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

I woke up the King himself was looking at me and saying I had a bonny face. Bonny means pretty. You’d think a King would know better, wouldn’t you?”

This was all that Edred could find to tell. I could have told more, but one can’t tell everything, and there is Elfrida’s adventure to be told about.

When the coach had disappeared in the mist and the mud⁠—for the weather was anything but summer weather⁠—Elfrida went upstairs again to the room where she had left the old nurse. She did not know where else to go.

“Sit thee down,” said the nurse, “and sew on thy sampler.”

There was the sampler, very fine indeed, in a large polished wood frame.

“I wish I needn’t,” said Elfrida, looking anxiously at the fine silks.

“Tut, tut,” said the nurse, “how’ll thee grow to be a lady if thou doesn’t mind thy needle?”

“I’d much rather talk to you,” said Elfrida coaxingly.

“Thou canst chatter as well as sew,” the nurse said, “as well I know to my cost. Would that thy needle flew so fast as thy tongue! Sit thee down, and if the little tree be done by dinnertime thou shalt have leave to see thy Cousin Richard.”

“I suppose,” thought Elfrida, taking up the needle, “that I am fond of my Cousin Richard.”

The sewing was difficult, and hurt her eyes, but she persevered. Presently someone called the nurse, and Elfrida was left alone. Then she stopped persevering. “Whatever is the good,” she asked herself, “of working at a sampler that you haven’t time to finish, and that would be worn out, anyhow, years and years before you were born? The Elfrida who’s doing that sampler is the same age as me, and born the same day,” she reflected. And then she wondered what the date was, and what was the year. She was still wondering, and sticking the needle idly in and out of one hole, without letting it take the silk with it, when there was a sort of clatter on the stairs, the door burst open, and in came a jolly boy of about her own age.

“Thy task done?” he cried. “Mine too. Old Parrot-nose kept me hard at it, but I thought of thee, and for once I did all his biddings. So now we are free. Come, play ball in the garden.” This, Elfrida concluded, must be Cousin Dick, and she decided at once that she was fond of him.

There was a big and beautiful garden behind the house. The children played ball there, and they ran in the box alleys, and played hide-and-seek among the cut trees and stone seats, and statues and fountains.

Old Parrot-nose, who was Cousin Richard’s tutor, and was dressed in black, and looked as though he had been eating lemons and vinegar, sat on a seat and watched them, or walked up and down the flagged terrace with his thumb in a dull-looking book.

When they stopped their game to rest on a stone step, leaning against a stone seat, old Parrot-nose walked very softly up behind the seat, and stood there where they could not see him and listened. Listening is very dishonourable, as we all know, but in those days tutors did not always think it necessary to behave honourably to their pupils.

I always have thought, and I always shall think, that it was the eavesdropping of that tiresome old tutor, Mr. Parados⁠—or Parrot-nose⁠—which caused all the mischief. But Elfrida has always believed, and always will believe, that the disaster was caused by her knowing too much history. That is why she is so careful to make sure that no misfortune shall ever happen on that account, any way. That is one of the reasons why she never takes a history prize at school. “You never know,” she says. And, in fact, when it comes to a question in an historical examination, she never does know.

This was how it happened. Elfrida, now that she was no longer running about in the garden, remembered the question that she had been asking herself over the embroidery frame, and it now seemed sensible to ask the question of someone who could answer it. So she said⁠—

“I say, Cousin Richard, what day is it?”

Elfrida understood him to say that it was the fifth of November.

“Is it really?” she said. “Then it’s Guy Fawkes day. Do you have fireworks?” And in pure lightness of heart began to hum⁠—

“Please to remember
The Fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.”

“ ’Tis not a merry song, cousin,” said Cousin Richard, “nor a safe one. ’Tis best not to sing of treason.”

“But it didn’t come off, you know, and he’s always burnt in the end,” said Elfrida.

“Are there more verses?” Cousin Dick asked.

“No.”

“I wonder what treason the ballad deals with?” said the boy.

“Don’t you know?” It was then that Elfrida made the mistake of showing off her historical knowledge. “I know. And I know some of the names of the conspirators, too, and who they wanted to kill, and everything.”

“Tell me,” said Cousin Richard idly.

“The King hadn’t been fair to the Catholics, you know,” said Elfrida, full of importance, “so a lot of them decided to kill him and the Houses of Parliament. They made a plot⁠—there were a whole lot of them in it. They said Lord Arden was, but he wasn’t, and some of them were to pretend to be hunting, and to seize the Princess Elizabeth and proclaim her Queen, and the rest were to blow the Houses of Parliament up when the King went to open them.”

“I never heard this tale from my tutor,” said Cousin Richard laughing. “Proceed, cousin.”

“Well, Mr. Piercy took a house next the Parliament House, and they dug a secret passage to the vaults under the Parliament Houses; and they put three dozen casks of gunpowder there and covered them with faggots. And they would have been all blown up, only Mr. Tresham wrote to his relation, Lord Monteagle, that they were going to blow up