Lark (Sally Watson Family Tree Series)

by Sally Watson

  Will-of-God had never tolerated any kind of back talk from anyone smaller than himself. His arm automatically lifted. James’s own arm shot out even faster, and he took a firm hold of Will’s wrist. He smiled and shook his head gently, very thankful that he had acted in time, because if Will had struck Lark, James would have reduced him to very small pieces in short order, and regardless of consequences. It was true that Lark needed her ears boxed, but James strongly felt that he was the one to attend to it. And in any case, it wouldn’t be for impudence to her cousin.

  “Tut-tut!” he murmured reprovingly, while Will stared with open mouth, and the other two soldiers peered with furrowed brows over his shoulders. “You must never strike or scold anyone with wandering wits,” chided James solemnly. “It could have quite awful effects.”

  Will began to frown heavily, and James called upon his imagination. “You see,” he explained with an air of great knowledge, “I just happen to know rather a lot about these cases. My father,” he added impressively, “is the Dr. Theophilus Thornybramble.”

  Lark giggled. Fortunately this was put down to her madness and no one paid any attention. Will and the two heads over his shoulders were looking both blank and awed. They had never heard of Dr. Theophilus Thorny-bramble, of course, since James had just finished inventing him, but it was clear to them that they ought to have heard of him, and that only the most shocking ignoramus could fail to recognize the name instantly. No one wanted to admit to such ignorance, so they all nodded and looked impressed.

  “You’ve heard, of course, of the important work he has done in this field,” James went on, beginning rather to enjoy himself in spite of the danger. At least he now had his feet on the ground, with no doubt at all of where his duty lay. Moreover, here was a battle he could fight with his favorite weapon—his wits.

  He flickered his eyes ever so slightly at Lark, who winked back at him and then crossed her eyes at Will-of-God and began to gnaw at the middle of one braid as if it were a bone.

  “You see,” said James, “such attacks of madness can be caused by a melancholia or sometimes a demon, which seizes upon the outer layer of brain. The soul immediately sets up a barrier to keep it from going any further, and if the victim is treated with great kindness, this barrier can strengthen and move outwards, thus displacing the demon or melancholia in time. But any kind of ill treatment can cause the barrier to collapse like the outer wall of a castle, leaving the citadel at the mercy of the attacker. And on occasion,” he finished ominously, “the soul has no time to escape, and is trapped.”

  “Bang, bang,” remarked Lark, nodding briskly.

  The head over Will’s left shoulder blinked and retreated an inch. The eyes over his right shoulder rounded even more. But Will-of-God, although most impressed with such learned discourse, was not distracted from his purpose. “I won’t hit her if she’s polite,” he conceded grudgingly. “Now let’s take her to Captain Dove.”

  James, who still had no very clear idea of his plan of attack, agreed for lack of a better idea. The small procession marched up the hill and down the other side, with Will and James on either side of Lark and the two soldiers trailing along behind.

  Captain Dove had been at the top of the castle, helping plan for battle—just in case the coming one should take place here. It worried him, particularly since he was responsible to Colonel Talbot, and he was not in the least pleased at being called down by the colonel’s dull-skulled son and presented with the sort of problem that he just was not prepared to face. None of his training had given him the least notion of what to do with a girl child who had lost her wits, particularly if she happened to be the future daughter-in-law of his own superior officer.

  He glowered heavily at the group before him, and looked around the gloomy stone walls for inspiration. There was none there. He looked at Lark, who stuck out her tongue at him. It gave her great satisfaction to be as impudent as she liked to the Roundheads, and get away with it. She put her tongue back in and made a horrible face. Captain Dove looked away again hastily.

  “Well, what do you expect me to do with her?” he inquired irritably.

  Will-of-God indicated that he didn’t know, and implied that it was now the captain’s responsibility. The captain almost swore, remembered himself just in time, and seethed quietly for a moment.

  “Do you want leave to take her back home or to Bedlam or somewhere?” he asked with heavy restraint.

  “Oh, no!” objected Will, who had been very much looking forward to his first battle. “Can’t we just lock her up until Father comes back?”

  “Now where,” asked Captain Dove, “do you think I could keep her? In one of the dungeons?”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Will vaguely.

  The captain, looking shocked, demanded whether Will had ever seen one of the dungeons, and whether he really wanted his future bride put there. Will-of-God looked highly uncomfortable, but more at the thought of his marriage than the dungeons. James cleared his throat modestly.

  “If you’ll forgive me, sir?” he suggested, and they all looked at him.

  “Who are you?” Captain Dove asked guardedly.

  “Oh, he’s the son of the famous—uh—Dr. Thruthlethwaite,” put in one of the Roundhead soldiers.

  Captain Dove stared from under shaggy eyebrows. “Who?”

  “Horatio Thornybramble, son of Dr. Theophilus Thornybramble, at your service, sir,” said James, bowing. “I see that you are a man of intellect, and I should be happy to put my own limited knowledge at your disposal.”

  The captain regarded him doubtfully. “Who?” he repeated, being a man who was not in the least embarrassed about his own abysmal ignorance. “Never heard of the fellow.”

  James was by now prepared for this. One could not expect a bluff to work indefinitely. “Your profession is in quite a different field, of course,” he murmured politely. “However, if you should ever care to consult the Calvin Academy of Mental Infirmaties in Geneva, or the Martin Luther College for Study of Divine and Malignant Affliction in Stockholm, I think you would find my father’s name well known and greatly admired.”

  Captain Dove knew nothing (fortunately) about such intellectual subjects, but he did know the names Luther and Calvin, which was precisely what James had counted on. He looked considerably friendlier, and permitted James to repeat his little speech about madness, with improvements.

  “Ha—hmm,” he remarked at last, remembering that his time was valuable. He really had no interest at all in Will-of-God or his unfortunate future bride, but he had considerable interest in avoiding the wrath of Colonel Talbot. “Well, Master Thornycroft, and what would you suggest?” he asked.

  “Thornybramble,” corrected James gravely. “I should suggest, sir, that as you so astutely point out, a garrison—particularly if it may soon be involved in a battle—is no place for the child. However, I happen to be staying at the Word-of-God Inn at the top of the town. The proprietress is a fine, godly woman, as you no doubt know, and I dare say she would be willing to take charge of the poor little creature temporarily. In addition, I would even be willing to try to effect a cure—although it may be that my skill is not equal to it, and she should be taken to my father.”

  Captain Dove looked relieved. Will-of-God did not. “Who would pay for the room?” he asked. “I don’t think anyone ought to meddle with Elizabeth until Father gets back, except me, of course. I’m her cousin, you know.”

  “You are not my cousin!” shouted Lark, deciding it was time for her to make another contribution. “I don’t like that man!” she told the captain confidingly. “If I have to see him again, I shall scream and scream.”

  “Elizabeth!” bleated Will-of-God, very much mortified.

  “Oh, for—” Captain Dove swallowed some words which General Cromwell would most certainly not have approved. He restrained himself from telling Lark that she showed remarkably good sense, mad or not, and that he might scream and scream himself, if he had to see much more of Co
lonel Talbot’s pimply son. He breathed deeply. “I can’t stand here all day with this,” he said finally, through his teeth. “Take her up to the inn, for the love of heaven. I’ll stand the bill if necessary. And you get right back here, Private Talbot. You’re not on leave, you know.”

  Half an hour later Lark was securely locked in a small room near the top of the inn, with a short chain on the casement window. James was down in the kitchen fuming, and Will-of-God was back at the castle, presumably. James wished him in a much warmer place. All had gone so well, he growled, pacing the kitchen, until that wretched knothead had insisted on keeping the key to Lark’s room himself!

  James groaned.

  12

  The Prisoner

  “It’s idiotic not to have another key!” said James. “Any inn has got to have extra keys!”

  Doll shrugged and went on kneading dough in what James considered a heartless manner. He sat down at the white-scrubbed table and regarded her with disfavor. Why on earth had she permitted Lark to be locked in that room if it only had one key? It was hard to believe that she could be so careless. Surely she couldn’t be a Roundhead spy? No, that was quite impossible. But why was she so unconcerned about Lark?

  “Well, what are we going to do?” he demanded hotly. “How are we going to get her out? What if the inn should burn down?” (He had also asked this of Will-of-God, who had merely looked blank and pointed out that it never had burned down, so why should it now?) “Do something, Doll!”

  Doll punched the dough vigorously and looked calm. “Don’t be such a hothead, James Trelawney. Your little friend is safe enough for the time being, and how safe do you think anyone would be if her Roundhead relations find her gone? For that matter, where do you think you could take her?”

  “I—” began James, and paused, because he hadn’t got quite that far yet in his plans.

  “Why not leave well enough alone for a few days?” Doll went on. “Don’t forget, King Charles and his army may be passing by here any day now, and you’ll need to be free to join him; and then there’s bound to be a battle soon, and everything may settle itself.”

  James’s mind had to admit that there was some sense in this, but again his feelings were stronger. Besides, he was getting a very irritating feeling that everyone was trying to run his life and make his decisions for him. As a result, he didn’t feel like taking anyone’s advice, however sensible.

  Not being able to say all this to Doll, he scowled. “It’s a terrible idea,” he told her perversely. “Besides, you can’t keep a little girl locked up like that; it isn’t decent.”

  Doll looked at him oddly and hardened her face. “Well, she is locked in,” she pointed out unanswerably. “Besides, even if we could let her out, she’d probably just run away again, and—” Doll wisely broke off her sentence just there and let James complete it in his mind for himself.

  James was silent, having no difficulty at all in completing the thought. It was quite true that Lark was not exactly the hapless angel-in-distress of romantic tales, but a lively and independent girl, to say the least of it. Still, he couldn’t just abandon her, although Doll seemed almost to think he should.

  He looked at her stolid face, single-purposed and stern. Doll never was tormented by divided loyalties, choices of wrongs. She gave her loyalty simply and unquestioningly, would sacrifice herself or anyone else for the king’s cause. James had never met a person of such iron purpose, and it shook him. He covered his eyes with his hand. The question of this morning swept over him. What was right? Was he weak and disloyal, that he couldn’t accept things without question?

  Doll pressed her advantage. “You’re a young idealist, and not very practical,” she said kindly. “You can’t see the forest for the trees. What does one tree more or less matter? It’s the good of the forest that counts.”

  James considered this warily. It sounded sensible, but he didn’t trust it. “No!” he said suddenly. “There’s a great big hole in your logic, Doll!”

  Doll, being a tidy housekeeper, looked distressed at the very idea of a hole.

  “The forest is trees,” said James firmly. “They all matter. Human beings matter even more. Surely that’s what life is all about? Didn’t Jesus keep saying over and over that we must care about people? All people!”

  Doll began slapping her dough into pans for rising. “Jesus didn’t have Cromwell to worry about,” she pointed out. “Where would we be if we went around turning the other cheek? Sometimes we have to sacrifice a few people for the good of all. It’s the goal that counts, no matter how you get there.”

  James shook his head, and pushed his chair back suddenly, so that it grated harshly against the stone flags. He went over and stared into the fire for a few minutes. Then he shook his head again.

  “No good,” he said. “You’re saying we sometimes have to do evil to achieve good, but it doesn’t work. That’s Cromwell’s excuse for butchering helpless women and children in Ireland. That’s the excuse men have always made for doing the most ghastly cruel things. You can’t use black paint and expect to paint a wall white with it!” James turned around and looked at Doll pleadingly. “We can’t ever be sure that our actions will have good results, we can only do things that we hope will come out right—so it’s really what we do that’s important. And you can’t do evil to get good, because it will turn out evil; can’t you see that, Doll? . . . And none of this,” he added vehemently, “is helping Lark!”

  Doll shook her head. She couldn’t see his point at all. “Nor the King,” she said. “Talk talk talk—but what he needs is men to fight for him, not fuss about whether it’s right.”

  They looked at each other, stalemated.

  Upstairs in her small prison, Lark was beginning to feel less cheerful again. She had assumed that James would come let her out the minute Will-of-God left, and they would set off immediately for some safer place, like Devon. But it must surely be nearly an hour now since Will had stumped off, and where was James? What could have happened?

  Lark had managed to think of at least twenty terrible possibilities before she finally heard his footsteps up the creaky steep stairs. She flew to the door, expecting to hear a key turn in the lock, but instead there was a cautious tap, and then James’s voice in the large empty keyhole.

  “Lark? Are you all right?”

  “Of course!” Lark cried. “Are you all right? What happened? Let me out!”

  “Shhh. I can’t. Speak softly, Lark; there are Roundheads staying here, remember. Lark, Will took the only key away with him.”

  There was a short silence while Lark digested this. “Can’t you get me out any other way?” she asked, her voice rising a little with alarm. “What about the window? James—”

  “Shhh!” said James again. “Listen, Lark, it isn’t going to be as easy as that. For one thing, where do we go when we get you out? We can’t just walk out the town gate past the castle and garrison, and I don’t know a good hiding place in Shrewsbury yet.”

  Lark’s heart sank, but not too far, for James was there. “Aren’t there any other Royalists in town?” she asked practically.

  “Oh, yes,” James agreed, thanking heaven that Lark was being sensible. “I’ll find something eventually. But in the meantime, the safest thing is to leave you here.”

  “But what about Uncle Jeremiah?” Lark’s voice broke into a squeak of alarm.

  “I know.” James sounded altogether too calm for Lark’s liking. “I’ve been thinking about that, too. But I don’t think he can do anything much when he does come; not right away, anyhow. After all, he won’t have much time, with armies heading this way. I doubt if he’ll even take you away from here, Lark. Where else could he put you?”

  “With some Roundhead friend in town,” suggested Lark promptly and unhappily.

  James shifted his position slightly, for the keyhole was at an awkward height. “That’s what they think Doll is,” he reminded her. “It should seem quite logical just to leave you here.” />
  There was a stricken silence from inside the room, while Lark contemplated the wreckage of what only yesterday had seemed a fairly rosy future. Now she was locked in a small room whose walls kept threatening to close in on her. Uncle Jeremiah loomed ominously in the near future—and, worst of all, James was beginning to sound like Doll! No doubt he was still perfectly determined to run off and meet a gory death in battle too. Lark shivered. Even the thought of having to face Uncle Jeremiah—though it made her very bones go wobbly with dismay—paled beside James’s danger. And it seemed she was helpless to prevent it.

  Then Lark pulled herself together. She must somehow contrive to save them both, since James seemed to have no intention of doing so. In a way, this was all her own fault, for being so stupid earlier today. If she hadn’t run off in a huff, she might never have run into Will-of-God at all. And of course flying into a temper with James had been the worst way in the world to persuade him of anything, however much it was for his own good. Grandmother had told her that many a time. Now it was going to be excessively difficult to win him over to her viewpoint. It never occurred to Lark that perhaps it was none of her business, much less that she might be wrong. She wished only good for her James, and she was perfectly certain that she knew best how he should attain it.

  With this in mind, Lark took herself in hand. Courage and a cool head were needed. And tact, for James must not know he was being managed, men being quite peculiar about things like that. She sternly subdued the panic that gripped her at the very thought of her uncle, and controlled a strong desire to bleat at James through the keyhole. She marshaled her wits.

  “Lark?” James’s voice sounded a trifle worried at the prolonged silence.

  Lark swallowed hard. “Yes, James,” she managed in a voice intended to be calm and brave, but which sounded small and forlorn. “Whatever you say, James.”