The Armourer's House Read online

  Tamsyn had never been in a Thames tilt-boat before, and she found it all very exciting, especially when she had wriggled well forward so that the tilt – which was a kind of hood – did not shut out any of the view. The boatmen bent to their oars, and the boat skimmed through the water, which slapped and whispered and sparkled along her sides. Past the Black Friar’s Monastery they went, past tall houses crowding to the water’s edge to watch their own reflections, and the lovely gardens of the Strand, threading their way among the river traffic of pleasure barges and grain barges and tilt-boats plying for hire, until they came opposite Whitehall Palace. Uncle Gideon said the King’s Grace was at Greenwich, and so it was no use looking out for him; but they looked all the same, just in case. Then the boat carried them on, past Westminster, and more great houses with smooth green lawns to the water’s edge and hedges of clipped yew and terraces full of the blue and golden flowers of spring. In one garden they saw a peacock strutting down a sloping lawn with all the jewelled eyes in the spread glory of his tail staring back at the sun, which reminded Littlest of the five peacock feathers in the play-chest in Kit’s Castle, and made him quite sad for a minute or so. Once they passed a barge hung with rose and purple tapestries speeding up to Westminster, with a great lady sitting in the stern with a little dog in her lap, who barked at Bunch. So of course Bunch barked back so hard that Giles had to grab him by the tail to keep him from barking himself into the river.

  Presently they came to open country, and at last the tilt-boat ran in under the steep bank, and everybody scrambled ashore. It was a lovely place. The river wound through low-lying meadows, and the shoots of the pollard willows along its bank were crimson with rising sap and bursting out into a haze of leaves that were like tiny silver-green candle-flames, and all the meadows were spread with a royal carpet of yellow irises and Mary-buds. Away across the fields Tamsyn could see the little village of Chelsea, half hidden behind poplar trees whose baby leaves fluttered gold in the sunshine; and far away to the north-east rose the towers and spires of London, looking like a city in a fairy-tale, not like the real-life workaday city that they had woken up and had their breakfasts in that morning. It was the first time Tamsyn had seen green meadows or heard lark-song since she came to live in the Dolphin House; and she wanted to kilt up her skirts and run, and run, and run, and never go back to London any more.

  Then Giles began to blow joyful blasts on his tin trumpet, and Beatrix began to sing at the top of her voice:

  ‘Lenten is come with love to town,

  With blossoms and with birdés round,

  And all bliss bringeth;

  Day’s-eyes in the dales,

  Notes sweet of Nightingales

  Which blithe song singeth.’

  It was a very old song, so old that it had been made in the days when people still called daisies ‘Day’s-eyes’, but it had a tune that sounded as new as the very newest Mary-bud in Chelsea Meadows. Tamsyn began to sing it too, and Giles still tootled blithely on his tin trumpet. But Littlest was not interested in music; he said very firmly, over and over again, ‘Littlest wants his dinner. Littlest wants his dinner! Littlest wants –’

  So they found a nice place under some alder trees, and Aunt Deborah uncovered the basket and spread a damask cloth on the grass, and began to take out all the things that she and Meg the Kitchen had made; and everybody sat down on the grass under the alder trees and had their dinner. There was a huge rook pie, cherry conserve pasties and pink-and-white ham smelling of herbs, and yellow marchpanes, and ridiculous little gingerbread men bright with gilt. Everybody ate a lot and talked a lot. At home it was ‘Silence at meals’ because of the children, but out here in the green meadows it was quite different; everyone could talk as much as they liked, and they did.

  After they had eaten everything there was to eat, Aunt Deborah shook out the cloth and scattered the crumbs for the birds, and packed the basket up again, and everybody played Hot-cockles and Hoodman-blind to shake down the pies and pasties – even Uncle Gideon, who never played running-about games with the children on any other day of the year except at Christmas time. Presently, when their dinner was nicely shaken down, the party split up. Piers was the first to go; he wandered off downstream by himself – at least, he started by himself, but Littlest trundled after him, still clutching Lammy, and shouting, ‘Piers, wait for Littlest. Piers, Littlest is coming too!’ And so they disappeared together.

  Beatrix watched him go, and tossed her head scornfully. ‘Just look at Piers,’ she whispered to Giles, ‘mooning off like that! What’s the good of having a brother if all he does is to moon off by himself when he could be jolly with the rest of us?’

  ‘I s’pose he likes it,’ said Giles. ‘He can’t help being queer and – and not like Kit.’

  ‘I wish he was like Kit,’ whispered back Beatrix, pretending to do something to her shoe. ‘It was fun before Kit was drowned.’

  They had been very careful not to let their mother hear what they were saying, but Tamsyn was close by, and she heard them quite plainly, and she thought Kit must have been a very wonderful person, because the Almost-Twins were always saying how far superior he was to Piers, and she thought Piers was very nice indeed; but she didn’t say anything at all, because they were not speaking to her.

  ‘Oh, Piers is all right,’ said Giles, in a kindly, condescending sort of way. ‘Let’s you and me go and explore.’ So they did, and Bunch went with them.

  Uncle Gideon lay down under a blackthorn tree, with his hands behind his head, and thought how nice it was to have nothing to do; and Tamsyn went down to the river bank with Aunt Deborah, and helped her to gather great armfuls of yellow iris leaves for strewing the parlour floor when they got back (Meg strewed fresh rushes and herbs on the parlour floor every week, camomile and hyssop and red-mint, but yellow iris leaves made the nicest strewing herb of all.)

  Presently, when they had picked enough, Aunt Deborah went to sit beside Uncle Gideon, because she thought it would be nice to be lazy for a little while, too; and Tamsyn slipped away by herself and followed the river up-stream until she came over a little lift of ground to a place that seemed to have been made especially for her, and not for anyone else in all the world. It was a hollow with a tiny stream running through it to join the winding Thames. Willow and hazel and alder shut it off from the workaday world, and from edge to edge it was full of the clear singing gold of Mary-buds (marsh marigolds we call them nowadays), all except in one place beside the stream, where there was a tiny plot of fairy green as smooth as a dancing-floor, all ringed round with tall yellow flags like lamps kindled for a ball; a dancing-floor for the fairy-folk and lamps to light their revels when the blue spring twilight flowed over Chelsea Meadows. Tamsyn stood for a moment on the rim of the hollow, and then she kilted up her green kirtle and ran down through the golden cups of the Mary-buds to the little green dancing-floor beside the stream.

  And what should one do with a dancing-floor but dance on it?

  Tamsyn spread her skirts and danced until her hair flew out like a dark cloud round her head and her cheeks were pink as foxgloves under the brownness of her skin, and her sensible shoes might have been golden slippers made by the fairy shoemakers, they were so light upon the grass.

  When she had danced until she was tired, she sat down on her heels in the very middle of the dancing-floor, and stayed quite still. She was not lonely any more; she was never lonely when she was by herself in the green out-doors, only when she was with other people whom she did not really belong to. And the little hollow was so friendly, just as though it had been waiting for her all along and was glad she had come. The stream ran by over its speckled stones, the sharp-scented watermint made a blue haze along its banks, and all around her the yellow flags were folding back their first petals to the sunshine, and high overhead larks sang in the blue – hundreds and hundreds of them, so that the whole sky seemed to shimmer with their song. Tamsyn sat as still as a little wild thing, a bright-eyed field-mouse o
r a baby rabbit, with the little hollow to keep her company, and felt quite, quite happy for the first time since she had said goodbye to her old home.

  She sat there until at last the time came when she knew she must go back to the others. She did not want to go. She wanted to build a little hut on the edge of the dancing-floor and live there for ever, with the larks and the alder trees and the speckle-stoned streamlet for company; and she did not think the Good People would mind. But she knew that if she did not go back soon, someone would come to look for her, and she hated to think of anyone – even Piers, who was quite the nicest of the family – coming and finding her here in her lovely secret place.

  So she got up and shook out her skirts, and climbed up through the wild irises and the golden Mary-buds, and left the hollow and the streamlet and the dancing-floor of fairy-green behind her. She did not pick any of the Mary-buds, because she never wanted to pick flowers; and she did not look back, because she had the oddest feeling that if she did, the hollow and the streamlet and the dancing-floor would not be there any more.

  When Tamsyn got close to the place she had started from, she found that the whole family had come together again. Pretty Aunt Deborah in her blue gown was sitting under the starry blackthorn tree, and she seemed to be telling a story to the others, who were gathered round her to listen. They all looked so happy and comfortable together, and there was no room for Tamsyn, no room at all. She didn’t belong to them; she didn’t belong to anyone, now, in all the world. For a little while she just stood quite still, watching them; and all the lovely happiness of her tiny dancing-floor took wings and flew away and left her, and she felt shut out and more forlorn than she had ever felt before, with a dreadful sort of black misery beginning to ache deep down inside her, like being hungry, only a thousand times worse.

  But at last Aunt Deborah looked up and saw her standing there, and waved to her, and called, ‘Come along, Tamsyn, my poppet,’ and Tamsyn came slowly across the grass, and Piers made room for her between him and his mother, and smiled at her in his quiet, grave way that somehow made his ugly face look rather nice. So she sat down on her heels, and listened to the end of the story; but the misery went on aching deep down inside her, because she did not belong, and it was dreadful not to belong.

  When the story was finished, they had the afternoon bread-and-raisins, and all the bits of march-pane and the gingerbread men that were left over from dinner, and quite soon after that it was time to go home because of Littlest’s bedtime. So they went back to the place where the tilt-boat was waiting for them with the two watermen lounging on the bank with the remains of their dinner all around them, casting dice against each other in a lazy sort of way; and they all climbed aboard, and the watermen cast off and sent the tilt-boat skimming back through the water towards London.

  Everybody was very nice to Tamsyn on the way home, because she seemed rather quiet; and Beatrix, who was a kind person when she was not too busy being Queen Catherine or someone out of the Bible, gave her half the lapful of Mary-buds that she had gathered. Tamsyn thanked her politely for the Mary-buds, and said, No, thank you, she hadn’t eaten too much gingerbread, when Aunt Deborah asked her; and then she suddenly became so merry and laughed so much at the queer faces Giles had begun to pull, that everybody thought they had been quite mistaken about her being quieter than usual.

  Little by little the river broadened, and the towers and spires and steep roofs of London Town rose up along the banks; and the green meadows and the lark-song were left behind; and Littlest was sound asleep with his coppery head nidnodding against Aunt Deborah’s shoulder long before they reached the river steps from which they had started out. He never woke up, even when they trooped ashore, with the lovely outing all over for another year; so they carried him home and put him to bed, and then they all had supper.

  It was a nice supper, but somehow it turned dry and tasteless in Tamsyn’s mouth, so that she could hardly swallow it. And when it was over, and the Almost-Twins had wandered into the garden because there was still a little sunshine left over from the day and they wanted to see how a thrush who had a nest in the quince tree was getting on, she went up to Kit’s Castle, where there was no one to see her, and sat herself down on the children’s play-chest under the window, and cried – and cried – and cried, for loneliness and homesickness, as though her heart would break.

  She cried for a long time, huddled up in a small, despairing lump in the deep window-recess, and she was still crying as hard as ever when a voice close above her said, ‘What’s the trouble, old lady?’

  Tamsyn jumped nearly out of her skin, and looked up; and then she saw that Piers was standing beside the play-chest and looking down at her, in an inquiring sort of way.

  ‘What’s the trouble, Tamsy?’ he asked again.

  Tamsyn swallowed hard, and blinked even harder, and said very firmly, ‘Nothing, thank you.’

  She did wish that Piers would go away. But Piers didn’t go away. Instead he sat down on the play-chest and put an arm round her in a motherly sort of way, and said very kindly, ‘Are you homesick? Is that it?’

  Tamsyn tried to say she had a fly in her eye and that was all, thank you, but it was no use, the words would not come out straight; she tried dreadfully hard not to cry any more, but that was no use either. So she burst into a fresh flood of tears all down the front of Piers’ Sunday doublet, and wept out the whole story in little bits between gulps and sobs and snuffles, while Piers made small, comforting noises and patted her on the back consolingly.

  ‘Nobody wants m-me,’ wept Tamsyn. ‘I don’t belong to n-nobody, and I am so mi-miser-rubble. And today I found a little green – p-place, and I was happy there, and I wanted and w-wanted to stay – and when I came back you were all so – c-comfortable together, an’ there wasn’t any room for me.’

  Piers went on patting her on the back. ‘Poor old lady,’ he said. ‘Poor old lady.’

  ‘N-nobody wants me,’ wept Tamsyn despairingly. ‘Nobody’s gug-glad I’ve come; oh dear, oh dear!’

  ‘Tamsy,’ said Piers very firmly, ‘I’m glad you’ve come. We all are; but if nobody else is – I’m glad you’ve come.’

  Tamsyn was so surprised that she quite stopped crying and looked at him with one eye. ‘Truly?’ she asked.

  ‘Truly,’ said Piers.

  She gave another sob, because when you have been crying very hard for a long time it is not easy to stop all at once; and Piers said anxiously, ‘Tamsy, do stop it; you’ll be sick if you go on like this.’

  ‘I am stopping it,’ said Tamsyn with dignity. ‘I’m stopping it as f-fast as I can,’ and she made a valiant effort and swallowed two or three more sobs and said, ‘I’ve stopped now.’

  ‘Good girl!’ said Piers, and he fished in the breast of his doublet and pulled out a large kerchief and mopped her face with it, very carefully, drying in all the corners.

  Tamsyn sat quite still to have her face mopped, with just an occasional snuffle and hiccough (she always got the hiccoughs when she had been crying), and then, without knowing quite how it happened, she found she was telling Piers all about Uncle Martin and Home. She told him about the pink and white convolvulus along the sunk lanes, and the high cliffs above the Atlantic where the peregrine falcons nested. She told him about the little grey house with golden lichen dappling its roof, and her own room under the eaves with the odd-shaped window through which she could see Lundy floating like a cloud far out to sea, as she lay in bed on summer evenings; and her own little garden in the corner of Grandmother’s big one, where she grew pansies and parsley and small trees from the cherry stones and beech nuts and crimson sprouting acorns that she found in the autumn woods; and about the May tree at the bottom of the orchard. It was a very old May tree, and carved on its gnarled trunk were three names and a date that you could still read quite clearly although the bark had crept in over the edges of the letters: ‘Gideon Caunter, Martin Caunter, Christopher Caunter. Anno Domini 1506’, which had been put there n
early thirty years ago by Tamsyn’s father and uncles, one fine summer afternoon when someone had given Uncle Gideon a new knife. Uncle Martin had told her all about it, and now she told Piers.

  She told him how you could stand on the hill above the house and see the tall ships sailing out over the Bar and away beyond Lundy; and she told him about the Joyous Venture, which would be swifter and more beautiful than any ship of the Port of Bideford, when she was launched and sailed for the West Indies. All the dreadful lost-dog feeling of not belonging to anyone had somehow gone quite away, leaving a warm, comforted sort of feeling inside her instead. And Piers seemed so interested, and asked just the right questions at the right moment, and she talked on, and on and on, until she had talked herself quite empty. She even told him about wanting to be a boy so that she could be a sailor when she was older, and have adventure and sail the seas of all the world, which was a thing she would never have dreamed of telling any of the other Dolphin House people.

  Piers didn’t say a word while she was telling him about wanting to go to sea, and when she had quite finished, he said, ‘I know. I’ve always wanted to go to sea, too.’

  And Tamsyn said, ‘Oh! was that why you were watching that ship at Billingsgate?’ And then she wondered if she ought not to have mentioned it. People are queer sometimes about not liking things mentioned.

  But Piers didn’t seem to mind at all. He only said, ‘Yes, that was it. By the way, Tamsy, thanks for not mentioning it to anyone. If it had been Beatrix who saw me, she’d have told the whole family.’

  Tamsyn thought for a little while. Uncle Gideon didn’t look the sort of person who would not let you go to sea if you wanted to, but she supposed he must be, after all. So she suggested hopefully, ‘I s’pose you couldn’t run away?’