The Secret Country by PAMELA DEAN Read Free Book Online Page B

Laura came hurrying across the yard to them, and bowed to Benjamin.
    “Fetch me Agatha,” said Benjamin, much more kindly than he had spoken to any of the five of them.
    “My lord,” said the page, and went away again.
    There followed a very uncomfortable interval. Benjamin had turned his back on them, but was far too close to permit the kind of outraged conversation they needed to have. Laura occupied herself with staring at High Castle, and almost forgot to worry. Aside from the moat’s being two walls back, everything was perfect. She admired the narrow windows, the moss growing between the cobbles of the yard they stood in, and even the distant blue of the mountains still visible over the wall. The lake that fed the moat was on the other side of the castle, and so was the room shared by the princesses Laura and Ellen. Ted and Patrick’s room, though, should look out on this very courtyard, and Ruth’s—
    “Suffering, deception, and mercy!” said a vigorous voice behind them.
    Laura jumped, bumping Ruth, who took no notice of her. They all turned around, and there, larger than life and half as natural, stood Agatha. There was nothing right about her except her voice and her gray dress. She was plump where she should have been bony, young where she should have been old, pretty where she should have been dignified, and she had a great deal of straight, smooth black hair that ought to have been white.
    “You may well say so,” said Benjamin to Agatha, over their five heads. “Take you these four, and I’ll manage His Highness.”
    “Come then, my lords and ladies,” said Agatha, in a tone of faint mockery. And she ushered Ruth, Patrick, Ellen, and Laura into High Castle, leaving Ted to stand with Benjamin in the courtyard.

CHAPTER 3
    BY the time Benjamin got the five of them back to High Castle, Ted was too battered to be exasperated and too tired to be thoughtful. He was beginning to be afraid instead. Benjamin was too big, the horse was too big, High Castle itself was too big, too high, and too grim. Benjamin had said they were all treacherous, and he had sounded as if he meant it. Ted kept remembering that this was a country in which a page could be hanged for mouthing off. Nobody had mouthed off to Benjamin on the way back, but Benjamin had looked at Laura every time she fell off that pony as if he would have liked to hang her for that. And as Agatha led the other four off into High Castle, Benjamin stood looking at Ted as if he would still like to hang somebody.
    “I’d give thee worse than bed without supper,” he said, “hadst thou chosen thy time differently.”
    “What?” said Ted. Benjamin’s face took on an expression common to grown-ups everywhere, and Ted added, “Sir.”
    “What is the date, then?” Benjamin asked him.
    “I think—I think it’s June the fourteenth. Sir.”
    “Think!” said Benjamin. “If thinking made things so, things would be otherwise.”
    Ted, trying to remember what date it was and why it should matter, only looked at him, and wished he would back away a little. He was taller than Ted’s father, who was not a small man.
    “Has that child bewitched all of you?” demanded Benjamin.
    “What?” asked Ted, giving up.
    Benjamin flung up his hands. “The King thy father,” he said, “was to hold a council at midday today, and thou wast summoned to’t.”
    Already, thought Ted. We’ve missed the whole beginning of the game. While Laurie and I were playing tag and everybody else was running around looking for us, they started the game. That doesn’t make any sense; how could they start it without us? It is us. “Heh,” he said.
    “Didst remember, then?”
    “No! I mean—”
    “She hath bewitched thee.”
    “Who has?”
    “Thy spitfire cousin!”
    Who’s my cousin here? he thought. Laura and Ellen. My spitfire cousin. Does he mean Ellen? Ruth’s the only one who can bewitch anybody, but she’s not my cousin. Minions of the Green Caves have no