The Stolen Lake Part 8

Dido felt sure that it was more than that. She had not informed Captain Hughes about the messages in the cats' collars she could just imagine the scorn with which he would dismiss such idle nonsense but she herself felt certain that they had something to do with Mr Holystone's infirmity.

As the train zig-zagged its way upwards, she occupied herself by looking out of the dirty window at the scenery, which was certainly very astonishing. Day wore slowly on as they climbed higher and higher, curving over mountainsides and through narrow pa.s.ses, creeping along narrow rocky valleys, and yet again up and up, following the course of the river Severn, now transformed to a boulder-strewn torrent. They pa.s.sed many more waterfalls, some plunging from thousand-foot crags into vapour-filled gorges, other pouncing down hillsides step by step.

At last Dido became bored with her own company -for Noah Gusset was curled up asleep, Mr Multiple and the lieutenant were playing chess, and Plum, a silent man at all times, was knitting himself a sock, while Captain Hughes, having written up his log, was deep, as usual, in aerostatics.

Seizing the chance when the train stopped at a wayside halt to take on more wood and water and allow a Customs official to inspect the foreigners' credentials, Dido slipped out of the first-cla.s.s car on to the rock platform beside the track.

'Hey, young 'un! Where are you off to?' demanded Lieutenant Windward, sticking his fair head out.

'I'm a-going in the box-car for a bit,' said Dido. 'I'll be all rug; don't you fret your fur.'

She was startled at the bitter cold of the mountain air, high up here between Elamye and Arryke; she made haste to scramble into the second-cla.s.s car, where the atmosphere was as warm as a nesting-box. There were no seats at all in here, and the pa.s.sengers who were mostly sunburned peasants, bringing their goods to the city all squatted on the floor. They wore sandals, ponchoes, goatskin trousers, and a dozen hats apiece, and the floor was littered with melon seeds, pineapple ta.s.sels and plantain rinds. However the human climate was a great deal more cordial than in the first-cla.s.s accommodation; Dido was greeted cheerfully enough, and offered cherries from a basket, a bite of a delicious fruit called chirimoya, and a mugful of chicha, a drink not unlike cider. She learned, partly by sign-language, since the peasants mostly spoke Latin, that they came, not from Tenby, but from small clearings in the forest, and that they were coming to sell their hats in Bath Regis. She herself was bombarded with questions.

'Why is the gringo captain coming to Bath? Why is he permitted to do so? Why does he leave his ship?'

'He is coming to visit your queen,' Dido said.

'Wants to see Her Mercy, do he? Why, in the name of Grandmother Sul?'

'No,' said Dido, 'she wants to see him. She wants him to do summat for her.'

'This was received with puzzlement and wonder.

'What could the gringo captain do for Her Mercy that her couldn't do for herself? A powerful wise woman she be!'

'Pick up the Cheesewring with her bare hands and sling it into the middle of Dozmary Pool, her could!' Dido gathered that these were local names for Mount Catelonde and Lake Arianrod. 'Make old Damyake Hill blow sparks into King Mabon's beard. She's a powerful one, she be. Could turn Severn Water back'ards through Pulteney Bridge. Ar, she'm a rare 'un, old Queen Ginny-vere.'

'Why doesn't she have a king?' Dido asked. 'In England we have both.'

They were all amazed at her ignorance.

'Course there be a King! Didn't you know that? Lives in his own place, top o' Beechen Hill in the Wen Pendragon. But he don't come out. Wounded, he were, in the wars.'

'What wars?'

'Long-ago wars. Old, old wars. He won't get no better till the red rain do fall. Then the great gates'U open, and he'll go home again.'

'What red rain?'

n.o.body was certain about that. 'He'll get better in his own time, maidy. Simmingly.'

'Maybe that's what the queen wants,' said Dido. 'Maybe she wants Cap'n Hughes to recommend a doctor from England.'

This precipitated a great discussion among the peasants, some saying that the queen could do anything, and consequently needed no help from outsiders, other pointing out that she must have had some reason for summoning the gringo captain.

In the middle of this, Dido was greatly startled to see the tall, thin, black-clad figure of Bran the Storyteller unfold himself from a corner where he had been dozing unnoticed, and move into the middle of the car. He had his white bird on his shoulder, and greeted Dido with a friendly nod.

'Oh!' cried Dido delighted, 'now you can finish the story about the man and the stick.'

But the word story instantly aroused a commotion among the other pa.s.sengers.

'A story a story! Your excellency your venerable your squireship your knowingness do'ee now, kindly, tell us a story!'

'Very well,' said the man called Bran. 'If you will all be so good as to keep quiet, so that I can make myself heard.' Instantly a dead silence prevailed, apart from the spitting of melon seeds.

Bran thought for a moment, cleared his throat, and began.

'Once a man called Juan applied for a post as night-watchman at a warehouse. He had been promised the job. But when he got there, the overseer said to him, "That job has been given to someone else." "To whom?" furiously demanded Juan. "To that man who just left." Looking out of the door, Juan was amazed to see that the other man exactly resembled himself. "Stop, you imposter!" shouted Juan, chasing him along the street. "You have stolen my job." But the other man turned a corner, and Juan could not find him.

'Then Juan fell in love with a beautiful girl. But when he asked her to marry him, she said, "I am already promised to that man on the other side of the marketplace." And he looked across, and there was his double again. "Now I shall catch you, you wretch!" he bawled, and he rushed across the square. But when he reached the other side, his rival had gone. And many times this happened; if It was the last loaf on the baker's counter, or the last place on the ferry, it was always the double who got there first.

'Then, one day, as Juan was going down the hill towards the river, he saw his double not far ahead. "Now I shall catch him," thought Juan, and he began to run. But, as the other man walked out on the bridge, a great flood came roaring down the river-bed and washed the bridge away. And Juan wept and raged and would not be comforted. "For," he said, "now I have lost my enemy for ever." '

'Is that the end?' asked Dido.

'That you must decide for yourself,' said Bran.

Dido reflected.

'Well, I think he was a looby, to carry on so,' she said. 'If I'd have been him, I'd never '

But Bran was briskly going round among the peasants, collecting small copper coins in a wooden cup. Then he sang a song, accompanying himself on his harp: 'I can hardly bear it

Waiting for tomorrow to come

Joy I want to share it

Waiting for tomorrow to come

Love I must declare it

Waiting for tomorrow to come

For that's the day

When she, when she, when she, when she, when

she

Will come

My way.

Time seems to creep

Waiting for tomorrow to come

Clock has gone to sleep

Waiting for tomorrow to come

Patiently I keep . . .'

His voice was drowned by a tremendous shuddering, creaking and clanking as the train drew to a standstill.

'Are we taking on more wood and water?' asked Dido, as Bran stopped singing.

'No,' he said. 'We have reached our destination. We are in Bath.'

The peasants began leaping out of the box-car. In two minutes they were all gone. Dido skipped out after them, and found herself on an icy, windswept stone pavement, inadequately sheltered by a thatched canopy. The air was bitter.

'Make haste, if you please, Miss Twite!' came the captain's voice. 'No time to loiter about and much too cold. We must get poor Holystone into shelter. Come along!'

'But Bran,' said Dido, looking round. 'Won't you please tell me '

Bran's tall figure, however, had vanished among the peasants in their flowing ruanas and high-piled stacks of panama hats. Reluctantly Dido followed the captain's impatiently beckoning arm and walked, shivering, through a kind of open-fronted station hall to a paved courtyard beyond. Here there were hackney carriages waiting, and a number of sedan chairs with their poles resting on the ground, and the blue-coated chair-men standing by them.

'Sydney Hotel!' Captain Hughes ordered one of the hackney drivers in a loud authoritative voice. 'Gusset Multiple take Mr Holystone up carefully and lay him on the carriage seat.'

Mr Holystone was still asleep, it seemed.

'Sydney Hotel?' one of the chair-men said to Dido. 'Hop in, missie, and we'll have you there in the flick of a pig's tail.'

Dido would have liked to ride in a chair they had gone out of fashion in London and she had never seen one but Captain Hughes called irritably, 'Into the carriage, Miss Twite look sharp now! We don't want to keep poor Holystone hanging about in this bitter cold!'

'Sorry, mister,' Dido apologised to the hopeful chairman, and she clambered into the carriage. Glancing through the window next moment she nearly dropped her cloak-bag for an instant she could have sworn that the rear chair-man was Silver Taffy. But then he moved into the shadows and disappeared. It can't have been him anyway, Dido thought; what would he be doing here? We left him behind at Bewdley.

Dusk was falling as they clattered out of the station yard, over b.u.mpy cobbles. Dido looked down to see if they were silver, but the light was too poor to be sure. It was freezing cold inside the carriage; and the steam from the horses' nostrils looked like dragon's breath. Dido shivered on the slippery leather seat and huddled against the comfortable warmth of Mr Midshipman Multiple. He, Noah, Dido and Plum rode in this carriage; Captain Hughes, Mr Holystone and Lieutenant Windward were in the other which had already started.

Despite the cold, Dido would not have minded a long drive if it had been possible to see anything of the town, but there were hardly any streetlights; the only illumination came from dim gleams, here and there, behind lace-curtained windows. Bath Regis, for a capital city, seemed very quiet and glum.

Luckily it proved no more than a ten-minute trot from the station to the Sydney Hotel, over a covered bridge with closed market-stalls on either side, and along an extremely wide street; then the travellers had reached their destination and were being solicitously helped to alight by half-a-dozen porters and footmen.

By the time Dido entered the vestibule she heard Captain Hughes giving orders that a dressmaker be fetched immediately to fit his young companion with a court dress.