Part 2 (2/2)

'Grog, sir grog will do capitally, thank'ee, Captain,' Mr Brandywinde replied, in a tone that was both eager and creaking, like a rusty handle cranked at an uneven rate. 'Grog, now, is excellent, if it is well mixed on sh.o.r.e, I must tell you, we combine it with a little orock cane spirit, you know! Then if, at the same time, you smoke a pipe or two of abaca hangman's weed, that is why, you could believe yourself a veritable Pasha. I believe even the White Queen herself -'

Then the captain's door was shut, and the two voices died to a murmur.

'Jemima!' said Dido. 'What a havey-cavey cove. He looks as if he'd sell his own ma for cats' meat. Don't you think so, Mr Holy?'

'Very likely his life is a lonely one,' said Mr Holystone guardedly. 'The port of Tenby is a small place, cut off by a great forest from the interior, and the capital.'

'What's the forest called?'

'Broceliande.'

'So how do we get through? If we're going to Bath to see the queen?'

'By boat. Tenby lies at the mouth of a great river, the Severn. It is the captain's intention to hire a boat and travel by water.'

Dido was rather disappointed. Having been at sea for most of the last eighteen months, she had hoped for a spell on land. But Mr Holystone a.s.sured her that there would be plenty of that. Half way along its course the Severn river was interrupted by a formidable series of cataracts das.h.i.+ng down from the Andes mountains in the west of New c.u.mbria; these falls were not navigable, and so the party must take to land at that point.

The captain's bell rang, and Mr Holystone went off to remove the bowls of musselsh.e.l.ls and replace them with fresh mutton and hearts of palm, brought out from sh.o.r.e in the pinnace. Dido, busy decorating a chocolate cake with baba.s.su nuts, judged from the voices coming through the door that Mr Brandywinde was becoming garrulous from drink and the unaccustomed company.

'You ask what the queen is like? The White Queen? My dear sir, she's rum. Rum as they come. How do you do, sir, what's your game? Rum, Rum, Rumpel-stiltskin is my name,' he carolled. 'The White Queen, they call her. Because of her hair, you know. Et cetera. Et cetera. Sits at her embroidery all day long. Says she's waiting. Waiting for what, you ask. And may well ask! But as to that, mum's the word. Both rum and mum. Her Royal Mercy ain't confidential.'

'If the queen is so unapproachable,' persisted Captain Hughes, 'does she have reliable ministers, advisers round her, to whom one may apply?'

'Oh, ay, there are some villainous-looking old scalla-wags with beards down to their s.h.i.+ns the Vicar General, the Grand Inquisitor, the Accuser, the Advocate of the Queen's Tribunal each more slippery than the next, if you ask me. Besides them there is the queen's jester or soothsayer, if you prefer the term '

'Soothsayer? What is he?' demanded the captain in a tone of disgust.

But before Dido could catch the answer, Mr Holystone emerged with a trayload of plates, and the door was closed.

During the rest of dinner it remained shut, and no more of Mr Brandywinde's disclosures could be heard. Dido who had finished decorating the cake was told to run up on deck and take the air. 'For,' said Mr Holystone, 'you have done more to help me than is fitting, though indeed I am very much obliged.'

'Oh, pho!' retorted Dido. 'You know your conversation's always an eddication, Mr Holy. I'm a-learning all the time I'm a-helping you. Deportment and manners too!'

She put out her tongue at him teasingly and skipped out on deck with a small cake, which he had baked for her in a separate pan.

Dusk had fallen by now, and large southern stars were beginning to twinkle out in the deep blue above the Thrush, though the c.u.mbrian coast and the snow-covered western peaks were still outlined against a sky of pale phosph.o.r.escent green.

Earlier that evening Dido had, without asking permission, removed from the captain's cabin an exceedingly powerful telescope which was one of his most valued possessions, for when carefully focused it had the power to render clearly visible objects which might be fifty or even a hundred miles off.

'He ain't about to use it while he's a-giving dinner and doing the civil to old Brandyblossom,' calculated Dido, 'so there's no harm in my borrowing it for a couple of hours.'

When she had eaten her cake she drew the gla.s.s from its case and, with its help, studied various features of the twilit sh.o.r.e. She could see the small town of Tenby clearly enough its wharves, quays, the s.h.i.+pping at anchor in the river-mouth, the tall black-and-white houses with feathery palms above them on the hillside. Then there came a belt of dense green, presumably the forest of Broceliande, full of pythons, pumas, alligators and Aurocs. Beyond that again, much farther off, hardly visible to the naked eye but clear enough through the powerful gla.s.s, lay a line of silvery foothills, below the higher peaks. Dido stared at these hills, trying to discover the point at which the Severn river tumbled over them in its majestic series of cataracts. She thought she had found the right spot a white zig-zag line against the grey of the hills when she chanced on an even more interesting sight what looked like a long procession of camels moving very slowly southwards across the lens of the telescope.

Were they camels? If not camels, then what else could they be? They were s.h.a.ggy long-haired beasts, long-necked too, with heads like those of sheep. Each bore on its back a large bulging pack. Each was led by a drover, and the procession crept at a snail's pace, as if the loads were a tremendous weight. As they toiled along they were outlined clearly, some against the green sunset sky, some against the rose-flushed snowclad peaks.

'Blow me,' muttered Dido. 'Ain't there a right lot of them, jist?'

She began to count, but counting was not Dido's strong point, and she gave up after four sets of twenty.

'Reckon they must use camels in New c.u.mbria where we'd use carriers' carts,' she decided. 'Maybe they finds it best to s.h.i.+ft goods at night when the Aurocs has gone to roost. Them Aurocs must be a plaguy nuisance, if they can scrag a sheep or a cow like Dora n.o.bbles a mouse.'

The last of the line of loaded camels disappeared into a dark cleft among the hills. It was now becoming really dark. Following Mr Holystone's instructions for doing so, Dido found the Southern Cross; then she heard the pinnace being whistled for, so she tucked the telescope under her duffel jacket and went below. As she descended the companionway, Mr Brandywinde and the captain came out of the dining-room.

'Perhaps by tomorrow,' the captain was saying, 'you will have received more information as to this this loss that Her Majesty has sustained.'

'Oh what she has lost she refuses to say,' carolled Mr Brandywinde. 'It seems to have vanished like last Wednesday!'

'Let us hope not!' retorted Captain Hughes acidly, 'or my mission is but a sleeveless errand.'

'A fool's errand what a shocking thought! A fool in the forest of Bro-cel-iande, one foot on the water and one on the land.'

At this moment Mr Brandywinde laid eyes on Dido, who was politely waiting in the galley doorway for the two men to pa.s.s by. The Agent's bloodshot eyes bulged until it looked as if they would burst from their sockets like horse-chestnuts he gulped, gasped, and fell into such a fit of coughing and choking that, if he had been on deck, it seemed highly probable that he would have fallen overboard as he staggered about.

'Deuce take the fellow!' exclaimed Captain Hughes impatiently. 'Here Holystone thwack him on the back! Give him some hartshorn or spirits of tar otherwise the man will take an apoplexy!'

Restoratives having been administered, Mr Brandywinde was presently able to mop his streaming eyes and apologise.

'It is nothing nothing a trifling infirmity,' he panted, still staggering. 'Takes me thus at times but it is nothing at all I a.s.sure you! A slight disability resulting from the quant.i.ty of pepper in the diet hereabouts nothing, sir, nothing, nothing! You must try the pepperpot stew, Captain I do urge you to try the pepperpot.'

'Yes, yes, very well ' replied Captain Hughes, not at all interested in pepperpot stew. 'Now, I shall be obliged, Mr Brandywinde, if you can arrange for beds in Tenby for my party tomorrow night since we must board the river-boat so early. Unless you can accommodate my men and me in your Residence?'

'Quite out of the question,' said the Agent hastily. 'Only two bedrooms; one for me and m'dear wife; one for our Little Angel. No, no, sir; rooms shall be bespoken for you at hic the White Hart. Fair tap there, but don't trust the gin. But, Captain, you never informed me, you never gave me to understand that you had a young female person a child among the crew. I was not apprised of this!'

'Why in the world should you be?' snapped the captain. 'It is of very little import! And she is not a member of my crew (good heavens, I should hope not, indeed!) merely a a supercargo, a kind of pa.s.senger whom I am escorting back to England. And I intend taking her to wait on Queen Ginevra; but she will require more suitable apparel.' The captain glanced with disfavour at Dido's jacket and trousers. 'Is there,' he asked Mr Brandywinde, 'a dressmaker in Tenby or, or a milliner, haberdasher, needlewoman who could supply Miss there with an outfit to wear at Court?'

If Mr Brandywinde could have become more flabbergasted, this announcement, it seemed, must have rendered him so. He gaped at Captain Hughes, feebly flapped his hands up and down, opened and shut his mouth several times, before at length replying, 'You intend taking Miss to visit the queen? Indeed! And you require some apparel '

'Petticoats! a gown! a sas.h.!.+ What about your good lady Mrs Brandywinde perhaps she might know the name of some sempstress?'

'Oh ah really I am not that is to say she does not or at least '

'Perhaps I and young Miss could wait on your good lady at your house, sir,' cut in the captain, as the Agent's replies did not seem to be tending in any useful direction. 'We will bestow our luggage at the inn, tomorrow, leave my first lieutenant to make arrangements for our trip up-river, and then call at your house if,' he added with some irony, 'if this will suit your convenience, Mr Brandywinde?'

Mr Brandywinde almost threw himself into another paroxysm in his efforts to a.s.sure the captain as to his zeal to be of use. There would not be the least difficulty in the world about finding some suitable person 'suitable ha, ha, for she will supply the young lady with a suit,' he concluded, with a burst of almost hysterical merriment. 'And I wish you good night, dear friend -dear friend; would that such evenings might never, never end!'

So saying he bounded over the rail with such agility that, had there not been a c.o.xswain waiting to receive him in the boat, his evening would most probably have ended in the jaws of a shark.

Captain Hughes went forward to the quarterdeck. From the irritable haste of his steps as he paced to and fro, the state of his mind could be guessed at.

Dido availed herself of this chance to restore the telescope to its place on the captain's desk.

Next morning Dido was up soon after dawn, roused by the fresh scent of trees and gra.s.s from the land, and the shrill cries of seagulls, which sounded like a great many tin spoons being sc.r.a.ped on a large number of china plates.

Hastily she tumbled her small handful of belongings together and stuffed them into a canvas bag. This done, she went hopefully on deck and stared at the land; she could not borrow the captain's spygla.s.s now, for he was in his cabin writing a report.

'What time does we get to go on sh.o.r.e?' she asked Mr Holystone when she went below for her breakfast.

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