“Three months!” Hildy interrupted. “But then I’d miss Harvest grittling and modes and the start of middle vokes—No!”
“Well, yes, I’m afraid you would,” Navis admitted. “But you’d be alive. You’d not be in prison. You can always come back next year, if things go our way.”
“If! Next year! Miss a whole year!” It was clear Hildy could not believe her ears. “Just for politics! No way!” She meant this so much that she actually made an effort to explain. “Father, you’re asking me to go back to junior vocation studies, just for politics.”
Navis looked exasperated and, for him, surprisingly helpless. His eyes flicked to Maewen. Maewen realized she must be some of his difficulty. She supposed it was because Navis had told Hildy she was someone called Ilona Something and Navis was not sure he dared explain who she really was—or who Navis thought she was. Oh, what a muddle! Maewen was sick of this. It was with enormous relief that she saw Biffa coming towering through the garden toward them. Maewen rushed to meet her.
“There you are!” Biffa said. “I hunted everywhere. Then I thought she’d decided to show you the One’s chapel and I came this way. Have you been there?”
“Not yet,” Maewen said. “Which way is it?”
But Biffa was gazing over Maewen’s head. “What’s wrong with Hildy? She looks near on in one of her rages.”
Maewen looked back at Navis and Hildy, bent toward one another arguing, against a great bush of lavender full of bees. She saw the anger in Hildy’s white face and the worry in Biffa’s healthy pink one, and she wondered how Hildy had managed to be friends with such a nice girl. “Navis wants to take her away with him,” she explained, “and she won’t go.”
“Why ever not?” said Biffa. “She’s been right gloomy all this week, saying she’ll be alone all summer here—you wouldn’t believe!”
Maewen could believe. “Then go and persuade her. Navis is worried to death,” she said. “Which way is the One’s chapel?”
“Over there,” Biffa said, pointing. “You’ll just have time before grittling.” She strode over to the lavender bush to loom anxiously over Hildy.
Maewen sighed as she trudged off the way Biffa pointed. She knew Biffa would persuade Hildy. She supposed it was a good thing, if Hildy was in danger. But the idea depressed her too much for her to bother to work out what the danger might be. There would be Hildy all the way to Kernsburgh, frowning angrily and pretending Mitt did not exist. And Mitt would have that look all the time, with that horrible jokey smile grafted on top of it. It hardly bore thinking of.
Chalk up another black mark to this Keril, she thought, as she came through the bushes and saw the One’s chapel across a gravel court. It was just as she had remembered it. But she had not remembered it here. The buildings must all have been in different places after two hundred years. I wonder why she didn’t show us it, Maewen thought. No, I know why. It’s not something she can call a silly name and mystify us with. Or maybe she’d call it Wunners.
The thought amused Maewen enough to give her the courage to advance slowly and quietly toward the small, domed building. She was not happy with the idea of stealing this cup. But she did think she ought to do something for herself. And of course she was in the fortunate position of knowing that she had done it. Just rush in, snatch it, and out, she told herself as she advanced cautiously, slantwise to the door.
A funny blue flash made her jump round. The gravel crunched under quick footsteps. Maewen swung round further, almost in time. Someone muffled in a gray robe grabbed at her with one hand and raised a knife in the other.
“No, not again! Help!” Maewen screamed.
She went on screaming because this time he had not grabbed her throat. It was so much like last time that she was sure it was the same man. He had her arm instead of her throat, and he was trying to twist it so that she would hold still for him to bring down the knife into her neck. In spite of the way it hurt, Maewen seized the wrist of his knife hand with her free hand and frantically held it away. She could see his face over her head. It seemed to be made of gray cloth, except for his glaring eyes. The sight turned her weak. She could only push at his wrist and keep screaming, “Help! I’m being killed!”
Gravel scrunched and spurted, stinging her face. Someone said, “Flaming Ammet!” and then, “Drop that, you hooded horror, you!” Mitt’s unmistakable large bony hand closed over the fist that was trying to stab Maewen. Everyone swayed, and grunted, and slid, in a shrill jangling of gravel. Then the attacker wrenched his hand, and his knife, free and ran, with Mitt after him like a greyhound. Maewen was left standing in a patter of small stones, still shouting.
“Oh save me, Mitt!”
She heard herself say it, as the madly running gray man plunged into the bushes and trees of the garden and Mitt hurtled after him. She stood staring, feeling a total fool. Tears were running down her face, though she had no memory of when she had started crying. How—how totally … girly! “Oh save me, Mitt!” she mimicked herself. Honestly!
She tried to walk to the chapel then, but her legs wobbled and refused to go, even though at the time they were carrying her round and round on the spot, like someone in a mad, giddy dance. She seemed to be trying to see all sides of the yard at once in case there were any more gray attackers. She made herself stop that. She managed to stand still and wipe her eyes, but that was all she could manage before Mitt came hurtling back with Navis running beside him. Both of them looked so anxious that tears came leaking down Maewen’s face again.
“Bastard
got away in the bushes!” Mitt said disgustedly.
“What are you doing on your own here?” Navis demanded.
Maewen swallowed. “Cup,” she managed, but that was all.
“That’s easily solved,” said Navis. “Stay with her, Mitt.”
Before Mitt could say anything, Navis had crossed the gravel and briskly vanished into the chapel.
“Are you all right?” Mitt asked Maewen. He put both hands out uncertainly, with half a mind to take hold of her shoulders. But then he did not quite like to touch her. Maewen instantly found she was hurling herself against him. She pressed her face against his chest. Through the hard mail she could feel Mitt panting and his heart thumping. She was sure she was embarrassing him horribly, but this did not prevent her from wrapping her arms round him, tightly. One of Mitt’s arms came gingerly round her shoulders and he patted her back. “There, there. It’s all right.”
“Oh Mitt, I’m so sorry!” Maewen blurted. “About me and about Hildy—about everything!”
“There, there,” Mitt repeated.