Unexpected Magic

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “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.”

  Chapter 3

  Castles in the Air

  Alex was woken by Everard exclaiming. He rolled over to find that the Prince had crawled out of the straw, leaving a cold prickly space. Alex began to shiver before he was properly awake. The dungeon was full of mist from the half-frozen moat outside and cut in two by a bright line of sunlight from the grating. Everard was in the sunlight and the mist, like an angel in a church window, looking up at the grating.

  “Come here and look,” he said.

  Alex crawled out of the straw and went over to him. The first thing he noticed was a long cascade of icicles hanging between the bars, which made him shiver more. Then he realized that what had made Everard exclaim were the bars of the grating themselves. They were new. They could not have been more than a week old. The iron was still dull gray and where there was rust it was in red-brown trickles.

  Under the clustered ice Alex could see the fresh chisel-marks, where the old bars had been hacked away to make room for the new.

  “Seven days old,” said Everard. “Not more.”

  “Newer than that, surely,” said Alex. “Think how damp it is in here. They might rust like that in a day, or even overnight.”

  “Yesterday,” said Everard, “I would have said you were condemned out of your own mouth and that Towerwood gave orders for these bars after talking to you on the road to Falleyfell. Today I am not so sure. Tell me truthfully, Alex. Are you in league with Towerwood?”

  “No,” said Alex. “Of course I am not. I hate him as much as you do. The first time I saw his face I hated him more than anyone I had ever met.” He looked drearily up at the grating and saw another day of arguing and fighting ahead. They would probably go on like this until they were too weak with hunger to argue any more. Not that he blamed Everard for his suspicions. Anyone in his shoes must feel that they would never trust anyone again. “Oh!” he said. “Let us not spend the rest of our lives quarreling—er—Your Highness. It is not worth it.”

  “I agree,” Everard answered. “It is not worth it. I had made up my mind that I would not, once I had asked you that. And, in fact, I think the order for these bars was given before Towerwood set eyes on you. It is a good day’s work to fix them in solid stone. He had planned to confine me here, I am sure, before ever you arrived. Your presence is a refinement, but I wished to know if you had consented to it or not.”

  “I never did,” Alex said. He was so relieved at Everard’s peacemaking that he let his jaw loose and his teeth began to chatter.

  “Come back to the straw,” said Everard. “There is some chance that we will die of cold before ever we starve.”

  They sat face to face in the straw, both shivering. Alex saw that the Prince’s black eye was going away. It was only pale yellow now. Yesterday must have been its last most colorful day. He told Everard so. Everard laughed.

  “An eye for an eye,” he said. “Except yours is a bump the size of a pigeon’s egg on your forehead.”

  Alex felt his forehead indignantly and had to admit that Everard had got his own back. “I am sure,” he told Everard, “that this is what would please Towerwood—to come back at the end of the week to find us both with two fresh black eyes. We should call it off and spite him.”

  Everard nodded and held up one hand with two fingers crossed. “Barley,” he said.

  Alex was pleased to find they had this custom in common. “Barley,” he said. “I am glad you know that too.”

  “As well as Humpty-Dumpty. But I had rather be called Everard.” Everard smiled and held out his hand. They shook hands and then Everard asked: “By the way, what did you mean by Habeas Corpus? Is it some kind of legal term?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” said Alex. “From Magna Carta—but I suppose you will not have heard of that either.” He explained about it, as far as he could, and about the barons and King John. “So now,” he said, “even the most obvious criminal is given a trial. No one can be locked up simply on suspicion or because someone wants them out of the way.”

  “Like you and me?” said Everard. “I see that the Outsiders have a point there. Alex, I promise you that if we ever get free from here I shall institute Habeas Corpus in this Principality. I come to see that there is a crying need for it.” Alex laughed. “I am not joking,” Everard said haughtily. Then he laughed too, but not very happily. “What a castle in the air!”

  As if to point out to Everard how hopeless it was to discuss Habeas Corpus, someone rattled the bolts and chains on the door. The two of them sat where they were and watched their jailer slide a hatch aside at the bottom of the door and push another cup and plate through onto the doorstep inside the dungeon. Alex longed for his knife as he watched. One could have stabbed the jailer through the hatchway and there was room for a boy to wriggle through the opening. As the hatch slammed shut, he shrugged his shoulders and got up to go for the food. Everard had stood up first, though, and it was he who collected their breakfast and brought it to the jailbird’s nest with a very gloomy face.

  “Last night was generous compared to this,” he said. “Alex, I do not want to make another argument, but I feel you should eat it.”

  “No,” said Alex. “We share as long as we possibly can.”

  “That will not be long,” Everard answered. “Look.” There was rather less than half a slice of dry brown bread and the water in the cup scarcely covered the bottom.

  “We can suck those icicles for water,” Alex said, and firmly broke the bread into two. He was very hungry by now, and the thought of losing this bread in another fight was almost unbearable. Everard, to his relief, took his half without saying any more. They lay in the straw beside the plate eating the bread crumb by crumb to make it last. Alex foresaw a time when they would quarrel about crumbs, but he hoped it was still a long way off.

  Everard was picking up crumbs with the end of one finger and licking them first before he ate them. “Castles in the air are very comforting,” he said. “I shall build some more, if you will help by telling me that they are unreal. I rely on you for that, Alex. This crumb is a partridge. I shall have that when we are free. And this crumb is bigger. It is a boar’s head—no, a whole side of venison. We will have that too.”

  Alex did not think E
verard was being wise. It seemed to him the way to drive oneself mad. He said so.

  “Thank you,” said Everard. “Say that every five minutes. Oh, Alex, I thought last night I would be mad by the morning. Everything seemed a castle in the air. I was going to be a good Prince, as good as my father, if not better. I was going to be able to live on the island—we say here that it is the mark of a truly good Prince if he can be on the island and the Principality Over the Water is still safely at peace. Now see what I have come to, caught up in my own wise edicts, and all my dreams are down to taking Endwait from Towerwood again so that I can have this wretched dungeon filled in.”

  Alex changed his mind about Everard’s castles in the air. Perhaps reality was worse. “Yes, by all means fill in this dungeon. But I hope you will do something more to Towerwood than take Endwait away from him. These crumbs have made me thirsty.” He got up and tried jumping for the icicles at the grating. It was no good. He was not tall enough to reach.

  Everard came and jumped for icicles too. He managed to break them off one each and they sucked them. They tasted vile, of dust and rust and pond-weed. Everard shuddered. “These will give us some disease, I imagine. Yes, I will do worse to Towerwood, never fear, but he must be properly arraigned for High Treason. It will not do to be spiteful. And yet, now I think about it, this is what everyone has said of Towerwood. ‘Let us not be spiteful.’ So we have been too fair and kind and he has thrived out of all proportion.”

  “So you did know he was nasty?” Alex said. “I have been wondering why he came to be so powerful, when no one can look at him without thinking: Here is a brutal monster out for what he can make.”

  “What could we do?” asked Everard. “He has never done wrong before, for all his faults.”

  “Really? To look at him you would say he has done nothing else all his life. Surely, Everard, there must have been something. For instance, how did he come to be Count of Gairne? Did he have any claim to be that?”