Conan quickly left the bed and went to the window. He expected to see an empty yard, but a group of cloaked figures was gathered there with a muted lantern. About a dozen he reckoned, but Taynton wasn’t among them. Most of them were men Conan had seen working at the inn, but one was a woman. Vera Pedlar stood a little apart. Her head was bowed, and she seemed more subdued than the others, among whom there was a discernible air of eagerness. They were all carrying something that looked like white clothing draped over their arms, and their breath was visible in the light from the lantern. He saw nodding heads and the occasional gesture. Their manner was that of men about to embark on something they found exciting. To his frustration, the squirrel’s cage rested on the ground beside them. It was covered with a cloth, but its shape was unmistakable.
Bran’s barking was silenced on a yelp, and then Taynton emerged from the stable with a short leather strap in his hand, which he casually draped over a nail on the wall. The innkeeper was also carrying white clothing, as well as a long staff or shepherd’s crook and the set of antlers Theo had mentioned. Had he, or one of the others, been the figure Gardner had
seen on the road? Bran could still be heard, growling more ferociously than Conan had ever heard him before. If the wolfhound could get at Bellamy Taynton right now, he’d tear him limb from limb!
“If I don’t do it first,” breathed Conan, for he could not abide cruelty to animals! He turned to grab his greatcoat, and strode from the room, meaning to confront the innkeeper. He hurried downstairs, and strode out into the yard, only to find it suddenly deserted. He paused in surprise, for he had fully expected to tackle Taynton about Bran, whose angry growls were again beginning to swell into the occasional bark. Then he saw the lantern. It bobbed briefly beyond the coach house and stables as the innkeeper and his companions crossed the field that descended into the valley.
Conan decided to follow them, for they were clearly up to something out of the ordinary, but first he went to see that Bran was all right. The wolfhound did not seem to have come to much harm, and gave delighted yelps and whines, sensing release was at hand. But Conan had to disabuse him of that notion, for the last thing he required right now was the company of a large, barely controllable hound with a grievance. Bran seemed dismayed that he was going to remain in the stables. His tail sank, and he assumed an air of mournful, dejected reproach that revealed Bran the Blessed, Son of Llyr, to be the Edmund Kean of the canine world.
As Conan left the stable, Bran directed a disgusted wolfhound snort after him. Then a look of bright determination gleamed in his crafty eyes, and he set to gnawing the rope that tied him to the hook in the wall.
* * * *
Meanwhile, Ursula simply did not feel able to sleep, and was sitting up in bed with her mother’s manuscripts spread before her. She was still flustered by her unorthodox visit to the Green Man, and shocked to have recognized the gentleman speaking to Taynton. There was no doubt this time that she really had seen him. He hadn’t been perceived in a brief flash of hallucination or witnessed in a haze of dreamy sleep; he was only too clearly living flesh and blood. And her heart belonged to him. But who on earth was he? She knew she’d never met him, and yet she was almost bursting with emotion toward him. Such emotion, and all of it loving.
Maybe Vera would know his name, if only because of the fuss about the wolfhound—that wretchedly white wolfhound. Why couldn’t it have been brown, or gray? She didn’t know whether to be apprehensive or invigorated by the bizarre events of the last day or so. Maybe she had been delving into ancient Celtic lore for too long and was beginning to let it creep into her everyday life as well! Still, at least she had the consolation of knowing that the squirrel had been set free. She felt good about that—very good.
The eleven o’clock bell at Elcester church drifted across the valley outside. By this time tomorrow night she hoped her first meeting with the Honorable Theodore Greatorex would be over. She hoped too that the dinner she and the cook had decided upon would be a success. There would be Severn salmon, for which a man would ride to Gloucester early in the morning, guinea-fowl, and roast leg of local lamb. She knew that many people regarded the latter as a pale shadow of mutton, but she preferred it, and with all the trimmings considered it to be a very tasty and handsome joint. There would be an accompaniment of salad and asparagus from the stove house, and various vegetables from the kitchen garden or store cupboard, followed by bottled peaches in champagne with cream, then cheese, nuts, liqueurs, and so on. Maybe it wasn’t fashionably French, she thought, and maybe the country cooking would be looked down upon at places like Grillion’s in London, but it was the best Elcester Manor could manage, especially at such short notice. If only the next twenty-four hours were over and done with. By eleven o’clock tomorrow night she would be able to sleep like the proverbial log! At least, that was what she hoped.
With a sigh she collected the manuscripts carefully together, and laid them on the table by the bed. But instead of snuggling down to try to sleep, she got up and went to the window. She was in time to see the lantern bobbing down toward the valley again.
In the space of a heartbeat common sense had departed once more. She flew into the dressing room to don footwear and the first ordinary gown she came to, a simple dove gray fustian. She tied her hair back with the second length she’d cut of lilac ribbon, and left the room with her hooded cloak. But a vestige of common sense remained, for this time she took one of her father’s pistols with her, knowing she’d feel safer that way. He kept two of them in the drawer of his writing desk in the drawing room, both of them loaded. In that room he also kept his glass cabinets of treasured archeological finds, including the recently found gold solidus of Magnus Maximus.
Her heart was beating swiftly as she checked that the pistol was loaded but safe, then put on her cloak and hid the weapon in the inside pocket. There wasn’t a sound in the house as she slipped out onto the upper terrace and hurried down the steps toward the door in the wall of the rose garden. Within a few minutes, as she was making her way quickly along the path across the lower park, it came as hardly any surprise when she discovered two squirrels were bounding along with her. It was as if they’d been waiting to escort her.
She entered the woods, where the bluebells were again silver in the light of a moon that would be full on May Eve. Beltane, now the day after tomorrow, for she heard the church clock strike midnight. The flowers’ haunting scent seemed to draw her farther and farther along the path toward Hazel Pool, and she could hear the gentle burble of the little stream. A snatch of voices carried on the air, and she halted, remembering what had happened before. There was no gentleman coming toward her this time, but was Taynton nearby? She turned nervously, but the path was clear that way too. Nevertheless, she felt doubtful about remaining on the path. Another path to the right, little used and occasionally overgrown, actually led more directly to Hazel Pool, but wasn’t favored because it did not enjoy the pretty pleasures of the stream. She decided to go that way.
Conan had followed Taynton and his companions to Hazel Pool, which he knew from his dream. It was a small circular lake edged by coppiced hazel trees and surrounded by open glades. Not in the dream were the life-size wooden figures, grimacing and terrifying, that someone had set to guard the approaches! Possessed of leering, grotesque faces like that on the inn sign, they were intended to deter, but Conan was not so easily put off. They made him shiver, nevertheless.
He hid among the hazels, where dog’s mercury and moss grew in the center of the stools. Water trickled softly by his feet, and he slithered a little in the mud and moss. It was when he glanced down to be sure of his footing that he realized the pool wasn’t natural, but formed in the distant past by the deliberate damming of spring water with a low stone wall that was now so overgrown it seemed like a natural bank.
The moon shone on the expanse of water, the surface of which was disturbed now and then by the plop of a fish. And in all the glades around there were bluebells. He had never seen a wood so full of them as this. It was very beautiful in the moonlight, even when intermittent as tonight; in daylight it must be breathtaking. There was no mistake it was the place he had dreamed of and where he had seen someone creep up behind his Lady of the Ribbons.
For the moment, however, his attention was on Taynton and his friends, who had gathered by an old hollow oak tree on the far side of the water. It was the only oak Hal had seen in a wood that was predominantly beech. The lantern had been hung upon a low branch, and the squirrel was in its cage on the grass among the flowers. He could see the little creature—Eleanor Rhodes?—cowering inside, clearly terrified. What had it been brought here for? A sacrifice? He hoped not.
The white clothing Taynton and his accomplices had carried from the inn had proved to be long, loose robes, which they all donned with care. Taynton himself wore the antlers, which were somehow fixed to a metal circlet adorned with mistletoe and oak leaves. He also wore a golden torque around his throat, and held the staff, which he raised before him as the others began to form into a line. Vera was reluctant to join them and had to be pulled into place.
Conan watched carefully from the other side of the pool. Thirteen, including the innkeeper. A coven, maybe? He glanced up as the hazels trembled suddenly. Many squirrels had joined him, and were quivering fearfully as they too watched what was happening across the pool. Were they really Eleanor’s attendants? Theo certainly seemed to think so, and their presence here now suggested they were definitely connected with her in some way, or at least with the white squirrel in the cage. But Conan knew in his heart there wasn’t any “or at least” about it. The two were one.
Taynton used his staff to knock a nail into the oak’s gnarled trunk, and a magic ritual of some sort commenced. His companions began to weave a serpentine pattern through the bluebells, chanting the old ring game that Conan also knew from childhood. They would have looked rather laughable if it were daylight, he thought, but at night they were rather eerie. It was Taynton alone who uttered the words “I am your master,” and when he said it, he touched one of them with his staff. This was repeated until all twelve had been touched. Then they became still and silent, and he spoke on his own.
Conan couldn’t fully understand his words, but they sounded like
“Loo-nass-ah, Sow-inn, Im-olk
—then something Conan couldn’t hear, followed by—
May all the secrets be known to my might. Loo-nass-ah, Sow-inn, Im-olk
—then the something again—
by the turn of the last may it be mine by right.”
A spell had been cast, Conan thought, shivering. Then the staff was stretched forward again, this time to touch the squirrel’s cage. As it did so, a shooting star suddenly curved brilliantly across the sky, clearly an auspicious sign, for Taynton gave a triumphant cry and spread his arms to the heavens as if giving thanks to the gods.
The squirrels in the hazels became agitated, flicking their tails and making angry little noises. Then Conan suddenly heard a twig snap nearby. He whipped around to see his Lady of the Ribbons creeping toward the pool to spy on the goings-on by the hollow oak. Her hood was raised, but he knew it was she. In the same split second he realized she was too intent upon the other side of the pool to notice one of the fearsome wooden guardians a few feet in front of her. Before he could whisper a warning, she suddenly saw it. She wasn’t prepared, and a terrified, only too audible cry escaped her lips as she instinctively stumbled backward.
* * * *
Ursula had never been filled with more dread in her life. In a sudden flood of clear moonlight the awful figure seemed somehow to move, as if it were alive. Suddenly, she knew only too well what had frightened Rufus Almore so much.
Somehow she gathered her wits. Taynton and his companions had heard her, and most of them were already running around the pool, so she turned and fled the way she had come. She left the path, running headlong through the bluebells, trees, and undergrowth. But after going less than fifty yards she caught her foot in a protruding root and pitched forward into an old badger set. It was a heavy fall that winded her painfully. She lost consciousness, and the last thing she heard was the distant baying of a wolfhound.
* * * *
Conan gave no thought to running after her, believing her to have escaped safely. There were other things happening at the pool. Taynton and his robed friends did not run far around the water’s edge, for Bran suddenly appeared from nowhere in front of them, crouching down and growling with such menace that now it was their turn to stumble backward in fear. As they edged away, the wolfhound leapt forward, barking at the top of his lungs as he fixed upon Taynton, meaning to wreak full revenge for the leather strap. Then the squirrels poured from the hazels as well, darting in all directions at once to cause as much disruption as possible.
Chaos soon reigned at Hazel Pool, and Conan could only watch, helpless with laughter, for it was the most comic spectacle he had ever seen. Most of the white-robed figures scurried everywhere, holding up their skirts like startled matrons, but one or two had wit enough to throw missiles at the wolfhound, or try to kick him if he came near, which wasn’t often. And all the while the squirrels ran under as many feet as they could, managing to topple more than one white-robed figure.
However, some of the squirrels had other goals, such as trying to open the cage to release the captive. With all the dexterity and ingenuity of their kind, they swarmed over the metalwork, scratching and scrabbling at the handle. Vera Pedlar watched them. She was the only one of the thirteen who had not left her place beneath the oak, and she made no move to drive the squirrels away. Neither did she assist them, although Conan felt that was what she really wished to do. Perhaps she was afraid. Yes, that was probably it, he decided. She was fearful of doing anything that would be against her master’s wishes.