Whittington

by Alan Armstrong

  Then Whittington stretched out one of his own rear paws so everyone could see. It was dark purple.

  “ONE DAY,” THE CAT CONTINUED, “a brisk gentleman appeared in the doorway of Fitzwarren and Whittington’s countinghouse. Dick looked up. He had an odd feeling he knew the man by his shape and the way he moved. He couldn’t be sure, the face was in shadow.

  “His clerk announced a messenger from Sir Louis. It was his old friend Will, the coachman who had brought him to London. It would have been hard to say who was more delighted at the reunion. Arm in arm and with each man talking as fast as he could they made their way to the alehouse.

  “Among the hundred amazing things that came out in their excited back-and-forth was that Will had worked for Sir Louis since he was ten. As for the agent who’d been so avid for whipping the country boy at the back of his carriage years ago, he’d died in a fit one morning when his horse stumbled.

  “‘But I’ve got to be on to the docks!’ said Will. ‘Sir Louis has a ship in on the tide. There’ll be time enough for us to talk—all the way to Persia, from what I’m hearing. You and the cat are to be at Sir Louis’s tomorrow evening at the change of bells.’

  “Will was about to leave when he remembered the package at his feet.

  “‘Sir Louis sent you this book. You’re to have it read before you see him tomorrow. He says it will ready your mind for his proposition. He begs you be careful with it because it’s his favorite book. He’s always reading in it like Scripture and copying out bits. If I could read I’d be into it before the Bible the way he goes on about it.’

  “It was a manuscript, a translation of Marco Polo’s account of his travels from Venice to Persia and the court of Kublai Khan in China, and on to India and all the places in between.

  “A hundred years before Dick Whittington was born Marco Polo had set out from Venice with his father and uncle, merchants like Fitzwarren and Sir Louis, who were searching for new goods and new markets. Marco was seventeen. Travel through the East and on to China was difficult. Few made the trip in Marco’s time, few made it in Whittington’s.

  “Dick read all night and most of the next day. He saw Marco Polo before him, excited and exhausted, one moment telling how hard the journey was, the next how promising. Through Marco’s eyes Dick saw strange people: beautiful women dancing to eerie musics, monks in orange silks, dwarfs, beggars, jugglers, beaters of copper, children weaving rugs, acrobats, jewel traders. He imagined the smell and hubbub of smoky, spice-smelling bazaars with red and yellow tents, magicians in tall hats, seers, snake charmers in costume, camels. He tasted oranges and yellow melons. He smelled the stink of camels’ breath. He went through desolate country where squinting warriors on shaggy ponies watched and spat, their speech unintelligible as Marco made the signs for thirst and weariness.

  “As Dick shook himself free of its magic, he saw that underneath everything the Book of Travels was a businessman’s account of customs, sights, and opportunities. Marco described commodities that might find a good market in Europe—silk, drugs, jewels. As for things to exchange, everyone around the world loved gold, coral, fine woolens, oil of rose, ivory, salt.”

  “Why salt?” Ben wanted to know. “Salt is cheap,” he said, pointing to the animals’ licking block.

  “The salt we get today is,” the cat replied. “It comes from mines. In those days it was expensive because they got most of it by evaporating seawater in ponds and skimming off the crystals. The process took a long time. They didn’t have refrigeration. They used salt to preserve every kind of meat and fish. They used it in cheese making and leather curing, and to flavor foods. No animal can live without salt. A small gift of it was a handsome present in those days.”

  “Hmm,” said Ben, to whom the notion that there was a time when sugar and salt were hard to come by was as strange as anything.

  “Sir Louis knew his man,” the cat continued. “The goods Dick read about he imagined trading for as he heard the music in the bazaar and watched the women dancing. He pictured himself riding through mountain passes on squat ponies with the dark, mustached men in costume Marco wrote about. He saw the orange-clad monks and heard their strange, outlandish bells.

  “He wondered at the accounts of hashish and opium, and at how in India they practiced ‘magical and diabolical arts, by means of which they are enabled to produce darkness….’ He read about elephant tusks, almonds, and pistachio nuts. About Persia he read, ‘The people are of the Mahometan religion. They are in general a handsome race, especially the women, who, in my opinion, are the most beautiful in the world.’

  “He thought of his grandmother and her telling him the Christmas story when he read this: ‘In Persia, Marco came to a city called Saba from whence were the three Magi who came to adore Christ in Bethlehem; and the three are buried in that city in a fair sepulchre, and they are all three entire with their beards and hair.’”

  SPRING CAME ON FAST. One week flurries, then the grass was tufting up like quilting and there were small yellow flowers. Around the barn chickens were clucking and hurrying about on business. The uproar for a new egg erupted twice, sometimes three times a day. Tractors were out, there were trucks on the highway carrying seed potatoes to the new-turned fields. The horses were rubbing heavily against anything to shed their winter hair. Swallows soared in and out, chattering and calling, gathering horsehair and straw for nests. The nervous phoebe built above the barn door again and scolded every time Bernie or the kids passed underneath.

  The goat was edgy. He was growing rounder and rounder. Bernie scolded Al for feeding him so much. “That goat’s gonna burst the way you’re spoiling him,” he growled. Then one day the goat did burst and there was a baby goat, white and wobbly. Bernie rushed back to the station and yelled, “Al, you’re an uncle!” Willy became Wilhelmina. Abby named the baby Theo after a boy she liked at school.

  As goats go, Wilhelmina was a loving mother. Theo sought her out for what he needed, and got it. He would have done fine without any outside help, but in the eyes of Havey and the Lady, Wilhelmina was barely up to the job. Havey remembered her pups and the Lady thought about children too. The presence of a not-quite-helpless youngster touched their maternal instincts. They took over Theo like two old aunts who had feuded in the past but at last agreed on one big thing. Whittington had ended Havey’s attacks on the Lady. Theo made them allies.

  Havey sniffed and licked the newcomer from end to end on their first meeting and scrubbed him every day thereafter. Somehow the more helpless the animal, the gentler Havey became. Whatever she’d had to get even about she’d forgotten.

  As for the Lady, she had a new student to instruct in the matter of tender greens, things not to get into in the back of the barn, and the history of everyone. Theo was a good student but he jumped. The Lady would be going on when suddenly he’d spring straight up and spin around. He meant no rudeness; that’s what young goats do.

  The effect of this unique upbringing was to make Theo more careful about his appearance than most goats and picky about his food. He also got quite a high opinion of himself because Al told him everything he had learned about goats in the library.

  For all the Lady’s instructing, Theo never learned to drink tidily like a duck. Havey’s efforts to teach him to run like a dog didn’t take either. Right after they’d start a chase together the kid would shoot up, twiddle his legs, then dash off somewhere else.

  Coraggio’s singing lessons were more successful. Theo would join the rooster at dawn with a long, deep baa. Their music made Bernie smile as he drove in.

  DICK WHITTINGTON was in Ben’s dreams and daydreams. School was in his nightmares. For all Abby’s work in the barn, he was still behind his classmates. While he’d been making progress, they had been too. They were getting further and further ahead.

  One afternoon the cat noticed that the boy was tired and angry. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “In reading some guy teased me, said I sounded like an air compressor—pp
ppaaapppttt. I slugged him.”

  There was a cheer from the rats.

  “I got sent home. It’s not fair.”

  “What about the classes with Coach O?” the cat asked.

  “Dr. Parker says I’d have to go all summer. Everybody would know.”

  “In school everybody knows everything about everybody anyway,” Abby said.

  “They’ll say things,” Ben growled.

  There was a heavy silence. The horses chewed and made the thoughtful snuffling noises horses make sometimes. The chickens dozed. The goats were indifferent. Goats don’t think much about anyone else.

  “You’re stuck,” the Lady said. “Stay where you are and what’s going to happen?”

  The rats were rooting for the boy to sign up. The Old One fixed Ben with his one bright bead eye and said, “I would if I could. From what I’ve heard out of Abby’s books, there’s more world out there in books than in this barn and field and all of Northfield ten times over.”

  The cat gave Ben a long look. “The boy in my home before didn’t have your chance.”

  Maybe it was then that Ben decided to take his chance. He didn’t say anything. He made a fist.

  Whittington jumped up to his storytelling place. He waited until Ben relaxed his hand. He knew the boy wouldn’t be able to hear until he did.

  “Dick’s old friend, the coachman who’d brought him down to London years before, had reappeared. He’d been sent by Sir Louis with a book. Dick was to go to Sir Louis’s the next evening having read it. He’d been up all night reading Marco Polo’s Travels. He finished it just before he set out.

  “The cat went along. She’d recovered from her operation but she was limping.

  “She was too proud to be carried, so the young man walked slowly. He was eighteen now, tall and strong, clean-shaved, with a chiseled face, deep blue eyes, and long, curling blond hair. There was a thin white scar across his right cheek.

  “As the cat hobbled along behind him, passersby thought it cruel that the fine gentleman didn’t bother to pick up the devoted pet limping at his heels. Dick knew the bite he’d get if he tried. In fact, the cat was walking better and better.

  “Will let them in. Sir Louis’s house was ablaze with candles. Dick was shown to the old man’s study. The cat slipped in on her own. There was a fire in the room. Sir Louis was in his green coat with the fur collar turned up. Maps were spread out on every table. Fitzwarren was there, the captain of the Unicorn, some other gentlemen Dick did not recognize, and Sir Louis’s granddaughter, the slim young woman in black Dick had seen twice before.

  “There were introductions. The strange men were three old sea dogs, ship captains who’d had experience sailing the Dardanelles and the Bosporus. The sailing charts belonged to them.

  “Some might not have found the girl beautiful. Dick could hardly breathe for looking at her. She was tall, with long black hair that gleamed in the candlelight.

  She had a quick smile. Her eyes were bright and lively like a bird’s eyes. Her mouth was large, she had a fine nose. She felt his stare and reddened, the pink showing under the faint olive cast of her skin. She slipped from the room like a shadow. The cat followed her.

  “Dick jumped up. ‘My cat!’ he said. In the dim passage he bumped into the girl.

  “‘I am … You are … My cat …’ His tongue wouldn’t work.

  “‘In the pantry,’ she said, laughing. ‘She smells the forcemeat.’

  “She took his hand. ‘This way’ Her silks rustled softly. Dick could smell her hair, her rose scent.

  “In the candlelit pantry they found the cat. She was waiting for them on a servant’s stool. It was as if she’d led them on. She wasn’t eating. The girl picked her up and stroked her.

  “‘I’m Dick Whittington,’ he said.

  “‘I know,’ she replied. ‘Grandfather speaks of you. I’m Mary Green.’

  “‘Yes,’ he said. He had a hundred things to say but he couldn’t speak.

  “For a moment the only sound was the cat’s purr.

  “‘We must go back,’ Mary said. Her voice was low. To Dick it was like music.

  “‘May I see you again?’ he asked.

  “She looked down and shook her head. ‘No.’

  “Pale and shaken, Dick rejoined the party.

  “What the talking came to was this: Sir Louis wanted Dick to sail with a shipload of English woolens and German salt and establish a factor, or agency for trade, at Constantinople. If he could make it into Persia, he was to establish another station at Tabriz. He would be retracing part of Marco Polo’s route.

  “Sir Louis had a charter from his friend and debtor, King Edward. Not that a piece of handsomely written-on parchment with ribbons and red wax seals would carry much weight with sea pirates, viziers, pashas, and the sultan who controlled the narrow blue straits that separate Europe and Asia. They would need cajoling with gold. Dick would have gold. The men said that if he could open agencies in those places, it would be a great thing for England.

  “Each of them had a share in the venture. If Dick succeeded, it would be a great thing for them too.

  “‘Your share will be enough to make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice,’ said one of the captains. ‘And you’ll be risking no capital of your own.’

  “‘Except your life,’ said Fitzwarren, almost to himself.

  “A day before, an hour before, the young man’s blood would have thrilled to talk of trade and silk routes, gold and glory for England and himself. But now he could hardly pay attention. He was burning. He kept looking for the girl.

  “The talk droned on until at last the men progressed to dinner. Mary joined the party. The cat settled in her lap as servants passed cold beef tongue in horseradish sauce, peas in lard, small birds roasted in pastry, a soup of berries, sweet white wine, dishes of shaved ice with red syrup. Dick ate nothing. He couldn’t swallow. His eyes were like lions for that girl. He took in her face, the shade of her cheeks, the graceful way she moved with not a motion wasted. He could just make out her body, young and firm, the body of a girl who walked miles and rode her own horse.

  “Her eyes were on him too, although he didn’t know it. She was discreet in her looking. His cat purred and purred, kneading the girl’s thigh, the way cats do to say something. Had Mary been able to understand Dick’s cat, it would have told her, ‘Love comes in at the eyes.’”

  THE DOG THAT LIVED in the house at the top of the farm road was a coal-and-chocolate Border collie with a blunt brown muzzle and white paws. Marker was bred for herding but he’d had no training. He didn’t get much exercise. He was frantic to run and chase. His one delight was going out early with his mistress. Sometimes she walked him toward the barn. He wanted more than anything to herd that crowd.

  One morning he slipped his leash and tore down the farm road. He took a turn through the paddock to send the horses running, as he’d watched Havey do so many times. Then he swept into the barn. The Lady scooted deep into the dark back under junk. Brahms flew high with the screeching bantams.

  Coraggio was struggling to get up on his hay bale when the dog got him by the neck. Feathers were flying like someone emptying a pillow when Wilhelmina butted Marker broadside so hard the rooster was blown free. Coraggio staggered and collapsed. The dog was struggling up when the cat sprang, clawing his eyes. As Marker’s mistress came shrieking to his rescue, Wilhelmina slammed him again. He was carried whimpering up the hill.

  When Bernie showed up, he knew something was wrong. Nobody was out. It was silent in the barn. Everyone was standing around Coraggio. He lay where he’d fallen. The tall man stooped and shook his head. “Nature is mean,” he muttered. There was no blood.

  Havey nosed the body.

  Bernie kicked at the dog. “Leave it alone,” he said. But Havey kept nuzzling the limp rooster and licking him. Coraggio stirred, raised his head, flopped back, then struggled to get up. He couldn’t.

  The tall man’s face was a study in wonder as he look
ed at the wagging dog and lifted the fluttering chicken into Blackie’s cage.

  It was a week before Coraggio could stand on his own again. His wonderful voice was ruined forever but soon everything else about him was working fine. Thereafter, first thing when Havey arrived at the barn she would give him a lick.

  Al said that Coraggio had had the breath knocked out of him. It was a common thing with birds that flew into windowpanes. All they needed was to rest a little and they’d revive.

  Bernie knew otherwise. “That chicken was dead. Havey did something.”

  IT WAS A DRIZZLY afternoon when Whittington resumed his story. The animals had come in. It smelled of wet horse, wet chickens, last summer’s hay, manure.

  “Where we left off, Sir Louis and his friends wanted Dick to make a trip like Marco Polo’s. At the dinner where they laid out their plan Dick saw Mary again.

  “Sir Louis had guessed Dick’s interest in Mary. Over dinner he announced that he had arranged for her to marry a gentleman of an old titled family. Dick felt sick. He tried to catch her eye. He could see that her face and neck were burning. She kept her eyes down.

  “Sir Louis went on about how important the voyage was for England. His words blew over Dick like so much wind. The cat pawed at his leg. He lifted her into his lap. She began to purr. He didn’t notice. She clawed gently; finally she bit him. She had something to tell him. For the first time he couldn’t hear what his cat had to say. There was too much news: news of fortune, news of disappointment. Sir Louis had picked a husband for the lovely girl. More than anything in the world Dick wanted to be alone with her.”