A String in the Harp (39 page)

“Hey, come on,” she said gently, steering him to a chair. “Don’t cry—it’ll only be worse. Tell me what happened.” She crouched beside him, watching his face. Great wet splashes dropped onto his clenched hands and bathrobe as he struggled to calm himself. Jen waited helplessly.

At last he took a great, sobbing breath and straightened his shoulders. “I couldn’t help it,” he said.

Jen nodded, still at a loss.

“Can I tell you what happened? I don’t think—I mean I want to tell you.”

Without answering, she pulled a chair over and sat down in front of him, close enough to touch.

“I know you don’t believe in this.” He opened his hand. The Key had left red, angry marks on it from being held so hard. Their eyes met over it.

“Please,” Jen said.

Peter gave a little nod. “I knew it had to finish,” he said quite calmly. “As soon as I figured out what the Key was doing. It’s been telling a story from beginning to”—he hesitated—“end. I’m still not sure what I’m meant to do about it, but there is a purpose. It scared me at first, because I didn’t know what was happening to me. Everything would be perfectly normal one minute and the next I wouldn’t know where I was. You know.”

“Yes. You acted as if you were daydreaming. You’ve had all of us worried.”

“But I wasn’t daydreaming at all. I did when I first came here—I kept wishing I was back in Amherst and I’d imagine what I’d be doing. Then I found the Key, and I began to see
people and places and things happening that I’d never seen before. I couldn’t have—they’re all old, I mean centuries old. Always there was one person; the Key I found belonged to him in that time, I’ve seen him with it.”

“Taliesin,” said Jen softly.

Peter looked up sharply to see if she were serious, then away again, satisfied. “Taliesin. You’ve seen him, too, I was sure you had that day on Foel Goch.”

Jen was perfectly still, not wanting to accept this, unable to deny it.

“Everything that you and Dad and Becky, and every one else has seen—the coracle, the lights on the Bog, the wolf, the
hafod,
fits into the story of Taliesin. They were all here once.” Peter’s voice was urgent, he was willing her to believe him. “I talked to Dr. Rhys about it. I went to see him, Jen, the day after the dinner party.”

“You never said.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Did you show him the Key?”

“He wouldn’t let me. He wanted to see it, but he said the same thing Dad did—that if he saw it he’d have to make me give it up.”

“Didn’t he think you should?”

“He believes me. And if I’m right, it doesn’t belong in a museum anywhere. He knows that, too.”

“But what’ll you do with it, Peter?”

His face clouded. “I wish I knew. I thought it would tell me—that would be the end of the story. It has somehow to get back to Taliesin. But it can’t now—it’s gone dead. It won’t tell me any more.”

***

Jen listened to Peter. She struggled to open her mind to what he was telling her, to believe the unbelievable. He had been lying in bed, halfway between sleeping and being awake, when the room had faded around him. It was replaced by
empty gray sea; ragged, restless waves and a biting wind. He saw a tiny dark spot out on the water, rising and falling without direction. It was a battered skin coracle, and in it sat Taliesin with Hu pressed hard against his legs, shivering. The wind carried a high wailing song, full of aching and sadness and loss. Endlessly it seemed, the coracle tossed about, unguided save by the wind and tide carrying it helplessly south.

From the wave crests sometimes, to the east, the dark line of shore was visible, out of reach, but within sight. Maelgwn’s men had taken him far from Llanfair, out along the great peninsula that pointed west like a finger toward the Kingdom of the Irish. They took him to Trwyn y Gwyddol, and set him in the coracle and launched him on the sea. No blood was shed, no one died on the soil of Gwynedd, and indeed the King himself did not know what had become of the bard Taliesin, though his guess might be a good one.

For two days and nights Taliesin and Hu shared the little boat, and they were driven down along the wild rim of Cymru, out of Gwynedd. As the third day broke, the wind rose and the sea roiled in fury. Rain came slashing out of the low gray clouds. Thunder rolled about the hills, crashing against its own echoes, and lightning cracked the sky. In the midst of chaos the coracle was thrown violently at the shore, in amongst the rocks where it smashed on the ruined walls of Cantrev y Gwaelod, at Sarn Cynfelin. Man and dog were flung into the waves and left to swim as best they could to the edge of shingle under the cliffs.

Here Peter stopped, his eyes far away, his face taut.

At last Jen asked, “Were they—did they—drown?”

“It was like a nightmare you can’t wake up from. It was
real!”

“But what happened to them?”

“I don’t know.”

“It couldn’t just stop there. You must have seen.”

“No.” Peter held the Key cupped in his two hands, like
water. “I saw them in the water, trying to stay up. I lost sight of Hu—I’m not sure what became of him. Then it was all gone. I was back in my room and the Key was dead. It doesn’t even feel the same anymore. I’ve read the story, Jen. I know he didn’t drown. He came back here to live, but that doesn’t help. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do!” He sounded desperate. Jen ached for him. She knew how hard it was not to know the answers.

“But if it’s dead,” she said carefully, “couldn’t you give it to Dr. Owen? It wouldn’t really matter, would it?”

“But it
does!
It still belongs to Taliesin and he must have it back. He lost it there in the sea and I’ve found it thousands of years later, but it connects the two of us somehow. If I give it to Dr. Owen, then the whole thing might just as well never have happened.”

Jen saw again the rows of neatly labeled brooches and coins and the beautiful silver bowl and knew in her heart Peter was right. “But how can you give it back to someone who’s been dead for centuries? Unless . . .” Bedd Taliesin, a pile of stones on a bare hillside, a grave, a burial cairn.

Peter knew what she was thinking. He shook his head. “That’s not the right place. It’s not really his grave. I’d have known if it was, and besides Gwilym said it’s much too old to be.”

“So you’re stuck.”

“I feel awful. Sort of used up.”

“You ought to be in bed,” said Jen. “It won’t help at all if you get sicker. Do you want some cocoa or toast or something? You’re probably hungry.”

Peter was about to refuse when he changed his mind. “Maybe cocoa.” He got up and went to his bedroom door.

“Peter?”

He stopped with his back to Jen. “What?”

She felt awkward. “I’ll bring your cocoa.”

He nodded.

Then quickly before she could stop herself, “I’m not sure I can ever believe in the Key. But—but I believe
you.”

The tension went out of him, and unbelievably, he smiled at her. “Thanks,” he said simply.

A
FTER THE INITIAL SHOCK
of loss had worn off, Peter accepted the end of the singing and of Taliesin with remarkable calm. As he had told Jen, he knew it would end eventually, and he was still sure the story wasn’t finished. Jen, of course, knew what had happened, and it didn’t take Becky long to guess. She was, as usual, sensitive to all changes in her family. It was hard to tell what David noticed for he said nothing more about Peter’s “object.”

Peter’s cold settled in to run a normal, irritating course. He was quite content to spend a week quietly convalescing at Bryn Celyn. He had a great deal to think about now that he was no longer caught up in the Key. For the first time since he’d found it, he could step back from it and consider the whole picture it had shown him.

At teatime Wednesday, Gwilym arrived—he had a happy facility for choosing teatime for his visits, Jen noticed—with an old wooden chess board under his arm and a macintosh pocket full of chessmen. “I thought you might like to play,” he said rather tentatively to Peter. “Have you before?”

Peter shook his head and Jen looked skeptical. “You
won’t get to first base trying to teach him that, Gwilym, it isn’t his sort of game.”

“First base?” Gwilym repeated, puzzled.

“Baseball,” said Peter helpfully. “My poor sister can’t tell the difference between baseball and chess—she’s quite hopeless that way. Show me what you do.”

And to Jen’s surprise, he and Gwilym spent the next two hours hunched over the board in fierce concentration, arguing amicably over legal and illegal moves and pawns and rooks.

It was after six when Jen reminded them it was dinnertime, the table needed to be set, and Mrs. Davies would soon be breathing fire if Gwilym didn’t get home for his meal. The chessboard was retired to the top of the fridge.

“Chess?” said David, when he saw it there. “Who’s been playing?”

“Gwilym’s teaching Peter,” explained Becky.

“I used to play chess in college. Haven’t played in years, but I used to enjoy it.”

“It’s a pretty good game,” said Peter noncommitally.

The supper dishes were dried and put away, but David seemed reluctant to leave the kitchen. He glanced at the chess board, then at Peter. “You wouldn’t be interested in another game, would you?” he asked finally.

“Well,” said Peter, “I wouldn’t mind.”

So they set up again, and Jen shook her head in quiet wonder. It was a pleasant, domestic, incongruous picture somehow. At nine she had to drag Becky out of the kitchen and push her toward bed. David and Peter played on.

In a few minutes Becky returned in pajamas and bathrobe.

“Becky—” Jen began warningly.

“I just came to say good-night,” said Becky innocently.

David set down a knight he’d just claimed from Peter and smiled at her. “High time, too! Good lord, I’ve got a quiz to think up for my Lit. class tomorrow—I had no idea it was so
late! Sorry, Peter, but I have got to go do some work. What do you say to a return match this weekend sometime? I’ll play with you until you start winning!”

“It’s Gwilym’s set,” said Peter, packing the men away in an empty biscuit tin. He didn’t look at his father. “If he’ll let me borrow it, all right.”

“Good.” David got up to leave, then stopped. “I’ve got to warn you,” he said reluctantly. “We’re almost sure to have a visitor this weekend.”

“Who?” asked Becky. Jen and Peter looked at each other, already certain they knew.

“Dr. Owen.”

Becky made a face.

“He’s in Aber and he’s talked to Gwyn Rhys about seeing us. Gwyn says he’ll probably get hold of me tomorrow, and if he wants to come, I thought I’d invite him to tea to get this over with. No good scowling at me, Becky, I’m no more anxious to have Dr. Owen come than you are, but we do owe him the courtesy to hear him at least.”

“The enemy in our camp,” said Jen.

“We only ever met the poor man once, you know,” protested David mildly. “He may not be as bad as he seemed in Cardiff. Everybody has off days.”

“He’ll be as bad,” Becky predicted glumly. “You think so, too.”

“Then I don’t set you a very good example, do I?” David sighed. “Beth would be very annoyed with me. Still, the four of us ought to be able to manage being polite to one Welshman for a couple of hours over tea.”

Peter was silent.

Dr. Owen did indeed want to see the Morgans. The next evening, David announced that he had invited Dr. Owen to tea at three-thirty on Saturday because the man had expressed a special interest in talking to all of David’s children. There was no escape.

“Not only is he someone I’d rather not see,” mourned Jen to Becky after supper, “but he’ll ruin a whole day of the weekend. If it weren’t for Dr. Owen, we could be up at the farm or on the beach somewhere instead.”

“I know.” Becky nodded soberly. “But we can use him as an excuse to buy all kinds of special stuff for tea—cream buns and tarts and rock cakes—and we can buy enough for a picnic Sunday.”

“Good idea,” said Jen. “We’ll have an orgy. The thing
I
can’t understand, though,” she added frowning, “is why Dr. Rhys likes him.”

Jen, Peter, and Becky were all sitting around the kitchen table doing homework. Peter had been very quiet; he was writing an essay he’d missed during the week, but now he set down his pen deliberately.

“Dr. Owen doesn’t think the way we do,” he said slowly. “He puts things in a different order—what’s at the top of my list is at the bottom of his. Reasons and facts are much more important to him than feelings. I think he and Dr. Rhys connect because they’re both involved in the same kind of work: history and Wales and Welsh language. But you can like a person without agreeing with him.”

“You sound as if you’re making excuses for Dr. Owen,” Becky accused. “You haven’t gotten soft about him, have you?”

“Not really. I just think Dr. Rhys was right when he said Dr. Owen has good intentions. I don’t believe he puts all those objects in the museum for himself; he does it for the country.”

“That sounds suspiciously charitable coming from you,” said Jen. “After all this fuss, you aren’t simply going to hand him the Key, are you?”

“I thought you wanted me to.”

“Not any more,” said Jen firmly. “We’ve all gone too far to give it up now.”

Becky grinned delightedly. “Hooray!” she said softly. Then, “You can’t give it to him now that it’s all four of us together, Peter!”

“I don’t intend to.” Peter’s serious face suddenly brightened. “I think it’s going to be pretty awful tomorrow, you know!”

Peter was right—it was awful all day. The tension in Bryn Celyn Saturday morning was electric—everyone was nervous and irritable. Jen flung herself feverishly into house-cleaning, giving Becky and Peter orders until they rebelled and went down to Borth to get out from under her. David stayed shut in his study, presumably hard at work on his paper.

Dr. Owen was punctual; at exactly three-thirty he rang the front doorbell and David went to let him in. Jen, Peter, and Becky were all in the kitchen, getting tea ready and putting off until the last possible moment the time when they had to go join the two men. Jen suppressed a suggestion that they all join hands in prayer before going down the hall.