The Cuckoo Tree (7 page)

As they passed through the gap, Mr. Firkin touched each sheep with his white crook, and Dido could hear him counting,

"Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Pip—"

Each time he came to
Den
he moved his hand down the crook, which had notches in it.

"Mr. Firkin," said Dido, when the sheep were all safe in the field, and she was scrubbing potatoes in the old man's kitchen, and setting them to bake among the glowing logs in his fireplace.

"Yes, darter?"

"What was that you were saying when you counted the sheep?"

"I was a-counting of them, darter."

"Yes, but what were those words—Yan, Tan, Tethera—"

"That be ship-counting lingo. Lingo for counting ship," Mr. Firkin explained kindly.

"Oh, cranberries! We're a-going round like a merry-go-round! Well, suppose I was to meet some chaps as called 'emselves Yan, Tan, and so forth; I'm not saying I
did,
but suppose I was to—"

Mr. Firkin's old brown face took on a cautious expression.

"Nay, I'd say let well alone, darter. Mebbe 'tis all talk but I've heard tell as how there be folk called Wineberry Men as 'tis best not to meddle with."

"Smugglers, maybe?"

"Hush! Nay, more like kind o' civil service gentry," Mr. Firkin said hastily. "Best not to talk about 'em, darter.
Wallses do have earses."

Deciding that the Wineberry Men almost certainly were smugglers, Dido returned to Captain Hughes and found him wakeful and fidgety.

"What about our Dispatch?" he demanded. "Do you have it safe, child?"

"Yes, yes, Cap'n. All rug. Right here." Dido tapped her chest, which crackled reassuringly.

"We must get it to London somehow," the Captain fretted. "What day is it today?"

"Fust o' November, Cap. All Saints' Day."

"And the coronation next week! It is desperately important that the Dispatch should reach the First Lord before then."

"Doc says you mustn't be moved afore two weeks," Dido pointed out.

"Then we must find a reliable messenger."

Dido bit her thumb. "I knows that," she said gloomily. "But trying to find a reliable cove in these parts is about as likely as picking up a pink pearl in Piccadilly. Everyone's up to the neck in summat. There's a carrier called Jem; today's his day to call, seemingly; but Mr. Firkin says he's shravey. Best not give him the Dispatch. What I thought I might do, Cap, if you're agreeable, is send a note by Jem to a cove I knows in London asking him to step down and help us."

"Is your friend reliable?" the Captain asked, pressing a hand to his aching head.

"Sure as a gun, he is!"

Since Captain Hughes, who was beginning to feel weak and feverish again, could think of no better plan, he agreed to this.

Dido sat down to the unaccustomed task of writing a letter. Borrowing the Captain's traveling inkhorn and quill, using a bit of paper the cheese had been wrapped in, she wrote:

"Dere Simon. I doo hop yore stil alive. I am all rug—wuz piked up by wailing ship an hadd Grate Times abord her. Brung home in Man o' War like Roilty. Wil tel more wen I see yoo. I do hop yore stil alive. Iff yoo can pleez cum hear wear I am stuk at preznt or send relleye relible cove. I badly need sum wun. I doo hop yore stil alive. Lots ov luv. Dido."

She folded it and addressed it: "Simon as used to livv in Rose Alley, Care of Doc Furniss, The art Skool, Chellsey, London."

She had scarcely finished this when voices were heard outside, there came a knock on the door, and Mr. Firkin ushered in a lank, greasy-haired individual in a moleskin cap and gaiters.

"This yer's Jem Mugridge, as'll take your letter to Perroth, darter."

One glance at him was enough to make Dido thankful she had not planned to entrust Captain Hughes's Dispatch to the shravey Jem; he looked about as reliable as a stoat.

"That'll be five-and-a-tanner," he said, receiving the letter, his little pink-rimmed eyes meanwhile darting into every corner of the room.

Dido was fairly sure that a letter to London should not cost so much, but Captain Hughes counted five shillings and sixpence out of a purse which he brought from under his pillow, Jem's eyes following every movement and every coin.

"I thankee sir and missie. That'll be in Pet'orth by breakfast time."

"So I should hope, if Petworth is but five miles distant," the Captain remarked testily.

When Jem had departed on his flea-bitten mare, Dido asked the Captain if he would have any objection to her stepping up the road to Tegleaze Manor.

"There's a cove there as asked to see me, and it seems only civil to go, seeing they sent us the basket o' prog. Mebbe I'll find someone as we can trust there; you never can tell."

Captain Hughes agreed to this; but since he seemed rather low-spirited at the prospect of being left alone, Mr. Firkin was easily persuaded to come and keep him company. Mr. Firkin's brother, it turned out, had been a seafaring man and a great singer; the two men were soon absorbed in discussing sea shanties and comparing tunes. Leaving them to it, Dido slipped off.

As she left the cottage some animal scuttled away, quick and quiet, along the wall. It might have been a rabbit or a large rat.

"I'll be glad when we can shift out o' this hurrah's nest," she thought with a shiver. "You gets the notion someone's everlastingly a-peering over your shoulder."

However, nothing else seemed to be stirring in the cold, moonshiny night. She walked up the beech avenue toward the Manor, turned right at the top as instructed, and found herself on the edge of an enormous sunk lawn.

"Guess this must be the tilting-yard," Dido thought. "The sides is tilted, anyhows; it's like a dripping pan." She scrambled down the steep grassy slope and walked across turf that was silver with icy dew. Black yew trees, once clipped to resemble giant pineapples, but, from neglect, grown into many strange shapes, were placed about the lawn in pairs, like sentries. Dido slipped from one pair of shadows to the next and ran softly up a flight of steps toward the house. She passed along a terrace above the lawn, through a wicket gate, through a small walled garden, and so came to a side door, half hidden under a great vine. While she was wondering whether to knock, the door opened.

"Hallo! I saw you come up the steps. Make haste—after me. Isn't this capital!" breathed Sir Tobit. Dido felt her hand taken; she was pulled into the dark; the door shut quietly behind her. She allowed herself to be led up a narrow flight of stairs, along a passage, and so presently found herself in the room where she had been before. It was just as dusty and untidy as it had been on the previous evening.

"Now we can talk," said Sir Tobit, throwing himself comfortably in a chair. "Grandmother is in bed with one of her headaches, so she won't trouble us."

"Talk, what about?"

"You can tell me your adventures. I've read all my
books. So the only way I can amuse myself now is to make up stories—and that's very boring because I know what the end is going to be. Well, go on—begin!"

Dido was not eager. However she felt some sympathy for Sir Tobit's solitude and boredom, so she obliged with a brief account of how she had been shipwrecked, picked up by a whaler and carried to Nantucket, and brought home by his majesty's sloop
Thrush.

"And I must let someone in London know that Cap'n Hughes is stuck here with a broken gam," she finished. "I've sent a letter to a pal o' mine, but I don't trust that carrier Jem above half; is there any reliable cove you can suggest?"

"There aren't many men left on the estate," Tobit said. "We're so poor, everyone has left, except Frill and Pelmett, and I wouldn't trust
them.
"

"Poor? In a place this size?" Dido was surprised.

"You see, Grandmother has a great fondness for betting on the horses. When she was a girl she loved riding; then she was thrown and broke her leg. So now as she can't ride, she bets instead; since I've been living here I believe she has gambled away, oh, hundreds of thousands of pounds. Yesterday she gave FitzPickwick her last diamond ring to sell. That's why I have to wear these clothes; we can't afford to buy new ones. But luckily there are lots of old ones about the house."

"How long
have
you lived here, then?"

"Oh, ever since I was a baby. I was born in the West Indies, on Tiburon Island; we have—used to have—
estates there. Papa and Mamma lived there, but they were killed in a hurricane, so Tante Sannie brought me here. I don't remember that. Sannie didn't know what it would be like here; she's homesick, but there isn't enough money to send her back." He spoke indifferently, but Dido felt that, since he was lonely himself, he ought to have more sympathy for the old woman's plight, stuck here in this great dusty cold house, so far from her own warm island.

"I'd better be getting back." She prowled restlessly about the untidy, shadowy room. "Is that you?"

A picture on the wall showed three children, dressed in clothes such as Tobit wore. The boy in the middle, holding hands of the other two, who stood slightly behind him, might have been Tobit at a younger age.

"No, that's three ancestors—two brothers and a sister who lived in Charles the First's time. They were triplets—all the same age."

"It'd be grand to be a triplet—you'd never be lonely then," Dido said, studying them with some envy. "What happened to them?"

"They quarreled," Tobit said coolly. "One fought on the king's side, one on Cromwell's, and the third one went overseas and vanished. The other two lost all their money in the Civil War, so ever since then triplets have been thought unlucky in our family."

"Have there been many more?"

"No, none; but we've had bad luck just the same ... Come along; I'll show you Cousin Wilfred's dolls' house."

He pulled the reluctant Dido—croopus, dolls' houses at
his age! she thought—out of the room, along passages and downstairs into the main hall—empty tonight; and through an open door into a small room at one side of it.

"Come on—old Wilfred isn't here, he's playing tiddlywinks with Sawbones Subito. Look—isn't it queer!"

Cousin Wilfred's room was as shabby as Tobit's, but in a different way. The furniture here was old, and had once been handsome, but was now falling to bits: the wood was worm-eaten, the satin upholstery faded and torn. Only the dolls' house looked well-cared-for. It was a faithful copy of Tegleaze Manor, beautifully made, furnished to the last detail with curtains, carpets, plates on the tables, pictures on the walls, even a carriage in the stables. There were no dolls, but tiny suits of clothes like Tobit's hung in the closets.

"He made it all himself, from old prints of the house as it used to be," Tobit said, carelessly throwing open the front.

"Even the pictures?"

These were oval miniatures, carefully framed, no bigger than postage stamps.

"No, those are real. Some ancestor collected them. Some of them were quite valuable, but Grandmother sold those—all except one, which isn't here. She'd like to sell
that,
but it belongs to me—or will when I come of age."

"When's that?"

"Next week—on my fourteenth birthday."

"Where's the picture now?"

"At the lawyers'—they don't trust her. Come on." Tobit
was restless—nothing seemed to interest him for long. He moved to the window. Dido took a last look at the nursery with its three white-spread beds, box of tiny toys, hoop leaning against the wall, and dappled rocking-horse which might just have stopped swaying, as if three children had rushed out of the room, slammed the door, and gone their different ways.

"Hey!" whispered Tobit. "Look!"

He beckoned Dido to the window. They were looking out on the moonlit tilting-yard. Two figures paced across it and vanished into the shade of a pair of yew trees.

"It's old FitzPickwick—wonder what
he's
doing here at this time of night. And who is that he's talking to? Tell you what—let's go out and stalk 'em, that'd be famous fun. Wait, have I got my peashooter on me?"

Tobit rummaged in his black velvet pockets.

"I druther have a word with your butler—is he anywheres about?" Dido said, impatient at the prospect of such a childish sport.

"
Gusset?
Why? Anyhow, you can't, it's his evening off; he goes to see his son. Ah, two shooters and lots of peas. Here, have one." He thrust a slender pipe into her hand and poured into the pocket of her duffel jacket what felt like about a pound of heavy little dry objects.

"Ain't we a bit old for sich goings-on?"

"What else is there to do in this moldering barracks—except make up stories? I'm a dead shot," he boasted. "With a sling I can hit a hare at a hundred yards. Only there aren't any hares. Oh,
do
come along."

"What's that?" Dido asked, as they passed a large chart on the wall.

"Family tree—all the way back to the Saxons." He pulled her along yet another dark passage.

"Who's old FitzPickwick?"

"Our bailiff—he's a toffee-nosed sort of fellow. It's my belief he's feathered his nest handsomely out of Tegleaze Manor," Tobit said, sounding all of a sudden surprisingly shrewd. "He sells Grandmother's jewelry for her, and places her bets."

"Doesn't give her very good advice, if she always loses."

"Hush!"

They had come out into a brick-paved stable-yard, like that of the dolls' house. A gate and a flagged path brought them back to the terrace overlooking the tilting-yard.

"When Jamie Three had
his
coronation," Tobit muttered discontentedly, leading Dido down the steps and along in the shadow of the high yew hedge that bordered the lawn, "Granny and Grandpa had a pageant here, with champagne and roast peacock for all the tenants. But now there are hardly any tenants, and no cash—not even enough for me to go up to London to
see
the coronation."

"Would your gran let you?" Dido asked. "I thought she was so set agin your going out in case you catch summat nasty?"

"Oh, she won't care what happens to me once I come of age—and my birthday's before the coronation—I'm fourteen on Monday, the coronation's on Wednesday, I daresay you didn't know, just home from sea? Old Jamie Three
died, and now it's going to be his son. He's always been called Prince Davie but he's going to be Richard the Fourth. And there's going to be fireworks on Ludgate Hill, and oxes roasted in Stuart Square, and processions, and all sorts of high jinks—don't I just wish I was going."