Flame-Coloured Taffeta

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  There were constellations of celandines in the ditch that she had fallen into last night, and a flitter of yellow-hammers along the woodshore, and the black shadows of last night and the wicked little wax heart had fallen away behind her, because she had told Peter about it and so was not, as it were, shut up alone with it anymore. She had decided that it would be best to visit Genty quite openly as though on an errand for her aunt, this time. And so she rode Snowball through the tongue of woodland that shielded the Wise Woman’s cottage from the lane, and slid from his good-natured back in the little clearing, hitching him to a hawthorn branch. A blue feather of smoke was rising from the chimney-hole, the white nanny was grazing comfortably in a patch of nettles, and the cottage looked its daytime self and as though it had never known a secret in all its life. Grizelda sat in the open doorway, washing herself with one hind leg pointing skyward like a flagpole. Damaris chirruped to her as she went in.

  The cottage was full of pungent-smelling steam, and in the midst of the steam, Genty sat in her chair before the hearth with her skirts spread out round her and a shawl round her head, her feet in a great tub of hot herb-filled water, and another crock of hot water bubbling on the fire within easy reach.

  Damaris checked in dismay, ‘Genty, are you ill?’ Did you catch cold last night?’

  ‘I’d not be surprised! but even a cold has its uses.’ Genty looked up. ‘Did ’ee see any strangers on the way here?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘The village do be full o’ Customs House men. Seems they’re nosing round after some brandy or the like that they reckon is still hidden hereabouts, from the last Run.’

  Damaris was glancing quickly and anxiously round the steam-filled cottage. As far as she could make out, the wax heart was gone from the place where she had left it; and she drew a quick breath of relief. She wanted never to see that terrible little image again. But nor was there any sign of Tom Wildgoose; and if there were Customs men about. . . . ‘Where is he?’ she asked. ‘I left him here in the night.’

  ‘Aye, so ye did my lover. And here I found him safe and sleeping this morning. He’s in a safe place, never you fret.’

  Damaris was thinking suddenly of Peter heading this way with Tom’s jacket and his empty pistol that he kept in its pocket. But he knew the Manhood, and had too much sense to run into riding-officers or any other of the Customs House men. And before she had time to say anything of this to Genty, she heard heavy footsteps on the grass path outside, and the Wise Woman’s gaze flickered past her through the doorway. She made a quick warning movement of one hand, then lifted up her voice in a complaining snuffle. ‘All night, I was with’un—Aye, the babe will do well enough, by God’s Grace an’ the power of ol’ Genty’s healing herbs, but what wi’ getting drenched to the skin in the Church Dyke on the way back, I’ve all but caught my own death o’ cold—’ She sneezed explosively into a soggy handful of rags. ‘Ye can see how ’tis wi’ me, Liddle Mistress, an’ no I’ve not yet made the freckle salve.’

  Damaris, her back to the door, made signals of understanding with her eyebrows, and flounced down on a nearby stool. ‘I’ll wait,’ she announced. ‘Aunt said I was not to come back without it.’

  The heavy footsteps had reached the door, and she looked round as a big man in the blue coat of the Customs service, with another, smaller and younger, at his heels, came down the step. Grizelda, pushed from her place, stalked off disdainfully, her tail erect behind her.

  ‘An’ who may you be, come pushing your way in here without so much as’ “with your leave” or a “by your leave”?’ croaked Genty.

  ‘Reckon you know that well enough, old mother,’ said the big man. ‘His Majesty’s Customs, that’s who I am.’

  ‘Aye, so what do ’ee want wi’ me?’

  ‘A look round,’ said the man, ‘just a look round.’

  ‘’Ee can look till all’s blue,’ Genty snuffled. ‘But ye’ll not find aught as hasn’t the right to be. If ’ee was wantin’ a wart charmed, now, or mebbe a herb tussie-mussie to please a girl with. . . .’

  The Customs man turned red. ‘I ain’t got no warts, an’ I’m a respectable married man.’

  ‘Married ye may be,’ sniffed Genty. ‘Respectable, never, not wi’ a nose that colour.’

  The younger man gave a snort of laughter, and turned it hurriedly into a cough.

  ‘And you can shut your gob!’ his senior rounded on him. Then, turning his attention back to Genty, ‘Now that’s enough o’ that! Acting on Information Received that there’s still contraband from the last Run hid somewhere hereabouts, we are here to search it out! Search it out, I say, wherever it may be. Even—,’ he looked round him, ‘in such a ramshackle birds’ nest of a place as this.’

  ‘Then ye’d better start searching,’ said Genty with another sneeze. ‘I’m sure I’m not stoppin’ ye.’

  ‘I shall, oh I shall, and don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes with this show of open doors and innocence!’ He jerked his head in the direction of the ladder. ‘You take the upstairs, Benjamin, and I’ll have a look round here.’

  Benjamin clumped away up the ladder, and they heard his boots overhead while the big man began to open cupboards and peer along shelves (‘Try inside the salt crock,’ said Genty.)

  Damaris sat very still, her hands gripped together under her cloak, watching. Where was Tom? She was sure he was somewhere about, but there was no hiding-place except the tiny inner closet with slate shelves where Genty kept the milk and such of her remedies as needed to be kept cold. Maybe he was upstairs? Under Genty’s bed? She heard Benjamin’s boots going to and fro and the sound of furniture being pulled about. The big man heaved up the lid of the chest under the window and half disappeared inside it; and she held her breath. She knew Tom could not possibly be in there, but it had been from the painted leather box inside that chest that Genty had taken the little wax heart, and what else might he find in there of things that should not be seen? They did not burn witches nowadays, as far as she knew, but what about prison or transportation? She craned her neck to see past him into the darkness under the lid, but there was no box there, and as far as she could make out, the chest was almost empty.

  The Customs House man slammed the lid down again, and turned away to peer up the chimney, almost upsetting the crock on the fire as he did so, despite Genty’s warning screech; then, coughing and with watering eyes, he began to thump his way round the walls to hear if any of them rang hollow.

  Benjamin’s legs appeared through the hole in the ceiling. ‘Nothing up there,’ he reported, clambering down. ‘Nor no one, neither.’

  His senior grunted. ‘Nothing here either.’

  ‘Take a look outside?’

  ‘Aye.’

  They went out through the door, Genty squawking after them, ‘If you’re quite sure you’ve done wi’ turning my house upsy down. . . .?’

  For a short while Damaris sat rigid, looking at the Wise Woman, and listening to the Customs House men poking round in the wood-pile and thumping on the walls to see if they sounded any more hollow from outside. At last they seemed satisfied, and footsteps and grumbling voices departed, fading into the distance; the thrush that had been singing in the garden plot before they came returned to his singing, and Grizelda came stalking back to her place on the sun-warmed doorsill.

  ‘Are they gone? I mean really gone?’ Damaris asked.

  ‘Reckon so. Give ’un a while longer to make sure.’

  They waited; but the Customs House men did not come back to disturb the peace of the little clearing.

  Genty pulled the shawl from her head and took her feet out of the tub of cooling water—Damaris noticed that hard and brown though they were, Genty had pretty feet, arched like a dancer’s; like the gypsy dancer on the threshing floor at Harvest Home. She got up and shook out her skirts. Then she pulled her chair and the tub aside and flung back the hearth-rug. Under it, Damaris saw, was a trapdoor with a handle that lay flat in its own recess so
there was no betraying lump under the hearth-rug once it was in place. Genty pulled up the trapdoor, revealing a small square of darkness. No, not quite darkness, for a faint glow like maybe the gleam of a rush-light seeped up from below. And with it Tom’s voice asking in a hoarse whisper,

  ‘Can I come up now, Genty?’

  Chapter 11: A Time for Parting

  ‘YOU’D BEST GET down there an’ keep him company for a while,’ said Genty. ‘He bain’t all that happy down there shut in by hisself; but there he’s got to stay while the daylight lasts—leastwise till the woods be clear of Customs House men, and your Mr Farrington’s given up the idea of re-capturing his smuggler or French spy or whatever.’

  By that time Damaris was peering down through the trap. A ladder ran down from it into the crowding shadows and the glim of the rush-light below; and as she looked, something moved and blotted out the glim, and she found herself almost nose to nose with Tom Wildgoose looking up at her.

  ‘Hurry now,’ said Genty’s voice at her back, ‘I don’ want to keep the trap open all day! But I’ll be here close by to let ’ee out again, my lover.’

  ‘Stand clear, I’m coming down,’ Damaris said to the rather strained face with the forelock of dark hair drooping as usual across his forehead. She turned round and gathered her skirts close, and dropped through the hatch, feeling for the ladder below her. A hand came round her ankle and guided her foot to the rung, then the other foot. Then hands were round her waist, lifting her the rest of the way. The trapdoor dropped into place above her, and she turned to face the fugitive.

  ‘I’ll met by moonlight, proud Titania,’ said Tom Wildgoose. ‘Have you come to keep me from getting restive and clamouring to be let out at the wrong moment?’

  Damaris nodded. ‘How is your knee? You haven’t made it worse?’

  ‘I haven’t made it worse,’ said Tom meaningly. Then he grinned. ‘It’s doing well enough. My chief ailment at the moment is that I’ve no stomach for being mewed up in small dark places.’

  ‘What is this place?’ Damaris gazed about her at the baskets and bundles and hanging herb bunches. ‘Genty’s store-room, I suppose.’ And then she realized that the far end of the narrow cellar was walled in with small round tubs that she knew well enough for brandy kegs, and her startled gaze flew back to Tom’s face.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom, ‘it’s someone else’s store-room, as well as Genty’s.’

  After the first moment, Damaris was not really surprised. In smuggling country you never knew who was or was not mixed up with the Fair Traders (and all they had ever known about Genty in that way was that she would not care whether or not you were a smuggler if you needed her help), and a Wise Woman’s cottage would be a good place for a Hide, for folk would not in general be too keen to meddle with her or her belongings.

  ‘Sit down, if you’re going to stay a while,’ said Tom, and sat down again himself on a square sacking-covered bale. Damaris sat down on its mate—all the bales and kegs were roped in pairs for carrying across a pack saddle or a man’s shoulders. The flame of the rush-light guttered a little in the current of air from a small hole under the roof, which must come out somewhere at the back of the hearth in the room overhead. Like enough Tom Wildgoose wasn’t the first man to have sheltered there while the search went by above him; and a man in hiding still needs air to breathe.

  The flickering light woke and lost and woke again an answering yellow glint behind the foot of the ladder, and looking more closely, Damaris saw that it was the brass clasp of the painted leather box from which yesterday evening Genty had taken the terrifying little wax heart. No wonder she had not seemed at all worried about the Customs House man looking into the chest under the window. Damaris drew back a little, scarcely knowing that she did so, as though something in the box might leap out at her.

  ‘It won’t bite,’ said Tom, noticing the direction of her gaze. ‘I carried it down here when we heard the Customs House men were on the prowl—Look, no scorch marks,’ he held out his hands.

  Damaris gave a little shiver. ‘Don’t. You don’t know what’s in it.’

  ‘I think I can guess, near enough. That little wax heart with the thorns in it that you left on the chimney-piece last night, when—I was pretty far gone, but not yet as deep into sleep maybe as you thought I was, that’s in there, for one thing.’

  ‘There wasn’t any harm in that one,’ Damaris said quickly, telling herself as well as him. ‘It hadn’t got his name on it, and she hadn’t spoken the Words, nor mingled the dark-of-the-moon herbs, she told me so.’

  ‘So it was just for showing to someone? Up at the Big House? For a threat, maybe?’

  ‘A warning, she called it.’

  ‘A warning, then. I thought there was something odd about the way that stallion played up, and the lantern going over, and my prison door coming open in the midst of all the uproar.’

  There was silence for a short while between them. Then Tom Wildgoose said, ‘You must have been very much afraid, to carry the thing alone through the dark and use it, in whatever way you did use it, even though it was only a warning.’

  Damaris said, giving him back look for look, ‘I was afraid. But there wasn’t any other way.’

  He reached out and brushed his finger across her wrist, very lightly. ‘There isn’t really anything I can say, except “Thank you”, is there, Damaris? No words beautiful and splendid and humble enough. If there were, I would say them all—’

  Almost in the same instant they heard a murmur of voices overhead. The trapdoor lifted, and through the square of daylight came a pair of legs.

  ‘Peter!’ said Damaris.

  He landed beside them, Tom’s coat slung over his shoulder and the blackthorn staff in one hand. ‘I’d have been here sooner,’ he said, ‘but I had to wait for the Customs House coves to have finished their poking and prying and be out of the way.’ He grinned at Tom. ‘It’s my belief it wasn’t only contraband they were after: what about that French spy who broke out of the Big House stables last night? With a wounded knee on him, he’d likely be lying up not far off.’

  He and Tom were looking at each other steadily in the light of the tallow dip.

  ‘If it was like that, why wouldn’t they say it was the spy they wanted?’ Damaris demanded (but she was suddenly remembering Benjamin coming down Genty’s bedroom ladder, reporting ‘Nothing up there. Nor no one, either’).

  Tom shrugged. ‘Maybe this morning with a clearer head and a sorer one, young Mr Farrington isn’t quite so sure that his prisoner wasn’t just a French sailor who’d lost his ship, after all. And if that was the way of it, maybe he doesn’t want to make himself look a worse fool than he does already, when a guinea in the hand of the Riding Officer may serve just as well.’ He got up from the bale he was sitting on, and taking his jacket from Peter, began to shrug himself into it.

  ‘And if they caught you for him?’ Peter asked with interest, propping the blackthorn staff in a corner.

  ‘I said he wouldn’t want to look more of a fool than he does already. Perhaps he just wants to get me to Portsmouth or wherever my ship may be, before I can spread the tale. But I wouldn’t care to wager on it.’

  ‘Well, with any luck, we shall never know.’ Peter had begun delving into his pockets. ‘I thought it would be safer to put the things from your pockets into mine. Less likely to fall out—tinder-box—handkerchief, knife—’ he passed the things over to Tom as he named them. ‘Purse—pistol.’

  Tom was stowing the things back into his own pockets. The purse he tossed up, listening to the rather faint chink of it. ‘There’s the price of my coach fare to London. Only one problem remains—how do I get to Chichester? He stowed the purse away. ‘Stupid to be outfaced by a mere half-dozen miles of walking, but I don’t think I can make it on foot.’

  ‘You could wait for a few days longer?’ Damaris pleaded.

  And, ‘The carrier goes up once a week, but he went this morning,’ said Peter. Both at the same instant.r />
  Tom stowed the empty pistol in his pocket. ‘No, I can’t wait another week,’ he said seriously. ‘I am a danger to Genty while I hide here.’ He sat down again on the bale and looked across at Peter squatting on the bottom rung of the ladder.

  ‘Then what will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know as yet. I’ll think of something—steal a horse, maybe.’ He sobered suddenly. ‘Peter, there’s one thing more I have to ask of you: I have to go back to Joyous Gard, and I don’t know the way.’

  Peter nodded, ‘The packet you had round your neck. I couldn’t bring it—I didn’t know where you’d hidden it.’

  ‘No,’ Tom said, ‘I am the only one who knows that. Will you guide me back?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘It had better be tonight.’

  ‘I shan’t be able to get away much before half-past ten. The house keeps later hours when my Great Aunt comes visiting. I’ll come then.’

  For a moment stillness held all three of them; and then Tom Wildgoose said, ‘Just like that? No questions asked?’

  ‘No,’ Peter said levelly.

  ‘I could still be a spy.’

  ‘I never thought you were. I thought we ought to make sure.’

  Damaris began to feel that she was not there at all, and all this was between the two of them.

  ‘And you’re sure now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wonder why?’

  Peter pushed his fists into his pockets as though he would come out through the bottom of them. ‘Damaris told me all that happened yesterday. If you had been a spy, I don’t think you would have let them take you like that, made them take you. Not just for a vixen and the risk to a girl. Not if you were a good spy, worth your pay.’

  ‘I could be a bad spy,’ Tom suggested helpfully.

  Peter grinned, ‘There’s that, of course. But if you were a spy, I reckon you’d be a middlin’ good one.’

  ‘My thanks,’ said Tom. He seemed to be making up his mind about something, and when he spoke again, it was made up. ‘All the same, I’ve the oddest feeling I should like you to know what’s in that packet.’