Midwinter Nightingale Read online

  He would have turned on his heel and gone back across the yard, but she had already recognized him.

  “Simon!”

  “Oh, botheration!” said Simon.

  “What a lovely, lovely surprise!”

  “What in the world are you doing here dressed up as a chimney sweep?”

  “You don't seem very glad to see me.” She pouted.

  “Why should I be?”

  “Oh!”

  “What are you doing here?” Simon asked again impatiently

  “I just thought it would be fun to go round offering to sweep people's chimneys. Make a change from boring home. And besides—” She stopped in the middle of what she was going to say.

  “Well, we don't need our chimneys swept,” he snapped, “so you'd better go back to boring home.”

  “I thought you said you were going to your aunt in London. I wrote to you there.”

  “I—I had to put off going,” he said lamely.

  “Who lives here? At Darkwater?”

  “My aunt Titania. Listen, will you please go home? And forget you ever saw me here?”

  “Why? Will you come over to Edge Place?”

  “No, I can't do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can't leave Darkwater just now.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can't tell you.”

  “Can't, can't, can't!” She mimicked him angrily “Well, I can tell you, you may have to, soon. If it rains much more, the dam up on Wan Hope Height will give way and then all this part of the forest will be under twenty feet of floodwater. Then you will jolly well have to leave!”

  Simon didn't believe her. And he was growing anxious about the king, left alone for so long. He said, “Look, I'm sorry, I can't stay here talking. And I advise you to go home before it is quite dark.”

  “Oh, my pony knows the way,” said Jorinda carelessly. “I'll tell you a funny thing. The other day somebody told me that Darkwater Farm had burned down. Why do you suppose they did that?”

  “I have to go. I'm sorry I can't invite you in. My aunt is out.”

  Jorinda swung herself onto her gray pony, hoisting her chimney rods jauntily over her shoulder; she hoped that she looked like Joan of Arc. Or Boadicea.

  “And I'll tell you something about your friend Dido Twite,” she called back spitefully

  “My friend—?”

  “It's going to be Rat Week for Dido Twite at the place where she's expected. Maybe she's there already. But I very much doubt if you'll be seeing your friend Dido again….” The gray pony cantered off into the shadows.

  Simon strode back upstairs with three new sources of worry. Jorinda had somehow found out that he was at Darkwater. Did she guess about the king? And was it true that the dam on Wan Hope Height was about to give way? And where, in heaven's name, was Dido?

  Upstairs, in the king's chamber, he had another cause for worry. The king had woken, tried to get off his couch, become entangled in his covers and fallen on the floor. He was trying vainly to haul himself up by the armchair that Lady Titania sat in when she kept him company.

  “Oh, my dear, dear sir!”

  “Help, help!” gasped the king feebly.

  After a long, breathless, undignified period of struggle, Simon had King Richard back on the bed and rearranged under his rugs. Aunt Titanias silks, scissors, thimble, embroidery hoop, needle book and emery ball were scattered everywhere about the floor. Simon picked them up and restored them to the rush basket in which they were kept. Near the fireplace he found a little vellum manuscript book, sewn together by a thin leather thong, with its title inscribed in ink: 100 New Embroidery Stitches. He looked inside the cover and saw a list: Tent Stitch, Chevron Stitch, Pekingese Stitch, Roumanian Stitch and so on. A slip of paper escaped from the booklet and fluttered to the floor. More stitches? No.

  Simon picked it up and read, in jagged black handwriting:

  Barnard Castle, Bernicia

  Keep the Old Boy alive as long as you possibly can. I plan to come round by sea and land an army at Marshport -within the next few weeks. Early -winter here. Where is the archB of W? Keep him at hand.

  Your devoted cousin,

  Aelfric

  in the same room she had been shut in before. Was the Woodlouse here too? Yes, he was. He crawled out from under the table, dusty, grimy, tear-streaked as before.

  “Look here,” said Dido. “First, have you got anything to eat?”

  He shook his head. “No. They said they wouldn't allow me any food till you told them the thing they want to know.”

  “Then we'll both of us have to starve to death,” said Dido. “For I don't know it.”

  She thought of mentioning her red herring story about the river in Scotland, but then thought again. Maybe there were listeners lurking behind holes in the wall to catch any information that might pass between her and the Woodlouse.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Piers Ivanhoe le Guichet Crackenthorpe.”

  “Well, Piers, the next thing we gotta do is whisper … in case there's folk got their three-cheers glued to the keyhole.”

  She rolled her eyes expressively and raised her brows, looking round the room for possible listening points. Piers seemed perplexed for a moment, then nodded intelligently

  “Got such a thing as a shiv on you, a knife?”—indicating her bound wrists. He nodded again and, a little to Dido's surprise, produced a penknife from his pocket and carefully sawed though the constricting cords. In gratitude, Dido vigorously patted his cheek; he flinched and looked startled.

  “Thanks, cully!” Dido whispered. “I was starting to think they'd fall off.” She rubbed her tingling palms together.

  “Now, the next thing is, how do we get out of here?”

  “There's no way,” he whispered mournfully.

  “Fiddle-de-dee! I've got out of worse places than this.” She glanced assessingly round the room, went and inspected the view from the window.

  “Tiger pike and alligators,” Piers reminded her in a whisper. The moat, disturbingly bubbled and pocketed, lay brightly illuminated by gas lamps.

  “So, right, the moat's out. Looks like we gotta learn to fly, Piers.”

  His face fell. Plainly he had hoped that Dido could work a miracle. She carefully inspected the room and its contents. One table, two chairs, some lengths of cord scattered on the floor where the Woodlouse had dropped them.

  Then Dido had another look at the ceiling. There was a trapdoor in it.

  Interrogatively, Dido pointed at it. Piers shrugged. The ceiling was well out of their reach. But Dido, without any more communication, began gathering up the bits of rope from the floor, untying the knots in them, then fastening them together to make one length, more than six feet long.

  “Does the trapdoor open?” she whispered. “What's up there?”

  “I dunno. I never saw it open. Anyway, how could you get up to it?”

  “You'll see.” Dido lifted one of the chairs onto the table and climbed up on it. The trapdoor was still several feet above her reach. She clambered down and hoisted up the second chair. It would not stand on the seat of the first one; the legs were too wide apart. So Dido turned it upside down, laying the two seats together.

  “Give us a hand now, Piers,” she whispered.

  “How?”

  “Stand on the table and help me balance.”

  Nervously, unwillingly, he did so. Dido scrambled onto the precarious structure of the two chairs, balancing on the rungs of the top chair, and reached up. Now she could touch the trapdoor with her fingers. She gave it a push and it rose slightly.

  “Champion! But I need a stick, or a shovel, or a cricket bat.”

  “What for?”

  “To shove it right up, lunkhead!” Then, seeing that the boy looked rather quenched, Dido ended more mildly, “Just look about, Piers, and see if you can't find summat that I could poke the trap with.”

  “No, I don't see anything,” he re
ported rather hopelessly after a few minutes.

  “Ohhhl” Dido let out a deep breath of frustration. Then, gingerly, she descended from the two chairs and cast her eyes round the room.

  There was an empty fireplace filled with a pile of cold white ash. In it, Dido's sharp eye detected something that Woodlouse had missed: a pair of rusty fire-tongs half buried in the ashes.

  “That'll do us prime, Piers!” she said in triumph. “Just you pass the tongs up to me when I'm atop of the chairs.”

  “S-s-suppose somebody hears us?” he stuttered.

  “Phooey! Why should they?” Dido retorted, hoisting herself up again.

  In fact there was every reason why somebody might hear them, for the chairs overbalanced and fell off the table, taking Dido with them. Piers looked toward the door in terror, expecting that somebody, hearing the crash, would come bursting in. But nobody did.

  “Guess they're all at dinner,” Dido said, rubbing her elbow and repositioning the chairs on the table. “Now, let's try that again, Woodlouse. Nothing grab, nothing get, my aunt Tinty used to say.”

  She balanced once more on top of the pair of chairs, Piers passed her the tongs and with them she was able to push open the trapdoor.

  “My, oh my, there's a thundering great loft up here! Pass us the candle, Piers, so I can have a look round.”

  “But then I'll be left in the dark.”

  “You come up too.”

  Agile as a squirrel, Dido grabbed the two sides of the trap opening, hung for a moment, then swung herself up and through the square hole. “I couldn't do that,” quavered Piers.

  “I'll dangle the rope, then, and haul you up. Lucky you're only a shrimp.”

  She pulled the knotted length of rope from her pocket and lowered one end. With unexpected ability Piers grasped it, gripped it with the outer edges of his feet and allowed himself to be pulled up.

  “I still don't see how this is going to help us,” he muttered rather hopelessly as Dido relit the candle from flint and steel she produced from her pocket. “They'll know where we've gone as soon as they see the open trap. Then they'll come after us. There's no way of getting out of here. We can't fly”

  “Well,” Dido argued, “it's still better than being nailed in a box and starved. Maybe we'll find summat to eat up here. This is a huge attic, looks like it runs all around the roof, under the tiles. They'll have a job finding us.”

  The loft stretched away into darkness in both directions.

  “Watch where you put your feet, Piers; step on the joists, not between em, or you're liable to put a foot through the plaster ceiling.”

  The tiled roof formed a triangle overhead and was high enough at the point of the angle for them to be able to stand upright. All kinds of odd items had been stored up there in the course of years; occasionally some planks had been laid over the joists to form a floor for storage. There were canvas bags, chests, portmanteaux, saddlebags, even articles of furniture.

  “I wish someone had thought to bring a bundle o' grub up here,” said Dido. “I could just fancy a bite of bread and cheese.”

  “Lot's grandfather used to own this house,” said Piers. “Commander Haakon Hardrada. He was a famous explorer. He sailed to the Umbrage Isles. Some of his travel things are stored up here, I believe. There might be food in them.”

  “Probably the mice had it long ago. No harm in looking, though.” Dido began opening boxes and untying strings. Inside a rather nice little walnut desk, she found a leather-bound diary written in elegant copperplate handwriting.

  “ 'This is the journal of me, Adelaide of Thuringia.'…Hey, she was the one who got to be queen, wasn't she? Lot's mum?”

  “This was her house when her father died. Lot was born here.”

  “'I have discovered, with terror, that my husband is a werewolf. Oh, what a fearful change comes over him at nightfall.' Hey, that's this Baron Magnus who's just gone off on the Black Pilgrimage today, ain't it?”

  Piers let out a gasp of fright. “He has gone where?”

  “Said he was going on the Black Pilgrimage to the city of Cora-something-or-other. I heard him telling that old duchess just afore the navy chap came in. What is the Black Pilgrimage then, Piers?”

  “It is very bad. It gives him the power to do terrible things. Lot talked about it.”

  “The way the cove is, even now, he ain't my notion of a Sunshine Boy” Dido muttered. “What's a werewolf, anyhow?”

  “Somebody who can change into a wolf at night,” Piers told her in a very low voice.

  “Holy Christmas! You're not bamming? He can really do that? Have you seen him do it?”

  “No, no, I haven't. Since he came out of the Tower and came here, I have hardly seen him at all. I think he has been ill. It is his foot. And he has been terribly angry. I heard Her Grace the duchess ask him should she send for a doctor, and he was furious. Said what good would a miserable sawbones do him? He said it was all the fault of a sack of sixpences.”

  “It's rum they'd talk of such things in front of you.”

  “Oh, they were talking in Latin.”

  “You speak Latin, Woodlouse?” Dido said in wonder.

  “My grandpa, who was a bishop, made me study it since I was four.”

  “No fooling! But what has a sack o' sixpennies got to do with old Whiskers turning into a wolf at darkfall?”

  “Silver is a very strong aid against the powers of dark,” Piers told her. “A silver bullet can kill a vampire. I think the sack of sixpences accidentally fell on him at the Tower! Upset his power.”

  “What a lot you know, Woodlouse.”

  Dido put the journal back in the desk, which was otherwise empty. “No, hey, here's a secret drawer. Nothing in it, though. No, wait, here's summat in a little leather case. Feels like a penknife. Yes, that's what it is. Knife at one end, scissors at the other. Mighty handy. I'll have a borrow of it if Lady Adelaide don't object.” She slipped it into her pocket.

  “No prog, though. Let's go on and find what else they stowed up here.”

  “The candle won't last much longer,” Piers said 'worriedly

  “Then us'll have to see in the dark.” Dido was inclined to add, “We could see by the light you give off, you ray of sunshine!” but did not. After all, she thought, the poor 'worm's got precious little to be cheerful about: family far away in New Galloway, gotta live in this dismal ken, nowhere to run off to.

  They explored on for ten minutes or so, turning a couple of corners under the great rectangle of roof.

  “Why did Baron Magnus have you collared?” Piers asked.

  “He thinks I know where the king is, because the king sees a lot of my friend Simon Bakerloo. But I don't know where they are. The only place they might be, I suppose, is Willoughby Chase.”

  “Where's that?”

  “In the north. That's where Simon comes from. Blimey,” said Dido, “what in creation can this be?” What they had come across were two large square objects blocking their way through the attic. The smaller one was made of metal—lead or zinc—the larger of wood.

  “This here's a tank,” said Dido. “Full o' water, too; that's handy” And she drank thirstily from cupped hands. “Take a drink, Woodlouse; that'll make ye feel better. But what the pink pestilence can this one be? It's like a huge box. The cook's bedroom? It's as big as a small room—only there ain't any door.”

  “Perhaps round the other side,” suggested Piers, and he began to wriggle on his stomach along the narrow triangular gap, which was all that remained between the larger wooden structure and the slope of the tiles.

  “It is a room!” said Dido when they had worked their way past it. “And look; here's a whole mess o' candle stubs. That's handy. But what the plague is this thing for?”

  Piers had discovered a pair of long poles lying across the joists with some tennis rackets and croquet mallets. To Dido's astonishment, he was suddenly filled with hope and enthusiasm.

  “Stilts! They are stilts!”

&n
bsp; “So what's that to sing about?” Dido picked up a croquet mallet. Now, those would be right handy in a set-to, she thought.

  “I used to walk on stilts through the marshes when I lived on Aelfy's Isle with Mother and Father.”

  “So? There ain't any marshes here.”

  “No, but I could walk across the moat.”

  “Have a bit o' sense, Piers! First off, how do we get them down to the moat? And, if we could do that, I'd reckon they are too short; the moat's likely too deep.”

  “No, look,” argued Piers, “you can move the foot-pieces and peg them in at different heights. And I know the moat is only five or six feet deep. It doesn't need to be any deeper, on account of the tiger pike and the alligators.”

  “Well, maybe that's so,” conceded Dido. “But we still gotta get them down to ground level. And then, there's only one pair. Who's going?”

  “You,” said Piers simply. “You've got friends to go to.”

  “Yes, but, cully, I can't walk on them things. I never walked on stilts in my livelong. Itd hafta be you.”

  “Oh.”

  “And anyway, we're up here and the moat's down there.”

  “Oh, but,” said Piers, “this box thing is a lift—if we could find out how to work it.” He sounded unexpectedly positive.

  “A lift?”

  “A hydraulic lift,” said Piers, suddenly knowledgeable. “It's worked by a hydraulic ram, from a stream somewhere out in the grounds. When this house was a proper school, there were maids who used to take clean sheets and pails of wash water up to the dormitories, using this lift. That tank is full of water that works the lift.”

  “If you say so.”

  “It goes down to the butler's pantry. And there's a window in the pantry that opens onto the moat.”

  Piers was plainly so carried away by his notion of walking on stilts through the water that he had become oblivious to any difficulties or drawbacks. Walking on stilts was something he could do. He dragged the poles inside the lift, where they only just fit, resting corner-ways from floor to ceiling. Then he carefully inspected the levers and dials that operated the hydraulic system. There was no door; the lift was a three-sided box.

  Dido was much more dubious. Stepping in beside Piers, she eyed the levers with suspicion. “Are you sure, if you pull that thing, that it won't just drop straight to the bottom?”