The Picts and the Martyrs Read online

  In the kitchen Cook was filling tins with tea and sugar and Peggy and Nancy were packing things into knapsacks. “And a cake,” said Cook. “And a beef roll to start on, and a dozen eggs. Dearie me, I wish I knew if I’m doing right or wrong.”

  “Right. Right. Right,” said Nancy. “There’s nothing else to be done and you know it. Look here, if you and Peggy and I all fairly bust ourselves being angels she’ll simply have to let Mother alone. But if Dick and Dot are here she’ll be down on Mother and down on us and down on them and we’ll never be able to hold in and everything’ll be ten million times worse.”

  “Well, I’m doing it for the best,” said Cook. “And if it turns out bad …”

  “It won’t. Their house is splendid. They’ll be better off there than here. And you’ll be able to smuggle grub to them. Where are our mugs and the camping spoons and knives and forks?”

  “Out of my kitchen all the lot of you,” said Cook. “We’ll be having her here before they’re out of the house. Miss Peggy, come out of my larder …”

  “All right, we’ll leave the rest of the stores to you. We’ll be getting on with all the other things. Giminy, there’ll be a lot to carry. And we can’t use dromedaries either. Nobody could push a bicycle up that path … Come on the Picts. Everybody cart what they can.”

  *

  For the next few hours even the Great Aunt herself was forgotten in the rush of house moving. They had not far to go, but every single thing had to be carried by hand. There were the two packed suitcases, that the four of them, two to a suitcase, found quite enough to manage, going up the steep place through the hazels where the overflow from the beck had washed the path away. There were the hammocks, a three-legged stool, a Tate & Lyle sugar case for a table, a hurricane lantern, the scarab flag, the folded paper skull and crossbones, the big camp kettle, a huge saucepan, a teapot, mugs, spoons, knives, forks, plates and more stores than would go into all four knapsacks. There was the little barrel, filled with lemonade, that had to be slung from a pole and carried up by Nancy and Peggy, who explained that in the ordinary way they carried their grog slung beneath an oar.

  Down at Beckfoot, as they came dashing in for fresh loads, they found Cook getting hotter and hotter, shaking out rugs, dusting and generally trying to do twenty-two things at once.

  “And what about your tea?” she said late in the afternoon, as Nancy went off for the last time with a knapsack in each hand.

  “No time,” said Nancy. “We’ll hang on till supper. There’s an awful lot to do.”

  “And them two?”

  “They’re all right. Rigging hammocks with Peggy.”

  “You’ll be back before Miss Turner comes?”

  “Back and beautiful,” said Nancy. “Be an angel, Cookie, and save time by digging out our best frocks.”

  *

  Up at the hut in the wood, the pile of things dumped outside it was dwindling. The two hammocks had been slung under the big cross-beams. Stores and crockery had been allowed to share the shelf high above the fireplace with Dick’s microscope and books. The huge skull and crossbones had been fixed up on the wall. A soap box, in a corner well away from the fire, was being used as a larder. The sugar case made a table and store cupboard in one.

  MOVING HOUSE

  “We’ve forgotten something,” said Dorothea. “What about our sleeping bags? They’re put away somewhere with our tents.”

  “Have you ever tried to get into a sleeping bag in a hammock?” asked Nancy. “It can’t be done … not unless you’re a sort of eel. That’s why we brought the rugs.”

  Dick was looking at the hammocks. He was wiping his spectacles. Dorothea knew that he was trying to work out the scientific way of getting into a hammock slung far above the floor. But he did not say anything, and neither did she. That sort of thing they would have to find out for themselves.

  “Barbecued billygoats,” said Nancy. “Who slung those hammocks?”

  “I did,” said Peggy. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Let go this end of this one,” said Nancy, “while I do the other, and then make it fast again with a bowline. Then they can undo them and roll them up during the day. We’ll roll them up now.”

  “No, no,” said Dick. “Please leave them so that I can have a good look and be able to do it tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. By that time they would have slept in those hammocks … if they could ever get into them. Dorothea looked hurriedly away.

  “It’s a lot better than the igloo,” said Nancy. “And it’ll be better still when you’ve lived in it a bit.”

  “Let’s start the fire again and make tea,” said Dorothea.

  “What’s the time?” said Nancy.

  Dick pulled out his watch. “Twenty-two minutes to six.”

  “Goodbye, Picts,” said Nancy. “She’ll be here before we’re ready if we don’t go.”

  “Do you think she’s really going to make it very awful?” said Dorothea.

  “Pretty awful, I expect,” said Peggy. “She usually does.”

  “It would have been a jolly lot worse for everybody,” said Nancy, “if she’d found visitors in the house with Mother away. We’ve saved that anyhow, thanks to you people not minding being kicked out.”

  “We’re going to be all right,” said Dorothea. “But what about you?”

  “We’ll keep her purring somehow. Come on, Peggy. You’ve got a smear right across your face. Hurry up. Soap and water. White frocks. Oh gosh, and party shoes. Come on. Look here, we’ll never be able to give her the slip tonight, but one of us ought to be able to dodge out in the morning. One of us’ll have to, or you won’t have milk for breakfast. Goodbye. Picts for ever!”

  “Picts and martyrs!” said Dorothea.

  “Now to meet the lioness,” said Nancy, and, with Peggy close behind her, was gone.

  CHAPTER VI

  “SHE’S HERE!”

  THE noise of footsteps died away below them in the wood. Dorothea stood listening till she could hear them no more. Everything had happened with such a rush, there had been no time to think. Now, suddenly she began to wonder if after all they were doing the right thing, and, even worse, if they were going to be able to do it. She was sure they were right in clearing out from Beckfoot. What else could they have done? Nancy and Peggy were older than they were and had wanted them to go. Even old Cook had been thinking they would be better gone. But wouldn’t it have been better to go away altogether? Down at Beckfoot it had seemed quite simple, just to go and live in a hut in the wood. It had seemed easy till Nancy and Peggy had gone. Now, just for a moment, she found herself wanting to run after them.

  She turned to look at the Dogs’ Home that was now to be a house for Picts. Were they really going to live in that old hut, alone, high in the wood, with no one else within sight or call? Were they going this very night to sleep in it, and wake in it tomorrow alone and secret, like escaping prisoners hiding in a hostile country? They had never even camped except with other tents close by and with John and the capable Susan taking charge and doing the housekeeping for everybody. Was she going to be able to manage by herself? Wasn’t the whole idea a mistake?

  She looked at Dick and saw that he had no doubts at all. For him there had been a problem to solve and a solution found for it. If they could not live at Beckfoot, they must live somewhere else. Why not here? And she saw that Dick was already looking warily into the trees and trying to get a better view of some bird of which he had caught a glimpse. Dorothea pulled herself together. Nancy and Peggy down there at Beckfoot with the Great Aunt were going to have the really difficult time. And, whatever happened, she and Dick must not be the ones to let them down.

  “Come on, Dick,” she said. “Let’s see what wants doing to our house.”

  They walked round it and decided that the wall was so thick that there was no need to worry about the few stones that had fallen from it. A little moss well pushed in would stop any holes in the roof. “It’s a good solid house,” said Dick,
“and quite big enough, and it couldn’t be in a better place.” Dorothea, after walking around it, and remembering that at least there was no danger of its blowing away like a tent, half thought they would make a bit of a garden for it, but decided that the few foxgloves growing close to the hut were really better than anything planted on purpose. “We’ll not bother about a window box,” she said, “but we’ll have some flowers in a jam-pot. I found an empty one when we were clearing the sticks out. I wish I’d thought of taking some roses when I was picking them to go in the spare room.”

  “I wonder who left the jam-pot,” said Dick.

  “Some Pict or other before us,” said Dorothea. “It doesn’t matter so long as he doesn’t come back while we’re here.” She looked at the door of the hut. “I’m sure Susan would say we ought to have brushed it out first, before putting the furniture in. But we haven’t a brush.”

  “I can make one,” said Dick. “Where’s that saw the other Picts left?”

  In a very few minutes he had cut some young birch shoots and tied them into a firm bundle round one end of a straight ash sapling. Meanwhile Dorothea had pulled all the furniture out once more, the packing-case table, the soap-box larder, the three-legged stool, the chair with a broken back, the two suitcases. Then she set to work with her new broom and the hut filled with choking clouds of dust.

  “Better not sweep all the floor away,” said Dick.

  “I’ll just get the top layer off. It’s mostly twigs. I’ll sweep it into the fireplace ready for when I start the fire again for supper. Look here. You’d better be cutting logs.”

  Dick, while the dust came rolling from the door and window of the hut, set to work outside on the huge pile of dead branches. There was an old tree stump in the clearing, just the right height for him to use in sawing the thicker ends of the branches into short lengths. The thinner branches he broke across his knee, or by putting a foot on them and lifting. He had made two piles, one of small stuff for firelighting, and one of thicker bits, and was resting for a moment, to open and shut his fingers, cramped with holding the saw, when Dorothea came out to him with something in her hand.

  “Dick,” she said. “Somebody really has been using our house. Look at this.” She held out an open clasp knife with a bone handle.

  “Not very rusty,” said Dick. “Where did you find it?”

  “I nearly brushed it into the fireplace,” said Dorothea and stiffened … “Listen!”

  “Only a motor car,” said Dick.

  “It’s her,” said Dorothea.

  Dick stood listening, the knife forgotten in his hand. Above the noise of the little beck, above the noise of the rustling leaves, above the harsh shouting of some jays below them in the wood, they could hear a motor car coming along the road. They heard it hoot at a bend. They heard it passing.

  “Perhaps it isn’t going to stop,” said Dick.

  They heard it hoot again.

  “It’s turned into Beckfoot,” said Dorothea. “She’s getting out now. This very minute. Nancy and Peggy are saying ‘How do you do?’ They’re carrying her things in and asking if she’s had a pleasant journey … just like they asked us …”

  Presently they heard the motor car hoot again. They heard it pass once more along the road below the wood. They heard the noise grow fainter in the distance.

  “They’re in for it now,” said Dorothea. “We all are.”

  Things felt suddenly different, even for Dick. Before, somehow, the Great Aunt had hardly seemed a real person. All these preparations, the turmoil at Beckfoot, the sudden change from being visitors into being Picts hiding in a hut in the forest, might have been just part of one of Nancy’s games. The noise of the motor car coming along the road to Beckfoot and going away again had altered everything. It was like the moment in a game of hide and seek when a whistle blows far away and the hider knows that the search has begun and that it is not safe for him to stir.

  For some minutes they stood silent.

  “It’s no good wondering what’s happening,’’ said Dorothea at last. “We can’t do anything to help them.”

  Dick found suddenly that he was holding a knife in his hand.

  “It isn’t one of their knives,” he said, looking at it carefully. “At least, I don’t think so. Nancy’s has a lot of tweaks in it, tin-openers and corkscrews and things. And Peggy’s is a scout knife with a marline spike.”

  “If there’s another Pict …” Dorothea shook herself. “Anyway, that string on the door had been there a long time. The only thing to do is to hope he won’t turn up. I’ve done the floor. You’ve got a grand lot of wood ready. Give me a hand in getting the things in again, and then I’ll get the Are going and you take the kettle and find a good place to fill it from the beck.”

  They were given yet another hint that someone else had been using the hut when, after the furniture had been taken in and arranged on the floor now swept clear of rubbish, Dick went off to fill the kettle.

  He crossed the clearing to the beck and only a few steps from the path found what he wanted, a tiny pool with a foot-high waterfall dropping into it over the edge of a rock. He filled the kettle by holding it under the waterfall and saw that, though there are always plenty of little pools in a beck finding its way down a steep hillside, this pool had been improved by someone who had built a dam across it at its lower end. “Wash basin,” said Dick to himself. “And we’ll be able to wash up by putting plates and things where the waterfall drops on them.” He went back to the hut and found Dorothea on her knees before the fire, blowing at the rubbish, which had not flamed up as easily as she had expected.

  “But this is awful,” she said, when Dick told her about the pool. “It’s that other Pict again.”

  “Well, it’s going to be very useful,” said Dick.

  Then, as the flames began to leap, and Dorothea hung the kettle on the iron hook and begun to look among the stores, he turned to the hammocks. How, exactly, had Nancy fastened the ends that were to be let go in the day-time?

  “I’m not going to do anything difficult the first night,” said Dorothea. “We’ll start on the beef roll. It’ll go bad if we try to keep it. I won’t open a tin. Beef roll. Bread and butter. And there’s any amount of cake for pudding.”

  “All right,” said Dick. “I’ve found out about the hammocks, how she fastened them, I mean. The only thing I haven’t found out is how to get into them.”

  “They’re a long way off the floor,” said Dorothea.

  “We’ll have to use the stool for a step.”

  “I say. Do take care,” said Dorothea two minutes later, reaching for the loaf of bread which had been kicked out of her hands almost into the fireplace.

  “Sorry,” panted Dick, who was lying on his stomach across a hammock that had somehow twisted itself into a rope. Flying legs felt desperately for the stool, but it had fallen over. The only thing to do was to go on. He held tight to the hammock and went over it in a somersault, landing safely on his feet. “Sorry,” he said again. “It’s no use trying to get into it head first. Of course it won’t be so bad when the rugs are in it. But I think the proper way must be stern first.”

  “We’ve got to learn everything,” said Dorothea, who had began by cutting the first slice of bread before putting the butter on, and only then remembered watching Susan who always spread the butter on the loaf and then cut off the buttered slice.

  “Stern first is the way,” said Dick, “and it’s much easier if you get on the packing case first.”

  Dorothea turned round to see Dick lying in his hammock and looking very pleased.

  “It’s quite easy,” he said, “once you know. You pull one side of the hammock down and go at it stern first till you’re sitting in it, and then you swing your legs up.”

  “How about getting out?”

  “Legs first. Then slide. Like this …” And Dick stood breathless on the floor beside her.

  “Kettle’s boiling,” said Dorothea.

  They we
re a long time over that first meal in their own house. Somehow, though there was no cooking to be done, the different courses fell apart. In that big fireplace wood burned very fast, and by the time they had eaten their slices of beef roll, they had to bring in more of the logs Dick had sawn, and once they had begun doing that, they went on till they had a good pile waiting ready in a corner of the hut. Then they ate their cake. After that they still felt hungry, wondered what supper had been like at Beckfoot, and went on to eat bread and marmalade. By the time they took their dirty plates, mugs, spoons and the one sticky knife that had been used for everything, and went out to the washing basin in the beck, the sun had gone far round and the clearing in the wood was in shadow.

  Washing up was not a success.

  “It’s doing it with cold water,” said Dorothea. “I ought to have remembered that Susan always uses hot.”

  “Leave everything under the waterfall,” said Dick, “and it’ll be clean by morning.”

  “We’ll have hot water another time,” said Dorothea.

  It was growing dusk when they heard steps coming up the path from the road.

  “It’s that Pict,” said Dorothea. “What are we going to do if we have to clear out now?”

  “It’s somebody pretty large,” said Dick.

  “She’s found out already,” whispered Dorothea. “It’s the Great Aunt herself coming up to bring us back.”

  “Mercy me, it’s a pull up that brow,” panted old Cook as she came up out of the trees into the clearing. “And the path grown over with trees and underfoot them stones enough to break your legs. There’s one thing. We shan’t have Miss Turner walking up here. I thought I’d drop that dish a dozen times. Eh me, I hope we’re doing right.”