Oaks, Pines And Willows

Chapter 3
Beacon Boy

"Deacon!"
The head gardener was calling Deacon. He was sitting in the hollow trunk of the great oak tree, the tree the castle was named after. He didn't want to go to dig up weeds, or plant pansies. He was twelve. Twelve year old boys should be playing outside, or getting into scraps with other boys. Or so he thought. But Deacon wasn't like other boys. He was clumsy, and bashful, and tripped over anything and everything, be it a root, a flower pot, or his own feet.
He had red hair. That's mainly why he got teased. Deacon the beacon, they would say.
It wasn't much comfort knowing no one could find him in the oak tree, because he wanted to be with friends even more than he wanted to be alone. But he had no friends.
He so badly wanted friends. But no one understood him. No one knew why he couldn't read, write, or do numbers. But then again most of the boys couldn't. Well, not much anyway. They didn't know how the words squirmed about in the page, not making any sense. They didn't know how poor his family were, how his mother was still mourning the loss of his father, who died when he was only a little boy. They didn't know how his small income was expected to feed a family of eleven. Not including the dog. Or the cat. Or the two cows, three pigs and a horse they still had left from the farm they had to sell when he was only four. They didn't know anything about him. They wouldn't be able to be his friends.
He got out of the hollow slowly, and climbed down the tree. He could run away. He could live on hid own, with no one bothering him. But what about his mother. As well as losing his father, she would lose him and the money he earned. No, he couldn't run away.he would go somewhere else, somewhere he could still get paid, and send the money to his family. He would go to the woods. No, he would go to the castle. He'd hide there until anyone found him. He'd sneak into the servants quarters, and sleep there. He could get a job as a servant. He would go there right now, before anyone started looking for him. He snuck into his shed-like room, took his spare set of clothes and some letters from his father, his only possessions, and wrapped then all up in his sheet. He grabbed the bundle. And crept out the back door. He went round by the woods, and behind the gardens, under the cover of the rhododendron bushes. He found an abandoned conservatory, went in through a smashed window, and curled up in a ball, coiled around his bundle, sleeping until darkness came.