by Joan Aiken
“Why yes, your worship, we seen him in Pennygaff while we was a-waiting for your worship to come along and tip us the office,” Prigman’s voice said.
“And his name is Owen Hughes?”
“That’s so, your honour; a little twiggy, black-haired kinchin, knee-high to a spadger-bird. He wears glazing cheats—’
“Spectacles, yampy-head! His ludship don’t gammon our way o’ talking,” Prigman cut in.
“It did not occur to you to bring along this letter he had left for his grandfather so that I could see it for myself?” the Marquess said abruptly.
“Why—why no, your ludship.” Bilk sounded taken aback. “Asides,” he added righteously, “if we’d a done that, the poor old gager wouldn’t a had no notion what had come to the boy!”
“But you say the note was neatly written?”
“Ah, to be sure! Uncommon tidy character, a Reverend couldn’t a scribed it out neater, eh, Prig?”
“Then you would not say it was the same writing as this?”
The Seljuk, stretching his ears, thought he caught the crackle of paper. Then followed a silence. Then Prigman, clearing his throat in a embarrassed way, said,
“Why, yes, surely, gaffer. Reckon ’tis the same hand, eh, Bilk?”
“Aye,” said Bilk. “Odds bods, it fair makes you hurkle, dunnit, to think o’ the young co lighting out wi” the bandore and then writing off so bold to his ludship and all the other worships, asking for a thousand mint clinkers—ach—arrrgh!”
Evidently Prigman had kicked him again.
“You are quite sure it is the same writing?” Lord Malyn repeated. “Although the other, you say, was so neat, and this is so untidy and ill spelt?”
“Maybe he was in a hurry when he writ this one,” mumbled Bilk.
“As you say. But it seems singular, does it not, that his writing should be shaky and hurried after he had made off with the harp, when he had all the time in the world, and yet the note written before, when he must have been in haste to be gone, was so tidy and careful?”
“Maybe he writ t’ other one in school.”
“A likely theory! You are sure you did not write the notes?” Lord Malyn suddenly rapped out.
“Us? Why—why no, gaffer! How could us? Your ludship knows neither on us can scribe!”
“How did you know that the boy had written to other people as well as to myself?”
“H—how d-d-d … ?”
Bilk was by now evidently almost paralytic with fright under this questioning. But Prigman said stoutly,
“Who don’t? The tale’s all over the countryside, your ludship, that he writ to you, and to the foreign worship, and to his royal highness.”
“Indeed? Are you so certain?”
“I—I think so, your worship.”
“You think so, do you? It is strange, is it not, that I have a letter here in the same handwriting, awaiting the arrival of his highness the Prince of Wales, which has not even been opened yet? How do you know what is in it? Shall I tell you what I think?” the Marquess said menacingly. “I think you are in league with this young boy, who is no doubt a seasoned thief. You bade him write the letters, you have him hidden away somewhere with the harp”—“No, no, gaffer, you got it all wrong!”—“and as well as coming to me with an impudent request for money you have not earned, you expected to make a handsome profit from the ransom as well. But you are wrong, my fine friends—very, very wrong! I think you had better produce that harp without loss of time before I lose patience—it would be a pity if, by the time you agreed to remember where you have it hidden, you were unable to fetch it because you had not the use of your arms or legs.”
There was a sort of squawk from Prigman.
“But, your worship, we doesn’t know where the blessed bandore is! That’s Ticklepenny’s truth!”
A long, unpleasant silence followed. Then the Marquess said in a cold voice,
“Enough. You shall have till Wednesday to lay hands on it Provided you bring it by then, safely and secretly, you will receive the same fee I promised before—not that you deserve it. But if not, you need expect no mercy. I shall find you, wherever you are. I found you in London, did I not?”
“Y-y-yes, your honour!”
“Remember it, then. Now get out of my sight. Garble, see these men leave the castle without delay. Oh, and Garble—send for Mr. Owen Hughes, the curator of the Pennygaff Museum, will you? And his grandson too, if the boy is to be found. Also make sure that two or three dungeons are empty by Wednesday, be so good, and that the thumbscrews are oiled, and so forth.”
Prigman let out another terrified whimper; then the two men appeared in the doorway, pale and trembling, escorted by the impassive Garble. Bilk was heard to mutter. “I told you it were puggle-headed to play May-games with his lordship. Now you’ll have to tell me where you put the bandore!”
The Seljuk remained motionless, half screened by curtains, and they passed without observing him; then he moved forward as if, having stepped aside for a moment to admire a fine pair of boars’ tusks, he was just continuing on his way.
At that moment the harassed major-domo came hurrying along the hall in search of him, evidently horrified at the thought of a guest left to roam the castle unescorted.
With a smile that almost curled his moustaches to his ears, the Seljuk allowed himself to be led into the presence of the Marquess, who was walking up and down a large apartment, languidly fanning himself. He did not look exactly ruffled, but there was a tightening about the corners of his fine, thin mouth, a yellow gleam in his eyes, and his long fingers held the gold-and-parchment fan as if, had it been a knife, they would gladly have stuck it into somebody. He was dressed very elegantly in velvet, black as night, but with a citron taffeta waistcoat.
Looking stout and gaudy by comparison, the Seljuk advanced to meet him.
“My dear sir! It is most affable of you to grant me the treat of visiting your stately nest, dwelling, domicile! And after such a short acquaintance, too!”
“On the contrary,” rejoined the Marquess with equal politeness, “it is kind of you, my dear Seljuk, to give me the pleasure of your company. Without it I should have been sadly dull, for his highness the Prince of Wales, whom I am also expecting, seems to have been unaccountably delayed.”
After several more civilities Lord Malyn led his guest into a dining-room which, like all the inhabited part of the castle, was furnished in black, gold, and velvet. A small but sumptuous repast had been laid out on an ebony dining-table.
“And now, my dear sir,” said Lord Malyn presently, when they had eaten guinea-fowl glazed with honey, saffron rice, parsnips, pineapples, nectarines, and peaches, “let us take our coffee into the library, and pray tell me how I can entertain you? Would you like to see my tiger-fish? My golden orioles? Or my reptile collection? It is small but choice; for instance, I have just acquired two tiger-snakes, charming creatures, which are, as you know, reputed to have a stronger venom than any other species.”
“Thank you, thank you,” replied the Seljuk, hurriedly gulping the coffee from his tiny gold demitasse, “but pray don’t trouble, put yourself out, turn topsy-turvy on my account; wild creatures do not tickle my fancy (not to spin you a yarn or put too fine a point upon it); indeed we have rather too many of them in my homeland. No, what would really solace, cheer, rejoice, warm the cockles, drive dull care away, would be to see your lordship’s collection of gold articles.”
“Ah yes, of course,” Lord Malyn said carelessly. “You are quite an expert on gold, are you not; I was forgetting you had told me so at Pennygaff. Come then, by all means.”
And he led the way through his library, past long shelves of heavily gilt volumes, into another room furnished entirely with glass cases. These were all filled with gold objects; every conceivable thing that could be made from gold seemed to have its place there: gold tools, gold weapons, ornaments, and utensils; there was a gold spinning-wheel, a gold musket, even a gold dictionary, with the
words printed on sheets of gold-leaf.
The Marquess called for more candles, and when these were brought the effect among all the treasures there was strangely magical; a kind of shimmer filled the room as if the very air had become imbued with gold particles.
“Ah, how truly gladsome, pleasing, felicitous,” exclaimed the Seljuk, and he strolled between the cases, looking very intently first at one object, then at another. While he thus examined the exhibits Lord Malyn, in his turn, watched the Seljuk very sharply, concealing his scrutiny under a pretence of weariness.
“My dear host, what a store, what prizes you have! And so resplendently polished! And such a charmingly warm room!”
“Oh, my servants attend to the polishing,” Lord Malyn said, gracefully stifling a yawn. “And as for the warmth, I can claim no credit for that, it is natural; I have merely had pipes laid from Nant Agerddau to my castle; they carry hot vapour underground from the Whispering Mountain. So I have a never-failing supply of heat. The pipes come up underneath the castle; even my dungeons are warm.” And he smiled benevolently, pouring the links of his gold snake-chain from one hand to the other.
“Indeed, how very ingenious and de luxe,” the Seljuk said absently. He was studying a set of gold fish-hooks. “Tell me, pray, my amiable friend, where did you procure these?”
“Strangely enough, they were picked up on the shore not far from here. Such gold articles are sometimes found on the shore hereabouts; it is thought that perhaps an old treasure-ship may lie wrecked somewhere off our coast.”
- “Ah, so? And this gold flute?”
“I had it from an old lady in Nant Agerddau; she had inherited it from her father who always declared he had picked it up in a quarry on the side of Fig-hat Ben. More probably he stole it.”
There were golden cymbals, too, and a small gold trumpet.
“You do not have a harp?” the Seljuk inquired, glancing about the room.
“ … No, not at present,” Lord Malyn answered after a slight pause. “Are you interested in harps?”
“It might be easiest to tell from a harp,” the Seljuk murmured, half to himself. Peering closely at a gold kettle, he added, “I recall some legend of a gold harp told me by a friend of mine, a Brother Ianto.”
Lord Malyn started, as if his gold-linked toy had turned into a tiger-snake and bitten him. His eyes dilated.
“Brother lanto? You know Brother Ianto? Of the Order of St. Ennodawg?”
“Indeed, yes!” Puffing a little, the Seljuk leaned forward to examine a gold bridle. “If it were not for the good brother I should now be demised, bumped off, dead as a doornail, my dear sir! I have much cause to be obliged to Brother Ianto; last year he was so obliging as to pull me out of the far distant Oxus river.”
“Oh—last year—” Lord Malyn’s excitement died down again as quickly as it had sprung up.
“So,” pursued the Seljuk chattily, inspecting a pair of gold bellows, “it was perforce one of my first concerns to meet, make contact, forgather with this lovable ecclesiastic as soon as the affairs of the Kingdom of Rum permitted me to visit your country.”
“Brother Ianto is in Wales?” Now the Marquess’s eyes fairly blazed: the Seljuk appeared mildly startled by the interest his words had excited.
“Dear me, yes; I had the pleasure of calling on him yesterday in his homely grotto.”
The Marquess had turned and was tugging at a bell-pull; when Garble, ever alert for a summons, came silently in, his master said sharply,
“Garble! Send somebody at once to search for a monk, a Brother Ianto, who is to be found inhabiting a grotto—where did you say you found him?” he demanded of the Seljuk. “At Nant Agerddau? very well. Don’t delay, Garble. If there should be a harp with him, that is to be brought also.”
“Yes, your lordship.”
The door closed softly behind Garble.
“What a kind thought to bring him here!” the Seljuk said. “Then I too shall have the pleasure of seeing my obliging preserver again. But Brother Ianto has no harp I can assure you, pledge credit, warrant, etc. If he had, I should have been greatly interested to see it.”
“Oh? And why would that have been, my dear guest?”
Lord Malyn was making an attempt to mask his excitement under an appearance of calm; he led the way into a smaller apartment fitted up as a withdrawing room with sofas and tanks of tiger-fish. The Marquess flung himself on a sofa and gestured to his visitor to do likewise; the Seljuk, giving a glance full of dislike at the tiger-fish, turned his plump back on them and gazed instead at an eight-foot maidenhair fern.
“Why are you so interested in harps? What can you learn from a harp?” Lord Malyn repeated.
“Why, who made it, of course, naturally, to be sure,” the Seljuk said simply.
“And what is that to the purpose?”
“In order to explain that, I must needs relate you a portion of history, my dear host, ally, and patron. Some three years ago a message in a bottle was picked up in the harbour of Sa’ir, which, as you may know, is the chief port of my country. Naturally this message was brought to me, as the Seljuk.”
“And what did it say?”
“It was written in a very ancient form of our Rummish language. It said,”Alas, alas, far from our warm homeland we, the Tribe of Yehimelek, languish in darkness and sorrow, hidden beneath the Whispering Mountain.”
“Indeed?” commented the Marquess. “And what did you understand from this mysterious message?”
“Why, sir, it so happens that some generations ago a portion of my subjects were lost, mislaid, let slip; naturally I am most anxious to restore these poor creatures to their homeland. Since the message was picked up I have sent out missions to investigate mountains reported to be whispering in any parts of the world. Then, happening to encounter Brother Ianto last year and hearing from him of your renowned Fig-hat Ben and your famous legendary harp, I leapt to a conclusion, smelt a rat, resolved to leave no stone unturned, decided to visit this salubrious area myself as soon as affairs of state permitted.”
Lord Malyn’s eyes had begun to gleam again.
“But what has the harp to do with this tribe? I confess I am still somewhat in the dark,” he inquired.
“The tribe of Yehimelek, my dear sir, were always famous among my people for their skill in gold-mining and gold-working. And chief among their skills in the ancient time was that of fashioning gold harps. For instance we have in our National Museum of Rum a gold harp more than two thousand years old—’
Lord Malyn’s eyes gleamed even brighter. “You think the Harp of Teirtu may have been made by your lost tribe?”
“Perhaps, maybe, possibly, indeed, who knows? Certainly I was sorry to hear from the worthy curator of the Pennygaff Museum on whom I had the honour to call that his harp had just been stolen. The unfortunate gentleman seemed quite distraught indeed. Naturally I had hoped that a sight of it might allay my doubts, scruples, waverings; alack, what a slip ’twixt cup and lip!”
“But the Harp of Teirtu, after all, is also extremely old,” Lord Malyn said smoothly. “Even if it had been made by a member of the lost tribe, that does not prove that they are still in existence now.”
“No, my dear old Marquess, but then consider the message in the bottle, picked up only three years ago.”
“A message in a bottle may toss about the ocean for hundreds of years before some chance wave casts it ashore.”
“But—aha! my dear sir—this was a glass bottle embossed with the inscription ‘Llewellyn’s Ginger Stingo, Cardiff, 1802’.”
“So,” Lord Malyn said slowly, “you really believe that a lost tribe of craftsmen in gold may be hidden to this very day somewhere beneath the Whispering Mountain, beneath Fig-hat Ben? My dear Seljuk, what an extraordinarily interesting guest you have proved to be! I do hope, indeed I shall endeavour to arrange, that you will prolong your stay beneath my roof for a long, long time.”
“Why, thank you sir, I shall be pleased, overjoyed to
avail myself of your kind offer; indeed I am sure your castle will make an excellent, tophole base for exploring the neighbouring vicinity.—And now I trust you will not consider me unbred if I retire to my chamber, my good friend? I have had a somewhat travelsome day.”
“Naturally, my dear Seljuk; I wish you to consider yourself quite at home. Do just as you please; this, you must know, is Liberty Hall.” And the Marquess rang twice for the major-domo. But as soon as the Seljuk had been escorted to bed, amid smiles and affability, Lord Malyn rang again.
“Garble,” he said when for the third time his secretary appeared, “I want you to keep a strict watch on the Seljuk. Be discreet, don’t let him see you, but follow him wherever he goes. Don’t let him out of your sight for a single minute.”
9
By now Hwfa’s fire was burning briskly.
“Do not try to stir yourself yet, sir,” Owen said to the hurt man. “In a moment you shall have some warm wine.”
Making certain that this was the correct treatment he pulled out his little book and consulted it, to the admiration of Luggins and Mog, neither of whom could read.
“‘Treatment for Wounds, Shock, Hyfteria: Adminifter a little Warm Stimulant, lay the patient in a Recumbent Pofition. Hot Fomentations applied to affected part. Allow fmall quantities of Gruel. The Patient should be kept cheerful, spoken to kindly yet firmly, and told to ftop any eccentricities. If necefsary adminifter a teafpoonful of Sal volatile and dafh cold water in the face.’”
“Hout, ma wean,” protested the patient, struggling to sit up. “Whit gars ye ca” me eccentric? I’m nae mair eccentric than only ither body—but I shouldna say nay to a wee drappie of yon warm stimulant.”
A little wine had now been heated in the silver cuplid of the stranger’s wine-flask; this was administered; meanwhile Dove and Hwfa, under Owen’s direction, pounded up a handful of chestnuts in some more of the wine and cooked the mixture into a kind of porridge.
“I’m afraid it’s all we can do in the way of gruel, sir,” Owen apologized, but when a spoonful of it was offered to the hurt man he smacked his lips and declared it to be the best claut of parritch that he had tasted since coming south of the Roman wall. When it was all swallowed they tried to apply fomentations of hot wine to the stranger’s wound, but at the very first attempt he let out such a yell of indignation that they were obliged to desist.
