Limbo Lodge (23 page)

But what riveted Dido’s attention was the sight of Manoel, with two other men, standing not much more than a hundred yards away on this side of the ravine, close to the bridge. One of the men was an Angrian in officer’s uniform, the other a Forest Person who seemed the worse for liquor; he kept giggling foolishly, waving his hands, and looking about him in a vacant manner, as if he wondered what he was doing there. He held a bow.

Manoel noticed Dido when she stood up and addressed her in a scornful, indifferent tone.

“Oh – so you are there? I suppose Herodsfoot is somewhere about? Well, you won’t be there for long. Capitan Ereira,” he ordered the uniformed officer, “tell the man, Ta-asbuie, to shoot a couple more arrows. And to waste no time about it.”

His voice, which was not particularly loud, travelled clearly up the slope. Must be thrown by some kind of echo from the other bank, Dido guessed. And that’s how it must have worked last night when he was a-chatting to the ghost.

But there was no time to lose in idle thoughts. Without troubling to answer Manoel, Dido scooted round to the wocho at the rear. Here she found Tylo and Yorka frantically trying to rouse Herodsfoot, who was flushed, wild-eyed and rambling, evidently in a fever from his bullet-wound, not at all in prime condition.

“Shaki-sir,
must
get up! Must climb hill to Sovran house!”

“I could as soon climb Mount Everest,” mumbled Herodsfoot. “Could as soon climb Mount Kanchenjunga. Could as soon—”

Tylo and Yorka exchanged despairing glances.

Dido turned and looked behind her. Manoel’s two companions had retired to the far side of the bridge. They had a brazier from which came smoke and flame.

Tylo said: “Yorka, can you make rain?”

“Never yet.” Yorka pressed her hands tight against her chest. “But I try,” she said.

“Is all we can hope for,” said Tylo.

Dido, looking around, saw that this was probably true. The drunken Forest Man, Ta’asbuie, reeling from one side to another in fits of hysterical laughter, was dipping arrows into the brazier and loosing them off as soon as they began to flame. His aim was fairly wild; quite a few of the arrows fell in the river. One lodged on the bridge, which began to burn; Manoel, with a quick, furious order, summoned a soldier to extinguish it. But several arrows had already fallen among the trees surrounding the Ghost House; a fierce crackling could be heard; billows of smoke went spiralling up into the sky from different parts of the forest.

Dido caught Captain Ereira’s voice from the bridge saying anxiously, “Sir, sir, do you think this is really wise? Suppose the wind changes – suppose it should blow from the south?—” Manoel made no reply.

“Save us!” muttered Dido. “I reckon this is the tightest corner yet.”

She picked up the baby, wondering which way to run. There were fires among the trees, both to right and left.

“No-no-
no
!” said Yorka. “You help me, Dido! Miria help too! Wake her. Now: you both help make rain. Like this. Think of water. Think big water. Think
hard.
Then put the water up in the sky.”

Yorka herself then seemed to go into a trance. She stood – as she had when divining the whereabouts of Aunt Tala’aa – with her face turned up to the sky and eyes closed. Her hands were clenched. She wore a frowning expression of terrific concentration, and was murmuring a Dilendi phrase over and over, but Dido could not hear what she said, her voice was too soft.

Dido herself, obeying instructions, thought about water. She thought of oceans, rivers, waterfalls, jugs full, mugs full, cups full, bowls full. She thought of fountains, brooks, ponds, gutters. She thought of the spittle in her mouth, the tears in her eyes (these were quite copious, with smoke now drifting thickly about the Ghost House). She thought of the blood running in her veins. She thought of the baby she held in her arms. “Our bodies are like cucumbers,” she remembered Herodsfoot saying, a day or two ago, as they munched their lunch. “Ninety per cent water.”

This baby is just like a sponge full of water, thought Dido. The baby, as if catching her thought, woke up and began to cry with terrific vigour. She yelled with all her heart. Perhaps the smoke had got into her eyes also.

Rain, thought Dido. Let it rain. Let it stream, pelt, pour, thunder, lighten. I am putting all those ponds and lakes up in the sky. I am putting oceans there. I am putting the River Thames. I am putting djeela juice, tea, coffee, milk, lemonade, up into the sky. I am lifting the whole Pacific Ocean and wrapping it round the sun . . .

A drop fell on her right hand.

She looked up, startled.

The sky had been its usual brilliant blue, with not a cloud in sight. But now two things were happening. The birds – parrots, frigate-birds, parakeets, owls, gulls, memory-birds – were all flying about in confusion, and crying and squawking. And across the sky, skeins of haze were floating like spider-webs, joining and tangling, weaving together to form a fabric of cloud – and from this fabric, drops were beginning to fall . . .

“Rain!” gasped Tylo. “
Ashtaa
Yorka – you did it! You really made the rain come.” And he made her a deep bow, pressing his hands together.

Yorka opened her eyes. The raindrops were now falling quite plentifully and a gust of wind, fanning up from the south, suddenly whipped across the gorge, carrying with it a hunk of flame, which completely enwrapped Captain Ereira and Ta’asbuie, reduced the bridge to a shrivelled wisp, and then swept on into the middle of the Angrian camp. There were shouts and screams of terror, and some violent explosions; after that the drumming of almost solid rain and a tremendous crack of thunder drowned all other noises.

“Into the Ghost House!” ordered Tylo – his words were inaudible, but his gesture was plain. Dido hastily tucked the baby into a sheltered corner and then helped Tylo with Herodsfoot who was too weak to move himself; they half-led, half-carried him under the overhang of the roof.

Yorka still stood outside in the downpour with her skinny arms upraised, apparently encouraging it to keep on raining and not stop.

“Bless my soul!” muttered Herodsfoot. “The fish will be rising. How I wish that I had brought my rod and tackle . . .”

Dido was peering down across the gorge, trying to see through solid sheets of water. She caught a glimpse of Captain Ereira and Ta’asbuie being carried into the camp; she could not decide whether they were dead or just badly burned. And where was Manoel? She could not see him.

Yorka now came into the Ghost House with a look of calm achievement on her face. “Rain come,” she said.

“Croopus, Yorka,” said Dido, giving Yorka a tremendous hug. “I’ll justabout say it
did
come. You’re a skinny little critter, Yorka, but I’ll tell you – you are real Grade A champion class when it comes to making rain!”

This remark was endorsed by a voice from behind them. A lady who came walking between the pillars of the ghost-house said approvingly: “Excellently managed, Yorka! I could have done it no better myself!”

Yorka’s face became brilliant. “Aunt Tala’aa!”

She made a deep bow, and the traditional greeting of child to adult in the Forest, placing her hands, palm inwards, on the lady’s cheeks.

“Now, my dear child – as the rain has served its purpose for the moment – it would make it easier for us to hear each other speak if you turned it off again.”

Yorka nodded and, leaving the Ghost House, went back into the deluge and made some signals to the sky, which soon began to take effect. The thunder stopped pealing. The torrent of water from the bank of heavy cloud gradually eased, slowed down, and finally came to a stop. All that could be heard now was a musical drip-drip from the overweighted branches. The sky began to clear and clouds of steam rose from the ground.

But Yorka herself, Dido noticed, turned extremely pale, staggered slighdy, and sat down on a rock as if, for a moment, she had lost her sense of balance. A thin trickle of blood ran from each nostril.

“You been taken queer, duck?” Dido asked anxiously.

Yorka shook her head.

“Cloud-rain pull out blood,” she whispered, dabbing it away with a leaf. “Not bad – soon better.”

But Dido noticed that she moved slowly and with caution for half an hour. Dido herself felt stiff and tired as if she had run in a race.

Meanwhile Aunt Tala’aa looked keenly about her at the other occupants of the ghost-house, and Dido studied the newcomer with deep interest.

Aunt Tala’aa was plainly a Forest Person, honey-coloured in complexion, and curly-haired (though at present her short, pure white hair hung draggled with rain); she was rather taller than most Forest People, about the same height as Lord Herodsfoot.

Her clothes were black, like those of the Angrian women, but she wore them very differently. Angrian women’s clothes were always dusty and shapeless, intended to be inconspicuous, looking old and worn even if they were not. Aunt Tala’aa’s clothes though black, and at the moment drenched with rain, were severely elegant, a long narrow skirt under a cape with a dark plum-coloured lining and floating white bands at the neck. She had a flat triangular black cap on her head.

Dido had once seen a bishop, who also happened to be a Professor of Law, riding through the streets of London in a carriage. He had impressed Dido very much – looked so shrewd and learned, but also
good
at the same time; this old girl reminded Dido of that bishop. It’d take a really downy ’un to put anything across Auntie Tala’aa, thought Dido.

It seemed as if their thoughts collided, for the old lady turned and subjected Dido to a piercing scrutiny.

“You are Dido Twite,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” agreed Dido, thinking, How does she know that?

“Talisman told me about you – about you all,” said Aunt Tala’aa. “We shall be friends. But first I see that our friend here – you must be Lord Herodsfoot, are you not? – needs some medical attention for his hurt shoulder.”

She stepped outside, was gone, perhaps, a couple of minutes, and returned with two leaves. One she placed on Herodsfoot’s shoulder, and covered it with a new poultice of cobweb; the other she instructed him to hold on his tongue for three minutes, then swallow.

When he had done so – and almost at once he began to look a little better – he murmured faintly, “Madam – did I hear you correctly just now when you addressed Dido – did I hear you say that
Talisman
had spoken to you of us?”

“Indeed she has. She has given me very good descriptions of you all.”

“Then she is alive? She is safe? She survived that dreadful climb?”

“She did – she is at Limbo Lodge – and, as soon as you are able to walk, I think that we should make our way there.”

“Oh,
yes
!” said Herodsfoot fervently.

In ten minutes – so efficacious was the power of the herb he had swallowed – Herodsfoot declared that he was quite able to undertake the walk to Limbo Lodge. He looked transformed – pale still, but hopeful, happy, and alert. Aunt Tala’aa said that the walk would take no more than twenty minutes. And it was much easier going than any of the tracks they had followed up to now, being wide and well trodden – plainly the way from John King’s house to the bridge had been much used.

As they climbed the hill Dido overheard snatches of conversation between Herodsfoot and Aunt Tala’aa. “You speak remarkably good English, ma’am – but, pray, how should I properly address you?”

She laughed. “Well, you could call me Aunt Tala’aa as most people do – or you could call me Professor Limisoë – I learned my English at the University of Cambridge and my French at the Sorbonne in Paris, where I studied for my Master’s Degree in Occult Philosophy.”

Herodsfoot was enraptured. “Aha! then you must know a great deal about the Tarot – and the Eight Immortals – and the thong games that the Arctic Folk may play only when the sun is above the horizon in their brief summer—”

In no time the two of them were chatting away like old friends, and he was addressing her as Auntie Tala’aa.

Limbo Lodge, seen from closer to, appeared large, low, and rambling. It was sited at the edge of the forest line, among clumps of clove and djeela trees, in a kind of wild garden. Over to the eastern boundary of this, the ground seemed to come to an abrupt stop: here, Dido guessed, was the Cliff of Death. It seemed to her a very odd thing to build one’s house within so short a distance of such an awesome spot.

Not a soul seemed to be stirring anywhere.

None of the group were aware of the dark figure that shadowed them among the trees.

A veranda skirted two sides of the house. Aunt Tala’aa led the way up a flight of steps on to the veranda. Looking in windows as they passed outside, Dido saw a games-room with a billiard table, punchball, dartsboard, and smaller tables marked for chess or chequers. Next door was a library lined with books, a lamp burning on a table, but this, like the games room, was silent and unoccupied.

Then, out of a door farther along, came Talisman, running, joyful, her face blazing with delight and triumph.

“Oh, I am so happy that you got here safely!” she cried. “Come in! come in! Have you had breakfast? No? Then come to the kitchen – my father will see you all later . . .”

Her brilliant smile embraced them all equally. She turned and led them along a wide passage to a room on the other side of the house whose large windows looked up the mountain to its craggy summit. This room was amazingly untidy, as if it had been occupied by a great number of people who had all left in a hurry without troubling to take anything with them Plates, bowls, baskets of fruit, loaves of bread lay about mixed with tennis rackets, footballs, fencing foils and hockey-sticks. There were also a great many notebooks: dozens and dozens of them, all sizes.

Talisman was putting a pot of water on the stove to make coffee, finding clean plates, chattering away.