The Children of Green Knowe Collection

by Lucy M. Boston

  ‘She’s got a daughter!’ said Tolly, opening the second to reveal a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and so on, until the last one was shaken out, only as high as a pea. They made a family of ten.

  ‘Those came from Russia, when Captain Oldknow went to the Black Sea. And this box from China,’ Mrs Oldknow said, handing him a highly polished black box. Inside it were little jugs and bowls and plates, all cut out of ivory and so paper-thin that they were half transparent. The biggest was not as big as a thimble.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Tolly, as excited as if he were preparing presents under a Christmas tree. ‘These are for Linnet’s heap.’

  He began to set the plates out as if he were laying the table.

  ‘There are no tea-cups,’ he said.

  ‘They weren’t invented when Linnet was little, only bowls and mugs. Nor were forks. They all ate with their fingers.’

  ‘Do you mean that if they came to dinner with us they would eat with their fingers? Suppose it was stew?’

  ‘They would sop it up with bread in their fingers.’

  ‘Did you eat with your fingers?’ asked Tolly, who could never be sure she was not the old lady in the picture. ‘And Toby too?’

  ‘Toby, and his mother and his grandmother and his great-grandmother, all the way back to Adam. But they did it very nicely; you would hardly notice. And they had napkins. Aubrey Oldknow’s wife (your great-great-great-great-grandmother) was the first lady in this country to use a fork. It was very grand. People were afraid to come to dinner in case they did it wrong. Old gentlemen were very annoyed and said they could not enjoy their food picking away at it with a silver prong. Captain Oldknow never would. He said it was fiddle-faddle.’

  She handed Tolly a box of ivory and ebony dominoes.

  ‘You can put them on any of the heaps. They all played with them.’

  ‘I’ll put it on Toby’s because he is the oldest.’

  ‘And your favourite.’

  At the bottom of the box, lying from corner to corner, was a long bundle wrapped round in green cloth. Mrs Oldknow lifted it out and put it on the floor while she unwrapped it. At first they saw a tangle of belts, straps and tassels, and then Tolly gave a great cry.

  ‘It’s Toby’s sword!’

  If Toby had fallen a little from his high place in Tolly’s admiration because he ate with his fingers, how high he rose now, when Tolly pulled the real sword out of its scabbard! It had a long, fine blade with an edge on each side. Tolly lunged forward to poke the bed with it. It went in about four inches.

  ‘Stop putting swords through the bed-clothes,’ said Mrs Oldknow in an ordinary voice.

  ‘Did Toby use it?’ asked Tolly solemnly.

  ‘He never stuck it into anyone, if that is what you mean. But he learnt to fence, and he wore it on Sundays when he went to church with his mother.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he want it now?’ Mrs Oldknow looked at him with an uneasy wrinkled face. Then she sighed.

  ‘Because he’s dead,’ she said at last.

  Tolly sat dumbfounded, with his big black eyes fixed on her. He must have known of course that the children could not have lived so many centuries without growing old, but he had never thought about it. To him they were so real, so near, they were his own family that he needed more than anything on earth. He felt the world had come to an end.

  ‘Are they all dead?’ he said at last.

  ‘They all died together in the Great Plague. The farm bailiff, Boggis, had been to London on business and he brought the infection back with him. Toby and Alexander and Linnet and their mother all died in one day, in a few hours. And little Boggis too. Only poor old grandmother was left, too unhappy to cry.’

  Tolly sat cross-legged with his head hanging, trying not to show his face.

  Mrs Oldknow got up and walked to the door where she could look down the staircase into what Tolly called the Knight’s Hall, as if she were looking for someone.

  ‘After all,’ she said, ‘it sounds very sad to say they all died, but it didn’t really make so much difference. I expect the old grandmother soon found out they were still here.’

  Tolly was watching something travelling across the floor towards him. It was a marble, a glass one with coloured spirals in the middle. It stopped by his listless fingers. He picked it up. It was warm.

  He glanced round the room but saw nothing, except that the dust of which the old box and its contents were full was hanging in the air as if newly disturbed. Then under his eyes the dominoes began of their own accord to stand themselves on end one by one, till they made a long regular curving line, each an inch behind the other. When they were all standing, an unseen finger pushed the last one, which fell over and knocked down the one in front of it. With a soft purr which startled the inquisitive chaffinch up into the air, each domino in turn fell forward till all were lying flat on their white faces, showing a long ribbon of black backs.

  Tolly laughed suddenly and loudly. Mrs Oldknow looked round.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, smiling, ‘their grandmother taught them that game. Wouldn’t she be surprised when she saw it happen all by itself? That’s Alexander. Linnet never could do it right.’

  ‘Aren’t they teases?’ said Tolly, quite comforted. ‘I’m going to look at their books.’

  Mrs Oldknow looked at him with loving approval.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Dust the books first and then wash your hands. The books are very valuable.’ She went away.

  Tolly did as she said. ‘I’ll clean Toby’s sword for him afterwards,’ he thought, settling himself down with the book of Aesop’s Fables open on the floor. The print was difficult, but he knew the stories and enjoyed the pictures. After a while, he came to the page that had the Ass in the lion’s skin, Linnet’s favourite. He bent down to have a closer look, but as he did so two hands were pressed over his eyes from behind and he could feel breathing beside his ear. He put his hands up and felt two very little ones and some curls, soft little cobwebs.

  ‘Linnet!’ he said at once, trying to catch hold of the fingers, but they melted away and there was nobody.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you tease – I can tease too. If you won’t let me look at your book, I won’t let you look at it either.’

  He shut Aesop up and sat on it, listening and looking on every side. He heard nothing and saw nothing, but underneath him the book began to move, as if someone were tugging at it. Suddenly he was frightened and jumped up and ran away downstairs to his great-grandmother’s reassuring company.

  ‘It did feel horrid,’ he thought, to excuse himself as he caught hold of her dress and followed her round. She asked no questions and they sat down together for lunch.

  Tolly had almost forgotten the snow, but it was still snowing hard. The garden was getting stranger and stranger. The bushes were just hummocks, little hills in the smooth snow. Even the big yews had lowered their branches to the ground under the weight of it and were getting tied down under the drifts. The snow lay thick round the doors and windows, stopping all draughts, so that the room was warm and rosy with firelight.

  ‘This will be a night for telling stories,’ said Mrs Oldknow. Tolly was happy.

  ‘And this afternoon I want to clean Toby’s sword,’ he said.

  They spent the afternoon cleaning it together. Tolly did the blade with paraffin and glass-paper. He was very careful and did not cut himself. Mrs Oldknow did the scabbard, which was covered with velvet. Boggis, coming in out of the snow, very skilfully and lovingly undid the belt and straps.

  ‘I was once a cavalry officer’s servant,’ he told Tolly. ‘These straps want soaking in oil for a week before they are touched.’

  ‘Where shall we put it?’ said Mrs Oldknow when the sword was ready, all but the belt which Boggis had taken away. ‘We must hang it up somewhere. Would you like it in your room? It would make a lovely shadow at night.’ They hung it beside the mirror opposite Tolly’s bed.

  *

  THIS WAS THE TALE that
Mrs Oldknow told him by the fire that evening.

  THE STORY OF BLACK FERDIE

  A long time ago, when Boggis’s grandfather was the gardener here, my grandfather Sir Toseland Oldknow was the owner. He had three grown-up sons who kept many beautiful horses. In particular the youngest, Alexander, my father, had a black mare which was famous as the fastest racer in the country. They thought of nothing but horses and could have done with much more stable room. Nevertheless, as you know, one stall was always left empty.

  Now it happened in the year when my grandfather was made a Judge that some gypsy caravans passing through this country camped for a while on a common outside Greatchurch. In one of the caravans lived an old gypsy woman called Petronella and her son, who was called Black Ferdie.

  Black Ferdie was tall and slim and very handsome. There was no girl who would say ‘No’ to him when he smiled. He was without an equal as a horse-breaker or as a rider. He was afraid of no horse on earth, but all horses were afraid of him because he sat them like the Devil, relentlessly. He was famous among the gypsies and the pride of his mother. He was in fact a horse thief.

  Black Ferdie soon heard of my father’s mare and made up his mind to steal her. He began to watch the house, hiring himself out to farmers as a hedge-cutter in order not to attract attention, and he cut off his long gypsy hair and even washed his face.

  There was a girl called Ivy who worked for my grandmother as a linen-maid, and she went every day to hang the washing on the hedge to dry. She was a pretty, good-natured girl who loved to talk and laugh. Black Ferdie knew as soon as he saw her that his work would be easy.

  He spoke to her every day, and he was so handsome, so amusing and so flattering that very soon he was her best friend. She could think of nothing else and often brought in the washing before it was dry because she could not wait any longer to see him again. Wet days were an agony to her because she could not go out to him but had to sit darning.

  One day Black Ferdie, who called himself Tom, asked her if there was no place at the Hall for him, because if he could work there he could see her all the time.

  ‘It is true,’ she said, ‘they want an under-gardener, but everybody who works here is a son or nephew of someone who has always been here. Judge Oldknow would never take you.’

  ‘But they took you just because you were so pretty,’ said Black Ferdie.

  ‘No indeed. I am the daughter of Mr Alexander’s sergeant who saved his life in the Low Country.’

  ‘Well, my beauty, you only have to say that I am your cousin, who has served in the Navy and now wants to settle down. My name is the same as yours, you know.’

  ‘Is it really?’

  ‘Well, what is yours?’

  ‘Ivy Softly.’

  ‘Just what I said. Mine is Softly too, Tom Softly.’

  ‘Oh, Tom! Isn’t that strange? I may call you Tom if you are my cousin. But I never knew I had any.’

  ‘Everyone has cousins they never hear of,’ said Black Ferdie, and he told her a wonderful tale about a mutiny in the Far East in which he had saved the captain’s life, only afterwards discovering that they were cousins too.

  Poor Ivy believed all he told her, though she was not absolutely convinced he was her cousin. It was not difficult to persuade her to ask my grandmother to recommend Tom to the Judge. She thought that if it was not true about his being her cousin, it was only a very little lie, and if he became her husband he would be in the family then if he was not before.

  So Black Ferdie became under-gardener. He was exceedingly civil and industrious and made a good impression. As luck would have it, the first job he was given was to weed the cobbled yard. As he knelt there all day, picking out the grass and mosses, he saw the horses being led out and in, and admired the black mare that he had come to steal. He noticed where the stable key was hung.

  That evening Judge Oldknow was entertaining one of the neighbouring squires to dinner. While this was in progress, Black Ferdie sat in the kitchen with his arm round Ivy, telling breath-taking stories about the Navy to the other servants.

  Most of it was quite impossible, because he had never been to sea, but neither had the other servants, so they believed everything, with the exception of old Boggis, who every now and then gave a most irritating sniff when Tom’s conduct (in the story) was more than usually admirable.

  When he could hear that the gentlemen in the diningroom were growing merry and noisy, Black Ferdie made an excuse and slipped out into the yard. Stealing round in the shadow of the buildings he entered the stables.

  Earlier in the evening he had given young Boggis, who was to watch the horses, a bottle of wine to pass the time away in case the gentlemen drank late. He found him now, as he expected, asleep in the harness-room with his head sunk on the table. The lantern hanging from a nail in the wall only lit a corner of the stable corridor. Outside, the rising moon was hidden from the earth by mist and trees, but high-sailing clouds caught its light and with their silver-gilt brightness reflected a glimmer through the stable windows that was enough for a thief’s trained eyes.

  Black Ferdie took a bridle and moved quietly along the stalls. Most of the horses were lying down, dim shapes that stirred and blew, shaking their manes. Ferdie passed them one by one, accustoming his eyes to the gloom. The neighbour’s horse was standing, being in a strange stable. It was a staid old hack of no interest to him.

  The black mare was also standing, because she was a fidget. As she sensed his presence her head flew up as high as the halter would let it, and she snorted and sidled into her corner.

  The moon must have cleared the trees, for just then the light grew stronger and Ferdie saw in the stall beyond hers a horse that had not been led past him during the day. He had counted them, and his eye, used to rounding up horses at night, could recognize them more certainly than you or I could by day. This horse was a chestnut with four white feet, with an arch to its neck and a spring in the movement of its haunches, a nervous delicacy in the lifting of its feet that put all thought of the black mare out of Ferdie’s head.

  ‘Now, there’s a horse for a man to ride!’ he thought, and turned into the chestnut’s stall with the bridle in his hand.

  As he approached, whistling softly, the horse turned its head towards him, putting back its ears and showing its teeth and the white half-moons of its eyes.

  There was no rattling of the halter ring to which it should have been tied. Black Ferdie saw that it was as free and relentless as he was, and that there was a quality of moonlight in its eyes and teeth that his nerves could not endure.

  He ran in sheer terror, but the horse reared round after him, wheeling through the narrow openings and out at the main door.

  It caught him halfway across the cobbled yard, snatching the back of his belted breeches in its teeth. It swung him dreadfully in the air and tossed him away. He crashed on to the cobbles and broke his knee.

  The chestnut stood and lifted its head to give a prolonged, penetrating neigh, so that the cheerful gentlemen indoors put down their glasses to listen with white faces. All the other horses then joined in the clamour, stamping and kicking in their stalls.

  ‘Horse thieves!’ shouted Alexander, and they snatched up their pistols and ran out.

  They found Black Ferdie lying helpless with his broken knee, his teeth chattering and his face grey and damp with sweat. However, he did his best to make up a story.

  ‘The thieves have got away with the chestnut,’ he said. ‘I saw the stable door open and I came to see if anything was wrong. They were just coming out with the chestnut, two of them, and when I tried to stop them they rode me down. They haven’t taken the black mare.’

  The judge and his guests stood by him with their pistols while the two elder sons did what they could to ease his knee. Alexander, with the servants, went to search the stables. The eldest son, while he was trying to arrange the injured man so that he could lie more easily, pulled a pair of pistols out of his great-coat pocket, while Ferdie swo
re with rage.

  ‘Look, sir,’ said the son, ‘he was armed!’ Alexander came back then.

  ‘Everything’s all right, sir,’ he reported, ‘except that Harry Boggis is asleep beside a bottle of wine. It takes more than a bottle to put him under the table, so I guess it was drugged. One of our bridles was lying in the black mare’s stall.’

  ‘Come here, Alexander,’ said his father, ‘and be a witness to what this man says. Now Tom, which horse was stolen?’

  ‘The chestnut with four white feet,’ said Black Ferdie with his teeth chattering. ‘In the stall next to the black mare. It rode me down and broke my knee. Hurry, sir, you may overtake them yet. There were two up.’

  ‘The chestnut in the stall next to the black mare,’ repeated the Judge.

  Nobody spoke, and Ferdie’s hair began to stand on end. The Judge’s guest, who had not yet spoken, now took a lantern and held it to Tom’s face.

  ‘I know this man,’ he said. ‘He is a gypsy known as Black Ferdie. He sold me a horse last Michaelmas at Norwich fair.’

  ‘Take him up,’ said the Judge, ‘and lock him up safely for the night. In the morning we will send him to the prison hospital.’

  Poor Ivy cried bitterly when she confessed that she had told a lie about his being her cousin. The Judge would have sent her home in disgrace, but my grandmother pleaded for her, because, she said, Linnet loved her so much. They all thought she meant me – I was only a baby and I had no mother – but sometimes now I wonder.

  ‘What happened to Black Ferdie?’

  ‘He was tried and found guilty and sent to Botany Bay in Australia.’

  ‘What did his old mother do then?’

  ‘No more questions,’ said Mrs Oldknow, suddenly in a hurry. ‘Old Petronella was as bad as he. Worse. Now off you go to bed.’

  *

  THERE WERE MANY things waiting for him in his bedroom now. The chaffinch was curled up and fluffed out on its perch. The not-quite-ordinary mouse was there to be put under his pillow. There were all the quivering shadows thrown by the night-light, and now there was a new one. Behind Toby’s sword was another larger, fiercer, man-sized sword hanging on the same nail. The books were on the table. They made mountainous steps on the sloping ceiling.