The Whispering Mountain

by Joan Aiken

  His tone was inquisitive, rather than unkind.

  “Do?” Owen was still somewhat dazed. He rubbed his forehead perplexedly, rather taken aback at the apparent good will of these boys who had hitherto been his enemies. But Hwfa and Dick, Soth and Follentine and Dove still scowled at him with dislike and hostility; only, he now realized, their enmity did not worry him as it had done before. “Do?” he repeated. “Why, I must try to get the harp back. Yes,” he went on, as what seemed his only possible course of action occurred to him. “I must go to Caer Malyn and tell the Marquess that Bilk and Prigman have gone off with the harp and that, as he is suspected of hiring them to steal it, he should help us to get it back.”

  “Bachgen dda! That’s right!” exclaimed Mr. Morgan approvingly. “Coward, did you say this boy was, Hwfa? Why he have twice your spirit. Going to see Lord Malyn! There’s many a full-grown man in this town would not dare!”

  Hwfa Morgan scowled at his father and muttered unwillingly, “Nothing so wonderful about him that I can see. But I’ll go along with you if you like, Owen Hughes.”

  For he perceived that Owen’s behaviour had won him respect, even popularity, and that it would be as well for his own position at least to make a pretence of sharing the general opinion.

  “And I’ll go too!” called out Luggins joyfully. “Like to see his lordship’s castleful of golden furniture, I would!”

  “I’ll come too.” “And I!” volunteered Dick and Follentine and Dove, following their leader’s example.

  “Don’t leave poor old Mog behind, boys!”

  Soth glanced questioningly at Hwfa, who muttered behind his hand, “Just wait till we have him out in the woods on the way to Caer Malyn. Mincemeat we’ll make of the little adwr!”

  Upon which Soth, smiling his sickly smile, lisped, “Glad I thall be to come along too, Owen Hugheth!”

  Hwfa and his associates stepped out of the rapidly dwindling crowd and joined Owen round the mounting-block.

  “Start right off, will you then, Owen Hughes?” Mog said.

  Owen would have liked to set out that instant, but Mr. Morgan advised waiting till next morning.

  “No sense trying to get through the Fforest Mwyaf at night, boy; eaten alive every last one of you would be, even my Hwfa, and he’s as tough a mouthful as ever gave the colic to a hungry wolf. Better come down to the Dragon for a bite of supper and a nap; welcome with us you are, since your old granda have turned so prickly. Plenty of room there, since all the gentry have left. The foreign gentleman didn’t stay long after Lord Malyn went; up to visit the museum first, and then off with him to Nant Agerddau in a hired chaise; wanted to see the Devil’s Leap was what he said.”

  It was agreed that the boys should start at daybreak with food for the journey and whatever weapons each could provide. Owen ventured to tap on the museum door and ask his grandfather if he might borrow the ancient crossbow from the collection of his arms, but his request was greeted by an implacable silence from inside.

  “No matter,” Mr. Morgan said. “Plenty of leather we have, down at the Dragon; make yourself a slingshot, you can.”

  However, next morning, much to Owen’s surprise, Luggins arrived carrying the museum crossbow (which was in good working order, thanks to the way Owen had been obliged to polish it every night) and a handful of bolts.

  “How did you persuade my grandfather to part with it?” Owen asked Luggins as the party of eight set out down the rocky, forested glen of the Gaff river, armed with sticks, knives, pikes, and the crossbow.

  “No trouble at all!” Luggins said, smiling his wide, simple smile. “Thought I’d call in, just, as I was passing the museum. At the door, I was, when a carriage stopped there, and a fellow all done up in gold lace says to your granda,”Mr. Hughes, is it? I have orders to bring you at once before his worship the Marquess of Malyn. He desires to see you without loss of time.” Well, while your granda was grumbling and arguing the toss, the way he has with him, what did I do but nip in the door behind him, whip up the crossbow, and out the window. Simple, see!”

  Owen congratulated him absently, his mind much occupied with this news. It sounded as if the Marquess had not got the harp, but had received his letter and sent for Mr. Hughes to demand an explanation. So that made two. The Seljuk’s letter had missed him; Owen had been relieved to find it waiting at the Dragon of Gwaun and had quietly taken the first opportunity of putting it in the kitchen stove. But where was the fourth—that addressed to His Highness Prince David of Wales?

  The route the boys were following lay along the course of the Gaff river and through the forest; this way was the most direct but more dangerous than the turnpike road, first because of wild beasts, and secondly because part of the track lay in a dry watercourse where the river had sunk underground, and the way was subject to sudden dangerous flooding after a storm. However at present the day was fair and they hoped it would remain so.

  The party had strung out in twos along the rocky riverbed; first Hwfa and Soth, who walked some distance ahead of the rest, mutering together in low voices and occasionally casting back glances full of ill-will at Owen.

  Next came Dick and Follentine, slashing with their sticks at every plant they passed, and throwing stones at every bird and animal.

  Luggins, Dove, Mog, and Owen brought up the rear, walking in a square, three of them openmouthed in wonder while Owen, out of the lore acquired from his little book, instructed them as to the natural wonders that lay on every side.

  “The Hedgehog will patiently fubmit to every provocation for its own fecurity—do give over poking the poor thing, though, Dove; it will never unroll while you do that! The giant oaks you observe overhead belong to the genus Quercus. The Mushrooms, Mosses, Ferns, and Liver-worts, all of which you see here abundantly displayed, belong to the twenty-fourth order of that excellent botanist Linnaeus.”

  “Hwchw!” said Mog, who was chewing a large mushroom. “I thought all this land belonged to his lordship? Will old Linnaeus be annoyed, think you, if I pick his mushrooms?”

  At this moment Follentine, hurling a rock at what he supposed to be a large grey boulder, had the misfortune to strike an elderly she-wolf who was curled up sleeping in the morning sun. She woke and flew at him with a snarl; yelling with fright he took to his heels, but she overhauled him in half a dozen bounds and seized the skirt of his jacket in her long fangs. While the rest of the boys stood paralysed by fright and indecision, Owen swiftly strung the crossbow and fired a bolt with such dexterity as to knock the wolf head over heels, killing her instantly.

  “Y mae ofn arnaf i!” blubbered Follentine. “She nearly had me, the brute! I’m not coming any farther. Back home, me!”

  “Rubbish, man! Shame on you! She hardly touched you. Handy shot of yours that was, Owen, boy!” exclaimed Mog, examining the dead wolf.

  “I’m wounded! I might die!” Follentine persisted, craning his neck to try and observe the back of his thigh, which the wolf’s teeth had grazed. “Look at the blood! Bleed to death I shall for sure.”

  Wishing that Arabis were there to advise him, Owen bandaged the slight wound with a handful of cobwebs and some dock leaves; notwithstanding all their persuasions, Follentine then made tracks for home, declaring that he was sure mortification would set in unless his mother cleaned the wound. Pursued by cries of “Mam’s babby!” from Dick and Hwfa he hastened up the gorge and was soon out of sight.

  The rest of the party then proceeded on their way, Luggins, Mog and Dove continuing to congratulate Owen on his marksmanship, which had filled them with astonishment, while Hwfa, Dick, and Soth kept some distance ahead, seeming more disgruntled than delighted at this proof of his ability to defend himself.

  “Have to get the bow away from him, we shall, before we nobble him,” Hwfa decided. “You do that, Soth; Dick and I’ll find an overhanging rock and drop on him from it. That ought to settle him.”

  “I—I theem to have thprained my ankle,” Soth stammered nervously, beginning to l
imp. I’m not thure that I thall be able—’

  But Hwfa turned on him such a menacing glare that he fell silent.

  However before the three could put their plan into execution they encountered a hazard in their path by which the whole party was brought to a halt.

  The dry watercourse had been descending through the forest in a series of steps, each deeper than the one before; halfway down the lowest, which dropped some thirty feet, the river again appeared, cascading out of a hole in the rock below the point the boys had reached. They were faced with the problem of how to make their way down this cliff, crossing over the waterfall, so as to rejoin their path, which continued along a narrow ledge on the opposite side of the gorge. Plainly at some recent time a fall of rock had removed a section of the path.

  “Bit awkward that is,” Luggins grunted, looking at the sheer drop below, and the spout of water which boiled into foam as it hit the rocks at the bottom.

  “Oh, what thall we do?” lamented Soth. “I wish we’d thtuck to the turnpike!”

  “Got any notions, Owen, boy?” asked Mog, swallowing a handful of blackberries which he had snatched from the brambles as they came along.

  Owen glanced up. Above them a small, but ancient and powerful yew tree grew out from the left-hand cliff, leaning more than halfway across the gorge.

  “If we could climb that tree—” he murmured thoughtfully.

  “And then what? Have a heart, man! Jump thirty feet, do you expect us?”

  “No, but if only we were provided with a rope—Stay! I have it!” And Owen was gone, running back the way they had come. In five minutes or so he reappeared, trailing behind him some long strands of tough, fibrous creeper-stem.

  “Clematis vitalba, or virginiana,” he explained. “‘This beautiful plant, covered with white bloffoms, or furry fruit clufters, makes indeed a fitting bower for any maid or traveller who may chance to seek shelter. Leaflets are three-nerved from the bafe, entire or with a few coarfe teeth, hairy on the nerves—’”

  “Hairy on the nerves?” Dick muttered. “It’s murder on the nerves, look you! Pound me into picws, you can, before I will be trusting myself to that bit of grass!”

  “It is very strong,” Owen assured him. “In the Caucasus these stems are frequently used for making light baskets—’

  “Os gwelwch yn dda! I am not an egg!”

  “I will go first and show how,” Owen said confidently. He paced the width of the gorge, measured the descent to the ledge with his eye, and did a quick calculation, then knotted two of the creeper stems together.

  “To find the strength of a rope,” he informed his companions, “you should square the circumference in inches, and divide by three, for the breaking strain in tons. I am joining these two pieces together with a rolling hitch, as they are of slightly different sizes; I shall secure one end to the tree by means of a timber hitch, thus—’

  Winding a spare strand of creeper round his waist, and slinging the crossbow on his back, he shinned up the tree with great agility and tied the end of his rope to a suitable branch; then he laid hold of the rope and slid down it to within four feet of the lower end.

  “Letth cut the rope, now, eh, Hwfa?” whispered Soth, but Hwfa, watching Owen’s actions with the utmost interest, took no notice of his henchman.

  “What’ll he do now, he can never drop from there?—Ah, I see, he is going to swing.”

  Indeed, Owen, by working his body backwards and forwards, soon had the rope swinging vigorously, right across the gorge, and when it was at the extent of its swing he was able to drop easily on to the ledge.

  Mog and Luggins watched with their mouths open.

  “Duw!” said Luggins. “Have we to do that? Dammo! I don’t fancy it above half. Suppose the rope breaks? I’m a lot heavier than you, boy!”

  “It’s all right,” Owen called. “I have calculated that the rope will take at least a hundred and eighty-seven pounds.”

  “That’s just about what I weigh, man! Oh well, if it’ll hold me, it will take the rest, no danger, so I might as well try first.”

  With which cheerful words big fat Luggins clambered up the yew tree, knocking off twigs right and left and bending the boughs almost double. Owen did feel a qualm of anxiety as Luggins entrusted himself to the creeper stem; however it bore his weight admirably, and once he was fairly launched on it he found the whole experience highly delightful and swung back and forth several times with loud cries of “Un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chewch, saith, wyth, naw, deg!”

  “That’s enough!” cried Owen, when he had reached number ten. “This is not a game!”

  “Grand sport it is, though!” panted Luggins, landing so heavily beside Owen that he nearly knocked him off the ledge. “Come back here we must, when we have called on the old Marquess.”

  Having seen how much Luggins enjoyed the crossing, Mog and Hwfa were eager to try, and soon followed his example. It was quite another matter, though, with Soth Gard, who, white as ashes, utterly refused to trust himself to it.

  “It ithn’t that I’m thcared,” he said several times over, through chattering teeth. “Ith jutht that I haven’t got a head for heighth. I think I’d better go home.”

  “Coward! Sheepheart!” shouted Hwfa furiously, but his words made no impression on Soth, who turned and walked rapidly up the gorge in the direction of Pennygaff.

  “I—I had better go with him, maybe,” Dick Abrystowe said hastily—he too was rather pale. “A long way from town we are now, see? Fall into some trouble on his own, he might—meet another wolf, who knows? Go with him, I will, to see he gets safe home.”

  And without more ado Dick set off in pursuit of Soth and the pair were soon out of sight.

  “Pity they wouldn’t try,” Owen said rather regretfully as the rest of the party proceeded in the opposite direction. “We could have doubled the rope and parbuckled them down like barrels, once there was somebody on this side to hold the other end.”

  “Where did you learn such a mortal lot about ropes and knots?” Mog asked.

  “On my father’s ship, when I was small.”

  And Owen proceeded to enliven the journey with tales of childhood spent aboard His Majesty’s sloop Thrush, before the Poohoo Province uprising had rendered it necessary for Captain Hughes to send his wife and child back to England on a tea-clipper. Luggins, Dove, and Mog listened spellbound to these stories, but Hwfa still remained aloof, a gloomy, thoughtful expression upon his face.

  For several hours now they travelled without incident along the dry bed of the river, which once again had sunk through a hole and out of sight underground. Towards noon, however, the wind began to rise, and dark clouds obscured the sky. Autumn leaves in great showers came rattling down from the forest trees above the gorge, and Owen looked back along their course, knitting his brows. The mountains around Pennygaff could just be seen in the distance, black against a purple sky.

  “Looks like rain back there, eh?” Dove said nervously. Owen nodded.

  “How much farther before we come out of the gorge?” he asked Mog, the only member of the party who had been that way before.

  Mog was not very sure; it might be a matter of five or six miles, he thought.

  Owen lay down and pressed his ear against the ground.

  “I think we should get out of the gorge now,” he said quietly.

  “Scared to have your feet wet, is it?” jeered Hwfa.

  But Dove, Luggins, and Mog were only too ready to follow Owen’s advice as fast as possible.

  “Only, how shall we set about it, man? Bit steep, these cliffs, and higher than the new Habakkuk chapel!”

  Owen proceeded to unroll from his waist the long rope of creeper he had carried with him.

  “Only need a little bird, now, to fly up with the end in its beak!” Hwfa said acidly.

  But Owen replied, “We do not even need that.” Pulling a reel of thread from his pocket, he fastened one end of the thread to an arrow, and fired it in such a way as to
make it pass over the trunk of an oak which grew halfway up the cliff. Luggins ran to retrieve the arrow, while Owen attached the other end of the thread to a length of twine, with which he was also provided. The twine in its turn was tied to the end of the creeper which by this means they were enabled to pull up over the leaning tree-trunk until half its length dangled down on either side.

  “Might as well have brought along a proper rope while he were at it!” muttered Hwfa.

  The two creeper-stems were then twisted and knotted together; Owen demonstrated how to climb up them, and Mog, Luggins and Dove clumsily but eagerly scrambled up the improvised ladder and out of danger. With Hwfa it was not so simple. Heavy, awkward, and extremely reluctant to display his lack of skill, he stood with arms folded and a scornful expression on his face.

  “Needn’t think you can get me to make a monkey of myself,” he mocked. “Proper lot of fools you all look, sitting up in that old oak!”

  “Come on, Hwfa, man!” Luggins urged. “Famous it is up here—snug as a belfry!”

  Owen slid down the rope again, full of anxiety.

  “Do climb up, Hwfa,” he urged. “I am sure there is not much time left.”

  Indeed, heavy drops of rain were beginning to fall as the storm moved down the valley and, more ominous still, a kind of muttering rumble could be heard coming from the direction of Pennygaff.

  “Cowards!” Hwfa sneered. “My old granny would laugh to see you perching yourselves up there.”

  But the rumble increased in volume to a roar; even Hwfa turned somewhat pale.

  “Hwfa, please, you must climb the rope!” Owen begged. “Indeed, there is no time to waste! Feel the ground shake!”

  “Dammo! Do not loiter! Climb, for your life, man!” shouted Mog, who, high in the tree, had a view round a bend in the gorge. “The old river’s coming down on you like Noah’s flood!”

  Haggard-faced, Hwfa took hold of the rope.

  “What do I do, then?” he asked angrily.

  “Reach up as high as you can, then pull yourself up. Cross your legs at the knees; press the outsides of your feet tight as you can against the rope.”