From Across the Ancient Waters (29 page)

“That may be,” laughed Percy, though without humor in his tone. “But he’s a bore with a temper.”

Percy realized that it was time he put into practice everything Gwyneth had told him a few days earlier. He dug his heels into Grey Tide’s sides, leaned as far forward as he could, and eased into a gallop.

Rhawn laughed merrily and caught him within seconds. Percy saw he was not about to outrun her. But at least he could make a pretense of trying to keep up with his cousins. They rode up side by side two minutes later to where Courtenay and Florilyn sat waiting.

“I guess I’m not ready for that rematch quite yet, eh, Florilyn!” laughed Percy, trying to divert attention from Courtenay’s suspicious glances.

“You kept in the saddle at least,” she said. “That is an improvement!”

“What’s this about a rematch?” asked Rhawn.

“Nothing,” replied Percy. “Just a private little contest between Florilyn and me, isn’t that right, Florilyn?”

“Percy has challenged me to a race,” said Florilyn in fun, never one to keep anything to herself.

“Which I am obviously not yet ready for!” rejoined Percy.

For the rest of the day, as they ate their picnic lunch, and throughout the entire ride back, Percy remained more on his guard than ever. It was now he who watched Rhawn’s every move like a hawk. She knew what he was doing and enjoyed the cat-and-mouse game immensely. As a result of it, Percy was forced to attempt more conversation with Courtenay. He kept to his side like a twin.

“Is it true that you were in trouble with the police?” Courtenay asked as they rode along.

“I’m afraid so,” replied Courtenay.

“What was it for?”

“Nothing serious. Petty theft. I was stupid. I broke into shops and stole things.”

“Why—I thought your parents were well off.”

“They are. Like I said, I was stupid. It was just for the adventure of it. But it was to the point where my father couldn’t protect me any longer. I was close to getting thrown into jail.”

“You were actually …
arrested?’“

“Not exactly. Most of the policemen knew my father. They usually brought me home with stern words and warnings. But for my father’s sake, they let me off. You know how it is. I imagine if you got in trouble, Rhawn’s father wouldn’t send you up for a stretch in Dartmoor.”

Another smile creased Courtenay’s lips. “Don’t be too sure,” he said.

Percy laughed. “What do you mean?”

“You know fathers—no young man is ever good enough for their little girls.”

“I see,” chuckled Percy. “Well, I suppose it is to your advantage that your fathers are friends.”

“Maybe … Now all I have to do is keep her away from you!” said Courtenay with a significant smile.

“Believe me, you have nothing to worry about.”

“So
you
say.”

“It’s true!” Percy laughed. “Besides, I’ll be gone in a couple of weeks.”

From high in a tree, the four riders were being watched as they went. Gwyneth had in truth been following for some time, running ahead, circling around, taking shortcuts up the steepest of the hills while they rode around them. She could not keep from curiously wondering what Percy was like when with the three older youths. It felt funny in her stomach to see her friend with them. Was he really the same person with them? As the afternoon progressed, she crept ever closer, hoping to catch sight of his face or hear his voice as they passed.

Suddenly Rhawn Lorimer looked up and let out an ear-piercing shriek. “Look, it’s the witch-girl!” she cried, pointing up in the tree ahead of them. “She’s right there. She’s spying on us!”

Courtenay followed her gaze and saw the little miscreant. Filled with rage and immediately assuming his role as presumptive heir and future viscount, he kicked his horse forward. “Come down from there this instant!” he yelled up into the tree.

Trembling to have been discovered, Gwyneth did not move.

“I demand that you come down.”

Still Gwyneth did not flinch.

He realized that she was calling his bluff. Unless he was prepared to climb up the tree after her, he would come off looking impotent. So Courtenay changed his tactic. “This is my property,” he said. “You are on the Westbrooke Manor estate. You are not allowed here. Perhaps you wandered here by mistake, so I will let it go this time. But if I find you trespassing again, I will not be so lenient. I hope I have made myself understood.”

“Watch yourself, Courtenay,” said Florilyn. “You don’t want to get any more bouquets.”

Rhawn’s ears perked up at the mention of the mystery of the flowers.

“It’s all right. Let’s go,” said Courtenay, still a little ruffled. “The sooner we get away from here the better.”

The others continued on their way.

Percy rode toward the tree, stopped, and glanced up. “Hello, Gwyneth,” he said. “What are you doing so far from home? You’re not lost?”

The merry laugh that met his ears rang out louder than he had imagined her voice capable of.

“Come down and join us. I’ll give you a ride home.”

Gwyneth scampered down through the branches as if she were a tree lizard. In less than a minute, she was standing beside Percy’s mount.

He reached down with his hand and again pulled her up and behind him on Grey Tide’s rump as if she were weightless.

The other three watched with mixed reactions to see their foursome suddenly turned into a fivesome, and an unwelcome one at that. For the rest of the way back, they kept their distance.

The remainder of the ride was subdued. Had he dared, Courtenay would have given Percy a tongue lashing for interfering. The two girls kept their own counsel as well, but for very different reasons.

Gradually Percy’s horse, with Gwyneth hanging on behind him, moved farther ahead. Their companions could hear Gwyneth and Percy laughing and talking. The very sound of it irritated two of them almost to distraction.

Courtenay’s brief thaw toward Percy had thoroughly frozen over. He was profoundly annoyed to have his rebuke of Gwyneth so completely ignored.

The incident had also seriously tarnished the luster in which Percy stood in Rhawn Lorimer’s eyes. She had done everything but kiss him, and he had as good as laughed at her. Yet now he was falling all over himself to give the little witch a ride home. She was more jealous of Gwyneth than she had ever been of Florilyn.

How could she be jealous of a mere child? The whole thing made her furious. She was more than a little afraid of Gwyneth, too. She knew the rumors as well as everyone else. But there was nothing she could do.

As they rode, however, Florilyn found herself filled with odd and unexpected reactions that were strangely sympathetic toward Percy. She didn’t dare say anything to the other two. But as she listened to Courtenay and Rhawn grumbling angrily, she found herself wondering just what was so despicable about his being nice to one of the village children.

Not so very long ago she had been intentionally cruel to him, trying to bait him and make him angry. Yet he had been stubbornly insistent on being nice to her, too. She didn’t deserve it, but he had persistently paid back her meanness with kindness. How could she fault him for being nice to someone else?

Percy treated everyone the same, whether rich or poor, boy or girl, young or old. After a summer in his presence, she had begun to realize what an unusual, and perhaps even wonderful, quality that was.

Lake Creature of Gwynedd

T
he first days of his summer had been so tedious and slow. Suddenly Percy realized that his summer in Wales was flying by so rapidly that it would soon be at an end. What had begun as an incarceration had turned into the experience of a lifetime. It was with a poignant sense of melancholy that he realized he would soon be saying good-bye to all this.

Late in the morning of a brilliant warm day of early August, Percy set out on horseback for the hilly region northeast of Westbrooke Manor. After his ride with the other three, it had come into his mind to venture even farther into the mountainous inland region, where Stuart Wykeham, the gardener, told him several small, high, cold crystal lakes lay tucked between the peaks and offered a spectacular sight of the sort one never forgets.

Percy made his way through the east gate of the estate in high spirits, continued in the same direction through an ascending valley between two flanking ridges, then cut northward into the high hills. No trail marked his way underfoot, but he had been given rough directions by Wykeham and Hollin Radnor. He was confident enough in his sense of direction by this time that he almost wanted to get lost for the sheer pleasure of finding his way back out of the mountains.

A tremendous downpour had drenched the whole of Gwynedd the night before. Today’s sun made the earth shine as though it had been sprinkled with diamonds. From its grasses and shrubs and trees gently rose a fragrance sweeter than the most costly perfume. The melody of Wales infected Percy as he rode happily along. He found himself occasionally breaking into some song or other he had heard in town, though he didn’t even know the meaning of half the words he tried to sing.

The climb steepened steadily the farther inland he progressed. In two hours, Grey Tide was breathing heavily. As they descended into valley or dell, losing sight temporarily of mountains ahead, a quiet sense of isolation stole over him. Percy felt that he was entering a fairytale world disconnected from Wales and England altogether. Scarce breeze could be felt, no sound heard other than the occasional call of a hawk high overhead.

Rising out of these fairy hollows as he pursued his trek upward, the eastern mountains rose again into view. Once more Percy felt the gentle winds on his face. Pausing at the highest of each successive summit, he turned to behold the coastline spread out in the distance behind him, the deep blue of the sea stretched as to the very horizon. Then again he descended down the eastern slope, and all sense of being near the sea again vanished.

Midway through the afternoon, growing tired but with the weary pride of accomplishment, Percy approached what he hoped, if he had followed the landmarks indicated by the manor’s two men correctly, would be the first of several lakes. He was leading Grey Tide through a wooded region of pine and fir. On his left rose a steep, rocky hillside, almost cliff-like and impassible, the opposite slope of which was supposed to overlook the tiny body of blue.

Making certain of his bearings, he worked his mount around the base of this small mountain as he continued to move gradually upward. At length he came to a jagged opening to his left where the shoulder of a projecting ridge opened between this hill and the next, extending down almost to Percy’s level. Turning into this pass, Grey Tide scrambled with some difficulty up the rocky surface. Around several large boulders, Percy arrived at the overlook he sought.

Cresting the summit of the narrow opening between the higher hills, Percy saw below him, surrounded on all sides by jagged rocky hills and peaks, a tiny lake of the most gorgeous blue imaginable. Not a ripple disturbed its surface. In size it could not have been more than three or four hundred feet across. The blue of its surface shimmered with the richest shade he had ever seen, growing almost black at the center, indicating great depth. Around the edges, the hues lightened to pale shades of turquoise, so still and pure as to make what could be seen of the bottom near the shoreline absolutely sparkling in clarity.

Percy dismounted and stood as one transfixed. Trees surrounded most of the lake’s circumference, broken on one side by cliffs and boulders rising straight up from the glistening surface in the direction of the overlooking peaks. Directly across from this cliff face, among the trees, a grassy meadow stretched away from the water’s edge perhaps a hundred and fifty feet before giving way to the slopes of granite. Near the water’s edge stood a dozen or more deer gently drinking from the lake and nibbling at the grass.

As he gazed, a sound began to invade Percy’s ears. Faint at first, it gradually increased. He realized he was listening to some faint, strange, far-off kind of music. It did not sound human. But he had never heard bird or other animal make such a call. The crooning tone was melancholy, like the lamenting howl of wild dog or wolf. A faint hint of melody could be detected in the repetition of its ethereal notes, hovering ever and about some unknown minor key, never quite resolving itself, yet mysteriously satisfying and peaceful.

Suddenly Percy remembered the rumored lake creature of the mountains.

The strange, otherworldly, melodic crooning grew. Was this how the beast lured its victims into its lair, with sweet spells that wove a seductive enchantment over the senses, bewitching the unsuspecting to their eventual death? Was it perhaps a great bird of prey? The sound almost resembled the lonely cry of a hawk—peaceful, mesmerizing, terrifying. He knew great mountain birds existed, capable of killing animals many times their own size. Was it trying to lure him closer with the hypnotic beguilement of its music?

The sight below him was truly lovely. Was that part of the bedevilment itself? Yet the sound floating over mountains and forest was not one he could fear.

The strange crooning kept him riveted where he stood. It now seemed to be coming from the lake itself. He felt his feet moving forward, down the incline before him … toward the sound.

Suddenly from behind the trees beyond the meadow, a figure appeared, a white-clad child-figure from whom the haunting melody came.

Percy stopped and stood motionless.

Here was no mountain bird, nor lake creature nor kelpie. It was
Gwyneth
singing to the animals!

Even from this distance, under the crown that appeared reddish gold in the sunlight, he could almost see the two eyes of heaven’s blue, behind which dwelt something whose light and life came from another world altogether, and from Him who made heaven and earth together.

A great joy rose in his heart as a smile rushed to Percy’s lips. His first instinct was to call out and rush down to her. Yet some power restrained both feet and tongue.