by Joan Aiken
"Hang on, Dora—I'll get you!" shouted Dido, who was not far off. She flung herself over the rail and slid down the anchor cable. Grabbing El Dorado round the chest, she hugged the cat against her and began to work her way upward again—no easy matter, as the frantic Dora bit, struggled, squalled, squirmed, and did all in her power to hinder the rescue. Luckily, a couple of midshipmen had witnessed the incident and leaned over to take the cat from Dido; Dora was a general favorite with all the crew except Silver Taffy because of her prowess as a mouser.
"Thankee, Mr. Multiple," panted Dido, scrambling back over the rail. "Dang it, ain't she a Tartar, though! Reckon my face looks like Blackheath Pond after a week's skating!" and she wiped the blood from her eyes.
"It just about does, Miss Dido," said the red-haired Mr. Multiple with a grin. "You'd best take puss below and get Mr. Holystone to bathe those scritches. That was a right nimble job you did there, miss—anyone'd think you'd spent your life at sea."
"Well, I justabout have," said Dido. "Here, Dora, you'd best come along of me. Seems you ain't welcome on deck."
With a darkling glance at Silver Taffy she picked up El Dorado—who had resumed her usual calm and was haughtily putting her ruffled copper fur to rights—and carried the cat below.
"What in the world have you been at, child?" exclaimed Mr. Holystone. "Captain Hughes will hardly think you fit to attend the queen's court if he sees you like that. Here—" and he anointed Dido's countenance with a most evil-smelling paste of shark's liver and seaweed, ordering her to lie in her bunk for three hours, and meanwhile occupy the times usefully by reciting a litany that went:
We clean three tweed beads a week with Maltese seaweed;
Lady Jane Grey, pray do not stray to Mandalay on market day.
Dido found this very unfair. She flung herself crossly on her bunk.
"We clean three tweed beads a week ... Oh, butter my brogans, what rubbish!"
Luckily, before she had time to become too annoyed, Dido fell fast asleep; the cockroaches had been particularly troublesome the previous night, rustling around with a noise like toast crumbs being shaken inside a paper bag; they had kept her awake for hours.
When she next woke, evening had come; the air was cooler and the light was dim. Yawning, she rolled off her bunk—the weight that had settled on her chest proved to be El Dorado—and went up on deck with the cat for a breath of fresh air, keeping a wary eye out for Silver Taffy.
She found Mr. Holystone on the foredeck, scraping mussels, which he took from a wicker hamper and dropped, when clean, into a cauldron. Dido squatted down to help him, and he exclaimed with satisfaction on the healing work already accomplished by the shark paste.
"Miss Dido," he went on in a lower tone, "I cannot sufficiently express my obligation to you for saving my poor Dora from that ruffian. Young Multiple told me the whole while you were asleep. I had thought you must have been teasing Dora—I might have known I was wrong."
Dido kindly forgave his unjust suspicions. "Anyhows, if you thought I'd been pulling Dora's tail, Mr. Holy, it was right kind of you to doctor me. But why is that Silver Taffy so down on poor Dora?"
"When we were at Nombre de Dios a fortune-teller came along the dock, telling fortunes by dropping a spoonful of soot into people's hands. She told Taffy that the lines in his hand foretold that a cat would be the end of him. He is a very superstitious fellow," said Mr. Holystone, shrugging.
"No wonder he's so tarnal mean to Dora. I'm surprised you let her up on deck."
"Oh, she can usually look after herself. The El Dorado cats have a superior degree of intelligence."
"Are there others like her, then?"
"Indeed yes. Where I come from in Hy Brasil and in Lyonesse such cats are not uncommon."
"With such long tails?"
"Many longer still. They can swing on trees as nimbly as any ape. I have heard it said that there were such cats in the lost garden where our forefathers walked with the gods."
"Fancy!" said Dido. Looking thoughtfully at Mr. Holystone, she asked, after a moment, "Is it a nice place, that land of Hy Brasil? Where you come from?"
A cloud appeared to pass over the steward's brow. He began to say something, checked himself, and, after a moment, merely remarked, "Yes; it is a pleasant place." Then he stood up, easily lifting the heavy cauldron of cleaned mussels.
"Captain Hughes has invited the British agent to dinner. See, there is the pinnace, putting out to fetch him. Bring down the basket, Miss Dido, if you will be so kind."
Mr. Brandywinde, the British agent, proved, when he came on board, to be a blotchy-faced, wandering-eyed, seedy-looking individual. He wore a tricorne hat, snuffcolored suit, silver-buckled shoes; his sandy, thinning hair was dressed in a style long out of date, tied at the back with a small grosgrain bow. Dido, peering through the galley doorway as he passed, thought how untrustworthy he looked, and she guessed that Captain Hughes felt the same, for his voice, when he greeted Brandywinde, was noticeably quiet and dry.
"Claret, sir, or ship's grog—or would you care for a cup of tea?"
"Grog, sir—grog will do capitally, thankee, Captain," Mr. Brandywinde replied, in a tone that was both eager and creaking, like a rusty handle cranked at an uneven rate. "Grog, now, is excellent, if it is well mixed—on shore, I must tell you, we combine it with a little orock—cane spirit, you know! Then, if at the same time you smoke a pipe or two of abaca—hangman's weed, that is—why, you could believe yourself a veritable pasha. I believe even the White Queen herself—"
Then the captain's door was shut, and the two voices died to a murmur.
"Jemima!" said Dido. "What a havey-cavey cove. He looks as if he'd sell his own ma for cats' meat. Don't you think so, Mr. Holy?"
"Very likely his life is a lonely one," said Mr. Holystone guardedly. "The port of Tenby is a small place, cut off by a great forest from the interior, and the capital."
"What's the forest called?"
"Broceliande."
"So how do we get through? If we're going to Bath to see the queen?"
"By boat. Tenby lies at the mouth of a great river, the Severn. It is the captain's intention to hire a boat and travel by water."
Dido was rather disappointed. Having been at sea for most of the last eighteen months, she had hoped for a spell on land. But Mr. Holystone assured her that there would be plenty of that. Halfway along its course the Severn River was interrupted by a formidable series of cataracts dashing down from the Andes Mountains in the west of New Cumbria; these falls were not navigable, and so the party must take to land at that point.
The captain's bell rang, and Mr. Holystone went off to remove the bowls of mussel shells and replace them with fresh mutton and hearts of palm, brought out from shore in the pinnace. Dido, busy decorating a chocolate cake with babassu nuts, judged from the voices coming through the door that Mr. Brandywinde was becoming garrulous from drink and the unaccustomed company.
"You ask what the queen is like? The White Queen? My dear sir, she's rum. Rum as they come. How do you do, sir, what's your game? Rum, Rum, Rumplestiltskin is my name," he caroled. "The White Queen, they call her. Because of her hair, you know. Et cetera, et cetera. Sits at her embroidery all day long. Says she's waiting. Waiting for what? you ask. And may well ask! But as to that, mum's the word. Both rum and mum. Her Royal Mercy ain't confidential."
"If the queen is so unapproachable," persisted Captain Hughes, "does she have reliable ministers, advisers round her, to whom one may apply?"
"Oh, ay, there are some villainous-looking old scalawags with beards down to their shins—the vicar general, the grand inquisitor, the accuser, the advocate of the queen's tribunal—each more slippery than the next, if you ask me. Besides them there is the queen's jester—or soothsayer, if you prefer the term—"
"Soothsayer? What is he?" demanded the captain in a tone of disgust.
But before Dido could catch the answer, Mr. Holystone emerged with a trayload of plates, and the door was cl
osed.
During the rest of dinner it remained shut, and no more of Mr. Brandywinde's disclosures could be heard. Dido—who had finished decorating the cake—was told to run up on deck and take the air. "For," said Mr. Holystone, "you have done more to help me than is fitting, though indeed I am very much obliged."
"Oh, pho!" retorted Dido. "You know your conversation's always an eddication, Mr. Holy. I'm a-learning all the time I'm a-helping you. Deportment and manners too!"
She put out her tongue at him teasingly and skipped out on deck with a small cake, which he had baked for her in a separate pan.
Dusk had fallen by now, and large southern stars were beginning to twinkle out in the deep blue above the Thrush, though the Cumbrian coast and the snow-covered western peaks were still outlined against a sky of pale phosphorescent green.
Earlier that evening Dido had, without asking permission, removed from the captain's cabin an exceedingly powerful telescope, which was one of his most valued possessions, for when carefully focused it had the power to render clearly visible objects which might be fifty or even a hundred miles off.
"He ain't about to use it while he's a-giving dinner and doing the civil to old Brandyblossom," calculated Dido, "so there's no harm in my borrowing it for a couple of hours."
When she had eaten her cake, she drew the glass from its case and, with its help, studied various features of the twilit shore. She could see the small town of Tenby clearly enough—its wharves, quays, the shipping at anchor in the river mouth, the tall black-and-white houses with feathery palms above them on the hillside. Then there came a belt of dense green, presumably the forest of Broceliande, full of pythons, pumas, alligators, and aurocs. Beyond that again, much farther off, hardly visible to the naked eye but clear enough through the powerful glass, lay a line of silvery foothills, below the higher peaks. Dido stared at these hills, trying to discover the point at which the Severn River tumbled over them in its majestic series of cataracts. She thought she had found the right spot—a white zigzag line against the gray of the hills—when she chanced on an even more interesting sight—what looked like a long procession of camels moving very slowly southward across the lens of the telescope.
Were they camels? If not camels, then what else could they be? They were shaggy, long-haired beasts, long necked too, with heads like those of sheep. Each bore on its back a large bulging pack. Each was led by a drover, and the procession crept at a snail's pace, as if the loads were a tremendous weight. As they toiled along, they were outlined clearly, some against the green sunset sky, some against the rose-flushed snow-clad peaks.
"Blow me," muttered Dido. "Ain't there a right lot of them, jist?"
She began to count, but counting was not Dido's strong point, and she gave up after four sets of twenty.
"Reckon they must use camels in New Cumbria where we'd use carriers' carts," she decided. "Maybe they finds it best to shift goods at night when the aurocs has gone to roost. Them aurocs must be a plaguy nuisance, if they can scrag a sheep or a cow like Dora nobbles a mouse."
The last of the line of loaded camels disappeared into a dark cleft among the hills. It was now becoming really dark. Following Mr. Holystone's instructions for doing so, Dido found the Southern Cross; then she heard the pinnace being whistled for, so she tucked the telescope under her duffel jacket and went below. As she descended the companionway, Mr. Brandywinde and the captain came out of the dining room.
"Perhaps by tomorrow," the captain was saying, "you will have received more information as to this—this loss that Her Majesty has sustained."
"Oh, what she has lost she refuses to say," caroled Mr. Brandywinde. "It seems to have vanished like last Wednesday!"
"Let us hope not!" retorted Captain Hughes acidly, "or my mission is but a sleeveless errand."
"A fool's errand—what a shocking thought! A fool in the forest of Bro-cel-iande, one foot on the water and one on the land."
At this moment Mr. Brandywinde laid eyes on Dido, who was politely waiting in the galley doorway for the two men to pass by. The agent's bloodshot eyes bulged until it looked as if they would burst from their sockets like horse chestnuts—he gulped, gasped, and fell into such a fit of coughing and choking that, if he had been on deck, it seemed highly probable that he would have fallen overboard as he staggered about.
"Deuce take the fellow!" exclaimed Captain Hughes impatiently. "Here—Holystone—thwack him on the back! Give him some hartshorn or spirits of tar—otherwise the man will take an apoplexy!"
Restoratives having been administered, Mr. Brandywinde was presently able to mop his streaming eyes and apologize.
"It is nothing—nothing—a trifling infirmity," he panted, still staggering. "Takes me thus at times—but it is nothing at all, I assure you! A slight disability resulting from the quantity of pepper in the diet hereabouts—nothing, sir, nothing, nothing! You must try the pepper-pot stew, Captain—I do urge you to try the pepper pot."
"Yes, yes, very well," replied Captain Hughes, not at all interested in pepper-pot stew. "Now, I shall be obliged, Mr. Brandywinde, if you can arrange for beds in Tenby for my party tomorrow night—since we must board the riverboat so early. Unless you can accommodate me and my men in your residence?"
"Quite out of the question," said the agent hastily. "Only two bedrooms—one for me and m'dear wife, one for our little angel. No, no, sir; rooms shall be bespoken for you at— hie—The White Hart. Fair tap there, but don't trust the gin. But, Captain, you never informed me, you never gave me to understand that you had a young female person—a child—among your crew. I was not apprised of this!"
"Why in the world should you be?" snapped the captain. "It is of very little import! And she is not a member of my crew—good heavens, I should hope not, indeed!—merely a—a supercargo, a kind of passenger whom I am escorting back to England. And I intend taking her to wait on Queen Ginevra; but she will require more suitable apparel." The captain glanced with disfavor at Dido's jacket and trousers. "Is there," he asked Mr. Brandywinde, "a dressmaker in Tenby—or—or a milliner, haberdasher, needlewoman, who could supply miss there with an outfit to wear at court?"
If Mr. Brandywinde could have become more flabbergasted, this announcement, it seemed, must have rendered him so. He gaped at Captain Hughes, feebly flapped his hands up and down, opened and shut his mouth several times, before at length replying, "You intend taking miss to visit the queen? Indeed! And you require some apparel—?"
"Petticoats! A gown! A sash! What about your good lady—Mrs. Brandywinde—perhaps she might know the name of some sempstress?"
"Oh ... ah ... really I am not ... that is to say she does not ... or at least—"
"Perhaps I and young miss could wait on your good lady at your house, sir," cut in the captain, as the agent's replies did not seem to be tending in any useful direction. "We will bestow our luggage at the inn, tomorrow, leave my first lieutenant to make arrangements for our trip upriver, and then call at your house—if," he added with some irony, "if this will suit your convenience, Mr. Brandywinde?"
Mr. Brandywinde almost threw himself into another paroxysm in his efforts to assure the captain as to his zeal to be of use. There would not be the least difficulty in the world about finding some suitable person—"suitable, ha, ha, for she will supply the young lady with a suit," he concluded, with a burst of almost hysterical merriment. "And I wish you good night, dear friend—dear friend; would that such evenings might never, never end!"
So saying, he bounded over the rail with such agility that, had there not been a coxswain waiting to receive him in the boat, his evening would most probably have ended in the jaws of a shark.
Captain Hughes went forward to the quarterdeck. From the irritable haste of his steps as he paced to and fro, the state of his mind could be guessed at.
Dido availed herself of this chance to restore the telescope to its place on the captain's desk.
Next morning Dido was up soon after dawn, roused by the fresh scent
of trees and grass from the land, and the shrill cries of seagulls, which sounded like a great many tin spoons being scraped on a large number of china plates.
Hastily she tumbled her small handful of belongings together and stuffed them into a canvas bag. This done, she went hopefully on deck and stared at the land; she could not borrow the captain's spyglass now, for he was in his cabin writing a report.
"What time does we get to go on shore?" she asked Mr. Holystone when she went below for her breakfast.
He had his absentminded expression; he looked as if his mind were a hundred miles off, almost out of reach. But at Dido's question he sighed, pulling his mind back into place, and handed her a mug of hot coffee with molasses in it.
"When the captain has decided which men to take and who shall be left in charge of the ship."
Soon after breakfast the captain sent for Dido.
"Mr. Holystone informs me that you have made fair progress in your deportment, and that your politeness is greatly improved, Miss Twite."
"Old Holy is a regular brick, ain't he? He never gets miffed or skiffly, even when I gives him a bit o' lip." Dido then recalled herself and added, "Ay, ay, sir."
"Let me see your obeisance."
"Eh?"
"Curtsy, child!"
Dido looked round for a copy of the King's Regulations, but the first lieutenant had borrowed it. Without this handicap, she managed quite a creditable curtsy.
The captain, however, remained dissatisfied.
"You certainly cannot appear before the queen in that rigout. We had best go on shore directly and set about finding a sempstress. Send Holystone to me, and tell him to have Mr. Windward summoned."
Dido ran out joyfully.