The Wind on the Moon (29 page)

Hearing the furniture being shifted, the Puma woke in the wardrobe and asked what was the matter.

‘We're going to sleep together,' said Dinah.

A moment later they saw beside them the yellow gleam of two bright eyes, and lightly, nimbly, the Puma leapt into the double bed which the pair of sofas made, and lay down between them.

‘Feel the muscle of my shoulders and my legs,' she said. ‘Put your hands upon my neck, and now upon my jaw. Can you see, in this darkness, how thick and sharp and strong are my claws when I bare them? Often in my native forest I had to fight, and fight fiercely, and I was never defeated except once by trickery. And now all my strength is here for your protection. Do not be afraid, for I shall look after you.'

The Puma's presence was so comforting, and her words so reassuring, and her silky hide so soft to lean against, that Dinah and Dorinda quickly fell asleep, and though the bed grew rather hot, with all three lying side by side, they slept till late in the morning and had to be wakened by Mr. Corvo. He came in and shook them gently, and when they opened their eyes they found breakfast ready. There was tinned fruit and condensed milk and boiled eggs and bread and butter and buns and jam for Dinah and Dorinda, and the remains of the leg of pork for the Puma.

Mr. Corvo waited till they had finished eating, and then he said, ‘We are now in Bombardy. In about four hours' time we shall be in Gliedermannheim. When we get to the station they will have to take the furniture vans off the railway trucks and put them on to lorries. Then they will drive us to the Castle, which is seven miles from the station. It is unlikely, I think, that we shall reach the Castle before six or seven o'clock, and then it will be too late to start unpacking the vans.—That is my opinion, and Bultek, when we were planning the journey, agreed with me.—So they will leave the furniture vans in the courtyard of the Castle till morning before they open them. But when it becomes quite dark we shall climb out and find our way into the Castle, and begin to look for your father.

‘In the courtyard, which is surrounded by high walls, it will be as dark as the bottom of a well, and no one will see us. And there is sure to be some door left open, for all we Bombards are careless about such matters, and wherever we go we lose our keys.'

To begin with, everything happened as Mr. Corvo said it would. The train reached Gliedermannheim, there was more jolting and swaying and swinging and bumping as the vans were lifted off the railway trucks, and then, after a long delay, they began the last stage of their journey, from the station to the Castle. They travelled slowly now, for the road ran steeply uphill, and there were many sharp corners to be turned. As they approached the Castle the noise of the motor echoed from stone walls, and they drove under a great archway and into the courtyard beyond.

When the motor was switched off they could hear soldiers marching, their boots ringing on the pavement, and an officer shouting orders in a strange language. The soldiers came to a halt, all their boots striking the pavement together, and twenty-four trumpets sounded. Then a military band began to play, marching with drums and fifes, and after that there was another fanfare of trumpets. More orders were shouted, there was the noise of marching again, and then silence. All the music and all the marching called a hundred echoes from the great walls of the courtyard, and in the furniture van the noise seemed deafening.

‘They were playing the Evening Salute,' whispered Mr. Corvo. ‘They play it every evening, an hour after sunset, when they haul down the ensign that flies from the flagstaff on the highest tower. Soon it will be dark.'

Within the van it was already dark, and now with a feverish impatience they waited for night.

Mr. Corvo sat with his watch in his hand—it had a luminous dial—and at last he rose and very carefully, so as to make no noise, pulled out the drawers of the tallboy that made a ladder to the roof, and, climbing up, opened the trap-door. The sky was dark, and through the opening a single star shone brightly. Mr. Corvo cautiously descended.

‘I shall go first,' he whispered, ‘and look for an open door. You will stay inside until you hear me knock three times on the side of the van. Then climb out as quickly as you can, but quietly. We must be very quiet, remember.'

‘Come back quickly,' said Dorinda.

‘As quickly as I can,' said Mr. Corvo, and climbing again to the roof, he disappeared.

Dinah and Dorinda, with the Puma between them and their hands on her silky back, waited in painful excitement.

‘How long has he been away?' whispered Dorinda.

‘About five minutes.'

‘Perhaps he can't find an open door. What shall we do then?'

Before Dinah could reply, there was a sudden clamour, of men shouting and iron gates flung open, and the sky above the trap-door quivered and grew bright in the sudden glare of searchlights.

Their powdery radiance poured into the van, and among the startling shadows Dinah stared at Dorinda, Dorinda at her, and their faces were white as paper.

The Castle of Gliedermannheim was built on top of a rocky hill. It looked something like a crown on a king's head: a little crown perched on the summit of a huge, knobbly, sallow-coloured, bald head. The city lay on the plain below, a mass of red and yellow roofs with church towers and greenish domes rising among them, and the tops of the trees that grew in the principal streets looking from a distance like hedgerows. The steep winding road that led to the Castle was also lined with trees, and branching from it across the hill, like the veins of a leaf, were lesser roads with villas and rich merchants' houses built beside them.

The Castle was enormously strong and rather ugly. Two square towers, with pointed turrets, guarded the entrance, and above the archway that connected them and led to the outer courtyard were several rooms where the Officers of the Guard lived. The outer courtyard was nearly as big as a football field, and paved with flagstones. To right and left of it were the barracks that housed the soldiers of the Guard, and opposite the archway was the enormous front door of the Castle itself. This was a square building enclosing an inner courtyard, with a square tower at each corner twice as high as the towers that guarded the entrance, and the one at the north-eastern corner highest of all. From the base of its northern and eastern walls the hill fell away as steeply as a precipice, and below these walls were the dungeons. They were lighted only by narrow shafts cut through the rock.

Above the front door was the banqueting hall, and on the same floor in the tower to the right of it was Count Hulagu Bloot's private suite. The banqueting hall was decorated with glittering suits of armour and gigantic oil paintings of the Rulers of Bombardy through the ages, and of scenes of battle; while the walls of Count Hulagu's private sitting-room were hung with disgusting pictures of people being tortured, and the skins of tigers, lions, bears, and leopards, the heads of which rested on little shelves and glared into the room through great glass eyes, and snarled with bared and yellow teeth. In one corner were some dumb-bells, a skipping-rope, and a Sandow developer for the muscles; and in another corner a bookcase with a book in it called
How to Make Friends and Influence People
.

Count Hulagu was a middle-aged man with a long yellow face and thick lips the colour of mulberries. His hair grew like stubble in a barley field, he had little greenish glittering eyes, a long nose with a wart on it, and whiskers grew out of his ears. He generally wore a white uniform with gold epaulettes, a purple sash, and a good many medals; but he never looked really handsome because one of his arms was longer than the other, and his feet were enormous.

On the evening when Dinah and Dorinda arrived in the furniture van, he was walking up and down his sitting-room with a frown on his face. He was feeling bored and also a little sick, because he had eaten too many chocolate éclairs and cream buns at tea-time. He had tried to read, but the book in his bookcase no longer interested him. He thought of sending out for some people to torture, but as well as feeling sick he had a slight headache, and their screams, he decided, would make it worse. So he walked up and down and looked at the pictures on the walls and the skins of the lions and the tigers, the leopards and the bears; and the pictures, he now perceived, were badly painted, and the skins were dusty and some were moth-eaten. He decided to have them all removed and replaced by new ones. And then, quite suddenly, he remembered that a few weeks ago he had sent Professor Bultek to England to buy the Duke of Starveling's furniture.

Drawing his revolver, he fired six shots at the ceiling. This was to summon the Lord Chamberlain. He used to fire one shot for a page-boy, two for a parlourmaid, three for his valet, four for the butler, five for the Officer Commanding the Guard, and six for the Lord Chamberlain. And as the ceiling was covered with half-inch armour-plate, no harm was done.

The Lord Chamberlain was a tall man with a handsome face, but his mouth had a nervous twitch, and during the three months that he had held office he had developed a stutter.

He opened the door, bowed, and said, ‘What does Your Ek-ek-excellency want, Your Ek-ek-excellency?'

‘New pictures and new furniture!' shouted Count Hulagu. ‘The Duke of Starveling's furniture from England. Where is Bultek? Why hasn't it arrived?'

‘It c-c-came this evening, Your Ek-ek-excellency. The v-v-vans are in the c-c-courtyard now.'

‘Why wasn't I told at once? Have them unpacked now, immediately! I want my room refurnished. Unpack, unpack!'

‘But it's d-d-dark, Your Ek-ek-excellency.'

‘There are searchlights on the Castle towers. Turn them on! Let the courtyard be made as bright as day, and then unpack, unpack!'

While the Lord Chamberlain hurried away as hard as he could, to do what he had been told, Count Hulagu fired three shots at the ceiling to bring his valet, to fetch him an overcoat; and five shots to summon the Officer Commanding the Guard, to turn out the Guard to help with the unpacking.

Then he went down into the courtyard, the searchlights were turned on, doors were flung open, soldiers and servants appeared from all directions—and in the little room in their furniture van Dinah and Dorinda and the Puma waited with dread and dismay in their hearts.

Fearful thoughts perplexed them. What had happened, and what was going to happen? What had become of Mr. Corvo?

Then they heard the door of their van being unlocked and pulled open, they heard rough voices speaking an unknown language, and the scraping, groaning noise of furniture being pulled out.

‘They're beginning to unpack!' whispered Dinah.

‘They'll find us!' murmured Dorinda. ‘What can we do?'

‘Hide!' growled the Puma.

‘But where?' asked Dinah. ‘In the wardrobe?'

‘There's room for us all,' said the Puma.

‘But they'll see what's left of the food and the other things we brought,' said Dorinda.

Dinah whispered fiercely, ‘Put them away! Put them into drawers, get them out of sight. But quickly, Dorinda, quickly!'

‘Open the bottom drawer of the wardrobe,' said the Puma. ‘There's room for me there. Then lock it and take the key. You can stand, one on either side, in the upper part of it, and keep the doors closed as well as you can.'

The upper part, which had two doors, was divided by a partition, and along the inner side of the left-hand door ran a strong brass rail.

‘I'll lock Dorinda in the right-hand side,' whispered Dinah, ‘and I can hold the brass rail to keep the other door shut. Listen! They're much nearer now. Oh, do hurry, Dorinda!'

‘Why don't you come and help me?' said Dorinda. She put a jar of raspberry jam and the remains of the Puma's sirloin of beef into a drawer in the tallboy, looked round to see that everything had been cleared away, and climbed into the wardrobe.

The men who were unpacking were working swiftly, and already they had taken out half the furniture. Now their voices came from close at hand, and their boots on the floor of the van sounded loud and threatening. The back wall of the little room was already trembling as Dinah locked the Puma into the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, locked Dorinda into the right-hand side, and climbing into the other, closed the door and held it firmly shut.

Presently, after a lot more noise, the wardrobe was seized, pulled forward, tilted on to its side, and dragged out of the van. The men who were handling it grumbled loudly, and though Dinah and Dorinda could not understand what they were saying, it was easy to guess that they were complaining about the weight of it. But Dinah and Dorinda had no time to sympathise with the men, for they had worries of their own. Now they lay on one side, now they were tumbled roughly to the other, and all the time Dinah had to keep firm hold of the brass rail to prevent the door from flying open.

The wardrobe was lowered to the courtyard with a bump that jarred their backbones, and it stood there for several minutes till the Lord Chamberlain had asked Count Hulagu where it should be taken. Then it was lifted again, lifted high on the shoulders of six men, and now Dinah and Dorinda found themselves lying on their backs. The six men carried the wardrobe through the front door of the Castle, up a flight of stone steps, round a corner, and up more steps; and while they were going upstairs Dinah and Dorinda lay uncomfortably with their heels higher than their heads.