A Reputed Changeling; Or, Three Seventh Years Two Centuries Ago by Yonge (best short novels of all time txt) 📖

his little legs was like knitting pins.  The lady was nigh upon death as it seemed, so that no one took note of the child at first, but when Madge had time to look at him, she saw how it was, as plain as plain could be, and told his father.  But men are unbelieving, my dears, and always think they know better than them as has the best right, and Major Oakshott would hear of no such thing, only if the boy was like to die, he must be christened.  Well, Madge knew that sometimes they flee at touch of holy water, but no; though the thing mourned and moaned enough to curdle your blood and screeched out when the water touched him, there he was the same puny little canker.  So when madam was better, and began to fret over the child that was nigh upon three months old, and no bigger than a newborn babe, Madge up and told her how it was, and the way to get her own again.”

“What was that, nurse?”

“There be different ways, my dear.  Madge always held to breaking five and twenty eggs and have a pot boiling on a good sea-coal fire with the poker in it red hot, and then drop the shells in one by one, in sight of the creature in the cradle.  Presently it will up and ask whatever you are about.  Then you gets the poker in your hand as you says, “A-brewing of egg shells.”  Then it says, “I’m forty hundred years old and odd, and yet I never heard of a-brewing of egg shells.”  Then you ups with the poker and at him to thrust it down his ugly throat, and there’s a hissing and a whirling, and he is snatched away, and the real darling, all plump and rosy, is put back in the cradle.”

“And did they?”

“No, my dears.  Madam was that soft-hearted she could not bring her mind to it, though they promised her not to touch him unless he spoke.  But nigh on two years later, Master Robert was born, as fine and lusty and straight-limbed as a chrisom could be, while the other could not walk a step, but sat himself about on the floor, a-moaning and a-fretting with the legs of him for all the world like the drumsticks of a fowl, and his hands like claws, and his face wizened up like an old gaffer of a hundred, or the jackanapes that Martin Boats’n brought from Barbary.  So after a while madam saw the rights of it, and gave consent that means should be taken as Madge and other wise folk would have it; but he was too old by that time for the egg shells, for he could talk, talk, and ask questions enough to drive you wild.  So they took him out under the privet hedge, Madge and her gossip Deborah Clint, and had got his clothes off to flog him with nettles till they changed him, when the ill-favoured elf began to squall and shriek like a whole litter of pigs, and as ill luck would have it, the master was within hearing, though they had watched him safe off to one of his own ’venticles, but it seems there had been warning that the justices were on the look-out, so home he came.  And behold, the thing that never knew the use of his feet before, ups and flies at him, and lays hold of his leg, hollering out, “Sir, father, don’t let them,” and what not.  So then it was all over with them, as though that were not proof enow what manner of thing it was!  Madge tried to put him off with washing with yarbs being good for the limbs, but when he saw that Deb was there, he saith, saith he, as grim as may be, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” which was hard, for she is but a white witch; and he stormed and raved at them with Bible texts, and then he vowed (men are so headstrong, my dears) that if ever he ketched them at it again, he would see Deb burnt for a witch at the stake, and Madge hung for the murder of the child, and he is well known to be a man of his word.  So they had to leave him to abide by his bargain, and a sore handful he has of it.”

Anne drew a long sigh and asked whether the real boy in fairyland would never come back.

“There’s no telling, missie dear.  Some say they are bound there for ever and a day, some that they as holds ’em are bound to bring them back for a night once in seven years, and in the old times if they was sprinkled with holy water, and crossed, they would stay, but there’s no such thing as holy water now, save among the Papists, and if one knew the way to cross oneself, it would be as much as one’s life was worth.”

“If Peregrine was to die,” suggested Lucy.

“Bless your heart, dearie, he’ll never die!  When the true one’s time comes, you’ll see, if so be you be alive to see it, as Heaven grant, he will go off like the flame of a candle and nothing be left in his place but a bit of a withered sting nettle.  But come, my sweetings, ’tis time I got your supper.  I’ll put some nice rosy-cheeked apples down to roast, to be soft for Mistress Woodford’s sore mouth.”

Before the apples were roasted, Charles Archfield and his cousin, the colleger Sedley Archfield, a big boy in a black cloth gown, came in with news of having—together with the other boys, including Oliver and Robert Oakshott—hunted Peregrine all round the Close, but he ran like a lapwing, and when they had pinned him up in the corner by Dr. Ken’s house, he slipped through their fingers up the ivy, and grinned at them over the wall like the imp he was.  Noll said it was always the way, he was no more to be caught than a bit of thistledown, but Sedley meant to call out all the college boys and hunt and bait him down like a badger on ‘Hills.’

CHAPTER II
High Treason

“Whate’er it be that is within his reach,
The filching trick he doth his fingers teach.”

Robin Badfellow.

There was often a considerable distance between children and their parents in the seventeenth century, but Anne Woodford, as the only child of her widowed mother, was as solace, comfort, and companion; and on her pillow in early morning the child poured forth in grave earnest the entire story of the changeling, asking whether he could not be “taken to good Dr. Ken, or the Dean, or the Bishop to be ex—ex—what is it, mother?  Not whipped with nettles.  Oh no! nor burnt with red hot pokers, but have holy words said so that the right one may come back.”

“My dear child, did you really believe that old nurse’s tale?”

“O madam, she knew it.  The other old woman saw it!  I always thought fairies and elves were only in tales, but Lucy’s nurse knows it is true.  And he is not a bit like other lads, mamma dear.  He is lean and small, and his eyes are of different colours, look two ways at once, and his mouth goes awry when he speaks, and he laughs just like—like a fiend.  Lucy and I call him Riquet à la Houppe, because he is just like the picture in Mademoiselle’s book, with a great stubbly bunch of hair sticking out on one side, and though he walks a little lame, he can hop and skip like a grasshopper, faster than any of the boys, and leap up a wall in a moment, and grin—oh most frightfully.  Have you ever seen him, mamma?”

“I think so.  I saw a poor boy, who seemed to me to have had a stroke of some sort when he was an infant.”

“But, madam, that would not make him so spiteful and malicious!”

“If every one is against him and treats him as a wicked mischievous elf, it is only too likely to make him bitter and spiteful.  Nay, Anne, if you come back stuffed with old wives’ tales, I shall not allow you to go home with Lucy Archfield.”

The threat silenced Anne, who was a grave and rather silent little person, and when she mentioned it to her friend, the answer was, “Did you tell your mother?  If I had told mine, I should have been whipped for repeating lying tales.”

“Oh then you don’t believe it!”

“It must be true, for Madge knew it.  But that’s the way always if one lets out that one knows more than they think.”

“It is not the way with my mother,” stoutly said Anne, drawing up her dignified little head.  And she kept her resolution, for though a little excited by her first taste of lively youthful companionship, she was naturally a thoughtful reticent child, with a character advanced by companionship with her mother as an only child, through a great sorrow.  Thus she was in every respect more developed than her contemporary Lucy, who regarded her with wonder as well as affection, and she was the object of the boyish devotion of Charley, who often defended her from his cousin Sedley’s endeavours to put down what he considered upstart airs in a little nobody from London.  Sedley teased and baited every weak thing in his way, and Lucy had been his chief butt till Anne Woodford’s unconscious dignity and more cultivated manners excited his utmost spleen.

Lucy might be incredulous, but she was eager to tell that when her cousin Sedley Archfield was going back to ‘chambers,’ down from the Close gate came the imp on his shoulders in the twilight and twisted both legs round his neck, holding tight on in spite of plunges, pinches, and endeavours to scrape him off against the wall, which were frustrated or retaliated by hair pulling, choking, till just ere entering the college gateway, where Sedley looked to get his revenge among his fellows, he found his shoulders free, and heard “Ho! ho! ho!” from the top of a wall close at hand.  All the more was the young people’s faith in the changeling story confirmed, and child-world was in those days even more impenetrable to their elders than at present.

Changeling or no, it was certain that Peregrine Oakshott was the plague of the Close, where his father, an ex-officer of the Parliamentary army, had unwillingly hired a house for the winter, for the sake of medical treatment for his wife, a sufferer from a complication of ailments.  Oakwood, his home, was about five miles from Dr. Woodford’s living of Portchester, and as the families would thus be country neighbours, Mrs. Woodford thought it well to begin the acquaintance at Winchester.  While knocking at the door of the house on the opposite side of the Close, she was aware of an elfish visage peering from an upper window.  There was the queer mop of dark hair, the squinting light eyes, the contorted grin crooking the mouth, the odd sallow face, making her quite glad to get out of sight of the strange grimaces which grew every moment more hideous.

Mrs. Oakshott sat in an arm-chair beside a large fire in a wainscotted room, with a folding-screen shutting off the window.  Her spinning-wheel was near, but it was only too plain that ‘feeble was the hand, and silly the thread.’  She bent her head in its wadded black velvet hood, but excused herself from rising, as she was crippled by rheumatic pains.  She had evidently once been a pretty little person, innocent and inane, and her face had become like that of a withered baby, piteous in its expression of pain and weariness, but otherwise somewhat vacant.  At first, indeed, there was a look of alarm.  Perhaps she expected every visitor to come with a complaint of her unlucky Peregrine, but when Mrs. Woodford spoke cheerfully of being her neighbour in the country, she was evidently relieved and even gratified, prattling in a soft plaintive tone about her sufferings and the various remedies, ranging from woodlice rolled into natural pills, and grease off the church bells, to diamond dust and Goa stones, since, as she said, there was no cost to which Major Oakshott would not go for her benefit.  He had even procured for her a pound of the Queen’s new Chinese herb, and it certainly was as nauseous as could be wished, when boiled in milk, but she was told that was not the way it was taken at my Lady Charnock’s.  She was quite animated when Mrs. Woodford offered to show her how to prepare it.

Therewith the master of the house came in, and the aspect of affairs changed.  He was a tall, dark, grave man, plainly though