Tolly took the Russian doll and placed that on the table too, beside the night-light. At once its shadow stood in the room, nearly as big as St Christopher. There seemed hardly any space left for Tolly himself, so he pushed the doll a little further away from the light till the shadow grew smaller. ‘I don’t want it any bigger than Linnet,’ he thought. ‘Linnet wrapped up in a shawl.’ When the room was comfortably full of shadow doubles of things he liked, and his own shadow had sat up in bed and stretched a long arm to touch the outstretched nose of the shadow rockinghorse, he blew out the candle by his bed and curled up to sleep.
Outside the wind was singing, and soft noises came from the windows which would have been rattling if they had not been cushioned up with snow. Tolly slept, and his dreams were most wonderful, but when he opened his eyes in the morning he could not remember at all what they had been. The windowpanes were covered thickly with frost-patterns of forest ferns – he could not see the real world at all. The chaffinch was pecking at the glass on the inside, but the window was frozen shut.
‘Come, chaffie,’ said Tolly, holding out a finger. ‘I’ll let you out downstairs.’
The chaffinch flew to him as if it understood, and they went downstairs together. The other birds were feeding at the open door where Mrs Oldknow stood.
Outside, the world was most magical. It had stopped snowing. The garden looked like the back of a giant swan curled up to sleep. There was nothing but white slopes, white curves, white rounded softnesses with bright blue shadows. Nothing had been scraped aside or trodden on. The only footmarks were the birds’ round the door. The yew trees had disappeared. In their place were white hills with folds and creases in their sides. Tolly picked up a handful of snow and found it was made up of tiny violet stars. He could hardly eat his breakfast for excitement.
‘Can I go out in it? I won’t be able to walk without making marks.’
Mrs Oldknow hesitated. Then she smiled.
‘I won’t allow Boggis to sweep or walk round here,’ she said. ‘I love it so much quite untouched. But you have never really met deep snow before. You must learn what it is. You can go, darling. You are just the right age.’
‘I won’t mess it just here,’ he said. ‘I’ll go round by the wall and keep out of sight.’
He set off, taking huge strides, sinking in to the top of his legs at every step, so that the snow was needle-cold on his bare knees and thighs. St Christopher was a snow-buttress stuck on the side of the house, up to his armpits in a drift. Tolly made slow progress, so slow that with everything unrecognizable it was quite hard to know where he was. He looked backwards and saw his own dragging footprints, like wounds in the snow. In front of him the world was an unbroken dazzling cloud of crystal stars, except for the moat, which looked like a strip of night that had somehow sinned and had no stars in it. The water was blue-bottle black with slabs of green ice floating just beneath the surface. Thick snow banks overhung the edge. Tolly could see them at the far side with snow caves underneath, so he was careful to keep away from the near edge lest he should go through.
Where was anything he knew? Was that hump the position of the Green Deer, or was it only an ivy bush? Which of these strange shrouded trees had the green squirrel sitting in the drift against its trunk? And what was that in the pathless garden that looked like a giant snowman eyeless among the slender tree-trunks and the soft hills that might cover anything?
The smell of the snow made him feel a little dizzy, and the deep silence and the absence of any footprints but his own rather frightened him. He felt like turning back and running for home, but who can run when up to his waist in snow? It was then that he noticed some other footprints beside his own.
Along the top of the snow, as if their owner had almost no weight, pointed feet were printed, a little animal that went in long bounds. It had gone towards the snow tent of a yew tree. The footprints disappeared inside the folds of the thick curtain. Tolly followed the trail, feeling ashamed that he could not help leaving such big ugly marks behind him. He bent down to go in under the tree without shaking the snow off the branches. As he crouched at the entrance, he heard the enchanting notes of a flute near at hand.
Inside was a high, tent-shaped room with branches for beams and rafters, lit with a shadowless opal light through the snow walls. In the centre, leaning against the bole of the tree, were Toby and Alexander, with Linnet sitting on the dry yew-needle carpet at their feet. It was Alexander of course who was playing, while a red squirrel ran up and down him, searching in his pockets for nuts. Toby was feeding the deer, the real deer, the beautiful dappled deer with black ears and a white breast. It wagged its tail like a lamb as it ate from his hand. Linnet was playing with the lanky hare, making it stand up and dance to the music. With its long ears raised it was taller than she as she knelt. Her little dog danced on its hind legs more vigorously than the hare to attract her attention.
Tolly was afraid to breathe or move lest they should vanish, but their eyes were all on him, and they smiled. He sat down just where he was, by the snow wall, and said nothing.
All kinds of animals were round the children. There was a shallow bowl of milk on the ground from which a hedgehog was drinking. Beside it, a rabbit that had just finished was sitting up wiping its whiskers. Alexander took the flute from his lips just long enough to say, ‘Keep an eye on the fox. I don’t want him to hurt the rabbit.’
Tolly looked round, and there next to him, sitting up like a dog with the sharpest of sharp looks, was the fox.
‘He’s not so bad,’ said Toby, ‘and he has had a piece of meat. But he needs watching.’
Up in the branches were hosts of birds. A thrush was learning the tune. Whenever Alexander stopped, it tried a solo. Then he would play the notes it wanted and the bird would repeat them. Robins and tits, of course, were everywhere, and field mice running backwards and forwards taking crumbs to their larders. High up in the shadows, looking very haughty, sat the woodpecker. Every now and then it tapped the tree in time to the music but twice as fast. Toby poured some more milk into the bowl. The hedgehog was contentedly moving off, but a mole was putting its nose to the milk.
‘That’s Truepenny,’ said Linnet. ‘Poor Truepenny, he’s blind. Let me have the squirrel, Alexander. I’m tired of Watt. He’s too dreamy.’
‘Funny Watt! He reminds me of a poor scholar at Cambridge. He is very intelligent, you know.’
‘He’s too well-behaved,’ said Linnet. ‘He’s all Sunday go-to-meeting. He’s one of Cromwell’s preachies.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Toby. ‘Watt is lovely magic. Haven’t you ever seen him dancing with his bride in the twilight? He is cousin to the leprechaun and a distant relation of Feste.’
Just then there was a harsh noise at the door, like a badly cracked bugle, and a silly face wearing a crown was thrust in, followed by a long thin neck that never seemed to end. It closed its eyes and opened its beak to repeat the horrid shriek, advancing to draw behind it a gorgeous body and a tail like a coronation cloak. They all laughed.
‘There’s your high society for you, Linnet; the confounded peacock. No more music now, nothing but shrieks and posturing. We might just as well go.’
They were gone, like a magic lantern picture when the slide is taken out. A shower of loose snow came down from the branches as all the animals disappeared. Tolly had a feeling as if he had been dropped into the snow out of the sky. He did not know where he had been, nor for how long. He gazed round, noticing again the terrible silence of the snow. There was no sound, his ears ached with silence. After so much life there was suddenly nothing, no one but himself. Then he saw there was one other – Truepenny, who was blind and moved uncertainly. He looked bewildered too. Tolly picked him up. He was soft, velvety and helpless, with pink hands and feet.
‘Poor Truepenny! I wonder where you came from? Can you hear flutes from your tunnel under the grass? You’d better go home again – it’s all over.’
He put the mole down and waited
to see it shuffle away into a heap of dead leaves that perhaps hid its hole. He sat for a while looking at the empty, glimmering, magical tent. Had he been dreaming? When at last he crept out again between the snow curtains, the sun was shining and above the snow the sky was blue. Somewhere in the garden a thrush was trying to whistle Alexander’s tune.
Tolly followed his own footsteps now. ‘Without them,’ he thought, ‘I feel as if I could get lost.’ On the way, he looked again at the hump that might perhaps be over the Green Deer. It had a slightly rumpled look, like a bed when someone is pretending never to have been out of it. Through a thin place in the snow he recognized the bent brown stem that was the deer’s back leg. Tolly tripped and fell full length in the snow. He got up and slipped again and the snow went into his mouth. He began to feel dreadfully tired, as if this bit of garden had been a great journey.
He was glad when he reached the house. Mrs Oldknow was waiting for him by the door. When she saw his eyes shining like big lamps she was very gentle.
‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you to get rid of some of this snow. I expect your Wellingtons are quite full. Pull! And all up inside your sleeves and your trousers – you are packed in snow!’
Tolly said nothing, but leant against her, and it felt nice. She was real, certain, and understanding. They ate their lunch without talking; it was chicken and Tolly was very hungry so they both enjoyed it. Afterwards he came and leant up against her again because he wanted to talk privately.
‘Granny,’ he said, ‘isn’t it queer?’
‘You’ve seen them all three, then, today?’
‘Yes, under the tree.’
‘That’s because of the deer. It always goes there when the snow is deep.’ Tolly did not like to mention the stem leg that he had seen afterwards sticking out of the snow eiderdown. It puzzled him too much.
‘It’s a wonderful snow house,’ he said. ‘It’s like being in heaven and playing in the clouds. And then the confounded peacock came and spoiled everything.’
‘It’s the silliest thing that ever lived,’ she said. ‘And stuck up! Was it wearing its crown?’
‘Yes, on its stupid little head.’
‘On the end of a long, long neck like a hosepipe.’
‘All the better for seeing round corners!’ They both began to laugh, as people do when a silly mood takes them.
‘It can’t decide whether it has hands or feet.’
‘When it walks it lifts up its toes like the hands of grand ladies, as if it wore rings and was looking for its handbag.’
‘Then it scratches its ear with them.’
‘It’s deaf. It ought to have an ear-trumpet.’
‘Then it and its wife could shriek at each other in turn.’
‘What would happen if you trod on its tail?’
‘I think it would hiccough.’
When they had finished making sillies of themselves and Mrs Oldknow had wiped the laughter tears from her eyes, she suggested a lesson on the flute. Tolly was willing. ‘But,’ he said, ‘Alexander has got it. How can there be two of it?’
‘The one he has now is part of him. This is the one he used to have. It is like a snake-skin when the snake sloughs it off.’ Tolly was displeased with this idea.
‘No, Granny. This is Alexander’s flute. It’s the real one. I know it is not a flute-skin.’
He put it to his lips, curling them under in a funny smile as she had taught him. And though it was he who blew and moved his fingers it felt to him as though the stops pulled his fingers to them and the flute took his breath and played itself. A phrase of rippling notes came out. Tolly was ravished.
‘That’s what Alexander was playing to the birds,’ he said.
He put it to his lips again, and the flute played it all through. Mrs Oldknow listened: for once she was completely astonished.
‘I think Alexander has given you his flute,’ she said. ‘I’ll teach you all the tunes he played. We will have some music every day, and you shall sing too.’
Before tea Tolly plodded out in Boggis’s footsteps to the stable. He looked everywhere for prints of horses’ hooves, but he saw none. He left a lump of sugar, being careful that Boggis should not see, for he could not forget Mrs Oldknow’s suggestion that it went into the blue tin tea-mug. What could I ever do, he wondered, to make Feste come for me? That of course was his highest ambition, but he almost despaired of it.
After tea there was another story by the fire. ‘It is about Linnet this time,’ Mrs Oldknow began. ‘All the stories cannot be about Feste. It is about the river again, because the river is a very lively inhabitant here, always to be reckoned with, and there are many stories about it.’
LINNET’S STORY
It was Christmas Eve. There had been snow, then a dripping thaw that had filled the river, followed by a sudden hard frost. The trees dangled with icicles that tinkled like Japanese bells. The eaves were jagged with ice daggers. The ground was hard like glazed rock, the moat frozen. Toby and Alexander, with their mother, had gone on foot to Midnight Mass at the big church in Penny Soaky across the river. The little church in this village belonged to what Linnet called the preachies, who did not celebrate Midnight Mass. The family had gone on foot because the road was too slippery for horses, the ruts too hard for a coach. Linnet could not walk so far, so she was put to bed and the grandmother sat downstairs alone. Linnet took Orlando, her little black and white curly dog, to bed with her.
She had a little spruce tree in her bedroom – it was her own idea – for the birds. On such a cold night her tame birds had come in to sleep in its branches. They were curled up with their heads under their wings. The tits were balls of blue, or primrose-green; the robins red; the chaffinches pink. Linnet had put a crystal star on top. It glittered among the shadows in the candlelight.
As she lay in bed she heard the wind singing through the icicles outside. It was an eerie sound that made her think of the enormous silence of the country across which it blew. Every now and then an icicle broke off with a sharp crack.
Linnet lay and listened, thinking of her mother and her two brothers walking along the field paths in the brilliant moonlight with their black shadows following under their feet. If she listened for the outside noises she could hear the water going through the water gates and over the weir. There was no flood, but a deep, strong current. She could hear occasionally the owls and the desolate herons. Once she heard a fox bark. Inside her room perhaps one of the birds shifted and chirped softly in its sleep. She could hear Orlando breathing into his own fur. She could hear the candle flame fluttering like a little flag. It was all so very quiet.
Presently she heard something else, something very strange. Outside on the ice-hard ground there were footsteps that could be nothing and nobody that she knew, not Boggis’s hobnailed boots, not her grandmother nor the quick young maid, not a horse! She was not frightened, she was simply certain that it did not belong to the everyday world. Orlando woke up and listened. Linnet could feel his tail softly beating against her ribs.
She got out of bed, wrapping herself in the cover so that she looked like the Russian doll, then she opened the window and leant out. Orlando stood beside her with his paws on the window-sill. She could distinctly hear the steps, heavy but soft, coming along the side of the house. The wind was like a knife against her cheek and all the stars twinkled with cold. Orlando’s reassuring tail was wagging against her.
Out into the moonlight came St Christopher himself, huge and gentle and with his head among the stars, taking the stone Child on his shoulders to Midnight Mass. As they went past, Orlando lifted his chin and gave a little cry, and from the stables came a quiet whinny. All the birds in the spruce tree woke up and flew out of the window, circling round St Christopher with excited calls. The stone giant strode across the lawns with his bare feet and soon came to the river. At the edge there was thin, loose ice that shivered like a window-pane as he stepped in. The water rushed round his legs and the reflection of the moon
was torn to wet ribbons. The stream crept up to his waist and, as he still went on, to his armpits. When it looked as if he could go no farther Linnet heard a child’s voice singing gaily. The sound was torn and scattered by the wind as the moon’s reflection had been by the water, but she recognized the song as it came in snatches.
Tomorrow shall be my dancing day
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play
To call my true love to the dance.
Sing O my love, O my love, my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.
As the Child sang, it clutched St Christopher by the hair to hold him firmly.
St Christopher felt his way carefully, foot by foot, through the deepest part and came out safely on the other side. Linnet saw him striding away across the meadows. The birds returned, coming in one by one past her head at the open window and chattering as they settled down again on the tree.
When St Christopher was out of sight Linnet realized that it was cold. She also remembered that she had got into bed without saying her prayers. She said them now, and Orlando lay on her feet and kept them warm till she had finished. Then she got into bed again and before long the bells rang out for midnight, and it was Christmas morning. When the boys came back she told them what she had seen. Alexander said he too had seen St Christopher kneeling among the tombstones outside the church in the shadow of a big cypress tree. He thought nobody else had noticed.
Of course they rushed out first thing in the morning to look, and found St Christopher in his place as usual with icicles all over him, but the sun was falling on the stone Child and the hand that it held up looked almost pink.
The Children of Green Knowe Collection Page 7