That sunny day in May, their objective was not the stream but a newly mown meadow, perfect for cricket. When the Roscoe children arrived, little Alicia panting along behind in her wide, stiff skirts and petticoats, the Pendragons were already there, practising with their old bat and ball.
They gathered around to stroke the silky smoothness of the new white-willow bat, to admire the glossy red leather of the new ball.
“They’re mine,” Alicia announced loudly, hopping about on the outskirts of the group, trying to see her proud possessions. “Bofe of them’s mine. Rupert an’ James an’ Ned gived them to me for my birfday.”
“Today’s your birthday?” asked the smallish, green-eyed, gap-toothed Pendragon, turning to her. “Many happy returns! Are you going to lend them to us?”
“Ye-es,” said Alicia doubtfully.
“That’s Silly Allie,” Rupert explained, “our sister. We had to bring her.”
“An’ you promised I can play,” she reminded him.
“Oh, she can go out on the boundary, where she will not do any harm,” said the biggest Pendragon carelessly. “Let us choose teams. Not Roscoes against Pendragons. We shall split up the families.”
Alicia never did discover which team she was on. Whoever was batting, it was never her turn, and the ball never came her way, though she had listened carefully when told she had to catch it and throw it back. She made a daisy-chain long enough to go right over her head and round her neck and still she had touched neither bat nor ball. In fact, the dogs saw more of the ball than she did.
When Edward went in to bat for the third time, she lost her patience and marched up to the wicket.
“I want to hit.”
“You are too little.”
“Silly Allie, you’re only a girl.”
“The ball might hit you and then we’d be in the suds.”
“I would not cry,” Alicia said bravely.
“You will spoil the scoring.”
“Come along, Allie,” said Peter Pendragon, catching her hand and pulling her away, “I’ll bowl a ball for you to hit. We shall use the old ones, over there. They are just as good for learning.”
Carefully coached, Alicia learnt the joy of hitting a ball into the thrower’s hands. Her eight-year-old mentor was too kind to tell her that meant she was out. By the time she stumped homeward, weary but happy, in the wake of her brothers, she was already planning to marry him, in a year or two, when she was quite grown-up.
* * * *
Alicia had not made such a nuisance of herself on her birthday, that her brothers were prepared to argue with Nanny next time they were told to take their sister along.
They had arranged to meet the Pendragons at the stream. It descended from the moors in a series of still brown pools and white, rocky flurries, through a steep-sided, wooded valley. The widest pool was a foot or so deep and full of minnows. There, Sir Francis Drake (young Lord Pendragon, commonly known as Pen) once again led his fleet against the Spanish Armada (Rupert as the Duke of Medina Sidonia).
With a difference:
Peter Pendragon had recently been given a picture book about pirates. “You can all be admirals and things,” he said as they took off their jackets, shoes and stockings. “I’m going to be a pirate. I shall sink any ship I catch, English or Spanish, even Drake’s, and steal all the treasure.”
Sitting on a flat rock beside the pool, Alicia observed the battle. As each boy was a ship, its crew, and its guns, as well as its captain, there was a great deal of noise and splashing, with the dogs joyfully joining in. Alicia watched the pirate anxiously.
At first he did quite well. The battling fleets were too busy attacking each other to take much notice of the renegade. Peter managed to sink three dogs, Edward twice, and his own younger brother three times.
Then the Spaniards were forced to haul down their colours. As paroled prisoners, they joined forces with the English to suppress piracy on the high seas. Peter was very thoroughly ducked.
Alarmed, Alicia jumped to her feet and clasped her hands. “Are you awright?” she cried as he came up spluttering.
He squirted water through the gap in his front teeth, grinned at her, and said grandly, “Us pirates do not care if we get a wetting.”
Pen promptly shoved him back down. While Drake was thus distracted, the Spaniards surreptitiously reneged on their parole. Led by Rupert, they scrambled over the rocks and surrounded Alicia.
“We’ve taken Queen Elizabeth captive!”
General battle once more ensued. Queen Elizabeth got her skirts splashed but suffered no other harm and was soon forgotten by most of the participants.
However, the pirate crept around the pool and sat down beside her, grasping her wrist.
“You are my prisoner now, Allie. I would make you walk the plank if I had one.”
“What’s that?”
“I shall show you the picture in my book one day. It has simply splendid pictures. Do you not mind getting your gown wet?”
“Not much. Not if it dries ‘fore Nanny sees.”
“Good for you. My sisters kick up a dreadful dust if they get anything on their clothes. I have three, and they have to be proper young ladies all the time. It is a dreadful bore. Maybe you don’t have to be so prim and proper ‘cause your father is only a baron. Mine is an earl.”
“Maybe,” said Alicia uncertainly.
“You are quite sensible for a girl. I shan’t make you walk the plank if you don’t want to.”
“You haven’t got one,” she reminded him, and he laughed.
* * * *
That summer, Alicia grew quite accustomed to being a captive of one sort or another. Lord and Lady Roscoe went straight on from the London Season to a series of country house parties, so the baroness did not see her daughter’s face turning brown as a berry, like any ragamuffin’s.
Whether Alicia was prisoner of the English, Spanish, French, Indians (Red or otherwise), Saracens, Vikings, or Jacobites, Peter Pendragon usually managed to insinuate a pirate into the game.
It was James Roscoe who first christened him Pirate. The nickname stuck. Soon it was used so generally amongst the children that Alicia almost forgot his real name.
Now and then the older boys ordained a day of fishing. It was always Pirate who baited Alicia’s bent pin for her. He would sit beside her on the bank and tell her marvellous stories from the Greek and Latin books he was beginning to study, and from the Arabian Nights, and of course from his pirate book. She didn’t mind never catching any fish.
The magic summer drew to a close. That autumn Lord Pendragon went away to Eton, and the others were kept busy at their lessons. Alicia started to learn her pothooks and hangers, practising diligently on a squeaky slate, while her first sampler garnered its share of bloodstains from pricked fingers.
Three times a week, she went to the stables to learn to ride on the moorland pony Edward had outgrown. She loved Whitefoot almost as much as she loved Pirate.
Oh, the triumph of the day when she was allowed to ride out with the boys! For Roscoes, Pendragons, and dogs still met on Sundays and holidays, avoiding the dank woods and chilly stream in favour of fields and moors. The stableboy sent to keep an eye on Miss Allie was the only fly in her ointment.
“You can go home now,” she told him when the Pendragons came in sight. “Pirate Pendragon will look after me.”
“I’ve got me orders, Missy,” he said indulgently, but he fell back, so that she rode to meet them alongside her brothers, as straight and tall in her sidesaddle as she could manage.
“Oh, you’ve got Ned’s Whitefoot!” said Pirate, blotting his copybook.
Alicia gave him a hurt look. “He is mine now. He’s a good pony, game as a pebble.”
“So are you, and your seat looks good,” he redeemed himself-- almost, “for a girl.”
“I hope you can keep up, Silly Allie,” said William, the eldest Pendragon now that his brother was at Eton. “If you cannot, your groom will just have to take you home.”
Grimly determined, Alicia kept up, following in the rear of the single file up the narrow, stony path between banks of golden bracken.
The others were all riding ponies not much bigger than Whitefoot, but not only was she smaller and new to riding, she had the disadvantage of the sidesaddle. If their mounts stepped on a loose stone and jolted them, they could grip with their knees. Alicia found herself grabbing Whitefoot’s shaggy mane more than once on the ascent. It was not fair. Why could she not have been born a boy?
Rupert, in the lead, stopped at the top of the slope while the rest caught up. As Alicia emerged from the shelter of the bracken, a blast of wind sent her hat flying. She hung onto Whitefoot’s mane again, afraid for a moment that she was going to fly after the hat.
“All right, Allie-oh?” asked Pirate.
“Yes,” Alicia told him breathlessly, pride making her let go of the mane and regain the upright posture which had earned his praise. “Oh, what’s that blue over there?”
It was a sparkling December day, the air as clear as glass. To the north, the brown heights of Bodmin Moor stood out against a pale blue sky. In the far west and south, a darker blue lined the horizon.
“That is the sea,” Pirate told her. “Have you never seen it? That is where I am going to sail away to be a pirate when I grow up.”
Alicia was dismayed. She did not see why he had to go away to be a pirate, when there was a perfectly good stream down in the valley. If he sailed off on the sea, how was she going to marry him?
“Do you got to go away?”
“You cannot be a pirate on land, Silly Allie.”
He had never used that horrid nickname before. She blinked hard, with trembling lips. “Don’t call me that!”
“Sorry, Allie-oh. I shan’t ever again. I did not know you minded.”
“I don’t much, not when it is just the others. Will you come back again after you sail away?”
“Sometimes. I’ll tell you what, when I capture a Spanish galleon, I shall bring you back some treasure. Would you like an emerald necklace?”
“Ooh, really?”
“I have already promised Ned some pieces of eight, because he is my best friend.” Pirate looked round. The others were trotting away up the wide track. “But now come along, hurry up, we are getting left behind. Can you canter?”
“Yes,” said Allie firmly, though she had only just learnt to trot and did not much like it.
Cantering was another matter. Whitefoot knew how so she just let him have his head to follow Pirate, and it turned out to be much easier than trotting. They all rode to a circle of rocks believed to be an ancient fort, where Alicia became an Ancient British princess captured by the Romans. She was getting good at being a captive.
* * * *
The following autumn, Rupert Roscoe and William Pendragon went off to Harrow and Eton respectively. With numbers diminishing, Alicia was occasionally allowed to be a warrior of some inferior kind. She was practically an honorary boy by then. When spring arrived, she was expected to bear her weight in a game of cricket.
Nearly seven, she had put on a spurt of growth and was taller than Johnnie, the youngest Pendragon, much to his disgust. She was also better coordinated. Thanks to Pirate’s coaching, she was a good, solid batsman and a fair fielder, though tight sleeves prevented overarm bowling and throwing.
That May she turned seven. The timid nursery governess was dismissed. Lady Roscoe sent a new governess, whose job was to begin Alicia’s training as a young lady. Not only history, geography, and French were added to reading, writing, and the modicum of arithmetic hitherto taught her. She must learn to sing and play the fortepiano, to paint in watercolours, to do delicate embroidery, to move with grace, and most of all, to behave in a ladylike manner.
No more hoydenish gallivanting with the boys, decreed Miss Porringe.
Alicia quite enjoyed history--she already knew a great deal about the wars of the English over the centuries, from a captive’s point of view. In geography, she learnt about the places Pirate would go when he sailed away, so that was interesting if sad. French might be useful if he ever let her go on a voyage with him.
She did not mind learning to be a beautiful lady like her seldom seen Mama. She remembered what Pirate had told her about his sisters, and she wanted him to be proud of her when she married him.
But nothing could stop her gallivanting, if that long word meant roaming the woods and fields and moor with Pirate, not to mention her brothers and his.
“She will have to lock me up in a dungeon with chains and rats and bats and things,” she said passionately to Pirate, the first time she slipped away.
Fortunately Nanny still ruled the nurseries, and Nanny still liked her naps. Miss Porringe was only in charge during schoolroom hours. On holidays, half-holidays, and Sunday afternoons, she usually shut herself away in her room writing endless letters to far-off relatives, so Alicia did not find it difficult to escape.
Bread and water for supper was a small price to pay on the occasions when the governess caught her returning home tousled and grubby.
* * * *
Alicia was ten when Pirate’s turn came to go off to Eton. At thirteen, he was still quite small and slight, scarcely an inch taller than Alicia. As well as missing him quite dreadfully-- much more than she did Edward, who went to Harrow at the same time--she worried about Pirate. The older boys told horrid tales of the treatment meted out to juniors who could not defend themselves.
At last the boys all came home for Christmas. The weather was foul, with great gales sweeping in from the Atlantic and rain falling in buckets. It was not until the third day that the Pendragons seized a lull and rode over to visit, with tales of flooded meadows and downed trees.
Pirate and Edward, fallen to boasting of the hardships and joys of life at their respective schools, were equally lively and opinionated. Yet to Alicia’s anxious eye, Pirate’s heart was not in their tussle.
Edward was summoned by Rupert to support him in some contention, and Pirate came over to Alicia, where she sat in the schoolroom window seat, watching and listening.
“Did the big boys at school pick on you?” she asked fearfully as he dropped to the cushioned seat beside her.