Flame-Coloured Taffeta by Rosemary Sutcliff
The church clock, which you could hear on still nights or when the wind was in the right direction, struck ten, and she was still wide awake when she heard the hoot of an owl, and then faint sounds from the direction of the steading yard; a voice speaking at half breath, and the stealthy creak of the stable door, and the muffled clop of horses’ hooves on straw-spread cobbles. No sound from True; all the Manhood dogs knew better than to bark at the night-time comings and goings of the Fair Traders. The owl cried again, and in a little the night was as quiet as it had been before.
Inside her head in the darkness, Damaris could see the horses being led down the lane between overarching thorn trees, away into the open levels; Marsh Farm way, maybe. Saw them waiting among the dunes for the boats to come in . . . Little ripples of sleep began to lap around her, like the incoming tide lapping at the dune grasses . . . She did not know how long she had been asleep, when she was suddenly awake again and listening for whatever it was that had woken her. In a few moments it came again. She had heard it once or twice before, and she knew what it was, the sharp spatter of pistol shots a long way off.
Chapter 2: In which Damaris finds her Smuggler
THE HORSEMAN WAS by custom the earliest astir of anyone on the farm, for the horses needed to have their first feed of the day at half-past four, if they were to be ready for work by half-past six. But on the morning after a Run both Caleb and Dick Nye, the second horseman, and the Carthagena horses were generally somewhat late, and on this particular morning Damaris, who usually arrived at the stable to bid good morning to the horses only just before they were led out, was early.
It had taken her some time to get to sleep again last night, and she had woken well before daylight, remembering that distant spatter of pistol shots, and worrying about possible harm to Caleb or anyone else she knew. She had got up quickly, ignoring the flowered china basin and jug of cold washing water in the corner, huddled on her clothes, dragged the comb three times through her curly brown hair in such a hurry that she broke one of its teeth, and gone flying downstairs and out by the narrow drying green into the steading yard.
The first silver-gilt wash of morning was just beginning to lighten the sky behind the granary roof while the cart-shelter beneath it was still a cave of darkness, and the dunghill cock who always roosted on the shafts of the hay wain was crowing as though it was only because of him that the day was coming at all. The first babble of lambs was coming over the wall from the barn fold, and Sukie who always grew very loving when she was going to have kittens came wreathing and purring round Damaris’s ankles. Damaris stooped to stroke the little hard furry ball of the cat’s head that thrust into the hollow of her hand. A gleam of lantern light was spilling out from the stable door. She pushed the door further open and went in, Sukie still weaving round her. The dim gold of the lantern light met her kindly on the threshold, and the good sweet breathy smell and the contented sounds of the stable; and she saw the big round rumps of the horses, their tethered heads lost in the shadows.
Above the thick warm stable smells, her nose caught the sharper accent of elecampane. She knew about that. Caleb was not like Matthew Binns, the head groom at the Big House—a horse-master possessed of the ancient skills, the magic of the toadbone and the words of power that could gentle a wild horse or drive a gentle one to instant frenzy; but none the less he was wise in most things that had to do with horses and their welfare, and he always scattered leaves of elecampane, fresh or dried according to the time of year, among the hay and beans in the manger of any horse that he thought might be too tired to eat up otherwise. There was something about it that they could not resist.
Caleb himself was at the other end of the stable giving a hurried grooming to Swallow, her father’s riding horse, who swung his head and ruckled softly down his nose in greeting as she came up. But Caleb went steadily on with the curry-comb, hissing through his teeth the while. Dick Nye was safely out of the way for the moment: she could hear him in the harness room, whistling as he got down the day’s working gear.
‘Caleb,’ she said, ‘I heard something last night.’
‘Did ’ee now?’ said Caleb said, breaking off his hissing but still concentrating on the curry-comb.
‘Yes I did.’ Damaris kept her voice down: she had not forgotten that she should not be speaking about such things at all, but she was too anxious just now to worry about that. ‘And it sounded like pistol shots.’
‘Twouldn’ be the first time anyone’s heard pistol shots in the Man’ood,’ said Caleb.
‘I was afraid—is anyone hurt?—Anyone of ours?’
‘Not as I knows on.’ Damaris gave a small sigh of relief, and turned to Snowball next door, who was nuzzling at her, demanding notice and the bit of apple or carrot that she always carried for him. In contrast with Caleb and the farm horses, and even Swallow, who had all a weary look about them, Snowball had, as usual, clearly passed an undisturbed night and was fresh as a daisy as well as being as white as one.
‘Now get ’long back to breakfast, will ’ee,’ said Caleb, ‘for I’ve enough to do, if we’re to harrow Dinder Meadow today, wi’out you underfoot.’
Dick was coming in from the harness room with the great horse-collars on his shoulder. And she knew that there would be nothing more to be got out of Caleb anyway, so she went.
After breakfast Damaris did lessons for an hour and a half with Aunt Selina in the parlour: reading, sometimes from an improving work on etiquette for the young, sometimes from the Bible, but just at present from a new book called ‘Pamela’ by a Mr Samual Richardson; then writing, in a fair copperplate hand from the book they had just been reading, and arithmetic, which took the form of helping Aunt Selina with the household accounts, which would never have got done otherwise, for Aunt Selina had no head for figures, being more of a romantic turn of mind. (Damaris could still remember the twitter she had been in and how she had embroidered white roses on a scarf for Prince Charles Edward Stewart, him they called Bonnie Prince Charlie, when he had made his bid for the English throne five years ago, all ready to present to him when he got as far south as Chichester. Only of course he never did. But Aunt Selina still drank her mid-morning glass of elderflower wine in secret to ‘the King over the water’ and felt deliciously daring while she did it.) And then she had to spend half an hour working on her sampler on which a very sad poem beginning ‘When I am dead and laid in dust’ was surrounded by a border of pinks and honeysuckle and small stiff birds. And after that Aunt Selina found so many tasks for her in the still-room and the dairy that on this particular day it was noon and dinner-time before she was finished.
Indeed she might not have got away even after dinner, but she made an urgent excuse about Snowball needing exercise, and slipped out to the stable with the bundle of household scraps that she had collected earlier and hidden behind the brushwood pile, safe under her clock. She was quite used to saddling her own pony, for there was only Caleb and Dick to see to the horses, and they would be out harrowing Dinder Meadow and Church Mead until well into the afternoon.
She saddled up—she still rode astride with her skirts bunched to her knees, though Aunt Selina had begun to bleat that it was high time she learned to ride side-saddle like a lady—and led Snowball out to the mounting block, and a few moments later they were trotting away down the lane.
The lost cottage was not far enough away for her to need the pony—she could have got there almost as quickly on foot—but she loved being out on Snowball, and when she had fed Lady, the vixen, she and Peter, if he was there, could take the pony on as they often did, taking turns to ride him. And if there was no sign of Peter, then she would go down onto the levels for a canter by herself. And Snowball perfectly understood and approved of the plan, and stepped out, tossing his head and snuffing at the spring-time.
They took one of their special short cuts, down by the dike where the silver tufts of the goat willows were powdered gold with pollen, past the field where Caleb and Daisy and Dolly were
There was dog’s mercury underfoot, and in an open place the first faintly scented wood-violets growing between the roots of an old tree. The buds were already coral-tipped on the branches of the squat wind-shaped oak trees. The sea was sounding today, even among the trees, though there was scarcely any wind. And Damaris, checking to listen, knew that the tide was on the turn, and knew also that there would be wind again, and rain before nightfall.
It was just after she moved on again and was almost within sight of the cottage, that rounding a tangle of bramble and honeysuckle she almost fell over a man in rough seaman’s clothes lying face down between the roots of an oak tree across her path.
Something seemed to check and then turn over itself inside her; she felt a scream rising in her throat and she wanted to turn and run, because it seemed very likely that he might be dead. But she managed to swallow the scream, and taking a deep and careful breath, knelt down beside him. His face was not quite hidden, for it was resting on his arm and turned a little to one side; and by putting her own face on the ground among the dog’s mercury, she was able to get some kind of look at it.
It was young and bony and at the moment very white. A strand of dark hair pulled free from the queue at the back of his neck, fell forward across it, and as she looked, the dry rough end of it stirred to a small puff of breath from his half-open mouth.
With a little sound of relief that was almost a sob, she sat back and began to look for his hurt. It did not take long to find. In his left leg just below the knee where the thick seaman’s stocking disappeared into his breeches was a dark soggy patch, almost black at the edges but still juicily red in the middle. Blood. And blood all down his leg and into his shoe and blood soaking into the ground beneath.
Damaris remembered last night’s pistol shots.
He must have been lying out in the woods ever since, or just wandering until he dropped. He was not anyone she knew, so probably he was a stranger to these parts, one of the men who came from further off to help get the contraband cargoes away. But if he was a smuggler (he was certainly not a Customs House man) he looked like a sea smuggler more than a land one. The one thing Damaris knew with absolute certainty was that whoever he was, whatever he was, she was on his side.
Better to leave his wound alone for the moment, the bleeding seemed to have nearly stopped. She began to pull up armfuls of last year’s dead bracken and pile it over him, partly to keep him warm—he looked so cold, grey cold—partly to keep him hidden, from smugglers and Customs men alike; for until they knew more about him it might be better that no one but herself and Peter should know anything about him at all. She parted the brown fronds and took one more anxious look at his face, then kilted up her skirts and set off once more through the woods, not by the way she had come—Snowball must wait, she would be quicker and less noticeable without him—but by the shortest way to the village.
Somerley Green was shaped like a kind of long crescent, its cottages strung out along the curving lane, with the Big House and its farm buildings at one end, Genty the Wise Woman’s cottage lost in the woods at the other, and the Church and the blacksmith’s and the wheelwright’s and the Mermaid alehouse and the vicarage all clustered near the middle, round the Green that gave it its name.
It was not long before Damaris came to the edge of the trees and saw the warm russet straggle of the village before her, and a short while later, still panting from the speed she had made through the woods, she was crouching under the overgrown bushes of the vicarage garden. She could see the study window beyond which Peter would most like be at his Latin again under the stern eye of his father. But how to get hold of him and no questions asked was quite another matter.
Finally she cupped her hands round her mouth and made the best imitation she could manage of the haunting woodwind call of an oyster-catcher, the private signal to Peter that she was there and wanted him. The Vicar was not really a countryman, and would not think it odd that an oyster-catcher should be heard so far from the tide-line, let alone in his shrubbery; but Peter, who had spent most of one afternoon teaching her the call, would know it well enough. She waited a few moments and then repeated the call, three times altogether. She did not dare to make it any more, lest somebody else who knew the habits of oyster-catchers—Ben who looked after the garden and the Vicar’s fat cob, for instance—should overhear.
Behind the panes of the study window there was a flicker of movement that was not just the reflection of a flying bird, but for a while, nothing more. She waited while the time crawled by, hardly able to breathe in her impatience. Then somewhere at the far side of the house a door opened and shut. Another waiting time crept by, and then with only the faintest rustle among the bushes, suddenly Peter was beside her.
‘That was the worst oyster-catcher I’ve ever heard,’ he told her.
‘You’ve taken your time! I thought you were never coming!’ she whispered accusingly.
He gave a half breath of a laugh. ‘It took a while to convince Father that he had promised to go and visit Silas Bundy this afternoon, and him laid by with the rheumatics. What is it, anyway?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way. Only come quick! I think he may die—’
But somehow she felt that already there was less chance of that happening, now that Peter was here. Peter with his square dependable face and thatch of mousey hair and rather serious gaze would somehow not let it happen. He was that kind of person.
‘Who may die?’
‘My smuggler.’
They were working their way down the side of the garden by that time, and he checked among a mass of lilac suckers. ‘You’re gammoning me!’
‘I’m not! I promise you I’m not. I found him quite close to Joyous Gard and he’s been shot in the leg. Oh do come on!’
‘Look,’ said Peter after a moment, not coming on, ‘all right, you’re not gammoning: I believe you. Now you’d better go home and forget all about it. I’ll find him and see what’s to be done.’
Damaris snatched a breath of exasperation. ‘Oh don’t sound so grown up! You’re only a year older than me. How could I possibly go home and forget about it? He’s my smuggler and of course I’m coming back with you!’
She was already scrambling through the roots of the hedge, and the last words came muffled in leaf mould.
Peter said nothing more, and she heard him coming behind her. They gained the shelter of the ditch down the side of Glebe Field, and took to the woods.
Chapter 3: The Wise Woman
WHEN THEY REACHED the place where Damaris had left her smuggler, the piled bracken had been flung aside, and the young man had heaved himself over onto an elbow and was peering about him in a dazed kind of way, with a pistol held rather shakily in his hand.
‘Don’t shoot,’ Peter called breathlessly, ‘were friends.’
And next instant Damaris was squatting beside him, saying in the voice she kept for young or injured things about the farm, ‘Don’t be afraid, we’ll not hurt you.’
‘Where—who—’ began the young man muzzily, frowning up at her.
Peter came straight to essentials, ‘Where’s he shot?’
‘In the leg like I told you. His left leg, just below the knee. —Oh be careful, Peter!’
The young man let out a kind of cracked breath of laughter, ‘A pair of children!’ And then, ‘Do I gather—that we have met before?’
‘Yes. At least, it was me that found you,’ Damaris told him. ‘Lie still, now.’
But she had no need to tell him that, for as Peter turned aside the bracken that still covered his legs and bent to peer at the red hole below his knee, the young man gave a gasp and lay back very still indeed, with h
‘He’s been shot, all right,’ Peter said after a moment. ‘It’s a bit of a mess.’
Damaris looked up from the young man’s rigid face. ‘What shall we do?’
Peter considered. ‘It’s none too warm out here,’ he said at last. ‘And I’d not be surprised if it was blowing up for rain—you can hear it in the tree-tops. We can’t let him lie out in it. Best get him along to Tumbledown and safe under cover before we do anything else. You’ve got Snowball?’
‘He’s hitched in the usual place, I’ll get him.’
When she got back, leading the fat white pony behind her—the underbrush and low-hanging branches were too dense for riding in that part of the woods—Peter had taken the young man’s spotted neckerchief and tied it tightly over the bullet hole. ‘He’s not more than half with us,’ he said, ‘we’ll just have to get him across Snowball’s back somehow. . . .’ He picked up the pistol which had fallen from the smuggler’s hand. ‘Empty.’ He dropped it into his own pocket and stood up.
Damaris hitched the pony’s bridle over a branch as close as she could get him alongside her smuggler, and set to work with Peter to get the young man to his feet.
‘Now up with you—your arm round my neck,’ Peter was saying. ‘Steady.’
The pony snorted and sidled, misliking the smell of blood, and Damaris’s smuggler, who as Peter had said, was only half with them anyway, had about as much strength in him as a shock of wet barley. But mercifully he was lightly built, and somehow, she never quite knew how, they got him across the saddle with his head and arms hanging down one side and his legs hanging down the other.