to the Far Blue Mountains (1976) (10 page)

"It may be months before I see Abigail. We must somehow cross the sea," I said, "and sail along a dangerous, unknown coast. And if we find her we shall be very lucky indeed."

"We will find her, worry none of that," Lila said.

"There will be storms and danger. There will be bloody fighting. And the law is upon my path, Lila."

"I shall be no burden," she replied calmly. "And I can cook better than the sort of victuals you'll be after having."

"Come then, Lila, and if you cannot ride all night, do you stay behind."

"I'll ride the nights and days through," she said firmly.

And so she did.

Chapter
8

North and westward we fled through the wind and the rain, driving along lonely lanes, plunging through the darkened streets of villages, our black cloaks billowing out behind like wings of great bats, the hooves of our horses striking fire from the cobbles.

Out of the night and into a village, then on again. At dawn we rested our horses in a grove beside the way, and sitting under a tree, ate a bit of the food Lila had put up, and it was good food, tasty and lasting. Meanwhile the horses grazed.

"Be they hunting you then?" she asked, looking at me from under her thick brows, "like Peter Tallis said?"

"They think the coins I sold were part of King John's treasure, lost in the Wash. It did no good to tell them nay."

"We go to Bristol?"

"I did think of it. But now ... no. I am for Ireland now, to one of the fishing towns."

She was silent for several minutes, and then said, "Do you know Anglesey?"

"I do know of it."

"I am from there."

I was astonished, for I had no idea her home was anywhere but London, and said as much.

"My father was a friend to Captain Tempany, and worked for him. Before my father died he found me a place with him. You wish to go to Anglesey?"

"I do, and to Ireland from there, and from Ireland to America."

"It is an old old way," Lila said, "but traveled often of an olden time."

A mist lay upon the grass and wove itself in cobwebby tendrils among the dark trees. The dawn was touching the mist with pink, but very lightly yet, as the hour was very early.

"I spoke hastily when I said I knew Anglesey," I explained, "I have not been there, but my father was, and he told me much of it ... an island of bards and witches, where the Druids were a time long since."

She gave me a straight and level glance from under her dark brows. "And live yet, if you know to find them."

"Druids?"

"Aye ... and the bards, too."

She was a strange woman, this Lila. Looking at her brooding face, I was minded to think of the story of Boudicia, of huge frame, the fiery Celtic princess who with flaming red hair and spear led the Iceni against the Romans, the Iceni, some of whom it was said had been among my ancestors. But who could tell? That was long ago.

We rested there, while the dawn painted the clouds with a deft brush. The warmth felt good to my muscles, and at last I got to my feet. "It is time, Lila. We have far to go."

She mounted with ease, and we rode on, again keeping to the lanes and byways, avoiding the traveled roads.

We walked our horses now and again not wishing to attract attention by seeming pursued. We walked, trotted a bit when the way was easy, now upon the open moor, then under the shade of old beeches.

At dusk of the second day we came up to Cricklade, following the old Roman road, at times a mere path, often a lane, yet running straight as the eye can see. We walked our horses beyond the town to Ashton Keynes where the Thames winds about, a small stream there, of no size at all.

There was an inn, and it looked neat and clean. "We'll try to sleep inside this night," I said. "I shall have a room for you if there be one, and I'll make do below stairs in the common room."

A room there was. To preclude curiosity, I said, "The girl is tired, strong though she is, and I'd not have her worn out for meeting the man she is to marry." Lila looked at me, but said nothing. "I am her cousin," I explained, "and she's betrothed to a lad in Shropshire. A sturdy one, too!"

"Aye." The innkeeper looked at Lila and shook his head approvingly. "That he'd better be."

There was some idle talk, and the innkeeper's wife showed Lila to a room under the eaves, small but tidy, and I rolled up in my cloak by the fire when the guests had gone and it was bedding time. It was a small place, and there was but one other there, a short, stocky man with a pleasant smile and a careful eye. He worried me some, for he asked no questions nor made comment, but listened to all spoken as he smoked by the fire.

When I was rolled in my cloak he said, "You've good horses there."

"Aye," I said, not wishing to talk.

"They've come far," he said.

"Aye," I repeated.

"And they'll be goin' farther no doubt. 'Tis in my mind that you should have fresh horses, sturdy ones, too."

Now I was alert, for this was leading somewhere if only to a horse trade. The man was no fool, and such worried me.

"Mine are strong," I said. "They are good for the distance."

"No doubt," he said, "but what if they're in for a run now? How long could they last?"

"As long as need be," I said, "and so they must. I've no silver for others.

They'll go the way," I said, "and to the green pasture when the run is over, to rest awhile."

"Aye, but you'll still be needin' others, or I miss my thought." He leaned over and knocked out his pipe at the hearth's edge. And then, low-voiced, he said, "You give your friends a de'il of trouble, man."

"What do you mean?"

"Would the name of Feghany sound true? Or that of a man named Peter?"

"There is a Peter in the Bible," I said.

"This is a different Peter," he said dryly. "You're in sore trouble, lad, for they be askin' questions in Oxford an' Winchester an' Bristol, too."

"You were speaking of horses?"

"Aye."

"Take them up the road to Cirencester ... the old Roman road. Hold them there and we'll be along."

He reached inside his shirt and handed me a sheet of paper. "Read it," he said, "and then put it in the fire, yonder."

I read. Then I looked straight in his eyes.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"We almost didn't," he said grimly. "We were looking for a lone man riding, and we'd men out at villages along every way northwest. Ah," he said, shaking his head, "that Peter! He should have been a general! He thinks of everything."

"But here? In this place?"

"I was in Cricklade when you passed through, watering my horses at the river, so I followed, saw you giving a look to the inn, so I came here before you."

"My thanks." I looked at him. "You've a name?"

"Call me Darby. They all do."

We slept then, and when in the cold light of another day my eyes opened, he was gone. The innkeeper was stirring the fire.

"Your cousin is awake," he said. "What a woman she is! Why, she'd make two of me!"

"And stronger than any three," I said. "I do not envy the lad. He'd better be one who keeps his eyes from the others or she'll have him over her knee."

He laughed. "Little thought he'll have for others with her to take care of," he said. "I'll put somethin' on for you."

An hour later, in a patch of woods and under the old beeches near the Thames, we traded horses with Darby. There were saddlebags on my horses, and a brace of pistols in case I had none.

"There be this, too," Darby said, and from a roll of skins he took my own sword, the blade of my father, than which none were finer. "How he got it from the gaol I shall never know!"

"Nor I," I said, "but I feel a new man now."

I put out my hand. "Someday, Darby, in America mayhap?"

"Na, I be a busy one here." He shook his head. "It has a sound to it, though.

America! I like it. Savages they tell me, and forests and land wherever you look."

"And running streams, Darby. Keep it in mind, if the worst comes. If you've a thought of finding me, follow a river to the far mountains and ask for me there."

"Barnabas Sackett, is it?"

"Aye, and by the time you get there the name will echo in the hills, Darby. The Indians will know of it, if the white men do not. It is a fair land, Darby, but a raw, rough land that will use up men until it breeds the kind it needs. Well, I will be used, and I hope to have a hand in the breeding, too."

Westward we went, riding easy on strong, fresh horses, through Cirencester to Gloucester over Birdlip Hill, and when I dipped into the saddlebags there was a purse of gold there, a dozen coins, and some silver.

"May I have the other sword?" Lila asked.

"A sword?" I was astonished. "It is a man's weapon."

She looked at me coldly. "I can use it as well as any man. I've five tall brothers, Sackett, and we fenced with swords upon many an hour. Give it to me, and if trouble comes, stand aside and watch what a woman can do!"

"Welcome!" I said cheerfully. "I did not doubt that you could do it, but only that you wished to."

"I do not wish. I do what becomes the moment. If it be a cookpot, I cook. If it be a needle, I'll sew, but if it be a blade that is needed, I shall cut a swath.

To mow arms and legs and heads, I think, is no harder than the cutting of thatch."

In the Cotswolds and the valley of the Severan there were Roman ruins all about, nor was I a complete stranger to them for I'd been led their way by Leland's manuscript, and remembered much of what I'd read.

We camped one night in the ruins of a Roman villa, and drew water from a mossy fountain where Roman patricians must once have drunk. Where we lay our heads that night, Roman heads had lain, though in better fare than we. But now they were gone, and who knew their names, or cared? And who should know ours, ours who had but the green grass for carpet, and the ruined walls of a once noble house for shelter?

Lila was a quiet woman. She spoke little and complained none at all, yet she was woman-too much woman to go off to America with no man of her own. I said as much, and she looked at me and said, "A man will come. Where I am, he will come."

"You'll see few white men in America, or any other but Indians. Good folk some of them, but they do not think like we do."

"I shall not marry an Indian. I shall marry an Englishman or perhaps a Welshman."

Then we forded a stream and rode up a narrow pass between rocks, and when night came we were in a wild and mysterious land, a place of long shadows and great rocky battlements and rushing cold streams and rich green grass around hard black rocks that shone like ice in the dim light of the after-sunset. It was a primeval landscape. Suddenly, they came upon us, a dozen or more of them. Wild, uncouth creatures, some clad in skins, some in rags, wild, mad things wielding all manner of weapons.

They came up from the rocks where they had lain in wait. Screaming wildly, they came down upon us. Lila drew her sword and wheeled her horse to meet them. I tried to yell that flight was our best chance, but she was beyond hearing. She did not scream, but yelled some wild Welsh shout, and light caught the flashing blade of her sword as she swept on toward them.

I barely had time to draw and fire a pistol, and then she was among them.

But what had happened? After her wild Welsh yell they had suddenly frozen, mouths wide to scream, staring at her. Then as one man, or woman, for their were women among them, they fled.

Her sword reached one, I think, before they were gone into the rocks from which they came. Then Lila wheeled her horse, towering in her stirrups, and shouted after them, a hoarse, challenging cry.

Her sword was bloody and she leaned from her saddle and thrust it into a hummock of earth and moss, once ... twice. Then she sheathed it.

Awed, I led us away up the trail to where it went through a pass in the mountains, and she followed quietly.

Later, when the road widened, we rode side by side. "What did you say that frightened them when you called out?" I asked.

"It does not matter."

"It was a curious thing. They stopped as if struck, then they fled as if all the terrors were upon them."

"Indeed, they would have been. They well knew when to fly. That lot! I have heard stories of them! Poor, misbegotten, inbred creatures that live in caves and murder innocent travelers. The soldiers have come for them a dozen times, but they disappear. Nobody finds them ... at least no Englishman."

She was silent then, and I as well. More than two hours had passed since we had seen even the slightest sign of life, and nothing at all but the wild mountains and the rushing cold streams and the rocks that lay like chunks of iron on every hand.

"There's a cottage yon," she said, pointing ahead.

"You have been this way before?"

"No."

"You are from Anglesey, Lila, and you spoke of Druids."