‘The footman said we shall have the Police on us tomorrow,’ Kay said, ‘and we shall have our fingerprints taken to see if we were accomplices.’
‘I say,’ Susan said, ‘d’you think we shall?’
‘Sure to,’ Peter said, ‘it will be a matter of Police routine.’
Kay thought that the burglary was a matter of Abner Brown’s Routine.
‘Well I do hope,’ he said, ‘I do really hope that little Maria hasn’t been in it with the gang. It would be just like her to do a thing like that.’
‘Oh, I do wish it was tomorrow morning,’ Jemima said, ‘and we could see the papers about it. If the motor cars have gone from the garage, then we may suspect that Maria has had a hand in it.’
‘Maria won’t have had a hand in it,’ Susan said, ‘except to collar all the swag and bring it back to its owners.’
When they reached home there was no news of little Maria, but in some strange way the news of the burglary had reached Ellen. She greeted the children with, ‘I do hope the burglars didn’t frighten you.’
‘No, they didn’t,’ Kay said. ‘But has Miss Maria turned up?’
‘No, not yet, Master Kay,’ Ellen said.
‘Is my guardian back?’ he asked.
‘No, Master Kay,’ Ellen said. ‘The Rupert’s Arms man met the eight-seven, but she didn’t come by that train, and there’s no other train from London tonight.’
‘Has any message come from her?’
‘No,’ Ellen said. ‘I telephoned through to the number you gave. She’d started to catch that train.’
‘Well,’ Kay said, ‘I suppose the trains are all upset, partly with Christmas and partly with the snow. She may have gone a certain distance and then had to come on by car.’
‘It may have been something like that,’ Ellen said.
‘You see, sometimes,’ Kay said, ‘they have to run the trains from London in two parts at this time of year. She may have come by the second part.’
‘Something like that, I dare say,’ Ellen said.
They telephoned to the station, and the station telephoned to Paddington, and Paddington replied that the train hadn’t started in two parts. Then they telephoned to the address where she had been staying. They replied that Caroline Louisa had started and hadn’t since returned.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Kay said. ‘D’you think I had better speak to the Inspector of Police?’
Then he remembered the Inspector’s maxim ‘That the simple explanation was always the last one thought of’ and thought, ‘Well, the Inspector would only laugh and tell me to take a posset.’
‘Ellen,’ he said, ‘can you make possets?’
‘Yes, Master Kay,’ she said, ‘I can.’
‘Well, I wish you’d make me a big one,’ he said, ‘because I’m feeling very miserable.’
He went up to bed. He found Peter already in bed, reading a murder story. Kay got into bed. Presently Ellen brought him a posset in a mug. He drank it down, thinking that the Inspector certainly knew a good thing. After he had drunk it the comfort seemed to tingle through him, which put an end to his miseries. He half heard Peter chuckling and saying, ‘I say, Kay, do listen to what the detective said.’ He knew that Peter went on to read what the detective said, but he paid no heed. He was fast asleep. When he woke the fire was almost out, but the moonlight shone in through the open curtains, and outside on the hard asphalt of the walks round the house came the clank of weapons and the stamp of feet marching in time. A trumpet blew and a stern voice cried, ‘The Wolves Guard setting out for Duke’s Heath! Guard against the wolves! Just starting for Duke’s Heath! You coming there?’
Kay looked out of the window and there he saw in the moonlight a pack of armed men with bronze scale-armour, helmets and short spears.
‘Are you coming, Kay?’ the Captain said. Duke’s Heath was a couple of miles away, but it seemed to Kay much too good a chance to miss.
‘Yes, of course I’m coming,’ he said.
He took his precious Box, which had been under his pillow, and in a minute he was out of the house.
‘Very strange lot of men,’ he thought. ‘Even in the moonlight they seem to be sunburnt and tanned.’ They had shields on their left arms, short swords by their sides and each man had two short spears.
‘Well, you’ll want a coat of armour, Kay,’ the Captain said, and put a lovely little coat of mail over his shoulders. It was lined with wash-leather and very warm, so that Kay was very glad that he had not stopped to put anything on over his pyjama coat. Then they gave him two lovely little spears and a little short sword, and away they went.
Kay thought that the officer, beside whom he was marching, was very good-looking and agreeable. He was young, pale, with quick eyes and black hair; some of his dash was in his men: they marched like one man, with snap and swagger.
‘Will you tell me who you are, please?’ Kay asked.
‘We?’ the young officer said. ‘We’re the smartest squad in the finest cohort in the star wing of the crack Legion of the whole Imperial Roman Army, search it where you will; you’ll not find anything anywhere to touch or come near the Blue and White Stripers of the Tatchester Toms.’
‘I suppose not,’ Kay said. ‘And are you going to camp at Duke’s Moor?’
‘No, no,’ the man said. ‘We’re the Wolf-Guard passing that way with the mails. We go on to the frontier.’
‘Are the wolves very bad?’ Kay asked.
‘So, so,’ the man said. ‘It’s best to keep your eyes skinned. Duke’s Moor is none too good a place. There are some of the old lot there, who used to hold Chester Hills.’
‘There’s a Roman Camp at Chester Hills,’ Kay said.
‘There had need to be,’ the officer said.
‘Were you ever fighting there, please?’ Kay asked.
‘You’d call it so,’ he said. ‘A bad place and bad people. Men disappeared – sentry after sentry; and were never seen again. You see, it’s a limestone country, all honeycombed with caves, and these Wolves as we called them were all underground. It cost us a lot of men to get them out of it.’
They marched so swiftly that very soon they were out of the town in the open fields with Duke’s Moor already black to their right front.
‘You’re looking for a friend,’ the officer said. ‘Well, here’s the bridge over the brook. There’s a dingle to the right where you could shelter in case the rain should come on again. If I were you, I’d wait here for your friend. Don’t cross the brook. Some of the Wolves may be out on the other side, and they’re none too good.’
‘You mean men wolves?’ Kay said.
‘See now,’ the officer said, ‘that flat bit near the brook. When we were operating here, we were camped on that bit of slope behind us, and had double sentries out, visited every half-hour. Well, on that flat bit, one of our posts saw a calf come out in the moonlight to feed; just one of these wild white calves that you see. Well, nothing odd in that; the calf fed, and scratched and stamped like any other calf; but the posts noticed that it was always drawing nearer. At last, one of the men in the post didn’t like the look of it, so he flung a stone and called “Get out of that,” and at once the calf tossed off its skin and charged the post, hurt one man and got away with two spears. The calf was two of these young Wolves under a cow-skin. That was only three years ago, just here. They’re none too good, the Wolves.
‘Now if you stay here, your friend will soon be with you; and we’ll go on.’
The squad’s music, a strange kind of horn and drum, broke out into a march; the squad stepped out to it with a stamp and jingle. Soon even the noise of the march was gone. Kay was alone near the swollen brook and the dripping trees of the dingle. ‘Duke’s Brook,’ he thought. ‘I wonder who Duke or the Duke was.’ He had been told that the real name was Duck’s Brook, from the Wild Duck that haunted there. The moon having gone behind clouds it was now dark night near the Duck’s Brook. Kay wished that the soldier had not told him that tale ab
out the wild white calf. The night was now black as a pocket; and there in the blackness, oh horror, was a white calf moving towards him just as the Roman had described.
Was it a calf? He remembered, that Cook had said, that there was a White Lady who ‘walked’ out Duke’s Brook way. This thing that was coming was a White Lady . . . but supposing it was a White Wolf, standing on its hind legs and ready to pounce. It looked like a wolf: its teeth were gleaming. Then the moon shone out again; he saw that it was a White Lady who held her hand in a peculiar way, so that he could see a large ring, with a glittering ‘longways cross’ on it. She was the Lady who had been outside Bob’s shop, waiting for the message.
‘Come, Kay,’ she said, ‘you must not stay here; the Wolves are running: listen.’
The midnight was still enough, save for the babble of the brook, and the occasional running patter of drops from the ash trees. Now above these noises, from out to the north by the straw yards, came the cry of Wolves in pack, ‘all mad,’ Kay thought, ‘like the bark of foxes, but much more awful.’
‘Come with me,’ she said, giving him her hand.
As he took it, he felt himself lifted from the grass, so that he glided beside her up the stream to the pool from which the stream rose. Near this, to the right, was an oak of great age, which Kay had always called King Charles’s Oak and the country-people called the She Oak. It was hollow with age, but the mighty shell was alive still.
‘There are the Wolves,’ she said. ‘Look.’
There in the moonlight, racing over the grass to them, were the Wolves in pack, with their ruffs up and their eyes glaring. The oak tree opened behind Kay, the woman stepped within it drawing Kay with her. Instantly they were within the quiet of the tree in a room panelled with living oakwood and hung with tapestries of oak leaves in which the birds were alive.
Kay marvelled, for the birds came out of the tapestries and perched upon his hands. ‘They want some strawberries,’ the woman said. ‘Won’t you give them some?’
‘Please, I haven’t any,’ Kay said.
‘Ah, here they are,’ the woman said. ‘Now you can give them some.’
Out of a little door in one of the walls a red squirrel came cocking, with very bright eyes. He carried in his fore-paws a cabbage leaf heaped with strawberries. He hopped down to the table and offered the leaf to Kay, who took the berries and gave them to the birds. It was charming to have the little birds’ claws upon the fingers and to see the little bills peck the berries.
‘Squirrel would like some nuts,’ the woman said. ‘Bring some nuts, Mole.’
Three black moles came swiftly out of the floor, each bearing dock leaves, one with beech-nuts, one with walnuts, one with filberts. As the squirrel cracked and ate these he sat on Kay’s shoulder (and tried to drop the shells down his neck).
‘Now Kay would like some supper,’ the woman said. ‘For indeed, Kay, things are not going too well, when the Wolves have the best of us underground, and are still Running.’
Indeed, they were Running; they were sweeping past the tree with every kind of shriek and madness.
But Kay in the happy oak never bothered about the Wolves, for the Woman was now grown young before his eyes: she was all bright, shining and beautiful, and humming a most beautiful tune which brought more and more birds out of the tapestries, so that perhaps there was no kind of bird known to Kay not fluttering near him. Whenever he thought, ‘I don’t see a goldcrest,’ or ‘There’s no golden-crested wren,’ or ‘I don’t see a lesser spotted woodpecker,’ lo, that bird would be hopping on to his finger. ‘These birds are lovely,’ he said. ‘However do you make them so tame?’
‘Oh, I have a way with them,’ she said. ‘But tell me, now, which season do you like best, Kay?’
‘I like them all,’ he said. ‘I suppose I like April best, on the whole.’
‘Look, then,’ she said.
All one side of the room changed to a rolling red ploughland stretching down to a blackthorn hedge where a brook was running. The blackthorn was in blossom; there were marsh-marigolds in the mud near the brook and a few primroses in the dead grass of the bank. Nearer to Kay, at his feet, a couple of lambs were nibbling. A patch of daffodils grew in the grass. It was April beyond all doubt.
A blackbird flew suddenly with a chackering cry on to the blackthorn near him. Before the spray had ceased to shake, a missel-thrush settled beside him: the spray swayed and settled; then the blackbird sang:
‘Out of the many-coloured earth,
That eats the light and drinks the rain
Come Beauty, Wisdom, Mercy, Mirth,
That conquer Reason, Greed and Pain.
My laughter ripples in the corn,
In the green leaf it claps its wings,
In summer’s rose it blows a horn,
In brook and flying cloud it sings.
Come missel-thrush with merry will
Ring out your jolly notes agen,
And April will come up the hill
A million bright green little men.’
As soon as the blackbird had sung, the missel-thrush lifted up a magical voice and sang in answer:
‘The withered thorn trees on the hill
Mope on the rabbit-barren dry,
I flute their thin blood to a thrill
Of quicking bud as I go by;
The dormouse drowsy to the soul
In warmth of mossop where he lies,
Uncurls his beech-nut-battened roll,
And is all dart and is all eyes;
And out along the hedge the curled
Green little buds that lambkins bite.
Spring, and the blackbird calls the world,
And all the cherry trees are white.’
‘Spink, spink,’ said a chaffinch. ‘That’s a very good song to me-oh.’
‘Sing the song again,’ said Jenny Wren, so the missel-thrush sang.
As she sang, the squirrel, the moles, the most beautiful little mice and seven little foxes brought Kay strawberries, raspberries, red and white currants, ripe mulberries, plump blackberries, red and yellow cherries, black cherries, walnuts, beech-nuts, hazel-nuts, filberts, little round radishes, little pointed wild strawberries, sloes all cracking with ripeness, a mushroom for a relish, a chip cut from a turnip, an apricot from the south wall and a peach almost bursting its skin. Then there came blue grapes, black grapes, yellow grapes, almonds, raisins, all so ripe and so sweet and so good; and the animals were so charming, offering them on dock leaves held in their front paws, and all the time the beautiful woman hummed. At last she said, ‘They have taken Cole, they have taken Maria, and they will take others; but don’t lose courage, Kay, even if the Wolves are Running. You will beat the Wolves, won’t you, Kay?’
Kay said he would, and at once there he was back in his bed at Seekings, in daylight, with Peter saying, ‘It’s about time you woke. You’ve been snoring like a stuck pig. Have you had a nightmare?’
When he came down to breakfast there was no letter from his guardian, but there was a newspaper and the children pounced upon this for news of the burglary at the Palace.
‘REGRETTABLE INCIDENT AT TATCHESTER PALACE. ALLEGED BURGLARY
‘We are informed that a serious and very successful burglary was carried out at Tatchester Palace last evening. According to the Bishop’s laudable custom before Christmas the Palace was the scene last night of a large children’s party with a Christmas Tree and other festivities. While these were in progress the burglars, who, it is thought, were assisted by someone secreted within the Palace, went through the guest-rooms and escaped with considerable booty, including the jewel-cases of five ladies who were guests of His Grace’s sister. The Police preserve a professional reticence over the affair, but it is understood that they regard the work as that of smart London men and are at present engaged upon exhaustive enquiries. It is understood that dramatic developments may be expected shortly.’
‘But that’s what they always say,’ Peter said. They talked am
ong themselves about how lovely it would have been if they could have caught the burglars at work, and held them up with pistols till the Police came.
Kay was very much worried about Maria being still absent, but Maria’s brother and sisters said that she would be all right. ‘She always falls on her feet,’ they said. ‘Don’t you worry about Maria.’ But Kay did worry. As soon as breakfast was over he went across to see the Inspector of Police.
‘And so, you haven’t seen Miss Maria,’ the Inspector said. ‘Ha, that doesn’t look so well, but you leave the matter in my hands, Master Kay, and I’ll make what inquiries are called for. And your guardian, I hear, hasn’t come back.’
‘No,’ Kay said, ‘that’s another point. She ought to have been back: she started out yesterday to catch a certain train and she didn’t come by the train. We have had no word from her since.’
‘So I understand,’ the Inspector said.
‘How did you know?’ Kay said.
‘Well, in the Law, Master Kay,’ the Inspector said, ‘it’s our duty to hear all things: “Information Received” we call it. But I will put through the necessary inquiries, Master Kay. You leave the matter to the bloodhounds of the Law, and, depend upon it, information will be received.’
Kay was cheered by his confident manner and by his repeating, ‘The simple explanation is always the last thing thought of.’
When he reached Seekings Ellen said, ‘Oh, Master Kay, your guardian’s brother has rung up. There was so much fog and such a crowd at the station yesterday that she didn’t start, but went back to her brother, and one or two other little things have sprung up since, so she won’t be back today, but she may be back tomorrow. And she sends her love and tells you not to worry, and she hopes you are having a good holiday.’
‘Well, that’s a jolly good thing,’ Kay said, and being much cheered by the news, he went upstairs to get his catapult and some bullets. He kept these in a little secret hiding-place underneath his bed. After he had put them in his pocket he looked out of the window towards King Arthur’s Camp, and there in the fields below the Camp he saw the gleam of water. He ran down at once to the others. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘it’s splendid. The floods are out. We’ll go for a mud-lark. We’ll get out all our ships and sail them on the floods.’
The Box of Delights Page 11