Simon (2 page)

It was Dr Hannaford’s custom to read at meals, for the simple reason that he had no leisure to read at any other time; and generally he read extracts aloud to the two boys. Today it was a new book,
The Circulation of the Blood
, by a Dr William Harvey of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and Simon did not find it very interesting; but Amias, who was passionately interested in how things worked, found it enthralling.

It was not until dinner was nearly over that Simon remembered the Thing he had found under the chest. He took it out of his doublet and looked at it in the palm of his hand. It was a chrysalis of some sort, brown and shiny, and very large, with a queer little tail turned up over its back like the handle of a jug. Simon had never seen one quite like it before. He held it out to
the Doctor, while Amias sprawled across the table for a closer view. ‘It was in the earth in the pot that got broken,’ he said. ‘What is it, do you think, sir?’

‘It’s a kind of grub thing,’ said Amias, and poked it. ‘With a hard skin,’ he added.

Dr Hannaford brought out his square horn-rimmed spectacles. He had eyes like a hawk, but he had worn glasses in his youth to make him look learned, and they had become a habit. Balancing them on the end of his nose, he peered through them at the brown thing in Simon’s hand. Then he shook his head. ‘Save that it is some sort of chrysalis, I greatly fear that I cannot satisfy your thirst for knowledge. Had it been a morbid humour, now, or a spasmodic contraction of the thorax, I could have told you all about it; even a conjunction of Saturn with Mercury: but a chrysalis—no, my education has been neglected.’

‘You don’t know at
all
what sort?’ Simon was surprised and disappointed, because usually the Doctor knew the answer to any question you might ask him.

‘I have not the slightest idea,’ said Dr Hannaford, returning his spectacles to his pocket. ‘You had best ask Pentecost Fiddler, the next time you meet him. There are very few living creatures he does not know, at least to bow to, I should imagine.’

Across the table the eyes of the two boys met, bright with sudden excitement. Here was the perfect adventure for this golden afternoon. They did not speak, for they seldom needed to put thier plans into words, each to the other, but from that moment the whole thing was settled. Pentecost Fiddler was something of a legend in those parts; he came and went as fitfully as an April wind, he and the battered fiddle that had given him his name; and wherever he appeared, at wake or wedding or country fair, he was welcomed for his playing, that could set the feet of an old man dancing and draw the heart out of a maid. From Hartland to South Molton, every man, woman and child was his friend when they chanced to meet him. But nobody ever went near him when he was at home; nobody ever went up the wooded valley below his cottage without crossing their fingers or turning their coats inside out. For Pentecost lived alone in a clearing of the woods beyond the Torridge, in a place
where it was not good for a mortal man to live. Once, the cottage had been lived in by ordinary folk, but that was long ago. The fairy flowers grew in what had once been the garden—white foxgloves and vervain and elder—and everyone knew what that meant. From time out of mind the place had been called Solitude, and a place does not get such an odd, uncanny name for nothing; and since no man could live comfortably on Fairy Ground unless he was on very intimate terms with the rightful owners, it stood to reason that Pentecost was kin to Good Folk.

Therefore, to visit Pentecost in his own fastness and ask him what sort of moth the brown chrysalis belonged to would be an adventure worthy of this heaven-sent half-holiday. They made no mention of their plans to anybody, because an adventure should never be made public beforehand. When dinner was over and the Doctor had gone back to his doctoring, they simply got a box to put the chrysalis in, lest it should find the inside of Simon’s doublet uncomfortably warm, and set out.

They went down through the garden and out on to Castle Hill, Amias leading and Simon at his heels. Amias always led in all their doings, partly because he was eleven and Simon was only ten and three-quarters, partly because he was the kind who leads and has brilliant ideas, whereas Simon was the kind who follows loyally, and does his best to save the brilliant ideas from ending in disaster. The wind was roaring up from the south-west, churning the bracken into a wild golden sea, and lashing through the waist-high furze with a shrilling like the outgoing tide on a pebbly beach; and the boys flung themselves into it, running and shouting for the joy of the autumn gale. They charged over the edge of the hill, down the ridged sheep-tracks that zigzagged through the furze, travelling at breakneck speed, for long practice had made them sure-footed as mountain sheep; and arrived at last, breathless and laughing, on the river-bank just above Taddiport.

Taddiport was a disreputable clump of cottages, and the Manor mill huddled under the sheer bluff of Castle Hill. It was joined to the town of Torrington high above by the steep straggle of Mill Street, which hung down so like a disgraceful tail that one almost expected it to wag when the town was pleased. More often than
not when going that way the boys crossed Mill Street and continued down-stream, to ford the river by one of the many stickles; but today, for no particular reason, they elected to cross like Christians by the hump-backed bridge where the seeding willow-herb grew between the arches.

On the farther bank they stopped to pass the time of day with a friend, a lean and lounging man with one watery blue eye, and a ferret in his pocket.

‘Mitching from school, my dears?’ inquired the one-eyed man, with sympathy.

‘No. Schoolmaster has the stomach ache, and we have a holiday,’ Amias told him; and they went on, past the chapel of the old leper hospice, and into the woods beyond, where the wind through the trees roared like a high sea and one had to shout to make oneself heard above it; and all the woods were full of flying sunshine and the shrivelled leaves whirling down the gale.

‘This is the Orenoque!’ Amias shouted presently, when, having worked their way down-river almost as far as Rotherne bridge, they reached the tiny half-choked stream that came down the valley of Solitude. ‘And if we follow it, it will bring us to the Golden City of Manoa that the Spaniards called Eldorado.’

So the woods became the great and rich country of Guiana, and the muddy trickle running down to join the Torridge was a great silver river, winding through forests of huge trees among whose branches fluttered Sir Walter Raleigh’s birds of white and crimson and carnation. The two explorers pushed on in huge excitement, until they found themselves far up the winding valley; here they halted and looked at each other, suddenly a little scared.

‘Perhaps he’s not at home,’ said Simon, and then felt ashamed, because his voice sounded hopeful.

‘Of course we could turn our doublets inside out,’ suggested Amias. ‘We should be quite safe then. But perhaps he wouldn’t like it.’

Simon shook his head. ‘It would be sort of
untrusting
to call on him like that,’ he agreed.

So they went on with their doublets still right side out, which
took quite a lot of courage. They had left the stream now, and were pushing up the wooded hillside, guided by nothing but the smell of adventure in their eager noses.

A few steps more, and quite suddenly the woods fell back, and they were on the edge of the clearing they had come to look for. Solitude lay aside from the main valley, in a little hollow of the hills, sheltered from the wind which surged through the tree-tops all around; and the quietness of it, under the roof of roaring wind, gave the place an odd feeling of sanctuary. Elder trees ringed it round, dripping with dark berries beloved of thrush and blackbird; crab trees drooped branches of little russet apples almost to the long grass where the coral leaves of the bird-cherry lay thick. Seeding periwinkle and wild geranium told where once a tended flower-patch had been. The tangle was so thick that it was a few moments before the two boys, halting on the woodshore and looking about them, could pick out the tumbledown cottage on the far side. Then they both saw it at the same instant.

‘There ’tis!’ exclaimed Amias, pointing.

‘I say, what a queer place,’ said Simon, with bated breath.

‘I wonder if Pentecost
is
there.’

‘Umm. So do I.’

For a moment, neither of them moved, then Amias squared his shoulders and strode forward. ‘Come on, let’s go and see.’

Simon marched after him, clutching the box in which was the brown chrysalis. They made their way through the tangle to the open doorway of the cottage, and halted again. The cottage was so low that the roof came down almost to their eye-level: once it had been thatched, but now the rotten reeds were covered over with moss like emerald velvet; the open door looked as though it had not been shut for years; the threshold was choked with nettles, and there was no sign of anybody inside.

‘Let’s knock,’ said Amias, and rapped gently at the open door.

They listened, but nothing happened; then they scuffled their feet and called politely, ‘Pentecost, are you at home?’

Still nothing happened.

‘He’s out,’ said Amias, between exasperation and relief. He gazed thoughtfully at the door for a few moments, and then made
up his mind. ‘Well, I don’t see why we should come all this way for nothing. I’m going to take a look inside.’

‘I don’t think we ought to,’ said Simon flatly.

But Amias sniffed at him—he had a peculiarly insulting sniff—and advanced right into the doorway. Simon followed as in duty bound, and they stood together peering into the gloom, their hearts thumping uncomfortably. Neither of them knew what they had expected to see, but what they did see in the farthest and darkest corner was a dim white shape that suddenly spread its arms and swept forward right into their faces, with a piercing mournful cry that made their blood jump. They sprang back, and for an instant, as they turned to run, they caught sight of a strange oval face with huge eyes, then the thing was planing away on ghost-white silent wings.

‘It was only a white owl,’ shouted Amias. ‘Only a silly old white owl!’ And he laughed, and shouted it to the trees. ‘A white owl—a white owl!’ But he did not stop running until he reached the edge of the clearing, and neither did Simon.

In the shelter of the woodshore, they halted and faced each other.

‘A white owl; that was all it was,’ said Amias.

‘Silly, to be scared off by a white owl,’ said Simon slowly. ‘I’m going back.’

‘Come on,’ commanded Amias; and back they went.

They had just reached the doorway again, when they heard a new sound, so like the shriller overtones of the gale that at first they were not sure they had heard it at all; then, as they stared into each other’s startled faces, rising shrill and sweet and clear above the turmoil, the sound of a fiddle playing, not a tune, but simply an accompaniment to the wind in the trees.

They spun round, and there, leaning against the trunk of a bird-cherry, with his fiddle tucked beneath his chin, stood Pentecost Fiddler. He was watching them under the brim of his slouch hat, and the moment they looked round he stopped playing and came forward, a mocking smile curving his long lips.

‘So you thought you’d have a good look at the warlock’s lair, while the warlock was out, did ye, my fine young gentlemen?’ said Pentecost, looking down at them.

‘We didn’t!’ said Amias indignantly. ‘We came to see you. We didn’t know you were out.’

‘And then the white owl flew out of your house, and—we ran away; and so of course we had to come back again,’ added Simon, who was painfully truthful.

‘Ah, yes, poor Bess. Her would be more startled than you were.’

‘Is she yours?’ asked Amias.

‘No more than I be hers. Her shares the shelter of my roof now and again, that is all.’ He drew his bow slowly across the strings, making for a few moments a kind of soft regretful music that had no tune in it, and looking thoughtfully at the two boys the while. Then he broke off, and demanded mockingly, ‘Weren’t you afeared to come here-along? Haven’t you heard that Pentecost Fiddler be kin to the Fairy Kind? Bain’t you afeared that I shall witch you into white mice? Abracadabra, hellebore and toadflax. Grrr!’

The boys stood their ground, though with quaking stomachs, and gazed back at him. For a wonder, it was Simon who answered first, grinning with sudden friendliness up into the fiddler’s strange dark face.

‘No,’ said Simon.

‘Good,’ nodded the fiddler. ‘And now, do ’ee tell me why you did come.’

Simon had forgotten about the chrysalis; it had never been much more than an excuse for the adventure. But now he remembered it, and held out the box. ‘We found this in some earth that we dug up,’ he said breathlessly. ‘At least, we put the earth in a pot to grow something special in, and then we broke the pot, and that was how we found it; and we don’t know what it is, and we thought maybe you could tell us.’

Pentecost tucked his fiddle and bow under one arm and, opening the box, took out the chrysalis. For a little while he was silent, turning it over and over in his thin brown hands. Then he asked, ‘Was there any bindweed close by where you dug ’un up?’

‘Oh yes; it grows all over the bank that we got the earth from,’ Amias put in.

‘Aye, I thought as much. ’Tis a chrysalis of one o’ the hawk moths. I’ve only seen but one like it before, and I can’t tell ’ee its name because it bain’t got one, so far as I know. The caterpillar has a li’l crimson horn in the middle of its head, like as it might be a li’l unicorn. You could call it a Unicorn Moth; that ’ud be as good a name for it as any.’

‘What shall we feed it on?’ asked Simon.

‘You won’t need to feed ’un at all. Put it in a dark place, and maybe ’twill turn into a moth, come the spring. If the moth was to lay eggs, and the eggs was to hatch into caterpillars, then you’d need to feed them on the leaves of the bindweed.’

‘I see. We’ll not forget. Thank you very much,’ said Simon, as he took back the chrysalis in its box.

Amias, who had been standing first on one leg and then on the other, put in, ‘I say, Pentecost, could we see inside your cottage?’