by Joan Aiken
“Come along, Shaki-Dido – you do good!” shouted Tylo encouragingly from the far bank. She plunged on desperately. The baby woke and let out a thin wail. Muskets cracked from the hillside behind her right shoulder, and she saw a chip fly off one of the tikkol trunks. Then Tylo’s hand was grasping hers, pulling her up on to the cliff edge.
“Good now you Shaki-Dido lie down behind tree,” urged Tylo, and she was glad to do so, but could not help peering out to see Yorka, nimble as a sting-monkey, flit across the bridge, hardly more visible than a gust of wind among branches. Last came Herodsfoot, and Dido grew sick with fright as she watched his gangling, awkward progress. Now the men with their muskets were not more than three or four turns of the cliff path from the bushes above Yorka’s bridge – Dido could see the flashes and the puffs of smoke as they discharged their weapons. It seemed impossible that they should miss him. But luckily their aim was poor, and Herodsfoot’s own clumsiness stood him in good stead – the bridge swung about so wildly that he was never in the same spot for two consecutive seconds. But just as Tylo had caught one of his hands to pull him to safety, a bullet did catch him in the shoulder and he jerked uncontrollably and cried out.
“Come, quick come!” cried Yorka, and grabbed his arm; he was dragged on to the bank and hustled down out of view. Tylo without wasting a moment cut through the support-cords of the bridge and jerked on a rope which attached it by a slip-knot on the opposite side. The whole flimsy structure dropped into the gorge and was gone.
“What a shame!” said Dido. “After all that trouble to make it! But let’s look at poor Frankie. Is he hurt bad?”
“Not too bad, I think!” gasped Herodsfoot, who was being alternately scolded and comforted by Yorka.
“Did the bullet lodge in you?”
“No, it scraped my collar-bone and passed on. I was lucky.”
“Golly-lucky!” agreed Tylo. “Come on now, best we get out of here.”
With Tylo and Yorka taking an arm apiece, Herodsfoot was bundled back among the trees, and Dido followed with the baby as fast as she could. The forest was much thicker here on the north-facing side of the gorge, so that in a very few minutes they were completely masked by trees and could not be seen by the musketeers; but still these men kept up their fire for a long time, peppering the whole hillside, and sometimes by pure chance a shot came dangerously close.
“Too bad now they know it’s us, and that we are here,” said Dido.
“Won’t know that longtime,” said Tylo, and he laid a course diagonally upward through the trees, whistling to his memory-bird and listening to its twittered answers, then slightly changing direction, all the time edging and twisting his way through close-growing vegetation, lianas, creeper, tree-fern, palm boles and opoë vine. Not so much spice at this end of the island, Dido noticed, maybe it’s not so hot here.
The forest smelt juicy, rather than spicy.
It was just as well that Tylo and the memory-bird between them seemed to know where they were heading, for dusk now fell fast; making the rope bridge had taken up a lot of the day.
The marksmen finally gave up their fire, perhaps thinking it a waste of ammunition. But it was plain that the gorge must be very narrow here, and the edge of it not far off, for Dido could sometimes smell camp-fires and meat cooking, and catch the sound, now and then, of men’s voices; Tylo must be leading his party parallel with the gorge rather than turning south towards King’s residence, which Dido recalled as being about half-way up Mount Fura, nestled snugly in a lap of the forest between two spurs of hillside.
“Where are you taking us, Tylo?” she asked, when they paused for a rest in a small clearing where for once it was possible to see the sky above, all clustered with stars.
Tylo said: “Not good fetch up Sovran’s house in dark night.”
“Guards might shoot at us?”
“Can be so. Also, come Sovran Island, good first stop Ghost House.”
“What is the Ghost House, Tylo?”
Yorka here chipped in. “House Sovran John build his wifie. After she die.”
“Her tomb?”
Dido did not know the Dilendi word for tomb, so she used the English one. But neither Tylo nor Yorka were familiar with this word.
“Where she was buried?” Dido offered instead.
“Buried? No, no!”
Only Angrians buried their dead, Dido learned. The Forest People thought this a disgusting practice; they burned the bodies of their dead relations and then threw them off the Cliff of Death in clay pots. Dido wondered a little where the skulls had come from that were buried under the monoliths at the Place of Stones, but was too polite to ask. Perhaps the skulls were from some long-earlier time when habits were different.
“Ghost House,” said Tylo, after about half an hour’s climb.
They had reached a small clearing, what seemed like a hollow in the hillside, perhaps the site of an old quarry. The ground here was flat and seemed mossy under foot. Dido noticed two things: first that the place was chilly, which surprised her very much. She could not remember feeling so cold since the Thrush had left the Straits of Magellan. Secondly, despite its chill, the air was heavy with the fragrance of spices – musk, aloe, amber-gris, pepper, civet, bezoar. Her nose prickled, she wanted to sneeze. Looking up she saw, through the opening in the trees, that a hazy pale moon was floating overhead, half veiled by wisps of cloud.
“Where does all the scent come from?” she whispered to Yorka, who whispered back: “Gifts to Ghost House. Many people bring.”
“Not now they won’t. Not with Manoel’s guards loosing off their barkers at anybody who steps this way,” said Dido. “What’s the gifts for?”
Yorka made a vague answer. “People sorry King wifie die. Sorry her baby die. Hope some day they come back.”
Tylo said: “Mylord Oklosh some poorly. Best stop here. Yorka you wrap him in cobweb.”
Poor Herodsfoot was indeed weak from pain and loss of blood; it was high time they halted. Dido was surprised that Yorka and Tylo seemed quite prepared to use the Ghost House as a night camping site.
It was a queer little building. Built of pale rock, it was quite visible in the dull moonlight. To Dido it seemed most unpractical. It consisted of twelve pillars, set in a square, approached by steps and standing on a stone platform. A flat roof did not entirely cover the space enclosed by the pillars; a double spiral of steps led up through a large opening in the roof. On the roof could be seen the statue of a woman, holding a child. Both woman and child were veiled and only partly visible.
Yorka had lowered Herodsfoot on to the steps leading up to the pillars, and was binding up his wound with a handful of cobwebs gathered on the way, and strips of ukka-leaf.
Dido was glad to sit and rest beside them, moving the baby from her shoulder to her lap.
“Is that John King’s wife?” she whispered to Tylo, pointing to the statue. He nodded.
The Outros people, he told her, regarded this as a very haunted place, and disliked coming here after dark. So although they were not very far, now, from the bridge and the Guards’ camp, no one would be coming that way before daylight.
“Forest People ain’t afraid of ghosts?” inquired Dido.
“Not golly-likely.” Tylo chuckled. Ghosts, after all, were only Auntie Naewa or Uncle Tobure – what harm could they do? The poor things were only trying to tell you something useful, or feeling a bit lonely, not having found their way, yet, to the other forest; there was no harm in ghosts. Not in forest. Only in houses were ghosts harmful.
“You stay here,” Tylo said, “I go find us supper from camp.”
“Tylo! No! You don’t mean you are going to swipe some vittles from the Guards?”
But that was what he did mean to do.
“How will you cross the bridge?”
“I go taku, they never see me. Go under bridge hand-wise. And hear what they talk about.”
He slung a leaf-bag on his back and slipped away among the trees.
This’ll be my fifth night in Aratu, thought Dido; it seems more like five months.
“What makes it so cold just here?” she asked Yorka.
Yorka said: “The ghost.”
“John King’s wife?”
“Dead wife feel cold till husband come. King wifie feel extra cold; she die of poison.”
“Croopus,” said Dido, “I bet my mum wouldn’t feel cold if my dad weren’t about. She’d be dancing in the street. There! That’ll be more comfortable for Frankie and the baby than lying on the cold stone floor.”
Tylo came back from his raid on the camp looking much more serious than when he had set out, despite the fact that he brought a pot of hot stew and a bag of fruit.
Manoel had got hold of old Ta’asbuie, he said, which was a very bad and worrying thing.
“Old Ta’asbuie do anything for drink.”
The Forest People hardly ever touched strong drink, wine or spirits; and small wonder; in order to keep alive and undamaged in the forest you needed eyes alert and your wits about you. But Ta’asbuie, found orphaned as a baby and brought up by an Angrian schoolteacher, had acquired a passion for palm toddy and would do almost anything for a couple of drinks.
“Is pity, for he number one fire-shooter.”
“What’s that?”
Tylo explained. If the Forest People wanted – as they occasionally did – to burn out a small patch of forest, they first soaked the surrounding area with pails of water.
“Or make rain, but not all Kanikke can do that.”
When the surrounding forest was thoroughly wet, the fire-shooter, from a safe distance, shot a flaming arrow into the middle of the section that was to be burned.
“Why not just light it with a bit of fire-fungus?”
Because, said Tylo, the forest, and the forest earth were so very combustible that the whole patch would explode, unless the greatest care was taken. That was why cooking-fires were always contained in stone caskets and why, mostly, the Forest People ate their food raw.
“So what’s Manoel want with this Ta’asbuie?”
“Wants him shoot fire arrow on to Mount Fura. Burn out John King.”
“Oh, murder,” said Dido, and Herodsfoot, who had been silently listening, exclaimed, “But that is monstrous! A crime! A crime of the blackest kind! Firstly, a fire on Mount Fura would mean the death of John King – his household – not to mention ourselves; not only that, but it would destroy all the animal life on this portion of the island. And – if the wind should change and blow northwards over the gorge – the whole island might go up in flames. It is the most wickedly irresponsible plan! It is not to be thought of!”
“Better be thought of,” said Tylo, frowning. “We go early, before sun-up, warn Sovran John.”
“Then we had best all go to sleep directly,” said Herodsfoot.
The stew eaten, everybody went to rest in the wocho. The baby, peacefully replete with fruit-juice, was already in a deep slumber.
But Dido could not sleep. Hearing everyone else’s quiet breathing only made her more wakeful; she slipped out of the wocho and went to sit on the steps of the monument. Now it seemed to her – strangely enough – that she could hear a voice singing: not very loud, the kind of untroubled, quiet song that a person might sing, almost under their breath, while doing a job of work, picking berries, or ironing, or hemming a shirt. The song – now and then Dido could just about catch the words – was all about how we came, once, from our old grandmother the sea, and were due to end up, bleached and desiccated, with our old grandfather the desert – and a long, strange journey it was between the two extremes . . .
“O-o-o, from swim to fly, from wet to dry,
From fly to blow, blow in the wind, o-o-o . . .”
It was a queer song, rather like the ones Yorka sang, thought Dido, but who could be the singer? Might it be Aunt Tala’aa, didn’t Yorka say that she was to be found in this part of the island?
The song was interrupted by an angry voice. And this voice was perfectly familiar to Dido – she had heard it quite recently and could not mistake. It was that of Manoel; harsh, nasal, and arrogant.
“Will you stop that caterwauling and pay me some heed?”
“O-o-o, why should I, why should I?”
“Because I love you!”
“And a strange way you had of showing your love!”
“Oh, Erato, don’t torment me! Say one kind thing to me!”
“You found a witch to poison me,” she sang,
“You threw my daughter into the sea,
You plan ill luck for my poor old King
Why should I say you one kind thing?”
“You never loved John!”
“I never loved either of you. But he was my husband, brought me up and was kind to me. You never raised me a monument! You were far away, playing with dice and dominoes in Europe. Games! If you had the choice between me, alive, and a pair of never-lose dice, which would you take? Don’t trouble to answer, I know!”
“I love you!” he shouted angrily.
“Easy words. Now my daughter has come back – do you plan to throw her into the sea a second time? Or what is your plan?”
“I have no plan. Where is she? Do you know where she is? I have no plan!”
“Oh, come! You first put the notion of coming back to Aratu into her head so that she could be useful to you – or you could dispose of her; you had her hustled into jail on a lame charge so that she would have to be obliged to you – but she got out, the clever thing; your trail is all over the landscape like a snail’s slime, you cannot conceal it.”
“I hate this island! I wish it were under the sea.”
“If it were under the sea, you would not be able to come and scold me. Scolding a ghost! What a dismal hobby!”
“I love you! I love you!”
“Oh, my dear Paul! Enough! You had best find another watchword, for that one won’t help you, and soon you are going to fall over the edge . . .”
“What do you mean? Edge? What edge?”
But there came no answer to that. The other voice began singing again:
“From wet to dry, from swim to fly,
O,o,o, the wind does blow . . .”
Ghosts talking, thought Dido, I didn’t reckon, when I came to Aratu, that I’d be hearing ghosts talking.
At least – one of them was a ghost . . . Where was Manoel?
Stretched on the steps of the monument, Dido fell asleep.
Chapter Ten
DIDO WOKE WITH A START, FROM A DREAM OF having burned the toast and being scolded by her mother. What had woken her was the smell of smoke.
She sprang to her feet in a fright.
The sight that met her eyes then did not at all diminish her fright. Now, in broad daylight, it was easy to see that the little stone-built Ghost House was within a bowshot-length of the gorge. A wide sloping path led down from the building to a wooden footbridge which spanned the ravine, here at its deepest. On the farther side of the bridge, tents were visible among the trees, and men with muskets, patrolling.
But what riveted Dido’s attention was the sight of Manoel, with two other men, standing not much more than a hundred yards away on this side of the ravine, close to the bridge. One of the men was an Angrian in officer’s uniform, the other a Forest Person who seemed the worse for liquor; he kept giggling foolishly, waving his hands, and looking about him in a vacant manner, as if he wondered what he was doing there. He held a bow.
Manoel noticed Dido when she stood up and addressed her in a scornful, indifferent tone.
“Oh – so you are there? I suppose Herodsfoot is somewhere about? Well, you won’t be
there for long. Capitan Ereira,” he ordered the uniformed officer, “tell the man, Ta-asbuie, to shoot a couple more arrows. And to waste no time about it.”
His voice, which was not particularly loud, travelled clearly up the slope. Must be thrown by some kind of echo from the other bank, Dido guessed. And that’s how it must have worked last night when he was a-chatting to the ghost.
But there was no time to lose in idle thoughts. Without troubling to answer Manoel, Dido scooted round to the wocho at the rear. Here she found Tylo and Yorka frantically trying to rouse Herodsfoot, who was flushed, wild-eyed and rambling, evidently in a fever from his bullet-wound, not at all in prime condition.
“Shaki-sir, must get up! Must climb hill to Sovran house!”
“I could as soon climb Mount Everest,” mumbled Herodsfoot. “Could as soon climb Mount Kanchenjunga. Could as soon—”
Tylo and Yorka exchanged despairing glances.
Dido turned and looked behind her. Manoel’s two companions had retired to the far side of the bridge. They had a brazier from which came smoke and flame.
Tylo said: “Yorka, can you make rain?”
“Never yet.” Yorka pressed her hands tight against her chest. “But I try,” she said.
“Is all we can hope for,” said Tylo.
Dido, looking around, saw that this was probably true. The drunken Forest Man, Ta’asbuie, reeling from one side to another in fits of hysterical laughter, was dipping arrows into the brazier and loosing them off as soon as they began to flame. His aim was fairly wild; quite a few of the arrows fell in the river. One lodged on the bridge, which began to burn; Manoel, with a quick, furious order, summoned a soldier to extinguish it. But several arrows had already fallen among the trees surrounding the Ghost House; a fierce crackling could be heard; billows of smoke went spiralling up into the sky from different parts of the forest.
Dido caught Captain Ereira’s voice from the bridge saying anxiously, “Sir, sir, do you think this is really wise? Suppose the wind changes – suppose it should blow from the south?—” Manoel made no reply.