The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories

by Joan Aiken

  "But they're not real, are they?” cried Mrs. Pontwell, the vicar's wife. “I mean—they are Mark and Harriet, cleverly dressed up, aren't they, really?"

  When she discovered that the helots were not Mark and Harriet, she gave a slight scream and kept well out of their way for the rest of the evening.

  Many of the guests remained, playing charades, until nearly midnight, but Cousin Elspeth, who intended to leave the following morning, retired to bed at half past ten.

  "Och! I've just had a grand time,” she said. “I never thocht I'd enjoy a party so well. But old bones, ye ken, need plainty of rest; I'll e'en take maself of to ma wee bed, for I must be up bricht and airlly the morn."

  Her absence did not diminish the gaiety of the party, and Mrs. Armitage was serving cups of hot chocolate with rum in it while everyone sang “Whitticomb Fair,” when piercing shrieks were heard from upstairs. Simultaneously, all the lights went out.

  "Och, maircy! Mairder! Mairder! Mairder!"

  "Sounds as if someone's strangling Cousin Elspeth,” said Mark, starting for the stairs.

  "Where did you put the matches?” said Harriet.

  There were plenty of candles and matches lying around, but in the confusion, with guests and members of the family bumping about in the dark, it was some time before a rescue party, consisting of Mark, Mr. Armitage, and Mr. Shepherd from next door, was able to mount the stairs with candles and make their way to Cousin Elspeth's room.

  They found that lady sitting up in bed in shawl and nightcap, almost paralytic with indignation.

  "A deedy lot you are, upon my worrd! I could have been torrn leemb fra leemb before ye lifted a feenger!"

  "But what happened?” said Mr. Armitage, looking round in perplexity.

  "The mirror's gone!” said Mark.

  "Whit happened? Whit happened? Yon unco’ misshapen stravaigning shilpit monsters of yours cam’ glomping intil ma room—bald as brass!—removed the meerror fra the wall, and glomped off oot again, as calm as Plato! Wheer they have taken it, I dinna speer—nor do I care—but thankful I am this is the last nicht in life I'll pass under this roof, and I'll ne'er come back afore death bears me awa', and it's only a wonder I didna die on the spot wi’ petrification!” And Cousin Elspeth succumbed to a fit of violent hysterics, needing to be administered to with burnt feathers, sal volatile, brandy, snuff, hot-water bottles, and antiphlogistine poultices.

  While this was happening, Mark said to Harriet,

  "Where do you suppose the helots have taken the mirror?"

  "Back to the cellar? How did they get out?"

  By this time, most of the guests had gone. The blown fuse had been mended and the lights restored. Mark and Harriet went down, a little cautiously, to inspect the cellar, but found it empty; the lock had been neatly picked from inside.

  As they returned to the hall, the telephone rang. Mark picked up the receiver and heard the vicar's voice.

  "Mark, is that you, my boy? I'm afraid those two mechanical monsters of yours are up to something very fishy in the churchyard. I can see them from my study window in the moonlight. Will you ask your father to come along, and tell him I've phoned P.C. Loiter."

  "Oh, now what?” groaned Mr. Armitage on hearing this news, but he accompanied his children to the churchyard, which was only a five-minute run along the main street, leaving Mrs. Armitage in charge of the stricken Cousin Elspeth.

  A large, bright hunter's moon was sailing overhead, and by its light, it was easy to see Nickelas and Tinthea hoisting up Miss Hooting's glass coffin. They had excavated the grave with amazing speed, and now carefully placed the coffin on the grass to one side of it. Then they laid the mirror, reflecting surface down, on top of the coffin.

  As the Armitages arrived at one gate, the vicar and P.C. Loiter came from the vicarage garden.

  "Here! What's going on!” shouted P.C. Loiter, outraged. “Just you stop that—whatever you're doing!—If you ask me,” he added in an undertone to Mr. Pontwell, “that's what comes from burying these here wit—these old fairy ladies in churchyards along with decent folk."

  "Oh dear me,” said the vicar, “but we must be broad-minded, you know, and Miss Hooting had been such a long-established member of our community—"

  At this moment, Nickelas and Tinthea, taking no notice of P.C. Loiter's shouts, raised the mirror high above the coffin, holding it like a canopy.

  "What's the idea, d'you suppose!” Mark muttered to Harriet.

  "So as to get the reflection of Miss Hooting inside the coffin—"

  "Ugh!"

  The coffin suddenly exploded with the kind of noise that a gas oven makes when somebody has been too slow in lighting the match. The helots fell backwards, letting go of the mirror, which fell and smashed.

  A large owl was seen to fly away from where the coffin had been.

  P.C. Loiter, very reluctantly, but encouraged by the presence of Mr. Pontwell and Mr. Armitage on either side, went forward and inspected the coffin. But there was nothing in it, except a great deal of broken glass. Nor was the body of Miss Hooting ever seen again.

  "I think it was a plan that went wrong,” said Harriet to Mark. “I think she hoped, if she had the mirror, it would make her young and handsome and stop her from dying."

  "So she sent the helots to get it? Maybe,” said Mark.

  "What a shame the mirror got smashed. Because, look at Cousin Elspeth!"

  Cousin Elspeth, overnight, had gone back to exactly what she had been at the beginning of the visit—sour, dour, hard-featured, and extremely bad-tempered.

  "Ye might have provided a drap of Earl Grey for my last breakfast!” she snapped. “And, as for that disgreeceful occurrence last nicht—aweel, the less said the better!” After which she went on to say a great deal more about it. And, as she left, announced that Mark would certainly not get the writing-desk, nor Harriet the mohair stole, since they were undoubtedly responsible for the goings-on in the night.

  "Somehow, I don't see Cousin Elspeth putting us through art school,” mused Harriet, as the taxi rolled away with their cousin along the village street.

  "That's a long way off,” said Mark peacefully.

  Mr. Armitage was on the telephone with Dowbridges, the auctioneers.

  "I want you to come and fetch two robots and enter them in your Friday sale. Please send a truck at once; I'd like them out of the house by noon. Yes, robots; two lunar-powered robots, in full working order, complete with instruction booklets. Handy for workshop, kitchen, or garden; a really useful pair; you can price the large one at 90 pounds and the small at 50 pounds."

  On Friday, Mrs. Armitage and Harriet attended the sale, and returned to report with high satisfaction that both helots had been sold to Admiral Lycanthrop.

  "He'll give them what for, I bet,” said Mark. “He won't stand any nonsense from them."

  But, alas, it turned out that the admiral, who was rather hard of hearing, thought he was bidding for two rowboats, and when he discovered that his purchase consisted instead of two lunar-powered mechanical slaves with awkward dispositions, he returned them, demanding his money back.

  The Armitages came down to breakfast on Saturday to find Nickelas and Tinthea standing mute, dogged, and expectant outside the back door....

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  Kitty Snickersnee

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  Harriet went once or twice a month to take spinning lessons from old Mrs. Holdernesse who lived down the hill. In between the lessons, Harriet collected sheeps’ wool from all the local barbed-wire fences, blackthorn thickets, and blackberry clumps, for Mrs. Holdernesse to spin. Two weeks’ work generally produced a basketful of gray, greasy, lumpy wool, smelling strongly of ammonia, and tangled about with thorns and dried grass and thistly-prickles. Next time Harriet saw the basketful, it would be snowy white, bleached, washed, and dried in the sun, then combed and smoothed and cleaned of all its prickles by rubbing and scraping on a teazel-board. (Teazels were the
thistle-heads of tall, spiny plants which grew down in the marshy fields known as the Wuldbrooks because they flooded in winter. Teazels seemed to have been invented by Nature specially for the purpose of scratching thorns and lumps of mud out of sheeps’ wool.)

  Mrs. Holdernesse was small and old, with white hair done in a knob on top, small skinny hands, and eyes like triangular chips of blue flint in her pale face. Her hands were amazingly skillful—with one she kept pulling out lumps of wool from the basket, while with the other she twirled and fed it into a quivering strand, which was drawn on to the shoulder of the spinning-wheel, and she kept that spinning round by pedaling with her right foot. And, when the basket of loose tufts was empty, she had a ball, big as her two fists, of strong white crinkly wool, which would be either knitted into sweaters or woven into rugs. Harriet had one of the sweaters. It had been dyed a bright golden yellow with lichen scraped off trees, and was too warm to be worn except in the very coldest weather.

  "Sheep know how to keep warm,” said Mrs. Holdernesse. “You never see a sheep shivering."

  While she was spinning or weaving she told Harriet all kinds of interesting facts: how the whole of this country was once deep forest, tall oaks which were all cut down to build ships; and how the inhabitants of Easter Island had done the same thing until there were no trees left on their island, so they could never sail away again ... how the Romans had brought walnut trees and their own gods to Ancient Britain.... Harriet listened and learned how to twirl the cluster of wool into a filament, not too thick, not too thin or it would break; if it did break Mrs. Holdernesse, with her bony nimble fingers, could twist the two strands together without the least difficulty, but Harriet found it very much harder, and would rub and twist until the strands grew grubby before she made a satisfactory join.

  One day Harriet arrived with a much larger basketful than usual. The wool was particularly filthy and matted; some of it was almost solid with dirt.

  "While you are having your lesson I shall put this lot to soak in a bath of foxglove juice,” Mrs. Holdernesse decided. “That will dissolve the mud and dirt. It almost feels as if there is something solid in there, among the wool. Where in the world did you find all this?"

  "There's an old shepherd's hut on top of Coldharbour Mount. It blew down in last week's storm and left quite a deep pit underneath. I found all this lot in there. The place hadn't been used for years."

  "Coldharbour Mount? Yes ... there used to be a lot of stories about that place; the Roman road from the sea runs over the top, so it has been used ever since then, and probably for centuries before that—by smugglers and highwaymen and soldiers on their way to and from wars,” remarked Mrs. Holdernesse, settling down again on her spinning-stool and working her wheel into motion. “Mind that strand, Harriet, it is getting a trifle too thick, fine it down a little. Yes, that is better."

  "Tell me some of the stories about Coldharbour Mount."

  "There used to be a big oak tree where two tracks met."

  "Yes,” said Harriet. “It is still there. Not far from the ruined hut."

  "It was called the ‘copt tree.’”

  "What does ‘copt’ mean?"

  "It was an Arabic word, relating to an early religious sect. As recently as a hundred years ago it was thought to be unlucky to pass that tree without leaving an offering."

  "What sort of offering?"

  "Oh, anything would be acceptable—a piece of bread, sugar-lump, even a hair off your head. Children who passed that way were thought to be in need of special protection."

  "What kind of protection?"

  "They had to wear a magic charm on a neck cord."

  "What kind of magic charm?"

  "Your lump of amber would do,” Mrs. Holdernesse said smiling. Harriet wore a lump of amber on a silver chain; she had had it last year for a present when her birthday fell during a family trip to Lyme Regis. “Amber is often used as a charm against witchcraft and the attacks of demons."

  "I take it off at night,” said Harriet thoughtfully. “Maybe I should keep it on."

  "Not so many demons about nowadays. Perhaps."

  "Do you think there are evil spirits on Coldharbour Mount?"

  "There might be a tree goddess called Black Annis,” Mrs. Holdernesse said. “—There, that's the end of your wool; shall we go and see how the foxglove bath is working?"

  "Who was Black Annis? What did she do?"

  "She was a cousin of the Egyptian goddess Sekhet, a lion lady. As Bast, the cat goddess, she was kind and friendly; as Sekhet she was ferocious and demanding. The Romans probably brought her over. There would have been some of her worshippers in the Roman army. Ah,” said Mrs. Holdernesse, stirring the muddy wool soup in her copper bath, “here is something quite solid in the middle of the brew; I shall fish it out with the laundry tongs."

  She did so, flicking aside trailing strands of wet leaves and bracken and grass.

  "Why, it's a mask!” exclaimed Harriet.

  "So it is. A cat mask. This must certainly be Black Annis. Or one of her descendants."

  "It's very shiny. Do you think it is silver?"

  "Yes, I do. Very thin. Very old. You have found something quite valuable, Harriet!"

  When the mask was dried, and rubbed with a silver-cloth, it shone brilliantly.

  "How old do you think it is?"

  "Many centuries,” Mrs. Holdernesse said, looking calmly down at the calm cat face. “It probably came from the north African coast. It would have been used for religious ceremonies—the priest or priestess would wear it."

  "Oh, do put it on, Mrs. Holdernesse! Let me see what you look like in it!"

  "Thank you, no. Not on any account. And I advise you not to do so, Harriet."

  "Why?” asked Harriet, though she thought she had an idea. There was something about the cat mask which attracted and yet scared and chilled her—she was eager to put it on; she wanted to see what the world would look like, seeing through those eye-slots—and yet she had a shivery feeling that, once she had put the mask on, she might not be able to take it off....

  "That mask has seen a lot of history.” Mrs. Holdernesse laid the mask on the window-seat leaning against a green cushion. The eye slots, with green behind them, seemed to be watching like cold cat's eyes.

  "Do you know any of its history?” Harriet asked, twirling away at her strand of wool.

  "I know that in ancient Egypt priest and priestesses wore masks like this for temple ceremonies. Somehow the mask must have made its way to Britain. And I have an idea about its more recent history—well, fairly recent—” Without pausing in her spinning, Mrs. Holdernesse picked up a new lump of wool, drew it out into a thread, and joined it to another which had nearly come to an end. She went on: “About two hundred years ago there was a highwayman in these parts—or rather a highwaywoman. It was said of her that she wore a cat mask so the people she robbed would never be able to recognize her. Coldharbour Mount was one of her favourite haunts."

  "My goodness! This must have been the mask that she used. What was her name?"

  "She had various nicknames—Kitty Sickle-claws, and Kitty Snickersnee, and Kitty Sekateur because she had a razor-sharp dagger and used to stab her victims, so that very few of them survived. One can see,” said Mrs. Holdernesse, “a connection with the goddess Sekhet."

  "What happened to her?"

  "She had a child—little Jemmy. She used to leave him with a woman who lived in West Burwood, over the hill. But the Bow Street men found out about him. And so when Kitty held up a coach on Coldharbour Mount a voice from inside called ‘Drop your weapon or little Jemmy gets a dose of lead down his gullet!’ And little Jemmy called out, ‘Mammy! Mammy!’”

  "So what happened?"

  "She dropped her weapon and the Bow Street men arrested her."

  "Did she go to prison?"

  "No, they hanged her right there and then, from the big oak tree. There was quite a commotion about that, questions asked in Parliament, why hadn't she a pro
per trial. But the Bow Street men said she was resisting arrest. And she had killed quite a few innocent travellers, so the whole thing blew over. Only there was trouble about the mask."

  "The mask. Why?"

  "They couldn't get it off her. So she was buried in it. There is a story—but no more than a piece of local legend—that a hundred years later somebody dug her up—her skeleton—and took the mask off the skull. Whether that is a true tale I don't know...."

  "What became of little Jemmy?"

  "There were questions asked in Parliament about him, too. He certainly died. It is thought that he was accidentally shot in the struggle when Kitty was taken. In any case, who'd want to bring up a highwaywoman's child?"

  "It's a sad story,” said Harriet. “What do you think I should do with the mask?"

  "You could give it to the museum in West Burwood."

  "Y-e-s—I suppose I could."

  "Or,” said Mrs. Holdernesse, spinning away, “you could drop it in the dew pond on Coldharbour Mount. Myself, I'd advise that."

  "I would so like to try it on."

  "It wants you to do that."

  "Why?"

  "That is what it was made for. And it has been dead—empty—inactive—for a long time now. Once it must have been used every day—it was important and powerful—"

  "It still feels powerful,” said Harriet, picking up the mask. It was as thin and light as a piece of tinfoil, it had a mellow shine in the light from the window, it looked mild and harmless as a Christmas decoration. There were two slots on each side, behind the cheek pieces.

  "I suppose they would have ribbons or strings through those holes, to fasten it on someone's head,” said Harriet. She picked up a discarded length of wool and threaded it through one of the holes. Then she found a second piece and threaded that.