Celandine (33 page)

The filmy eye of the dead fish regarded her, drawing her hypnotically in to its blue-black depths. It slowly suggested an idea to her – and what a wonderful idea it was.

How long would it take, though? Five minutes? Ten? Was it really worth the risk of being caught? She
had
been lucky so far. To go back into the school again would simply be foolhardy. Foolhardy, stupid . . . and irresistible.

The door of the glass case opened quite easily, although Celandine’s hand shook as she fumbled with the little metal clasp. To be caught in the headmistress’s study! That would surely be the end of her. The stuffed fish was tight in the otter’s jaws, but she wiggled it to and fro, and it began to crumble – the dusty surface of it breaking up around the otter’s teeth. Celandine drew it slowly out and placed it on the open newspaper. It was dry and almost weightless, and it looked curiously unconvincing lying beside its damp and leaky brother.

She struggled to make the real mackerel fit into place. It was fatter, and she had to press the silvery flesh down hard onto the otter’s lower teeth – until the skin was pierced – before she could squeeze the body under the top two fangs. Finally it was done, wedged into place. Celandine stepped back. It looked very good, and the stoat, the weasel, and the pine-marten all grinned their approval. What a
little
thing a weasel was, she thought. Like a bit of skipping rope.

Now that the glass door was closed, it would need an unusually sharp eye to detect any alteration to the display. Days might pass – weeks – before the source of the dreadful smell could be tracked down. Celandine picked up the piece of newspaper, folded it about the stuffed fish and tucked the package beneath her arm. That was that.

One final small act of revenge occurred to her as she tiptoed from Miss Craven’s study. She would have to pass by the staffroom on her way out of the building – and if that room should just happen to be empty, well then, why not?

Celandine knocked softly at the staffroom door. If there was a reply, she would say . . . well, she would think of something.

Silence. She opened the door and peeped in. The room was empty.

A minute later she closed the door again and walked calmly down the corridor, gently tapping Miss Belvedere’s leather strap against her palm as she did so. What a pity that she’d not had the foresight to bring a big bunch of nettles with her, or a dead rat, or a nest of scorpions, and put
those
in the drawer in place of the strap. But there. She couldn’t think of everything.

There had been another bonus; one of the teachers had left some food on the staffroom table. It was only a sandwich and a piece of cake, but the items came ready-wrapped in greaseproof paper and just about fitted into her blazer pocket. They would come in useful for the train journey.

Celandine pushed the newspaper package and the leather strap well down into the dustbin, picked up her canvas bag, and made her way across the croquet lawn. The cheers from the playing field rang out louder than ever. They might almost have been for her, she thought. And all in all she felt that she deserved them.

Chapter Fourteen

SHE HAD SUCCEEDED
at last, and this thought kept her going as she followed Fin into the pitch-darkness of the wicker tunnel, blindly feeling her way forward, and trying at the same time to keep her bag from slipping into the water. Her feet were soaked and her hair was being pulled out in strands by the sharp ends of the wickerwork, but she had escaped – third time lucky. She was free. Nevertheless the sound of her own breathing became increasingly panicky, and it was a huge relief to emerge from the tunnel and stand upright again.

Celandine staggered onto the flat rock in the middle of the stream, and awkwardly jumped across to the shadowy bank where Fin was waiting for her.

‘
Cake-cake-cake
 . . .’ He hadn’t forgotten her promise, and she had to stop and fumble through her bag for the crumpled and sticky little package that she had saved for him.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m getting cold now.’ She began to move away from the stream.

‘Ah-ah-ah . . .
I
all right.’ Fin took a quick bite of his cake before catching up with her.

There was a little more light than there had been in the tunnel, but it was scary out here just the same. The creaking limbs of the sycamore trees loomed above them, massive and forbidding against the night sky, and Celandine was so glad that Fin was with her. She would not care to be stumbling through these cold black woods all alone. How different the world was after dark. The well-worn pathway to the caves, friendly and familiar in daylight, seemed treacherous to her now – with dips and hummocks and exposed roots that threatened to catch her out at every gasping step. She had not stopped to think of how this part of her journey might be. She had thought only of catching that train, and escaping. Anything to escape. Beyond that, she had hardly dared venture or imagine. Now the enormity of what she was doing crept up behind her and breathed upon her neck.

She had run away from school, and from the whole world, and she was staggering through the darkness on Howard’s Hill, weighed down by her heavy bag, cold and tired and homeless.

No, not homeless. She
could
go home, if she wanted to. Mill Farm was only at the bottom of the hill, and she could turn around and go there now if she chose. She could give up this foolishness and be in her own bed in half an hour. There would be a price to pay – for she would certainly be sent back to Mount Pleasant in the morning. But she did have a choice.

‘Fin!’ Her voice was gulping, shaky with exhaustion. ‘Slow down. I can’t see you.’ She caught the brief flash of Fin’s white teeth as he stopped to
wait
for her, a Cheshire cat grin in the surrounding gloom.

The air at the mouth of the cave was warmer. From the distant passageways there came a faint orange glow, and Celandine could smell the same oily perfume that she remembered from before, but stronger, now that it was night-time. It reminded her of incense, and of church.

Fin would not come any closer. He remained at the bottom of the loose pile of shale that sloped away from the cave entrance. His eyes glinted up at her.

‘Ah-ah-ah! Nooo. Not go
there
. Come is me. I.’

‘Halloooo!’ Celandine’s voice echoed around the cavern. ‘Can anyone hear me?’

Fin was still hissing at her from the bottom of the slope; ‘Noooo! Shhh! Is
Tinklers
there! Is
get
you . . .’

Celandine peered into the shadows of the cave, and waited. ‘I’m all right, Fin. Don’t worry.’ Again her words bounced back at her – too loud for this place – and again there was the sense of something churchlike in the quiet scented atmosphere.

Two small figures appeared, fleeting shades against the distant glow, and then vanished. Back they came, three, four – more – standing in a huddle at the far end of the cave. One of them separated from the group, and came towards her. Micas. Celandine recognized the shape of his head, the way that his hair grew at the sides but not on the top, like a monk. He carried a light before him, a dish of oil with a crude wick that flared and guttered as he walked. Celandine saw a host of chalk marks on the flickery walls of the
cave,
and was surprised at how many had been added since she was last here. Months and months it had been. It looked as though they had been working hard.

‘Micas! It’s me – Celandine.’

‘As I see – I as thowt to see thee no more. What do thee want, child?’ Micas drew close, and looked up at her. ‘’Tis gone moon-wax. Bist not a-bed then?’ His face was puzzled, but his voice was as calm as she had remembered it.

‘I’ve run away,’ she said. ‘And I’ve nowhere to go. I hoped that I could stay here. For a while.’ She was so tired. The thought of Freddie entered her head – a white explosion, quite soundless. It made her blink.

‘Stay? Bide wi’ us?’

‘Yes. Just for a while.’

‘Dost have troubles, then?’

‘Yes. I have. Lots.’

‘Om. And shall they seeken for ’ee here? Wast followed to this place?’

‘No, Micas. I promise. Nobody knows that I’m here.’

Micas stood beside her at the cave entrance and looked out upon the darkness. The little clay lamp sputtered unevenly in the damp night air, giving off a smoky pungency. Lavender. Celandine recognized the scent of it now. Fin seemed to have disappeared.

‘The wind don’t turn,’ said Micas. His bald head was tilted backwards as he regarded the shifting skies. ‘Nor yet the season. Come, then.’ He began to retreat into the cave once more, and gestured to her that she
should
follow. ‘Thee med stay this night, at the least. Elina! Mab! Bring a bolster and pallets – and make up a tansy. We ha’en a Gorji traveller among us, though I never thowt to hear me speken such a thing.’

In a hollowed-out side chamber close to the cave entrance, Micas and Elina laid down three wicker pallets, end to end. They looked a bit like flat picnic baskets. Elina draped a rough woollen coverlet across the pallets and said, ‘Can ’ee sleep on that?’

Celandine’s head was rocking with weariness. She lowered herself dizzily onto the wicker bed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Elina. I’m sorry to put you to so much . . .’ Her voice faded away. She was too exhausted, suddenly, to even be polite. All she wanted to do was disappear into endless slumber.

They gave her a sacking pillow filled with aromatic leaves, so that as she lay upon it and pulled the coverlet over her, the scents of the forest instantly swept her away on a perfumed tide.

She was too tired to search for a single thought through the fog that filled her head. And when she heard Elina’s quiet murmur, ‘Rest theeself then, maid,’ she could find no voice to answer with.

Celandine awoke briefly that first night, and lay in the dead silence, waiting, as the strangeness of her surroundings descended upon her. A dim yellow light filtered through the chamber entrance, from a lavender oil lamp in the main tunnel beyond. She put out her hand to touch the rough stone wall beside her. It did not feel cold.

The thick woollen coverlet was wrapped about her – she had rolled herself up in it, as though she were a cocoon – and the wicker pallets creaked softly beneath her whenever she moved. She was warm, and she was dry. Beyond that there was no sensation. Blurred images of her long day drifted through her head; sitting on the chair in Miss Craven’s office, the letter from her father, the distemper paint and the glass case, the railway clerk at Little Cricket with his drippy nose, and the injured soldier on the train – Tommy. Again the thought of Freddie burst before her – a puff of white smoke that slowly spread to all the corners of her vision. But she could feel nothing, no pain. She closed her eyes again. Tomorrow, perhaps, her senses might return.

Tomorrow came and went, and the day after that. To Celandine it was as though she was disconnected from all that was happening around her, seeing herself from a distance – during the few hours that she was awake. For all she really wanted to do was sleep. She couldn’t remember when she had ever felt so sleepy. Her little side chamber was warm, and it was so comforting to just sleep and dream, sleep and dream. And when she was awake, it was equally comforting to lie on her back and look up at the stone roof of her sanctuary, to follow the encrusted patterns of the tiny barnacle-like things that grew there, and to float through the hours like a mermaid in a cavern beneath the sea. No lessons, no freezing cold showers, and no war. All her troubles had been left behind her,
banished
beyond the wall of briars that separated her from the outside world. They couldn’t find her here.

Celandine was aware of the quiet comings and goings of the cave-dwellers, as they passed by the entrance to her darkened room, the muffled snatches of speech that told of their normal everyday lives.

‘Bist going arter kindles, Tammas?’

‘Aye, whilst rain do hold off.’

‘Bide, then. I’ll come with ’ee.’

What were kindles, Celandine wondered? Kindling? There must be fires then, somewhere beyond the deep tunnels at the back of the main cave. Perhaps that was why the cave walls never seemed as cold as she would have expected.

‘Bron! Do ’ee mind that crock o’ spadger’s eggs! Thee’ve feet like Gorji shovels.’

‘Well what be ’em doing down theer, for all to hop round? Much wonder they ends up scraddled, if that’s where ’ee lays ’em.’

The footsteps came and went.

Celandine could hear the excited whispers of the cave-children, playing at some game in the broad main entrance, but the confused echoes made it hard to tell whether there were a dozen of them out there, or only two or three.

‘Goo on, Bant, gi’ un a gurt flick!’

‘I got ’un! Ohhh . . . ’Tis out agin.’

‘The worse for thee, then, for now ’tis Goppo. In his eye then, Gop!’

‘Blinder! Good on’ ee, Gop!’

What could they be doing, Celandine wondered?
She
was curious, but not curious enough to leave her bed. She closed her eyes and listened to the muted echoes, soft starbursts of sound, bouncing through the darkness.

Sometimes Elina or her daughter Mab brought food – a porridgey mixture of dried fruit, and grain, and seeds that Celandine did not recognize, all stewed up together and ladled onto a wooden trencher. For drink there was either water or a hot infusion which they called a ‘tansy’, and which was a bit like unsweetened tea. It was plain stuff, and plain that the cave-dwellers lived upon little else at this time of year, but Celandine automatically ate and drank whatever was given to her, lost in the nothingness of her own cloudy daydreams.

‘Thee be more like a mousen than a giant.’ Elina had come into the side chamber to collect Celandine’s wooden dish. ‘I’ve heared a mousen make more of a noise, leastways. Will ’ee not come through the tunnels and sit wi’ us?’

Elina had a kind face. The long grey hair that fell in a single plait over one shoulder, and the coloured scarf she wore about her neck, made her look like a tiny version of the old fortune-teller that came to Goosey Fair each year. Her dark wrinkled eyes were full of concern.