The Little White Horse Read online

  ‘Black William’s daughter was a beautiful girl, tiny and exquisite as a fairy child, slim as the sickle moon; not dark-complexioned like her father, but of an exquisite fairness, with silvery fair hair and silvery grey eyes and a skin like milk. Indeed so silvery fair was she, and so regal was her air, that throughout the valley she was called the Moon Princess.

  ‘Though he had not at first wooed her for love, her beauty was so great that by the time their wedding day came Sir Wrolf was as enamoured of her as a man can be of a woman, and she of him.

  ‘He made the manor-house as beautiful as he could for her, hanging rare tapestries upon the walls and furnishing the chairs with silken cushions. And at the top of one of the towers he made for her a lovely little boudoir, with windows looking north and south and west over the kingdom of Moonacre. He caused the sickle moon to be carved in the stone ceiling, with the stars circling around it like courtiers round their queen, and he made the door to the room so small that only someone of fairy stature could enter the room; for she was not so talkative by nature as he was himself, and he knew she would value this assurance of privacy.

  ‘Sir Wrolf’s wedding gift to the Moon Princess was an exquisite little milk-white horse, a little wild horse that he had found the week before his wedding entangled in a thorn-tree on Paradise Hill. They say in the valley that every morning at dawn the white horses from the sea sweep inland in a joyous wild gallop that nobody sees because they are so quickly gone again, and legend has it that this little white horse was one of them. He could not go back to the sea with the others because the thorn-tree had caught him. He was a fairy horse, but different from other sea-horses because he had a horn sticking out of his forehead, and this horn, catching in the thorn-tree, was his undoing; but, of course, I cannot vouch for the truth of that . . . Though I do know that to this day our villagers believe that old thorn-tree on Paradise Hill to be much frequented by the Little People, and they go there always on high days and holidays and stand beneath its branches and have three wishes.

  ‘The Moon Princess’s wedding gift to Sir Wrolf was a great ruby set in a ring and a huge tawny animal, a sort of dog that had been hers since puppyhood. She had no dowry to bring him, for Black William was a poor man, but she did bring with her a lovely string of moony pearls that had been her mother’s.

  ‘It was at the time of his wedding that Sir Wrolf adopted as his family crest the two animals, the dog and the horse, and as his family motto: “The brave soul and the pure spirit shall with a merry and a loving heart inherit the kingdom together.”’

  At this point Old Parson paused for such a long time that Maria wondered if this was the end of his story. But it wasn’t. He sighed deeply and sadly and then went on again.

  ‘I should have liked to stop there,’ he said. ‘I should like this story to be like all the best stories and to end in “Happy ever after”. But it did not, and I must tell it as it has been handed down to us through the generations . . . Well, children, at first all went well with Sir Wrolf and the Moon Princess, for they remained most deeply in love with each other, and they had riches and good health, while the health of Black William rapidly grew worse, and Sir Wrolf saw himself in a fair way to gain possession of the pine-woods and the fishing in the bay. There was only one thing wanting to their happiness, a child; but Sir Wrolf had wrested so much that he wanted from life already that he did not doubt he would have a son, too, all in good time. And then, quite suddenly, Black William got married; not to a great lady but to a farmer’s daughter from over the hills, and a lusty little dark-skinned dark-haired son was born to him; and Sir Wrolf’s cup of bitterness was full.

  ‘That was the beginning of the estrangement from his wife. The little Moon Princess, possessed of a truthful and a pure spirit, had not before realized the depth of her husband’s guile. She had believed his conversion from his evil ways to be a genuine one, and she had believed he had wooed her from love alone. Now, as he raged and stormed against her father and his child, unconsciously revealing in his rage every thought of his mind for years past, she understood the truth, and her pride — and she had a very great pride — was wounded to the quick. She would not believe him when he told her that he did now most truly love her. His utterly true protestations of love she took to be lies; and her love for him turned slowly to hatred.

  ‘Then to her, too, there was born a child, the longed-for son. But it was too late for husband and wife to come together again. The babe was like his father who had deceived her, and for that reason his mother could not love him. She left him to the care of nurses and his doting father, and spent most of her time shut up in her tower room or working in the manor-house garden. They say it was she who planted those yew-trees and had them cut into the shapes of knights or cocks, just to annoy her husband.

  ‘And then the garden, as well as the house, became hateful to her, and she took to spending more and more time riding her beautiful little milk-white horse through the glades of the park, and up and down Paradise Hill, and down through the heather to the sea. Especially did she like to ride on Paradise Hill, and she would dismount and sit for hours at a time beside the monks’ well, and beside the thorn-tree where the little white horse had been found, and it seemed that on Paradise Hill she and her little horse found some happiness and peace. Yet she lived a life of loneliness and sorrow, for as her pride cut her off from her husband and child, so did it separate her from her father and stepmother and their child and the castle in the pine-woods. For her stepmother was only a farmer’s daughter and she would not consort with such. And she had, too, though she hated him now, a loyalty to her husband, and would not make friends with his enemies.

  ‘For the old feud had broken out again, and Sir Wrolf and Black William were once more enemies, with their servants fighting each other whenever they met, and the whole countryside groaning beneath the burden of their rage. And then, in quick succession, there occurred two startling events. Black William suddenly disappeared and, as no trace at all could be found of him, he was given up for dead. And only a month later word came to Sir Wrolf that the little dark-haired baby had been found dead in his cradle, and that his mother, overwhelmed by her grief, had gone back to her own people beyond the hills, taking with her the body of her son. So now the pine-woods leading down to the sea were the property of Sir Wrolf, through his wife the Moon Princess, and he had won his heart’s desire.

  ‘But it did him no good. Though there was no evidence that Sir Wrolf had had anything to do with Black William’s disappearance, and no evidence that the little dark-haired baby had died of anything worse than one of the usual childish ailments, the Moon Princess, her mind warped by loneliness and wounded pride, was convinced that her husband was responsible for both deaths. She believed him to be no better than a murderer, and she could no longer endure to live under his roof. So, one cool, starry night, when all the household was carousing after the evening meal, she dressed herself in her riding-habit and, taking with her nothing except her string of moony pearls, she stole down to the stable-yard and harnessed her little white horse and rode away into the park, and was never seen again.’

  Once more there was a long pause, and Maria found that her heart was beating very fast indeed.

  ‘Did no one ever know what happened to her?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Old Parson. ‘No one ever knew what happened either to her or to her little white horse.’

  ‘What happened to Sir Wrolf?’ asked Maria.

  ‘He was heartbroken, and he never ceased to mourn for the little Moon Princess,’ said Old Parson. ‘And scarcely a day passed that he did not ride his great chestnut horse, with his tawny dog following behind, through the park and the woods and the fields, and round and round Paradise Hill, looking for her. But he never found her. And ten years after she left him he died, a bitter and unhappy man, who got little joy from the fact that he left to his son John the whole of this lovely valley, from hill to hill, as his inheritance, and that of his heirs, for e
ver.’

  ‘And what happened to the great tawny dog?’ asked Maria.

  ‘Throughout Sir Wrolf’s life he remained faithful to the master to whom he had been given,’ said Old Parson, ‘but when Sir Wrolf died he went back to the pine-woods from which he had originally come; and he too was never seen again.’

  ‘But the Men from the Dark Woods?’ asked Maria. ‘You have not said anything about them. That can’t be all the story.’

  ‘It is time that all these children went home to their breakfasts,’ said Old Parson. ‘And time that you and I took ours in the Parsonage.’

  Maria understood. The part of the story the Old Parson had just told her was known to all the world, but there was some more of it that was the private property of the Merryweathers, and this he would only tell her privately. She got up and smoothed her dark-blue gown, and said smiling good-byes to the children as they trooped away to their breakfasts, Robin with them. She was sorry to see Robin go. She had hoped he would have come to breakfast at the Parsonage too. But he didn’t. He gave her a beaming smile, tossed her the little bunch of primroses that he was wearing in his jerkin, and went away with the rest.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1

  MARIA and Old Parson went out into the churchyard, turned along a path to the right, and so came to a wooden gate leading into a small, sweet, tangled garden where currant bushes and rose bushes and square plots of bright spring flowers spread themselves fragrantly before the Parsonage front door.

  The little, grey, squat Parsonage was so old that it looked more like an outcrop of rock than a house. It was overgrown with creepers and clematis and roses and honeysuckle, through which its small diamond-paned windows and old oak front door peeped shyly. Old Parson opened the door, and they were in the living-room of the Parsonage, a place of such attraction that Maria’s eyes opened wide in delight.

  It was a large room, for apart from the little kitchen leading out of it there was no other room on the ground floor. There was a wide stone hearth at one end, with a bright log fire burning in it, and beside the hearth a fascinating little twisting stone staircase led up to bedrooms in the roof. The floor was of smooth flagstones, scrubbed to snowy cleanliness. Wooden bookshelves full of books lined the walls, and there were bright check curtains of white and red at the windows, whose panes had been cleaned and polished till they winked and gleamed like crystal. The walls were very thick, and in each deep window recess there stood a pot of salmon-pink geraniums.

  There was an oak table in the middle of the room spread with a white cloth and red-and-white breakfast china, and there was a settle by the fire and a couple of hard oak chairs, but no other furniture and no pictures or ornaments. But the room did not need them because of the books, which stood there upon the shelves breathing out a friendliness that seemed to furnish and ornament the room, as did its spotless neatness and cleanliness. Maria had no doubt that the loving usage that had turned the books into living creatures was Old Parson’s, but she could not believe that the cleanliness was the work of any mere male.

  ‘Do you live here alone, Sir?’ she asked. ‘I live alone,’ said Old Parson. ‘But I have a housekeeper, who lives in the village and comes in each morning for an hour or so to cook and clean. Her name is Loveday Minette.’

  Then Old Parson looked out of the window and sighed a little. ‘There are times when I wish I did not live alone,’ he said. ‘Even with the company of my violin, the snowbound winter evenings can be very long. Now take off your bonnet and cloak, my dear, and Loveday will bring breakfast.’

  But Maria had done no more than loosen the strings of her bonnet when the door leading to the kitchen opened and a woman came in carrying a tray with brown boiled eggs upon it, and coffee, and milk and honey and butter, and crusty home-made bread.

  But for once Maria was oblivious of good food, and with her hands arrested at her bonnet strings she stood and gazed at Loveday Minette as those gaze who look upon a dream come true and wonder if they sleep or wake. For when in lonely moments the motherless Maria had imagined for herself the mother she would like to have, that mother had been exactly like Loveday Minette.

  She was slim and graceful as a willow wand, tiny as a fairy’s child, with a beautiful milk-white skin faintly tinged with rose. Her smooth straight hair was pale gold, and was wound round her head in a great plait like a crown, which gave her a regal air that was in keeping with the proud erectness of her bearing. Her eyes were grey and direct in their glance as Maria’s own, and though her sweet smiling lips were delicately moulded they were strong, too, and there was just a hint of obstinacy in the clear-cut line of her jaw. So great was her beauty that at a first glance she looked young, but at a second glance one saw that she was not young. There was grey in her pale-gold hair and a faint pencilling of lines about her eyes, and her hands, though beautifully shaped, were roughened by many years of toil. She wore a grey linen gown, sprigged with small pink roses, with a plain white kerchief folded across the breast and a white apron. She set the food upon the table, smiled at Maria as though she had known her always, then came to her and unfastened her bonnet strings, lifted her bonnet off her head, and set her hair to rights with a few deft touches. Then she caressed Maria’s cheek with her forefinger, smiled at her again, put her bonnet and cloak on the settle, and went away.

  Old Parson meanwhile had brought the two chairs to the table and stood holding Maria’s very ceremoniously. Feeling like a queen, she seated herself, and he pushed it in, then sat down in front of her and helped her to eggs and coffee.

  For a little while Maria ate speechlessly, partly because the food was so good, and partly because the lovely familiarity of Loveday Minette had deprived her of the power of speech. Yet when at last she did speak to Old Parson it was not of Loveday, for somehow Loveday seemed too wonderful, too much of her own, to be spoken of, but of the story Old Parson had told them in the church.

  ‘You did not finish the story,’ she said to him. ‘There is another part of it, a private part of it, that you could not tell to the other children.’

  ‘That’s so,’ said Old Parson. ‘Sir Benjamin did me the honour of telling me the private part of it not long after I came here. We’ve always been friends. I have a great regard for Sir Benjamin, and he for me. He takes my outspokenness of speech in good part; and I am, I believe, the only creature to whom he has spoken of that queer mixture of legend and fact that I will relate to you. The old folk among the villagers know the story, but to them he does not speak of it.’

  Old Parson stirred his coffee silently for a moment or two, and then began to tell the story with a queer sort of remoteness, as though it were just some tale out of a book. He did this on purpose, Maria thought later, so that all that the story meant to her and for her should not startle her too much.

  2

  ‘Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world,’ said Old Parson. ‘You might think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake. Sir Wrolf, when he was told of the death of Black William’s child and when the mother went back to her own people, no doubt thought the Merryweathers had seen the last of that family. His son John, who could not remember his mother, doubtless thought of the Moon Princess and her little white horse as lost for ever out of this world. And doubtless he thought, too, that his father’s original deception of his mother was a sin that would not affect succeeding generations.

  ‘Yet all attempts to cut those yew-trees into any shapes but those of knights and cocks is doomed to failure; always they go back to their original shapes. And the wicked men live in the pine-woods today. And once in every generation the Moon Princess comes back to the manor; and for a short while there is great joy, for always the sun Merryweathers and the moon Merryweathers consort well together; but then, as if in punishment for the original sin, there is a quarrel, and the Moon Princess once more goes away.’

  ‘Must she
always go away?’ whispered Maria anxiously. For she herself, she guessed, was the Moon Princess in this generation. And she did not want to go away.

  ‘She always has gone away,’ said Old Parson. ‘Not necessarily from the valley, but from the manor. Yet the old folks in the village vow and declare that one day there will come a Moon Princess who will have the courage to deliver the valley from the wickedness of the Men from the Dark Woods. But like the princesses in all the nicest fairy-tales, she will have to humble her pride to love not a prince but a poor man, a shepherd or ploughman or some such country lad, and to effect the deliverance with his help, and that’s a thing which no Moon Princess has yet done, so proud are they one and all, so loath to accept assistance from another.’ Old Parson sighed and poured himself a cup of coffee. ‘And so it goes on, and the wickedness of the Men from the Dark Woods is still with us.’

  ‘But who are They?’ asked Maria. ‘If Black William’s only son died, they can’t be his descendants.’

  ‘Word was brought to Sir Wrolf that the child had died,’ Old Parson corrected her, ‘but no one was ever found who had actually seen the child dead. There are those who say that his mother, fearing Sir Wrolf might harm her child, said that he was dead and then fled with him to her own people. Be that as it may, fifty years later the black cock was once more heard crowing in the woods, and it was discovered that four men, who might have been the sons of that child, had come from over the hills and established themselves in the castle.

  ‘And their descendants have been there ever since, a curse to the whole neighbourhood. The Merryweathers may say they own those pine-woods running down to the sea and Merryweather Bay, but they no more own that bit of country than they own London Town. The Men from the Dark Woods own it. In the past there have been Merryweathers who have attempted to dislodge them by force or guile, but if driven away for a short while they always come back again. Your uncle wisely makes no such attempt. He endures them, and does what he can to protect animals from their cruelty and to make up to his people for all they suffer at their hands . . . And waits.’