Midwinter Nightingale Read online

  Simon and Dido walked across to greet them.

  “Good day, sir,” said Simon. “I'm Simon Battersea, staying here at present with His Majesty, who is—who is in poor health. And this is Dido Twite.”

  “How do,” said Sir Thomas. “Battersea, eh? I used to know your uncle and aunt at Loose Chippings. Rattling fast country around there, and your uncle kept a doocid good pack of hounds. Battersea, hey? You sent me a check for my sheep. More than dismal old Minna of Burgundy ever did.”

  “Why, yes,” said Simon. “Those sheep were being disgracefully ill treated. But they are now in the care of the monks here, who will keep them for their wool and are happy to have them. The sheep are happy too. I am not so sure about the bears.”

  “Bears, bears? I never ordered bears. Boots, it should have been, electric boots.”

  “I understand from the monks,” said Simon, “that a consignment of boots was washed ashore last week from a wrecked Russian cargo ship. But the electric elements didn't work. Soaking in the water, you know. The monks gave them to the poor. There were a few bears as well who swam to shore….”

  “Pesky Burgundians!” said Sir Thomas. “I didn't know the king was here. I've come about some godforsaken Burgundians, got washed up here, I understand, fetched over by that conniving Minna of Burgundy so as to put her no-account nevvy on the throne. But he's stuck his spoon in the wall, so I hear, and no loss to anybody— he was my stepgrandson, and a devilish cub since he could crawl—and now I hear the Burgundians have stove in their vessel on Querck Bank—so it's said, that right? So I've had all my trouble and expense for nothing, curse them all for a pigeon-brained cack-handed set of blunderheads!”

  “I'm afraid you are rightly informed,” said Simon. “Baron Magnus and his son are both dead. The baron died in the fire at Fogrum Hall and his son and the duchess fell off the viaduct.”

  “Was Lothar drunk?”

  “Yes. And before that he had inadvertently killed his sister by stabbing her with a Saxon spear.” Simon did not add that the killing stroke had been meant for him.

  “Eh, dear me. Poor Jorinda. Poor lass. But she was a flighty one, like her mother before her. I knew itd be only a matter of time before she came to no good. So I've had all my trouble for nothing—importing Russian bears and electric boots. To tell ye the truth I'm just as glad to keep King Dick on the throne. But now— hmnnn? I've come to pay off the Burgundians and I reckon to pass the night in the Priory, for it'll be dark in an hour or two. But how to get my cattle across and a few odds and bits for the night? I take it the monks can furnish me with a room?”

  “Oh, yes, there are plenty of rooms,” said Simon. “And I think it will be safe enough if we bring over your luggage piece by piece.”

  Accordingly this was done. Sir Thomas walked over first. “Seventeen stone!” he confided to Dido. “Give or take a pound or two. Pon my sainted saddlebag! Am I expected to climb up that unending staircase?”

  Dido, however, had found a diagonal approach to the 'warming chamber, where the shipwrecked Burgundians were accommodated, and she took Sir Thomas that way, which was not so steep as the stair, and there were trees to hold on to. Meanwhile Simon and Gribben brought over the two horses and the provisions in a series of trips.

  “Fortunate thing!” Sir Thomas explained to Dido as they slowly climbed. “M'granddaughter helped me answer and send off a confounded chain-letter affair— which I thought a load of pernicious rubbish, but it has paid off uncommonly well. Money comes in every mail, left me quite plump in the pocket; so I can give those Burgundian rogues enough journey money to send them back to Burgundy. Best thing to do, the way matters have turned out.”

  “You pay them to go home?” said Dido. “That's mighty obliging of you, Sir T.”

  “Generally works out best that way. Danegeld, you know.”

  Dido left Sir Thomas in the warming chamber, talking and giving orders to the shipwrecked Burgundians (luckily their English was far better than his French), and went up to the king's little room. Father Sam and Father Mistigris were there, and Simon arrived soon after.

  “Sir Thomas Coldacre would like to come and pay his respects to the king,” he said. “Is His Majesty strong enough to meet a stranger, do you think?”

  “He is growing weaker all the time,” said Father Sam in a low worried voice. “I don't know—”

  But the king had caught Simon's words.

  “Sir Thomas Coldacre?” he whispered. “Nay, he's no stranger. I ken him well. Fine I'd like tae see the callant! Many's the braw run he and I took togither after some canny farrant fox, and many's the grand gaedown and flagon of doch-and-doris we shared togither in those same days. Bring the auld loon in; I'd like fine to have a crack wi' him.”

  Father Sam and Simon gazed at each other in amazement. It was a long time since they had heard the king speak so strongly and so connectedly.

  Simon went off and soon returned with Sir Thomas, who subsided, creaking, on one knee and kissed the king's hand.

  “Sorry I am to see you in such poor shape, sir. But there! I reckon we all come to the end of the run sooner or later. And you're in good hands, I see; Father Sam is as shrewd as any sawbones, and the monks with Father Mistigris here can surely give ye a fine rousing send-off. But still it grieves me to see ye brought so low. Do ye remember that run we had over Sheeplow Water Meadows when Puffington headed the fox and the huntsman was soused in a clay hole? Lord bless me, how we laughed!”

  “Ay well I mind it,” whispered the king. “And the whips all got left ahind! Those were the days, mon, those were the days!”

  “Now, Dickie man, is there aught I can do for ye? Messages I can take to folk for ye? Bills paid, mortgages redeemed, aught of that sort? I just paid off all those Burgundian mercenaries, yell be glad to hear; the silly lubbers can't wait to get on the next packet home….”

  “Nay, there's naught, I thank ye,” whispered the king. “Auld Aunt Titanias gone afore me; I felt it in my hairt two-three hours agone. All I maun do now is wait for death—but waiting's a sad, unchancy business, forbye! Tis like waiting for a dismal bink of a train that never comes. Do ye think,” he suddenly said to Dido, who was standing at the end of his bed, “Dido, dearest girl, do ye think we'll likewise be obleeged to wait, to wait for meals or trains or meetings in the waurld to come?”

  “Croopus, no, Your Majesty,” Dido said firmly. “Nobody waits for anything there!”

  “Well answered, my dearie! I'm blythe tae hear that. Ay—come to think—there is one thing ye can do to obleege me,” the king said, turning back to Sir Thomas. “This coronet ceremony—King Alfred's headpiece—ye ken? We're a' waiting for that, and sair fashed, for the coronet's no' to hand; we hae the archbishop here, and the successor yonder”—he pointed at Simon—“but wheer's the cockermoney with which to crown him? Do ye ken wheer it might be, Sir Tammas?”

  “Why, yes,” said Sir Thomas, sounding a little surprised, “I see it right there.”

  He pointed. “The Lady Adelaide used to be good friends with my daughter, Zoe, at one time, and the Lady A was always a great one for embroidery; she was forever making kneelers for Clarion Wells cathedral or some such ploy She'd long been friends with the prince of Wales (as you were then, sir) before she married him—you. And, one time, you lent her that coronet for an embroidery frame; she told us that. You must have lent it to her again after your own crowning. Do ye remember now?”

  All eyes turned to Aunt Titania's needlework equipment, which was lying in a muddle on a wooden stool. Dido went over slowly and picked up the piece of embroidered linen, which was pulled tight over a circular embroidery hoop. She undid the hoop—which was in fact two hoops, one tight inside the other—separated them and dropped the embroidered cloth on the floor. The inner hoop, which had been concealed under the cloth, was made of twisted dark copper studded here and there with pale green peridots.

  “Ay, yon's the biggonet,” said the king contentedly. “Well I kenned it wad be certain t
ae come tae light some-where. And I'm much obleeged tae ye, Tam, auld friend! Now, let us hirple through this fashous ceremony and hae done with it. Father Sam, are ye there?”

  Father Sam, whose eyes had been nearly starting out of their sockets during the previous few minutes, moved forward, took the coronet from Dido and handed it to the king, retaining one side of it.

  “Kneel down,” he said to Simon, who silently did so, close to the king's bed.

  Dido, standing by Sir Thomas at the end of the bed, noticed that the gale outside had stopped blowing. The room was quite silent.

  Father Sam said some Latin words, quite a long string of them. Then he put the copper circlet on Simon's head. Then he waited a few minutes. Then he added a few more Latin words. Dido heard something that sounded like “Ubi non praevend rem dejidenum” but Dido knew no Latin. Then he said, “You may stand up now, my boy. That's it.”

  Simon stood up. Then they all heard, quite distinctly, a loud blast of dazzling song outside the window. Birds, fluting, sizzling, twittering, jug-jugging, singing their heads off.

  “Nightingales,” whispered the king contentedly. “It must be Saint Lucy's Day”

  Then he died.

  “Oh, confound it!” exclaimed Sir Thomas, scrambling to his feet. “I was just about to fetch my brandy-warmer—Gribben had unpacked it—and give the old fellow a snort of red-hot aquavit—cockadoodle broth— brandy beaten up with eggs. That would have roused him! Now it's too late. Too late! But how about you, my boy? (Should address you as Your Majesty I suppose, but it's a bit early to start that.) Would you care for a nip of the old stingo? Or you, Miss Dido?” Simon shook his head.

  And Dido, crying her heart out on the floor at the end of the bed, made no reply.

  Be sure to read Dido Twite's next adventure!

  Turn the page for an excerpt from Joan Aiken's The Witch of Clatteringshaws.

  Available now from Delacorte Press

  Excerpt from The Witch of Clatteringshaws copyright © 2005 by Joan Aiken Enterprises, Ltd.

  Published by Delacorte Press an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  All rights reserved

  Dear old Cousin Samuel:

  …As I stood in my chilly Convenience, gazing out at the evening mist on that day fifteen years ago, I became aware of a cautious skinny figure dressed in white, which was making its way silently and warily toward the waste bins.

  Really there was no need to tiptoe, as this ferocious battle was being fought a few miles to the south, and the noise of cannon and musket fire and grenades quite drowned the cries of gulls and the evening twitters of the birds. Yes, the Battle of Follodden. You remember it, I'm sure.

  People are always rather self-conscious about visiting the waste bins. They are still there now, a row of four against the drystone wall. They have labels on them: WICKER BOXES, BOTTLES, PAPER, GARMENTS. The bottle bin has three round holes for CLEAR, BROWN, and GREEN. The paper bin has a hinged letter-box flap over its slot. And the garment bin has a massive, heavy, cylindrical drawer-like fitment. You pull it toward you by a brass handle, and when you have pushed in your bundle of trousers or whatever, you let go of the handle and it swings upward and shoots your offering down onto the pile inside. The bins are cleared by council carts, which come every month at midday when the Hobyahs are not active, and the contents are sold or given away to the poor of the parish, who are glad to receive them, however ragged.

  Hobyahs are not interested in the contents of the bins. It is true that Hobyahs enjoy a good mess—if clothes or bottles are left lying on the grass, the Hobyahs will tear and smash and throw them all over the ground—but what they really go for is live meat.

  Me? No, dear Samuel, the Hobyahs are not interested in me. Long ago they gave me up as a bad job. And they are afraid of my friend Tatzen over the loch. And they don't like my broom or my golf club; all the years they have hung outside my door they have never been touched.

  People don't care to be seen dumping their bottles and cast-off clothes. They leave that task till the last possible moment before the Hobyahs come out of their holes…. Sometimes they leave it too late and then there is an unexplained disappearance. Sometimes that is blamed on me.

  Well, I watched this thin, cautious, white-clad character making her way toward the garment bin, and I soon came to the conclusion that it was my sister Hild. You never forget a person's walk. We had not met since I ran away from home to enter the Seminary of the Three Secrets, where I met you, dear Samuel, but I could see that now was the time to break that silence.

  I have a carrier pigeon so as to communicate with my friend Tatzen on the north side of the loch. And it will carry this letter to you by and by. I wrapped a message round its leg and launched it from my broken doorway. “In the coach park by the garment bin. I'm going there now.” Then I floated over on my broom quicker and easier than a sprint.

  I tapped Hild on the shoulder as she was in the act of pulling the brass handle, and said, “I shouldn't do that if I were you.”

  She jumped as if an arrow had hit her and said, “Why not?” And she added, “What business is it of yours, anyway? You nasty dirty low-down witch?”

  I can't remember if you met my sister Hild? We never did get on when we were living as sisters in the same house. My sailor dad was drowned, you may remember, so then Ma married Stan Hugglepuck, who ran the Dukes Arms and later became Provost. Hild was his daughter. There's just a year between us, but she was always bigger and bossier, and Stan never took to me. One of the reasons why I ran away to study the Ninefold Path.

  I said, “Because they just emptied the garment bin yesterday. They won't be round again for a month.”

  “What's that got to do—” she began irritably, but then the white-wrapped bundle that she had been on the point of dropping into the brass cylinder stirred and let out a thin whimper. Our eyes met over the linen wrappings.

  I said: “He'd starve to death before the council cart came again. Wouldn't be very nice for them to find his body.”

  Hild snapped, “How do you know it isn't a girl?”

  To me, that didn't seem to make much difference. We stood and eyed each other.

  At that moment there was a whistling overhead, like the wind in ships' rigging. Louder than the distant gunfire. We looked up. It was my friend Tatzen the otter-worm, circling overhead, letting out little puffs of hot flickering air.

  Hild let out a terrified scream. Then she did a thing that really surprised me. Dropping the live bundle, she snatched my broom, mounted it inexpertly—I don't suppose she had ever ridden a broom in her life—and lit off, on a zigza.g course, up into the air.

  I thought, Oh, well, let her go—brooms are replaceable, after all—and I stooped to pick the bundle off the ground before the Hobyahs arrived.

  It was letting out some perplexed, indignant yells.

  Tatzen had done a U-turn and gone after Hild, who was riding jerkily in the direction of the loch. It seemed likely that he would overtake and grab her before she reached the waterside.

  She looked back, saw him, and dived downward. Vanished into a bank of mist.

  And that was a mistake because the Hobyahs were beginning to stir under the thick vapor that lay like frost on a cake over the grassy slope. You could see the mist stirring and humping as they moved about, coming out of their burrows, waking, rubbing heir big bulging eyes. Scratching the ground wih heir claws. Grinding their teeth.

  I heard a shrill scream, and then a lot of short frantic cries.

  Then silence.

  Tatzen turned and came back to settle beside me in the coach park. Stretching his stumpy legs and his long furry neck, he studied the bundle in my arms.

  “Hold it a minute,” says I, “while I go and look in he coach.”

  For there was a mud-splashed coach and four exhausted horses parked by the entrance.

  But nothing could be learned from the coach. The woman inside it wa
s dead, poor hing. There was no luggage, no belongings, no clue to tell who she was or where she had come from. The coach driver had gone, and we would not be hearing any more from my sister Hild. I undid the traces so that the four weary horses could get away from the Hobyahs when they arrived, as hey soon would.

  Then I went back to Tatzen. He had coiled himself into a ring and was thoughtfully studying the small face that poked out from the folds of the linen napkin.

  “The mother's dead,” I said.

  “What'll we do with this?”

  “You had better take it across the loch and leave it on someone's doorstep. No Hobyahs on that side of the water.”

  I expected him to argue, and I was prepared to point out that my broom had been stolen, but to my mild surprise he said, “Very well,” and rose vertically into the air, letting out small puffs of steam.

  The sounds of battle were coming closer all the time.

  Tatzen has not shown much concern for my welfare, I thought rather sourly. But otter-worms and humans have different priorities; you have got to make allowance for the fact that they are cold-blooded creatures, partly amphibian. And he had relieved me of a responsibility.

  I went back to my Convenience, skirting round some dozy Hobyahs, and took down my golf club from its hook.

  A golf club is not so good as a broom but is better than nothing.

  I'd go and check on the bundle in five years or so. See how it was making out.

  Best wishes, dear Samuel, from your loving cousin. How are you getting on?

  Malise

  Published by Dell Yearling an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  Copyright © 2003 by Joan Aiken Enterprises, Ltd.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, 'without the 'written permission of the publisher, except 'where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press.