The Box of Delights Read online

  ‘Will I have the bacon-rind, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That Kay Harker, what you wot of,’ Rat said, ‘if you was to saw his head off you’d do a good deed. He’s to have a Dog give him at Christmas. That’s what.’

  ‘He won’t bite you,’ Abner said.

  ‘Ah,’ the Rat said, ‘I hate him, and I hate Dogs.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Acos he’s going to have a Dog give him.’

  After this Rat smeared his paw across his nose and lurched off sideways to the candle-end. He blew out the light and took the candle-end: Kay judged that he bit the still soft tallow at the end. He moved off into the underground passage singing, with his mouth full of tallow, a song to his one tune of ‘Sally in our Alley’:

  ‘Now, nights are cold,

  And on the wold

  The wintry winds do whist-ol.

  I ride my grey

  On the highway,

  To shoot ’em with my pist-ol.

  Now berries red

  Hang overhead

  And pale berries of mist-ol.

  It’s my delight

  To go by night

  To shoot ’em with my pist-ol.’

  Presently, the words died away underground. Abner took a few paces to and fro within the ruin. Kay could hear a few muttered words: ‘Putting in for Captain, are they? We’ll see. So Kay Harker is to have a Dog at Christmas. If that fool Rat would only choose the things that interest me, instead of what interests himself, he might be really useful. As for that intolerable child, Maria, at the house here, I wonder if she would be useful?’ He seemed to reflect for a while. ‘What did that fool of a Rat mean?’ he muttered. ‘Who is to get out of the ring by Arthur’s Camp at dawn tomorrow? Could Cole double back from Tatchester and try it, or would it be one of the others? Going to Seven Barrows, too; what would they hope to do there? Well, the chances are that the Box will be on the man who tries to get out of the ring that way. Bottler’s Down, eh? As nice a quiet place for a scrobbling as ever was made. We’ll stop whoever it is. And, of course, it may be Cole, Box and all. I believe it will be. It probably will be . . .

  ‘Rat, if it be, you shall have three rancid kippers and a haggis.

  ‘Come now, I must telephone.’

  So saying he flashed a torch on the broken stones of the floor, and walked briskly away, passing within two yards of Kay. When he had gone, Kay slipped from his hiding-place and returned to Seekings.

  ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘they always say that “Listeners hear no good of themselves,” but I never thought that old Rat in the old days would want to saw my head off. And who is going to give me a dog? I’ll find out from Ellen.

  ‘And what a world to come home to. Abner Brown and a gang, all dressed up as clergymen, and all after something that the Punch and Judy man has. I wonder what it can be. The Punch and Judy man is a wizard, if ever there was one, so it’s probably some magic thing that he carries about with him. Why should Abner say that he has gone to Tatchester? I suppose he has heard that the Bishop asked him to come to Tatchester. Those spies at the window might have heard that. He might have been one of the spies himself for that matter.

  ‘Then who are Cole Hawlings and the other two with the “Longways crosses” on their fingers?

  ‘Well, when Caroline Louisa comes back tomorrow, I will tell her the whole story and ask her advice.

  ‘Now what can I get for Caroline Louisa’s Christmas present?’

  By this time, he had reached Seekings. He shook the snow from him and went in.

  ‘I say, Kay, wherever have you been?’ Peter said: ‘We’ve been waiting simply ages for you, and you aren’t dressed, or anything, and we were just going to play Pirates, and there has been a clergyman sort of chap here asking for the Punch and Judy man.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’ Kay asked.

  ‘Oh,’ Maria said, ‘I told him he had gone with the Tatchester Choir.’

  ‘So that’s how he thought that,’ Kay thought to himself.

  ‘What did he say?’ Kay asked.

  ‘I rather thought he was going on to Tatchester after him. But don’t think for a moment that he was a clergyman. He was a burglar of the deepest dye. However, he didn’t get much change out of us.’

  ‘What did he want the Punch and Judy man for?’ Kay asked.

  ‘Oh, he had got some cock-and-bull story that he wanted some old versions of the Punch and Judy play. I’ll bet that wasn’t his real reason. I’ll bet the Punch and Judy man is a member of a gang of burglars, and this clergyman is a member of a rival gang.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got gangs on the brain,’ Peter said.

  ‘If I have got gangs on the brain,’ Maria said, ‘whose brain is right as a general rule, may I ask? I’ve got a good deal more knowledge of life than you have, although you are so old and so wise, and go to a public school, and have to say “Sir” to the Masters. I’d “Sir” them, if it was me.’

  ‘Well,’ Kay said, ‘he has gone on to Tatchester, you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter said. ‘I told him that the Bishop had engaged him to play tomorrow.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Kay said, ‘let’s play Pirates. I’ll go up and dress.’

  ‘Oh, no you won’t,’ Maria said. ‘We’re not going to wait any longer. We’ve been waiting simply hours, as it is. You’ve had your chance of being a pirate and you haven’t taken it, and now you’ll be a merchantman, and you’ll be captured and tortured, and then you’ll have to walk the plank, and Peter and I are going to be the sharks that will eat you.’

  After they had played Pirates, they had supper. After supper, they sat round the fire and toasted chestnuts. Then, they told a chain ghost story, each telling a little piece and passing it on to the next one. Then presently, it was time for all the children to go up to bed. Kay and Peter were the last to go up. They got into their beds, and talked to each other across the room about what they would do in the holidays.

  It was very snug in their room, for Ellen had built up the fire. Peter had just said that he thought he would be getting off to sleep, when Kay was thoroughly startled by the whining cry of the wind in the chimney. Often, on snowy nights, he had heard that cry of the wind in the chimney, but tonight there was something in the shriek that was very awful.

  ‘I say, Peter,’ he said, ‘did you hear that? It was just like wolves howling.’

  ‘Wolves are extinct,’ Peter muttered, half asleep. Kay thought that he would turn off to sleep, and was just on the brink of sleep, when the wind again howled.

  ‘It was wolves,’ Kay said. ‘It was what the old man said, “The Wolves are Running”.’

  Kay could not have been long asleep when he woke up feeling certain that there was something very important to be done at King Arthur’s Camp. He rolled over, thinking, ‘Well, it isn’t likely that anything is to be done there at this time of night,’ and was very soon asleep again. However, his dreams turned to King Arthur’s Camp. He saw the place, half woke, then slept and saw it again. At this, he woke up wide awake, convinced that he must go there at once. He sat up in bed, struck a light and lit a candle. Peter woke up very grumpily. ‘What on earth are you lighting a candle for?’ he said.

  ‘I’m going out to Arthur’s Camp,’ Kay said; ‘will you come along?’

  ‘Arthur’s Camp?’ Peter said; ‘it’s miles away. Whatever are you going there for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kay said, ‘but I feel that I’m wanted there.’

  ‘Wanted?’ Peter said. ‘You’re talking in your sleep. What time is it?’

  ‘Nearly midnight,’ Kay said.

  ‘Well, who on earth would want you there at midnight?’ Peter growled. ‘Do be sensible; you’ll catch your death of cold. It’s probably pouring snow still.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Kay said. ‘Look.’ He pulled back the curtains from the window so that Peter could see the bright moon shining on a world of deep snow. ‘You see, it’s stopped snowing; it’s a lovely night now.�
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  ‘I know your lovely nights,’ Peter said; ‘freezing like billy-o, and about a foot of snow to slodge through.’

  ‘It’s jolly fine being out in the snow at night,’ Kay said. ‘You see foxes, white owls and tawny owls.’

  ‘I never heard such rot,’ Peter said. ‘Do blow the light out and let a chap get to sleep.’

  Kay said, ‘I’ll go alone.’ He had wrapped himself up in thick things; now he took the candle and slipped downstairs. It was certainly icy cold in the hall. Some frosty snow had driven up underneath the doors and lay gleaming on the mats. He pulled back the bolts, took off the chain and opened. As he pulled the door back he became aware of something scraping the snow upon the drive. Somehow he had half expected it, and there it was: a shining white pony, with a proud Arab head, scarlet harness and headstall. ‘Mount and ride, Kay,’ the little horse said, ‘for the Wolves are Running.’

  Kay mounted at once; the horse sped over the garden with him, making no noise at all, but flicking up snow behind him as he sped. Kay could not be sure that these flicks of snow did not change into little white hounds.

  All the town was fast asleep, there was only light in one window. Soon the houses dropped behind, and there was the open country, looking very wild and strange under the snow. ‘Of course it’s wild and strange,’ he muttered; ‘all the buildings are away: the two farms and the mill. Where have they gone? And those black pools . . . how did water come there?’

  While he was wondering, the horse turned off on the track to Arthur’s Camp. At this moment, Kay heard on the wind a note which he had heard once before that night. It was faint and far away, but it was the cry of wolves running.

  At the Camp there was more strangeness. All the trees which had darkened the Camp the day before were gone; it was now a bare hill with a kind of glare coming from the top of it. By this glare, Kay saw that the earthen wall of the Camp was topped with a wooden stockade, which the horse leaped.

  Kay slipped off the horse and kept a tight hold of the reins while he looked about him. Within the stockade a big fire was burning; it hissed and smoked as men put snowy branches on to it. By the light of the fire Kay saw that the camp was busy with many short, broad, squat, shag-haired men and women, among whom some wizened savage children darted or cowered. Penned in one place were some half-starved cows, in another place some long-legged sheep. A dog or two skulked and yapped. There were some huts and ricks, and great piles of wood for firing. Whoever these people were, they had certainly been roused in the midnight by an attack of some sort.

  In a moment Kay understood what the attack was. Somewhere down on the hill-slopes coming towards them that faint cry which had so scared him now burst out with a frenzy and nearness which made his blood run cold.

  ‘The Wolves are Running,’ he muttered. ‘And now here they are.’

  At this instant, the little white horse shied violently, plucked the reins from Kay and bolted. Kay saw the people running towards the stockade. The moon had come from her cloud and was shining brightly.

  ‘Of course,’ Kay said, ‘this is only a dream. I shall wake up presently . . . But, no,’ he added, ‘no, it isn’t a dream. They are wolves, and here they are at the pale.’

  Just three feet from him, a big wolf leaped to the stockade and almost scrambled to the top. A man struck at it with a kind of adze, and missed it, Kay thought, but the fierce head fell back. As he fell back, there was a worrying, yapping snarl, as the rest of the pack came over the palisade in a body behind Kay. All rushed to meet them, flinging stones and lighted logs, shouting and striking. Kay rushed with them. Three wolves had got over, and at their appearance all the cattle and sheep were stampeding in the pens. There were the three wolves all hackled and bristled, snarling and slavering. Stones and burning embers fell all about them and hit them, they flinched and dripped and snarled but did not give way. Some men ran up and struck at them with spears and adzes; they gave way then and leaped easily back over the paling, to their fellows. In another instant, the pack was over the stockade in the darkest of the Camp. ‘They’re over again,’ Kay cried. It was plain that they were over, for the cattle and sheep now cried out in terror and again stampeded, this time in such force that they broke their pens and scattered. The men shouted, and ran at the wolves. A woman thrust a great piece of gorse into the fire, lit it, and ran with it blazing. Kay seized another piece of gorse and did the same. A terrified little cow charging past him upset him. When he was again on his feet he saw that one of the sheep had been bitten, not too badly, and that the wolves were driven off. One wolf in scrambling back had had his backbone hacked through with an axe: another was being finished with spears. Three or four women had lighted gorse: for the moment the glare was too much for the wolves; they drew away; but they had not yet given up the attack. Kay could see them not far away, sometimes as green eyes glaring, sometimes as darknesses in the snow. They were waiting for the fires to die down, getting their breath, laying their plans, and licking their knocks and singes. Kay wondered how he was to get home to Seekings with the wolves in the fields. ‘They always said there aren’t any wolves,’ he muttered, ‘but there could easily be wolves in places like Chester Hills, and now, in this wild winter, out they come.’

  The men now drove the stock to a space all lit and cornered by fire. Great flakes of fire floated away into the wind, as the dead leaves took flame: blots of snow fell hissing among the embers; the cattle flinched at both.

  Kay had been reading a few days before that wolves are creatures of extraordinary cunning. Presently, he noticed that all the pack had shifted away from the palisade. The cattle inside the enclosure became quieter. The men and women put out the flares which they were burning. There was a general slackening of the tension. Then, suddenly, from the darkest point of the Camp, there came a howl and the noise of rushing bodies. The pack was over the stockade and into the Camp, and the cattle were stampeding, and the people shouting and lighting flares, and flinging weapons and burning embers again. Kay said to himself, ‘This is the real attack. The others were only just feints to find out how the land lay.’ Two enormous wolves, with red eyes and gleaming teeth, rushed directly at himself.

  He felt himself plucked by the arm. There was the little old Punch and Judy man, but no longer dressed like a Punch and Judy man: he was wearing a white stuff that shone. ‘You come here beside me, Master Kay,’ he said. ‘Don’t you bother about those things: you only see them because I’m here. But it is like old times to me, Master Kay, to see this. I’ve had fine times in winter nights, when the wolves were after the stock. Many times we would stand to, like this, almost till daylight. And, then, the thing to do is to follow them, Master Kay, and never to let up till you’ve caught them; for the wolves lose heart, and they’re not half what you’d think they’d be when you see them like this.

  ‘But, I hoped that you would come, Master Kay, because other wolves are running. They’re running after me, and they’re running me very close. It’s not me they want, it’s my Box of Delights that you caught sight of at the inn. If I hand that to you, Master Kay, will you keep it for me, so that they don’t get it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Kay said, ‘I’ll keep anything for you that you want kept, but, if you are in danger from anybody, go to the magistrates; they’ll defend you.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the magistrates don’t heed the kind of wolf that’s after me. This, Master Kay, is the little Box, and there are three things I must tell you about it: you open it like this; if you push this to the right you can go small; if you press it to the left you can go swift. I’ve not had this long, Master Kay; it is Master Arnold’s, not mine; and though I’ve sought for him and called him, I have not found nor been heard. He’s gone a long way back, Master Arnold has.

  ‘If I had time, Master Kay, I might best the wolves. But they run me close, with this New Magic, which I can’t guard myself against. Going swift and going small will save you, you’ll find; you’re young. But they won’t save me, Mas
ter Kay, not any more, for I’m old now, and only know the Old Magic. Now, will you keep this for me till I’m able to claim it, if I ever may be able, or till old Master Arnold can come back for it?’

  ‘I will indeed,’ Kay said.

  ‘And, if they put me to an end, Master Kay, as perhaps they will, then you are to keep it till old Master Arnold comes; but above all things, keep it from coming to them. Will you do that?’

  ‘If I possibly can, I will, of course. But who is this Master Arnold and how shall I know him?’ Kay said.

  ‘You’ll know him if he comes,’ the old man answered, ‘for he’ll come right out of the Old Time.

  ‘Now, one other thing. If you and your friend, Master Peter, would come out this way towards dawn, you may see what comes to me. And now, good fortune, Master Kay, and I hope that I’ll come back for this Box of Delights before so very long and give it to Master Arnold in person.’ He handed Kay the little black, shiny box. Kay had seen one or two of the old men in the village with tobacco boxes that looked like it. ‘Put it in your inner pocket,’ the old man said.

  He was about to put it into his pocket, when somebody thrust a big gorse bush into the fire. It flared up with a blaze and crackle. Instantly, the cattle and the tribesmen had disappeared. Kay seemed to be alone in a glare of light, surrounded by a ring of wolves all snarling at him and glaring with red eyes.

  ‘Never heed them,’ the little old man’s voice said from far away. ‘Press it to the left and go swift.’

  He had the box in his breast pocket with his hand still upon it. He pressed the catch to the left, and in a flash, he was plucked up into the air away from the wolves and the hillside, and there he was, rather out of breath, in his bed at Seekings, with Peter sitting up in the bed opposite, saying, ‘I say, Kay, what are you doing? Haven’t you gone yet? What’s the time?’

  ‘Quarter to one,’ Kay said.

  ‘Uh,’ said Peter with a growl, rolling over.