The Runaways (7 page)

‘Lady Alicia, she don’t like visitors,’ explained Ezra. ‘Moses an’ Abednego, they comes an’ goes over the wall.’

After that he did not say any more, for the strange twilit place imposed its own silence. It was a relief when they saw light breaking through the thinning evergreens and knew they were coming out into the open again. Presently the moss under their feet turned golden-green and an archway cut in the yews straight ahead was ablaze with sun. The children began to run, full of joy, and then suddenly there stepped into the archway, blocking out most of the sunshine, the most alarming figure.

He was a coal-black giant with a big head and long loose arms. He had a curved knife in one hand and stood a little crouched, as though ready to spring at them. Absolom growled and the children stopped dead so suddenly that Ezra, leading Rob-Roy, bumped into Timothy.

‘Get on then,’ said Ezra, annoyed. ‘What’s come to ee? That’s only Moses Glory Glory Alleluja. Don’t hurt the poor chap’s feelin’s now. Gentle as a dove ’e be.’

Nan walked bravely forward, for she was a child who would not have liked to hurt the feelings of the devil
himself, the others following, and the nearer they came to Moses Glory Glory Alleluja the less terrible did he appear, and when they were through the arch of yew and quite close to him, he was suddenly changed by some miracle of the sunlight from a figure of fear into one of the most attractive men they had ever seen. He was a black man with white woolly hair, tall but stooped about the shoulders, his face folded into deep lines of age and kindness. His eyes were sad, but his smile, as he looked at the children, was as wide with pleasure as Ezra’s own. He wore the tattered remnants of a coat of dark green livery, from which one brass button still hung by a thread, as though he had once been a coachman or footman, a gardener’s corduroy trousers and a sacking apron tied round his waist. The knife in his hand was a scythe, with which he was trying to clear a path through the mass of grass and docks and nettles in which he stood knee-deep. Nan held out her hand to him.

‘The children,’ he said with delight and took Nan’s hand in his. He had a fascinating hand, large as a ham, coal-black but with a pink palm. All the children shook hands and Absolom removed his tail from between his legs and wagged it. How, they all wondered, could they have felt afraid of this glorious man? After their father, Uncle Ambrose and Ezra, he was without doubt God’s masterpiece.

‘They’re good children as children go,’ Ezra informed him. ‘An’ Absolom’s a good dog. ’Ave ee got these ’ere beds up the ’ouse?’

‘Got ’em at the back door,’ said Moses. ‘Put the children in the cart or their legs will be stung.’

They piled into the cart again and followed in the wake of Moses and Ezra, swaying through the green sea of grass and docks and nettles. Presently they realised to their astonishment that once it had been an orchard or a garden, for apple trees in full bloom and tall black cypresses grew up out of it, and ahead of them were two great trees of japonica covered with flaming blossom. The sun was bright and hot and there was the hum of bees.

‘Our bees?’ Robert asked.

‘Aye,’ said Ezra. ‘Powerful fond o’ Linden Manor, our bees be.’

They came between the japonica trees, where the mossy drive appeared again from beneath the weeds and grasses, and there before them was the Manor. It was an old house built of weathered grey granite with a stone-tiled roof. It was surrounded by unpruned rose bushes and its dormer windows peered like eyes through the hairy creepers that had climbed right up to the roof and even in places to the tall chimneys. From the front there seemed no entrance; briars grew over the pillared porch of the front door and all the downstairs windows
had blind eyes, for their curtains were drawn. There was a stone terrace in front of the house, but the weeds had pushed up the paving stones. Directly behind it Lion Tor towered to the sky and Linden Wood surrounded the house and its ruined garden as a moat surrounds a castle, completely cutting it off from the world beyond. Hot, murmurous with bees, the place cast a spell.

Turning right, Moses led them to the back of the house where the wood came pressing almost up to the walls. It was full of great linden trees, oaks and beeches all dressed in their bright spring green. There was a cobbled yard behind the house with a tumbledown stable to one side. The back door was open and the monkey was sitting on the doorstep playing cat’s-cradle. He was a sad-eyed grey monkey with an irritable expression, wearing a tattered green livery coat like the one that Moses wore, and when he saw the children he chattered with
annoyance
and scrambled back into the house.

‘Children, do not worrit Abednego,’ cautioned Moses.

‘We won’t,’ they said.

‘Where be beds?’ asked Ezra.

‘In the kitchen,’ said Moses.

The back door opened straight into the big kitchen. It was a dark dreary place, not at all like the bright happy kitchen at the Vicarage. It had a well in the middle of the floor and a big oak dresser stretched from floor to ceiling. On the top of the dresser was Abednego, still chattering with annoyance. By the well in the middle of the floor there were two truckle-beds, two feather mattresses and two little folded quilts. Moses, Ezra and the boys carried the beds and mattresses 
out to the cart and Nan followed with the quilts in her arms. They smelt faintly of cedar wood and they were made of hundreds of diamond-shaped patches of silk, satin, velvet, and brocade of all the colours of the rainbow. She was so absorbed in them that she did not notice, as she stepped out into the sunlight, that Betsy had stayed behind in the kitchen.

Betsy was gazing at Abednego. He was about her own size, but he had the face of a very old man and he was like Absolom. The queer mixture of man, child, and creature fascinated her. And so did his long tail, which hung down over the willow-patterned china on the dresser like a velvet bell-rope. Mechanically rocking Gertrude in her arms, she stared and stared, and Abednego stopped chattering and stared at Gertrude, who was a very beautiful doll with red cheeks, golden hair, a blue silk dress, a lace
petticoat
, and red shoes. Betsy said afterwards that she did not mean to worrit Abednego and had no intention of pulling his tail. She merely wanted to stroke it to see if it was as velvety as it looked, and standing on tiptoe and stretching up her left hand she did so, and like a snake striking down came Abednego’s long hairy arm and skinny hand and snatched Gertrude from the crook of her right arm. Before she had time even to get her breath he had leapt from the top of the dresser, wrenched open the door beside it and vanished, carrying Gertrude with him. At once Betsy dashed in pursuit, for she was a brave child, and though she was no more than mildly fond of Gertrude, she had a very strong sense of personal property.

The door closed itself behind her and she was in
darkness
. She ran and ran, and felt as she ran that the strange
dark tunnel was taking her right into the heart of a mountain. She forgot this was a house. Now and then a faint glimmer of light suggested that other tunnels led off to right and left, but she kept straight on because she very soon became so frightened that she could not stop. She was brave, but she thought she heard long swift loping footsteps padding up behind her and she pictured some creature rather like Abednego, but more horrible, reaching out for her with furry paws. She very soon forgot about Gertrude and even about the others and home, she forgot about everything except the hairy creature coming behind her. Then she tripped over something and fell headlong. She did not hurt herself, partly because she was so well cushioned with fat and partly because she fell on something soft, but she was startled and for a few moments she could only lie still with her face pressed against the softness.

Then she heard not the footsteps of the creature but a soft humming, and it was so familiar and reassuring that immediately all the fear went out of her and she sat up and opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw was a slanting sunbeam, and slowly and happily revolving in it, as though bathing their wings in the gold, were three bees. It was not total darkness about her now, but a dim green underwater light with the sunbeam slanting through it, and she thought at first that she was sitting on thick green moss in a cavern in the mountain. Then she realised that this must be a house after all because she was sitting on a green carpet. The long dark passage had led her into the hall of the house and she had tripped on the carpet because it was ragged at the edges. Under the
carpet the hall was paved with stone, like the passage, and it smelt cold and dark because the windows were all closed and covered with green velvet curtains. They were old and shabby and there was a big hole in one of them. It was through this hole that the sunbeam slanted. Betsy didn’t know how the bees had got in. If they had followed her up the passage then they had been with her all the time and she needn’t have been so frightened. Uncarpeted stairs led up from the hall into darkness and their curved balustrade was festooned with cobwebs. Betsy had thought the cobwebs at the Vicarage were glorious, but they were nothing to these, which looked as though they had been here for a hundred years, growing more intricate and marvellous all the time.

She got up and smoothed her frock and the bees stopped revolving in the sunbeam and led the way up the stairs. She followed them, going slowly step by step through the thick curtains of shadows that dropped from some high unseen roof. But there must have been light coming from
somewhere
, for there seemed always a gleam of gold upon the bees’ wings. She reached the top of the stairs and the bees led her along a dark landing, then up two steps and along a corridor with rows of doors in it, and up more steps and along another corridor, and then they stopped before a door that was not quite dark because through a large empty keyhole another sunbeam had thrust as much of itself as it was able to do. In this small beam the bees once more revolved, bathing themselves in the gold, and Betsy lifted the latch of the door and walked in. They followed her and she closed the door behind the four of them.

‘What are you doing here?’

The voice was sharply imperious, but Betsy was so pleased to hear a human voice again that she did not mind, and it was wonderful to come out into the sunlight of an uncurtained room. Though it was a very strange room. The first thing Betsy noticed was a needlework picture hanging on the wall close to her. It showed men on horseback, with falcons on their wrists, riding through a forest glade towards a town built high up on a mountain that rose above the tops of the tallest trees. The town had steep roofs and towers and pinnacles like a cathedral, but was so far away in the sky, that it might have been fashioned out of clouds and rainbows. The furniture in the room was old and dark and the dark wavy floor reflected the light like water. The curtains were dim gold and the small shoes of the lady were gold too, and set side by side on a purple velvet footstool.

She was as strange as her room, very small and upright in her big carved chair. Her black silk dress was shiny, long and full, and when she moved it rustled and reflected the light just as the floor did. In some places there were slits in the silk as though it were very old and she herself looked old, with a lot of white hair piled up untidily on top of her small head and a nose so thin as to be almost transparent. Her face was bleached as though she was never in the sunshine and her tiny hands looked like claws holding the carved birds on her chair, and so weighed down by their load of rings that Betsy was quite sure she would not be able to lift them up however hard she tried. And then suddenly one hand flew up with a flash of diamonds and the fingers gripped Betsy’s shoulder like pincers, the wrinkled eyelids lifted and blue fire shone out from eyes that were as young as Betsy’s own. And at that very instant the three bees flew out of the open window. For a moment Betsy felt
abandoned
and then she thought that the bees wouldn’t have left her if it hadn’t been all right.