Cold Shoulder Road

by Joan Aiken

  “Your daughter Meena, Madam, was no better than a slattern. And where is she now, pray? My son Horatio was at least killed fighting bravely—”

  “Ay! In a smugglers’ scuffle!” Mrs Boles spat out venomously.

  “But your daughter, Meena, where is she? Went off and abandoned her defenceless infant.”

  “Not a bit of it! The Gentry took the babby from her, for their Handsel Child. Cried my eyes out, I did. So then Meena cut her losses and went to New York where she’s doing nicely in the hotel business . . .”

  “Hah! That I can well imagine!”

  Is went quietly up the stairs and tried her key in the lock. It fitted, but refused to turn.

  Pye’s lamp had been broken by tusks, and lay inside the cage, leaking oil on the stair-carpet.

  “Pass the lamp through, Pye!” Is whispered. Pye did so with a nod of comprehension. She was beginning to look more pulled-together. Is wondered, dribbling oil on to the lock, if she had heard and taken in what Mrs Boles and the Admiral were saying to each other.

  “That’s the dandy! Now it turns.”

  The key turned, the lock clicked.

  “Now let’s give the cage a shove, Pye.”

  Remarkably, the cage, when shoved, glided silently and easily back into the cobwebby ceiling. This old Admiral, Is had to admit, is no fool when it comes to making machines work . . . Perhaps that was where Pye got her unusual abilities.

  “C’mon, Pye, let’s get us outa here. Penny’ll be worrying.”

  But Miss Merlwyn barred the way, large and threatening in her inappropriately gorgeous dress of pale-yellow silk. Her face, above it, was exactly the same shade of yellow, her eyes had turned to angry Chinese slits. She had helped herself to another blunderbuss from the umbrella stand.

  “Wait a moment, my fine pair! Stand still where you are, until you have told us where the treasure is to be found. Otherwise the smaller one gets a breakfast of lead shot.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that, ma’am,” said Is.

  “Oh? And why not?”

  “Because there seems to be a whole caucus of folk outside the front door. And somebody might see you do it.”

  Miss Twite turned and looked down the stair, through the door. Her jaw dropped, her eyes widened.

  By a slow, unnoticed process, while these events had been taking place, the dark of the night had faded to grey. The hall windows had turned from squares of black to squares of pale blue. And a distant sound, which Is had at first taken for the shushing of the sea at the foot of the cliff, was now recognisable as something else.

  It was people singing.

  Without giving any more thought to Miss Twite and her blunderbuss, Is ran outside the front door.

  “Come on, Pye. Come and take a look at this!”

  The Admiral’s house, set on the slope of land between the cliff edge and the hilltop, faced in two directions, uphill and downhill.

  To the south lay the sea, faintly silver now, with the black shape of the ship Gentian bobbing gently at anchor down by the foot of the cliff. And to the right the white chalk track which led down the steep slope to the town gleamed faintly in the pre-dawn light.

  There were dozens of people coming up the slope and gathering steadily in front of the house. There were more people – many, many more people – winding down from the top of the northerly hill behind, in a long black snakelike procession.

  “Croopus!” murmured Is. “What a lot of folk. Where the pize have they all come from?”

  “Some here, some from France,” Pye told her matter-of-factly. “That lot up there from France.” And she pointed to the procession winding down the hill. “I called ’em. Where is France?”

  “Over the water,” said Is absently. She was listening. “Pye, they’re all singing ‘Whales and Snails’.”

  Or, if not, it was something very like.

  “Mums and kids better stick together

  Hang in there whatever the weather

  Hold in a chain that none can break

  Hold together for the future’s sake . . .”

  At the head of the file of people coming down the hill, Is – hardly able to believe her eyes – saw Ruth and Arun. And a black-haired girl whom she did not know. And Micah Swannett.

  “Pye, look who’s there!”

  With a shriek of joy, Pye raced towards Ruth and Arun. She was hugged, passed from one to the other.

  Now, suddenly there came an outbreak of shots and angry shouting in the town below. There were puffs of smoke. Heads turned that way. The crowd on the hillside was momentarily hushed. But it was only for a moment. More and more people came pouring from both directions. Up the hill from the town. Down the hill from (presumably?) the Channel Tunnel entrance that lay beyond. And all of them assembled in front of the house.

  They were all singing. Some in one language, some in another. But the words they sang seemed to dovetail well enough.

  Is ran to Arun.

  “What happened to Dominic? How did you get here? Were you in France?”

  “He’s dead,” said Arun, answering her questions in order. “The diamonds killed him. They gave off poisonous rays. Yes, we were in France. We walked back.”

  “Walked from France?”

  “Through the Tunnel. It took all night.”

  “Why not on the train?”

  “Held up by French customs officers. Is, this is Annette de Puy. She helped Ma and me, and she saved Micah. Where’s Penny?”

  “There she comes now,” said Is, who saw Penny, still with a black eye and swollen cheek, coming up the hill from Folkestone. She looked angry and sad, but hugely relieved at the sight of Is and Pye, Arun and Ruth.

  “They shot that poor girl,” she told Is bitterly, when she was within speech range.

  “Who?”

  “Jen Braeburn, she was called. From Seagate. She came to the house in Cold Shoulder Lane to fetch me. Those two coves who followed me were lurking outside and shot her. But then the crowd just took them and threw them off the pier.”

  “Oh, poor Jen, how dreadful. How wicked. Why should she have to die?”

  “Why should any?” said Pen, staring at the huge crowd.

  The Admiral came out of his front door and looked about him in a bewildered manner.

  At sight of the Admiral, a tremendous communal groan of hate and disapproval went up from the crowd, followed by another, equally angry, at the sight of Miss Twite, who followed close behind. The pair glanced nervously this way and that, then made their way at speed across the lawn and into the cantilevered triangle of garden beyond, that hung on its platform right over the sea. Nobody tried to stop them. Everybody watched. Down below, the ship Gentian rocked gently. Now it could be seen that sailors were very busy about her, unfurling sails, undoing ropes, fastening hatches.

  “Getting ready to make sail,” said Arun.

  “But will folk just let them go? After all the harm they’ve done?”

  “We’ll see.”

  With shoulders hunched and heads bent forward, as if they expected showers of missiles to be launched at them, the Admiral and Miss Twite made their hurried way to the very tip of the cantilever garden, where a ladder hung down by which the ship could be reached.

  “I’d simply hate to climb down that,” muttered Ruth.

  “But it’s good they are going,” said Pye. And then, with tremendous emphasis, in thought-speech:

  “Sing louder, everybody. Sing!”

  The crowd burst into a roar of song:

  “Hold in a chain around the earth

  Life to death and death to birth

  Hold for whatever your soul is worth . . .”

  The sudden shattering roar of so many voices had a formidable effect. The Admiral and Miss Twite, at the edge of the garden, stopped in fright and looked behind them. Then they both shrieked and started to run back, for a gap had opened between the artificial garden and the true cliff edge.

  . . . They were too late. The crack widened
with startling speed, the whole quarter-acre of man-made garden peeled away from its support and fell – carrying the man and woman with it – straight down on to the ship, which vanished under the water. A dull boom came up later from the foot of the cliff, and the shock of huge waves could be felt.

  “So they got their deserts,” remarked Mrs Nefertiti, who had been walking slowly up the cliff path and now reached Ruth and Is. “Not before time. Things’ll be better from now on. You done well, child!” she said approvingly to Pye. “You fetched a lot of folk from a long ways off . . . And now I reckon everybody can enjoy a big hop-about. The Gentry’s finished. There’ll be no more of them.”

  Indeed, the hop-about was already beginning. People were dancing in rings, they were laughing and forming sets, waltzing and weaving.

  Into this scene of festivity rolled a carriage from along the Dover Road. And out of it stepped a tall, plump, cheerful man in white breeches and a green velvet jacket.

  “Where is Miss Is Twite?” he was asking.

  “Podge! It’s Podge Greenaway!”

  “Well, there you are, little Is! You haven’t growed much!” he said. “But how’s this?” His pleasant face wore a look of mild surprise. “In your note you said that things were mighty terrible round here. But this looks to me more like a jollification!”

  “Well,” said Is, “things has turned out better than expected. But we’re mighty pleased to see you, Podge, just the same . . . This here’s my cousin Arun Twite, this is his Mum, Mrs Ruth Twite, here’s my sis, Penny, and this is little Pye.” With a grin she added, “Her name’s really Pye Fishskin, but I reckon she ain’t too keen on that monacker.”

  “What happened to the Admiral?” Podge asked, looking round. “When I got your note I decided that it would be quite unsuitable for him to attend the dinner at Dover Castle. So I had him denied at the door. Until his name should be cleared of the suspicion of running the Merry Gentry.”

  “I reckon his name never will be cleared now,” said Is, “for he’s dead, drownded, along with his ship. But if you step into his house you’ll find it’s just chockablock with mammoths’ tusks all ready to be carved into sneezecoffers.”

  “Oh well,” said Podge cheerfully, “if that’s so, that saves a deal of trouble.”

  “And, Podge. You know King Charles’s treasure? Well, we found it. Three great king-sized crocks of gold and stuff – it’s all hid away over yonder. Or under yonder.” Is nodded to the Admiral’s conservatory and the hillside beyond. “But it’ll take a deal of digging out, for the ground’s very sliddery thereabouts.”

  “Bless my soul!” said Podge. “Who found it?”

  “Me and Arun.”

  “Well, then, young ’uns, I reckon it’s yours – if it was lost, that is; if it was hidden for safe keeping, then it belongs to the Crown. There’ll have to be an Inquest about it.”

  “It was lost,” said Is, “for first of all it was on the sloop Victory and she sank. And then someone found it on the Goodwins and stowed it in the cave; but they weren’t the owners, the folk who stowed it away.”

  “I reckon that’ll be for the Crowner to sort out,” said Podge. “But if it’s yours, what would you want to do with it?”

  “Oh, me and Arun don’t want it,” said Is hastily. Arun shook his head in agreement. “But what we thought . . . those poor Silent Secters might like a lump of it, to help ’em buy themselves a passage to the New World and a plot of land there.”

  “You’d think there would be plenty for that,” said Podge. “The Silent Sect – which are they?”

  “Umn,” said Is, looking about. “They’re the ones in black hats. But they seem to have taken a day off from being silent.”

  Down the hill she could see a number of the Silent Sect in their black and blue costumes, laughing and dancing just as freely as everybody else. Window and Micah had found each other and were dancing hand in hand.

  “I think I’ll go with them,” said Ruth suddenly. “With Micah. And Window. To the New World.”

  “But . . . Ma!” Arun was tremendously shaken. “Just when you got into the way of talking? You’re going back into Silence?”

  Ruth gave him a hug.

  “We’ll see! But I find that silence suits me very well. There’s a lot to be said for it. You get time to listen. And paint pictures. I’ll go to the New World for a trial. A year, perhaps. Just to see . . .”

  “Not for always, Mum, please! And what about Pye?”

  “Pye’s going to have plenty of friends,” said Ruth affectionately. “She could live with Penny and Is. Or with Dido. Or with her grandma.”

  “No thank you!” said Pye firmly.

  “So you are Arun Twite?” said Podge. “I have a message for you from His Majesty. From King Simon.”

  “From the King?” Arun was startled to death.

  “You were a great friend, I believe, of the last Prince of Wales – of Prince David?”

  Arun nodded.

  “And you make up songs?”

  “You can hear ’em!” said Is. “Listen.”

  The crowd were singing:

  “Whales and snails aren’t bothered by thunder

  Snails and whales play hooky in gales

  Snails slip over and whales dive under

  Weather’s a pleasure to whales and snails . . .”

  “The King,” said Podge, “wants to appoint a court musician and songwriter. And he would like you to apply for the post.”

  “M-m-me?” said Arun, stammering.

  Mrs Nefertiti said to Is, “You and your sis and little Pye are welcome to come and stay at Womenswold, dearie, until you’ve got your home built again. And – I didn’t bring him, for I reckon he wouldn’t enjoy the crowds – but I’ve a friend of yours back at the farm—”

  “Not Figgin?”

  “Figgin?” cried Pye, her cheeks scarlet with joy. “Let’s start now!” And then she added, sliding her hand into her pocket, “Penny! Can you mend my ocarina?”