The Whispering Mountain Page 9

  “Here’s a young man will go along with you to show the way to Pennygaff, and never charge a farthing for his trouble,” said Mr. Davy Thomas the landlord, with a wink for Owen.

  “King’s Regulations don’t allow for passengers,” the messenger snapped. “Besides, two riders would slow up the nag.”

  “Weigh no more than a feather, this boy do! Help to you he will be, too. Who’s to warn you of the wild boar when he do come after you in the Fforest? Have you in mincemeat he will, the old twrch trwyth, before you can so much as turn round and lay a bolt in your crossbow. Through the Fforest is the quickest way, indeed, but dangerous with it, and a few do vanish there every year, what with the wild boars and the wolves, the ravening blaid-diau!”

  This argument seemed to strike the messenger; he turned round and considered Owen with care.

  “Are you a good shot with a crossbow, eh, boy?”

  Owen was about to shake his head doubtfully when Brother Ianto gave him a poke in the ribs.

  “Never know what you can do till you try, boy. Wearing new glasses you are now, don’t forget.”

  “Try a shot,” invited the messenger, and handed his arbalest to Owen with a short metal arrow ready fitted in it.

  “What shall I shoot?” Owen asked nervously.

  “Shoot my hat,” suggested the landlord. In front of the inn was an ash tree, scrawny and tall as if it were trying its hardest to reach up out of the dark gorge in which it grew. On the topmost twig hung a steeple-hat.

  “Y diawl knows how the little scaff put it up there,” Mr. Thomas said. “One of them from the fair; good whacking he’ll get if ever I catch him! Shoot it down, boy.”

  So with trembling hands Owen took aim and let fly at the hat; much to his surprise it came sailing down, neatly transfixed by his bolt.

  “Da iawn, not bad at all!” exclaimed Mr. Thomas, tenderly picking up his hat and removing the arrow, while the messenger said to Owen, “You’re the boy for me!”

  Smiling like a wrinkled brown old gnome, Brother Ianto patted Owen on the shoulder.

  “Go you on your way, then, boy, and remember, things are never so bad but they may take a turn for the better. A safe journey to you!”

  “Look lively, then,” said the messenger. “There’s no time to waste,” and he mounted the wiry dun pony the ostler had just brought out.

  Owen hesitated; he would have liked to say goodbye to Arabis and thank her. But very likely she despised him so much that she would rather not be embarrassed by another meeting; and in any case the messenger was waiting impatiently for him to mount. He sprang up on the pillion, but called to Brother Ianto.

  “I’ll be back to pay for the glasses. Or I’ll see you in Pennygaff!”

  And, “I’ll keep a look-out for those thieves,” promised Brother Ianto.

  “If you should see Arabis—” Owen shouted, but the clatter of the pony’s hoofs on the rock pathway drowned his words.

  “How far is it to this Pennygaff?” asked the messenger as they rode down the gorge.

  “Forty miles if you go through the Fforest,” Owen said. “About twice as long over the mountain.”

  They were passing the row of little abandoned houses; the cliff had not fallen yet; instinctively the dun pony skirted well over to the other side of the gorge. Owen shivered at the recollection of his imprisonment.

  “Through the Fforest’s our way, then,” said the man. “Maybe we’ll have the luck to chance on his highness in there. Seems he came down to stay with Lord Malyn and go boar-hunting, but I’ve been to Castle Malyn already, and nobody’s there but servants. His lordship expected any minute from London, Prince David any day, but neither of them there yet. So I left an urgent message and came hunting this dod-gasted countryside; trouble is, his pesky highness don’t like to be bothered with a whole procession of grooms and lackeys when he goes hunting; he’d given them all the slip at Gloucester and gone off on his own.”

  “Is it really true that King James III is dying in London?” Owen asked timidly.

  “Bless your gaiters, no! Tooth-ache, that’s all the old boy has! It made him fretful and low-spirited; then he began to worry that Prince David would be eaten by a wolf or pronged by a wild boar. And on top of that he lost the key of his writing-desk and took a fancy into his head that the prince had gone off with it, so nothing would please him but to send for his highness to come home again. Lot of garboil over nothing, if you ask me.”

  But Owen thought his highness the Prince of Wales was lucky to have a father who worried about him when he was in danger and pined for him when he was away.

  Soon they had left the narrow gorge behind and, instead of striking up over the stone shoulder of Fighat Ben on the route taken by Bilk and Prigman, the king’s messenger, guided by Owen, followed a track that led them down rolling, grass-grown slopes, and at length into the great oak forest, the Fforest Mwyaf, which lay like a border of fur round the feet of the mountains, and stretched far away, eastwards to England, westwards to Caer Malyn and the coast.

  “Keep a sharp lookout now, my boy,” warned the messenger, “for I’ve no fancy to be guzzled up by a wolf or spitted on the tusks of one o they fustilarian wild boars that run ramping and champing in these dern woods you have hereabouts.”

  Owen pulled the little book of knowledge from his bundle. “The wild Boar, sus scrofa,” he quoted from it, “has a thick undercoat of long, curly hair through which bristles pass to form an outer covering of dark brown or greyish black. Tusks may be eight to ten inches long. The young have brown fur with spots and stripes of white. The adult, very savage, has been known to kill a tiger.”

  “A tiger?”

  “Not in Wales, I think.” Owen turned over several leaves. “No, that would be in Africa or Tartary. The Boar is naturally stupid and of a sluggish disposition, but he is Restless at every change of the weather, and greatly Agitated when the Wind is high.”

  “D‘ye reckon there’s much chance of a breeze at present?” inquired the messenger, glancing uneasily at the last of the golden autumnal leaves gently stirring above them. “I’d as lief not brabble with one o’ they agitated hog-pigs. You keep a sharp watch, young ’un; if you lets a tusker creep up on us unexpected, I’ll lamback you, or my name’s not Smith!”

  “Is it Smith?” asked Owen, whose spirits had risen amazingly since his decision to return to the museum and tell all to his grandfather. Being able to read his dear little book again cheered him still more.

  “O’ course it’s Smith,” growled the messenger, kicking his pony into a canter down a long ride between mighty oak trees.

  “Well, Mr. Smith, did you know that the Lard of the Boar is used for Plaisters and Pomatums, and the Bristles for Brushes?”

  “No I didn’t, and what’s more I don’t care a fig,” replied Mr. Smith. “I just hope we shan’t be needing any plaisters, that’s all. Here, you put that book away and tend to business.”

  “We are going too far south,” Owen said, obeying, “you should turn eastwards.”

  “How do you reckon that out, boy?”

  “With my compass,” Owen said, and showed it at the end of its cord.

  “That’s a handy little article!” Mr. Smith exclaimed in tones of respect. “Pity his majesty wouldn’t issue us messengers with the likes o’ that, special when we’re obliged to leave the highway and roam about in this sort o’ nook-shotten wilderness. How much farther would you say it was now, lad?”

  “Thirty-seven miles,” Owen said after a little calculation.

  “And how d’you work that so pat?”

  “The pony’s steps are a yard long, and every five hundred steps I’ve made a chalk mark on your leather jerkin.”

  “Ho, so you have, have you? Well, just you wipe ’em off afore we get to Pennygaff, I don’t wish to ride in looking like a horn-book. Thirty-seven miles,” said Mr. Smith, and did a little calculation on his own account. Then he kicked the pony’s slab-sides. “Here! Shake your shaggy shanks, Dobb
in-ap-dobbin, or we’ll not be there till cockshut time. And spending a night in these woods is something I’d not fancy above half.”

  The pony, however, was obstinate and would go at his own pace and no faster; if kicked more than he considered reasonable he stood stock still with legs apart and head down until such time as he chose to move on again.

  “The devil fly away with the perishing nag and the scoundrel who fobbed him off on me,” grumbled Mr. Smith, vainly jerking at the reins on one of these occasions.

  Owen consulted his book.

  “The Horse,” he read out, “is generous, docile, fpirited, I mean spirited, and very tractable.”

  “Oh, to be sure! Certainly!” snarled Mr. Smith. “About as tractable as Windsor Castle!”

  “The Horse distinguishes his Companion, and neighs to him, and will remember any place at which he has once ftopped.”

  “He’ll remember this spot, I’ll lay. Counting the blades of grass, he is, I daresay, to tell his stablemates. I don’t suppose that there chap-book of yourn tells how to start a horse when he’s stopped, do it?”

  Owen was obliged to admit that it did not. “I wish my friend Arabis were here. She knows how to whisper in the ears of horses when they give trouble.”

  “If I were to whisper in the ear ‘o this here Turk, what I said ’ud make him blush to the end of his tail.”

  “Shall I try whispering to him?” Owen suggested diffidently.

  “Whisper if you’ve a mind to, boy; no harm I reckon; only look sharp about it.”

  Owen accordingly slipped from the pony’s rump and going forward, took hold of one furry ear and whispered into it. Having no notion of what sort of soothing spells Arabis used to charm refractory horses, he decided to try the Table of Corn measures from his Book of Knowledge:

  2 lasts 1 wey

  10 weys 1 quarter

  20 quarters 1 comb

  80 combs 1 bushel

  320 bushels 1 peck

  This had an electrifying effect. On the word peck the pony bounded forward as if he saw a manger full of corn ahead of him under the trees. Mr. Smith, violently dislodged from the saddle, fell sprawling.

  “Dang it!” he cried furiously and, leaping to his feet, made after the pony, who kept evading him and remained tantalizingly just out of reach. Owen ran round to the pony’s other side and tried to grab his reins, but the wayward animal kicked up his heels and cantered to the end of the glade.

  “This is all on account o’ your parlous notions!” Mr. Smith said to Owen. “A right slubber you made o’ the business. Now what are you agoing to do about it?”

  “I don’t suppose you have any Carrots, Sugar, or other delicacies of which horses are Inordinately fond?”

  “No I have not; and anyways if I had I wouldn’t offer them to that son of Beelzebub.”

  Owen reflected. “My grandfather considers that mushrooms are a delicacy; I wonder if the pony would do so too?”

  “No knowing what whim that rug-headed prancer might take into his noddle,” remarked the messenger. “Try him if you like. Only don’t poison the brute! I daresay half these toadystools is sudden death.”

  However Owen, aided by his useful book, was able to pick out a cluster of wood mushrooms from the various kinds of fungi which grew profusely in the vicinity. He pulled a few and broke them in pieces, then approached the pony, who watched him come with suspicion, but pricked his ears interestedly as the scent of the mushrooms reached him, borne on the rising wind.

  “Stap me!” muttered Mr. Smith. “I do believe the unnatural animal’s agoing to swallow the bait.”

  The pony stuck out his neck and then lifted a lip to nibble at one of the portions of mushroom.

  Matters were in this delicate state when they were all startled by the sound of a low, fierce series of grunts, alarmingly near at hand. With a shrill whinny the pony flung up his head and bounded aside; Owen looked swiftly round and, to his horror, saw an immense wild boar emerge from a clump of hazel bushes midway between him and Mr. Smith. Its bristles were a dark mahogany-brown in colour, its curved tusks were fully ten inches long, and its tiny red eyes gleamed with ferocity.

  “The bow! The crossbow!” Mr. Smith called frantically. “You’ve got it, boy! Shoot the monster, don’t just stand there gawping!”

  Owen had slung the bow on his back when he dismounted. Hurriedly he wiped his glasses, unslung it, and fitted a bolt. The boar, roused and irritated by Mr. Smith’s shout, was moving in his direction, pawing the ground menacingly and shaking its huge head so that a spray of saliva flew about, while keeping its little eyes fixed on the terrified messenger.

  “Shoot!” Smith croaked again. The boar made a rush at him and he dodged round a massive oak. “What ails you, boy? Do something!” he cried to Owen, who looked quickly about, picked up a stone, and hurled it at the boar. Uttering a high-pitched squeal of rage it spun round and made for him, ramping and frothing, and covering the distance at fearful speed on its short powerful legs.

  Shaking but resolute, Owen knelt down and took aim; at the last possible moment he launched a bolt right into the boar’s open gullet. Still it came on; desperately he pulled out another arrow and fitted it into the crossbow. Then suddenly, with a last screaming grunt, the old king-boar pitched over heavily and fell dead not half a yard from where Owen crouched.

  “Phew!” Mr. Smith emerged from behind the oak tree, fanning himself with his three-cornered hat. “I thought we were properly lugged that time! Hey, boy, what made you take such a tarnal long time to shoot?”

  “Because my book says the Boar is insensible to Blows on account of the Thickness of his Hide; so shooting him in the mouth seemed our only hope.”

  “Humph; well, you’re certainly a cool customer,” was all Mr. Smith said to that.

  Owen would have liked to stay and make a careful examination of the dead animal, but Mr. Smith was anxious to get on; by great good fortune their pony, panic-stricken at the sight of the boar, had run blindly into a hazel thicket where it had been obliged to remain, sweating and shivering, with its reins hopelessly tangled among the boughs.

  Docile now, and subdued, it allowed itself to be mounted and made no objections to cantering off at top speed.

  “Likely we’ll have no more trouble with the nag now, at least,” Mr. Smith remarked. “If I’d ha” thought, though, I’d ha” cut off one of the boar’s pettitoes to tirrit him with if he should get resty again.”

  However Owen had prudently stowed some of the mushrooms in his pockets; he felt sure they might prove more efficacious than frightening their mount with a boar’s trotter.

  As it proved, though, they had no need to cajole or threaten the pony, who behaved in a meek and biddable manner for the rest of the journey. They met no more wild boars face to face, and if they chanced to hear the distant grunts of one, rooting for truffles or chestnuts farther off in the forest, the very sound was enough to start the pony into a gallop, so they were able to cover the remaining distance to Pennygaff in record time, and arrived at the outskirts of the town just as a windy dusk was falling.

  “Is this Pennygaff, then?” Mr. Smith inquired as they threaded their way down a narrow, empty street between little slate-roofed dwellings. “It’s a doleful sort o’ borough, isn’t it? Where’s all the folk?”

  “They are indoors, I suppose,” Owen said doubtfully.

  The town did seem unusually deserted. Not a step echoed on the cobbles, apart from their own; not a light showed in the windows.

  Mr. Smith shouted his message about the lost prince in front of the stocks, and the gallows, and the new Habakkuk chapel. Nobody appeared to take the slightest interest.

  “Is it much use making the announcement if no one hears you?” Owen ventured to ask.

  “I’m not paid to swabber out the folk from their houses if they don’t choose to come, am I?” Mr. Smith replied. “I’ve let it be known three times in a public place that the prince is missing, that’s all I’m required to do. I
shan’t weep millstones if he never turns up.—Is this a decent inn, boy?” he added as they approached the Dragon of Gwaun.

  “It’s the only one in the town,” Owen told him.

  “Humph! Better than a bed of prickles in the Fforest Mwyaf, I suppose. Well, boy, thanks for your company; if anyone asks, you can tell them that Ebenezer Smith said you had a good stomach in a trammelsome corner.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Owen said, as this seemed high praise from the tetchy Mr. Smith. “And thank you for letting me ride with you.”

  He returned the crossbow to Mr. Smith, who tied his pony to a staple and entered the inn; Owen went on towards the museum with a fast-beating heart.

  As he neared the top of the hill he began to hear the murmur of voices, and to see the light of numerous lanterns ahead; soon, to his astonishment, he perceived what appeared to be most of the inhabitants of Pennygaff assembled outside the museum. As many as could had entered the courtyard; the rest were beyond the wall, thronged as close as they could get.

  Owen, being thin and light on his feet, managed to wriggle and work his way towards the front of the crowd without anybody remarking him. On his way he caught scraps of conversation.

  “Down with sleepers’ tickets, I say!”

  “Give us back our holy harp!”

  “They say the old ystraffaldiach have sold the harp to buy more flint arrowheads and stuffed birds!”

  “Sold it to Lord Malyn I heard, in return for a pension and a house in Pontypool!”

  “His grandson took the harp over to Caer Malyn five nights ago, Cyfartha Jones told me.”

  “Achos dybryd! Foul crime it is!”

  “Thief! Gr drwg! Thief!”

  Horrified by these unjust accusations Owen, who by now had reached the middle of the courtyard, lifted up his voice and shouted,