Midwinter Nightingale

by Joan Aiken

  Dido said dubiously, “One of em's the king. And he's sick, in a great clumsy carry-chair. And there's a pair of bears. And two horses …and a flock of sheep. I dunno if 'twill be safe to fetch the king across in that contraption; it's mighty heavy. But he's awful sick and like to die.”

  “I'll fetch a stretcher from the barn,” said the boy. “I'm Brother Mark, by the way. We quite often get sick people coming here.” He disappeared, running toward a stone, thatched building, and came back in a minute with two poles and a canvas sheath. Meanwhile the sheep had decided, on their own initiative, to amble across and were now clustering hopefully outside the barn. “Yes, go in, go in,” Brother Mark absently told them. “There's plenty hay inside.” And the flock at once did so. “Now let us cross and get your friends.”

  Mark had also brought out two pairs of skates made from deer's antlers. He passed a pair to Dido, who gratefully put them on.

  “Say, thanks, Mark, that'll make a power of difference.”

  The skates did indeed make a difference, and they were able to cross the channel in a few minutes. The party on the other shore had seen the stretcher and waited.

  “That was well thought of, Mark,” said Father Sam. “I doubt the sedan would be too heavy. But I trust that our royal friend, wrapped in his quilts on the stretcher, will take no harm if the crossing be done as fast as possible.”

  With everybody helping, the exchange was made and the king, wrapped in coverings, was borne across the channel by Simon and Father Sam, wearing the skates. Mark brought the king's bag of needments; Dido and Harry led the horses, who slid and whickered nervously on the ice and were kept at a safe distance behind the sick man in case their weight proved too much. The bears followed independently, studying the ice as if they hoped to find fish under it.

  “Brother Isaac will take care of them,” called Mark. “He is a great fisherman. Now I fear we have to climb three hundred steps.”

  The bears and horses were left in the barn, and the rest of the party took turns carrying the stretcher up the steps, which was far more arduous than the trip over the frozen channel.

  “It is because of floods and pirates,” panted Mark as they approached the great arched doorway that led into the monastery courtyard. “Floods never rise as high as this, and pirates climb so slowly that everybody has time to hide.”

  He led them through some very untidy cloisters and past the Priory chapel to a big bare community chamber with a view of the sea through large unglazed windows. Dido gasped as she looked from one of these; the drop on the seaward side of Otherland Mount was sheer— three hundred feet down to the tossing waves below. Far to her left she could see the curve of the great shingle bank running round to Wan Hope Point. And, between gusts of snow, she could also see a ship rolling and pitching, slewed over on her side, half smothered by huge white waves that came galloping in toward the hostile shore. Tiny black figures on the beach were hauling on ropes from the ship, but their efforts seemed puny compared with the might of the elements. The sea's roar could be heard, even from this height, and the scream of the wind.

  Mark shook his head. “They can probably rescue the crew,” he said, “but I'm afraid the ship is done for.”

  “I don't see many monks down there,” said Dido.

  “There are only nine of us left now. But come this way and I'll show you the guest chambers and the kitchen.”

  The guest chambers were a row of little rooms, probably monks' cells, on the landward side of the Priory. And just as well too, thought Dido, or the guests would hardly get a wink of sleep with the sea roaring away like it is. On the steep hillside running down to the Middle Mere, there grew massive trees, forest oaks, ilex and sycamore; their boughs heaved and swung in the gale, but they protected this side of the Priory from the worst of the tempest. Here the king was installed in a quiet little room with a narrow white bed. While Simon and Harry were attending him, Mark said to Dido, “Come and I'll show you the kitchen and you can brew up something hot for the poor old gentleman. Matthew, the kitchen brother, is down at the wreck, but Brother Isaac, the cellarer, will show you where to find things.”

  The kitchen, farther along on the same side of the building, was a large room, almost completely bare, with little to show its function except for some holes in the stone wall containing a pile of earthenware bowls, and a fireplace that held a pile of gray ash with one red spark.

  “Brother Isaac will be down below in the pantry”

  Dido was anxious to check out the pantry, as she could see nothing in the kitchen that would provide a hot drink for the king. Mark led her down a steep flight of steps to a room that seemed to be cut out of the hillside below the kitchen. It had holes for windows looking out onto the big trees and the Middle Mere, and more steps led out to kitchen gardens, orchards and dairies. It was also most satisfactorily furnished with piles of root vegetables, strings of onions and herbs, great earthenware vats of milk, barrels of cider, cheeses and sacks of grain and flour. Dried fish hung in bunches. Dido, who had learned to make chowder while on board a whaling ship, helped herself to onions, potatoes, milk, butter, dried parsley and bay leaves, fish and peppercorns.

  “You got any dried salt pork?” she asked Mark. But he shook his head.

  “We are vegetarians—except for the fish,” he said.

  “I'll manage without, then.”

  Now Brother Isaac came climbing up the stair from the kitchen gardens. Dido could see why he was not out with the others rescuing the shipwrecked sailors, for he was desperately lame, could only just drag himself along sideways. It did not seem to trouble him; he was a cheerful little man and beamed at Dido.

  “You need a box to work on,” he said. “Mark'll find ye a box.”

  It seemed the kitchen was furnished with boxes and bits of timber salvaged from shipwrecks, which were later burned up for firewood. There had not been a wreck for some time and the supply was running low, but Isaac said cheerfully, “Plenty coming now! Not that we mean harm to the crew, don't think it!” he added. “But they are Burgundians, after all, come to invade our country, so if they get wrecked, they have only themselves to thank.”

  “Oh, so it's a Burgundian ship?”

  “Yes, my lovey, they all speak Burgundy French, and they will be asking for beef stew and red wine, which we don't have. But Sir Thomas will see to it that they all get sent home again.”

  Dido had not the least idea who Sir Thomas might be, nor did she care. Mark found her a wooden packing case that had contained candles; on this she chopped up onions, fish, potatoes, celery, herbs, then added beans and corn. She blew up the kitchen fire with some kindling supplied by Brother Isaac and set a nourishing soup to simmer.

  Brother Isaac said, “I'd help ye, but I can see that ye are managing just fine without my interference, and I'm all behind with my praying; there's extra prayers required for those poor souls on the ship, and then there's the sick man in the guest room—did ye say he was the king? Ah, then he'll need a deal of praying, I reckon, to smooth his way into the next world—not that I ever heard any harm of the poor gentleman, but he must have a whole pack of cares on his shoulders. And my prayers take twice as long as the other brothers', for I can't kneel, with my infirmity, so I have to manage on a prayer frame that Brother Mark made me. Eh, he's a handy young fellow, so he is.”

  The prayer frame was a triangular structure, padded with sheep's wool.

  Tis becoming a bit bald, the padding. I need more wool, so I do.”

  “We brought some sheep,” Dido said. “You're 'welcome to their wool. I'm sure Simon will agree. I dunno where he picked up the sheep.”

  Brother Isaac was delighted to hear about the sheep. 'Tis blankets I'll be weaving for all the brothers.”

  While her soup was simmering over the kitchen fire, Dido went along to see how the king was settling. She found him restless and fretful. Simon had gone down to the beach to help the rescuers and old Harry had fallen into exhausted sleep.

  �
�Where is Titania?” pleaded the king. “Where is my coronet? I want to go home! I want to go home. I don't belong here; I don't belong.”

  Dido wondered sadly where he did belong; what place was it that he thought of as home? Certainly it could not be this bare and windy monastery.

  “When can I catch the train to King's Cross? Why don't I hear any nightingales?”

  “Dear Uncle King, I don't reckon there's a-going to be a many nightingales here, so close to the sea. Can't you make do with seagulls? There's a plenty of them.”

  “I want to go home!”

  “We're all going home,” Dido improvised.

  “We are? When? When?”

  “When we come to our journey's end!”

  For some reason this reply seemed to satisfy the king, and he lay silent for a while, clasping Dido's hand.

  In a very low voice, she sang him one of her father's songs:

  “When does the wind go home?

  When he has swept the sky

  And pushed the clouds into corners

  And hung them up to dry …”

  She saw Simon peering round the door and tiptoed out to him.

  “The old feller's gone to sleep…. Why is he so set on having nightingales?”

  They moved a little way down the passage. Simon said, “Aunt Titania, the old lady who looked after him lately, she foretold that he would hear nightingales singing before his death.”

  “She was one of the two who got killt in that carriage?”

  “Yes. I always thought she loved the king. I'd never dreamed that she was in some way connected with Baron Magnus, with Lot and the duchess. Perhaps her story about nightingales was a lie … to encourage him to stay alive till that other fellow with a Saxon name came from the north…. Poor Cousin Dick!”

  “Or maybe she went to spy on them all at Fogrum Hall, see what they were up to. I guess we'll never know,” said Dido.

  “She must have meant to come back to Darkwater when she packed the king's bag of needments. I see she put her own embroidery things in as well. I don't suppose you do embroidery, Dido, do you? You wouldn't have a use for them?”

  She shook her head. “Learned to knit, I did, aboard the whaler. But I'm no hand with a needle.”

  “She also packed this thing among the embroidery silks. What do you think it is?”

  Simon had in his hand a small convoluted object made of ivory

  “Oh, I know what that is,” said Dido. “My aunt Tinty had one. It's a hearing aid. But the king's not deaf, is he? He seems to hear all that's going on. I wonder if it works.” She fitted the object into her ear and exclaimed, “My stars!”

  “What's up?”

  Simon tried it and was equally startled. “I can hear birds singing!”

  “Hey!” said Dido. “I'll lay you a gross of guineas those are nightingales!”

  Simon and Dido stared at each other.

  “She was going to fool him—when the time came,” Dido said.

  “How wicked!”

  “Do you think she meant to kill him?”

  “When the right moment came, perhaps. She had been giving him some drug in his food that made him see ghosts. But she needed to have the archbishop of Wessex at hand—and he's dead, poor old boy, killed by Magnus's people.”

  “Yes, Father Sam told me. I saw him, old Whitgift, only a few days ago; he wanted me to find the king …and you, cos you're the next in line. Is that really so, Simon?”

  “Well, I believe so,” he said gloomily. “Though old Aunt Titania did seem to have this other candidate up her sleeve, somebody called Aelfric of Bernicia. But he seems to have been kept away by bad weather.”

  Father Sam joined them, wet and exhausted from helping with the wreck.

  “Well, we got them ashore, all ninety-nine of them,” he said cheerfully. “All but the captain—he would stay by his ship, silly fellow. They are all in the 'warming room, drying off, and Brother Matthew says your chowder is done, Miss Dido, and may he move it off the fire so he can brew the Burgundians something hot? Father Mistigris has gone off to send for Sir Thomas.”

  Dido went to rescue her chowder. Simon said, “Who is Sir Thomas? What does he have to do with the shipwrecked sailors?”

  “Sir Thomas Coldacre. He and the duchess of Burgundy made the arrangements to fetch all these Burgundians here; so he can just take charge of them now,” said Father Sam.

  “Sir Thomas will have to be told that his granddaughter is dead.”

  “I doubt if he'll grieve much for her, poor silly girl. Nor for Lothar, who was never anything but bad news. The duchess wanted to put Lot on the throne, but that would have been really disastrous. You'll make a better job of it, my boy”

  “But,” said Simon reluctantly, “even if I do have to take on the job, we can't go ahead or do anything without the new archbishop of Wessex—and who in the world is that? Maybe there isn't one. How could there be?”

  “Oh, that's no problem,” said Father Sam cheerfully. “It's meself.”

  “You, Father Sam?”

  Twas the king's job to appoint me, and he did that. I came top of the list of six chosen by the Convocation of Wessex Clergy last month. All we need now, to carry out the requirements of the succession ritual, is the coronet itself. I dare say old Lady Titania was hunting for it when she went off to visit the duchess at Fogrum; there had been a rumor that it was left in Lady Adelaide's desk.”

  “No, it wasn't there,” said Simon. “Dido told me. She happened to look in the desk and all she found was a diary. And Fogrum Hall is burned down now, so if the coronet was there, it's gone for good.”

  “Well, well. Perhaps it will turn up here,” Father Sam said hopefully. “After all, Alfred himself was here, hiding from the Vikings, in the year 878, and left the monks a charter to prove it. I'll ask Father Mistigris when I see him. Now I had best go back to those poor Burgundian fellows, who are quite shocked and exhausted. They'll know better another time, if they are asked to invade someone else's country….”

  He strode away, dripping, and Simon returned to the king, who said piteously, “Simon! I want to go home!”

  out of the sky and landed on Simon's shoulder. He and Dido were at the foot of three hundred stairs, looking out across the frozen mere.

  “All the birds and beasts take a rare shine to you these days, Simon,” said Dido.

  “It's since I stopped eating meat. Can be a bit inconvenient at times.”

  He carefully undid the paper wrapped in silk, which had been wrapped round the pigeon's leg. “This was probably meant for Aunt Titania. She had a messenger service.” He read the words on the paper and frowned in perplexity “No. It seems to be from Aunt Titania—must have been written before she died.”

  “Maybe the pigeon got lost in the storm. Who's it to?”

  “I don't know. Me, perhaps. Or the king.”

  “What's it say?”

  “It says: 'I was wrong about Chaucer. He adapted the lines from a local poet, Gregory Pollard of Wan Hope: “And bye the Middel Mere, Oft ye may heare Midwinter Nightingale to human eares tell out Hyr Piteous Tale.” T Plantagenet.'”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don't know,” said Simon crossly. Here was yet another puzzle that needed solving, and he was already so tired he thought he could go to sleep for a hundred years—if he ever had the chance to start. “Poor old king,” he said. “He told me he wanted to die at Darkwater because he'd been a boy there. And the nightingales …But we couldn't leave him there with the flood coming.”

  “And Alfred's crown wasn't there?”

  “No,” Simon said. “I have had a really thorough search. I just pray that it's here somewhere. He might have left it here sometime for safekeeping.”

  “There's an awful lot of places to look,” said Dido. She stared up at the high stone walls and ruined arches on the hillside above them. A thousand years ago this place had been a thriving community. King Alfred had been here hiding from the Norsemen and granted
it a charter. Even two hundred years ago there had been two hundred monks, growing corn and vegetables, making cider from the apples. But now there were only nine. Brother Mark was the last novice to apply and it did not seem likely that there would be any to follow him.

  “It's a bit sad,” shivered Dido, looking out across the frozen Mere.

  They were waiting for Sir Thomas Coldacre to arrive. And then they would have to break the news to him that his granddaughter and stepgrandson were both dead.

  “That Jorinda,” said Dido cautiously “she was a rum sort of gal.”

  “Hasty in her actions.”

  “Had you known her long? Met her, maybe, when I was in Ameriky?”

  “No. I just met her on the train a few days ago.”

  “She said you and she were a-going to get married.”

  “She was wrong. There was not the slightest chance of that.”

  “I reckon that's just as well. She wouldn't have been right for you.”

  “The only person I've met so far,” said Simon, “who would be right for me is you, Dido.”

  She shook her head. “Not if you're a-going to be king, Simon. I'd never do as queen, never! Not me. It's too high a step from Rose Alley to Saint Jim's Palace. You'll have to look for someone classier. Or turn down the job.”

  “I don't think I can do that,” he said unhappily “Then it'll have to be no one at all.”

  “Maybe they can find somebody else to put on their throne. Maybe Cousin Alf will turn up yet from Burnham-on-Sea. …”

  “Here comes Sir Thomas,” said Simon, squinting across the ice. “He seems to have brought a whole load of luggage with him.”

  Sir Thomas had ridden to the Middle Mere on a weight-carrying hunter, escorted by his man Gribben on another, with a massive quantity of clothes and provisions, including a side of ham and a barrel of liquor. But they had come to a halt on the far side of the channel and, dismounting, surveyed the ice doubtfully.