Limbo Lodge

by Joan Aiken

  “Hush!” entreated Katarina.

  They could hear heavy footsteps and voices all over the house. Some passed the library door. They heard someone ask a question, and apparently receive a negative answer.

  “So how are we to get away from here?” breathed Dido.

  “I show you Don Enrique’s private way to stable.”

  Katarina pulled back a section of shelves lined with sham books and opened a door. A flight of steps descended to a yard. Katarina led them round it, keeping in shadow, and so to the stables. She whispered something to a sleepy stable-hand who, without argument, brought out their horses. In another yard, not far away, they could hear the stamping, shouting, clatter, and whinnying of the Guards troop who had come in search of them; the noise drowned the sound of their own horses’ hoofs as they moved away down the track.

  “Katarina, thank you, thank you!” whispered Dido. “I hope you won’t be in trouble from this—”

  “No, no, meninha, why should they think of me? Now, make haste, make haste—”

  The horses were rested (all except Talisman’s mule, but it, luckily, had not had such a long journey on the previous day) and so they went quickly down the valley occupied by the Quinquilho ranch and into another one where the forest grew thick and untouched. By now the greenish light of dawn was beginning to flood the sky.

  Lord Herodsfoot was still fretting about their unceremonious departure.

  “No chance to say thanks to the old lady – not that she was very friendly – but after all she did give us dinner and beds—”

  “I wonder if she is a friend of Manoel Roy?” said the doctor.

  Herodsfoot turned towards her eagerly. “Are you acquainted with that man? I believe I heard Dido say that you had met him in Europe?”

  “Yes, my adopted father and I used to meet him here and there in gambling towns. And he often urged me to take a trip back to Aratu some time – suggested that I should return to visit the place where I was born—”

  “Now I wonder why he did that?” mused Herodsfoot. “Do you think he can have had some private motive?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Old Asoun told me – when I was staying with him and we were discussing affairs in Aratu – he said Manoel is devouringly ambitious – he would like to succeed his brother as ruler of the island. Also, he hates his brother, who stopped supplying him with money to travel to Europe. (Apparently there was some disgraceful episode – he cheated at cards, or killed a man in a duel – the Forest People, of course, know all these things.)”

  “But why would Manoel want Doc Tally back here?” broke in Dido, who was riding, with Yorka perched on her saddle-bow, a few paces behind the others. “The island folk might like Tally better than him? If old John King’s her father? If she’s the heir? If she’s the kid that got chucked in the sea?”

  “My dear, do you think you are that child?” Herodsfoot asked Talisman.

  She replied simply, “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you have any positive proof?”

  “Yes, my medallion.” she said. “With my name on it. Jane Kirlingshaw. King’s name was Kirlingshaw before he changed it to King. Aunt Tala’aa said so.”

  “Yes,” said Herodsfoot. “So I heard also from Asoun. That seems quite conclusive.”

  Wonder why he seems so glum about it, thought Dido.

  “Do you have any ambition to become ruler of Aratu?”

  “Oh, good heavens, no, none,” Talisman said impatiently. “I want to be a doctor. A good one.”

  Lord Herodsfoot looked a trifle more cheerful. “A very proper ambition!” he congratulated her. “Now: does Manoel, do you think, know or suspect that you are his niece?”

  “Oh, yes, I am sure he must,” she answered. “I can remember his asking my adopted father all kinds of questions about how and when he found me. Yes – it does seem to hang together – he wanted me back on this island for reasons of his own. Perhaps to kill me, do you think? To eliminate me as a possible rival? That was what he intended when he threw me off the cliff perhaps—”

  “Yes, what has happened up to now does suggest that. Or perhaps now he wants to have you under his control – so that he can use the threat of imprisonment for these trumped-up crimes to get you to do what he wants.”

  He picked the wrong gal for that, thought Dido. “I don’t see Doc Talisman doing what any cove wants, not unless Tally wants it too,” she said.

  Herodsfoot chuckled. “I quite agree with you there.” He gave an admiring, respectful look at the doctor. “But Asoun was telling me about Manoel’s plans. He has the support of the townspeople, because they are nearly all Angrians, with their strict, gloomy puritanical beliefs, and they let themselves be run by the Town Guard and lead very narrow lives.”

  “And treat females like toads,” said Dido.

  “Just so. But Manoel has little support from the Forest People, who live so differently. And the Forest People don’t like him. Can you wonder? Their power lies in the Kanikke, the witches.”

  “But why do they accept the rule of John King? He’s not a Forest Person.”

  “No; but he was married to one, and loved her very much, and adopted many of her ways. And he doesn’t bother the Forest People and they don’t bother him. The Forest People have no ambitions. Whereas the Town People want to cut down more forest and plant more plantations.”

  “More Forest People than Town People,” put in Tylo.

  “Yeah,” said Dido, “but the Town People are active and pushy, so they get their way more than forest folk, who just want to sing Creation songs and eat bark bread when they are hungry.”

  “That’s it,” said Herodsfoot. “Exactly so. I think Manoel wants Doctor Talisman on his side because she would be acceptable to the Forest People. Is, already, one of them because of her mother. To them, she is a Kanikke.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Talisman. “I began to know it almost as soon as I came to Aratu.” Dido thought of the scene in Manoel’s courtyard. “And then Aunt Tala’aa told me so.”

  “Well,” said Herodsfoot, “it certainly seems as if the most important thing just now is for you to get to see John King. Before somebody tries to throw you back into jail.” He sounded depressed again. What a one he is for ups and downs, thought Dido.

  Doctor Talisman evidently thought so too, for she said, “Enough of this conversation! Let us have a race. The forest is not so thick here. I will race you to the brook down there,” she told Herodsfoot. “Are you ready – go!”

  She kicked her mule into a canter and shot alongside of Herodsfoot, who, taken by surprise, needed a moment to get going, but soon overtook her, laughing and waving his hat, then drew ahead. Dido, with the extra weight (not that it was much) of Yorka on her pony, did not try to compete, but rode soberly on down towards the stream.

  “He loves that Doc!” said Yorka. “From the minute he first see her.”

  “Do you think so? I do too,” Dido said sadly.

  “Why sad? Not bad to love!”

  “Golly-good!” said Tylo cheerfully. “Better than hate, anyhow. That Manoel – he hate the whole world.”

  Dido could not explain the complicated pain she felt about Herodsfoot and Talisman. She was fond of them both. In fact, she thought, they were two of the nicest people she had ever come across. But she felt that the road ahead of them was a very slippery and twisty one, and that, however things worked out, the result might not be for the happiness of everybody.

  “That girl back at the Quinquilho ranch,” she said. “That girl Luisa. Why was the old lady so angry?”

  “Because the father of that child a Forest Person,” said Tylo. “My uncle’s cousin’s son Kaubre. Ereira family very angry about that.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Dido. “Why isn’t Luisa with him? In the forest?”

  “He dead. Don Enrique shoot him.”

  Suddenly Dido had a strong feeling of homesickness for Battersea, London. Battersea was dirty and ugly, maybe, the people
who lived there were poor and tough, they had to buy their food, it did not grow on trees, but there was no dark background to them, they all knew each other and did what was expected. Nor did they shoot each other. Or not much.

  “There’s too much blame mysteriousness about this island,” she said.

  At the stream, where there was a ford, Herodsfoot and Talisman were waiting for the others, resting their horses, letting them drink.

  He was teasing her.

  “I don’t believe you are really a Kanikke. Or you wouldn’t have let me beat you in the race.”

  Dido thought of telling Herodsfoot how Talisman had climbed up the tower. But she decided not to.

  “Just the same, I am a Kanikke,” Talisman retorted. “And, by and by – when I see fit – I shall prove it to you.”

  “Now I do remember you!” Herodsfoot suddenly exclaimed. “You were the little girl in a tartan dress who used to sit, sometimes, rather impatiently, on the steps of the Casino at Bad Szomberg, playing Tricotin in a tiny mother-of-pearl box, while the men were all inside playing Faro and Basset.”

  “And once you gave me a box of bonbons.”

  “Did I? I had forgotten that.” They smiled at each other.

  Tylo said, “Now we got climb up, very steep, to reach the Place of Stones. Got leave horses halfway up – too steep for them.”

  “You don’t think Manoel and the Civil Guard will follow us here?”

  “Can’t follow through forest. And nobody go to Place of Stones. Too bad luck. Only Halmahi and Kanikke, people with strong soul. Most people too scared.”

  “Somebody went there,” said Dido, “and pinched the skull that Doc Tally has. Where did you come across it, Doc?”

  “My adopted father bought it for me – one time – when he was very rich, when he had won a huge amount of money at Four-Five-Six. He saw it in a curiosity shop in San Firmo, labelled ‘Sacred skull from Aratu’ and he knew that I wanted a skull anyway for my medical studies – so he bought it. He tried to find out who had sold it to the shop, and from the man’s description he believed it was Manoel Roy. He knew that Manoel had lost heavily at the tables the day before – Manoel was always a wild gambler, lost more often than he won – and then, suddenly, he had plenty of money again.”

  “He had sold the skull? Must have brought it with him from the Place of Stones. It was quite brave of him to go and pinch it,” remarked Dido. “If the place is supposed to be so spooky.”

  “He be sorry later, by golly,” said Tylo. “He be sorry by and by.”

  The forest had thinned now, into patches of giant ferm and wild clove trees, with grassy, shrubby stretches in between. It was mid morning, and growing very hot. Yorka showed Dido how to make a hat out of a huge ukka leaf, tied under the chin with grass.

  The horses were left tethered in a shady grove when the track became too steep for them to manage, inside a ring of kandu nuts for protection against pearl-snakes, whose bite was just as deadly to horses as to humans. Talisman slung the skull round her neck in an ukka leaf.

  The last part of the climb was extremely hard going. Here the ground was almost naked rock, silvery grey in colour, and thinly covered with pale dust, which made it slippery and treacherous underfoot.

  “One thing – at least there’s no snakes hereabouts,” gasped Dido, when her feet had shot from under her for the sixth time, and she picked herself up, cross, bruised, and scraped. “Snakes have got more sense than climb this hill.”

  Instead of snakes there were birds – huge grey eagles floating almost motionless overhead, “Looking,” Dido said, “as if for two ukka seeds they’d drop down and scrunch us up for their lunch—” and she sighed, for it seemed a long time since the meal they had eaten at the Quinquilho ranch the night before.

  They were now up so high that a large part of the island was visible: behind them the forest like a rug of thick brilliant green fur; beyond, and all around, the celestial blue of the ocean. Ahead of them, slightly to the right, or west, rose the conical peak of Mount Fura, dark with trees up to half its height, then pale rock and scrub.

  “It was once a volcano,” said Lord Herodsfoot. “But extinct now, I am happy to say.” From his saddle-bag he had taken a small telescope, and carried it with him up the mountain; through it, he studied the prospect ahead. “I think I can see a house, high on the mountainside; I suppose that is King’s palace – Limbo Lodge – strange name to give it! It looks so close from here; hard to believe it is still a day’s journey away.”

  Tylo took the glass from Herodsfoot and squinted through it. “Is so: that Limbo Lodge. But much far still; long golly-hour walking. Go down, then up.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Dido, taking her turn with the glass. “There’s a big gully in between us and that mountain, ain’t there?”

  Between the two greens – the green of the forest on this side, dark emerald in colour, and the paler, greyer green of the woods on Mount Fura – there could be seen a distant gap.

  “Is there a river down there in that deep gorge?”

  “Kai river,” said Tylo nodding. “Very deep – fast river – probable must go down to cross beach – crocodiles too—”

  “Don’t they have a bridge?” asked Dido, who did not fancy the sound of crocodiles.

  “Did have bridge, old Sovran John ordered smash. So I heard.”

  “Why?”

  Tylo shrugged. “Don’t want people see him too easy.”

  “But he’s the ruler!” said Talisman. “It should be easy—”

  “Do you think so?” said Herodsfoot. “Now, if I were the ruler – I should never wish to be bothered by subjects – I should sit in my study all day long, drinking Madeira wine and reading Latin poetry—”

  “Oh!” She exploded with outrage, then saw that he was teasing her. “You should not say things like that – even in joke! It is a ruler’s duty to listen to the needs of his people.”

  “But he’s deaf, poor man – or so I understand – he simply can’t hear what they ask him.”

  “Yes, that is true,” put in Yorka. “He not hear any voice at all. People talk to him, they write word in book.”

  “Some say he lose hearing when skull taken from Place of Stones.”

  “Oh well,” said Dido hopefully, “in that case, when Doc Tally puts the skull back in its hidey-hole, maybe the old cove will get back the use of his lug-holes. When do we get to this blessed Place of Stones, Tylo? My legs feel like banana peel.”

  A warm thick mist, damp and fresh, suddenly drifted down out of the sky as they climbed, and now hung close around them, blocking out the distant view.

  “Keep go straight up hill,” said Tylo. “Hold hands.” He took the hands of Dido and Yorka. Herodsfoot grasped the doctor’s hand.

  “This is like the mists in Ireland, where I come from,” he said. “Have you ever been there, Talisman?”

  “No, never.”

  “It’s a beautiful country. I should like to take you there sometime.”

  Dido sighed.

  They walked on cautiously through the thick whiteness.

  “You ever been here before?” Dido whispered to Yorka. Somehow the denseness of the mist, the lack of visibility, made it natural to whisper.

  Yorka shook her head.

  “My auntie Tala’aa come here at Thunder Time. With other Kanikke. To talk to the Old Ones.”

  “Who are they?”

  They, Dido learned, were the ancestors, who had put the stones in the Place of Stones at the beginning of things, long, long ago.

  “Many, many treetimes.”

  “Don’t this mist smell sweet? It’s like breathing sugar and spice.”

  “Carry far sounds, too.”

  This was true. A faint, distant drumming could be heard, even by the non-forest people.

  “I suppose old Asoun, or your Aunt Tala’aa, would know what those drums were saying?” Dido said to Yorka, and noticed a fleeting look of disquiet on Talisman’s face.

  Su
ddenly the steep slope flattened. Unexpectedly, they had come to the top of the rise, and stood on level ground, still in a close group, clasping each others’ hands. And at the same moment they realised that they were among the Stones – three black monoliths reared up immediately around them, each one the height of a two-storey house. And a fourth slab was perched horizontally across the tops of two of the others.

  “My word!” cried out Herodsfoot with immense enthusiasm. “A cromlech! (Or, as the Bretons would have it, a dolmen.) And a very, very fine specimen!”

  Peering about in the murk, they could see many more of the great stones close at hand; but all the others had fallen down. There were nine fallen ones, Dido reckoned, and a number of the flat slabs which must have rested on top, but many of those were shattered, so it was hard to decide how many there had been.

  “Where d’you think your skull oughta go, Doc?” Dido murmured softly.

  Of the three standing stones, one was bigger than the two others and stood apart from them. Talisman knelt down and examined its base.

  “I’d been told that the skulls were buried under the upright stones, but they seem to be standing on solid rock,” she whispered. “It is amazing that they have stayed standing for so long. They seem to be just balanced, not sunk into the ground—”

  “No, look, Doc—” Dido had laid her cheek on the ground and was squinting closely at the base of another standing monolith. Then she went and studied one of the fallen stones. “This is really clever! See, they were pegged on to the ground. This one had a spur carved out on its underside that fitted into a slot in the rock below. A bit of the spur is busted off, but you can see how it was done – here’s the hole in the rocky ground where it went, and there’s a matching bit of the spur, still plugged in the hole. If I had a knife or a skewer I believe I could prise it out—”

  Herodsfoot had a folding knife with an attachment for removing stones from horses’ hoofs. This proved just right for delving the broken section of rock out of the hole.