Silver on the Tree Page 11

  Jane said, looking out over the estuary as she munched, “What an enormous lot of flat land there is on the other side of the river. Miles of it, miles and miles, before the mountains start again.”

  “Cors Fochno,” Bran said, his strange white hair drying fluffy in the sun. “Bog, most of it—see the drainage channels, all so straight? Some very interesting plants there are, over in that part, if you are a botanist. Which I am not…. And old things have been found there, a golden girdle with spikes on it, once, and a gold necklace, and thirty-two gold coins that are in the National Museum now. And there are stumps of drowned trees out there on the sands, near the dunes. Some on this side of the river too, on the sands between Aberdyfi and Tywyn.”

  “Drowned trees?” Simon said.

  “Sure,” Bran said. He chuckled. “From the Drowned Hundred, no doubt.”

  Barney said blankly, “Whatever’s that?”

  “Haven’t you heard that old story yet? About where the Bells of Aberdyfi ring, all ghostly out at sea on a summer night, over there?” Masked by the dark glasses that covered his pale eyes once more. Bran got to his feet and pointed out at the mouth of the estuary, all of it sunlit now beneath wider patches of blue. “That was supposed to be Cantr’er Gwaelod, the Lowland Hundred, the lovely fertile land of the King Gwyddno Garanhir, centuries ago. The only trouble was, it was so flat that the seawater had to be kept out by dykes, and one night there was a terrible storm and the sea-wall broke, and all the water came in. And the land was drowned.”

  Will stood up and came quietly forward to stand beside him, looking down at the estuary. He tried to keep the excitement from his voice. “Drowned,” he said. “Lost….”

  The mountain was very quiet. The skylark had finished its song. Very far away once more they heard gulls faintly crying, out over the sea.

  Bran stood very still, without turning. “Dear God,” he said.

  The others scrambled to their feet. Simon said, “The Lost Land?”

  “I have known that old story always, as well as I know my own name,” Bran said slowly, “and yet I never thought….”

  “Could that really be it?” Simon said. “But—”

  Barney burst out, “It has to be! It couldn’t be anything else! Isn’t that right, Will?”

  “I think so,” Will said. He was trying to stop his face from breaking into a broad stupid smile. Confidence was running through him like the warmth of the sun. He could feel again, rapidly growing as strong as before, the sense of the High Magic all around. It was a kind of intoxication, a wonderful expectancy of marvellous things: the feeling of Christmas Eve, or the new-green mist of trees in early spring, or the first summer-holiday sight of the sea. Impulsively he stretched both arms upward, as if to catch a cloud.

  “Something—” he said, talking out of his feelings, without any thought of what he said. “There’s something—” He whirled about, staring round him on the mountain; delight was singing all through him, he scarcely knew that the others were there. Except one of them.

  “Bran?” he said. “Bran? Do you feel it—do you—” He flapped one hand impatiently as he found he had no words; but then looked and knew that he needed none, from the rapt astonishment on Bran’s pale face. The Welsh boy too turned, looking out over the mountains, out at the sky, as if hunting for something, trying to hear a voice calling. Will laughed aloud, to see the reflection of the same indefinable joy that flooded his own mind.

  Jane, behind them, watching, sensed the intensity of their feeling and was afraid of it. Unconsciously she drew closer to Simon, and reached an arm to keep Barney beside her; and chilled by the same instinct Barney did not resist, but stepped slowly backward, away from Will and Bran. The Drews stood there, three together, watching.

  And out over the hill, a mile beyond in the blue and gold patterning of the estuary, a flickering of the air came, like the quiver of heat that is over a paved road in high summer. At the same time a whispering music drifted to their ears, very distant and faint, but so sweet that they strained to hear it better, yet could never catch more than a hint of the delicate elusive melody. The quivering air grew bright, brighter, glowing as if it were lit from within by the sun; their eyes dazzled, but through the brightness they seemed to see a changing out in the estuary, a movement of the water.

  Although the tide was already low, there seemed to be more sand shining golden now beyond the furthest low-tide mark. The waves had stilled, the water had begun to go back. Further and further the white rim of the blue sea withdrew, and the shore rose out of it; first sand, then the glimmering green of weed. But it was not weed, Jane saw incredulously, it was grass; for after it, as the sea fell back and back, there rose trees, and flowers, and walls and buildings of grey stone, blue slate and glimmering gold. A whole city lay there, growing gradually out of the retreating sea: a live city, with here and there thin strands of smoke rising from unseen fires through the unmoving summer air. Towers and glittering pinnacles reached up like guardians, over the flat fertile land patched green and gold, stretching beside the mountains. And far away at the distant edge of the new land, where the blue of the vanished sea at last began again, they glimpsed a pencil of light standing, a faraway tower gleaming like white fire.

  Up on the highest ridge of the slope, looking out over the lost land and the city that seemed to govern it, Will and Bran stood together, outlined against the blue sky. They seemed to Jane to be poised there, expectant, like musicians waiting for the first sweep of a conductor’s baton. She saw Will raise his head suddenly and look out to sea. And then the brightness that filled the air began to grow again, dazzling, blinding, so that only the faintest outline of the strange land could be seen through it, and it seemed to Jane as she flinched back, shielding her eyes, that the luminous air drew itself into a shining broad ribbon like a road, stretching from their feet far, far out into the air and over the valley, down beyond the mouth of the Dyfi River.

  She heard the sound of the music again, lovely and elusive, and she saw Will and Bran step together on to the bright road of light and move away, over the river, through the air, into the haze and towards the Lost Land.

  Her arm tightened across Barney’s shoulder, and at her other side she felt Simon’s hand touch her own. They stood together in silence.

  Then the music dwindled into the sound of gulls crying, far away, and the shining road of light faded, and with it the figures that had been walking upon it. And as brightness fell from the air they saw, looking out over the estuary, no towering city, no new green fields, no thin smoke rising, but only the sea and the river and the low-tide shore just as they had been in the beginning.

  Simon and Jane and Barney turned, in silence, and gathered coats and the remnants of picnic lunches into the rucksacks, and walked back to the road.

  • Three from the Track •

  They walked in single file, back along the path over the hills. The wet grass glittered in the sunshine now; raindrops hung sparkling on bracken, heather, the patches of yellow-starred gorse.

  Barney said, “What are we going to say?”

  “I don’t know,” Jane said.

  “We’ll have to meet John Rowlands in the Square, where they were going to,” Simon said. “And say—and say—”

  “Better if we don’t,” Jane said suddenly. “Then he’ll just think they’re late, and go without them. He warned them he would, remember?”

  “That won’t solve anything for long.”

  “Maybe they won’t need long.”

  They went on in silence. At the turn where the path curved back down towards Aberdyfi, Jane paused and stood gazing ahead over the fields, over to the next ridge of high moorland where they had first encountered Will and Bran.

  She pointed. “Can’t we go on over the hills, and down to the hotel from the ridge?”

  Simon said doubtfully. “There isn’t any footpath.”

  “Be a lot quicker than going down to the village,” Barney said. “And we shouldn’t see
Mr. Rowlands either.”

  “There’s bound to be a sheep trail at least, after this field,” Jane said.

  Simon shrugged. “I don’t care. Go on then.” He seemed detached, indifferent, as though his mind were still half- paralyzed. Jane swung open the gate to the first field that would lead them away from the little road, and he followed listlessly.

  Barney trotted behind, taking the gate from Jane; but before he could swing it shut again, suddenly ahead of him Jane screamed, a dreadful high muffled sound. She seemed to leap into the air, cannoning sideways into Simon; Simon too yelled, and then he and Jane were flinging themselves at Barney, pushing him back through the gate. And behind them in a horrible hasty flash Barney saw, coming at them from all parts of the field, the red rippling bodies of dozens of polecats like the two they had seen on the road before, on their way up the mountain.

  Desperately Simon slammed the gate shut, in a hopeless instinctive clutch at defense. But instantly the animals were after them as before, pouring through the open rails that would have kept out nothing smaller than a sheep. The children kicked out at them; the lithe red creatures slipped aside and were at their heels again in a moment, white teeth glinting, black eyes shining; never biting, always nagging, hovering, chivvying. Driving … driving, Barney thought suddenly; driving us, as if we were sheep and they were sheepdogs. He glanced up, and saw that the small hard bodies darting sideways against his ankles were pushing toward the open gate of the farm they had passed earlier that day. Deliberately he turned away, and at once the animals were at his heels, hissing, snapping, making dreadful small yipping sounds, turning him; until in spite of himself Barney turned back to Simon and Jane, and all three of them flung themselves for refuge towards the yard of the farm.

  “Slowly, now!” The voice was warm, relaxed, amused; as Jane skidded desperately into the farmyard she glimpsed the figure of a woman ahead, holding out an arm to catch her. The smiling face seemed somehow familiar … Jane thought no further, but collapsed in exhausted relief against the comforting outstretched arm. Behind her, Barney glanced apprehensively over his shoulder—and saw that every single polecat had disappeared.

  “Goodness me now!” The woman’s voice was gentle. “Break your necks you will, tearing in here like that as if the devil were at your heels. What is the trouble, what’s wrong?” Then she looked more closely at Jane. “Why, I know you—you’re the children who were with Bran and Will Stanton, yesterday.”

  Barney said suddenly, “You’re Mrs. Rowlands!”

  “Yes indeed.” Blodwen Rowlands’ voice sharpened. “What is wrong, has something happened to the boys?”

  They stared at her, unable for a moment to gather enough wit for an answer.

  “No no,” Jane said then, stumbling. “No … they’re all right, they … went down. They said they were going to meet you in the Square.”

  “That is right.” Mrs. Rowlands’ round face cleared. “Came up here just for John to see Llew Owen, we did, we were just on our way down now. We did wonder whether we might meet the boys on the way.” She looked at Jane in concern. “Your hair is all wet, cariad, that rain must have caught you…. Now why were you three in such a fright?”

  “Not a fright really,” Simon said gruffly. Now that every trace of the polecats had gone, he was beginning to feel shame at his panic. “It was just—”

  “There were these animals,” Jane said, too exhausted to pretend. “Polecats, Bran said they were. We’d seen two this morning, near here. And then just now on the path, lots of them just jumped at us out of nowhere—and—and—they were horrible. Their teeth—” She gulped.

  “Oh dear me,” Mrs. Rowlands said comfortingly, cossetingly, as if to a small child. “Never you mind now, there’s nothing now, they’ve gone….” She put her arm round Jane’s shoulders and led her towards the farm. Simon made a face at Barney that said: She doesn’t believe it. Barney shrugged, and they followed.

  Before they reached the farmhouse John Rowlands came out of its door; they could see his Land-Rover parked close by. He knew them at once; surprise creased his lean brown face.

  “Well well,” he said. “Three out of five—and where are my two?”

  “They went on down,” Barney said, all blithe self-possession now, keeping instinctively as close to the literal truth as Jane had done. “We thought we’d go across the top and then down to the Trefeddian that way. But there didn’t seem to be a path.”

  “Hard to find it nowadays,” John Rowlands said, “since all those new houses down the hill have covered up the path. Gone, it is, the old way we went when I was a boy.” He had cast one sharp look at Jane’s pale face, but seemed disinclined to question them further; there was a preoccupied look behind his eyes.

  “Come with us,” Mrs. Rowlands said. “Give you a lift, now.” She waved farewell to the farmer’s wife emerging enquiringly from the farmhouse, and opened the Land-Rover’s back door.

  “Yes, of course,” John Rowlands said.

  “Thank you very much.” They climbed in. Jane peered closely at hedgerow and field as the car turned out into the lane, and saw Barney gazing too, but there was no sign of anything except white fool’s parsley, and rose-bay willow-herb tall in the grass, and the sweep of the tall green hedges above.

  Simon, sitting beside her, saw the strain in her face and brushed a fist gently against her arm. He said, very low, “But they were there.”

  The Land-Rover crept down the last elbow turn of the steep little road and into Chapel Square, there to wait in line while a miniature traffic jam of cars fidgeted in the single tiny one-way street leading to the main road.

  “Goodness gracious,” Blodwen Rowlands said. “Look at them all. I want to call in at Royal House, John, but how you will find a parking place I cannot think.”

  “We shall just have to be visitors, and go in the car park,”

  John Rowlands said, swinging to the right and edging through sweaters and parkas, push-chairs and buckets and spades, their owners all vaguely wandering or gazing out at the sea.

  The Land-Rover was left in the park, its square roof looming over its smaller neighbors like a landmark. They threaded their way back along the crowded steets; Mrs. Rowlands paused beside a shop-window filled with jerseys and swimsuits and shorts.

  “Wyt ti’n dwad i mewn hefyd, cariad?”

  “No, I won’t come,” John Rowlands said, pulling his pipe from his pocket and peering into its bowl. “We will be over on the wharf, I dare say. The best place to look out for Bran and Will. No hurry, Blod, take your time.”

  He led the children across the road, between a huge black shed labelled Outward Bound Sea School and a cluster of masts, their rigging gently singing in the breeze, where the boats of the Aberdyfi Yacht Club lay in lines on the beach. Sand spilled out over the pavement.

  They walked across the wharf and out on to the short dogleg jetty. John Rowlands paused, filling his pipe from an old black leather pouch. “A different jetty we had here when I was a boy,” he said absently. “All of wood, great beams of black creosoted timber…. We used to climb all over them at low tide, and fall off where the green weed was slippery, and fish for crabs.”

  “Did you live here?” Barney said.

  “See over there?” Following John Rowlands’ pointing finger, they looked back at the long terrace of stately, narrow, three-storey Victorian houses that stood facing out over the road, over the beach, to the mouth of the Dyfi River and the sea.

  “That one in the middle, with the green paint,” John Rowlands said, “that’s where I was born. And my father before me. He was a sailor, and so was his father. My grandfather Captain Evan Rowlands of the schooner Ellen Davies—he built that house. All built by the old captains, they were, the houses along that road, in the days when Aberdyfi was still a real shipping port.”

  Jane said curiously, “Didn’t you want to be a sailor too?”

  John Rowlands smiled at her through puffs of blue smoke as he lighted his pipe, dark
eyes narrowed by the lines of his brown face. “Once I did, I dare say. But my da was drowned when I was six, you see, and my mother took my brothers and me away from Aberdyfi then, back to her parents’ farm near Abergynolwyn. Back in the hills near Cader Idris—behind the valley where you were today. So what with one thing and another, it was sheep for me, not the sea.”

  “What a shame,” Simon said.

  “Oh, not really. The shipping days have been gone a long time now, and even the fishing too. They were dying already in my father’s time.”

  Barney said, “Fancy him drowning. A sailor.”

  “A lot of sailors can’t swim,” Simon said. “Even Nelson couldn’t. He used to get seasick, too.”

  John Rowlands puffed reflectively. “For a lot of them there was never time to learn, I fancy. The men in those sailing ships—no playing in the sea for them. The sea was their mistress, their mother, their living, their life. But everything serious. Nothing for fun.” He turned slowly back towards the street, his eyes carefully searching—just as, Jane suddenly realized, they had been already searching the wharf and the beach. “I don’t see any sign at all of Bran and Will. How long before you left, was it, that they came down?”

  Jane hesitated, and saw Simon open his mouth and shut it again, confused. Barney simply shrugged.

  She said, “About—about half an hour, I suppose.”

  “Perhaps they caught a bus?” Barney said helpfully.

  John Rowlands stood for a moment, pipe between teeth, his face without expression. He said, “Have you known Will Stanton for long?”

  “We were all on holiday together once,” Jane said. “About two years ago. In Cornwall.”

  “Did anything … unusual … happen on that holiday?” The Welshman’s voice was casual still, but suddenly he was looking very closely and specifically at Simon, the dark eyes bright and intent.