The Stolen Lake Part 20

But she replied, 'No, I thank you, brother, I must return to the queen. That ill-conditioned child -' she cast an angry glance at Dido 'revealed that Artaius had returned, as you had already told me by carrier-pigeon; Her Mercy wants coronation robes prepared.'

'The news could not have been withheld from her for long,' Caradog said calmly.

'Where is Artaius now?'

'With Mabon.'

Both of them glanced at the sky. Dido, following the direction of their eyes, saw a tear-shaped globe drifting over the peaked and gabled roofs. It was pale-yellow in colour; below it on cords swung a barrel-shaped leather vessel. It was hard to guess how big the balloon was, up there in the sky; perhaps about the size of a pig. 'Look!' Dido said, nudging Elen. But the princess, at this evidence of her father's honourable nature, appeared very downcast.

'I wonder he hasn't stopped sending them,' she said.

The balloon vanished from view behind a high round tower at the top of the town.

Now Dido watched with astonishment as a dozen of the grey-clad guards came staggering across the square carrying an upright piano, which had evidently been brought up on the train as well as the prisoners.

'What you want a piano for. . .' said Lady Ettarde to her brother, in a tone of mystification, as it was heaved up the steps of the temple.

'It is so silent up here, just myself and Grandmother Sul,' explained Caradog, inclining his head to the carving above the lintel. 'I thought she might enjoy a different music'

Lady Ettarde sniffed. 'Fanciful nonsense! The old ways were better nothing but bocinas when I was a young gel. Goodbye, brother I must be getting back to the queen; Her Mercy won't be best pleased at being left alone all this time with no one but old Mag Morgan. I'll leave you the guards.'

'No need; I don't wish for them,' he said. 'Tell them to lock the town gate as they go out. Then the young ladies will be safe enough unless they have a taste for flying.'

'Are you certain?' His sister looked very doubtful. 'We want no repet.i.tion '

'Whose idea was that cave? They will be far safer here. Hapiypacha will watch over them. Farewell. Until the Day of Sul.'

'Until the Day of Sul,' Lady Ettarde said, and climbed back into her sedan chair. The guards, having delivered the piano somewhere inside the building, carried the chair across the square and disappeared down the hill.

Caradog turned and surveyed his prisoners.

'Are you hungry?' he asked unexpectedly.

'Ain't we, jist!' said Dido.

'Then you had better come inside.'

The interior of the temple was a huge s.p.a.ce, shaped like a long isosceles triangle, tapering not quite to a point but to a high narrow wall at the far end, pierced by three lancet windows. These were the only windows in the place, which was very dim; the long side walls were blank, broken only by niches alternating with protruding cylindrical stones.

Under the three windows which admitted pink sunset light stood a huge stone altar-block, fourteen feet long by five feet high. On this, rather unexpectedly, lay various musical instruments: bamboo flutes, a harp, a lute, several crumhorns and a rebeck.

'Material offerings are of little interest to Sul,' Caradog explained, as Dido glanced inquisitively at these. 'The sound of music, or the human voice, is to her what burnt offerings are to lower G.o.ds.' He gave an explanatory nod at the piano, which had been set down not far from the altar.

What about chucking us in the lake? Dido wanted to ask. What does Sul think about that? It ain't Sul who wants us in the lake, it's that greedy queen.

Caradog led the girls on through a door beside the altar into what was plainly the priest's house. This was a bare stone building, scantily furnished with carved stone couches and tables; however there was a fireplace, where blazed a fire of thorn and fig branches, filling the air with aromatic smoke. Ordering the girls to sit down on one of the stone couches, Caradog presently handed them each a bowl of rather tasteless bean-and-yucca stew. This was accompanied by ancient slightly mouldy bread and weak willow-leaf tea. Being exceedingly hungry, the prisoners ate uncritically and began to feel, if not cheerful, at least somewhat better.

The meal finished, Caradog led them back to the temple again. Here he began to play on various of the instruments, fetching strange quavering sounds from the bocinas, plucking on the harp and lute, blowing through the crumhorns; the noises he made were very uncouth. Dido did not think highly of his performance; nor, to judge from the grimace she made, did Elen, who presently volunteered, 'I can play on the piano if you would like me to? I learned in England '

'Can you, though?' Old Caradog's deep eyes lit up; he dragged a stone block up to the piano since a stool had not been provided; Elen sat down on this, rather uncomfortably, and proceeded to play a waltz.

The Guardian was amazed. He stood with his eyes shut in ecstasy, swaying the upper part of his body about in time with the music. When it was ended he opened his eyes again and sighed, as if his spirit had returned from another, far-distant region. Dido, too, was greatly impressed with Elen's proficiency. She herself had not the slightest notion of how to play on the piano.

'Oh!' sighed Caradog. 'If I could but keep you here long enough to teach me that art!'

This depressing remark spoilt the more cordial atmosphere that had been building up between the Guardian and his prisoners; looking at the light, which was almost gone, he said shortly, 'Come; it is time you retired for the night,' and took them back into his house. 'This is your room ' indicating a small chamber, stone-floored, and with no furnishings at all except what looked uncomfortably like a large heap of human hair in one corner. 'There is water in the room next door,' said Caradog, and there was, a large stone tank of it. 'Now,' he continued, 'I will introduce you to Hapiypacha, who will watch over you from now on.'

At the end of a pa.s.sage he pulled back an iron-barred gate as big as a door. From the darkness beyond came a loud, yawning growl the sound made by someone who is roused too suddenly from sleep and not best pleased about it.

'Hapiypacha is kept hungry through the night,' said Caradog. 'I feed him at dawn.'

As Caradog said this, Hapiypacha emerged from his sleeping-quarters in one long fluid bound. He snarled and spat sideways at the Guardian as he pa.s.sed; the old man stood his ground, remarking calmly, 'Hapiypacha has an unfriendly disposition; but he knows I am his master.'

Hapiypacha was an ounce, or mountain leopard; he stood four feet high at the shoulder, was about nine feet long, including his tail, had a pale-grey coat, dotted over with large dark rosettes, and three black stripes along his back; his black ears were ta.s.selled, he had two dark 'tear-marks', stripes down his cheeks, white whiskers, green luminous eyes, and a no-nonsense expression. Wrinkling up his black nose as he snarled again, he loped to the temple entrance, pa.s.sed through, and could be seen in front of the altar, pacing up and down as if he were keeping guard over it. A strong musky smell came from him: like cheese with dried fish, Dido thought.

'Now,' said the Guardian, 'behave yourselves, keep quiet, and Hapiypacha will do you no harm. But if you make any sudden move, or shout or break into a run he is trained to overtake a running quarry, and he can catch anything on four legs or two. I do not advise you to try it. . . Good night.'

He left them at the entrance of their room, and returned to the temple.

There was no means of fastening their door, they discovered; if they pushed it to, it merely swung open again. In the end they managed to wedge it shut with a handful of hair from the heap which was indubitably human. Deeply depressed by this circ.u.mstance, they spread out their cloaks on it, and combed their own hair with their fingers. 'We'll look for some ichu gra.s.s tomorrow,' said Dido. Then, silently, they lay down to sleep. They were in no mood for chat.

Their bed was soft enough, despite its frightening implications. But Dido's sleep was broken by miserable dreams. She heard Mr Multiple scream as he was thrown over the waterfall; she saw poor Plum carried off by Aurocs; fiery-eyed owls dashed at her, snakes wriggled among the heap of hair, Mr Holystone stood on the far side of a ravine, with Caliburn in his hands, but looking away from her, in the wrong direction.

Towards dawn she woke, parched with thirst, and, in some trepidation, padded next door carrying a wooden cup Caradog had left them, to fetch herself a drink of water from the stone tank. Coming back it struck her that their bedroom door had been ajar; someone must have opened it while they were asleep. And, returning to bed, she discovered who: sprawled out beside Elen, with his chin comfortably supported by her ankles, lay Hapiypacha, fast asleep.

Dido regarded him rather doubtfully for a moment. Then she knelt and set the wooden cup of water down on the ground. As she did so, for some reason, she remembered Mr Holystone saying, Never drink the first cup of liquid offered you by a stranger.

Maybe things'll somehow come right, she thought. Though dear knows how!

Then she curled up on the far side of the heap from Hapiypacha and went back to sleep.

11.

When Dido next woke, it was to see Elen thoughtfully scratching the thick soft fur between Hapiypacha's ears, and pulling out the loose fluff over his eyebrows, while he purred like the distant rumble of Mount Catelonde.

'It's going to be awkward,' Dido remarked, 'not letting old Caradog find out how thick you and Happy-p.u.s.s.y have got. Or he might think we'd need another keeper.'

But in fact it proved not too difficult. Most of the daytime hours were pa.s.sed by the old Guardian by Sul's altar, where he blew or plucked on his various instruments. During the afternoon he went to feed his animals stabled in the valley below, and was absent for a couple of hours, departing through a postern gate in the ma.s.sive wall, which he locked behind him. At noon and in the evening he fed the girls some more of his bean-and-yucca stew. If Elen chose to come and play the piano in the temple which she did from time to time he was happy to desist from his own performances and listen to hers, rapt in a trance of pleasure; sometimes, indeed, after these interludes, it was quite hard to rouse him. Otherwise he paid little attention to his prisoners; they might wander where they chose through the cold, sunny, deserted city, climbing stairs, coming out on to terraces, peering over terrifying drops. As Caradog had said, they were free to fly out if they chose; there appeared to be no other way out.

Everywhere they went, Hapiypacha accompanied them, loping at their heels, or sometimes bounding ahead, leaping up on some bal.u.s.trade or rock platform if a merlin or rockdove chanced to alight. Caradog had warned them about Aurocs, which, once or twice, they saw planing about the sky with their hideous triangular wings outspread. 'But,' the Guardian said, 'so long as Hapiypacha's with you, no Auroc's going to come near; they won't tangle with him.'' Indeed the great leopard often snarled up, wrinkling his nose and hissing, when the shadow of an Auroc pa.s.sed over.

Up at the top of the town, beyond the Temple of Sul, there was a round tower, which Dido had noticed on their first arrival. Exploring in this direction, they found that the tower was not a tower at all, but simply a huge rock, the upper part of which had been cut and shaped into a single stone shaft some twenty feet high. At the top of this the familiar face of Sul was carved. Beyond the pillar extended a bal.u.s.traded terrace from which the whole of Lake Arianrod could be seen. There was now a fair amount of water in the star-shaped basin, and more of the yellow balloons kept arriving.

'They are made of wild silk,' Elen said sadly. 'Used for irrigation in the highlands. Why doesn't papa stop sending them? I don't understand it.'

Dido was visited by a depressing idea.

'Perhaps old Gomez, when he nabbled us, left a note, as it might be from you or me, saying don't worry, gone off with Mr Mully to pick up diamonds in the lake-bed. Or summat of the sort.'

'Surely Papa would not be so foolish as to believe such a story?'

But no other possible explanation occurred to them.

Most of the balloons came drifting over the shoulder of Mount Catelonde, the heat of which was sufficient to melt the wax on the fastenings and make them discharge their contents into the lake-bed. But a small number floated over the crater itself, through the reddish-black column of smoke that came coiling sluggishly from the volcano's open jaws. Then that particular load of water never reached the lake, but fell down into the heart of the volcano, like a teacupful of water dropped into a furnace. And as the furnace sizzles and spits when water is dropped into it, so Mount Catelonde rumbled and hissed and spat out jets of red-hot ash and lava each time this occurred.

'If enough water got spilt into the crater,' said Elen thoughtfully, 'I shouldn't wonder but what it might start a full-scale eruption.'

'What would happen then?'

'It would be like a saucepan boiling over. Only what comes out of a volcano is lava boiling rock, thick as mola.s.ses, rolling down the mountain. Of course it might just roll down into Lake Arianrod; but if it went down the other side of the mountain or if there were a big explosion and part of the mountain blew off it might be dangerous for the city of Bath. Oh, how I wonder if Gwydion has got there yet; if he has if he learns what has happened to us he will surely come to rescue us?'

'I wouldn't depend on that,' Dido said. 'Who'd tell him? If you ask me, it's no use expecting other people to help you. What's that thing down there, d'you you suppose?'

A flight of steps led down the steep hillside from the terrace on which they stood. Below, extending outwards from the hillside, rather like a diving-board, was a narrow natural tongue or spur of rock, perhaps ten feet long and three or four feet wide. Below it, the cliff fell sheer, more than a thousand feet, to the blue waters of Lake Arianrod.

Elen looked down and shivered.

'Can't you guess? That's the Tongue of Sul where we shall be thrown into the lake. I believe we aren't really thrown just pushed out along the rock and left to stand there until we fall off. I should think it would not take long you would soon become giddy on that narrow tip. Some people jump off, I've heard, so as to get it over sooner.'

Now it was Dido's turn to shiver.

'Brrr! What a spooky spot. Let's get away from here. I'm sorry I asked I wouldn't have come this-a-way if I'd known. Maybe it's dinnertime the sun's moved quite a bit since we've been here.'

But Elen, walking dejectedly after Dido, burst out, 'I don't know that I mind being thrown into the lake. Dido! I really love Cousin Gwydion. I always have. I can feel it here -' She thumped her chest. 'If I can't marry him, I might just as well be in that lake. Or or go back to England and teach mathematics! I'm certainly not going to stay in Lyonesse and marry one of those Ccapacs.'

'But, Elen,' said Dido, shocked, 'how can you marry him? He's married already. And anyway you've hardly met him how can you be sure?'

'You forget. I was partly brought up with him. I loved him then. Oh, if only he was just Cousin Gwydion.'

If only, thought Dido sadly, he was just Mr Holystone.

Trying to retrace their steps to the Temple of Sul, they became confused among a maze of narrow cobbled ways, and came out on a dry dusty shelf above a ravine which was quite narrow only about ten feet across -but unbelievably deep.

'Watch out, Elen,' Dido said anxiously. 'Don't go too near that gritty edge.'

A mountain hare, sunning itself among a tangle of wild fig and cactus on the far side of the gully, started up and bolted away across the mountainside. To the girls' utter amazement, Hapiypacha cleared the gully in one effortless bound, and shot off in pursuit of the hare, going so fast that he seemed to float over the ground; in twenty seconds he had caught it, and returned with it in his jaws, leaping back over the gully with the same unconcerned ease, before settling down in a patch of shade to demolish his prey in four bites.

'He's got hi's own way out, at all events,' Dido said. 'Guess the Guardian don't know that '

An idea seized her so suddenly that her jaw went stiff and she stammered in her excitement. 'Hey p-p-p-princess! He he likes you!'

'Who does? What do you mean?'

'Why, old Puss there ' as Hapiypacha, having finished his lunch, came to rub his head against Elen's arm. 'D'you reckon you could ride him? Get him to take you out of here?'

'You mean over there?' Elen's eyes went huge with fright. She looked down into the terrifying gully.

'Go on! You said just now you wouldn't mind being thrown into the lake. At least there'd be some point to this!'

'But but what about you?' Plainly, though, Elen had begun to consider the idea, instead of just dismissing it.

'Well,' Dido said reasonably, 'it'd be no use my trying to ride him. He don't like me above half. It's you he's took sich a fancy to. So it's a case of you or nothing, ennit? But he's a right fast goer, our Happy-p.u.s.s.y; if you could get across that gully on him, and ride him over the mountains to Wandesborough, maybe you could give the alarm in time to send somebody and stop old Stone-Eyes from dropping me in the lake. Or or if not it's better one should get away than both of us get polished off. And then and then you can tell your cousin Gwydion about Queen Ginevra's goings-on - She had to reiterate this argument a good many times before Elen could be brought to consider it. But presently after they had eaten their noon meal and Caradog was away feeding his beasts Elen did try riding the leopard. At first it was doubtful whether he would sanction the idea at all, he hissed and spat and started away when, nervously tucking up her skirts, she attempted to bestride him; but by the end of the day he was co-operating tolerably well, though he did not look pleased about it; his ears were set back flat against his head and he mewled angrily to himself all the time she was on his back.

'Still, we're a-getting somewhere!' exulted Dido. 'Who'd a thought, this morning, that he'd let you ride him so biddably? And it's still two days to the new moon. If you practise all day tomorrow '

'All day!' shuddered Elen. 'If you knew what it was like sitting on his back! There isn't any saddle-holllow nothing but bony spine all the way along. It's all very well for you '

She bit her lip and stopped suddenly.

'Don't you worry,' said Dido. 'Maybe the old boy will be so sore when he finds he's lost you and Hapiypa-cha that he'll be out a-hunting over the mountain, and I'll have a chance to get away too.'

Though what could I do? she wondered. Steal a ride back on the silver-train? Her private thoughts were not hopeful.

By the evening of the third day Elen was getting on much better with her wayward mount. She had learned that the usual taps or kick used to urge a horse to greater speed only put him in a bad temper, but he would respond very well to coaxing words if she leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

'I reckon now's as good a time as any,' said Dido, who had discreetly removed Hapiypacha's breakfast of dried guinea-pig when the Guardian's back was turned, so as to render the leopard extra-hungry by evening. 'Let's go up to that gully-spot and hope for another hare.'

At first they were afraid they were not going to be able to find the place again, as they wandered to and fro in a network of dusty, silver-cobbled alleys, with late swallows and mountain falcons wheeling overhead in the last of the sun.

But at last they came out on the edge of the gully, and, as luck would have it, there was another hare, drowsing in exactly the same spot on the other side.

'Quick, Elen before you've got time to get scared hop on him!' said Dido. Impulsively she gave the other girl a hug. 'Go on, now don't be frit! Give my best regards to Mr Holy if you find him -'

Elen scrambled herself on to Hapiypacha's bony withers. Leaning forward she took a firm grip of the thick fur on his neck with both hands, and whispered, 'Go on, now, Tomkin after him '

The leopard bounded, checked an instant, and then shot away, clearing the ravine with his usual carefree power, landing well over on the other side, despite the fact that he had a rider on his back.

'Grip with your knees!' shouted Dido as Hapiypacha raced after the hare. 'Good luck!'

And then she turned round to find herself staring straight into the indignant face of Caradog.

'You are a very, very wicked child!' he said wrath-fully.

'Oh, come on, mister!'

'My sister said you were a troublemaker! She was right!'

'Now listen here '

'I let you and your companion go free, instead of locking you up, as I should otherwise have done (it is true,' he added in parenthesis, 'that Sul prefers a healthy, willing sacrifice; or so I have always thought) and what happens? You act with outrageous deceitfulness and ingrat.i.tude you seize the first opportunity to escape!'

'Well,' Dido said reasonably, 'What would you have done? Just sat down and waited to be chucked over the cliff?'