Lark (Sally Watson Family Tree Series)

by Sally Watson

  But James very quickly picked up a hint that young gentlemen anxious to leave the country in a hurry for their health might do well to wander around the Dart River and the streams that fed into it. He didn’t need a second hint.

  By the afternoon of the second day he and Lark were hot on the trail of the gentleman with the boat, and were walking into a small village consisting mainly of a few thatched cottages, a smithy, and an inn situated on the banks of a wide stream. The inn served without doubt as local meeting place, clubhouse, and tavern, and there was a walled garden with benches between the inn and the banks of the stream.

  Lark eyed the inn with some apprehension, feeling that so far their luck in such places had not been altogether good. James hesitated for the more practical reason that Gypsies could hardly walk right in and ask for “a gentleman who was helping Royalists escape”—especially since he didn’t happen to know any Royalists in this particular village. So he and Lark wandered around a little, peered into the blacksmith’s shop, and presently paused to glance through the open gate into the inn yard.

  Instantly they heard a most familiar voice.

  “I can tell that you are a most clever and good woman, and so I shall tell you a very good fortune for only a small piece of silver.”

  “Willow!” whispered Lark, standing on tiptoe to see over the shrubbery and James. But all she could make out was a swinging gold earring amid dark hair, and beyond it the barest glimpse of what seemed to be an elderly farm woman.

  “Shhh,” said James, who could see a bit more, and wanted to hear more, too. Willow’s chosen victim had a trusting and gullible expression that at once aroused his sense of chivalry, and he did not intend just to stand there and let her be cheated.

  “Eh,” said the victim. “Tis fine and good of ee, m’dear, but what wid an old woman th’ loikes of oi do wi’ silver?”

  “Surely you have one piece?” Willow wheedled. “Silver brings much better luck than copper, and I can tell a much better for—” There was a smart slapping sound, and she interrupted her own speech with a small yelp of pain and surprise.

  “Eh, m’dear,” came the woman’s voice as Willow nursed a stinging wrist. “Oi never telled ee to look in oi’s purse ee’self, now, did I?” Her voice was placid and slow, but there was a hidden note of tart humor that caused Lark to burrow her way past James in order to get a good look at its owner.

  “Grandmother!” she squealed, and under the dumbfounded noses of James and Willow, she hurled herself across the courtyard and into the farm woman’s arms.

  The farm woman, after one instant of blank amazement, bore up very well. A pair of tip-tilted green eyes sparkled, and she held Lark at arm’s length to survey her. “I always did say you took after me,” she remarked with satisfaction. “Knew you’d be too much for Jeremiah. Well? Did you run away, or did he give up and turn you out?”

  Lark giggled. James stood where he was and went on staring. Could it be . . . Was it possible that the redoubtable grandmother . . . the highborn lady who spoke her mind to kings . . . was now wandering Devon disguised as a poor country woman? . . . The more James looked at that vital face, the more he thought that this unlikely notion was, after all, highly probable. He also thought he could now guess from whom Lark had gotten certain traits of character.

  “What are you doing here, Grandmother?” Lark was now demanding. “I knew you’d be doing something exciting! Is Grandfather here, too? Oh, I know! Is he the gentleman who comes around to save Royalists from the Roundheads and whisk them off to France? He is, isn’t he? And you . . .” She paused, and her mind flew back to the Blue Dolphin and certain other parts of her journey with James. “You’re very useful, aren’t you, Grandmother?” she chortled. “Who would suspect Grandfather when he has his dear sweet wife along?”

  Lark was very nearly beside herself with excitement. Lady Valerie held her peace and waited for the spate of words to subside.

  “Are you going to save us? You must, you know, because James and I do need saving, especially James. . . . Oh!” She whirled, her face suddenly puckered with remorse, to drag James forward. “Oh, I am sorry! This is James Trelawney, Grandmother, and we’ve been saving each other from Roundheads and things, and he’s taken very good care of me. And you mustn’t blame him for my running away,” she added, correctly interpreting a severe flash in Lady Valerie’s eyes. “He hadn’t anything to do with it, and he couldn’t take me back, because I wouldn’t tell him where. And you can’t scold me for running away, either,” she went on with an engaging but impudent grin. “Just think how many times you’ve told me the story about how you and Grandfather both ran away when you were young, and met at the players’, and played Romeo and Juliet, and fell in love; and if you did, why shouldn’t I?”

  “Which?” demanded her grandmother meaningfully. “Run away, or play Juliet, or fall in love?”

  Lark turned pink and declined to answer, but James, mercifully, did not notice. “I know who you are, Ma’am,” he said, bowing deeply. “I’ve been wishing to meet you. You’re the lady who tells kings and queens to their faces that they are idiots.”

  Lady Valerie smiled, greatly pleased. “Only when they deserve it,” she amended. “However, I must admit that this has been very frequently since our Queen Bess died. Not that I should have told her such a thing even if she had deserved it,” she admitted.

  James, looking at her, didn’t believe this for a moment, and said so. But Lady Valerie shook her head.

  “You never saw her,” she said. “She kept three steps ahead of the rest of the world, Queen Elizabeth did.”

  At that point a shabby, white-haired old man came out of the inn and paused in the courtyard to stare for a moment. Then he suddenly ceased to resemble a poor countryman, by the simple process of straightening up, throwing back his thick hair like a lion tossing its mane, and giving a delighted roar.

  “Lark, you young scamp! What in blazes are you doing here and in that outfit when you’re supposed to be in durance vile at the hands of Jeremiah? Where did you find her, Val?”

  He looked a little like King Lear, and sounded like Hamlet, so that James could very easily see him running away to adventure with the players as a boy, and playing roles well, too. Neither he nor his wife, in fact, seemed to have given up play-acting at all.

  Willow interrupted at this point, rather acidly. “I do not know what is happening,” she remarked, “but I think that if anyone sees an old Gorgio man hugging a Gypsy girl they will be very much astounded, and will want to know more. I would also be very glad if someone explains to me all the nonsense you have been talking, and how people like you could be talking to kings and queens.”

  Lark and her grandfather hastily separated, and Lady Valerie looked at Willow with a twinkle. “You’re quite right, and I think we had best start being practical at once,” she said. “Is this young lady a friend of yours, Lark? Well, then, you shall have your bit of silver, though you don’t really deserve it, you know. A clumsier attempt at picking a purse I have seldom seen.”

  Willow, who prided herself on her light fingers, gave an outraged gasp, snatched at the coin Lady Valerie held out to her, and stalked away in great mortification. James grinned after her retreating back as it whisked out of the gate, stared thoughtfully for just an instant, and turned back to be properly introduced to Sir Nicholas Raven. Then he got down to business.

  “If you are the gentleman with the boat whom we’ve been hunting, sir, do you suppose we could leave quite soon? Things,” he added with modest understatement, “have been getting a bit warm lately.”

  “By all means,” agreed Sir Nicholas at once, “Have you any preparations to make? Anyone to notify? Your parents?”

  James’s glance flickered briefly in the direction of the gate. “Oh, I’m sure Willow will tell Psammis and Sheba, and they’ll tell Mother and Father,” he said lightly. “Willow is a very clever girl. Besides, she knows Father will see that she gets a gold piece—the very minute he he
ars we’re safe in France, that is,” he added with sudden prudence.

  Sir Nicholas nodded and also eyed the open gate. There was a tiny speck of green in the crack which did not seem quite to match any of the foliage. “Splendid,” he said affably. “I hope she’s also clever enough to realize that she can earn more gold by faithfully carrying any message for you?”

  “She is,” broke in Lark firmly. “You see, her mother has rather adopted James because of saving his life, so you see they can absolutely be trusted to the death to keep faith, and help.”

  Sir Nicholas nodded. “In that case, I hope Willow stays right where she is, for I have a bit of business to discuss with her and the innkeeper. I’ll settle our reckoning at the same time, Val, so we can leave at once.”

  He strode out of the courtyard looking as commanding and purposeful as Othello, leaving James with his mouth open, ready to explain about leaving a message so that his parents could find him when they came to France. Sir Nicholas having already taken himself out of hearing, James explained this to Lady Valerie instead. She merely nodded.

  “Yes, Nick will have guessed that,” she said briskly. “It’s one of the things he’s arranging.”

  “But—” began James. “How? Where?”

  “You’ll stay with Lark’s family and us, of course,” Lady Valerie told him masterfully. “We’ve a very nice chateau near the coast with plenty of room. When your parents are ready, we’ll fetch them ourselves, Nick and I. We come over quite regularly.” She turned to include Lark in her smile. It was clear that she was enjoying herself very much, and James wondered briefly how she and his mother would get on. Then he pulled himself back to the present hastily, because Lady Valerie was giving directions.

  “We’ve a dory hidden upstream, and our boat is waiting for us down in the river estuary. But it won’t do to set village tongues wagging by being seen just now with you disreputable children. After all, Nick and I have our respectable roles to maintain. You two will have to slip out back of the inn, here, and walk downstream until you reach a sharp bend about half a mile on, with a clump of willows right at the point. We’ll be along presently in the dory and pick you up there.”

  She ushered them right out of a small back gate as she spoke, and they found themselves, a trifle breathless, looking across a short stretch of green meadow to the darker green line where the stream flowed. James took a deep breath, cocked his head, and regarded Lark with a grin that she found completely mystifying.

  “Don’t you like Grandmother and Grandfather?” she asked.

  “Oh, very much indeed!” he told her truthfully. “Life couldn’t possibly be dull with them around, could it?” But his grin broadened. He was thinking that, after all, perhaps Lark wasn’t quite as strong-willed and managing a person as he had thought her. Compared to her grandmother, in fact, she was a most tractable and compliant small person, and James had no doubt at all that they would get on extremely well together.

  “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. And although she teased all the way to the clump of willows, he did not tell her what he had been grinning about.

  21

  The Equinox

  It was almost an anticlimax. They sailed down the stream and the river, found the Sea Raven, and sailed out of the estuary without so much as a scare or a false alarm. Lark felt rather cheated. Not that she wanted any more real trouble for a while yet, but one more dramatic episode might have been fun before settling down to a life of dull safety in France. But it didn’t look for a while as if anything of the sort was going to happen, even though they sailed along the south coast of England close enough to keep a fairly sharp eye on the shore.

  “Far enough out to be safe,” Sir Nicholas told James, “but near enough for practical purposes. You see, the fishermen along here know my boat. Royalist ones, anyway. They’ll signal if they should happen to have a message or a passenger for me.”

  It was near the Isle of Wight that the signal came. “An urgent one,” said Grandfather, his lean old face sparkling with interest. “I presume there’s some poor Royalist in there just a nip and two inches ahead of the Roundheads. We’ll lay offshore until dark, and then take the small boat in and see if we can get him off.”

  “May I go?” demanded Lark and James at once. “Certainly not,” said Sir Nicholas. “I’ll take two of my own crew. No one in the world can handle boats and currents better.” Then he paused, looked thoughtful, and changed his mind. “On second thought, I’ll take James if he’d like to go.”

  Lark stuck out her lip in annoyance as her grandfather turned to one of his crew. It really was too bad being left behind while James went off adventuring without her! Unfair!

  “What’s the date?” demanded Grandfather suddenly turning from his conference. “I thought so! September twenty-first, the exact top of the autumn equinox. And a full moon tonight as well. We’ll have the highest tide tonight that’s been seen in some years, I fancy!”

  James remembered some of his history. “Wasn’t it the equinox high tides and storms that wrecked Julius Caesar’s fleet two years in a row when he was trying to invade Britain?” he asked.

  Sir Nicholas nodded, and Helier, a French mariner who had been first mate of the Sea Raven ever since it was built, spoke up in his oddly French-flavored English.

  “The storm, she comes, too, her.” He glanced westward at the gray ocean, heaving a little with long swells. “She sits and waits. Presently, after midnight I think, she begins to arrive herself. I think perhaps she will be one like that of 1647, one big killer, that. We should set sail before dawn if we do not wish to smash ourselves in small pieces on the rocks.”

  Sir Nicholas nodded. “If anything should delay us,” he told his wife, “don’t wait too long. I’ll leave Helier on board, and you’ll sail when he says, whether we’re back or not.”

  Lark caught her breath at this, and was astonished that her grandmother’s face was perfectly serene.

  “Very well, Nick. In that case, I’d come back for you, of course, as soon as possible.”

  And Grandfather nodded again, matter-of-factly.

  Lark fumed and puzzled inwardly while they had a bite of supper and waited for dark. It was dangerous! Grandfather and James might not get back in time, might be caught, might have to be abandoned to the mercies of Cromwell’s men! Didn’t Grandmother even care? Why didn’t she say anything? She might have been seeing them off on a pheasant hunt!

  But when Lark started to object, she found her grandmother’s green eyes on her, and felt a warning tap. Grandmother wasn’t a person to be defied casually, so Lark held her tongue and clenched her teeth. She kept silent while James and Grandfather disappeared—probably forever—over the rail in the white light of the full moon.

  Very near tears, Lark glanced up at her grandmother a little resentfully, envying her that unshakeable calm. Then she nearly yelped aloud for Grandmother was gripping her hand so fiercely that Lark was sure every finger must be squashed to a pulp! Astonished, she realized that Grandmother was not in the least tranquil, but merely a remarkable actress.

  Lark, who had rather prided herself for her own acting ability, regarded her cheerful face with awe, and almost forgot her distress in wonder and admiration.

  The air was very calm, but the sea was a little agitated now. Large swells, higher now, indicated the storm still to the west; and a great confusion of the smaller waves told a story to sea-wise eyes of equinox, tides, and currents. Lark, fascinated by the menace of that sea, felt no desire to go down to the cabin and wait. She stared down at the silvery dark lapping against the yacht, and felt Grandmother’s stillness beside her.

  “So you’ve been growing up, have you?” murmured Lady Valerie. “I see you’ve even followed the family tradition of selecting your own man and sharing a few adventures with him.”

  “Yes, but he hasn’t got around to selecting me yet.” grumbled Lark. “And now he’s off having adventures without me.”

  “That’s your n
ext step in growing up,” remarked Grandmother with a chuckle that was not unsympathetic. “Learn when to let your man go off into danger, and do not cry, nor try to hold him back, nor ask to go with him.”

  Lark disliked this idea very much, and said so. She hadn’t liked it when she first started chewing on it way back in Shrewsbury, and she didn’t like it any better now, and she had once thought that she would never be able to swallow it. But if even Grandmother said it was necessary . . . Lark tightened her lips in one last surge of rebellion. Then she melted in sudden love for James, and a saintly feeling that she would suffer anything at all to make him happy.

  Lark being human, the saintliness vanished almost at once, and she found herself explaining her complicated feelings to her grandmother, who said that she understood and sympathized perfectly. “Unfortunately,” she said, “one has to give a little sometimes.”

  Lark looked at her reproachfully in the gloom of the night sky. Grandmother? Compromise? Lady Valerie smiled ruefully, seeming to read her mind.

  “It isn’t that I don’t believe in meeting life head-on,” she explained, “because I do. And I’ve found that a little determination can often do wonders to rearrange things in a very satisfactory way. But,” she added regretfully, “not always. You have to learn where to compromise, and it’s love that will teach you best.”

  Lark conceded the point because her heart knew it to be true. Still, even the most dangerous and disagreeable adventure was much better than being left behind. She knew. She had tried both. And danger did add a distinct zest to life. It was a challenge to one’s cleverness and courage, she explained earnestly, and things promised to be so dull when they reached the safety of France.

  “I shouldn’t worry about that yet,” warned her grandmother. “I can see you’ve become addicted to adventure, poppet, and I can quite sympathize with you. But that doesn’t alter what I said in the least. If you love your husband, be able to let him go sometimes.”