Lark (Sally Watson Family Tree Series)

by Sally Watson

  Presently she found a place where she could walk out on a branch while holding to the one above, and there she tied the first cap as far out as she could reach. It made a splendid spot of white in all the brown and tawny and green. Encouraged, she climbed higher and did the same thing on the other side of the tree.

  From this branch, she could see down the hill to what seemed to be a fair-sized valley. Surely a valley should have water at least, and perhaps people? She craned her neck hopefully. But there were too many trees in the way, and the shoulder of the hill besides. With a sigh—for she really was feeling terribly tired—she made her way higher in the tree.

  And then . . . surely there was something moving down there? Lark’s heart began thumping with hope that scarcely dared to exist. At the risk of losing her balance altogether, she did squirrel-like things until at last, through the leaves, she saw a caravan of brightly painted wagons just moving into the valley.

  Gypsies! She would have been delighted even to find Roundheads or bandits. But Gypsies were kind, as she well knew. Hastily tying a collar to the branch above her, Lark slid down the tree, fastened the other collar on the lowest branch, and turned to James. But he was unconscious again.

  There was no time to rouse him. Lark set off down the hill toward the now-invisible caravan at a suicidal pace. She scarcely dared hope that it might be Psammis’s tribe; she would settle for any humans at all!

  She plunged ahead, remembering that they had been just in line with the sun, and keeping to that direction. At a less desperate time she would have gone around steep places and slides of scree, but not now. Branches lashed across her face and tore the sturdy homespun of her skirt as she went. In steep places she sometimes went too fast for her feet, and fell. Once she rolled all the way down a slide, and another time she landed on her wrist so painfully that all she could do for a moment was to hold it, gasping, while pain shot up her arm like knives, and her stomach churned. Then she stumbled to her feet again and went on.

  Gradually the slope became less steep, and after some time she found herself on more open ground where she could once again see the wagons. There were even figures walking along beside them. Lark picked up speed and found breath to call. “Help! Wait! Please!”

  Someone turned. Someone else pointed. Her feet moving mechanically now, Lark labored on, staring through blurred eyes. Could that be a small round figure in the back of the yellow wagon? And the massive bearded man coming from the front of the caravan . . .

  “Psammis!” she bleated. “Psammis! Sheba!”

  And then she was surrounded by familiar faces, then she was sobbing and gasping in the ample strength of Sheba’s arms. “James—help—” she managed, and then had no more breath.

  “Quiet, small Gorgio; breathe deeply, then tell us,” commanded Sheba. And in a minute Lark was able to talk.

  “James—he’s hurt—up on the hill. He’s sick and out of his wits, and I think he’s— Please help him, please! If you don’t, he—” She couldn’t finish. Instead she smeared sudden tears across her face with the back of her hand and stared at them pleadingly, a most thoroughly filthy and wretched small person, even by Gypsy standards.

  “Where?” asked Psammis simply.

  Lark pointed up the hill, where two of her four spots of white could be seen amid green foliage. “There,” she said, equally brief.

  “Come,” said Psammis to Neco and a villainous-looking Gypsy named Otho. “We will find him,” he told Lark. “You need not come.”

  “Yes,” said Lark firmly. “I do need.”

  Sheba, looking at her, nodded. “She and I will come,” she said.

  Psammis regarded Lark doubtfully, but as usual he took Sheba’s advice and said no more, but began leading the way back up the hill.

  It was even longer going back than Lark remembered. She labored on, behind Neco and in front of Sheba, determined to make it on her own. And now that she had found help—a true miracle, and a large one—she began to worry for fear that James might after all have wandered off and become lost.

  Psammis, with the Gypsy gift for following trails, had no trouble at all tracing the wild and broken line of Lark’s descent. But once in a while he looked at a particularly steep and reckless bit, and turned around to eye her wonderingly. Clearly this child had far more in her than Psammis ever imagined.

  But Lark was finding it very hard going. Her wrist throbbed and hurt badly. Often she stumbled, and once would have fallen flat but that Sheba suddenly put a firm brown hand on her shoulder. The hand did more than steady her; it somehow gave her strength. Lark felt it in a swift surge and wondered whether it was Gypsy magic or some particular healing gift of Sheba’s. She turned her head with new hope. “Can you do that for James?” she asked breathlessly.

  Sheba smiled enigmatically and did not answer, but Lark found the rest of her climb easier in spirit as well as body.

  James was still there! He was also looking, if possible, worse than ever. Lark gave a small squeak of relief and dismay combined. And then she stood still while Sheba crossed swiftly and knelt down beside him. She put her hands on each side of his face, across his temples and over his head, looking grave as she felt the heat of his fever. She kept her hands there a long moment, and Lark did not know whether she was doing magic or just learning somehow what was wrong with James and how sick he was. She listened to his heart, she felt his wrists, and put her hands at the sides of his ribs. Then she turned to Psammis. “We will take him down on a litter,” she said.

  The three men made one swiftly, with long poles and the cloaks. James opened his eyes as they bent over him, and frowned. He knew his wits were wandering, and it was a great annoyance to him. Didn’t he have enough real things to worry about without seeing imaginary ones besides? Last time it had been his father that he had seen, and before that the Roundheads at the Blue Dolphin, and now it was the Gypsies. To make it worse, he could even hear them. Most confusing of all, he could also see and hear Lark, but since she didn’t look any more real than the Gypsies, how was he to know whether she was really there or not?

  “Lark?” he asked rather crossly.

  She—or his illusion of her—came over and knelt beside him and took his hand. James, still not sure if she was real, felt that he wanted to explain his difficulty to her, if she was there, that is. But it seemed very complicated.

  “Ha—” he said with great effort. “Hallu—cin—ations,” he managed, and closed his eyes again, feeling that he had explained everything in a most scientific way. And although he was dimly aware of being lifted and carried gently down the hill, he thought that he was now merely extraordinarily dizzy in addition to everything else.

  The one comforting thing was that Lark’s hand seemed to be near: sometimes holding his, sometimes touching him when he called to be sure she was there. He did hope she was all right . . . She kept saying she was . . . He must get better as soon as possible in order to make sure . . .

  Lark stayed on her feet until they were back at the caravan and Sheba vanished with James into the yellow wagon. Then, since there was no longer a great need for her to stay conscious, she quietly collapsed.

  17

  The Yellow Wagon

  When James was again able to tell what was really happening from what wasn’t, he found that he was with the Gypsies again. This confused him so much that he went back to sleep for a whole day.

  By the time he was able to take an intelligent interest in things, he was already convalescing, and consequently inclined to be both irritable and unreasonable. He was aggrieved to find that he had somehow lost more than a week, and that it was now September. He demanded to know what had been going on, and whether the expected battle had taken place, and why no one ever told him anything.

  Lark regarded him doubtfully. He looked very pale and thin on the pallet in the back of the yellow wagon, and not up to much excitement. Moreover, Sheba had particularly warned Lark not to upset him in any way, and Sheba had become very possessive an
d motherly toward James while she was saving his life.

  “Well?” demanded James, beginning to look upset.

  Lark decided she had better tell him. “Well—yes,” she admitted, trying to sound as cheerful as possible about it. “The battle was at Worcester three days ago. We heard that the English Royalists and the Highlanders fought splendidly, and if the Lowland troops hadn’t gone and refused to fight, mostly, why King Charles might not have—uh—well, lost the battle.”

  It was a severe blow, even though James had expected it. He put a hand over his eyes. “Badly?” His voice was muffled.

  “Well, yes,” Lark admitted. It was getting harder to be cheerful. “But they do say King Charles got away,” she told him soothingly.

  James did not look soothed. “Got away?” he echoed, digesting this. “Got away! You mean he hasn’t got any army at all any more? It’s all wiped out?”

  He was looking alarmingly excited. “Shhh,” said Lark hastily. “Don’t upset yourself, James! Anyway, it isn’t all wiped out. Quite a lot of Cavaliers and Scots got away, and I know they haven’t all been caught, because the Roundheads are still hunting for them. They even searched us once, and Sheba had to put something on your face to make it come out all over with spots, so they thought it was a horrible disease, and the Hand of God, and they rode away in a hurry just in case it got on them, too.” She chuckled.

  James was not amused. “I’m glad you think it’s funny!” he snarled. “It’s merely the end of everything we believed in and fought for, and Cromwell will take over everything now! I warrant you’ll laugh pretty hard when your uncle takes you back again for good, won’t you?”

  Lark stared at him unbelievingly, her feelings seriously wounded. She tried to remind herself that he had been very ill and was not himself, and had had a very hard time. But then, she had had a hard time, too, and in some ways harder than James. After all, he had been more or less peacefully unconscious all the time she had been climbing trees and falling down mountains and cracking her wrist for his sake, and all the days since when she had been half crazy with fear that he would die, and even these last days when they had actually heard the sounds of the battle, and she had had that to worry about, too. She choked back an angry retort, and then bit her lip to keep it from quivering, and sat in silence for a moment trying to control herself.

  “I’m s-sorry,” she said at last in a small and subdued voice, but with a new kind of dignity. “I think you’d b-better get some sleep, James.”

  James immediately perceived that he had been a beast and also that this was no way to prepare a girl for wanting to marry him when she grew up. This last thought surprised him a trifle. He had not known it was in his mind before now. But once he thought about it, he saw that it was perfectly natural and inevitable, and altogether the cleverest idea he had ever had.

  “I’m a beast,” he said remorsefully. “Forgive me, Lark. Are you all right? Why is your arm all bandaged like that?”

  “I cracked it or something—uh—coming down a hill,” replied Lark, immediately mollified. She gave him a dazzling smile. “Oh, James, I’m sorry if I annoyed you, but I was trying not to upset you with bad news; and anyway I’m so glad you’re going to get well that I haven’t got much sadness left for the battle. I was so scared you were going to die!”

  They looked at each other with some satisfaction. James was thinking that Lark really was devoted to him, and perhaps he had not, after all, spoiled his plan to marry her some day. Lark was way ahead of him. She was thinking that this was splendid practice in handling her husband-to-be in his more difficult moments.

  But before they could say any more, Sheba appeared, took one look at James, shooed Lark out, and ordered her patient to compose his mind at once and go to sleep.

  James, of course, did nothing of the sort. Instead, he lay and fretted about what was likely to happen to England, the Royalists, King Charles, his parents, and, most particularly, his Lark. None of it looked at all heartening. And he was in the frame of mind where he felt himself personally responsible for everything that had happened or might happen. He had just about concluded that the battle had been lost for the lack of just one more soldier (himself) on the side of Charles, and was going on to decide that somehow he would doubtless manage to lead Lark right back into the arms of Uncle Jeremiah, when Sheba looked in on him again.

  She saw at once that he was working himself into another fever, and being a very wise woman, she decided that he had better get things off his chest. So she fetched Lark back and told them to go ahead and be as upset as they liked until James’s hot broth was ready.

  James forgot about Lark needing to be protected from too much knowledge and worry. Somehow she had become his comrade, someone to share things with. He told her everything that was distressing him, especially the bit about how to reach his parents and then get over to France to find hers.

  “The Roundheads will be six times as thick and suspicious and nosy now,” he concluded. “Especially in Devon, which is strongly Royalist. For all I know, my parents have already been turned out of their home. And on top of it all, here I am as weak as a kitten, and you with a broken arm, and both of us with practically no money left.”

  Lark thought about it for a minute or two. There was a new kind of serenity about her, which James found intriguing. “My arm isn’t broken,” she pointed out presently. “It didn’t have to be set or anything. And I don’t think we ought to worry about the other things yet, because there isn’t anything we can do right now, is there, except get well. And when there is, I dare say you’ll think of it,” she went on trustingly. “You always do.”

  Somehow James found himself comforted and reassured by her confidence in him.

  As a matter of fact, Lark’s new confidence wasn’t entirely in James. During the worst times, after he had been wounded, she hadn’t been able to lean on him at all. She had been forced to depend on herself and God, and as a consequence she had made some most interesting discoveries.

  God, she had decided, wasn’t an irascible old fellow with a thunderbolt in one hand, at all. He was a sort of Power that was always right there, like air. And prayer wasn’t telling God what to do, as Uncle Jeremiah seemed to think. It was a wordless sort of thinking that could go on in the back of one’s mind all the time, like breathing air. And then in special emergencies it was like a silent yell for help. Lark had yelled for help that day on the mountain, and the help had come. She thought it very kind of God to arrange a special miracle, one way or another, and she had a brand new confidence in Him.

  She put in a special thought about all their various problems, left the back of her mind open to any hints that God might choose to send disguised as a bright idea, and then left all the details to Him.

  She left James to his nap and got down to walk along with the caravan—always close to the yellow wagon, in case James should need anything.

  She was the first thing James saw when he awoke and let his fancy drift out through the wagon doorway. He smiled to himself at the faithful small figure, and then looked again. He had been remembering an enchanting small girl by the side of a river, who had pushed him and the lout off the bank and then later spread out her hair to dry and calmly announced that she was going to Scotland. Only that morning he had been thinking that he would marry her when she grew up. Now it occurred to him that it might not be as long as he had thought. Lark was growing up, practically under his eyes. She didn’t even look about ten years old any longer. Her face was thinner, for one thing. And she had a different expression, for another. James decided with satisfaction that perhaps he could request her hand in marriage almost as soon as he found her parents and restored her to them. They would probably be feeling quite kindly toward him, too. With these pleasant thoughts, James slept once more.

  By the next day he was able to worry more actively about the unknown fate of King Charles, and also (in between worrying) to remember brief snatches of the days he had lost.

  “I t
hink I do remember a little about Roundheads searching,” he told Lark. “I thought it was a dream. My face was hot and itched horribly, and I remember hearing some child roaring and howling like all the lions in the Tower of London put together.”

  “That was Berry being spanked,” Lark told him, looking amused. “She decided she wasn’t going to let the Roundheads go past her into the wagon, and when one of them tried, she bit him. And no one ever told the Roundhead that no one was allowed to lay a finger on Berry, so he did. Hard. You never saw anybody so astonished and furious in your life. She was so mad that when he finished spanking her and gave her to Sheba, she bit Sheba too, and got another spanking; and now she gets them whenever she needs them.”

  “Well!” James digested this slowly. “I’m surprised there wasn’t knife play when a Gorgio dared hit a Romany child.”

  Lark leaned over and whispered. “I think everyone in the tribe thought it was good for her,” she whispered. “But Bracken’s the only one that says so out loud.”

  James grinned and kept his opinion to himself. Then he frowned. “Where are we?” he wanted to know. “Where are we heading? Are there any plans? Has anyone heard anything of the King? We’ve got to get me well as fast as we can, Lark, because we’re a danger to the tribe every minute we’re here.”

  “Well, you can’t leave for a while yet, however much you want to,” Lark said complacently. (She and Sheba had an unspoken agreement that they would cheerfully risk all sorts of other lives for James’s.) “Anyhow, I don’t think they’d let you just go. Not now. You’ve been adopted. Sheba says she gave you life as much as your real mother did, and that makes you her son.”