Lark (Sally Watson Family Tree Series) Read online

  Books By Sally Watson

  by year of original publication

  Highland Rebel 1954

  Mistress Malapert 1955

  To Build a Land 1957

  Poor Felicity 1961

  Witch of the Glens 1962

  Lark 1962 Other Sandals 1966

  The Hornet’s Nest 1968

  The Mukhtar’s Children 1968

  Jade 1969

  Magic at Wychwood 1970

  Linnet 1971

  ORIGINAL COPYRIGHT © 1964

  BY SALLY WATSON

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except by a reviewer, without the permission of the publisher.

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES

  OF AMERICA

  A hardcover edition of this book was originally published by New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Ms. Sally Watson.

  First Image Cascade Publishing edition published 2002.

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Watson, Sally, 1924-

  Lark.

  (Juvenile Girls)

  Reprint. Originally published: New York: Holt, Rinehart and

  Winston, Inc., 1964.

  ISBN 978-1-930009-65-3

  To Constance Swinton, who thinks no effort too much for a

  friend, a client or a cat.

  Acknowledgments

  For my long-time fan-friends: Carla Kozak, Darice McMurrey, Donna Trifilo, Joy Canfield, and Michele Blake, who all conspired beautifully to make this reprint possible; and Caryn Cameron, who put me on a website, among other supportive things.

  Author’s Letter to Readers

  Whew! And whoopee! Republication after only thirty-odd years.

  It wasn’t my fault it took so long, honestly. I did try. So did dunno-how-many friends of my books. All to no avail–until at last, some of said friends took action.

  When I moved to Santa Rosa after twenty-five years or so living in England, I made friends with the local librarian, Darice McMurray, who not only was a delightful person, but she had loved my books when young! How very gratifying!

  I was desolated when she was transferred. But it all turned out for the best when in San Francisco she went to cat-sit for some other librarians named Carla Kozak and Donna Trifilo, and found some of my books in their homes–and told them I was still alive and only ninety minutes away. It turned out that Carla at thirteen had written me a fan letter where I lived in England. (I remember it, too. It was particularly charming.) She and Donna both loved my fictional cats, and had got interested in things like Scotland and history, they say, because of my books. And they even had a whole group chatting on e-mail about whether I was dead and why couldn’t my books get published again. So when they learned that I was (a) alive and (b) living 60 miles up the freeway, they all came up from San Francisco to visit me. And it was a wonderful visit. So many tastes in common!

  Eventually things came together. Carla knew Joy Canfield of Image Cascade Publishing, and it seems they all talked to one another and also to Michele Blake, who wrote to tell me that she had loved my books too, and why didn’t I phone Joy whose number she included? So I did–and as the English would say, Bob’s your uncle!

  Thanks very much to all of you! I couldn’t have done it by myself. I’d been away too long. I didn’t know where to start.

  Contents

  1 THE COTTAGE WITH THE HERB GARDEN

  2 THE LARK FLIES

  3 THE RESCUE

  4 THE WISH

  5 THE BLUE DOLPHIN

  6 THE WOOD

  7 THE GYPSIES

  8 WILLOW

  9 DOLL

  10 THE QUARREL

  11 THE SON OF DR. THORNYBRAMBLE

  12 THE PRISONER

  13 UNDER THE WALL

  14 THE SKIRMISH

  15 JAMES’S HOLE

  16 LARK IN COMMAND

  17 THE YELLOW WAGON

  18 A MANOR IN DEVON

  19 THE INTRUDERS

  20 THE WAY TO FRANCE

  21 THE EQUINOX

  22 CHARLES

  1

  The Cottage with the Herb Garden

  JAMES

  The man in sober Puritan dress paused and glanced behind him, for he thought he had heard a sound that was neither squirrel nor bird. But except for the small rustles and twitterings that belonged there, the forest lay still and shadowy in the long summer twilight. He turned and went on, for he was anxious to see his family, and even the disturbing young niece he was raising at God’s request.

  Behind him a brown shadow moved slightly and became a wiry youth with a lean brown face which wore an expression of amusement mixed with wariness. The wariness was quite understandable, for in Cromwell’s England of 1651 it was not in the least safe to be a messenger for the defeated Royalists. The amusement was simply the love of this exciting game—for James Trelawney had an adventurous spirit as well as a deep loyalty to his young king, Charles II, who had been crowned in Scotland last January, though he could hardly have been said to have ruled yet.

  James made a wry face as he went on silently through the forest, moving with almost the lithe grace of a Gypsy—though he was not one. It was his private opinion that the Scots—or at least the Lowland Scots—were all quite mad, and he wished Charles had not associated himself with them, even to be crowned. He had a dark suspicion that no good would come of the alliance, especially now that the Scots had decided to invade England with Charles at their head. That was not the way, thought James, to win the love and trust of the English.

  But that was not James’s affair, thank goodness. He simply served his king in whatever way he could, mainly by delivering messages; a job which became more exciting the further the Scottish army moved into England. But this particular errand pleased him, for he loved old Mistress Tillyard and looked forward to a savory meal and an evening of talk once his messages were delivered.

  A mile or so further there was a clearing near the edge of the wood, where an old cottage nestled in the middle of an herb garden. A light flickered through the drawn curtains. James tapped softly.

  LARK

  Lark set an egg carefully in her basket, kilted her full gray skirts a little higher, and went on searching among the hay with an industry that was truly impressive. A painter (assuming that God and Cromwell had approved such an un-Puritan occupation) might have done a portrait of the small-boned figure with snowy cap and collar and grave round face. He would doubtless have called it “Industrious Puritan Child,” in which case he would have been mistaken on all three counts. For Lark was older than she looked, and her private thoughts were still lamentably worldly, and her great industry was simply because Uncle Jeremiah had just arrived home last night and she was trying (though without much hope) to escape one of his interminable family prayers.

  “Elizabeth!” The sound came from the house. Lark wrinkled her nose and burrowed further into the hay, seething with rebellious thoughts. She felt that she hated her aunt and uncle and all her cousins, and in addition she was very much displeased with God, so that it would be quite silly to go and pray to Him. It seemed perfectly clear that He must be on Uncle Jeremiah’s side.

  Uncle Jeremiah, of course, was perfectly certain of this, and that was one reason why Lark was here today instead of being with her own family, now in exile in France. When Lark was born, her uncle took an immediate fancy to her, and decided that she should marry his oldest son. That was back in the days before religion and politics and the Civil Wars had driven their families apart, and Lark could remember his visits quite well. He always told Lark and Will-of-God that
they would marry some day, and everyone took it rather as a joke except Lark, who didn’t at all like her big cousin, even then.

  But to Uncle Jeremiah it was no joke. It was God’s Will. He had said so on that awful day more than two years ago when he had brought his whole troop of Roundhead soldiers to her father’s home and stolen Lark right away from her family! He said God had particularly arranged the orders that took his troops right past the Lennox home in the most convenient way possible. Clearly He had not wanted Will-of-God’s future wife to be brought up in such an ungodly household, but to be raised in a manner worthy of her husband. And off he had ridden with her, in spite of the perfectly blistering things said to him by Lark’s mother and grandparents—her father was away at the time, trying to help save the Royalist cause.

  But it had already been too late to help poor beheaded King Charles, and the Royalist cause seemed lost with him. All her father had accomplished was to get himself and his family exiled to France, leaving Lark in Uncle Jeremiah’s hands.

  It had been a dreadful shock to Lark, the adored youngest child in her own family, accustomed to having her own way within reason. Here there was no quick warmth of affection, no teasing, no spoiling, not even any laughter. Lark had been unbelievably unhappy. And for a long time she simply couldn’t believe that Uncle Jeremiah was not going to take her back, no matter how unhappy she was. Tears did no good, arguments were silenced, rebellion was punished. Pleading was met by the rejoinder that it was All For her Own Good, and God’s Will.

  Lark learned to be subtle. She wore a mask of meekness in sheer self-defense. She no longer glared and told them she hated them all. Her carefully played role hadn’t got her back home—yet—but it had saved her a good deal of unpleasantness, and it had convinced Uncle Jeremiah that he had tamed her, more or less. He would have been very much astonished to know that she still hated him unrelentingly, and was still perfectly determined to get back to her family, be they at the ends of the earth. And she would have no scruples about how she managed it, either! What with one thing and another, Lark had developed into an incredibly determined person on the inside and a splendid actress on the outside.

  “Elizabeth!” She was always Elizabeth here, though no one at home had ever called her anything but Lark. She closed her ears stubbornly. It was Will-of-God’s voice, and he was, if anything, even more grim and bossy and humorless than his father. Lark hadn’t the least intention of marrying him, but she very much hoped to be back with her family before the unpleasant subject should come to a head. In the meantime, she set herself firmly against growing up—or at least against showing it so that people would notice. With considerable help from nature, she was still managing to look and act about ten. Since Puritans didn’t celebrate birthdays, she hoped that her aunt and uncle would somehow forget the passage of time.

  “Elizabeth! Didn’t you hear us calling? You’re delaying prayers, you wicked girl!” Will-of-God stood in the doorway frowning into the gloom of the barn. His new full breeches and boots made him look more hulking than ever, and now that he was going into Cromwell’s army, in his father’s own company, his airs were simply unbearable. Lark would have loved to defy him outright, but she had learned through long experience that it wasn’t worth it. It meant either being punished or being prayed over, and she didn’t know which she disliked more.

  Instead, she turned deceitfully innocent eyes to her cousin. “Oh,” she said guilelessly, “were you calling, Will-of-God? I was trying to find the speckled hen’s nest, so we could have lots of eggs for Uncle Jeremiah.”

  Will-of-God frowned at her. He sometimes entertained uncomfortable suspicions about what really went on in Elizabeth’s head. To be sure, she was merely a female, but it was well known that Satan found females particularly easy to corrupt, since they were even more wicked and stupid by nature than males were.

  “You should have known, anyway,” he said severely. “You knew Father was home, and he always has extra prayers when he’s here. I sometimes wonder, Elizabeth, how long it will take to train you into a suitable wife for me.”

  Lark was by now expert at hiding her feelings, and if she permitted herself a malevolent glance at him, the dimness of the barn hid it. Still, it was impossible to resist a subtle dig now and then at his revolting complacency.

  “Perhaps God just predestined me not to become a good Puritan,” she murmured innocently.

  Will-of-God had no answer to this disconcerting idea, which most unfairly attacked him on his home ground. Instead, he turned and led the way masterfully to the house, his delinquent cousin trailing meekly behind.

  She knelt—after not too much of a scolding—between her placid cousin Honour and her stolid cousin Repent, wishing for the thousandth time that the paving tiles of the floor were less hard, or that she had a cushion hidden beneath her long skirts, or that Uncle Jeremiah would make his prayers shorter. Better yet, she wished that his company would be sent way up to Scotland to fight, so that he would get home less often. She tried to count her blessings by remembering that at least he wasn’t home much of the time as it was, and that now Will would be gone too; but that didn’t help much—especially after the unwelcome reminder that she was supposed to marry Will some day. She wouldn’t! She just wouldn’t! Her back stiffened, but her heart sank with the awful fear that they might be able to force her into it. They always did win, she remembered bleakly. In more than two years, she had never got her own way once, about anything!

  In the middle of the prayer, Lark made a small private vow. She would escape her horrid, mean relations one way or another. And when she did, she would always have her own way for the rest of her life!

  Behind Lark, Aunt Judith looked hard at the back of her problem niece. The white-capped head was properly lowered, and the nape of the childish neck looked very vulnerable between the neat brown braids, but that narrow back was much too straight for anything like humility of spirit. Mistress Talbot glanced over the children’s heads at her husband, who was quick to take the hint.

  “Look upon Elizabeth, Oh Lord,” he commanded. Lark stiffened slightly. “Thou knowest how I have tried to lead her from the ungodliness of her early training. Chasten her stubborn and rebellious spirit, and bring her in repentance to Thy feet so that she may become worthy to receive the name Submit.”

  Lark immediately hardened her heart against God. She had no desire at all to be renamed Submit, not even for salvation and heaven. In any event, it seemed quite unlikely that she was one of the Elect, and if God predestined everyone to salvation or damnation before they were even born, Lark really couldn’t see any point in worrying much about her rebellious spirit at this late date. On the other hand, if it turned out that Uncle Jeremiah was wrong about God, and her own family right, and God didn’t predestine people at all, then there was even less point in letting herself earn such a horrid name as Submit. Lark concealed a very logical mind behind her childish face.

  She did not share this particular bit of logic with her uncle, however. Such confidences, she had discovered, invariably led to long and uncomfortable lectures and more praying. Questions of any kind were most upsetting to Uncle Jeremiah—especially the kind of questions that occurred to Lark. So she raised her round eyes to his with the blank, newborn look of a baby.

  Her uncle was by now almost convinced that his niece was not really rebellious at all, but merely not quite bright. He wondered, as he ended his prayer and arose, what arrangements God made for such unfortunates. Then he hastily pushed the disturbing question aside and wondered instead if she could really be shaped into a proper wife for Will-of-God by the time she grew up.

  By the time she grew up . . . He seated himself at the head of the supper table and glanced again at his niece as she took her place along the side bench with his own six. She didn’t seem to be growing at all, he discovered. She looked no larger than when he had first brought her, a small and fiercely rebellious eleven-year-old, to his home. And she somehow looked even smaller now, per
haps because his own sturdy, red-cheeked offspring were considerably larger now . . . Jeremiah found this disturbing. Neighbors might think he didn’t feed her enough.

  “You’re a puny child, Elizabeth,” he remarked reprovingly. “You ought to eat more.”

  His entire family looked at him with astonishment. “Eat more?” echoed his wife. “But husband, she already eats nearly as much as Will-of-God!”

  “She does?” Jeremiah looked with surprise at his oldest son, who nodded a trifle resentfully. “Well, then . . .” He dismissed the subject. Apparently it was God’s Will that Elizabeth remain puny, no doubt as punishment for having been born and raised in a non-Puritan family.

  Lark was demurely silent, with her eyes on her plate and her ears on her uncle’s conversation. It was the best way to learn about what was going on in England—and Lark was vitally interested in what went on in England. If only the young King Charles and the Royalists and the Scots could defeat Cromwell after all, Mother and Father could come back from exile and she could go back home to them. She blinked hard, for her eyes often got blurred with tears when she thought of her mother and father. She hastily pulled her thoughts back and listened.

  “Is it true, husband,” asked Aunt Judith worriedly, “that that dreadful young Charles is bringing the wild savage Scots in an army to invade us? The neighbors say we’re all likely to be murdered in our beds.”

  “Aye, he’s invaded true enough, may Satan fly off with him!” Uncle Jeremiah glowered. “But there’s no danger here so near the south coast, wife. Cromwell is following close behind, and more of our army is heading north. The Scots will be crushed before they get as far as Manchester.” He dismissed Charles Stewart as of no consequence and turned to look at his niece again, dissatisfied. “There’s no color in her cheeks,” he pointed out critically.