Summer 1914
The door burst open, causing Mary to drop the book she carried. Colin darted through the open door, shouting, “Did you see it, Mary? The placard at the pub? ‘War declared on Germany!’”
He raised a fist and broke into song. Annoyed, Mary plugged her ears. “Why must you declare war on all of us here at Misselthwaite as a result?”
Mr. Craven came shuffling inside behind Colin, not quite as enthusiastic as his sixteen-year-old son. “Forgive us, Mary,” he apologized. “The only war here is between Colin and his manners. Clearly, the latter lost this battle.”
Mr. Craven ruff led his son’s hair fondly, though a crease of worry appeared on his forehead. “Greet your cousin properly, my boy!”
The two had just arrived home from holiday with the Barry family from a neighboring estate. Tom, the youngest son, was one of Colin’s closest friends. Tom’s sisters were ten years older at least, and they were all married with their own families. This made the outing unappealing to Mary since she had no companions her age other than Tom and Colin, who had a tendency to outboast one another to pass the time. So she begged off, preferring the company of the garden to the tiring bravado of young men.
“Right you are, Father. Hullo, Mary!” Colin reached out and shook her hand overenthusiastically. “Have a nice time with the sheep while we were away?”
Mary rolled her eyes, yanking her hand away from her cousin. She had told her uncle that she couldn’t miss the weaning of the sheep this year. But this probably had more to do with a certain shepherd boy rather than the sheep themselves.
Ignoring her cousin, Mary turned to her uncle. “I take it your holiday was pleasant?”
Mr. Craven sighed, leaning in to give his niece a peck on the cheek. “Quite so, my dear. We missed you dreadfully though.”
“Anything to eat in this house? I’m starved,” Colin groaned.
“Yes, tromping around like a buffoon will wear you out,” Mary remarked wryly. “Martha laid dinner out a few moments ago. Won’t you come and eat, Uncle?”
Mr. Craven was already heading upstairs to his rooms. “No, thank you. I am quite done in. All I want is my bed, I’m afraid.”
“No time for bed, Father! Not when we’re at war with the Germans,” Colin said, puffing out his chest. “I can’t wait until I get over there to show them what’s what.” He brandished an imaginary sword, ran up a few stairs, and leapt down again to assault a supposed attacker.
“It will be over long before you are old enough to fight in a war, my boy. Rest assured of that,” Mr. Craven said wearily.
He was gone and out of sight when Colin turned to his cousin and whispered, “It won’t be over all that soon, will it, Mary? It wouldn’t do to miss all the excitement!”
“What’s so exciting about war?” she retorted. “All that time marching around for no good reason? It was never very interesting when I saw my father’s regiment marching in India.”
“Ah, but this will be different. Wait and see! A real war!” “Do I have to go, Uncle?” Mary asked.
There was to be a parade in the village, and Colin had begged his father to let them go. “I would feel much easier if you went with Colin,” Mr. Craven said. “Besides, you spend so much time cooped up here at Misselthwaite. It might do you good to see something outside the garden for a change.”
“I am quite at ease here,” Mary replied unthinkingly.
“But surely you can admit that you are starved for company. Colin alone can hardly be a suitable companion for a young lady,” her uncle said.
“It’s a parade, not a party. I doubt we will say two words to anyone besides ourselves,” Mary protested. “That is, if Colin actually stays nearby instead of racing off with Tom Barry at the first opportunity.”
“Please, for me, will you relent to go for at least one hour? That is all I ask,” Mr. Craven bargained.
Mary sighed. “Very well.”
“Excellent,” he grinned. “I require a report of the parade, and we both know that your cousin is likely to embellish the small details and leave out the significant ones.”
Mary giggled. “That’s true enough. I promise to bring you back a faithful account.”
Mr. Craven patted her hand affectionately and returned to his study for the day. Mary thought it hypocritical that he encouraged her to leave Misselthwaite for company when he haunted the place like a ghost, the holiday with the Barrys notwithstanding.
Once a great traveler, Mr. Craven said he had seen enough of the world. He was keen to explore the world at home instead. The only trips he had taken since his fateful return to Misselthwaite six years ago were the trips to the Continent with Colin, which he considered important for educational and cultural reasons.
Mary, on the other hand, had no real interest in seeing the Continent. Perhaps it was her early journey all the way from India that left her disenchanted with travel. She sounded like a weary old soul when she told her uncle that she had seen enough of the world by the age of ten and was ready for the peace and quiet of Yorkshire. Her uncle rarely pushed her outside of the house, but since she turned sixteen, he seemed to feel differently.
The parade was later that afternoon, to be followed by general festivities until late into the evening. Colin wanted to leave promptly at two o’clock, which Mary thought too early. But he would not budge, so Mary reluctantly consented.
They walked to the village since it was a lovely day and not all that far. “Tom said that he plans to join up as soon as he’s eighteen, the lucky devil. He’ll be eighteen in half a year! So much closer to it than I am,” Colin complained.
“I don’t know why you want to go to France anyways. You have already visited the Continent twice as it is,” Mary reminded him.
“But visiting is different than going to war. Imagine the glory of it!” Colin closed his eyes, though he continued skipping along wildly. The length of his torso still did not quite match his lanky arms and legs, a sign that he was still yet to grow into his full height, whereas Mary had not grown a bit for the last two years. For a brief time, she lorded her height over Colin, who hated that his cousin was taller than he was. But he soon surpassed her, and she knew that he would lord that fact over her for the rest of their lives.
“Glory? I don’t see the glory in playing with guns and rolling in the dirt all day,” Mary said, her brows raised haughtily.
Colin guffawed. “I don’t expect you to understand. But think of riding into battle with scabbard blazing and rescuing your entire regiment from certain death! All will hail me as a hero and perhaps I will be invited to Buckingham Palace to meet the king.”
Mary laughed heartily at Colin’s blissful expression. “Be sure to bring back news of how they tend their gardens. That is my sole interest in Buckingham or any palace, for that matter.”
“You and my mother’s garden,” Colin huffed. “It was fine when we were children, but really, Mary, don’t you think of anything else?”
The image of a dark-haired shepherd boy came to mind, but Mary quickly banished the thought. “Not really, no,” she replied.
“Which is exactly why you need to leave Misselthwaite more often. Come on!” Colin shouted. He grabbed Mary’s hand and plunged them both into the tall grass to take the shortcut to town.
At a barreling pace, they entered the village, which looked more like a carnival town than the usual humble place with a handful of shops and smattering of carts throughout the streets. Flags bedecked every shopfront, and every person in sight wore ribbons pinned to their shirts or plaited in their hair. Colin nabbed two small f lags and ribbons from a nearby cart and gave a few coins to the vendor. “Here,” Colin said as he handed Mary one of each.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Mary asked, holding up the ribbon. Colin rolled his eyes. “You wear it in your hair like the other girls,” he drawled, pointing all around them.
“But I don’t know how to tie a ribbon in my hair,” she contended with a sour expression. “You know I never wear anything in my hair unless Martha dresses me, which she has not done for years.”
“Perhaps it’s time you started,” Colin lectured. “Here, let me try.”
He took the ribbon and began weaving it between strands of her bronze- colored hair. Mary held back a laugh at his look of deep concentration, which included sticking his tongue out from the corner of his mouth. “Stop that!” Colin chastised. “You’re ruining the design.”
“It’s not my fingers doing the work,” Mary sniffed.
“There,” Colin pronounced, ignoring her barb. “It looks rather expert, if you ask me.”
“Don’t worry, I shan’t ask you,” Mary teased with a broad grin.
Colin returned the grin and took her hand again. “Come on, let’s find a good place to watch from.”
Mary let him pull her along, but she was distracted by all the commotion. There were hardly this many people out even on a market day, nor did she recognize most of them. They must have come from all over the county.
Colin found the last two open spots on the stone wall lining High Street. He boosted Mary up then jumped up himself. The music and fanfare started nearly at the same moment, and the crowd let out a cheer, waving their f lags high.
Colin whooped and waved his f lag earnestly. The musicians came first, piping and drumming so loudly that Mary thought the drum might be marshaling her heartbeat as well as the steps of the young recruits following behind. The young men marched with their heads high and shoulders back. Colin let out a groan of jealousy. “Now why can’t I be part of their company? That boy there, John Crowe, is not all that much older than me.”
“Don’t be daft; he’s three years older than you at least!” Mary proclaimed. Colin shrugged off the correction.
Rows and rows of recruits marched past while the younger girls threw f lowers at their feet. The onlookers shouted “hurrah” and “God save the king!” with wild abandon. Mary noticed a pair of older girls running to the side of the street and throwing f lowers too, but they aimed for specific boys, a sweetheart or two perhaps. They burst into fits of giggles when one of them winked. Mary shook her head, not understanding the exchange at all. She would be mortified to make such a display in front of the entire village.
Next came the jugglers with their household items like spoons and knives, which chased each other through the air in an unending circle. One man even balanced a shovel on his chin, which caused the crowd to applaud wildly. He took his bow, flourishing the shovel out to the side.
And so it went until the last company, which consisted of boys too young to be recruits, but they made a show of bearing pretend arms and marching like the older boys.
“Look, there’s Tom!” Colin pointed. He leapt from the wall and ran to join his friend.
Mary called after him, but his name was lost in the crowd’s shouts of praise. She shook her head, knowing it was inevitable that he would leave her alone, but she thought he would linger a little longer than that. She stayed in her place though, watching the crowd mingle and drink together after the parade ended. This kind of carousing was far different from the parties that her parents attended in India. Mary was never invited, of course, but she sometimes watched from the window or the balcony. The extravagant displays were never much to her taste.
She could have participated in the much simpler festivities now, but she chose to watch again, feeling apart for some unbeknownst reason. Colin, on the other hand, joined as though he had known these people all his life, but really, they had only known him for the last few years. What they knew of him before were mere rumors that cycled through the longstanding chain of gossip. Perhaps that was why they watched him with awe and fondness. They were so happy that the supposedly disfigured, sickly little boy was actually a handsome, strapping lad. They were proud to call him one of their own.
As Mary watched the scene, she noticed a discarded ribbon curling and uncurling as an errant wind carried it down the street. The ribbon was stomped on more than once, but as soon as it was released, it kept unfurling and traveling further. Mary jumped down and followed the determined ribbon on its path. She bumped into several people, murmuring excuses and chasing the ribbon without meeting anyone’s gaze. The ribbon made it all the way to the end of the street until it finally caught on the wheel of a nearby cart. She watched it struggle, fighting to be free of its wooden captor, but there was no easy release for it. Mary stooped to untangle it from the spoke.
There was something foreboding about the sad ribbon. It had been a bright and cheery symbol of the “glory of war,” as Colin said, but now it was so easily ripped and discarded. The faded red resembled the red of the coat her father used to wear as an officer in his regiment. That coat was long ago discarded too, and her father with it, no longer to be seen proudly marching like all these recruits that passed by moments before. She wondered what it meant that its glory, and perhaps her father’s as well, had been so short-lived.
When Mary looked up, she caught the gaze of someone across the street. The dark-haired boy waved with a half-smile. Mary’s heart fluttered briefly, but she cleared her throat and gave a restrained wave in return. Dickon Sowerby broke into a full grin, laughing mischievously as his gaze dropped to the ground. He crossed the street and when he stood directly in front of her, he asked, “What have you got in your hair, Miss Mary?”
Mary raised a hand quickly to brush through her hair, wondering if something had gotten caught. She hoped she did not look a complete fool. But Dickon smiled and reached out to give Colin’s ribbon a gentle tug. “I don’t think I’ve seen the other girls wear it like this before,” he observed.
Mary whirled around to look at her ref lection in the nearest shop window. “Oh gracious,” she muttered.
Colin’s “design” comprised half a bow and mostly a series of knots. Mary tugged at them fruitlessly. “I did not put it in,” she explained.
“Let me help,” Dickon volunteered.
He turned her around by the shoulders then patiently worked through the knots. Mary tried not to watch him with his face so much closer than usual. But he caught her staring, and she looked away, clearing her throat again.
Dickon grinned broadly. “Did you enjoy the parade, Miss Mary?” he asked.
“Yes, I suppose,” she replied.
“And what were you chasing down the street?” He finished untying the ribbon and proffered the crumpled result to her.
“Oh, just this other ribbon,” Mary said sheepishly. “I don’t know why. I thought it looked rather pretty marching down the street with the boys, but it was trampled on quite a bit. I suppose it’s not quite the sight it once was.”
She took the ribbon from Dickon and compared the two, mostly as an excuse to occupy her gaze. “I can buy you another, if you like,” Dickon offered.
“Oh no, I didn’t ask for the first one. Colin bought it,” she said.
He looked around and asked, “Where is Master Colin? I saw him with Tom Barry earlier.”
“I expect he will be with Tom for the better part of the day. He begged me to come, mostly so that my uncle would allow him. So, here I stand before you,” Mary proclaimed and raised her hands with a mocking flourish.
Dickon chuckled. “Are you planning to stay for long?”
“No, I think not,” Mary said, eyeing the ongoing festivities. “I am ready to go home actually. I wish I could say I felt the spirit and cheer of all this, but it feels rather strange to me.”
Dickon nodded. “I know what you mean. Hard to imagine a war when it’s so far away, isn’t it?”
“Mm,” Mary nodded.
“Can I walk back with you?” he asked.
“That would be lovely, thank you,” she said.
“Martha is here somewhere. I better tell her before I go. She always hates walking on her own. She thinks a fairy will snatch her if she steps one foot off the path,” he said with twinkling eyes.
They found Martha easily enough with Mrs. Sowerby, who was in town selling her famous pies. “Oh, you’re leaving so soon?” Martha asked, her face falling. “They say there might be dancing later!”
“Miss Mary is ready to go, and Master Colin is nowhere to be found,” Dickon explained.
Mrs. Sowerby paid attention to the exchange between the siblings while handing out two more pies to customers. “Martha, why don’t you go along with them? I can handle the rest of these.”
Martha looked at her mother, baff led. “But you said I better not get distracted by all the fuss and leave you alone to work.”
Mrs. Sowerby smiled with mild embarrassment. “I never said any such thing. Go along with your brother and Miss Mary. And straight home, mind. I don’t want the lot of you rambling over the moors this late in the day.”
All three of them exchanged glances, noting that the sun was still nearly directly overhead and hadn’t started its descent. “Go on, then!” she said, waving them away. The three started down the street in the direction of Misselthwaite.
“Shouldn’t you tell Master Colin that you’ve gone, miss?” Martha asked. Mary shrugged. “I doubt he’ll notice. When he does, he’ll likely ride home
in Tom’s carriage, and there wouldn’t be room for me anyways.”
“Won’t he worry about you going off on your own?” Martha prodded. Mary chuckled. “I don’t see why. We have traveled this pathway home so
many times that I could walk to Misselthwaite in my sleep from here.”
“What I don’t understand is why you and Master Colin don’t ask to bring the carriage to the village. If I had a carriage, I would ride in it everywhere so that I could rest my feet for two minutes together in the day. Mrs. Medlock won’t let me sit for the blink of an eye once I step foot back in that house, mark my words!” Martha exclaimed.
“What about a horse to carry you, Martha?” Dickon asked.
Confused, Martha inquired, “But what horse is there to ride?”
Dickon cut in front of his sister and crouched halfway in front of her. Martha laughed and batted him away. “I’m not riding on your back! I’ll break you in two if I do!”
Unhindered, Dickon backed up until Martha lost her footing, and she fell onto his back. He grabbed her legs, forcing her to grab on to his neck while she shrieked. “Dickon, put me down! You’ll break both our necks as sure as I live and breathe!”
Amused, Mary chortled, “You did say you wanted to rest your feet, Martha.”
“I am only too happy to oblige, noble lady!” Dickon shouted, neighing and breaking into a run.
Martha squalled even more and clutched his neck for dear life. “Martha, don’t strangle your horse so. Give me some lead rope,” Dickon choked exaggeratedly.
She loosened her grip but closed her eyes and buried her face in his shoulder instead. Mary ran alongside them until Dickon slowed to a walk. He looked over at Mary with a smile, and she grinned back like a fool. At the easier pace, Martha worked up the courage to peek at their surroundings.
“Surely, it isn’t as bad as that, Martha? You look as though you were the one gone off to war to face the Germans!” Mary teased.
“Never me, miss,” Martha shook her head. “But Mrs. Medlock would make a fine colonel with all her bossing, don’t you think?”
They all laughed at that. Mary imitated the housekeeper by screwing up her face and shaking a finger at an imaginary soldier. “You call that a march, young man? You must pick up your feet, not drag them across the Continent like the lazy cow you are!”
Tears of laughter streamed down Martha’s face. “I can see the fear of all of them now. Much more terrifying than any of the Germans, to be sure.”
The sound of gunfire interrupted their laughter, and Dickon dropped Martha but caught her before she fell backwards. They all turned back toward the village, where a f lock of birds were startled into the air. Raucous cheers echoed through the surrounding fields, and the three companions exchanged looks. “What was that?” Mary asked.
“A salute of some kind, I expect,” Dickon mused.
“It doesn’t sound very nice, does it?” Mary observed anxiously.
“No, miss, but perhaps it was more exciting right there watching the soldiers fire the guns instead of only hearing them from far away,” Martha suggested, holding a hand to her chest to steady herself.
But her frightened expression quickly turned to a wicked grin. “Oh, but didn’t those recruits look handsome, Miss Mary? Did you think one was more handsome than another? I saw at least ten I wouldn’t mind calling my beau!”
Mary smiled weakly but made no reply. Dickon watched the path of the birds as they circled then came back to rest once they were certain they were not the intended prey.
“Come on!” Martha said, running ahead.
Mary and Dickon fell into step together again, but their earlier jubilation was missing. “Will the war change things very much, do you think?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know. I expect it must,” he replied. “Even without the war, things would change from what they are right now, though.”
“But why? Everything is perfectly lovely as it is. I do not want wars or change or any of it. I am content enough with the world right now at this moment,” Mary announced.
Dickon chuckled. “But even the air changes with every season.”
“And so it may continue to do, but not I,” Mary declared with boldness. Before Dickon could reply, Martha called out to both of them, “Come on, you slow coaches!”
Dickon looked to Mary questioningly, to which she shrugged and started to run. Dickon kept pace with her instead of racing ahead like Colin would have. She liked the feel of running next to him, as though they were fleeing from the change that nipped at their heels. She only hoped they could run fast enough so that it would never catch them.
