CHAPTER VI
THE TART THAT WAS NEVER BAKED
Welladay, as Merrylips would herself have said, 'twas passing strange, the way of wise, grown folk, even of such kind folk as her own dear godmother!
Merrylips had thought that the bed in the great chamber would be made ready at once for Rupert. She had thought that she herself should be allowed to sit by him and tend him, as if he had been indeed her brother. But instead Lady Sybil, with her usual kindness for the sick and needy, neither more nor less, bade make a bed for the boy in the chamber above the ox-house, where some of the farm-servants used to lodge. And though she went herself to see that he was made comfortable, she would not let Merrylips go near him.
"But I thought 'twould pleasure you," Merrylips faltered, "to aid one that was a soldier to the king."
"And so it doth, sweetheart," said Lady Sybil, and bent to kiss her. "Thou didst well, no doubt, to bring the poor lad hither. But ere I let thee speak with him further, I must know whether his illness be such that thou mightst take it, and moreover I must know what manner of lad is he."
Lady Sybil spoke with her own kind smile, but as she turned away Merrylips saw that a shadow of trouble was on her face.
A little dashed in spirits, though she could scarcely say why, she ran to Goody Trot for comfort. Up and down the many stairs of Larkland she sought in vain for the old woman, till at last, as a most unlikely place, she looked into her chamber. And there she found Goody Trot, all in a flutter, busied in sewing a tawdry necklace and three broad pieces into the covering of her bolster.
"Never do I look to see the light of morn!" cried the poor old soul, as soon as she saw Merrylips. "We's all be robbed of goods and gear and slain as well, with two murderous Spanish spies lying beneath our roof."
It was useless for Merrylips to say that Claus and Rupert were neither spies nor Spaniards.
They were foreign folk, were they not, Goody Trot asked. Go to, then! All foreigners were Spaniards, and had not the Spaniards, in her girlhood, sent a great fleet to conquer England? Now that there were rumors of war in the air, Goody Trot was sure that the Spaniards were coming again, and that Claus and Rupert were spies, sent before the general army.
It was almost as sad when Merrylips left the old woman and sought out Roger, the butler. She found him loading an old snaphance, over which he cocked his head wisely. These were troublous times, he hinted, and there were those not a thousand miles away who might be fain to see the inside of Larkland. Let them but try, and they should see more than they bargained on, he ended, with a grim chuckle, as he fondled his snaphance.
"But they are friends unto us, Rupert and Claus," cried Merrylips. "They are soldiers to the king whom we serve."
"And how know you that, mistress," asked the old man, "save by their own telling? And how know you that they tell the truth?"
In all her life Merrylips had never thought that any one could really lie. Wicked people did so, she had been told, but she had never dreamed that she herself should ever know such people. It hurt her now to believe that Rupert could have lied to her who had trusted him. Yet if he had not lied, Roger, her tried old friend, who called him false, was harsh and cruel.
It was a torn and tossed little heart that Merrylips carried to her godmother to be quieted, at the hour of twilight when they usually talked together.
"It is not true," she said stormily. "Oh, dear godmother, now that you have seen Rupert, you know it is not true—the evil things they all are saying of him."
"I know that he is ill and weary, poor lad!" said Lady Sybil, but when Merrylips would have protested further, she hushed her.
"Think not too harshly of thine old friends that they suspect this new friend thou hast made," she counselled. "Remember these are days when every man in this poor country doth suspect his fellow—when brother is arrayed against brother. We know not whence these two strangers come."
"Claus told me—" Merrylips began.
"Ay," said Lady Sybil, "he told thee somewhat, even as thou didst tell it unto me, but, child, when I questioned him, he unsaid much that he had said aforetime."
Then, touched by the little girl's sorrowful silence, Lady Sybil made haste to add:—
"It may be the poor soul was but confused and frightened. He seemeth none too ready of wit, and hath small skill in our language. In any case, my dear, time will show whether he be true man or false, and to time we'll leave the proof."
But at eight years old it is not easy to leave a small matter to time, let alone so great a matter as the proving of a dear new friend. Lady Sybil might go comfortably to her bed, but for Merrylips that night there was no rest. Between dozing and dreaming and waking to doze again, she thought about Rupert, her little soldier of the king.
So much to heart she took the charge of falseness that all the household made against him that she felt as if he must somehow know of that charge and suffer under it. She longed to do something to show him that she, at least, believed in him. Sleepily she wondered which one of her treasures she might give him by way of comfort. Should it be her dear whittle, or her best ball, or her own crossbow?
The light of the summer dawn was just breaking in the chamber when Merrylips sat up in her bed. She had been struck with a fine idea. She would give Rupert a cherry tart of her own baking. He would like a cherry tart, she knew. Any boy would! Besides, she must put herself to some pains to bake it, and she was glad to sacrifice herself for the sake of poor Rupert whom every one distrusted.
As soon as Merrylips had made up her mind, she began to wonder why she should not rise at once and go pluck the cherries for the tart. Then she decided that that would be a very wise thing to do,—indeed, that she ought to do it, and by such industry she should greatly please her godmother.
So up she got, at four o'clock in the morning, and dressed herself swiftly. She tied a little hood over her flyaway hair, and an apron round her waist to hold the cherries. Then she slipped out at the garden door, just as the cocks were crowing, and ran through the dewy grass to the great tree in the corner of the garden, where the duke cherries grew.
When once she was seated on high among the branches, Merrylips could look over the wall of the garden. On her right hand she saw the ox-house and the wain-house and the stable, all faintly gray in the morning light. Almost beneath her ran a footpath from these outbuildings. It skirted the garden wall until it reached the corner where stood the duke cherry tree, and there it led into the fields.
With her eyes Merrylips followed this path. It made a narrow thread of darkness among the grasses that were white with dew, until it was lost in a hazel copse. Beyond the copse the sun was rising, and the sky was flushed with a strong red that dazzled her eyes, so that she had to turn them away.
Just at that moment Merrylips heard a sound of cautious footsteps on the path below, and a hoarse exclamation. She looked down, but she was so dazzled that for a second she could not see clearly. Then on the path below she saw Rupert standing. She was surprised, not only to see him there, but to see him alone, for she had thought that the voice that she had heard was not his, but Claus's.
Still, she could not stop to wonder about this, for here was Rupert, looking up at her with a piteous, startled face. She could not bear that for a single minute he should think her unfriendly, like the rest of the household.
"Good-morrow, Rupert!" she called gayly. "You're early afoot. Fie! So ill as you are, you should lie snug abed. My godmother will be vexed with you."
For a moment Rupert thrummed his battered cap and cast down his eyes.
"I stole forth. I was starved for a sup o' fresh air," he muttered. "But now—I will go back."
"Best so!" nodded Merrylips. "And oh, Rupert!" she leaned from her perch to add: "Ere noontime I'll have something rare to show you."
He looked up at her then, and blinked fast with his gray eyes. If he had been a younger boy, she would have said that he was almost crying.
So sorry did she feel for him that she was very near telling him about the cherry tart, but she checked herself, and tried another means of comfort.
"Rupert," said she, "would you like to see my crossbow? Old Roger gave 't me,—ay, and I can hit the white at twenty paces. Would it pleasure you to see it?"
"Will you go now to fetch it?" Rupert asked in a low voice.
Merrylips nodded, and tossed him a cluster of cherries.
"Do you wait me here," she bade, as she made ready to climb down from the tree. "You will await me, Rupert?"
He kept his eyes on the ground beneath the garden wall,—the little strip of ground that Merrylips could not see. After a moment he bowed his head, and then, as Merrylips swung herself downward from branch to branch, she lost sight of him.
In breathless haste Merrylips ran to her chamber. There she flung down the cherries, and bundled into her apron her crossbow and her ball and her top and all her other treasures.
Then out she posted, in the light that now was broadening, and ran through the garden gate into the path to the spot where she had left Rupert. She found footprints in the gravel, and under the wall the elder bushes were crushed as if a man had crouched there, but she found no other sign of human creature.
Sadly enough Merrylips trudged back to her chamber and put away the playthings that Rupert had not cared to see. She felt that she should have been angry with him, if it were not that she was his only friend in Larkland and must be faithful to him. And perhaps, she tried to excuse him, he had been too ill to stay longer out-of-doors. She did not blame him for going back to his bed, and she would make him the cherry tart, just the same.
When the rest of the household rose for the day, Merrylips said no word of Rupert, for at heart she was still a little hurt. But she took the cherries in a pipkin and sat down to stone them on the shady bench by the garden door. She was thinking, as she did so, how all would be made right between her and Rupert, when she carried him the little tart. Perhaps he would even say that he was sorry that he had broken his promise to her.
Just then Mawkin came bustling to her side.
"Lackaday, mistress," cried Mawkin, "but you are lessoned fairly, and mayhap next time you'll hark to the words of them that be older and wiser than you, a-vexing her sweet Ladyship and a-setting the house by the ears, as you have done, with fetching in of graceless vagrom wretches, no whit better than they should be!"
"You have no right so to speak of Rupert!" cried Merrylips, hotly.
"And have I not?" Mawkin took her up. "Look you now, my lady her kind self hath just been unto the ox-house to minister to that vile boy, and he and the man are both gone hence—stolen away like thieves under cover of night. Now what do you say unto that, Mistress Merrylips?"