Chapter 11 #2
The all too familiar negative answers to her queries rather dampened her zeal, but she rode on to the smithy.
Amid showers of sparks and the clang of iron on iron, Ted Barnard was forging a shoe for a vast, patient carthorse.
Daisy waved to him. His grin white in his blackened face, he waved back with his hammer.
She wheeled her bike around the smithy and leant it against the back wall, out of the way. The Barnards’ whitewashed brick cottage was right next door, its tiny front garden ablaze with sweet williams, candytuft, tall blue delphiniums, and fragrant mignonette.
Mrs. Barnard, stout and grey now but as motherly as ever, was delighted to see Daisy. So was Tuffet, a tousled, dun-coloured bundle of energy with bright brown eyes behind her shaggy forelock, who danced around Daisy’s feet, stumpy tail wagging madly.
“Go to your basket,” Mrs. Barnard ordered. “She’s got more bounce than I can cope with, Miss Daisy, and that’s a fact. You just set yourself down for a nice cuppa, dear. The kettle’s on the hob.”
Over seed-cake and an amazing assortment of home-made biscuits, Daisy told Mrs. Barnard about her writing career. “And now I’m doing some articles on London museums for an American magazine,” she finished.
“Well I never, fancy that! Such a naughty little moppet as you was, too, always running after your poor, dear brother and always a heap of pinnies to be ironed, so quick as you dirtied ’em.”
Daisy laughed. “Unlike Vi, who was always clean and tidy, and still is.” She looked down ruefully at her dusty blouse and skirt.
“One of the advantages of writing is that no one sees you a lot of the time. Mrs. Barnard, do you remember Gervaise frightening me half to death with a tale of a witch living in Cooper’s Wood? ”
“That I do, dear, being as how it was me sat up with you through your nightmares for a week after.”
“Is she still alive? Does anyone live in that cottage now?”
“Nay, the old ’oman died a few years sin’—ninety-four, she were! Mr. Feversham up at the big house being too old himself to care for shooting or much else nowadays, he’s let the cottage moulder and the coverts grow wild.”
“I thought I might go and have a look at the place. It would be a good setting for a story. Only I’d rather like company. Do you think Tuffet would like to go for a walk with me?”
At the magic word, the dog bounded from her basket and came to sit at Daisy’s feet, peering up hopefully through her fringe.
“It’s my belief,” said Mrs. Barnard, laughing, “as she’d love to go with you. Nor you needn’t be bringing her every step of the way back if it’s out of your way. Tell her to go home and she’ll be on the doorstep in no time flat, begging for her dinner.”
Daisy stopped at the telephone booth by the pub, but it was out of order, so she rode on back to Cooper’s Wood with Tuffet racing beside the bicycle, short legs at full stretch.
Finding the narrow path, Daisy lugged the bike a few paces in from the lane and hid it under a straggly laurel she was sure she’d recognize. The dog at her heels, she continued along the path until it forked.
Both branches led onward into the depths of the wood. Daisy hesitated but, nose to the ground, Tuffet forged ahead down the right-hand path, so she followed.
A jay screeched a general warning. The muted sounds of birdsong ceased abruptly.
In the eerie quiet under the thick canopy of leaves a twig snapped like a pistol-shot beneath Daisy’s sandal.
She stopped, heart in mouth. Nothing came to her ears but the scuff of Tuffet’s feet in the damp, crumbling leaf-mould.
The path gradually swung back on itself, towards the lane. Loath to retrace her steps in the heavy stillness, Daisy kept an eye out for a side turning. Before she found one, a dense mass of holly barred the way.
Or rather, it barred Daisy’s way. The dog scurried on, hot on the trail of a rabbit, squirrel, fox, or pheasant.
“Tuffet!” Daisy called reluctantly, in a low voice, to no effect. She tried to whistle, but her mouth was too dry.
So much for her camouflage. Presuming Tuffet would find her own way home, Daisy turned back. She soon came to another path leading the way she wanted to go—or did she? It led around the giant bole of a once-pollarded oak, wreathed with ivy, which had concealed it from the opposite direction.
She took it, telling herself firmly she had no reason for nerves as the chances that she had chosen to explore the right wood were practically nil. All the same, she walked carefully, avoiding stepping on dry twigs, like in the Red Indian games Gervaise and Phillip had occasionally let her join.
The path twisted and turned, but as far as she could tell continued inward. She had to duck under low branches, climb over a fallen tree-trunk, unhitch her skirt from grasping brambles, and stop now and then to wipe the sweat from her brow.
She must be mad!
Birds were twittering again, having decided the intruder was harmless. Then came another jay’s screech. A moment later, Daisy heard the patter of feet on the path behind her and Tuffet rejoined her with an ecstatic yip.
Heartened, Daisy pushed on. Around a last bend and they emerged into what must once have been a pleasant ride.
The abandoned bridleway had sprouted a forest of birch saplings, and blackthorn thickets, and masses of purple-pink rosebay willow-herb.
Still, the going looked somewhat easier, and it seemed likely that the cottage would have been sited somewhere near the ride for accessibility.
Tossing a mental coin, Daisy turned left.
She followed the path of least resistance.
Within a few yards, her suspicions were aroused.
The way was too wide and, though twisting around obstacles, too straight for fox or badger, or even deer.
Though the ground was too dry and hard for footprints, here and there a plant appeared to have been crushed beneath a heavy boot.
She spotted the odd broken branch, withered leaves brown against the green backdrop.
In a blackthorn, among the swelling sloes, hung a scrap of blue cloth.
Daisy found she was holding her breath. She let it out silently and proceeded with stealthy tread.
Quickly tiring of this slow means of locomotion, Tuffet bounced ahead. To make use of the camouflage, Daisy ought to behave like a legitimate dog-walker, she realized, not skulk along like a poacher after pheasants. Besides, skulking was hard on tired legs. She tramped on at a more normal pace.
In any case, the way through the brush had probably been forced by someone genuinely walking a dog, she assured herself as Tuffet disappeared around a clump of gorse. Inhaling the coconutty fragrance of the yellow blooms, Daisy followed. Before her stood the witch’s hut.
Beneath the branches of a towering sycamore, the cottage crouched like a cornered animal.
Weeds sprouted from the sagging thatch roof.
Whitewashed plaster had yellowed, peeled, and in places flaked away to show the wattle-and-daub walls beneath.
The glass in the two small windows was broken.
The door between was cracked and warped, its iron latch rusted.
Nothing could have looked more desolate, derelict, deserted. Daisy heaved a sigh, half disappointment, half relief. So much for her triumphant return with news of Gloria’s whereabouts.
The dog had paused to snuffle at something in the small garden, where pink-flowered convolvulus smothered overgrown currant and gooseberry bushes. Now she sat down for a brief scratch, before trotting off around the end of the cottage.
“Tuffet!” Daisy called, in vain.
They had come quite a distance from the village, and Daisy was afraid the dog might not find her way home. She followed. No sign of Tuffet. Around the next corner, a thatched lean-to slumped against the cottage’s back wall. Perhaps Tuffet had found a way into it.
As she went to investigate, Daisy glanced up. Above, in the gable of the end wall, she saw the window of an upstairs room. At least, she assumed it was a window. It was boarded up.
The boards should have been grey, weathered, splitting. Instead, they were the ochre of new-sawn wood. Bright nail-heads gleamed.
Daisy’s heart began to thump. She backed away, turned, and hurried round the corner to the front, calling breathlessly for her camouflage. “Tuffet, come! Come here, you naughty dog. Time to go home.”
The door swung open, smoothly, noiselessly, on well-oiled hinges. A large man in braces and a collarless shirt stood on the threshold, his baleful glare adorned with the fading remnant of a black eye.
“Just walking the dog!” Daisy squeaked. “Have you seen her?”
He blinked. “Nah.”
“Get on wiv it,” snapped an impatient voice behind him.
The big man stepped out, uncertainly. “I dunno, she…”
“Too late, mate. She’s seen yer now. We gotta stop ’er.”
By then Daisy was half-way to the gorse bush marking the path. Feet pounded after her.
Tuffet appeared from nowhere, frisking about her ankles, barking joyfully. Daisy tripped, staggered a few steps trying to regain her balance, and fell headlong into a bed of nettles.
Hands like iron bands gripped her arms.
“Gotcha!”