Cecily called Byron closer. “These boys who are here . . . are they scary boys?”
“I don’t think so. They’re gloomy.”
“Gloomy!” It sounded harmless, even hilarious; still Cecily kept hold of the dog. Side by side the girls and the hound pushed through the grass, edging between the heaps of stone until the castle loomed above them, and they stopped.
“Hello?” called May.
Nothing living moved, not a sparrow or a fieldmouse; the hem of the kitchen cloth wavered in a breeze that wasn’t strong enough to rustle the wiry weeds. But the castle spoke: it answered them. Hello, it said. Hello.
Cecily glanced up — she thought she’d glimpsed movement at the peak of the highest wall. A weed was growing from a crack there, flurrying gently, but that wasn’t what she thought she’d seen. She had had a sense of flatness and falling, like a lean bird coming to land. She flexed her fingers around the dog’s collar.
“Hello?” May called again. Her voice hurried through the castle and returned to her, hello hello hello. “I’ve come back — hello?”
Nothing. Then suddenly Byron’s ears stood upright, and in that instant Cecily saw too.
A boy with a dainty, melancholy face was peering from around a corner in the disintegrating heart of the ruin. The sight of him made May chirp, “It’s me!” and start forward between the fallen blocks. Carefully, Cecily followed.
The boy edged out from the protection of the wall. “Who’s that?”
“That’s Cecily, she —”
“I don’t like strangers.” He said it almost to himself; then more forcibly, as if convinced. “I don’t like strangers! Stay where you are! This is wrong, this is — a betrayal!”
May stopped, the plate tipping. “Cecily’s my friend. It’s all right, you can trust her. Look — we’ve brought some food.”
“You needn’t have. We didn’t ask for it. Don’t presume to know what we want. What we want, we’ll ask for!”
Cecily, emboldened by indignation and the presence of the dog and the title, rarely-worn, of friend, rose to her full height, which was as tall as the boy and broader, and thundered, “Excuse me! My uncle owns this land. You are a trespasser. We’re not horrible girls, and we’re not being horrible to you, so you’d better not be horrible to us, had you? Otherwise I’ll tell my uncle, and then you’ll be in trouble!”
The boy stared as if she’d walloped him with a plank. “Your uncle owns this land?”
“Yes he does!”
“Then he must know we’re here . . .”
“I don’t think so. He’s very busy. He doesn’t have time to wonder if horrid boys are hiding in the castle. But I could tell him — and I will, if you don’t behave!”
The boy’s face, which was already pale, became, for an instant, almost watery; and Cecily had an odd awareness that he was always unwell, and tetchy and sensitive because of it. “I’m sorry,” he said, and it wasn’t only pride he had to overcome to say it, but an impulse to cry. It didn’t make her pity him.
“You should be. It’s hateful to be rude.” Cecily released Byron’s collar but the dog stayed by her, his coppery gaze on the stranger. “We can be friends, but not if you’re going to be unpleasant. Who else is here?” she asked.
The boy looked into the shadows. “Brother. Come out.”
From behind a wall, unhesitating, stepped a younger child. If the boys were indeed brothers, the first must have taken after one parent, the second after the other, for they did not look much alike. One seemed a collector of stamps, the other a player of rough games. The younger’s face was not wary but cheerful, his frame not gangly but robust. Both of them, however, had pretty, dove-grey eyes, and both of them wore their mousy curls long, all the way down to the collar. It took Cecily a moment to remember who else kept their hair like that, in a lion’s mane, and realised it was her uncle Peregrine. And Cecily, who knew a bit about clothes, saw that those the brothers were wearing — linen shirts, velvet jackets, leather boots, calf-length cloaks — were well-made and costly, and something else as well, something she couldn’t immediately define. “Hello,” she said to the child. “What’s your name?”
“You don’t know who we are?” The older boy was surprised. “You haven’t heard of us?”
“No . . .”
“You haven’t heard us mentioned? Not by anyone hereabouts?”
“No!” Cecily had to smile at these brothers with pretensions to fame.
The boy considered a moment, then nodded seriously. “Good. If you don’t know who we are, I’d prefer not to say. I keep this secret not for us, but for you. The less you know, the safer you will be.”
“Tongues tattle!” trilled the child.
“Safe?” Cecily scowled. “What do we need to be safe from?”
“There are ears everywhere — I beg you, lower your voice. There are eyes peeking round every corner. Watchers,” said the boy. “Spies.”
May and Cecily exchanged the glance of bemused tolerance that young ladies have for grandiose young men. “I don’t think anyone’s spying on us —”
“You don’t know. There are many places a spy might hide.”
Cecily conceded it was certainly the case that throughout the ruins there were many crannies from which someone who had absolutely nothing better to do might spy on them. Jeremy perhaps, or some village children, or maybe . . . the police. Maybe the police were looking for these boys. They seemed peculiar enough to warrant the interest of the police. To find herself in casual conversation with two felons brought all Cecily’s cunning to the fore. “If you won’t tell us your names, we better not tell you ours,” she said.
“We know your names,” said the little one. His childish voice was smug and annoying. “She’s silly May, and you’re silly Cecily. We see you! We hear you, chatter chatter chatter! Silly Cecily, with a wet stocking! Sounds like a song.”
“Shh,” said his brother, but not harshly — with love.
“And that is silly Byron, a dog,” added the child.
There were many people who had permission to tease Cecily, but these two were not among them. She said nothing, but her gaze darkened. It was May who spoke. “We brought you some breakfast, in case you’re hungry.”
She drew back the cloth from the plate. A lifetime had passed since the toast had browned, since the omelet had slipped sizzling from the pan: the leftovers, cold and jostled, looked like the slops that get tipped into a trough. “Oh!” said the boy.
“They’re trying to poison us,” snarled the child.
May blinked at her mutant offering, swallowing hard. She stood on tiptoe to sit the plate on a ledge of stone. “I’ll leave it here. You can eat it later, if you’re hungry.”
“Take it away! We’ll never eat that. I’ll tell our mother you’re trying to poison us! She’ll make you sorry.”
This was too much for Cecily. “Where is your mother? I’d like to speak to her.”
“She wouldn’t like to speak to you.”
“I think she would. I think she’d like to know that her son is awful —”
“She won’t mind. She’ll laugh.”
“Then your mother must be awful too!”
The child gasped as if stabbed. “Don’t say such things about my mother!”
“I’ll say what I like!” Cecily roared. “You need a good pinching, you do!”
The child sprang forward, hair flying; he screamed, “Just try it! I’ll fight you!”
His brother weighed him down with a hand. “Stop. Remember your manners. What did I teach you?”
The child hopped about, seething like a snake; gradually, reluctantly, simmered. With the air of repeating a disbelieved mantra he stated, “Living among peasants shall not make us peasants. Living in wilderness will not make us wild.”
“Behave as Mother and Father would wish. Apologise.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, clearly not.
“I’m not a peasant.” Cecily spoke like a shelf of ice. “My fat
her is rich and important.”
“Not as important as us,” retorted the brat.
“Brother,” said the elder, “you are shaming me before our guests.”
“Ah!” The child’s grin broke. “I am sorry. I am sorry now.”
May smiled, and maybe she forgave the brothers their appalling behaviour: but Cecily never would. A younger sister, the softer-hearted sibling, she was accustomed to making peace: but she did not have to forgive these boys, and she never truly would. She made her tone affable, her expression friendly; but she sat down on a pile of rubble and made Byron sit beside her, and set about teaching the trespassers who was, and who wasn’t, king of this castle. Pinning her glare on the older boy she asked, “Why are you hiding in Snow Castle?”
“Is that what you call it? I am surprised. To name a place makes it exist . . . and this place does not. Perhaps that’s why we are here: because this place does not exist.”
The breeze blew, the girls stared. The boy was evidently sophisticated, with his words like poetry. Perhaps he hoped to scare them off with his depths. It would not work. Cecily, used to the world speeding past her, had long ago cultivated the patience of a Labrador. The only way to get rid of her was to give her what she wanted. “Why are you hiding?” she asked again.
“We’re not hiding.” Though the younger boy was sturdily made and burdened with bad temper, there came from him a sense of lightness, as if he itched to zip round the fields like a hare. “We’re here,” he said, “you can see us, we’re standing right here.”
“We were sent here,” said his sibling — there was lightness about him too, Cecily noticed, the vagueness of the physically fragile which seems to place them just barely on the earth. “We had no choice.”
“We don’t want to be here.” The child sighed. “We want to go home.”
“Oh!” Suddenly everything made sense, as if Cecily had turned a corner in a Maze of Mirrors and stepped out into the real world. “You’ve been sent up from London, haven’t you?”
“Yes, sent here —”
“And you’ve left your mother behind in London — just like you did, May! Did you come up on the train?”
“They brought us here against our will —”
“Against our will!” snapped the youngster, like a turtle. “I yelled and kicked and fought and screamed, I didn’t want them to take us anywhere! But nobody cared.”
“And now they’re keeping us here, in this nowhere place, as if we are nothing but — prisoners.”
“I saw grumpy children like you at the station,” Cecily reminisced. “I wondered if you were running around on the train like wild dogs. It was sad to leave home, I know that, but London is in danger . . .”
“London has dangers,” the elder agreed.
“My daddy will make it safe again, though,” Cecily couldn’t help adding. “May’s dad, too. Is your father fighting in France?”
“Our father is dead,” said the boy.
“Oh!” May clutched her hands. “Did he die in the war?”
“No. He survived all battles where mere men were his adversary.”
It sounded impressive, but the small child was grudging. “He shouldn’t have died. He should have lived. Everything went wrong after Father died. Now the bad men have sent us to this place, and I don’t know where Mother is, and nobody is a friend of ours, and these horrible peasant-girls are here! Everything’s wicked! Wicked!”
This was the last straw for Cecily. Staggering to her feet she shouted, “You don’t understand anything! It’s all for your own good, you stupid boys! My daddy will save you and us and everyone, and then you’ll be sorry for saying what you just said! Come on, May, let’s go. I’m going to tell Uncle Peregrine these stupid boys are here, and he’ll come and chase them off with a gun!”
“How dare you!” bellowed the child, darting back and forth with a robin’s agility. “How dare you shout at us! How dare you call us names! Get away from us! You’re wicked!”
In the excitement Byron started barking, a sound fearsome enough to make trees sway and land slide; he lunged threateningly at the strangers, who disappeared into the ruins like smoke up a chimney. “Byron, no!” May cried, but the boys had already fled: she stared after them with puzzlement, like a puppy left on the side of the road. She turned to Cecily, however, a face pinched with anger. “Now look what you did!”
“They were rude to us! They were rude about Daddy!”
“Oh, your daddy! Your daddy wouldn’t care what two boys said! They were frightened!”
“I don’t care — I hope they never come back! Do you hear me, stupid boys? I hope you go away and never come back!”
Her voice sheared off the walls of the castle, go away, never come back: both girls felt certain she’d been heard. May stared into the ruins forlornly, her hands fallen to her sides. A pair of larks flew by, slinging toward the river. Byron’s gaze followed them. “They were just frightened,” muttered May.
She swung away and stalked out from the shadows, leaving the plate where it lay. She passed her frowning hostess sporting an impressive furrow of her own. The sight of it pierced Cecily with an arrow of dismay. “Only you and I are allowed to play in the castle,” she said, but the establishment of this exclusive club failed to right what had gone wrong. Distressed with herself as she so frequently was, Cecily hurried after her evacuee. She ploughed through swampy puddles, ignored the vicious spikes of thistle. They reached the gully where the river ran without exchanging a word, and gazed down at the water.
“. . . Shall we ask Mama to take us into the village today? I have money.”
May shrugged, refusing to be drawn. The water surged over the stepping-stones; May did not offer to carry her companion across. She forded the current like an Amazon, leaving Cecily to scramble from shore to shore with a hand on Byron for balance. Water got into her shoes and somehow into her eye. By the time she dragged herself up the far bank, Cecily was utterly crushed. “I’m sorry!” she bawled.
May flung a dismissive glance. “What are you sorry about? You weren’t taken from your mother and put on a train and sent to a place you’d never been. You didn’t sit on a floor and hope you were nice enough for somebody to want you. You don’t have to live with strangers every day — even kind strangers are still strangers. You don’t know what that’s like!”
“Oh, May! Are you unhappy? Do you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you,” May answered, “and I’m not unhappy. But I might have to stay at Heron Hall for a long time, Cecily. Mum said it might be months and months, depending on the war. So you can’t keep treating me like a guest, or like — like your best friend —”
“Don’t you want to be my friend?”
“I do, you are my friend, but can’t I be — someone you don’t have to take care of all the time?”
Cecily tripped, lurched wretchedly on. She knew what May meant: she meant she did not want a shadow in the shape of Cecily. It was hurtful — Cecily believed the only thing that mattered was to be included, needed, remembered — but she struggled not to be hurt. “I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll try to treat you more like — a brother?”
“Or a sister?”
That was a better idea, and Cecily brightened. “I don’t have a sister, so I don’t know how to treat one, but I’ll try my best.”
“I don’t have a sister either,” said May. Mercifully, she slowed. “I’ve got you, though — and you’ve got me. We can practise on each other.”
Cecily pranced with happiness. They were nearing the woods, and once past the trees they would be able to see Heron Hall. The prospect made Cecily want to run, to speed back to that place of warmth and certainty. On this far side of the woods, things could be unpredictable. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she really was. “I wish I hadn’t said nasty things to those boys. I didn’t think. That’s what Mama always tells me: I never think.”
May didn’t disagree. She resumed a whippet’s pace over the grass. “Too late to
worry now. They’re probably miles away. Especially if they think Mr Lockwood’s going to get a gun and shoot them.”
“Yes,” said Cecily. “Unless they ate that breakfast you brought, in which case they’re probably already dead.”
A scruff of laughter escaped May, making her frown all the deeper and walk that much faster. Cecily scurried in her wake. Even as exertion drove the brothers to the back of her mind, a thought occurred to her. Their luxurious clothing had reminded her of something, and now she remembered what it was. A pantomime: those boys had been dressed like characters on the stage.
They asked Cecily’s mother to take them to the village, and Heloise agreed as she had nothing better to do. Though there seemed nothing better for Jeremy to do either, the boy assured his mother that he’d prefer to stay behind. “I can read, I can hike, I can sweep chimneys,” he said; but Cecily sensed that, although he intended to do something, it wasn’t any of these. With money in her pocket, she couldn’t care what it was.
By now the sun had gathered sufficient strength to make people shed their coats, if not their vests. The fine weather had brought the villagers out into the streets. Women strolled about in no hurry to go home, their children clamped to their hips or trailing nonchalantly behind them. Boys were unloading vans and polishing windows and carting trays of groceries here and there. Rationing had cast its miserly pall over the country but the shopkeepers were doing their best to present tasty displays to the passers-by, and there was enough for everyone, provided nobody was greedy. The girls wove past the street stalls on the heels of Heloise, looking left and right, bonked on the head by baskets, reaching out for what they shouldn’t touch. Lads laughed, babies cried, women haggled, shop-bells rang. It was surprising to remember that, in places around the world, the sky was not sunny or perhaps it was too sunny, the shops were closed and empty, and some people, many people, had no home left standing, no normal life left to live. In this green village, it was a lovely day.
The Children of the King Page 6