by Joan Aiken
'Now, curtsey,' said Mr Holystone calmly. 'Do not let the King's Regulations slip off your head. Point the right toe – swing the leg slowly to the side, then back – bend the left knee – hands move slowly backwards, spreading the fingers wide – '
The King's Regulations thudded to the floor, narrowly missing the feet of the first lieutenant, a fair-haired young man with a long, earnest face, who came by at that moment. He gave Dido a sympathetic grin, and went into the captain's cabin, where they heard him reporting:
'Thirteen volcanoes sighted ahead on the starb'd bow, sir.'
'Thank you, Mr Windward. You may give the order to slacken sail. We shall heave-to, a safe distance out to sea from the port of Tenby, in case the state of hostility between New Cumbria and its neighbour should have worsened. I hope to receive further information and instructions from the British Agent in Tenby.'
'Ay, ay, sir.' Lieutenant Windward saluted and returned on deck.
Dido replaced the King's Regulations on her head. She pointed her right toe and announced, 'How do you do, Your Majesty?' Then she shakily lowered herself on a bent left knee, continuing, Tt was kind of you to invite me to your palace. – Oh, fish-guts!' as the heavy book crashed to the floor once more.
'You had better come in here,' said Mr Holystone, 'and practise taking tea. Thumb and three fingers together on the handle – small finger extended. Good. Let me hear your tea-table conversation.'
'No sugar, thank you, Your Majesty. Merely a drop of cream. There; that is just as I like it. Pray, Ma'am, from which Tradesman do you obtain your Tay?'
'No, Dido, no! Not, "Pry, from which tridesman dew yew obtine yer tie?" From which place do you obtain your Tay?'
'From which plaice dew yew obteeyne yewer teeaye?'
Mr Holystone threw up his eyes to heaven.
At this moment a sudden shudder through the ship indicated that the Thrush had hove-to; they heard the creak of windlasses and the thud of feet on deck as the sails were lowered.
'Oh, please lemme go up on deck, Mr Holy!' begged Dido. 'I'll practise ever so hard tonight, cut my throat and swelp me, so I will!'
Mr Holystone shrugged and let her go. To his mind, the chances of Dido's acquiring the manners of a polite young lady seemed about as probable as a mouse's nest in a cat's ear. Besides, he thought, how do we know what is considered polite behaviour in Bath Regis?
Up on deck, Dido glanced eagerly about her.
The Cumbrian coast was visible as a line of black cliffs, about two miles to westward of the Thrush. Those cliffs must be tarnal high, Dido thought, to be so plain from here. But at one point they dropped to a vee. And a pinnace, which had put out from the Thrush, was steering for this cleft.
Beyond the cliffs, and a good deal farther inland, Dido thought, a line of mountains could be seen – a cluster of peaks, very high and spiky, like the teeth of some great trap. Wonder if Bath Regis is up in them mountains? If so it's going to be a scrabblish stiff climb getting up there. Oh scrape it! Dido sighed to herself; don't I just wish it was the Kentish flats, and that there port was Gravesend.
A considerable bustle was going on about the decks and rigging, as the sailors spread sails over the yards to act as awnings, bundled other sails tidily into canvas cases, coiled up the shrouds, and generally prepared the ship for a spell of inactivity. Dido, on the foredeck, had to duck and dodge several times, as men dashed past her, or ropes whistled over her head.
All of a sudden she heard an angry yell, and the outraged squall of a cat. Spinning round, she was just in time to see the sailor known as Silver Taffy grab hold of El Dorado, who had been perched on one of the main-deck eighteen-pounders, minding her own business. Twirling the cat by her long tail, Taffy tossed her over the side. Not, however, before she had avenged herself by slashing with all her claws at Taffy's face. She whirled through the air, turning over a dozen times, and would certainly have fallen prey to the sharks had she not struck the anchor cable. With despairing strength the poor animal managed to twine her long sinuous tail several times round the cable, and so dangled there, swinging and wailing, as she scrabbled frenziedly to grasp the rope with her paws.
'Hang on, Dora, I'll get you!' shouted Dido, who was not far off. She flung herself over the rail and slid down the anchor cable. Grabbing El Dorado round the chest, she hugged the cat against her and began to work her way upwards again – no easy matter, as the frantic Dora bit, struggled, squalled, squirmed, and did all in her power to hinder the rescue. Luckily a couple of midshipmen had witnessed the incident and leaned over to take the cat from Dido; Dora was a general favourite with all the crew, except Silver Taffy, because of her prowess as a mouser.
'Thank'ee, Mr Multiple,' panted Dido, scrambling back over the rail. 'Dang it, ain't she a Tartar, though! Reckon my face looks like Blackheath Pond after a week's skating!' and she wiped the blood from her eyes.
'It just about does, Miss Dido,' said the red-haired Mr Multiple with a grin. 'You'd best take puss below and get Mr Holystone to bathe those scratches. That was a right nimble job you did there, Miss – anyone'ud think you'd spent your life at sea.'
'Well I just about have,' said Dido. 'Here, Dora, you'd best come along of me. Seems you ain't welcome on deck.'
With a darkling glance at Silver Taffy she picked up El Dorado – who had resumed her usual calm and was haughtily putting her ruffled copper fur to rights – and carried the cat below.
'What in the world have you been at, child!' exclaimed Mr Holystone. 'Captain Hughes will hardly think you fit to attend the queen's court if he sees you like that. Here – ' And he anointed Dido's countenance with a most evil-smelling paste of sharks' liver and seaweed, ordering her to lie in her bunk for three hours, and meanwhile occupy the time usefully by reciting a litany that went, We clean three tweed beads a week with Maltese sea-weed; Lady Jane Grey, pray do not stray to Mandalay on market-day.
Dido found this very unfair. She flung herself crossly on her bunk.
'We clean three tweed beads a week. . . Oh, butter my brogans, what rubbish!'
Luckily, before she had time to become too annoyed, Dido fell fast asleep; the cockroaches had been particularly troublesome the previous night, rustling around with a noise like toast-crumbs being shaken inside a paper bag; they had kept her awake for hours.
When she next woke, evening had come; the air was cooler and the light was dim. Yawning, she rolled off her bunk – the weight that had settled on her chest proved to be El Dorado – and went up on deck with the cat for a breath of fresh air, keeping a wary eye out for Silver Taffy.
She found Mr Holystone on the foredeck, scraping mussels, which he took from a wicker hamper and dropped, when clean, into a cauldron. Dido squatted down to help him, and he exclaimed with satisfaction on the healing work already accomplished by the shark paste.
'Miss Dido,' he went on in a lower tone, 'I cannot sufficiently express my obligation to you for saving my poor Dora from that ruffian. Young Multiple told me the whole while you were asleep. I had thought you must have been teasing Dora – I might have known I was wrong.'
Dido kindly forgave his injust suspicions. 'Anyhows, if you thought I'd been pulling Dora's tail, Mr Holy, it was right kind of you to doctor me. But why is that Silver Taffy so down on poor Dora?'
'When we were at Nombre de Dios a fortune-teller came along the dock, telling fortunes by dropping a spoonful of soot into people's hands. She told Taffy that the lines in his hand foretold that a cat would be the end of him. He is a very superstitious fellow,' said Mr Holystone, shrugging.
'No wonder he's so tarnal mean to Dora. I'm surprised you let her up on deck.'
'Oh, she can usually look after herself. The El Dorado cats have a superior degree of intelligence.'
'Are there others like her, then?'
'Indeed yes, where I come from in Hy Brasil and in Lyonesse such cats are not uncommon.'
'With such long tails?'
'Many longer still. They can swing on trees as nimbly
as any ape. I have heard it said that there were such cats in the lost garden where our forefathers walked with the gods.'
'Fancy!' said Dido. Looking thoughtfully at Mr Holystone she asked, after a moment, 'Is it a nice place, that land of Hy Brasil? Where you come from?'
A cloud appeared to pass over the steward's brow. He began to say something, checked himself, and, after a moment, merely remarked,
'Yes; it is a pleasant place.'
Then he stood up, easily lifting the heavy cauldron of cleaned mussels.
'Captain Hughes has invited the British Agent to dinner. See, there is the pinnace, putting out to fetch him. Bring down the basket, Miss Dido, if you will be so kind.'
Mr Brandywinde, the British Agent, proved, when he came on board, to be a blotchy-faced, wandering-eyed, seedy-looking individual. He wore a tricorne hat, snuff-coloured suit, silver-buckled shoes, his sandy, thinning hair was dressed in a style long out of date, tied at the back with a small grosgrain bow. Dido, peering through the galley doorway as he passed, thought how untrustworthy he looked, and she guessed that Captain Hughes felt the same, for his voice, when he greeted Brandywinde, was noticeably quiet and dry.
'Claret, sir, or ship's grog – or would you care for a cup of tea?'
'Grog, sir – grog will do capitally, thank'ee, Captain,' Mr Brandywinde replied, in a tone that was both eager and creaking, like a rusty handle cranked at an uneven rate. 'Grog, now, is excellent, if it is well mixed – on shore, I must tell you, we combine it with a little orock – cane spirit, you know! Then if, at the same time, you smoke a pipe or two of abaca – hangman's weed, that is – why, you could believe yourself a veritable Pasha. I believe even the White Queen herself -'
Then the captain's door was shut, and the two voices died to a murmur.
'Jemima!' said Dido. 'What a havey-cavey cove. He looks as if he'd sell his own ma for cats' meat. Don't you think so, Mr Holy?'
'Very likely his life is a lonely one,' said Mr Holystone guardedly. 'The port of Tenby is a small place, cut off by a great forest from the interior, and the capital.'
'What's the forest called?'
'Broceliande.'
'So how do we get through? If we're going to Bath to see the queen?'
'By boat. Tenby lies at the mouth of a great river, the Severn. It is the captain's intention to hire a boat and travel by water.'
Dido was rather disappointed. Having been at sea for most of the last eighteen months, she had hoped for a spell on land. But Mr Holystone assured her that there would be plenty of that. Half way along its course the Severn river was interrupted by a formidable series of cataracts dashing down from the Andes mountains in the west of New Cumbria; these falls were not navigable, and so the party must take to land at that point.
The captain's bell rang, and Mr Holystone went off to remove the bowls of musselshells and replace them with fresh mutton and hearts of palm, brought out from shore in the pinnace. Dido, busy decorating a chocolate cake with babassu nuts, judged from the voices coming through the door that Mr Brandywinde was becoming garrulous from drink and the unaccustomed company.
'You ask what the queen is like? The White Queen? My dear sir, she's rum. Rum as they come. How do you do, sir, what's your game? Rum, Rum, Rumpel-stiltskin is my name,' he carolled. 'The White Queen, they call her. Because of her hair, you know. Et cetera. Et cetera. Sits at her embroidery all day long. Says she's waiting. Waiting for what, you ask. And may well ask! But as to that, mum's the word. Both rum and mum. Her Royal Mercy ain't confidential.'
'If the queen is so unapproachable,' persisted Captain Hughes, 'does she have reliable ministers, advisers round her, to whom one may apply?'
'Oh, ay, there are some villainous-looking old scalla-wags with beards down to their shins – the Vicar General, the Grand Inquisitor, the Accuser, the Advocate of the Queen's Tribunal – each more slippery than the next, if you ask me. Besides them there is the queen's jester – or soothsayer, if you prefer the term – '
'Soothsayer? What is he?' demanded the captain in a tone of disgust.
But before Dido could catch the answer, Mr Holystone emerged with a trayload of plates, and the door was closed.
During the rest of dinner it remained shut, and no more of Mr Brandywinde's disclosures could be heard. Dido – who had finished decorating the cake – was told to run up on deck and take the air. 'For,' said Mr Holystone, 'you have done more to help me than is fitting, though indeed I am very much obliged.'
'Oh, pho!' retorted Dido. 'You know your conversation's always an eddication, Mr Holy. I'm a-learning all the time I'm a-helping you. Deportment and manners too!'
She put out her tongue at him teasingly and skipped out on deck with a small cake, which he had baked for her in a separate pan.
Dusk had fallen by now, and large southern stars were beginning to twinkle out in the deep blue above the Thrush, though the Cumbrian coast and the snow-covered western peaks were still outlined against a sky of pale phosphorescent green.
Earlier that evening Dido had, without asking permission, removed from the captain's cabin an exceedingly powerful telescope which was one of his most valued possessions, for when carefully focused it had the power to render clearly visible objects which might be fifty or even a hundred miles off.
'He ain't about to use it while he's a-giving dinner and doing the civil to old Brandyblossom,' calculated Dido, 'so there's no harm in my borrowing it for a couple of hours.'
When she had eaten her cake she drew the glass from its case and, with its help, studied various features of the twilit shore. She could see the small town of Tenby clearly enough – its wharves, quays, the shipping at anchor in the river-mouth, the tall black-and-white houses with feathery palms above them on the hillside. Then there came a belt of dense green, presumably the forest of Broceliande, full of pythons, pumas, alligators and Aurocs. Beyond that again, much farther off, hardly visible to the naked eye but clear enough through the powerful glass, lay a line of silvery foothills, below the higher peaks. Dido stared at these hills, trying to discover the point at which the Severn river tumbled over them in its majestic series of cataracts. She thought she had found the right spot – a white zig-zag line against the grey of the hills – when she chanced on an even more interesting sight – what looked like a long procession of camels moving very slowly southwards across the lens of the telescope.
Were they camels? If not camels, then what else could they be? They were shaggy long-haired beasts, long-necked too, with heads like those of sheep. Each bore on its back a large bulging pack. Each was led by a
drover, and the procession crept at a snail's pace, as if the loads were a tremendous weight. As they toiled along they were outlined clearly, some against the green sunset sky, some against the rose-flushed snowclad peaks.
'Blow me,' muttered Dido. 'Ain't there a right lot of them, jist?'
She began to count, but counting was not Dido's strong point, and she gave up after four sets of twenty.
'Reckon they must use camels in New Cumbria where we'd use carriers' carts,' she decided. 'Maybe they finds it best to shift goods at night when the Aurocs has gone to roost. Them Aurocs must be a plaguy nuisance, if they can scrag a sheep or a cow like Dora nobbles a mouse.'
The last of the line of loaded camels disappeared into a dark cleft among the hills. It was now becoming really dark. Following Mr Holystone's instructions for doing so, Dido found the Southern Cross; then she heard the pinnace being whistled for, so she tucked the telescope under her duffel jacket and went below. As she descended the companionway, Mr Brandywinde and the captain came out of the dining-room.
'Perhaps by tomorrow,' the captain was saying, 'you will have received more information as to this – this loss that Her Majesty has sustained.'
'Oh what she has lost she refuses to say,' carolled Mr Brandywinde. 'It seems to have vanished like last Wednesday!'
'Let us hope not!' retorted Captain Hughes acidly, 'or my mission is but a sleeveless
errand.'
'A fool's errand – what a shocking thought! A fool in the forest of Bro-cel-iande, one foot on the water and one on the land.'
At this moment Mr Brandywinde laid eyes on Dido, who was politely waiting in the galley doorway for the two men to pass by. The Agent's bloodshot eyes bulged until it looked as if they would burst from their sockets like horse-chestnuts – he gulped, gasped, and fell into such a fit of coughing and choking that, if he had been on deck, it seemed highly probable that he would have fallen overboard as he staggered about.
'Deuce take the fellow!' exclaimed Captain Hughes impatiently. 'Here – Holystone – thwack him on the back! Give him some hartshorn or spirits of tar – otherwise the man will take an apoplexy!'
Restoratives having been administered, Mr Brandywinde was presently able to mop his streaming eyes and apologise.
'It is nothing – nothing – a trifling infirmity,' he panted, still staggering. 'Takes me thus at times – but it is nothing at all I assure you! A slight disability resulting from the quantity of pepper in the diet hereabouts – nothing, sir, nothing, nothing! You must try the pepperpot stew, Captain – I do urge you to try the pepperpot.'
'Yes, yes, very well – ' replied Captain Hughes, not at all interested in pepperpot stew. 'Now, I shall be obliged, Mr Brandywinde, if you can arrange for beds in Tenby for my party tomorrow night – since we must board the river-boat so early. Unless you can accommodate my men and me in your Residence?'
'Quite out of the question,' said the Agent hastily. 'Only two bedrooms; one for me and m'dear wife; one for our Little Angel. No, no, sir; rooms shall be bespoken for you at – hic – the White Hart. Fair tap there, but don't trust the gin. But, Captain, you never informed me, you never gave me to understand that you had a young female person – a child – among the crew. I was not apprised of this!'
'Why in the world should you be?' snapped the captain. 'It is of very little import! And she is not a member of my crew (good heavens, I should hope not, indeed!) merely a – a supercargo, a kind of passenger whom I am escorting back to England. And I intend taking her to wait on Queen Ginevra; but she will require more suitable apparel.' The captain glanced with disfavour at Dido's jacket and trousers. 'Is there,' he asked Mr Brandywinde, 'a dressmaker in Tenby – or, or a milliner, haberdasher, needlewoman who could supply Miss there with an outfit to wear at Court?'