The Little White Horse (26 page)

The salt smell of the sea, the cool breath of it, seemed
to be sending great surges of strength through her tired body, and over her head the seagulls wheeled in splendour and cried their strange strong cry.

An ancient stone jetty was built out into the bay, and on it fishing nets had been laid to dry, and some ugly little fishing boats, with dirty black sails furled around their masts, were rocking on the blue water. At sight of these fishing boats Maria felt suddenly angry. Black sails! Ugly little boats on that sparkling sea. They should have been blue boats, red boats, green boats, yellow boats, with white sails like the wings of birds . . . And so they would be, when the wickedness of the Men from the Dark Woods was banished from this place.

But at the present moment it wasn’t, and her efforts at banishment had been a complete failure, and Robin was pulling at her skirt with a warning cry. She looked round and saw them coming pouring out of the cave like horrible black beetles out of their lair.

‘Run!’ cried Robin.

A steep dangerous little path wound up the rock to the top of the cliff above, and they ran for it, Serena leaping ahead and Zachariah coming behind. Unused as she was to rock climbing, Maria found the scramble very difficult, and Robin did not find it any too easy with Wiggins under one arm. He tried to put Wiggins down and make him climb by himself, but Wiggins wasn’t used to rocks either and refused to budge, so he had to pick him up again. It was a horrible climb, because very soon they heard the feet of the men behind them, gaining on them fast.

It was a nightmare. And Maria wondered if when they got to the top they would be able to run fast enough to get away. Why, oh why, had Wrolf and Periwinkle deserted them? But they never would get to the top, she thought. In a very few moments now they would feel the hands of the Men from the Dark Woods closing round their ankles. She knew they were terribly close because of the way Zachariah was spitting and swearing in the rear.

‘Go on!’ gasped Robin behind her. ‘Faster! Faster!’

But poor Maria couldn’t go faster. Her limbs seemed to have turned to lead, and her hands were sore and bleeding from holding on to the sharp rocks. The only way she could get along at all was by fixing her eyes upon the white blob of Serena’s tail, bobbing up the rock in front of her, and the hare’s two long ears waving like flags in the air. There was something very soothing in the sight of that blob of a tail, something invigorating in those cheerfully waving ears. Serena was apparently quite serene. On and on went Maria, seeing nothing at all now except Serena.

And suddenly the hare gave a great leap and disappeared, and Maria’s sore hands were clutching not rock but tufts of heather, and she was looking straight up into the brown furry face of Wrolf. They had reached the top of the cliff, and Wrolf and Periwinkle were waiting there for them. She should not have doubted those beloved animals. ‘Wrolf! Wrolf!’ she cried, and flinging her arms round his neck she kissed him passionately upon his cold black nose.

‘Don’t waste time kissing them!’ cried Robin behind her in exasperated tones. ‘Get on him!’

She got on him, Zachariah leaping up behind her, and Robin and Wiggins got on Periwinkle, and with Serena leaping ahead they rode like the wind for home, the seagulls wheeling and crying triumphantly over their heads. The pine-trees sped by them, and the clumps of golden gorse. Up hill and down dale they rode, and presently they reached Primrose Hollow, where they had found Serena, and then the pine-trees gave way to the oaks and beeches, and they saw the apple blossom waving over the orchard wall, with the towers of the manor-house rising beyond. They were safe now, with home in sight and the wicked men left far behind, and the galloping of Wrolf and Periwinkle changed to a gentle trotting. Maria and Robin could get their breath and smile at each other, and be happy because they were safe.

‘Well, it’s been a grand day!’ said Robin.

‘Yet we haven’t done what we meant to do,’ said Maria. ‘The Men from the Dark Woods are just as wicked as ever and angrier than they were before. We haven’t made them better, we’ve made them worse.’

‘Yet I don’t seem to mind, do you?’ asked Robin.

‘No, I don’t,’ said Maria. ‘I suppose we couldn’t expect to succeed at the first try. But there has to
be
a first try, and now we’ve had it, and it’s behind us.’

‘And it was a jolly good adventure,’ said Robin. And then he looked up at the sky and saw that it was flushed with colour. ‘Why, it’s sunset,’ he cried. ‘We’ve been out all day. I must run home or Mother will be anxious.’

He jumped off Periwinkle, handed the reins to Maria, put down Wiggins, and sped away through the park in the direction of the gatehouse, turning round once to wave his hand to Maria. The sunset light lit up the long green feather in his hat and his rosy laughing face. Then he was gone, the trees gathering him in to themselves as though he were their child.

Maria rode slowly through the formal garden and into the stable-yard, where she found Digweed waiting. He did not say anything, but gave her a broad and comforting sort of smile, as though to say, ‘Never mind! Better luck next time!’ And then he led off Periwinkle to give her a good rub down and a good feed. Wrolf, too, when Maria had slipped off his back, gave her a reassuring, consoling look, and then he and Zachariah and Serena and Wiggins went slowly up the stone steps to the kitchen, in search of rest and food. They all looked very tired, Maria thought . . . All except Wiggins, who was leading the procession with the air of a conquering hero . . .

But then Wiggins had done nothing at all the entire day except get in the way and be carried. His was the triumphant mien of the military commander who has taken no active part in the dust and heat of the battle,
yet marches very actively indeed at the head of his troops when they return victoriously home.

Only we aren’t victorious, thought Maria, and now that Robin was not with her any more she did, after all, feel a little discouraged. She felt as though she could not go indoors and face Sir Benjamin, who would see at once in her face that she had had an unsuccessful day. She sat down on the stone parapet of the well, and thought that she would rest for a little while first.

It was lovely and peaceful here in the stable-yard, with the white doves cooing about her and the blue sky over her head flecked all over with little pink clouds like curling feathers. She bent over and looked in the well and saw her own face looking back at her from the dark water; it looked white and tired and a little sad, and somehow not quite the face she was accustomed to. It looked, she thought, as the face of the first Moon Maiden might have looked when she rode away from the manor-house for ever. Perhaps, before she saddled her little white horse, she too had sat here on the parapet of the well for a little, and had seen her face reflected in the water with her lovely golden hair about it and her moony pearls shining about her neck.

‘What
did
she do with those pearls?’ wondered Maria.

A high squeaky cough, a please-look-round-and-see-me cough, interrupted her thoughts, and looking round she saw Marmaduke Scarlet standing at the top of the kitchen steps. He nodded and smiled at her, and he too seemed quite undisturbed by the failure of this first day’s effort.

‘I am about to prepare an omelette for your delectation at supper,’ he said, ‘and I require the butter, which I put to cool this morning within the well. May I trouble you, young Mistress, to put your hand within the aperture just below you, to withdraw the required condiment and to bring it with you when you come within to make your toilet in preparation for the assimilation of the nourishment of which by this time you must stand in dire need?’

At the conclusion of these remarks Marmaduke Scarlet
bowed and withdrew, and Maria immediately prepared to do his bidding, for she knew his long speech meant in plain language, ‘You’re keeping supper waiting. Hurry up.’

She leaned over the well again, reaching her hand and arm down through the ferns, and groping for those attractive hidden cupboard places in the wall of the well that Sir Benjamin had shown her on her first day here, and that she had thought would make such a splendid hiding-place for jewels. In the first little cupboard she could find only cheese, but the second she tried had the butter. It was rather a small pat, she found, when she had pulled it out, and she wondered if it would be enough, for Marmaduke Scarlet’s delicious omelettes were always very large and very buttery indeed. Perhaps there was a second pat farther inside. She leaned right over the parapet of the well this time, as far as she could, and groped with her hand right to the very back of the little cupboard.

She could not find any more butter, but her fingers touched what felt like a small metal box, and she sat took hold of it and pulled it out. It
was
a box, and she sat on the parapet of the well again and put it in her lap. It was very old, but she could still make out the cock upon the lid. The box was not locked and she opened it. Inside was a bit of discoloured, rotting silk, that seemed to fall almost to dust when she touched it, and folded within it was a string of gleaming pearls.

Maria sat motionless, holding them in her fingers, her lips parted in amazement at the beauty of them. Over her head the sunset sky had changed from blue and pink to gold, and the white doves strutting around her had gold-tipped wings. The wind had dropped and it was utterly still. Very slowly Maria lifted her hands and twisted the pearls round her neck, then she leaned over the well again and looked once more at her reflection. The sunset must have got into her sandy hair, as well as into the doves’ feathers, for she saw it this time shining like pure gold about her white face; yet more full of light than the pearls
about the column of her white throat. She smiled at her face in the water and the face smiled back at her, and so still and lovely was the moment that it seemed as though the whole world held its breath.

Maria sat up again and thought about the pearls. As though the first Moon Maiden had told her, she understood how they had come to be hidden in the well. The Moon Maiden
had
sat here for a little while on the night she went away, and she had wondered who the pearls belonged to, whether they were her own because her father had given them to her, or her husband’s because they were the only dowry she had brought to Moonacre. She had not been able to decide, and not wanting to take away what was not hers, nor yet to give her husband wealth to which he had no right, she had hidden the pearls in the well.

A squeaky voice once more sounded forth loudly and a little indignantly from the top of the kitchen steps, ‘Young Mistress, the hour is late —’

Maria loosened the pearls a little, pushed them inside her coat and buttoned it up on top of them. Then she took the pat of butter and slowly and sedately walked up the kitchen steps into the house.

M
ARIA
that night slept very deeply for a few hours, and then woke up abruptly to find her little room as bright as day. At first she thought that the morning had come, and then she realized that the most brilliant moon she had ever seen was shining in through her window and flooding her room with light. The silver waves of it came washing in through the uncurtained window rather as the waves of Merryweather Bay had come rolling in to break at her feet in welcome.

There was something very friendly about this moonlight, as though tonight’s moon loved her and claimed her as a sister, and was lighting up the world for her alone. She unfastened the moony pearls, that were still wound about her neck, and held them up in her hands almost as though she were offering them as a gift, and the moon, shining upon their loveliness and making it ten times more lovely, seemed to be accepting the gift.

And yet Maria did not want to give those pearls away. She loved them far too much. She did not want to give them even to the lovely moon, and as for giving them to the Men from the Dark Woods — well — she just couldn’t do it. And yet she had to do it. Monsieur Cocq de Noir had promised that They would stop being wicked if she could give him proof that Black William had not been murdered by Sir Wrolf but had withdrawn to a hermit’s life by his own choice, and if she would give him the pearls.

That first condition was already fulfilled, for when he
was pursuing her and Robin he would have seen Black William’s hermitage with his own eyes; and the pearls he would have, too, if she could bring herself to give them to him . . . And then he would not be wicked any more, and complete happiness would come to the Moonacre Valley . . .

Somehow Maria did not doubt that if she kept her part of the bargain, Monsieur Cocq de Noir would keep his. The wickedest of men have good in them somewhere, and, remembering the direct look in his eyes, she felt quite sure that he was not a man who would break his word. Yet she felt she could
not
give him these pearls, that she had found herself and that seemed already a part of her.

‘If I could only give them to
you
,’ she said to the moon. ‘But I don’t want to give them to that horrid man.’

And then it struck her suddenly that if she gave her pearls to Monsieur Cocq de Noir she would, in a way, be giving them to the moon. For the moon belongs to the night, and what was more like night than Monsieur Cocq de Noir and his black pine forest? And the first Moon Princess had come out of the night-dark pine-wood, bringing the pearls with her. The pearls belonged far more to the Men from the Dark Woods than they did to the Merryweathers.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Maria, and unable to lie still any longer she got out of bed and went to the south window and looked through the branches of the great cedar-tree at the formal garden below.

It was all black and silver, as it had been on the night of her arrival. The daffodils had had their gold stolen from them by the witchery of the moon, and each of them held up a silver trumpet on a slender silver spear. And the yew-tree men and the yew-tree cocks were as black as night, and looked so alive that Maria felt that if the daffodil trumpets were to sound they would immediately begin to move . . . One
was
moving, and Maria caught her breath.