The Cuckoo Tree

by Joan Aiken

  Pelmett went to the bay’s head and they started at a cautious pace, Dido walking beside the carriage, Frill leading the lame grey horse. Captain Hughes stirred and moaned a little.

  ‘Can you go a bit faster, Mister Pelmett?’ Dido urged anxiously.

  ‘Just so long’s the wheels don’t come off,’ Pelmett agreed, and increased the pace. They had by now reached the spot where Dido met her mysterious guides.

  ‘How far is it to this Dogkennel Cottages?’

  ‘Dogkennel Cottages? Jigger it, is that where we’ve got to take him?’ Pelmett was plainly startled and not too happy at this news.

  ‘That’s what the old lady said. She said someone called Mr Firkin or – or Mrs – some name like Libbege – ’ud look arter him.’

  ‘Mrs Lubbage.’ Pelmett pronounced the name with distaste. ‘Well, I dessay she would if she’d a mind to; she’m a wise woman. But I ain’t so unaccountable keen to have dealings wi’ the old besom. Frill, you can do the talking.’

  ‘Not I,’ Frill said uneasily. ‘Let the lass talk for herself.’

  Both men quickened their pace, as if anxious to get the meeting with Mrs Lubbage over as soon as possible. The white track, now winding between gentle grassy slopes, led into a long shallow valley at the far end of which, under a hill round and bare as a bald head, Dido could see a little row of cottages with one or two outbuildings and a couple of haystacks.

  ‘Them’s Dogkennels,’ Pelmett said with relief.

  As they drew near, Dido saw that the cottages were flint-built and looked very poverty-stricken. Some of the windows were broken; a few cabbage stalks grew in the derelict garden-patches. A dim glimmer of light showed in one window; the rest of the cottages, some three or four in all, were dark.

  ‘I’m skeared,’ Frill said shivering. ‘This is an unket place – fair gives me the twets. Can’t we stop here?’

  ‘We’d best carry the chap in,’ Pelmett said. ‘Old Mis’ is sure to ax if we did. Sides, there’s the doctor’s cob; while he’s about she ’on’t do anything twort.’

  A stout grey cob was tethered by the door of the cottage with the light in its window. Pelmett looked about him, picked up a rock and, as if reluctant even to touch the door, used the rock to hammer on it.

  The door shot open. Plainly they were expected.

  ‘My daffy-down-dilly!’ exclaimed the man who opened to them. ‘What in the world kept you so long, my dear souls? Have you brought my patient? How is the sad sufferer? Let us fetch him in, molto, molto allegro!’

  Pelmett and Frill lifted the unconscious man out of the carriage.

  ‘Where’ll we set him, gaffer?’ Pelmett asked, plainly reluctant to set foot inside the cottage.

  ‘In here, where elsewise?’

  But Dido had stepped inside the open door.

  ‘This don’t smell right to set a sick man in – it smells downright horrible,’ she said bluntly. The little room she had entered was slightly below ground level, dimly lit by a rush dip, and it had indeed an evil smell – a damp, warm, sickly, fusty, rotten smell of old filthy rags and food gone bad and burning rubbish, and a queer faint choking sweetness all over. ‘Ask me,’ Dido went on, ‘the air in this place is enough to make a body ill.’

  ‘Oh, it is, is it? And who asked your opinions, Miss Prussy?’ inquired a voice at her elbow. She turned round sharply.

  Beside her, studying her with hostility, stood an enormously fat woman, who wore a grubby print dress and a grubby print apron and trodden-down slippers. She had her arms folded across the front of the apron. Her face, with tiers of double chins, and small twinkling eyes set in folds of fat, and curly grey hair atop, should have been friendly and jolly, but although the mouth pretended to smile the unwinking stare of the sharp little eyes made Dido feel very uncomfortable.

  ‘N-no offence, missus,’ she said politely, ‘b-but the Cap’n there, being a sailor, is used to lots o’ fresh air, and he can’t abide being cooped up anywhere stuffy. Reckon he’d be better in a barn or hayloft, if you has one? ‘Sides, if this is your kitchen, you won’t want a sick person cluttering about in it.’

  He can’t stay here, that’s for sure, she thought, her eyes, now used to the dimness, taking in the horrible squalor of the little kitchen, the piles of soiled rags and rotting vegetables, greasy puddles on the uneven brick floor, and peeling, blackened walls.

  ‘Eh! High-up, flarsky and hoity-toity we are,’ Mrs Lubbage said sourly. ‘Still, there’s empty housen aplenty; if my kitchen’s not good enough for you, you can take yourself next door. I ain’t pitickler where you sleeps, it’s all one to me. Her ladyship sends a message for me to have an eye to the poor sick gentleman; that’s all I knows.’

  ‘Perchance it would be better to take the patient next door,’ Dr Subito agreed with ill-concealed relief. ‘Can you carry the poor languisher there, my good fellows?’

  Not at all reluctant, Pelmett and Frill carried Captain Hughes to another of the empty cottages. The first they tried had been used for keeping chickens in, and was not much better than Mrs Lubbage’s kitchen. But the next was empty and clean enough; it even had a rickety old bedstead which Pelmett stacked with hay while Frill fetched sticks and kindled a fire in the little hearth. By the light of this, and some tapers which the men had brought with them, Dr Subito was able to examine the captain.

  ‘A leg is broken, alas, which I will set,’ he announced, and proceeded to do so, swiftly and deftly. ‘Otherwise he suffers only from fever and inflammation of his head wound, that is all. The wound received at sea, I understand? Since how long? Two months? And he is recovering con brio up to now?’

  ‘Chirpy as a cricket,’ Dido said. ‘The surgeon on board his ship – that’s the Thrush – told him how when he got to London the doctors there’d likely say he could have his bandages off. It’s a plaguy shame this had to happen now. How long’ll he be poorly again, mister – doctor?’

  ‘He should not be moved for two weeks – three, if this fever does not slip down very quickly. I will come back tomorrow – subito – meantime you will find that the large lady – Mrs Lubbage – is a famous nurse.’

  ‘She don’t look it – I’d as lief not trouble her,’ Dido said, wrinkling her nose at the thought of that kitchen.

  ‘Senti, young lady, she has the gift of healing, she knows about herbs and charms, molto, molto,’ Dr Subito said earnestly. He was a small, spare man, with a sallow complexion and an anxious expression; his large black moustachios were his most lively and vigorous feature. When he spoke about Mrs Lubbage he glanced somewhat nervously behind him and made an odd, jerky sign with two fingers. ‘If it were not for the intervention of Mrs Lubbage, many, many of my patients would not have recovered!’ Under his breath he muttered, ‘And many, many of them would not have fallen ill, presto alla tedesca!’

  ‘Fire’s going nice and sprackish now, sir,’ said Pelmett. ‘And I’ve put the lame nag in the shippen with a bit o’ feed, and reckon us’d better ride the other one back to the Manor, or ol’ Mis’ll be turble tiffy and bumblesome, axing where we’ve got to.’

  Plainly he was dying to get away.

  ‘I will accompany you, my good fellows, allegro vivace,’ the doctor said quickly. ‘Give the patient this draught, young lady, when he awakens, and another dose at morning-tide. He should have light feedings – milk, eggs, white wine. No meat. I will return domani – tomorrow. Addio! To the re-see!’

  ‘Hey! Where am I to find eggs and wine and so forth in this back-end?’ Dido called after him, but he did not hear, or did not choose to.

  Dido suddenly found herself left alone with the sick man; the sound of hoofs died away outside and after that, strain her ears how she might, there was nothing to be heard at all save a distant sighing of trees.

  ‘This is a fubsy kind o’ set-out,’ she said to herself. ‘Still, no use bawling over botched butter – have to make the best of it. I’d as soon not tangle overmuch wi’ that old witch next door though. Only thing is, how are
we going to get summat to eat? Oh well, maybe old Lady Tegleaze’ll send some soup and jelly – or cheese and apples – no use fretting ahead. Queer old cuss she is, too – all those rooms in that great workus of a place, and she has to send us to a ken that ain’t much bigger than a chicken-coop.’

  She made sure the captain was sleeping peacefully, packed the hay tight under him and straightened the capes and carriage rugs over him. Next she brought in their valises, which would serve as tables or chairs, made up the fire, piled more hay in a corner for her own bed and bolted the front and back doors of the cottage, which consisted of two ground-floor rooms with a loft above.

  Lastly Dido pulled a packet from the front of her midshipman’s shirt and carefully inspected it. It was addressed to the First Lord of the Admiralty and was covered in large red unbroken seals.

  ‘All hunky-dory,’ she muttered to herself in satisfaction. ‘Likely enough it was you as whoever rummaged over the carriage was a-looking for – seeing as how nothing else was stole. But they didn’t find you, and so long as we’re in this neck o’ the woods, or till I can lay hands on some trustable chap to take you to London, you stays right inside my shimmyshirt.’

  She replaced the packet, blew out the tapers and curled up in her sweet-smelling nest.

  About half an hour later she heard somebody cautiously try first the front, then the back door.

  ‘Hilloo?’ Dido called out. ‘Is that the baker’s boy? One white, one brown, two pints o’ dairy fresh with the top on, half o’ rashers and a dozen best pullets’, if you please.’

  Dead silence greeted this request and though Dido listened alertly for some time after, there was no further disturbance. Presently, satisfied, she fell asleep.

  Early next morning, well before daybreak, Dido was woken by the crowing of roosters near at hand. Beyond the roosters, plaintive in the dark, she could hear sheep bleating – high and low, near and far – it sounded as if the hills were covered with an immense flock of sheep, full of unappeased longing for breakfast.

  And I could do with a peck myself, thought Dido, rolling off her flattened pile of hay. Croopus, don’t they half have it noisy in the country! Still, I reckon it’s time for the Cap to take another dram o’ physic. ‘Hey, Cap’n Hughes!’ she said softly. ‘How are you a-feeling today?’

  His forehead was cool and his eyes, when they opened, recognized her.

  ‘It’s the young passenger – Miss Twite,’ he murmured. ‘I will escort her to London when I carry the Dispatch – Osbaldeston will continue in command until the end of my sick-furlough. – Ah, thank you, my dear – ’

  Obediently he swallowed down the draught which Dido had prepared for him and fell asleep at once. Satisfied that he was doing well, Dido blew up the embers of the fire and fed it with dry sticks. Now, how could she go out leaving the sick man secure from intrusion? There were bolts on both doors and a lock on the front one, but no key.

  ‘Nothing bigger than a cat could get in at the windows, so that’s no worry,’ she decided. ‘Wonder if I could get out through the loft?’

  Entry to this was through a trapdoor in the ceiling. She piled the cases one on another, and from the top one she was just able to spring up, grab the edge of the opening and pull herself through like a squirrel.

  Plainly the loft had been used in the past for housing pigeons. A number of miscellaneous oddments had also been stored up here at one time or another and then forgotten: probing about cautiously in the half-dark Dido found some pewter dishes, half a dozen clay pipes (broken), a stringless lute, a box of mildewy books, an iron candlestick, a three-legged stool, some earthenware crocks and a hip-bath.

  ‘Some o’ these’ll come in useful,’ she decided. ‘Now, what’s out back?’

  A couple of tiles had been removed from the roof to make an entrance for the pigeons. Putting her face to the hole, Dido looked out and in the growing dawn light saw that a neglected, weed-grown farm yard lay behind the row of cottages. With great care she removed another tile, enlarging the hole enough to stick her head through, and looked sideways. A big rainwater barrel could be seen to her right, just below the edge of the roof.

  Guess if I could get on to that I could climb down from it, Dido thought, measuring its height with her eye. She began taking more tiles from the hole, slipping each carefully off its pair of wooden pegs and laying it on the floor, until there was a gap large enough to climb through. Once a tile escaped her and slid down, landing with a crash on the cobbles below, but nobody appeared to have heard. When the hole was big enough she squeezed through and went down the roof on fingers and toes until she was above the big wooden cask. Prodding it first, to make sure the top would take her weight, she scrambled on to it. A broken wooden hand-barrow leaned against the wall below.

  That’ll do for climbing back, she thought with satisfaction, and jumped nimbly to the ground. Hardly had she done so when she heard footsteps: an old man carrying two buckets on a yoke across his shoulders walked round the corner of the cottages and across the yard away from Dido. He had not seen her but his dog, following a few yards behind, did, and gave one sharp formal wuff. The old man turned himself round – he could not turn just his head because of the yoke.

  ‘What be fidgeting ee, Toby?’ he said.

  The dog barked again.

  ‘Why, dag me, ’tis a boy. No it bean’t, it be a liddle maid. Where be you from so early, darter?’

  ‘Are you Mr Firkin?’ Dido asked. ‘Lady Tegleaze said you’d help me.’

  ‘Owd Tom Firkin I be, and thisyer’s my dog Toby.’

  ‘What kind of a dog’s that? I’ve never seen one like him before.’

  Toby was a greyish-sandy colour, as big as a sheep and so extremely shaggy that it was hard to tell which way he was facing.

  ‘Old-fashioned shipdog ee be,’ Mr Firkin said.

  ‘Old-fashioned! He looks like something out o’ the Ark.’

  ‘Ah, he be a wunnerful clever dog wi’ the ship; we ne’er loses one at lambing time.’

  While he was speaking Mr Firkin continued on his way and Dido followed into a cowshed where a brindled cow stood waiting to be milked. Mr Firkin hung his yoke over a wooden partition, took off the buckets and sat down to milk on a three-legged wooden stool like the one in the loft, leaning his head against the cow’s side. He wore a battered hard felt hat, painted grey with a pheasant’s feather in it, and a sort of jerkin and apron made of sacking over velveteen breeches and leather boots. He had a long bushy white beard which at the moment was inconveniencing him very much; it stuck out and got in the way of the milk flow and if he pushed it to one side with his elbow it dangled into the pail.

  ‘You want a bit o’ string for that, mister,’ said Dido. She had one in her pocket with which she tied the beard, doubled up in a neat bunch.

  ‘Nay! That’s nim,’ he said admiringly. ‘I can tell ee must be a trig liddle maid. Why don’t ee feed my chickens while I tend to owd Clover here, then us’ll git our breakfasses.’

  He showed her where the hens were shut up at night ‘for fear o’ foxy owd Mus’ Reynolds’ and gave her a round tin pan with a wooden handle.

  ‘Chickens’ grub be in the posnet yonder.’

  Outside the cottage at the far end of the row from Mrs Lubbage’s, Dido saw a kind of cauldron on legs, which proved to be full of potato peelings. Under Mr Firkin’s directions she mixed these with a measure of corn. Then she opened the fowl-house door, letting loose a knee-deep flood of brown, white and speckled poultry into the yard, and fed them by flinging out handfuls of the mixture until they were all busily pecking and the pan was empty. Meanwhile Mr Firkin had finished milking and carried the two full pails back to his cottage. Dido followed and found him there carefully wringing his beard into one of the pails.

  ‘Now then, what’s all this nabble about ol’ Lady Tegleaze?’ he said, putting a pan of water to boil over the fire. While he cut slices off a loaf and a side of bacon and laid them in a skillet, Dido told him about the ac
cident: how Captain Hughes, wounded in the Chinese wars, had been coming home on sick-leave when his ship, the Thrush, had become involved in another battle, against the French this time, and had captured a French frigate.

  ‘And we was taking a dispatch to London about it all when this roust-up had to happen.’

  Mr Firkin was deeply interested in her tale.

  ‘Yon sick cap’n’s lying with a busted leg in the empty cottage? Eh, I’ll take him a posset; that’ll furbish him up.’

  He poured milk into another pan (not from the pail into which he had wrung his beard, Dido was relieved to notice), warmed it, added sugar, eggs and a golden fluid from a leather bottle.

  ‘What’s yon, mister?’

  ‘Dandelion wine, darter.’

  The posset was yellow and frothy and smelt wonderful – like a whole field of dandelions. Dido ran back along the yard, clambered by means of the wheelbarrow on to the cask and so to the roof, through the pigeon-hole, down through the loft entrance, and was able to unbolt the cottage’s front door just as Mr Firkin arrived.

  Captain Hughes was stirring again, more wakeful this time and very glad of the posset.

  ‘Puts me in mind of the Chinese lily soup we used to get in Poohoo province,’ he said. It soon made him drowsy, and he slept again.

  ‘D’you think he looks all right, mister, or d’you reckon he’s feverish?’ Dido asked Mr Firkin.

  ‘Nay, I’m bline, darter, I can’t see him! Mis’ Lubbage’ll be the one to tell ee how he’m faring.’

  ‘Blind? You are?’ Dido was astonished. The old man’s eyes were so bright, and he was so deft in everything he did, that it seemed as if he could see better than most.

  ‘Blinded forty year agone, struck by lightning sitting under a snottygog tree on Barlton Down. Turble fierce thunderstorms we had when I were a lad.’

  ‘How ever did you know I was a girl?’ Dido asked, thinking back.

  ‘Why, my dog Toby told me, surelye! There bain’t much as my dog Toby can’t tell me.’ The shaggy Toby wagged his tail knowledgeably and thrust his head under his master’s arm.