The Little White Horse Read online

  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.

  4

  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.

  The salt smell of the sea, the cool breath of it, seemed to be sending great surges of strength through her tired body, and over her head the seagulls wheeled in splendour and cried their strange strong cry.

  An ancient stone jetty was built out into the bay, and on it fishing nets had been laid to dry, and some ugly little fishing boats, with dirty black sails furled around their masts, were rocking on the blue water. At sight of these fishing boats Maria felt suddenly angry. Black sails! Ugly little boats on that sparkling sea. They should have been blue boats, red boats, green boats, yellow boats, with white sails like the wings of birds . . . And so they would be, when the wickedness of the Men from the Dark Woods was banished from this place.

  But at the present moment it wasn’t, and her efforts at banishment had been a complete failure, and Robin was pulling at her skirt with a warning cry. She looked round and saw them coming pouring out of the cave like horrible black beetles out of their lair.

  ‘Run!’ cried Robin.

  A steep dangerous little path wound up the rock to the top of the cliff above, and they ran for it, Serena leaping ahead and Zachariah coming behind. Unused as she was to rock climbing, Maria found the scramble very difficult, and Robin did not find it any too easy with Wiggins under one arm. He tried to put Wiggins down and make him climb by himself, but Wiggins wasn’t used to rocks either and refused to budge, so he had to pick him up again. It was a horrible climb, because very soon they heard the feet of the men behind them, gaining on them fast.

  It was a nightmare. And Maria wondered if when they got to the top they would be able to run fast enough to get away. Why, oh why, had Wrolf and Periwinkle deserted them? But they never would get to the top, she thought. In a very few moments now they would feel the hands of the Men from the Dark Woods closing round their ankles. She knew they were terribly close because of the way Zachariah was spitting and swearing in the rear.

  ‘Go on!’ gasped Robin behind her. ‘Faster! Faster!’

  But poor Maria couldn’t go faster. Her limbs seemed to have turned to lead, and her hands were sore and bleeding from holding on to the sharp rocks. The only way she could get along at all was by fixing her eyes upon the white blob of Serena’s tail, bobbing up the rock in front of her, and the hare’s two long ears waving like flags in the air. There was something very soothing in the sight of that blob of a tail, something invigorating in those cheerfully waving ears. Serena was apparently quite serene. On and on went Maria, seeing nothing at all now except Serena.

  And suddenly the hare gave a great leap and disappeared, and Maria’s sore hands were clutching not rock but tufts of heather, and she was looking straight up into the brown furry face of Wrolf. They had reached the top of the cliff, and Wrolf and Periwinkle were waiting there for them. She should not have doubted those beloved animals. ‘Wrolf! Wrolf!’ she cried, and flinging her arms round his neck she kissed him passionately upon his cold black nose.

  ‘Don’t waste time kissing them!’ cried Robin behind her in exasperated tones. ‘Get on him!’

  She got on him, Zachariah leaping up behind her, and Robin and Wiggins got on Periwinkle, and with Serena leaping ahead they rode like the wind for home, the seagulls wheeling and crying triumphantly over their heads. The pine-trees sped by them, and the clumps of golden gorse. Up hill and down dale they rode, and presently they reached Primrose Hollow, where they had found Serena, and then the pine-trees gave way to the oaks and beeches, and they saw the apple blossom waving over the orchard wall, with the towers of the manor-house rising beyond. They were safe now, with home in sight and the wicked men left far behind, and the galloping of Wrolf and Periwinkle changed to a gentle trotting. Maria and Robin could get their breath and smile at each other, and be happy because they were safe.

  ‘Well, it’s been a grand day!’ said Robin.

  ‘Yet we haven’t done what we meant to do,’ said Maria. ‘The Men from the Dark Woods are just as wicked as ever and angrier than they were before. We haven’t made them better, we’ve made them worse.’

  ‘Yet I don’t seem to mind, do you?’ asked Robin.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Maria. ‘I suppose we couldn’t expect to succeed at the first try. But there has to be a first try, and now we’ve had it, and it’s behind us.’

  ‘And it was a jolly good adventure,’ said Robin. And then he looked up at the sky and saw that it was flushed with colour. ‘Why, it’s sunset,’ he cried. ‘We’ve been out all day. I must run home or Mother will be anxious.’

  He jumped off Periwinkle, handed the reins to Maria, put down Wiggins, and sped away through the park in the direction of the gatehouse, turning round once to wave his hand to Maria. The sunset light lit up the long green feather in his hat and his rosy laughing face. Then he was gone, the trees gathering him in to themselves as though he were their child.

  5

  Maria rode slowly through the formal garden and into the stable-yard, where she found Digweed waiting. He did not say anything, but gave her a broad and comforting sort of smile, as though to say, ‘Never mind! Better luck next time!’ And then he led off Periwinkle to give her a good rub down and a good feed. Wrolf, too, when Maria had slipped off his back, gave her a reassuring, consoling look, and then he and Zachariah and Serena and Wiggins went slowly up the stone steps to the kitchen, in search of rest and food. They all looked very tired, Maria thought . . . All except Wiggins, who was leading the procession with the air of a conquering hero . . .

  But then Wiggins had done nothing at all the entire day except get in the way and be carried. His was the triumphant mien of the military commander who has taken no active part in the dust and heat of the battle, yet marches very actively indeed at the head of his troops when they return victoriously home.

  Only we aren’t victorious, thought Maria, and now that Robin was not with her any more she did, after all, feel a little discouraged. She felt as though she could not go indoors and face Sir Benjamin, who would see at once in her face that she had had an unsuccessful day. She sat down on the stone parapet of the well, and thought that she
would rest for a little while first.

  It was lovely and peaceful here in the stable-yard, with the white doves cooing about her and the blue sky over her head flecked all over with little pink clouds like curling feathers. She bent over and looked in the well and saw her own face looking back at her from the dark water; it looked white and tired and a little sad, and somehow not quite the face she was accustomed to. It looked, she thought, as the face of the first Moon Maiden might have looked when she rode away from the manor-house for ever. Perhaps, before she saddled her little white horse, she too had sat here on the parapet of the well for a little, and had seen her face reflected in the water with her lovely golden hair about it and her moony pearls shining about her neck.

  ‘What did she do with those pearls?’ wondered Maria.

  A high squeaky cough, a please-look-round-and-see-me cough, interrupted her thoughts, and looking round she saw Marmaduke Scarlet standing at the top of the kitchen steps. He nodded and smiled at her, and he too seemed quite undisturbed by the failure of this first day’s effort.

  ‘I am about to prepare an omelette for your delectation at supper,’ he said, ‘and I require the butter, which I put to cool this morning within the well. May I trouble you, young Mistress, to put your hand within the aperture just below you, to withdraw the required condiment and to bring it with you when you come within to make your toilet in preparation for the assimilation of the nourishment of which by this time you must stand in dire need?’

  At the conclusion of these remarks Marmaduke Scarlet bowed and withdrew, and Maria immediately prepared to do his bidding, for she knew his long speech meant in plain language, ‘You’re keeping supper waiting. Hurry up.’