by Joan Aiken
‘That Finster is a complete clodpole! – Mind, His Nabs ain’t easy to manage, I’ll hand you that; he has to be humoured, he has to be wheedled; you need to pay heed to his whimsies:
‘Just a little heed’ll
Save a deal of wheedle
Skill and tact and speed’ll
Often win a way –’
sang Mr Twite. ‘Well, now you see, my pippin, why there is such a need for you to marry the king –’
‘Marry the king?’ gasped Dido. ‘Are you off your rocker? Have you gone clean out of your finical wits, Pa?’
‘Stop acting skittish and silly and hysterical, child. What else do you suppose I ever had in mind? All you have to do is sit tight and play your cards cannily – as you would say to our Netherlandish friend up yonder –’
Mr Twite gestured with an airy hand towards the upper floors of Bart’s Building which they were now approaching.
‘But, Pa – Princess Adelaide of Thuringia is being fetched over to marry the king – everyone knows that.’
‘Tush. I do not mean that king, child.’
‘Sakes alive! Pa!’ Dido interrupted him – in any case, what he was saying made no sense at all – ‘Hey, Pa, look at the house. It’s afire! There’s smoke coming out!’
‘Ahhhh – blessmysoul –’ muttered Mr Twite, slowly coming down from the lit-up, airy, fantastical regions where his mind had been floating. He stared at the house. ‘Smoke. So there is. Coming from doors and windows. How very singular. Not to say unusual. I wonder, now, what could be occasioning such a phenomeniggle?’
He stood on the pavement outside Bart’s Building, scratching his head slowly, staring vacantly. Dido stared too. The house looked like an old, black, whiskery cat. Smoke in plumes, in curls and tendrils, was finding a way through door and window cracks all over the downstairs part of the building.
‘It’s on fire!’ said Dido again, horrified. ‘With all those folk inside – Mrs Bloodvessel and little Is and Mr van Doon and the lollpoops – quick, Pa, we gotta get them out – give us the keys, quick, I’ll go in and roust ’em out while you run for help – go and fetch the fire brigade –’
But Mr Twite did not seem inclined to hand her the keys, or to run for help. He still scratched his head. ‘Well, now –’ he began ruminatively. ‘Well, now we have to think about this –’
What he would have said was interrupted by Dr Finster, who arrived, in a curricle, at a gallop.
‘Ah – Bredalbane – what a lucky chance – thank heaven you are here –’ he panted. ‘Come back at once! His excellency has had a severe seizure – I have administred a strong opiate – but your music is more important still. Pray come directly –’
He reached down a hand, Mr Twite took it, and was swiftly hoisted into the carriage.
‘But, Pa!’ cried Dido. ‘The keys – the fire – all those folk in there – you aren’t just a-going to leave them –?’ She could hardly believe it, even of her father; she could hardly speak for horror.
But he said, ‘Don’t bother me now, my cherub – his lordship is more important. As for the fire – I daresay it will prove to be a trifle –’
His final words were blown back on the icy wind as Dr Finster, who had already turned the carriage, whipped his horses into a gallop.
‘Throw back the keys!’ screamed Dido, but Mr Twite took no notice.
She wasted no time in looking after the carriage. She had her own front door key, tucked into the page’s cummerbund; she flung the front door open and raced up the stairs to van Doon’s room before the hoofbeats had died away.
‘Sir! Sir!’ she called, beating on the door with both fists, ‘come down quick! The house is afire! Make haste!’
The Dutchman was still awake; a light showed under his door and he opened it directly. Little Is was there too; they had been playing dominoes; thank goodness for that, thought Dido.
‘Quick!’ she said to Is. ‘You gotta help me get out the lollpoops – all those young ’uns locked in down there – the fire’s downstairs, just smell the smoke!’
They came down none too soon; thick smoke was coiling up the stairs, and as they ran towards the front door a sudden fierce burst of flame shot out of Mrs Bloodvessel’s door.
‘Reckon that’s where it begun – in there,’ panted Dido. ‘D’you think, mister, that she’s – that she –?’
Van Doon looked through the door at the raging flames and shook his head. ‘If she is in there, child, she cannot be alive. But you say that there are others – there are children down below?’
‘Yes, and I haven’t a key!’ Dido clenched her fists. ‘Pa told me to put it on the mantel. We gotta bash open the door, else they’ll all be kippered in there, poor brutes. Oh, if Pa hadn’t gone off –’
The Dutchman displayed unexpected resource.
‘We must take a post from the fence – I do not think it will be too difficult – so!’ He dragged loose one of the rusty iron rails. ‘Now we use it to knock down the door. You help me,’ he ordered Dido. ‘Not you, little one; you are too small.’
Five – six – seven – eight times he and Dido ran at the warped and paintless door and drove their improvised battering ram against it; at the ninth stroke the door gave way and they tumbled through into the smoke-filled room. Already from inside they had heard faint pitiful cries: ‘Help, help!’ and as soon as the door was down a mass of terrified, smoke-grimed children began to struggle and scramble out into the area and up the steps.
‘Be careful!’ called van Doon. ‘Do not trample one another. There is time, we will help you all!’
Dido grabbed a grimy boy who seemed lively enough, not too choked or confused by fumes.
‘Can you run and raise the alarm? If you get there quick enough, maybe the firemen can stop the whole house burning. I’ll see that the rest of your mates get out safe.’
He nodded and ran off.
Dido and the Dutchman raced to and fro, lugging, dragging, hauling, tugging and pushing the rest of the lollpoops to safety. The ones near the street door had been in better shape; the poor wretches who were packed together at the back – tight as cigars in a box, thought Dido – were, many of them, fainting or stupefied from breathing smoke, and had to be dragged or carried out and laid face-down on the cobbles.
The last two were fetched out only just in time; a whole section of the charred ceiling fell in, and a fearsome light from above was thrown across the dismal basement room where the ropes dangled, already beginning to burn.
‘Gott sei dank – that is all of them,’ said the Dutchman, rubbing his brow with his shirtsleeve. His face, like that of Dido, was black with smoke and grime. Just as well, she thought; all we need is somebody taking him for King Dick.
At this moment the fire wagon arrived with a clatter of sturdy horses and clank of brass pails.
‘Any folk still inside?’ the fire chief asked van Doon.
‘We got out all the children from below –’ van Doon indicated the stupefied lollpoops, lying higgledy-piggledy on the pavement.
‘Lucky for them,’ the fire chief commented briefly. ‘Always said that place were a death trap.’
‘But there is the woman in that room there,’ Van Doon pointed to the ground-floor room where flames sprouted like ferns from the front window.
‘She’s done for, then. No question. Still, I reckon we can save the house. Get going, lads!’ he bellowed at his men, who had already formed a bucket chain to the river – where it was discovered that the ice had to be broken, for it had formed a rim, inches thick, along the edge, running out for several feet into the river.
While the full and empty buckets were passed to and fro at racing speed, Dido and van Doon worked hard at rousing the lollpoops – slapping their faces, shaking them, rubbing them with handfuls of snow and ice, and, as fast as they recovered, setting them to help their companions.
But all the time, while she worked, Dido’s mind, spinning in a circle, chased one idea. Round and round, rou
nd and round.
How could Pa have gone off like that, with the front door key in his pocket, leaving the place to burn? Of course he was all lit up and excited after his concert – I know that – and upset, because of Finster’s stupid trick – and worried, on account of His Nabs taking a bad turn – but, just the same – how could he?
He didn’t know I’d got a front door key. That was just luck.
And what about that last dram he gave Mrs B? And what about the cigar she was smoking? When we left the house – was she still smoking it then? Holding it in her hand? When Pa said something spiteful about Ma – something that made Mrs B. give a kind of squawk –?
How can somebody write such music – and act so?
At last the fire was quenched, and the half-choked lollpoops were all on the way to recovery. The fire wagon departed, taking with it the charred corpse of Mrs Bloodvessel, decently wrapped in a counterpane. The room she and Mr Twite had occupied was the only one completely burned; it was gutted, with a hole through the floor to the basement below, which was now half full of water from the firemen’s activities.
The upstairs part of the house was still habitable, though black as an oven with soot and grease, ice-cold from the night air, and soused with water which had already begun to freeze. And every room in the house was filled with the same stench – a rank, sharp, stifling smell of burnt timber.
‘What’ll we do now?’ a girl lollpoop dismally asked Dido. ‘Do us lie out all night in the street, us’ll freeze to death. And he did take our fardens.’
Dido thought of those farthings, probably in her father’s pocket.
‘You’d best come back inside,’ she said gruffly. ‘Reckon it’s safe enough. And there’s plenty empty rooms upstairs. Find yourselves places.’
Silently they stumbled in, toiled up, and sank on the floors of the empty rooms. Is, her basement lair now flooded with six inches of half frozen water, went back to Mr van Doon’s room, where Dido contrived her a bed from a folded mat and her own sheepskin jacket.
‘Where’s Figgin?’ demanded the Slut suddenly. ‘Where’s my cat Figgin?’
Nobody had seen him. Is began to cry.
‘Oh, if he’s burned – if he’s burned – I – I don’t rightly know what I’ll do!’
‘Don’t take on so! He’ll turn up – that cat’s got a power of sense,’ Dido reminded her. ‘Anyhow he wouldn’t be in Mrs B’s room – he never went in there, she couldn’t abide him.’
Leaving van Doon to comfort Is, if he could, Dido went, rather wearily, downstairs to shut the front door – though with the windows burned out, there seemed little point in such a precaution.
As she stood on the step, yawning, rubbing the smoke from her eyes, looking at the trampled, sooty snow, she saw Wally Greenaway approaching at a run.
10
SOPHIE HAD GONE early to the Margrave’s party, having dressed herself carefully in one of Simon’s best evening suits – black satin knee-breeches, white ruffled cambric shirt, black velvet jacket, satin-lined cloak and tricorne hat.
Just as she was about to leave, her white dove fluttered down and perched on her shoulder. Nothing would persuade it to stay at home, or to travel back with Mogg in the carriage.
‘I’ll not be here long, Mogg, I don’t intend to stay for the musical entertainment,’ Sophie told the aged coachman. ‘Can you come back for me in about an hour; though I am sorry to keep you tooling to and fro.’
‘Never mind that, missie,’ he grumbled. ‘But I am sorry to see you dressed up so, like one o’ them play-actors. And with that blessed bird! It ain’t becoming. It’ll lead to trouble, mark my words.’
‘Fiddlestick, Mogg. I think it’s very becoming,’ said Sophie, looking admiringly at her black silk legs. ‘Anyway, never mind that – you cross old man – but just come back for me at ten.’
‘All rug, Missie Sophie; I’ll be there.’
One of Sophie’s reasons for intending to leave early was the possible awkwardness of meeting somebody she knew at the party, since she had herself announced as the Duke of Battersea. But, in fact, as soon as she gave her name to the major-domo, she was led away from the main salon, along a passage, down a stair, and into a small chamber, beautifully furnished with a dull greenish velvet carpet, grey satin walls, and all the furniture, to match the hearth, carved out of palest pink marble. A large bunch of pale pink roses stood in the empty grate; the room was rather cold. Evidently it was not in regular use. Sophie admired it very much.
Here, after a few minutes, the Margrave joined her. He was, Sophie noticed, extremely pale, and walked with a limp. When she bowed to him he gave her a cold, scrutinizing stare, then a chilly smile.
‘Hmm, yes, I see . . . the likeness is really remarkable. Not anticipating anything of the kind I was, if only temporarily, deceived, last time we met. But you need not trouble to keep up the deception any longer, Lady Sophie. Pray be seated.’
Sophie gulped, but accepted his invitation to sit and managed to observe with tolerable calm, ‘My brother was unable to come on either occasion, excellency, because he is out hunting wolves on the south side of the river – so as to render the area safe for your procession next week. He is in considerable danger. But we should not have practised the deception. Now: in what way can I be of service to you?’
She could not help blushing, felt a fool to have involved herself in the business, and, in her heart, blamed Simon a little; also herself; why was I such a fool, she thought, why didn’t I just come as myself?
But the Margrave’s next words blew all such vain repinings out of her mind.
‘Originally, I must confess, I had forgotten your existence,’ he said. ‘You have complicated my arrangements. I planned that your brother should die, along with the rest of the king’s friends –’
‘What are you saying?’ Sophie gasped.
‘– And it may still be necessary,’ the Margrave went on in a level tone. ‘All depends at this point on you, my dear.’
He studied her again, carefully, then, with a sudden inarticulate sound of exasperation, stepped forward, snatched the dove from her shoulder, and wrung its neck. The bird was dead before Sophie could even open her mouth to protest.
‘I cannot – stand – birds,’ the Margrave said rather breathlessly. His pale face had become suffused with red. He put the dove on the pink marble mantelpiece.
Then he went on with what he was saying, as if nothing had happened.
‘I will admit that I was greatly taken with your response, last week, to my Chapelmaster’s music. I recognise that you have an intelligent spirit, that you are perceptive. You could be of great assistance to my design, if you could be persuaded to join me?’
Sophie could only gaze at him in silence, her eyes black as coals in a face perfectly bloodless from shock.
To hear of her brother’s murder – to hear it alluded to in that calm, matter-of-fact voice had made her ears ring and her throat close up. And then, the dove. She felt as if she would choke. She could not speak.
‘I propose, you see, to replace the king with a substitute. One of my own selection, who will pay heed to my wishes,’ the Margrave went on placidly. ‘The substitution is to take place during the tunnel opening ceremony. The likeness is so exact that nobody – outside the king’s close circle of intimates – can be aware of the change. Quite different from your little prank,’ he said contemptuously. ‘It is lucky,’ he added, ‘that the king was so seldom in London hitherto, and had so few friends.’
He paused, looking at Sophie for her response.
‘I – I see,’ she croaked, thinking the Margrave must be as mad as a hatter. Yet he looked sensible enough. Better humour him, anyway, until she could escape. ‘What – pray – had you in – had you planned to do with – with the real king?’ she asked in a shaking voice.
‘Oh, nothing inhumane,’ the Margrave replied airily. ‘Nothing drastic, I assure you. There is a small island, Inchmore, off the coast of Scotland; it boasts
a monastery, and the good monks also look after a number of persons whose wits have gone astray: I plan that the king shall be – shall be accomodated there, as a religious or as a lunatic; the choice is up to him.’
Sophie shivered at the thought; the poor king declaring, asserting, pleading that he was the real heir to the throne; who, in such a place, would pay the least attention?
‘Now,’ the Margrave went on in a mild persuasive tone, ‘you can see, dear Lady Sophie, that the help of you and your brother would be of sovereign value in such an undertaking. Known, as you are, to be his intimate friends, who would doubt if you supported and countenanced my candidate? Who could doubt him? You know me – you esteem my musical taste – you must see the advantages of such a –’
‘Oh, no,’ Sophie interrupted hoarsely. ‘Oh, no: that is quite, quite out of the question. I could not – we could not – be party to any such – it is a wicked plan –’
‘Why?’ The Margrave’s face flushed even redder. ‘To replace one honest dull man by another? One who will be influenced by me? Who will be imbued with my tastes, my intelligence – ?’
‘We are fond of the king.’
‘Pish! You have known him for so short a time.’
‘And his father before him –’
‘Do not forget that you would have great resources,’ the Margrave went on softly, though his mouth was beginning to twitch rather, and his skin to go white in patches; it was plain that he was having to keep himself under severe control. ‘Your schemes for poor children (I understand that you have some) could be greatly advanced. I shall have control of –’
‘Stop! Stop!’ cried Sophie indignantly. ‘You are talking wicked, wicked nonsense. How can you? No possible persuasion would tempt me – or Simon. It is a mad notion. How can you entertain it? You look to me like a very ill man – and you are not young,’ she went on impetuously, ‘you should be thinking of better things, using your power in a better way, especially if you have not much time left –’ ignoring the terrible look he gave her. ‘Oh, I can’t stand it!’ She was half choking with indignation; she stood up, hardly aware of what she did. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself; I had best leave you before I say what I really think –’
