ted, and instantly regretted it.

  Patrick’s eyes narrowed, but all he said was, “Maybe this is a new game.”

  He picked up the chessboard. It looked like rosewood inlaid with ebony and ivory, and its border, wider than usual, was carved with scenes of court life and battle. Patrick tipped it toward Ted, smiling, and the lamplight slid down it like water.

  “The props are sure better,” said Patrick.

  Ted closed the lid of their box, also carved, on the chess pieces, and he and Patrick put board and box away.

  “So,” said Patrick as they went downstairs, “do you think it’s a good idea to be crowned?”

  “Randolph thinks it is,” said Ted, “and he’s the only one who knows what’s going on.”

  They nodded politely to Agatha, who passed them carrying a tray with two cups and a jug on it. She gave them a look of resigned suspicion, then smiled suddenly.

  “Fence knows what’s going on,” said Patrick when they were several corners further on.

  “That’s not what I meant. Randolph killed the King, and he’s the only one with real plans about what should happen after, because he’s the only one who knew the King was going to die. Fence wanted to have the coronation after the battle, and I’d rather, but Randolph said
we should have it before.”

  They clattered down the last steps.

  “Did he say why?”

  “He said that if they didn’t crown me it would show doubt of me.”

  Patrick frowned at the wall. “Maybe they doubt you anyway. If I was Edward, I might kill the King. He was a terrible father.”

  Ted felt that this was unjust, but could not say why. Then the first part of Patrick’s speech caught up with him.

  “They could think I did it. They never did tell me what happened when Jerome got them all together and Agatha asked them questions, and Matthew wrote it all down.”

  “Well, Randolph won’t let them hang you for it,” said Patrick, starting down the hall again.

  There was a guard at the open door to the practice yard. There had never been one there before. The ways from the yard to the outside were guarded, so another guard on this door was silly.

  Ted wished he could feel more like a prince and less like a guilty child. He and Patrick had every right to come practice their fencing. They had been doing it for weeks. But let somebody with a sword and a leather cap and a mail-shirt show up, and he wanted to run for his room.

  Patrick, after a brief pause, had marched on as if he were afraid he was going to miss the beginning of a movie, and Ted ran to keep up. The guard looked Patrick over until Ted came up, and then moved out of their way.

  “Give you good morrow,” she said. Ted looked at her in surprise. She was the woman with the scarred forehead who had sat next to Matthew at the Banquet and guarded the Council Chamber after the King was poisoned.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  Patrick simply stared, and then pulled Ted out into the yard.

  “I never saw a woman guard before,” he said as they picked out their swords. Every rack and weapon had a patina of moisture, and Patrick frowned. “How come these things don’t rust?”

  “I saw some after Randolph poisoned the King,” said Ted.

  “Well,” said Patrick, “if there are women in the army then I guess the girls can come to the battle.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ted, trying to imagine Laura in the middle of a fight. “It’s not just that they’re girls. They’re only little kids, except Ruthie.”