The Rookery Boxset

by B G Denvil

  “Because the men didn’t ride horses like us. Oh no, nothing so small and ordinary. Personally I think horses are very grand, and they can be beautiful too. Master Micky Postlethwaite who owns the farm on the other side of Kettle Lane, he has two big horses to pull his heavy ploughs and such. He told me he used to have oxen, but horses understand what they’re told and the oxen never did. I told him people used to have to pull everything themselves unless they were very rich, and he just cackled at me.”

  I pointed out that she was losing track of the story. It was all very interesting and weird, but I was impatient to get back to my ghost and Rollo. “Yes, and the lords have huge horses for battle too,” I said. “But I want to hear about your tiggas.”

  “I didn’t see any more of them,” Peg chattered on. “But what I did see were these giant animals which I would never have believed could be real until I saw them so close, and watched them walk past. They were great grey things with legs like tree trunks and big flappy ears. And so big. As big as a church spire. Most strange, they had long, long noses that flopped down to their knees, and they could poke them around too. Then either side of this funny wobbly nose, two of their teeth stuck right out. A bit difficult to eat with I imagine. You couldn’t chew your dinner with teeth sticking out of your mouth like long pointed swords. Then with the nose in the middle flashing around like a whip and the ears going flap, flap, flap, well, you just want to laugh – or maybe just cry.”

  I was trying to imagine these things, but gave up. Actually, I thought perhaps Peg was blown off to some sort of made-up land. But I clapped my hands anyway, and waited.

  “Then I realised why the palace doors were so high,” she said. “Because these giant animals had to go through to their homes. But if some of them were enemies, there was a plan for that too, because they stuck big spikes on all the doors high up, so the monsters couldn’t bash the doors down with their heads. I saw one out in a market, and it stamped those massive feet and made an incredible trumpeting sound. Quite as terrifying as the tiggas. Anyway, they called these creatures allifantz, and there was a great many around. Men in funny clothes with huge coloured balls on their heads rode these allifantz. I don’t know how the men managed to balance those big balls, but they did it quite well.”

  “Big coloured balls?”

  “Yes, big coloured balls.”

  “And the women too?” I asked.

  “Oh dear me no,” she continued. “They were so beautiful with long black hair, and they wore wonderful floating materials with golden embroidery and the most glorious colours. They painted little red spots on their foreheads, which looked strange, and some of them had naked bits in their middles. But no one seemed shocked. These women all floated around with sparkles on their wrists and colours I’d never even seen on birds. Oh, and that reminds me, they had special birds too. Quite large with long, long tails that swished along the ground behind them. They made high screeching noises and the people called them demons, but they were stunningly beautiful when they popped their tails out in a sort of great big fan. All flashing feathers in the most incredible colours, shimmering and dancing. I thought them the most beautiful birds I’d ever seen. I would have loved to bring one home, but I doubt the crows would have liked it. They would have felt quite ashamed of their own little plain black feathers.”

  “I love the crows,” I said defensively.

  “No doubt,” Peg smiled. “But that country and all its amazing monsters, well, it was paradise. A boiling hot paradise with sunshine like a furnace. I should love to go back there one day, but I’m never able to control these funny little trips of mine, you know.”

  “I’d love to come with you,” I said, which was true.

  “The people were so elegant and colourful too,” Peg sighed. “And no little thatched cottages. Surely everyone in the whole country couldn’t live in a palace with allifantz. One day perhaps I can explore a little more. The country was called Bhārät, but I doubt I can even remember that.”

  “Draw pictures of allifantz,” I suggested, “so you won’t forget what you saw,” though I really wanted her to switch back to our original conversation, and find out her brilliant idea which she’d been so enthusiastic about just as she disappeared.

  “What an excellent idea,” she said, clicking her fingers for some paper.

  I grabbed the opportunity. “Talking of brilliant ideas,” I reminded her, “you said you had one just before you went off to play with tiggas and allifantz, that you had a great idea about my ghost. Can you help me with that, just for a moment?”

  “Oh dear,” she said with an apologetic sniff, “I have no idea at all. There’s no memory of it floating any which way up or behind. I’m afraid this exciting trip to jungles and palaces has blown everything else far, far away.”

  So I tottered off to bed and dreamed – not of Agnes – but of striped balloons on everyone’s head, and allifantz flying up into the air and fanning out their coloured tails.

  I would therefore have nothing to tell Rollo on the following morning, but I told myself it didn’t matter. After all, if I told him I’d seen his mother and that was that, he’d think I was quite crazy and wouldn’t want to see me again. Then I questioned whether I really did like him in a silly boy girl kissy sort of way and decided absolutely not. Kissing him, I decided, would be entirely repulsive. Then I repeated what my mother told me several times every single day, that I was lazy, brainless, weak and cowardly, so ugly that no one would ever want to kiss me anyway, and would soon discover that I had such a weak magical grade, I would probably be weaker than our maid Kate. Kate was sweet, but she was lazy, self-pitying, plain, and had a magical grade of twelve. Poor Kate. Poor me. Perhaps we’d make a good team.

  But with a small twinge of my better half, I remembered that at least I’d see Rollo tomorrow morning, even if I couldn’t give him happy news of his mother.

  Five

  I woke to pouring rain.

  “Well, you can go and sweep the dining room floor again,” said my mother. “I’m not going out to market in this horrible weather.” She could not fly either, of course. Not that flying in a downpour would be much fun, I supposed.

  I nearly cried, but I served breakfast with the biggest smile I could find and then when everyone had trotted off, I swept the floor. What fun. At least I could leave four buckets just outside the kitchen door, with no need to go all the way to the well. The rain did that task for me.

  But when I crawled back to my room, I was nearly in tears. I would have to wait until next Friday, and Rollo might have given me up by then.

  It rained all day. I called Agnes about a thousand times, had a brief talk with Whistle, but he was too involved in some special spell he was working on, and I don’t think he even realised I was there. He seemed to be conjuring up a small silver cup. Whether it was real silver, I couldn’t know, but for a few minutes I couldn’t resist watching him. First there was the flat bottom, Then the sides started to grow under his fingers. Fascinating and so clever, but I couldn’t wait any longer.

  I went back to Peg’s room, intending to ask her all about her recent trip, not even thinking about Agnes or Rollo anymore. Her door was open a crack, so I went in, calling her name softly. In fact, she was fast asleep so I turned around as quietly as I could and slowly stumbled my way back downstairs.

  There she was waiting for me, sitting on my bed, Agnes Snoop, and very elegant in a wispy sort of pale green gown. Her hair was loose, and she somehow looked younger. I was thrilled and went to sit beside her.

  “I’m so pleased to see you again,” I said with the little girl politeness I never lost. “I was hoping you’d come back. But it’s more than two weeks since I saw Rollo.”

  “I believe it’s too late today,” she nodded. “But would you go to find him one day soon? I’m sure he would welcome you at our house if you’d care to visit. I shall, of course, tell you how to find him.”

  Actually, I wasn’t so keen on that idea. For one th
ing, my mother never let me out of The Rookery alone. Never had, never would. And I also felt it would be very pushy to visit him after only having met him twice at the market.

  But I nodded, being polite again. “I would hate to seem too forward,” I added. “But if you want me to – ?”

  “You see,” Agnes said, soft voiced, “I feel, as I suppose you also feel, that I should not interrupt your life, or ask you to do something just for me and my family. But I cannot visit other village folk. For some reason I cannot tell, you are far more receptive.”

  Now that really wasn’t something I was going to explain. So I said, “I’ll go. I’m happy to go, if you have a special reason.”

  Well, obviously it was a special reason, and I was quite excited about it when I heard.

  She smiled that funny little dimpled smile and said, “I was sick for some days. I couldn’t breathe. I feared I might die, and so I prepared two special gifts, one for my dear husband, and one for my son whom I loved just as much. But I wasn’t ready to drop dead quite that quickly, so I hid the gifts, meaning to write a note telling them where the presents were hidden, and leave it on my bed when I really did die. But life never takes into account the plans you make for yourself. Indeed, I often felt that life waits until you make plans, so it can then go off and do something completely different. And one morning, I choked and died, and that was that.”

  “Oh dear,” I said. But how can you be really sympathetic about someone’s death when they’re sitting there talking to you!

  “Actually I had fun,” she told me somewhat unexpectedly. “It was a lovely experience. Dancing and singing and lots of lights, and my own mother there waiting to give me a hug. But it’s been ages, and I still haven’t been able to tell my dearly beloved family where they will find my last wishes.”

  “You died almost a year ago” I asked.

  “A little less, I think. We don’t count the days over here. But,” And she stared at me out of those big translucent ghost eyes, “I am surprised that you aren’t frightened of me. When I tried to call on a few of my old village friends, either they could not see me, or they ran screaming from the room. It made me feel quite guilty.”

  “Umm,” I prevaricated, “I sort of like unusual things.”

  I didn’t add that I’d enjoy seeing my mother a good deal more if she was a ghost too.

  Instead I waited patiently, and eventually, almost in a ghostly whisper, she told me, “You see, my dear, I wrapped the gift for Rollo in dry leaves and pushed it into the little hole in the oak sapling outside his bedchamber window. It’s just a little crack in the bark, but I put acorns in first and more acorns afterwards so it would be protected from the rain and birds.”

  “A clever idea.” I grinned. “He’ll be so thrilled.”

  “And for my beloved husband,” she continued, “I hid his gift in his big wooden chest where we kept all our clothes. At the bottom of the chest is the doublet he wore for our wedding. It is too grand for ordinary wear, and he meant to keep it for church, but then he got so fat, he couldn’t fit into it. But he didn’t want to give it away, even to Rollo, because of our happy memories. So I rolled his special gift up inside the doublet. It must surely still be there.”

  I thought it was a lovely sweet thing for her to do, especially while she could barely breathe and was dying, and I told her so, while making plans to visit Rollo the next day when hopefully it would have stopped raining and I could nip out without my mother noticing.

  Although I would have liked Agnes to stay and talk – indeed, she could have talked for hours to my delight, telling me about her life after death and all those things I knew nothing about. But once I’d thanked her, I reached out my hand to take hers, which wasn’t there, and she disappeared. Probably my own fault.

  So I hoped all night that the next day would bring us one of its own hidden gifts – and that was good weather. Well, it was autumn, and the trees were turning colour in a blaze almost as good as sunshine. But I knew my mother would have extra work for me in the house if she thought it was going to be more rotten weather.

  It wasn’t bright sunshine, but it wasn’t raining either, so I made the beds, swept up, scrubbed yesterday’s rainy slosh from the front doorstep, filled the buckets from the well, served breakfast, cleaned up afterwards and wiped down the front corridor.

  Then, quick as I was able, I scampered from the house, dodged out of the open front gate and into Kettle Lane, ducked beneath the floating leaves and flopping branches of trees all the way along and made my way to Little Piddleton Village. No market, and no church either, because it was Saturday, but the butcher’s shop was open again, and that was where I had been told to turn left.

  As I walked that tiny winding lane, even the sunshine tried to peep past the clouds, and it reflected in the puddles still lying along the lumpy bumpy beaten earth. Agnes had told me that the little Snoop household was the next cottage past the even tinier and scrubbier laneway leading off on the right. I found it and stood there, scared stiff, just as though I was about to see a pack of Peg’s tiggas.

  Instead I saw Rollo. He was just coming out of his cottage, and we almost bumped into each other. He just stood there staring for a moment, and looking as scared as I had been, as if he thought I might tell him I wanted to marry him or something. But I smiled a bit weakly and muttered, “I have a message for you. And for your dad too.”

  Not the brightest way to start, but at least now he was interested. Goodness only knows who he thought the messages might be from. Furious complaints from my mother? Threats from the priest? Warnings about owing money to the local shop?

  “Do you want to come in?” he asked very shyly. “My dad’s at home, but he won’t mind. He never talks to anyone anyway.”

  I could just imagine sitting there, in that dark chilly little downstairs, with no fire on the slab because no smoke was oozing out the hole in the thatch, next to the old man I’d never met, trying to pretend he couldn’t see me. So I said, “Can I do something a bit peculiar first?”

  He mumbled a sort of, “If you want to. But what?”

  Yes – I’d plucked the last reed now – he surely thought I was mad. But I pointed to the little half grown oak tree baby growing up in the front of his house, and said, “There’s a little crack in the bark of that tree. Or a hole in the trunk. Something like that. And it can’t be too high to reach. Have you seen it?”

  He nodded, but now he was frowning too. “Yes, I know it,” he said. I was half expecting him to tell me to mind my own business, but he didn’t. “I used to hide spiders in it, to bring out later and frighten my friends.”

  “Well,” I said, wondering if I’d look even more stupid and pickle brained it the whole thing turned out to be a hoax with no secret gift at all, “can you reach? It should be full of acorns, but there’s something underneath. Not a spider.”

  Yes, alright, I was a flaming lunatic, but he shrugged, and fished his hand into the little hole. He pulled out six little dried out acorns and dropped them on the lane, and then twiddled around a bit more. Clearly he had found something. After a moment he was able to pull it out. He stared, then gazed up at me. “From you?” he mumbled.

  “Not me,” I said, and mine was a mumble too. “Open it and see.”

  With a frantic urgency as he began to guess, he pulled off the dead leaves which surrounded the little box, and stood there as if paralysed, just holding it. “This is my mother’s,” he said. Now it was a whisper. “She kept her mother’s wedding ring in it.”

  “Open it then,” I told him.

  He seemed transfixed, just holding the tiny box and rubbing his finger all around it. Then, with a massive inhalation, he opened the lid. One small golden circle lay on a carefully folded scrap of paper. The ring was so narrow, and it was also well worn, so very little gold remained, but clearly it meant a great deal to Rollo. He touched it over and over, then picked it up and clasped it in his palm, as though feeling some glorious sensation, like perhaps t
he return of his mother. Then finally he pulled out the paper, opened the fold and read whatever was written there.

  Rollo promptly burst into tears, turned from me and leaned against the oak tree. I waited, just standing there and completely silent. If I tried to comfort him, he’d be too embarrassed.

  Men cried all the time when there was a reason. Stories of overflowing emotions were common. Evidently the lords and the commons in parliaments sobbed too, and if either man or woman stayed dry-eyed, unmoved and untouched after some awfully upsetting situation, then they were called cold and unfeeling.

  But it was different here. Rollo’s feelings were very private and besides, he hardly knew me.

  Then he turned suddenly and stared at me through all those tears. “You said there was one for my father too?” I nodded. “Can you tell me where?” he asked on a gulp. “Or must you speak to him yourself?”

  Now I shook my head, saying, “No. I can tell you. I just hope I’m right. It’s at the bottom of his bedchamber chest of clothes, wrapped in his old doublet that doesn’t fit him anymore. Tell him. I’ll wait here if you don’t mind, just to find out if I’m right.”

  He dashed off as though the hounds were after him, and flung open the front door, disappearing inside with a bursting and joyful call for his father.

  I could hear the noises from inside. I could hear the father’s soft tired voice, even though I wasn’t sure of what he said, but it seemed he thought his son was inventing nonsense, just to get him moving. It was sometime later when I heard him slowly climb the stairs and hoped he had finally been convinced to take a look at least.

  It was much easier to hear the next development. The father’s voice, abruptly from the hush, cheered loudly and then tumbled into tears.

  Nearly crying myself, I waited. It was sometime later when Rollo staggered out again, and hurried to me. “It was there,” he told me. “My father found it. Her own wedding ring, I think, and a message he wouldn’t let me read. It meant so much to him.”