by Joan Aiken
Emma recalled Charles’s often-expressed wish to go to the ice-house, which lay at a distance generally beyond the walking powers of his younger brothers and sister.
I believe that is where they are bound, she thought, and set herself to overtake them, walking forward at a quick pace and looking about her with some disappointment, for this was an area of the park that she had hitherto not visited, but today it was almost entirely veiled from view by the freezing mist.
Miss Osborne, she thought, probably knows the park from childhood, so I daresay there is no danger of their losing their way. Otherwise it might seem only too possible in this thick light.
At last the pair ahead came to a halt, and Emma was able to catch up with them.
‘Miss Emma!’ cried Charles joyfully. ‘Mamma thought that you probably would not take a walk today as it is so cold. So I came out with Miss Osborne. But I am mighty glad to see you! Look, there is the ice-house that I wished you to see.’
Emma smiled at the young lady who stood with Charles, and said, ‘Allow me to introduce myself! I am Emma Watson, and you, I believe, are Miss Osborne. Mrs Blake sent me after you with instructions not to let Charles lose the ball.’
‘How do you do,’ said Miss Osborne. ‘I am very happy to make your acquaintance.’
Seen close to, she was a slight girl, of more than average height but very thin, transparently fair in complexion, like her mother and brother, but without her mother’s sparkling eyes and strongly marked brows. Her brilliantly red hair was today concealed under a warm plumed hat. She seemed amiably enough disposed, but rather shy.
‘The ball is quite safe, as you see,’ she offered after a moment. ‘We have been throwing it for Fido. Charles wished to play at bilbo-catch, but my fingers were too cold.’
She had the two wooden bilbo-cups with straight handles in a bag slung over her arm.
‘Will you play now, Miss Emma?’ said Charles hopefully. ‘You are a capital hand at bilbo-catch.’
‘In the garden, on a fine day, I thank you, yes!’ said Emma, laughing. ‘But here, in the mist and frost, I do not think is the right occasion. So this is the famous ice-house that you have told me of so often? I am very glad to see it at last. And it is exactly like a cave out of the Arabian Nights.’
The ice-house was a round-domed building, made of brick, and set into an artificial hill. Trees had been planted around it, which had grown into a grove, so that it presented a mysterious appearance, like a pagan temple or grotto, the more so as thick green moss had spread over the bricks, and dead leaves were plentifully heaped in the low-arched approach passage, which led down a gentle slope to the dark interior.
Fido, Miss Osborne’s little terrier dog, seemed roused to great excitement by this tunnel-like passage, and yapped loudly at its mouth, kicking and scratching up the dead leaves, sending them flying in clouds.
‘Perhaps badgers have been using it as a house, or rabbits,’ suggested Charles.
‘Is it not used for ice any longer, then?’
‘No, they have dug out another ice-house closer and more convenient to the castle,’ said Miss Osborne. ‘This place has not been employed since I was a child. Indeed my brothers and I used to call it our bandits’ cave.’
‘I wish I had been here then!’ said Charles with sparkling eyes. ‘How deep does it go, Miss Osborne?’
‘It is quite round inside, you know, like a brick basin sunk into the ground. I suppose it may be about ten feet deep. In the winter it would be packed full of ice, which they took out in summer for ice puddings.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Charles. ‘I have seen them taking ice from the new one. I would dearly like to go in. Do you think I might?’
He looked with longing at the dark arched passage, which was only three or four feet high.
‘No indeed! I am very certain that your mamma would not wish you to,’ said Emma, firmly, and Miss Osborne agreed.
‘Indeed you must not, Charles. On no account! For one thing, there is no rope now, to pull you out of the cave – and the brick slope inside is sure to be horribly slippery with ice—’
‘Rope?’ Charles looked perplexed.
‘There used to be a young elder tree, it is gone now, growing near the entrance, and my brother Chilton always tied one end of a long rope to it before we went in, so that we had a means of pulling ourselves up out of the bowl. It is quite steep, you see. My brothers used to push me from behind. Sometimes we played that we were miners, going into a gold mine,’ Miss Osborne said, and looked suddenly rather wistful.
‘I believe that we should turn back,’ said Emma. ‘Charlie, you are beginning to shiver. It is too cold to stand here talking. Some time when your uncle Adam is with you, and has brought a rope along, you may go into the cave.’
‘Oh, please, please, may we not play one game of bilbo? Here is a capital flat place, in front of the cave! Just so as to warm us up!’
‘Two catches then, no more,’ said Emma firmly; she felt that Charles, disappointed in his evident longing to enter the ice-house, should at least have one of his wishes granted.
Overjoyed, Charles took the bilbo-cups from Miss Osborne and gave one to Emma.
‘I shall begin walking back,’ announced Miss Osborne hastily. ‘It is by far too cold to stand watching. Come, Fido!’
But Fido, seeing the ball tossed back and forth between Charles and Emma, believed their intention was to play with him, and he became wildly excited. He dashed from one to the other, yapping and frisking. He ignored the calls of his mistress, who therefore set off without him.
‘We had better stop, Charles,’ Emma said panting as she sprang to one side and dexterously caught the ball he had sent her in her wooden cup. ‘Fido thinks we are doing this in order to tease him. And Miss Osborne is leaving us behind.’
‘Just one more, Miss Emma – oh, botheration!’ For Charles, slipping on a patch of frosted grass, accidentally shot the ball off at a tangent, far away from where Emma might possibly have reached it. It fell on the grass, just outside the entrance to the ice-house, and Fido was after it in a flash, hurling himself under the arch and in among the dead leaves.
‘Fido! Come back! Come here, sir!’
But Fido did not come back with the ball. And suddenly his yappings became a great deal fainter, as though he had fallen to a considerable distance below the ground.
‘Oh, mercy! I am afraid he must have fallen down into the bottom of the ice-house. I had better go in and see what has happened,’ said Charles valiantly.
‘No, Charles! Wait – wait!’
But Miss Osborne, running back, cried, ‘Fido? Where is Fido gone?’ so piteously and with such fear in her voice that Emma’s protests were overborne, and Charles hastily scrambled under the low brick arch.
‘Fido? Where are you? Come here,’ they heard him calling, and then there was a thump and a loud wail of surprise.
‘Oh help! I had not thought it would be so steep!’
‘Oh dear, Charles! Are you down in the bottom?’ called Miss Osborne.
‘Yes, but I am not at all hurt. There is a whole heap of dead leaves down here. And Fido is quite happy too, Miss Osborne. He thinks it is a great lark.’
‘Reach up a hand to me and I will try to pull you out,’ said Miss Osborne, and, in her turn, she scrambled under the arch.
‘Just a moment, Miss Osborne! Wait!’ cried Emma urgently. ‘Wait, I beg you – take hold of my hand. Or you may slip in also!’ She darted forward and stretched out an arm. Miss Osborne, scrambling down the slope under the arch, did catch at her hand, but then precisely what Emma had feared came to pass. There was a treacherous layer of ice under the dead leaves in the approach tunnel, and Miss Osborne, like Charles and the dog, glissaded down it and so, helplessly, into the deeper brick cavity beyond.
‘Oh, no, no!’ she shrieked, jerking wildly on Emma’s wr
ist. And then, luckily for Emma but unfortunately for herself, she let go, and fell on top of Charles.
Emma, with a sick sense of dismay, had felt something snap in her wrist when it was jerked so hard; she guessed that damage, perhaps severe, had been done to it.
Doing her best to ignore the pain she knelt by the tunnel entrance and called, ‘Miss Osborne! Can you hear me? Are you hurt?’
‘No – no,’ came back in a moment. ‘I am not hurt, and nor is Charles – and Fido is frisking about as if it were all a great joke – but we cannot by any possible means get out of this detestable hole. The brick sides are covered in ice. It is like being inside a glass basin. Do not you come any closer, Miss Watson, else you may fall into the trap too. Go for help – run to the castle, it is the closest. Or, if you should see any of the estate men, tell them to come at once with ropes and pull us out.’
‘Yes, I will do that,’ said Emma. ‘I am very sorry not to be able to pull you out myself, but I can see that would be beyond my power. I will go as fast as I can.’
Without mentioning her hurt wrist, she set off in the direction of Osborne Castle, which might be half a mile away. She knew approximately where it lay, across on the other side of the ornamental water, though from here it was invisible in the mist.
‘I will make as much haste as I can!’ she called again.
Pulling off her glove as she hurried along, she nervously inspected her wrist, which was beginning to swell. The pain it gave her was acute, but she endeavoured to withdraw her mind from that, and to concentrate, instead, on guessing what her reception might be at the castle, and which of the inmates might be at home. Eagerly, she glanced about her in the mist, wishing that some gardener or gamekeeper might make his appearance and prevent her being obliged to enter the great house, but no such person was to be seen. She crossed the arched bridge over the lake (no very simple matter, for it, too, was iced over and slippery) then ascended the long gentle slope which ran up to the castle.
In her wrist the throbbing was now so extreme that it was all she could do not to let out small whimpers of pain while she forced herself to hurry as fast as possible.
The approach to the front of the castle was imposing. An undercroft below a great formal balustrade contained a blocked entrance, doubtless the original main door; now the caller must ascend one of two huge symmetrical sweeping stone stairs which led to an upper level. Seeing no help for it, Emma toiled up the right-hand stair. As she did so she became aware of the scrunch of hoofs from a single horse down below her on the gravel. She paid no heed to the sound, for all her concentration was now focused on her errand, the need to transmit her news to some helpful person, and the really atrocious pain in her left wrist, which throbbed rapidly and began to make her feel queasy and somewhat light-headed.
She traversed a wide stone terrace to the double front doors, beside which there was a bell-pull, but before she could make use of this the door was flung open by a manservant who must, through a flanking window, have seen her approach.
With a gulp of relief she explained her mission.
‘Oh, pray – Miss Osborne – and young Master Charles Blake – and the little dog – are all fallen – trapped in the old ice-house – can you quickly send men there with ladders and ropes—’
Behind her now she heard rapid steps on the stone pavement, and Mr Howard’s urgent, anxious voice: ‘Miss Emma! Whatever is the matter? How comes it that you are here?’
But Emma was beyond speech. The panelled entrance-hall began to sway dizzily in front of her, and with a small pitiful moan she crumpled forward, striking her head a sharp blow, as she fell, on the black-and-white marble tiles of the floor.
***
When Emma recovered consciousness she stared around her in bewilderment and was, for a moment, under the impression that she must be dreaming. She found herself lying down on a soft couch. This was certainly not, she realized, the low-ceilinged chamber that she shared with Elizabeth at the parsonage. A few feet away she could see the leaping flames of a large fire, and above it a high marble mantel, on which were ranged various objects of sparkling glass and gilded china.
Attempting to raise herself on one elbow, she let out a moan as the movement jarred her wrist.
‘A-a-a! Pray do not excite yourself, Miss Watson! Remain quite still for the moment, if you please!’
Perplexed, Emma thought she recognized the tones of Mr Sindell, the apothecary, a helpful, gentlemanlike man, who regularly called at the parsonage whenever Mr Watson required attention.
‘Mr Sindell!’ she said weakly in relief. ‘Where am I? What has happened?’
‘Softly, softly, Miss Emma! You dislocated your wrist, but that is no great matter. I have set it, and put a compress on it, and you will be better in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Now that you are awake I will give you a dose to ameliorate the pain. Here, drink this, my child, and then you will soon be as right as rain.’
‘Thank you – ugh – it tastes disgusting.’
She drank the nauseous mixture and then leaned back limply against a pile of cushions, beginning slowly to take in the fact that she lay on a sofa in a large and handsome drawing-room. Another fire burned at the far end of the room, where stood, or sat, a small group of persons. One of these now came forward eagerly to demand, ‘Is she better, Mr Sindell? Have you made her well again?’
Emma recognized the voice of Miss Osborne. That young lady came and knelt by her, looking into her face.
‘Poor, poor Miss Emma! I am so very sorry about your wrist. That must have been my fault – for I remember I gave it a great jerk as I fell – and then, Mr Sindell said, you knocked your head as you fainted away in our hall.’
‘So I did,’ said Emma, putting up her good hand to find a large lump on her brow. ‘I cannot think how I came to be so stupid. But it is no matter. Pray don’t apologize. I shall be quite the thing again directly. But you – did people soon arrive to rescue you? And Fido? And Charles?’
‘Oh, very soon,’ began Miss Osborne, but now the silvery tones of her mother came as an interruption.
‘My dear Harriet, you really must not bombard Miss Watson with questions, or she will never be well enough to drive home. Indeed it was a most foolish escapade – most regrettable – but we must be thankful there is no particular harm done; and let it be a lesson to everybody concerned never to do it again.’ She laughed, a humourless icy tinkle. ‘I trust that it will be so!’
‘I assure your ladyship, it was the purest accident,’ began Emma weakly. ‘The little dog ran after the ball, which had rolled down the slope—’
‘Indeed, Mamma, that was how it came about,’ put in Miss Osborne earnestly. ‘Then Fido slipped in – for the slope was all icy – and Charles, going after him, slid likewise—’
‘We will say no more about it, Harriet,’ said Lady Osborne coldly. ‘I do not wish to hear another word on the subject. It was a disgracefully hoydenish escapade. I am surprised at you. As for the boy, he deserves to be sent to bed with no supper.’
‘I have no doubt, Lady Osborne, that my sister has already administered some suitable reprimand,’ put in Mr Howard’s mild voice. Emma could not avoid a slight start at the sound – she had not been aware that he, too, was in the room. But he and the short, light-haired woman whom she knew to be Miss Carr, now joined the group round the sofa.
‘How are you now, Miss Emma, are you feeling more the thing?’ he asked gently. There was, Emma thought, a certain constraint in his voice.
‘Thank you – yes – I am so very sorry to have given everybody this trouble . . .’
Emma had some ado to control her own voice. She began to feel a little ill done by; the accident, after all, had not been her fault, and she had made all speed to fetch help; yet it seemed to her that she was being held to blame for the whole.
‘It was a very lucky stroke of fortune that Mr Sindell was
in the castle at the time, prescribing for my chilblain,’ said Miss Carr consolingly. ‘So he was able to examine your wrist at once and take the necessary measures to set it right. And, in a few minutes, as soon as you are feeling a little more gathered together, he has offered to drive you home in his carriage.’
‘Oh, yes, thank you!’ exclaimed Emma, sitting up rather too quickly, and putting a hand to her brow as the room swung about her. ‘I would be so grateful for that. My sister Elizabeth will be most distressed if I am not home by – pray, what time is it?’
‘Do not distress yourself, Miss Emma. It is not yet half past three. I am in no hurry,’ said Mr Sindell kindly.
But Emma knew that he must be anxious to get on to his other patients. And she herself wished for nothing but to escape from Osborne Castle, where she felt a most unwelcome intruder. It was a piece of good fortune, she thought, that Lord Osborne and his friend Tom Musgrave were not present; their clamour and comments, against the icy atmosphere of Lady Osborne’s dislike and disapproval would have made the situation even more uncomfortable.
‘I am sure that in a moment I shall be quite well enough to walk to your carriage, Mr Sindell,’ she said, attempting to sound firm and matter-of-fact.
‘If you were to give the young lady an arm, Sindell,’ said Lady Osborne coolly, ‘and one of the footmen can assist her on the other side—’
Emma rose rather totteringly to her feet.
Unfortunately just at this juncture Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrave did make their appearance, grumbling loudly to each other about a young dog which had spoiled their shooting by putting up the birds before it ought.
‘Hey-day! Here is Miss Watson, I vow and declare!’ jovially announced Tom, while Miss Osborne ran to her brother crying, ‘Only fancy, Cedric! Such a thing! We have had such an adventure! Little Charles and I fell into the ice-house! And Miss Emma Watson was obliged to go for help! And she has hurt her wrist badly and must ride home in Mr Sindell’s carriage.’
‘Fell into the ice-house?’ Lord Osborne repeated wonderingly, scratching his tumbled fair locks. ‘Why, how in the world could that be?’
