The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (13 page)

‘Wait till next week and I’ll have a key made to get you out. Can you get into the coal-cellar from inside?’

Bonnie nodded. ‘All too easily. She locks us into it as punishment quite often.’

‘Then I will give you a key to the outside door, and you will only have to contrive to be locked in.’

Bonnie flung her arms round his neck. ‘Simon, you are wonderful! Now I must fly back or I shall be punished for loitering.’

Simon watched until she had run indoors. Then he
shied
the last lump of coal to wake the driver of the cart from his beery slumbers, carefully took his piece of clay from its hiding-place in the laurel bushes and, holding it as if it were die most precious gold, walked swiftly away to find the nearest locksmith.

Sylvia was obliged to miss her tea. She had been given a dress of Diana Brisket’s to mend, and the task had taxed even her skilful needle, so disgracefully torn were its delicate flounces. Her head ached, and her cold fingers were less nimble than usual: consequently the dress was not finished when Diana wanted it. She flew into a passion, slapped Sylvia, and told her mother that number ninety-eight was lazy and refused to work. In consequence, Sylvia had to stand at the back of the dining-room with the other wrongdoers at tea-time, while Bonnie burned with sympathetic fury.

During sewing-time after tea, Bonnie chose a moment when Mrs Brisket was out of the room, crept round to Sylvia, and pressed something into her hand.

‘Eat it, quick, before she comes back!’

Sylvia looked at what was in her hand and saw with amazement that it was a little cake, crisp and hot from the bakery.

‘Where did you get it, Bonnie?’

‘It must be from Simon! I found two of them in the nesting-boxes when I went to collect the eggs. If I’d known that horrid wretch Diana would make you miss your tea, I’d have saved mine for you, too.’

And she whispered to Sylvia the news of Simon’s plan for them.

Sylvia was pale already, but she became paler still with excitement.

‘Escape? Oh, Bonnie, how wonderful! Here, you finish this cake. I think I’m too excited to eat it.’ And she coughed.

‘No, you must eat it, Sylvia. You had no tea.’

‘I can’t, my throat is too sore. Where shall we go, Bonnie?’

‘Well,’ Bonnie whispered, frowning, ‘we can’t very well go back to Willoughby Chase, for they’d search for us there at once. And if James and Pattern tried to help us they’d get into trouble. What do you say to trying to get to London to see Aunt Jane?’

‘Oh, Bonnie,
yes
! Dearest Aunt Jane, how I long to know if she is all right.’ Sylvia spoke with such enthusiasm that she coughed again. ‘But how shall we get there, Bonnie? It is such a long way, and we have no money for train tickets.’

‘I have thought of that. Very soon Simon will be driving his geese up to London for the Easter Fair at Smithfield Market. Easter falls at the end of April this year, and he will want at least two months to get there –’

‘ – And we could go with him!’

‘Hush,’ whispered Bonnie, for at this moment the door opened and Mrs Brisket re-entered the room.

She cast her usual suspicious glance round the assembled children before beginning to read aloud from a volume of sermons, and they bent their heads and pretended to busy themselves over their work.

Every night that week, when Bonnie went to feed the hens and collect the eggs, her pleasantest task of
the
day, she felt a tremor of excitement. Would the key and clothes be there? But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings went by without her discovering anything unexpected in the henhouse.

On Saturday there was another inspection by the Education Officer, this time in the morning. He had really come to invite Mrs Brisket to dine with him next day, but she always seized the opportunity of showing him how well-behaved and biddable her pupils were, and she had them all standing in rows for a hour before his arrival. The strain of this was too much for poor Sylvia. Drenched through every day with cold water in the icy, draughty laundry, she had taken a bad cold and was flushed, heavy-eyed, and feverish. Just as the Inspector entered the room where she stood, she fainted quietly away.

‘That child, ma’am, is ill,’ said Mr Friendshipp, pointing to her with his cane.

‘Very likely it is all a pretence!’ exclaimed Mrs Brisket, looking at Sylvia with dislike. But on inspection it was plain that Sylvia’s illness was genuine enough, and Mrs Brisket angrily directed two of the big girls to put her to bed in a small room on the ground floor, where sick children were kept so that they should not give the infection to others. A basin of cold porridge was dumped in her room and, as she was much too ill to eat it, she would have fared badly had Bonnie not come to her aid.

Bonnie, discovering at dinner-time that Sylvia was missing, whispered to the friendly Emma to ask where she was.

‘Ill, in the little locker-room.’

‘Ill?’ Bonnie turned pale. She had suspected for several days that Sylvia was ailing, though Sylvia always stoutly denied it.

If she was ill, how could they escape? On the other hand, if they did not escape, what would become of Sylvia? It was not impossible, Bonnie thought, that she might
die
of neglect and ill-attention in this horrible place.

With great daring Bonnie took a chance when Mrs Brisket was inspecting the dormitories upstairs, and ran in to visit Sylvia, whom she found conscious, but dreadfully weak, flushed, and coughing. A cup of cold water stood by her bedside.

‘Here!’ whispered Bonnie, ‘here, Sylvia, swallow this down. It’s not much, but at least it’s nourishing and warm!’ And she pulled from her pocket an egg, only five minutes laid, tossed the water from the cup out of the window, broke the egg into it, and beat it up with her finger.

‘I’m sorry, Sylvia, that it’s so disgusting, but it will do you good.’

Sylvia gazed with horror at the nauseous mess, but Bonnie’s bright, pleading eyes compelled her to swallow it, and it slipped more easily than she had expected down her sore throat. Then, hearing Mrs Brisket descending the upper stairs, Bonnie covered Sylvia as warmly as she could, gave her a quick hug, and dashed silently away.

That evening, when Bonnie fed the hens and searched for eggs, she put her hand beneath one warm, protesting feathery body and felt something hard and long among the eggs — a key! She pulled
it
out and found attached to it a label, which said, in Pattern’s printed script:

‘Tomorrow night at ten. Look under the straw-bales.’

Bonnie ran to the bales of straw which were kept for the nesting-boxes and found behind them two warm suits of clothes, a boy’s, with breeches and waistcoat, and a girl’s, with a thick woollen skirt and petticoat. Both were of coarse material such as tinker children wear, but well and stoutly made, and both had beautiful thick sheepskin jackets, lined with their own wool. In the pocket of each jacket was a golden guinea.

Bonnie guessed that the boy’s was for her and the girl’s for Sylvia.

‘For Sylvia could never be got to look like a boy. Oh, how clever and good Simon is! He must have got Pattern to help him. But will Sylvia be able to travel? We
must
manage it somehow!’

She bit her lips with worry.

Snatching the opportunity while it was dark and there was nobody about, Bonnie carried the two bundles of clothes indoors and hid them in the coal-cellar behind a large mound of coal while she was supposed to be filling Mrs Brisket’s evening coal-scuttle and making up her fire.

During the evening she seized another chance to take a fresh egg to Sylvia and whisper the news to her. Poor Sylvia dutifully swallowed the egg and tried to be excited by the plan, but she felt so weak and ill that she was sure she would never manage the escape, though she dared not tell Bonnie this. Bonnie
could
see for herself, though, how frail Sylvia looked, and she became more worried than ever.

Sunday passed in the usual tasks.

Mrs Brisket departed after ten to the party at Mr Friendshipp’s, leaving the school in charge of her daughter Diana, who, as her custom was, immediately began to bully and harry the children, making them fetch and carry for her, iron her clothes, curl her hair, and polish her shoes. Mrs Brisket had forbidden her to leave the house, but she had no intention of staying in, and was proposing to visit a bazaar on the other side of the town, having calmly taken some money from her mother’s purse.

‘Here! You!’ she called, seeing Bonnie hurrying past. ‘Where are you going with that hangdog look? Come here!’

Bonnie came, as if unwillingly.

‘What have you got in your pocket?’

Bonnie made no reply.

Diana thrust in her hand and let out a shriek of disgust. She withdrew it and stared at her fingers, which were dripping with egg-yolk.

‘Thief! Miserable little thief! Stealing the eggs from my mother’s henhouse!’ She raised the dripping hand and slapped Bonnie’s face with it.

Six months ago Bonnie would have slapped her back, and heartily, but she was learning patience and self-command. To be embroiled in a struggle with Diana was not part of her plan, though she longed to box the girl’s ears.

‘I was taking it to Sylvia,’ she said steadily. ‘Your
mother
is starving her to death. She has had nothing to eat all day but two raw onions.’

‘Is that any business of yours? Very well,’ said Diana, white with temper, ‘since you think you can look after Sylvia so well, you
shall
look after her.
You
can look after each other in the coal-cellar. Alice, help me shut them in.’

Alice, and a couple of the larger, worse-natured girls, willingly did so. Others remonstrated, as Bonnie was pushed, and Sylvia, still in her night-clothes, half carried into the dark, dirty place.

‘You shouldn’t do it, Miss Diana. Sylvia’s ill – it will make her worse,’ exclaimed Emma.

‘Hold your tongue! Who asked
you
to interfere?’ shouted Diana, and slapped her. The door was locked, and the key put in its accustomed place on Mrs Brisket’s parlour mantelpiece. Then, after making sure that everyone was in a properly cowed frame of mind, Diana wrapped herself in a velvet cloak and went out to the bazaar, locking the front door and taking the key with her.

Meanwhile Bonnie, in the coal-cellar, was congratulating herself on the success of her idea as she swiftly helped to dress the trembling, shivering Sylvia in her new warm clothes.

‘There, Sylvia! Now don’t cry, there’s a lamb, for I feel sure Simon will have some good plan and will be able to take us to a place where you can be properly cared for. Don’t cry!’

But Sylvia was too weak to hold back her tears. She sat obediently on a large lump of coal while Bonnie prepared to change her own clothes. But before she could do so there was a creaking of the lock and the door softly opened – not the door to the garden, but the one through which they had been thrust in. A head poked round it – Emma’s.

‘Bonnie! Sylvia! Are you all right? Can you come
out
and get warm! Diana’s out and Alice has gone to bed.’

Bonnie felt the tears prick her eyes at this courageous kindness on the part of Emma. But how ill-timed it was! At any minute Simon might arrive, and she did not want anyone to know that he was helping with their escape.

She whispered to Sylvia, ‘Wait there, Sylvia, for two minutes, only two minutes, and then I’ll be back,’ and ran swiftly to the cellar door.

Outside stood Emma and a large number of children, all deathly silent, in the passage that led from the kitchen. One of them pointed upwards, meaning that they must make no sound for fear of Alice.

Bonnie was amazed and touched. She had had no idea how popular her bright face and friendly ways had made her with the other children, in the fairly short time she had been at Mrs Brisket’s.

Impulsively she hugged Emma.

‘Emma, I won’t forget this! If ever I get away from this hateful place’ (and oh, I pray it will be tonight, she said to herself), ‘I’ll send back somehow and get you out too. But Sylvia and I mustn’t leave the cellar. If Mrs Brisket or Diana came back you would get into dreadful trouble.’

She looked at the children’s anxious, eager faces and wished that she could do something for them. Suddenly she had an idea. She ran to Mrs Brisket’s parlour and brought out the large hamper of cheese which the headmistress kept for rewarding tale-bearers.

‘Here! Quick, girls! Eat this up!’ She tossed out the chunks of cheese in double handfuls to the ravenous children.

‘Cheese!’

‘Oh, Bonnie!’

‘Cheese!’

‘Wonderful cheese!’

They had gobbled up most of the savoury lumps before Emma suddenly exclaimed, ‘But what will Mrs Brisket say?’

‘I’ll take care of that,’ said Bonnie grandly. She had been scribbling on a sheet of paper. ‘This is to pay for the cheese,’ and she now signed it with her name, fetched the guinea piece from her jacket pocket and put it with the paper on Mrs Brisket’s writing-desk.

‘There! She’ll be angry, but she will see that I am the one to blame. Now, Emma, you must lock us up in the cellar again and put back the key. Yes!’ as Emma protested, ‘I promise that will be best in the end,’ and she nodded vigorously to show that she meant it, and went back into the cellar.