by Joan Aiken
“It is the Place of Stones, the twelve great stones that our Sisingana spoke of in his story. Nine are fallen, three still stand,” Tylo explained. “We go there to be made clean of trouble or curse.”
“Dear me!” said Lord Herodsfoot eagerly, pushing up his glasses, at which Yorka gave a warning growl. “I should dearly like to see that place! There is a game called Twelve Stones, played by the Twi people—”
“Well,” said Tylo, “we sleep tonight at Quinquilho Ranch. We could perhaps cross Honey river tomorrow by the ford, and pass Place of Stones.”
“Splendid! Splendid! Do you know the history of this place?”
“Is old, very old. Many thousand treetime. Stones come from who knows where? Not island stone. Who knows how? Too heavy for men to lift. Under every stone a man’s headbone buried.”
“A skull.”
“Is so. But one headbone gone.”
“Who took it?”
“No one know.”
Nor could they find out from Tylo exactly when the skull had been taken.
“Some treetime back,” was all he could tell them. People did not often visit Kulara, the Place of Stones, because, unless you had a real need for cleansing, the Place was likely to send you away loaded with more trouble than you had brought with you.
The Place discouraged casual visitors.
“Some say, why not old Sovran John King go for cure from hearing sickness.”
“Well,” said Dido, “why don’t he?”
“Maybe stones don’t help him, he not Island man.”
“He would have to believe in them,” said Herodsfoot thoughtfully. “But if he married an Island girl, he must have shared some of her beliefs.”
All the way along, as they rode, Yorka was telling Dido about the plants in the forest.
“Not one, not one single tree, in the whole forest, but happy to help us. See, those berries make wash-paste; this creeper just right to weave bags; that tree make table or stool, that fruit very good for flavour meat when you cook. These leaves keep you dry when rain come.”
In exchange for this information, Dido told Yorka about the streets of Battersea, London, where she had gown up, the beggars, thieves, cut-throats, lords and ladies in their carriages, market stalls selling food, household goods, and toys, the street singers and jugglers. Yorka was polite and interested, but she made it plain she thought that Battersea sounded like a dreadful place – where you had to pay for food!
“Wouldn’t you like to travel and see other places besides Aratu, Yorka?”
“No. I wholly love our Forest. Don’t want anywhere but here.”
Yorka had not even been as far as Regina town, and had no particular wish to do so. She said it sounded like a dismal place full of bad-tempered people.
“Tell about this Quinquilho house where we are going.”
And none too soon, either, thought Dido, for though they were now back in the true forest and could not see the sky above them, even the dim tree-light was dwindling fast, and ominous growls of thunder and flashes of lightning every now and then made the horses start and whinny.
“Quinquilho not a wocho. House built by Outros people ten treetimes back.” Yorka pushed her lip out disdainfully. Dido gathered that she, personally, would prefer to spend the night in the forest rather than lodge under a stone roof with this gloomy Angrian family.
“They got nowhere they want, nothing they do.”
Dido pondered.
What do folk want? Frankie Herodsfoot there, he wants to find more and more games. And plants and stories. Doc Talisman wants to cure sickness. Cap’n Sanderson wants to sail his ship. What do I want? I want to go back to Battersea and find my friend Simon and see what’s happened in London Town.
“What do you want, Yorka?”
“Be a Kanikke. Like my mother’s sister, Aunt Tala’aa.”
“What do Kanikke do?”
“Magic. Good magic,” said Yorka firmly. “Bring rain. Make fish grow big in river. Send away the Drought Woman. Sing Whispering Song, melt trouble fire. Write name in sand, keep away Never Week.”
“You can learn to do all that?”
“By and by. In treetime. Now,” said Yorka, “here we come Quinquilho. Ereira family. Don Enrique. Dona Esperanza. Hear dogs bark.”
Her quick ears had caught the sound, far away. The dogs sounded very savage.
“Hope they’re tied up,” said Dido.
“Dog won’t ever bite naked person, you know that?”
“Well,” said Dido, “I don’t aim to take off my britches and jacket just to find out if that’s a true tale. It’s too cold by half, anyhows.”
The temperature had shot down. Now the travellers were out of the forest and in a large cleared space of spice plantations. There were grape vines also. The smell of spice tingled on the cool evening air. Ahead of them was a solid stone house, enclosed by walls, approached across a paved yard. The dogs, raging their heads off, were behind a fence, Dido was thankful to find. A bent, aged man, muttering what might have been either blessings or curses, arrived and led their horses away to an open-fronted stable. A sour-looking elderly woman appeared. She seemed a little put out at their arrival, but, nevertheless, invited them to come indoors.
Chapter Five
THE HOUSE SEEMED TO BE IN A STATE OF subdued commotion, Dido thought, as they followed the old woman through the ice-cold stone arched passages to a cavernous dark kitchen as big as a ballroom. It contained a large bare table and several stools, besides many shelves holding enormous platters and dishes. No other inhabitants of the house were to be seen, and yet there was an atmosphere of hurry and trouble; somewhere in the distance they could hear hasty footsteps; and the clamour of raised voices, and the clatter of pots or pails suggested that some domestic crisis was taking place.
Dido shivered. Despite a wan fire alight in the huge old cooking stove, the kitchen seemed not much warmer than the yard and orchards outside. Yorka’s dead right about this place, she thought; there’s summat about it that gives you the chill heeby-jeebies.
Lord Herodsfoot glanced around him with interest and remarked in a low voice: “This must be one of the oldest Angrian mansions in the island, several hundred years old, I’d guess.”
“Feels like it’s never been properly warmed since it was built,” Dido whispered back.
The grey-haired woman who had led them in now made off through a doorway with some muttered explanation: “Later, food will be brought. Now you will have to excuse me . . .”
“This is a good time for you to show me the King Crocodile game,” Lord Herodsfoot suggested hopefully to Yorka.
He took a half-burned stick from the fire and was about to draw a game-square on the white scrubbed flags of the floor, but Dido, guessing that this would not be at all well received by the housekeeper, pulled her embroidered game-cloth from her pocket. “Here, you can use this; someone’s been scrubbing those flagstones all day.”
Herodsfoot’s eyes lit up at sight of the cloth. He exclaimed; “Why! That is an original game-board cloth, probably from ancient Persia; it may very well date back to the reign of Chosroes II! It is a most rare and valuable specimen. Where in the name of wonder did you get it, may I ask?”
“It was left me by a feller called Brandywinde who died,” Dido explained. “And dear only knows where he laid hands on it – if ever there was a jammy-fingered rapscallion, he was the one! Anyhow I reckon it’ll do for young Yorka to show you the rules of the crocodile game – you can just turn the cloth face down.”
But Yorka, unexpectedly, would not allow this.
“Many, many spirits of dead people in this house,” she said, shivering a little as she stared about the gloomy kitchen. “Play games by day, very well, pleases the ghosts, they enjoy to watch. But at night, in darktime, no! they come play too, take us back with them when they go home.”
“Oh? Is that really so?” said Herodsfoot. “Then certainly we must not play. But it does not look as if anybody is g
oing to come and take care of us for some time. We might as well make ourselves comfortable.” He sat on a stool. “Won’t you sing one of your songs to us, Yorka?”
Yorka sang, in a soft threadlike little voice:
“If there is a girl-child soon come to this house
O, o, o, I fear her tasks will be many and hard
O may the waterpot be light on her shoulder
O may the needle not prick her finger too hard
O poor little sister I wish you well!”
“Do you know any songs?” Herodsfoot then asked Dido.
“Only the ones my pa used to make up.” She sang:
“Oh, how I’d like to be Queen, Pa,
And float in a golden canoe
Sucking a sweet tangerine, Pa,
All down the river to Kew.”
Dido sang quite loud and cheerfully, thinking of her father, and what a bad parent he was, except for making up songs, and the grey-haired woman came storming back into the kitchen.
“What devil’s music is that?” she hissed, giving Dido a ferocious look. “How dare you raise your voice in impious song while the young senhora is in such trouble? Be quiet at once! If you make any more noise you will have to go back into the forest, and you will not like that, for it is raining as hard as ever.”
Indeed they could hear the rain lashing down in the paved yard outside, and the gale howling against the stone-mullioned windows.
“We are indeed sorry for your trouble, senhora,” said Herodsfoot politely. “We did not mean to offend. But what is the matter? Can we be of any help, any use, in any possible way?”
“In no way!” she snapped. “The younger senhora, Meninha Luisa, she is about to give birth at this time. But the birth is a hard one, and the child a long time coming. The young lady is in much pain. No one can help. If we only had a doctor! Instead we have a parcel of useless idle-mouths who will be wanting food and beds, and have no more sense than to sing in this house of calamity!” And taking a cauldron of hot water from the range, she stomped out of the kitchen again.
“Well; there is a doctor,” Dido said sadly, “but dear knows where she has got to. Don’t I jist wish she were here with us!”
Her words went unanswered, for at this moment a personage who must be the lady of the house entered the kitchen: an extremely grand, white-haired senhora, thin as a broom-handle, with a pale, flinty face, pale eyes, black clothes, and a black lace headdress spangled with large pearls draped over her brow.
“I understand you are Milord Herodsfoot?” she said to his lordship with icy civility. “I have heard about you from my cousins in Regina City.” He bowed. “And these will be your servants, no doubt.” Her eye swept over Dido, Yorka, and Tylo without pausing. “I regret that you find our house in some confusion, and that you were shown into the kitchen. My daughter Luisa . . . is unwell. But you, senhor, should not have been left in this room. Your servants . . . may remain here. You, sir – pray come with me – do me the honour of accompanying me to the Sala where a meal shall be served for you.”
“That’s uncommonly kind of you, ma’am,” said Herodsfoot, standing his ground, “but I beg you won’t trouble yourself with entertaining me. I’m sure you wish to be with your daughter. And I shall do very well here with my companions.”
“Your compan—” She stared at him as if he had asked to be accommodated in the pigsty. “Most singular! You prefer to remain in the kitchen? Oh – very well – if that is your wish. The meal shall be brought to you here . . . in the course of time . . .”
And she swept severely away, without another word.
Herodsfoot gave Dido a rueful grin, pushing up his glasses. “Bless me, what a tartar! Lucky she’s not the one passing out vouchers for the Royal Garden Party at St James’s. We’d none of us be invited—Oh, may the foul fiend fly away with these glasses! Yorka, I’m afraid the earpiece has broken again—”
With a suppressed wail, as if this were the very last straw, Yorka received the broken spectacles from Herodsfoot and looked around her for mending materials. But nothing in the bare, cold kitchen seemed to strike her eye as being at all suitable. Shaking her head sorrowfully, she tucked the glasses into a little pouch containing seeds and grasses which she carried at her waist.
At this moment an elderly man in black breeches and a striped apron came in carrying a tray and – rather to their surprise – proceeded to serve them a meal, which was unexpectedly good: thin, bitter soup, pancakes, some game-bird roasted with rice, peppers and garlic, and cups of hot drink served in small metal cups.
“Maté,” said Herodsfoot, tasting it.
Yorka had never before come across plates, spoons and forks, and found them highly amusing.
While they were eating, Dido asked her quietly, “Did you know, Yorka – about the baby being born in this house – when you sang your song?”
Yorka nodded, but said, “Hush! Too many ghosts about. Better they don’t hear talk of baby.”
The very minute they had finished eating, the elderly man said to Lord Herodsfoot, “Sir, you will now wish to go to rest. You and the boy-servant, follow me. Isabella the housekeeper will soon show the young girls where they may sleep.”
And in a moment or two the grey-haired woman came back and sternly led Dido and Yorka in a different direction, along some more freezing stone passages, past dozens of closed doors, and up a spiral flight of stairs – up, and up, and up. I don’t like this house one bit, Dido thought. Dear knows what might be going on behind all those shut doors – prisoners, mad people who’ve been tied to their beds for twenty years, servants dying of sickness because nobody takes the trouble to care for them. And all these stairs! Our bedroom must be up at the top of a tower.
It was at the top of a tower. The door that Isabella opened led into a round room with three windows spaced at regular intervals in the wall. There were two small bamboo cots and two stools. A thin, black-haired woman was hurriedly throwing covers on to the cots.
“I will leave you now,” snapped Isabella, and gave some instructions to the other woman in a low voice, addressing her as Katarina. As soon as she had left, Katarina ran to Dido, caught hold of her hands, and kissed them, calling down blessings on her head.
“You saved my daughter! Oh, thanks, thanks, meninha, a thousand thanks!”
“Saved your daughter?” Dido was completely astonished. “I don’t reckon as how I saved anybody’s daughter—”
Then she thought of Yorka and the snake. But Yorka’s mother was dead . . . and this woman was not a Forest Person. She was an Angrian.
“Yes, yes, you did, you did! In the town. The Guard were after her – because she was in the street without a hood over her head – some boys stole it – but you let her into the hospital—”
“Great sakes!” said Dido, remembering. “Would they really have arrested her – just for not having a hood—?”
“Arrested her? They would have hung her up from a tree – as they do so many – if you had not helped her—”
With a shiver, Dido remembered the scene by the roadside before Tylo and she had reached the prison.
“Where is your daughter now?”
“Oh, she is safe. The nurses helped her – she hides – never mind where! But I thank you, meninha, I bless you – always, always—”
Kissing Dido’s hand again, Katarina left. As she did so she murmured conspiratorially, “Isabella ordered me to lock the door. Don Enrique and Dona Esperanza trust nobody. But I shall not lock the door. And if you should need anything in the night – only call to me. I sleep at the foot of the stair.”
“How is it going with the poor girl who is having the baby?” Dido murmured.
“Slowly. Not well. And the poor father – not here—”
After the door had closed, Yorka said, “I do not like to sleep in bed. On floor is best.”
“Suit yourself! Sleep where you like,” Dido said cheerfully. “But you better wrap yourself in that quilt. It’s powerful cold up
here. My word, though! We can think ourselves lucky we don’t live in Regina town. What a place – where you get hanged for not wearing a titfer on your noddle. Swelp me!”
She went to the nearest window and looked out. The storm was still raging, gusts of wind made the tower quiver, and flashes of lightning displayed the stable-buildings and paddocks a long way below, the plantations farther off, and the true forest rising raggedly behind them.
“We’re awful high up. Even higher than a djeela tree!” Dido chuckled. “At least djeela trees don’t have ghosts in ’em – even if they do have snakes. Are there so many ghosts in this house, Yorka?”
“Some – many,” said Yorka. “All walk around this place, hoping they grab that baby soon coming—”
“Well, you better make a good magic and stop them.”
“I try.”
And Yorka sat herself thoughtfully, cross-legged, with her quilt round her shoulders.
Dido opened the window.
“Even one of them climbing snakes could hardly slither his way up here,” she said.
Something did, though, later in the night. Dido had fallen asleep as soon as she lay down. The unaccustomed luxury of a real bed – even a hard narrow cot and scanty cover – flung her into slumber at once. But after a couple of hours she suddenly woke, aware that some sound had roused her. She looked up at the window nearest her bed. The storm had blown itself out, a bright moon shone. The window was clearly outlined in brilliant white moonshine. Dido saw a hand slip over the sill – then another hand – then a head and shoulders rose up, outlined against the pearly night sky.
Yorka was instantly awake too. “Who that climb in?” she whispered.
Talisman’s voice answered. “Don’t be afraid! Dido? Are you there? I’ve come to share your sleeping-quarters!”
“Doc Tally! Saints save us! Am I glad to see you again!”
The doctor swung her feet neatly over the sill and settled cross-legged on the floor. A sweet powerful scent, something like that of cloves, coming from her, immediately filled the room.