The House of Arden, E. Nesbit [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

that’s what we’ve got to do, for sure; without you could find a white Mouldiwarp, and that’s not likely.”

“A white Mouldiwarp?” said both the children, and again they spoke together like a chorus and looked at each other like conspirators.

“You know the rhyme⁠—oh! but if you’ve forgotten everything you’ve forgotten that too.”

“Say it, won’t you?” said Edred.

“Let’s see, how do it go?⁠—

“White Mouldiwarp a spell can make,
White Mouldiwarp a spell can break;
When all be well, let Mouldiwarp be,
When all goes ill, then turn to he.”

“Well, all’s not gone ill yet,” said Elfrida, wriggling her neck in its prickly muslin tucker. “Let’s go and see the witch.”

“You’d best take her something⁠—a screw of sugar she’d like, and a pinch of tea.”

“Why, she’d not say ‘Thank you’ for it,” said Edred, looking at the tiny packets.

“I expect you’ve forgotten,” said cook gently, “that tea’s ten shillings a pound and sugar’s gone up to three-and-six since the war.”

“What war?”

“The French war. You haven’t forgotten we’re at war with Boney and the French, and the bonfire we had up at the church when the news came of the drubbing we gave them at Trafalgar, and poor dear Lord Nelson and all? And your grandfather reading out about it to them from the ‘George’ balcony, and all the people waiting to cheer, and him not able to get it out for choking pride and because of Lord Nelson⁠—God bless him!⁠—and the people couldn’t get their cheers out neither, for the same cause, and everyone blowing their noses and shaking each other’s hands like as if it was a mad funeral?”

“How splendid!” said Elfrida. “But we don’t remember it.”

“Nor you don’t remember how you killed all the white butterflies last year because you said they were Frenchies in their white coats? And the birching you got, for cruelty to dumb animals, his lordship said. You howled for an hour together after it, so you did.”

“I’m glad we’ve forgotten that, anyhow,” said Edred.

“Gracious!” said the cook. “Half after eleven, and my eggs not so much as broke for my pudding. Off you go with your letter. Don’t you tell anyone else about you forgetting. And then you come home along by Dering’s Spinney⁠—and go see old Betty. Speak pretty to her and give her the tea and sugar, and keep your feet crossed under your chair if she asks you to sit down. And I’ll give you an old knife-blade apiece to put in your pockets; she can’t do nothing if you’ve got steel on you. And get her to take it off⁠—the ill-wishing, I mean. And don’t let her know you’ve got steel; they don’t like to think you’ve been beforehand with them.”

So the children went down across the fields to the “George,” and the bean-flowers smelt as sweet, and the skylarks sang as clearly, and the sun and the sky were just as golden and blue as they had been last week. And last week was really a hundred years on in the future. And yet it was last week too⁠—from where they were. Time is a very confusing thing, as the children remarked to each other more than once.

They found the “George” halfway up Arden village, a stately, great house shaped like an E, with many windows and a great porch with a balcony over it. They gave their letter to a lady in a round cap who sat sewing in a pleasant room where there were many bottles and kegs, and rows of bright pewter ale-pots, and little fat mugs to measure other things with, and pewter plates on a brown dresser. There were greyhounds, too, all sprawling, legs and shoulders and tails entangled together like a bunch of dead eels, before the widest hearth the children had ever seen. They hurried away the moment they had given the letter. A coach, top-heavy with luggage, had drawn up in front of the porch, and as they went out they saw the ostlers leading away the six smoking horses. Edred felt that he must see the stables, so they followed, and the stables were as big as the house, and there were horses going in and horses going out, and hay and straw, and ostlers with buckets and ostlers with harness, and stalls and loose-boxes beyond counting, and bustle and hurry beyond words.

“How ever many horses have you got?” said Elfrida, addressing a man who had not joined in the kindly chorus of “Hulloa, little ’uns!” that greeted the children. So she judged him to be a newcomer. As he was.

“Two-and-fifty,” said the man.

“What for?” Elfrida asked.

“Why, for the coaches, and the post-shays, and the King’s messengers, for sure,” the man answered. “How else’d us all get about the country, and get to hear the newses, if it wasn’t for the stable the ‘George’ keeps?”

And then the children remembered that this was the time before railways and telegrams and telephones.

It is always difficult to remember exactly where one is when one happens to get into a century that is not one’s own.

Edred would have liked to stay all day watching the busyness of everyone and the beautifulness of the horses, but Elfrida dragged him away.

They had to find the witch, she reminded him; and in a dreadful tumble-down cottage, with big holes in its roof of rotten thatch, they did find her.

She was exactly like the pictures of witches in story books, only she had not a broomstick or a high-pointed hat. She had instead a dirty cap that had once been white, and a rusty gown that had once been black, and a streaky shawl that might once, perhaps, have been scarlet. But nobody could be sure of that now. There was a black cat sitting on a very dirty wooden settle, and the old woman herself sat on a rickety three-legged stool, her wrinkled face bent over a speckled hen which she was nursing in her lap and holding gently in her yellow, wrinkled hands.

As soon as Edred caught sight of