Midwinter Nightingale Page 2

  “We seem to have a flock of sheep on board,” he said, changing the subject.

  “Oh, I saw them in a siding when I got on,” Jorinda agreed carelessly. “A couple of stock cars loaded with them. They will be going to market in Windlebury, I daresay”

  She sounded supremely uninterested.

  “Well, while they are attaching the sheep, I shall go and take a look at my mare,” Simon said firmly, putting on his coat, and this time, instead of walking along the corridor, he left the carriage on the platform side and walked back, through the pelting rain, to the horse box at the rear of the train. Now there were three stock cars behind it, which had been shunted from a siding.

  The horse box, Simon had observed when Magpie was led on board at the London terminus, was of a far superior construction to the passenger cars, which were old and shabby, with cracked windows and worn upholstery leaking straw at the split seams. The horse box, in contrast, was magnificently fitted up. It must at some time have formed part of a royal train. There were polished mahogany stalls lined with thick cotton padding, each with a coat of arms on the door, brass mangers that glittered like gold, deep trays filled with sand for the horses to stand in and ingenious water troughs filled by a drip from silver tanks overhead so as to avoid too much spillage. Huge bales of hay lined the coach so that the equine passengers need never go hungry.

  Magpie seemed content and was quietly chomping on a nose bag of oats that Simon had left for her. She greeted him with a friendly snuffle and rubbed her head vigorously on his chest, then returned to her meal.

  “Good ol' gal, ain't she?” said the horse-box attendant, a wizened little man with a brown face like a withered oak leaf. “Lucky, piebalds are reckoned—ain't they? Windfall Clumps, that where you and she's bound for?”

  “That's right.” Simon pulled out his and the mare's tickets, one pink, one green, and the man clipped them. He said, “But you have to go through customs first, at Windwillow. Anything to declare?”

  “Only my paints and paintbrushes and the mare's bag of oats. And two saddlebags.”

  “Arr! Those be the very kind of baggage they go through fiercest—like a mouse in a lardy cake,” the attendant said, absently brushing off a mouse that had run up his gaitered leg (the horse car was alive with mice because of all the spilled oats).

  “Why?” Simon asked.

  “Why! Word has it they be a-looking for a lost piece o' joolry—Queen Adelaide's crown. Mind—no one never tells me nothing. Maybe 'tis Princess Sophronisba's choker customs gentry be after, but I dunno—'tis all fancy and make-believe, I daresay, sos they can claim extra wages—” and he spat between the hooves of a dapple-gray pony who was occupying the stall next to Magpie's.

  “Where are the sheep going?” Simon asked. A sudden surge of bleating came from the car next door as it was shunted into place.

  “Idunno. Like I said, no one tells me nothing. Mind, I did hear as they was going to Burgundy—but I reckon 'twas a Banbury tale.”

  “Burgundy? But that's across the Channel! And—” Simon was going on to say, we are almost at war with Burgundy—but at that moment the engine gave a loud authoritative whistle and there was a violent jerk as the new couplings were tested.

  “I'd better get back to my seat,” Simon said, then gave the old man a guinea and ran back along the corridor to his own compartment.

  The glass-paned door was half open and he saw the girl, his fellow traveler, reflected in it as he approached. She was standing up and had opened the door of her cat's travel cage. The cat, Simon had noticed before, was a most unusual and foreign-looking beast, pinkish cream in color with very soft, thick-looking fur and black points, ears, paws and tail. It seemed well accustomed to travel, sat very composed, bolt upright, and gazed into space with a lofty air, ignoring everything outside its cage. Now its owner pulled from her pocket a small notebook or pamphlet and very quickly and neatly slid it under the pink velvet cushion on which the cat was sitting. The cat took no notice of this. Then Jorinda closed and locked the cage, attached the key to her ear—Simon had noticed before that she wore silver earrings shaped like keys—and sat down nimbly in her corner seat.

  As Simon entered the carriage she looked up at him, smiled and said, “Was your mare quite comfortable? And my pony? Ah, thank goodness, we are starting at last—I have been so bored, sitting here with nothing to look at but those damp bushes!”

  Simon wondered very much what the booklet that Jorinda had hidden under her cat might be. Vaguely he remembered hearing that there was a very heavy tax on the export of certain kinds of books and written material from one part of the country to another—or was it forbidden altogether? I'll have to find out more about that kind of thing, he thought dismally; sometime it may be my job to know all about such laws. This was a prospect he did not look forward to at all. In the meantime he felt that it was none of his business if the girl intended to smuggle a forbidden paper through customs—if she wanted to risk being fined or imprisoned, that was her own affair.

  Plainly unaware that he had seen what she had done, she continued to chatter cheerfully about her school, and her brother, and what her father might do when he came out of prison.

  “It must have been a great chance for Pa to read and study—I daresay he will be very well informed when we see him next,” she said primly.

  “Will he be coming to your grandfather's house?” Simon asked.

  “Mercy no! Granda would have another seizure! No, no, I daresay he will go to friends …,” Jorinda said vaguely. “He has bought a house, I believe….” Then she suddenly let out an ear-piercing scream, startling Simon almost to death.

  “Oh! Oh! Ooooooooh! Help! Help!”

  “What on earth is the matter?” he asked impatiently— he was rather bored by the girl and could see no cause for the terror that seemed to have seized her.

  “There! There! On your coat—there! Oh, if it comes near me I shall die, I know I shall!”

  She jumped up on the seat, whimpering, sobbing, laughing and gibbering hysterically

  Simon was wearing a long caped riding coat of gray duffle. Looking down at it, he saw a large mouse run swiftly along the hem and vanish into a fold of the material.

  “A mouse? Is that what all the fuss is about? It must have climbed onto my coat when I was in the horse box. There are dozens of them along there. It's nothing to be scared of.”

  “I can't bear them, I can't bear them!” she cried hysterically “If it comes near me, I shall faint, I shall die, I know I shall!”

  What a carry-on, Simon thought, about one little mouse. His opinion of the girl, which had never been particularly high, shot down. But he twitched aside a fold of his coat, was lucky enough to spot the mouse and grabbed it by its tail.

  “Ugh! Ooooahh! How can you?” said Jorinda, shuddering and shutting her eyes.

  Simon had half a notion of offering the mouse to the cat—but the cat, sitting with eyes closed, seemed supremely uninterested in what was going on; anyway, it looked overfed. Instead Simon opened the window and tossed the mouse out into a beech coppice through which the train was now passing. On a thick carpet of dead leaves the landing should be soft enough, he thought.

  Next minute he felt the train begin to brake and slow down.

  “I think we are coming to Windwillow, where they do the customs inspection,” he said. “I'll have to go back to the horse box; my saddlebags are there.”

  “Please don't bring back any more mice! My maid will see to my luggage before she brings the lunch,” Jorinda said.

  How boring to be a rich girl and obliged to travel about with a maid, Simon thought, though he supposed it must be convenient in some ways. He grinned a little, thinking of his friend Dido, who had made her way all over the world without any help but her own wits.

  The bleating of the sheep was almost unbearably loud as he reached the horse-box door. Just beyond this, trestle barriers had been set up across the station platform, and. a sign saying NO PASSENGE
RS PAST THIS POINT. PLEASE TAKE YOUR LUGGAGE TO THE CUSTOMS INSPECTION COUNTER AT THE END OF THE STATION.

  Simon climbed into the horse box, lifted down his saddlebags from the brass hook where they were hanging and unstrapped Magpie's nose bag. This seemed oddly heavy, considering how few oats were left in it, so, wondering if a stone or some undesirable object had found its way into the feed, he thrust his hand inside, sifted through the grain and chaff with his fingers and was not altogether surprised to come across what felt like a piece of string connecting some hard lumpy objects the size of grapes; when he pulled this out, it proved to be a necklace of green stones on a silver chain. Simon frowned a little over this find and glanced toward the attendant, who was ostentatiously occupied polishing mangers at the far end of the horse box with his back turned. Since this man was the only person who could have dropped the necklace into the nose bag, which Simon had filled after the train started, there was no point in questioning him, for his reply was bound to be a lie. Instead Simon calmly hung the necklace on a nearby harness hook. He then very slowly and deliberately searched through the contents of his saddlebags, which held paints, warm clothes, some packets of raisins, a tube of spillikins, and a small magnetic chess set. Frowning a little over this, Simon dug down to the very bottom of the bag and found a velvet box lined with goose down and containing a diamond clip. The diamonds were magnificent ones, as big as peas.

  “No, really,” muttered Simon crossly. “This is too much. What do they take me for, a Hatton Garden salesman?”

  He perched the little box on a traveling anvil that stood nearby, then finished his search of the second bag, but found no more alien objects. The old attendant, who had been watching him for the past few minutes, nodded gloomily.

  “Arr, thee's got a bit of sense in thy noddle, young feller, simmingly! Customs gentry do be devilish keen to turn in a-plenty smuggled goods; don't they dig out any theirselves, they baint above planting a few gewgaws in folkses bags sos to claim finder's fee—” and he scowled at the brooch on the anvil.

  “So I see,” said Simon dryly, rather regretting the guinea he had given the little man earlier, and he went once more carefully through his luggage and pockets before walking along the platform to where the customs officials were waiting, with unconcealed impatience, behind a wooden counter.

  “Took your time, didn't you?” one of them grumbled. “Come on—pass over the bags—we haven't got all day”

  Simon saw a thin elderly woman struggling onto the train 'with several heavy bags. He guessed she was Jorinda's maid. She and Simon seemed to be the only passengers, unless other people had passed through the customs turnstile while he had been in the horse box. And what about Jorinda? Had she some special exemption? Or had she and the cat passed through before the maid and the luggage?

  The customs officers—two redheaded lantern-jawed men with hair cut so short it looked like rusty paint over their bald heads—seemed seriously displeased about something. They searched through Simon's belongings again and again, strewing his clothes about on the trestle table, poking suspiciously inside his paint pots, prodding a skewer through a cake of soap, spilling raisins on the station platform.

  “Hey!” Simon protested. “My things are getting all wet.”

  The men ignored him. “We was told, definite, they would be there,” one of them muttered to the other.

  “Go through the chap's pockets again.”

  They went through Simon's pockets; they made him take off his riding boots and delved inside. Finally— sourly and with great reluctance—they let him repack his scattered belongings and get back onto the train.

  By the time Simon finally returned to his own carriage, he found that the elderly woman was there with Jorinda, unpacking a hamper that contained a lavish picnic—game pie, simnel cake, roast chestnuts, crystallized grapes, ham patties, cheese, hard-boiled eggs and apples.

  The elderly woman, who was very sour-faced, threw Simon a glance of dislike, suspicion and warning. This did not surprise him as much as the exceedingly warm welcome he received from the girl, who jumped up, gave him a radiant smile and looked as if, had they been alone, she would have flung her arms round him.

  “My lady! Sit down at once!” snapped the maid. “Young ladies don't rise when a male person comes in. Never!”

  Jorinda blushed deeply; her eyes met Simon's in a deep, grave, sparkling look that filled him with embarrassment and discomfort. What has got into the girl? he wondered.

  “Oh, but he's my kind friend, Nurse Mara!” she said in an urgent, throbbing tone. “He saved me from a mouse!”

  “That was nothing at all,” Simon said quickly. “All I did was throw it out the window. Did you have any problems with the customs?” he added, feeling rather uncomfortable, as they were all three standing in the small space between the seats, and he would have liked to sit down and take out the roll he had brought for his lunch.

  Nurse Mara sniffed, as if she too thought rescue from a mouse nothing out of the common. “Your ladyship is just silly about mice,” she remarked, and repeated, “Sit down, do, child.”

  With a swish of skirts Jorinda reseated herself and gestured for Simon to do so too.

  “Won't you please share my picnic?” she begged, and fixed him once more with that deep, meaningful, glowing gaze. “For I shall never be able to eat it all by myself.”

  Good heavens, thought Simon uneasily, anybody would think the girl had fallen in love with me. But we have only just met!

  “Th-thank you!” he stammered. “But—but what about this lady?” He turned to look at Mara, who was snappishly unfolding a starched napkin.

  “Oh, she is only a servant.” Jorinda coolly took up a slice of game pie and bit a large semicircle from it. “She takes her tiffin in the baggage car. You need not bother your head about her. Not in the very least.”

  Nurse Mara fixed Simon with a basilisk stare that emphatically contradicted these words.

  “Do please have some of my picnic,” Jorinda repeated, munching. “The game pie's not bad.”

  “I won't, really, thank you,” Simon said, rather awkwardly seating himself in what space was left from the feast. “As a matter of fact I don't eat meat.”

  “Don't you? Why? How very queer! Well then, have a hard-boiled egg—do! Or some chestnuts.”

  Jorinda went on pressing him until at last, to pacify her, he took an apple and bit into it. At the crunch a tawny owl, which had been asleep in the rack for the past hour, woke, opened huge round eyes, let out a snoring sound and clicked its beak.

  Jorinda gave a sharp cry. “What's that?”

  “It's only my owl. Thunderbolt. He won't hurt you. He likes to sleep all day”

  Jorinda's cat, which had opened large plum-colored eyes at the sound of the owl's voice, shut them again, as if the interruption was too trifling to be worth his attention.

  Nurse Mara shrugged furiously in a gesture that said, “What did I tell you?” and left the compartment. But, evidently placing no trust whatsoever in her young mistress, she continually came back to do some small thing: open a pot of jelly, peel an egg for Jorinda, or just glance sharply through the glass door to make certain nobody was misbehaving. And soon she came back to repack the remains of the picnic lunch and warn her charge that the next stop, Distance Edge, was where they had to get off.

  “My granda's manor is about twenty miles from there,” Jorinda told Simon. “Sir Thomas Coldacre, of Wan Hope Height. Where are you bound?”

  Her face fell when he told her that he was going south to Windfall Clumps.

  “Oh! What a pity! I hoped you were traveling my way. Shall I give you my address? Will you give me yours? As a matter of fact I haven't quite made up my mind …”

  Simon hurriedly explained that he did not know what his address would be—that he would not, probably, in any case, stay there for very long—would shortly be returning to London—his plans were uncertain—all depending on other people.

  Jorinda's face fell e
ven more at this, but brightened a little at the mention of London.

  “I mean to go there as soon as Granda "will let me. Papa has a house there. London's a fine town, ain't it? But I do, I do wish for us to meet again. We must!” Her fingers clutched his arm. Simon looked anxiously toward the door—but Nurse Mara was out of view for the moment. “What is your address in London? We could meet there—please—couldn't we?” She fixed imploring eyes on his.

  What a queer girl, thought Simon. All those years at school, you'd think she'd be a bit cooler in her manners.

  He decided that he had no option but to tell a lie, a thing that went much against his nature.

  “Oh, I shall probably be staying with my aunt Bessie in—in Hans Town.”

  “What is her direction? Her surname?” Jorinda pulled out an ivory tablet.

  “Mrs. Nettlepink—18 Prince Richard Row,” said Simon, hastily inventing.

  By this time the train had jerked to a halt.

  “Come along—do, my lady,” urged Nurse Mara. “Your grandpa's coach will be waiting. And besides, we've—” Her last instruction was drowned in a tremendous outbreak of baaing from the sheep as if their state had become much worse—more, suddenly, than they could bear.

  Petulantly, Jorinda snatched up her cat in its cage and followed the nurse, turning, as she stepped down onto the platform, for a final beseeching look at Simon.

  Knowing that it would take at least five or ten minutes for the train to be divided and the two parts to go their separate ways, Simon waited a moment or two, until Jorinda and her nurse ought to have left the station, before stepping out to make sure that his own compartment and the horse box were correctly positioned in the part of the train that would turn south to Windfall Clumps. What was his surprise, then, to see that Jorinda was still on the platform, much farther back, toward the rear, beyond the horse box, in earnest confabulation with a grimy-looking man who was leaning on a long pole. She handed him something—money, perhaps— then, without noticing Simon, turned and followed Nurse Mara through a wicket onto the road beyond, where a chaise drawn by four horses waited. Two men followed, heavily burdened down with luggage.