The Ivy Tree

by Mary Stewart

The sky was still and blue, and the high cauliflower clouds over towards the south seemed to hang without movement.

Two lambs, their mother astray somewhere not far away, were sleeping, closely cuddled together, in the warm May sunshine.

Dimly I was aware that the lambs had bolted, crying.

Not Adam, no, this intruder into my demi-Eden. But quite possibly the serpent. He was looking just about as friendly and as safe as a black mamba.

There were things I wanted to know. It isn’t every day that one is recognised – and attacked – for a ‘double’ some years dead.

‘Haven’t you read Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey? You couldn’t say that was “pure romance”. It could have happened.’

But the power of the oak would be its undoing, for the wall had been clothed in ivy, and the ivy had reached for the tree, crept up it, engulfed it, till now the trunk was one towering mass of the dark gleaming leaves, and only the tree’s upper branches managed to thrust the young gold leaves of early summer through the strangling curtain. Eventually the ivy would kill it. Already, through the tracery of the ivy-stems, some of the oak-boughs showed dead, and one great lower limb, long since broken off, had left a gap where rotten wood yawned, in holes deep enough for owls to nest in.

You’ll likely find there’s teacakes and singin’ hinnies for your tea.’ ‘Singin’ hinnies?’

the kitchen, and Mrs Bates with her.’ ‘I can smell baking, even from here. Do you suppose she’ll have made singin’ hinnies for my tea?’