Chapter Three

Bugbear in the Old Wood

MY FIRST FOOT-RACE, thinks I, was with my pug-puppy on the sands of the North Bay here in Scarborough. A girl I would always be, yet that didn’t stop me from wanting to do boyish things, or what papai calls hoydenish things, such as climbing, jumping and romping. One time, while papai lay under his favourite Scots pine in our garden, amusing himself with his great and deep thoughts as he was wont to say, my own great thought was for my puggy and I to jump over him each time we circled the pine tree, and noisily so, for I had burst into a fit of giggles. ‘Silly gooseberry, I shall court-martial you,’ papai teases me whenever I act hoydenish. But, truly, I cannot help myself.

In May of 1815, after papai had returned from doing war business with the Lancashire Militia, he announced, ‘We are for the old wood where no doubt Sofia-Elisabete shall entertain us with her hoydening’, to which I shouted, ‘Goose-grog! I hope they have goose-grog.’ You see, I rather wished to spend my fifth birth-day with Pie and Graça at Pemberley where I could eat a cart-load of gooseberry fool. ‘No-no-no,’ papai shook his finger at me, ‘to the Fitzwilliam Hunting Lodge we go, to visit your grandfather.’

Papai promised that Cook at the lodge would make gooseberry fool for me, she being the best cook in the world. He cast his eyes heavenward – the savoury and sweet memories tumbling round in his head no doubt – as he praised the singularity of Cook’s apple charlotte. ‘O apple of my eye.’ ‘O sweet charlotte.’ ‘O the goodly apple.’ Mamãe goggled her eyes whenever papai would request that dessert, it being clear to her now why he favoured it so. ‘Ay, ay,’ cried she, knowing she would need to cajole the receipt from this Cook.

We would spend a month in the old wood, as the country-folk called Sherwood Forest. Things being so, I wished to bring Tin-Key with us, but papai warned me that our dear little puggy might be mistaken for a wild animal and end up stuffed and nailed to my avô’s trophy wall at the lodge. Reluctantly, then, did I agree to leave Tin-Key with Mackie, our trusty footman at our Scarborough abode. I hear you cry, ‘What is a Tin-Key?’ I named my pug-puppy Tin-Key in honour of my papai, who, with his ear made of tin, has the ability to sing in a key of his own, as mamãe frequently reminds him.

During the long carriage ride, papai serenaded us with ‘O, the month of May, the merry month of May, So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green.’ Mamãe, she being greatly vexed with papai’s singing, knew not what to do at first, for a proficient in music she is, until she learnt to sing along with him to drown out his voice. On the third day of our journey to the old wood, whilst papai serenaded us with ‘Oh the roast beef of old England, and old English roast beef’, I tugged at his sleeve with urgency.

Papai cast a grim look at me. ‘Pray tell me you visited the Necessary House before we quitted the inn.’

‘Não. You said quick march to the carriage.’

‘Well, now, perhaps I did.’ With a waggish grin, papai gazed at mamãe. ‘Surely you wish for mamãe to help you?’

‘Não, não, não,’ protested I.

‘Oh, hang it! Fatigue duty again.’ Papai rapped his walking-stick for the driver to stop.

Later that afternoon we reached our destination of Fitzwilliam Hunting Lodge, an estate situated on former Crown land that had been sold to my avô, Lord Matlock. While my mamãe stood there admiring the rustic lodge framed by ancient oaks, I broke from her grip to get a better look and see at the turret atop a small rise. This folly, this enchanted tower, whispered to me in some kind of forgotten language that I must needs clamber up the hillock to explore its mysteries. Ai de mim! Someone had secured the door with a padlock. My avô explained to me that a bugbear resided therein who would gobble up any naughty wicked children, particularly those who came near his magical abode without any grown-up protection. Que estranho! These bugbears have strange customs.

‘Meu avô, I’m not afraid of Bugbear.’

‘O, ho!’ My avô tapped me on the nose. ‘You are a courageous one.’

‘I bet a ha’penny I can squash him,’ bragged I.

‘Done! I’ll take your bet,’ replied he.

Upstairs in our apartments, mamãe led me to the dressing room, where she instructed me to call for her when I had done. While I sat within, I overheard my papai and mamãe romanticking themselves in the next room; for, they had been separated for two whole months while papai did his war business in Lancashire, and they had pined for each other every day.

‘My dear Mrs Fitzwilliam, we are finally together in the wilds of England.’

Mamãe laughed. ‘Are you flirting with me?’

‘I am, indeed. Perhaps you would indulge me in one of my wandering fancies to-day?’

‘Pray, what fanciful thing would that be?’ she teased him.

‘Come here, my Senga,’ said he in an audible whisper, ‘and be merciful and quick about it.’

I rapped the wall three times with my knuckles, for they had forgotten that I sat within, and not for the first time, believe you me.

‘Mamãe, I’m ready for you,’ I shouted with all my might. This displeased papai, to be sure.

‘Y-y-yes, my child…I shall be there in a minute…’

‘Pray be merciful and quick about it, mamãe,’ commanded I.

The next day, while my papai and mamãe were romanticking themselves on a stroll through the old wood, my avô promised to take me to a faeryland. We rode out on a mare, passing through the pretty village of Edwinstowe, and then the wilds of Birkland, and from there we rode on another mile or so to Budby Forest where fifty thousand hawthorns bloomed. Hoisted atop my avô’s shoulders, I picked ever so many of these sweet-smelling blossoms from the branches to surprise my mamãe with. We settled ourselves on a log covered with snowy-white blossoms, whereupon my avô recited the tale of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. I sat thus entranced with the plucky deeds of the brave outlaws.

‘What say you of Maid Marian?’ my avô inquired.

‘Gah!’ exclaimed I. All this romanticking with her outlaw I could do without. ‘I want to be Robin Hood and shoot arrows.’

My avô laughed. ‘I’ll teach you how to swim instead, just like I taught your father when he was a boy.’

A few days later, whilst my papai and mamãe walked out to shoot hare, my avô took me to the Great Pond. My avô knows everything about the art of swimming – how to plunge oneself into the water like a frog, how to breathe under water like a carp, how to avoid drinking down a great deal of water like a horse and so forth. Once I had mastered some basic tricks, such as swimming on my belly and treading water, I learnt a diverting trick – the flying boulder – by jumping high into the air, tucking my knees to my belly and pinching my nose ere I landed in the water. And each time I performed a perfect flying boulder, my avô would clap his hands in approval.

‘Raaaawwrrr!’ roared a filthy, stinking man with a long beard, who appeared from nowhere to attack my avô. The two of them tussled for a long while until my avô, being a strong man, shoved his foe into the water.

‘Meu avô, who is he?’ I gaped at the shabby man who clambered up the bank.

‘Eh? Oh, I’ve named him Yahoo. He lives in the hermitage, and I dare say he enjoys attacking me as much as I do him.’

I gasped. ‘Is he a bugbear?’

‘Well, now, you might say he is my bugbear.’ For a moment, my avô looked as guilty as papai did when he had fallen asleep during Mass and Father O had given him a severe rebuke for doing so.

When the time came for us to quit the Great Pond, I skipped merrily alongside my avô while he sang in his rich baritone:

When Robin Hood was about twenty years,

With a hey down, down, and a down,

He happened to meet Little John,

A jolly brisk blade right fit for the trade,

For he was a lusty young man…

In the shadows of the ancient oaks, I could see Yahoo dodging us all the way back to our abode, but I feared nought with my brave avô at my side. I rushed up the stairs in the lodge to change my clothes, when I came to a sudden stop, my brain tingling with my magical powers. That is when I observed my parents speaking in a hushed tone, enough so to raise my suspicions that I was in the midst of some romanticking going on.

‘What rotten luck to tussle with a stinking tatterdemalion instead of tussling with you,’ papai wrapped his arms round mamãe. Apparently, Yahoo had wrestled with papai as well.

‘My poor dear was attacked by a strange hermit.’ Mamãe wrinkled her nose. ‘Pugh! You really do need to bathe.’

‘I will, but only if you help me, Senga.’ Papai gave her a lopsided grin.

Mamãe knew that if she did not help him, he would not bathe for at least a week and only on a Sunday morning before we went to chapel. With a wink, mamãe led him by the hand into the dressing room. Soon she got him into the bathing-tub, and I could hear them laughing and then their low murmurs and after that complete silence and then the laughter started up again. I wondered why they thought it so amusing to bathe.

At dinner-time, I begged papai to let me sit up to supper, which I often did when we were at home, but papai lectured me it would not be appropriate for a child to dine at table with an earl. I stamped my way upstairs, vexed at being cast off, when I seized upon a brilliant idea on how to get rid of my dinner of pease, beefsteak and maccaroni, now that I wasn’t hungry. Having accomplished the evil deed, I sneaked downstairs to the drawing room to eavesdrop on everyone.

‘As like as two peas are to one another…’ my avô muttered to himself.

‘Pater, did you say something?’

My avô cleared his voice. ‘You, son, were a holy terror as a young lad.’

‘Is that why you washed my mouth twice with soap when I was seven years old?’

‘O fie! I never washed your mouth with soap.’

‘My papai hates soap-suds,’ I chimed in, giving everyone a start.

‘Sofia-Elisabete, you ought to be in bed,’ papai scolded me.

My avô lifted me to his knee. ‘Do you know, while we dined, a most curious event took place outside the window? I could swear ’twas a tempest of pease, beefsteak and maccaroni. Who’d have thought that possible?’

I commenced my tale with relish. ‘While I supped upstairs by myself, I heard the strangest thing. Mr Pea bet Mr Beefsteak to jump out the window. Then Mr Beefsteak bet Mr Maccaroni to jump out the window. And then Mr Maccaroni bet Mr Pea to jump out the window. “Done! Done! Done!” they all cried. So there was nothing for it. They threw themselves out the window to win their bets.’

Papai shook his head, and he berated me for my hoydenish behaviour and bad habit of lying. ‘A child fabulist has sprung from me,’ complained he.

‘What’s a fabulist?’ asked I.

‘It’s someone who invents stories.’

I shrugged with raised brows. ‘But papai, the truth is so hum-da-dum-drum.’ Well, upon hearing that, papai threatened to escort me upstairs if I didn’t go to bed. I lingered a moment or two in the passage to spy on them again.

Papai inclined his head towards mamãe. ‘I fear she’s quite like her lying mother, who sent me to the wrong convent in Lisbon when I was searching for…’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ mamãe interrupted him. ‘Our Sofia-Elisabete is just a child with a lively imagination.’

I climbed up the stairs, wondering if my first mother was a hoyden and a fabulist like me. A week passed, and by then, I had long forgotten about it.

The third of June arrived, it being my natal day, and I wished to go swimming with my avô, but papai had invited his friends, the Robinsons, to join us at the lodge for a picnic instead. According to papai, he had met Tom Robinson nearly two years ago at the Black Swan in Edwinstowe when papai, who had disguised himself as a common labourer, spilt ale on Tom, and Tom, in turn, had planted a facer on him. And that is how grown men amuse themselves and become great friends, methinks.

These Robinsons lived in Edwinstowe where they owned a grocer’s shop. There were five of them in all – a hugeous father, a sweet mother, two boys named Pico and Pequin, ages ten and eight, respectively, and a toddler called Poppaye, who looked, well, Poppaye-ish. But we Fitzwilliams could not help but be curious about the names Pico and Pequin. Mr Robinson explained that he named his sons after places mentioned in a certain tale – one where a Spaniard journeyed to the moon with the aid of his flying gansas or geese. Oh, how I wished to fly on a gansa to the moon. But Pico scoffed at me, claiming that no girls could survive the long and difficult journey to see the Man in the Moon, nor would they be safe from the moon men.

The Robinson boys taught me how to play ancient games, such as blindman’s bluff, leap frog, buck buck and running the gauntlet. They taught me how to speak like a Notts boy, and so I taught them a few choice words in Portuguese, including ‘Viva!’ when you greet someone. The dinner-bell having rung, we raced one another to the festive table that Cook had set up out of doors, it being laden with fish, flesh and fowl, pyramids of this, that and the other, and my favourite gooseberry fool, all nicely dished up.

‘D’yer eat this ivry day?’ Pico goggled at these platters of food, particularly the mound of maccaroni.

‘Yi, don’t you?’ It hadn’t occurred to me that the Robinsons were poor. Could they not eat the food in their grocer’s shop if they so wished? Surely they never went to bed hungry.

Pequin picked up one of the hairy gooseberries. ‘I’ve niver seed a goosegog afore.’

‘Niver?’ I had thought all English ate gooseberries.

Once the dinner concluded, the men smoked their pipes, and the women played with Poppaye, while we children stole away to the surrounding old wood. The Robinson boys took out their sling-stones, and they began to hurl rocks at an imposing, ancient oak tree. ‘Retreat!’ warned Pico, and he tossed his sling-stone into my hands, for he had heard my papai’s rapid approach. Convinced that I was the culprit, papai lectured me that I should not sling rocks at Matlock’s Favourite Oak because it would upset my avô.

‘But papai, I wasna slingin’ stones. Pico an’ Pequin…’

‘I don’t care who did the slinging. A proper young lady must not do it,’ commanded he.

‘But papai, I dunna know how to sling. I dunna…’

‘Confound your buts and dunnas. Obey me at once.’ He held out his hand for the sling-stone, which I gave to him with alacrity. When he strode off, angry as can be, I stuck out my tongue at those two connivers who fell a laughing at me for getting scolded. I saw how it was. Boys got to run wild, slinging stones, whereas girls could not.

‘Yer in the suds now, nincompoop.’ Pico guffawed as if he had uttered the wittiest thing in the world.

‘Pah!’ taunted I. ‘Yer niver gettin’ yer sling-stone back.’

‘My papa will clout yer papa if he doesna give me my sling-stone.’

The next week my avô proposed a jaunt to Creswell Crags where we could explore the secret caves that sheltered Robin Hood and his Merry Men from the law. My heart filled with joy at the thought of another boyish adventure with my avô, but to my ten-fold dismay, he invited the Robinson boys. I got into the carriage where I sat in between the two miscreants, Pico and Pequin, who pinched me and pulled my hair when my avô did not attend to us. ‘Yow!’ I rubbed my sore head. To distract my tormentors, I begged my avô to tell us another tale of Robin Hood, and so he did. We learnt how Robin Hood set the prisoners free at King John’s Palace in Clipstone while King John searched the caves at Creswell Crags for the bold outlaw.

‘I’m goin’ to be Robin Hood someday,’ remarked I.

Pico laughed at me. ‘Yer just a slip of a girl.’

When we reached our destination, we clambered up the hillside to inspect one of the caves. There, I suffered a goodly amount of time trapped inside the small cave while my captors pestered me with spiders and other horrid creatures.

‘Yer canna get out, Robin Hood, ’til yer eat it,’ Pico dangled a gigantic spider in front of me.

‘Why, you rascal.’ I picked up some magic dirt, and I threw it at Pico, thereby enabling me to escape from the cave. I ran to my avô, who awaited me with a proud grin on his face.

To my great relief, we returned to Edwinstowe where our carriage conveyed us to the grocer’s. I bid the Robinson boys farewell with ‘adeus’, hoping I would never see those two imps ever again. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

One sunny day too soon thereafter, Mr Robinson and those aforementioned imps arrived at the lodge. Pico said the men were going to fish for trout. ‘Yer a namby-pamby girl an’ canna goo wi’ us,’ taunted he. I gave him a monstrous glare. I ran as fast as I could up the hillock, where I pounded on the turret door with my fist. ‘Let me in you silly Bugbear,’ cried I, my eyes filling up fast with hot tears. I turned round to discover that papai had followed me up to the folly, and in a fit of rage, I saluted him with a volley of oaths that he always used when he thought I couldn’t hear him.

‘Saucy girl! I counted four oaths in your string of invectives. That’s four fatigue duties for you.’

‘I dunna care.’ I turned away in a pout, and I stamped my feet – left-right-left-right – for I detested chores more than anything.

‘Do you wish to make it five?’

‘It isna fair. He’s my avô,’ insisted I. ‘I knowed him first.’

‘When you can speak the King’s English again and behave like a proper young lady, pray let me know.’ Having said that, papai turned a crisp, right-about-face, and he marched off with long strides. He, being at odds with my avô for some reason, had declined to join the Robinsons on their fishing excursion.

‘It isna fair to be a girl,’ muttered I. And that is why I determined to run away and hide somewhere. I slid my way round the turret where no one could see me. Leaning against the wall, I closed my eyes, and I willed myself to drift upwards – higher and higher and higher – and when I opened my eyes, I found myself standing atop the turret.

I knew not how long I was up there, but it seemed as if I had no sooner accomplished this grand feat, than I heard papai calling my name. I own that I took delight in hearing the concern in his voice, because surely he now believed how wronged I had been. Ere long my mamãe joined him, as did my avô, who had returned from his angling adventure with the Robinsons. ‘Where are you? Sofia-Elisabete, where are you?’ Their voices rang with worry.

I peered down at them through an arrow-slit on the parapet. ‘Meu avô! Meu avô! You have come home at last.’

The three of them glanced up at me. I do believe I gave them a good fright, for they certainly seemed shocked to see me high atop the turret.

‘Dear God, no.’ Papai gaped at me in disbelief.

In an instant my avô opened the turret door, having found the padlock unlocked. Their loud footsteps echoed in the folly as he and my papai charged up the winding staircase, uttering oaths at each other and blaming the other for not remembering to lock the door.

‘Sofia-Elisabete, I shall court-martial you,’ bellowed papai, he still being of a snappish humour.

‘Bugbear chased me up here,’ claimed I.

‘I dare say you are lying.’ Papai scowled, and he sprang forward to catch me. ‘Vem cá. Come here.’

I ran away from papai as fast as I could. ‘Avô! Avô!’ I sought the safety of my grandfather’s outstretched arms. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

He stooped down to scrutinise me. ‘Child, how came you to be here?’

‘I knocked at the door – tap-tap-tap. Bugbear called out, “Come!” And so I let myself in. Bugbear chased me round and round. But I squashed him good and hard.’ My tale was so brilliant I had convinced myself that this had really happened, yes, indeed.

‘Now why would Bugbear chase you? Think carefully little one.’

The gleam of reproach in his clear blue eyes cut me to the soul, and thus I hesitated for a long moment.

‘I…was…naughty?’

‘That’ll do.’

Having understood my avô’s censure, I covered my face with my hands to hide my shame. I began to weep a hundred – nay, a thousand – nay, a million – tears, for most assuredly my avô detested me now, and I would never get to do flying boulders or other boyish things with him ever again. To my great surprise, however, he grasped my right hand, and he placed a ha’penny into it. With a wink, he gathered me into his warm embrace where all was forgive and forgot.