by Joan Aiken
‘Why mustn’t anyone find out?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she’s not allowed to have children because she’s a witch.’
‘Is she really a witch?’ Dido asked.
‘She thinks she is.’
‘Are you scared of her?’
The boy pondered, his grey eyes fixed on distance. ‘I’m more scared of the other one,’ he said at length.
‘Which?’
‘Her friend. Tante Sannie.’ He looked a little impatient – as if, Dido suddenly thought, he expected her to know all this already. She glanced around her at the bushy little dark-green tree, which could have held about two more people as well as themselves but did not, and asked,
‘Who were you a-talking to when I climbed up?’
He looked still more surprised. ‘I was talking to Aswell, of course.’
‘Who’s Aswell?’
‘My friend. Can’t you hear him? He’s talking now.’
‘No I can’t,’ Dido said crossly. Was the boy touched in the upper works?
‘No you can’t,’ the boy agreed, after listening again. ‘Aswell says I’m the only one who can hear him.’
‘Where is he?’ Dido asked rather disbelievingly.
The boy frowned, getting his thought into words. ‘In a way he seems to be here. Sometimes when we first start talking I can feel him – feel him put his hands between mine. But it’s hard for him to do that – it only lasts a minute. Really he’s thousands of miles away.’
‘Where – in the sky?’
‘I suppose so. He’ll come when I call. Not always but sometimes. And more often here in the Cuckoo Tree than back in the loft.’
Dido was suddenly enlightened.
‘You fetches him by singing that funny rhyme – canarack, stanarack?’
‘Of course.’ It seemed as if he found Dido dreadfully slow-witted, and she felt a little forlorn.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Cris.’
‘Well, Cris, why don’t you run away from Auntie Daisy? Croopus, I would, if I had to live in the loft all the time.’
‘They’d find me,’ Cris said. ‘Even if Auntie Daisy couldn’t, Tante Sannie would be sure to find me, wherever I went. And I couldn’t bear that. She can do things.’ He shivered. ‘Besides, Aswell says it’s better if I stay. Aswell knows much more than I do. And I can help the old man – Mr Firkin.’
‘Does he know you’re there?’
‘He doesn’t let himself know – I expect he guesses Auntie Daisy would be angry,’ Cris said, thinking again. Dido suddenly realized that he was not at all used to having a conversation – it took him a minute to translate her questions into his thoughts and back again. ‘But I think he does know. He leaves food for me. And Toby knows, of course.’
Dido nodded. ‘Don’t you see no one else?’
Cris looked puzzled. ‘Who could I see? I’m supposed to stay in the loft while it’s light. But Auntie Daisy’s too fat to come up, so most days I come here.’
‘It’s nice.’ Dido leaned back against a spicy, springy cushion of yew. ‘Reckon you could just about live in this tree. Can you eat the berries?’
‘The red squashy part you can – but it’s not very nice, it’s sickly. The green seed in the middle is poisonous.’
‘Do cuckoos build their nests here?’ asked ignorant Dido.
‘Cuckoo’s don’t build. They lay their eggs in other birds’ nests.’
‘Then why’s it called the Cuckoo Tree?’
Cris listened a minute.
‘Aswell says it’s always been called that – since Charles the First’s time. Because it’s such a funny shape.’
At this moment the sun, which had been battling with the mist for the last ten minutes, suddenly burst through. The clouds lifted in a great spongy, steamy mass, melting skywards into the blue.
‘Saints save us!’ exclaimed Dido.
She had not realized how high up they were. Below the Cuckoo Tree the wooded hill shot steeply down for six hundred feet, and at its foot flat country began which stretched away – field after field, wood after wood – into the far blue distance.
There were villages, churches, a town with a tall steeple, a pair of lakes not far off reflecting the colour of the sky. On either hand the downs rolled away, one behind the other, like green grassy waves. And the beech trees in the woods down below blazed red and gold in their autumn plumage.
‘Where’s London?’
‘You can’t see that from here – it’s over fifty miles.’
‘Not that town there?’ Dido was disappointed.
‘No, that’s Petworth.’
The name reminded Dido of Captain Hughes and his Dispatch.
‘I’d best be getting back,’ she said regretfully. ‘What about you?’
‘I daren’t come back now the mist’s lifted. I’ll have to wait till it’s dark.’
‘Don’t you get hungry?’
‘Used to it. Maybe I’ll find some blackberries or nuts left.’
Dido felt in her pockets and discovered a couple of eggs which she had picked up in Auntie Daisy’s hen-house. One of the eggs had broken.
‘Ugh!’ She pulled out her fingers, slimy and dripping. ‘Lucky the other one ain’t bust. S’posing it’s not addled, that is. You could build a little fire and roast it.’
‘Thanks.’ Cris took the egg. His thin, serious face broke into a smile which made Dido wonder if he had ever smiled before.
‘My stars!’ she suddenly remembered. ‘The doc’s s’posed to be coming at noon to look at my Cap’n. I’d best scarper. Tooralooral, Cris. See you in the loft, maybe.’
Cris turned rather pale. ‘You’ll be careful? If Auntie Daisy heard you up there – ’
‘Mum as a mouse in a mad cat’s ear,’ Dido promised, and climbed nimbly backwards down the trunk. It was like going down the companion-way of a ship.
At the foot she noticed an odd thing: a corkscrew, which somebody had screwed several turns into the reddish, flaky bark. A small piece of green ribbon was tied to the handle.
Daffy idea to leave a corkscrew in a tree-trunk! Dido thought. No bottles hereabouts? Wonder why Cris has it there?
It was not until she had started the steady jog-trot back to Dogkennel Cottages that she remembered Yan, Tan, Tethera and the rest. They too had been planning to come to the Cuckoo Tree. Could the corkscrew belong to them?
She reached the top of the hill and started running down the slope towards the little row of cottages. Away to her left she could see Mr Firkin with his dog Toby, sitting in the middle of a huge flock of sheep.
‘Ask me,’ said Dido to herself, ‘Mr Firkin and Toby are about the only two round here that ain’t muxed up in some kind of havey-cavey business. Blight it, there comes old Sawbones Subito on his nag; I’d best hustle.’
3
THE DOCTOR’S VERDICT on his patient was favourable.
‘Another two weeks,’ he declared, ‘and we shall have him con moto, allegro assai! It is a strong constitution, fortunately – fortissimo! Continue with the treatment along the lines I have laid down. The signora Lubbage – she has seen him?’
‘Yes,’ said Dido, ‘she put these here cobwebs on him. She ain’t home just now.’
‘Ah, that is good – I mean, that is good she has seen him. Eccolo, I will return on Friday,’ said Dr Subito, and made off at top speed, casting wary glances along the road in either direction.
Captain Hughes was wakeful after the doctor’s inspection, and somewhat fretful.
‘I could eat a sturgeon, bones and all,’ he announced, and Dido glanced round the bare little room.
‘We’re clean out of prog, Cap,’ she said. ‘Wait a couple o’ minutes and I’ll see what I can fetch in.’
Mr Firkin still sat out on the hillside with his sheep, a couple of miles away, but the basket from Tegleaze Manor was close at hand, temptingly in view through Mrs Lubbage’s kitchen window.
‘I s’pose she did lock
the door?’ Dido said to herself.
She walked along to the witch’s cottage carrying Captain Hughes’s clasp-knife, with which she thought it would be easy enough to force open the door. She tried to make certain: yes, locked. Just as she was about to insert the knife-blade between door and doorpost she experienced a curious prickling sensation in her hands; at the same time a small buzzing voice – where? inside her head perhaps – said faintly but audibly,
‘This is a hoodoo lock. Beware. Do not touch it.’
‘Eh?’ Dido looked sharply behind her. Nobody was there. Have I got a screw loose? she wondered, and approached the knife-blade to the crack once more.
Again she heard the voice, distant but distinct, impossible to locate, like the drone of a loud mosquito:
‘This is a hoodoo lock. Beware. Do not touch it.’
‘Rabbit me!’ Dido, thoroughly discomposed and uneasy, stepped back, eyeing the door as if it might fly open and thump her. ‘This is a right murksy set-out! Talking doors – I s’pose when I goes to lay hands on the basket of grub it’ll get up and walk away! Well, the old crone may have hoodoo’d her front door, but I’ll lay she didn’t think to set one o’ her spooky boobytraps in the attic – blow me if I don’t fetch the vittles out that way just to serve her right for her nasty suspicious nature.’
Somewhat to the surprise of the Captain she returned to his room, piled up their luggage and climbed into the loft. Then she made her way along through the series of lofts until she reached that of Mrs Lubbage, whose trapdoor was open. Jamming a broomstick across the hole, Dido tied a length of cord to it and slid down.
Mrs Lubbage’s kitchen smelt even worse with the door shut; the smell was like a solid, threatening presence in the room.
Just our luck if it’s turned the grub sour, Dido thought, moving carefully and warily across the greasy bricks towards the table on which stood the hamper of provisions. A label on the handle reinforced her courage: it said in large clear print:
FOR THE SICK GENTLEMAN AT
DOGKENNEL COTTAGES
Bet we wouldn’t a seen a crumb of it if I hadn’t come to fetch it, Dido thought, grasping the handle. Next moment, with a startled gasp, she almost dropped the whole supply on the bricks for, sitting on the table close by and revealed when she picked the basket up, was the largest rat she had ever seen, brindled, with a tail that must have been fully two feet long. It did not scurry away, as an ordinary rat would have done, but turned its head slowly and gave her a steady look; Dido felt a cold sensation between her shoulder-blades.
However she returned the look boldly.
‘You’ll know me again, Frederick, that’s for sure,’ she said to it. ‘And I just hope you’ve kept your long whiskery nose out o’ the Cap’n’s cheese. Now, how’m I going to get yon basket up the rope?’
She solved this problem by attaching the basket to the end of the rope and pulling it up after her, watched meanwhile by the rat, as if, thought Dido, he was learning how, so he could do it himself next time.
The rat was not the only creature that seemed to be watching her: she noticed, in a corner of Mrs Lubbage’s kitchen, a small carved wooden table exactly like the one she had seen at Tegleaze Manor, with little black faces and white-painted eyes that seemed to follow her.
If I never go back into that boggarty place again it’ll be soon enough, she thought, scrambling back into her own loft. Blest if I know how Cris can stand living there. No wonder he seems a bit out o’ the common.
Anyways, we got the grub. She lowered it down into Captain Hughes’s sickroom, jumped down herself, and unpacked the hamper with exclamations of satisfaction.
‘Bread – butter – cold roast chicken – flask o’ soup – cheese – red-currant jelly – grapes – oranges – and a bottle o’ wine. Couldn’t a done you better if you’d been Admiral o’ the Fleet,’ she told the Captain, and proceeded to heat up some of the soup for him and toast some of the bread.
‘I’ve poured in a dram o’ wine as well, so it’s right stingo stuff,’ she said, giving him a bowlful. She herself ate an orange and a leg of chicken to hearten her for the scene which she felt certain must follow Mrs Lubbage’s return and discovery that the basket was missing.
Sure enough, at about sunset there was a tremendous thump on the door.
‘Hush! You’ll wake the Cap’n!’ Dido hissed, opening it.
Outside stood Mrs Lubbage, brawny arms akimbo, little black eyes snapping with rage.
‘Evening, missus,’ Dido greeted her politely, slipping out and closing the door. ‘Guess you was wanting to ask about the basket o’ prog Lady Tegleaze sent down for us? Cap’n Hughes was fair clemmed wi’ hunger, and you hadn’t left word when you’d be back, so I jist nipped along and helped myself – hope that was all hunky-dory.’
The witch stared at her for a moment, started to say something, and then changed her mind.
‘How did you get in?’ she asked at length in a surly tone.
Dido could not mention the loft, because of Cris, so she opened her eyes wide and innocently replied,
‘Why, how d’you think? Down the chimbley?’
Mrs Lubbage seemed annoyed but baffled by this answer and was about to ask another question. Luckily at that moment a distant bleating, which had been drawing closer, became so loud that no further conversation was possible: Mr Firkin had arrived home with his flock. Mrs Lubbage stumped off angrily to her own cottage; Dido ran to help Mr Firkin and Toby persuade the sheep to file through a gap between two hurdles and so into the pasture at the rear of the farmyard.
As they passed through the gap, Mr Firkin touched each sheep with his white crook, and Dido could hear him counting,
‘Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Pimp – ’
Each time he came to ‘Den’ he moved his hand down the crook, which had notches in it.
‘Mr Firkin,’ said Dido, when the sheep were all safe in the field, and she was scrubbing potatoes in the old man’s kitchen and setting them to bake among the glowing logs in his fireplace.
‘Yes, darter?’
‘What was that you were saying when you counted the sheep?’
‘I was a-counting them, darter.’
‘Yes, but what were those words – Yan, Tan, Tethera – ’
‘That be ship-counting lingo. Lingo for counting ship,’ Mr Firkin explained kindly.
‘Oh, cranberries! We’re a-going round like a merry-go-round! Well, suppose I was to meet some chaps as called ’emselves Yan, Tan and so forth – I’m not saying I did, but suppose I was to – ’
Mr Firkin’s old brown face took on a cautious expression.
‘Nay, I’d say let well alone, darter. Mebbe ’tis all talk but I’ve heard tell as how there be folk called Wineberry Men as ’tis best not to meddle with.’
‘Smugglers, maybe?’
‘Hush! Nay, more like kind o’ civil service gentry,’ Mr Firkin said hastily. ‘Best not to talk about ’em darter. Wallses do have earses.’
Deciding that the Wineberry Men almost certainly were smugglers, Dido returned to Captain Hughes and found him wakeful and fidgety.
‘What about our Dispatch?’ he demanded. ‘Do you have it safe, child?’
‘Yes, yes, Cap’n. All rug. Right here.’ Dido tapped her chest, which crackled reassuringly.
‘We must get it to London somehow,’ the Captain fretted. ‘What day is it today?’
‘Fust o’ November, Cap. All Saints’ Day.’
‘And the coronation next week! It is desperately important that the Dispatch should reach the First Lord before then.’
‘Doc says you mustn’t be moved afore two weeks,’ Dido pointed out.
‘Then we must find a reliable messenger.’
Dido bit her thumb. ‘I knows that,’ she said gloomily. ‘But finding a reliable cove in these parts is about as likely as picking up a pink pearl in Piccadilly. Everyone’s up to the neck in summat. There’s a carrier called Jem – today’s his day to call, seemingly – but M
r Firkin says he’s shravey. Best not give him the Dispatch. What I thought I might do, Cap, if you’re agreeable, is send a note by Jem to a cove I knows in London asking him to step down and help us.’
‘Is your friend reliable?’ the Captain asked, pressing a hand to his aching head.
‘Sure as a gun, he is!’
Since Captain Hughes, who was beginning to feel weak and feverish again, could think of no better plan, he agreed to this.
Dido sat down to the unaccustomed task of writing a letter. Borrowing the Captain’s travelling ink-horn and quill and using a bit of paper the cheese had been wrapped in, she wrote:
Dere Simon I doo hop yore stil alive. I am all rug – wuz piked up by wailing ship an hadd Grate Times abord her. Brung home in Man o’ War like Roilty. Wil tel more wen I see yoo. I do hop yore stil alive. Iff yoo can pleez cum hear wear I am stuk at preznt or send relleye relible cove. I badly need sum wun. I doo hop yore stil alive. Lots ov luv. Dido.
She folded it and addressed it: ‘Simon as used to livv in Rose Alley, Care of Doc Furniss, The art Skool, Chellsey, London.’
She had scarcely finished this when voices were heard outside, there came a knock on the door, and Mr Firkin ushered in a lank, greasy-haired individual in a moleskin cap and gaiters.
‘Thisyer’s Jem Hoadley, as’ll take your letter to Perroth, darter.’
One glance at him was enough to make Dido thankful she had not planned to entrust Captain Hughes’s Dispatch to the shravey Jem; he looked about as reliable as a stoat.
‘That’ll be five-and-a-tanner,’ he said, receiving the letter, his little pink-rimmed eyes meanwhile darting into every corner of the room.
Dido was fairly sure that a letter to London should not cost so much, but Captain Hughes counted five shillings and sixpence out of a purse which he brought from under his pillow, Jem’s eyes following every movement and every coin.
‘I thankee, sir and missie. That’ll be in Pet’orth by breakfast time.’
‘So I hope, if Petworth is but five miles distant,’ the Captain remarked testily.
When Jem had departed on his flea-bitten mare, Dido asked the Captain if he would have any objection to her stepping up the road to Tegleaze Manor.