"For myself," said Andrew, "for me, personally, this turn of events is no great tragedy. Quite willingly, if there were no other considerations, I could settle down here, for it is a pleasant place and I could carry on my profession here as well as elsewhere. But for the two of you I know it is a matter of great importance to get to Oxenford."
Conrad pounded the ground with his club. "We have to get to Oxenford. There has to be a way. I, for one, will not give up and say there is no way."
"Nor will I," said Duncan.
"I had a premonition of this," Andrew told them. "Or if not of this, of something very wrong. When I saw the birds and the butterfly…"
"What the hell," asked Duncan, "have birds and butterflies got to do with it?"
"In the woods," said Andrew. "In the forest just beyond the standing stones. The birds sit frozen in the branches, not moving, as if they might be dead, but they have a live look to them. And there was a butterfly, a little yellow butterfly sitting on a milkweed pod. Not stirring, not moving. You know the way a butterfly will sit, slowly moving its wings up and down, not very much, but some motion to them. This one did not move at all. I watched for a long time and it did not move. I think I saw, although I could not be sure, a thin film of dust upon it. As if it had been there a long time and dust had collected on it. I think the woods are part of the enchantment, too, that time has stopped there except for the people—and Hubert. Everything else is exactly the same as it was on the day this castle was created by enchantment."
"The stoppage of time," said Duncan. "Yes, that could be it. The castle is brand new, so are the standing stones. The chisel marks still fresh upon them, as if they had been carved only yesterday."
"But outside," said Conrad, "in that world we left to walk into this world, the castle lies in ruins, the stones have tumbled down. Tell me, m" lord, what do you think is going on?"
"It's an enchantment," said Meg. "A very potent one."
"We've beaten enchantments before," said Conrad. "We beat the enchantment that came upon us as we approached the strand."
"That was but a feeble spell," said Meg, "designed only to confuse us, to get us off the track. Not a well-constructed spell, not carefully crafted as this one surely is."
Duncan knew that what she said was true. Despite all their whistling past the graveyard, despite all of Conrad's bravado, the firm confidence they showed for one another's benefit, this was an enchantment they were not about to break.
They sat crouched in a row on the bottom step of the stairway that came down from the entrance. Before them ran the measured velvet of the lawn. Daniel and Beauty were at the foot of the park, near the standing stones, filling their bellies with succulent grass. Hubert, the griffin, still lay where he had been earlier in the day. Grown stiff with age, he did not move around too much.
"Where's Tiny?" Duncan asked.
"The last I saw of him," said Conrad, "he was digging out a mouse. He's around somewhere."
So here they were, Duncan told himself, caught in as pretty a mousetrap as anyone could want. This way not only would the manuscript never get to Oxenford, but it would be lost to mankind as well. All that would remain would be the two copies made at the abbey's scriptorium.
His father, at Standish House, and His Grace, at the abbey, would wait for word of him and Conrad, and there would be no word; there never would be word. They would have gone into the Desolated Land and that would be the last of them. Although perhaps, just perhaps, there might be a way for word to be gotten out. Diane could get out, could go out and return. At least, should she be willing, she could carry word to Standish House, perhaps carry the manuscript as well. There still might be time for someone else to get to Oxenford with it. Not through the Desolated Land, for that route had proved too dangerous; the chances of traversing it were slight. Despite the swarming pirates, it might be carried by ship. There still might be enough time left to pull together a fleet of fighting ships, manned by men-at-arms, to get through the pirate packs.
"M" lord," said Conrad.
"Yes, what is it?"
"A delicate matter."
"There are no delicate matters between you and me. Speak up. Tell me what you were about to."
"The Horde," said Conrad, "does not want us to get to Oxenford—well, maybe not actually to Oxenford, maybe they just don't want us to get anywhere. They've tried to block us at every turn. And now perhaps we're blocked for good. They'll have no more trouble from us."
"That's true. But what's your point?"
"The Lady Diane."
"What about the Lady Diane?"
"Could she be in league with them? Is this but a clever trick?"
Duncan flushed in anger, opened his mouth to speak and then held back the words.
Andrew hurriedly said, "I think not. To me it is inconceivable. Twice she aided us in battle. She would not have done this had she been in league with them."
"I think you probably are right," said Conrad. "It's only that we must consider every angle."
In the silence that followed, Duncan's mind went back again to his half-formed plan to get the manuscript to Oxenford by some other route. It wouldn't work, he knew. Diane, without question, could carry it to Standish House, could acquaint his father with what had happened to him and Conrad, but it seemed hardly likely that the manuscript could be carried to Oxenford by sea. His father and the archbishop had given that possibility full consideration and apparently had decided that it would be impossible. It might be that his father would decide to attempt it by land once again, sending out a small army of men-at-arms, but that sort of venture, it seemed to Duncan, would have little chance of success. The Reaver's band of thirty men or more had been easily wiped out. That his own small group had gotten as far as it had, he was convinced, was due only to the protection afforded by the talisman.
Or, wait a moment, he told himself. If Diane could take the manuscript to Standish House, she could take it just as easily to Oxenford. At Oxenford she could deliver it by hand to Bishop Wise and wait to bring back the word.
But, thinking this, he knew that none of it was possible, knew that he had been doing no more than conjuring up fantasies in a desperate effort to find some solution to his problem.
He could not hand over the manuscript to Diane—nor, perhaps, to any other. He could not give it to someone he could not trust and in this place, other than Conrad, whom could he trust? Diane had lured him and his party into this circle of enchantment. And now she said that she was sorry, had even wept in saying she was sorry. But expressions of sorrow come easily, he told himself, and tears just as easily.
And that was not all. The manuscript had been given into his keeping and it must stay that way. He was the one who had sole responsibility for it; it was a sacred trust he could share with no one else. In his mad groping for some way out of his predicament, he had forgotten, for the moment, the holy vow he implicitly had taken when His Grace had handed him the parchment.
"Another thing," said Conrad. "Could the demon help us? He might have a trick or two up his sleeve. If we appealed to him, if we were able to offer him the payment of setting him free, if we could…"
"With a demon I'll not deal," snapped Andrew. "He is a filthy beast."
"To me," said Duncan, "he seems a decent chap."
"You cannot trust him," Andrew said. "He would play you false."
"You said we could not trust Snoopy either," Conrad reminded him. "Yet if we'd paid attention to Snoopy, we'd not be where we are now. He warned us against the castle. He told us not to go near it."