The Children of Green Knowe Collection

by Lucy M. Boston

  *

  TOLLY WENT UP TO bed, taking some crumbs for the chaffinch to eat in the morning. And who knows, perhaps the mouse too. When he reached his room at the top of the stairs, he was delighted to find a pair of tits there as well. ‘Perhaps I’ll have a Christmas tree with a star on top. That will make another lovely shadow.’ There were the two china dogs on the chest of drawers staring him in the face. ‘What can I do to have an Orlando? I can’t put those icy cold things in my bed. Besides, they might fall out and break. I’ll have to make do with the mouse.’ When he was in bed he stroked it in his pyjama pocket and said, ‘Mouse, mouse, come alive. Mouse, mouse, be magicked.’ The mouse gave a twist in his pocket and squeaked, and climbed out and ran across his neck and squeezed past his ear, and flipped his cheek with its tail. But Tolly was already asleep.

  The next morning, to Tolly’s immense relief, the snow was still lying thick and sparkling, its surface touched only by the light feet of birds. There had been a fresh fall in the night that had half-filled Tolly’s steps of the day before, so that they only showed as deep dimples. He could hardly wait to go out – much too anxious, lest he should find no children in the tree house, to be able to eat his breakfast. He stood by the door into the garden and fluted for all the birds and animals to hear, as a sign that he was coming as soon as he could.

  He set off after breakfast round the corner past St Christopher, who was still warmly blanketed up by drifts of snow and wore a cowl of snow that wrapped his head and the stone Child’s together. He tried to follow his own tracks but soon lost them. The wind had blown the drifts into different shapes. It was a new journey, as lonely and difficult as the last, but this time he knew what he wanted to find. He could see the pyramid of snow that was the yew tree. He would find the opening if he had to struggle through snow up to his neck. All the while he looked right and left for the springing trail of the squirrel, but it was Watt’s ears he saw at last, sticking up from behind a hummock. Watt lolloped slowly along as if to show him the way, till Tolly, with his heart thumping with suspense, crawled after him through the low opening.

  They were all there. Toby’s handsome head was bent over a piece of rope that he was splicing. The deer was munching hay and oats out of a wooden bucket beside him. It looked round as Tolly came in, scratching behind its ear with a hind hoof. Linnet and Alexander were putting Linnet’s little gold bracelet round the squirrel’s neck. It fitted beautifully. They looked up together, meeting Tolly’s eyes as so often in the picture. Tolly had bottled up so many questions inside him that they had to come out.

  ‘Where is your mother?’ he said.

  ‘Why, in heaven of course, Ignoranty.’ (Linnet said ‘Ignoranty’ as if it were a pet name.) ‘But she doesn’t mind our coming here.’

  ‘Was the Great Plague awful?’

  Alexander looked up smiling. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It only lasted a few hours. I’d forgotten all about it.’

  ‘I don’t remember it at all,’ said Linnet. ‘What was it, Alexander?’

  ‘Who’s Ignoranty now?’ said Toby.

  ‘I am. I don’t know anything about your stupid Plague,’ said Linnet, laughing and rolling over, with her curls all mixed up with yew needles and ivy leaves. It seemed that anything was funny enough to make Linnet laugh. She couldn’t help it.

  ‘If you rolled about in the snow outside you would be a Linnet-snow-sausage.’

  ‘Mind the milk! Truepenny hasn’t been yet.’

  ‘I did flute for him,’ said Tolly, ‘in case you hadn’t got your flute with you.’

  ‘I’ve given it to you,’ said Alexander.

  ‘Oh, oh! I’ve rolled on Hedge-prickles!’ said Linnet, sitting up and rubbing her arm as the hedgehog hurried away.

  Orlando came to comfort her.

  ‘Did you make that enormous snowman with no eyes?’ Tolly asked Toby. There was a silence.

  ‘Over there, I mean,’ said Tolly, pointing through the wall to where he thought it was, ‘among the trees, as big as St Christopher.’

  ‘Oh, Ignoranty! He means Green Noah,’ said Linnet.

  ‘Keep away from him,’ said Toby.

  ‘I’m not afraid of him,’ said Linnet. ‘He can’t hurt me. I’m dead.’

  ‘I didn’t mean you, little Flipperty-gibbert – I mean him,’ said Toby, nodding towards Tolly.

  ‘Don’t go near him,’ said Alexander. ‘He is eyeless and horrid.’

  But Linnet was dancing round Toby in mock solemnity with turns and curtseys.

  ‘I made up a rhyme to tease him,’ she said, quite irrepressible. ‘I dance round him and I sing, like this:

  Green Noah

  Demon Tree

  Evil Fingers

  Can’t catch me!’

  Toby made a grab at her, and while they tussled and laughed together Alexander said, ‘The only thing the confounded Peacock is good for, is that it always gives warning if Green Noah moves.’

  ‘Where is the Peacock?’

  ‘I expect it’s sulking because you and Granny laughed at it so much.’

  ‘Why, where were you when we were laughing?’

  ‘Sitting in the inglenook. Toby was in the other.’

  ‘Yesterday? Why couldn’t I see him?’

  ‘Well, you were sitting in the same place, so how could you? It’s as if you were both in the same person.’

  Tolly sat breaking twigs between his fingers as he tried to work out this new problem. But it made no sense to him – it was too hard. He looked up again to grin at Alexander, but found he was alone. They had all gone.

  Never was a little boy more desolate than Tolly. He wanted them so much, every minute of every day, and he had no sooner found them than they vanished. With hot, salty tears he scattered the heap of broken twigs under his hands, and there lay an old bracelet, bent and black, a tiny one that would fit a squirrel’s neck. ‘They always leave something where they have been,’ he thought, comforted, as he brushed the soil off it. He spent some time trying to get his own narrow hand through it, and at last he succeeded. He plodded back to the house, marching up to Mrs Oldknow with his hands behind his back.

  ‘Guess what I’ve found.’

  Mrs Oldknow took hold of his hands and pulled them to her. He held them out with tightly clenched fists, and she wasted much time trying to open his fingers. At last she felt something under her own fingers round his wrist. She knew at once. Her wrinkles creased up in a boyish, excited smile.

  ‘My own dear little Linnet! You’ve found her bracelet! Tell me where it was?’

  ‘She put it round the squirrel’s neck. It looked marvellous there, all glittery in the fur.’

  ‘She would, of course! I might have thought of that. But she might just as easily have put it on Truepenny, who would have taken it down to wear in the dark of his tunnels. It was a present from her Granny on her sixth birthday. Let’s clean it up. Look, she is wearing it in the picture.’ They took it in turns to rub it till it was bright gold again.

  ‘Can I have it?’ said Mrs Oldknow. ‘I know you found it, but I would like to keep it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tolly, feeling very proud. ‘You can keep it. I have the sword.’

  ‘It will have to go to the jeweller’s to be mended. Look, the seed-pearls have gone out of these little holes.’

  Every few minutes there was a fizz from the fire, as drips came down the wide chimney, but they were too much interested in the bracelet to notice. Afterwards they had a music lesson, in the course of which Tolly called out, ‘Granny, look! The snow’s all melting.’

  It was thawing fast, slipping off the trees in big, slushy drops, and turning to mud on the paths. Tolly could hardly believe that all those powdery drifts could turn wet and nasty and sink away so quickly. By tea-time the tree house had nearly gone. The branches showed through, green and dripping.

  ‘Unless it freezes hard tonight, we shall have another flood,’ said Mrs Oldknow. ‘If it does freeze, pity the poor birds! Their feet would be frozen
on to the branches. We must leave your window open, but not enough for the owls to get in. They snatch little birds while they are asleep. Perhaps the tits and robins will follow the chaffinches in.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea. May I go and ask Mr Boggis for something?’ Toseland ran out. He found Boggis and asked him to cut some big branches of evergreen, as big as he could. Boggis cut some four-foot lengths of stout ivy, a large branch of bay, and the top of a laurustinus that was like a young tree. All these Tolly carried upstairs to his room. He fixed the branches upright, tying them to the backs of chairs; the ivy he laid along the beams. Then he opened the window, from which he seemed to look down on the sun setting in streaks of grey mist, and took up his flute. ‘Help me please, Alexander,’ he said, putting his lips to it, and the flute and he played together.

  The birds heard. One by one they flew in and inspected their lodging. Two robins quarrelled over a bush, but in the end one of them went to bed in the doll’s house instead, where he spent the night in the music room where the beams were just the right size for a perch. Tolly set the window just wide enough to let a late-comer in. He thought an inch and a half would do, but was not quite sure how thin an owl could make itself. Cats, he knew, could squeeze through very narrow gaps. After all this, he went downstairs again, very pleased with himself.

  ‘You haven’t ever told me a story about Alexander.’

  ‘Very well, I will tell you one tonight.’

  ALEXANDER’S STORY

  All of the children, as you know, because you have heard them, had beautiful voices, but Alexander’s was the best. Toby and he sang in the choir in the church in Penny Soaky, where they were very strictly trained. They also sang at home, for their mother played on the spinet and was a clever musician. It was a great treat when their father and elder brother were at home too, to add a bass and a tenor to their part-singing and to teach them sea shanties.

  On one of Captain Oldknow’s visits he took the whole family to Greatchurch to dine with some friends, and afterwards to see the sights, in particular the church famous for its music and its stained glass. This was at a distance of twelve miles. The Captain and his three sons rode. The two ladies and Linnet went by coach. It was Linnet’s birthday. She had a new Dutch doll and was wearing her best dress, the one you know from the picture, and her mother too. In fact the picture was painted not very long afterwards, in honour of the events of which you are going to hear.

  At the house of their friends there was much laughter and excitement, first for welcome and pleasure, but also because of the latest news – the proposed visit of the King to a neighbouring mansion. The conversation during dinner was all about it, for it was expected that some kind of entertainment would be provided for His Majesty in the evening, at which all the young people of the county had hopes of appearing, either as performers in the masques, or as members of the audience.

  ‘There is no hope at all for you, my dear,’ said Captain Oldknow to Linnet. ‘We are quiet country people with no friends at court. No one will think of asking us.’

  After dinner they walked to the church to admire the stained-glass windows that had escaped damage from the pikes and stones of Cromwell’s soldiers, and so could show to the future the riches that almost everywhere else in the country had been wantonly smashed. The children followed their parents in, expecting to see a church like any other, but bigger and handsomer. It was, however, quite different. It was more like an empty banqueting hall, but so long and so high that, as they stepped inside, they felt themselves dwindle to the size of ninepins. The four walls seemed to be all stained glass, with only enough stone to hold them together, but the stone was decorated high and low with carved crowns, animals and flowers.

  Linnet looked round in astonishment. ‘Alexander!’ she said. ‘It’s one of Merlin’s palaces.’

  Alexander could not speak. He was beside himself with delight at the building and the glass.

  The afternoon was dull, so that the colours in the windows were deep and rich like sunset seen through a wood, and the stone vaulting looked velvety. A verger was lighting candles two by two all round the walls. Alexander listened to his footfalls sounding like fingertaps on a kettle-drum under the high hollow of the roof. The whole place was vibrating and ecstatic. He felt as if he had fallen under an enchantment, as if he could do impossible things. ‘But it’s not Merlin’s cheating castle,’ he thought. ‘Its name should be Joyous Gard.’

  He strayed from his family the better to concentrate on the sensation of tingling emptiness and expectation in the building that he found so strange and so enthralling. If one of the other visitors, intent on looking up at the high windows, made a false step, the sound came to him remote and beautiful as if a pigeon with flapping wings had taken off in the roof. When Alexander was separated by the length of the building from the others, who were just going out by the west door, he heard the final syllable of Toby’s voice slipping in a whisper down the wall from the roof at the east end, where he stood himself. It was queer to think of it travelling silently like a butterfly across the immense length of the honey-combed vaulting, to fold its wings and drop there in a half-breath of sound to his ear.

  Alexander stayed on, making no sound that could remind them that he was left behind. How could they go so soon? But he was glad to be undisturbed. The verger had gone, and no one else had as yet come in. He stood alone in a magic world. The candles waved in the air that was as much in movement as if in a forest. Every now and then a spindle of wax breaking off a guttering candle fell into the brass holder with a bell-like note that seemed to go up and up and be received into Heaven. Alexander held his breath and listened. There was no sound except a low droning of wind passing along the distant vaulting, the kind of sound that is in a shell.

  He had a sudden great desire to sing, to send his voice away up there and hear what nestling echoes it would brush off the roof, how it would be rounded and coloured as it came back. Standing by the choir-stalls he sang what first came into his head, part of a new song that his mother was teaching him. He tossed his notes up, like a juggler tossing balls, with careless pleasure. He could feel the building round him alive and trembling with sound.

  I call, I call, I call, (he sang)

  Gabriel! Gabriel! Gabriel!

  He stopped to listen. It was as if the notes went up like rocket stars, hovered a second and burst into sparklets. The shivered echo multiplied itself by thousands. One would have thought every stone in the building stirred and murmured. He tried it again, louder.

  Gabriel! Gabriel! Gabriel!

  He could almost imagine the Archangel must hear, might come. He looked round, suddenly awe-struck. To his confusion he saw that he was not alone. Leaning out of the organ loft was a Jack-in-the-box of a man with a pointed red beard and a bald head like a marble.

  ‘Boy! Boy!’ he shouted, and all the echoes roared like lions. ‘Boy! Boy! Stay there (there). On your life (life).’

  Alexander thought he was wild with anger at his presumption in daring to sing. He decided that, considering he was in church, he had better stay and take his scolding.

  The little man burst out of the organ-loft stairs, seized him by the arm and held him relentlessly. He had light eyes with very black pupils, like a parrot’s, and his beard was raised like a weapon every time he shut his mouth.

  ‘What’s your name, boy? Where do you come from? Who is your father? Your father is just outside? Come along, take me to him.’

  He dragged Alexander with him, still holding him as if he were a wild animal that might escape.

  ‘There he is, with my mother and my brother and sister.’

  ‘Sir! Sir! (What did you say your name was, boy? Oldknow?) Captain Oldknow! Sir!’

  All this commotion attracted the attention of the passersby as well as of the Captain whose son was being dragged towards him as if for fearful punishment.

  ‘Oh my dear sir! Dear lady! What a voice, the most astonishing voice! I can’t take a refusal. This b
oy must sing. He must sing before the King. It’s a miracle. Calling me by name! Gabriel! Gabriel! (He sang this in a squeaky falsetto.) Admit it was startling.’

  Captain Oldknow interrupted the stream of words with an amused gesture. ‘What is all this about, sir? And why are you dragging my son as if he were a malefactor?’

  The wild man clutched Alexander all the more desperately.

  ‘No malefactor, sir – an angel. The voice of an angel. I cannot let him go.’

  ‘Alexander,’ said his father, ‘can you explain all this to me? How did you meet this gentleman?’

  ‘Gabrieli McTavish, at your service, sir,’ interrupted the old man.

  Alexander, feeling very foolish, explained as best he could, and all his family laughed with him.

  ‘Now, dear sir,’ said the Captain, ‘I begin to see what this is all about. My son has been experimenting with echoes and has raised one where he least expected it. It seems that his few notes were approved of. Is that all?’

  ‘All, sir! Sir, it falls to me to arrange the musical diversion for His Gracious Majesty next month, but my best boy’s voice is breaking. I dare not trust it, and the second best boy is sick. I was in despair, I was like to be disgraced. But now we have only to come to an arrangement.’

  The gist of the matter was that the organist, Gabrieli McTavish, was to produce the masque Cupid and Death before his Majesty, and by a series of mischances there was no boy available who could sing the part of Cupid. If Alexander were to stay and be trained for the part, all the family could have seats for the show.

  ‘Oh!’ gasped Linnet and her mother together, with such feeling that it was probably from a wish to give them pleasure that Captain Oldknow decided to allow Alexander to live with their friends, if they would take him, until the royal visit, and be trained by his new singing master.