Is

Table of Contents

‘Were you aware that New Blastburn – or Holdernesse, as they call it – is an underground town?’

‘
Under ground?
Save us! Why?’

‘While digging out and enlarging the first coal mine, they discovered a huge natural cavern under Holdernesse Hill and so – at your uncle’s command – the city has been entirely rebuilt inside it.’

‘Well, I’ll
be
! A whole town inside of a cave! I suppose that way,’ said Is, thinking about it, ‘they don’t get no rain or snow. It would be jist prime for the street kids. No crossings to sweep, though, no mud. Is
that
where all the kids are?’

‘No,’ said Aunt Ishie. ‘They are in the mines. Or the foundries. Or the potteries.’

‘In the mines?’

‘All children here,’ said Aunt Ishie, ‘are set to work. From age five. In the coalmines, in the foundries, in the breweries, in the potteries. The mines are far from the town, now, under the sea; they are very, very extensive. The children work and sleep there.’

THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE

BLACK HEARTS IN BATTERSEA

NIGHT BIRDS ON NANTUCKET

THE STOLEN LAKE

THE CUCKOO TREE

DIDO AND PA

IS

THE WHISPERING MOUNTAIN

(
winner of The Guardian Fiction Award
)

MIDNIGHT IS A PLACE

THE SHADOW GUESTS

GO SADDLE THE SEA

BRIDLE THE WIND

THE TEETH OF THE GALE

ALL YOU’VE EVER WANTED

MORE THAN YOU BARGAINED FOR

A SMALL PINCH OF WEATHER

ALL AND MORE

A HARP OF FISHBONES

THE FAITHLESS LOLLYBIRD

PAST EIGHT O’CLOCK

A FOOT IN THE GRAVE

UP THE CHIMNEY DOWN

THE MOON’S REVENGE

A NECKLACE OF RAINDROPS

THE KINGDOM UNDER THE SEA

TALE OF A ONE-WAY STREET

TALES OF ARABEL’S RAVEN

ARABEL AND MORTIMER

MORTIMER’S CROSS

MORTIMER SAYS NOTHING

MICE AND MENDELSON

THE LAST SLICE OF RAINBOW

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Epub ISBN: 9781409024835

Version 1.0

  

A Red Fox Book

Published by Random House Children’s Books

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

A division of Random House UK Ltd

London Melbourne Sydney Auckland

Johannesburg and agencies throughout the world

First published by Jonathan Cape 1992

This Red Fox edition 1993

Text © 1992 Joan Aiken

Illustrations © Pat Marriott 1992

The rights of Joan Aiken and Pat Marriott to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

RANDOM HOUSE UK Limited Reg. No. 954009

ISBN 0 09 910921 2

T
HE PLAYLANDERS
came to Winchelsea

With flags flying

And Gold Kingy’s standerd flying in the midil medil midill

And with a rush

The Playlanders came to batal

And sixty were killed at the furst shot from John’s canan

And with a great noyse all the Playlander army

Fell backwards down the hill

And they met the other fruntgard of the rill army

And tumbeld it all about and shouted “you noty men

What are you trying to do?

You noty raskles

What do you think you are?

Shouting flee!

Ealce we will kill you all.”

But John’s men lathted at this

And John shouted “fire the canans

And your rifuls

And out with the standerd of luck.

Now men fight bravely

For you now

That the Playland army

is larger than ours.”

The mane army came rushing up the hill

With Gold Kingy shouting

Ahoy! Ahoy!

Flee! Flee! becoz the mane army is coming up the hill.

And the Playlanders fled down the hill

In great disorder

And they tumbeld tumbold over one another

And shreeked, and got all mixt up . . .

One day some Playlander warships

Were sailing saling in the sea

And they saw a lovly lovely island

In the Mediterrranean sea

With blew blewe rivers in it

And buttful pine foristes in it

And they sailed to its shores

And when they got there

They saw a buttful lake lak among the montens

And there was one montenn witch they called Juhuhooa

Witch was larger than all the others

With lovly beards berds beairds in it

And buttfull beests that would come

When you called them

And buttfull cats that would come in your window

And lovly froats and flowres flowrs

Witch would flowr all the year round.

JANE AIKEN

This poem was written by my sister Jane when she was seven, or thereabouts, and if she was not sure how to spell a word, she put in all the possible alternatives. I am grateful to her for letting me use part of it, and to the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, for providing a copy
.

Note
: The details about coal-mining conditions in the nineteenth century are factual, and I am grateful to the Caphouse Colliery Museum and the Halifax Industrial Museum for information acquired there. But of course workers were allowed to leave the mines at night.

The chapter headings are taken from the
Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book
.

The action of this story begins a few years after the end of my book DIDO AND PA, and a few of the characters in that and earlier books are mentioned. But this is a separate story, and you don’t need to have read my earlier books to follow it.

1

On a clear evening in November, nearly a hundred years ago, frost lay like thick white fur over the ancient thorn trees on the crest of Blackheath Edge, some miles south of London town. The birds had long since hushed their faint murmurs. And farther south, in the forests of Chislehurst and Petts Wood, the last few leaves were dropping fast from giant oaks, and glistening with frost as they fell.

A tall woman, hoisting a pail of water from a well in a clearing of Blackheath Wood, turned her head sharply as she heard the faint wail of wolves in the distance.

She called, ‘Is? Are you close at hand, Is?’

A girl came running towards the well. She was small in build, but quick and alert. Her breeches and jacket were made of wolf-skin, with the fur left on. She carried a large basket of chestnuts.

‘What is it, Penny?’

Penny said, ‘You best get indoors. I heard wolves.’

‘Already?’ Is stood still to listen. ‘Wonder what brings ’em out. They ain’t often as early as this.’

‘Never mind that, you get indoors. Where’s the blessed cat?’

‘He’s not far. Figgin, Figgin!’

A large, scrawny, bony cat came bounding through the frosted clumps of grass. In his mouth he carried a fieldmouse with long dangling tail. At a louder howl from the wolves in the distance he dropped the mouse, ate it in two hasty bites, then snarled out a long, angry, defiant answer to the wolves’ chorus:

‘Morow – wow – wow – wow – wow!’

‘Don’t be silly, Figgin, you can’t take on a whole wolf-pack! Come on inside.’

Cat and females vanished into a long, low barn which had been turned into a comfortable dwelling by the addition of a cot-bed, table, stools made from sawn-up tree-trunks, and a log fire that smouldered inside a knee-high ring of brick. The floor, too, was paved with brick. Two small windows were uncurtained, for who was there to look in?

Penny dumped her pail of water under a shelf that held bowls and pans, then barred the door with an oak beam which could be slid through two hoops. She was a lean, pale person, aged about thirty, with straw-coloured hair tied in a tight knot, and a sour expression. She wore a sacking dress. The look on her face did not alter as she spoke to the girl – it was fixed by years of habit – but her voice was friendly enough as she said, ‘You and that dratted cat! You’d take on all the wolves of Kent if I was to let you.’

‘Pesky things! Hark – they’re a-coming this way,’ from Is, intently listening. ‘They’re after summat, I guess.’

‘Never mind them.’ Penny had started cutting up vegetables for soup. Is began to pull off the prickly outer casings of the chestnuts in her basket and toss them on to the fire, where they burned with a smoky crackle.

‘Tell us a story, Pen, do,’ she said hopefully. ‘Tell the one about the harp o’ fishbones. That’s one o’ my fav – ’

‘Hush!’

Penny held up a warning finger. The two stood silent. Figgin growled. They all strained their ears and, after a minute, began to catch an irregular thump-thump of footsteps on the hard ground – not those of wolves – which seemed to grow louder and then die away again, as if the runner were following an uncertain, frantic course: now coming closer, then veering off in a different direction.

Penny bit her lip and glanced doubtfully at the door.

‘Tricky if we open up – we don’t want to let
them
in.’

‘But if there’s a poor cove out there in the wood with the wolves arter him – Pen, we
can’t
jist leave him to be guzzled up!’ urged Is.

From the far end of the barn she fetched a long thin bundle of hazel twigs, tied together with most of the leaves still on, and thrust the leafy tips into the fire until they began to blaze.

Penny, worried and frowning, rolled a tree-stump close behind the door so that it could not be opened wide, then, from the hook where it hung on the wall, took down a blunderbuss, an ancient weapon, but clean and well-greased.

It was already loaded.

Now they heard a voice outside the window that cried faintly, ‘Help! Does anybody hear? I’m in sore straits!’

‘Is – you stand there by the wall!’ ordered Penny. ‘Hold the poker and – when I say – shove the door-beam back, while I ready myself here with the gun.’

They took up their stations, Is against the wall with poker and blazing sheaf of twigs, Penny facing the point where the door would begin to open when Is thrust back the beam.