Conrad's Fate (17 page)

“It looks more like a house than the wooden place,” I said, “and we're stuck here if we don't do
something
.”

“True,” said Christopher. “Let's go.”

We got up and lugged the dog over to the empty square doorway. The place smelled horrible inside, and it was absolutely empty in there. Light came in through enough small windows—just gaps between slabs of slate, really—to show us that the stairs were now indoors. They went zigzagging up one of the walls, and they were simply steps, with nothing to stop a person falling off the outside edge. They were made of slate like all the rest, but they were so old that they sort of drooped outward toward the empty middle of the place. And the trouble was, this building was as high as ever the wooden tower had been.

I told myself that it was no worse than Stall Crag. Christopher swallowed, rather. “One slip,” he said, “one stumble, and we'll be dogmeat for Champ here. But I
think
I can keep us stuck to them by magic if we stay close together.”

The dog refused to go inside at first. I knew it was the smell combined with the sight of those stairs, but Christopher explained cheerfully that poor Champ lived out-of-doors and was probably forbidden to go inside a house. It could have been true. Anyway, he towed the resisting beast to the bottom of the stairs. There Champ braced all four gigantic paws and would not budge. We tried climbing up a short way and calling beguilingly, but he simply went out into the middle of the dark, smelly floor and began to howl again.

Christopher said, “This is hopeless!” and he went down and tied his neckcloth into Champ's collar for a lead. He hauled. The neckcloth stretched. Champ stopped howling, but he shook all over and still refused to move.

“Do you think he knows something we don't?” I suggested. I was resting a hand on a step two stairs up, and it was slimy. It would be nice to have an excuse not to climb the things.

“He knows exactly what we know. He's a coward, that's all,” Christopher said. “Champ, I refuse to put a compulsion spell on a mere dog. Come
on
. It's getting late. Supper, Champ. Supper!”

That did the trick. Champ came up the steps in a rush. I was barged into the slate wall, first by the dog and then by Christopher as Christopher was towed upward, and I had to scramble like a maniac to keep up with them. We took the first three zigzags at a mad run, but after that, when the hollow building was like a deep, smelly well around us, Champ seemed to realize he might need to save his breath, and he slowed down.

It was worse like that. I climbed sliding my back up the rough wall and hoped hard that Christopher's spell was a good strong one. Some of the steps higher up were broken and slanted outward more than ever. To take my mind off it, I asked, “Why did you say my bad Fate was codswallop—my karma?” My voice made a dead sort of booming around the place.

Christopher's voice made more dead echoes as he called downward, “I don't think you have any. You have a new, fresh feel to me. Either this is your very first life or your earlier ones were blameless.”

I knew he was wrong. He was making me seem so childish. “How do you mean?” I boomed up at him.

And he echoed back, “Like Lady Felice. I don't think she's been around more than once at the most. Compare her with the Countess, Grant.
There's
an old soul if ever I met one!”

“You mean she has bad karma?” I boomed.

“Not particularly,” he echoed down. “Not anything very bad from before, I think, though mind you she's laying up a bit this time round, if you ask me.”

This made me sure he was just guessing. “You don't know really, do you?” I shouted back. “
Other
people can see my Fate! They
told
me!”

“Like who?” Christopher called down.

“Like my Uncle Alfred and the Mayor of Stallchester,” I yelled upward. “So!”

By now it was getting hard to hear. The place was filling with echoes, and Champ, up ahead, was rasping out breaths as if Christopher's neckcloth were throttling him, but I am fairly sure Christopher said, “If you ask me, Grant, they were probably smelling their own armpits.”

“Will you
stop
calling me Grant in that superior way!” I shouted at him.

I don't think he heard. Champ at that moment dived away sideways. I thought he was simply diving up the next zigzag, but it turned out to be the top of the stairs. Christopher, with his arm stretched out to hang on to the neckcloth, was jerked after Champ and out of sight. I thought for a moment that they had disappeared, but when I sidled up after them, I found a square slate passage leading through the top of the wall. There was light at the end of the passage, lighting up every slimy slab, and Champ was towing Christopher along it at full gallop. I sprinted after them, expecting to come out on the roof.

But we all burst out onto big floorboards, in a place full of the warm smell of wood, where I saw that the light had been coming from a row of dusty windows looking out to the mountains above Stallchester. The ceiling was flaking plaster, and all around us was the feel, like an engine in the distance, of other people living and moving around here.

“Grant,” Christopher whispered, “I believe we're back.” He looked ghastly. It wasn't just that he was white and shaking and his stockings were laddered. He was covered with dark slime and cobwebs, too. And if the back of his waistcoat was anything to go by, mine was ruined. I could see my breeches were. And my stockings. Again.

“Let's go and check,” I said.

We tiptoed back along the passage we seemed to have just come in by. It was wooden now. At the end of it we came to the streak of paint on the wall. Then we had only to peep around the corner to see we were certainly in Stallery. Andrew and Gregor were just coming out of the clothes store, adjusting crisp new neckcloths. People were hurrying and calling things and coming in and out of doors in the distance. We could tell that everyone was getting smartened up for supper and Dinner after that.

We dodged back into the part with the windows.

“We'd better let them go downstairs before we get more clothes,” I said.

“I approve of the first part of your plan,” Christopher said, “but you're forgetting Champ. We have to account for him, too. We must go down as we are. Then, if anyone sees us, we can say that we found him stuck in the drains. And if nobody does see us, we let him out of the nearest door for Smedley to find and
then
sneak up here for more clothes.”

“Drains right up
here
?” I said.

“There have to be,” he said firmly. “Where does our bathwater go—and so forth?”

I supposed it might work. It seemed to me a recipe for trouble. “Can't you magic our clothes?”

“Not for a whole evening,” Christopher said. “It would be an illusion, and illusions wear thin after an hour or so.”

I sighed. “Anyway, thanks for keeping us on those stairs.”

Just for a second Christopher had such a blank, dumbfounded look that I knew he had forgotten to work any magic on those steps. I was glad I had not known while I was on them. “Think nothing of it, Grant,” he said airily.

Then we hung about for a boring ten minutes. Champ did not help. He whined and drooled and made little rushes toward the passage. Either he knew he was not meant to be here or he could smell all the suppers cooking.

At length the bell went for maids' supper, making us all jump. Champ turned his jump into another surge down the passage. This time we followed him. There were still people about in the distance, and we could hear the lift working. That meant we had to go down the stairs, trying not to let Champ tow us down them too fast.

He took us in an eager rush down onto the matting of the nursery floor. Here he broke into a gallop whatever we said. Perhaps he thought the matting was grass and he was allowed to run on it. Anyway, he ran us straight past the top of the next stairs and dragged us on down the passage, to where the door was open on that long, empty nursery.

As we hurtled up to it, a young man in evening dress came out of the nursery. The dim light there showed his fair hair and the lost, rather drooping way he looked. But the look changed as he saw us. His head went back, and he went ramrod straight, with his face all firmed into haughty surprise.

“What the devil do you think you're doing?” he said.

It was quite obvious to all three of us that he was Count Robert.

Christopher must have used some magic then.
He and the dog both stopped as if they had run into a wall. I overran a little and stopped myself on a doorknob on the other side of the corridor. The Count turned himself so that his frosty look could hit me as well as Christopher.

I had no idea what to do, but Champ had no doubt. His tail thumped. He crawled forward, quivering with shame, to the full stretch of Christopher's neckcloth, and tried to get into licking distance of the Count's beautiful, shiny shoes. Christopher just stood and looked at the Count as if he were summing him up. This was where being an amateur was a big help. Christopher would not have minded being sacked on the spot. He had more or less found Millie now, and he could make himself invisible and come back to finish the job, but I still had my Evil Fate to think of. I stared at the Count, too, hoping and hoping to
know
he was the one causing my Fate, but all I could see was a young fellow in expensive evening dress who had every right to stare at us in outrage.

“Come on,” Count Robert said. “Explain. Why are you dragging poor old Champ around up here?”

“It's more that
he
was dragging
us
,” Christopher said. “From the look of him, I think he caught your scent, my lord.”

“Yes, he did, didn't he?” Count Robert agreed, looking thoughtfully down at Champ, who wagged and groveled more than ever. “But that doesn't explain why he's here or why all of you are covered with black gunk.” At this, Christopher drew breath, presumably to begin on the drains story. “No,” said the Count. “Not you. I can see you'd just tell me something glib and untrue.” Christopher looked hurt and indignant, and the Count turned to me. “
You
tell me.”

It seemed to me that I'd nothing more to lose. I knew I was about to be sacked and sent home in disgrace. Wondering what Uncle Alfred would say, and then thinking dismally that I would be dead by next year anyway, so what did Uncle Alfred matter either, I said, “We went past the painted line in the attics. Champ was at the bottom of a wooden tower there, but we couldn't have got him back up it, so we waited until it changed into an empty slate building.”

Christopher muttered, “Believe it or not, I was going to tell you that, too.” The Count gave him a disbelieving sideways look. “Honestly,” Christopher said. “I thought you'd probably guessed.”

“More or less,” said Count Robert. His frosty look tipped up at the edges and became a slight grin. “You were unlucky to get those two towers straight off. Hugo and I didn't run into them for years. Well, now what shall we do about it? I don't think any of you should be seen as you are. Amos is prowling round the next floor in a rage—”

“About us?” I said anxiously.

“No, no—about something I told him,” the Count said. “But he'd certainly better not see you or Champ as you are. He'd fire you both on the spot if he knew where you'd been, so …” He considered for a second. “Give me the dog. Hugo and I can get him cleaned up in my rooms—luckily Champ is well known to be a friend of mine—and then I can take him down to the stables. You two go and get fresh clothes, or you'll be in real trouble.”

We both said, with real gratitude, “Thank you, my lord.”

Count Robert smiled. There was a sad sort of look to him, smiling. “No problem. Here, Champ!”

Christopher let go of the neckcloth. It was an ex-neckcloth really, more of a dirty string by this time. Champ immediately sprang to his hind legs and attempted to put both his paws on the shoulders of the Count's evening jacket. The Count caught the paws just in time, in a way that showed he had had a lot of practice, and said, “No,
down
, Champ! I love you, too, but there's a time and a place for everything.” He put Champ down on all four feet and took firm hold of the ex-neckcloth. “Off you go,” he said to us.

We scurried away to the attic stairs. I looked around as we went and saw Count Robert using one of his gleaming shoes to urge Champ into the Family lift. “Get on, stupid!” he was saying. “It's quite safe. Or do you
want
to meet Amos in a rage?”

Christopher was very excited as we sped back to the clothes store. “My guess was right, Grant! You heard the Count, did you? There are lots more places beside those two frightful towers. Millie must be in one. Will you come with me to look for her tomorrow on our morning off?”

Well, of course I would. I could hardly wait to explore. Next time, I thought, I would take my camera with me, too, and collect some real evidence of other worlds, or dimensions, or whatever they were.

Before that, of course, we had to get into new clothes, hide the gunky ones in an empty room, and rush off to our supper. Then we had to stand by the dining room wall with those stupid cloths over our arms while Mr. Amos, Andrew, and two other footmen served the Family with their Dinner. Neither of us dared do a thing wrong. Mr. Amos was still in a rage. Whatever Count Robert had said to him, fury about it was bottled into Mr. Amos, so that he was like a huge pear-shaped balloon full of seething gas. Andrew and the other two tiptoed around him. Christopher and I tried our best to look like part of the wall.