Chapter Text
The sound of laughter echoed from the ancient oaks, beech and chestnuts of the Narnian woods. Five people - two tall young men and three children, a golden-haired girl and two boys – ambled together along the defined, pebble-edged path through sunlit glades toward the coast. “Goodness!” cried the girl in a high, trilling voice. “I’d quite forgotten how busy market day can be!”
“So ’d I, Lu,” said the elder of the boys, an alert-looking lad with just enough resemblance about the eyes and mouth to be identified as her brother. “Still, it’s good to get out and about, Caspian: and to see you weren’t exaggerating when you said Narnia’s prospering again.”
The smaller of the two men, handsome like his friend and as fair as the other was dark, lifted his hands. “One must allow a king to boast of his accomplishments Edmund – you of all people know that!” he said cheerfully. “Lion bless me, what commotion is this? I do believe there’s someone clambering about in that great chestnut tree ahead!”
“Help!” wailed a female voice from deep within the lush green canopy spreading from the tree in question across the centre of the glade. “Travellers, whomever you may be, pray pause and help me!”
“I know that voice!” cried the dark-haired man, starting forward from his friends with eyes narrowed and lofty head tipped back. “Lady Herringbone! What do you do, scrambling about in a tree!”
“Oh! My Lord!” A rosy face topped by a tangle of looping brown curls peeped between branches. “Aslan be thanked, I – oh! Your Majesty, crave pardon! Not for worlds would I have addressed Your Highness so roughly…”
“Good lady, never mind our royal sensibilities: only tell us what you do, and how we may be of service!” cried King Caspian the Tenth, much astonished. “My Lord Drinian…”
“’Tis all the doing of my abominable brother Tamarin, Sire,” moaned the distressed lady. “He stole my precious sewing box – you must know of it, my Lord, for I’m sure your wife, my very dear friend, has spoken of how dear it is to me!”
“The ancient Archenlandish box?” Drinian, lord of the great northern province of Etinsmere, somehow contrived to maintain a perfectly serious mien. Yes, his young wife had told the tale of the antique box exactly as it had been told to her (for Daniela was a remarkably fine mimic) with all its exclamation points and underlining’s included. “A fair prize for the young master to seize, but for what purpose?”
“I tell the wretch never to touch something and he must at once have his grubby fingers all over it!” Master Tamarin’s sister declared. “He confessed – as he fled the house! – to concealing it here. I have it but now… how am I ever to get down without doing it harm or breaking both my legs!”
“Toss the box down for us to catch,” Lucy suggested earnestly. The other’s hazel eyes almost popped.
“Oh, but if it were to be dropped, I should be… you will be careful? ‘Tis so very old and precious, I…”
“Too precious to be left in a tree, and I see small other hope of getting both you and it down than the method Queen Lucy suggests.” Drinian’s stern tone at least stopped another outpouring of incoherent alarms. “Now, my Lady, let the box fall on my command! We shall stand ready; and the moment we have it caught, we may begin to consider some method of rescuing you.”
Alicia, Lady Herringbone (to give the lady in the tree her full name) thought for a moment, then gave way. “Can you see it?” she asked anxiously, shaking something until the twigs and leaves around her trembled. Edmund gave a sudden yelp.
“I can!” he exclaimed, pointing excitedly. “Right above your head Scrubb, see? Gather round everyone! Caspian – Lu, move a touch to the left, will you? Right! One of us is sure to catch it now!”
The five on the ground formed themselves into a tight knot, arms upraised. “Oh, dear!” cried the lady in the tree. “Oh, do please be careful! Oh, dear!”
With a rustling shower of leaves and the snapping of small twigs, the Herringbone household’s pride and joy dropped heavily toward the earth. Five pairs of hands snatched eagerly at the air. “Oh, well held Ed!” cried Lucy.
Triumphant, he brandished his trophy. “No harm done, Lady Herringbone!” he promised the lady, who seemed close to fainting form her perch with relief. “Now you can use both hands, can you find a way down?”
“Oh, dear!” It seemed to be all she could say. The group on the ground heard the sounds of frantic kicking and scrabbling against the tree trunk. Another shower of fresh foliage drifted down to catch in their hair. “Oh, goodness me! No, King Edmund, I appear to be completely stuck.”
Caspian and Drinian shared a speaking look. “Remain quite still, Ma’am,” Drinian instructed, as sharp as if the young woman were an especially hapless member of his crew aboard the royal galleon Dawn Treader. “If Your Majesty would be so kind as to hold my cloak, I’ll go aloft, see what can be done.”
Caspian tossed the short blue mantle across his arm and, nimble as a monkey, Drinian launched himself up into the branches. “Now, Ma’am,” they heard him say soothingly from the canopy over their heads. “Bring the left hand back toward me, that’s right. Right foot down slowly, that’s the way!”
“Oh, dear!” cried Lady Herringbone. “Oh, when I get my hands on that hateful little beast… oh! Oh, I have a foothold now, I see! Oh, thank you, my Lord, I shall be quite all right now I’m sure! Oh goodness me, I do feel giddy!”
Drinian slithered down first, turning to offer a steadying hand to the lady who, hindered by her long gown, huffed and panted her confused way to safety in his wake. With a great rent torn down the side of her yellow skirt and leaves dripping from her curls Alicia, Lady Herringbone, half-fell into a curtsy before her sovereign.
“Oh, Sire!” she gasped, fanning her grimy face with one hand. “Your Majesties – young master - my Lord – thank you all so much, I really do feel quite faint! Pray overlook my rude manner in so hailing you…”
“Think no more of it, my dear lady,” said Caspian placatingly. He steered her toward a grassy knoll, urging her to sit (which she did with a heavy thud). “Rest and recover your breath a moment! Now, this scapegrace, your brother…”
“Barely fourteen, Your Majesty, and mischievous as a bagful of monkeys,” the lady declared, suddenly quite fierce. Her gaze shifted from the eminent personages clustering to the small, scuffed box being clutched protectively close to Edmund’s chest. “This is our greatest treasure – well does he know its value! Your Majesty – King Edmund, if I may…”
“Oh, yes, of course.” If this battered wooden tub was her household’s most precious item Edmund decided, discreetly studying her long, fleshy fingers for rings, it must be a pretty miserable one!
As he passed it into her outstretched palms a fingernail, broken in making the catch, snagged on a crack in the wood. They heard a tiny scraping sound; then slowly, reluctantly, a portion of timber at the box’s base creaked away from the rest.
“Oh Ed! You’ve broken it!” said his sister reproachfully. “Look!”
Horror-stricken, everyone stared. “I don’t think there’s any damage,” said Eustace eventually. “Look closer: it’s a secret drawer! You must have caught the release mechanism, Edmund!”
“Aslan’s Mane!” cried Lady Herringbone. “This box has been in the possession of my ancestors these two centuries at least, and I’m sure they never knew… How very clever of you, Sire, to find such a thing!”
“I do believe there’s something inside!” said Lucy excitedly, bending to peer more closely into the shallow tray.
“Looks like parchment,” Edmund decided, frowning. “Lady Herringbone, may I…”
“Be my guest, Your Majesty! I’m sure it’s naught of use to me!”
“Thank you.” Very carefully, half expecting the fragile object to crumble beneath his touch, Edmund levered the folded yellowing sheet from its hiding place. “Glory! I wonder how old it is? Hear how it crackles! It could be really ancient!”
“The box is six hundred years and more old, Your Majesty.” Alicia Herringbone, as Drinian’s wife could have warned them (had she been of their party and not back at the castle of Cair Paravel in the company of Caspian’s new queen, awaiting their return) could out-chatter Pattertwig and all his troupe of Talking Squirrels on a topic that truly interested her. “It was given to my great-great-great – oh, I forget how many times great - grandmother by an admirer - an Archenlander. Of its history before that we know little. ‘Tis said it was made by a sailor and passed down through his relations until his descendant gave it to mine. It was said, you know…”
Lucy nodded politely, allowing the young woman’s high-pitched enthusiastic chatter to drift through the back of her mind. Edmund, she noticed, was fondling the aged parchment with unconcealed admiration. No points for guessing, she thought, just as he seized the moment of the lady’s brief pause for breath to make his request.
“I wonder, would you let me take this old scrap?” he asked, trying (and failing quite miserably in Caspian’s opinion) to keep the eagerness from his voice. “I rather like very old things.”
“Take it and be welcome, Sire.” Hugging her treasure to herself, Lady Herringbone had not the least interest in a dirty piece of long-forgotten parchment. “My Lord Drinian, are you not ashamed of yourself? It must be ages since I enjoyed the company of my dear friend Daniela! Do you mean to deprive your wife of all her old friends’ company?”
“That, Ma’am, I should never dare attempt,” replied the gentleman with perfect solemnity. “Ah! Master Tamarin loiters in the bushes yonder, looking for the result of his mischief. Fly, young master! I should be quaking now, were I in your boots!”
“Tamarin! Why, you spawn of the devil Tash, I’ll give you such a thrashing you shan’t sit down for a week!” Still clinging to her beloved box Lady Herringbone fairly sprang to her feet and raced in pursuit of a flash of dull brown in the undergrowth Lucy presumed to be her incorrigible brother. “Come back here at once!”