by Sally Watson
“But he doesn’t mind having his son arrested?” the major managed to demand sarcastically. He had just about decided that the lady’s wits were addled.
“Oh, that!” She fluttered her hand at him. “You see, that’s simply a silly mistake. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault; probably a general or someone. I’ve noticed that very often the most important men are the most muddle-headed, don’t you think? At any rate, I can’t possibly think why anyone should want to arrest my Jamikins. For one thing he’s only a boy, and for another he isn’t even here. He’s way off in Kent, visiting his grandmama, and has been all summer. Why do they say they want to arrest him, by the way?”
The major was having some difficulty keeping his mind on the subject. “For treason, madam,” he said stiffly. “Aiding and abetting one Charles Stewart.”
“Oh, now, isn’t that silly?” Lady Trelawney laughed. “They have the wrong person altogether, of course. You had better go back and tell them—”
“Sorry, ma’am,” interrupted the major, confused but deeply suspicious. “I have my orders, and if you don’t produce your son at once, I must search the house. As you see, he can’t possibly get away with my men surrounding the house, so there’s no point in wasting my time any longer.”
Lady Trelawney frowned at him. “You know,” she decided, “I don’t believe I care at all for your manners. Search the house, indeed! Why, you weren’t even invited here. And as for wasting time, it’s quite the other way round. It is you who are interrupting me, and if you had any idea how much there is to do—”
At this point there was the sound of a door opening in the hall behind Gaston, and a muffled bellow which indicated that Sir William had been listening carefully and was determined to live up to the reputation his wife had given him.
“What in thunderation—Gaston! Katherine! Am I never to be allowed a moment of peace? What in blazes is all that noise?”
“You see?” Lady Trelawney looked reproachfully at the major and turned to call past Gaston in soothing tones. “Don’t bother, dear; it’s quite all right. Merely a silly muddle about wanting to arrest little Jamie for treason, but I’m explaining to the man that it’s all a mistake.”
“It is not a mistake!” interrupted the major hastily and loudly. He felt that he would much prefer even an infuriated Sir William to his idiotic wife. “I have a warrant, and I warn you that I shall be obliged to search your house if you don’t produce James Trelawney.”
Sir William suddenly appeared in the doorway, looking so choleric that the major almost changed his mind, and even the pokerfaced Gaston looked surprised. “What? What? Stuff and nonsense! Never heard such lunacy!” He scowled at the major, who backed up one step, recovered, and waved his warrant in Sir William’s face. Sir William grabbed it, read it, appeared about to choke, and shoved it aside.
“Lunacy!” he repeated. “Boy’s not even here. Hasn’t been for months. Sent him away out of trouble. Gross inefficiency!” He glared at the officer, who glared back, determined not to give in an inch.
“You see, you’ve annoyed him!” cried Lady Trelawney accusingly. “William, dear, why not just let them go on and search, so they can go away again? Although I do think it very bad manners to go poking around in people’s private homes, and I shall be most offended if you damage anything or let your soldiers go into my wardrobe. What do you think, William?”
Sir William grunted disagreeably. “Oh, very well; hurry and get it over. I trust the two of you are capable of it without turning your whole army loose in my house? And mind, I shall be behind you every minute, so you need not try to filch anything.”
The major flushed hotly, controlled himself, and followed a stiffly disapproving Gaston through the lower part of the house. In any other Royalist house, he would have left a swath of destruction behind. It was a matter of principle among many Parliament soldiers to smash breakables, slash portraits and hangings, and generally destroy as much as possible. Unfortunately, this pleasure was denied the major in this particular house, for he had been ordered not to damage anything. It seemed that one Nathaniel Beveys, a friend of General Cromwell himself, had expressed a wish for this estate once things were settled down a little, and he wanted it in good condition. The major fumed silently, but didn’t dare put his sword through so much as a single chair.
They paused in the kitchen. The major questioned the blank-faced Joan while his trooper looked under tables and in tubs and up the fireplace. Joan was of no help at all. She said the young master was away, and she minded it were in late spring he left, about cherry blooming time, or just after, and she couldn’t rightly mind where he’d went, but he’d forgot his new blue coat, and a pity that was, too.
Feeling more and more out of temper, the major continued to follow Gaston along the hall, up the stairs, and, with a glance out the windows to make sure his men were still at their posts, he began on the upstairs rooms. He was beginning to have a sour suspicion that this trip was not going to be at all successful, but he certainly was not going to give up without covering every inch of ground, even to the point of searching Lady Trelawney’s wardrobe. Yes, definitely he would do that: it would infuriate her.
But he didn’t get quite that far, after all. It was from under the massive four-poster bed in the large bedroom that his trooper flushed the quarry. There was a muffled squeak, a scuffling sound, and then a yelp from the soldier, who backed out nursing a bit finger.
“Mercy!” said Lady Trelawney, looking deeply interested.
“Come out this instant!” the major called under the bed. “Do you hear? If you don’t, I shall shoot.”
“I should consider that excessively ill-mannered,” declared Lady Trelawney decidedly.
Nobody paid any attention to her. There was a shuffling sound from beneath the bed. After a moment, on the far side, two apparitions arose, slowly, side by side.
They really looked most startling against the clean and austere richness of the bedroom. Their hair was tangled wildly, the dirt on their skins and clothing showed up admirably, and they wore expressions of guilty cheekiness borrowed directly from Bracken. Moreover, Lark was wearing one of Lady Trelawney’s lace collars over her own gaudy beads and trying to hide a handful of satin ribbands; while James clutched a pair of silver shoe buckles.
There was quite a long silence.
“My best shoe buckles!” said Sir William at last in a strangled voice.
James looked sheepish, but only slightly.
“I am extremely tired,” Lady Trelawney announced in plaintive tones, “of having people come into my home without being invited. I do wish you would all go away—and leave our property behind when you go. What are you naughty children doing here, anyway?” she added quite unnecessarily.
Lark smiled at her shamelessly. “Read your palm, Lady?” she suggested in Willow’s best manner and accent. “I will tell you a very good fortune.”
“How can you do that?” demanded Lady Trelawney, momentarily sidetracked. “If you read the lines on my palm, I mean, and the future is already set, how can you know before you look whether it will be good or simply dreadful?”
“Oh, I can tell—” began Lark, but Sir William began to rumble ominously, and his wife hastily waved her hands at the Gypsies.
“Never mind that now,” she said. “You are very naughty, and we are most displeased.” She frowned at them. “When we gave your people permission to camp in our meadow, we never for one minute intended that you should come sneaking into our house and steal our things. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
James and Lark contrived to look nothing of the sort; only slightly inconvenienced at having been caught.
Lady Trelawney blinked at them and turned to her husband. “William, do you think they entirely understand about Good and Evil?”
“I should consider it highly doubtful,” replied Sir William, looking grim. He was clearly working up to a simply deafening explosion. One could almost begin to see the black smoke escap
ing from his nose and mouth.
No one had been paying the slightest attention to the Roundheads for several minutes now, and it began to occur to the major that the situation was rapidly escaping from his hands—if indeed it had ever been there at all.
He cleared his throat. It was intended to be a masterful sound, but it somehow came out a trifle tentative. He tried again with better results. Everyone turned and looked at him, and he began to wish that he felt more sure of his ground, especially with Sir William glowering like that from beneath what could only be described as beetled brows.
“Are you James Trelawney?” he demanded of James, and immediately felt extremely foolish. Even his trooper looked at him as if he had lost his wits. James and Lark regarded him with pitying curiosity, and then turned their attention back to Sir William, who was now turning a most unwholesome shade of red.
“Oh, dear!” Lady Trelawney looked at the major impatiently. “Major, do please try not to be so silly! Can’t you see how vexed he’s getting? William, my love, don’t you think we should send these very dirty young persons back to their camp? And I think Hal should go along to see that they go straight there, and also to tell the Gypsies that if this sort of thing happens again, we shall be very seriously displeased.”
“No!” growled Sir William. “Not Hal. I’ll escort them back myself.” He looked pleased with the prospect. “Come along!”
The major asserted himself. “I’m going to finish searching!” he declared loudly.
Sir William turned and looked at him. He smiled. The major didn’t at all like the smile.
“Yes, by heaven, you are!” agreed Sir William softly. “You are going to search every inch of this house, my good fellow, and I shall personally make sure you do a good job of it. Gaston, kindly stay here with these young rogues until I am ready to take them back to their camp. Major, be kind enough to come with me. We are about to search, Major.” And he led the way out of the room, with the soldiers behind him and Lady Trelawney bringing up the rear, calling to him to please remember his heart.
The instant the door was safely shut, with the impassive Gaston standing guard just outside, Lark sank on her knees and buried her face in the bedclothes to muffle her giggles. “Oh, James!” she whispered as he dropped down beside her, “Your parents are wonderful! I adore them both, and your mother was so funny I could scarcely keep from laughing!”
James grinned, quite at ease now that his father had things well in hand. “Actually,” he murmured, “Mother’s a born comic, so I’ve no doubt it was quite easy for her. But you know Father is the mildest-tempered man in the world.” He shook his head in admiration of his father’s dramatic ability. “I’d like to invite you to sit in a comfortable chair, Lark, but . . .” He looked at the fine tapestried padding on his mother’s favorite chair sadly, and then at Lark’s garments.
“Another time.” Lark cocked her head at James and settled herself comfortably on a plain wooden chair beside the wardrobe chest. “I wonder how that poor Roundhead is getting along.”
The poor Roundhead was getting along very miserably indeed. He was, as promised, being given a very thorough search. Sir William stood over him and saw to it that every chest, box, drawer, window seat, and corner in every room was gone into.
“Behind the hangings, there,” ordered Sir William. “You forgot to look under that cushion. Joan, empty that sewing box for the major.”
It was not at all the sort of search the major had visualized. He was not used to such high-handed enthusiasm from people whose homes were being searched. But there was not a thing he could do about it except fume silently. He finished with a sense of great relief, left two of his soldiers there to keep an eye on things, and led the rest of them back to headquarters feeling sullen and altogether frustrated.
20
The Way to France
A short time later Sir William Trelawney and his wife marched with purpose and majesty from their front door, followed by Gaston herding two disreputable Gypsies in front of him. The two Parliament soldiers on guard looked at the procession and each other doubtfully; then one of them followed discreetly behind while the other kept watch over the house.
The procession, still with immense dignity—or at least the first portion of it—strode straight to the south meadow where the Gypsies were camped. There Sir William exchanged a few words with Psammis and Sheba which the trailing Roundhead could not hear, but which looked to him like an approaching storm.
After that, Psammis, Sheba, and the procession vanished into the yellow wagon, leaving the Roundhead nothing to look at but Neco sitting carelessly on the steps and a sudden swarm of Gypsy children who were making as much noise as possible. Led by a demon of a small boy, they raced and shrieked around the yellow wagon so that only now and then could the Roundhead hear roars of rage from inside. But he did not altogether like the looks that the Gypsies were giving him, so he withdrew to the edge of the meadow. After all, he pointed out to himself, an argument between an ungodly Royalist and an even more ungodly Gypsy was hardly important to General Cromwell.
Lark sat on the floor inside the wagon next to James, leaving what seats there were to his parents. She had been considerably upset to hear that the Roundheads really meant to arrest and hang James if they could only lay their hands on him. She was glad that the grownups had enough sense not to fuss about unimportant details such as class barriers or dirt, but got straight to the heart of the matter, which was to get James safely out of England as quickly as possible.
“I’m afraid we must call on your further kindness,” said Sir William to Psammis. “It seems clear that they must remain Gypsies for a while longer.”
Psammis did not look overjoyed at this, for even though he understood that Sir William’s gratitude would be great and tangible and probably of gold, there was more danger to the tribe now, with a warrant out for James. But Sheba gave him no time to object.
“Yes!” she said firmly, speaking to Lady Trelawney in particular. “For if you first gave life to your son, I gave it to him again, and share motherhood with you. Moreover,” she added, “I foresee that you will be with him again soon, but it will be many years for me, so it is fair that I keep him now.”
“Well, if it comes to that,” James murmured into Lark’s ear, “you saved my life too, you know; probably twice.”
“I am not going to think of myself as your mother!” retorted Lark with great firmness, and James choked slightly.
Lady Trelawney was nodding sadly to Sheba. “Yes,” she said. “You can help him now, and we cannot. I suppose we dare not even see him again before he leaves, for there is certain to be some crop-headed, psalm-chanting trooper at our heels from now on.”
“And very unsettling you’ll make it for them, too, my dear,” added her husband cheerfully. “However, I fear we shan’t be able to help James get transportation to France now, without endangering all of you and anyone else we contacted. . . .” He sat for a moment, frowning at nothing, while he concentrated.
“Never mind, Father; I can do that better than you, anyway,” announced James. “I know nearly every Royalist in Devon, I dare say. And I’m already on the track of a man who comes over here quite often just to find people like me to spirit away from under Roundhead noses. And I fancy we could risk letting Bracken drop by the house quite often, Mother, to pass on any news and let you know when and where we’ve gone.”
“We?” echoed Lady Trelawney, looking at Lark. “James, I really don’t think you should try to take Lark! Why, you’ve already dragged that poor, delicately nurtured child (James hooted at this description, and Lark pinched him) over half of England, and now you’re proposing to take her into a foreign country, not particularly civilized in some ways, I gather, just on the chance that her parents might be there somewhere. It’s bad enough for you to go off that way, my dear; I really think it would be much better to leave Lark with us until we can join you.”
“Join me?” echoed James, holding Lark’s
hand possessively, but momentarily distracted.
“Certainly,” said his father. “You don’t think we’d let you go off into indefinite exile alone, do you? We’ll be along as soon as we can arrange our affairs here.”
“But the house! Fairlawn!” protested James.
“That’s all arranged,” Sir William answered, looking faintly smug. “Your mother’s cousin Nathaniel Beveys put in his request for it to Cromwell himself, and it’s been granted him to take over at his pleasure. Nathaniel’s a fine man, even though I consider him to have taken his loyalty to the wrong side, and he’s very fond of your mother. All we need do is let him know we’re leaving, and he’ll take care of it for us until such a time as we may be able to return.”
“Oh,” said James in great relief, and turned his attention back to the problem of Lark. “I can’t leave her behind,” he discovered with satisfaction. “It would be too dangerous. People might ask questions, or her uncle might find her.”
“Anyhow,” added Lark, looking conceited, “he needs me. He’s safer when I’m around.”
Lady Trelawney surrendered without another word. Then there were a few details like money and how to exchange messages to settle, and after that it was high time for half the procession to go back.
Psammis and Sir William suddenly remembered to shout and roar at each other again, but this time on a friendlier note, to indicate to the audience that a truce was being reached. Lady Trelawney, keeping her feelings admirably under control, kissed James and Lark lightly. “God bless you both and keep you safe, my dears,” she said. And the conference emerged from the yellow wagon with an air of much dignity and rather cautious good will.
For the next two days, the Gypsies scattered around the countryside, the men with their tinkering tools, the girls and women to tell fortunes. James and Lark also roamed around, but with a more direct purpose. It was not to be expected that the Gypsies would learn anything helpful except by accident, since the Romany and the Gorgio were not in the habit of confiding in each other on matters of life and death.