The Cuckoo Tree (18 page)

"Keep your breathing down, you two—try
not
to breathe, can't you!" Dido whispered.

There was no more sound from the other side of the mill.

After five minutes had gone by, Dido said,

"Guess it'd be all right to mizzle off? We'd best climb over this wall behind us and circle round. Agreeable? Tobit, give Cris a hoist over the wall, can you?"

With the utmost caution they climbed, by means of the junk heap, on to the wall, which was not very high. There was much more of a drop down on the far side, into a field; Dido realized that this was in fact the town wall.

Without speaking, Dido grabbed Cris's hand, gestured her to take that of Tobit, and led off at a silent trot, under the wall, until they came to a small copse. Striking a footpath, they turned along it, through a gate, across another field, all the time skirting around the edge of Petworth which they could see as a few twinkling lights in the distance. At last their path met another which led back toward the town; they followed this warily, ready to duck into the hedge if they heard anybody approaching. But they met no one, and the path presently brought them out
beside a big house at the bottom of the High Street.

"Right," muttered Dido. "You two bide here—duck down behind them bushes if you hear anybody coming—and I'll scout on ahead and make sure all's clear. Don't either of you dare to say a word!"

Luckily there was no cockfight that evening, and the yard at the rear of The Fighting Cocks Inn was empty and dark. Before going in, Dido glanced through the kitchen window and saw Miss Sarah Gusset knitting socks by the fire; nobody else was in the room. Dido slipped softly in the back door.

"There you are, then, dearie," Miss Sarah remarked placidly, finishing off her sock and adding it to a large heap of others. "Where's t'other little lass? And did you find the one you went to look for?" She spoke as if rescuing people from jail were a perfectly normal occupation.

"Yes, ma'am, we did," Dido said quietly. "They're a-waiting outside—I was wondering where we'd best put 'em—it wouldn't do for anyone to lay eyes on 'em."

"No indeed, dearie. They'd best go in our Gentlemen's cellar, the one the Wineberry lads uses in wintertime; they'll be cozy as two mice in a nest there. Just you fetch them in, poor little scrumplings—I daresay you can all do with a bowl of my soup."

Reassured by this calm welcome, Dido went off to fetch her companions. Halfway down the High Street an alley led in from the left. Just as Dido reached its entrance, a man came hurrying out of it; unable to check herself in time, she ran straight into him.

"Croopus, I'm sorry, mister—" she began, and then, getting a sudden glimpse of his face by the glimmer of a street lantern, "Why, it's
Pa!
"

The man's mouth fell open in utter dismay. "Great fish swallow us, it can't be Dido?" he muttered, gave her a hunted look, and made off at top speed up the hill.

Dido stared after him for a moment, biting her knuckle. But the first need was to get Tobit and Cris under cover; she went on down the hill. When she reached the point at which she had left them they were not to be seen. She gave a soft whistle.

"All clear, it's me—Dido!"

After a pause, long enough for her to grow anxious, Tobit and Cris crept out from behind two bay trees in tubs that ornamented the closed front of a greengrocer's shop.

"That man came by," Tobit whispered nervously. "I think he was hunting for me."

"Humph," Dido muttered to herself. "Here's a fine start. How's my pa got muxed up in this?" But aloud she was encouraging: "There was a chap, but he's gone—went off up the hill. Come on now—look sharp!"

Silently as three fish in a river they ran up the High Street and around to the back of The Fighting Cocks. Miss Sarah was waiting at the back door to let them in.

"That's the dandy," she said comfortably. "Come you down into the cellar now, while there's no folk about."

An iron spike with a side of bacon hanging from it stuck out of the bricks on one side of the big kitchen fireplace. Miss Sarah gave this a sharp tug; a large section of bricks opened outward like a door, revealing a narrow flight of stone steps.

"Take this rush dip, sweetheart, and go you down," Miss Sarah told Dido. "I put the soup on the hob and I've a pair of beds a-warming—I daresay the liddle 'uns'll be middling weary." She spoke as if Tobit and Cris were about six years old and gave them a kindly smile. "Then, when you've settled 'em, dearie, you come up and tap twice to be let out—I know you'll be wanting to have a look at your Cap'n. He's no different, but seems comfortable. Oh, just take the socks as you're a-going down, lovey, will you—I try to keep those Wine berry chaps socked up regular, their poor feet do get so wet."

The brick door closed behind them.

After descending about twenty winding steps they found themselves in a dry, brick-paved, brick-vaulted cellar which was so large that Dido guessed it must extend under the house next door as well as the inn kitchen. At the far end were about forty massive casks, labeled Sack, Rhenish, Canaries, Oporto, etc.; there were also bales of tobacco, crates of corkscrews and clay pipes, and half a dozen fourteen-quart kegs of brandy. Ten hammocks were slung from the ceiling, neatly made up with patchwork quilts; from two of them the handles of copper warming
pans protruded. Ten seats, made from sawn-off sections of tree trunk, were ranged in front of a small but hot fire which burned in a kind of hollow pillar, open at one side, in the middle of the room; evidently its chimney ran up into that of the kitchen fireplace in the room above. A pot of soup stood on the hob.

"Jeeminy, this is snug," Dido said with approval. "It's a sight better than jail,
or
Mother Lubbage's parlor, hey, Cris?" Cris gazed around wonderingly; so did Tobit. Then Dido recollected something.

"Oh, Cris, this here's your brother Tobit; Tobit, meet your sis; reckon you ain't hardly had a chance to look at each other yet."

There followed a silence while they did so and Dido added with friendly impatience, "Well—go on! Don't you want to
say
summat to one another?"

It seemed they did not. They stared and stared. Tobit twisted a lock of his hair around his finger; Cris sucked a finger and rubbed it against the collar of her sheepskin jacket. At last Dido said, "Well, if you don't feel like talking, best eat," and ladled soup into earthenware bowls. Tobit gulped his down ravenously; Cris almost forgot to eat, watching every movement he made. Still neither of them spoke.

"Rumple me," Dido thought. "If
I'd
only just met my brother for the first time
I'd
have a sight more to say, I reckon. What a rum pair they are!" She stacked the soup bowls, put a couple of logs on the fire, and added aloud,

"Sweet dreams, then, mates. Us'll talk about plans in the morning. Now, don't you go a-making any ruckus, or chattering all night. Those is your hammocks a-warming. I'd best go and look after my Cap'n now."

She left, feeling that the silence behind her was closing and thickening, and becoming colored, like water into which a brilliant dye is slowly being poured; she had the fancy that if she turned and tried to go down the stairs again she would find it almost impossible to push her way.

When she had tapped twice and been let out by Miss Sarah, she went up to the attic and hung anxiously over Captain Hughes. His condition was unchanged, but he certainly seemed peaceful enough, and appeared to have been tidied up a good deal.

"I took off all those nasty old cobwebs," Miss Sarah explained, "and wrapped him up from head to toe in brandy leaves; that's why he smells so medical."

"What's brandy leaves, missus?"

"Lily leaves soaked in brandy; my old mother always used to say they'd cure any trouble but a broken heart. Now don't you fret about him, dearie, we'll get him better one way or another. My stars! He's a fine-looking fellow, isn't he—handsome as a herring. Yan sent a message to say he'd be round in the banquet hall at screech o' dawn for a confabulation. He went to the Angel but could get no news, he said to tell you. So you'd best get a bit o' sleep yourself. I had to put you in the loft, as all our guest rooms are full, but you'll sleep as soft as a silkworm there, for
that's where the owlers keep their packs."

"What's owlers, ma'am?" Dido asked, as Miss Sarah opened a small trap door over the attic stairs, which led to the roof.

"Wool smugglers, dearie."

And indeed Dido discovered that all the space between the joists was packed with wool to a depth of several feet, so that it was like sleeping on a marvelously thick, springy mattress the size of a whole room. She burrowed herself a nest and lay in luxury. She could hear genuine owls calling, among the chimney pots outside; the owl hoots changed imperceptibly into the chattering of starlings, and she found that splinters of light were making their way between the tiles and that Miss Sarah had stuck her head through the trap door and was calling softly,

"Morning time, love! There's a bowl o' porridge keeping hot for you in the kitchen!"

While Dido gulped down her porridge, Miss Sarah, busy frying twenty eggs for the inn guests, said,

"I'll see to the Cap'n presently, don't you fret your head about him. And I reckon the liddle 'uns down below can sleep a bit longer yet; I've not heard chirp nor cheep from them. You can take down their breakfastses when you come back from seeing my nevvy Yan."

So Dido slipped out to the banquet hall and found Yan Wineberry already there, carving a whistle from an elder twig. His brown face looked less cheerful than usual and he greeted Dido soberly.

"I've not been able to find out anything about the boy,
my duck. That Tegleaze be missing too—" he was beginning, when Dido, first glancing cautiously about the big empty room, whispered,

"Hush! It's all rug, we got him!"

"Nay! You never!"

As Dido described the mysterious way in which Cris had discovered, without being told, that Tobit was down the well, he looked more and more astonished.

"Well! That beats cockfighting!" he said at length. "I'd alius beard as twins was a bit uncanny and could understand each other wi'out talking but I never heard naught to equal that! And fancy you two liddle things being able to shove that gurt stone back and wrastle him out—he'd a bin drowned for sure by now, if you hadn't. That well be a hundred foot deep, easy. Who put him down there?"

"He just said some men. He and Cris was both a bit dumbstruck when I got 'em back here last night. But I reckon as how it was old Mystery."

Yan nodded. "Cousin Will said he'd not been back to the Angel all night, nor that mate of his, the fellow who plays the hoboy. They must still be out, searching for the boy—guessed he'd climbed outa the well when they saw the top shoved back, I daresay."

"What can we do with Tobit and Cris?" Dido said. "They can't stop in your aunt Sary's cellar forever."

"I've been thinking about that, duck. I reckon it'd be best if they came up to London with us, on our run."

"Croopus," said Dido, somewhat taken aback. But then she began to see that this was a sensible suggestion. "It'd
keep them out o' trouble here for sure; and no one'd be looking for them in London. But what about on the way—how can you keep them hid?"

"We're all hid together, duckie—'tis a secret way we go, see?"

"And what happens when you get there?"

"Well," Yan said, "they could stop with my auntie Grissie in Wardrobe Court, where we always puts up; she'd keep an eye on 'em. And I was thinking—we always takes a load o' corkscrews and two-three tubs of Hollands to Sir Percy Tipstaff—he's the Lord Chief Justice, you know—I could tell him as how there'd been a frame-up on young Tobit. Sir Percy knows I'm a trustable chap—I reckon he'd pay heed to me."

"Oh. Yan!" Dido hugged him warmly. "That's a prime plan. It's no use talking to old Lady Tegleaze or any of the nobs down here—the ones as hasn't a screw loose is all in it together, thick as gutter mud."

"And I'll take your letter to Lord Forecastle too."

"I wish
I
could come along," Dido said wistfully.

"You're kindly welcome, my duck."

"No, I'd best stay with poor old Cap'n Hughes. And if I'm seen about the town, Mr. Mystery and Sannie and the rest of 'em'll likely think that Tobit and Cris are still stowed here too, and that'll put 'em off the scent."

Yan agreed with this.

"But you take care of
yourself,
lovey," he cautioned her. "Don't you go getting chucked down a well."

"I'm fly!" said Dido. "No one's liable to sneak up on me 'thout my hearing 'em. Now, where should Tobit and Cris come—where do you start your run?"

"We meets at the Cuckoo Tree. The ten-shilling men pick up the stuff at Appledram Camber and fetch it so far—then five of us takes it on to London."

"Cris and Tobit better not go back to the Cuckoo Tree now old goody Lubbage knows that's where Cris used to go."

"No," Yan agreed. "I reckon they'd best get the carrier's cart to Pulborough—my uncle Ned's the driver, he'll take 'em hid inside a pair o' cider barrels or summat—get off at the White Hart pub by Stopham Bridge, and one of us Wineberry chaps'll meet 'em there. And you give them Cap'n Hughes's letter and I'll see it's delivered."

This sounded like a watertight plan, but still Dido hesitated.

"Which day d'you reckon to get to London?"

"Tuesday—if we don't have too many deliveries along the way."

"Suppose there was trouble here—spose summat went wrong and I wanted to get in touch with you afore you got to London?"

"There's three pubs along the way where I'll ask for a message: the Rose at Run Common, the Ring o' Bells at Ripley, and the Rising Sun in Wandsworth."

"The Rose, the Ring, and the Rising Sun—that's easy to remember. And you'll take mortal good care o' the Cap'n's
Dispatch, won't you—I've a notion it's someway connected wi' the coronation, and that's why the Cap was so desperate anxious to get it there the day before."

"Don't you worrit—I'll keep it locked up, along o' the Lord Mayor's dallop of tea and the Lady Mayoress's pipkin of pink lemon perfume," he promised.