And what was that? Celandine stood still and listened. Tap-tap … tap-tap …
The sound came from the clearing above, but now … yes … now she could hear it to the side of her also. They were coming through the woods, along the inner edge of the wall of briars. Corben and his archers were to the right of her, and from above and to the left of her the beaters were closing in. There was nowhere else for her to hide. She might crouch among the undergrowth for a while longer, but soon they would arrive, beating with their sticks, to drive her like a pheasant towards Corben and the Ickri archers.
It was over. All over. They were sure to find her in the end.
Celandine sank to her knees, defeated at last, and closed her eyes. Our Father, which art … which art …
No. Too many other thoughts were crowding her brain to be able to pray properly – pictures and visions that sprang into her head, unbidden. Tobyjug … why did she suddenly see him, trotting happily through the paddock on his leading rein? And Young Wilfrid, driving the dung cart. Fin – dear Fin – staring down at her from the trees. Miss Bell … and Nina … Mary Swann. Why on earth would she think of Mary Swann? Tap … tap-tap …
Her heart lurched with fear and her throat grew tighter. Beamer, the great shire horse, she saw, leading the team back into the stableyard … William, the school porter … and Freddie … poor, poor Freddie … there he was, in his Christian outfit. Around her and around her they all paraded, an endless circus of faces, as the hot tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed upon her shaking hands. Tap-tap … tap-tap …
‘Come.’
Celandine opened her eyes at the unfamiliar voice and gazed upon the moonlit figure that stood before her. Through starry tears she saw a wavering vision, a tree-spirit, a fantastic thing of leaves and vines, with wild hair that shone blue-green beneath the moon. Cascades of ivy fell about the hunched shoulders and the skinny fingers that extended themselves towards her were as green as willow twigs. The eyes she had seen before – yes, once before – peering at her from the hawthorn bushes below the caves. Reassurance they had given her then, and reassurance she took from them now. She was not afraid.
‘Celandine. Come.’ The voice was cracked, with age it seemed, but there was a beauty in it, a quiet confidence that held the approaching danger at bay.
No, she was not afraid. This creature meant her no harm, would never hurt her. Celandine raised her hand automatically, with no second thought, to touch the fingers that reached out to her – and a tiny spark of electricity sprang between the closing gap. It made her jump, but still it did not frighten her. Again Celandine stretched forth her hand, and this time she gently took the offered fingers between her own, so cool they felt and so healing. She rose to her feet.
‘Ye have the Touch, maid – as I did know when I saw thee first. Come, then. Follow.’
Celandine allowed herself to be led, even though she was being led towards the terrible sound of the oncoming beaters. Tap-tap … tap-tap. Towards her own death-rattle she walked, guided by this spirit of the woods, and found herself willing to go. Closer came the insistent tapping, and closer yet, but the hand in hers was calm and Celandine drew calm from it.
‘Here thee may climb.’
They had stopped at the foot of a spreading oak, one of the great trees that bordered the woodland. Climb? How? Moving around it, Celandine saw that the back of the trunk was damaged. There was a smell of scorched bark and moss. Then she remembered. This was the tree to have been first struck during the lightning storm – before the beech. She had seen it from above, when she had stood with Micas at the edge of Great Clearing.
Now she saw that the trunk had been partially split – a huge strip of splintered bark torn down almost to the undergrowth – and that she would be able to get a foothold here. She would be able to climb up and crawl along the stricken branch that dipped across the wall of brambles. She could escape. She really could …
The brambles tugged at her clothing as she pushed herself around to the back of the tree. She could just lift her foot high enough to wedge it into the split of the thick bark. Gripping onto a shard of splintered wood, Celandine hauled herself upwards, then again, until she was able to squeeze in to the vee where part of the massive branch had twisted away from the main trunk. She peered down at the ground. Her strange little saviour looked vulnerable now, humpbacked and frail, although there was a quickness of movement about that tiny frame that was unusual in one who appeared to be so old.
‘Who are you?’ Celandine said.
The ghostly face, so solemn and wise, studied her for a moment.
‘I be Maven-the-Green. Or so ’tis reckoned. Now go well, maid – and harken to me. Thee’m one wi’ a gift.’
The beating sticks were drawing horribly close. Tap-tap … tap-tap …
‘A gift?’
‘Aye, the Touch. And ’tis a gift to be given – mark it well. But thee’ve another gift, and this must be hid, ’till better times than these. Thee shall know the day, when it comes. Help me, maid, as I help thee. Now away with ’ee.’
Celandine clambered up the angled split in the trunk until she reached the horizontal branch that extended out over the brambles. Down through the black woods came the sinister rattle of the sticks, and she was suddenly terrified that her white shirt and trousers would give her away at the last. She must be so visible up here. She risked a quick glance below. Maven-the-Green had gone.
Along the thick tree limb she crawled, trying to push aside the heavy foliage as quietly as she could. Finally she had reached a point where she could go no further – the leaves and branches were just too awkward for her to be able to get past. She lay on her tummy and fearfully looked down once more, to see how far she would have to drop. She could see a pale patch of moonlit earth below. An overwhelming certainty came over her – a feeling that blotted out all else for a moment. This was the tree where it had all begun, on Coronation Day. And down there, in that patch of moonlight, was where the bassinet had stood – where she had lain and looked up at Fin in such wonder. This was the very branch …
The patch of bare earth dissolved into pitch darkness as the moon disappeared. Celandine was aware once again of the danger she was in, and she clung to the overhanging limb in renewed dread – because now the tapping was all around her. The sticks were beating at the coppices in the darkness below, and she could hear the sound of many small bodies swishing through the undergrowth at the foot of the tree – but worse … oh worse … now it seemed that they were coming up the tree … tap-tap-tapping all around her … battering at the leaves and branches … hundreds of them … thousands …
Celandine swung herself over the tree limb, gulping in terror, hung there for a moment, then dropped down into the darkness. A horrible thump as she hit the ground and the breath was knocked right out of her. But immediately she forced herself to get back on her feet, though she was doubled over with pain and fear as the terrible rattling above her grew to a roar. Celandine staggered from beneath the tree and felt the first of a thousand stinging blows – on her face, her arms, her bare neck … hailing down upon her defenceless being. Hailing down …
It was hail. A summer storm …
The freak downpour whipped across her shoulders as she stumbled away from the forest and began to run down Howard’s Hill. Away, away, away – from the terror that snapped at her heels, the panic that clawed at her back, and down towards the distant lights below. Faster she ran, careening through the stinging bullets of hail as though through enemy fire, and faster still, until suddenly her legs were out of her control, her steps grown too long – impossibly long – and she was springing into the darkness seven leagues at a time, a leaping, bounding, pounding, tumbling giant. She was utterly helpless – launching out into deep black space, with arms outstretched. Over went the world, and over and over, the wheeling world that turned its circle, so that everything that ever had been came round again … and again she was rolling down Howard’s Hill in the sunshine wit
h Freddie beneath a spinning summer sky. The peewits sang, and the party people roared with laughter, and the sun went bang and shattered into a million red planets, just as it had before.
Chapter Nineteen
SHE WAS A pine marten in a glass case – a weasel, a stoat, an otter – and even though the world might peer in at her, and poke and pry, she was protected by an invisible wall and they could not reach her. If she stayed quite still, and said nothing – nothing – then eventually they would have to go away and leave her alone.
Her mother, her father, her Uncle Josef – they were all at her bedside, just as they had been the first time. But now there was a fourth figure also. Another doctor.
Their mouths were moving. Celandine could see them out of the corner of her eye. She could see the shapes of the words that came out of those mouths, and the colours of them. And she could hear all the questions – Where had she been? What had she done? What had happened to her hair? – but the questions were just shapes and colours and sounds. If she stared for long enough, and didn’t blink, then she could see right through them and through her bedroom wallpaper, the ceiling, and the roof. She could just drift upwards into the blue stillness of the sky and continue to say nothing.
‘Some concussion, certainly, but perhaps shock also. It’s difficult to say how severe. What do you think, Wesser?’
‘Um. I am not yet sure. She seems comfortable at the moment, but I am afraid that the leg will be quite painful. Try to move her as little as possible, Lizzie.’
‘Of course. But Josef, it frightens me that she will not speak. I must know what is happened here. Where she has been so long …’
‘Give her a little more time. This is a very bad fall, and she needs rest. Doctor Lewis and I have both examined her, and … well … we can find no damage apart from the leg, and bruising on her head. The leg will be in splints for some weeks. But this is an accident, we think, rather than any attack, or … assault upon her. As for not speaking, she is perhaps in some shock, as Doctor Lewis has said, and it might take a while for her to recover. Erstcourt – this boy who found her – William, did you say his name was …?’
‘Young Wilfrid, the carter’s boy. What the devil he was doing up on the hill at that time of night, I can only guess at. Says he was out with his dog, and got caught in the hailstorm. After a rabbit, if I know anything about it. Anyway, it was the dog that found her, for which we must be grateful I suppose, and so I didn’t press the matter further. I’ve already spoken to the local constable and got the search called off, but I daresay the police will have some questions that need answering – and so shall I, for that matter. When do you think she’ll be in a fit state to tell us what she’s been playing at, Josef? Lizzie and I have been worried to death.’
‘Try not to be too impatient with her, Erstcourt. She will tell us in her own time, and I’m sure there will be an explanation for all this. Lizzie, you must stop crying. She is safe. That is the only important thing.’
‘But her beautiful hair … and what are these clothes that she was wearing? Trousers for cricketing? Yes, and a man’s shirt! What can be the explanation for this? And she is so thin! For weeks she has been gone. Where? Where? I must know. Celandine, do you hear me? Were you taken by the gypsies? You must tell Mama what has been happening to you …’
‘Now, Lizzie …’
The shapes of the words bounced about the room, and it was curious to see the different colours of them – her mother’s a kind of orangey-pink, her father’s blue-grey, like the smoke from his pipe. She had never noticed that words had colours before.
And it was so simple to hide from them. The shapes and the sounds could not reach her. Nothing could touch her, because at last she had found the perfect place to hide – the best hiding place of all; inside herself. The invisible wall was all around her, and she was hidden inside herself. Nobody could find her here, and nobody could make her come out if she didn’t want to.
They fed her, and they bathed her and they brought her books to look at. Celandine opened the books, one or two of them, and looked at the black and white patterns that the words made. If she made a circle with her finger and thumb, and looked through it, like a telescope, then she could move the telescope over the page and watch the patterns. The black shapes looked like fuzzy caterpillars, but the white spaces in between were more interesting – like a maze. Sometimes she could see white wavy lines, running from the top of the page to the bottom, that reminded her of twisted vines or brambles.
Pencils and paper they brought her also, and the pencils were useful to poke down the inside of the heavy bandage on her leg in order to reach an itch that she couldn’t otherwise get to. She tried to find a way of folding the pieces of paper in half eight times, because she knew that it couldn’t be done.
It got dark, and then it got light, and then dark, and light again. Sometimes she slept when it was light, and sometimes she lay awake when it was dark, listening to the mouse in the attic. Once she heard a squeal, and Cribb’s savage snarl, in the dead of night. An awful, gurgling rattle of a sound. The dogs had caught something …
‘Lizzie, I think perhaps it would be good if Celandine came to stay with Sarah and I, for a week or two. A holiday, yes?’
‘A holiday? Do you mean at the clinic? Oh Josef! Do you mean as a … a patient? I don’t know. I am so worried about her. She says nothing. But really, she has not been so many days at home – and now for her to go away again … and to a hospital … with all those … and now that Freddie is gone, she is all that I … she is …’
‘Yes, I know this is very hard for you, Lizzie. But I think it might be for the best. And the children – they might cheer her up a little. Perhaps it is not good for her to be so much on her own. No, she would not be a patient as such … not really … but she does not progress as I had hoped, and I should like to keep a closer eye on her.’
‘Is she so bad? Perhaps just a little more time.’
‘Yes, I am sure that a little more time is all she will need. But Lizzie, I am seeing this with many of the injured soldiers who are my patients. They suffer a very deep shock, from the constant bombardment. Whatever it is that has happened to Celandine seems to have had an effect very similar. She has become entirely withdrawn, and I need to be able to watch her more carefully.’
‘But you won’t put her with those poor men …’
‘No, of course not, Lizzie. This is just a little holiday with us – a change of scenery, and some younger company. Peter and Samuel would love to see her again, and of course her Aunt Sarah will enjoy having a girl to make a fuss over …’
Later they lifted her into Uncle Josef’s smart gig, with a rug over her knees, her walking sticks propped up beside her and a basket for the journey. She felt nervous. It was not so easy to keep the world away from her now that she was out in the open air, and there was so much of the world that she did not wish to see …
But as they pulled out of the gate Uncle Josef turned to her and said, ‘Celandine, let me make you a promise. I shall never try to make you tell me where you have been or what has happened to you. When you feel like talking again, you will do so – and I shall be happy to listen. Until then I am equally happy with silence.’
She turned her head away from him, partly so that he should not see the sudden tears in her eyes, and partly so that she could avoid looking at Howard’s Hill. As they passed through the farmyard gate, Celandine saw a scrap of dark-stained material lying beside the grass verge. It was blue and white spotted, or it had been once. She thought that she had seen it before, but she couldn’t remember where.
Her cousins had wandered away from the dining table, bored with their jigsaw, and bewildered at her lack of communication.
‘But why won’t she speak?’ Celandine heard Peter whispering to Aunt Sarah.
‘Because she prefers not to,’ said Aunt Sarah. ‘And please don’t whisper. It’s not polite.’
The jigsaw pieces were spread out over the table,
a great sea of them surrounding the pitiful little island that Peter and Samuel had managed to assemble. Celandine looked at the picture on the lid of the box. It was quite a famous one – of a horse and wagon, standing in the middle of a stream, with trees and sky, and an old farm building in the background. A mill. She began to push some of the pieces around, but then realized, out of the corner of her eye, that Aunt Sarah was watching her. Celandine took her hands off the table and put them back into her lap.
Later she sat with the family at the same table for supper.
‘The whole business is quite pointless.’ Uncle Josef was talking. He sounded unusually cross and gloomy. ‘They send them to me, I help to patch them up, and then what do they do? Why, they post them straight back to the battlefront, of course. As long as a man is able to stand and see, then as far as they are concerned he is fit for fighting. A week later that same man is either missing a trigger finger, or deserted. Or dead. And in the meantime they send me more of them to “cure”. How ignorant they are.’
‘Perhaps not whilst we’re at supper, Josef,’ said Aunt Sarah. ‘And particularly …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘You can’t cure Olive though, can you Papa?’ Samuel’s voice was sad and faintly accusing.
‘No, darling. I can’t cure Olive.’
‘Olive is Samuel’s kitten,’ Aunt Sarah turned to Celandine. ‘He dropped her in the bath-tub, and now we think she has influenza, or pneumonia, poor thing. But speaking of bath-tubs, you two boys, it’s time you were both in yours. Yes, you may get down. Say goodnight to Celandine.’
‘You will try though, Papa, won’t you? To make Olive better?’
‘I’ll try, sweetheart. But really, we can only wait and see.’
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