Dido and Pa

  After an immensely long wait, during which her fingers and toes gradually lost all feeling, and she began to wonder if they would freeze altogether and snap clean off, the sound of distant music began to be heard, and the beat of a drum.

  Tum, tum, titherum, titherum, tum, tum.

  Then the music became recognizable as Dido’s favourite tune, ‘Calico Alley’ – played so joyfully, so liltingly, that anyone’s fingers and toes, even if completely frozen, would begin to clap, would begin to dance at the sound. In fact the crowds, lined up so thickly at the side of the road, did just that – they began to dance, and to clap, and to cheer and jump up and down as the forerunners of the procession came in sight – a drum major from the Household Cavalry on a white horse, followed by a fife band, followed by the cavalry troops, with cuirasses glittering, and plumes flying, the red and gold of their uniforms glowing in the early light, and their horses moving so proudly and excitedly, lifting their feet high in the air, that they too seemed to be almost dancing to the music.

  More and more troops of soldiers followed, in different uniforms, to different tunes, all Dido’s favourites; then coaches, chariots, barouches, gleaming with gilt, with brilliant coats-of-arms emblazoned on the door panels, with top-hatted coachmen and white-wigged footmen, with postilions and outriders, with glossy horses and glistening harness, with flowers and rosettes and ribbons and fluttering flags.

  And here, drawn by six black horses, came the king’s ceremonial coach itself, very old and immensely grand, all constructed of gold and glass, so that he could be seen inside it; like a goldfish, poor thing, thought Dido, in his velvet cloak and crown with all them rubies in it; don’t it look heavy, must be like carrying the kitchen sink on your napper, I bet it don’t half give him the headache. And, perched up behind, two footmen in dark blue and gold, motionless as statues with white wigs and folded arms, whom Dido had no difficulty in recognizing as Podge and Simon.

  ‘Hi-oh, SIMON! Hi-oh, PODGE!’ she yelled at the top of her lungs, and thought she saw the eyelid of Podge, who was nearest to her, give just the faintest flicker as he went by, only five feet below her.

  The royal coach rolled into the tunnel, to the music of ‘Black Cat Going Down Stairs’, and vanished into darkness. Then the music changed to ‘The Day Before the Day Before May Day’, and here came an open coach with the Margrave of Nordmarck, refulgent in gold and white and diamonds, wearing a great ermine cloak; and opposite him in the open carriage sat Mr Twite, all dressed up in his best, severely beating time to the music with an ivory baton, and keeping a sharp eye on the band of the Household Grenadiers, who followed next – but with such a look of pride and bliss on his face that Dido’s heart, in spite of herself, swelled in sympathy and admiration. Oh I don’t know what to think about pa, she thought; he’s a rancid liar, he don’t reckon on nobody but himself, he was unkind to Ma and horrible to Mrs B., he never done a thing for Penny or me, but there’s nobody in the whole world can make up tunes like his? Maybe his tunes’ll go on for ever? Maybe folk will remember them long after they’ve forgotten Pa, and the bad things he done? Maybe the tunes is what’s important, not Pa?

  And then Dido wondered, for the first time, where her father had passed his childhood. He had never talked to her about it – never said a word. Maybe he had been a lollpoop, growing up in the street, spending his nights in a lodging like Mrs Bloodvessel’s?

  The carriage bearing the Margrave and Mr Twite rolled out of sight into the dark tunnel; Mr Twite had not noticed his daughter on the hillside above.

  Now Dido turned and began to wriggle purposefully through the crowd, which swallowed her as the incoming tide swallows up a single grain of sand; slowly, doggedly, persistently, she worked her way up the embankment, through a thousand legs, always going uphill over the stony, snowy, frozen ground, on hands and knees, until the mass of people began to thin out, and at last she was away from the crowd, quite alone, on the bank of the frozen Thames. To her left were the masts and chimneys of the India and Millwall Docks; to her right the river stretched like a white velvet ribbon; far off, shining gold in the early light, she could see the spires of Westminster. And in front of her lay a quarter of a mile of ice.

  Do I dare to go over the other side? she wondered.

  Charing Cross is a fair step from here, it’s true; the river’s not so wide there.

  Yes I do dare; that ice looks plenty thick enough to me.

  Down below, along the procession route, the crowd was waiting, happily beating time and singing all the bits they could remember from Mr Twite’s tunes, for the second half of the procession to begin appearing out of the tunnel in the other direction. Troops from the Bombardier Guards were now going in; they rode grey horses and wore huge white hats made of polar bears’ fur, and white cloaks, and the music to which they cantered along was one of Mr Twite’s most serious tunes, ‘Three Herrings for a Ha’penny’. Quite soon, as the crowd knew, a troop of milkmaids and shepherds and hay-wagons would come dancing out in the other direction, to a different kind of music. And there would be another coach following them, but who would be sitting in it? Would the king have changed coaches in mid-tunnel, as some thought, and come riding back to his palace at St James’s, leaving the glass coach to continue empty to Greenwich? Or would Princess Adelaide of Thuringia be in it? (This was what another lot of people hoped and expected.) Or perhaps there would just be a waxwork king inside the second coach?

  By and by, out it came. Londoners who had been alive at the coronation of Old King Jamie III recognized the vehicle; it was the one called the Royal May-Bogie, made expressly for that coronation, which had taken place at mid-summer; it was painted all over, most gorgeously, with coloured blossoms and leaves, so that it looked like a bunch of flowers travelling along the highway. The same two footmen – or two who looked the same at any rate – stood up behind, but now they carried huge bouquets of sweetpeas; and in the carriage, not quite so easily visible as in the glass coach, for the windows were smaller, but still easily recognizable, was the king himself. So he must have changed coaches in the tunnel!

  ‘God save King Dick!’ burst in a roar from a thousand happy throats. ‘God save good old King Dick. May he never fall sick!’

  Halfway across the ice, Dido paused, wondering if she had caught the sound of her name, called faintly in the distance behind her. She looked round. From here, in the middle of the great white highway which was the Thames, London seemed no more than a faint smudge; a cloud of smoke and a cluster of frosty roofs to the north and west of her. To the east there were masts, where ships lay frozen in at Greenwich and Woolwich; to the south, the hills of Kent glimmered in a frosty haze. Even the royal music, from here, was only a faint throb in the ice-cold air, sometimes to be heard from one side of the river, sometimes from the other.

  I wonder what it’s like, down there in the tunnel, thought Dido. Ain’t it queer that, right under where I stand, perhaps at this very minute, Simon and Podge are changing over coaches. Oh I do hope it’s all going as it should.

  And then she was sure she heard her name again, clear and sharp across the diamond brightness of the ice: ‘Dido! Di——do!’ And there, a small black speck making his way steadily towards her across the whiteness, was Wally.

  Although dying to get on, and see the rest of the procession from the other side, Dido waited patiently until he had come up with her, slipping and sliding and panting.

  ‘Why, Wally? What’s amiss?’

  ‘Had to catch you –’ he gulped.

  ‘What about your coffee-stall? You’re losing umpty pounds worth o’ trade!’

  ‘One o’ the lollpoops just warned me – van Doon sent word back to Bart’s Building – he was in a mortal fright for ye – he heard the Margrave planning to do you – heard him giving orders –’

  Wally stopped speaking. At first Dido thought he had run out of breath. Then, seeing his face of stupefied horror staring over her shoulder, she turned to find out what he was looking at, a
nd saw the ice-boat.

  It was set on a triangular frame with an iron runner at each corner and the point of the triangle at the stern; there was a rudder, a mainsail, and a jib. The sails were enormous, contrasted with the size of the boat, which was hardly larger than a dinghy. Because of the huge spread of sails, though there seemed little wind, the boat was able to career along over the frozen river at a startling speed, tacking vigorously from side to side; now it swooped over to St Katherine’s Dock, now it darted south-east towards Cherry Garden Pier; now it hurtled back to the north side of the river; now it was coming straight for them, like an arrow over the ice.

  ‘It’s the Margrave’s ice schooner,’ stammered Wally with blue lips. ‘Run, Dido! Bunk! Mizzle! Best make for the south shore!’

  As the ice-boat careered towards them, Dido saw the black hammer on the gold flag. And she recognized Boletus at the tiller and Morel standing in the bows with a noose of rope in his hand.

  ‘Run!’ cried Wally again. But it was too late.

  With a tremendous grinding roar, with a fizz of pulverized, powdery ice, the silvery keel shot past them, the noose, expertly flung, jerked them together, and, gasping like fish on the angler’s line, they were drawn on board.

  Tum, tum, titherum, tum, tum, sang the drums, and the glass coach rolled out from the tunnel into Kent.

  ‘Hooray, hooray, hooray!’ yelled the happy crowd, as the horses paced forward, to the tune of ‘Calico Alley’, cunningly mingled now with ‘Raining, Raining, all the Day’. And Mr van Doon, in velvet cloak and ruby-studded crown, bowed and smiled and waved to the populace until, unused to this exercise, his arm ached and his hand grew numb. Through Rotherhithe and Deptford, on towards Greenwich, the coach rolled, and gradually the crowds diminished until there was nobody left along the route. Then suddenly the glass coach turned aside, up Forest Hill, and over Black Heath, abandoning the rest of the procession, which continued towards Greenwich. By now the highway was a single road, then it became a farm track, then no more than a narrow glade between trees.’

  ‘What is this?’ called the occupant of the coach. ‘Where are you going? Where are you taking me? This cannot be the right road. Stop! Stop I say!’

  And he hammered on the glass panel separating him from the driver.

  ‘We’ll stop soon enough. Don’t you fret your head,’ replied the coachman, without troubling to turn round.

  High on the hilltop, among the thorn trees, lay a thick, icy fog; the branches glimmered with hoar-frost, the birds were all silent. Not a sound was to be heard.

  Presently the coach rolled to a stop; the horses stood giving off clouds of steam and vapour. A pair of men, who had been waiting there under the trees, walked forward; one of them took the bridle of the leaders.

  ‘Nicely on time,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Have you done the digging?’ asked the coachman, dismounting.

  ‘Ah. It’s done.’

  ‘Let’s have him out then.’

  Numb with horror and astonishment, van Doon heard the footmen jump down from the rear of the coach. The door was flung open.

  ‘We need you out of there,’ someone said, and rough hands dragged him out, so unceremoniously that he stumbled and fell on the frozen, snowy ground.

  ‘What are you doing? You cannot do this to me?’

  ‘Oh can’t us, my codger! That’s what you think!’

  ‘But I – but I –’

  He didn’t know what to say. If they thought that he was the king –? But, on the other hand, if they knew he was a van Doon –?

  ‘What are you doing? What are you going to do?’

  The king was supposed to be taken to some island; where he would be imprisoned but not harmed; so the Margrave had said.

  ‘You’ll soon see, my cocky. You’ll see soon enough, my fine majesty.’

  His cloak, crown, and velvet jacket were taken off him. Somebody said, ‘Tie his hands,’ and they were grabbed, and roped behind his back. A sack was thrown over his head. ‘Take off them di’mond buckled shoes,’ someone said. ‘He ’on’t want ’em where he’s going.’

  Half fainting, cold and sick with horror, van Doon crumpled on the ground. He heard steps moving away.

  ‘Let’s see the hole – is it good and deep?’ someone said. ‘Might as well hit him on the head at once, then, and shovel him under.’

  Then the coachman’s voice: ‘Nay, no, no, dag me, that ain’t half deep enough. His Nabs’d have our guts for garters if wolves come along and dug him up again and he was recognized. Here: give us a shovel; it won’t take but five minutes to dig out another ell or so – blow me, but this ground’s hard though, ain’t it –’

  A sound of clinking, grunting, and panting.

  Then, very softly from behind him, the paralysed van Doon heard a whisper.

  ‘Mister! Mister! Can you roll over on your stummick? That way I can get at your hands to undo ’em.’

  Hardly able to credit his ears, he rolled; and felt something tiny picking and sawing at the cruelly tight cords that bound him. It felt like a grasshopper’s teeth . . . he could not believe than anything hopeful would come of it. But then an edge of metal snicked the ball of his thumb – like the sting of a hornet – and next moment his hands were free.

  ‘Don’t-ee move yet – now I’ll do your feet,’ said the hornet, and the sawing began again on the cords that bound his ankles. The sack was pulled off his head. Van Doon moved his cheek on the frosty ground, enough so that he could squint sideways and see who was working to release him.

  It was the Slut.

  ‘That’ll do plenty, that’s deep enough,’ said a voice beyond the thorn tree. ‘No wolf’s a-going to dig him out of there.’

  ‘Just a couple o’ feet more.’

  ‘What a one you are for digging! Ought to be king’s gardener at Kew.’

  ‘Hup, mister – can you stand?’

  Hauled by two tiny hands, van Doon rose totteringly to his feet. Now the Slut was putting away a businesslike little pen-knife.

  ‘That’s the dandy. Now, you gotta run. Come on! Arter me. Fast as ever you can!’

  Gulping in great lungfuls of icy, foggy air, van Doon set off clumsily, in his sock feet, after the Slut, who was barefoot. She sped away through the thorn-bushes, looking back every couple of yards to make sure that he was following her.

  Quite soon they heard angry shouts behind them.

  ‘Oy! Oy, lookit! The cove’s scarpered. After him!’

  Dido said to Morel, ‘You’ll be real sorry if you do any mischief to us, mister. The king knows all about His Nabs’s little plan to do a swap-over in the tunnel; and it ain’t a-going to happen. Or not the way His Nabs expects.’

  ‘Really? Fancy that!’ said Morel, smiling at her disbelievingly, as the ice-yacht continued to whiz along the frozen river, going eastwards.

  ‘It’s so,’ said Dido. ‘They done the swap already. The king went out to Greenwich last night, and rode in this morning. And van Doon went to St James’s at sun-up and got in the glass coach. So now the king’s riding in to London, and van Doon’s on his way to Kent. And His Nabs is in for a mighty peck o’ trouble.’

  ‘You are a very clever child,’ said Morel, ‘and you made up all that out of your head, and there isn’t a single word of truth in it.’

  He folded his arms and continued to smile.

  ‘What did the Margrave tell you to do with her?’ croaked Wally.

  ‘Take her down to Woolwich Basin, where the ice is thinner, and drop her in. He didn’t tell us to do that with you,’ – giving Wally a despising look, ‘but, as you would come along for the ride, now you have to pay the fare.’

  And he turned, whistling, to let out the sail, as the boat went about.

  ‘I’d best drop Dad’s sack over the side,’ Wally murmured to Dido in a low tone. ‘Maybe someone’ll pick it up and find the gold key –’

  ‘What’s that about a gold key, my young shaver?’ inquired Boletus alertly. ‘You got
a gold key in that there sack? And what would that be the key to, I wonder? Here, Morel, take the tiller a moment.’

  He moved forward and grabbed the bag that still hung from Wally’s shoulder.

  ‘I don’t see no gold key,’ he grumbled, rummaging through its contents. ‘But there’s a very decent morsel o’ cheese here, and a jug of what smells like real grade-A tipple – no sense in dropping that down to the fishes at Woolwich. Here, Morel – take a swig of this, it’s right stingo stuff!’ And he passed the flask to his mate, smacking his lips, then bolting down a large lump of cheese.

  Too bad there ain’t enough for you young ’uns,’ remarked Morel, tossing down the rest of the drink and then munching the rest of the cheese. ‘But there’s no point in wasting it . . . Now where’s this gold key you was on about?’ he demanded of Wally, groping about in the bottom of the black velvet bag; ‘I don’t feel any gold key. Are you trying it on? Because if you are –’

  He stopped, suddenly, his face contorted into a mask of extreme agony.

  ‘Jeeeee – rusalem! What in the wide –’

  At the same moment Boletus let out a fearful yell of pain.

  ‘Ohhhhhhh! Murder! There’s a fire in my bread-basket!’

  Both men doubled over, clutching frantically at their stomachs.

  ‘What is it?’ gasped Dido, utterly bewildered. ‘What’s got into ’em?’

  Now the two of them were writhing in the bottom of the boat, rolling over and over like hedgehogs.

  Wally moved to the tiller and took it, watching the men dispassionately. He said, ‘It’s Dad’s apple-punch. You must never, ever drink it when you’ve eaten cheese. Or t’other way round. The two don’t go together. Dad says it’s liable to kill you. I don’t know if he’s right for I never see anyone try it before. But looks like he might be . . . Now we’d best be ready to jump; this seems as good a place as any. Are you game?’