Dido and Pa (26 page)

"
I'll
tell you what you gotta do," said Dido. "Just you listen to me."

The day of the tunnel ceremony dawned bright, fair, and bitter, bitter cold. Half London had lined up along the route of the procession, on either side of the Thames, and half London was half frozen, keeping itself warm as best it could, wrapped in velvets, in furs, in rugs, in rags, in old newspapers. Charcoal braziers and spirit lamps heated water for foot warmers and hand warmers; hot cockles and hot pies and roast chestnuts had a nonstop sale. Wally had repaired and cleaned up his coffee stall, and hammered out the dents, and was selling mugs of tea and coffee as fast as he could pour them, in a little alley called Glamis Gardens, not a stone's throw from where the new tunnel emerged into Shadwell on the north side of the river. In order to secure such an advantageous position, he had set up his stall there, with Dido's assistance, long before daybreak. Dido was helping him pour and sell his drinks, but an hour before the procession from St. James's was due to arrive, he told her:

"You cut along now, young 'un"—which made her grin, for she was several years the older—"cut along, get yourself a spot by the road. You been a whizz at helping and I'll recommend you for the job o' chief coffee waiter at the Pul-teney Hotel any day you name, but now you want to hear your old man's music, so skedaddle! I'll see you at my dad's place, after."

"You sartin, Wally? You'll never sell half so much, not without me."

"Get along, girl! You want to see old King Dick riding in his gold coach—and Podge and Simon standing up behind. Give 'em a yell from me. Scarper now, or you'll never be able to fight your way to the front."

"What I might do, after," said Dido, considering, "is cross the river on the ice and watch 'em come out the other side."

"Blimey, kid, you sure that ain't a bit chancy? All the way over the ice?"

"I'm sure it's strong enough, Wally, I heard the landlord of the Jolly Mermaids tell your da that some bloke'd driven a curricle across at Charing Cross."

"That may be," said Wally doubtfully, "but suppose half the crowd takes it into their noddles to do likewise? All those folk on it might bust the ice. Charing Cross is a lot farther west. It's rabshackle, to my mind."

"The ice won't give, Wally. Just feel how cold it is—enough to freeze the feelers off a brass octopus."

She waved to him and ran off.

Wally stared after her anxiously, then turned to dispense
coffee to a waiting line of six impatient people jumping up and down and chafing their hands together.

Dido, accustomed to fending for herself, had no difficulty in securing a place of vantage from which to see the procession. She wriggled, she edged, she slid, she nudged, she crawled, she slithered, and at last, with nobody even noticing that she had got ahead of them, she found herself perched like a houseleek, ten feet up, on top of the granite wall cutting through the bank, just where the tunnel road began its plunge to go down under the Thames. Her view could not have been better. Indeed, her only problem now was to keep the surging mass of people, who were behind her on the bank, from pushing her forward off the wall and under the hooves of the processional horses. The hillside was all frosty and frozen, the ground like iron covered with snow; but the top course of the wall formed a slight ridge, a few inches above ground level, so she hooked her fingers and toes into this and clung as tight as a monkey.

After an immensely long wait, during which her fingers and toes gradually lost all feeling, and she began to wonder if they would freeze altogether and snap clean off, the sound of distant music began to be heard, and the beat of a drum.

Turn, turn, titherum, titherum, turn, turn.

Then the music became recognizable as Dido's favorite tune, Calico Alley—played so joyfully, so liltingly, that
anyone's
fingers and toes, even if completely frozen, would begin to clap, would begin to dance at the sound. In fact, the crowds, lined up so thickly at the side of the road, did just
that—they began to dance, and to clap, and to cheer and jump up and down as the forerunners of the procession came in sight—a drum major from the Household Cavalry on a white horse, followed by a fife band, followed by the cavalry troop, with cuirasses glittering and plumes flying, the red and gold of their uniforms glowing in the early light, and their horses moving so proudly and excitedly, lifting their feet high in the air, that they, too, seemed to be almost dancing to the music.

More and more troops of soldiers followed, in different uniforms, to different tunes, all Dido's favorites; then coaches, chariots, barouches, gleaming with gilt, with brilliant coats of arms emblazoned on the door panels, with top-hatted coachmen and white-wigged footmen, with postilions and outriders, with glossy horses and glistening harness, with flowers and ribbons and fluttering flags.

And here, drawn by six black horses, came the king's ceremonial coach itself, very old and immensely grand, all constructed of gold and glass, so that he could be seen inside it; like a goldfish, poor thing, thought Dido, in his velvet cloak and crown with all them rubies in it; don't it look heavy, must be like carrying the kitchen sink on your napper, I bet it don't half give him the headache. And, perched up behind, two footmen in dark blue and gold, motionless as statues with white wigs and folded arms, whom Dido had no difficulty in recognizing as Podge and Simon.

"
Hi-oh,
SIMON!
Hi-oh,
PODGE!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, and thought she saw the eyelid of Podge, who
was nearest to her, give just the faintest flicker as he went by, only five feet below her.

The royal coach rolled into the tunnel, to the music of Black Cat Going Down Stairs, and vanished into darkness. Then the music changed to The Day Before the Day Before May Day, and here came an open coach with the margrave of Nordmarck, refulgent in gold and white and diamonds, wearing a great ermine cloak; and opposite him in the open carriage sat Mr. Twite, all dressed up in his best, severely beating time to the music with an ivory baton, and keeping a sharp eye on the band of the Household Grenadiers, who followed next—but with such a look of pride and bliss on his face that Dido's heart, in spite of herself, swelled in sympathy and admiration. Oh I don't know
what
to think about Pa, she thought; he's a rancid liar, he don't reckon on nobody but himself, he was unkind to Ma and horrible to Mrs. B., he never done a thing for Penny or me, but there's nobody in the whole world can make up tunes like his? Maybe his tunes'll go on forever? Maybe folk will remember them long after they've forgotten Pa, and the bad things he done? Maybe the tunes is what's important, not Pa?

And then Dido wondered, for the first time, where her father had passed his childhood. He had never talked to her about it—never said a word. Maybe he had been a lollpoop, growing up in the street, spending his nights in a lodging like Mrs. Bloodvessel's?

The carriage bearing the margrave and Mr. Twite rolled
out of sight into the dark tunnel; Mr. Twite had not noticed his daughter on the hillside above.

Now Dido turned and began to wriggle purposefully through the crowd, which swallowed her as the incoming tide swallows up a single grain of sand; slowly, doggedly, persistently, she worked her way up the embankment, through a thousand legs, always going uphill over the stony, snowy, frozen ground, on hands and knees, until the mass of people began to thin out, and at last she was away from the crowd, quite alone, on the bank of the frozen Thames. To her left were the masts and chimneys of the India and Millwall docks; to her right the river stretched like a white velvet ribbon; far off, shining gold in the early light, she could see the spires of Westminster. And in front of her lay a quarter of a mile of ice.

Do I dare to go over to the other side? she wondered.

Charing Cross is a fair step from here, it's true; the river's not so wide there.

Yes I do dare; that ice looks plenty thick enough to me.

Down below, along the procession route, the crowd was waiting, happily beating time and singing all the bits they could remember from Mr. Twite's tunes, for the second half of the procession to begin appearing out of the tunnel in the other direction. Troops from the Bombardier Guards were now going in; they rode gray horses and wore huge white hats made of polar bears' fur, and white cloaks, and the music to which they cantered along was one of Mr.
Twite's most serious tunes, Three Herrings for a Ha'penny. Quite soon, as the crowd knew, a troop of milkmaids and shepherds and hay wagons would come dancing out in the other direction, to a different kind of music. And there would be another coach following them, but who would be sitting in it? Would the king have changed coaches in mid-tunnel, as some thought, and come riding back to his palace at St. James's, leaving the glass coach to continue empty to Greenwich? Or would Princess Adelaide of Thuringia be in it? (This was what another lot of people hoped and expected.) Or perhaps there would just be a
waxwork
king inside the second coach?

By and by, out it came. Londoners who had been alive at the coronation of old King Jamie Three recognized the vehicle; it was the one called the Royal May-Bogie, made expressly for that coronation, which had taken place at midsummer; it was painted all over, most gorgeously, with colored blossoms and leaves, so that it looked like a bunch of flowers traveling along the highway. The same two footmen—or two who looked the same at any rate—stood up behind, but now they carried huge bouquets of sweet peas; and in the carriage, not quite so easily visible as in the glass coach, for the windows were smaller, but still easily recognizable, was the king himself. So he
must
have changed coaches in the tunnel!

"God save King Dick!" burst in a roar from a thousand happy throats. "God save good old King Dick. May he never fall sick!"

***

Halfway across the ice, Dido paused, wondering if she had caught the sound of her name, called faintly in the distance behind her. She looked round.

From here, in the middle of the great white highway which was the Thames, London seemed no more than a faint smudge—a cloud of smoke and a cluster of frosty roofs to the north and west of her. To the east there were masts, where ships lay frozen in at Greenwich and Woolwich; to the south the hills of Kent glimmered in a frosty haze. Even the royal music, from here, was only a faint throb in the ice-cold air, sometimes to be heard from one side of the river, sometimes from the other.

I wonder what it's like, down there in the tunnel, thought Dido. Ain't it queer that, right under where I stand, perhaps at this very minute, Simon and Podge are changing over coaches. Oh I do hope it's all going as it should.

And then she was sure she heard her name again, clear and sharp across the diamond brightness of the ice: "
Dido!
Dido!" And there, a small black speck making his way steadily toward her across the whiteness, was Wally.

Although dying to get on, and see the rest of the procession from the other side, Dido waited patiently until he had come up with her, slipping and sliding and panting.

"Why, Wally? What's amiss?"

"Had to catch you—" He gulped.

"What about your coffee stall? You're losing umpty pounds worth o' trade!"

"One o' the lollpoops just warned me—van Doon sent word back to Bart's Building—he was in a mortal fright for ye—he heard the margrave planning to
do
you—heard him giving orders—"

Wally stopped speaking. At first Dido thought he had run out of breath. Then, seeing his face of stupefied horror staring over her shoulder, she turned to find out what he was looking at, and saw the ice boat.

It was set on a triangular frame with an iron runner at each corner and the point of the triangle at the stern; there was a rudder, a mainsail, and a jib. The sails were enormous, contrasted with the size of the boat, which was hardly larger than a dinghy Because of the huge spread of sails, though there seemed little wind, the boat was able to career along over the frozen river at a startling speed, tacking vigorously from side to side; now it swooped over to St. Katherine's Dock, now it darted southeast toward Cherry Garden Pier; now it hurtled back to the north side of the river; now it was coming straight for them, like an arrow over the ice.

"It's the margrave's ice schooner," stammered Wally with blue lips. "
Run,
Dido! Bunk! Mizzle! Best make for the south shore!"

As the ice boat careered toward them, Dido saw the gold hammer on the black flag. And she recognized Boletus at the tiller and Morel standing in the bows with a noose of rope in his hand.

"Run!" cried Wally again. But it was too late.

With a tremendous grinding roar, with a fizz of pulverized, powdery ice, the silvery keel shot past them; the noose, expertly flung, jerked them together, and gasping like fish on the angler's line, they were drawn on board.

Turn, turn, titherum, turn, turn,
sang the drums, and the glass coach rolled out from the tunnel onto the Kentish side of the river.

"Hooray, hooray, hooray!" yelled the happy crowd as the horses paced forward to the tune of Calico Alley, cunningly mingled now with Raining, Raining, all the Day. And Mr. van Doon, in velvet cloak and ruby-studded crown, bowed and smiled and waved to the populace until, unused to this exercise, his arm ached and his hand grew numb. Through Rotherhithe and Deptford, on toward Greenwich, the coach rolled, and gradually the crowds diminished until there was nobody left along the route. Then suddenly the glass coach turned aside, up Forest Hill, and over Blackheath, abandoning the rest of the procession, which continued toward Greenwich. By now the highway was a single road, then it became a farm track, then no more than a narrow glade between trees.

"What is this?" called the occupant of the coach. "Where are you going? Where are you taking me? This cannot be the right road. Stop! Stop, I say!"

And he hammered on the glass panel separating him from the driver.

"We'll stop soon enough. Don't you fret your head," replied the coachman, without troubling to turn round.