Once inside, Owen looked round with indescribable pleasure at the place which had been his happy home for two months as they travelled leisurely across southern England. And a snug, delightful home it made: the roof and sides were cunningly woven of latticed withies, which had a canvas facing within and without; a coat of pitch had rendered this weather-proof on the outside: inside it was whitewashed and Arabis, who had a decided talent for painting, had decorated it with a design of roses, cabbages, and daffodils. Red drugget covered the floor, and a fire burned in an iron stove. An aromatic smell came from the many bunches of herbs which hung overhead drying in the warmth, and on a high shelf stood pillboxes, medicine bottles, jars of ointment and papers of powder. Two shelf-beds
were neatly made up and covered by patchwork quilts, while two more, strewn with cushions, were used as seats. A red baize curtain could divide the room in half but was at this moment drawn back. A table, fastened to the floor, had a kind of wicker fence to prevent dishes sliding off it if the wagon tilted. An oil lamp swung on a chain from the ceiling, throwing warm golden light and a never-ending procession of shadows. Pots, pans and some Bristol ware shone on a slatted shelf: everything there sparkled with cleanliness. From a hook on the wall dangled a gaily ribboned instrument, something between a violin and a mandolin; it was called a crwth.
“I'm glad you still have Hawc,” Owen said, as the falcon, excited and roused from his foray, continued to hiss and heckle, raising and lowering his wings.
“Yes, indeed!” Arabis slipped a hood over Hawc's head to quiet him, and placed him on a perch ingeniously contrived from an old broom. “If we hadn't, hard it would be indeed to keep the stockpot filled; Dada is writing a long poem about King Arthur now, just, and there is absentminded it makes him! he only speaks on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays at present, so lucky you are that today is Wednesday.”
She laughed, nodding towards a great heap of books and sheets of paper scrawled across and across with handwriting, which covered one of the beds. Owen, screwing his head round, read a title on the sheet nearest him: “The King at Caerleon: An Epic Poem in CCC Cantos by Tom Dando. Canto CCLXXXVIII.”
“I still think it must be odd to have a father who speaks only every other day,” he remarked involuntarily.
“Oh wellâ” Arabis was philosophical. “Not so bad, he is, old Tom. Better it is than having no father at all.” Then she blushed and exclaimed anxiously, “There's sorry I am, Owen dear! Where were the wits in me? Have you any news of your father yet?”
He shook his head. “No. But that means little. Grandfather thinks he may still be alive; a prisoner, perhaps, in the Chinese wars, or cut off somewhere so that he cannot send a letter. And letters take so long to come.”
“Tell me about your granda, then, is it? Found him all right, did you, after we parted that day at Gloucester?”
“Yes,” Owen said, remembering the sad day last summer when he had been obliged to say goodbye to the kind friends who had carried him so far. “Yes, I had a lift in a carrier's cart along to Monmouth, and from there I walked; it took a week but I was lucky with the weather.”
“And your granda? Was he pleased to see you? Fond of him, are you?”
Owen had to look away from Arabis. There was too much of a contrast between the warmth of her voice, the kindness in her dark eyes, between the whole friendly comfort of the little home on wheels and the other home he was so soon to re-enter. He stared hard at the falcon, biting his lip. After a moment he was able to say,
“It took a little time for Grandfather toâto believe that I was his grandson.”
“But you had the papersâthe certificate of your birth, and your father's letter?”
“He said anybody might have stolen themâthat my having them proved nothing.”
“There's silly! Who'd do such a thing, pray? And so?”
“Well, so in the end he took me in. He still says, though, thatâthat I must take after my mother's family, that I'm not like a Hughes. But he's a just man. Heâhe said he was prepared to give me a home and pay for my education.”
“So I should think indeed!” cried Arabis. “His only son's son! And your poor mama dead of typhus fever on the voyage home from China, and the captain's letterâThere, there, never mind me, bach, I didn't mean to grieve you by reminding you. Here, have a mug of soup, is it?”
Owen smiled, remembering how Arabis always administered hot soup to anyone in trouble.
“Good soup it is too,” she said, “Hawc caught a hare as we came over Midnight Hill. And I put in a drop of the mead a sailor gave Dada in Cardiff. So drink up.”
Owen kept his eyes on Arabis over the rim of the mug. He had never for a moment forgotten her during the time spent at his grandfather's, but the picture of her had set firm in his mind and become less alive. Now it was almost a shock to see her againâher real selfâtalking and laughing. He found that he had grown so that he was very slightly the taller of the two.
“You haven't changed a bit, Arabis,” he said.
She had long, soft hair, black as coaldust, which she wore in the knot on top for Hawc's benefit. Her eyes looked almost black too, because the pupils were so big, but they were really a very dark grey. Although she spent most of her days out of doors, scouring the hills and woods for medicinal plants while her father, with Galahad and the cart, plodded along the road, her skin never tanned, but
remained pale and clear. When she smiled a three-cornered dimple appeared under her left cheekbone.
Owen and she were not unalike, both being thin and dark, but his eyes, behind the glasses, were brown, not grey. On the journey from Southampton to Gloucester people had sometimes taken them for brother and sister. Owen knew that Arabis had once had a younger brother but he and her mother had both died of an inflammation in the hard winter ten years before.
“So you go to school now?” Arabis said. “Lucky boy! You can learn history and astronomy and all the languages that they speak in foreign lands. It makes me sad to think that if I met my mother now she might be speaking and maybe I'd not understand her.”
“You'd pick it up fast enough,” Owen said, remembering Arabis had told him her mother came from the island of Melita. “You are such a clever girl, Arabis! I believe you know all there is to know about herbs and wild creaturesâand younger than me, too!”
“There's wonderful!” she laughed at him. “How would I help it? But to learn in school! I'd go, if it didn't mean leaving Tom. Don't you love learning?”
“Yes,” Owen said truly. He did not speak again of his difficulties with Mog and the others who hated him because he was a stranger. Why whine about his troubles to Arabis? Nothing seemed to perturb her; he had seen her quiet and unafraid before a bullying magistrate, accused of witchcraft; and equally calm, facing the charge of an angry bull, maddened by the pain of a broken horn. She would probably think he was making a fuss over a trifle.
But, he suddenly thought, he could tell her about his
other worry. Arabis was the only person he could think of who might have sensible advice to offer.
“Arabis,” he said on this impulse, “have you ever heard of the Harp of Teirtu?”
“Telyn Teirtu? Indeed yes. Tom would be telling us stories about it when we were little: that it was made of gold, and had three rows of strings, one for men, and one for kings, and a row that would burst out playing all on its own if a strange hand tried to steal the harp; and a lot more beside.”
“Yes, that is it,” he said. “My father told me the story too. Kilhwch, son of Prince Kelyddon, got his cousin King Arthur to help him steal it for a bride-gift for the Princess Olwen. It was taken from Castell Teirtud to the king's castle at Caerleon, and then to the castle of Yspaddaden Penkawr. But then it was lost, some say St. Dunstan had it and gave it to St. Ennodawg, some that it found its own way home to Castell Teirtud.”
“There was a prophecy about it made by one of the old bards,” Arabis said.
“When the Whispering Mountain shall scream aloud
And the castle of Malyn ride on a cloud,
Then Malyn's lord shall have and hold
The lost that is found, the harp of gold.
Then Fig-hat Ben shall wear a shroud,
Then shall the despoiler, that was so proud,
Plunge headlong down from the Devil's Leap;
Then shall the Children from darkness creep,
And the men of the glen avoid disaster,
And the Harp of Teirtu find her master.”
“But it is a very confusing prophecy, indeed, for how could the castle of Malyn ride on a cloud? And who is the despoiler? Anyway, what about the harp, boy?”
“Well, that's it,” Owen said. “My grandfather thinks he has found it.”
“No!” said Arabis, and her eyes went wide. “Well, there is a piece of news, indeed! But you look as glum as if you had lost a guinea and found a groat. Where did he pick up the old harp?”
“He was taking stones from the ruined monastery on the island in the river Gaff, to build another room on to the museum. He pulled down a bit of wall and found a little closet hollowed out in it. In the closet was an old chest lined with copper, and in the chest was the harp.”
“No nonsense?” said Arabis, much interested. “Will it play?” She glanced up at the crwth hanging on the wall. “Dearly would I like to get my fingers on it!
“No, it won't play. It is old and black and all the strings but one have gone. But the frame is made of gold, Grandfather thinks, and there is ancient writing on it.”
“Valuable, then, it will be?”
“Yes,” said Owen gloomily, “and that is one of the reasons why there is trouble in the town.”
“Why, in the name of ffiloreg?”
“Nobody can agree about what should be done with the harp. Some say, sell it, and let the money go to build a new school. There's a foreign Ottoman gentleman in the town, and it's believed he wants to buy it. But some say the harp should stay here because it was found on town land and belongs to the people of Pennygaff. And everybody seems to be angry with Grandfather.”
“What does your granda say?”
Owen looked troubled. “He says it isn't clear yet who has a right to the harp. He says the island where it was found isn't town land.”
“Whose is it, then?”
“Grandfather thinks it probably belongs to the Marquess of Malyn. He owns most of the land round here.”
“Ach y fi! That bad man!”
“Is he so bad?”
“When my mam was ill,” Arabis said, “we'd halted the wagon in a patch of bushes up by the lodge of Castle Malyn. The lodgekeeper's wife, who was a decent sort of woman, had Mama in her cottage, with my little brother, and was nursing them. His lordship got word of it and said he'd have no gypsies and vagabonds squatting in his cottage, or tinker' wagons standing by his park gates. My dada asked to see him and told him she was ill, and it was only for a little time, till she took a turn for the better. But the lord said if she was ill she had better go to the workhouse, rather than infect his people. So he sent three of his men to carry her out of the lodge. Out in the snow they carried her, and put her in the cart. So we went on, over the hills, but that night was the worst storm of the winter, and the horse died in the shafts, halfway over, and Mama and my little brother died too.”
There was silence for a minute. Then Arabis went on,
“I've heard other tales of him too. They say the rents he charges his tenants are the highest in the country, and if they can't pay, out they go that same day. And that he treats his servants like slavesâhundreds of them are at work, day and night, polishing the hoofs of his horses,
blowing between the leaves of his books, cleaning his collection of gold things. He keeps a footman who must run before his carriage wherever he drives. Imagine having to run faster than a carriage all day long!”
With a start, Owen remembered the man who had rushed panting down the hill. So many things had happened since then that, until this moment, the strange event had vanished from his mind.
Arabis went on, “If the Harp of Teirtu really belongs to him, it could hardly have a worse owner.”
“Nobody knows for sure yet,” Owen said. “But Grandfather is determined to act fairly in the matter.”
Looking out (while they talked the horse Galahad had been slowly but stoutly breasting the steep hill from the river Gaff) he added, “We are almost at my home now. I should so much like Grandfather to meet youâwon't you please come in andâand take some refreshment? I thinkâI'm sure he'd like you.”
As he said the words he felt a faint qualm. But surely old Mr. Hughes would like Arabis and her father? Who could fail to do so?
“My word!” Arabis exclaimed, looking out. “Do you live in a museum, then, boy?”
“Why yes,” he said, “my grandfather is the curator, you see, ever since he retired from being a sea-captain like my father.”
The little town now lay below them, slate roofs shining with rain in the gloom, and only a dim street lamp here and there to throw a few dismal patches of light. In front of them a pair of gates, not unlike the school ones, led to a cobbled yard. A notice on the gates bore the words