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

“Yes, you were; and I didn’t half like it myself. I wished we hadn’t, rather. And when it started, and we knew we’d got to go on with it. Oh, horrible! And when it was over we wanted to go again, and we did, and it’s been so jolly to remember. This is like that. See?”

“I don’t,” said Edred, “understand a single word you say. This isn’t a bit like the water-shoot or anything. Now, is it?”

Elfrida frowned. Afterwards she was glad that she had done no more than frown. It is dangerous, as you know, to quarrel in a boat, but far more dangerous to quarrel in a century that is not your own. She frowned and opened her mouth. And just as her mouth opened the door of the room followed its example, and a short, dark, cross-looking woman in a brown skirt and strange cap came hurrying in.

“So it’s here you’ve hidden yourselves!” she cried. “And I looking high and low to change your dress.”

“What for?” said Edred, for it was his arm which she had quite ungently caught.

“For what?” she said, as she dragged him out of the room. “Why, to attend my lord your father and your lady mother at the masque at Whitehall. Had you forgot already? And thou so desirous to attend them in thy new white velvet broidered with the orange-tawny, and thy lady mother’s diamond buckles, and the silken cloak, and the shoe-roses, and the cobweb-lawn starched ruff, and the little sword and all.”

The woman had dragged Edred out of the room and by the stairs by this time. Elfrida, following, decided that her speech was the harshest part of her.

“If she was really horrid,” thought the girl, “she wouldn’t try to cheer him up with velvet and swords and diamond buckles.

“Can’t I go?” she said aloud.

The woman turned and slapped her⁠—not hard, but smartly. “I told thee how it would be if thou wouldst not hold that dunning tongue. No; thou can’t go. Little ladies stay at home and sew their samplers. Thou’ll go to Court soon enough, I warrant.”

So Elfrida sat and watched while Edred was partially washed⁠—the soap got in his eyes just as it gets in yours nowadays⁠—and dressed in the beautiful white page’s dress, white velvet, diamond buckles, little sword, and all.

“You are splendid,” she said. “Oh, I do wish I was a boy!” she added, for perhaps the two thousand and thirty-second time in her short life.

“It’s not that thou’ll be wishing when thy time comes to go to Court,” said the woman. “There, my little lord, give thy old nurse a kiss and stand very cautious and perfect, not to soil thy fine feathers. And when thou hearest thy mother’s robes on the stairs go out and make thy bow like thy tutor taught thee.”

It was not Edred’s tutor who had taught him to bow. But when a rustling of silks sounded on the stairs he was able to go out and make a very creditable obeisance to the stately magnificence that swept down towards him. Elfrida thought it best to curtsey beside her brother. Aunt Edith had taught them to dance the minuet, and somehow the bow and curtsey which belong to that dance seemed the right thing now. And the lady on the stairs smiled, well pleased. She was a wonderfully dressed lady. Her bodice was of yellow satin, richly embroidered; her petticoat of gold tissue with stripes; her robe of red velvet, lined with yellow muslin with stripes of pure gold. She had a point lace apron and a collar of white satin under a delicately worked ruff. And she was a blaze of beautiful jewels.

“Thou’rt a fine page, indeed, my dear son,” said the lady. “Stand aside and take my train as I pass. And thou, dear daughter, so soon as thou’rt of an age for it, thou shalt have a train and a page to carry it for thee.”

She swept on, and the children followed. Lord Arden was in the hall, hardly less splendid than his wife, and they all went off in a coach that was very grand, if rather clumsy. Its shape reminded Elfrida of the coach which the fairy-godmother made for Cinderella out of the pumpkin, and she herself, as she peeped through the crowd of liveried servants to see it start, felt as much like Cinderella as anyone need wish to feel, and perhaps a little more. But she consoled herself by encouraging a secret feeling she had that something was bound to happen; and sure enough something did. And that is what I am going to tell you about. I own that I should like to tell you also what happened to Edred, but his part of the adventure was not really an adventure at all⁠—though it was a thing that he will never forget as long as he remembers any magic happenings.

“We went to the King’s house,” he told Elfrida later. “Whitehall is the name. I should like to call my house Whitehall⁠—if it wasn’t called Arden Castle, you know. And there were thousands of servants, I should think, all much finer than you could dream of, and lords and ladies, and lots of things to eat, and bear-baiting and cockfighting in the garden.”

“Cruel!” said Elfrida. “I hope you didn’t look.”

“A little I did,” said Edred. “Boys have to be brave to bear sights of blood and horror, you know, in case of them growing up to be soldiers. But I liked the masque best. The Queen acted in it. There wasn’t any talking, you know, only dressing up and dancing. It was something like the pantomime, but not so sparkly. And there was a sea with waves that moved all silvery, and panelled scenes, and dolphins and fishy things, and a great shell that opened, and the Queen and the ladies came out and danced, and I had a lot to eat, such rummy things, and then I fell asleep, and when