Free The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope

their way."
    "No, no, it isn't that. You said, without your seeing, nobody could go past without your seeing them. As if you were there all the time. As if — " An appalling thought suddenly flashed into Kate's mind. "Sir Geoffrey doesn't make you live in that place, does he?"
    "Geoffrey has nothing to do with it," said Christopher Heron. "He hasn't concerned himself with me or my affairs for a long time now, any more than my father did. I live as I please."
    "In that place?"
    "I go back to the Hall whenever Geoffrey comes."
    "But when he's away you live in that place?"
    "I have to live somewhere."
    Kate looked up the narrow valley with its litter of fallen stones and the bare rock shutting it in on either side. The gray clouds that had filled the sky all morning had begun to close down and were pouring over the cliffs like smoke. "But surely you haven't any need — " she began.
    "No: Henry Warden saw to all that," Christopher cut in before she could finish the sentence. "It's not far to the spring, and there's a flat rock by the door of the hut where a boy from the castle could come and leave food without troubling him."
    "I don't care what Henry Warden did," said Kate fiercely. "You aren't a leper like Henry Warden."
    "No, I'm not. He shut himself away before he could kill anybody."
    "You didn't kill Cecily."
    "Why is she dead, then?"
    "You didn't mean to kill her. Any more than you meant to kill your mother."
    "I could have kept her safe at the Hall, I could have tried to catch her on the path, I could have gone to look for her sooner, I said I wanted to be rid of her, perhaps in my heart I always wanted to be rid of her without knowing it. How can you tell what I meant to do? How can I? How can anyone? I think the damned souls in hell must spend half their time wondering what it was that they really meant to do."
    "If you think the damned in hell spend their time doing that, then you can't know very much about the damned in hell," Kate retorted furiously. "I am utterly at squares with this childish dealing. Why in the name of heaven don't you go down to the village and make a proper confession to the priest and let him tell you what penance you ought to be laying on yourself? You aren't one of the damned in hell. We're all of us under the Mercy."
    "I'll lay my own penance on myself," said Christopher Heron. "And I wasn't born under the Mercy . . . Good lord, it's starting to rain again! Look at that sky."
    Kate disregarded the sky. "You could at least go away somewhere else where you wouldn't have to think about her all the time," she suggested, as a last resort.
    "I could go digging for pearls in the ground too, and much good that would do me," said Christopher Heron. "Must you leave now?"
    "I wasn't leaving."
    "Oh yes, you are," said Christopher Heron. "Leaving to my great regret because I don't want you to get caught in the rain and die of a cold or ague. How otherwise could I courteously put an end to this stupid and profitless conversation? I told you what I did because I laid it on myself to do it, but I've told you now and it's over and done. Why should we go on quacking over the way I feel — or the life I lead — or anything else I may choose to do? Be off with you."
    He said it very quietly, without stirring a step, but something in his voice swung Kate around like a hand on her shoulder and sent her almost running up the path back to the castle. She was halfway to the Standing Stone before she paused and glanced back.
    Christopher Heron was still standing where she had left him. He had turned his head again and was looking through the rain at the dark opening in the cliff wall.
     

Chapter V
    The Redheaded Woman
     
     
    The rain lasted three days. By the time Kate went to bed, it was falling steadily, and by midnight it was coming from the northeast in great gusts that lashed against the windows and made it impossible to rest. She lay awake a long while staring into the dark and wondering how far a leper's