Cold Shoulder Road (13 page)

Ahead of them in the dusk could now be seen a low one-storey building; and Is hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that no light showed in the slit windows, no sound came from it, or sign of activity showed around it.

“Is
this
the place?” Dominic de la Twite asked, and his voice was full of scorn – and disappointment as well. “Is
this
your sister’s house? This shed?”

“Yes, Mister. This is it,” croaked Is, from a throat pulled tight with trouble and pain. She scrambled out, looking hopefully around the clearing for her cat Figgin. But no shadowy form came running to plunge against her legs. Nobody answered her knock on the door. No light kindled. She filled her lungs and did her best to shout, “Penny! Ho there!” loudly and cheerfully. “I’ve come home!” But nobody answered.

An owl hooted somewhere in the forest, that was all.

It was one of the worst moments that Is had ever lived through.

All of a sudden she felt a huge sympathy for Arun. Now she had an inkling of how baffled and disappointed he must have felt when they entered the damp, silent little house in Cold Shoulder Road.

Dominic de la Twite descended from the carriage and strode authoritatively to the door. He rapped on it, long and loud.

“Is anybody there?” he shouted. “Open up, if you please! Miss Twite! Mrs Twite!”

But there was no response. He rattled the latch. The door was locked.

“You, girl!” He turned on Is. “Do you have a key to this place?”

Is looked at him consideringly. Then she looked back at the carriage. Arun had climbed slowly down, and was standing staring about him, his face a white blur in the dusk. Will Fobbing, slumped on the box, his elbows on his knees, his head on his arms, could be heard snoring loudly.

“Well,” said Is after a pause, “I
do
have a key, as it comes about.”

Very slowly and deliberately, she drew out a ravelled piece of grubby string which had been round her neck, with a key attached to it, and pulled it over her head. De la Twite stepped forward to snatch it from her, but she neatly side-stepped him, skipped to the door, and unlocked it. The Leader followed her, almost treading on her heels, as she walked inside.

“Is there a light?” he demanded.

“Hold on a minute, Mister. Don’t be in such a pelter.” Feeling about with the ease of long habit, Is found a shelf by the door, a flint, tinder, and candle. She struck a light, kindled a flame. Light slowly grew, and showed a big, shadowed room, table and stools carved from bits of tree-trunk, shelves against the wooden walls holding pots and cups; two beds, and a few books. There were ashes in the central hearth. But these ashes were stone-cold; nobody had lit a fire here for days, weeks, perhaps months.

De la Twite, glaring about him, swore long and softly and savagely. What specially riveted his attention were two pictures hanging from nails on the wall. As he stared at those, Is moved to the table, on which there stood a saucer containing a few coins, and a scrap of paper. These things she quietly pocketed. Then she caught hold of Arun’s hand – he had followed her in, blinking and confused, moving like a sleepwalker.

“Come quickly,
quickly
,” she said to him in thought-speech, and pulled him out of the barn. “
You can see they aren’t here. Quick – after me
.”

Once outside she hastily and soundlessly relocked the door and slung the key on its string back round her neck.

While they were out of sight, Will Fobbing had climbed, or tumbled, down from the box of the chaise and now lay stretched out at full-length on the mossy turf. He snored loudly.

Let’s just hope the wolves don’t get him, thought Is, swiftly beginning to unbuckle the harness of one of the horses.

“Quick, Arun, you untie the other.”

Automatically he did as she directed. Thanks be, she thought, he’s hearing me again.

“Good! Now lep up on his back. He’ll not be resty – poor beasts, they’re both as tired as can be. But they’ll carry us a mile or two farther.”

Both horses, in fact, pleased to be free from the shafts, trotted away briskly enough out of the clearing. Is turned for another look at the place which had been her home for so long.

Now a furious banging and shouting broke out inside the barn.

He better not do too much of that, thought Is, it might attract the wolves.

Arun rode along beside Is in silence, in a kind of dream, for some considerable distance. Then he mumbled confusedly, “Where are we, Is? Where did these horses come from? Where are we going?”

“
First
thing we’re doing is getting away from that skellum,” said Is grimly, kicking the fat sides of her bareback mount. “Do you know what he had in the coach, under his seat? Handcuffs! And a pair of barking irons as well. What’d he want those for? When he was going to see your Mum and my sis?”

“For the wolves?” Arun suggested vaguely.

“Well – maybe! But I never heard of putting wolves in handcuffs! That man means no good. Not to us, anyway. And I believe he meant harm to your Mum.”

Arun still looked confused and only half-awake. But the fresh air, and the rhythm of the trotting horses, were helping to rouse him. After they had ridden a mile or so farther, Is began to hope that the Leader’s grim influence was wearing off.

She took a right turn, southwards, down a ride that crossed the one along which they had come.

. . . Behind them, far away in the clearing, a speck of bright fiery light began to dance among the trees.

“Where are we bound for?” Arun asked again, sleepily, after they had ridden another couple of miles.

“We’re going to a Cold Harbour,” Is told him. “There used to be one down somewhere here-along. It was southwards of where Penny and I lived, a matter of nine or ten miles.”

“What’s a Cold Harbour?” he asked, yawning.

“Oh –
you
know – a place where trampers and travellers can put up. A poor folk’s refuge. It’ll do for us. We can’t go back to Seagate . . . now we know your Mum ain’t there anyhow.” She gave a brief chuckle. “Did you see them pictures up on the wall, back in Penny’s place?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Two of ’em there was – they’d come since my time, Penny and I hadn’t no pictures when I was at home. And guess what they were! One was a picture of the Admiral – a real nimble likeness – and t’other was of old Domino Twite his own self. Didn’t I notice him take that in! He was fair pussy-struck! That was how I was able to nip out the door and lock it. And it shows your Mum
musta
been there with Penny, and not so long ago, neither. She and Pen musta reckoned, for some reason, that they’d best scarper off to another pad. Maybe they figured old Domino ’ud come seeking them there. After all, lots o’ folks knows Penny; she sells her dolls all over the countryside.”

“But why? I don’t understand,” Arun said helplessly. “I thought – the Leader said – he liked my Mum.”

“Hah! So he
said!
The way a fox likes a chicken. You’re still a bit dumfoozled, matey,” Is told her cousin kindly. “You’ll see things clearer when we’ve got ourselves well away, and had a rest, and maybe a drop o’ summat hot.”

“Hot? Here? In the middle of this great wood?”

“You’ll see. Like I told you. In the Cold Harbour. Not far now . . . I hope.”

They had been climbing, and the forest had changed from oak to beech. By this time it was full dark, and a misty moon was keeping pace with them in the sky above, visible from time to time through the branches. They crossed over a ridge, and began to descend again.

Now, ahead, a dim glow could be seen through the trees, and they smelt wood smoke. The horses pricked up their ears and went on a little faster.

“Hope there’s a bit o’ fodder for the poor brutes,” said Is. “They’ve come a perishing long way.”

The refuge, when they reached it, was a queer building, unlike any other. It stood in a small clearing of the wood, and consisted, principally, of four huge stones, three of them standing up like fingers, and the fourth one, which was big as a farm cart, balanced on the tops of the other three, forming a roof. Round this structure, more stones had been added later, in a rough wall, to make a kind of shelter.

“The place is called Pook’s Pantry,” Is told Arun. “It’s very, very old.”

A fire burned in front of the refuge. Across from it, on the far side of the clearing, grew a huge and venerable yew tree, with a trunk that ten people holding hands could hardly encircle. Its canopy of needles above was so dense and dark that it formed a roof. Another horse was already tethered under it.

“Lucky the branches is so high overhead,” said Is. “Yew leaves is downright pizen to nags . . . Hey, look, some thoughtful soul has left a bit of hay and chaff. Can you draw a pail of water from the well, Arun?”

When the horses were fed and cared for, Is and Arun went over to the fire, where six or seven people were quietly resting, or talking in low voices, or cooking their supper.

“Evening, all,” said Is politely, and received a mild rumble of greeting in return.

Branches lay piled against the stone hut. She and Arun added a few to the fire, then heated some water in a metal pot which they found by the entrance.

“I’ve a flask of rose-hip syrup, young ’uns,” offered a tall gypsy woman. “Ye can have a spoonful apiece, if ye’re so minded.”

“Thank ye kindly, missus. We’ve got dried cherries,” said Is, and offered them in exchange. They drank hot water, flavoured with rose-hip, out of wooden mugs.

Two men, who said they were sailors, paid off at Dover and walking to the Port of London, where they hoped to pick up another ship, were willing to share their rabbit stew. A bagman on his way north offered a mouthful from his bottle of grog, but this Arun and Is, remembering the Admiral’s fearsome brew, politely refused. A tinker gave them a bit of his bread and cheese, which was very good. Nobody presumed to ask any questions except an old white-haired fellow, apparently a travelling preacher, who studied them attentively in the mixed fire and moonlight, then said, slowly, “How come ye wear the clothes of the Silent Sect, at Seagate, young ’uns? Are ye runaways?”

“No, sir,” Is told him. “Our own duds was all in tatters, so a lady at Seagate gave us her boys’ things, acos they was drownded.” The old fellow seemed sincerely interested, so she went on explaining: “My cousin’s Mum used to belong to that Sect. We’re a-looking for her. Has anybody here heard tell of her, maybe? Her name’s Missus Ruth Twite.”

A thoughtful silence settled over the group round the fire.

After a while, the bagman said, “
Twite
. That’s an okkard kind of name. I’ve heard tell of Twite, afore now.”

“There’s a rhyme,” said the tinker. “Many knows it:

After the tinker had said these lines, nobody spoke for some time. Then the tinker asked Is and Arun, “Did ye never hear that rhyme, young ’uns?”

“No,” said Arun. “I never heard it before.”

“Nor did I,” said Is. “But it sounds to me like a true rhyme. There’s bad Twites, and there’s decent ones. And the ones that’s bad, they are bad through and through. My Dad was one o’ that kind. An out-and-out no-good, he was. Though,” she added thoughtfully, “he made up some real choice tunes. But Arun’s Mum, that we’re a searching for, she sounds like a right nice lady and paints pictures that you never saw the match of.”

“So,” said the old preacher after some thought, “you two young ’uns are both Twites, eh? Cousins?”

“That’s so,” said Is.

“And are ye black Twites, or white?”

“Blest if I know!” said Is. “No one ever asked us before! But that Dominic de la Twite, him as is Leader of the Silent Sect over at Seagate, I reckon he’s a black ’un.”

“I never heard no harm of the Sect,” said the bagman. “Queer pernickety folk, they be, for sure, but they keep themselves to themselves and do no ill. Not like the Merry Gentry. Now
they
do harm, no question.”

“Ah! That they do,” said the tinker. “Any that threatens to split on them to the Preventives, or the Coastguards, he’ll never eat another breakfast. Let alone dinner.”

“I marvel ye dare speak so free,” said the gypsy woman. “How do ye know there ain’t somebody here as belongs to the Gentry?”

There was a short, chill silence. But then one of the sailors said, “Ah, hokum! Any cove what belonged to the Gentry, he wouldn’t be sitting here sucking rabbit bones. He’d be in the Old Maison Dieu, drinking sherry wine.”

“That’s so,” they all agreed, relieved.

A general easement set in, the sailors offered more rabbit stew all round and, when that was declined, began singing sea shanties.

Then the gypsy woman sang a sad ballad about a dear lost companion, and the tinker sang a song about three jolly huntsmen.

“Do ye know any songs, lad?” the bagman asked Arun.

“Um,” he said. And then, to the complete amazement
of
Is, he stood up and sang: