Read The Perilous Gard for Free Online Page A

for many and many a hundred years they held the Elvenwood in their turn, and kept it free and safe from all the world. Oh, they were a great family, the Wardens, as mighty as kings in their day and their time, yet my poor lady's father was the last of them, and who's to have the care of us now?" She looked almost imploringly at Lord Richard's tower, her wrinkled hands shaking.
    "Sir Geoffrey — " Kate began tentatively.
    "And whoever heard of Sir Geoffrey before he came thrusting himself in where nobody wanted him?" old Dorothy snapped, with another contemptuous toss of her head. "My lady — she was young, and full of fancies, and she could twist her father around her thumb whenever it pleased her. Nothing would do but she must marry the man, and he no more than a beggarly knight who came to the door when he was lost in the Elvenwood. 'Let her alone, let her alone,' was all my lord would say. 'She can teach him the way of the land too, when I'm dead and gone; and better this one than another, for he loves her.' I told them what would come of it, over and over again I told them. You could never teach him the way of the land. They're all soft, the Herons."
    "Soft?" Kate's chief impression of Sir Geoffrey had been that he was made entirely out of granite and steel.
    "Big and soft and stupid," said old Dorothy, viciously. "Haven't you eyes? You saw him with his brother."
    "What brother?"
    "Christopher Heron." Dorothy spoke the name almost as though she were spitting it out of her mouth. "You saw him. He was over by the window while you were eating your bit of a dinner."
    "That was Sir Geoffrey's brother?" Kate knew now what the height and the thick tawny hair had reminded her of. "B-but why does he treat him so, then?"
    "Because he's softhearted, I said! It was his own child — his own child, the only child my poor lady had; and Christopher Heron was crazed with jealousy of her, wanting the whole inheritance for himself. He's always been mad to have land of his own. Any of Sir Geoffrey's men will tell you that."
    "Are you saying," Kate demanded incredulously, "that he killed her?"
    "I'm not saying it; he says it himself. What more do you want? There's some that will make another tale of it, but don't you believe them. I know what I heard with my own ears. 'I killed her,' he said to his brother, standing there before all of us as white as his shirt; and not a thing did Sir Geoffrey do but turn his back on him and walk away. They say he has a great name for justice in his own country. Justice! What he ought to have done was tie his hands behind his back and hang him to a — "
    "Dorothy."
    Sir Geoffrey had opened the door from the gallery, and was standing at the end of the walk, Master John at his shoulder. Dorothy stopped short, and in spite of her belief in his soft-heartedness, made a noise like a frightened hen.
    "You can go now, Dorothy," said Sir Geoffrey. "You're wanted in the hall. John here will take you down." He did not raise his voice, and it was impossible to tell from his face just how much he had overheard, but Dorothy went scuttling past him as if in a high wind, Master John kindly taking hold of her arm to steady her through the doorway. Kate thought she saw the fat white fingers close very hard in the flesh of the arm as he did so, but they were both gone so quickly that she could not be sure. She and her guardian were left facing each other along the line of battlements.
    "Come here," said Sir Geoffrey.
    Kate went. She hoped that she did not actually scuttle, like Dorothy, but it seemed a long way.
    There was a pause, while Sir Geoffrey regarded her grimly and she felt herself slowly shrinking to the size of a very small pebble that lay on one of the stone corbels near to his hand. It must look so dreadfully as if she had gone sneaking off to whisper scandal in a corner the minute he let her out of his sight.
    "Sir Geoffrey — " she began, stiffly.
    Sir Geoffrey apparently did not even hear her.
    "Mistress