by Joan Aiken
An unusually flat note in Simon’s voice alerted Dido and she gave him a sharp look.
“What’s up, cully? Someone took half a guinea off you and gave you tuppence change?”
He sighed. He was not going to tell Dido that he had just received a long lecture from Sir Angus MacGrind and Sir Fosby Killick about the unsuitability of his choice of acquaintances.
Dido said, “Listen, pal. Didn’t that old gal down in the Wet-country—the one who looked after King Dick when he was sick—”
“Lady Titania?”
“Right. Didn’t Lady To-and-fro have a pen pal in Scottish land who reckoned he had a right to be King?”
“Yes,” said Simon slowly. “She did. But all her papers were lost in the flood. We don’t know the person’s name, or where he lived, or anything about his credentials—”
“Now there’s a fancy word,” said Dido. “Well, if I could find this feller and his cred-what-do-you-call-ems—what would you reckon to that?”
His face lit up. “Oh! If he had a real right to the throne—it would be such a relief! I can’t tell you, Dido—”
“Thought as much,” said she gruffly. “Well, that’s what I’m a-going to do. Go up to the North Country and ferret about. It’s odds but I’ll find him.”
“If you could—but Scotland’s a big place—and you’d think he’d have come forward by now, if he thought he had a claim.…”
“Well, anyhows, there’s no harm in taking a look,” said Dido. “I’m a-going right off now. Just came down to polish up me trotter-cases in case there’s bogs. That’s about the only thing handy in this here palace—no shortage of shoe polish.”
She was not going to tell Simon how awful she thought the palace was in almost all other respects.
“I’ll look in at Willoughby Chase,” she said, “and pick up young Woodlouse. I daresay he’ll be glad to help. And he was a real bright little fellow—could speak Latin and Greek and all sorts.”
“Give my best love to the Greens,” Simon said sadly. “I just wish I was coming with you. But there’s such a lot to do here.… Keep in touch by pigeon mail.”
“Ay, I’ll do that. Father Sam’s got a cousin up in those parts too. It’s likely she might be a help. A right rum moniker she’s got: the Witch of Clatteringshaws.”
“I wish I could give you some money for your trip,” said Simon. “But they tell me the King must never handle money.”
“Ask me,” said Dido, “it’s a rotten old job being King.”
TWO
Letter delivered to St. Arling’s Grotto, Wetlands, OHO 1BE
Dear Cousin Sammyvell:
You never answer my letters, you moldy old wretch.
I believe you don’t care a pinch of snuff how the world goes on outside your grotto. Now me, I do care. I do come out every five years or so to see what has been going on—battles lost or won, roads laid or not, new fashions in kids’ games, railway lines taken across farming land, mansions ransacked by burglars, shipwrecked hulls hoisted up off the seabed. Some of these tales odder than others. Why do children come to the coach park despite parental warnings about Hobyahs, every now and then forgetting they must leave before dusk, and then what happens? There’s a child missing and I get the blame. I think about blame. You left me in charge, though you knew I was unreliable, and you get off with a caution while I am landed with the longest penalty. Unfair! Kids play a game called broken bottles. Why is it called that? Who knows? The old ship hoisted off the seabed at the mouth of Loch Grieve—who would have guessed that it had a seventy-seven-carat emerald hidden inside a conch shell among its cargo—now there will be a lawsuit lasting years about the ownership of that emerald. They say Tatzen has got it. Well, he has! I nipped it from the Town Hall and gave it to him.—And the new rail line, running from Wold’s End Junction in the midlands past Roman Wall in the borders and over Loch Grieve—who in the world is going to pay the huge cost of that stretch of permanent way? Let alone the upkeep of the bridge? It needs a man, fulltime, painting the metalwork, forever. And my friend Tatzen, hovering above, is desperately tempted to pick off a painter from time to time—he has only done it once or twice, since I pointed out to him that it was built instead of the tunnel which would have cut straight through his nest in Cult Bank.—And what about the Hobyahs, who are beginning to think they might cross the rail bridge by night (lying flat as the Midnight Scot thunders by), and the Picts, sending an occasional scouting party to snatch a few cattle—though how to get cattle back across the rail bridge is something the Picts have not yet solved. But the left bank is not quite the safe haven from Hobyahs that it once was.
Anyway, more public-spirited than Cousin Sammy—yes, it’s you I’m addressing—I once in a while take down my golf club from its hook (the new broom was never as biddable as the old one) and cross the loch northward and pay duty visits to the householders of Clatteringshaws village to check on their health and social habits.
Where do they keep their milk? And do their children attend school? And do they still do their laundry in the loch?
There used to be a ghost called the Bone Nixie, who reputedly washed shrouds in the shallow water. She was certain death if she grabbed hold of you, but I hear no more of her now the bridge has been built; perhaps it was my friend Tatzen who helped himself to a few laundry ladies from time to time. They all have washing machines now.
Well, five years after the Battle of Follodden was fought and lost by both sides, I cross the loch to the north bank and go to earn my shilling-a-year salary from the Clatteringshaws Council by inquiring into the habits of its taxpayers.
Where do you keep your milk? And how do you dispose of your empty bottles? And are pets allowed to sleep on your children’s beds?
“We don’t keep pets in this house, I’m happy to tell ye,” snapped Mrs. Euphemia Glamis McClan.
I was interested in her reply, since, coming along the lochside road outside her house, the Eagles Guesthouse, I had heard a frantic screaming; if not a pig being killed, or a Siamese cat desperate for its dinner, could it have been a child? Having something horrible done to it? The only child visible was little Fred, aged five or thereabouts, who was now dragged out from under the table by his threadlike arm. I noticed that he had a black eye.
“Say good day to the welfare lady!” hissed Mrs. McClan.
Fred whispered something inaudible.
“He’s shy”—giving his arm a jerk that ought to have pulled it from its socket—“and his nature’s naturally evil. He’ll go to the Bad Place, for sure.”
Not shy, I thought. Terror-stricken.
“Is he yours, Mrs. McClan?”
“Maircy, no!”
“One of the guests’?”
The Eagles, as advertised by its board, was a Residential Guesthouse. But most of the residents seen creeping about were far too ancient to have produced little Fred.
“Dearr me, no! A wee motherless bairn. An orrphan. A charity child. My dearr husband has a hearrt as big as the worrld. He took him in.”
Mrs. McClan’s expression indicated that she entirely regretted this charitable act.
“Your husband?”
Mrs. McClan made a vague gesture toward the town graveyard, visible through the large rain-streaked window. It was crammed with massive granite gravestones—Mrs. McClan’s past customers? Two huge sycamore trees presided over the gloomy plot and kept out most of the light. In the distance a gray figure did something with a spade.
“Angus—my husband—is the acting sexton. He is entirrely devoted to his task; he keeps the graveyard in pairrfect orrder.”
I wondered what was the difference between an acting sexton and a regular sexton.
“And little Fred—helps him?”
I wondered how little Fred had come by that black eye.
“Och, no! My son does that.”
“Oh, yes, your own boy—is he at school?”
“Ay, Desmond—he’s fourrteen. A grrand boy. A grrand help to me an
d Angus.”
“And little Fred—does he attend school?”
“Losh, no! Whiles, I teach him his reading and figuring. And he lends a hand about the hoose. Fetches in firewood, scours the pots, polishes shoes—”
“You are a good useful boy, little Fred, I can see that—”
Little Fred gave me a terrified glance and retired under the table. A big, bulky black-haired boy came into the room. Seeing me, he began to retreat, but his mother said,
“Desmond—tell your father that I’ll be wanting a basket of potatoes for the boarrders’ tea.”
“Can’t Fred get them?”
“Och, vairry well.”
Fred tried to slip out of the room, but Desmond caught him by the scruff of his neck.
“Don’t try to run off, you little scug!”—giving him a clout—“And you can fetch some logs, too, when the potatoes are in. When’s dinner?” Desmond asked his mother.
“Soon.” The words “when this lady has gone” trembled in the air but were not spoken.
Desmond cast a puzzled glance at my golf club and left the room, pushing little Fred before him.
“You will be sending little Fred to school, I hope, by and by?”
“Och, nae doot—by and by …”
Mr. McClan walked in, stripping off a pair of leather gardener’s gloves. He gave me a cautious look, ducked his head in speechless greeting, then retired toward the kitchen.
There was something curiously, unnaturally smooth about his face. And that of his son, Desmond. As if they had been iced over, like birthday cakes, and then colored pink. Whereas Mrs. Euphemia McClan, the wife and mother, had deep angry grooves cut from her nostrils to her jaw, and a permanent frown from eyebrows up to her stiff gray shock of hair. Rage lurked just behind her look of wary watchfulness.
“Can I have a chat with the boarders?”
“Och, no, they’ll all be sleeping. Their afternoon nap, ye ken—”
“Oh! Next time I call, then.”
“Ay. Next time.”
She looked as if ten years on in the future would be quite soon enough for my next visit. By then it would be a new generation of boarders.…
Walking up the main street of Clatteringshaws toward the Monster’s Arms, with my golf club over my shoulder, I realized that I had asked nothing, learned nothing about the new habits of the Hobyahs or about my friend Tatzen.
More about them in my next. Though you don’t deserve a next, you moldy old recluse.
But I see that Saint Arling is up there in the list of saints, so you must have fiddled it somehow. Maybe you are up hitting the high spots in London? While I molder here …
Did someone with kind hands turn up?
Where’s Cousin Rod and Wiggonholt these days?
Oh, that cursed tune! If only I could remember it! I’m still haunted by it—never getting it quite right.
Regards,
M
THREE
Simon read through the day’s Royal Program, which lay beside his breakfast boiled egg.
“Open Parliament,” it said. “See applicants.” Applicants for what? Simon wondered. “Review Household Cavalry. Meet Foreign Dignitaries. Lunch with Bishops. Inspect Hospitals. Attend Civic Function. Dinner with Finnish Royal Family.”
Simon laid the paper down and dug a spoonful of boiled egg from the shell. It had not been boiled quite long enough; the white was transparent and runny. It ran over Simon’s chin, which he crossly wiped, using a stiffly starched napkin embroidered with a coronet in gold thread. The gold thread scratched his chin.
“Oh, plague take it!” said Simon.
“Have a tissue.”
The man approaching from the other end of the extremely long dining table pulled a tissue from a gilt container shaped like a crown and passed it to Simon.
“Thanks,” said Simon, wiping egg yolk off his fingers. “Who are you?”
“Your Majesty’s court jester. Name’s Rodney Firebrace.”
“You don’t look very funny.”
Rodney Firebrace was a tall, stringy, harsh-faced character with a reddish complexion slightly scarred by smallpox, a thin thatch of ginger hair, jacket and trousers of rust-colored broadcloth, and a small silver badge pinned to his lapel that said COURT JESTER BY APPOINTMENT OF H.M. A sharp-eyed gray parrot perched on his shoulder. Nothing about him suggested humor. He said:
“Court jesters are not necessarily expected to be funny.”
“Oh? What, then?”
“They tell the truth at all times. At all costs.”
“How did you get the job?”
“I was King Richard’s jester,” Firebrace said. He had a loud, carrying voice, not unlike a bird’s croak. Each time he spoke the parrot on his shoulder raised and lowered its wings and let out a subdued squawk. Now it suddenly remarked:
“Highly humorous. Ha ha ha. Shoot a second arrow to find the first.”
“King Richard gave me the job five years ago.”
Were there many applicants? Simon wondered. Reading his thought, Firebrace went on, “My qualifications were better than those of the nineteen other people applying for the position. They were all music-hall comedians. I had been tossed by a bull. And fallen off a mountain. And I had a university degree from Saint Vigean’s.”
“What in?”
“Humor, Its Sources and Uses. And Communication with Bulls.”
“Well, I’m sure you will be a great help,” said Simon politely. “I am sorry you have just missed my friend Dido. She enjoys a good joke.”
“The Right Honorable Miss Twite? Is she not in residence here?”
“She just took off from King’s Wrath station this morning. For Caledonia.”
“Indeed?” said Rodney Firebrace. “Perhaps that is just as well for Miss Twite.”
“Oh? Why?”
“I was just about to warn you. There is a faction moving against Miss Twite. Her position here at court is critical—I should say highly precarious.”
“This isn’t a joke? You are serious?”
“Never more so. The Civil Service,” explained Firebrace, “don’t like her.”
“You mean all the old boys, the Purveyor of the Royal Venison, Keeper of the Privy Purse, and the rest of them—they don’t like Dido?”
“Not at all. They fear for their own positions. They are afraid that Miss Twite might use her persuasive powers to—”
“Get me to sack them all and hire younger staff?”
“Just so. There is a movement to have Miss Twite pushed down the oubliette. Or sent to the Tower on some trumped-up charge.”
“Highly humorous,” said the parrot. “Ha ha ha.”
“I didn’t know there was an oubliette.”
“Halfway along the passage to the small Throne Room.”
“I’ll have it filled in.” Simon made a note on his daily program.
“Why has Miss Twite gone to Caledonia?”
“To have a hunt around,” Simon explained, “and see if she can’t find that other applicant for the Throne. For I don’t mind telling you, I’m not above half keen on the job. Now that I’ve tried it.”
“Ah,” said Firebrace. “I did wonder. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea. Unhappy sits the head that wears a crown.”
“Highly humorous. Ha ha ha. The second side of the slice toasts faster.”
“Could you ask your parrot to say something else?”
“Wiggonholt, shut up.—May I ask,” said Rodney Firebrace, “for which part of the North Country is Miss Twite bound?”
“Well, that’s one of the problems. Father Sam, you know, the Archbishop—”
“Yes, he’s my cousin—”
“—he sometimes gets letters from a kind of cousin of his—yours too?—who lives up there. But she only writes about once in ten years, and he hasn’t heard from her for a while. And she’s a bit unreliable, he says. But she was supposed to know something about a rumor that a royal child went missing after the Battle of Follodden. Child o
f King Malcolm of Caledonia and his wife, who was Princess Ethelfleda of Lower Saxony, both of them in direct line from Aelfred the Great and Brutus of Troy.”
“Mind you,” said Rodney Firebrace, “mind you, I’m not saying those qualifications are not exemplary, they certainly are that—but even if Miss Twite succeeds in rummaging out this contender for the Crown, how are we to know that the Civil Servants will find them in any way superior to yours? Or find this person preferable? How old is he or she, by the way?”
“When was the Battle of Follodden?”
“Around fifteen years ago.”
“Humph …”
“Truly diverting,” said the parrot. “Rib-tickling. Ho ho ho. First for a curse. Second for a laugh. Third for telling.”
“Shut up, Wiggonholt.”
A footman came in with a note for Simon from the Lord Chancellor.
“The King and Queen of Finland and Princess Jocandra are due to arrive in ten minutes.”
“Oh, bother it,” said Simon.
FOUR
To the Archbishop of Canterbury, c/o St. James’s Palace, London SW1 HRH
Funny old Smowell! Fancy hearing from you after all this time! You say you have not had any letters from me. Well, I didn’t have any from you, so that makes us even. You still feel bad about the awful thing we did. What puzzles me is this: you say we failed to hear the words, so they are lost to posterity. I suppose that is so. But the thing is, Sammy, that it would have been kept secret in any case—so what difference does it make? Nobody would have heard the words either way—so where’s the loss? You tell me that. And I still think that my penance was a lot worse than yours.
Things here go on much as usual. There have been extra high spring tides, and the twin whirlpools of Mindluck and Hartluck have been so active that no boat could cross the loch. It is just as well they built the rail bridge where they did—any farther west toward the mouth of the loch would have been hopeless. There’s a rock bar in the middle that makes it very shallow at low tide. That’s what causes the whirlpools.
Your penance. How can you make atonement in the middle of city luxuries? I realize that you have to crown the King (may he live forever), but won’t that make your reparation time twice as long? Quartered in my Ladies’ Convenience for the next dunnamany years, I feel quite sorry for you.
