The Armourer's House Page 11

  So they went down and down and round and round into the parlour, where the candles had been lit and Meg was setting the table for supper, and all the family were gathered together.

  ‘Well, poppet, you don’t look nearly so coldy,’ said Aunt Deborah the moment she saw Tamsyn. ‘And what have you and Piers been doing with yourselves?’

  ‘I had a loose tooth, and Piers pulled it out, Aunt Deborah,’ said Tamsyn, taking the tooth out of her hanging pocket and holding it up triumphantly for everyone to see.

  ‘Oh, my poor poppet!’ said Aunt Deborah. ‘Don’t forget to put it out for the Good People tonight.’

  And presently she went upstairs to put Littlest to bed, and Beatrix went upstairs to take off her cloak. And when Beatrix came back, she told the whole family scornfully, ‘I know what they’ve been doing. They’ve been playing ships! There’s an outline of one chalked on Kit’s Castle floor.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a zany!’ Giles said, helping himself to walnuts. ‘Piers isn’t any good at that sort of thing.’

  Tamsyn looked across the parlour at Piers in a surprised sort of way; because it seemed so very queer that that was what people should think they had been doing – just playing ships. It had all been so much more real than that; she could remember so well the lovely lift of the Dolphin’s deck as the seas took her, and the birds of white and pink and crimson among the forests of the New World, and the roar of the Santa Marguerita’s guns.

  And Piers looked across the parlour at Tamsyn; and they smiled at each other in a shared-secret sort of way, because nobody knew what they had been doing that evening, whatever anybody might think – nobody in all the world.

  Before she went to bed that night Tamsyn put her tooth in the little dish of water outside the back door for the Good People; and when she went out first thing in the morning, to collect her penny, there it was, bright and new in the bottom of the dish. And there, floating above it, was a little ship! A ship made of a walnut shell, with a splinter of wood for a mast and a scrap of parchment for a sail, and a tiny squiggle of silver wire at her stem that Tamsyn knew at once for a dolphin! She never showed that little ship to anybody, except Piers. You have to be very careful who you show a gift from the fairies to, and Tamsyn knew that quite well.

  7

  A Tale for Hallowe’en

  The weeks went by, and Tamsyn’s tulip had three milky-green leaves and something that looked as though it might be a flowerbud, deep down among them, so that Aunt Deborah said, ‘Deary me, I do believe it’s going to flower by Christmas after all.’ But of course Tamsyn had known all along that it would flower at Christmas, because the Wise Woman had said so.

  It was autumn now, and on fine mornings every leaf and grassblade in the little garden behind the Dolphin House was furred with hoar-forst round the edge, and there were swirly feathery frostflowers on the parlour window-panes, the Surrey Hills were blue as the flowers of the bitter-sweet; and on fine evenings all the world was full of the smell of wood-smoke, and the sun went down in a pink-flushed sky behind Westminster. On other days the thick, dun-coloured fog rolled up the river, and even found its way indoors, so that when the candles were lighted in the evenings, they burned with golden haloes round them like the ones worn by saints in old pictures. There began to be sellers of russet apples and hot chestnuts in the streets, and the blue, frosty dusk came earlier every evening, so that the Dolphin House children no longer played in the garden or even in Kit’s Castle after supper, but drew their stools close round the fire in the parlour, and plagued their mother for stories.

  For long, dark evenings in the fire-glow are the times for telling old stories; and of all the evenings in the year, Hallowe’en is the very best – except perhaps Christmas Eve.

  This particular Hallowe’en was cold and frosty, and the fire of beech logs burned clear red all through, just right for baking apples and roasting chestnuts. Supper was over, and the children were tired of playing Hot-cockles and ‘Cheeses’ and everybody had gathered close around the fire; Aunt Deborah and Uncle Gideon in their own tall-backed chairs at either side, and Piers and Tamsyn and Bunch and the Almost-Twins perched on stools or squatting on the warm, rush-deep floor between them. There was a delicious smell and a delicious sizzling of the little red apples roasting among the hot ash, and Giles had just put a handful of chestnuts to roast among them. The candles had all been snuffed out – firelight is quite enough on Hallowe’en as everyone knows – and the warm leaping light of the burning logs sent queer, fantastic shadows licking up the walls almost as far as the ceiling: Uncle Gideon’s and Aunt Deborah’s, and between them the children’s shadows, and a little upright shadow with pricked ears that was Bunch’s. Uncle Gideon had been reading his best-beloved book out of the oak chest, the one which was called the Iliad; but he had stopped reading now, and closed the book, and sat with one finger between the pages to keep his place, gazing into the red heart of the fire. Aunt Deborah was mending a pile of hose – Uncle Gideon’s black ones and Piers’ brown ones, Giles’ green ones, and a wee scarlet pair that belonged to Littlest. Tamsyn was making a partlet strip to be a Christmas present for Uncle Gideon. You see, none of the Dolphin House children had very much pocket-money, and so they made most of their Christmas presents themselves, quite often in full view of the person it was going to be given to, who was, of course, in honour bound not to look. Partlet strips were things men and boys used to wear round their necks before ruffs came into fashion. This was one of fine holland embroidered all over in black silk with a vine-leaf design in all the different stitches Tamsyn knew how to do. Neither she nor Aunt Deborah could see to sew very much, but every time the fire leapt up they put in two or three more stitches, and when it sank again, they just sat.

  Nobody else was doing anything at all.

  ‘Mother,’ said Giles suddenly, ‘tell us a story.’

  Everybody looked up hopefully at Aunt Deborah, and Aunt Deborah laid down the little red stocking she was darning, and said, ‘Very well, my poppets. What story shall I tell you?’

  ‘You always tell us about Young Tam Lin on Hallowe’en, Mother,’ said Giles reproachfully. ‘You know you do.’

  ‘Yes, I do, don’t I?’ said Aunt Deborah. She looked down at the red stocking in her lap with a queer little smile that was half glad and half sorry. Then she looked up again, and said, ‘I’ve told that story every Hallowe’en since – since Kit was a little tiny boy, he always loved it so much – and surely you must all know it off by heart by this time. Wouldn’t you like another story for a change?’

  Piers shook his head. ‘Hallowe’en wouldn’t be Hallowe’en without Young Tam Lin, Mother,’ he said, ‘really it wouldn’t. Besides, Tamsy hasn’t heard it at all.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Aunt Deborah again, and she rolled the little red stocking into a ball and put it with the others, while everybody drew closer to the fire in an expectant way. ‘Come closer still,’ said Aunt Deborah, leaning down towards them. ‘Come very close, my dears, for it is not wise to speak loud of the Good People, on this night of all the year.’

  Everyone cast quick glances behind them, at the queer, crowding shadows (shadows are not quite the same at Hallow-tide, as they are on other nights of the year), and shivered with a delicious sort of creepiness and crowded closer still into the fire-glow that was painting golden roses on the soft grey stuff of Aunt Deborah’s skirt.

  ‘When I was a little girl,’ began Aunt Deborah, ‘there was an old friend of my father’s, one of those who went north with the Princess Margaret when she was sent as a bride to the Scottish King. There were gay doings at Holyrood for the Royal Wedding, and at the dancing in the great hall he met a Highland gentlewoman, and they were wed, and he brought her south with him. And oh! but she was lovely! Tall and dark, with the great eyes of her set slantwise in her face as though she were a faun. I have often wondered whether all the Highland women are as beautiful as she was. Well, so she used to come often to visit my mother – I think she was lonely i
n the south – and sometimes she would tell me stories in her soft voice that had an odd lilt to it, always stories of her own country. One of her stories was about Young Tam Lin, and this is how she used to tell it, as nearly as I can remember.’

  ‘High among the hills of Carterhaugh there was once a little lonely well. Soft green turf rimmed it round, and the long sprays of the wild rose arched over it; and in the hottest summer the water never sank but a little way below the broken grey stones of the well-curb. Yet no one ever drew water there, and no one ever passed that way after dusk, and if ever a maiden found herself near the spot while herding sheep in the hills, she would leave a gift beside the broken well-curb and hurry away as fast as her feet would carry her; for it was fairy ground.

  ‘But once, long, long ago, before even our grandmothers were born, a maiden did come to the Fairy Well of Carterhaugh. The Chieftain’s daughter she was, and her name was Janot, and ever since she was a baby the old nurse who brought her up had warned her against the Fairy Well, as every nurse and every mother in Selkirkshire warned her bairns. But she was a wild lass, like a hawk of the sea-cliffs, and her eyes as blue as the harebells and her long, straight hair as yellow as the broom; and there came a day when she grew tired of warnings and hungry for adventure, so she kicked off her shoes and braided her yellow hair and kilted her green kirtle to her knee, and slipped away from her companions in the castle garden. Before they knew that she was gone she was off and away to Carterhaugh as fast as her bare feet would carry her. On she went, by sheep-tracks of smooth turf, through seas of uncurling bracken and young bilberries, following ever the river Ettrick until she came to Carterhaugh and up over the moors to the Fairy Well.

  ‘Oh, but it was wild and lonely up there, with the larks singing in the wide skies, and the whaups crying, and the land dropping away from her feet to the blue hills of the Border Country. And all at once Janot was afraid, and just for a moment she thought that she would take the gold pin from her gown and leave it for a gift to the Fairy Kind, and go home quickly, as she had come. But she was not one to turn away from a thing because she was afraid; so she bent forward across the well-curb, and broke off a long wild-rose spray that arched above it. There were two pink blossoms upon the spray, and as she broke it off, the petals fell from one of them, as is the way of wild roses when their branch is shaken. She leaned forward to watch the five petals floating in the dark water, and there was her own face looking up at her from the depths – aye, and another face looking over her shoulder! A thin face it was, and dark enough to startle any maid.

  ‘For the time that it might take your heart to beat twice, Janot never moved. Then she turned slowly from the well-curb, still holding the rose-switch in her hand. Close beside her on the greensward stood a brave young gallant, clad all in green, from his close-fitting hose to his feathered bonnet. And oh, but he was bonny, despite his black hair and his wan, dark face; there was a cleft to his chin and a quirk to his eyebrow, and the eyes of him were bright and grey.

  ‘ “And why do you pick my roses, Janot?” asked the young man.

  ‘And Janot lifted her chin disdainfully, and, “The roses are free to all,” she said.

  ‘ “Ah, but they are not. The roses belong to Themselves who own the well,” said the young man. “The roses are mine.”

  ‘ “Then you will be one of Themselves – one of the Lordly People?” says she, breathing fast, for she was afraid. For answer he bowed his head on his breast; and seeing him standing there with bowed head and no word to say, her fear left her, and she said, “You have called me by my name; will you not tell me yours, fairy though you be?”

  ‘ “I am called Tam Lin,” said the young man, and, as he spoke, he doffed his bonnet to her so low that it swept the fern.

  ‘Ach well, for a while and a little while they talked together, there by the well, until the shadows began to lengthen, and the larks dropped out of the heavens. Then Tam Lin said, “Now you must go home, Janot, or your father will be seeking you and fearing you lost. My heart is sore to let you go, but there is no help for it, no help at all.” And he took her hand and turned her towards her home; and suddenly his hand was gone from hers, and when she turned, there was no one beside her – only five rose-petals floated on the dark well-water and a whaup rose crying into the evening sky.

  ‘So Janot went home, barefoot through the young bracken as she had come. She carried the wild-rose spray with its one pink blossom with her, but she left her heart behind her on Carterhaugh with young Tam Lin. And ever as she went, there was a wild weeping within her, for it is an ill thing to give your heart to the Fairy Kind, who have none to give in return.

  ‘The summer ripened and wore away, and Janot worked at her tapestry frame as skilfully as ever, and played ball as merrily with her ladies among the rose trees in the castle garden, and danced as lightly in the great hall when the candles were lighted. But those who knew her best saw that she was not happy. They saw that her laughter never touched her eyes, and they saw her turn ever towards Carterhaugh when she thought that none was by; and her father, the Chieftain, thought, “Maybe she would be happier wed.”

  ‘So one day he said to her, “Janot, you are grown up now, and it is time that you were wed. Is there any man near to your heart, my daughter? For if there is, and he is worthy, you shall surely have him.”

  ‘ “No,” she said, and laughed, for how should she tell her father, “it is no man that is near to my heart, but one of the Lordly People”?

  ‘The summer grew to autumn, and still Janot turned to Carterhaugh when she thought that none was by, and still her laughter never touched her eyes. Then one day her father went to her, where she sat alone in her bower. “Janot,” said he, “is there still no man near your heart?”

  ‘ “None,” says she.

  ‘ “Then I shall choose a husband for you, for it is time that you were wed.”

  ‘Up sprang his daughter to her feet. “You may choose to your heart’s content,” says she, “but I will have none of your choice. There’s not a man among the lordlings in your hall that I would wed if he were the last man in Scotland.”

  ‘Then the old Chief was angry, though he was a kindly man. “You shall wed whom I choose, and when I choose, Janot,” said he. “I have been patient with you all the summer, and I’ll be patient but a short time longer.” And out he went, and slammed the bower door behind him.

  ‘For a while after he was gone, Janot stood where he had left her, as still as the grey standing-stones on the moor above, and then she cast herself face down upon her bed and wept most bitterly; for it is an ill thing to give your heart to the Fairy Kind, who have neither heart to give in return nor soul to walk in God’s good heaven. Yet she could not quite believe that it was so with Tam Lin. Surely none of the Fairy Folk had eyes as true as he, surely, surely . . .

  ‘Up she sprang and went to her mirror. She dressed her yellow hair and braided it with gold-work as though she were going to her wedding; but she kicked off her shoes of fine Cordovan leather and kilted her green kirtle to her knee, and she went down the winding stair and out by a postern gate, and set off and away like a winged thing towards Carterhaugh.

  ‘The bracken that had been freshly green when last she came that way was golden-tawny now, and swayed to her waist as she passed through. Past sky-reflecting moorland pools she sped, down beside the Ettrick, and up and over the dun moors at Carterhaugh like a deer with the hounds behind her, until at last she came to the Fairy Well.

  ‘There were no blossoms on the brier that arched above the water now, but the rose-hips shone scarlet in the autumn sunshine, and hastily Janot broke off a spray, just as she had done before. Five shrivelled yellow leaves fell from it, and she leaned forward eagerly to watch them floating on the still water. Her own face looked back at her from below the floating leaves; and just as before, the dark face of Tam Lin looked over her shoulder.

  ‘Round she turned from the well-curb, and there stood Tam Lin beside her, just as sh
e had remembered him, from green-shod foot to bonnet feather.

  ‘ “Why do you pull the wild-rose spray, Janot?” asked he. “And why have you come back to Carterhaugh?”

  ‘ “My father is for choosing me a husband,” said Janot.

  ‘ “And is there no man that is near to your heart?”

  ‘ “None save you yourself, Tam Lin,” said Janot proudly. “That is why I come to Carterhaugh. That is why I pull the wild-rose spray.”

  ‘ “It is an ill thing for any maid to give her heart to the Fairy Kind, who have none to give in fair exchange,” said Tam Lin, with his eyes upon her face.

  ‘Then Janot gave him back look for look, and “Tam Lin,” she cried, “if ever you were mortal child, I pray you tell me now! I have heard of children taken by Themselves – was it so with you? If ever you heard church-bells ringing, if ever you knew a prayer, tell me; for it is an ill thing indeed, if I have given my heart to the Fairy Kind.”

  ‘ “I will tell you,” said Tam Lin, and he took her hands and held them close. “And I will tell you the truth, Janot. My father was a knight and my mother was a lady. I was born and christened and reared and trained as any other good knight’s son. But one cold, dark day as I rode home from the hunting, my horse stumbled, and I was thrown. I was thrown on Fairy Ground, Janot, and Themselves took me to be a knight of theirs, under the hollow hills.”

  ‘Then Janot’s heart was glad, yet troubled too, and she asked, “What need had the Proud Folk to take you from the world of the Sun? Have they not knights enough of their own, in Fairydom?”

  ‘ “Oh, they have knights enough of their own,” said Tam Lin, and laughed; but his laugh had a dreary ring to it that set the whaups crying. “Do you not know that once in seven years the Fairy Kind must give one of their number to the power of Hell?”

  ‘Then Janot cried out, and her face was white as the first snow of winter. “Will they give you?” she cried, and her voice wailed over the moors like a plover calling rain. “Is that why they took you to be their knight in the hollow hills?”