by Joan Aiken
“Oigh! Oigh! Ceade millia diaoul! Troutsho!”
“Your highness! Please!” Dr. Jenkins wiped some treacle from his beard.
“Awa, ye blethering goose, ye gabbling skyte!”
“The man is mad, with him!” said Dr. Jenkins vexedly.
Prince David seemed to come to himself a little.
“Dinna gang sae ram-stan, ma man!” he croaked. “Have ye nae a dram o’ the usquebaugh? A tass o’ aquavitae?”
“Oh, gracious to goodness,” fretted the doctor. “What will his highness be talking about, I do wonder? Indeed it is beyond me to understand his ravings.”
“I think I know,” said Hwfa, who often helped his father in the Dragon of Gwaun. He ran downstairs and soon returned bearing a glass of colourless liquid, which the prince received with a seraphic smile and immediately swallowed down.
“Ah, ye’re a canny lad, a lad after ma ain hairt,” he said to Hwfa. “Ance the inner man is satisfied, ye can do whit ye damn please wi” the outer!” And turning over, he sank into a sleep so profound that the doctor was able to spread turpentine salve over the wound without in any way disturbing his patient.
Then they all tiptoed downstairs, but as they were doing so, they heard a strange thump in the air, like a soft clap of thunder, and the building trembled.
“What was that?” Owen said.
“Dear, dear! Can his highness have fallen out of bed?” worried the doctor, and bustled upstairs again, but Hwfa said,
“Outside, that noise was. More like a big gun it sounded.”
“Or a fall of rock in the pit,” Luggins said.
“No pits round here,” said Hwfa.
Owen’s knees suddenly felt weak beneath him.
“Come with me, quick!” he said. “I believe I know what it was.”
Followed by the other boys he began running down the street towards the empty row of houses. But before they reached the end of the town they met Mog and Dove, who were pale and wild-eyed.
“Please to say what has been going on?” Hwfa demanded. “Wondering what you were up to, we were. No need to push the old mountain over, is it?” He spoke sarcastically, but he was plainly relieved to see his friends safe.
Dove was shaking all over.
“Awful it was!” he said. “Awful!”
“What happened, then, man?”
“Here,” suggested Owen, “let’s get out of the crowd, and the snow.”
Half the population of Nant Agerddau was scurrying down the road, through the snowstorm, to see what had happened; the boys turned aside and walked through the great porticoed cave entrance beside the town hall. A sign on a board said:
NANT AGERDDAU TOWN COUNCIL
DEVIL’S LEAP CAVE
ADMISSION 6D
IMMERSION IN WATERS 2S 6D
WATER PER GLASSS 1S
But the man who usually sat at a table in the entrance cave taking sixpences had dashed off down the town like everybody else.
The boys walked into the cave unchallenged, and made their way through a passage and a series of linked chambers to an inner cavern with a hot pool in it, where old ladies came to bathe their rheumatic ankle-joints.
“Now,” said Hwfa, “tell, then, is it?”
They all sat down on rocks.
“We followed those two men,” Mog said. “Easy it was. They went up the hill cornerways like crabs, leaving tracks behind them in the snow, no trouble to keep in sight. But where the trees thinned out, hard to get close enough to hear their talk. So we kept on, follow, follow, though the path they took would break a snake’s back, so roundabout. By and by they came near Nant Agerddau, us still a good distance behind. Nasty old path thereabouts, too, all loose stones; kick one down, start the whole hillside falling.”
“I remember,” Owen said. “They took me that way too.”
“Then we came into the gorge, and easier to creep near because the road do bend about; stole along we did, quiet to hear one snowflake grind on another, and came on the pair of them sudden, standing still to argue in the middle of the road. Old Dove here squatted down behind a rock and I squeezed into a little bit of bramble-scrub—full of prickles I am yet—and crawled closer and closer.
“‘Will you swear you haven’t got it hid away?’ I heard one of them say.
“‘Swear till Turpentine Sunday, I will,’ says the other, very angry. ‘What difference do that make? All I care is that Old Stigmatical will have our necks in three days if we don’t get it for him. I’ll lay you’ve got it all along!’
“‘If I had it, would I still be keeping company with you, you foister?’ says the other, angrier still. ‘’Twas all your peevy notions got us into this imbranglement—now you get us out!’
“‘Well I say we’d best go back to the stalling-ken and see what’s come to the young co; maybe ’twas he fetched out someways, and prigged back the bandore.’
“‘The stalling-ken ain’t safe,’ says the second one. ‘Anyways, suppose he’s still there, and alive, what then?’
“‘Why then,’ says the first, nasty to make your blood run cold, ‘we’d best stick a shiv in him, so’s he won’t cry rope on us; then we’ll make tracks for France; that’s the only part where Old Stigmatical won’t find us now he’s got his glaziers on us. He’d never credit it if we told him we couldn’t find the blessed owch—not after what’s gone before.’
“‘Oh, all right,’ says the first, ‘but let’s be quick, then.’
“‘I’ll go on my own if you like, if you’re afeered,’ says the second.
“‘No,’ says the first, giving him a look to slice up a side of beef, ‘acos I don’t trust you farther than I can throw you. Maybe you got up to some skimble-skamble trickery with the young kinchin, arranging for him to win free and prig the bandore from where you hid it. I’m a-coming too.’”
“By now it was snowing so thick that I’d been able to wriggle close as I am to you; I could hear well enough all they were saying. But hard to understand, with the queer words they used, and still not certain sure, I was, if they were the right pair, though it seemed like enough. When they started off towards those empty houses I felt fair and sure, so I gave Dove a bit of a beckon to come on.”
“I came on,” Dove broke in, “but I came on slow. Not keen, see, because I was remembering what you said about those empty houses, Owen, and how the whole mountain was likely to drop on them. ‘Wait, you, boy,’ I said to Mog, ‘wait till they come out again, be so kind, and then we’ll have our little chat.’”
“I was agreeable,” Mog said, “so we waited. And we saw the old mountain up above begin to fold itself and slide. The snow it was, see, too heavy on the lip of the cliff. More and more kept coming down from above in an awful, slow, crawling rush; hung on the edge for a minute, it did, and Dove yelling his head off for the men to come out before it fell. Dove yelled, I yelled, till the voice was clean gone from us; but too late, see?”
“It fell on the house?” Hwfa said.
Mog nodded. “If there is a bit of wood or stone in that whole row of houses bigger than a pea now, may I never cross another bridge!”
There was a silence, while the boys thought about the awful fate of Bilk and Prigman. Then Hwfa, always practical, said,
“Pity it was you didn’t find out who they stole it for, or what they did with it. No wiser than before we are, now.”
“All we know is they seemed to have lost it,” Owen said glumly.
“Fine help that is,” Luggins muttered.
“Oh well.” Hwfa stood up. “Back to the Boar’s Head, me, and see how our old prince is getting on. Decent old prince he is, fair play; best not to leave that bleed-you-to-death sawbones alone with him too long.”
Dove, Mog, and Luggins soberly followed Hwfa, but Owen, suddenly remembering that Bilk and Prigman, in the letters they dictated, had named the Devil’s Leap cave as the place where the ransom money was to be left, found himself curious to explore a little more while he was there.
“I’ll follow you,” he said to the others.
“Think we should stay with him?” said Mog in the street. “Queer boyo, that Owen. Knocked him about, those men did, left him in that house to die, but proper upset about them he seems, just the same. Bit cracked, maybe?”
“Thinking, that’s all he is doing, boy,” Hwfa said impatiently, giving his friend a clump. “More brains in his little finger, he do have, than you keep in the whole of that great empty head of yours. Come on, and not to bother about Owen, is it? Follow in his own good time, he will. I’ll be asking old Davy Thomas at the inn if he can give us a bit of supper; second cousin once removed of my Auntie Olwen Lloyd-Jones, he is.”
10
While the Seljuk, in Mr. Davy Thomas’s hired chaise, cantered briskly towards Caer Malyn, another vehicle was also proceeding, much more slowly in the same direction. This was Tom Dando’s wagon, drawn by the massive Galahad.
When Tom awoke to find a note from his daughter requesting him not to mention his intentions to anybody, but to leave a basketful of listed medicines in a cave near the caravan, and then set out at once for Port Malyn, he was not in the least surprised (nothing ever surprised Tom Dando); he left the basket as directed, paused only to swallow a mug of herb tea, harnessed Galahad, and started forthwith. But he had woken late, and by now the day was well advanced.
Moreover Tom had now reached Canto CCXC of “The King at Caerleon” and had little though to spare for anything else; without a glance at the splendid mountainous and forested landscape opening around him, he sat on the driver’s seat scribbling away as if he paid for his fingers by the minute and must get the utmost use out of them; as soon as he covered it, every sheet of paper was tossed back through a small window into the interior of the wagon where, as the hours went by, a huge pile grew up; meanwhile Galahad was left to make his own way to Caer Malyn. This he did, slow and steady, plodding along and minding his own business, stopping from time to time in order to snatch a mouthful of breakfast from bank or hedge. Galahad knew all the roads in Wales as well as the inside of his nose-bag; since Arabis usually chose their course, picking the least-known, little-used tracks where she would be likely to find rare herbs growing, Galahad followed the same route. In his accustomed manner he paused, as they passed clumps of wild rhywbarb and wynwyn, the trailing strands of the perfagl, or the large leathery leaves of the marchruddygl; he came to a halt under oak trees carrying tussocks of uchelwydd, the holy herb used by the druids, or by bright green patches of suran; but today nobody jumped down and went to pluck the leaves and berries.
Travelling leisurely at this pace they were overtaken by dusk before they had reached Caer Malyn, so, finding that he could no longer see the lines as he wrote them, Tom pulled up, loosed the horse, and went inside to continue his poem by lantern-light.
All through the hours of dark he continued to write as if somebody were shouting the words into his ear and he only just able to get them down in time; at last, just as the first green sprouts of dawn began to uncurl in the eastern sky, he drew a line at the foot of the final page and wrote Finis under it.
“Well, there is a tidy night’s work, Arabis, my little one,” he said then, yawning and stretching his cramped fingers. “Now, a good cup of tea, is it, and put all those old sheets in order for your dada?”
Nobody answered and, looking round in perplexity, he remembered that Arabis was not in the wagon; that he was somewhere in the middle of the Fforest Mwyaf, on his way to Port Malyn.
“Hai, how,” he sighed, “make the tea myself then, I must.”
Although tired out, he was very happy, and now terribly anxious to read the poem aloud to somebody; he bustled about, making tea and feeding Galahad, he read stray sheets of the poem that lay strewn all over the wagon; every line seemed to him marvellously beautiful, the best he had ever written.
“Ach y fi, Gwalchafed, my fat friend!” he shouted, shaking up the reins as they moved off under the trees. “Can’t you go any faster than that, and you pulling the finest poet from Bull Bay to Worm’s Head?”
Much astonished at this change in his master, Galahad broke into a thunderous trot; so the last part of their journey was swiftly accomplished, and when they arrived at Port Malyn the little town, huddled along the river’s narrow gap through the cliffs, was still deep in shadow and nobody stirring.
The tide was low; moored boats squatted on the mud by the small stone pier and a strong salty fishy smell came from the weed-covered harbour walls. A rock shoal lay uncovered out beyond the breakwater; Arabis was down there gathering seaweed, but when she heard the wagon wheels and the clip-clop of Galahad’s hoofs she turned and ran swiftly up a flight of slippery steps on to the quayside.
“Hwt there, Dada!” she called softly. “Where have you been, with you? Waiting all night I was! Eaten by the bleiddiau I thought you must have been, and a tough old morsel to chew down, eh, Galahad, my little sunflower? Whoa, now, while I lead you up by here.”
And, taking the bridle, she guided horse and wagon out along a narrow track leading away from the harbour and round the base of the cliff to a quarry which made a sheltered and secluded place to halt.
“Now, a good bite of breakfast, for I am famished with me!”
Arabis jumped nimbly into the wagon and set about doing three things at once: soothing Hawc, who was very affronted at having had no attention paid him for so long; putting on a kettle and some rashers to fry; collecting a large basketful of remedies together with as much food as they could spare.
“My word, Dada! Writing a fair old streak you must have been,” she exclaimed, shovelling reams of paper together (but very carefully, for she was a good daughter).
“Arabis! It is finished! My poem about King Arthur is finished! Wait till I read it to you—so beautiful to make you weep whole barrelsful of tears, it is!” And plumping himself down in a nest of paper, Tom grabbed bunches of pages and read her all the best bits. “Here, listen to this! Or no, even better this beginning of Canto CCLX is—aha, and here is my favourite part of all, just see if this would not melt a heart of granite!”
Arabis, gulping down bacon and herb tea and bara brith, listened and praised.
“Like the sound of a trumpet that verse is, Dada! Please to read again. Truly, if this poem does not win you the bard’s crown at the Eisteddfod, I will not be believing that people have ears any more. Wonderful it is, indeed. But don’t let your breakfast get cold with you; plain it is you never touched a crumb of food all day yesterday.”
Tom, discovering how hungry he was, began to eat; while he did so Arabis told him about the tribe of Yehimelek, and their desperate need for help, food, and medicine.
At first hardly aware of her words, Tom presently found his attention caught, in spite of his fatigue, and started listening with interest.
“Children of the Pit, eh?” he commented, washing down a bowlful of picws with a swig of tea. “Living underground for thousands of years? No wonder they are a bit on the small side. Shame it is. But,” he went on, his imagination kindling, “noble subject for a poem that would be, yes indeed! The Children of the Pit, living in darkness, till their deliverer come. Let me see, now …” And he began scrabbling vaguely about among all the loose paper for his quill.
“Now, Dada! One poem at a time, is it?” Arabis chided. “Besides, Yehimelek made me promise, most particular, that we would not mention to a living soul.”
“True, that is so. But no harm to write a poem, maybe? Keep in the poetry box, I could, till they were all back home, then publish?”
“But, Dada, they do not know how to get home!”
“Hwchw,” Tom Dando said, yawning. “Wasteful sort of arrangement that is. Have to tidy them up somehow. Let me think, now, then. Notion I have there is something I know about this? Workers in gold brought over by the old Romans? Ring a bell down in the cellars of my mind, that do. Somebody was saying something, it seems to me—’
Arabis waited hopefully. But after a minute Tom
rubbed his head, with another enormous yawn, and said,
“Wait till tonight it must, though, the old brain is all cobwebs. Asleep on my feet I shall be in another minute. Maybe I will be remembering in dreams.”
“Off to sleep, then, Dada; and I’ll be back to make your dinner, is it?” Arabis said, giving him a hug and steering him towards his bunk.
“Never mind for that; breakfast enough to last till Friday you have given me, girl!” He yawned again so widely that it looked as if the top of his head might fall off; his eyes closed as he sank back on the patchwork quilt, and by the time Arabis had descended the steps he was asleep, and snoring so loud that the whole wagon heaved and the seagulls were obliged to quit the roof.
Arabis would have liked to ask if he had seen Owen before leaving Nant Agerddau, but her question, like the origins of the Pit People, would have to keep till evening. “At least Owen has Brother Ianto to keep an eye on him” she thought. Meanwhile it was more important to return to the tribe before anybody in Port Malyn woke up and saw where she was going, or before the tide came in and cut off her access.
Carrying the baskets of provisions she climbed down on to the rocks at the base of the cliff and scrambled along as swiftly as she could to the seaweed-hung entrance; here she gave a low whistle and was at once greeted by Tennes and Strato, who popped their heads out, pressed her hands to their whiskery cheeks, and relieved her of the baskets.
She spent a busy morning among her patients. By degrees she was beginning to understand a few phrases of their language; quite a number of the words seemed strangely familiar and recalled old, half-forgotten rhymes that her mother had sung to her, long ago. It also became plain to her that, though Yehimelek did not know it, some of the people, probably by lurking on the outskirts of Port Malyn or Nant Agerddau by night, had managed to pick up a little Welsh.
As the day drew on Arabis had the satisfaction of seeing most of the sick people begin to mend, either from her medicines or the nourishing and sustaining qualities of seaweed broth. When she had visited all the patients, and another cauldron of broth was heating, she returned to Yehimelek and found that he, too, seemed stronger; he was up, sitting by his tiny window, wrapped in a camel-fur robe. His black eyes were once more full of fire; Arabis thought that he looked like a little old eagle, hook-nosed and white-haired, slightly moulting, perhaps, but still fierce and proud.
