The Armourer's House Read online

  ‘Oh, do come away!’ whispered Beatrix. ‘It might belong to a witch.’

  ‘Course it doesn’t,’ said Giles scornfully. ‘There’s a witchen tree by the door, and no witch can abide a witchen tree; you know that.’

  ‘You’m right there, ’tis only white magic that can be woven where the witchen tree is – white magic and healing spells,’ said a soft voice close by, and the three children jumped as though they had been caught stealing apples. Round a mass of rose-bushes near the gate hobbled a little old woman with a trowel in one hand and a piece of sacking in the other. Her hair was hidden under a huge white coif, and her eyes in her withered brown face were blue as the larkspurs in her garden.

  ‘Come your ways in, my dears,’ she said. ‘Come your ways in and welcome.’

  And Tamsyn knew by the sing-song lilt of her voice that the old woman was from Devonshire. She slid down from the bar of the gate, and raised the latch in a great hurry, and they all trooped in, Giles remembered to doff his bonnet and the two girls making their best curtsies. ‘Thank you very much,’ they said politely.

  The old woman stood watching them with a little smile that puckered her face into a thousand fine wrinkles, while Giles closed the gate behind them. Then she asked, ‘And what do ’e want wi’ old Tiffany Simcock, my dears? Not a lost lover to be brought back, nor straying cattle to be found. No, no, nor yet the shingles to be healed with a girdle of rushes. Is it a wart, now? Have one of ye a wart for old Tiffany to charm away?’

  ‘Then you are a witch – a white witch!’ cried Beatrix, half-way between being very thrilled and a little scared.

  ‘White witch or Wise Woman, ’tis all the same thing,’ said the owner of the garden. ‘Is it a wart, now, my pretty?’

  ‘Well – no – you see – ’ began Beatrix.

  But Giles said quickly, ‘We did not come wanting anything, mistress; we didn’t know there was a cottage or a garden, or – or anything here. We came out to watch our father and our brother Piers at archery practice, and then we got tired of it, so we threw a hazel twig in the air, and followed the way it pointed when it came down, to look for an adventure – and here we are.’

  ‘My days!’ said the Wise Woman. ‘You’m bold children to do such a thing on Midsummer’s Eve, and with the Fairy Wood too. The Good People might have led ’ee over the edge of the world for an adventure, instead of bringing ’ee here to old Tiffany. You’m not likely to find adventure hereabouts, but if so be as bread and honey will do instead – hyssop honey, my dears, and there ’bain’t none so sweet as hyssop honey in all the wide world – why, then, you’re welcome to that.’

  They said Yes please, it would, and Thank you very much, for they were beginning to be hungry.

  So the Wise Woman smiled and turned to lead the way up the turf path to the cottage, with the three trooping behind her. But in the doorway she turned once more, and looked from Giles to Beatrix and back again. ‘You’m brother and sister, I reckon?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, mistress,’ said Giles.

  The Wise Woman nodded. ‘But the little one; the little one who comes barefoot through the grass, she’m not your sister?’

  ‘No, she’s our cousin,’ Beatrix explained. ‘She lived in Devon with our grandmother, but our grandmother died, and so she lives with us now.’

  The Wise Woman put down her trowel on a stool beside the door and dropped the piece of sacking over it, and took Tamsyn’s face between her old gnarled hands, tipping it gently upwards and gazing into her eyes. ‘Ai-ee,’ she crooned, as Tamsyn smiled suddenly. ‘I knew, I knew! Us of the west always knows one another. The stars were dancing over Torridge when you were born, my pretty.’

  Tamsyn nodded her head between the Wise Woman’s hands. ‘But it’s a long time since I came away,’ she said. ‘Almost four months.’

  ‘’Tis more than that since I last watched the tall ships of Bideford sail over the Bar,’ said the Wise Woman, more as though she was speaking to herself than to Tamsyn. ‘My man was a sailor, and he brought me here-along when the world was young, before your mother was born. Ah, well, he’m dead these many and many years ago.’

  Giles had begun to shift from foot to foot in a hungry sort of way, hoping that she had not forgotten about the bread and honey. But she had not, for she suddenly let go Tamsyn’s face and turned to the darkness of her kitchen, calling back over her shoulder, ‘Come your ways in, my dears, and mind the step.’

  So they came in, minding the step, which was a steep downward one. The kitchen seemed very dim and cool after the hot sunshine outside, and at first they could not see much but the red glow of a low fire on the hearth, and a shaft of sunlight that filtered through the horn panes of a tiny window and slanted down, full of dancing golden dustmotes, to the rush-strewn floor. But as their eyes grew used to the gloom they saw bright copper pans, and bundles of herbs and green cheeses in linen bags hanging from the rafters, and a rough table with its top scrubbed creamy-white, and rows and rows of shelves all round the walls crowded with exciting-looking jars and pots and bundles, almost like an apothecary’s shop. There was a crimson clove carnation in a green pot on the window-sill, too, and a little grey cat who had come out from a dim corner, arching her back and purring, to curve herself round the Wise Woman’s ankles as her mistress toddled about the kitchen, fetching crocks and platters and setting out her best on the scrubbed table.

  ‘Now,’ she said, in a little while, ‘pull up thicky stools, my dears, and sit ’ee down. Here is brown bread and honey-in-the-comb, a handful of strawberries, and warm white goats’ milk. Draw up to the table, and God bless the meal.’

  So Giles and Beatrix and Tamsyn drew up their stools to the table, and ate thick slices of coarse brown bread and gold-dripping honeycomb and little sweet scarlet strawberries, washed down with warm milk in a brown earthenware pitcher which they shared among them, while the Wise Woman sat on her stool beside the fire and watched them kindly. And when they were as beautifully full as they could possibly be, she got up and said that she would show them her garden – her real garden, where she grew her herbs.

  The Almost-Twins were not really very interested in gardens, but they were nicely brought up, and knew that you could not eat somebody’s bread and honey and then not be interested in their garden if they wanted to show it to you. So they said politely that they would like to see Mistress Simcock’s garden. But, as you know, Tamsyn loved gardens and growing things, and she said, ‘Please’, and pushed her stool back very quickly, and hopped up, licking her sticky fingers with her little pink tongue.

  Mistress Simcock led them out of doors again, and round the house, stopping to pass the time of day with a white nanny-goat who was tethered, with her kid beside her, in a little green place of her own, to another garden at the back, which they had not guessed was there at all. It was a small square plot with the tall poplar trees standing like sentinels beyond it, and from hedge to hedge it was full of the soft colours and mingled scents of the herbs that grew there. A tiny wind had sprung up, and the tops of the taller herbs were swaying gently, scattering their fragrance to the warm air; and there was a ceaseless humming of bees among the flowerheads and a flittering of jewelled butterfly-wings in the sunshine. The Fairy Feel lay strong over this garden, too – stronger than in the flower-patch beyond the cottage. Even now, in the bright dayshine, it was an enchanted place, and later, when the blue Midsummer dusk came down, it would be one of those places which are thresholds of Fairyland itself.

  The Wise Woman began to move up and down the narrow, mazy paths between her herbs, with the little grey cat walking before her with its tail erect, and the three children following behind. Sometimes she stopped to touch an especial favourite with a touch so gentle that not a basking butterfly on a leaf or a pollen-spangled bee in a flower-cup was disturbed by it. ‘These are my children,’ she said. ‘My fine tall sons and pretty daughters.’ And she went on again, speaking the name of each plant as she came to it – names that sang themselves
in Tamsyn’s head like a magic charm.

  ‘Borage, marjoram, foxgloves, wormwood, melilot, rose-of-the-sun,’ crooned the Wise Woman. ‘Bee-balm, bergamot, elacampane. Here’s camomile; see her flowers like a thousand bright eyes smiling from the ground; and here are marigolds – brew the petals to drink when you have a cold. Cumin for sore eyes; rosemary and rue – I always grow them together, sweet and bitter, side by side. This is applemint, and this herb patience, and this sweet cicely from a convent garden; and southernwood, and tancies to flavour little cakes at Easter time. Here are my dandelions, and they would seed themselves all over my garden if I did not stop them, the bold creatures; priest’s crown, some folks call them – ai-ee! but not the priest of these days, they wear no crowns, no, no; ’tis the priests of olden times, the priest-kings, the Druids, who gave the flower its name. They were wise men, the Druids; they knew the use of herbs and the white secrets of healing magic, but they weren’t no wiser than old Tiffany Simcock, my days, no!’

  Presently she stopped beside a flower like a giant harebell, and stooped to touch one of the flower-heads that drooped on the thread-slender stem. ‘Rampion,’ she crooned, ‘that belongs to Themselves, the Pharisees, the Lordly People. You may set the bells a-ringing, but don’t ’ee go for to pick the flower at Midsummer. ’Tisn’t safe to meddle with aught that belongs to Themselves, at Midsummer; not with elder-blossom, nor yet white foxgloves, nor yet with rampion.’ And she turned to the children behind her. ‘Do ’ee remember that, my dears.’

  ‘We will,’ they said.

  And Tamsyn said, ‘Please, have you any white foxgloves in this garden?’

  ‘Aye, down beside the poplar trees. I grow all the fairy flowers. I grow them to please the Fairy People who come to me. All gardens have a few Pharisees, all gardens and all places, but my garden has very many. They come and go like the winds, but there is never a time when my garden is quite without its Pharisees.’ And she turned her head as though to watch something fluttering among the leaves of a yellow-flowered mullion; while the little grey cat raised its head and watched, too, with wide amber eyes.

  ‘Please,’ asked Tamsyn, ‘can you see Them?’ She hoped it was not rude to ask; she did so want to know.

  ‘Ai-ee, I can see Them,’ replied the Wise Woman. ‘I was born on Midsummer’s Eve, and so was my mother before me, and the first thing I ever mind seeing was the Proud People hovering against the moon, and their eyes like sparks, and their wings pearled by the moonshine. Them as flies in the sunshine, and them as comes with the moon, and them as flitters in the twilight betwixt and between; old Tiffany knows them all, and they knows old Tiffany.’

  And she toddled on again, stopping to touch a flower here and a leaf there as she passed, until they had gone right round the garden and got back to the cottage. Then Beatrix said in her most grown-up way, ‘I think we ought to be going, Mistress Simcock. It must be quite late.’

  ‘And your mother will be wondering what has come to ’ee,’ nodded the Wise Woman. ‘But first you shall each have a gift to take back with ’ee, for ’tis not often as folks come to old Tiffany without as they has the shingles to be struck for, or warts to be charmed away.’

  ‘Oh, but we don’t want you to give us anything,’ began Beatrix primly. ‘Thank you very much for the bread and honey, but – ’

  Giles kicked her. He saw no sense in refusing a present when one came your way; and anyhow, the Wise Woman had already gone indoors, leaving them in the sunshine before the cottage. In a little while she came back carrying the promised gifts. ‘’Tis little enough, perhaps,’ she said, ‘but ’twill be something to remember old Tiffany by.’ There was a blue earthenware pot of run-honey for Giles, a necklace of carved cherry stones strung on a scarlet thread for Beatrix; and for Tamsyn there were her shoes and stockings which she had forgotten, and a brown bulb something like an onion.

  ‘For the little one with the bare feet,’ said the Wise Woman, ‘because you have the fairy’s gift of green fingers, even if you can’t see the Fairy People. Plant it in a pot and keep it in the dark until it shoots, and then put it in a warm window. Tend it well, and love it dearly as all growing things need to be loved, and it will flower at Christmas time and bring you your heart’s desire.’

  Tamsyn looked at her a little doubtfully. When she first came to London her heart’s desire had been simply to go home again at once, to her own dear Devon, and her other heart’s desire had always been to be a boy, so that she could sail with one of those tall ships of Bideford, that were for ever outward bound over the Bar or homing up-river from half the world away. But now it had spread, and got mixed up with Piers and the Dolphin and Joyous Venture, which was all rather muddling; and of course the Wise Woman could not be expected to know that, and she could not explain about it – not with the Almost-Twins there, too. But the Wise Woman was very wise, even among other wise women, and perhaps she did know after all; she took Tamsyn’s face between her hands once more, and bent to look at her, long and closely, with those wonderful larkspur-blue eyes.

  ‘I shall never go home,’ she said at last. ‘I stay here with my garden, my fine sons and pretty daughters; but you will go home, one day – one day – and then you shall have your heart’s desire, all your heart’s desire. And when you go home, little maid, remember me, and call my name to the West Wind and the surf along the Pebble Ridge, and give my love to the Torridge as it flows under Bideford Bridge, and to the steep combes and the mewing buzzards, so that they shall remember me, too.’

  And Tamsyn said, ‘I will! Oh, I will!’

  The Wise Woman stooped, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Now you must go,’ she said, ‘all of you. Run – run, my chickens, or your mother will be thinking you’re lost.’

  So they thanked her again, politely, and went scurrying down the path to the gate. They looked back once, after closing it behind them, and saw her still standing in the doorway of the fairy-seeming cottage, with the little grey cat sitting beside her. She waved to them, and they waved back; then they plunged into the tangle of elder and hazel that shut the enchanted garden away from the workaday world.

  The sun was getting low, though it would not set for a long while yet, and the shadows of tree and cottage and hedgerow lay far across the golden meadows, and the larks had dropped out of the sky. But the cuckoos were still calling from the distant woods.

  ‘I wonder if she’s mad,’ said Giles. ‘It was rather a nice sort of mad, if she was.’ And he opened the pot of honey and stuck in one finger.

  ‘Of course she wasn’t,’ said Beatrix, putting on her cherry-stone necklace. ‘Wise Women always say queer things; it comes of being so wise.’

  But Tamsyn didn’t say anything – not anything at all. There was a lovely warm feeling of happiness inside her that seemed to sing very softly; and she nursed the fat brown bulb which was to flower at Christmas and bring her her heart’s desire, and thought long thoughts all by herself, a little behind the other two.

  They had just put on their shoes and stockings again after crossing the stream – Tamsyn, too, this time – when they met Piers and Timothy.

  ‘Well, you are a bright party,’ said Piers. ‘We thought you’d been carried off by Barbary Pirates at the very least, and Mother sent us to look for you because it’s time to go home – more than time.’

  ‘I say, we’re very sorry,’ said Giles, and began to explain about the search for adventure, and the Wise Woman, and how it got rather later than they thought; but Piers said, ‘Never mind about that now; the thing to do is to get back.’

  And Timothy squinted like a bull-frog at everybody in turn, and said cheerfully, ‘My eye! You’ll catch it, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘One day when you do that,’ said Giles, rising in his wrath, ‘you’ll stick like it, an’ you’ll have to be led round the country from fair to fair with a collar round your neck like a dancing bear, an’ some people will pay to see you, but I shan’t.’

  ‘Stop it, both of you,
’ said Piers, in a voice that sounded surprisingly like the one Uncle Gideon used when he meant to be instantly obeyed. Neither Giles nor Timothy had ever heard him speak like that before, and they were so astonished that they actually stopped. Then he took Tamsyn’s hand in a comforting sort of way, and said in a quite different voice, ‘Don’t you worry, Tamsy.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Tamsyn stoutly. ‘And I’m used to being spanked.’ Nothing, not even a spanking, could spoil the warm singing-gladness inside her, or take the magic out of Midsummer’s Eve.

  But there was no smacking for anyone, after all.

  When they got back to the place where they had started from, they found that almost everybody had gone home to supper, and Aunt Deborah was sitting with Littlest half asleep on her lap and Uncle Gideon pacing up and down close by and looking rather grim. The moment she saw them she dumped Littlest on the grass and jumped up and came to meet them.

  ‘Where did you find them?’ she demanded. ‘Oh, deary me, you really are naughty poppets. It’s past Littlest’s bedtime and we shall be so late for supper. You don’t deserve any supper, and you must be so hungry.’

  So Giles began to explain, and Bunch came barking round them, and Uncle Gideon came stalking up, still looking very grim, but with his eyebrows cocked up inquiringly.