by Mary Brown
My companions were inferior servants of the other gentlemen who attended the feast—there were no ladies save our hostess—and, although they ignored me except for a nod of courtesy and a look of disdain at my shabby wear, they chattered quite freely amongst themselves, and once I had done pigging I listened more carefully. What I heard disturbed me. There were six knights in attendance on the top table, four of whom were staying at the castle, the other two neighbours. They were all well attired, handsome, and of an age or younger than Conn, but once I realized what their servants were saying I observed them more closely.
The conversation I overheard went something like this:
Servant One: "Yours doesn't look too chuffed . . ."
Servant Two: "Yours neither." (Belch) "What do you expect? Stranger appears and knocks their noses together!"
Servant One: "Yours had had it anyway. Six weeks . . ."
Servant Two: "So what? Yours took longer, but look at his eyes! Doubt if he'll carry those saddle-bags round much longer."
Servant Three, from across the table, picking at his teeth: "What gets me is how she does it! Cool as the lake and twice as deep."
Servant Two: "Cool? By'r Lady, she's no more cool than this stew! Randiest whore I ever seen."
Servant Three: "Anyway, this one's no better than his stamina, and by the looks of him he's travelled hard already—"
Servant One: "Nothing to the road he has to ride!"
The others sniggered, then one of them glanced at me and winked his companions to silence, and after that I turned to their masters with more awareness. I saw pinched faces under the handsome exteriors: hollow eyes, nervous fingers crumbling unregarded bread, sidelong glances; tongues licking lips, but not of gravy; a hand too ready to stray to knife or dagger; damp palms, pallor, greed—and all directed to where Conn sat, blissfully ignorant, picking at a capon with idle fingers, his gaze always toward the sparkling Adiora, looking more beautiful than ever in a midnight-blue dress sewn with silver thread, her hair unbound save for a silver fillet round her brow. In spite of the look of bemused happiness on Conn's face, and the sight of his moustache once more elevated in eagerness, I felt uneasy: it seemed the lady's interest had antagonized just about everyone except Sir Egerton, who was dozing happily.
All at once I wanted to be back on the quest again together, in spite of my present ease and comfort; I wanted the sweet horsey smell of Snowy's flank to snuggle up to; I wanted Corby's caustic comments, Puddy's good sense, Moglet's soft fur, even Pisky's endless reminiscences, tangled as a nest of grass snakes . . . I wanted Conn back with us, dusty, irritable sometimes, gentle always—
Oh heavens! Hours ago I had promised to go back and report to the others, and by now they must be starving! Pretending I was still hungry I helped myself to a plate of the beef and oyster stew, then slipped away from the table unnoticed and found my way back to the stables. I expected the usual wails and moans about hunger and promises not kept, but they were remarkably quiet. It appeared Puddy had caught a couple of fat bluebottles and had shared shreds with Pisky, so it was only Moglet and Corby for stew. I thought of telling them about Conn's infatuation, about the strange sounds I thought I had heard, but decided it would be foolish: everything would probably be different in the morning, and after all we should be on our way again in a day or so. In the meanwhile, I was missing the promised entertainment at the feast, so after ten restless moments I announced I was going back inside.
Then in their eyes, all five pairs of them, I saw the knowledge of my neglect and guilt lent an angry and spiteful spark to my tongue.
"No reason why I shouldn't go and enjoy myself once in a while! Everyone but me seems to have fun, gets to eat at a table like the gentry, sometimes joins in pleasant conversation, exchanges gossip, has a change of company every now and again! Everyone but me, it seems, finds themselves among their own kind! And what have I got? The promise of a smelly stable and a load of helpless animals!" And, thoroughly frightened at my reaction, guilty at my outburst and lonely as hell without either my friends or Conn, I went back to the feast, to be faced by a thoroughly distasteful entertainment I would have done well to miss.
This consisted of "performances," if you could call them that, by dwarves, manikins, cripples and deformed animals. I found it very easy to imagine myself and the others in their place, and it seemed worse when I saw Conn, his flushed face and sparkling eyes telling only too well their story of too much food and wine, applaud and laugh as heartily as the rest at some poor creature with but one eye in the centre of its forehead and no arms, doing a wretchedly inept tumbling act which ended with it falling into the hearth and setting up a bewildered howl as its hair caught fire. I felt even sicker when they put an emaciated dog with only three legs into a sack with a giant rat: I did not wait for the outcome but ran out to the coolness of the courtyard and was sick on their nice, clean cobbles.
After that I was too ashamed to return either to the others or the feast, so crept away to the shadows of a side-stair and up to our chamber, and there lay down by the fire and sniffled myself to sleep.
* * *
I must have slept heavily, for when I awoke the bed in the shadows was already occupied. Still feeling slightly sick and with a nasty taste in my mouth, I blinked sleepily at the fire, which someone had replenished for it was now leaping and dancing like those wretched creatures downstairs, throwing shadows crooked enough to give one the frights. And it was not only the flames that made the shadows caper on the wall, for somehow there was a different shadow-play from the bed. The firelight shone ruddily on Conn's red hair, his eyes, shining bright, and over his thin, white body. But not only Conn: the Lady Adiora hung over him, and her hands and legs and teeth were busy on him, holding, twisting, biting, clutching, pulling, tearing until I heard him groan as if in pain and jumped to my feet despite my thumping head and scuttled over to the bedside.
"Stop it!" I cried shrilly to the lady, who was clad only in her golden hair. "You're hurting him!" And I drew my dagger, prepared to drive her away by force, for he now lay gasping as in a fever, with her sitting across his loins and raking his chest with her pointed fingernails till the blood darkened his skin like sloe-juice on a pigeon's breast. But he only gazed at me with unseeing eyes and groaned the more and she leant across and struck me on the cheek.
"Don't you dare interfere, you dirty little hunchie! You're—you're no better than those others in the dungeons: you should never have been allowed inside! Now, get out! Out, I say, or it will be the worse for you!" And she spat at me so hard that the gobbet stuck to my mask and I had to wipe it away with the back of my hand.
Slowly I sheathed my dagger and looked again at Conn, whose eyes and hands were on the lady's breasts.
"Er . . . it doesn't understand, my beautiful." He turned for a moment to give me an apologetic smile. "Do as she says, there's a good, er . . . Thingummy."
"And don't come back!" she hissed.
"But—but she's hurting you!" I faltered, but at that they both gave such a snigger that I started back, and then suddenly knew what they were doing.
I understood all at once about our Mistress and her Shape-Changes and the sticky head of Broom; about the swineherd who had threatened me with that great thing sticking out in front; all about what it meant to be a female; most of all what the parts of Conn's body were for, and hers—and mine, and it was as if someone had flung me naked from the warm into a bank of snow, so that I gasped with shock and disbelief and ran to the curtained doorway and fought my way through the thick folds and stumbled tear-blinded down the steep stairs, my shadow running hunched before me from the flaming cressets in the wall, until I fell down the last few steps to lie, stunned, on the patterned marble mosaic of the empty hall.
It was the cold that brought me to: I suppose I must have lain there no more than a few minutes, yet in that time it seemed everything had changed. The oil lamps still guttered in their chains, the dampened fire still stuttered and lisped in the firepla
ce, but the air was filled with an echo like a great gong and the mosaic beneath me sweated with fear. I managed to raise myself to my hands and knees, and from where I crouched I could see the glazed eye of the great stag, running away from me, hear the beat of his terrified heart, the thud of his hooves, the harsh rasp of his breathing and wiped a fleck of bloodstained foam from my hand. And then I was running with him, crashing heedless through the undergrowth, careless of stinging bramble and whipping branch, and the ground sprang away from beneath my feet and the knot of fear in my stomach grew into a physical pain that made me cry out, but still the pursuers came on and at last I turned to face them and an arrow hissed through the singing air and thudded into my breast and I was bleeding, dying, dead—
"Come back, come away, dear one!" All at once I heard my friends calling me, and with a great effort I dragged myself back to reality, staggered to my feet and hunched my way to the great oaken doors that led to the courtyard, struggled with bolts and latches strangely heavy and stiff, flung myself through the gap that offered and stumbled down the shallow steps and across the cobbled yard to the safety of the stable, where Snowy took my arms around his neck, Moglet caressed my ankles, Corby brushed his sound wing across my face, Puddy hummed gently and Pisky sang me a bubbly song.
"I'm sorry, so sorry!" I sobbed. "And so afraid!"
"We know," whispered Snowy, "but you are safe now . . ." and he let me cry out my tears and remorse and wipe my eyes on his silky mane. When I was comforted enough they asked me what had happened, and first I told them about Conn and the lady and then of the fear and sorrow that I had experienced in the hall.
They listened attentively, but it was Corby who summed up our problem, in his own inimitable way.
"So he's temporarily not one of us," he said slowly. "And there's something nasty under the floorboards . . ."
The Binding: Unicorn
The Terror under the Floor
After a good night's sleep we went over it all again, and I had to endure once more my memories of Conn and the lady, but my friends instinctively made it easy for me, and once again it was Corby's good sense that made it bearable.
"Time you grew up anyway, Thing dear, and my guess is that it was only a thing of the flesh and nothing to worry about in the long run. Sometimes with humans, I understand, it is a bit like eating: wasn't it the Rusty Knight himself that said he was tired of plain fare and craved venison? Fair enough, but a diet of venison day and night will make you liverish, and before long you're back to bread and cheese and ale, the stuff that keeps you going most of your life.
"So, let it be: he'll return to plain fare soon enough . . ."
After I was reconciled to all this—superficially at least—there was still the wonderment of realizing where men and women fitted into each other like mortice and tenon, their bodies tongued and grooved and dovetailed like fair furniture. But I had not thought that this coupling could be a thing of such violence, of cries and tearings, of hurt and passion. Still, it was interesting, just the same, and I thought about it at intervals for quite some time. The only sure thing in all this cogitating was that a body such as mine, all humps and crookedness, would need a very fine carpenter indeed to marry the parts to another.
Of the strange noises in the hall, the feelings of terror and despair, Snowy at least was positive something should be done. The trouble was, we did not know whether there was anything actually underneath the floor, as I suspected, though when I went back later and stamped, quietly, I reported back that there seemed to be an echo of sorts beneath my feet.
"Sounds like a cellar," said Puddy. "Or a dungeon."
Something tickled at the back of my mind: hadn't the Lady Adiora said something about a dungeon? But my thoughts were going back farther than that.
"The castle seems to have been built on the foundations of a large Roman villa," I said slowly. "And if I remember—if I recall—someone must have told me that those old villas had great storerooms underneath, and lots of pipes and channels for a hot-water warming system; sometimes these cellars extended even beyond the foundations of the house itself if there wasn't a ready supply of water adjacent—"
"The lake!" said Corby. "But they don't use it now: go a half-mile for fresh water from a river through on the other side of the woods. Heard one of the nags grumbling 'bout doing the journey three times a day or more when there's company."
"Water in that lake looks dead," said Puddy. "Can't have been alive for years."
"We must take a look," said Snowy. "All that you have said, Thing, makes me believe that there is something gravely amiss here. A larger amount of fodder than is necessary for the beasts here is collected daily, and some of it carried outside the castle walls. As far as I remember there are no outer stables, nor any cattle grazing . . . I think, friends, it is time we took some exercise."
So it was that I rode out of the stable, Moglet and Puddy inside my jacket, Pisky's bowl slung round my waist and Corby wobbling on my shoulder, to ask the soldiers on duty that the main gate be opened.
We were greeted by a shout of laughter. "Call that thing a horse?" guffawed one of the gate-guards. "And as for that tatty bird . . . Any more in the travelling circus?"
I frowned most dreadfully, and I could hear Corby grinding his beak, but Snowy behaved just like the clown they believed him: stumbled a little, flicked his ears back and forth, swished his tail and gave me some good advice in the midst of all this as well.
"Go easy, Thing dear: every human likes to laugh, and the more they despise us the more ready they will be to disregard us as a threat to whatever they are hiding. Play as silly as me, there's a good girl. And, wise crow, fall off your perch and try and look ridiculous, if you can . . ."
So we found ourselves outside the gate, with a good deal of chaffing on the guard's part, and a secret rage in my breast. I turned Snowy's head eagerly towards the side of the castle nearest the lake, but quite unexpectedly he stopped suddenly and lowered his head and I slid gracefully down his neck to land on the turf in a heap. I got to my feet, spilling cats and toads and fish all over the place.
"What on earth did you do that for?" I demanded furiously, but even as I asked I heard the sound of laughter carried from the gateway, and turned to see them all still watching us.
"That was the reason," said Snowy. "So, today we shall not go near the lake, but shall rather ride innocently through the forest for a while. Get up again, Thing: I promise none of this will be wasted."
So that day we rode the perimeter of the castle, but some hundred yards hidden in the forest. We found neither bird nor beast to disturb its stillness, but we did find another exit. We had originally approached the castle from the east, joining the woodland ride that approached it from the south; but running near north there was another ride that ended on a knoll looking over a swift-running river, which was obviously where the household water was collected each day. Beyond this was a wooden bridge, a small village on the other bank, and thick forest. We followed the ride back towards the castle, and found that we emerged some quarter mile from the strange enclosed space at the back of the building, and even as we watched from the shelter of the trees we could see that the pavilions inside were being enlarged and painted, and at one time someone opened the bolted wooden gates and we could see the gravel within being meticulously raked into formal patterns and the tubs of shrubs being moved to the sides.
Snowy sighed, and I could feel him shiver beneath me. "I think we are almost too late: tomorrow and the day after it will rain, and then I think they will leave it till the full moon . . . We have five days. Tomorrow we shall have to risk going by the lake. It is too soon, I fear, but it is a risk we shall have to take if we are to free them."
"Them?" I echoed, but he only shook his head, and carried us swiftly back through the rest of the semicircle of forest.
The next morning we were out again, but this time attracted far less attention from the guards, as Snowy had predicted. Again as he had promised the sky
was overcast and a little warning wind rattled the flags on their poles, then died away.
I had attended supper again the previous night in the great hall, and had had to face once again the sight of Conn, utterly besotted, eyes only for the Lady Adiora. Upstairs there had been castle servants who shouldered me out of the way when the bathing-water was produced, and there were others to air his new clothes—russet and green, fine wool and silk—and make up the bed, so I was largely redundant as far as I could see. We had only exchanged a couple of words, when he had fallen over me in his hurry to bathe and change and then, as I had apologized for being in the way, he had looked at me with an air of puzzlement as if he did not recognize me, and had merely asked, after a moment, if my room were comfortable. I had said yes, of course I had, for it was obvious that he had forgotten about the rest of us, or at least put us to the back of his mind for the time being. So I had not reminded him I had been banished to the stables, had not told him our fear of what the dungeons held, and most of all had not let him know how I hated the Lady Adiora for stealing him away and despised him for letting her. In all this, of course, I was forgetting Corby's wise words, but solecisms and banalities, however true they may be to the objective eye, are no use at all to one who is subjectively green with jealousy all over like an unripe apple, even if that one has absolutely no right to be . . .
So, as I said, we went out that next morning to spy out the land on the lakeward side of the castle. I dismounted on the other side of a clump of sear and withered reeds and tipped Puddy and Pisky into the waters to see what life there was, if any, and Moglet was detailed to work her way around the edge, keeping as far as possible out of sight. Corby was set as lookout and Snowy was to crop aimlessly towards the castle and an interesting-looking dark, gullied gateway set in the castle wall. I was the distraction: if I thought anyone was watching I behaved like the village idiot, capering around and turning somersaults and picking daisies for a chain.