to my chamber in spite of my maids, said she had a May charm to keep my looks and my lord’s love.’
‘What was the charm?’ Elfrida asked eagerly, forgetting to say ‘Majesty’ again.
‘It was quite simple,’ said the Queen. ‘I was to keep my looks and my love so long as I never dropped a kerchief. But if I dropped a kerchief I should lose more than my looks and my love; she said I should lose my head,’ – the Queen laughed low, – ‘within certain days from the dropping of that kerchief – this head you see here;’ she laughed again.
‘Don’t, oh, don’t!’ said Elfrida. ‘Nineteen days, that’s the warning – I do hope it’ll do some good. I do like you, dear Queen. You are so strong and splendid. I would like to be like you when I grow up.’
The Queen’s fine face looked troubled.
‘Please Heaven, thou’lt be better than I,’ she said, stooping lower still from her horse; Elfrida standing on tip-toe, she kissed her.
‘Oh, do be careful,’ said Elfrida. ‘Your darling head!’ and the Queen kissed her again.
Then a noise rather like bagpipes rose shrill and sudden, and all drew back, making room for the rustic maids and swains to tread the country dance. Other instruments joined in, and suddenly the King cried, ‘A merry tune that calls to the feet. Come, my sweeting, shall we tread a measure with the rest?’ So down they came from their horses, King and Queen, and led the country dance, laughing and gay as any country lad and lass.
Elfrida could have cried. It seemed such a pity that everybody should not always be good and happy, as everybody looked today.
The King had sprung from his horse with Edred in his arms, and now he and his sister drew back towards Cousin Richard.
‘How pretty it all is!’ said Edred. ‘I should like to stay here for ever.’
‘If I were you,’ said Richard, very disagreeably indeed, ‘I would not stay here an hour.’
‘Why? Is it dangerous? Will they cut our heads off?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said Cousin Richard, still thoroughly disagreeable. ‘I wasn’t thinking about your heads. There are more important things than your heads in the world, I should think.’
‘Not so very much more,’ said Elfrida meekly, – ‘to us, I mean. And what are you so cross about?’
‘I should have thought,’ Richard was beginning, when the old woman who told Elfrida to go forward with the nosegay of ceremony sidled up to them.
‘Into the woods, my children,’ she whispered quickly, ‘into the woods. In a moment the Queen will burst into tears, and the King will have scant kindness for those whose warnings have set his Queen to weeping.’
They backed into the bushes, and the green leaves closed behind the four.
‘Quick!’ said the witch; ‘this way.’ They followed her through the wood under oaks and yew-trees, pressing through hazels and chestnuts to a path.
‘Now run!’ she said, and herself led the way nimbly enough for one of her great age. Their run brought them to a thinning of the wood – then out of it – on to the downs, whence they could see Arden Castle and its moat, and the sea.
‘Now,’ the old woman said, ‘mark well the spot where the moat stream rises. It is there that the smugglers’ cave was, when Betty Lovell foretold the landing of the French.’
‘Why,’ said Edred and Elfrida, ‘you’re the witch again! You’re Betty Lovell!’
‘Who else?’ said the old woman. ‘Now, call on the Mouldiwarp and hasten back to your own time. For the King will raise the country against the child who has made his sweeting to shed tears. And she will tell him, she keeps nothing from him, and … yet—’
‘She won’t tell him about the kerchief?’
‘She will, and when she drops it on that other May-day at Greenwich he will remember. Come, call your Mouldiwarp and haste away.’
‘But we’ve only just come,’ said Edred, ‘and what’s Elfrida been up to?’
‘Oh bother!’ said Elfrida. ‘I want to know what Richard meant about our heads not being important.’
‘Your heads will be most important if you wait here much longer!’ said the witch sharply. ‘Come, shall I call the Mouldiwarp, or will you?’
‘You do,’ said Elfrida. ‘I say, Dicky, what did you mean? Do tell us – there’s a dear.’
Betty Lovell was tearing up the short turf in patches, and pulling the lumps of chalk from under it.
‘Help me,’ she cried, ‘or I shan’t be in time!’ So they all helped.
‘Couldn’t Dick go with us – if we have to go?’ said Elfrida suddenly.
‘No,’ said Richard, ‘I’m not going to – so there!’
‘Why?’ Elfrida gasped, tugging at a great piece of chalk.
‘Because I shan’t.’
‘Then tell us what you meant before the Mouldiwarp comes.’
‘You can’t,’ said a little voice, ‘because it’s come now.’
Every one sat back on its heels, and watched where out of the earth the white Mouldiwarp was squeezing itself between two blocks of chalk, into the sunlight.
‘Why, I hadn’t said any poetry,’ said Elfrida.
‘I hadn’t made the triangle and the arch,’ said old Betty Lovell. ‘Well, if ever I did!’
‘I’ve been here,’ said the mole, looking round with something astonishingly like a smile of triumph, ‘all the time. Why shouldn’t I go where I do please, nows and again? Why should I allus wait on your bidding – eh?’ it asked a little pettishly.
‘No reason at all,’ said Elfrida kindly; ‘and now, dear, dear Mouldiwarp, please take us away.’
A confused sound of shouting mixed with the barking of dogs hurried her words a little.
‘The hunt is up,’ said the old witch-nurse.
‘I don’t hold with hunting,’ said the Mouldiwarp hastily, ‘nor yet with dogs. I never could abide dogs, drat the nasty, noisy, toothy things! Here, come inside.’
‘Inside where?’ said Edred.
‘Inside my house,’ said the mole.
And then, whether they all got smaller or whether the crack in the chalk got bigger they never quite knew, but they found themselves walking that crack one by one. Only Elfrida
