by Joan Aiken
‘He’s wandering, poor fellow,’ whispered Bonnie. ‘He must have got out of bed in delirium. We had best send Mrs Shubunkin to sit with him and see he does not do himself a mischief.’
Mr Grimshaw was plainly most displeased at their presence in his room, so they went off to tell the housekeeper that the invalid should not be left alone.
‘Now come,’ said Bonnie then, taking her cousin’s hand, ‘Papa and Mamma must be free now, for I saw Miss Slighcarp downstairs as we crossed the stair-head.
When they reached Lady Green’s sitting-room, they found the doctor there speaking with Sir Willoughby.
‘And so you will let this poor man remain here so long as he is in need of attention?’ the doctor was saying. ‘That is most kind of you, Sir Willoughby, and like your liberality.’
‘Eh, well,’ Sir Willoughby said, ‘couldn’t turn the poor fellow out into the snow, what? Plenty of room here. He can remain till he gets his wits back – till we return, if need be. Looking after him will give the servants something to do while we are away. You’ll come in and see him from time to time, Morne?’
The doctor departed, promising careful attendance on the stranger and wishing Lady Green a speedy return to health.
‘Nothing like a sea voyage, dear lady, to bring roses back to the cheeks.’
‘And so this is Sylvia,’ said Lady Green very kindly, when the doctor had gone, ‘I hope that you and Bonnie are going to be dear friends and look after one another when we are away.’
‘Oh yes, Mamma!’ Bonnie exclaimed. ‘I love her already. We are going to be so happy together …’
Then her face fell and her bright colour faded, for at that moment Lady Green’s maid entered the room with wraps and a travelling-mantle.
‘Are you leaving now Mamma? So soon?’
‘It wants but five minutes to midday, my child,’ said Lady Green as she wearily allowed herself to be swathed in her cloak. Sylvia observed how thin her aunt’s wrists were, how languid her beautiful dark eyes.
Silently the children followed downstairs in the bustle of departure. Servants darted here and there, mound upon mound of boxes went out to the chaise, Sir Willoughby tenderly supported his wife to the hall door. There she enveloped Bonnie in a long and loving embrace, had a warm kiss, too, for Sylvia, and, pale as death, allowed herself to be lifted into the carriage. They saw her face at the window, with her eyes fixed yearningly on Bonnie.
‘It won’t be long, Mamma,’ Bonnie called. Her voice was strained and dry.
‘Not long, my darling.’
‘Be good children,’ said Sir Willoughby hurriedly. ‘Mind what Miss Slighcarp tells you, now.’ He pressed a golden sovereign into each of their hands, and jumped quickly into the carriage after his wife. ‘Ready, James!’
The whip cracked, the mettlesome horses blew great clouds of steam into the frosty air, and they were off. The carriage whirled over the packed snow of the driveway, passed beyond a grove of leafless trees, and was lost to view.
Without a word, Bonnie turned on her heel and marched up the stairs and along the passages to the nursery. Sylvia followed, her heart swollen with compassion. She longed to say some comforting words, but could think of none.
‘It may not be long, Bonnie,’ she ventured at length.
Bonnie sat at the table, her hands tightly clenched together. ‘I will not, I will not cry,’ she was saying to herself.
At Sylvia’s anxious, loving, compassionate voice she took heart a little, and gave her cousin a smile. ‘After all,’ she thought, ‘I am lucky to have Papa and Mamma even if they have gone away; poor Sylvia has no one at all.’
‘Come,’ she said, jumping up, ‘the sun is shining. I will show you some of the grounds. Let us go skating.’
‘But Bonnie dear, I have no skates, and I do not know how.’
‘Oh, it is the easiest thing in the world, I will soon show you; and as for skates, Papa thought of that already, look …’ Bonnie pulled open a cupboard door and showed six pairs of white kid skating-boots, all different sizes. ‘We knew your feet must be somewhere near the same size as mine, since we are the same age, so Papa had several different pairs made and we thought one of them was certain to fit.’
Sure enough, one of the pairs of boots fitted exactly. Sylvia was much struck by this thought on the part of her uncle, and astonished at the lavishness of having six pairs made for one to be chosen.
Likewise, Pattern pulled out a whole series of white fur caps and pelisses, and tried them against Sylvia until she found ones that fitted. ‘I’ve hung your green velvet in the closet, miss,’ she said. ‘Green velvet’s all very well for London, but you want something warmer in the country.’
Sylvia could not help a pang as she remembered the cutting of the green velvet shawl and saw the sumptuous pile of white fur; how she wished she might send one of the pelisses to Aunt Jane. But next moment Bonnie caught her hand and pulled her to the door.
‘Don’t go outside the park now, Miss Bonnie,’ Pattern said.
‘We won’t,’ Bonnie promised.
Snug in their furs, the two children ran out across the great snow-covered slope in front of the house, through the grove, and down to where a frozen river meandered across the park, after falling over two or three artificial cascades, now stiff and gleaming with icicles.
The children sat on a garden bench to put on their skates. Then, with much laughter and encouragement. Bonnie began to show Sylvia how to keep her balance on the ice.
‘Why, Sylvia, you might have been born to it, you are a thousand times better than I was when I began.’
‘Perhaps it is because Aunt Jane took such pains teaching me to curtsy and dance the gavotte balancing Dr Johnson’s Dictionary on my head,’ Sylvia suggested, as she cautiously glided across to the opposite snow-piled bank and then hurriedly returned to the safety of Bonnie’s helping hand.
‘Whatever the reason, it is perfectly splendid! We can go right down the river to the end of the park, much farther skating than we can walking. The wolves, you see, cannot catch us on the ice.’
‘Is the river frozen all the way down?’
‘Yes, all the way to the sea. Oh, I can’t wait for you to see this countryside in summer,’ Bonnie said, as they skated carefully downstream. ‘The river is not nearly so full then, it is just a shallow, rocky stream, and we bathe, and paddle, and the banks are covered with heather and rockrose, it is so pretty.’
‘Is it far to the sea?’
‘Oh, far — far. Fifty miles. First you come to Blastburn, which is a hideous town, all coal tips and ugly mills. Papa goes there sometimes on business. And then at the sea itself there is Rivermouth, where Papa and Mamma will go on board their ship the Thessaly.’ Bonnie sighed and skated a few yards in silence. ‘Why!’ she exclaimed suddenly, ‘is not that Miss Slighcarp over there? It is not very safe to go walking so near the park’s boundary. The wolves have more than once been known to get in. I wonder if she knows, or if we should warn her?’
‘Are you sure it is Miss Slighcarp?’ said Sylvia, straining her eyes to study the grey figure walking beside a distant coppice.
‘I think it is. Are you tired, Sylvia? Can you manage another half-mile? If we continue down the river it will curve round and bring us near to her. I think we should remind her about the wolves.’
Sylvia protested that she was not at all tired, that she could easily skate for another hour, two hours if necessary, and, increasing their speed, the children hastened on down the frozen stream. The bank soon hid Miss Slighcarp from their sight.
‘It is very imprudent of her,’ Bonnie commented, ‘I suppose, coming from London, she does not realize about the wolves.’
Sylvia, secretly, began to be a little anxious. They seemed to have come a very long way, the house was nearly out of sight across the rolling parkland, and when they rounded the curve of the river they saw that Miss Slighcarp had cut across another ridge and was almost as far from them as ever. Sylvia’s legs an
d back, unused to this form of exercise, began to feel tired and to ache, but she valiantly strove to keep up with the sturdier Bonnie.
‘Just round this next bend,’ Bonnie encouraged her, ‘and then we must meet her. If not, I do not know what we can do – we shall have reached the park boundary, and moreover, the river runs into woods here, and the ice is treacherous and full of broken branches.’
They passed the bend and saw a figure – but not the figure they expected. A stout woman in a red velvet jacket was walking away from them briskly into the wood. She was not Miss Slighcarp, nor in the least like her.
‘It isn’t she!’ exclaimed Sylvia.
At the sound of her voice the woman swung round sharply and seemed to give them an angry look. Then she hurried on into the wood and disappeared. A moment later they heard the sound of horses’ hoofs and the rumbling of carriage wheels.
‘How peculiar! Can we have been mistaken? But no, we could not have confused a grey dress with a red one,’ Sylvia said.
Bonnie was frowning. ‘I do not understand it! What can a strange woman in a carriage have been doing in our woods? The road runs through there, but it goes nowhere save to the house.’
‘Perhaps when we get back we shall find her. Perhaps she is a neighbour come calling,’ Sylvia suggested.
Bonnie shook her head. ‘There are no neighbours.’ Then she seized Sylvia’s arm. ‘Look! There is Miss Slighcarp!’ Sure enough, the grey figure they had first observed was now to be seen, far away behind them, walking swiftly in the direction of the house.
‘She must have turned back when we were between the high banks,’ Bonnie said repentantly. ‘And I have brought you so far! Poor Sylvia, I am afraid that you are dreadfully tired.’
‘Nonsense!’ Sylvia said stoutly. ‘We had to come. And I shall manage very well.’
But she was really well-nigh exhausted, and could not help skating more and more slowly. Bonnie bit her lip and looked anxious. The sky was becoming overcast with the promise of more snow, and, worse, it would not be long until dusk.
‘I have done very wrong,’ Bonnie said remorsefully. ‘I should have made you turn back, and come on myself.’
‘I should not have let you.’
A sudden wind got up, and sent loose snow from the banks in a scurry across the grey ice. One or two large flakes fell from the sky.
‘Can you go a little faster?’ Bonnie could not conceal the anxiety in her tone. ‘Try, Sylvia!’
Sylvia exerted herself valiantly, but she was really so tired that she could hardly force her limbs to obey her.
‘I am so stupid!’ she said, half-laughing, half-crying. ‘Suppose I sit here on the bank, Bonnie, while you go home for assistance?’
Bonnie looked as if she were half-considering this proposal when a low moaning sound rose in the distance, a sound familiar to Bonnie, and, since yesterday, full of terrible significance for Sylvia. It was the far-off cry of wolves.
‘No, that is not to be thought of,’ Bonnie said decisively. ‘I have a better plan. We must take off our skates. Can you manage? Make haste, then!’
They sat on a clump of rush by the river’s edge, and with chilled fingers tugged at the knots in their bootlaces. Sylvia shivered as once again the wolf-cry stole over the frozen parkland; it had been bad enough heard from the train, but now, when there was nothing between them and those pitiless legions, how dread it sounded!
The children stood up, slinging their skates round their necks.
‘Now we must climb this little hill,’ Bonnie said. ‘Here, I’ll take your hand. Can you run? Famous! Sylvia, you are the bravest creature in the world, and when we get home I shall give you my little ivory workbox to show how sorry I am for having led you into such a scrape.’
Sylvia did her best to smile at her cousin, having no breath to answer, and tried to stifle all doubts that they ever would get home.
Arrived at the top of the hill, Bonnie stood still and, as it seemed to Sylvia, wasted precious moments while she glanced keenly about her through the rapidly thickening snowstorm.
‘Ah!’ she cried presently. ‘The temple of Hermes! We must go this way.’ She tugged Sylvia at a run down the slope and across a wide intervening stretch of open ground towards a little pillared pavilion that stood on an artificial knoll against some dark trees. They had now put the river between them and the cry of the wolves, which was comforting, but Sylvia was dismayed to see that Bonnie was once more leading her away from the house.
‘Where are we going, Bonnie?’ she panted, fighting bravely to keep up.
‘I have a friend who lives in the woods,’ Bonnie returned. ‘I only hope he is not away. Let us rest a moment here.’
They stood struggling to get their breath in the temple of Hermes, which was no more than a roof supported on slender columns.
‘Oh, Bonnie, look, look!’ Sylvia cried in uncontrollable alarm, pointing back the way they had come. Through the dusk they could just distinguish two small black dots at the top of the slope, which were soon joined by several others. After a moment all these dots began coursing swiftly down the hillside in their direction.
‘There is not a moment to be lost,’ Bonnie said urgently. ‘Make haste, make haste!’ Half-leading, half-supporting the exhausted Sylvia, she urged her on through the deepening wood. Here Bonnie seemed to know her way almost by instinct. She passed from tree to tree, scanning them, apparently, for signs invisible to her cousin.
‘Here we are!’ she exclaimed in a tone of unutterable thankfulness, and, to Sylvia’s astonishment, she put her fingers to her lips and gave vent to a long, clear whistle. More surprising still, she was instantly answered by another whistle which seemed to come from the very ground beneath their feet.
A clear, ringing voice called, ‘Here, Miss Bonnie! Here, quick!’
Sylvia found a lithe, bright-eyed boy beside her, helping her on. Taller than Bonnie, he was dressed entirely in skins. He wore a fur cap, carried a bow, and had a sheaf of arrows slung over his shoulder.
As the first of the wolf-pack found their track in the temple of Hermes and came raging after, along the clear scent, the boy turned, fitted an arrow to his bow, and sent it unerringly into the midst of the pursuers. One wolf fell, and his companions immediately hurled themselves upon him with starving ferocity.
‘That gives us a breathing-space!’ the boy exclaimed. ‘Inside, Miss Bonnie! Don’t lose a moment.’
With Bonnie tugging at her hand, and the boy guarding the rear, threatening the wolves with his bow, Sylvia found herself whisked down a long narrow path, or passage-way, snow-lined at first, then floored with dead leaves. It was dark, she was in a cave! And more curious still, she could feel a number of live creatures pushing against her legs, almost overbalancing her. They were soft and smooth, and she could hear an angry hissing coming from them which almost drowned the clamour of the wolves outside. She would have cried out in fright if she had had any breath left – and then she and Bonnie rounded a corner in the passage and saw before them the comfortable glow of a fire burning on a sandy hearth.
Heaped-up piles of ferns and dead leaves, covered with furs, lay against the cave walls, and on these Bonnie and Sylvia flung themselves, for even Bonnie could now acknowledge that she was nearly fainting from weariness.
‘There!’ said the boy, following them in. ‘I’ve shut the gate. They’ll not catch you this time! But what was you doing, Miss Bonnie, so far from the house on a night like this? It’s not like you to take such a foolish risk.’
As Bonnie began explaining how it had come about, Sylvia was amazed to see a number of large white geese waddle after the boy into the cave. They looked rather threateningly out of their flat, black, beady eyes at Sylvia and Bonnie. One or two of them thrust out their necks and hissed, but the boy waved them back into the passage and flung them a handful of corn to keep them quiet.
Lulled by the flickering firelight and the long white necks weaving up and down in the entrance as the geese pecked
their corn, Sylvia, who was half-stupefied by exhaustion, fell fast asleep.
When she awoke it was to the sound of voices. Bonnie was saying anxiously:
‘But Simon, we cannot stay here all night! My dear Pattern will be so worried! She will be certain the wolves have got us. And Miss Slighcarp, too, will be concerned. Perhaps they have already sent the men out searching for us.’
‘I’ll have a look in a moment,’ the boy returned. ‘Now, if you’ll wake your cousin, miss, the cakes are ready, and you’ll both feel better on full stomachs than empty.’
He spoke with a pleasant country burr. Sylvia, lying drowsy on her heap of leaves, thought that his voice had a comfortable, brown, furry sound to it.
‘Sylvia! Wake up!’ Bonnie said. ‘Here’s Simon made us some delicious cakes. And if you are like me you are ravenous with hunger.’
‘Indeed I am!’ Rubbing her eyes and smiling, Sylvia brushed off the leaves and sat up.
The boy had separated the fire into two glowing hillocks. From between these he now pulled a flat stone on which were baking a number of little cakes. The two children ate them hungrily as soon as they were cool enough to hold. They were brown on the outside, white and floury within, and sweet to the taste.
‘Your cakes are splendid, Simon,’ Bonnie said. ‘How do you make them?’
‘From chestnut flour, Miss Bonnie. I gather up the chestnuts in the autumn and pound them to flour between two stones.’
While they were eating he went along the entrance-passage. In a minute he came back to say, ‘Wolves have gone, and it’s a fine, sharp night, all spiky with stars. No signs of men out searching, Miss Bonnie. It’s my belief we’d best be off now while the way’s clear. Do you think you can walk as far as the house now, Miss Sylvia?’
‘Oh yes, yes! I feel perfectly rested,’ declared Sylvia. But she was obliged to acknowledge when she stood up that she still found herself stiff and tired, and would be unable to keep up a very fast pace.
‘I have badly overtaxed your strength this first day,’ exclaimed Bonnie self-reproachfully. ‘Still, if you can walk, Sylvia, I think we should be off now and save our poor Pattern some hours of dreadful worry.’