The Picts and the Martyrs

by Arthur Ransome

  “Just coming, Aunt Maria.” That was Nancy’s voice, but oddly gentle, not like her usual cheerful shout.

  Then they both gasped at once. The boat had come into sight below the lawn, gliding down the river. They had last seen it with a crew of dishevelled savages. Now it was being rowed by a girl in a white frock with a pink ribbon round her hair. Another girl, just like her, was sitting in the stern, idly trailing a hand in the water. The boat turned into the boathouse. A minute later, they saw the two girls walking hand in hand towards the house.

  Dick looked at his watch. “Half a minute to half-past four,” he whispered. “They’ve done it.”

  “I say,” whispered Dorothea. “How many more days? They’ll never, never be able to keep it up like that.”

  They could not see the meeting of the Great Aunt and her nieces, but there was talking and then silence and then the noise of a door closing.

  “They’re in at tea,” said Dick. “Now’s the time. Quick, Dot. This way. We’ve got to get the pigeons to Timothy’s boat before they’ve finished and come out again.”

  *

  It would have been safe to go straight to the road while the Great Aunt was indoors having afternoon tea, but instinct made the Picts swerve to the right, away from the house, and they climbed over the wall into the road only a few yards from the field gate where they had met the doctor.

  “Hurry. Hurry,” said Dorothea, and they raced along as far as the gap where the path led up to their house.

  “She said they’d hidden them behind this wall,” said Dick. “I’d better go along inside the wood so as not to miss them. It’ll take longer if we have to stop and look over the wall every other minute.”

  “I’m coming, too.”

  “You’d better keep along the road,” said Dick. “We’ve got to get the pigeons over the wall.”

  “I’ll keep watch at the same time.”

  “Good.”

  It was a low tumbledown wall, only a few feet high, and here and there broken down altogether. Dick raced through the pines and larches, looking along the wall for the old pigeon cage he remembered from the mining expedition of last year.

  “Don’t you think we may have passed it?” said Dorothea from the road, when they were already almost opposite the gate into Beckfoot.

  “Not yet,” said Dick. “I say. Better go quick when you pass the gate.”

  “Or slow,” said Dorothea. “So long as I don’t look as if I belonged.” All the same she walked a little faster while passing the big open gateway.

  “Got it,” said Dick a moment later. “They said they’d put it somewhere close opposite. I say, it’s bigger than I remembered.”

  Dorothea came to the wall and looked over.

  “There’s a gap just a little further on,” she said. “We’ll get it through there.”

  She came round, to find Dick testing the weight of the cage, and looking at an envelope, sealed with black sealing wax, and tied to the cage with a bit of string that had been threaded through a small hole in one corner.

  “Pict Post,” read Dorothea. “She oughtn’t … Oh well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. ‘Private. Personal. Urgent.’” The envelope was one of Nancy’s best, addressed to “Timothy Stedding, Esq., S.A. and D. Mining Company,” with a skull and crossbones instead of a stamp.

  “This bag must be the food for them,” said Dick. “I’ll put it on the top of the cage. Look here, if you’ll take that end, I’ll walk in front and take the other with my hands behind my back. Then we’ll both be able to walk straight ahead. Quicker than if one of us has to walk backwards.”

  “Pheeu … Pheeu, Pheeu. Pheeu,” Dorothea made a noise to reassure the pigeons, as like as she could make it to the noise she had heard Titty making for them last year.

  “It’s Sappho and Homer,” said Dick. “Or Sappho and Sophocles … That’s Sappho anyhow. I don’t remember which of the others they said they lost.”

  “Sophocles,” said Dorothea. “I’m awfully glad they’ve still got Sappho. It was Sappho who took the message to Beckfoot that brought the firefighters just in time.”

  “She’s the one who sometimes didn’t hurry about getting home,” said Dick.

  “I expect they’ll have told Timothy in the letter which one he can count on.”

  They took the big cage through the gap in the wall and then set out along the road, up the steep slope over the shoulder of the promontory and down again on the other side towards the lake shore. Dick was keeping a look out for the grey rowing boat, and presently saw it, with its nose well pulled up on the shingle beach. They left the road, struggled through some high bracken and came down to the water.

  “It’ll just about fit across the stern,” said Dick. “Look out. Just hold steady with the end on the gunwale while I get in.”

  The long narrow boat listed sideways with a loud creak as Dick climbed in.

  “It’s all wrong pulling her so far up on the stones,” he said. “But I suppose he was thinking of the wash from the steamers. He hasn’t got her in a very good place …” He worked his way along the boat with one end of the cage while Dorothea held up the other walking on the shore till she could go no further without stepping into the water.

  “Shall I get in, too?”

  “I can manage now,” said Dick. “Hang on to the pigeon food till I get the cage fixed.”

  “Just right,” he said a minute later. “It almost might have been made to fit.”

  “Twist the envelope this way so that he can’t help seeing it,” said Dorothea, handing Dick the bag of pigeon food. “He’s sure to be surprised when he sees the cage, and if he doesn’t see the envelope with his name on it he might think someone had put it in his boat by mistake.”

  “And I’ll put the pigeon food just in front of it on the bottom boards, so that he can’t help noticing it when he sits down to row,” said Dick.

  “Well, we’ve done it,” said Dorothea. “Let’s be quick. She’s probably pouring out second cups by now. It’s drawing-room tea, you know, balancing bits of bread and butter on the edge of a saucer.” In her mind’s eye she was seeing the Beckfoot drawing-room, and Nancy, Amazon pirate, holding her cup and saucer in one hand while, without spilling her tea, she offered her aunt a plate of cakes with the other.

  “Can’t we wait and see him?”

  “They said we’d better get back while it was safe,” said Dorothea. “And he may not come for ages. And there’s all our housekeeping to do. Tea and supper all in one,” she went on. “Come along. Let’s get up home and be Picts and perfectly invisible. Much better not take risks when we needn’t.”

  Dick had had a look at the anchor that Timothy had laid out up the beach. He was now bending over the knot with which, to make sure, Timothy had fastened his boat’s painter to the stem of a hawthorn tree.

  “John, or Nancy, or Tom Dudgeon would never have tied it like that,” he said.

  “He’s a miner, not a sailor,” said Dorothea.

  “I know,” said Dick.

  His mind leapt forward to the work he and Timothy were to do, making analyses of different samples of copper from the mine. Real analysis, not just copying experiments out of a book, and dipping bits of litmus paper and seeing them turn blue or pink when you knew they were going to anyhow. And they were going to work in the houseboat. And that meant sailing in Scarab. And Scarab’s harbour was ready. And Scarab was ready. And tomorrow, at last, they would be sailing her.

  “Dot,” he said gravely. “It was awful when I thought we’d have to do without Scarab.”

  “It would be a lot safer if we could,” said Dorothea. “But I’d forgotten that you’ve got to be able to get to the houseboat.”

  “We’ve got to get the assays done before Captain Flint comes home,” said Dick. “I wish we could start tomorrow.”

  “He’ll send a pigeon when he’s ready to begin,” said Dorothea. “Come along. Better get a lot of wood ready now so as not to have to bother with it when you’re
working all day.”

  Dick hesitated no longer. They left the grey boat and the pigeons waiting for Timothy, hurried safely past Beckfoot and up to their hut. Everything was just as they had left it, and the Picts settled down to home life. Dorothea looked through her stores list and decided on a steak and kidney pudding, because the directions on the tin were very simple. Dick burnt his fingers getting the tin open after its long stay in boiling water, but the pudding was well worth it. They made ready much more wood than they used in cooking their supper. They heard a nightjar. Dick had a good view of the tawny owl flitting through the trees. Dorothea found her empty jam-jar, filled it with water, put some wild honeysuckle in it, and set it on the window sill. They washed up beside the beck. Tonight, they did not go down in the dusk to hear if Nancy was playing her pieces on the piano. What with the postman and Timothy and the doctor and the harbour and the pigeons, Dorothea felt there had been more than enough risks taken for one day. They set up their hammocks early, found them more comfortable than they had the night before, and were asleep soon after dark.

  CHAPTER XI

  “A BETTER PICT THAN EITHER OF US”

  “LISTEN!”

  Dorothea stopped with an egg balanced in a spoon just as she was going to lower it into the water already boiling in the saucepan. The Picts had slept well their second night in their own house, and there was no real hurry about getting up. But it was not light enough in the hut to read while lying in a hammock, and, with Scarab to be launched that day, Dick wanted to put in every minute he could at the sailing book. He felt as if he was going to sit for an examination and he wanted to make no mistakes with those two old shellbacks, Nancy and Peggy, as examiners. So he had slipped out, dipped his head in the pool in the beck, cleaned his teeth, dressed, set the three-legged stool in the doorway and settled down to work. Dorothea had not felt like lying in a hammock with Dick already up and about, so she too had got up, washed, dressed, brought mugs and plates from under the waterfall where they had been rinsing all night, lit the fire with two matches (she would have done it with one if only the first had not broken as she was striking it) and now had breakfast all but ready.

  “Listen!”

  Dick lifted his head from his book.

  “It’s somebody coming,” he said, “but it isn’t Timothy, or Nancy or Peggy …”

  “Not unless they’re walking on skates,” said Dorothea.

  Footsteps were coming quickly nearer up the path through the wood where the overflow from the beck had washed the stones bare, and with every step there was the click of metal.

  “Friend or enemy?” Dorothea whispered.

  Dick picked up his stool and came into the hut.

  “They may go straight past.”

  “Not with smoke coming out of the chimney,” whispered Dorothea. “And the door open. … No. … No. … Keep still. It’s too late now.”

  “We couldn’t put the fire out anyhow,” said Dick.

  The steps were almost silent now. Whoever it was had crossed the beck and was on the grass of the clearing. A stick cracked close by. A smallish boy, yellow-haired, blue-eyed, and red-faced, stood in the doorway, holding out a quart bottle.

  “Here’s your milk,” he said, looking curiously round the hut.

  “Thank you,” said Dorothea. “Did they send it from Beckfoot?”

  “Aye. And I’ve to bring you a quart in the morning and you’ll give me the bottle to go back.”

  “The bottle from the day before?”

  “Aye. Not this yin.”

  The boy was digging in the pocket of his short corduroy breeches. He pulled out a crumpled envelope. “For you,” he said.

  “Is there an answer?”

  “Nay, they didn’t say. They heard somebody a’coming downstairs and they pushed me out quick and shut t’door on me.”

  There was nothing written on the envelope. Inside it was a small bit of writing paper with a hurriedly scrawled skull and crossbones in one corner, not one of Nancy’s best. Underneath it was written, “Bit of a row last night. She told Cook she was being extravagant with milk. Cook held her peace though nearly busting. Yours is to come separately. Give him yesterday’s bottle. Now listen. Orders for the day. Be where I said at two o’clock sharp.”

  Dick and Dorothea read it together, while the milk-boy’s eyes roamed this way and that, over the hammocks, the skull and crossbones on the wall, and the packing-case table on which Dorothea had been making ready for breakfast.

  “No, there isn’t an answer,” said Dorothea.

  “Where’s t’other bottle?”

  “Sorry,” said Dorothea. “I’ll give it you in a minute. I saved some milk in it from yesterday. I’ll just pour it over our cornflakes.”

  She took the half empty bottle from the floor by the wall furthest from the fire. The small boy watched her. She was just going to pour it over the cornflakes which were already heaped in two saucers, when the small boy said, “Smell ut.”

  “It’s gone sour,” said Dorothea a moment later. “How did you know?”

  “That’s no place to keep ut this weather.”

  “It’s so hot everywhere,” said Dorothea. “Well, it doesn’t matter if you’re bringing another bottle tomorrow.”

  The boy put out his hand. Dick took the bottle from Dorothea and gave it to him. He sniffed at it, held it up, looked at the milk through the glass, emptied it on the ground just outside, came back and leaned against the doorpost as if he meant to stay.

  Dorothea, who had put the spoon with the egg in it on the packing-case table while she was reading Nancy’s message, picked it up and lowered the egg carefully into the saucepan. She put a second egg in the spoon and lowered that in, too.

  “Look at your watch, Dick,” she said. “We’ll try to get these just right.”

  “Three minute and a half,” said the small boy. “That’s what my mother gives ’em.”

  Dick looked at his watch, holding it in his hand. This time, at least, there should be no mistake.

  Dorothea began cutting bread and butter.

  The small boy stood there, his eyes alert, not looking at all like going.

  “What’s your name?” asked Dorothea, uncomfortable at being watched in silence.

  “Jacky. Jacky Warriner. What’s yours?”

  “Dorothea Callum and Dick Callum.” Dorothea suddenly reddened. Ought she, or ought she not, to have told their names to a stranger? But it must be all right, she thought, or he would not have been sent to them.

  “You’ll be visitors?”

  “Yes, in a way,” said Dorothea.

  The small boy pointed at the hammocks.

  “Sleep here?”

  “Yes,” said Dorothea, uncertainly, wondering how far Jacky had been let into the secret.

  NOT LOOKING AT ALL LIKE GOING

  “She don’t know, I reckon?”

  “Who?”

  “That Miss Turner.”

  “No.”

  “I thought there was summat … when they threw me out so quick.”

  “Two minutes,” said Dick, looking at his watch.

  “Doing for yourselves?” asked Jacky, shifting his weight from one doorpost to the other.

  “Yes,” said Dorothea.

  “Plenty of food?”

  “Yes,” said Dorothea.

  “My mother don’t think much of tinned stuff.”

  An idea came to Dorothea. “Have you had your breakfast?” she asked.

  “Six o’clock,” said Jacky scornfully. “We’ve had cows in and milked since then. What are you doing for your food? Catch trout in t’beck?”

  Dick looked up. He had been thinking of that himself. “We haven’t got a fishing rod,” he said.

  “Rod!” said Jacky. “You don’t want a rod to catch trout.”

  “How do you catch them?”

  “Guddle ’em,” said Jacky. “What about rabbits?”

  “We haven’t got a gun.”

  “Gun? What for? You don’
t want a gun for rabbits. Have you got a fry pan?”

  “Only a saucepan,” said Dorothea.

  “You want a fry pan for trout.” Jacky shifted again, but showed no signs of leaving them.

  “Oh, I say, Dot. I’m awfully sorry. Five minutes. I’ve done it again.”

  Dorothea hurriedly scooped first one and then the other egg out of the saucepan. “Never mind,” he said. “We’ll get it right tomorrow.”

  “You want a fry pan for eggs, too,” said Jacky suddenly, and came a step into the hut. “Break ’em into boiling water and you can see ’em turn white. Or stir ’em up with butter over t’fire. I’ll lend you a fry pan.”

  And, while they watched open-mouthed, Jacky walked across the hut, took hold of a loose stone in the wall close to the fireplace, shook it a little and pulled it out. Then he took a second stone out, reached in and brought out an old blackened frying pan.

  “You take this,” he said. “Put it back when you’re done wi’ ut. Like nuts?” he asked, and reaching again into the hole in the wall, brought out an old flour bag and emptied some brown nuts on the ground beside Dorothea.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Dorothea. “Have we taken your house? We didn’t know. I’m awfully sorry. We knew somebody had been here because of the wood and the ashes in the fireplace, but we thought it was a long time ago.”

  “I’m not wanting it,” said Jacky.

  “They didn’t know at Beckfoot.”

  “Nobody knows nowt about ut,” said Jacky. “Nobbut me. You’re welcome. And I don’t mind your using my saw.”

  “That’s awfully good of you,” said Dick. “We’ve nowhere else to go. And I’m sorry I took the saw without asking.”

  “You weren’t to know,” said Jacky.

  “This must be your knife,” said Dick, taking it from the shelf over the fireplace.

  “I’m right glad to have it,” said Jacky. “Where was it? I thought I’d lost it in the wood.”

  “We found it on the floor,” said Dick.

  “You’ve been putting things to right,” said Jacky, opening his knife and trying the blade with a finger.