‘Stables,’ said Boggis briefly, out of breath with sawing.
Tolly thought of the horses that had once lived in such grand rooms.
‘Were they very special horses?’
‘Oh aye, they were fine horses when I was a lad. Shining like the sun and dressed up like lords. I’ve never had an overcoat like they had! When they were led out, striking sparks out of the cobbles with their hooves and shaking their bridles, they were a proper eyeful. Your grandfather, Mr Toseland as was, he was a rare one with a horse. He could make them do anything by just breathing secrets into their ears.’
Boggis went on with his sawing, and Tolly roamed round, his eyes getting used to the patchy light. He found other trap-doors which he could not lift, a whole row of them all along one side. One was broken and lay off its hinges beside the square hole. Underneath on the stable wall was the iron basket to hold hay, into which he climbed. He crouched there trying to imagine that the stall was occupied by the warm silky body of a horse, feet stamping in straw, hindquarters fidgeting, tail swishing, and a great rolling black eye that could see backwards and forwards at the same time, half covered by mane and forelock. He tried so passionately to imagine it, to see, hear and smell it, that the wonder is that no horse was there.
‘Hullo there! Master Toseland, where are you?’
‘I’m here,’ he answered, standing up so that his head stuck out of the hole.
‘Trust you to get in the haunted stall! Were you looking for Mr Toby’s horse by any chance? That stall’s always kept empty in case he feels like spending a night there. Folk say you can hear him at night, whinnying for the young master.’
‘Which young master?’
‘Don’t ask me! I bain’t no good at history. One of the young masters, same as you.’
‘Have you ever heard him whinnying?’
Boggis cocked a half-humorous, half-serious eye at him. ‘I tells you, I sleeps at home. And that’s where I dreams.’
Toseland climbed over the hayrack and let himself down into the manger.
‘You haven’t put any hay for him,’ he said.
‘Ghosts don’t eat hay.’
‘But they like to pretend.’
The manger was empty. It was as big as a bed and he could lie full length in it. In that position, running his fingers along the cracks, he found a loose piece of wood wedged under the ledge of the manger at the back. Just for love of poking round, Toseland, with great difficulty, prized it out. On one side of it there was dirty paint. He rubbed it with his sleeve and saw that there were red and white patterns on it. He licked his handkerchief and rubbed harder. Some letters appeared, very queer spiky, spidery letters, not like print at all.
‘Mr Boggis, look what I’ve found.’
Boggis came and peered through the trap-door.
‘Now then, don’t you take away nothing you finds here. We don’t want no souvenir hunting here.’
Toseland put it down in the bottom of the manger. There ought to be hay, he thought. Of course they ought to put hay. Then he remembered that he still had a piece of sugar that he had taken for the rocking-horse. He put it carefully exactly in the middle of the painted board. Then he climbed down from the manger and ran up the ladder again to the loft. It was getting so dark that by now Boggis had lit his storm-lantern to finish his sawing. The loft looked even more exciting by lamplight, but in another quarter of an hour Boggis said it was tea-time – time to go in.
Toseland walked in front with the lantern, and they stepped from the stables into shallow water and waded slowly towards the house. As they went under the big yew trees the lantern lit up the underneath of the branches making them look like rafters in wild magic houses. The windows of Green Noah were all lit up again. Tolly felt as if he had lived here always instead of just one day.
Mrs Oldknow was sitting in front of a tea-tray by the fire, just as before, when Tolly came in all dirty with bits of straw in his hair.
‘I can see where you’ve been,’ she said. ‘Go and wash yourself and get the straw out of your hair; then come and tell me all about it. I can see you are bursting with questions again.’
When he came back she said: ‘Show me your hands. And now turn round and let me see if you have got peat dust on the seat of your trousers. There! Now begin. Here’s some hot buttered toast and honey.’
‘Granny, what was the name of Toby’s special horse?’
Mrs Oldknow put down her cup and saucer. ‘Boggis has been telling you stories.’
‘Yes, and I found something.’
‘Toby’s horse was called Feste. What did you find?’
‘I found a funny board with patterns and writing on it. It looked like a name but I couldn’t read it. It was funny writing.’
‘It was a name. Feste. Good boy, you are doing well! I thought that board was lost – that someone had chopped it up by mistake, or on purpose. I haven’t seen it since I was married. When the stables were built each horse had its name above the manger. Alexander had a white pony called Bucephalus. Poor little Linnet wasn’t allowed a horse of her own. She rode in a pannier behind her mother or Boggis – I mean the Boggis there was then.’
‘Granny, I do want to hear Feste neigh. Is my bedroom too far away to hear him – if he did, I mean?’
She smiled gently at him. ‘No, I don’t think it’s too far away.’
‘Did you hear him when you were little?’
‘Oh, yes, I heard him. Generally at sundown. There were other horses then, of course, but I could always tell Feste’s voice. It is quite individual.’
There was a long silence while Toseland imagined having a horse of his own, even a ghost horse.
‘I did a silly thing,’ he said at last. ‘I put a lump of sugar for him.’
‘That wasn’t silly at all, darling,’ she said.
‘Granny, what did Linnet put in the bird-cage? The chaffinch didn’t like sugar, He came, you know, but he wouldn’t stay.’
‘Linnet always left the door open. She didn’t like to shut them in. She put crumbs of pastry and biscuit, and seeds that she gathered in the garden in the summer. The chaffinches came and went as they liked, but they always built their nest in the cage in spring. She put a forked branch of hawthorn for them. You can do that too. I am surprised they have remembered for so long; no one has used that room for years. I think they must tell stories to their nestlings.’
‘Stories about Linnet, as you do to me?’
‘Why not?’
‘Tell me more about them, please. Why isn’t their father there in the picture?’
‘He was a ship’s captain. There was an older boy too, Aubrey, who was a midshipman on his father’s ship. Captain Oldknow sailed all over the world. He used to bring home presents for the family. From one journey he brought the mouse for Toby – your mouse – and that great silk Chinese lantern that hangs in the Music Room for his wife. It opens and shuts like an umbrella, but I never touch it now because the silk is so old and tender. Alexander and Linnet were not born then.’
‘What else did he bring home?’
‘From Holland he brought all that lovely lace that they are wearing, and the bird-cage; from Spain, Toby’s sword; and from Germany, the book that Alexander’s holding.’
‘How could he read it if it was a German book?’
‘It was in Latin and he could read it, and he loved it. From France he brought that little dog for Linnet and a lot of rose trees for his wife. Those are the flowers in her basket. Roses were almost a new discovery, very fashionable and exciting. Everybody wanted to have some. They are growing here in the garden still.’
‘The same ones?’
‘The same in a way, descended from them as you are from the captain.’
‘I feel as though I had lived here always,’ said Toseland. ‘Why is it called Green Noah?’
Mrs Oldknow’s face suddenly creased into rings of unhappy wrinkles.
‘For someone who’s lived here always, you ask a lot of quest
ions,’ she said.
‘I know, Granny. But tell me, please.’
‘It’s not the real name,’ she said. ‘It used to be called Green Knowe, but it – got changed. A long time ago.’ That was all she would say. But Tolly had more questions.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘all those children’s faces carved in wood in the entrance hall? They all seemed to be laughing when I came. Who put them there?’
This time Mrs Oldknow looked pleased. ‘The grandmother in the picture found them in a builder’s store. They came from the chapel of a monastery that had been pulled down. She bought them for the beams in the children’s bedroom. She said they were guardian angels. Now, as you see, they are welcoming angels – though one was guardian to a chaffinch last year.’
‘What colour was Feste?’
‘He was chestnut with a white nose and four white feet like a kitten, and he jumped like a cat. Toby and he loved each other more than anything on earth.’
‘But the deer was Toby’s too,’ said Tolly, gazing at the picture. ‘Isn’t it beautiful! A deer seems more magic than a horse.’
‘Very beautiful fairy-tale magic, but a horse that thinks the same thoughts that you do is like strong magic wine, a love philtre for boys.’
*
TOLLY LAY AWAKE in bed. There was so much to think about –the birds, the children, the floods, the stables where lovely Feste called for his master. It was a clear night with a full moon shining on miles of water and seeming twice as bright as usual. The bedroom was all silver and black with it as it poured through the window and flooded the floor with quicksilver. The flame of the night-light looked like a little golden pen-nib, giving less light than there was already around it. The moon shone in the rocking-horse’s eye, and in the mouse’s eye too when Tolly fetched it out from under his pillow to see. The clock went tick-tock, and in the stillness he thought he heard little bare feet running across the floor, then laughter and whispering, and a sound like the pages of a big book being turned over.
‘It might be Alexander and Linnet looking at pictures by moonlight,’ he thought, dreamily. ‘But where are they?’
He sat up and stared all round the room. There was only his own bed and all his things just as he had left them, clearly seen in the moonlight, though there were black patches of shadow under the window where he could not see. Then there was all the room repeated in the looking-glass, more mysterious, the moonlit parts brighter, the dark more impenetrable. The whispering went on. If they were in the dark corners, he thought, they couldn’t see the pictures.
‘Linnet!’ he called suddenly. ‘Where are you? Come out into the moonlight.’
There was a laugh just where he wasn’t looking, and when he turned that way, a patter of feet, and the whispering was where he had been looking a moment before.
‘Are you just teasing me?’ he asked, and was answered by such an infectious little laugh that he couldn’t help laughing too. After that there was silence, but it was a companionable, happy one in which presently he smiled and settled himself to sleep. He dreamed that he was holding out his hands dripping with golden syrup, and that it was Feste who came with his soft white nose and pinky-grey lips and sucked it all off, while Linnet flew in the air like a bird and laughed from the branches of the trees.
*
WHEN HE WOKE Mrs Oldknow was standing by his bed smiling at him.
‘It’s time to get up. Look, the floods have all gone in the night. Come and see.’ She opened the window to lean out. ‘Tolly! Quick! Quick!’
Under the high window all the lawns were emerald green. Beyond them the river flowed obediently in its own course, and beyond that again were miles of green meadow. Right in front of the window where the last pool was draining away from a hollow in the grass, a large silvery thing was twisting and jumping violently in the sun.
‘It’s a great big fish.’
‘It’s one of Toby’s carp from the moat. Silly thing – it got left behind when the water went away. Run, Tolly, put on your coat and your Wellingtons and throw it back into the moat.’
Tolly ran as fast as he could, slithering down the steep winding stairs in his socks and pulling on his Wellingtons by the front door. He reached the fish before anyone else, but it was nearly as big as himself, and flapped so wildly when he picked it up that he was afraid and let it fall again. Then it gasped horribly and lay still, and now he was afraid to touch it in case it was dying. Just then Boggis arrived with a wheelbarrow.
‘Quick, quick, Mr Boggis! It’s Toby’s fish. It’s dying! It’s Toby’s! Mr Boggis, quick!’
Boggis came without any hurry and bent his bright red face down to look.
‘Ay, it’s one of Master Toby’s sure enough. What a size it have grown to! Must be hundreds of years old.’
He put the fish in his barrow and led Tolly to the moat, which was a ring of deep water all round the garden. There he tipped the barrow up and the fish plopped in and disappeared. They stood and looked at the place where it had fallen.
‘Was it still alive?’ asked Tolly. As he spoke, a fish face was poked above the surface, then there was a swirl of water, a flip of a tail, and it was gone.
‘Sure enough it was!’ said Boggis.
‘It was a very ugly fish,’ said Toseland.
‘T’aint no beauty. No more will you be when you’re a hundred years old! Master Toby used to feed it with bread.’
‘It came when he called it,’ added Mrs Oldknow, joining them. ‘Its name is Neptune. Toby used to tell Linnet that it understood Latin. He always talked to it in Latin. She was very much impressed.’
‘What did he say to it?’
‘He said “Veni Neptune. Panem dabo tibi et vermes”.’
‘I don’t know any Latin.’
‘Neither did Linnet. It means “Come Neptune. I will give you bread and worms”. In the garden you will find a platform over a pool where he fed them.’
They fed the birds together. Tolly wanted his hands to be buttered again, but was told that that was only for the introduction ceremony, not for every day.
‘Do the birds understand Latin?’
‘No, not Latin. Music. Alexander used to play the flute to them. They used to sing when he played, but all different tunes. Only the thrushes learnt his tune and the starlings who never sang it properly – they only made fun of it.’
‘What tune did the thrushes sing?’
‘“Greensleeves”, for one.’
‘Oh Granny, I know “Greensleeves”. I do really. At school we had it on the wireless. I wish I had a flute.’
‘Perhaps you’ll get one for Christmas. That’s quite soon, you know. Now finish your breakfast and then you can explore the garden.’
The garden had looked very desolate when the water was over it, but now even the trees looked different and every path seemed to lead just where it was most exciting to go. First he went round the east corner of the house that he had not yet seen. Broken stones stuck out all up the wall, as if there had once been a building there that had been pulled down. In fact there was still a high garden wall with arched slits in it that must once have been windows. Ferns and shrubs and ivy were growing out of the cracks between the stones and there was a lovely smell in the air. Quite suddenly he became aware of something so big that at first he had not seen it.
Against the side of the house, immensely tall and half covered with festoons of Old Man’s Beard, was a stone figure. The first thing that attracted his attention to it was, close to the ground, some stone fishes swimming in what looked like stone water, as though the flood had left something behind. Then he saw that behind the fishes were two huge bare stone feet that seemed to be paddling with stone ripples round the ankles; above them, legs and folds of clothing. High above that, so that he had to step back to look up at it, among the twining strings of the creeper he saw the head of a giant stone man, carrying a child on his shoulders.
Tolly was astonished. He looked and looked at it and could not go away. He pl
ayed round its feet for a long time, collecting coloured pebbles out of the gravel, and stones that were like different things, such as a peg-top, an egg, a calf’s face, a hammer-head; and a real marble. Every now and then he would look up to see the statue again. Its surface was worn soft by rain and frost and wind, not shiny and hard like monuments in churches. It looked friendly and nearly alive. Tolly loved it.
At last curiosity led him away to see where the other paths would lead him. There were many big trees and wild places where there were only little paths like rabbit runs. As he went along the birds went with him. They whistled and chirped on every side and always flew out of the bushes just before he arrived there, to perch on others just ahead. He followed a track round the edge of the moat, shuffling his feet in the dead leaves and pine-needles and stooping under low branches. Here, in a little clearing between two huge trees he found his next great surprise.
Standing on the grass with its ears pricked up as if it had just heard him was a deer that was a bush. It was like Toby’s deer in the picture, but cut out of live evergreen with brown bush-stalk legs growing out of the ground. Toseland stroked it; its neck felt soft. It seemed so much alive that it was queer that of course it couldn’t have eyes. How wild it looks without eyes, he thought. How magic! It took his breath away. And then he saw, sitting under a big beech tree, a green yew squirrel with a high tail. That seemed to be listening too. Other living things beside the birds were rustling in the bushes, and he heard other calls, more like children than birds. Tolly ran, hoping to catch them. He found nothing but a live rabbit that bolted in long hops and shot down a hole. He ran on down the little path, past a yew peacock – that was comparatively ordinary. Further on there was a green hare sitting very erect by the water’s edge; then the path suddenly turned and left the water, going by a bank of trees and dense undergrowth and brambles where it would be almost impossible to walk. It came out between a yew cock and hen, on to a large lawn.
Tolly wanted to get back to the water again, and by-and-by he found a flight of steps which led down towards it. Here the moat formed a deep pool overshadowed by trees, though now it was winter and the branches were bare except for the birds that had followed him and perched there. The water was brown with a blue gloss reflected on it from the sky, like a starling’s back. The steps ended in a wooden platform. As Tolly stood and looked into the water he thought he saw, deep down, a great, shadowy fish swimming slowly. This, then, was Toby’s platform.
The Children of Green Knowe Collection Page 3
