The Stolen Lake Part 23

'Old you may be, my ancient friends, but I am older yet! Still there is work for us to do!'

Now the crowd quieted down, for in all this joyful excitement and hubbub, there had been no sign from Caer Sisi, the Royal Palace. In fact, when Holystone turned the head of his pony in that direction, great jets of steam suddenly shot from the ground in a ring all round the palace on its island, as if to protect it from intruders.

'Dear me! That's a highly ingenious form of defence,' muttered Captain Hughes, who happened to be beside Dido just then. 'I must send a memorandum to the War Office about it. A barricade of scalding steam; most effective. Expensive, of course . . . I am not sure that it would be practicable in His Majesty King James's dominions.' He added thoughtfully, 'I am afraid it gives no very encouraging clue as to Queen Ginevra's intentions.'

Holystone halted his pony a safe distance from the steam jets and sat regarding them. The herald came up beside him again, blew another blast on his bocina, and declaimed, 'The High King Arthur, Rex Quondam et Futurus, stands here outside his palace of Caer Sisi. Who bids him welcome?'

'That's a tactful way of putting it,' commented Captain Hughes.

After one revolution of the rotating palace, three people emerged from the smaller door at the top of the steps: The Grand Inquisitor, the Vicar General and old Mrs Morgan.

Now the jets of steam slackened down until they were only about two feet high, and the two men, Gomez and Fluellen, picked their way forward, edging between the spouts with some care, and advanced until they were within speaking distance of Holystone.

'Are you in truth Artaius Mercurius, son of Uther Pendragon?' demanded the Vicar General.

'I am!' replied Holystone.

'What proof do you give in confirmation of your statement?'

'The mark of Gwydion on my arm,' he bared it, 'and the sword Caliburn in my hand.'

'Under whose recognisance do you come?'

'King Mabon, ruler of Lyonesse, and Caradog son of Caradog, Guardian of the Pa.s.s of Nimue.'

The two men consulted together. Mrs Morgan went back inside the castle, after a very sharp scrutiny of Holystone. Gone to tell the queen, Dido guessed.

The two officials exchanged more words, and Gomez announced, 'It is enough! We accept your recognisance, Pen-dragon, son of Uther. Advance to be greeted by your loving queen!'

'So I should hope!' tartly commented Captain Hughes.

Now there ensued a long pause. Dido expected that the castle would stop spinning, that the great doors would open; but neither of these things happened. Maybe they've forgotten how to stop it, she thought to herself; or more likely the machinery's gone wrong, rusted after all this time.

Whether this was the case, or whether the queen was still doubtful of her caller's legitimacy, the castle continued to revolve. However, after several more turns (and evidently with considerable difficulty, owing to her girth and lack of mobility) Queen Ginevra herself presently emerged through the rotating door and stood at the top of the black marble steps. A throne was hastily carried to the spot by several guards. She sat down on it.

Then, in a faint, high, weary, but carrying voice, she called, 'Arthur, son of Uther. Rex Quondam! Come forward and be recognised by me!'

Holystone walked forward, crossed the bridge, and mounted the steps. Under his beard he was very pale, Dido noticed. She also noticed, with some surprise, that the queen did not seem to have made any particular alteration in her garments or coiffure. She still wore the flowing white robe, like a nightdress, and the plain circlet of diamonds over her lanky hair.

Evidently Lady Ettarde had not come up to scratch in the matter of festive robes.

For that matter, where was the Mistress of the Wardrobe?

Glancing round, as this thought occurred to her for the first time, Dido noticed Silver Taffy not far away, edging through to the front of the crowd. He was leading somebody by the arm.

A man- in the crowd near Dido could be heard to mutter, The queen looks more like his mum than his wife, don't she?'

And a woman snappishly replied, 'Well, he's been reborn and she hasn't. Some people have all the luck!'

The Vicar General in ringing tones proclaimed, 'Welcome, Arthur, Rex Quondam, to your faithful, devoted, loyal and long-suffering queen, Ginevra, who has waited for you these thirteen hundred years, keeping your kingdom safe for you. Great be their reward who remain faithful in adversity!'

'What adversity did she have to put up with?' somebody murmured. 'She's never gone hungry!'

Queen Ginevra's high voice was heard to exclaim, 'Arthur! It really is you!' in a tone of genuine astonishment.

And he answered steadily, 'Yes, it's I. Guinevere -Jenny! It's been it was good of you to wait for me so long.'

And stepping forward he bent down (the queen looked like a fat white dumpling beside his spare erect-ness) and kissed her on her broadish brow, above the pouched, poached-egg eyes, below the greasy white hair.

Dido, glancing at Elen, who was on her left-hand side, noticed that the princess looked likely to faint. She was swaying dizzily in her saddle. Leaning across, Dido grabbed her arm. 'Put your head right down on your pony's neck!' she hissed.

'Why, husband, did you stay away so long?' the queen was asking in a complaining tone. 'And why, when you did come back, did you go to Lyonesse first? And then ride here at the head of an armed force?'

Dido did not catch Arthur's reply. Silver Taffy had come up to Captain Hughes, and greeted him with a grin and a wink.

'Got back then, I see, sir! No problems? Found the young ladies, all right and tight?'

'Certainly,' said the captain coolly. 'And you what have you been doing? Where have you got that poor devil Brandywinde?'

'Oh, he's here, sir just behind me. Well, the first thing I did,' he laughed cheerfully, 'was to put paid to my Auntie Ettarde's account. She won't sew anybody's shroud, not ever again. She lies spitted like a partridge among her tuckers and farthingales!'

'What, you wretch-' began the captain, in a tone of horror. But Taffy only laughed, and moved farther towards the front of the crowd, pulling Brandywinde behind him. The latter appeared wholly confused, as if he did not know where he was, or what he was supposed to be doing.

Meanwhile it was plain that the reunion between the queen and her husband was not going very well. Gine-vra continued to scold poor Holystone for his slowness in returning to her. He looked miserably depressed. The queen's eyes had turned to their mirror-blankness, reflecting only the patchy, smoke-flecked blue sky. At this moment Catelonde gave a loud angry rumble.

Poor Mr Holy, Dido thought, He just can't act loving enough towards her who could? And that's what she can't stand o' course she can see that he don't like her one bit. Anybody could see that. He can't help himself. Oh, why do I have to feel sorry for people all the time, however nasty they are?

'You are a very faithless, untrue, unkind husband!' Ginevra suddenly cried shrilly. 'How do I know what you have been up to all these years?'

King Arthur's return to his wife was going horribly wrong.

Mabon called out angrily, 'What about you, you miserable woman? I hadn't been going to say anything about it, if Gwydion was really fond of you let bygones be bygones is my motto but what about my daughter? What about Elen? You had her abducted -twice! You were going to murder her!'

Ginevra turned her sightless eyes in his direction.

'I had to do it,' she said complainingly. 'It was the will of Sul. I had to survive, for the good of the kingdom.' And she repeated, 'It was the will of Sul.'

'Sul be blowed!'

'Oh, hush, Papa!'

Now Silver Taffy, shrewdly perceiving that the mood of the crowd was changing and turning hostile towards the queen, if she was not prepared to welcome Arthur, strode out in front of the people and shouted, 'Yes, and what about all our girl-children, that she said were taken by the Aurocs! We all know what really happened to them. What about them, you old she-hyena?' He turned to the crowd and shouted, 'She had them! She murdered them every one!'

There was a gasp of horror from the throng.

But at this point Elen, suddenly recognising Silver Taffy, exclaimed, 'Why, but that is the man who took me prisoner for the queen you hateful monster! Whose side are you on, you double traitor?'

Forgetting her previous faintness, she pointed an accusing finger at Taffy. And Hapiypacha, as if he had been waiting all day for this signal, launched himself like a javelin towards the pirate. Taffy went grey with terror at the sight of the snow-leopard bounding towards him; he spun round, wailing, and fled along Westgate Street. Hapiypacha bounded lightly after him, and in a moment the pair were out of sight; there was not the least doubt as to what would happen.

Into the silence which followed this grim occurrence came the whining voice of Mr Brandywinde: 'And what about her wickedness and witcheries? Turned my fingers to blobs of dough, she did look, friends -' and he exhibited them. 'Can't even spread bread and b.u.t.ter! Compensation, there ought to be, for all she done the tongues cut out, the shrunken heads -'

'Ay, so there ought!' shouted the crowd.

Queen Ginevra looked bitterly at the sea of faces confronting her. Incomprehension and despair were on her flabby features, and in her shining, sightless eyes.

'Oh!' she cried out piercingly. 'How can any of you understand me? I hate you all! But,' to Holystone, 'I hate you worst of all!'

Holystone said hoa.r.s.ely, 'Guinevere, you have been a selfish, wicked woman an unkind shepherdess, preying on your flock. I condemn your actions, and I repudiate you!'

'Oh you brute! It was for you! I did it for you!'

With a dreadful, raging, moaning cry, a shriek that went through the hearts of her people like a saw through tissuepaper, Queen Ginevra turned from Holystone and pushed her way into the revolving door, which reached the head of the steps just at that moment.

Then a portentous thing happened.

Whether because Ginevra had purposely released some control or by simple accident, the pace of the revolving door suddenly increased to a wild whirl. It spun madly round, with the queen inside it, so that the rotating panels could only be seen as a blur. Ginevra's scream was echoed and drowned by the eerie screech of the spinning door, and then of the castle, as it, too, began to turn more quickly.

'Sir! Come back! Make haste!' Captain Hughes shouted warningly.

Holystone glanced behind him, then leapt down the steps and across the bridge. For the steam-jets were beginning to grow again; in the s.p.a.ce of forty seconds they shot up as tall as poplar trees; the crowd wailed and stumbled and stampeded in its efforts to get away before anybody was scalded. Holystone, the Vicar General and the Grand Inquisitor just managed to dodge between the jets while it was possible to do so, before they became a wall of steam.

'Er may I perhaps suggest, Your Highness, that we adjourn to the Pump Room?' suggested the Vicar General, who looked badly shaken. 'I think I do not believe it possible that Her Mercy '

The poor wretched woman can't possibly have survived inside that giddy-go-round,' bluntly summed up Captain Hughes. 'Nor could anybody inside the castle, for the matter of that. Human frame ain't meant for that kind of usage. Unfortunate; very; but all for the best, maybe.'

'I am afraid you are right, Captain,' smoothly agreed the Grand Inquisitor. 'In which case his Highness King Artaius here is next in '

But at this moment Captain s.e.xtus Lucius Trevelyan came elbowing his way through the crowd with an expression of deep anxiety on his clean-cut Roman features. He bowed hastily both to King Mabon and Mr Holystone.

'Sirs -' he began. But his voice as he spoke was drowned by a horrendous rumbling roar from Mount Catelonde. The roar went on for the s.p.a.ce of three minutes, growing louder and louder. Captain Trevely-an's lips continued to move as he tried in vain to make himself heard.

' utmost urgency! Glaciers on Mount Damyake have begun to slip on account of the increased volcanic action,' he was saying when the rumble died down at last. 'The ice is approaching the city of Bath with -with considerable velocity from the east. And, as well, on the western side of the town, a torrent of molten lava is approaching with even greater speed. I think it my duty to suggest that you advice the citizens to gather up such household chattels as they quickly may, and remove themselves from the city within the s.p.a.ce of one hour at longest. And you too, Your Majesty and my lady and Your Highness, if you please! The slopes of Mount Ambage would seem, at present, to offer a reasonably secure point of vantage.'

'Leave the town?' said the quick-thinking King Mabon. 'Right. Best tell the people. Have it proclaimed. You agree?' to Holystone, who nodded..'But dear me what about Caer Sisi? What about the queen?'

The Vicar General shrugged.

'Fata abstant,' he said. 'She is done for. We cannot help her.'

Captain Hughes was heard to remark, 'I daresay the same subterranean upheaval that is affecting Damask and Catelonde had that unexpected effect on her palace.'

Holystone, who had looked white, sick and dazed since the dreadful scene with Queen Ginevra, now visibly took command of himself.

'Send the jefe here,' he commanded. 'We must organise the removal of the citizens in an orderly manner, by streets, or there will be panic and people will be injured and the gates blocked. Order the street watchmen to sound the alarm. Clear the town by all four gates, beginning with the citizens who live in the centre; appropriate all carts, carriages and street-cars, all beasts of burden; inform the owners that these will be returned, and compensation paid . . .'

In a moment he was the centre of a whirl of activity; he stood calmly giving orders as messengers raced in all directions.

'Come, Miss Twite Multiple, Windward, Gusset!' said Captain Hughes. 'Since we are not natives of this town we had best get ourselves out from underfoot before the headlong rush begins. The most sensible thing we can do is make for the rack-railway and go back to the Thrush; we certainly do not want to be cut off here in this G.o.d-forsaken spot which is all too probable if the glacier blocks the railway track, or the station is buried in lava '

'Leave now?' cried Dido in dismay. 'Without seeing what happens?'

Without saying goodbye was what she meant.

'Cap's right, you know,' Lieutenant Windward said. 'No sense in hanging around where we ain't needed '

Dido glanced about her, saw Elen mounting her pony. The princess, like Holystone, looked white, appalled and hollow-eyed.

'Papa has ordered me to go back to Lyonesse with Captain Trevelyan,' she said. 'He think it best; will you come with me, Dido?'

But Dido explained that she had to return to the Thrush. The two girls hugged each other rather miserably. 'Here have this,' Dido said huskily, and thrust the little diamond mirror into Elen's hand.

'You will come and see me again some time visit me in Lyonesse? I'll never forget what you did never! And if and if you should see G-Gwydion before you leave ' her voice shook a little on the name 'tell him he is always welcome at my father's palace, he knows that. . . Give him my my affection.'

'I don't suppose I shall see him,' said Dido bluntly. ' But if I do I'll tell him. Goodbye, Elen. Take care of Hapiypacha. And you might go and play the piano to poor old Caradog now and again.'

Elen nodded, ducked her head, and kicked her pony into a trot. Hapiypacha loped after her.

'Miss Twite! Will you please come along!' shouted the captain. 'Windward has ascertained that a train will start from Goodridge's Corridor station in ten minutes. We must lose no time.'

'I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming,' Dido said. The small English party bolted for the station.

'Never mind our luggage at the Sydney,' panted Captain Hughes. 'They can have it in lieu of payment if they can carry it away in time.'

The streets were jammed full of carts, pushcarts, carriages, wheelbarrows, and every kind of conveyance, all crammed with domestic goods. Dido noticed the Four Ancient Creatures, looking rather bewildered, being wheeled off on children's pushchairs. Loaded llamas gazed about them tolerantly, as if wondering why everybody was making such a commotion.

When they reached the station they found the queer little tip-tilted train already three-quarters packed with people who were using this means of escape from the threatened city; however room was kindly made for the gringos. . . This time there were no seats at all; Dido squatted on the floor, feeling miserably sad, remembering the ride up; Mr Holystone had slept all the way but at least he had been there; and Bran had told stories . . .

The train gave a jerk. The engine started to shriek and shudder. But suddenly there was a disturbance on the platform, people were calling, 'Make way, make way!' and to the engine-driver, 'Don't start yet, hold your steam!' And there was Mr Holystone. He had half-a-dozen men behind him, all clamouring for his attention, all asking him for instructions but his eyes were searching through the pa.s.sengers crowded together on the train - 'Couldn't let you go without bidding you goodbye, sir,' he said, hurriedly wringing Captain Hughes's hand. 'Thank you again for all your kindness. Tell the quartermaster to throw out the flour in the black canister, it will certainly have weevils in it by this time. Thank you for carrying me up all those plaguy mountains,' he said with a grin to Multiple, Windward and Gusset, shaking hands with each in turn. 'Goodbye, Dido.' He gently touched her cheek. 'Don't forget how to curtsey. And remember me when you take tea thumb and three fingers on the handle. 'We clean three tweed beads a week -'

'Mr Holy,' gulped Dido. 'I've a message for you.'

She gave it.

'Thank you,' he said gravely. 'And listen will you keep Dora for me? As a gift and a remembrance?'

Dido thought.

'I'd rather not,' she said after a moment. 'You won't think me rude, Mr Holy? Dora's a person. She didn't ought to be given as a present. Someone can bring her to you.'

'I know what you mean,' he said. 'You are right. Bran will bring Dora, with Elen's cats Bran is going to travel down with you.'

'He is?' Dido's face lit up. 'Oh, I am glad!' as Bran climbed in. 'Goodbye, goodbye, Mr Holy good luck!' She hung out, blowing kisses as he hurried away.

The train started with a shriek.

'None too soon,' said Bran. 'Look over there.' They were in the box-car which had no gla.s.s in its windows; the visibility was excellent. Dido, following the direction of his pointing finger, was just in time to see Mount Catelonde blow its top clean off; a thousand feet of mountain vanished in a great heaving spout of flame; the huge rock that had balanced on the tip of the crater for so long bounded upwards like a pea and then vanished from view.

'Blocked the Pa.s.s of Nimue, likely as not,' said Bran. 'If this railway is cut by the glacier there will be no way into Upper c.u.mbria except through the mines.'