Part 6 (1/2)

'Wool? It were a blasted pincus.h.i.+on - not any fabricoction,' Dido was beginning indignantly, when Mr Holystone came down the stairs. His face broke into a beaming smile of relief at the sight of Dido, and he exclaimed, 'There you are! We have been so concerned about you.'

'I was nabbled,' Dido repeated, and, encouraged by Mr Holystone's sympathy and evident belief, she poured out the story of what Mrs Morgan and Mrs Vavasour had done to her. Taking the two men up to her room, she pointed to the chest which contained the secret entrance.

'It does not open,' said the captain, trying it. 'It is nailed shut. This must be pure invention!'

Mr Holystone, however, pulled out his clasp-knife and prized open the lid. The stair inside was revealed. On it lay a tuft of Dido's brown hair, a scatter of pins and the buckle from her left brogan.

'Good G.o.d!' Captain Hughes was aghast. 'Then the child's tale is true! This is atrocious! An outrage! Where was this warehouse, child? On the dockside? I shall have the constables summoned those two women apprehended where is the innkeeper?'

He strode towards the door, turning round to bark, 'Do you keep watch over the child, Holystone! Don't let her out of your sight for a single instant!'

'I say, Mr Holy,' said Dido, as the captain clattered off down the stairs, shouting for the landlord, officers of the watch, bow street runners, and justices of the peace, 'I say, I ain't half hungry.'

'You poor child, you must indeed be famished. Come down to the inn parlour and I will bespeak a meal.'

In the parlour, a pleasant, shadowy, panelled room, they found a fire burning, for the temperature of New c.u.mbria, hot during the day, dropped abruptly once the sun had set. Mr Holystone summoned a waiter and ordered food for Dido. While it was being prepared she told him her story in greater detail. He shook his head.

'I doubt if those two women will be caught. They have probably discovered by now that you managed to escape, and will have made themselves scarce. They may be miles off.'

Dido was inclined to agree.

A bowl of oyster stew arrived, with some thin ca.s.sava biscuits. While she was hungrily eating this, Mr Holystone told her of the captain's meeting with Mr Pryce, the mayor, or jefe, of the town.

'What the mayor told him was one reason for his being so distressed over your absence. It seems that the Rocs, or Aurocs, the great birds that live in the mountains, fly down over the town at early dusk, and carry off many children, especially girls. There is great danger for young persons who go out alone.'

'That's why old Brandyblossom is leaving town then,' observed Dido, carefully wiping her stew bowl with a piece of ca.s.sava bread. 'So the Little Angel won't be swiped by an Auroc. But how does those two old hags come into the business, I wonder? If I'd been found missing, Cap'n Hughes would've thought an Auroc got me. But them two ain't Aurocs unless they're in the catering way, a-selling tasty t.i.tbits to the Aurocs.'

A sizzling shark steak was brought in, garnished with peppers and slices of lime.

About to commence eating, Dido paused at the sound of a heartrending, famished mew, which seemed to come from under the oak settle on which she was sitting. She looked down. A thin, golden cat had emerged from under the seat, and was stretched up beseechingly, with both slender paws on her knee.

'Why it's Dora! How in tarnation did she get here? Reckon she followed you, Mr Holy?'

Dido put down a goodsized morsel of shark; the ravenous cat caught it with both paws before it reached the ground, and set upon it avidly.

'No: that is not Dora,' said Mr Holystone, carefully inspecting the animal. He rubbed with a gentle thumb between the copper ears and tufted eyebrows. 'My cat has a little silky curl, just here, in the middle of her forehead and this one has none.'

'This one's thinner than Dora, too,' agreed Dido, feeling the bony ribs and dropping another piece of shark. 'But ain't that rum to find one so simular! Are we close to your land, then, Mr Holy? Or is cats like that common all over Roman America?'

'We are not 50 far from Hy Brasil,' he said, sighing. 'But cats such as this are not so frequently met with -they generally belong to rich people the n.o.bility. -How now, what have we here?'

Around the cat's neck his stroking fingers had discovered a thin, plaited collar, with a leather disc and a tiny packet attached to it. The disc said t.i.tten Tatten. Mr Holystone, feeling the collar, uttered a soft exclamation.

'This collar is made from human hair,' he said.

'Holy snails! Someone ain't half got long hair. Must take a deal o' combing out,' Dido said, running her fingers through her own short locks. 'Does the packet give the owner's name?'

She set down her plate, with the rest of the shark steak. The cat was too interested in this bounty to object to the removal of its collar, and Mr Holystone unfolded the little packet with careful fingers, while Dido went on to a final course of pineapple and pawpaw.

'My, ain't that tasty! What's the paper say, Mr Holy?'

He was frowning over the little square. It was a tiny printed page.

'Bee. The animal that makes honey, remarkable for its industry and art.

'Beldam. An old woman, generally a term of contempt, marking the last degree of old age with all its faults and miseries.

'Cat. A domestick animal that catches mice, commonly reckoned by naturalists the lowest order of the leonine species.'

'That's rummy,' said Dido, looking over his shoulder. 'What 'ud a person stick that in a collar for? Bee? Beldam? Cat? What d'you make of it, Mr Holy? It looks like a page from a dictionary.'

'It is a dictionary. If I mistake not, it is Dr Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language.'

'Why would someone stick it in a cat's collar?'

Dido took the paper from him and stared closely at the printed lines.

'Looky here,' she said after a while. 'Somebody made marks here and there, see, like it might be with a thumbnail, under some o' the letters. Think that means summat? Look, here, in animal there, in remarkable -A, R, R-'

'A, B, E I believe you have hit on something!' Mr Holystone wrote down the letters on the tablet he kept for noting good recipes.

'Arrabeelamye. ”What the blazes is that?'

'Arrabe. Elamye. They are two of the Children of Silence.'

'Children of Silence?'

'The mountains that lie between New c.u.mbria and Lyonesse. Ambage and Arrabe, Ertayne and Elamye, Arryke, Damast, Damyake, Pounce, Pampoyle, Garesse, Caley, Calabe and Catelonde.'

'What a deal you know, Mr Holy! But what's this last one? Elen? Is that a mountain too?'

'No, it is not a mountain,' said Mr Holystone, looking very troubled indeed. 'Elen is a girl's name.'

4.

They boarded the river-boat at a black and silent hour of night, when all the citizens of Tenby were abed and asleep. The night air was sharply cold, and Dido grumbled to Mr Holystone, as the small party walked through the silent streets.

'Why in the name of Morpus does we have to start off now?'

'It is on account of the bore.'

'Bore? It's a right plague!'

'No, child.' She could hear the smile in his voice. 'A bore is a tidal sweep of water which will, I am informed, carry us upstream as far as Bewdley.'

They crossed a bridge to the island in the middle of the Severn river, and walked to a cobbled quay where a strange-looking craft lay waiting. It had a cowlike rounded bow, three open decks, and a huge paddle-wheel at the stern.