Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
“You can write to Miss Avis,” I said, “and draw her pictures of Caldicott Hall. Your letter would be addressed to Mrs. Carstairs to thank her for the fine time you enjoyed at the vicarage, with a postscript to Miss Avis.”
“I like Lark too.” Leander yawned as our horses plodded along.
Hyperia rode a skinny, geriatric bay mare who nonetheless enjoyed good conformation. I was on Atlas, and Leander had been mounted on a shaggy dapple gray as venerable as she was hairy.
“Lark is not as loquacious as her younger sister,” I said as we turned up the drive that led to the Keep. The way was deceptively slippery, with the dusting of snow melting under the bright sun, while the ground beneath remained solidly frozen.
“Lo-quay-shush,” Leander muttered. “Does that mean bossy?”
“Loquacious,” Hyperia replied, “means chatty, voluble, garrulous.”
Leander stared at her. He was doubtless hoarding up vocabulary like a young dragon hoarded gold. “Avis talks a lot so Lark doesn’t have to say much.”
From the mouths of babes… “The grooms are still skating.” I spotted Atticus easily as the half-swept pond came into view, because he was swirling about with a broom in each hand. He looked to be having a fine time, though he was going too fast for a tyro on the ice.
“I want to skate!” Leander kicked his pony, which had no effect other than to bring the beast’s head up for a moment.
“Do you know how to skate?” Hyperia asked.
“No, but that’s Atticus, and he’s skating. He is supposed to be working in the stable, but there he is with the two brooms.”
Each boy managed to envy the other his supposed freedoms and privileges, though as best I could determine, neither boy wanted to swap places.
“This is Atticus’s first outing on skates,” I said.
“The whole stable has paused in their labors to enjoy this diversion, which I understand to be something of a pre-Twelfth Night tradition at the Keep. Atticus is using the brooms for balance, and you will, too, if you’d like to give skating a try. ”
“He’s going wicked fast.”
“Too fast,” Hyperia said. “Julian…”
“Agreed.” But how to intervene without mortifying my tiger? He appeared to have an aptitude for the sport but, in the way of too many boys of varying sizes, no appreciation for the risks.
“Oh God.” Hyperia stopped her mare just as Atticus lost one broom and went shooting off toward the uncleared portion of the pond. He went down, spun like a loose kite, and then the ice under him gave way.
“Uncle Julian, he’ll drown!”
“No, he shall not.” I cued Atlas into a fast canter, and we made straight across the snow-dusted ground for the pond. “Atticus, stop thrashing! Save your breath!”
Atlas executed a perfect sliding stop by the side of the pond. The grooms were gathering around, all yelling directions to the boy, who flailed mightily in the frigid water beyond the broken ice.
“You lot get back,” I yelled. “If the ice is weak, your combined weight only increases the risk of more breakage. Start tying your scarves into a single long rope. Solid knots.”
“I can’t swim!” Atticus choked. “I can’t swim, and the water’s too deep.”
“I can swim.” I jogged along the bank as Hyperia and Leander approached on horseback at a trot. “I can swim, and if you move your legs steadily and keep your arms atop the ice, you will not drown.”
“It’s too bloody cold, guv!”
“We’ll have you out in no time. Lay your arms on the ice. Don’t try to climb out, or you might break more ice.”
He laid first one dripping arm over the unbroken ice, then the other. “I can’t feel nothing but c-cold.”
I walked onto the surface at the uncleared end of the pond and went cautiously. All seemed sturdy, but some warm spring feeding the pond from the bottom might have created weakness in the middle.
“We’re making ye a rope, lad,” one of the grooms called. “Just keep yer head and do as his lordship tells ye.”
“Be it noted,” I said, giving the ice a good thump with my bootheel. “I am about to soak my boots and everything else I’m wearing. Leander, we’ll need you off that pony.”
My heart was pounding like a war drum. Battle nerves, and because I had not suffered them in some time, they shook me. My breath felt short, though I was not winded, and only at the last minute did I think to toss my spectacles, gloves, and coat onto the bank.
“I’m coming to you,” I said, giving the ice another stout thump. I was rewarded with a crack, so I thumped again and let the pond claim me.
The cold was shocking, also dangerous. I could touch bottom—barely—and the bottom fell farther away as I made my way to Atticus.
The grooms were lined up on the bank, faces tense. They’d fashioned us a rope of different-colored scarves.
“Leander,” I called, “you come first. Take one end of the scarf and crawl on hands and knees toward Atticus. You are light, a veritable sack of feathers, and the ice will hold your weight. Stop a good eight feet from Atticus and spread yourself flat on the ice like a pinwheel.”
I reached my quarry and held him about the waist. The water was near my chin, but I could hoist Atticus up enough to reassure him that rescue was at hand.
“I’m c-cold.”
“Understandably so, as am I. Close enough, Leander. I want the smallest of you grooms crawling onto the ice as Leander has just demonstrated. You grab the boy by the ankle, and the next smallest grabs his fellow, and so forth. Make a chain, and we’ll pull Atticus free.”
The difficulty for Atticus was that he could not climb out of the water.
He had no means of gaining purchase against the slippery ice, though he could continue to widen the hole he’d fallen into on all sides.
The cold would soon render him too weak to move, and once he went under, finding him in the murk and reeds would be impossible.
“Leander, toss Atticus the scarf.”
The first few throws went wide until I managed to catch the bright red end of the makeshift rope.
“Atticus, can you hold the rope?”
He tried to close his fist. “Hands froze.”
“Try again.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to die.”
“Ballocks to that.” I managed—just—to get the scarf knotted around his skinny chest. “They’ll pull you out, and your job is to let them.
Don’t help, don’t struggle. Gentlemen, on three, you haul Leander closer to you.
Leander, you keep hold on to the rope for dear life until Atticus is free of the water and lying on the ice like a drunken seal. ”
“On three!” somebody yelled.
I braced my boots as effectively as I could against the silted bottom of the pond, and on three, I heaved Atticus up onto the unbroken ice.
It cracked.
Just as I gave him a shove forward with the last of my reach, the grooms hauled stoutly, and Leander held on, indeed, for dear life. Atticus was soon on shore, a shivering, sodden heap, three coats draped over him and his little back being incessantly patted.
I slogged into shallower waters, managed to crawl onto the ice nearest the bank, and was soon a somewhat larger shivering heap. Four flasks were waved at me. I partook of one, wished I hadn’t, and issued a general order to get the scarves unknotted.
“Shut yer gobs and do as his lordship says,” somebody—presumably Ferguson—barked. “Back to work with us, as soon as yon lad and his lordship are up to the Keep.”
“If somebody could take my horse to the stable, I’d appreciate it.” Atticus would forgive me the ruin of my boots, but I would not forgive myself if my sopping personage ruined Atlas’s saddle. “And Miss West will need an escort back to Lady Clotilda’s.”
A dog cart driven by a substantial female jogged up from the direction of the stable. “Is the wee lad well? Tell us he didna drown!”
“He’ll be right enough if the fevers don’t get him,” Ferguson said. “His lordship had him out before you could say God Save the King.”
The occupant of the cart, a thickly swaddled woman of later years, scrambled down unaided. “Wee Atticus, bless us, ye’ve had a soaking. Into the cart with ye, and don’t think of sassing Maggie MacArthur if you value your hide.”
“Cook,” Ferguson muttered for my apparent benefit. “We don’t trifle with her.”
“My lord, you too,” Maggie MacArthur said. “No sass. Wet as you are, this cold will steal the life from your bones.”
“Julian.” Hyperia was neither ordering nor requesting. She was reminding me that there were children present.
Then too, I had lost all feeling in every extremity. Draped in my blessedly dry coat, I was half hoisted into the dog cart, Atticus a shivering lump beside me. Maggie wedged herself onto the bench, took up the reins, and inspired the pony to circle back in the direction of the Keep.
Before she could direct the beast into his bouncing trot, I offered a general wave. “Good job, you lot. The boy could have perished, but you didn’t let that happen. Leander, you acquitted yourself with particular courage and quick-wittedness.”
My eloquence ended there in a loud sneeze, which provoked ragged laughter. As the pony lifted into a punishment of a trot, Hyperia slipped an arm around Leander’s shoulders and gave him a squeeze.
I waited until Atticus and I were bundled into flannel dressing gowns, shawls, and lap robes and further warmed by the blazing hearth in my quarters before I began my interrogation.
“Who urged you to greater speed, Atticus?”
He lifted his nose from his mug of cider. “Wot you goin’ on about now, guv?”
“You are a novice at skating, and you heeded the voice of caution up to a point. You used both brooms, and you tried to keep to the swept part of the pond, but somebody urged you to take a measure that put you at risk of serious harm. Who goaded you to fly across the ice?”
“Everybody said that’s the best part. You go so fast, you feel like you’re flying. My skate caught on some bump in the ice, and then I fell.”
“Everybody urged you to go flying onto the unswept ice? No one told you to slow down?”