"Mayhap, but my Aunt Cordelia's the sort of woman who never hears good gossip. No more does she speak it. She fancied Jonas herself, ye ken."
Cuthbert was thunderstruck. "Fancied Jonas! By all the fiddling gods! Can you imagine it! Why, if they hung folk for bad taste in love, your auntie would go early, wouldn't she?"
Susan giggled, hugged her knees, and nodded.
"It's time we left," Roland said. "If something chances that Susan needs to know right away, we'll use the red stone in the rock wall at Green Heart."
"Good," Cuthbert said. "Let's get out of here. The cold in this place eats into the bones."
Roland stirred, stretching life back into his legs. "The important thing is that they've decided to leave us free while they round up and run. That's our edge, and it's a good one. And now - "
Alain's quiet voice stopped him. "There's another matter. Very important."
Roland sank back down on his hunkers, looking at Alain curiously.
"The witch."
Susan started, but Roland only barked an impatient laugh. "She doesn't figure in our business, Al - I can't see how she could. I don't believe she's a part of Jonas's conspiracy - "
"Neither do I," Alain said.
" - and Cuthbert and I persuaded her to keep her mouth shut about Susan and me. If we hadn't, her aunt would have raised the roof by now."
"But don't you see?" Alain asked. "Who Rhea might have told isn't really the question. The question is how she knew in the first place."
"It's pink," Susan said abruptly. Her hand was on her hair, fingers touching the place where the cut ends had begun to grow out.
"What's pink?" Alain asked.
"The moon," she said, and then shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about. Brainless as Pinch and Jilly, I am ... Roland? What's wrong? What ails thee?"
For Roland was no longer hunkering; he had collapsed into a loose sitting position on the petal-strewn stone floor. He looked like a young man trying not to faint. Outside the mausoleum there was a bony rattle of fall leaves and the cry of a nightjar.
"Dear gods," he said in a low voice. "It can't be. Itcan't be true." His eyes met Cuthbert's.
All the humor had washed out of the latter young man's face, leaving a ruthless and calculating bedrock his own mother might not have recognized ... or might not have wanted to.
"Pink," Cuthbert said. "Isn't that interesting - the same word your father happened to mention just before we left, Roland, wasn't it? He warned us about the pink one. We thought it was a joke. Almost."
"Oh!" Alain's eyes flew wide open. "Oh, f**k! " he blurted. He realized what he had said while sitting leg-to-leg with his best friend's lover and clapped his hands over his mouth. His cheeks flamed red.
Susan barely noticed. She was staring at Roland in growing fear and confusion. "What?" she asked. "What is it ye know? Tell me! Tell me!"
"I'd like to hypnotize you again, as I did that day in the willow grove," Roland said. "I want to do it right now, before we talk of this more and drag mud across what you remember."
Roland had reached into his pocket while she was speaking. Now he took out a shell, and it began to dance across the back of his hand once more. Her eyes went to it at once, like steel drawn to a magnet.
"May I?" he asked. "By your leave, dear."
"Aye, as ye will." Her eyes were widening and growing glassy. "I don't know why ye think this time should be any different, but. . ." She stopped talking, her eyes continuing to follow the dance of the shell across Roland's hand. When he stopped moving it and clasped it in his fist, her eyes closed. Her breath was soft and regular.
"Gods, she went like a stone," Cuthbert whispered, amazed. "She's been hypnotized before. By Rhea, I think." Roland paused. Then: "Susan, do you hear me?"
"Aye, Roland, I hear ye very well." "I want you to hear another voice, too." "Whose?"
Roland beckoned to Alain. If anyone could break through the block in Susan's mind (or find a way around it), it would be him.
"Mine, Susan," Alain said, coming to Roland's side. "Do you know it?" She smiled with her eyes closed. "Aye, you're Alain. Richard Stock-worth that was."
"That's right." He looked at Roland with nervous, questioning eyes - What shall I ask her? - but for a moment Roland didn't reply. He was in two other places, both at the same time, and hearing two different voices.
Susan, by the stream in the willow grove: She says, "Aye, lovely, just so, it's a good girl y'are, " then everything's pink.
His father, in the yard behind the Great Hall: It's the grapefruit. By which I mean it's the pink one.
The pink one.
7