The Picts & the Martyrs. Arthur Ransome

house,” said Dick, “and quite big enough, and it couldn’t be in a better place.” Dorothea, after walking round it, and remembering that at least there was no danger of its blowing away like a tent, half thought they would make a bit of a garden for it, but decided that the few foxgloves growing close to the hut were really better then anything planted on purpose. “We’ll not bother about a window box,” she said, “but we’ll have some flowers in a jam-pot. I found an empty one when we were clearing the sticks out. I wish I’d thought of taking some roses when I was picking them to go in the spare room.”

      “I wonder who left the jam-pot,” said Dick.

      “Some Pict or other before us,” said Dorothea. “It doesn’t matter so long as he doesn’t come back while we’re here.” She looked in at the door of the hut. “I’m sure Susan would say we ought to have brushed it out first, before putting the furniture in. But we haven’t a brush.”

      “I can make one,” said Dick. “Where’s that saw the other Pict left?”

      In a very few minutes he had cut some young birch shoots and tied them into a firm bundle round one end of a straight ash sapling. Meanwhile Dorothea had pulled all the furniture out once more, the packing-case table, the soap-box larder, the three-legged stool, the chair with a broken back, the two suitcases. Then she set to work with her new broom and the hut filled with choking clouds of dust.

      “Better not sweep all the floor away,” said Dick.

      “I’ll just get the top layer off. It’s mostly twigs. I’ll sweep it into the fireplace ready for when I start the fire again for supper. Look here. You’d better be cutting logs.”

      Dick, while the dust came rolling from the door and window of the hut, set to work outside on the huge pile of dead branches. There was an old tree stump in the clearing, just the right height for him to use in sawing the thicker ends of the branches into short lengths. The thinner branches he broke across his knee, or by putting a foot on them and lifting. He had made two piles, one of small stuff for firelighting, and one of thicker bits, and was resting for a moment, to open and shut his fingers, cramped with holding the saw, when Dorothea came out to him with something in her hand.

      “Dick,” she said. “Somebody really has been using our house. Look at this.” She held out an open clasp knife with a bone handle.

      “Not very rusty,” said Dick. “Where did you find it?”

      “I nearly brushed it into the fireplace,” said Dorothea and stiffened … “Listen!”

      “Only a motor car,” said Dick.

      “It’s her,” said Dorothea.

      Dick stood listening, the knife forgotten in his hand. Above the noise of the little beck, above the noise of rustling leaves, above the harsh shouting of some jays below them in the wood, they could hear a motor car coming along the road. They heard it hoot at a bend. They heard it passing.

      “Perhaps it isn’t going to stop,” said Dick.

      They heard it hoot again.

      “It’s turned into Beckfoot,” said Dorothea. “She’s getting out now. This very minute. Nancy and Peggy are saying ‘How do you do?’ They’re carrying her things in and asking if she’s had a pleasant journey … just like they asked us … ”

      Presently they heard the motor car hoot again. They heard it pass once more along the road below the wood. They heard the noise grow fainter in the distance.

      “They’re in for it now,” said Dorothea. “We all are.”

      Things felt suddenly different, even for Dick. Before, somehow, the Great Aunt had hardly seemed a real person. All these preparations, the turmoil at Beckfoot, the sudden change from being visitors into being Picts hiding in a hut in the forest, might have been just part of one of Nancy’s games. The noise of that motor car coming along the road to Beckfoot and going away again had altered everything. It was like the moment in a game of hide and seek when a whistle blows far away and the hider knows that the search has begun and that it is not safe for him to stir.

      For some minutes they stood silent.

      “It’s no good wondering what’s happening,” said Dorothea at last. “We can’t do anything to help them.”

      Dick found suddenly that he was holding a knife in his hand.

      “It isn’t one of their knives,” he said, looking at it carefully. “At least, I don’t think so. Nancy’s has a lot of tweaks in it, tin-openers and corkscrews and things. And Peggy’s is a scout knife with a marline spike.”

      “If there’s another Pict … ” Dorothea shook herself. “Anyway, that string on the door had been there a long time. The only thing to do is to hope he won’t turn up. I’ve done the floor. You’ve got a grand lot of wood ready. Give me a hand in getting the things in again, and then I’ll get the fire going and you take the kettle and find a good place to fill it from the beck.”

      They were given yet another hint that someone else had been using the hut when, after the furniture had been taken in and arranged on the floor now swept clear of rubbish, Dick went off to fill the kettle.

      He crossed the clearing to the beck and only a few steps from the path found what he wanted, a tiny pool with a foothigh waterfall dropping into it over the edge of a rock. He filled the kettle by holding it under the waterfall and saw that, though there are always plenty of little pools in a beck finding its way down a steep hillside, this pool had been improved by someone who had built a dam across it at its lower end. “Wash basin,” said Dick to himself. “And we’ll be able to wash up by putting plates and things where the waterfall drips on them.” He went back to the hut and found Dorothea on her knees before the fire, blowing at the rubbish, which had not flamed up as easily as she had expected.

      “But this is awful,” she said, when Dick told her about the pool. “It’s that other Pict again.”

      “Well, it’s going to be very useful,” said Dick.

      Then, as the flames began to leap, and Dorothea hung the kettle on the iron hook and begun to look among the stores, he turned to the hammocks. How, exactly, had Nancy fastened the ends that were to be let go in the day-time?

      “I’m not going to do anything difficult the first night,” said Dorothea. “We’ll start on the beef roll. It’ll go bad if we try to keep it. I won’t open a tin. Beef roll. Bread and butter. And there’s any amount of cake for pudding.”

      “All right,” said Dick. “I’ve found out about the hammocks, how she fastened them, I mean. The only thing I haven’t found out is how to get into them.”

      “They’re a long way off the floor,” said Dorothea.

      “We’ll have to use the stool for a step.”

      “I say. Do take care,” said Dorothea two minutes later, reaching for the loaf of bread which had been kicked out of her hands almost into the fireplace.

      “Sorry,” panted Dick, who was lying on his stomach across a hammock that had somehow twisted itself into a rope. Flying legs felt desperately for the stool, but it had fallen over. The only thing to do was to go on. He held tight to the hammock and went over it in a somersault, landing safely on his feet. “Sorry,” he said again. “It’s no use trying to get into it head first. Of course it won’t be so bad when the rugs are in it. But I think the proper way must be stern first.”

      “We’ve got to learn everything,” said Dorothea, who had began by cutting the first slice of bread before putting the butter on, and only then remembered watching Susan who always spread the butter on the loaf and then cut off the buttered slice.

      “Stern first is the way,” said Dick, “and it’s much easier if you get on the packing case first.”

      Dorothea turned round to see Dick lying in his hammock and looking very pleased.

      “It’s