The descent into winter was slower and mellower than the preceding year, when a thin layer of ice had covered the river, to Johnny's fascination and Meg's disgust. All the same, his fourth birthday was spent indoors, sheltering from severe gales that seemed to want to whip the sea across the marshes up into a fulminating wave that would cover the land with its wrath.
He did not, as he might have done even in recent times, spend the day gazing wistfully through the window, his neck wrapped up in a comforter as proof against the draughts that made short and sneaky work of the rotting timber.
He had a far superior occupation now, and one that seemed to have even more magical properties than the production of sound. Ever since he had begged Meg to teach him the notes, she had softened towards him and was often quite kind.
Perhaps she had simply outgrown her petty spites and morose moods, for she was now sixteen and back to the bloom her aunt had lately lamented as lost. She seemed content to sit with him at the piano, showing him the fingering for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, teaching him what the black squiggles in her music books meant.
Twinkle Twinkle turned into more complicated melodies, some of which he created by himself, others he constructed from his recollections of the hymns at church and the tunes the butcher's boy whistled. The piano was a wondrous fountain of joy to the infant Johnny, if a nuisance to his aged aunt, who tutted and grumbled when he played the same air fifteen times in succession, eager to perfect it before leaving off and trying something else. It was manna in his desert, sunshine in his darkness, a ray of hope in his unformed, uneasy soul.
And, as his musical education flourished, so did his learning of alphabet and number. Meg took to Mrs Crisparkle's suggestion with some enthusiam – whether from uncertainty about her future, the boredom of darkening winter days or genuine desire to inculcate learning to her little charge was not clear.
What was clear was that Johnny was quick to pick up the necessary skills and was soon able to fill his slate with curly-lettered messages. Since he was still yet to utter a word in speech, this was an enormous step forward in the field of domestic communication, though Aunt Hetty might have benefitted more if her eyes were not grown so weak.
Meg schooled him gently, without recourse to her aunt's dread stick, and he responded to her new manner wholeheartedly, clinging to each little word of affection as if it might slip from his grasp and turn the world black again. Sometimes she even sat him on her lap and let his curly head rest against her apron bib and the softness behind it. Once he looked up to see that she was crying over him, her tears dropping like very slow rain into his raven's wing hair.
He wanted to ask her why she cried, he almost made the words come, but at the last they stuck in his throat and he thought that perhaps it was best he did not know anyway. He did not need to add to his own sum of sadness, after all.
So he ran to the piano and played a tune that was merry, a march to remind her of the red-jacketed soldiers they sometimes saw when at market in Cloisterham, whose winks and waves made her blush fit to match their livery.
His dark humours still seized him at unpredictable times, earning him many hours locked in the cookhouse until the storm had blown through. He flung the pots and pans to the ground or beat them against the wooden walls, chipping and marking the rough planking. It was as well that they were indestructible, Meg said. But he wasn't, he realised one day, and that was when he managed to knock himself out with the frying pan. After that, he wasn't locked in the cookhouse again.
Meg teased him about the blow to the head and said it had turned him into a devil-child, but he knew she only said it in jest, because he had been a devil-child before that.
By the spring, he was able to read the books on the living room shelves, though most of them were far too dull to contemplate. He liked parts of the Bible, especially the Proverbs, for which he made up little tunes, elaborating them on the piano.
"When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish; and the hope of unjust men perisheth," he chanted in his piping little voice, furnishing a variety of minor chords to underline the point.
"What a curiosity you are," muttered aunt Hetty. "An unnatural child."
But Meg laughed and asked him to sing another.
"Wine is a mocker," he sang, giggling along with her now. "Strong drink is raging."
"For shame," said aunt Hetty, banging her stick on the floor. "You are blasphemous. Stop it now, I tell you."
But she was less irritated by her nephew's disrespect of the holy book than she was by her suspicion that he was making a sly comment on her fondness for rum punch.
The month of June brought a big wedding at the village church, of the man at the grey-gabled house with the great high wall to a beautiful golden-haired lady. Meg took him to watch the bride and groom come out of the churchyard, but he was not much interested, preferring instead to watch a game of chase that was being played on the green close by.
"Go and join them, if you must," Meg sighed.
But Johnny shook his head. The village children teased him about his hair and his silence. They would not welcome him to their game.
He turned to watch the procession, the rice thrown in the air, the cheering and mounting of the carriage ready to take them away to their wonderful married future.
"She's so beautiful," breathed Meg, with nothing of envy, simply admiration for the glowing golden bride.
Johnny considered this proposition and was inclined to agree.
She looked in his direction as the carriage passed by and he was momentarily blinded by her glory, hiding behind his sister's skirts until the apparition was gone.
He wasn't sure what he thought about marriage. He couldn't really work out what it was for. He knew that he had parents, who were married, in London, but they never came to Cloisterham and he hardly supposed they ever would. They sent money, that was as much as he knew, and occasionally a letter for Meg, over which she would weep before crumpling it and throwing it in the fire. He dreaded those letters, for she was always harsh and cross with him for days afterwards.
More often than that, though, she was patient, teaching him with a quiet resignation that approached actual kindness at times. She left off trying to make him speak, for it only upset them both, but encouraged him to sing more and more.
Summer came again and Johnny alternated piano playing with chasing chickens and trying to scoop fish from the river, lying on his stomach on the towpath and dabbling his hands in the slack waters. Meg disapproved of his going near the river and would scold him if she caught him, but he loved nothing more than to watch the boats and barges sailing past, on their way to London.
Jess the cat followed him down one day, keen to profit from Johnny's hopeless efforts. He had a jar today and he swished it about in the weeds, hoping for tadpoles, even though their season was past.
A man walked by with a dog, which barked at Jess. Her ginger fur stood on end, her tail a huge brush and she fled along the towpath. Johnny leapt up and chased her, but she wouldn't stop and eventually slunk through a gap in the high wall that surrounded the grey gabled house and disappeared.
Johnny stood by the wall, looking behind and then in front, uncertain of what to do. What if Jess got lost in there? She didn't know the place. What if she never came back?
He put down his jar and squeezed his small body between the crumbled stone heights, finding himself in a small perimeter thicket. He hissed for Jess, but she did not come.
Peering through the branches, he could see a lake in the distance. Closer at hand, at the rear of the house, which he faced, was a vast trim lawn on which some very well-dressed people were playing croquet.
The house was dauntingly big and handsome. Johnny could not imagine living in such a place. The games of hide and seek he and Meg could play… The beautiful bride lady lived here, and he thought he saw her, far off, a white ruffled figure sitting in the shade of a little marquee with some other ladies, taking tea.
A sudden streak of ginger shot across the neat green, causing the croquet players to shout and laugh.
Johnny sprung from the bushes and ran after it, but Jess was away around the side of the house before he could get close to her, and he hadn't got very far when a large hand grabbed him by the shoulder and a larger voice asked him what the devil he thought he was doing.
He looked up into a wide, healthy face with a splendid moustache.
His attempts to struggle free of his captor's grip were useless, if spirited, and he aimed a kick at the man's shin which made him suck in a breath and tighten his hold to a painful intensity.
Meanwhile, another man had loped up, a thin fellow, very dandyishly attired – the groom from the wedding.
"I say, Drood, what have we here? A little gypsy child?"
"A little ruffian," growled the man addressed as Drood. "If you were half a head bigger I'd thrash the life out of you, boy. What are you doing here? Come to thieve, have you? Eh?" He shook Johnny until he wailed aloud.
"I say, old fellow, go easy. He can't be above five years old." The other man dropped to a crouch and looked into Johnny's face. "What's your name, boy?"
Johnny said nothing, but simply snivelled and twisted around in the moustache man's tight hold.
"You may go home just as soon as you explain what you are doing here," the dandy man continued pleasantly. "Come now – I can't have all and sundry roaming my lawns, can I? This is private property."
"Let me whip it out of him," suggested Drood.
At this suggestion, a silvery voice was raised in protest, and a rustle of petticoats heralded the arrival of the bride-lady.
"Heavens, he is only a little boy. Leave him be, Edwin. Let him come to me."
She stretched out her arms.
Johnny thought she might be an angel, come to take him to heaven. Drood reluctantly released him and the lady took Johnny's hands and drew him towards her.
"Who are you, little one?" she asked.
Her eyes were the blue of the china ornament on aunt Hetty's mantel. She had golden ringlets that fell forward as she leant down to him and brushed his cheek.
He looked towards the men, standing together with eyebrows raised, and looked back at her.
"I am John Jasper," he said.
His voice! That was how it sounded. He said it again, for good measure, a little louder.
"I am John Jasper."
She laughed. "That is a very good name. I have a very silly name – shall I tell you what it is?"
He nodded.
"It is Rosa Bud! Did you ever hear anything so foolish? Rosa Bud, indeed. I had a perfectly lovely name of my own once – I was Rosa Wakeham – but then I married this gentleman here and now I have the most ridiculous name in all England. Don't you pity me, you, with your solid, sensible name?"
He smiled, reflecting the sunshine of her own expression back at her.
"Now, tell me, Master Jasper," she said in a conspiratorial whisper, "did you come here for your cat?"
He nodded vigorously.
"I thought as much. It's my belief that cats are very clever creatures who unerringly know the way home. I think your pet will be waiting there for you when you return."
"Do you?" he said.
"I am quite sure of it. Now, if you will tell me where you live, I will dispatch these two gentlemen here to escort you safely home."
"I can go by myself."
"Oh, but you are just a baby. Mr Bud and Captain Drood will be happy to take you home, won't you, gentlemen?"
They looked far from it, but each mumbled some words of assent as the blue of Mrs Bud's eyes took on a steelier hue.
"Come then – where do you live?"
"In the village. With aunt Hetty."
"Lead the way, and your guardsmen will follow. Thank you for your visit, Master Jasper." She bent and kissed his grimy forehead. "I am ever so much obliged. I hope I will see you in church on Sunday."
He put his fingers up to the warm spot she had left on him and watched in wonder as the faery bride returned to her bower, skirts trailing and ringlets bouncing.
"Tender-hearted girl, ain't she, your Rosa?" said Drood, a mite sourly, to his companion.
"She has always loved children. I'd call that a good sign," replied Bud. "Well, then, young chap. Let's be off, shall we?"
Johnny delivered them to the cottage, from the door of which Meg flew out, ribbons streaming, apron flapping.
"Johnny, where have you been? I have been calling and searching for you this last hour. Oh. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I hope Johnny has not been misbehaving himself?"
She had grabbed Johnny's wrist and pulled him towards her, and now she straightened up, looking properly at the visitors.
"Young Johnny has been for a walk where he should not have been," explained Bud.
"Oh, dear, I am very sorry to hear it."
Bud carried on with the tale of Johnny's wanderings, but Johnny could not help but notice that Meg was not listening particularly hard. She and that damnable moustache man were engaged in a furtive game of pretending not to look at each other.
"I am so sorry," she repeated at length. "I would invite you in for tea, as recompense for the inconvenience you have been put to, but my dwelling is very humble…as you see…"
"Not at all," chimed in Drood, in his big, braying voice. "A dish of tea would be capital."
"I ought to get back to Rosa," demurred Bud. "And our guests."
"You go on back, Bud. Don't worry about me. I shan't be long."
Johnny was sent to the other room to reflect upon his impetuosity. Jess lay on his bed, curled up as if nothing had ever happened.
He heard the boom of Drood's voice, Meg's gentler tones, the chink of teacups, an occasional querulous grunt from aunt Hetty. Why did that man want to take tea here when he could be at the fairy castle with the beautiful Rosa Bud?
Johnny lay on his bed and thought about Rosa Bud. Was it possible for a lady to have two husbands? If so, would she consider him? He added it to his rather scant list of life ambitions, along with being able to play everything ever written for the piano and sailing the seven seas.
But he came to rue the day that he ever met Rosa Bud, for on that day Meg met Captain Drood, and thereafter the moustachioed soldier seemed to visit very much more often than Johnny found congenial.
He was instructed to make himself scarce during these visits, but sometimes he could not help stumbling into their awkward ritual of tea and flirtation, much as he loathed and avoided Drood's false joviality.
"Ah, brother Jack," Drood said on one such occasion, Johnny's fifth birthday as it transpired. "You know, Margaret, the boy is five years old and his health is clearly what one might call rude. Would your parents not take him back to London? The Cloisterham air has worked its wonders and he surely can't be regarded as needing it longer?"
Johnny's shoulders stiffened and he went under the table, not trusting Meg to defend him in his absence.
"My parents are very busy," said Meg vaguely. "They have no time to care for him. He is better here."
"Yes, but Margaret…" Drood lowered his voice. "Your aunt is very old and frail now."
"But I am not."
"How shall I put this, Margaret? There are reasons, personal to me and which will become apparent quite soon, I hope, that render it much more convenient if your brother is in the care of his own parents. For, while a man with his own establishment can be much in want of company, that company is not generally that of a small boy."
"Oh." Meg's hand flew to her mouth and her cheeks flooded with blood.
They looked at each other a long time, then Meg looked at Johnny under the table.
"I will write to them," she whispered.