Nightbirds on Nantucket

by Joan Aiken

  Missed it, diagnosed Dido. Seconds later a damp, dew-spangled sheep bolted past her, nearly knocking her down, and disappeared into the dimness before she could grab it.

  Blazes, Dido thought. Now I've lost 'em both, Pen and the sheep. Which'd I better go after? Pen, I reckon. The sheep can look after itself.

  "Penitence!" she called lustily. "Du-oo-tiful! Penitence! Where are you?"

  No answer—only a plaintive, faraway bleat. Not you, woollyknob, Dido thought crossly. She floundered on into the smoky whiteness, tripping over wet, tangling shrubs, getting caught in thorn bushes and low-growing holly, stumbling into holes and out of them again.

  What a blame-awful country, she thought. Why can't they have some decent grass, 'stead of all this dratted scrubbage that tears your shins to ribbons? Thank goodness I've got britches on; poor old Pen in her thin, white stockings must be getting scritched to pieces.

  "PEN! Where are you?"

  This time there was no answer at all.

  Doggedly, Dido went on hunting and calling. She must have covered acres of ground in the course of the next two or three hours, but never had so much as a glimpse of either Pen or the sheep. At last she struck a track which led uphill. Dark was falling by now. Dispirited, weary, and very worried about Pen, she turned along it. Maybe I'll come to a house or a farm, she thought, where I can ask somebody to give me a hand hunting. At this rate the poor little brat stands a chance of being out all night, and that'd just about do for Pen; she'd be seeing ghosts and boggarts for the rest of her life.

  She hurried along the track, which sloped more and more steeply uphill and suddenly brought her out into a familiar barnyard. Why, curse it, Dido thought angrily, I'm home. What's the good o' that? No hopes Auntie Trib will give a hand. I'd best turn right round and go back the other way to Mrs. Pardon's.

  She was just turning wearily down the dusky track when a lantern light showed in the barn door.

  "Dido!" called Pen's eager voice. "Is that you?"

  "Penny!" Dido exclaimed joyfully. "You're back, then!"

  "Yes, and, what do you think? I found the sheep again! Wasn't that a bit of luck? And, Dido, I have had such a curious adventure. Listen—"

  "You found the sheep? You brought it back all on your own?" Dido was amazed. "I'd never 'a thought you had it in you, Pen! How ever did you manage to fetch it along? Where is it now?"

  "In the barn. I led it," Pen said.

  "How, for gracious' sakes?"

  "Well," Pen said rather shyly, "I thought, how would Dido set about it? And, as I hadn't got a rope, I took off my stockings and tied them together. It was the sheep that found the way home really, not me. But I was dreadfully worried about where you'd got to, Dido. I'm ever so glad to see you."

  "Well, us'd better turn to and do the evening jobs while there's still a glim of daylight," Dido said. "You can tell me about your adventure when we're indoors making supper, Pen."

  They made haste with their tasks. Both were tired, wet, and hungry—though Dido grinned to herself as she thought how much hungrier Aunt Tribulation would be.

  "Done the fowls? Good. That's the lot, then," she said to Pen as they met at the back door.

  "Oh, Dido," breathed Pen fearfully, "there's a light in the kitchen. Do you suppose—?"

  "Ssh!" Dido laid a milky finger on her lips and opened the kitchen door.

  The kitchen was warm and bright but had lost some of its cheerful atmosphere. For Aunt Tribulation, fully dressed, was sitting in the rocking chair by the stove. She was no less formidable up than she had been in bed; although she had taken off her tinted glasses, the gray eyes they had concealed were cold and singularly unwelcoming. She wore a brown-and-white-checked gingham dress and a brown shawl; an enormous brown brooch, with enough hair in it to stuff a pincushion, fastened her white fichu. Her gray hair was strained back into a tight knot behind her head. She looked hungry.

  "We found the sheep, Aunt Tribulation!" Pen announced proudly, after a momentary check in the doorway.

  "So I should hope! You've taken long enough about it. Is the milking done? Then hurry up and make my supper."

  "Pen must change first," Dido said firmly. "Her dress is sopping and she's got no stockings on."

  "Make haste, then. And, pray, why were the larder and cellar doors locked, and what have you done with the keys?"

  "Oh, dear, did you want them?" Dido exclaimed innocently, drawing the keys out of her breeches pocket. "I locked the doors acos we found the kitchen window open this morning, and I was feared that burglars or wild animals might get in and steal our vittles or frighten you, Auntie Trib! O' course I never thought you'd be coming down for summat; I thought you was much too ill. I am sorry! Did you get peckish, then?"

  Aunt Tribulation did not answer, but looked daggers while Dido, pretending not to notice, made up the stove and started frying bacon.

  "Pen'll do some pancakes when she comes down. She's a dab at pancakes. And she set a pot o' beans a-baking in the oven this morning; what a shame you never thought to look in there, isn't it, Aunt Trib. You coulda been eating baked beans all this time."

  Supper was taken in baleful silence, and as soon as the children had washed up the dishes they escaped to bed, Dido almost bursting with suppressed laughter.

  "Now tell me your adventures, Dutiful," she said when they were snug under the quilt and the candle blown out.

  "It was the strangest thing! After we lost each other I hunted for you, and I ran towards where I thought you had been standing, but I must have gone astray, for I ran on and on, a long way, and suddenly I found myself among high trees."

  "Trees? Why, there ain't but bushes and bits of scrub for miles."

  "I must have been in the Hidden Forest, you see," Pen explained. "It seemed so mysterious in the mist! When I called to you (as I had been doing on and off all the time) my voice echoed back so boomingly that I was afraid and dared not do it anymore. I became confused in the wood and, trying to return the way I had come, went on, I think, in quite the wrong direction. Then all of a sudden I found myself up against a strange kind of barrier."

  "A fence, like?"

  "No, not a fence, nor yet a wall....It was about as high as my head and very thick, and round like a great iron pipe; yes, like an iron pipe as big as a great tree trunk."

  "That's rum," Dido said. "What held it up, then?"

  "It was mounted all along its length—and it was very long; I never saw either end—on pairs of cartwheels."

  "Sounds as if maybe someone gets their water through it," Dido suggested.

  "But there are no farms anywhere near the Hidden Forest! It is a solitary place."

  "Well, I dunno what to make of it," Dido said, yawning. "You never knew it was there afore?"

  "No, never. But that's not the end of the story."

  "No? Hurry up, then, Dutiful. My eyes is closing in spite of themselves."

  "I thought I would feel my way along the pipe, and so get out of the wood. But I had not gone very far when I bumped into a man."

  "What sort o' man? What was he doing?"

  "Oh, Dido, he was strange! He was tapping on the pipe with a hammer. He gave a great start when I bumped into him. I would have screamed, but that he seemed even more frightened! I said I was lost, and which way to Soul's Hill? And he said, 'Whisper,' laying his finger on his lip and looking all round, and then he pointed which way I should go and led me to the edge of the wood. Then he whispered something, and it took me such a long time to make out what he was asking—he spoke in such a strange, foreign way! At last I realized that it was boots he wanted—he showed me his feet in thin, foreign-looking shoes, all wet and torn and muddy. So I promised I would have a look at the farm—there might be an old pair of Papa's sea boots, and was that all he wanted? And he said—I think— that he had a great longing for something sweet—could I bring him any cakes or sugar or jam? To keep out the cold and damp. He said he would wait by the fork in the track every night from seven till nine."
<
br />   "Was he a beggar?"

  "No, indeed, I am sure he was not! For he gave me money to pay for the boots—three English gold coins."

  "English coins?" Dido was suddenly wide awake. "How d'you know they were English?"

  "Because there is a picture of a king and the words 'Carolus II Rex Br.'"

  "Good cats alive!" Dido said. "An old guinea piece! There's still quite a lot of 'em about. My pa used to get them for playing on his hoboy. D'you think the man was English, Pen?"

  "He certainly was not American. But he didn't speak like you—his language was very queer. He was a sad-looking man with a face like a monkey, and big ears, and nearly bald. He said not to tell anyone that I had seen him, and if I came with the boots I was to croak like a night heron."

  "Night heron? What's that? One of those birds that go on yakking all the perishing night?"

  "Yes," Pen said. "I think that was what he meant. And he said how glad he was that he would soon be back in Europe."

  "Did he?" Dido was more and more interested. If this man is really going back to Europe soon, she thought, and if I could make friends with him, and if I could get Pen fixed up to stay with Mrs. Pardon ... Who can the man be? Oh, is there a chance that I could go with him as far as London?

  "We must look him out a pair o' boots tomorrow, Pen," she said. "I don't mind taking 'em to him if you're scared to go back. There's a deal of old boots up in the attic."

  And one pair of salt-stained, bottle-green ones that ought not to be there, she remembered, just before she went to sleep. Was it not probable that Aunt Tribulation and the veiled stowaway of the Sarah Casket were one and the same person?

  7

  Aunt Tribulation gets up. Second trip to the attic. Dido's in the well. Return of Captain Casket. Trip to the forest.

  The conspirators. The gun.

  Aunt Tribulation had evidently decided that it was easier to keep an eye on the girls if she got up, for the next day they were disconcerted to find her established in the kitchen when they came in from the morning's milking.

  "This room is disgracefully dirty and untidy," she said grimly. "After breakfast you, miss," she said to Penitence, "may bestir yourself to give it a good scrub and cleanout. You," this to Dido, "take Mungo and the cart down to the peat swamp to fetch a load of peat."

  "I'll help Penny first, and then she can come with me," promptly replied Dido, who had no intention of leaving Pen to fend for herself for so long with Aunt Tribulation.

  "You'll do as I say, and don't argue about it!"

  Dido did not argue about it, but when Aunt Tribulation retired after breakfast, leaving the girls to wash up, she fetched a bucket of water and began to scrub the floor.

  "I'll do that Dido—you'd better go!" whispered Penitence, alarmed.

  "And leave you on your own? Not likely! Hurry, and we'll be done afore she comes down."

  Aunt Tribulation, when she did come down, was very angry. "How dare you disobey me, insolent girl!" she thundered, looking about for her stick. But Dido, accustomed to self-preservation in the hubbub of the London alleys, had prudently removed the stick, chopped it up, and burned it in the stove. Aunt Tribulation boxed her ears instead, and told her to go and sit on the whale's jawbone for two hours, reciting, "I must not be a naughty, insubordinate girl."

  This Dido did not at all mind doing. True, the jawbone was not very comfortable to sit on, but it was close at hand, so that she would wave cheerfully and shout encouragement whenever Pen's duties took her across the barnyard, and it made a change from work.

  After an hour or so, Dido had an idea. "Psst! Penny!" she called, as Pen came out with a basin of wrung-out cheesecloths. "Come this way a minute?"

  "What is it?" Pen hung her cloths on the clothesline, starting at the end nearest Dido, but keeping an anxious eye on the kitchen door.

  "That span'l dog of your auntie's—the one that bit you—"

  "It didn't bite me," the truthful Penitence interjected. "I was afraid that it might."

  "What was it called?"

  "Toto." Pen recalled the horrid creature with a shudder. "I am so glad she didn't bring it with her this time."

  "Probably died years ago. But never mind that," Dido said. "Don't you think as how it would be polite and sociable to ask arter Toto's health? Might put the old gal in a better humor."

  "Do you think so?" Pen said doubtfully.

  "Well—try, Penny, and see! Just say, 'Aunt Tribulation, how's Toto?' and see what she says."

  Slightly puzzled, Pen obeyed. Dido was unable to hear the conversation, which took place in the kitchen, but the result was most satisfactory. Pen came flying out, looking scared, to report in a whisper, "She was as cross as two sticks! First, she didn't seem to remember Toto at all, and when I reminded her, she told me to get along out and hoe the corn patch and not bother her with silly chatter!"

  At this moment Aunt Tribulation put her head out of the kitchen door and called sharply, "Hurry up, miss! Don't dawdle there! And you go, too," she added with a fierce scowl at Dido, "so that I can have a bit of peace and quiet! Work hard, mind! I shall be out presently to see how much you have done."

  "Tooralooral," said Dido, sliding down the whale's jawbone. "Come on, Penny."

  "What are you giggling about?" the mystified Penitence inquired as they carried their hoes towards the corn patch.

  "Just that I believe it ain't going to be too hard to manage the old bag o' bones." But Dido did not confide her growing conviction that their taskmistress was not the real Aunt Tribulation at all, as her ignorance about Toto seemed to show.

  It was not, however, always so easy to circumvent Aunt Tribulation, now she had decided to come downstairs and take charge of the household. Indeed, as Dido said, it was hard to believe she had ever been ill at all, so active and vigilant was she now in pursuit of keeping the children hard at work. Reprimands for real or fancied faults fell thick and fast, since she made no allowance for inexperience, and expected all tasks to be carried out with perfection, both indoors and out.

  "What does she take us for, perishing slaves?" grumbled Dido.

  Even without her stick, Aunt Tribulation found no difficulty in devising punishments. Dido, who constantly incurred her displeasure, was frequently deprived of meals, shut in the grandfather clock, and had her head rapped with a thimble. Pen succored Dido when she could, bringing her tidbits, opening the clock to whisper condolences, and rubbing the bruised head with wintergreen ointment.

  "As well as learning you to stand up to Aunt Tribulation, Pen, we've someway got to make her humble, so she's real sorry for her nasty nature and won't never bother you no more," Dido observed one morning when they were out taking salt to the sheep.

  "Do you think that would ever be possible? I'd much sooner go and live with Mrs. Pardon," sighed Penitence.

  "Yes, but we can't fix that till we've heard from your pa. Aunt Trib certainly wouldn't want to lose a handy cook-parlormaid-farmhand-dairymaid like you, Pen. Have you written the letter to your pa yet?"

  "Yes, I have it in my chemise pocket."

  "Now, the mischief is, how're we going to get it to Nantucket to post it? No use to give it to old Mungo and ask him to take it to the mail office."

  Market days had come and gone, but Aunt Tribulation had sternly vetoed any idea that Dido or Pen might go in with the farm produce and do some shopping. Mungo, as usual, was sent on his own with a written list of groceries needed, which the owner of the main store would check and supply.

  "If we could give the boots to your monkey-faced friend, he might post the letter for us," Dido presently reflected. "The trouble is how to wheedle Aunt Trib out o' the house so's I can slip up to the attic and grab a pair. She never stirs except just across to the dairy."

  "I could tell her one of the sheep was sick and ask her to come up to the pasture."

  "She wouldn't care," said Dido, who privately suspected that Aunt Tribulation knew little more about farming than the girls themselves. "No, I have
it, Penny. You must pretend you think I've fallen down the well. She wouldn't like that; no water, for one thing, and who'd do the milking? She'd come out to help you grapple for me with a rope, and I could nip round to the back and climb up the willow tree and in our window."

  "But if she found out?" breathed Pen in horror.

  "We could say you made a mistake. I'll drop my red shirt down, so's it looks like me down there," said Dido, to whom Mrs. Pardon had recently given some old shirts of Nate's, cotton, with NEW BEDFORD FLOUR MILLS stenciled across the back, which were more comfortable in the hot weather. "Pity we couldn't drop Auntie Trib herself down."

  In pursuit of this plan, Dido contrived that evening to smuggle out her red shirt hidden in a pile of cheesecloths, and dangle it down the well on a loop of thread until it caught on a projection about thirty feet below. The weather favored them; it was misty again, and dusk was falling. Dido beckoned to Pen, who was in the henhouse, and whispered, "Now, screech!"

  "Oh," faltered Pen, "I don't believe I can!"

  "Consarn it, Pen, you'd screech fast enough if a wild bull was rushing at you! Let on that one is!"

  Pen gave a faint wail.

  "Louder than that!" hissed Dido. "Here, I'll do it!" She let out a fearful scream and then quickly slipped away round the corner of the house. The back door flew open and she heard Aunt Tribulation's voice.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Oh, Aunt T-Tribulation," Pen stammered, "I'm—I'm afraid Dido's in the well."

  "Blimey, she'd never get to Drury Lane," Dido groaned to herself as she rapidly shinnied up the willow tree. "I never heard sich a rabbity bit of acting." She scrambled in at their chamber window and pulled the spare attic key out of her pocket.

  In a moment she had darted up to the attic and seized the largest and least worn pair of sea boots; then, on a sudden thought, she tiptoed to the bundle of clothes behind the chest, pulled out the bonnet, and looked inside. It bore a London dressmaker's label and a name: "Letitia M. Slighcarp." So did the cloak. Dido did not dare wait to examine the rest of the clothes; she fled silently down the stairs again, relocked the door, and was out and dropping from the willow tree all in the space of half a dozen heartbeats. She could still hear voices and splashings from the direction of the well, so she thrust the boots into a clump of fern, strolled nonchalantly round the corner, and remarked, "Hilloo? Dropped summat in the water?"