The Armourer's House Read online

  ‘ “That is why they took me. That is always their reason for taking human children,” said Tam Lin. “And the seven years are almost up, Janot; but you can save me if you will.”

  ‘ “Tell me!” she demanded. “Tell me! There is nothing in all the world or beyond it that I will not do.”

  ‘ “It is a terrible thing that you must face, and a hard thing that you must do; and if you fail we shall both be lost to all eternity.”

  ‘But she said, “I am not afraid.” And she waited for him to tell her the thing that she must do.

  ‘ “Tonight is Hallowe’en,” said Tam Lin, “and tonight at midnight the Fairy Folk will ride. And if you would win me away from them, you must be waiting here to take me as the cavalcade goes by.”

  ‘ “But oh, Tam Lin, how shall I know you in the dark, and among all the knights of Fairydom?”

  ‘ “Here is how you shall know me,” said Tam Lin, “and this is what you shall do. You shall hide here in the shadow of the well-curb to watch the Court of Elfland pass, and there will be light for you to see by, moonshine and elf-glow. First you shall see the Queen, riding by her lone, in a gown of green, with gold-work round her hair, and her hair as yellow as yours, Janot, and her eyes as blue as yours. Then will come the ladies of the Court, riding all together, and when the last lady has gone by, look for the knights who follow hard behind. The first knight will ride a horse as black as midnight, and the second, a horse as brown as a polished chestnut, and the third, a horse as white as milk. Let the black go by, Janot, and let the brown go by, but run to the milk-white steed and pull his rider down, for the rider of the milk-white steed will be no one but myself. Then hold me – hold me tightly, for the Fairy Folk will not easily let me go; they’ll turn me in your arms into many strange and hideous things, but remember always that it is I, Tam Lin, and hold me close, and do not be afraid, and I’ll do you no harm. At the very last they’ll turn me to a burning coal between your hands. Then throw me quickly into the well-water, and I shall be in Tam Lin’s shape again. Then cover me with your green cloak, and I shall be safe from the Fairy Kind. I shall be your own true love, Janot, for ever and for always; this I swear.”

  ‘ “I will be here,” said Janot. “I will not fail you.”

  ‘Then Tam Lin kissed her once upon the brow and once upon the lips, and turned her towards her home. And suddenly his hand was gone from hers, and when she looked round, there was no one beside her – only five yellow leaves afloat in the well-water and a whaup crying above the hills. So she went home barefoot through the fern, as she had done before, and she carried the brier spray with her, but she left her heart on Carterhaugh with young Tam Lin.

  ‘That night she went early to her bed, saying that she was tired; but as soon as her maidens left her she rose again and dressed, flung her wide green cloak around her shoulders, and stole down the winding stair and out by the postern gate. It was cold, cold and dark, for the moon was not yet risen, and already the turf was crisped with frost, and the brambles and the bracken seemed to clutch at her with little icy fingers as she fled by. But she came up and over the moors to Carterhaugh at last, and crouched down beside the curb of the Fairy Well.

  ‘The moon was near to rising, and in a little while it lifted over the dark rim of the hills; the great red moon of the Fairy Kind, scarlet as hot coals on the edge of the sky. Slowly it swam up and up, growing paler as it rose, until all the moors were changed from black to glimmering silver under a glimmering silver sky. And Janot loosed her green cloak on her shoulders, for she knew that it was near to midnight.

  ‘She did not see the Elf-throng in the distance; she did not know when they were drawing near, but suddenly she heard a bridle ring, and they were close upon her as she crouched there in the shadows of the Fairy Well. The silver of the moon was all about them, and their lanterns glowed like emeralds, so that she saw them clear. The Queen rode by, with white moonshine and green elf-light mingled in her hair, and she with locks as yellow as the broom and eyes as blue as the harebells of the glens; and all behind her rode her ladies in high, fantastic head-dresses and shadowy robes of green. Here a jewel flashed and there a horse’s up-reared crest caught the light like the curve of a breaking wave, and there a filmy sleeve floated across the moon, and dark eyes glimmered and a red mouth laughed and a white hand fluttered on a bridle-rein. But Janot scarcely glanced that way, for she was looking always beyond them, for the knights who followed after. Many and many were the ladies of the Elf Queen’s Court; but at last they had all gone by, and the knights came on behind. First there rode a knight in yellow on a great black horse, and next there rode a knight in scarlet red, on a horse of glossy brown, and then there came a knight clad all in green and mounted on a horse whose flanks shone white as milk beneath the trappings.

  ‘Then up sprang Janot, and ran to the milk-white steed. She heard the thunder of his great round hoofs, and his mane blinded her as it flowed across her face, but her arms were fast about the rider, and she pulled him down. Then there rose a frightful shriek from all the Fairy Host, and Queen and courtiers and fairy steeds were gone from mortal sight into a great wind which swept and swirled around Janot. Great wings beat about her head and screaming voices deafened her and strange lights danced before her eyes; and in place of Tam Lin she was holding close against her a writhing, whipping, fork-tongued adder. Yet she remembered what her love had told her, and held fast to the hideous little thing; and next instant ’twas no longer an adder that she held, but a great, black bear with rending claws, and she was dragged to her knees, still clinging to its thick fur with all her strength, while still the wild wings beat about her head and the wild voices shrieked in her ears. Then, with a roar, the bear was changed into a lion, milky-toothed and red of eye, with foaming jaws and flame about its head, but she twisted her hands in its mane and clung with all her might until the ravening lion was become a red-hot bar of iron. Oh! but the cruel agony scorched her through and through, so that all her body seemed made of pain. But she cradled the glowing bar against her as tenderly as a mother cradles her babe, shielding it from the screaming things that tried to tear it from her. And suddenly it was changed to a burning coal that she held in her cupped hands, with the bright flames licking through her fingers.

  ‘Then she whirled about with a cry, and flung the hot coal from her into the well, just as Tam Lin had bade her do. The wild wings ceased to beat about her head, and the screaming voices were stilled, and the strange lights flickered out; only the Fairy Wind still swept and swirled around her, and Tam Lin’s hand and arm came over the well-curb and his head rose from the dark water.

  ‘ “Now cover me with your cloak, Janot,” he cried. “Cover me quickly from their sight.”

  ‘And Janot slipped the cloak from off her shoulders and muffled him from sight as he climbed over the well-curb.

  ‘All that night she sat beside him as he lay under her wide green cloak, and the frost was bitter cold, and the moon shone down over Carterhaugh so that all the moors were webbed with glimmering silver, save where the woods stood dark along the valleys. And all the while the Fairy Wind swooped about them out of a quiet sky, and the woods slept in the windless night below. But at last the dawn flushed golden in the east, and the rim of the sun slid up over the hills, and the Fairy Wind died down. Then Janot lifted the wide green cloak from off Tam Lin, and “Dear Heart, it is day,” she said.

  ‘They looked each into the other’s eyes as the first golden finger of the sunlight touched the moors, and the larks were singing above them in the morning sky; and they knew that they were safe.

  ‘And “I will be true-love to you, Janot, for ever and for always,” said Tam Lin.

  ‘So in a little while they went down from Carterhaugh, hand in hand, and turned towards Janot’s home, but this time Tam Lin’s hand remained in the hand of Janot, for he was free of the Fairy Kind.

  ‘And that, my dears, is the end of the story.’

  Everybody sat quite still for a mome
nt after the story was over, and then Beatrix heaved a little, contented sigh, and said, ‘I do like that story!’

  ‘I wonder what Janot’s father said when she brought Tam Lin home,’ said Giles, fishing hot chestnuts out of the fire. ‘I’ll wager he was surprised – so surprised he nearly fell over backwards! I say, I wonder what he did say.’

  Uncle Gideon smiled at the fire, and said in his quiet way, ‘Do you know, I have always wondered the same thing. It must be a little surprising, even perhaps a little upsetting, to find that one’s only child has brought home a perfectly strange bridegroom before breakfast.’

  ‘I expect he was so pleased he soon got over being surprised,’ said Tamsyn softly. ‘I expect they had a lovely wedding, and lived happily ever after.’ And then she added anxiously, ‘I do hope they were always very careful about leaving cream outside the back door for the Fairy Folk, and not picking rampion at Midsummer, and things like that. They – they’d sort of have to be more careful than most, wouldn’t they?’

  Aunt Deborah laughed her soft, warm laugh. ‘I’m sure they were very careful,’ she said. ‘And now – as soon as Giles has done stuffing himself with chestnuts, it is time you all three went to bed.’

  So Giles swallowed the last crumbs of hot chestnut in a hurry, and turned very red in the face and watery about the eyes because they were very hot indeed; Tamsyn put away the partlet strip in the carved chest where she and Beatrix and Aunt Deborah all kept their sewing; and the three of them took their chamber candles and said goodnight, and made their bow and dropped their curtsies. Then they all trooped upstairs, Giles to the little garret under the eaves that he shared with Piers, and Beatrix and Tamsyn to their own chamber, where Littlest had already been asleep for hours in his little truckle-bed under the window, with Lammy clutched to his chest.

  8

  Uncle Martin Comes for Christmas

  A little before Christmas a most lovely thing happened. Aunt Deborah had a letter from Uncle Martin. It came all the way from Bideford in a coasting vessel, and the sailor to whom Uncle Martin had given it brought it up from Billingsgate one morning, on his way home to his family in St. Albans.

  The letter said that Uncle Martin was coming up to London on business, and to spend Christmas with his brother and sister-in-law, and would be arriving, roads, weather and footpads permitting, on Thursday next. (In those days people didn’t generally ask if they could come to visit you, because it took so long to get an answer; they just wrote to say they were coming, and came. Sometimes they just came, without writing first at all.)

  Aunt Deborah read the letter while the family watched her breathlessly; and then she told them that Uncle Martin was coming to stay for Christmas. The Almost-Twins and Littlest were very noisy with excitement, because they had never seen Uncle Martin, and an unknown Uncle coming to stay is an exciting sort of thing. But Tamsyn just said, ‘Oh-h!’ very softly, and turned bright pink under her brown, and didn’t say any more at all, because it was so lovely that just at first she couldn’t quite believe it, and when she got to believing it, she didn’t want to talk about it to anyone, except perhaps to Piers, and Piers was at work.

  Then Aunt Deborah gave the sailor cold beef and brown bread and cider in the kitchen, because he said, Yes, he was rather hungry, when she asked him. And Tamsyn slipped down after them and sat on the salt-butter cask and watched him with shining eyes while he ate and drank. Beatrix had not come down to the kitchen, because she said the sailor was dirty, and Giles had had to set off for school, and Meg was busy making pastry at the other end of the kitchen table; and so Tamsyn was left in peace to sit on the salt-butter cask by her lone, and feel very, very happy, and gaze at the sailor. She thought he was quite the nicest-looking sailor that she had ever seen. He had a ruddy face rather spoilt by rough weather, and little, bright, grey eyes with wrinkles all round them that had come from so much screwing them up to look into the distance. He had gold rings in his ears, and a curly, quirky mouth that stretched right across his face, and clothes that were salt-stained and sun-faded and so ragged that the brown skin of his arms and shoulders showed through. And besides all this, he had brought the wonderful letter from Uncle Martin.

  At first the sailor was too busy eating to talk much, but every now and then he winked at Tamsyn or Meg the Kitchen, by way of politeness; and after a time he began to eat more slowly, as though he was beginning to be full. So Tamsyn thought perhaps he could spare a little time for talking now, and she leaned forward on the salt-butter cask and said would he please tell her about where he had been and the adventures that he had had.

  The sailor seemed only too pleased; and between mouthfuls of beef and draughts of cider, he told her how he had sailed all the seas that there were to sail, and served under Sebastian Cabot, in the Mathew of Bristol town, when he discovered the West Indies, and how he had seen the glories of the New World, and talked with men who had mouths and eyes in their chests and no heads at all, and how he had almost discovered the North-West Passage to Cathay. He talked on and on, while Meg the Kitchen (who was not nearly so deaf when she wanted to hear something) stared at him open-mouthed between every roll of the rolling-pin, and Tamsyn leaned so far forward on the salt-butter cask that she came very near to losing her balance, because it was so tremendously exciting to meet someone who really had been to the New World and seen the things that she and Piers so desperately longed to see.

  ‘Ah well,’ said the sailor at last, finishing up the cider and pushing away his empty plate, ‘the sea is a good place, and the land is a good place too, and just now ’tis the land as calls Jabez Varley – for Jabez Varley be my baptismal name, little Mistress. ’Tis two years since I seed my wife and childer; and now I’m off home to spend Christmas with them, and the sea behind me and the good smells of the earth to welcome me back; for I was farm-bred. And maybe I’ll stay at home a year and help wi’ the harvest, and maybe I’ll not; and if I’d any sense I’d stay home for good, but well I knows that when the sap rises in the spring the old unrest’ll wake in Jabez Varley’s blood, and I’ll turn my face to the sea again, hungry for the cold salt smell of it as I am this morning for the smell of fresh ploughed earth.’

  Then Aunt Deborah came down again, and gave the sailor a mutton pasty and a silver piece to help him on his way; for it was a long way to St. Albans. And he put on his ragged seaman’s bonnet so that he could doff it to her, and gave Tamsyn one last enormous wink, and went off blithely, to be home in time for Christmas and make merry with his family, and work on an inland farm until the sea called him back again.

  Then there began to be a great hustling and bustling, because of getting ready for Uncle Martin as well as getting ready for Christmas. Tamsyn helped Aunt Deborah and Meg the Kitchen to make the guest-room ready. They spread clean, lavender-scented linen on the bed, and shook out the embroidered crimson bed-curtains, in case there should be any spiders in the corners. They spread fresh rushes and rosemary and hyssop on the floor, and put a little posy of sweet-smelling herbs in a yellow pottery jar on the big clothes-chest, to make the room smell nice. When the guest-chamber was as ready as ready could be, with honey-wax candles on the side chest and the very best linen head-sheet covering the goose-down pillows, they shut the door on it carefully, to keep the cleanness and tidiness in and Littlest out. Then they went on with the baking and brewing and stoning raisins and crushing sugar-candy, and polishing the best pewter, and washing Aunt Deborah’s treasured Venetian goblets (but of course nobody was allowed to touch those, except Aunt Deborah herself; they were much too precious). And every time Tamsyn passed the door of the guest-room, she couldn’t help opening it just a little way and peeping inside, because seeing the room all fresh and ready for its guest helped her to believe that it was not all a dream, and that Uncle Martin would really and truly soon be here.

  It was four whole days between the coming of the sailor with the letter and the arrival of Uncle Martin, and it seemed to Tamsyn that they would never go. But Sunday wen
t by somehow, and then Monday, and then Tuesday; and then it was Wednesday, and Uncle Martin would be coming tomorrow! Tamsyn added up every one of her sums wrong on Wednesday morning, and made every one of the cross-stitches in a whole pansy-head in her sampler facing the wrong way, so that she had to unpick them all again.

  Then at last it was Thursday! Time for lessons, and Tamsyn made the most dreadful mess of her copy. Time to go out shopping, and her inside swayed gently up and down and gave queer little jumps all the while they were out, in case Uncle Martin should have travelled quicker than they expected, and be there when they got back; but of course he hadn’t and he wasn’t! Time for dinner, and Tamsyn was much too excited to eat, though she did try, because it was a very nice dinner. Slowly the winter’s afternoon wore away, with Tamsyn and Beatrix rushing from the kitchen, where they were helping Meg to make frumenty, every time a horse came along the street. Just at twilight Giles came home, whooping up the street because there was no more school for twelve whole days, and Christmas just ahead and an exciting unknown uncle coming to spend it with them. But still there was no sign of Uncle Martin.

  ‘He wouldn’t be here yet, lovey – not unless he rode very fast indeed on the last stage,’ said Aunt Deborah, comfortingly, to Tamsyn, as they all trooped upstairs to the parlour. ‘And he’ll have to leave the horse at the inn, too, before he comes on to us.’

  In the warm parlour the others gathered round the fire to eat their afternoon bread and raisins, but Tamsyn took hers away by herself to the deep bay window that overhung the street, and curled up on the cushioned sill with her nose pressed against the panes. It was beginning to be quite dusk, and she could see the candles behind her reflected in the glass, like tiny golden crocuses dancing there, and little broken reflections of Aunt Deborah in her great chair, and the Almost-Twins and Littlest and Lammy and Bunch all mixed up together round her feet, but not Piers nor Uncle Gideon, because they were still at work – she could hear the ring of the hand-hammer and the deep roar of the forge coming up from the workshop below. The tulip was reflected in the window too. It was still tight shut, but the bud was fat and big and red as Christmas holly, and the edges of the petals were just beginning to curl back. It would certainly be open by Christmas Eve – a flower like a scarlet lamp, just the shape of the great stern-lanterns she had seen high up on the poops of the tall ships of Bideford Town. Lovely! Tamsyn poked it very gently with the tip of her right forefinger. Then she looked into the street again. Everything beyond the reflected candle-flames was blue in the dusk, a lovely soft blue that looked as though you could stroke it, and all down the street windows were lighting up, yellow as wild wallflowers. If she looked straight downwards she could see the light that streamed out from the workshop window making a golden patch on the cobbles; there were golden patches under every lighted window in the street, and Tamsyn noticed that there was beginning to be a sort of pale look to the ground and faint, white blurs on window-sills and in the angles of gables. And when she looked up at the candle-lit window of Master Bodkin-the-Goldsmith’s house over the way, there were little whirling flakes drifting down between her and it. Snow!