Limbo Lodge by Joan Aiken

House of Correction (a title which Dido thought even nastier than jail) was long and white, with narrow barred windows and a wall round it. A few Civil Guards lounged about the entrance. Others could be seen near wooden huts scattered among the trees.
    Dido thought about Doctor Talisman. Was she in that building? What was happening to her? Would there be a trial? A judge?
    “Now you listen me, Shaki-miss,” said Tylo, when they had ridden on towards the end of the valley, were still among the planted trees but not in sight of the House of Correction. “You want leave word for your friend? She soon be free again, Shaki-Manoel he soon fix, you say you know that?” Evidently Tylo was not fooled by Talisman’s disguise.
    “So Cap Sanderson said . . . but can you leave a message there, Tylo?”
    He grinned cheerfully. “Everbody know no-harm Tylo. One guard my father’s sister’s son. Not much Forest Person there, but some. You wait here, Shaki-miss, I leave talk-message. You got word-paper-speak?”
    “No. I’ve no paper on me. – Wait, though – yes, I have.”
    In her pocket she had Talisman’s little notebook. She pulled it out and leafed through it to see if there were any blank pages. At the front, in neat elegant script, was the name Jane Talisman Kirlingshaw. Then followed beautifully drawn little diagrams and numbered instructions. Then what looked like patterns embellished with little figures, some human, some animal. Then lists of herbs and medicines. At the end were a few empty pages. Dido tore one out and wrote (luckily she had a pencil stub), “Yore book is safe. Hop you are all rug. Hop to see you soon. Dido.”
    “There.” She gave it to Tylo, then, for safety, tucked away the notebook inside her waistband.
    “Now, Shaki-miss, you stay here. Just here. Soon back.”
    Tylo turned his pony and, following the track along which they had come, was soon out of sight.
    Dido dismounted, threw her pony’s reins over a branch so that he could graze and sat under one of the red-flowering trees (Tylo had told her they were clove trees) keeping a vigilant lookout for pearl-snakes and sting-monkeys. She could hear some monkeys in the branches overhead, jabbering at each other, but she did not interfere with them, nor they with her.
    After twenty minutes or so she began to feel desperately thirsty, and looked in the pony’s saddle-bag to see if it contained water. There were bread-rolls and squashy dried figs and a water-bottle, but it was empty. Nothing to drink. Not far away, though, Dido thought she could hear water running. Maybe there’s a brook, she thought. I won’t go far . . .
    Through the trees she could see that the side of the valley rose in a steep rocky wall. That was where the sound of water came from. Walking in that direction, Dido saw a little waterfall, spouting down between rocks into a pool below. The very sight of the white spray made her throat feel even dryer.
    She hurried on, then came to a startled stop, when what she had taken for a rock at the side of the pool moved and lifted its head, and she realised that it was a man sitting on the ground, wrapped in some kind of brown, muffling garment. Now Dido could see two gaunt bare feet like those of a scarecrow extending stiffly from the draperies. He flung back a fold of cloth from his face, and extended a flat wooden bowl, crying out in rusty Angrian: “Alms, Senhores! Alms, for the love of heaven!”
    Dido saw with dismay that he was blind. Jist the same, she thought, this is a mighty queer place for a beggar to choose as his begging-patch – ain’t it? He can’t expect many customers to pass by here? Still, best give the poor cove a couple of pennies . . .
    She fumbled in her pocket, where she had a few tiny coins. She was about to drop them into the begging-bowl when the beggar grabbed her by the arm and jerked her off her feet. She yelled, and knocked the man’s hands away from her throat. They rolled together on the