Midwinter Nightingale by Joan Aiken Page A

started suddenly again with a jerk. Changing horses at a post house, thought Dido, but, blimey, where can we be going? Half across England by the feel; we've been hours on the road. And I ain't half hungry!
    No one came to give her any food, however, and the new horses—they must be prime stampers; someone's rich, thought Dido—went rattling on at a breakneck pace for what seemed hour after hour. Despite her bound hands, Dido managed, after dozens of failed attempts, to shove up one of the window blinds and to arrange herself on the seat with her legs tucked under her—thank the mickey they didn't tie my ankles too, she congratulated herself—so that she was able to see out as they bowled along.
    However, the view of the landscape outside gave her no clue as to where they were going. London-born, Dido had traveled outside the city very little, apart from a couple oftrips to Sussex; the forested, hilly countryside beyond the carriage window might have been France, Greece or Scotland for all she knew. Not a live soul in it for miles, she thought with a shiver; who'd want to live in such a nook-shotten wilderness? Give me Battersea any day!
    The thought of Greece or France reminded her of what the old archbishop had said about the Burgundians being about to invade; the duchess of Burgundy was an enemy of the poor old king, he had said, and so was somebody else, Baron Magnus Thing. It don't do to be king, Dido thought. You gets enemies like rats have fleas; no, I wouldn't want that job for all the tea in China.
    A change in the horses' pace attracted her notice; she looked out and saw that the carriage was turning off the highway, was passing between two massive stone gateposts with carved griffins on top of them. The griffins were in shocking repair, with grass and ivy growing out of their jaws; and a great rusted pair of gates dangling between the pillars had not been pushed to, probably, for half a century. Beyond the gates ran a wide avenue between two rows of forest trees, some of which had fallen and lain in their places until they were grown over with brambles. Whoever owns this place is mighty chintzy when it comes to upkeep, thought Dido, glimpsing a vast mansion ahead; its pale stone front was three times the width of the avenue, but the stone was lichenous and moss-covered, most of the windows were dark and the steps that approached the double front doors were stained and crumbling.
    Dusk was falling but she saw a weedy moat under a stone bridge. One or two of the windows on the ground floor showed dim lights in them. At least there's folk in the house, thought Dido, and if they want me to sing for them like a canary, let's hope they'll come across with a bite of summat hot; I'd fancy a meat pie now, or a bowl of that chowder they make so tasty in Nantucket….
    The carriage drew up at the foot of the broken steps. The doors opened and two men in dark clothes came out of the house. A few words were exchanged with the driver; then the carriage door was flung wide, and without a word to Dido, the two men grabbed her by the feet and shoulders, swung her up the steps and in at the house door, then carried her like a sack for some considerable distance along a stone-paved passageway.
    Dido had passed the last two hours of the journey in mincing and munching the bit of cloth in her mouth and gnawing the bandage that held it in place; now she spat it out and demanded: “Where are you a-taking me? What place is this? And when does I get a bit of prog?”
    “You keep a still tongue in your head,” said one of the men, and swung her so hard that she bumped painfully against the stone floor. “You tell Their Excellencies what they want to know. Then
perhaps
you'll get summat to eat. Not before!”
    The passage here took a sharp turn to the right and the men carried her what seemed like another quarter-mile along it. Then she was pitched through an opendoor and fell in a heap on a damp brick floor. The door slammed and she