A
rabis was sitting in an oak tree, munching a piece of oat bread and waiting for the sun to rise.
She had come out in search of medicinal ferns, which she liked to pick with the dew on them, but it was still a little too dark to tell one plant from another, and so she leaned back contentedly, cradled in a fork of the tree, and listened to the voice of Fighat Ben, the whispering mountain. Up here the whisper was clearly audible, a sort of sighing murmur, like that of a sleeper disturbed by dreams. The tree in which Arabis sat grew on the side of a quarry situated above the little town of Nant Agerddau, where the road came to an end and the sides of the gorge drew together to meet in a semicircle of rugged cliff.
Long ago, before the town grew up, the road through the gorge led only to this quarry, where men had once mined for gold, until the day came when the last sparkle of gold had been scraped from the mountain's veins. The sloping cliffs, now all grown over with a tangle of trees
and bushes, were pocked with little eye-shaped mine entrances. Some of these openings were screened by ferns and briars; cascades of reddish water poured from others. One of the biggest openings was halfway up the cliff, right under the gnarled roots of the oak into which Arabis had climbed. Ferns half concealed the cave and had taken root, also, in the tree's mossy bark, sprouting on trunk and branches like a green mane; Arabis had established herself in a sort of nest, almost hidden among their feathery thickness.
Presently she was surprised by the sound of voices uplifted in a rude chant.
“The harp that once in Tara's pad
âYo ho ho and a bottle of perryâ
Did hang, is now upon the gad!
Hey diddle diddle and derry down derry!”
In the dim, pre-dawn twilight Arabis could just see two men lurching clumsily up the steep slope.
“Watch out, Bilk, you silly cullion! Don't raise such a garboil, or we'll have half the macemongers of the town on our tail.”
“Garboil! I like that! You're the one as is making the most of the whoobub. If you hadn't swigged so much tickle-brain down there at the Boar's Head, we'd ha” been here long since. Look at the sky! It'll be lightmans in twenty minutes. Anyone might twig us.”
“Tushâhic!âwho's abroad? All snug in their libbeges. Anyways, here we beâlet's stow the bandore under this big rufftree, nobody'll come prying here-away.”
“I'm willing,” said the other man. “Poop it in plenty deep, so no one won't lay their glaziers on it.”
There was a grunting, rustling and shuffling in the ferns directly underneath Arabis. She longed to see what was going on, but did not dare move in case they heard her; plainly they were up to no good.
“All rug?” said one of the voices at length.
“I reckon she could lay there till Doomiesday, no one would twig. Back to the bousing-ken, eh? Us could do with a dram of hot stingo.”
“You go on, then, cully, and lay on a dram for me; I'm agoing to give my napper a rinsing in yonder freshet.”
“Tol-lol; I'll meet you at the bousing-ken then.”
The two men fumbled their way down again; Arabis heard them slipping and cursing among the rocks and brambles. Though dying of curiosity she judged it prudent not to move from her hiding-place until they were some distance off, and it was a good thing she waited, for after about five minutes she heard one of the men returning, much more quietly, though he panted a good deal and sometimes let out a bad word.
“Where the deuce
is
the miching thing, then?” she heard him mutter. “I made sure we laid it hereabouts. Aha! There she be! Now, let's fool old Bilk, let's lay her in another o' these here vaultages, down there-along.”
Arabis, craning out warily from her nest of fern, saw him withdraw a large sacking-wrapped bundle from the cave-mouth underneath, and transfer it to another hole in the cliff some twenty yards distant. In the still morning air she distinctly heard him chuckle to himself as he retreated through the bushes:
“Oh, won't old Bilk-o be set back on his pantofles when he finds the bandore's not there any more. Ho, ho, I can't wait to see his nab!”
He disappeared in the direction of the town. Five minutes went by, and still Arabis, with her habitual caution, remained crouched in the fern. Then a dark figure rose up from behind a curtain of ivy on her left, and made its way towards the bundle's new resting-place.
“Thought you'd diddle me, eh, Prigman, my sprag young co? Think yourself tricksy as a weasel, eh? But old Bilk knows a prank worth two o' that. Just you wait, my woodcock!”
He withdrew the bundle once more, and moved it to yet another cave mouth. Arabis heard him grunt to himself:
“You lay there, my pretty, and old Bilk'll be back for you afore Turpentine Sunday. Then us'll turn you over to the highest bidder. And
then
it'll be velvet gaskins and satin galleyslops for Sir Toby Bilk, ah, and a cloth o' gold weskit and frumenty every night!”
Chuckling deeply, he, too, made off in the direction of the town.
“Well!” Arabis said to herself. “There goes a fine pair of rapscallions, each one cheating the other! But I'd dearly like to know what this treasure is they've been so careful to hide away.”
The sky was now quite light; indeed the first rays of the sun were beginning to gild the tops of the distant Black Mountains, though the gorge of Nant Agerddau still lay in shadow under the great peak of Fig-hat Ben. Looking down towards the little grey stone town Arabis could see a few threads of smoke beginning to trail upwards from
the chimneys. Between her and the houses stretched the flat quarry floor, now overgrown with a thick carpet of moss and lichen. Here the gypsies and fair people had pitched their tents and halted their gaily-coloured caravans, but as near to the town and as far from the quarry-face as possible, for there was a general belief that the caves and cliffs hereabouts were haunted by little black, furry, elvish people who came out at night, and who had a thieving and malicious disposition. It was said that strange lights shone at midnight in the caves, that weird wailing sounds could sometimes be heard; anybody who saw the lights or heard the sounds was supposed to be in danger of becoming deaf and blind. These beings were referred to politely as the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair People, but some townsfolk asserted that the name should really be Fur People, or Fur Niskies, and many believed that they were the black imps of Old Bogey-Boo himself. Arabis, however, did not worry about such tales; she had never met anybody who could truly say they had seen the little people, nor had she herself, but if she did, she felt sure she would not fear them.
Having now made sure that both men had really gone, she slipped down from her oak tree and gathered an apronful of ferns. Then, stooping to pick more as she went, taking care not to let her course appear too particular, she began to move towards the spot where Bilk had finally stowed the mysterious bundle.
Much to her annoyance, just as she judged she must have reached the point where Bilk had been standing when he made his remark about a gold waistcoat and frumenty, she heard a loud hail from below her, on the floor of the quarry:
“Aha, there, good morning, good morning to you, my dear young person, maiden, female! Can you inform me, I pray, whether the cavern containing the famous Devil's Leap is in this region, area, location, vicinity?”
This new voice, deep and fruity, was certainly neither of the two she had heard before. Looking down the bushy slope Arabis perceived a strange figure: a tall, fat man, rather dark-skinned, and most oddly dressed in tight-fitting pantaloons and a sort of tunic, over which he wore a dazzlingly striped satin sash and a fur coat. He had a fur cap on his head and a pair of moustachios which curved upwards like terriers' tails.
Fixing his large earnest brown eyes on Arabis he scrambled up towards her, puffing heavily.
“Can you give me this information, my esteemed young damsel? I shall be most greatly obliged.”
“The Devil's Leap cave is nowhere near here, sir, indeed,” Arabis said quickly. “Down in the middle of the town you will find the way to it, right by the Town Hall, if you do know where that is?”
“I recall, I remember, yes, yes, I bear in mind. A large most hideous building, the colour of camel's liver, is it not?”
Arabis gave him directions how to find it, but he did not seem to be paying very close attention; all the while she spoke, his eyes were roaming up and down the side of the quarry.
“These holes, now, these gaps, these apertures? The ancient goldmines, yes? There is no gold-mining now, I believe?”
“No sir, not for many a year,” Arabis replied, wishing he would go away.
At this moment the sun popped into view over a shoulder of the mountain, making all the dewdrops in the ferny quarry sparkle like diamonds. Immediately the stranger flung back his head and let out an amazingly piercing yellâ“Aie, walla, wella, willa, aie, walla wo!” until the echoes, dashing across the quarry and bumping into each other, sounded like the shouts of an advancing army. Birds flew squawking from bushes. Heads were poked in sleepy, startled inquiry from caravans and tents.
“A religious observance, my dear young lady,” the stranger explained urbanely, panting a little.
Arabis, seeing that for the moment she had lost her chance of investigating the men's bundle, tried to memorize the spot where she stood and began to move casually downhill.
The stranger accompanied her, making polite remarks about the beauty of the countryside, all the while keeping up a sharp scrutiny of their surroundings and of Arabis herself.
“You are a native, resident, denizen of this charming spot, my dear person?” he was inquiring, when there came another interruption. A large black-and-white bird, which had been hovering in an undecided way high above the quarry, now sighted Arabis and dropped like a plummet on to her head, cushioning his landing with a skilful last-minute brake action of the wings.
“Hey-day! Lackadaisy! My stars!” exclaimed the foreign gentleman. “Madam, I fear you have been assaulted by a
songster, one of the feathered tribe! Allow me to assist you!”
“No danger, sir, I thank you,” Arabis answered, laughing. “This is my tame falcon, Hawc.”
“Aha, indeed, verily? For sure,” the man said, his muddy brown eyes studying Hawc with their usual keenness, “how foolish I am. I now observe that he brings you a letter, missive, epistle.”
“IâI beg your parson, sir?” Arabis said, very much surprised. What could he mean? But when she pulled on a glove, which she always carried hanging at her belt, and gently dislodged Hawc on to her wrist, she saw that the stranger seemed to be right: impaled on one of the falcon's long, talons was a small piece of paper.
“A well-trained fowl, bless me!” the man remarked, trying very hard to see what was written on the paper. Arabis slipped it quickly into her glove but not before she had had time to read the printed words:
The Infatiable gluttony of the Peacock tends to alienate our attachment from it, while the harfh fcream of its voice diminifhes the pleafure received from its Brilliancy.
A page from Owen's precious little book! But how curious! How had Hawc come by it? And where could Owen be?
“Erâexcuse me, sir,” she murmured hastily. “Leave you I must, now, I am afraid. No trouble at all to find the Devil's Leap you will have; anyone in the town will be
telling you. My dada is wanting his breakfast now, just, see.”
In fact, as she well knew, this last was hardly true. She reached the caravan to find Tom Dando wreathed in paper and streaked with ink, scribbling away at his poem; verses poured out of him like water from a spring. One or two people were waiting to buy medicine or have their hair cut; luckily they seemed in no hurry and kept respectfully silent, sitting in the sun on the steps outside the van as the sheets of paper piled up higher and higher inside. Arabis glanced in, to make sure Owen was not thereâwhich he was notâand then whispered,
“Down the town I am going, Dada. Back home in time to make your dinner!”
Her father nodded abstractedly; his right hand with the quill never for a moment stopped its gallop across the paper. Arabis left him and threaded her way through the fair; a number of people were stirring now, fetching water, blowing on the ashes of last night's fire, grilling bacon. Before entering the town she made sure that the foreign gentleman was not following her.
Just before she reached the first houses, Arabis loosened a long tress of her fine black hair and held it up for the falcon to take in his beak.
“Easy now with the pulling, Hawc, my little one,” she said. “Remember hair will come clean out if you will be tugging too hard.”
Keeping his beak firmly clenched on the strand, Hawc flew slowly off, with long easy flaps of his wings, and Arabis followed him at her swiftest walking pace, sometimes breaking into a run.
Right down the cobbled street and through the little town of Nant Agerddau they wentâbakers, butchers, and grocers were still shuttered, and the whisper of Fig-hat Ben, up above the rooftops, was the only sound to be heard. Midway along stood the new town hall, backed against the cliff, and by it, with pillars and a portico, very grand, was the entrance to the big cave, a long, high tunnel leading into the mountain. Arabis thought, as she sped past, that she caught a glimpse of a fat, fur-coated figure standing a short way inside the tunnel. He had his back turned and did not seem to notice her.