The Little White Horse (25 page)

At this she had her host more startled than ever. His eyes positively bulged. ‘What makes you give me the name of Cocq de Noir?’ he asked.

‘Because it is your name,’ said Maria. ‘I know who you are. You are the descendant of that little son of Black William’s who was supposed to have been murdered by Sir Wrolf. But he wasn’t. His mother took him away to safety in the far country beyond the valley. He never came back to the valley, but his sons did, and all of you here now are the descendants of his sons.’

The astonished silence that greeted this statement told Maria that she and Old Parson had put two and two together quite correctly.

‘My ancestor, Sir Wrolf, was very wicked to try to take Black William’s land away from him,’ went on Maria. ‘But he was not any more wicked than you are, poaching and stealing in the way you do.’

‘My land is unproductive,’ snapped Monsieur Cocq de Noir. ‘We cannot rear livestock in a pine-wood. Upon what am I and my men to live if we do not poach and steal?’

‘You should trade with the valley people,’ Robin piped
up suddenly. ‘We never have any fresh fish in the valley. We’re longing for it. You should sell us your fish, and we would sell you our meat and eggs and poultry.’

Monsieur Cocq de Noir snorted with contempt. ‘It would be quite impossible for a Cocq de Noir to support himself in his ancestral castle with the dignity befitting his rank by selling fish,’ he said with an indignation that raised his voice gradually from an angry mutter to a shout of rage. ‘Where’s that string of pearls that my ancestress the Moon Maiden took with her to Moonacre Manor? Those pearls are the property of my family. Had I those pearls, I could sell them and live virtuously upon the proceeds until the end of my days. Wickedness has no attraction for me provided I can get what I want without it . . . Your family stole those pearls.’

‘We did not!’ said Maria indignantly. ‘Those pearls have not been seen since the Moon Maiden disappeared. She lost them, or she hid them, herself.
We
didn’t do anything with them.’

‘Give me those pearls,’ said Monsieur Cocq de Noir, ‘and I might seriously consider the mending of my ways.’

‘How can I give you what was lost hundreds of years ago?’ asked Maria angrily. And then she remembered what Loveday had said about not getting angry and she tried to speak more calmly. ‘We ought not to quarrel,’ she said. ‘If you will forgive Sir Wrolf for trying to get his land away from Black William, Sir Benjamin will forgive you for all your poaching and stealing, and then if you will promise not to be wicked any more, we can all be friends for ever after . . . For we are distant cousins, you know. The Moon Maiden is my ancestress too.’

But Monsieur Cocq de Noir was getting angrier and angrier. ‘Though Sir Wrolf did not murder Black William’s son, he murdered Black William,’ he stormed. ‘And that is a sin that will not be forgiven while any Cocq de Noir lives.’

‘Sir Wrolf did
not
murder Black William,’ said Maria stoutly. ‘Black William just got bored with everything
suddenly, like wicked men do, and went off by himself somewhere. And then I believe he just got into a boat and sailed away into the sunset.’

‘Prove it,’ shouted Monsieur Cocq de Noir, banging on the table with his fist. ‘Get me those pearls, prove to me that Black William was not murdered, and I’ll be a model of virtue till the end of my days.’

It was no good. Monsieur Cocq de Noir was being so utterly unreasonable in his demands that Maria simply could not keep her temper. Even though Robin leaned forward and made a warning face at her, and Zachariah miaowed a great reproving ‘Miaow!’, she simply boiled over.

‘You’re the most unreasonable man I ever met,’ she stormed, ‘as well as the wickedest! And if Black William was anything like you, I wouldn’t have blamed Sir Wrolf if he
had
murdered him — though of course he didn’t. And I’m ashamed to be your distant cousin, I am indeed.’

At this pandemonium broke loose. All the men leaped to their feet and shouted and waved their cudgels and guns, and the black cock on the beam crowed like mad, and Monsieur Cocq de Noir yelled at the top of his voice. ‘These are the most insolent children I have ever met. Put them in the dungeon and let them starve on bread and water. No sausages or apple-pie — only bread and water.’

Robin leaped to his feet. ‘Run for it!’ he shouted to Maria. ‘Quick! Run for it!’

He dived beneath the table, scooped up Wiggins, who all this time had been scrunching a delicious bone at Maria’s feet, and then they ran for it, making a dash for the stone staircase leading to the little gallery before the men quite realized what they were doing.

But the minute they did realize, they were after them, and the children could not possibly have escaped had it not been for Zachariah, who covered their retreat in the most masterly manner.

Swelling himself out to twice his in any case considerable
size, he advanced backwards behind Maria and Robin, spitting and scratching savagely, and shooting out such terrifying flames of fire from his great green eyes that the men were just for the moment daunted, and the four adventurers ran up the stairs and into the gallery, and through the little door into the friendly darkness of the tower stairs.

‘Go on running,’ gasped Robin. ‘Only another five minutes, Maria, and we’ll get away on Wrolf and Periwinkle.’

The children had only just reached the roof when they heard the men pounding up the stairs. They scrambled over the battlements and on to the branch of the friendly pine-tree and wriggled their way across, Maria going first, so much more afraid of the men than of the drop below her that this time she gave it no thought at all; Robin following after with Wiggins in his arms and Zachariah bringing up the rear. They reached the pine-tree and scrambled down it, and then, when they reached the ground, they had what they afterwards agreed was the worst shock of any that they had that terrifying day.

For Wrolf and Periwinkle were not there.

Then Robin grinned at Maria and took her hand. ‘We’ll do it on our legs,’ he said. ‘Run, Maria. Pull up your skirts and run. The men won’t dare scramble along the pine-tree branch, but they’ll come out of the main doorway and down the rock.’

They ran, and when they reached the clearing and Maria looked back over her shoulder, she saw that Robin was quite right. The Men from the Dark Woods were pouring out of the castle door and running down the flight of steps cut in the rock below.

‘Run! Run!’ urged Robin, but there was rather a despairing note in his voice, and indeed it was difficult to see how they could escape, for they were out of breath already, they were not sure of the way, and Maria was
impeded by her skirts and Robin was burdened with Wiggins. Only Zachariah, leaping easily along, seemed unhurried and unafraid. And then, suddenly, despair was turned into joy, for a beam of sunlight, piercing through the darkness of the trees, shone upon a beautiful, silvery, long-eared form leaping along ahead of them.

‘It’s Serena!’ gasped Maria. ‘Serena to show us the way!’

After this they were not afraid any more, even though they soon heard the men pounding behind them. They followed Serena, and ran and ran, until at last they saw looming up before them the great pine-tree where they had eaten their dinner. Serena bounded towards it, jumped between two of the great roots and disappeared.

‘She’s gone right down inside!’ gasped Maria. ‘Down into the hollow place underneath that Wrolf showed us!’

‘She means us to go down inside, too,’ said Robin.

Maria went first, squeezing herself between the roots and crawling through on hands and knees, and Robin pushed Wiggins and Zachariah in after her and then followed himself. They could only just do it. Had they been a very little bit fatter they would have stuck. And they were only just in time. One minute later and the first man to reach the pine-tree would have caught hold of Robin’s leg as he disappeared.

Down in the warm, safe darkness below the pine-tree roots they found themselves slithering down what seemed a steep bank of earth, and then they fell. But they did not hurt themselves because they landed comfortably on a soft bed of dried pine-needles.

For a moment they lay there panting, getting their breath back, seeing at first nothing at all in the darkness. And then, as their eyes grew accustomed to it, a beam of light filtering through the pine-tree roots far above their heads showed them a little of their surroundings, and they sat up and looked about them. They were in a little cave in the earth. They were sitting on soft ground, but the lower
walls of the cave were of rock. And then, as they were able to see better, they made a startling discovery . . .

Once upon a time this cave had been lived in . . . A hollow place in the wall was blackened, as though a fire had been lit there, and standing on a flat rock beside it was an iron pot that must have been used to cook stew in. And lying on the rock beside the pot were a huntsman’s knife in a metal sheath and a tarnished silver mug. Maria and Robin picked them up and looked at them, holding them close to their eyes in the dim light, and lo and behold, the sheath that held the knife was beautifully made in the shape of a cock, and upon the silver mug also there was traced the outline of a cock.

‘Someone lived here once,’ said Robin.

‘Black William lived here once,’ said Maria triumphantly. ‘I expect the pine roots were not so thickly twisted in his day, and there was quite a large opening. It’s just as I said, Robin. He got bored with all the quarrelling and came and lived here in the woods by himself.’

Robin opened his mouth to reply, but suddenly there was an alarming noise above, the noise of an axe on wood, and they discovered that they were not safe after all, and up they jumped. The men, too large to push their way through the small opening that had admitted the children, were hacking at the tree roots.

‘Look!’ cried Robin, whose eyes were now so accustomed to the dimness that they could see quite well. ‘Look at Zachariah!’

On the other side of the cave, opposite them, was the jagged three-cornered entrance to what looked like another cave, and Zachariah was standing there making frantic beckoning movements with his tail. They darted in after him, and it wasn’t a cave at all, it was an underground passage leading right down into the earth, very like the one that led down from Paradise Door to Loveday’s house. But they had no lantern now, it was all pitch dark.

However, Zachariah was as good as any lantern.
Maria took firm hold of his tail, as she had done when she crossed the pine branch, and Robin came behind her holding to her skirt with his right hand and carrying Wiggins under his left arm, and Serena lolloped after. They went stumbling away into the darkness, down and down, stubbing their toes against stones in the path, grazing their elbows against the sides of the rock passage, but led, sustained and supported by Zachariah’s tail.

Behind them they could hear a rending sound, and knew that their pursuers had made their way into the hiding place, and then a silence, as though they were taking a look at what they found there, and then a clanging of nail-shod boots on stones which told them that they were following them down the passage.

‘But they won’t get along as quickly as we’re getting along,’ said Robin encouragingly. ‘They haven’t got Zachariah’s tail.’

So they stumbled on in good heart, and presently a strange beautiful sound came up the passage to meet them, now loud, now soft, like music that swells and then dies away again, and then swells once more.

‘Whatever is that?’ asked Maria.

‘It’s the sea,’ said Robin. ‘I do believe, yes, I do believe, that we are going to come out in Merryweather Bay.’

Maria could not speak. Her excitement at the thought of being close to the sea at last absolutely choked her.

Presently there was a dim green light in the tunnel, and she could see Zachariah’s ears and whiskers outlined against it, and all the time that lovely sound of the sea was growing all about them. And then the tunnel widened out and they were in another larger cave, with opposite them upon its farther side an opening that framed a bit of dim yet lovely daylight. Zachariah was making for the daylight, but Maria halted him with a vigorous pull at his tail. ‘Look!’ she cried. ‘There’s Black William’s boat!’

They stopped and looked. It was lying on the floor of the cave, narrow and long, rather like a Viking’s ship. The wood had rotted away in places, but the ribs were
still there, stout and strong and beautifully shaped, and the prow of the boat was carved in the shape of a great cock with wings outspread.

‘There!’ cried Maria triumphantly. ‘That’s the boat in which Black William sailed away into the sunset.’

‘Then why is it here?’ asked Robin. ‘It ought to have been in the sunset.’

‘After Black William landed in the sunset, the little white horses who live in the sea brought it back to the land again,’ said Maria. ‘And one of them pulled it in here.’

Robin laughed the sort of laugh that says, ‘I don’t believe a word you’re saying’; and they might have stopped to argue about it, but Zachariah, who wasn’t interested in Black William’s boat but only in getting them to safety, pulled vigorously on his own tail and hurried them along towards that patch of daylight. Going through it they found it was the entrance to yet another cave, with a sandy floor strewn with shells, that led them straight out into Merryweather Bay.

‘Oh! oh! oh!’ cried Maria. ‘Stop, Zachariah! Robin, stop! Look, Wiggins! Look, Serena!’

And even though they knew the Men from the Dark Woods were after them, they all stopped and stared.

Merryweather Bay was shaped like the crescent moon. Beautiful rocky cliffs, full of caves, enclosed a little beach of coloured pebbles, and then a strip of golden sand scattered over with rocks that held pools of scarlet sea anemones, and shells, and coloured seaweeds like satin ribbon. Beyond the bay the sea was deep blue, flecked with white-capped waves that looked like galloping horses, hundreds of white horses stretching to the horizon in a glory of sparkling light that made Maria want to shout aloud for the very wonder of it. Within the bay this glorious sea came to meet them in wave after shining wave that curved and broke and fell, flinging showers of bright foam and rainbow-coloured bubbles to lie like tossed flowers at her feet.