Читать книгу A Reputed Changeling - Yonge Charlotte Mary - Страница 2

“He is an ugly ill-favoured boy—just like Riquet à la Houppe.”

“That he is!  Do you not know that he is a changeling?”

Such were the words of two little girls walking home from a school for young ladies kept, at the Cathedral city of Winchester, by two Frenchwomen of quality, refugees from the persecutions preluding the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who enlivened the studies of their pupils with the Contes de Commère L’Oie.

The first speaker was Anne Jacobina Woodford, who had recently come with her mother, the widow of a brave naval officer, to live with her uncle, the Prebendary then in residence.  The other was Lucy Archfield, daughter to a knight, whose home was a few miles from Portchester, Dr. Woodford’s parish on the southern coast of Hampshire.

In the seventeenth century, when roads were mere ditches often impassable, and country-houses frequently became entirely isolated in the winter, it was usual with the wealthier county families to move into their local capital, where some owned mansions and others hired prebendal houses, or went into lodgings in the roomy dwellings of the superior tradesmen.  For the elders this was the season of social intercourse, for the young people, of education.

The two girls, who were about eight years old, had struck up a rapid friendship, and were walking hand in hand to the Close attended by the nurse in charge of Mistress Lucy.  This little lady wore a black silk hood and cape, trimmed with light brown fur, and lined with pink, while Anne Woodford, being still in mourning for her father, was wrapped in a black cloak, unrelieved except by the white border of her round cap, fringed by fair curls, contrasting with her brown eyes.  She was taller and had a more upright bearing of head and neck, with more promise of beauty than her companion, who was much more countrified and would not have been taken for the child of higher station.

They had traversed the graveyard of the Cathedral, and were passing through a narrow archway known as the Slype, between the south-western angle of the Cathedral and a heavy mass of old masonry forming part of the garden wall of the present abode of the Archfield family, when suddenly both children stumbled and fell, while an elfish peal of laughter sounded behind them.

Lucy came down uppermost, and was scarcely hurt, but Anne had fallen prone, striking her chin on the ground, so as to make her bite her lip, and bruising knees and elbows severely.  Nurse detected the cause of the fall so as to avoid it herself.  It was a cord fastened across the archway, close to the ground, and another shout of derision greeted the discovery; while Lucy, regaining her feet, beheld for a moment a weird exulting grimace on a visage peeping over a neighbouring headstone.

“It is he! it is he!  The wicked imp!  There’s no peace for him!  I say,” she screamed, “see if you don’t get a sound flogging!” and she clenched her little fist as the provoking “Ho! ho! ho!” rang farther and farther off.  “Don’t cry, Anne dear; the Dean and Chapter shall take order with him, and he shall be soundly beaten.  Are you hurt?  O nurse, her mouth is all blood.”

“I hope she has not broken a tooth,” said nurse, who had been attending to the sobbing child.  “Come in, my lamb, we will wash your face, and make you well.”

Anne, blinded with tears, jarred, bruised, bleeding, and bewildered, submitted to be led by kind nurse the more willingly because she knew that her mother, together with all the quality, were at Sir Thomas Charnock’s.  They had dined at the fashionable hour of two, and were to stay till supper-time, the elders playing at Ombre, the juniors dancing.  As a rule the ordinary clergy did not associate with the county families, but Dr. Woodford was of good birth and a royal chaplain, and his deceased brother had been a favourite officer of the Duke of York, and had been so severely wounded by his side in the battle of Southwold as to be permanently disabled.  Indeed Anne Jacobina was godchild to the Duke and his first Duchess, whose favoured attendant her mother had been.  Thus Mrs. Woodford was in great request, and though she had not hitherto gone into company since her widowhood, she had yielded to Lady Charnock’s entreaty that she would come and show her how to deal with that strange new Chinese infusion, a costly packet of which had been brought to her from town by Sir Thomas, as the Queen’s favourite beverage, wherewith the ladies of the place were to be regaled and astonished.

It had been already arranged that the two little girls should spend the evening together, and as they entered the garden before the house a rude voice exclaimed, “Holloa!  London Nan whimpering.  Has my fine lady met a spider or a cow?” and a big rough lad of twelve, in a college gown, spread out his arms, and danced up and down in the doorway to bar the entrance.

“Don’t, Sedley,” said a sturdy but more gentlemanlike lad of the same age, thrusting him aside.  “Is she hurt?  What is it?”

“That spiteful imp, Peregrine Oakshott,” said Lucy passionately.  “He had a cord across the Slype to trip us up.  I heard him laughing like a hobgoblin, and saw him too, grinning over a tombstone like the malicious elf he is.”

The college boy uttered a horse laugh, which made Lucy cry, “Cousin Sedley, you are as bad!” but the other boy was saying, “Don’t cry, Anne None-so-pretty.  I’ll give it him well!  Though I’m younger, I’m bigger, and I’ll show him reason for not meddling with my little sweetheart.”

“Have with you then!” shouted Sedley, ready for a fray on whatever pretext, and off they rushed, as nurse led little Anne up the broad shallow steps of the dark oak staircase, but Lucy stood laughing with exultation in the intended vengeance, as her brother took down her father’s hunting-whip.

“He must be wellnigh a fiend to play such wicked pranks under the very Minster!” she said.

“And a rascal of a Whig, and that’s worse,” added Charles; “but I’ll have it out of him!”

“Take care, Charley; if you offend him, and he does really belong to those—those creatures”—Lucy lowered her voice—“who knows what they might do to you?”

Charles laughed long and loud.  “I’ll take care of that,” he said, swinging out at the door.  “Elf or no elf, he shall learn what it is to play off his tricks on my sister and my little sweetheart.”

Lucy betook herself to the nursery, where Anne was being comforted, her bleeding lip washed with essence, and repaired with a pinch of beaver from a hat, and her other bruises healed with lily leaves steeped in strong waters.

“Charley is gone to serve him out!” announced Lucy as the sovereign remedy.

“Oh, but perhaps he did not mean it,” Anne tried to say.

“Mean it?  Small question of that, the cankered young slip!  Nurse, do you think those he belongs to can do Charley any harm if he angers them?”

“I cannot say, missie.  Only ’tis well we be not at home, or there might be elf knots in the horses’ manes to-night.  I doubt me whether that sort can do much hurt here, seeing as ’tis holy ground.”

“But is he really a changeling?  I thought there were no such things as—”

“Hist, hist, Missie Anne!” cried the dame; “’tis not good to name them.”

“Oh, but we are on the Minster ground, nurse,” said Lucy, trembling a little however, looking over her shoulder, and coming closer to the old servant.

“Why do they think so?” asked Anne.  “Is it because he is so ugly and mischievous and rude?  Not like boys in London.”

“Prithee, nurse, tell her the tale,” entreated Lucy, who had made large eyes over it many a time before.

“Ay, and who should tell you all about it save me, who had it all from Goody Madge Bulpett, as saw it all!”

“Goody Madge!  It was she that came when poor little Kitty was born and died,” suggested Lucy, as Anne, laying her aching head upon nurse’s knees, prepared to listen to the story.

“Well, deary darlings, you see poor Madam Oakshott never had her health since the Great Fire in London, when she was biding with her kinsfolk to be near Major Oakshott, who had got into trouble about some of his nonconforming doings.  The poor lady had a mortal fright before she could be got out of Gracechurch Street as was all of a blaze, and she was so afeard of her husband being burnt as he lay in Newgate that she could scarce be got away, and whether it was that, or that she caught cold lying out in a tent on Highgate Hill, she has never had a day’s health since.”

“And the gentleman—her husband?” asked Anne.

“They all broke prison, poor fellows, as they had need to do, and the Major’s time was nearly up.  He made himself busy in saving and helping the folk in the streets; and his brother, Sir Peregrine, who was thick with the King, and is in foreign parts now, took the chance to speak of the poor lady’s plight and say it would be the death of her if he could not get his discharge, and his Majesty, bless his kind heart, gave the order at once.  So they took madam home to the Chace, but she has been but an ailing body ever since.”

“But the fairy, the fairy, how did she change the babe?” cried Anne.

“Hush, hush, dearie! name them not.  I am coming to it all in good time.  I was telling you how the poor lady failed and pined from that hour, and was like to die.  My gossip Madge told me how when, next Midsummer, this unlucky babe was born they had to take him from her chamber at once because any sound of crying made her start in her sleep, and shriek that she heard a poor child wailing who had been left in a burning house.  Moll Owens, the hind’s wife, a comely lass, was to nurse him, and they had him at once to her in the nursery, where was the elder child, two years old, Master Oliver, as you know well, Mistress Lucy, a fine-grown, sturdy little Turk as ever was.”

“Yes, I know him,” answered Lucy; “and if his brother’s a changeling, he is a bear!  The Whig bear is what Charley calls him.”

“Well, what does that child do but trot out of the nursery, and try to scramble down the stairs.—Never tell me but that they you wot of trained him out—not that they had power over a Christian child, but that they might work their will on the little one.  So they must needs trip him up, so that he rolled down the stair hollering and squalling all the way enough to bring the house down, and his poor lady mother, she woke up in a fit.  The womenfolk ran, Molly and all, she being but a slip of a girl herself and giddy-pated, and when they came back after quieting Master Oliver, the babe was changed.”

“Then they didn’t see the—”

“Hush, hush, missie! no one never sees ’em or they couldn’t do nothing.  They cannot, if a body is looking.  But what had been as likely a child before as you would wish to handle was gone!  The poor little mouth was all of a twist, and his eyelid drooped, and he never ceased mourn, mourn, mourn, wail, wail, wail, day and night, and whatever food he took he never was satisfied, but pined and peaked and dwined from day to day, so as his little legs was like knitting pins.  The lady was nigh upon death as it seemed, so that no one took note of the child at first, but when Madge had time to look at him, she saw how it was, as plain as plain could be, and told his father.  But men are unbelieving, my dears, and always think they know better than them as has the best right, and Major Oakshott would hear of no such thing, only if the boy was like to die, he must be christened.  Well, Madge knew that sometimes they flee at touch of holy water, but no; though the thing mourned and moaned enough to curdle your blood and screeched out when the water touched him, there he was the same puny little canker.  So when madam was better, and began to fret over the child that was nigh upon three months old, and no bigger than a newborn babe, Madge up and told her how it was, and the way to get her own again.”

“What was that, nurse?”

“There be different ways, my dear.  Madge always held to breaking five and twenty eggs and have a pot boiling on a good sea-coal fire with the poker in it red hot, and then drop the shells in one by one, in sight of the creature in the cradle.  Presently it will up and ask whatever you are about.  Then you gets the poker in your hand as you says, “A-brewing of egg shells.”  Then it says, “I’m forty hundred years old and odd, and yet I never heard of a-brewing of egg shells.”  Then you ups with the poker and at him to thrust it down his ugly throat, and there’s a hissing and a whirling, and he is snatched away, and the real darling, all plump and rosy, is put back in the cradle.”

“And did they?”

“No, my dears.  Madam was that soft-hearted she could not bring her mind to it, though they promised her not to touch him unless he spoke.  But nigh on two years later, Master Robert was born, as fine and lusty and straight-limbed as a chrisom could be, while the other could not walk a step, but sat himself about on the floor, a-moaning and a-fretting with the legs of him for all the world like the drumsticks of a fowl, and his hands like claws, and his face wizened up like an old gaffer of a hundred, or the jackanapes that Martin Boats’n brought from Barbary.  So after a while madam saw the rights of it, and gave consent that means should be taken as Madge and other wise folk would have it; but he was too old by that time for the egg shells, for he could talk, talk, and ask questions enough to drive you wild.  So they took him out under the privet hedge, Madge and her gossip Deborah Clint, and had got his clothes off to flog him with nettles till they changed him, when the ill-favoured elf began to squall and shriek like a whole litter of pigs, and as ill luck would have it, the master was within hearing, though they had watched him safe off to one of his own ’venticles, but it seems there had been warning that the justices were on the look-out, so home he came.  And behold, the thing that never knew the use of his feet before, ups and flies at him, and lays hold of his leg, hollering out, “Sir, father, don’t let them,” and what not.  So then it was all over with them, as though that were not proof enow what manner of thing it was!  Madge tried to put him off with washing with yarbs being good for the limbs, but when he saw that Deb was there, he saith, saith he, as grim as may be, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” which was hard, for she is but a white witch; and he stormed and raved at them with Bible texts, and then he vowed (men are so headstrong, my dears) that if ever he ketched them at it again, he would see Deb burnt for a witch at the stake, and Madge hung for the murder of the child, and he is well known to be a man of his word.  So they had to leave him to abide by his bargain, and a sore handful he has of it.”

Anne drew a long sigh and asked whether the real boy in fairyland would never come back.

“There’s no telling, missie dear.  Some say they are bound there for ever and a day, some that they as holds ’em are bound to bring them back for a night once in seven years, and in the old times if they was sprinkled with holy water, and crossed, they would stay, but there’s no such thing as holy water now, save among the Papists, and if one knew the way to cross oneself, it would be as much as one’s life was worth.”

“If Peregrine was to die,” suggested Lucy.

“Bless your heart, dearie, he’ll never die!  When the true one’s time comes, you’ll see, if so be you be alive to see it, as Heaven grant, he will go off like the flame of a candle and nothing be left in his place but a bit of a withered sting nettle.  But come, my sweetings, ’tis time I got your supper.  I’ll put some nice rosy-cheeked apples down to roast, to be soft for Mistress Woodford’s sore mouth.”

Before the apples were roasted, Charles Archfield and his cousin, the colleger Sedley Archfield, a big boy in a black cloth gown, came in with news of having—together with the other boys, including Oliver and Robert Oakshott—hunted Peregrine all round the Close, but he ran like a lapwing, and when they had pinned him up in the corner by Dr. Ken’s house, he slipped through their fingers up the ivy, and grinned at them over the wall like the imp he was.  Noll said it was always the way, he was no more to be caught than a bit of thistledown, but Sedley meant to call out all the college boys and hunt and bait him down like a badger on ‘Hills.’