Linnets and Valerians Page 8

  She stood and looked about her and she wondered if there was any place anywhere more lovely and strange than this, poised here halfway between the world of the trees and of the clouds. It was a miniature green valley, almost like a garden, held in a cleft of the rock. The two spurs of rock that contained it on each side were both the same shape, like the paws and forearms of a huge beast, and viewed from this side they were not menacing but protective, as though the beast held the garden in his arms. A small stream ran down the center of it and fell over the edge of the cliff down to the trees below, and the banks of the stream were thick with water forget-me-nots and green ferns. There were flowers everywhere in the grass and more ferns and little rowan trees grew up the sides of the valley. Nan put her flowers into a pool between two stones at the edge of the stream, to get a good drink, and she had a drink herself, lifting the water in her cupped hands. Then she sat down to rest and for the first time looked up at the rock at the head of the valley and saw it shaped like the chest of the beast, and up above it, against the sky, was fhe huge shaggy lion’s head. Now she knew where she

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  was, between the paws of the Lion who kept guard beneath the tor.

  She knew where she was but she still did not know where Betsy was. She called her but there was no answer and taking her flowers out of the water, she began to search the little valley, following a path beside the stream. It took her only a few minutes to reach its source, bubbling out of the rock near the head of the valley. She walked a little farther and the path brought her out into an open space in front of the lion's chest. Only now the mass of rock became less like a lion than a house. What from a distance had looked like the lion’s mouth was the mouth of a door-shaped cave up above her in the rock-face. Rough steps had been cut diagonally in the rock, leading up to the door, and at the bottom of them was a wooden workbench, a saw and ax, a pile of logs and a waterpot. Evidently the Lion was inhabited. He was alive.

  Still carefully carrying the flowers Nan climbed the steps with a beating heart. She was not afraid, for she knew there was nothing to be afraid of in this place, but life for the last few days had been not quite what she was accustomed to and she did wonder what was going to happen next. She reached the top of the steps, came to the mouth of the cave and looked in. There seemed no one about and she very timidly went inside. At once she felt as though she had gone back thousands of years, right back to the time when people had no homes except the caves, when they dressed in skins,

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  hunted the wild beasts and drew wonderful pictures on the cave walls. There was a picture in this cave, on the wall opposite her, but she could see it only dimly because smoke drifted between her and it, smoke going up in a waving blue column from the fireplace of stones in the center of the cave to a hole far up above in the roof. The floor of the cave was spread with dried ferns and there was a table of rough planks laid on logs of wood, a few pots and pans beside the fire, and bunches of dried herbs hanging on the walls. Light came into the cave from its opening and from the hole in the roof above and Nan found she could see quite well. She crept cautiously around the fire because she very much wanted to see the picture on the wall.

  It wasn’t one of the long-ago cavemen’s pictures because it wasn’t of wild animals. It was of men in tall hats with falcons on their wrists riding through a forest, and up above them was a town with towers and pinnacles perched on a mountaintop. Nan was reminded at once of Linden Wood and Lion Tor. The outlines of the picture had been incised in the rock with a sharp tool and the colors carefully applied within the outlines. It was not an oil painting and it looked as though the artist had got the colors from roots and flowers. The picture was not very clear yet Nan could feel the mystery of the wood, and the airy-lightness of the towers in the sky.

  She moved on around the cave and there were other pictures on the walls, more like the cavemen’s pictures

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  because they portrayed hares, foxes, squirrels, striped badgers and all sorts of birds. She did not yet know the names of the birds and beasts but the little pictures made her love them. In one corner she found a bed of dried heather spread with old sacks and near it some roughly made wooden dishes, a clay pot full of wild flowers, and a basket of woven reeds containing dry wrinkled apples, nuts and queer-looking roots. But no Betsy. She was on the point of going out again when she noticed a curtain of hide hanging on the wall, lifted it and saw a narrow fissure in the wall of the cave, just wide enough for a man to squeeze through, and beyond it a roughly made wooden ladder ascending a sloping chimney in the rock. Pale green light filtered down the chimney, so she supposed it led up to the hillside above. She dropped the curtain and drew back, for the ladder was so steep and the rungs so far apart that she did not think Betsy could possibly have gone up it.

  But after a moment or two she realized that someone was coming down it for she heard heavy footsteps slowly descending. Had it not been for Betsy she would have run away, but she had to ask whoever it was whether he, or it, had seen Betsy. So, trembling, she stood her ground.

  He came out backward from behind the curtain and with deep relief she saw he was a man, not a thing, a tall man with bent shoulders and tawny hair and beard. He turned around, straightened up and saw her. His jaw dropped in consternation and a look of alarm came

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  into his golden-brown eyes. He was dressed in the oddest assortment of ragged garments and seemed to be what Grandmama called a tramp. She did not like them and had a notice on her gate which said NO TRAMPS, NO VENDORS, BEWARE OF THE DOG. But Nan liked this man on sight just as she had liked Ezra and Moses Glory Glory Alleluja. He was big and strong, and golden like a lion, yet at sight of her he had begun to tremble too, and because he was frightened she ceased to be afraid. To reassure him she held out to him the flowers she was still carrying. He took them with joy, his whole face lighting up, counted them carefully and added them to the other flowers in the clay pot.

  “You dropped them?” asked Nan.

  He nodded and smiled at her and taking a wrinkled apple from a basket he held it out to her. To please him she took it and ate it but it was dry as a piece of leather. He opened his mouth and made a strange sound, an expression of deep sorrow came over his face, and Nan knew that he was dumb. She knew because they had had a dumb servant in India, and he had made those same strange noises and his face had worn that same look of bewildered sorrow. Nan had grown very clever at saying for him what he wanted to say and she found she could do the same for this man. “You were picking flowers in the wood down below,” she said, “and you heard voices and a dog barking and you ran away and climbed up above the treetops home again, but in your hurry you dropped some of the flowers. One must not

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  drop flowers for then they die. It was only my voice you heard, and Ezra’s, and our dog barking at a pheasant, and we wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

  An expression of relief came over the tramp’s face and taking her hand he bent down and kissed it. His gesture was gentle and courteous and she thought that after all he couldn’t be quite an ordinary tramp, not the sort you warn off by notices on the gate about savage dogs that aren’t there, and he would understand how anxious she was about Betsy. Leaving her hand in his she told him about Betsy being lost. He looked sad and shook his head to show her that Betsy was not here, and he pointed up the ladder down which he had come and shook his head again to tell her that Betsy was not up there with the sheep on the hillside. Then, taking Nan with him, he went to the mouth of the cave and stood looking out, his hand over his eyes. They saw no one at first and then the tramp gave a croak of pleasure, for down below them in the small valley was a little white figure scurrying along by the stream. But it wasn’t Betsy, it was Absolom. “It’s Absolom, our dog,” said Nan, and she and the man climbed
down the steps to the valley.

  Absolom came bounding to meet them, his tongue out and his ears flapping, very proud of himself that he had found Nan. He had a bit of paper fastened to his collar with a piece of gardener’s string and Nan took it and read it. On one side of it, in Uncle Ambrose’s beautiful handwriting, was a list of the groceries that Ezra had bought and the children had found in the cart and

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  eaten, and on the other side crookedly printed words had been inscribed so painfully and laboriously that in places the pencil point had dug right through the paper.

  Dear maid come back I cant get up them rocks on wooden leg nor couldnt the little un get up em no harm in Daft Davie but your uncle wouldnt like it dear maid come back now respectfully Ezra Oake.

  Nan was glad she had not read the message aloud because of the word daft. If this man was Daft Davie he was not daft and she felt hot with indignation that anyone should call him so.

  “It is Ezra,” she said, “and he’s down below in the wood and he is anxious about me but he can’t come up because of his wooden leg. So as Betsy isn’t here I must go back.”

  Daft Davie looked very bewildered and so Nan told him how they had come to live with Uncle Ambrose for always, and she would see him again. Then she said good-bye and ran off down the valley with Absolom. Just before she climbed up over the Lion’s paw she turned and looked back and there was Daft Davie at the top of the steps just outside the entrance to his cave. He was watching her go away and he looked very sad. She waved to him, and she felt sad too, but she knew she would see him again, and his wonderful home inside the Lion’s head.

  Ezra was waiting for her and Absolom at the foot of

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  the cliff and he was pleased to see them again for he had been anxious. He was also annoyed. “Give I the slip like that again, maid,” he said, “and I’ll tell on you to your uncle.”

  “But I had to go,” said Nan. “The bees said so. There were four of them turning around and around in the sunbeam and they led me on.”

  “Well now,” said Ezra, astonished, “what were they thinking on? The little ’un wasn’t up there.”

  “I must have had to go there,” said Nan, “or the bees wouldn’t have said so.”

  “That they wouldn’t,” agreed Ezra. “Don’t know, I’m sure. Well, us better be getting back to Manor. You’ve been gone nigh an hour and we ’aven’t found the little ’un.”

  As they went Nan said, “I like Daft Davie and I like his house. Who is he?”

  “Used to live over to Pizzleton, village down on the other side of Lion Tor. Worked for the blacksmith there. But the village boys laughed at him, being dumb and peculiar as you might say, and threw stones and that, and he ran away and he’s lived on Lion Tor ever since. He earns a bit now and again, helping with the lambing and the harvesting, selling baskets and such like. Clever with his hands. But he’s daft, poor chap. No harm in ’im.”

  They were back again in the yard by the well but there were no signs of the others and no signs of Betsy.

  6

  Tlie Card en of tlie Fountain

  The second search party, Timothy, Robert and Moses, put Rob-Roy in the stable and set out for the gardens.

  “Where do the best flowers grow?” asked Robert.

  “In the garden of the fountain to the west of the house,” said Moses. “There’s wallflower and sweetbrier there, and come the summer there’ll be night-scented stock and mignonette. I plant there all things that be sweet to smell beneath the moon.”

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  “Don’t they smell sweet beneath the sun too?” asked Timothy.

  “They do, young master, but it be beneath the moon that milady paces the garden of the fountain upon my

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  arm.

  “Does Lady Alicia only go out at night?” asked the astonished Robert.

  “Only at night, young master.”

  “Why does she only go out at night?”

  Moses smiled and shook his head and gave no answer. Timothy thought that he was not a very communicative person. He spoke slowly, as though he were not used to talking, and his deep soft voice would begin a sentence with power and then die sadly away to a mere breath of sound. Yet he did not seem a dying sort of person for somewhere at the back of his dark eyes there was fire. Robert did not notice these things about Moses because he was a practical person, always much occupied in telling people what they ought to do, but Timothy was not practical and following where Robert led he was able to notice things. As Moses led them silently through the tall grass that bordered the terrace in front of the house he noticed three things. There was an uncurtained window upstairs and it was a little open, and three bees flew out of it as he watched. Those were two things. The third was the great wisteria vine that grew up the side of the house and had such thick branches that it would be possible to climb it.

  They came around to the west side of the house and

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  through an archway into a small garden entirely enclosed by yew hedges. In the middle of it was a fountain with a statue in the center, and there were winding grass paths and flower beds full of dark red wallflowers, southernwood, lemon verbena and thyme. And there were hedges of lavender and sweetbrier, rosemary bushes grown almost as large as trees, and an arbor grown over with honeysuckle. There was nothing growing here that was not sweet smelling and the little place was most lovingly taken care of.

  “Do you take care of it?” Timothy asked Moses.

  Moses smiled and nodded. “Moses is gardener to milady,” he said. “And chef to milady. And butler to milady and once he was coachman. But the horses are dead now and the rats have eaten holes in the seats of the carriage. No more horses.” He had begun to speak with a sort of forlorn pride but now his deep voice sank away into inaudible sorrow and Timothy wanted to cry.

  Robert didn’t because he was not listening. Being practical he was looking for Betsy. “She’s not in the arbor,” he called out. “Let’s look behind all the bushes.”

  Moses joined him in the search but Timothy felt quite sure that Betsy was not here. If she had been she would have heard their voices and called out to them. He wandered off by himself to the center of the garden where the fountain was. There was no longer any water in the marble basin and the man sitting on the rock in the center of it had moss growing on him and he looked heavy and weary. Yet he wasn’t old, because the beard

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  that flowed over his chest was crisply curly, and his hair, bound with a garland, was curly too. And the muscles of his back and bare arms were so strong that one expected him to be holding a sword or spear. But he wasn’t; he was holding in his left hand some queer sort of musical instrument made of reeds, the hand raised as though he had only just taken it from his lips, and his right hand was lifted too as though he was calling to someone to listen to the echo of his vanished music. His face was strong and sad and two strange little horns grew out of his head. Timothy had not noticed the horns at first because they were almost hidden in the curly hair, and when he did notice them he began to feel a little scared. Then he looked down at the rock on which the man was sitting and had the shock of his life, because he saw suddenly that the man was only a man as far as the waist. Below the waist he was an animal with hairy goat-shaped legs and hoofs instead of feet. Panic seized Timothy and with one part of himself he wanted to scream and run away, yet with the other part of himself he wanted to look again at the listening face and because he was a plucky child he stayed where he was and lifted his eyes. Looking up he was not aware now of heaviness or weariness but of power and loneliness. He was still afraid, but differently afraid. He no longer wanted to scream but he did want to be clear outside this garden, and suddenly he ran through the archway in the yew hedge and back to the place wher
e he had seen the three bees.

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  He looked up at the window and they were no longer there but he could hear a faint reassuring humming in the pale wisteria flowers over his head, and partly because he loved climbing trees and partly because he wanted to be up there with the bees, he began to climb up the wisteria. It was quite an easy climb for an agile small boy and so enjoyable that he forgot his panic in the garden, and in a few minutes he was on the flat top of the porch and not far below the open window. He climbed up a little farther, the porch below giving him a sense of not having to fall far if he were to lose his footing, and presently he was right under it and heard a murmur of voices mingling with the murmur of the bees. There were three voices, an old lady’s voice, a chattering monkey voice, and the other was Betsy’s. Timothy climbed down to the top of the porch again, slowly so as not to make a noise, and standing there he noticed a small uncurtained window almost hidden behind the wisteria to his left, a window that was neither upstairs nor downstairs but somewhere between the two. He walked cautiously to the edge of the porch and peeped through it, and he had another shock, for sitting on the floor of the little room inside, a room no bigger than a cupboard, was Frederick the cat washing behind his ears. Feeling eyes on him, Frederick turned his head and saw Timothy. They looked at each other and Timothy was so fascinated by Frederick’s unblinking stare that he could not look away.

  Then Frederick began to swell. He swelled and

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  swelled and his blazing eyes grew larger. One great paw struck the glass of the window and it cracked. Timothy did not wait any longer. He had no recollection of climbing down the wisteria. The next thing he knew he was running under the arch of yew into the garden of the fountain as though he were running home, and the great stone man in the center was no longer a frightening thing but a rock of defense.

  Moses and Robert came from behind a tree. “She’s not here,” said Robert. “We’ve looked everywhere.”