Midwinter Nightingale (16 page)

In the meantime she decided that the best thing she could do was go back to sleep, as there was evidently no prospect of getting anything to eat.

to meet me?” asked the king.

“Of
course
they 'will, Your Majesty,” Simon assured him.

“Cousin Dick, Cousin Dick.”

“Cousin Dick.”

Simon had no idea who
they
were. Every day, at about this time, when afternoon was tending toward evening, King Richard grew unaccountably worried and distracted. He would ask, over and over again, if Simon could lend him the rail fare to Back End. Where Back End might be, Simon did not know, nor what the fare was likely to be, but he constantly assured the sick man that there was plenty, plenty of money in the silk sack that lay on the mantel shelf.

“And they will be waiting there to meet me? And they will know me?”

“Certain sure they will, Cousin Dick.”

“And those other ones, the group, the ones in black jackets, they won't stop me?”

King Richard showed great anxiety about “the group in black.” He would stare fixedly at the far end of his chamber and exclaim that the men in black were walking in procession from one side of the room to the other, that they must have come to seize him and were liable to do so at any moment. Simon had great difficulty in restraining the king at these times; he was frantic to get off his couch and run for his life. Simon knew that if the king were to stand up and take even two or three steps, he was so weak that he would collapse on the floor. If Lady Titania was at hand when the king fell into such a state, she could quiet him down with the remedies she always carried with her: a few drops of columbine juice or a pinch of fennel powder. But Simon was not qualified to administer these, and Lady Titania, having given the king his lunch, often walked out into the woods looking for herbs, tree bark, fungi, nuts and even samples of soil and chips of rock, which she used for medicinal purposes. So, at these times, Simon had to soothe the king as best he could. Generally, after an hour or two in this feverish state, the king would sink into an exhausted slumber as dark fell.

So it was today.

After Simon had reassured the invalid over and over that there was sufficient money in the royal exchequer for his journey fare to Back End, and that friends would
be there to see to his comfort when he arrived, the sick man lapsed into his usual sudden slumber.

Simon, worn out from offering fervent promises and reassurances—and occasionally being obliged to restrain the distraught patient—sat himself down wearily and munched a few fragments of crusty bread left over from the noon meal, for which the king had displayed little appetite.

It won't be long now, Simon thought sadly; I must ask Lady Titania if we had not better send for His Grace the archbishop. I suppose she has a messenger ready.

As Simon reached this decision, his eyes were fixed absently on the end of the room; now he was startled to see a silent procession of black figures progress at a stately gliding pace from one side of the chamber to the other and apparently disappear into the wall. They did this for several minutes. It was like watching a funeral cortege of ghostly monks.

Can this house be
haunted?
wondered Simon. But he did not believe in ghosts and had never heard any ghostly legends about Darkwater Farm.

Then it occurred to him that what he was seeing exactly tallied with the king's account of black figures walking across his bedroom. Simon had always assured the sick man that these figures were imaginary, delusions, hallucinations cast up by his fevered brain. And I still believe that, thought Simon, but how comes it that I am having them too?

Am I going crazy? Have I caught Cousin Richard's malady?

Then another solution occurred to him. There was a sour, dry taste on his tongue from having eaten the leftover crusts of bread. A large flagon of water, with glasses, always stood in the king's bedchamber; Simon himself filled it twice daily from the well in the courtyard. He swallowed a long draft of cold, fresh water. When he looked up after drinking, the dark figures were gone, totally. There was nothing to be seen at the end of the room but a haze of gathering dusk.

It was in the bread, Simon thought. Something in the bread that he eats for his midday meal makes the king see those spooky figures. But Lady Titania bakes that bread. Does she
know
what effect it is having on the king? Is she putting some drug, some medicine into the flour? Is she doing it to poison him?

A small crumb of the bread remained on the silver platter. Simon put it into his mouth and sucked it slowly. A last black shape made its fluttering way from side to side of the room, rather fast, as if in haste to catch up with the others.

What should I say to Lady Titania? Why has she done this?

Simon began wandering back and forth across the room, absolutely undecided. Lady Titania seemed wise, kindly, wholly devoted to the king and his interests, but what did he really know about her? Where did she
come from? Where had she been during most of the king's reign?

I wish there was somebody else I could ask about this, thought Simon.

There came a tap at the door—a soft, hesitant tap. Simon went to the door and opened it, with his finger on his lips, warning that the patient was asleep. Mrs. Wigpie the housekeeper stood outside.

“I'm right sorry to trouble Your Grace,” she whispered apologetically, “but Madam's still abroad in the woods, and there's a person come asking if we want our chimneys swept. What should I tell them?”

Simon stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind him.
“Do
” we “want the chimneys swept?” he asked.

“Well, no, Your Grace, Mr. Dewdney from Low Edge, he mostly does em twice a year, in May and November. Count he's been so terrible bad with rheumatics, he's a bit late this year….”

“Do the chimneys need sweeping?”

“Not sos you'd lay your head on the block for,” Mrs. Wigpie said doubtfully.

“Would this person do a good job?”

“That I couldn't say, sir.”

“Humph,” said Simon. “Maybe I'd better come and see whoever it is. His Majesty has just gone off to sleep. He's safe to be left for twenty minutes or so.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Wigpie. “I'm sure I don't
know what's keeping Her Ladyship out so late these days. I expect she'll soon be home with her bits of plants and mosses.”

Simon crossed the courtyard to the outer entrance, where Harry the gatekeeper was waiting rather irritably to raise the drawbridge as soon as Lady Titania returned. Rather an odd time for a chimney sweep to call, Simon thought.

The aspirant sweep, who had been sitting on a mounting block, now stood up. With a shock of dismay, Simon discovered two things at once. First, the “sweep” was not male but female, dressed in sooty men's breeches and a black velvet cap. And, second, he knew her perfectly well. She was Jorinda Coldacre, the girl he had met on the train.

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: