by Joan Aiken
“Like palm of my foot!” he said cheerfully. “Tylo, everybody say, optimus guide! Zehr gut, molto bene, oh la la, bueno bueno, speak all language much perfect!”
“And you know where Lord Herodsfoot is just now?”
“Mylord Oklosh?” For some reason, Tylo burst out laughing at the very thought of Lord Herodsfoot, then covered his mouth with his hand, slipping his eyes away politely, and added, “Easy go there for me, Shaki-miss, go to Sorgu dream-easy. Lord Oklosh now sitting outside the house of my father’s Sisingana. He Halmahi.”
“Sisingana?”
He thought, and explained. “Father’s father’s father.”
“Your great-great-grandpa?”
“Golly-likely.”
Dido found that when Tylo was not certain of an answer, this was the phrase he used. It seemed a handy one to her. When she asked how long it would take to reach the Sisingana’s house, Tylo said, “Four hour, golly-likely. Forest very thick, there-a-ways. If rain come, thicker. Take longer. Through night, maybe.”
“Does much rain fall here?”
“Now-and-now. Then-and-then.”
This talk had brought them to the top of the hill, where the houses of Regina town stopped, and a dirt track ran on across a hillside mostly covered with low-growing shrubs. Looking back, Dido saw how the town fell away steeply behind them, white-roofed houses set snugly like ivory dice among green plumy trees, and the harbour at the bottom like a blue keyhole, with the Siwara, a toy ship, tethered against the dock. There seemed to be a tremendous amount of activity on the dockside; hundreds of tiny black figures the size of ants rushed back and forth.
“How hard they are working down there,” Dido said, and Tylo, frowning, made no reply for a minute, then said, “Maybe storm come. We best get on our way. Here bring-come horses.”
The horses, led up another track by a wizened old man, were small, sturdy animals with shaggy coats; Dido had never ridden on a horse in her life and hoped the beasts had calm dispositions. Hers, luckily, appeared to have a placid nature, to know its business, and be willing to follow Tylo’s mount.
They were equipped with saddle-bags which Dido hoped had food in them; she had eaten rather a scanty breakfast in Manoel’s house, where she did not feel welcome, and the prospect of a four-hour (or longer) ride to their destination and then the same ride back to Regina town sounded like a long day’s excursion. Specially if they were obliged to stop overnight.
Also in the saddle-bags were gauze mosquito-nets. “You want, for forest,” Tylo said, showing Dido how to wrap it round her. “Many-many bugs, very bitey.”
“What about the sting-monkeys?”
He laughed. “Follycub? You no hurt follycub, he no hurt you. Scared of shadow – always frightened. There, now – see?”
They were passing a large gnarled, grey-leaved tree, standing solitary at the side of the track. Among its branches Dido could see a lot of energetic carryings-on as they approached, small creatures about the size of rabbits leaping from bough to bough and chattering shrilly.
“Watch-see-now,” said Tylo. He dismounted, holding his reins, found a fist-sized stone, and hurled it into the tree. Instantly, with wild shrieks and shrill yammerings, the whole population of the tree leapt out of the branches and fled away in terror over the scrubby ground. They were, Dido saw, small whitish-grey monkeys with long feathery fur and active plumy tails. Their faces, black-ringed, were triangular, and their large eyes pale blue.
“He sting you only by bad chance,” Tylo explained, remounting. “And just as well, by golly, for if he sting, you die.”
“Golly-likely?”
“No. You just die. You got kandu nuts?” Tylo asked, evidently reminded by this of the other peril they were liable to encounter.
“Kandu nuts? Oh, scrape it,” Dido said, remembering that Captain Sanderson had advised always carrying some as a precaution against snakebite. “When I left the ship I didn’t expect to go gallivanting straight away into the back o’ beyond.”
“No matter. I got, in saddle-bag.” Tylo looked ahead along the track, frowned, and said, “Here-now we got ride quick. You golly-likely ride quick, Shaki-miss? Like this?”
He kicked his pony into a fast canter, and Dido’s followed. In fact she found this easier than trotting, which was very bumpy. She stuck on grimly.
“Yes, all rug!” she called. “But what’s up, Tylo?”
He made no answer, but kicked his pony on even faster. They galloped at full tilt past a group of people under a tree. Dido was so occupied with sticking on to her mount that she did not see what was happening, but heard a lot of shouting and then one thin, piteous wail, quickly cut short. Next minute they had passed some craggy rocks and were out of sight round a bend in the track. The road began to slope downhill into a valley full of trees; Tylo slowed to a trot, then to a walk.
“What was happening back there, Tylo?” Dido demanded.
“Bad business, Shaki-miss. Not our do. Only best ride past, ride away quick.”
Dido thought, with deep worry, which for the past hour she had been trying to push to the bottom of her mind, of Doctor Talisman, hauled off to jail by that tough-looking party of Civil Guards. What was happening to her?
“Where is the jail, Tylo?” she asked. “My friend is there.”
“Soon we come.”
The road ran down into a dale where trees grew close together, planted in orderly rows. Some were tall, green, and feathery; others were thickly covered with dark-red flowers. The sweet scent that came from them was so powerful that, although Dido enjoyed it at first, after a while she found it almost too much, too painful; breathing became hard work.
“Jail,” said Tylo, nodding towards a large building in the middle of the grove. “Not name Jail though. We call, House of Correction.”
The House of Correction (a title which Dido thought even nastier than jail) was long and white, with narrow barred windows and a wall round it. A few Civil Guards lounged about the entrance. Others could be seen near wooden huts scattered among the trees.
Dido thought about Doctor Talisman. Was she in that building? What was happening to her? Would there be a trial? A judge?
“Now you listen me, Shaki-miss,” said Tylo, when they had ridden on towards the end of the valley, were still among the planted trees but not in sight of the House of Correction. “You want leave word for your friend? She soon be free again, Shaki-Manoel he soon fix, you say you know that?” Evidently Tylo was not fooled by Talisman’s disguise.
“So Cap Sanderson said . . . but can you leave a message there, Tylo?”
He grinned cheerfully. “Everbody know no-harm Tylo. One guard my father’s sister’s son. Not much Forest Person there, but some. You wait here, Shaki-miss, I leave talk-message. You got word-paper-speak?”
“No. I’ve no paper on me. – Wait, though – yes, I have.”
In her pocket she had Talisman’s little notebook. She pulled it out and leafed through it to see if there were any blank pages. At the front, in neat elegant script, was the name Jane Talisman Kirlingshaw. Then followed beautifully drawn little diagrams and numbered instructions. Then what looked like patterns embellished with little figures, some human, some animal. Then lists of herbs and medicines. At the end were a few empty pages. Dido tore one out and wrote (luckily she had a pencil stub), “Yore book is safe. Hop you are all rug. Hop to see you soon. Dido.”
“There.” She gave it to Tylo, then, for safety, tucked away the notebook inside her waistband.
“Now, Shaki-miss, you stay here. Just here. Soon back.”
Tylo turned his pony and, following the track along which they had come, was soon out of sight.
Dido dismounted, threw her pony’s reins over a branch so that he could graze and sat under one of the red-flowering trees (Tylo had told her they were clove trees) keeping a vigilant lookout for pearl-snakes and sting-monkeys. She could hear some monkeys in the branches overhead, jabbering at each other, but she did not interfere with them, nor they wi
th her.
After twenty minutes or so she began to feel desperately thirsty, and looked in the pony’s saddle-bag to see if it contained water. There were bread-rolls and squashy dried figs and a water-bottle, but it was empty. Nothing to drink. Not far away, though, Dido thought she could hear water running. Maybe there’s a brook, she thought. I won’t go far . . .
Through the trees she could see that the side of the valley rose in a steep rocky wall. That was where the sound of water came from. Walking in that direction, Dido saw a little waterfall, spouting down between rocks into a pool below. The very sight of the white spray made her throat feel even dryer.
She hurried on, then came to a startled stop, when what she had taken for a rock at the side of the pool moved and lifted its head, and she realised that it was a man sitting on the ground, wrapped in some kind of brown, muffling garment. Now Dido could see two gaunt bare feet like those of a scarecrow extending stiffly from the draperies. He flung back a fold of cloth from his face, and extended a flat wooden bowl, crying out in rusty Angrian: “Alms, Senhores! Alms, for the love of heaven!”
Dido saw with dismay that he was blind. Jist the same, she thought, this is a mighty queer place for a beggar to choose as his begging-patch – ain’t it? He can’t expect many customers to pass by here? Still, best give the poor cove a couple of pennies . . .
She fumbled in her pocket, where she had a few tiny coins. She was about to drop them into the begging-bowl when the beggar grabbed her by the arm and jerked her off her feet. She yelled, and knocked the man’s hands away from her throat. They rolled together on the ground. Dido had managed to twitch herself away, when the man pulled a long, glittering knife out of his draperies.
Don’t I jist wish Tylo was here, Dido thought, pulling away to avoid the long eager blade which was wriggling its way towards her throat; why the plague did I ever leave the track? With a quick wriggle and twist she flung herself sideways out of the blind man’s grip and kicked the knife from his hand; it whirled away and fell into the pool.
The blind man made no attempt to go after it; he raised his voice in a high cracked yell that set the monkeys in the trees to screeching and gabbling.
“Ohé! Ohé!” As if in instant answer to his call, two Civil Guards came strolling out of the grove. They carried pistols and wore an irritated air, as if they objected to being disturbed. They looked disapprovingly at Dido. One was fat, one thin. They were Angrians, tall and flat-faced.
“Hola,” the fat one said, “what goes on here?” And at once the blind man broke into a torrent of explanation in the Dilendi language.
“Hey,” said Dido. “What’s he telling you? I was putting money into his bowl when he went for me with a knife—”
“You, girl, you come with us; come to our hut, wait for Capitan,” said the thin guard. “We see no knife.”
“Wait for Capitan hear what you say. Yes, you come now,” said the fat guard.
They marched Dido through the trees, prodding her with their pistols. The blind man, meanwhile, melted away into the shadows of the grove. Dido cursed herself in several different ways; why had she not followed Tylo’s instructions? Supposing the guards took her back to the town and found out that she was the girl who had helped Talisman with the operation? Then a whole lot of time would be wasted . . .
“Where are you taking me?” she said slowly and carefully.
“We put you in the hut, Shaki-girl; till our relief come and tell Capitan.”
The hut, when they reached it, was small and wooden; outside it, two stools and a bench with a jug and cups on it suggested that the guards had been enjoying a morning snack of palm wine. Dido wondered if they had a regular arrangement with the blind cut-throat who passed on to them any promising prey. He, Dido thought, was not Angrian, but not a Forest Person either; a mix, perhaps.
“I have no money,” she said loudly.
“We see. That we see.”
They turned out her pockets and appropriated the few coins they found. Dido was thankful that she had stuffed Talisman’s notebook inside her shirt.
“What’s this? What’s this, Shaki-girl?”
This was a folded velvet cloth, embroidered over with lines, and decorated with beads and sequins. It had been bequeathed to Dido by Mr Brandywinde, the drunken steward of H.M.S. Thrush, who had died of too much grog earlier in the voyage.
“That? It’s a game – you can use it for chess or fighting Serpents—”
“No, no,” they contradicted. “The game you play on it is Senat. We know. You have game pieces, you got?”
“No, I don’t. You can use black and white stones.”
“We know. We know that.”
One of the guards fetched a handful of white pebbles. The other opened the hut door.
“You stop in there, Shaki-girl, till Capitan come.” Then he looked over Dido’s shoulder into the hut and giggled. Both men were more than a bit drunk, Dido reckoned. “Oho – we have a friend in here, Andu,” he hiccupped. “The Shaki-lady has a furry friend to keep her company.”
“So?” The other guard came and looked through the door.
“Ah, so. A friend, a furry friend.”
Dido did not care for the sound of this.
“Our furry friend will not trouble you if you stay quiet. Keep still, and he will not trouble you.”
“She, idiot! It is a female. We will give her a drink. Females like to drink!”
“Ah, they do! Indeed, indeed they do!”
Hiccupping with laughter, the two men sloppily filled a bowl with palm wine and set it on the hut floor.
“Now: just keep still, Shaki-miss, and no harm will come to you.”
“Remember poor Tonio?” the fat guard said in a thoughtful tone.
“Yes, the poor lad, and how he turned blue?”
“He swelled up and turned blue; he took a week screaming and dying.”
“How he did scream.”
“May he rest in peace,” both men said. “Into the hut, Shaki-girl; watch out for the furry friend.”
The door slammed behind Dido. Outside it she could hear one of the guards saying, “Now: you can be black and I shall be white.”
“No, caramba! We shall shake the dice for it.” They began to quarrel.
Dido stood quite still, looking hard about her. She let her eyes grow accustomed to the dusk inside the hut.
It was tiny, and completely bare: dirt floor, wooden walls, two slit windows, high up, which let in a red light filtered through the clove blossoms. The floor and the corners were in shadow. As Dido stood quietly, leaning against the door, she thought she heard a shuffling, scraping sound in one corner. Looking attentively in that direction, moving her eyes only, she began to interpret the huddled shadow, and saw a frill of white fur, a darker triangle of face, two pale eyes. It was a sting-monkey, flattening itself into the angle of the walls. It was terrified.
It’s as scared of me as I am of it, thought Dido. Jist so long as it don’t panic . . .
She stood as still as a post, trying to send mental messages to the creature. I’m harmless, I’m friendly. I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me.
It’s their tails, she remembered Captain Sanderson telling her. Docked of its tail, a sting-monkey would be as harmless as a kitten. But they are nervous. They flick the tail over their shoulder, like a scorpion – that’s why they are sometimes called scorpion monkeys – and, if the sting touches you, you’re done for. Dead as mutton.
Dido swallowed. She was still just as thirsty as she had been before. Thirstier.
So – it seemed – was the monkey. She could see its whiskers tremble, as it smelt the liquor in the bowl. By infinitesimal, creeping stages, it began to inch its way forwards towards the drink it craved.
What’s that liquor going to do to the beast? Dido wondered. A cold trickle of sweat began to creep down between her shoulder blades.
The monkey suddenly jumped forward, put its face down to the bowl, and began to drink in audible,
splashing swallows.
If only I had something to bash it with, thought Dido. But there was nothing in the hut, nothing at all.
Outside, the voices of the two guards grew louder and louder, as they argued about the game.
The monkey had finished every drop in the bowl. It picked up the bowl in its two slender little black hands, tilting to pour out the last trickle. Then it dropped the bowl, which broke. Then it began to bounce up and down on all four feet.
As if it were dancing, Dido thought. Croopus! The beast’s as drunk as a fiddler.
The monkey began to whirl round and round. Its tail flew out like the sail of a windmill. Dido flattened herself against the wall.
The men outside could evidently hear something of the monkey’s actions. One of them called: “Are you well, Shaki-miss? Why don’t you lie down and go to sleep? Hic! Capitan won’t come along for some while yet—”
Dido had no wish at all to go to sleep. But perhaps the monkey will dance itself into a stupor, she thought.
Outside, the voices grew higher.
“Ah pig! That was the last of the wine you swallowed!”
Dido heard the thud of a blow, yells, and the crash of breaking pottery.
Now, inside the hut, another small noise was making itself audible – the very faintest dragging, as of a finger being stroked on polished wood. At first it was hard to locate, because of the row outside, but soon Dido realised that it was coming from her right-hand side. She slanted her eyes in that direction without moving her head.
She was not long in suspense about it. From the corner of her eye she saw it coming – the flat, gleaming diamond-shaped head, with its metallic grey shine, the lean, whiplike black body. It slid along the wall, not fast, not slow, making obliquely for Dido’s foot.
This hut, thought Dido, is like a perishing zoo. It’s a wonder those fellers out there don’t charge for admission.
It was not possible to stand any stiller, but she tried to do so. At the last minute the snake changed direction slightly so that only its final two-thirds, a quivering, tensely drawn-out spring, poured across her foot. Its motion was always indirect, on a diagonal, like an endless series of interlocking S’s, casual-seeming, but purposeful.