The Cuckoo Tree (2 page)

There was a portico with white marble pillars, and some iron staples, roughly driven into these, were evidently meant for tethering horses.

Dido slid off the gray's back with relief. "Though dear knows how I'll ever get back on," she thought, seeing no mounting block. Ignoring a slight palpitation of the heart at the grandeur of this place—the double doors, under the portico, were so huge that a medium-sized whale could easily have passed between them, given enough water to swim in—she tugged briskly at a brass bellpull.

The house had seemed so silent, as if all its inmates were elsewhere or asleep, that she was a little startled when the doors flew open at once; they had been pulled back, she discovered, by a pair of liveried footmen in powdered wigs, and directly in front of her a butler stood bowing.

"Can you help me—" Dido began. He interrupted her with raised hand.

"This way, my lady. Please to follow me."

"Poor old fellow," Dido thought, following. "I suppose in a place as grand as this he ain't allowed to give orders for help on his own, but has to ask the lord or duke or whoever lives here."

They crossed a wide hall, decorated with a great many pairs of deer's antlers, ascended several flights of marble stairs—very slowly; the butler was a very aged man—and proceeded along several wide passageways until, it seemed to Dido, they must have reached the very end of the house.

"Coo, it's a big place, ennit?" she remarked. "Must take a deal o' sweeping. I'm right sorry for the housemaid."

The aged butler, in the act of knocking at a door, turned and surveyed her with some surprise. The sight of her clothes, which he had not observed in the darkness of the portico, appeared to surprise him still more.

"I'd take it kind if you'd ask someone to keep an eye on my nag while I'm up here," Dido added. "If I'd a known we'd have to come sich a perishing way I'd a tied him up a mite tighter."

"But—did your ladyship not come in a carriage?"

"That's just what I'd a told you if you'd waited—" Dido was beginning impatiently, when an equally impatient voice inside the door shouted,

"How the deuce many times do I have to say, come in?"

Flustered, the butler threw open the door, bowed, stood aside, and announced, as Dido entered,

"The Lady Rowena Palindrome!"

"There! I might a known there was some mux-up," Dido said. "Bless your socks, I ain't Lady Rowena Thingummy."

"Never mind, I daresay you'll do just as well," said the room's occupant. "Come in and sit down. Can you play tiddlywinks? Gusset, there's a draft; don't stand there, go out and shut the door behind you."

"I beg your pardon, Sir Tobit. But if the young lady
isn't
who she said she was—"

"I didn't say I is, I said I isn't!" Dido put in. "My stars! I was told I'd get
help
here, not a lot of argufication—"

"I had better inform her ladyship," the butler muttered worriedly. "She won't be best pleased, I'm afraid. What name
did
you say, missie?"

"I didn't say
any
name, but it's Dido Twite."

"Dido Twite. Dwido Tite. Twido Dite. Twito Died. Dwighto Tied," the butler repeated, and left the room, closing the door.

"Oh, bother! Now Grandmother will come along and there'll be a lot of fuss. Why did you have to say you weren't Rowena Palindrome? What does it matter who you are? Sit down, anyway, and amuse me till the old girl comes—it'll take her a while to get up."

"I haven't
got
a while," said Dido crossly. "There's a chap out there, dying, maybe, in an overset carriage, and the driver's knocked silly—not that he was much at the start—and I'd be obliged if you'd kindly send out those two coves as has nothing better to do than open and shut
doors to fetch the poor souls here and see arter 'em a bit."

"An overset carriage? How do you know?"

"How do I know? Acos I was in it—that's how."

"You were in a carriage that overturned? Aren't you lucky!"

"Rummy notion o' luck you has," Dido said, studying her companion with curiosity. And certainly he was an unusual figure—a boy of twelve or thirteen, tall and thin, with a pale face and a mop of black hair. More singular still, he was dressed in clothes at least two hundred years out of date—the sort of clothes worn by gentry in Charles the First's day: a frilled shirt with long lace cuffs, a long-skirted embroidered waistcoat, a sword, velvet breeches, and buckled shoes. His hair was tied back with a velvet ribbon. A huge furry white dog lay at his feet; it had a pointed nose, like a bear, and the tongue lolling from its jaws was blue.

Her host, for his part, studied Dido with almost equal astonishment; he saw a sun-tanned girl, her brown hair cut untidily short; she wore long, wide trousers of dark-blue duffel, a white shirt with a sailor collar, and a tight-fitting pea jacket with brass buttons.

"Why do you wear such peculiar clothes?" he said.

"These? They're a midshipman's rig; mighty comfortable too. I jist got back from sea, that's why. Going up to London with dispatches for the Fust Lord o' the Admiralty, and our numbskull of a driver has to overturn us afore we've gone twenty miles, and poor Cap'n Hughes wounded in the
Chinese wars and weak as a snail—"

"You've been at
sea
—you, a girl?" Sir Tobit stared at her round-eyed. "Why?"

"That'd be a long tale. That'd be several long tales. What about those hurt men?"

"Oh, we can do nothing for them till my grandmother has given permission," he said carelessly. "So you may as well sit down and tell me your stories till she comes. Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?"

He pushed toward her a tray carved from some silvery foreign wood. On it were several plates, wooden likewise, containing a few wrinkled apples, some nuts, and a large lump of cheese.

"We never eat anything but fruit and cheese; my grandmother thinks it best. Cowslip wine?"

The cowslip wine, pale yellow in color, was served in an earthenware pitcher. Sir Tobit poured some into a wooden mug.

"Thankee." Dido rejected the nuts—which were wizened, strange-looking little things—but helped herself to an apple and a lump of cheese. There had been no time for supper at the Port of Chichester, so she was glad of them. The dog snarled a little as she moved, and Sir Tobit, cuffing him lightly, said,

"Quiet, Lion!"

Glancing around the room as she ate, Dido was struck by the oddity of the contents. In a mansion this size she would have expected richness and grandeur; gold doorknobs, maybe, and crystal chandeliers, such as her friend Simon
once told her were to be seen at the duke's castle in Battersea. But here everything looked dusty and worn, and seemed to be made of the plainest materials—wooden chests, straw matting, loosely woven curtains in queer, bright colors, looking as if they had been sewn by people living in grass huts on some distant foreign isle. The lights were the commonest kind of tallow candles and not too plentiful. There were strangely shaped, strangely colored clay pots, and numerous little statues and images in wood and pottery. And books were piled everywhere, higgledy-piggledy—on the chests, the floor, the chairs, and on a curious little round table which looked as if it had been carved with a toothpick from the trunk of a tree. It was rather a nasty little table, Dido thought, looking at it more closely—the top and bottom were solid disks of wood, connected by a crisscross wooden network; at every join a little wooden face grinned maliciously with white-painted teeth and eyes. The room was a large one and the farther end was almost in darkness, but Dido had an uneasy feeling that somebody was there in the shadows watching—occasionally the corner of her eye caught a movement. Perhaps it was another dog?

"Tell about the carriage accident," Sir Tobit demanded. "What happened? Were you waylaid? Was there a fight?"

"No, no, it was just an accident—nothing out o' the common."

"But how did it come about?"

"Land sakes, hain't you never seen a carriage turn topsy-turvy? The driver was a bit tossicated, that's all; I
reckon he runned one o' the wheels against the bank. So over we went. And Cap'n Hughes was stuck inside. I managed to scramble out."

"Where did it happen?" Sir Tobit was asking, when the door was opened by Gusset the butler and a lady swept into the room.

Although Lady Tegleaze was plainly very old, her age was not her most striking feature. What most impressed Dido about her was a feeling of
queerness
—as if her very bright eyes were set most of the time on things that nobody else could see, as if she were listening to sounds or voices that nobody else could catch. Like her grandson, she was tall and thin, she limped slightly and walked with a stick, she wore what must surely be a wig of flowing gray curls, and had carelessly flung around her a lavender-colored satin overdress, trimmed with point lace. It was faded and slightly torn. As she came in, Dido heard a door close softly in the shadows at the far end of the room.

"Not so close!" Lady Tegleaze exclaimed, limping swiftly toward Dido and tapping her with the stick. "Not so close to Sir Tobit—remove yourself, pray!"

The dog Lion growled softly to himself.

Rather taken aback, Dido scrambled to her feet and stepped back, ducking her head in a mixture between a bow and a curtsy. What in tarnation does the old girl think I'm a-going to do—
bite
him? she wondered, but the very oddness of Lady Tegleaze commanded respect.

"Now then," she continued, fixing Dido with those curiously bright, curiously distant eyes, "what is all this
about? Who is this young person? Why is she here and where is Lady Rowena Palindrome?"

"Please, your ladyship, the young lady is Miss Twido Dite; and Frill just gave me this; he said a messenger brought it not ten minutes since." The butler handed Lady Tegleaze a note.

"Humph," she said, unfolding and reading it: "From the duchess—too late—too far—too rainy for the horses—cried off. Pish! When I was a gel horses were horses and could stand a bit of rain."

"They always cry off," Sir Tobit languidly observed. "No one wishes to come here. Why should they? You won't let
me
go to
them.
"

"So who are you?" The old lady's gaze returned to Dido. Absently she took a handful of nuts from the dish and munched them.

"She had an accident to her carriage," Sir Tobit explained. "On the London road. There are two hurt men and she wants our help to fetch them. One of them's a sea captain, carrying dispatches."

"A sea captain? You have come off a ship?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"From what country? What ship?"

"A navy ship, ma'am, the
Thrush;
she was a-coming home from the China wars and stepped from her course to chase a Hanoverian schooner, and picked me up off'n the isle of Nantucket."

"
China! Nantucket!
" Lady Tegleaze could not have been more horrified if Dido had said Devil's Island. "And you
come here—from such places—reeking of typhus, yellow fever, and every kind of infection! Pray stand over by the door!"

"I don't wish to stand anywhere, ma'am, if you'll only send someone to help right our coach and tend to those hurt chaps," Dido said rather aggrievedly, removing herself to the desired location.

"Gusset, have two of the men go back with this young person. But the injured people certainly cannot come
here;
that is quite out of the question. Suppose Sir Tobit caught some noxious illness from them, and it so near to his coming of age!"

"Where should they be taken then, marm?" Gusset inquired doubtfully.

"Someone on the estate can take them in!"

"There hain't many
left
on the estate now, your ladyship."

"There are some tenants in Dogkennel Cottages still, are there not? Old Mr. Firkin—Mrs. Lubbage? Very well—take them there."

Gusset looked even more doubtful, and Dido was not too happy at the sound of Dogkennel Cottages. Still, it's only for a night, she thought; tomorrow I can stop the mail coach or summat. "Maybe your ladyship could tell me where I can get hold of a doctor?" she asked politely.

"A doctor?" Lady Tegleaze seemed vaguely surprised.

"Dr. Subito is here, playing tiddlywinks with Mr. Wilfred," the butler reminded her. "I could ask him to step along to the cottages."

"Why, yes, I suppose he
could
do so, if the child absolutely demands it; though I would not wish
him
to pick up any infection. But come, child, come along; every minute you are here increases the risk to my grandson."

Lady Tegleaze limped to the door.

"There, I said how it would be," muttered Sir Tobit sulkily. "Just when I had the chance to hear some new tales, instead of having to make up my own."

But Dido was eager to be off. "Thanks for the wine and cheese," she called back, and followed Lady Tegleaze.

At the top of the stairs, Lady Tegleaze came to a halt.

"Where is Tante Sannie?" she asked Gusset.

The butler paused a moment before answering. Then he said, in a peculiarly expressionless voice,

"She was in Mas'r Tobit's room. I reckon she be in your ladyship's room now. Would you wish for me to search?"

"No—no. I will go myself. Follow me, child."

Oh crumpet it, Dido thought; now what?

However she followed along another series of passages. Lady Tegleaze halted outside a door.

"Wait here," she commanded Dido. She opened the door and called, "Sannie?"

Through this door Dido could see another large dimly lit chamber filled with a clutter of foreign-looking furniture, draperies, and scattered clothing. A faint, sickly waft of aromatic smoke drifted out. This is a rum house and no mistake, Dido thought.

Next moment the skin on the back of her neck prickled as something small and dark scuttled from the shadows
inside the room out through the door. It was too small for a person, surely? Could it be a large dog? Or an enormous spider?

Then she saw that it was in fact a tiny, bent old woman, wrapped in a kind of embroidered blanket, black and white, which covered her entirely except for two very bright eyes which peered up at Dido from under her head swathings.