The Picts and the Martyrs Page 3

  And the reformed pirates took their visitors upstairs to their bedrooms, lit their candles for them, asked them if they had everything they wanted, and left them for the night. In spite of the big telescope lying handy, Dick decided not to wait for the stars. Dorothea blew out her candle and settled herself in the middle of the big spare-room bed. An owl called in the woods. “Not a barn owl, but a tawny,” thought Dick, listening to the sharp “Gewick! Gewick!” as he fell asleep. A smell of new-mown hay drifted from the meadows on the further side of the river. “There isn’t a lovelier place in all the world,” thought Dorothea. London last night, and now Beckfoot. The summer holidays had begun.

  CHAPTER III

  OUT OF THE BLUE

  NO ONE could have guessed from the way the day began how differently it was going to end. There was a dip in the river before breakfast, when Dick added three more birds, waterhen, wagtail and swan, to the list he had begun the night before. Breakfast, like supper, was a formal meal, with hosts being polite to guests and guests refusing to be outdone in courtesy by their hosts. They talked of plans, but these were all of the tamer kind.

  “You do understand, don’t you?” said Nancy. “It’s no good thinking of anything tremendous. It’s got to be plain ordinary life, to show Mother it was perfectly safe to leave us by ourselves.”

  “Of course,” said Dorothea. “We don’t mind. I’ve got a new story to write.”

  “And there’s the boat,” said Dick. “And birds, and that chemistry I’m going to do with Timothy. There wouldn’t really be time for anything else.”

  “Good,” said Nancy. “It feels a bit rum planning for nothing to happen instead of stirring things up, but that’s what we’ve got to do. There’s one thing about it. It’s easy.”

  “It’s going to be perfect,” said Dorothea.

  And then, soon after they had finished breakfast, the blow fell.

  A bell rang somewhere in the house, followed by a double knock on the front door.

  “Postman,” said Peggy.

  She and Nancy ran out into the hall.

  “There won’t be a letter for us yet,” said Dick.

  “There might be,” said Dorothea, and they went out after the others.

  The postman was just handing the letters over. “Nay,” he was saying, “they’re not all for your mother, nor for your uncle either. There’s a postcard for each of you … Bergen postmark … Fine-looking place … And a letter for Miss Ruth Blackett … Eh? I’m glad to see you back and hope you’re well …” He smiled cheerfully at Dick and Dorothea, whom he remembered from the year before.

  “Thank you very much. I hope you are, too,” said Dorothea.

  “Nowt to go back?” said the postman.

  “Not today,” said Peggy, and the postman went trudging off to his bicycle, which he had left by the gate.

  “Is something the matter?” asked Dorothea.

  Nancy had hardly glanced at the picture-postcards. She had dropped the letters for her mother and Captain Flint on the table in the hall. She was staring at the letter addressed to herself.

  “Something is the matter,” said Dorothea, and Dick, who had been looking at the postcards with Peggy, glanced up at Nancy’s face and saw that Dorothea was right. Nancy was holding the envelope in her hand almost as if she were afraid to open it.

  “Harrogate postmark,” she said, “and calling me Ruth … It’s a letter from the Great Aunt.”

  “Open it. Open it,” said Peggy. “Let’s get it over. It’s bound to be beastly. Like her nosy telegram,” she explained to Dorothea. “The Great Aunt never writes to us except for birthdays to hope we’re turning over new leaves.”

  Nancy opened the letter. Her face went crimson. She stamped her foot. “But I told her we weren’t alone,” she said. “Whatever are we to do? Cook!” she called. “Cooky! The most awful thing has happened. …”

  Dorothea stared at her. How could a letter from an aunt be so upsetting to an Amazon Pirate? She thought of other aunts they knew, most friendly, kindly creatures. Were Great Aunts somehow different? Dorothea could not believe it. She thought a Great Aunt must be something like Mrs Barrable, with whom they had been sailing on the Broads. And a letter from Mrs Barrable was always good fun for everybody with the little pictures her pen kept making when she let it run away. But there was Nancy, at first afraid to open the Great Aunt’s letter, and then looking as if it had brought dreadful news.

  “Is someone dead?” said Dorothea.

  “Ten times worse than that,” said Nancy.

  “What is it?” said Cook, who had come to the kitchen door.

  “Read it,” said Nancy.

  “Nay, I can’t read it,” said Cook, “not without my spectacles.”

  “Well, listen,” said Nancy. “It’s Aunt Maria. She’s coming here.”

  “She can’t do that, with your mother away,” said Cook.

  “That’s why she’s coming,” said Nancy.

  Nancy read the letter aloud:

  My dear Ruth,

  I have just learnt with surprise that your mother has chosen this time to go abroad with your Uncle James. Neither of them has thought fit to let me know of their intentions. I am horrified at the idea that you and Margaret are alone in the house. I cannot consider Cook sufficient guardian in your mother’s absence. It may have been from a wish to spare me anxiety that your mother did not tell me she was to be away from home when you returned from school for your vacation. A little more thought would have shown her that I should have preferred to hear from her than to receive such disturbing news at second hand. However that may be, my duty is plain. Inconvenient as it is for me to disarrange my plans, I cannot permit you two children to be thus abandoned to your own devices. You tell me your mother returns on the thirteenth. On that day I am expecting a friend whose visit I cannot defer. I have, however, cancelled all my engagements until that date, and am coming to Beckfoot tomorrow to take charge of the house till the eve of your mother’s return, when I shall have to leave you to prepare for my visitor at Harrogate. I shall be glad if you will ask Cook to air the spare-room bed for me. I have made, by telephone, my own arrangements for a conveyance to meet me at the station, and expect to be at Beckfoot between six thirty and seven o’clock.

  Believe me, my dear niece,

  Your affectionate Aunt,

  Maria Turner

  “Beast! Beast! Beast!” said Nancy. “And we can’t stop her. We can’t do anything. And she’s going to be here tonight.”

  “If Miss Turner thinks I’m not fit to look after you, I’d best be packing,” said Cook. “I’ll not stop in the house with her.”

  “Is she very awful?” asked Dorothea.

  “She jolly well is,” said Nancy. “You ask the Swallows. They know what it’s like when she’s here. She spoilt every thing for all of us. We had to be in for meals and learn poetry and wear best frocks and be seen and not heard and all that sort of rot. Ask Cook. She knows her, too. She fairly danced when she went away. Yes, you did.”

  “I wasn’t sorry to see the back of her,” said Cook. “Sitting down to meals before I had ’em ready. Looking at her tumbler and wiping it with her napkin. She’s one of them that can’t keep their eyes off the clock when other folk are a bit behind. If she hadn’t gone when she did she’d have had your mother in bed with all her worriting.”

  “Last time she was here,” said Nancy, “Uncle Jim told Mother she must never have the G.A. here again except in term time. And Mother said she never would.”

  “Let’s take to the hills,” said Peggy. “Let’s clear out to the island. Cook can come, too. We’ll leave the key for the G.A., and she can stew in Beckfoot all by herself.”

  Dorothea looked at Nancy. This was the sort of plan that Nancy herself might have made in ordinary times. But Nancy, in charge of Beckfoot, was a different Nancy.

  “We can’t,” she said. “No camping till Mother comes back.”

  “She’ll ruin everything,” said Peggy. />
  “I know,” said Nancy. “But it’s not that that matters. Can’t you see? It’s Mother she’s hitting at, not us. She means to make Mother wish she’d never gone away. She means to make her wish she’d never been born.”

  “Well, I wish she hadn’t.”

  “Don’t be a butter-brained galoot,” said Nancy. “Mother, not the G.A. She’s going to make Mother wish she herself had never been born. We’ve got to stick it. So has Cook. We’ve got to soothe the savage breast. We’ve got to be so jolly good that she simply can’t not realize that it was all right for Mother to go away.”

  “I’d like to ramscramble the one that put it into her head to come,” said Cook. “Where are we going to put her, I’d like to know. Air the spare-room bed for her! I’ll have to put her in your mother’s room.”

  “Oh, look here, we can’t do that. She jolly well shan’t sleep in Mother’s bed.”

  “Where else?” said Cook. “She don’t know you’ve got visitors …”

  “She’ll be more furious than ever when she finds out.”

  “She will that. …” And then, Dorothea saw that Cook had something to say that she did not want those visitors to hear. Cook was going back into her kitchen, and Dorothea saw her give Nancy a beckoning nod.

  “It’s all right, Cooky,” said Nancy. “Spit it out. We’ve got no secrets from them.”

  “You come in here for a minute,” said Cook.

  “Go on,” said Dorothea. “Dick and I don’t mind. We’ll be in the garden … Come on, Dick.”

  Dick followed Dorothea out through the hall door at once, but even so they could not help getting a hint of what was in Cook’s mind. “Visitors while she’s away …,” Cook was saying. “Your poor mother’ll never hear the last of it.”

  *

  “We may have to clear out,” said Dorothea. “Did you hear what Cook said?”

  “Go home?” said Dick. “But we can’t. There’s Scarab nearly ready. And I’ve got to do those assays with Timothy. And we’ve only just got here.”

  “It can’t be helped,” said Dorothea. “I’m in the spare room and the Aunt wants to sleep in it.”

  “They’ll fix up a bed for you somewhere else.”

  “That isn’t all,” said Dorothea. “You heard that letter. She thinks Mrs Blackett oughtn’t to have left Nancy and Peggy. And Cook says it’ll be worse when she finds they’ve got visitors.”

  “But Mrs Blackett asked us.”

  “That’s just it,” said Dorothea. “Look here. I’ve got to tell Nancy we’ll go. I’d better tell her at once …” She went back into the hall. A tremendous argument seemed to be going on in the kitchen. She heard Cook, Peggy and Nancy all talking at once. “Hi! Nancy!” she called. The talking stopped suddenly.

  “Come on in,” called Nancy. “Cook says …”

  “Don’t you think we’d better go home?” said Dorothea. “We could come back after she’s gone.”

  “What about Dixon’s farm?” said Nancy, and Dorothea knew that her instinct had been right.

  “I thought of that,” said she. “And Holly Howe. But they’re both full up. That’s why Mother wrote to Mrs Blackett. We’d better go home. We can come back after she’s gone.”

  “We don’t want you to go,” said Nancy. “And Mother wouldn’t want you to go. She’d be as sick as anything. It’s only that the G.A.’s going to undo all the good of Mother’s holiday. Cook’s right about that. She’ll go for Mother for having you here at all … But why should you go? Why shouldn’t Mother ask you here if she wants to? Why should the G.A. be allowed to barge in and spoil everything? Hullo, Dick’s got something to say.”

  Dick had come in, and was standing in the doorway, wiping his spectacles with his handkerchief. Nancy, like Dorothea, knew the signs.

  “Spit it out, Professor,” she said.

  “Couldn’t we be badgers?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Couldn’t we go on being here and never let her see us? Like badgers. In lots of places people think they’re extinct. But they aren’t. Only they never let themselves be seen.”

  “She’d hear you moving in the house,” said Nancy. “And it wouldn’t be any good talking about ghosts to the Great Aunt. She’d go on the prowl till she found you.”

  “Things’d be a sight worse then,” said Cook.

  “Need we be in the house?” said Dorothea. “Our tents are here from last year.”

  “No camping,” said Nancy. “We promised that.”

  “If only the igloo wasn’t on the other side of the lake,” said Dick.

  “We could have lived in that all right,” said Dorothea. “We’d be Picts.”

  “Picts?” said Nancy.

  “Ancient Britons,” said Dorothea. “Prehistorics. Original inhabitants. They had to hide from the invaders and went on living secretly in caves and in the end people thought they were fairies and used to leave milk outside the door for them. Something like that. I heard Father talking about it. …”

  “What about the Dogs’ Home?” said Peggy.

  Nancy jumped off the ground with both feet at once. “Well done, Peggy,” she cried. “Well done, Dick! I was a galoot never to have thought of it. They could be Picts there for a hundred years and all the Great Aunts in the world would never know. Come on. Let’s go and have a look at it at once.”

  “That old place,” said Cook. “There’s no glass in the window and the roof’s likely enough down by now.”

  “Bet it isn’t,” said Nancy. “Glass doesn’t matter. Fresh air’s all right. And there’s a grand fireplace. And plenty of wood everywhere. Look here, Cookie, they could live in the Dogs’ Home as comfortably as anything till Mother and Uncle Jim come back.”

  “What about their meals?” said Cook.

  “Easy. Dorothea’s a splendid cook.”

  “I never have cooked,” said Dorothea. “But I’ve often watched Susan.”

  “There’s nothing in cooking,” said Nancy. “Not the sort you’ll have to do. And we can smuggle food out to you.”

  “Can’t you come too?”

  “She knows we’re here. We can’t escape. We’ve got to bear it. But it’ll be a lot easier if she isn’t made worse by finding we’ve got visitors.”

  “I don’t know what your mother’d say about it,” said Cook.

  “Look here,” said Nancy. “Mother wouldn’t want them to go home. She’d planned everything. Only she never thought the G.A. would be here. They’re jolly well going to stay. They’ll be all right in the Dogs’ Home. The G.A. won’t know anything about them so there’ll be one thing less for her to complain to Mother about. And if we can only manage to be angels for ten whole days she won’t have anything to complain about at all. Come on.”

  “She’ll be here at half past six,” said Cook suddenly. “And you’ve got the spare room looking like a nightmare.”

  “You get at it right away,” said Nancy. “We’ll tear down the skulls and crossbones when we come back. We must just see if the Dogs’ Home’s fallen down.”

  “But …”

  “Settled,” said Nancy. “It’s the only possible way. Come on, the Picts.”

  And leaving Cook worriedly fingering Miss Turner’s letter, Nancy and Peggy, followed by Dorothea and Dick, went out of the kitchen, through the yard and turned right outside the Beckfoot gate along the road that led up the valley under the steep woods.

  “But what is the Dogs’ Home?” Dorothea asked Peggy.

  “You’ll see,” said Peggy.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE DOGS’ HOME

  NANCY was racing ahead. “Hammocks,” she said over her shoulder. “You’ll do better in them than sleeping on the ground.”

  “There might be a rat or two,” said Peggy.

  “How far is it?” asked Dorothea.

  “No way,” said Peggy. “That’s the beauty of it. It’s up in the wood just round the first bend.”

  Dick and Dorothea knew the road that passed Beckfoot
, turned inland to the bridge over the little river, and divided into two, one road going to the head of the lake, and the other going on up the valley and past High Topps over to Dundale. But they had never been up into the woods that sloped steeply down to it behind Beckfoot.

  “If only it hasn’t tumbled down,” said Nancy.

  “We haven’t been up there for ages,” said Peggy. “It’s where we used to go when we were young, before we had Amazon and before we discovered Wild Cat Island. It’s a jolly good place.”

  “It’s a jolly good place to be hidden in,” said Nancy. “No one can see it from anywhere and we can slip up there ourselves if ever we can escape.”

  “Just the place for badgers,” she said a moment later. “Or Britons, or whatever it was you said.”

  “Picts,” said Peggy.

  “This way, the Picts!” said Nancy, and turned off the road through a gap in the low stone wall at the bottom of the wood.

  *

  Dick and Dorothea followed breathless, not so much because they were hurrying as because of the speed with which things were happening. Plans for a quiet life had been blown away in a moment. That letter from the Blacketts’ Great Aunt had changed everything. Why, even Cook, who had seemed so pleased to see them, had been as much upset by it as Peggy and Nancy. At breakfast they had been welcome visitors, but after the coming of that letter even Cook had not been able to pretend that it was not a pity they were there. What could the Great Aunt be like? And then a word from Dick about being badgers, a word from Dorothea about being Picts, and already they were looking for a hiding place. Better than going home, of course, but … a dogs’ home, kennels. …

  “Buck up, you Picts!” said Peggy.

  *

  There was a belt of tall pines and larches along the side of the road. A path from the gap in the wall led suddenly from sunshine into shadow. For twenty yards or so there was a clear track covered with brown needles. But beyond the pines and firs was coppice, oaks and hazels and silver birches, and the Picts could seldom see more than a yard or two ahead. For a little way the path was good enough under foot, and then, suddenly, it turned into something like the bed of a dried-up mountain stream, sharp-edged stones and rocks with here and there a tiny pool. Dick and Dorothea found it pretty hard going, stepping from one stone to another, and at the same time fending off the hazel branches.