Cold Shoulder Road (16 page)

“Aren’t there neighbours who’d tell on ye?”

“In Womenswold? Nary a soul. It’s only two farms. All the men were snatched by the Gentry when they were short of hands. And they got killed in some fray. The wives aren’t a-going to tell on us. And one of the daughters is only ninepence in the shilling. We get milk and eggs and they help when we need provisions. Take Pye for an outing sometimes.”

“Ain’t that risky? Someone might see her.”

“Not round here. But once Henzie – that’s the simple gal – she did take Pye to Folkestone market. Ruth was wild about that, when she heard. So now we don’t take Pye to the farm no more.”

Is remembered her glimpse of Pye at the Folkestone market.

“She didn’t seem so babyish there; she acted right sensible. Buying fish.”

“I know,” said Penny, sighing. “She acts babyish when she’s with Ruth. To get notice took of her. Makes me wild, sometimes. But Ruth says we havta let her. She’ll get over it by and by.”

Pye’s babyish ways at breakfast next morning made Is impatient too, but she supposed that Aunt Ruth knew what she was about. One certain thing in Pye’s favour was that the cat Figgin seemed fond of her. He followed her about, and jumped on her lap when she sat down – a thing he had not yet deigned to do with Is, who was still in disgrace. And Figgin was no fool when it came to people.

People and cats is full of cussed ways, thought Is.

Indeed at breakfast Arun and his mother fell into a painful, sharp-edged quarrel.

It began when Ruth said that she saw no need for him to take the horses back to Seagate.

“It is only putting yourself at risk. Quite needlessly.”

“The man at the King’s Head ought to have his horses back,” said Arun doggedly. “Why should he be the loser?”

“Twite is a dangerous man. We’ll be worried all day about you. Oh, when I think of how your poor father walked up to London, searching for you,
seventeen
times – and never found you – inconsiderate . . . just like a boy . . . never think of putting yourself in someone else’s position—”

“Dad walked to London seventeen times because he
liked
rambling about the country . . . I’ll lay he wasn’t only looking for me,” argued Arun. “He was always going off on those roaming walks. You can’t deny that. Long before I ran off he’d be away for days on end, hunting for Ladies Tresses Orchids or Birds’ Nest Orchids. Ma! You know that’s so.”

“Oh! I believe you are just like him. A real Twite!”

“You’re a Twite yourself!” retorted Arun. Mother and son glared at one another. Pye began to snuffle and tears poured down her cheeks. She stuck out her tongue at Arun as far as it would go.

“Keep on doing that! Maybe you’ll learn to talk that way!” he snapped at her.

“Oh!” exclaimed Ruth. “How can you be so heartless to the poor afflicted child?”

“Maybe she needs more of that and not so much cosseting!”

Arun removed himself huffily and went off to Seagate, riding one horse, leading the other.

Is took him on one side before he went. “Arun! You will be really, really careful, won’t you? Y’Mum ain’t wrong about the risk.”

And what Ruth don’t know, thought Is, is the awful, baleful power that Dominic de la Twite has – over Arun, anyway. She thought of Arun’s spellbound sleep, the gap in his memory covering all the time he was with the Leader . . . Yet she did not dare offer to go with Arun; that would seem as if she did not trust him to carry out a simple errand.

“But do make haste back!” she urged him. “We’ll be right anxious till we see you.”

“Never fear, never fear,” he answered impatiently, and went off to where the hobbled horses were grazing. She watched him leave, kicking his mount into a trot. Bless him, she thought, I dare say he needs to get clear of all us females. Could be he’s ashamed of being led off like a pig to market, yesterday, by old Domino. Let’s hope this ride sets him up a bit in his own mind.

Sighing, Is went off in search of Penny.

Penny, never one to let the grass grow under her feet, had set herself up a doll-making workshop in the cook’s galley of the
Throstle
. The fire in a brick box provided her with a means of melting wax and glue, singeing feathers, heating a flat-iron; and she was busy, in the way Is remembered seeing her for years past, stuffing cotton bodies with sheep’s wool gathered from hedges, and fastening them on to china or porcelain or wax heads. Automatically, Is sat down and began to help.

Penny nodded thanks, but said, “Better maybe ye should go and see if ye can be any use to Ruth, help learn little Pye to read. Or tell her stories, you used to be a rare hand at that.”

“
You
used to tell
me
stories, Pen.”

“Other way round as well.” Pen threaded a needle, knotted a thread. “And it’d be a good turn to Ruth. She’s mortal upset that Arun hardly more than handed her the time of day when they met.”

“What?” cried Is, greatly astonished. “When
she
was so stand-offish with him, and gave him no more than a little bit of a snippety nod? She must be moonstruck!”

“You gotta remember,” said Pen, “she belonged to that plaguey Sect for most of her life. She ain’t in the way of showing what she feels. She
never
used even to talk to Arun. Let alone hug or pet him. You gotta keep that in mind.”

“Was Aunt Ruth always in the Sect?”

“No. She met Uncle Hose when she was fifteen, she told me – they were cousins, she’s a Twite, too – and they fancied each other and fixed to get wed. So she was obliged to join the Sect, for he was in it already.”

“What a shame!” said Is. “I bet she was sorry. Fancy having to stop talking! I bet she hated it.”

“Very like. Soon as he died, she began painting those pictures. As if someone had taken a lid off. Talking, too. First time I met her, she hardly talked. Then, after I’d been to Folkestone a couple of times, we got friendly.”

“That Sect are a rum lot,” sighed Is. “I dunno what to make of ’em. Some of ’em ain’t so bad. The only way the old ’uns seem to let loose is by dancing – have you seen ’em do that?”

Penny shook her head, biting a thread. Is described the solemn dance session which she and Arun had watched in Seagate. “And I’ve heard the young ’uns gets together secretly at night-time just to
talk
. That’s a prime treat for them.”

“They could do worse,” said Penny briefly. “And I think the folk in the Sect are decent enough. It’s only that Leader who’s a wrong ’un. There’s nowt wrong with silence. Most folk gab too much.”

“I reckon the Leader’s got pals in the Gentry,” said Is.

She was about to tell Penny what she had heard at night in the forest when a series of ear-splitting shrieks broke out in the officers’ mess. Is leapt up from her stool, but Penny remained unperturbed.

“Pay no heed. That’s Pye. The only sound she ever makes. She does that when summat riles her, or she can’t have what she wants. Or tries to do one o’ the things Ruth shows her, and can’t.”

“Croopus! How you
stand
it!” said Is, as the row went on. “I don’t wonder Aunt Ruth snatched her, if she did that next door every night. I only wonder nobody drowned her.”

“Well,” suggested Penny, “why don’t you go and see if you can pacify her?”

“Me?”

“Why not?”

Is went into the officers’ mess and found Ruth sitting at the mahogany table opposite Pye. Between them on the table lay a piece of paper and a slice of bread.

On the paper were written the letters
B R E A D
.

Pye was shrieking with terrific intensity and beating her fists on the table until they must have been bruised black and blue.

Is asked, “What’s amiss with the chavey?”

Ruth was perfectly calm.

“I’m trying to make her see that
that
—” she pointed to the piece of bread – “and
these—
” she pointed to the letters on the paper – “and the spoken word
bread
all mean the same thing.”

“Can’t she take it in? Maybe she’s too little – or too thick-headed – to understand?”

“Oh, no, she understands very well. But she wants to eat the bread.”

Indeed Pye made a snatch for the slice while Ruth was speaking, and Ruth neatly whipped it out of reach. Pye stood up on her stool and jumped up and down in a passion of fury. Her round face was purple, her eyes were invisible, screwed into slits . . . she reminded Is of somebody. Who?

“She can’t be that hungry?” Is said. “She had a big breakfast. I watched her. An egg, an apple, and four slices of bread and honey.”

“No. She is not usually so demanding,” Ruth answered quietly. “But, you see, she is jealous of Arun. Because he is my son. She is very quick at picking up other people’s feelings. She knows well that I have been worried about Arun for so long, before he came here. Now that he has come, she is afraid that I will love him the better of the two. Is she not a foolish child?”

There was a smile in Ruth’s voice. Is wondered if Pye heard it. Pye still continued to shriek, but Is felt quite sure she was listening to what was said.

“Arun is afraid of the same thing,” Is said. “He thinks you love Pye best.”

“People wear themselves out with such needless worries,” Ruth said.

And you do it, too, Is thought.

“Aunt Ruth?”

“Well?”

“Can I try something with Pye?”

“By all means,” said Ruth.

Is said to Pye in thought language: “Pye? Can you hear me? Can you understand what I am saying to you? I am thinking about a fox and a big black bird. Both of them want that piece of bread. The fox is running, the bird is flying. Which do you think will get to it first?”

Pye looked up, astonished. Her pale eyes had become round again, round as marbles. I wonder if she needs glasses? thought Is. I suddenly have a picture of her with glasses on her face. Rimless ones. Now, why should I think that?

She said to Pye, “Do you know the word for
bread
? Those letters on the paper make that word. These are their sounds.
B
–
R
–
E
–
A
–
D
. Press your lips together, then open them as if you were going to take a bite. Then bring your tongue forward and press it just behind your teeth.
Bread
. That is what those sounds mean, written down on the paper.”

Pye said, in thought language, “The big black bird is going to get the bread first.”

Then she jumped down from her stool and, with tears streaming down her face, rushed to Ruth Twite and grabbed her round the waist, burying her face in Ruth’s lap. In thought language she shouted at Is: “Go away! Go away! I hate you! I don’t want you here! Not at all. This is
my
home, not yours!”

Is looked doubtfully at Ruth, who laid a calming hand on Pye’s head.

“Perhaps you had better leave her with me, just for the time being. But I do not think that you have done her any harm.”

By dusk three people in the ship
Throstle
were not even trying to conceal their worry about Arun.

“It
couldn’t
take him more than a couple of hours to walk here from Seagate,” Ruth said, half to herself, over and over.

“Maybe he had to wait till dark to start out, so folks wouldn’t see him,” Penny suggested.

“Or take a roundabout way in case he was followed,” said Is.

“Oh, why, why did I ever let him go with those horses?” Ruth demanded. “One of the girls from the farm could have gone. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Arun would never have agreed to that, thought Is. For it would have connected the farm to the horses and the trip to Penny’s barn.

But there was no sense in arguing.

Little Pye clung like a limpet to Ruth’s hand. The cat Figgin marched restlessly about, jumped on the table, finally consented to come and push his face into that of Is, but with a growl that said, “Don’t you dare to leave me for so long, not ever again!”

It’s the first time that Arun and I have been apart for so long since we came south together, Is thought. I do wish I could catch some echo from his mind, just to give me a notion where he is.

Just as she thought this she
did
catch the echo – perhaps it had prompted the wish. She knew that he was trudging wearily through the forest, coming from an unexpected direction, from due west.

Could he have got lost? Or did he have to muddle his trail? Was somebody after him?

Not wishing to raise premature hopes, Is slipped away from where the others were sitting.

Pye had already gone off on some errand of her own.

“It’s nearly your bedtime, Pye,” Ruth called after her.

Very handy for Pye she can’t speak, Is thought – she need never trouble to answer.

Going to the quarterdeck to let down the rope-ladder – for, with a huge rush of relief she now knew that Arun was only a bowshot’s length away – Is found Pye, at the top of the ladder, busily engaged in sawing through the strands of the rope with a sharp kitchen knife.

Is could hardly believe her eyes.

“Why – you – little –
monster
! Just you pass over that schliver! Right away!”

Pye gave her a stony look. But Is was much larger and stronger. The knife was sullenly passed over. Pye would then have made off along the deck, but Is grabbed her stubby wrist and held her fast.

“Do you want I should tell Ruth that you were fixing to break Arun’s neck? Do you?” she asked Pye in thought language.

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“Pye? Where are you? It’s past your bedtime!” came Ruth’s voice. Pye wriggled free and ran off through the tangle of spars, ropes, and branches.

Is, hard at work retying the rope-ladder with the slashed length of rope safely above the top shackle-bolt, called out reassuringly, “Pye’s along here, Aunt Ruth. And I can hear Arun a-coming!”