Limbo Lodge (10 page)

“What did she die of – King’s wife?” she asked Tylo.

“Snakebite.”

“Too many snakes on this island. You’d think he’d want to leave, after that.”

“Rich here,” Tylo pointed out. “Djeela nuts. And kw’ul.”

“What’s kw’ul?”

He made gestures with his fingers. “What Shaki-misses like to wear round neck.”

He pointed to little Yorka, who had a necklace of shiny brown nutshells. They hardly seemed worth braving snakes for.

“How long will it take to get to this Limbo palace?”

“Two night in forest. Best we start chop-chop now. And Sisingana need peace.”

“You agreeable to that, Lord Herod – Frankie?”

He sighed. “While grieved indeed to terminate my pleasant visit with the venerable Asoun, who had promised to teach me the game of King and Crocodiles (which sounds to me remarkably like the ancient Saxon game of Hnefatafl) I believe we had best set out with no delay. Asoun did mention that we were in for a spell of unchancy weather.”

“Unchancy! If that means a shower like the one last night—”

Little Yorka, jumping up and down, squeaked, “I can teach the Shaki-lord King and Crocodile! Oh-oh! I can teach!”

“Can you, my dear?” said Lord Herodsfoot, looking down at her kindly. “But you would not want to take a long wet trip through the forest, would you?”

“Not? Why not?” The forest was where Yorka lived, she pointed out. It was her home.

“Well, let her come,” said Tylo. “She can help me find the way to the Quinquilho Ranch, where we spend our first night. Belong to Angrian family, Ereira.”

“Will the Ereiras want us staying with them?”

“No,” said Tylo, “but must give bed to traveller.”

“They have strict rules of hospitality,” Herodsfoot agreed.

So they set off without delay.

Herodsfoot had had another guide, a boy called Senu, to lead him to the grove where Asoun at present chose to live. Since his services were no longer required, Senu declared his intention of going off to the Kulara Place for a cleansing, and loped away at once up the side of the valley.

The others mounted their fed and rested mounts; Herodsfoot had a little fleabitten grey pony, and Yorka rode in front of Dido (though she said proudly that on foot she could keep up with any four-footed beast).

“Still, no need to walk when you can ride,” said Dido. “Where are your mother and father, little ’un?”

Her mother was dead, Yorka explained, fallen from a tree when a rotten bough broke under her. Her father, a Hamahi message-sender and record-keeper, was somewhere in the forest; she saw him now and then, but spent more time with her aunts, and with great-grandfather Asoun. She turned round to call the old man a last goodbye, but he was busy waving infection away from his door with a bunch of feathers, and did not heed her.

“He will do that four days now.”

“What’s that cleansing place where Senu’s gone?”

“It is the Place of Stones, the twelve great stones that our Sisingana spoke of in his story. Nine are fallen, three still stand,” Tylo explained. “We go there to be made clean of trouble or curse.”

“Dear me!” said Lord Herodsfoot eagerly, pushing up his glasses, at which Yorka gave a warning growl. “I should dearly like to see that place! There is a game called Twelve Stones, played by the Twi people—”

“Well,” said Tylo, “we sleep tonight at Quinquilho Ranch. We could perhaps cross Honey river tomorrow by the ford, and pass Place of Stones.”

“Splendid! Splendid! Do you know the history of this place?”

“Is old, very old. Many thousand treetime. Stones come from who knows where? Not island stone. Who knows how? Too heavy for men to lift. Under every stone a man’s headbone buried.”

“A skull.”

“Is so. But one headbone gone.”

“Who took it?”

“No one know.”

Nor could they find out from Tylo exactly when the skull had been taken.

“Some treetime back,” was all he could tell them. People did not often visit Kulara, the Place of Stones, because, unless you had a real need for cleansing, the Place was likely to send you away loaded with more trouble than you had brought with you.

The Place discouraged casual visitors.

“Some say, why not old Sovran John King go for cure from hearing sickness.”

“Well,” said Dido, “why don’t he?”

“Maybe stones don’t help him, he not Island man.”

“He would have to believe in them,” said Herodsfoot thoughtfully. “But if he married an Island girl, he must have shared some of her beliefs.”

All the way along, as they rode, Yorka was telling Dido about the plants in the forest.

“Not one,
not one
single tree, in the whole forest, but happy to help us. See, those berries make wash-paste; this creeper just right to weave bags; that tree make table or stool, that fruit very good for flavour meat when you cook. These leaves keep you dry when rain come.”

In exchange for this information, Dido told Yorka about the streets of Battersea, London, where she had gown up, the beggars, thieves, cut-throats, lords and ladies in their carriages, market stalls selling food, household goods, and toys, the street singers and jugglers. Yorka was polite and interested, but she made it plain she thought that Battersea sounded like a dreadful place – where you had to
pay
for food!

“Wouldn’t you like to travel and see other places besides Aratu, Yorka?”

“No. I wholly love our Forest. Don’t want anywhere but here.”

Yorka had not even been as far as Regina town, and had no particular wish to do so. She said it sounded like a dismal place full of bad-tempered people.

“Tell about this Quinquilho house where we are going.”

And none too soon, either, thought Dido, for though they were now back in the true forest and could not see the sky above them, even the dim tree-light was dwindling fast, and ominous growls of thunder and flashes of lightning every now and then made the horses start and whinny.

“Quinquilho not a wocho. House built by Outros people ten treetimes back.” Yorka pushed her lip out disdainfully. Dido gathered that she, personally, would prefer to spend the night in the forest rather than lodge under a stone roof with this gloomy Angrian family.

“They got nowhere they want, nothing they do.”

Dido pondered.

What
do
folk want? Frankie Herodsfoot there, he wants to find more and more games. And plants and stories. Doc Talisman wants to cure sickness. Cap’n Sanderson wants to sail his ship. What do I want? I want to go back to Battersea and find my friend Simon and see what’s happened in London Town.

“What do you want, Yorka?”

“Be a Kanikke. Like my mother’s sister, Aunt Tala’aa.”

“What do Kanikke do?”

“Magic.
Good
magic,” said Yorka firmly. “Bring rain. Make fish grow big in river. Send away the Drought Woman. Sing Whispering Song, melt trouble fire. Write name in sand, keep away Never Week.”

“You can learn to do all that?”

“By and by. In treetime. Now,” said Yorka, “here we come Quinquilho. Ereira family. Don Enrique. Dona Esperanza. Hear dogs bark.”

Her quick ears had caught the sound, far away. The dogs sounded very savage.

“Hope they’re tied up,” said Dido.

“Dog won’t ever bite naked person, you know that?”

“Well,” said Dido, “I don’t aim to take off my britches and jacket just to find out if that’s a true tale. It’s too cold by half, anyhows.”

The temperature had shot down. Now the travellers were out of the forest and in a large cleared space of spice plantations. There were grape vines also. The smell of spice tingled on the cool evening air. Ahead of them was a solid stone house, enclosed by walls, approached across a paved yard. The dogs, raging their heads off, were behind a fence, Dido was thankful to find. A bent, aged man, muttering what might have been either blessings or curses, arrived and led their horses away to an open-fronted stable. A sour-looking elderly woman appeared. She seemed a little put out at their arrival, but, nevertheless, invited them to come indoors.

T
HE HOUSE SEEMED TO BE IN A STATE OF
subdued commotion, Dido thought, as they followed the old woman through the ice-cold stone arched passages to a cavernous dark kitchen as big as a ballroom. It contained a large bare table and several stools, besides many shelves holding enormous platters and dishes. No other inhabitants of the house were to be seen, and yet there was an atmosphere of hurry and trouble; somewhere in the distance they could hear hasty footsteps; and the clamour of raised voices, and the clatter of pots or pails suggested that some domestic crisis was taking place.

Dido shivered. Despite a wan fire alight in the huge old cooking stove, the kitchen seemed not much warmer than the yard and orchards outside. Yorka’s dead right about this place, she thought; there’s summat about it that gives you the chill heeby-jeebies.

Lord Herodsfoot glanced around him with interest and remarked in a low voice: “This must be one of the oldest Angrian mansions in the island, several hundred years old, I’d guess.”

“Feels like it’s never been properly warmed since it was built,” Dido whispered back.

The grey-haired woman who had led them in now made off through a doorway with some muttered explanation: “Later, food will be brought. Now you will have to excuse me . . .”

“This is a good time for you to show me the King Crocodile game,” Lord Herodsfoot suggested hopefully to Yorka.

He took a half-burned stick from the fire and was about to draw a game-square on the white scrubbed flags of the floor, but Dido, guessing that this would not be at all well received by the housekeeper, pulled her embroidered game-cloth from her pocket. “Here, you can use this; someone’s been scrubbing those flagstones all day.”

Herodsfoot’s eyes lit up at sight of the cloth. He exclaimed; “Why! That is an original game-board cloth, probably from ancient Persia; it may very well date back to the reign of Chosroes II! It is a most rare and valuable specimen. Where in the name of wonder did you get it, may I ask?”

“It was left me by a feller called Brandywinde who died,” Dido explained. “And dear only knows where
he
laid hands on it – if ever there was a jammy-fingered rapscallion, he was the one! Anyhow I reckon it’ll do for young Yorka to show you the rules of the crocodile game – you can just turn the cloth face down.”

But Yorka, unexpectedly, would not allow this.

“Many, many spirits of dead people in this house,” she said, shivering a little as she stared about the gloomy kitchen. “Play games by day, very well, pleases the ghosts, they enjoy to watch. But at night, in darktime, no! they come play too, take us back with them when they go home.”

“Oh? Is that really so?” said Herodsfoot. “Then certainly we must not play. But it does not look as if anybody is going to come and take care of us for some time. We might as well make ourselves comfortable.” He sat on a stool. “Won’t you sing one of your songs to us, Yorka?”

Yorka sang, in a soft threadlike little voice:

“Do you know any songs?” Herodsfoot then asked Dido.

“Only the ones my pa used to make up.” She sang:

Dido sang quite loud and cheerfully, thinking of her father, and what a bad parent he was, except for making up songs, and the grey-haired woman came storming back into the kitchen.

“What devil’s music is that?” she hissed, giving Dido a ferocious look. “How dare you raise your voice in impious song while the young senhora is in such trouble? Be quiet at
once
! If you make any more noise you will have to go back into the forest, and you will not like
that
, for it is raining as hard as ever.”

Indeed they could hear the rain lashing down in the paved yard outside, and the gale howling against the stone-mullioned windows.

“We are indeed sorry for your trouble, senhora,” said Herodsfoot politely. “We did not mean to offend. But what is the matter? Can we be of any help, any use, in any possible way?”

“In no way!” she snapped. “The younger senhora, Meninha Luisa, she is about to give birth at this time. But the birth is a hard one, and the child a long time coming. The young lady is in much pain. No one can help. If we only had a doctor! Instead we have a parcel of useless idle-mouths who will be wanting food and beds, and have no more sense than to
sing
in this house of calamity!” And taking a cauldron of hot water from the range, she stomped out of the kitchen again.

“Well; there is a doctor,” Dido said sadly, “but dear knows where she has got to. Don’t I jist wish she were here with us!”

Her words went unanswered, for at this moment a personage who must be the lady of the house entered the kitchen: an extremely grand, white-haired senhora, thin as a broom-handle, with a pale, flinty face, pale eyes, black clothes, and a black lace headdress spangled with large pearls draped over her brow.

“I understand you are Milord Herodsfoot?” she said to his lordship with icy civility. “I have heard about you from my cousins in Regina City.” He bowed. “And these will be your servants, no doubt.” Her eye swept over Dido, Yorka, and Tylo without pausing. “I regret that you find our house in some confusion, and that you were shown into the kitchen. My daughter Luisa . . . is unwell. But you, senhor, should not have been left in this room. Your servants . . . may remain here. You, sir – pray come with me – do me the honour of accompanying me to the Sala where a meal shall be served for you.”