The Little White Horse (12 page)

This was awful.

‘But Miss Heliotrope and I couldn’t help being born females,’ faltered Maria.

‘I am unaware that we have blamed you for it,’ said Marmaduke. ‘It is my distinct impression that we have received you with our best courtesy and cookery, and made the best of an unfortunate circumstance that admitted of no circumlocution.’

‘You’ve both been very kind,’ faltered Maria.

The ends of Marmaduke’s smile suddenly came out of his ears and attached themselves to the corners of his mouth again.

‘The circumstances might have borne upon the Squire and myself with more heaviness than has actually been the case,’ he conceded kindly. ‘You, Mistress, are of tender years; and femininity, my dear young lady, grows on a female with the passage of time, like all bad habits, and is less objectionable in the early stages. And as for your lady governess, she is a distinct improvement upon that other duenna, who resided here before with the other young mistress, and never stopped asking questions. Through the keyhole I have perceived her to be a woman of great saintliness of character and weakness of digestion, characteristics which, by concentrating a lady’s mind upon her own soul and stomach, do not allow her to indulge in that feminine curiosity about the affairs of others which renders her presence so trying to the males whose domicile she shares.’

Maria flushed rosily and refrained from asking who it was who laid out her clothes for her. She was also afraid to ask about the other young mistress, and that other duenna, though she was dying to ask who they were. Nor did she dare ask Marmaduke Scarlet where his bedroom was, though she was dying to ask that too, because she could
not think whereabouts in the house it could possibly be.

‘Young Mistress,’ said Marmaduke, ‘the fact that I am disposed to look upon your presence here with favour does not mean that I desire to have you running in and out of my kitchen all day long. I do not. My kitchen is my private domain, to be entered only on my invitation. That invitation will be conveyed to you from time to time by myself, or by Zachariah the cat.’

And then with a wave of the hand and a courteous bow he signified, as a king might do, that the interview was now at an end. Maria curtsied to him and withdrew humbly, Zachariah attending her as far as the kitchen door and standing on his hind legs to lift the latch for her.

She raced through the hall and the parlour and up the tower stairs to Miss Heliotrope’s room.

‘Miss Heliotrope,’ she gasped, ‘there
is
a cook, a funny frightening little dwarf with a white beard and a scarlet cap, who uses dreadfully long words and doesn’t like females . . . But he doesn’t mind
us
so much because you’re so good and I’m so young. He brings our hot water and lights our fires, but he doesn’t see to my clothes . . . Miss Heliotrope, who
does
see to my clothes?’

Miss Heliotrope, darning needle in hand, turned from the mending of her curtains. ‘Some woman,’ she said. ‘They may say what they like, Maria, about no woman having entered this house for twenty years, but there
is
a woman about the place . . . Look at this.’

She opened the bottom drawer of her chest of drawers and beckoned to Maria to come and see. Tenderly laid out in the drawer were three lace fichus and three mob-caps trimmed with heliotrope ribbon. And between the folds of the fichus were three little lavender-bags made of white muslin, each embroidered with a different heliotrope flower — a violet, a pansy, and an autumn crocus.

‘It is real Honiton,’ said Miss Heliotrope in a sort of ecstasy. ‘Real Honiton — quite priceless — such as I’ve always longed for. And those ribbons — my favourite colour — echoing my name — and the flowers on the
bags — I never saw such perfect embroidery. Maria, I ask you, could any
man
, any mere
man
, have prepared that drawerful of delight that you see before you?’

‘No,’ said Maria.

W
HEN
she woke up the next morning, Maria found to her great surprise that her riding habit had not been put ready for her. Instead there had been laid out a very decorous dark-blue gown with plain white linen collar and cuffs, a dark-blue cloak, and a dark-blue straw bonnet with delphinium-blue ribbons.

Maria was not very fond of this costume. In spite of the ribbons, it was rather a sombre and serious outfit, and it made her feel as serious as itself. However, she knew better than to put it away and get out her habit, for she realized now that what she did day by day was not left entirely to her own choice. She was more or less under orders. And it seemed that her orders today did not include riding.

She put on the blue gown slowly, her mood in tune with the grey day outside her windows. There was no sun to be seen today, no blue sky. Grey clouds hung low over the world. But it was warm and still, and bird-song rose up to her from the rose-garden under her west window. She hoped it would not rain, for she knew that Digweed had driven off in the gig very early this morning to make some purchases in the market-town beyond the hills that enclosed the valley, and she would not like him to get wet.

With her cloak over her arm and her bonnet swinging from her hand, leaving Wiggins still sleeping on her bed, she went down to the parlour, opened the window, and
looked out at the tangled briars where now a few fresh green leaves were unfurling. There seemed more birds than ever this morning, their bright wings like flowers among the branches. They were singing so lustily that she felt that she must sing too. She crossed the room, opened the harpsichord and sang the little song that she had liberated from it.

She went on singing until, once more, there came to her the knowledge that there was a listener in the rose-garden. She got up, went to the open window and looked out. And this time the listener was not the small fairy-like figure who had vanished like a dream, but a tall old man who came out from among the rose-trees and came up to the window and held out his hand to her.

It was Old Parson. Without a word Maria put on her bonnet and cloak, climbed up on the window-sill, stepped out of the window, took his hand, and jumped down beside him; and hand in hand and in silence they walked through the rose-garden and the formal garden and out into the park.

Old Parson walked fast, moving with long strides, like quite a young man. He looked very purposeful indeed this morning, and a little grim, and the lean hand that held Maria’s held it hard and possessively. He had some business with her, that Maria knew. But she was not afraid. And when he turned and smiled down at her she was more than not afraid; she was elated. She had the feeling that her introduction to Moonacre was more or less completed, and that today the purpose of her being here would declare itself.

‘Where are we going, please, Sir?’ she dared to ask.

‘To the church,’ said Old Parson. ‘I have much to show you there. And after that you will take breakfast with me at the Parsonage. It is early yet, but there is much to say and much to do, and we are well-advised to make an early start.’

‘Will they be anxious about me if I am not back to breakfast?’ asked Maria.

‘No,’ said Old Parson. ‘I left a message with Zachariah the cat.’

They took the way that the coach had taken on Sunday, and came out through the broken gate into the village street, and so to the lych-gate. They walked up through the churchyard to the church, and Old Parson pushed open the heavy door and bowed courteously to Maria as she preceded him inside.’ Why!’ she cried in astonishment. ‘The church is full of children!’

‘Children wake up very early in the mornings,’ said Old Parson, ‘and are a great nuisance to their parents, getting in their mothers’ way while the breakfasts are being prepared, or else following their fathers out to the milking, and irritating the cows by their noise and clatter. I therefore gather them together here and keep them amused until their breakfasts are ready for them.’

They had entered quietly, and Maria had a moment or two to look about her before the children saw her. There were perhaps about thirty boys and girls in the church, none of them more than about twelve years old, and quite a number of small toddlers of two or three. They looked like flowers in their bright clothes, and they were gathered in happy groups all about the church, chattering like starlings and intent upon various mysterious games.

‘Children!’ called Old Parson, leading Maria up to the clear space by the chancel steps. ‘Children. Maria Merryweather is with us.’

He spoke as though this were something very important, and the children evidently thought it was too, for they left their games and came crowding round Maria, smiling at her with shy friendliness.

‘Show her the Lady and the Bell,’ Old Parson commanded them. ‘And then later we will sing her the Bell Song.’

Maria’s right hand was taken by a pretty little girl as
tall as herself, with curly fair hair and a forget-me-not blue dress, whom later she discovered to be Prudence Honeybun, the innkeeper’s daughter, while a little round fat brown boy of four years old or so, whose roundness and brownness and glossiness reminded her of a horse-chestnut, attached himself limpet-like to her left hand. His name, the other children told her, was Peterkin Pepper.

Judged by the standards of today, the children of Silverydew had not a great number of toys in the church; indeed, they only had two, but as they were more than satisfied with what they had they were not to be pitied at all; and looking at these treasures through their eyes, Maria quite understood their satisfaction.

First they showed her the Bell, which stood upon the floor near the pulpit. It was a very old bell, and they told her that once there had been a monastery at the top of Paradise Hill, and that the bell had hung in the tower of the monastery church and seven times a day it had rung the monks to prayer, and the people in the valley below, hearing the Bell, had prayed too. They rang it to show Maria what a sweet tone it had, and they told her Old Parson let them use it when they played at being the monks, and when they played at christenings and weddings, or at being the bell-ringers.

‘The Silverydew Church bells are famous,’ they told Maria. ‘You can hear them miles away. Old Parson has made up a song about them. We’ll sing it to you presently. They all have names, you know, and when they were hung in the belfry they were christened just as human beings are. They were signed with the sign of the cross and anointed with oil and salt and wine.’

But Maria could not stay long looking at the Bell because Peterkin Pepper was pulling at her hand, dragging her towards a niche in the wall where there was a statue of a Lady with her Baby in her arms. It was a small wooden statue, not much bigger than a doll, and so worn by age and the caressing hands of many children that the features of Mother and Child had nearly been worn away.
But the sweep of the Lady’s cloak was lovely and graceful, so was the proud poise of her head, and the Baby had his hand upraised in blessing and a smile upon his face. The children had put two vases of flowers in the niche, one on each side of the statue.

‘We always give the Lady something pretty,’ said Prudence Honeybun. ‘Sometimes in the winter it’s only berries or birds’ feathers that we’ve picked up. But it’s always something. We love the Lady. We’d like to bring her seashells from the shore, but we’re afraid to go down to the shore because of Them.’

Peterkin Pepper now spoke for the first time, giving tongue in a deep bass voice that was most startling, coming from one so young. ‘I wish I had a great big stick,’ he said. ‘I wish I had a great big knobbly stick to chase Them away!’

‘Have They been stealing your father’s chickens again, Peterkin?’ one of the children asked him.

‘Four chickens,’ said Peterkin briefly. ‘Yesterday.’

‘It’s the Men from the Dark Woods,’ Prudence told Maria in a whisper. ‘They live in the pine-wood, you know, and they are very wicked. They won’t let people go to Merryweather Bay, though it isn’t really their bay. And they set cruel traps for the wild animals, and they steal our chickens and ducks and geese. And they steal the honey from the hives, too, and fruit from the orchards. We are happy in Silverydew, but we can’t be perfectly happy because of Them. But no one knows how to stop them from being wicked.’

A little shiver went down Maria’s spine. So those wicked men lived in the pine-wood, did they? That pine-wood that pressed up so close to the manor-house walls. No wonder she was afraid of it. She would have liked to ask Prudence some questions, but the other children were calling out to her that she must come and see the Merryweather Chantry, and the knight, and the two animals.

‘Robin’s in the chantry,’ said Old Parson. ‘Let Robin
show her the chantry. It is his right. The rest of you will stay outside.’

So Robin was here! Maria abruptly forgot her fears for joy that Robin was here too, and in the Merryweather Chantry. And she was delighted, too, to find Old Parson and the children talking about Robin as though he were a flesh-and-blood boy. She had always known that he was, even though in London no one but herself had seemed able to see him. But here it seemed that other people saw him too. The children and Old Parson accompanied her to the two worn steps that led up to the chantry, and there they stopped and she went inside alone.

It was a little low stone chamber, just like a cave, and it was almost entirely filled up by a big stone tomb. Upon the top of the tomb lay a life-size effigy of a knight in full armour, with his helmet on his head, the visor raised to show his grim unsmiling face, and his mailed hands crossed upon his breast. His great cross-handled sword was by his side, and it was not carved out of stone like the rest of the effigy — it was a real sword, bent and rusty with its great age, but real. But even more exciting to Maria than the sight of that great sword was the fact that there were two animals carved at the top and bottom of the tomb. The knight’s head was pillowed upon the recumbent figure of a little horse, and his feet were propped against a creature the living image of Wrolf. After that, Maria was not surprised to find the Merryweather motto carved in Latin round the tomb. She was just spelling out the faint almost obliterated lettering when Robin popped up from behind the tomb, brandishing a scrubbing-brush. He grinned at her, and she grinned at him, and it seemed to Maria that suddenly the sun came out.