by Joan Aiken
“Save us!” muttered Dido. “I reckon this is the tightest corner yet.”
She picked up the baby, wondering which way to run. There were fires among the trees, both to right and left.
“No-no-no!” said Yorka. “You help me, Dido! Miria help too! Wake her. Now: you both help make rain. Like this. Think of water. Think big water. Think hard. Then put the water up in the sky.”
Yorka herself then seemed to go into a trance. She stood – as she had when divining the whereabouts of Aunt Tala’aa – with her face turned up to the sky and eyes closed. Her hands were clenched. She wore a frowning expression of terrific concentration, and was murmuring a Dilendi phrase over and over, but Dido could not hear what she said, her voice was too soft.
Dido herself, obeying instructions, thought about water. She thought of oceans, rivers, waterfalls, jugs full, mugs full, cups full, bowls full. She thought of fountains, brooks, ponds, gutters. She thought of the spittle in her mouth, the tears in her eyes (these were quite copious, with smoke now drifting thickly about the Ghost House). She thought of the blood running in her veins. She thought of the baby she held in her arms. “Our bodies are like cucumbers,” she remembered Herodsfoot saying, a day or two ago, as they munched their lunch. “Ninety per cent water.”
This baby is just like a sponge full of water, thought Dido. The baby, as if catching her thought, woke up and began to cry with terrific vigour. She yelled with all her heart. Perhaps the smoke had got into her eyes also.
Rain, thought Dido. Let it rain. Let it stream, pelt, pour, thunder, lighten. I am putting all those ponds and lakes up in the sky. I am putting oceans there. I am putting the River Thames. I am putting djeela juice, tea, coffee, milk, lemonade, up into the sky. I am lifting the whole Pacific Ocean and wrapping it round the sun . . .
A drop fell on her right hand.
She looked up, startled.
The sky had been its usual brilliant blue, with not a cloud in sight. But now two things were happening. The birds – parrots, frigate-birds, parakeets, owls, gulls, memory-birds – were all flying about in confusion, and crying and squawking. And across the sky, skeins of haze were floating like spider-webs, joining and tangling, weaving together to form a fabric of cloud – and from this fabric, drops were beginning to fall . . .
“Rain!” gasped Tylo. “Ashtaa Yorka – you did it! You really made the rain come.” And he made her a deep bow, pressing his hands together.
Yorka opened her eyes. The raindrops were now falling quite plentifully and a gust of wind, fanning up from the south, suddenly whipped across the gorge, carrying with it a hunk of flame, which completely enwrapped Captain Ereira and Ta’asbuie, reduced the bridge to a shrivelled wisp, and then swept on into the middle of the Angrian camp. There were shouts and screams of terror, and some violent explosions; after that the drumming of almost solid rain and a tremendous crack of thunder drowned all other noises.
“Into the Ghost House!” ordered Tylo – his words were inaudible, but his gesture was plain. Dido hastily tucked the baby into a sheltered corner and then helped Tylo with Herodsfoot who was too weak to move himself; they half-led, half-carried him under the overhang of the roof.
Yorka still stood outside in the downpour with her skinny arms upraised, apparently encouraging it to keep on raining and not stop.
“Bless my soul!” muttered Herodsfoot. “The fish will be rising. How I wish that I had brought my rod and tackle . . .”
Dido was peering down across the gorge, trying to see through solid sheets of water. She caught a glimpse of Captain Ereira and Ta’asbuie being carried into the camp; she could not decide whether they were dead or just badly burned. And where was Manoel? She could not see him.
Yorka now came into the Ghost House with a look of calm achievement on her face. “Rain come,” she said.
“Croopus, Yorka,” said Dido, giving Yorka a tremendous hug. “I’ll justabout say it did come. You’re a skinny little critter, Yorka, but I’ll tell you – you are real Grade A champion class when it comes to making rain!”
This remark was endorsed by a voice from behind them. A lady who came walking between the pillars of the ghost-house said approvingly: “Excellently managed, Yorka! I could have done it no better myself!”
Yorka’s face became brilliant. “Aunt Tala’aa!”
She made a deep bow, and the traditional greeting of child to adult in the Forest, placing her hands, palm inwards, on the lady’s cheeks.
“Now, my dear child – as the rain has served its purpose for the moment – it would make it easier for us to hear each other speak if you turned it off again.”
Yorka nodded and, leaving the Ghost House, went back into the deluge and made some signals to the sky, which soon began to take effect. The thunder stopped pealing. The torrent of water from the bank of heavy cloud gradually eased, slowed down, and finally came to a stop. All that could be heard now was a musical drip-drip from the overweighted branches. The sky began to clear and clouds of steam rose from the ground.
But Yorka herself, Dido noticed, turned extremely pale, staggered slighdy, and sat down on a rock as if, for a moment, she had lost her sense of balance. A thin trickle of blood ran from each nostril.
“You been taken queer, duck?” Dido asked anxiously.
Yorka shook her head.
“Cloud-rain pull out blood,” she whispered, dabbing it away with a leaf. “Not bad – soon better.”
But Dido noticed that she moved slowly and with caution for half an hour. Dido herself felt stiff and tired as if she had run in a race.
Meanwhile Aunt Tala’aa looked keenly about her at the other occupants of the ghost-house, and Dido studied the newcomer with deep interest.
Aunt Tala’aa was plainly a Forest Person, honey-coloured in complexion, and curly-haired (though at present her short, pure white hair hung draggled with rain); she was rather taller than most Forest People, about the same height as Lord Herodsfoot.
Her clothes were black, like those of the Angrian women, but she wore them very differently. Angrian women’s clothes were always dusty and shapeless, intended to be inconspicuous, looking old and worn even if they were not. Aunt Tala’aa’s clothes though black, and at the moment drenched with rain, were severely elegant, a long narrow skirt under a cape with a dark plum-coloured lining and floating white bands at the neck. She had a flat triangular black cap on her head.
Dido had once seen a bishop, who also happened to be a Professor of Law, riding through the streets of London in a carriage. He had impressed Dido very much – looked so shrewd and learned, but also good at the same time; this old girl reminded Dido of that bishop. It’d take a really downy ’un to put anything across Auntie Tala’aa, thought Dido.
It seemed as if their thoughts collided, for the old lady turned and subjected Dido to a piercing scrutiny.
“You are Dido Twite,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” agreed Dido, thinking, How does she know that?
“Talisman told me about you – about you all,” said Aunt Tala’aa. “We shall be friends. But first I see that our friend here – you must be Lord Herodsfoot, are you not? – needs some medical attention for his hurt shoulder.”
She stepped outside, was gone, perhaps, a couple of minutes, and returned with two leaves. One she placed on Herodsfoot’s shoulder, and covered it with a new poultice of cobweb; the other she instructed him to hold on his tongue for three minutes, then swallow.
When he had done so – and almost at once he began to look a little better – he murmured faintly, “Madam – did I hear you correctly just now when you addressed Dido – did I hear you say that Talisman had spoken to you of us?”
“Indeed she has. She has given me very good descriptions of you all.”
“Then she is alive? She is safe? She survived that dreadful climb?”
“She did – she is at Limbo Lodge – and, as soon as you are able to walk, I think that we should make our way there.”
“Oh, yes!” said Herod
sfoot fervently.
In ten minutes – so efficacious was the power of the herb he had swallowed – Herodsfoot declared that he was quite able to undertake the walk to Limbo Lodge. He looked transformed – pale still, but hopeful, happy, and alert. Aunt Tala’aa said that the walk would take no more than twenty minutes. And it was much easier going than any of the tracks they had followed up to now, being wide and well trodden – plainly the way from John King’s house to the bridge had been much used.
As they climbed the hill Dido overheard snatches of conversation between Herodsfoot and Aunt Tala’aa. “You speak remarkably good English, ma’am – but, pray, how should I properly address you?”
She laughed. “Well, you could call me Aunt Tala’aa as most people do – or you could call me Professor Limisoë – I learned my English at the University of Cambridge and my French at the Sorbonne in Paris, where I studied for my Master’s Degree in Occult Philosophy.”
Herodsfoot was enraptured. “Aha! then you must know a great deal about the Tarot – and the Eight Immortals – and the thong games that the Arctic Folk may play only when the sun is above the horizon in their brief summer—”
In no time the two of them were chatting away like old friends, and he was addressing her as Auntie Tala’aa.
Limbo Lodge, seen from closer to, appeared large, low, and rambling. It was sited at the edge of the forest line, among clumps of clove and djeela trees, in a kind of wild garden. Over to the eastern boundary of this, the ground seemed to come to an abrupt stop: here, Dido guessed, was the Cliff of Death. It seemed to her a very odd thing to build one’s house within so short a distance of such an awesome spot.
Not a soul seemed to be stirring anywhere.
None of the group were aware of the dark figure that shadowed them among the trees.
A veranda skirted two sides of the house. Aunt Tala’aa led the way up a flight of steps on to the veranda. Looking in windows as they passed outside, Dido saw a games-room with a billiard table, punchball, dartsboard, and smaller tables marked for chess or chequers. Next door was a library lined with books, a lamp burning on a table, but this, like the games room, was silent and unoccupied.
Then, out of a door farther along, came Talisman, running, joyful, her face blazing with delight and triumph.
“Oh, I am so happy that you got here safely!” she cried. “Come in! come in! Have you had breakfast? No? Then come to the kitchen – my father will see you all later . . .”
Her brilliant smile embraced them all equally. She turned and led them along a wide passage to a room on the other side of the house whose large windows looked up the mountain to its craggy summit. This room was amazingly untidy, as if it had been occupied by a great number of people who had all left in a hurry without troubling to take anything with them Plates, bowls, baskets of fruit, loaves of bread lay about mixed with tennis rackets, footballs, fencing foils and hockey-sticks. There were also a great many notebooks: dozens and dozens of them, all sizes.
Talisman was putting a pot of water on the stove to make coffee, finding clean plates, chattering away.
“Would you believe it – my father knew me at once! It was so wonderful! After I climbed the cliff—”
Dido, filled with curiosity, peered inside some of the notebooks. Why keep notebooks in the kitchen? Why keep so many? She found they were all filled with handwriting and each one contained a curious one-sided dialogue. Each book had a name on it: ‘Jorge’, ‘Enrique’, ‘Tomas’, ‘Pepe’. Dido leafed through several of them. Then the solution came to her. Of course – John King was stone deaf. Each person who had any dealings with him carried a book and wrote down what he wanted to say.
Poor old cove, thought Dido, staring down at these one-sided conversations, each in a different handwriting, no wonder he went a bit queer in the attic and shut himself up in Limbo Lodge. Must have been like living inside of a barrel.
Dinner is served, Excellency. The deputation of fishermen is here with a sample of pearls. The barber is waiting to trim your beard. Do you wish to see the accused men? The tailor with a coat for a fitting. Senhor Manoel is here . . . Would your Excellency prefer guava or melon?
Then Dido picked up a book labelled Manoel. This one was different. Looking here and there, turning pages at random, Dido found Manoel’s side in a series of furious arguments, scribbled so violently that the writing sometimes dug into the paper: I cannot stand life here any longer. Please let me go to Europe again. Please let me go. I promise that I will not play for high stakes. I swear it! I think you are mad. A mad, bigoted tyrant! I am your own brother, I am worth more than this. Why do you not let me go away from here?
“Breakfast is served!” said Talisman. She had swept all the hugger-mugger of objects off a large table into a basket that looked as if it had held firewood, and had set out plates, bowls of fruit, loaves, and cups of coffee. They were all glad to pull up stools and sit down. Herodsfoot ate little (though he seemed to have recovered remarkably fast from his bullet wound); he could not take his eyes off Talisman. But the others were ravenous.
“Where have you been, Aunt Tala’aa?” asked Talisman, putting a bowl of tikkol fruit in front of the old lady. “When I saw the smoke come up the hillside near the Ghost House, then – for the first time – I was afraid. Really afraid. I could not find you in my mind. Where were you? Did you make that rain?”
“I was in ekarin. No, I did not make the rain.”
“What is ekarin?” murmured Dido to Yorka, who was sitting beside her, trying to feed the baby with goats’ milk, of which there was a supply in Limbo Lodge. Miria did not fancy goats’ milk at all and was demonstrating, with yells, that she would prefer djeela juice.
“Ekarin. That is when somebody goes away from this world for a time. The sun does it. He sets. The moon also. Gods do it. And Kanikke must do it too. They need to, to keep up their strength and knowledge and baraat.”
“I see.”
“No. The rain,” Aunt Tala’aa said, with the pride of a teacher whose pupil has done superlatively well, “the rain was made by Yorka here, who should grow up to be one of the most notable Kanikke that our island has ever produced. Indeed, she is one already.”
Yorka hung her head bashfully and stared at her plate.
“Dido helped me,” she muttered. “And so did Miria. It was her loud shrieks that really opened the sky.”
“We must find a first-class foster-mother for that baby,” said Aunt Tala’aa, smiling at Talisman, who looked as if she thought that would be an easy task.
“Talisman?” said Dido. “Tell us about your meeting with your old man. Was he surprised to see you?”
“It took what seemed like an eternity to climb the cliff,” said Talisman. “I cut steps as I went, with a knife that Aunt Tala’aa had given me. For I thought I might need to go back down that way if – if my father did not accept me. When I reached the top I was so tired that I crawled into a hollow among the bushes and went to sleep. Two of the guards found me there. They wanted to throw me over the cliff, but I – but I persuaded them not to . . . I said they should bring me to see John King, and, in the end, they did. When I was brought to him, I was going to show him my medallion, but there was no need. He said ‘Erato!’ and, and embraced me—” she dashed a tear from her eye, “and then he said, ‘Before your mother died, she and I were playing a game of chess. Now we can finish that game, you and I.’”
“But why,” said Dido, “did all his guards go off, climbing down the cliff?”
“That was my father’s idea. He said, ‘If Manoel chooses to come and besiege Limbo Lodge in this spiteful, stupid way, I shall play a trick on him. I shall send my guard round by sea to Regina. There I hope they can persuade the townspeople – the ones that are left – to a different way of thinking. I daresay the numbers will be about equal!”
“But what does your father plan to do himself? He can hardly stay here without food or servants,” said Herodsfoot.
“Oh, he has some plans,”
said Talisman. The radiant smile came back to her face. She went on: “The wonderful, the amazing thing is that his deafness is getting better. I am being able to cure it. A tincture made from the venom of pearl-snakes – is not that strange? – Aunt Tala’aa and I had talked of it, and I decided to try it on him – and, as a result, his hearing is coming back. Is not that wonderful? Often before I have felt satisfaction at a cure because my guess had been proved right – but I have never felt happiness like this before. If I can do this for him, what more can I not do to help him, what can we not achieve together? It can be the beginning of a better time for Aratu.”
Poor Frankie, thought Dido, looking at Herodsfoot’s face, I don’t reckon there’s much of a chance for you in among all that . . .
“But now,” said Talisman, “let me take you to meet my father. He is not strong enough, yet, to speak to you all; but I will introduce Lord Herodsfoot. And you three just step inside the door and greet him—”
Accordingly Dido, Tylo, and Yorka stayed in the rear of the group as Talisman led them along the wide passage to the door of a room that faced up towards the mountain crest.
Aunt Tala’aa remained in the kitchen feeding the baby. No doubt she was acquainted with John King already.
Talisman walked through the open door, with Herodsfoot behind her, and motioned to the others to stay where they were and come no farther.
They saw a large, spacious room, wildly cluttered, like the kitchen, with a collection of miscellaneous articles – astrolabes, carpenters’ tools, orreries, telescopes, musical instruments, chess sets, piles of books, tubes of paint and palettes. Halfway between the door and the large French window stood a great gold-and-silver four-poster bed. In this reclined an old man – a magnificent old man, wrapped in a black wool robe like that of a monk.
Croopus, thought Dido, he sure looks more like a real king than poor old King Jamie does. (She had seen King James III of England once, at a military display in St James’s Park and thought but poorly of him). John King’s bush of hair and beard were white, his eyes were deep-set and gleaming, a craggy brow was offset by a jaw like the bulwark of a galleon. It was the face of a clever and powerful man, yet not a cruel or mean one, thought Dido; he knows his own mind, that’s all. But how much heed does he pay to other folks’ minds?