by Joan Aiken
“Yes, well, I think I have it all,” he said, addressing Dido as if she were an old acquaintance. “It was a great piece of luck that you did not arrive any sooner.”
He had not shaved for a couple of days; his face was covered with pale stubble so that, with his damp pale hair, he looked like a wet dandelion clock.
“Lord Herodsfoot, you’re wanted back in London in a hurry! I’m sent to tell ye.”
“Oh, good heavens, now why?”
Lord Herodsfoot rubbed his damp head. He had a wide, lively mouth. When he smiled, it seemed to extend right across his face, from ear to ear. His smile was very friendly.
“King Jamie wants ye badly. We got a message at Tenby,” said Dido, feeling somewhat aggrieved at this matter-of-fact reception, as she thought of what a long distance, and long time, she had been travelling in search of this man. “King Jamie is mighty poorly. Cap’n Hughes, of the Thrush, is waiting at Amboina to fetch ye back to Lunnon town.”
“Oh, bother King Jamie! Is he really sick? Or just bored?”
“That, I couldn’t tell ye. Not having the pleasure of His Majesty’s acquaintance.”
“Do you think I really have to go?” Herodsfoot asked, as seriously as if Dido were the Prime Minister.
“If King Jamie himself wants you – maybe you could go by the North-West Passage – that might be faster—” Dido was beginning when the little girl, Yorka, came to them with a large bunch of feathers. Her aim was to indicate to them politely that they should move a bit farther away from the Sisingana’s hut, into which he had retired and was now taking a much-needed nap.
The uncle, another broad-faced, smiling man, had returned from his fishing excursion, evidently a successful one, for he had a basket of what looked like large river trout.
He and Tylo were lighting a fire by blowing on a piece of tree-fungus, which slowly became incandescent. The fire was not laid on the bare ground but contained inside a hearth made of piled-up stones with a knee-high kerb around it to prevent sparks from flying out. When Dido asked about this, Tylo explained that the soil of Aratu was very combustible, being mostly peat. Once or twice in the island’s history there had been disastrous fires, and the Forest People were afraid that if a fire ever got out of control, the whole island might burn up.
“Like what happened on Mount Ximboë. That once island like this one, many tree-length from here, far towards place of cold white sea; and it burned up and all the people died. So now always we keep fire in fire-box.”
The roasted fish were accompanied by roots dug from the ground, beans, delicious bark-bread, sandwiched with peppery leaves, and the djeela fruit which were the best food Dido had ever tasted.
“No wonder John King wants to keep them for himself!” While they ate, Lord Herodsfoot told Dido more of the history of Aratu, about which he seemed to be very well informed.
“The Angrians came here from Europe about four hundred years ago. That was a time when a lot of European countries were grabbing other people’s lands. The Angrians took over, driving the Forest People into the middle of the island, and they built their port, Regina, and planted spice plantations. The pepper trees were here already, but they brought nutmeg and cloves and many others. But then the Forest People, very slowly, but powerfully, began to fight back.”
“How did they do that?”
“They began casting spells, to make the Angrians homesick. One of them went:
Spirit of our grandmother, Aratu-land
Make the incomers mourn for their own place
Make them sad in their hands and feet
Their eyes, their mouths, their private parts
Stab them in their thoughts
Trouble them east, west, south, and north
Make their stomachs long for their own fruit, own fish,
Oh, make them get in a ship and sail far away
To Angria,
To their own, own home
To their own, own home.”
“And did the spell work?”
“It did indeed. In the course of the last hundred years, nearly all the Angrians migrated and went back to Angria, or to South America. And the ones who stayed behind have grown very sad and peculiar.”
“They hate girls, don’t they,” Dido said, remembering what Tylo had told her.
“Yes, and they hate sport and anything cheerful. Because of the spell. They have become very glum and puritanical. They used to be fond of playing games, but now they think that is sinful. They disapprove of me, because I am looking for ancient games for King Jamie. They look down on any sort of amusement.”
“Soon they all go,” said Tylo hopefully. “By and by, by golly.”
“In spite of this disapproval,” Herodsfoot went on, “many of the Angrian men are addictive gamblers. Cards, dice – any form of betting they can’t resist.”
“But tell about John King. Why did the Angrians let him come and take charge here? He was English, wasn’t he?”
“He very strong mind,” said Tylo.
“King came to this island when he was about twenty years old,” Herodsfoot said. “He had his younger brother, Paul, who was sixteen. And a pocketful of djeela seeds. No one ever learned where he got those. The convict ship from which he escaped had stopped at various ports. King started growing djeela trees and trading spices in a small way, but soon grew rich. And by that time the Forest People’s curse was affecting the Angrian settlers very strongly, so they were devilish down in the dumps, and glad to have King take over the running of the island, which he did very capably. He adopted an island girl whose parents had died of snakebite, and called her Erato and had her sent to school and taught music. And then he married her. She had a very beautiful singing voice, I’m told.”
“Like sunrise bird,” said Tylo nodding.
“You heard her? No, you couldn’t have. She died twenty years ago.”
“My father hear her. Gardener to Sovran King. Live those days in Asgard Hall. Now House of Correction. When Erato die, old Sovran John move to Mount Fura. And threw his baby off the Cliff of Death.”
“No,” suddenly put in Uncle Desi, who up to now had remained silent, munching his bark bread. “Not Sovran John. His brother Paul throw baby.”
“How do you know that?” asked Lord Herodsfoot, very interested. His glasses slipped off his nose, and he shoved them back by one earpiece, causing little Yorka to let out a shriek of wrath.
“No! No! Not do so! You break again, no more tinnel-stalk!”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Yorka! She has had to mend my glasses half a dozen times while the old boy was singing his story,” explained Herodsfoot guiltily. “It was so very exciting.”
“My father’s sister see Paul throw baby. She, picking sing-plums up sing-plum tree, see Paul King put Jane-child in clay pot, throw off mountain. Time of the onda.”
“That’s the tidal bore that comes past every time Mount Ximboë erupts,” explained Lord Herodsfoot. “But this is very interesting. If Paul King really did throw his niece into the sea, it gives one quite a different notion about him. He has changed his name to Manoel, by the way,” he explained to Dido. “Manoel is an Angrian name; he is friendly with the Angrians and wishes for their approval. I used to get on tolerably well with the fellow but – throwing his niece off the cliff – no, no, really one can’t countenance a thing like that.”
“But – Lord Herodsfoot—” said Dido, puzzled.
“Oh, do, call me Frank! My name’s Algernon Francis Sebastian Fortinbras Carsluith, but all my friends call me Frank.”
“Frankie, then. Thanks. Mine’s Dido. But—in the town—when we saw him—Manoel didn’t seem to know you, acted as if he’d not met you.”
“Oh, that’s because, in the days when I knew him, I hadn’t come into the title yet. I was just the Honourable Algernon Carsluith when I used to come across Paul King in gambling towns like Bad Szomberg. Of course I was doing research then for my doctorate degree in Loaded Dice.”
“Oh,
now I get you. He don’t know it’s you. Did you come across Doc Talisman too?”
Herodsfoot had only vague recollections of a Dutchman, Van Linde, who upset the casino managers by his phenomenal luck. He did not remember a little girl. Maybe she was a boy then, Dido thought. Maybe she always dressed as a boy, to get inside gambling halls, or because it made travel easier.
“But why would Manoel throw the baby into the sea?”
“Maybe, like the Angrians, he hates girls.”
But Uncle Desi said no, it was because, if the girl-baby were out of the way, then when John King died his brother Manoel would take over his position as ruler of the island. “Or, that is what he hope. Maybe soon he throw his brother off Cliff of Death. Or hope Outros people do so. For now Sovran John don’t give his brother no more money for travel. He can’t go away, must stay here on Aratu.”
Dido found this story extremely interesting. Twenty-odd years ago Doctor Talisman had fallen off a cliff, had been rescued by a trading ship, taken halfway across the world, and brought up in Europe.
It’s a rare funny thing, thought Dido – that, if Doc Tally is John King’s daughter – and her story does seem to fit into that one like a foot into a shoe – it’s a mighty havey-cavey thing that the very cove, her own uncle, who chucked her off the cliff, should meet up with her years later in a gambling town in Hanover.
Or is it so havey-cavey? Was he looking for her? Does it all hang together? Suppose brother Paul – or let’s call him Manoel if he’s changed his moniker to that because it sounds more Angrian and he wants to be all pals with them – suppose Manoel, after he chucked the kid into the sea, suppose he heard tell about the Dutch vessel a-sailing by that picked up the young ’un. Suppose he goes to Holland and hears of a girl-kid being rescued by this Van Linde? We know that, in those days, Manoel made a plenty trips to Europe, gambling. (Where did he get the dibs to gamble? Well, brother John was doing right well from all those djeela trees; maybe he got the mint sauce from generous brother John). But then brother John clams up. Manoel has to stop home. But he’d met young Tally at one of those gaming places and given her the notion of coming back to Aratu to take a gander at the place she come from.
Now why does Manoel do that? Why does he want her back here?
Right from the start I reckoned that Manoel would bear watching, Dido thought. In my book he’s as twisty as a corkscrew. He knows that Tally is Old Sovran King’s daughter, what’s he planning?
“Frankie,” she said urgently, “we must hurry us back to Regina town.”
At this moment old Asoun, the ancient Sisingana, woke from his brief nap and came rolling impressively out of his wocho.
“I hear the drums,” he said. “They send a message.”
He spoke in the Dilendi language, but Dido by now was beginning to pick up a fair number of words.
“Drums?” She was puzzled. “I don’t hear no drums, your honour.”
Yorka, now the meal was finished, had come to sit leaning comfortably up against Dido in order to teach her a game played with four blades of grass and two snail shells.
“Great-great-grandpa can hear drums when no one else can,” she explained.
“Drums,” repeated Asoun. “Drums tell me two things. The clever Outros lady has escaped from the House of Correction.”
“Oh, bully for Doc Talisman!” cried Dido joyfully. “We might’a guessed they’d never keep her buckled up for long! But I wonder where she’s heading? I hope she’ll come this way. She knew I was under orders to look for Lord Frankie – and she’d not want to stay in the town in case there was trouble about Mr Mully – unless she’d go back to the ship?”
“No,” said Asoun. “For the second drum-message relates to the ship. The City Guards have taken the ship.”
“Taken the ship? Why, in mussy’s name?”
Asoun waited for a few moments, listening to inaudible messages.
“Is so, often,” whispered Yorka. “He hear drum from all over.”
“Who does the drumming?”
“Other Hamahi. All over forest.”
Like the memory-birds, thought Dido. A network of drum messages all over the island, heard only by some. Pretty smart, that. Those Angrian coves had things really stacked against them when they tried to take over this place.
Asoun was ready to speak again.
“City Guards took ship because djeela-pods found in cargo-hold. But Captain said he never put them there. Very angry. Said it was a plot, a trap. Guards take no notice. Unload his cargo.”
“Why do that?”
“They want ship. Take out to sea, make for Manati harbour.”
“So Cap’n Sanderson’s cargo was just left lying on the dock? He won’t be best pleased about that.”
“What was the cargo?” Lord Herodsfoot inquired.
“Tea. Sugar.”
Dido thought of the savage rain last night beating down on sacks of sugar, on chests of tea.
“Where is Cap’n Sanderson?”
“Gone to ask audience of Leader John King.”
“Humph,” said Herodsfoot. “He’ll be uncommonly lucky – by what I hear – if he gets to see King on his mountaintop. Not even his brother gets to see him these days – if what I’m told is true.”
“Poor Cap. He’ll be really wild,” said Dido. “First, having some scallywag plant a load of djeela pods on him; he’d never be such a jackass as to take those on board. And second, having his ship pinched! That’s the limit! I lay it’ll be a while afore he comes to Aratu again.”
“But in the meantime,” said Herodsfoot, sliding his glasses up his nose and evoking a warning shriek from Yorka, “in the meantime it somewhat lessens our chances of getting off the island. In the near future, at least.”
“Yus. That’s so,” agreed Dido, pondering. “Tylo – what’d we better do? It’s late in the day, now, to go back to Regina town – and if we did go back, what’s the point? There’s no ship and no captain—” And the Town Guards may be waiting to collar me too, she thought, for helping Doc Tally with the operation. Croopus! Poor Mr Multiple in the hospital! I just hope he’s coming along as he ought, that they are taking good care of him. After all, none o’ this is his fault.
Tylo considered.
“Might be better try go see old Sovran John King.”
He sounded rather pleased at the prospect.
“Have you ever seen him, Tylo?”
He shook his curly head. “Only across river-gorge, he sit in garden of Limbo palace. Very old man, white hair. And hard to make hear voices. That I know.”
“King is very deaf,” confirmed Herodsfoot. “I heard that too. All his personal staff are issued with notebooks; they have to write down in their books anything they want to tell King, or ask him.”
“Tough luck if you can’t write. Or can’t spell.”
It was a lucky thing for John King, Dido thought, that his deafness had come on after his wife Erato died. If it was her singing voice that he so specially loved. Would have been hard on him if he grew so deaf he couldn’t hear her sing.
“What did she die of – King’s wife?” she asked Tylo.
“Snakebite.”
“Too many snakes on this island. You’d think he’d want to leave, after that.”
“Rich here,” Tylo pointed out. “Djeela nuts. And kw’ul.”
“What’s kw’ul?”
He made gestures with his fingers. “What Shaki-misses like to wear round neck.”
He pointed to little Yorka, who had a necklace of shiny brown nutshells. They hardly seemed worth braving snakes for.
“How long will it take to get to this Limbo palace?”
“Two night in forest. Best we start chop-chop now. And Sisingana need peace.”
“You agreeable to that, Lord Herod – Frankie?”
He sighed. “While grieved indeed to terminate my pleasant visit with the venerable Asoun, who had promised to teach me the game of King and Crocodiles (which sounds to me remarkably li
ke the ancient Saxon game of Hnefatafl) I believe we had best set out with no delay. Asoun did mention that we were in for a spell of unchancy weather.”
“Unchancy! If that means a shower like the one last night—”
Little Yorka, jumping up and down, squeaked, “I can teach the Shaki-lord King and Crocodile! Oh-oh! I can teach!”
“Can you, my dear?” said Lord Herodsfoot, looking down at her kindly. “But you would not want to take a long wet trip through the forest, would you?”
“Not? Why not?” The forest was where Yorka lived, she pointed out. It was her home.
“Well, let her come,” said Tylo. “She can help me find the way to the Quinquilho Ranch, where we spend our first night. Belong to Angrian family, Ereira.”
“Will the Ereiras want us staying with them?”
“No,” said Tylo, “but must give bed to traveller.”
“They have strict rules of hospitality,” Herodsfoot agreed.
So they set off without delay.
Herodsfoot had had another guide, a boy called Senu, to lead him to the grove where Asoun at present chose to live. Since his services were no longer required, Senu declared his intention of going off to the Kulara Place for a cleansing, and loped away at once up the side of the valley.
The others mounted their fed and rested mounts; Herodsfoot had a little fleabitten grey pony, and Yorka rode in front of Dido (though she said proudly that on foot she could keep up with any four-footed beast).
“Still, no need to walk when you can ride,” said Dido. “Where are your mother and father, little ’un?”
Her mother was dead, Yorka explained, fallen from a tree when a rotten bough broke under her. Her father, a Hamahi message-sender and record-keeper, was somewhere in the forest; she saw him now and then, but spent more time with her aunts, and with great-grandfather Asoun. She turned round to call the old man a last goodbye, but he was busy waving infection away from his door with a bunch of feathers, and did not heed her.
“He will do that four days now.”
“What’s that cleansing place where Senu’s gone?”