The Cuckoo Tree

by Joan Aiken

  ‘Down yonder.’ Tobit showed him the tiny oblong of Wardrobe Court, easily to be recognized by its two plane trees. He inserted the stone foot of Saint Erconwald, with message attached, into his sling, took careful aim and let fly. The projectile whirled away, soaring over the churchyard, over the rooftops, dropped, and was lost to view.

  ‘Send it lands on the planestanes, and disna smash some citizen’s losen-glass!’ said the King anxiously.

  They waited, peering, straining their eyes. One minute went by – two – five – seven.

  ‘If there’s no one about in Wardrobe Court,’ Dido muttered.

  ‘If it lodged in a tree – fell in a window-box – ’ Cris worried.

  But then suddenly a figure appeared on the roof of a house that must, surely, be on the south side of Wardrobe Court. The light was too dim and he was too far off to be recognized, but he carried a long pole attached to the end of which was, without any shadow of doubt, Aunt Grissie’s red chenille tablecloth. He waved the pole once, twice, three times, and the watchers on the tower let out a unanimous gasp of joy and relief.

  ‘Though dear knows we’re nae oot o’ the wanchancie business yet,’ remarked the King, as they retraced their steps down the spiral stairs. ‘Let’s see what yon skytes are abune the noo.’

  When they returned to the gallery and looked down they could see that a change had taken place in the random shifting and drifting motion of the great crowd assembled below. The crowd’s attention was focused on the puppet theatre which a figure in black fur, wearing a mask, had almost finished erecting in the north transept. Dido stared fixedly at this character. From his height she guessed him to be Colonel FitzPickwick – or was it Mystery come back? She could not be certain.

  There was an upheaval going on in the crowd. People were pressing and massing in front of the theatre. With another fourteen long hours before the coronation ceremonies would begin, any promise of distraction was as welcome as water in the desert.

  Evidently this commotion did not suit the puppeteer’s purpose, for he could be seen to send out a sharp message: presumably that no performance was to be expected for a long time yet. A disappointed ripple passed through the crowd, which moved back.

  ‘Forbye, they’re growing fretful and capernoited,’ muttered the King, knitting his brows. ‘Where be your laddies wi’ the cakes, Dean?’

  ‘There they go.’ The Dean pointed downwards to where a dozen choirboys in white surplices could be seen threading their way among the crowd, each carrying a big silver tray heaped high with macaroons. These were handed out liberally, and eagerly received; for the moment the puppet theatre was forgotten. Plainly this development did not meet with the puppet-master’s approval; he consulted with two shorter assistants, also masked – were they Sannie and Mrs Lubbage?

  What’ll they do? Dido wondered. They’re as stuck as we are; they dassn’t start a performance too soon.

  At this moment, however, King Richard solved the puppeteers’ problem, while adding greatly to that of his own supporters. Observing the giant necklace of citrus fruit that hung in swags around the balustrade, he reached down with his penknife to remove an orange and, by mischance, cut right through the cord; the entire necklace of fruit went cascading down on to the crowd in the nave, who naturally looked up to see what had caused this rain of oranges and lemons.

  A great gasping murmur went up:

  ‘The King! Granny, look, ’tis His Highness! Ma! Look up there, it’s His Majesty’s own self!’

  ‘Sir!’ exclaimed Dido. ‘Duck! Don’t let the Hanoverians see you!’

  Too late! Plainly the puppet-master and his two assistants had discovered the King’s presence, full of excitement and purpose, they were bustling about their theatre. And some smaller assistants were now making their way up and down the nave carrying trays full of what were presumably Joobie nuts.

  ‘Oh, croopus,’ Dido said. ‘Sir, you’ll have to talk to the people. Now the Hanoverians know you’re here I reckon it don’t make much odds.’

  ‘I am e’en o’ the same mind,’ agreed the King and, leaning over the balustrade, he called in a voice that, though not particularly loud, was remarkably clear and carrying:

  ‘Friends! Will ye leesten tae me a meenit? This is yer am appointit king, Davie Jamie Charlie Neddie Geordie Harry Dick Tudor-Stuart, wishfu’ tae hae a crack wi’ ye. I came tae spend the nicht here, in seerious meditation afore being crownit tomorrow, and blythe I am tae see sae mony o’ ye keeping me company. But, friends, I maun warn ye. There’s unfriends amang us too.’

  ‘For mussy’s sake, sir, don’t mention the rollers!’ Dido whispered urgently in his ear. ‘It’d start a panic – they’d all helter-skelter for the doors. It’d be murder!’

  King Richard nodded reassuringly, while continuing to address the crowd.

  ‘These unfriends, wha I willna scruple tae ca’ by their richtfu’ name, which is Hanoverians, are aboot tae gang aroond, offering ye nuts. Dinna eat yon nuts! They are a kind of poison: they will mak’ ye sick, and in your sickness ye will see ghosties and hobgoblins and deil kens what! Drop the nuts on the floor, wamp them under foot!’

  ‘No, no! Not on my tiles!’ the Dean was heard to protest in agony.

  ‘But, friends, if ye are hungry – and it’s a lang watch till the morn – my gude friend his Reverence the Dean here has kindly sent oot some almond cakies – those ye can eat a’ ye’ve a mind to.’

  The crowd down below could be seen responding to this advice by dropping handfuls of Joobie nuts on the black-and-white tiles and scrunching them underfoot as instructed. The puppeteers were plainly angered and taken aback by this development; King Richard nodded with satisfaction.

  ‘Now: anither thing, friends. Bear wi’ me patiently and I’ll not trouble ye much farther. These ill-deedy Hanoverians have also set up yon puppet theatre in the Cathedral. They plan to distract yer minds with galdragonries and marvels! Weel, ’tis a free country – thank the Lord – I’ll not forbeed ye tae look. But dinna tak it unco seeriously. (But dinna mistreat the Hanoverians either – we want nae rampauging in the Cathedral.) Those that love me best, and loved my old dad, Jamie Three, will maybe not look at a’. For my part, I like plays and puppetries fine, but I jalouse they arena whit I’d wish tae watch the nicht afore I’m crownit. This nicht I aim tae spend in seerious thocht and hymn singing. And I’m aboot tae commence noo. Any friends wha care tae join in are kindly welcome!’

  Without more ado, King Richard lifted his voice – a resonant baritone – in a tuneful rendering of Metrical Psalm Twenty-three.

  There was a moment’s pause, then a gale of sound followed him. The entire congregation had joined in.

  ‘Saints save us!’ breathed Dido. ‘Don’t I just hope the noise ain’t enough to upset the rollers.’

  The Dean, terribly agitated, glanced around him at his beloved building, waiting for the landslide to start. But the sound of the singing, though tremendous, was steady and ordered. The Cathedral vibrated like a chimney in a storm, but it kept its position.

  ‘Good boy, good boy!’ murmured the Dean. ‘Ah, he’ll make a decent king, if we’re all spared. Only, does he know enough hymns to keep them going all night?’

  The Dean bustled off to find a hymn-book. Dido, seeing that for the moment King Richard had the situation under control, turned back and climbed the spiral stairs to the outer stone gallery below the dome, and looked down to see what was happening in the streets.

  What she saw filled her with amazement and thankfulness.

  On the north side of the Cathedral the crowd had scattered to a considerable extent and the reason for this was that Yan, mounted on an elephant – presumably Rachel – was riding in and out, unrolling as he went what seemed an endless reel of rope. Each time he came close to the Cathedral he tossed a loop of this rope to another of the Wineberry Men – Dido could not see which – who stood waiting to receive and make it fast; then the elephant dashed away to the outer perimeter of the ope
n space round the Cathedral where another Wineberry Man stood ready to receive another loop of rope and tether it to whatever was at hand.

  ‘Pegging it down just like a tent, bless ’em,’ muttered Dido, and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘I might a known they’d do the job decent and seamanly. They surely never got the stuff from old Lord Fo’c’stle, though? I can’t believe he’d come through with it so quick.’

  Yan having secured St Paul’s at about forty different points on the north side, took a turn of rope completely round the Cathedral and disappeared lickety-spit northwards in the direction of Newgate, presumably to pass the rope round the block formed by Paternoster Row and Ivy Lane.

  ‘Just so long as the rope holds,’ said Tobit anxiously. He had followed Dido on to the stone gallery. ‘I bet the Cathedral’s pretty heavy, once it starts to slide.’

  Cris ran out and caught Tobit’s hand.

  ‘Come quick! Things aren’t so good inside.’

  They dashed at top speed down the shallow spiral stairs and back to the inner gallery.

  When they looked down they saw that the puppet-master had started his play. It was not, from where they stood, possible to see the puppets themselves, but judging from the behaviour of the audience, what they were doing was very sinister. Remembering the Miller’s Daughter, Dido knew how wild and strange they could be, even when acting something comical. The people standing near were gaspingly attentive; every now and then, at some bit of action, a portion of the crowd would jump nervously back.

  ‘Blame it,’ Dido said. ‘It won’t do to have much o’ that.’

  As if to underline her words, there was an uneasy surge of the crowd at some startling occurrence, and the Cathedral rocked on its unstable foundations.

  Meanwhile the King, steadily singing, beating time as he sang, was still carrying a good half of the congregation with him, at the same time keeping a wary eye on the activities of the Hanoverians.

  ‘Some o’ the daft fules ate the nuts in spite o’ the warning,’ he told Dido between two verses. ‘That’s why they’re sae nairvous and rintheroutacious.’

  It seemed that events on the puppet stage were approaching a climax. The light from the theatre shone blue and evil.

  ‘I wonder what Sannie and Co. plan to do if they start the church a-sliding?’ said Dido.

  ‘Oh I heard that,’ Tobit told her. ‘They reckon it’ll slide south, that’s why they put the theatre near the north door – as soon as it starts to move, they slip out the back way.’

  ‘Not so easily now, they can’t.’ Dido grinned, thinking of Yan’s network of rope. ‘I’m a-going down,’ she went on. ‘I want to see these here mannikins.’

  Cris and Tobit followed her. The stairs were beginning to fill up, as early-comers were crowded out of the nave and transepts. It was hard to squeeze their way down, but people were kind about letting them through; everybody was singing, even on the stairs, and there was a general atmosphere of cheerfulness and goodwill.

  Out in the nave it was different. About three-quarters of the huge crowd now assembled in the body of the Cathedral were singing. Those who could see the King were taking their time and tune from him, and the rest were following them (with some exceptions: Dido distinctly heard one old lady singing ‘Oh where and o where is my little dog gone’, looking round her with a melancholy expression which was certainly justified if she had brought her little dog into the Cathedral). But the people directly in front of the puppet theatre were not singing: they were following the action on the stage with strained attention.

  Wriggling, gliding, edging their way, Dido, Tobit and Cris moved in the direction of the theatre. People in the crowd here were by no means as friendly and helpful as those on the stairs; they met with glares and mutters of ‘Keep back there! Give over shoving!’ One man gave Cris a clout as she slid under his elbow; three more linked arms and tried to stop them getting through.

  As, in spite of this opposition, they neared the stage, they began to hear the music: a sad, hypnotic wailing drone. It was the same tune that Mr Twite had played on his hoboy, but it was now being rendered, Dido saw, by Tante Sannie and Mrs Lubbage, wearing black fur clothes and black masks, playing on black combs wrapped in black tissue paper.

  At last, by standing on tiptoe and craning sideways, they were able to get a view of the puppets.

  The play was evidently about a war between goblins and humans. The humans were losing the war. And the goblins – little dark creatures, their faces wizened with malice, their eyes blazing with green light – were winning. They had poisoned blades to their swords and daggers; they sang a magic song which killed its hearers. Louder and louder wailed the sad, spooky music.

  ‘Oh, Alfred, I feel rotten queer,’ said the woman beside Dido, absently swallowing a couple of Joobie nuts she held. ‘I believe I’m going to faint.’ She swayed, but there was hardly room to fall over. ‘You can’t faint here, Lil, hold up, do!’ said the man with her anxiously. However, at this moment another woman did faint, crumpling on to the black-and-white tiles.

  ‘We have won!’ screamed the goblin king on the stage triumphantly waving his poisoned sword. ‘Not one of our enemies is left alive!’

  He turned towards the audience, his eyes blazing green, his army of dark, wicked little soldiers massing behind him – more and more of them came piling on to the stage. ‘And now,’ hissed the king, ‘now, my friends, we are coming to get you!’

  The whole army of goblins poured off the stage.

  There were screams, shouts of fright and disgust, gasps, moans. Both Dido’s feet were stamped on heavily, as the crowd surged backwards. Three more women fainted.

  The situation in the nave was now as if one piece of a jigsaw were trying to shove its way through the rest of the completed puzzle: there was no room to move at all, and yet a whole huge section of the crowd was frantically pushing and struggling to get away from the puppet theatre.

  Cris pounced forward and grabbed one of the puppets from the floor.

  ‘Look!’ she cried to the woman called Lil. ‘It’s only a doll! It won’t hurt you!’

  But the woman, screaming and hysterical, was in no state to listen to sense.

  ‘It’s alive, it wriggled! I saw it!’ she wailed. ‘It’s got a poisoned dagger!’ And she fought like a crazy creature to get away from it. Kicked and knocked by frantic feet, the puppets skidded about on the smooth tiles, and wherever they were seen they spread terror and pandemonium.

  ‘They aren’t alive!’ shouted Dido at the top of her lungs, ‘Stand still! They can’t hurt you!’

  But at that moment she distinctly saw one of the little creatures move towards her foot, jerking itself along the ground. Quelling a horrible swoop of her heart, she picked it up, and realized that it was propelled by a simple mechanism of a twig, a notched cotton reel and a stretched, twisted piece of catgut. ‘Look! It’s only a toy!’

  She might as well have said so to Niagara.

  ‘STAND STILL!’ shouted the king. ‘Keep your heads! Stand still!’ But the crowd, five hundred strong, heaved sideways, once, twice, three times.

  ‘Hold them!’ shouted the King to the people farther away from the puppet theatre who, unaffected by the panic, were still keeping their position and singing away. ‘Link your hands round and hold them!’

  The Cathedral began to rock.

  ‘Guess this is what an earthquake’s like,’ Dido said to Cris. They had been washed up against a pillar, as if by a flood. Dido grabbed an arm of Tobit, an arm of Cris, and braced herself against the stone. ‘Hark at the bells! Don’t they half ring!’

  The chandeliers with their tapers were swinging wildly; shadows leapt about; oranges and lemons rained down from the high vaulted roof. The puppet theatre toppled and fell, crushing a good many puppets underneath it. Dido peered through the mass of people, trying to discover where the puppet-master and his two assistants had got to. She could not see them in the general muddle. It was like a battle;
it was a battle.

  The Cathedral rocked a fourth time.

  ‘Do you think it’s starting to slide?’ Cris said. She was rather pale. She let go of Dido’s hand and clung to Tobit.

  ‘Dunno. With all the ruckus, it’s hard to say what’s happening.’

  But at that moment the Cathedral did something definite. With a tremendous noise, louder than any sound hitherto produced by the crowd, with a kind of thunderous, rumbling scrunch, St Paul’s lurched sideways – shuddered in every stone – and sank about six feet into the ground, canted over at an angle of fifteen degrees.

  And stood still.

  ‘Some of the rollers must have buckled and given way,’ said Tobit.

  ‘That’s so – on account of Yan’s anchoring it so tight,’ agreed Dido. ‘With all that rocking about and the ropes holding fast, the rollers jist couldn’t take the strain. Oh well – guess the old place is safe enough now – though it’s going to be a right puzzle for his Reverence to jack it up level again. – Why, look – there is Yan!’

  At the moment of the Cathedral’s final subsidence, the north doors had swung open. There was a movement of the crowd to try and get out, but due to the angle at which St Paul’s was tilted, down at the south-west corner, the north entrance was now above ground level. Moreover Rachel the elephant was standing outside, blocking the way. The five Wineberry Men leapt in, off her back.

  ‘The puppets!’ called Dido. ‘Pick ’em up! Put ’em away!’

  She, Cris and Tobit began tossing all the puppets they could see into a wicker hamper, evidently the container in which they had been brought. The Wineberry Men helped. Seeing this, the crowd began to settle down.

  ‘Friends!’ shouted the King from above. ‘It wad mateerially asseest matters if ye’d a’ sit doon on the ground. The Cathedral is quite safe – just a wee bit canted o’er. Ye hae nae groonds for appreheension!’

  People were only too pleased to comply – with three exceptions. As the whole congregation sank limply to the floor, three desperate figures were seen trying to make their way to the south entrance: Sannie, Mrs Lubbage and the puppet-master, who had been foiled in their attempt to get out at the north door.