the scholar's sweetheart 15

 

Chapter 15

 

Jasper woke to the sound of voices, having decided to doze until dusk. It was still light when the voices woke him. They drifted up the hillside, and if he strained he could hear what was said; Crowy’s voice, and two others, he thought, were Perun and Swallow Heron, Crowy’s cousins, who were brothers. As unpleasant as Crowy, Jasper did not want to fall into their clutches.

“She can’t have gone far,” he heard Crowy’s voice, frustrated. “She’s only a woman and she was half suffocated by the tent wrapped round her.”

“Hungry and thirsty too, I wager,” said Swallow, with a rough laugh.

There was a silence.

“She stole my beer, bread, ham, and cheese,” admitted Crowy.

There was jeering laughter from the other two.

“You’re slipping, Crowy,” said Perun. “Lookee!  If we find her for you, do we get a turn to poke her?”

“When I’ve schooled her,” promised Crowy.

“Reckon she might of gone over the hill?” asked Swallow.

“Talk sense! She’d have to climb the cliff here,” said Crowy. “If she’d gone out through the roof, well, yes, she could of walked onto the top o’ the cliff, but she never did. She went out o’ the window an’ I reckon she hung an’ dropped, it’s not far. She couldn’t go into a village, they’d of druv her out. She might of gone up if she went to where the slope’s gentle, but women when they run, they take easy paths, not difficult ones.”

Jasper had to concede that this was probably accurate for many women. It was, however, Shuri, who had taught him to go up when evading Fowk, as people do not look up. Jasper had once spent three horribly uncomfortable days in an oak tree with his mother until Fowk cooled off over whatever had enraged him, and they could go home.

“Shuri’s a cut above most women. I’m going up the cliff, and if nothing else, I can use it as a vantage point,” said Swallow.

“You’re an ornery cur. Speaking of which, where’s the dog?”

“In the wood,” said Perun. “I’ll get it; you get me down something o’ hers, an’ I’ll soon have her tracked, if Swallow will wait up a moment,” he added. Jasper could only hope that Crowy’s scent from carrying him in the tarpaulin was all the dog could find, since some of which was all he had left that had been in contact with him – the wig having enough of its own natural oils to mask his scent. With luck the dog would be confused.

Jasper slipped out to lay more sticks on his entrance side and pull debris over them, and scattered more wild garlic.  He dug a hole towards the other side of the hill, and took the opportunity to empty his bladder and bowels as a dog would be drawn to the stronger scent. He slithered back into his hide, and pulled debris into the small gap he needed to enter. Jasper had never been so frightened in his life. Crowy was a fearsome enemy but could be appealed to through greed. Perun was too stupid to recognise the opportunity to hope the son of a marquis could be held for ransom; Jasper was fairly sure that Perun would not see how Jasper could be ‘useful enough’ to a marquis to be worth anything. And Swallow! Swallow liked hurting, and giggled when people were in pain. If he only had a pistol, thought Jasper, he could shoot one and maybe outrun the others. He pushed aside the bracken he had pulled to cushion his nest, and dug frantically to add to the debris to make it harder to get at him.

And then, suddenly, as he was cursing that he had hit a root, the chalky ground beside the root started to trickle away, and formed a hole, beneath his hiding place!

“Dear G-d, thank you if this is what I think and the tree fell because of a sink hole,” said Jasper. In a hole, he could slash at hands with his knife, so long as it was big enough that they could not collapse it on him.

He had brought candles from the bedrooms in the cottage, and was glad they were good wax, not tallow dips. He kindled a spark to light one  and held it down into the hole. It looked to be about six feet deep and ran off one way further than the candle could penetrate.

Jasper widened the hole, dropped through his belongings, and slithered down himself, pulling bracken back over the top, and then cautiously relit the candle.

It was larger than he had thought, and where the candle flame had been unable to reach, he could see tool marks on the chalky wall; someone had dug flints from here sometime, long ago. How long, Jasper could not guess, but he suspected it was long enough to have been old when the witching sisters were burned. A spring bubbled up from the fallen-in dirt where the tree had once stood, and likely the one thing that had allowed it to grow so large, and yet, the thing that killed it by undermining it. It made it a bit of a squeeze into the cut passageway, but had also, paradoxically, probably been what opened it.

Jasper, considering that he had little choice at this point, set off down the passage, after first tasting the spring water, and then filling empty beer bottles when he found it was good. He hung on to a tree-root to do so, rinsing the bottles first, as the spring ran a short distance and vanished into a fissure, and Jasper had no desire to fall into a deeper sink hole cut by the spring as it disappeared into the chalk after being forced to the surface by a layer of clay.

 

oOoOo

 

Evelyn awoke to the rather timid shaking by a maid.

“If you please, sir, you asked for an early dinner, and it’ll be served in the parlour in ten minutes,” she said. “I’ve brung up your clothes, me ma an’ me washed an’ ironed them. An’ I’m sorry about your collar but we didn’t have much starch.”

“That will be fine,” said Evelyn, reaching for a coin from the commode to vail her. “I’m not a dandy.”

“You do look all a gentleman should be,” blurted out the girl, and blushed.

“Why, thank you,” said Evelyn. “My wife agrees. How is my dog?”

“Oh, she’s fine, sir, she got to eat first,” said the girl.

“Well, then, I have time for a quick wash, I think,” said Evelyn, starting to get out of bed.

“Eeep!” said the maid, fleeing, as Evelyn had stripped entirely to sleep. Evelyn grinned. She was a chatty child, despite her shyness, and Evelyn really did want to wash before dressing. Evergreen had roused too, and stripped the clothes he had not handed over for washing to take advantage of the hot water the girl had brought.

Half an hour later they were tucking into what was described as lamb with tarragon and thyme, served with celery and green onion chopped into rice.

“Acceptable,” said Evelyn. “I think the tup they served may have been in its second lambhood rather than being grass lamb, but it was well cooked.”

Evergreen giggled.

“I’ve never had lamb, so I wouldn’t know,” he said.

Half an hour later still, they were on the road towards Grovely Wood.

“I think that this must be one of the more sparsely occupied corners of England which isn’t actually moorland,” said Evelyn. “Well, we should get to... what did you say it was called?”

“Great Wishford,” said Evergreen. “I heard it used to be ‘Great Witchford,’ but it were for the wytch elms, not for witchcraft.”

“Do you believe in witchcraft at all?” asked Evelyn.

“Not at all in daylight and mostly not when I’m with someone like you,” opined Evergreen. “At night, somewhere creepy, I lay garlic about me as well as saying my prayers.”

“Nothing wrong with being thorough,” said Evelyn.

 

Night was closing in fast by the time they reached Great Wishford. They hitched their horses and went into the ale house. The main street seemed to have been recently built, and somehow felt wrong in its overwhelming modernity.

“We don’t serve your kind here,” said the landlord, with hostility.

“No? Dear me, how very unfriendly of you,” drawled Evelyn, with his best aristocratic tones.

“Oh, forgive me, milord, I thought you was gypsies,” said the landlord, grovelling.

“My son has been abducted by a gypsy and this excellent lad from a different tribe is helping me search,” said Evelyn. “There are gypsies, and gypsies, you know.”

“I still can’t serve him, matter o’ policy,” said the landlord.

“Fine, serve my horses and dog, and sell me bottles of beer and sandwiches,” said Evelyn. “Bring them out to me in the yard so we don’t have to sully your unchristian premises any longer than necessary and so I can go find my boy.”

The landlord lost himself in a plethora of oleaginous half sentences and apologies, and Evelyn ignored him, stalking out with Evergreen, awed, in his wake.

“We’ll search for an hour, unless Bess picks up a good trail, and then camp overnight,” said Evelyn. “I trust you to find us a good place to camp. I did not set out with expectations to camp, but we have good wool blankets, and if you can find somewhere suitable, it’s coming on to rain.”  He broke off to take beer and sandwiches and pay the landlord as Bess and the horses were fed. “Landlord, do you have any old horse blankets to sell us? And perhaps I can stable my horses here?”

The landlord looked cunning.

“My name is Finchbury. Evelyn, Marquis Finchbury,” said Evelyn softly. “If you even try to sell my horse whilst I am gone, you will wish I only handed you over to the law, because I will ruin you; and my horses will come home to me anyway because they are trained to do so. So remove any larcenous thoughts from what you laughingly call your brain.”

The landlord paled.

Any stories he had heard had probably been of Evelyn’s father, but Evelyn was not about to quibble if it got compliance.

They were provided with some rather motheaten blanket, for which Evelyn paid too much, and passed through the village following the road towards the wooded rise which lay to the south. They moved off the road and up into the trees on the chalk outcrop. 

Evergreen took his knife, a vicious-looking tool, and cut a sapling seven feet long and lashed it three feet up from the ground between two other saplings as Evelyn held things for him.

“We can use the old blankets to stretch out and peg down, and add bracken to them and bracken under other blankets to sit on, and if you would gather firewood before it gets too wet, my lord, I’ll dig a pit and get a fire going,” said Evergreen.

Evelyn knew how to gather firewood, at least, and meekly did so, piling it under the stretched out makeshift roof. Evergreen was lopping more branches, sharpening the ends to drive into the ground with a heavy flint, and lashing another branch between them to help hold the blankets out. Overlapped, he laid bracken over them, having made a slope shallow enough that they did not slide down, whittling pegs to drive through the old wool and into the ground. He nodded approval at Evelyn storing the wood inside, where the ends of the blanket flapped over. Bess was left, casting about, so far to no avail. Then Evelyn assisted Evergreen to dig a pit, piling the earth from it on the other side of the pit from the makeshift tent. The boy appeared to have acquired a shovel. Evelyn decided not to ask; the landlord had been disobliging and had overcharged for everything.

“Why a pit?” asked Evelyn.

“Hide the fire,” said Evergreen, digging into the side of the pit. “And keep it from the weather like this,” he made a hole in the side of the chalk, with an air hold down, by thrusting his knife in. He rapidly lit a fire and soon it was crackling away, the pile of earth and chalk behind it throwing heat back towards the tent. “In winter, you light a fire in a pit, and then dig another, and take most of the fire to the second, filling in the pit with hot embers to be under your bed,” he said. “It’s damnably cold for this time of year, but we can always shift fire and tent if it gets worse.”

“Indeed,” said Evelyn. “I note you lit it between two other saplings.”

“Which could be used to have a pole between to hang a pot,” said Evergreen.  “Bess isn’t getting anywhere, and I doubt she will after rain, but we can look for Crowy’s hideout. He’ll go out to hunt and fetch water if nothing else.”

Evelyn had to be content with this, and retired to the tent as Evergreen whistled to Bess and indicated that they should turn in for the night.

Evelyn had to admit that the warmth of the dog between them, under shared cloaks as blankets, made all the difference; and though he was neither comfortable nor especially warm, he was not especially uncomfortable nor cold. Evergreen got up from time to time to feed the fire, and Evelyn dozed rather than sleeping until the cold grey of a wet dawn oozed over the horizon.

“Set in to rain for several days now,” said Evergreen. “I’ll take Bess questing; you keep the fire in, and gather more wood. I’ll come and get you if she finds a scent. But I can smell smoke on the air, and more than just our fire. I’ll see if I can find out what it is.”

 

oOoOo

 

Whilst Evelyn and Evergreen were dining on mutton, Jasper made his way down an old mine shaft. It came out abruptly, though a fall of rock blocked the exit, but Jasper could feel and smell fresh air through it.  Carefully, he cleared the debris enough for his slender frame to slither out onto the hillside into crepuscular gloom. To his left, and below him, a rill burst out of a crevice, and Jasper suspected it might be the same watercourse which bubbled up in the cave. He drank his fill, and lifted an item from the water where it gleamed in the waning moon, and found it to be a mostly green copper pin or brooch, in some kind of arcane knot. He took it as a good omen, and wondered if it had washed from having been lost near the big fallen tree, carried by the water. He pinned it to his shirt as the best way to carry it, corroded though the pin was. It was not as if he cared much about Crowy’s shirt, after all.

“Ma’ll like you, if she’s alive,” muttered Jasper.

This reminded him of his intentions.

He made a stealthy way back up the hillside, and could hear Swallow calling out.

“She’s been here, Crowy; I found a shelter, but she ain’t there now. The dog wanted to scrabble but there’s nowhere for her to have gone. I had to cuff the beast to get it to stop, and try to find where she’s gone, and it’s my belief she went down to the village.”

“They don’t like gypsies there,” said Crowy.

“No, but if they didn’t drive her out, she’s likely in the lock-up, waiting for a whipping,” said Swallow, with a giggle. Jasper shuddered, imagining the man fondling himself at the thought.

“She might even be grateful at being rescued, at that,” said Crowy. “You go back to the cottage; tie the dog in the stable and feed the mule. I’ll see if she’s in the lockup and steal some more food.”

 

Jasper grinned, savagely to himself. He gave them time to get down the cliff and returned to his hideout. It had been pulled apart at one side, but it would keep off the rain which was just starting. He spent his time repairing his shelter, to wait for Crowy to return, disappointed in not finding Shuri in the rude hut which constituted the village lockup, but doubtless successful in the stealing of food. This took Crowy a little over an hour, and it was fully dark when he returned, complaining that they had plainly driven Shuri out, and he was sick of the hunt, and that they should go back to find her with her tribe.

This firmed Jasper’s resolve. He could smell smoke from the cottage chimney; and, had he but known it, from the fire his father and Evergreen lit, having narrowly missed walking into Crowy on larceny bent. He gave them time to boil water for whatever meal they were making, and slipped out of his hideout, and slithered down the cliff on the stable, or blind side of the house.

The dog barked, and kept barking.