The Cuckoo Tree (27 page)

Wriggling, gliding, edging their way, Dido, Tobit, and Cris moved in the direction of the theatre. People in the crowd here were by no means so friendly and helpful as those on the stairs; they met with glares and mutters of "Keep back there! Give over shoving!" One man gave Cris a clout as she slid under his elbow; three more linked arms and tried to stop them getting through.

As, in spite of this opposition, they neared the stage, they began to hear the music: a sad, hypnotic wailing drone. It was the same tune that Mr. Twite had played on his hoboy, but it was now being rendered, Dido saw, by Tante Sannie and Mrs. Lubbage, wearing black fur clothes and black masks, playing on black combs wrapped in black tissue paper.

At last, by standing on tiptoe and craning sideways, they were able to get a view of the puppets.

The play was evidently about a war between goblins
and humans. The humans were losing the war. And the goblins—little dark creatures, their faces wizened with malice, their eyes blazing with green light—were winning. They had poisoned blades to their swords and daggers; they sang a magic song which killed its hearers. Louder and louder wailed the sad, spooky music.

"Oh, Alfred, I feel rotten queer," said the woman beside Dido, absently swallowing a couple of Joobie nuts she held. "I believe I'm going to faint." She swayed, but there was hardly room to fall over. "You
can't
faint here, Lil, hold up, do!" said the man with her anxiously. However at this moment another woman did faint, crumpling on to the black-and-white tiles.

"We have won!" screamed the goblin king on the stage, triumphantly waving his poisoned sword. "Not one of our enemies is left alive!"

He turned toward the audience, his eyes blazing green, his army of dark, wicked little soldiers massing behind him—more and more of them came piling on to the stage. "And
now,
" hissed the king, "now, my friends, we are coming to get
you!
"

The whole army of goblins poured off the stage.

There were screams, shouts of fright and disgust, gasps, moans. Both Dido's feet were stamped on heavily, as the crowd surged backward. Three more women fainted.

The situation in the nave was now as if one piece of a jigsaw were trying to shove its way through the rest of the completed puzzle; there was no room to move at all, and yet
a whole huge section of the crowd was frantically pushing and struggling to get away from the puppet theatre.

Cris pounced forward and grabbed one of the puppets from the floor.

"Look!" she cried to the woman called Lil. "It's only a doll! It won't hurt you!"

But the woman, screaming and hysterical, was in no state to listen to sense.

"It's alive, it wriggled! I saw it!" she wailed. "It's got a poisoned dagger!" And she fought like a crazy creature to get away from it. Kicked and knocked by frantic feet, the puppets skidded about on the smooth tiles, and wherever they were seen they spread terror and pandemonium.

"They aren't alive!" shouted Dido at the top of her lungs. "Stand still! They can't hurt you!"

But at that moment she distinctly saw one of the little creatures move toward her foot, jerking itself along the ground. Quelling a horrible swoop of her heart, she picked it up, and realized that it was propelled by a simple mechanism of a twig, a notched cotton reel, and a stretched, twisted piece of catgut. "
Look!
It's only a toy!"

She might as well have said so to Niagara.

"S
TAND STILL
!" shouted the king. "Keep your heads! Stand still!"

But the crowd, five hundred strong, heaved sideways, once, twice, three times.

"Hold them!" shouted the king to the people farther away from the puppet theatre, who, unaffected by the
panic, were still keeping their position and singing away. "Link your hands round and hold them!"

The cathedral began to rock.

"Guess this is what an earthquake's like," Dido said to Cris. They had been washed up against a pillar, as if by a flood; Dido grabbed an arm of Tobit, an arm of Cris, and braced herself against the stone. "Hark at the bells! Don't they half ring!"

The chandeliers with their tapers were swinging wildly; shadows leapt about; oranges and lemons rained down from the high vaulted roof. The puppet theatre toppled and fell, crushing a good many puppets underneath it. Dido peered through the mass of people, trying to discover where the puppet master and his two assistants had got to. She could not see them in the general muddle. It was like a battle; it
was
a battle.

The cathedral rocked a fourth time.

"Do you think it's starting to slide?" Cris said. She was rather pale. She let go of Dido's hand and clung to Tobit.

"Dunno. With all the ruckus, it's hard to say
what's
happening."

But at that moment the cathedral did something definite. With a tremendous noise, louder than any sound hitherto produced by the crowd, with a kind of thunderous, rumbling scrunch, St. Paul's lurched sideways—shuddered in every stone—and sank about six feet into the ground, canted over at an angle of fifteen degrees.

And stood still.

***

"Some of the rollers must have buckled and given way," said Tobit.

"That's so—on account of Yan's anchoring it so tight," agreed Dido. "With all that rocking about, and the ropes holding fast, the rollers jist couldn't take the strain. Oh well—guess the old place is safe enough now—though it's going to be a right puzzle for his Reverence to jack it up level again. Why, look—there
is
Yan!"

At the moment of the cathedral's final subsidence, the north doors had swung open. There was a movement of the crowd to try and get out, but due to the angle at which St. Paul's was tilted, down at the southwest corner, the north entrance was now above ground level. Moreover Rachel the elephant was standing outside, blocking the way. The five Wineberry Men leapt in, off her back.

"The puppets!" called Dido. "Pick 'em up! Put 'em away!"

She, Cris, and Tobit began tossing all the puppets they could see into a wicker hamper, evidently the container in which they had been brought. The Wineberry Men helped. Seeing this, the crowd began to settle down.

"Friends!" shouted the king from above. "It wad mateerially asseest matters if ye'd a' sit doon on the ground. The cathedral is quite safe—just a wee bit canted o'er. Ye hae nae groonds for appreheension!"

People were only too pleased to comply—with three
exceptions. As the whole congregation sank limply to the floor, three desperate figures were seen trying to make their way to the south entrance: Sannie, Mrs. Lubbage, and the puppet master, who had been foiled in their attempt to get out at the north door.

"Get them, lads!" shouted Yan.

The three separated, Sannie and Mrs. Lubbage fleeing toward the crypt, while the puppet master darted through the door to the spiral stair.

Dido, Tobit, and Yan followed him.

"I'm afeered he means mischief to the king," Dido panted. "We mustn't let him get to the gallery!"

Yan nodded, pounding ahead. But there was really no risk, as they saw when they reached the narrow gallery entrance; it was jammed with people and the fugitive had evidently abandoned his plan and, in desperation, continued onward and upward with Yan close at his heels.

"Stop, you fool!" Yan shouted after him. "You can't escape that way!"

The puppet master evidently thought otherwise. Pausing an instant to discard his black fur cloak and hood, which were hampering him, he rushed along a narrow passage that led off the stairs. Now they could recognize the fair hair and mustache of Colonel FitzPickwick.

"He can't escape that way," said a voice behind Dido. She looked around and saw the Dean. "It leads only to the roof."

But FitzPickwick had unbolted the door and sprang out
into darkness, followed, an instant later, by Yan. Light from inside showed a lead-lined valley between two roof ridges.

"Yan! Take care!" called Dido anxiously.

She started after him, but the Dean grabbed her arm.

"Don't go, child! It's too dangerous in the dark: That's the nave roof—it ends in a sheer drop over the west front."

Nonetheless, Dido would have gone—but at that moment they heard a wild shout of rage, or defiance, or despair. A moment later Yan came back to them, looking pale and appalled.

"He jumped ... clean off the end of the roof."

"Heaven forgive him," said the Dean.

Downstairs, they found that a general calming-down and tidying-up process had taken place. Another issue of choirboys' buttons had been dealt round and most people, exhausted by all the excitement, had gone to sleep, lying as comfortably as they could on the sloping cathedral floor. The king, having delivered a calming speech, had retired to the north gallery. Here the Wineberry Men were summoned to be thanked for the speed and skill with which they had secured the cathedral.

"You saved it from destruction," the Dean kept repeating, with tears in his eyes. "I'll never forget it, never!"

"Losh, lads, ye did wonders," agreed the king.

"How did you get the rope so quick?" Dido wanted to know.

"Got it from the Old Bailey. They've alius got plenty there—for tying up prisoners. Sir Percy fixed for us to have it—he and Lord Raven were still arguing when we took along his Reverence's note. We could see the cathedral a-swaying about from there, so I reckoned there wasn't time to go along and argue the toss wi' Lord Fo'c'stle."

"I'll no' say but that ye were richt," agreed the king, "Weel, lads, if ye wish for pensionable, kenspeckit poseetions in the government, Davie Jamie Charlie Neddie Geordie Harry Dick Tudor-Stuart's the man tae see ye'll get them."

Yan and the rest thanked him politely, but said on the whole they would prefer to continue plying their trade as Gentlemen.

"'Tis what we're used to, you see, sir."

"Aweel, I'll no' quarrel with ye; 'tis a gey frack profession, fit for gallant lads like yersel's. Whene'er ye veesit Westminster I'll be blythe tae buy claret from ye as my dad did afore me. And I hereby gie ye leave to write Appointit tae His Majesty on the brattach o' your boat."

Much impressed by this royal favor, the Wineberry Men withdrew, pulling their forelocks.

"Would Your Grace wish to see the two prisoners?" the Dean inquired.

"I canna say I do, but I doubt I had better," said the king reluctantly.

Tante Sannie and Mrs. Lubbage were led in; they had been taken in the crypt without difficulty, for the subterranean passage was blocked when the southwest corner of the cathedral sank into the ground.

The two witches were a sorry spectacle. Sannie seemed to have shrunk; she had always been small, now she was tiny, hardly bigger than a five-year-old. She whimpered out miserably, on seeing the king,

"Oh, dear King-sir! Is will be kind to poor old Sannie? Old Sannie never meant harm! Only to go back where the sea she do sing, and isn't no cold nor rudeness, but love apples and sweet grass, and old people is loved and given quilt stuffed with happiness feathers—"

"What does she mean?" asked the king.

"She wants to go back to Tiburon," Dido said.

"And the other one?"

But no one, ever again, would be able to tell what Mrs. Lubbage wanted—if she wanted anything. She had half a dozen Joobie nuts, with which she played, smiling like a baby, trickling them from one hand to the other without speaking; she never said another word.

"Take them away," said the king. For the first time he sounded tired. "Take them away and let them be looked after somewhere..."

"Shall you let them go back to Tiburon, sir?" Dido asked when they had gone.

"Och, weel, they'd be out of mischief there."

But old Sannie died in the night; whether from age, or lost hope, no one could say.

"Whit aboot ye three?" the king said to Dido, Cris, and Tobit. "Gin ye hadna brought yon message in the faurst place, we'd nane of us be here noo. I'd be blythe for ye tae carry my train the morn, alang wi' young Owen Hughes—would ye like to?"

Dido glanced at the others; they nodded.

"Thanks, Mister King; we'd be right pleased. If I can get back to Sussex directly arter, that is; I shan't feel easy till I see how my old Cap's a-getting on. And I promised Lord Sope I'd return his elephant."

So that was how Dido Twite, along with Tobit and Cristin Tegleaze, came to carry the train of King Richard IV at his coronation. And the Master of the King's Garlandries, arriving at the last minute for the ceremony, because he and his helpers had been working all night replacing the scattered decorations on the cathedral, looked down from the Whispering Gallery and exclaimed,

"Good heavens! That's Dido!"

Dido, Tobit, and Cris started for Sussex the very instant the ceremony, which was held at six in the morning, had finished. They had been invited to stay for the junketings, but declined. Dido was anxious to get back to her Captain; Tobit and Cris, armed with an injunction, signed by the Lord Chief Justice, against anybody trying to stop them taking possession of Tegleaze Manor, in particular one Miles Tuggles, alias Tegleaze, alias Mystery, were anxious to see what was happening at home; and Rachel, too, was dreadfully homesick; right through the crowning she had stood just outside, in St. Paul's churchyard, trumpeting mournfully.

Just before they left, Dido received a message to say that the Duke of Battersea would like to see her, as soon as he had fixed up some toppling garlands.

"Duke o' Battersea? Who's he?" she said, puzzled. "Well, look, tell him I'm right sorry but I can't wait now. Ax him to write to me."

Rachel swung through the outskirts of London at a rattling pace. Along with Dido, Tobit, and Cris, traveled Captain Hughes's son Owen; he seemed a pleasant enough boy, though rather silent and anxious at the moment. This was hardly surprising, since the Captain's family had not heard from him for several years, had thought him dead in the Chinese wars, and now the news of his mysterious illness was hardly encouraging.

"Don't you fret, though, I reckon the king's doctor will be able to set him to rights," Dido kept saying consolingly. "He seemed a right sensible cove."