by Joan Aiken
Bonnie, discovering at dinner-time that Sylvia was missing, whispered to the friendly Emma to ask where she was.
‘Ill, in the little locker-room.’
‘Ill?’ Bonnie turned pale. She had suspected for several days that Sylvia was ailing, though Sylvia always stoutly denied it.
If she was ill, how could they escape? On the other hand, if they did not escape, what would become of Sylvia? It was not impossible, Bonnie thought, that she might die of neglect and ill-attention in this horrible place.
With great daring Bonnie took a chance when Mrs Brisket was inspecting the dormitories upstairs, and ran in to visit Sylvia, whom she found conscious, but dreadfully weak, flushed, and coughing. A cup of cold water stood by her bedside.
‘Here!’ whispered Bonnie, ‘here, Sylvia, swallow this down. It’s not much, but at least it’s nourishing and warm!’ And she pulled from her pocket an egg, only five minutes laid, tossed the water from the cup out of the window, broke the egg into it, and beat it up with her finger.
‘I’m sorry, Sylvia, that it’s so disgusting, but it will do you good.’
Sylvia gazed with horror at the nauseous mess, but Bonnie’s bright, pleading eyes compelled her to swallow it, and it slipped more easily than she had expected down her sore throat. Then, hearing Mrs Brisket descending the upper stairs, Bonnie covered Sylvia as warmly as she could, gave her a quick hug, and dashed silently away.
That evening, when Bonnie fed the hens and searched for eggs, she put her hand beneath one warm, protesting feathery body and felt something hard and long among the eggs — a key! She pulled it out and found attached to it a label, which said, in Pattern’s printed script:
‘Tomorrow night at ten. Look under the straw-bales.’
Bonnie ran to the bales of straw which were kept for the nesting-boxes and found behind them two warm suits of clothes, a boy’s, with breeches and waistcoat, and a girl’s, with a thick woollen skirt and petticoat. Both were of coarse material such as tinker children wear, but well and stoutly made, and both had beautiful thick sheepskin jackets, lined with their own wool. In the pocket of each jacket was a golden guinea.
Bonnie guessed that the boy’s was for her and the girl’s for Sylvia.
‘For Sylvia could never be got to look like a boy. Oh, how clever and good Simon is! He must have got Pattern to help him. But will Sylvia be able to travel? We must manage it somehow!’
She bit her lips with worry.
Snatching the opportunity while it was dark and there was nobody about, Bonnie carried the two bundles of clothes indoors and hid them in the coal-cellar behind a large mound of coal while she was supposed to be filling Mrs Brisket’s evening coal-scuttle and making up her fire.
During the evening she seized another chance to take a fresh egg to Sylvia and whisper the news to her. Poor Sylvia dutifully swallowed the egg and tried to be excited by the plan, but she felt so weak and ill that she was sure she would never manage the escape, though she dared not tell Bonnie this. Bonnie could see for herself, though, how frail Sylvia looked, and she became more worried than ever.
Sunday passed in the usual tasks.
Mrs Brisket departed after ten to the party at Mr Friendshipp’s, leaving the school in charge of her daughter Diana, who, as her custom was, immediately began to bully and harry the children, making them fetch and carry for her, iron her clothes, curl her hair, and polish her shoes. Mrs Brisket had forbidden her to leave the house, but she had no intention of staying in, and was proposing to visit a bazaar on the other side of the town, having calmly taken some money from her mother’s purse.
‘Here! You!’ she called, seeing Bonnie hurrying past. ‘Where are you going with that hangdog look? Come here!’
Bonnie came, as if unwillingly.
‘What have you got in your pocket?’
Bonnie made no reply.
Diana thrust in her hand and let out a shriek of disgust. She withdrew it and stared at her fingers, which were dripping with egg-yolk.
‘Thief! Miserable little thief! Stealing the eggs from my mother’s henhouse!’ She raised the dripping hand and slapped Bonnie’s face with it.
Six months ago Bonnie would have slapped her back, and heartily, but she was learning patience and self-command. To be embroiled in a struggle with Diana was not part of her plan, though she longed to box the girl’s ears.
‘I was taking it to Sylvia,’ she said steadily. ‘Your mother is starving her to death. She has had nothing to eat all day but two raw onions.’
‘Is that any business of yours? Very well,’ said Diana, white with temper, ‘since you think you can look after Sylvia so well, you shall look after her. You can look after each other in the coal-cellar. Alice, help me shut them in.’
Alice, and a couple of the larger, worse-natured girls, willingly did so. Others remonstrated, as Bonnie was pushed, and Sylvia, still in her night-clothes, half carried into the dark, dirty place.
‘You shouldn’t do it, Miss Diana. Sylvia’s ill – it will make her worse,’ exclaimed Emma.
‘Hold your tongue! Who asked you to interfere?’ shouted Diana, and slapped her. The door was locked, and the key put in its accustomed place on Mrs Brisket’s parlour mantelpiece. Then, after making sure that everyone was in a properly cowed frame of mind, Diana wrapped herself in a velvet cloak and went out to the bazaar, locking the front door and taking the key with her.
Meanwhile Bonnie, in the coal-cellar, was congratulating herself on the success of her idea as she swiftly helped to dress the trembling, shivering Sylvia in her new warm clothes.
‘There, Sylvia! Now don’t cry, there’s a lamb, for I feel sure Simon will have some good plan and will be able to take us to a place where you can be properly cared for. Don’t cry!’
But Sylvia was too weak to hold back her tears. She sat obediently on a large lump of coal while Bonnie prepared to change her own clothes. But before she could do so there was a creaking of the lock and the door softly opened – not the door to the garden, but the one through which they had been thrust in. A head poked round it – Emma’s.
‘Bonnie! Sylvia! Are you all right? Can you come out and get warm! Diana’s out and Alice has gone to bed.’
Bonnie felt the tears prick her eyes at this courageous kindness on the part of Emma. But how ill-timed it was! At any minute Simon might arrive, and she did not want anyone to know that he was helping with their escape.
She whispered to Sylvia, ‘Wait there, Sylvia, for two minutes, only two minutes, and then I’ll be back,’ and ran swiftly to the cellar door.
Outside stood Emma and a large number of children, all deathly silent, in the passage that led from the kitchen. One of them pointed upwards, meaning that they must make no sound for fear of Alice.
Bonnie was amazed and touched. She had had no idea how popular her bright face and friendly ways had made her with the other children, in the fairly short time she had been at Mrs Brisket’s.
Impulsively she hugged Emma.
‘Emma, I won’t forget this! If ever I get away from this hateful place’ (and oh, I pray it will be tonight, she said to herself), ‘I’ll send back somehow and get you out too. But Sylvia and I mustn’t leave the cellar. If Mrs Brisket or Diana came back you would get into dreadful trouble.’
She looked at the children’s anxious, eager faces and wished that she could do something for them. Suddenly she had an idea. She ran to Mrs Brisket’s parlour and brought out the large hamper of cheese which the headmistress kept for rewarding tale-bearers.
‘Here! Quick, girls! Eat this up!’ She tossed out the chunks of cheese in double handfuls to the ravenous children.
‘Cheese!’
‘Oh, Bonnie!’
‘Cheese!’
‘Wonderful cheese!’
They had gobbled up most of the savoury lumps before Emma suddenly exclaimed, ‘But what will Mrs Brisket say?’
‘I’ll take care of that,’ said Bonnie grandly. She had been scribbling on a s
heet of paper. ‘This is to pay for the cheese,’ and she now signed it with her name, fetched the guinea piece from her jacket pocket and put it with the paper on Mrs Brisket’s writing-desk.
‘There! She’ll be angry, but she will see that I am the one to blame. Now, Emma, you must lock us up in the cellar again and put back the key. Yes!’ as Emma protested, ‘I promise that will be best in the end,’ and she nodded vigorously to show that she meant it, and went back into the cellar.
With great reluctance Emma locked the door again. Instantly Bonnie flung off her brown overall and hustled on her boy’s clothes, which felt very thick and strange, but comfortable.
‘Oh, how funny I must look! I wish we could see ourselves. Here, Sylvia, I saved a piece of cheese for you. Try to eat it. It will give you some strength. We must take our aprons with us. It won’t do to leave them behind, or they will guess that we have got other clothes and may be in disguise.’ She bundled them up and tucked them in her capacious pockets.
‘Now for the key!’
Just for one awful moment it seemed as if the somewhat roughly-made key would not open the outer door. However, wrapping a fold of her jacket over it and wrenching it with both hands, Bonnie got it round, and raised the flap. A gust of snowflakes blew into her face. ‘Good, it’s snowing, so much the better. We shan’t leave any footprints. Now, Sylvia, you had better have my coat as well as your own.’ She buttoned it on to her cousin, who was really too ill and weak to make any objection, and half-pulled, half-hoisted her up the slope down which the coal was poured. Then, swiftly, she re-locked the door, put the key in her pocket, and urged Sylvia towards the gate with an arm round her shoulders.
‘We can hide in a laurel bush,’ she whispered. ‘There’s a thick one beside the front railings. Then if Mrs Brisket or Diana should come back, they won’t see us. I can hear the town clock striking ten – Simon should be here at any moment.’
And indeed, as they reached the railings, they heard his voice whispering, ‘Miss Bonnie? Miss Sylvia? Is that you?’
‘Yes, it’s us!’ Bonnie called back quietly, and ran to open the gate.
9
‘SYLVIA’S ILL!’ BONNIE muttered to Simon as soon as they were outside the gate. ‘She can hardly walk! I think we shall have to carry her.’
‘No, she can go in the cart,’ Simon whispered back, and then Bonnie saw that he had with him a beautiful little cart, drawn by a donkey.
Her eyes lit up with delight. ‘Why, it’s the very thing! Isn’t it the one from Willoughby that we use for picnics –’
‘Hush. Yes!’ whispered Simon. ‘Let’s get away quick, and then I’ll explain.’
Between them they lifted the trembling, shivering Sylvia into the cart. She gave a little protesting moan as she came into contact with something soft that seemed alive.
‘What is it?’ breathed Bonnie.
‘The geese! They won’t hurt her. There are quilts and mattresses underneath.’
Swiftly and skilfully Simon disposed Sylvia in the cart, on a warm mattress, covered with several quilts. Thirty sleepy, grumbling geese were pushed unceremoniously to one side and then, when Sylvia was settled, allowed to perch all over and round her until only her face was showing.
‘There! They’ll keep her famously warm.’
And in fact the warmth of the mattress and quilts and the soft feathery bodies on top was such that in two minutes Sylvia was in a deep sleep, and never even felt the cart begin to move.
‘Will you ride too, Miss Bonnie?’
‘No, I’ll walk at the head with you, Simon.’
‘Let’s be off, then.’
They hastened away. Simon had tied rags round the wheels and they went silently over the cobbled road. The only sound was the tippety-tap of the donkey’s feet.
When they had turned several corners, and put several streets between them and Mrs Brisket’s school, both Simon and Bonnie breathed more freely.
‘No one will remark us now,’ said Bonnie, as they passed into a wide, naphtha-lighted street in the middle of the town, where, although it was nearly midnight, trams still clanged up and down, and pit and factory workers trudged to and fro in their clogs.
‘Certainly no one would take you for Miss Bonnie Green,’ said Simon, chuckling. ‘You make a proper boy in those things, haircut and all. Here, I brought these for you.’ He turned, sank an arm into the cart and rummaged among the geese, and brought out two sheep’s-wool-lined caps, one of which he carefully placed over Sylvia’s sleeping head. The other he gave to Bonnie, who gratefully pulled it on, for the snow was now falling thick and fast.
‘Miss Pattern made them for you; they weren’t finished in time to leave with the other things.’
‘Pattern? Oh, did she make the clothes?’
‘Yes, she did, when she heard I was going to help you, and James found the donkey and cart – Miss Slighcarp was going to have sold them, but James told her they belonged to parson and hid them away. I reckoned it would be just the thing for our journey. And Miss Pattern gave me a saucepan and a fry-pan and some cups and plates and a great pie – they’re all in the back, under the seat. We’ll have a bite to eat presently – I dare say you’re clemmed, Miss Bonnie – but not till we’re out of the town.’
‘Where is Pattern?’ asked Bonnie.
‘She’s gone back to live with her mother at the lodge. She sent her dear love but didn’t dare ask you to call in, for Miss Slighcarp passes there every day and there’s only the one room, as you know. If there’s a search for you they’d be bound to go there. It’s best Pattern should not have seen you.’
‘And is James still at the house?’
‘Yes. He gave me the guineas to put in your pockets out of his wages – and gracious knows they’re little enough now.’
‘I’ve spent mine already, Simon,’ confessed Bonnie, and told what she had done.
Simon shook his head at her, but all he said was, ‘’Twas like you, Miss Bonnie.’
‘Simon, it’s ridiculous to go on calling me miss. Just call me plain Bonnie.’
Simon grinned, but answered indirectly, ‘Have you got that coal-cellar key with you? Here’s a good place to get rid of it.’
They were crossing the bridge over the wide river, with its busy traffic of coal barges and wool wherries. When Bonnie produced the key and the two overalls, he made them into a bundle with a bit of string, weighted it with a cobble, and threw the whole thing into the river. Then they went on with light hearts.
The town presently gave way to country. Not much could be seen in the dark, but Bonnie caught dim glimpses of snow-covered slag-heaps, with here and there a great pit-wheel or chimney. Then they passed fields, enclosed in dry-stone walls. After a while they were climbing up a long, slow ascent, the beginning of the wolds.
‘You’d best have a bit of a sleep now,’ Simon suggested to Bonnie after a couple of hours had passed. ‘We’re safe away, and ’twill be morning by and by.’
‘What about the wolves, though?’ Bonnie said. ‘Shan’t we be in danger from them? I’d better help you keep a look-out. Have you brought a gun?’
‘Ay, I’ve my bow, and James gave me your fowling-piece. It’s in the cart. But I doubt we’ll not be troubled by wolves; it’s turned March now, and with spring coming they’ll be moving farther north. We’re not likely to see any of them once we’re over Great Whinside.’
‘What shall we do about Sylvia, Simon? She ought to stop somewhere till she’s well enough for the journey.’
‘I’ve been thinking that, and I know the very place. We’ll reach it about six in the morning. You get in the cart and have a nap now.’
‘All right, I will,’ said Bonnie, who was beginning to be very sleepy, ‘if you’re sure the donkey can stand the load.’ She patted the donkey’s nose.
‘Caroline’s pulled heavier loads than that.’
So the cart was halted, and Bonnie, carefully, so as not to wake Sylvia, scrambled in and made a nest for herself among the
feather quilts and the warm, drowsy geese. Soon she, too, was asleep.
When Bonnie woke she lay wondering for a moment where she was. There was no clanging bell, no complaining voices, and instead of shivering under her one thin blanket she was deliciously comfortable and warm.
A cool breeze blew over her face, the cart jolted, and then she remembered what had been happening and said softly, ‘Simon?’
His voice came from somewhere in front. ‘Yes?’
‘Stop the cart a moment, I want to get out.’
‘Not worth it,’ he said. ‘We’re nearly there.’
Bonnie wriggled to a sitting position and looked about her. The sky was still mostly dark, but daylight was slowly growing in the east. Thin fronds of green and lemon-yellow were beginning to uncurl among masses of inky cloud. When Bonnie looked back she could see that they had come over a great ridge of hills, whose tops were still lost in the blackness of the sky to the north. Ahead of them was a little dale, and loops of the white road were visible leading down to it over rolling folds of moor. A tremendous hush lay over the whole countryside. Even the birds were not awake yet.
‘That’s where we’ll have our breakfast.’ Simon pointed ahead. ‘That’s Herondale. We’re way off the main road now. No one’s likely to come looking for us here.’
He began to whistle a soft tune as he walked, and Bonnie, curling up even more snugly, watched in great contentment as the lemon-yellow sky changed to orange and then to red, and presently the sun burst up in a blaze of gold.
‘Simon.’
‘What is it?’
‘There’s no snow here.’
‘Often it’s like that,’ he said nodding. ‘We’ve left snow t’other side of Whinside. Down in Herondale it’ll be warm.’