Dido and Pa

by Joan Aiken

  ‘Maybe! Yet I can’t help wondering if her father has something to do with the business. She told me she’d seen him in Sussex not long ago – he was mixed up in the plot to stop King Richard’s coronation. If he told her some tale – Yet Dido was never taken in by her father –’

  ‘Maybe Miss Sophie’ll have heard summat, time we gets home.’

  They reached the house in Chelsea very late indeed for breakfast. Bakerloo House belonged jointly to Simon and his sister Sophie. It was really too large for them and their small staff of devoted servants, but by the terms of a Trust they were not allowed to do anything with it until Sophie came into her inheritance, on her eighteenth birthday. Then she had plenty of plans for it.

  Sophie was bitterly disappointed and upset when she heard that Simon had found Dido and then, almost at once, lost her again.

  ‘Poor little dear! How very strange! What in the world can have happened to her? Do you think you should advertise for her, Simon? Have her cried by the town crier? Or hang up placards in the streets offering a reward?’

  ‘I am not sure that would be wise,’ said Simon. He sat unhappily, nibbling without appetite at the enormous breakfast which the housekeeper, Dolly Buckle, had swiftly prepared and set before him. ‘If we advertised – and someone who meant mischief had got hold of her – that would only add to her value for them –’

  ‘Yes. I see. They would know how much we value her. But oh –’ exclaimed Sophie, ‘I am so disappointed! Dido Twite! To find her alive and well, after all this time we thought she was drowned! Where in the world can she have been?’

  ‘Everywhere in the world, from what I could make out! The Galapagos Islands – and Nantucket – and New Cumbria –’

  ‘How did she –’ Sophie was beginning, when Dolly Buckle came in again, curtsied, and said, ‘Here’s a note just come for you, Mester Simon.’

  The note was short and to the point. It said:

  Dere Simon: I hav dissided that now you are a Dook I cant be your Freind. Ar stashins ar two far Apart. Good by will allus think of you.

  Yrs affcctly,

  Dido Twite.

  Simon read this and bit his lip. Then he handed it to Sophie, who read it twice, very carefully, knitting her fine dark brows.

  ‘Is this Dido’s writing?’ she asked her brother.

  ‘How can I be sure? It is a long time since I have seen anything written by her. It could be, I suppose. Why not?’

  Sophie turned over the paper and studied it.

  ‘Why, Simon, look – this is music paper – ruled with sets of staves – the kind that songs and sonatas are written down on.’

  ‘So it is! That makes me all the more certain that Dido’s father must be mixed up in this business. He’s a musician – he would be sure to have such paper.’

  ‘Do you think he would hold Dido against her will?’ asked Sophie doubtfully. ‘Could he have told her that she must not be our friend? Might he have obliged her to write this? What is he like? You lived in his house –?’

  ‘Oh, he is a scoundrel. Yet somehow I don’t see anybody obliging Dido to do anything she didn’t mean to,’ observed Simon with a grin. ‘But then – could he perhaps have persuaded her that it would be opposing his cause to be friendly with a duke?’

  ‘But Dido is not sympathetic to his cause! Not if she just foiled a Hanoverian plot to wreck the coronation –’

  ‘No-o,’ said Simon dubiously. ‘But Twite is her father after all –’

  ‘Who brought this note?’ Sophie asked Mrs Buckle.

  Unfortunately nobody had seen the messenger. The note had been found lying on the shelf of the porter’s lodge.

  ‘Why wasn’t Fidd at his post?’

  ‘He were a-reprimanding the children, Mester Simon.’

  ‘What children?’

  ‘The ones as allus keeps coming and playing may-games in the courtyard. Ten, twenty times a day he’s obliged to chivvy ’em out. They’re getting more capsical every week.’

  ‘It is because the weather is growing so cold,’ said Sophie in a troubled tone. ‘Look, snow is falling now – in November! The children have to play games to keep themselves warm, poor dears.’

  She spoke with deep sympathy; brought up on a Poor Farm herself, until her noble birth was discovered, Sophie knew very well what it was to be cold and hungry.

  ‘There now!’ grumbled Mrs Buckle disapprovingly. ‘They’re at it again, this very minute, the young tinkers!’ She pointed out of the breakfast-room window, which looked over the paved courtyard.

  Sure enough, a party of about thirty ragged children was forming up to play some game, selecting one of their number to be It.

  ‘Arminy, arminy, arminy,’ they sang,

  ‘My lover came over from Jarminy;

  My lover came over from Bremen;

  I gave him an apple, I gave him a lemon

  And sent him off to heaven

  One – two – three – four – five – six – seven!’

  When the counting-out had been done, the girl chosen to be It went off and sat on the fountain with her back to the rest.

  Fidd the old porter now came out of his lodge and was about to chase the group out of the yard, but Sophie flung open the window and called loudly, ‘Leave them alone, Fidd, they aren’t doing any harm!’

  ‘That’s as may be, Missie Sophie!’ Fidd turned his aged tortoise head in Sophie’s direction. ‘Give ’em an inch, they take a furlong, I say! Let ’em in the yard, next thing they’ll be a-scuttering all over the house like rats in a granary, before you can look two ways.’

  ‘They can’t play in the street, Fidd, it’s too dangerous there, with carriages galloping past all the time.’

  Fidd retired to the porter’s lodge, shaking his head dissentingly.

  ‘I read in the paper, only today,’ said Sophie, ‘that there are ten thousand homeless orphan children in London – isn’t that dreadful, Simon –’ She stopped, for Simon’s eye had fallen on the newspaper she held out, and he gave a gasp of horror.

  ‘Good heavens! The Dean of St Paul’s, Lord Forecastle, and Sir Percy Tipstaff, all drowned on their way to visit the king – how shocking! The poor king will be so grieved! They were among his closest friends. Indeed, they were his only close friends. Poor man! I must write him a note of sympathy at once!’

  Leaving his breakfast nearly untouched, Simon went off to the library.

  But Sophie remained at the window, watching the ragged children in the courtyard.

  Having chosen one of their number to be It, they were now leading her in solemn procession across the paved yard, chanting as they went:

  ‘Bonnie Prince Georgie lies over the water

  He don’t rule over this land though he oughter

  Bonnie Prince Georgie lies over in Hanover

  Oh, why won’t some wellwisher bring that young man over?

  Our swords we will sharpen, our spears we will forge,

  And it’s up with the banner of Bonnie Prince George!’

  The player chosen to be Prince George was now throned on a mounting-block and all the rest elaborately bowed and curtsied.

  Then the actor playing Prince George toppled off the block and lay flat on the ground, while the others chanted, running round and round the fallen one:

  ‘Bonnie Prince George, your breakfast is made!

  He won’t come down, he’s dead in his bed.

  Bonnie Prince George, your dinner is made!

  He won’t come down, he’s dead in bed.

  Bonnie Prince George, your supper is made!

  He won’t come down, he’s stock-stone-dead.’

  Each time they sang this the fallen figure twitched and then lay motionless again.

  Finally they sang:

  ‘Bonnie Prince George, your house in on fire!’

  at which the ‘dead’ one jumped up and chased after the rest of them, shouting,

  ‘Just wait till I catch you and I’ll skin you alive!’

&nb
sp; They all fled away shrieking, and the ‘prince’ caught one of them, and then the game started all over again.

  Fidd the porter watched them, scowling; he thought it highly undignified that the Duke of Battersea’s courtyard should be put to such a purpose. But at last the children became bored – or playing had warmed them enough to go back to their usual occupations. They began to drift away in clumps and groups, picking up, as they went, the trappings of their trade: trays of pencils, baskets of oranges or nuts, brooms, laces and ribbons; all the things they sold in the street.

  Sophie noticed one of them, a small fair-haired boy, approach the front door of the house. She saw Fidd come charging out of his lodge, and she herself ran down the stairs to the front hall, so as to open the door and get to the child before Fidd reached him. She arrived just in time, as Fidd was about to pounce, growling ‘Ho, no! Not in there you don’t go, my young warmint!’

  ‘No, but I got a missidge!’ gasped the boy. ‘I’m on an arrant!’

  ‘A likely tale!’

  ‘Wait a minute, Fidd,’ said Sophie. ‘I wish to hear what the boy has to say.’

  ‘And what are you doing, Lady Sophie, opening the door – that ain’t dignified!’ the old man scolded.

  ‘Oh, pooh, Fidd! Go mind your lodge.’

  ‘I gotta missidge for the Dook o’ Battersea!’ pleaded the boy.

  ‘Have you indeed, my dear?’ said Sophie. ‘Then the duke shall be fetched. Tarrant!’ she ordered a footman. ‘Will you please ask his grace to step down here a moment?’

  In a moment Simon came down. He was in the middle of his letter of condolence, had an ink blot on his finger, and looked rather put-about.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘This boy has a message for you,’ said his sister. Instantly Simon became very alert. ‘Yes? What is the message?’ he asked the boy.

  ‘Send them gummies away out o’ hearing.’ The boy jerked his head at Fidd and Tarrant. ‘Now listen close.’

  He brought his hand out of his pocket and opened it, disclosing a small, rusty, very chewed-looking apple-core.

  ‘See this? It’s all there were to bring. There were a token, but it got took back. And there were a Simon, but it got snabbled. And there were a missidge.’

  ‘What did the message say?’

  ‘Her birthday be the fust o’ March. Name’s Died o’ Fright. She be with ’er pa and ’er’ll come when ’er can. Got it?’

  ‘With her pa,’ repeated Simon. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Pimlico, I got the missidge. But it came a long way afore then. Lotsa bringers atwixt here and there. Whitechapel way, maybe. Or Spitalfields. All rosy?’ said the boy, and slipped away, shaking his head as Sophie offered to reward him. They saw him dash through the gate and disappear into the traffic of the King’s Road.

  The brother and sister remained staring at one another in the doorway.

  Then Sophie asked in a low voice, ‘Is Dido’s birthday the first of March, would you know?’

  He frowned, and rubbed his brow.

  ‘The first of March? How can I possibly remember?’

  ‘The first of March is St David’s Day,’ offered Sophie helpfully.

  ‘So it is! And – you are right – that is Dido’s birthday. I remember her saying something about leeks, once –’ His voice trailed away, he stood gazing across the courtyard.

  ‘Whitechapel. You don’t think it would be any use searching for her, or telling the Bow Street Runners?’ suggested Sophie.

  Simon shook his head. ‘It would be looking for a grain of sand in the desert. And the boy only said maybe Whitechapel. But at least she said she will come when she can. Dido is certain to keep her promise.’

  Sophie gently took the rusty apple-core from her brother.

  ‘At least,’ she said, ‘we know that she is safe.’

  When Dido next woke up, it was with an aching head, and a mouth that tasted, she thought with disgust, just like that musty, fusty room in the basement where all the kids spent the night, dangling in nooses. What had Mrs Bloodvessel called them? The lollpoops. And she charged them a farthing a night. Eighty-three of them she had counted out the door . . . so that meant she made over one shilling and eight pence a night – enough to buy three or four pounds of meat or five pots of beer. She’s a right shrewd one, that Mrs B., thought Dido, raising herself up on one elbow – which caused another sharp scrunch of pain to run through her head. Massy me, what’s up with me? Could it be that yellow jossop she gave me. It did taste mighty spicy. Maybe she put a hocus in it.

  Doing her best to ignore the hammer blows inside her skull, Dido struggled up into a sitting position. To her surprise, she found that she was not in the place where she had fallen asleep. Great fish swallow us, I must have been deep under, not to know about it when they carried me here.

  The room in which she now lay seemed to be an attic, judging from the steep slant of the ceilings and the triangular dormer windows. Scrambling to her feet – she had been curled up on a straw pallet on the floor – Dido pattered over to one of the windows and looked out. Sure enough, she was high up – she could see dozens of distant steeples, the huge black dome of St Paul’s, with its cross and ball of gold gleaming through a thin snow that fell like a curtain; closer at hand there were cranes and ships’ masts and the grimy bulk of warehouses. Peering out to her left, Dido saw the wide Thames, running swift and black, snatching away the white snow as it fell, turning it to frothy dark water; one or two ships were ploughing up-river against the tide with ruffles of dirty foam against their noses. Pushing open – with some trouble – the cracked and grimy window, Dido took several deep sniffs of rusty-smelling sharp air into her lungs and felt a little better. She looked down, but could not see the street below; the window opened on to a ledge of roof, with a railed parapet along the edge, which was already beginning to be outlined in snow.

  I could use a drink o’ water, thought Dido, looking at the river, and turned back into the attic. Its door was shut and, she found when she tried it, locked; she rattled it vigorously, and yelled, ‘Hey! Lemme outa here! Lemme out!’ several times, but nobody came and nobody answered.

  Reconsidering the room, Dido found a pint mug full of water and a chamber-pot. Apart from these articles, and the straw mattress, with its single worn blanket, the room was unfurnished, and quite cold. Philosophically, Dido drank the water, made use of the pot, and then, squatting down on the mattress again, wrapped the blanket round her shoulders while she meditated.

  What’s all this about? Some weaselly scheme o’ Pa’s; some of his Hanoverian dealings, that’s for sure. Let’s think, what was they a-talking about while I was drinking that mickey liquor? Something about B.P.G. What did Pa say? I know: he said B.P.G. has stuck his spoon in the wall. So who is B.P.G.? Was B.P.G. the one as Pa wanted me to look after?

  After a moment or two of thought the solution came to her. Love a duck! It’s Bonnie Prince Georgie! He’s hopped the twig! He’s kicked the bucket! That’s it for a certainty! Now I remember Mrs B. saying, ‘You can’t have a party without a prince,’ just afore I passed out.

  Bonnie Prince Georgie has took and died on them.

  So what’ll Pa and his cullies do now? They’ll just have to pipe down and make the best o’ King Dick.

  But no, Dido recollected, her father had said something else. Someone – she could not remember the name – ‘has other fish to fry.’

  Fish, thought Dido; wish to goodness I had a few fish to fry. A sudden pang of hunger made her get up and rattle the door again. She yelled, ‘Hey! I’m starving in here. What’s the idea?’ Still there came no answer.

  No use staying in here if I can find some way to get out, Dido decided. If it can’t be the door, then it’ll hatta be the window.

  Pushing the casement wider open, she hoisted herself up, got a knee over the sill, and scrambled out on to the ledge, which ran alon
g the edge of the roof outside. The parapet was only six inches high; kneeling against it, Dido squinted down through small, stinging snowflakes, and found there was a sheer drop to the street a long way below; the house must be four, perhaps five storeys high. Can’t let meself down by the blanket, thought Dido; firstly it ain’t big enough, even if I could tear it into strips; and secondly I wouldn’t trust it above half, so moth-eaten as it is. Let’s see what’s round the corner.

  On hands and knees, proceeding carefully, for the narrow ledge was aswim with wet snow, she crawled leftwards, towards the river end of the house. Humph! There’s those timbers a-slanting down to the river. Could slide down one o’ those, maybe . . .

  Not over enthusiastic about this possibility – for the bulky piles were very steeply slanted, and slimy-looking with age and weather – Dido explored on around the other two sides of the roof. But she found that the sloping buttresses did, in fact, offer her only chance of escape. She had hoped there might be a way of climbing across to the roof of another house, but a yard, bordered by a creek, lay at the back, and on the fourth side of the house a gully, three storeys deep and too wide to jump, separated her from the next house in the alley. And, even if she could clear the gully, the house on the far side had only a sloping slate roof to land on, white, now, with snow; I’d roll off there like an egg, Dido thought, that would be no manner o’ use at all.

  No: it’s got to be a slither down one o’ the joists, I reckon; like it or lump it. Resolving to lump it, she returned to the river end of the house and glumly surveyed the sloping piles once more. There were five of them, and they met the wall of the house some six feet below the parapet over which she peered. Slanting outwards, they went into the river about fifteen to twenty feet away from the ground floor of the house; twenty feet of swirling, frothing, freezing Thames water. But the end pile, the westward one, entered the water only a short distance from the iron fence, embellished with spikes, which ran out past the house and curved into the water.

  If I can climb down that joist, thought Dido – and it’ll be as quick as a monkey sliding down an organ grinder’s stick – I ought to be able to reach across and grab the railing – if the beam ain’t so slimy I shoot straight into the water. Thing is to try and go slow. Well: best get it over and done with, light’s going fast, shan’t be able to see in ten minutes.