The Stolen Lake

by Joan Aiken

  The train ran on three rails, the centre one having large cog-teeth, which engaged with similar teeth on a set of wheels under the cars, so that, however steep the slope, the train could never slip backwards. Gay red roses and green leaves had been painted along the sides of the wagons a long time ago. The paint, like everything else about the train, was old, dirty and worn.

  After considerable delay the engine started with a great snorting and straining and blowing of steam and a shriek so prolonged that it seemed to be protesting against its task.

  Almost as soon as it had clanked away from Bewdley the track stopped being level and began to climb; they rounded a corner of the Severn gorge, crept up a steep hillside, and were immediately presented with a view so magnificent that it made Dido gasp. A mile west of Bewdley the valley of the Severn was barred by a great semi-circle of cliffs over which the river came racing in a huge horse-shoe of boiling white water, full three-quarters of a mile from side to side; white vapour rose from it like smoke, and the roar was loud enough to drown even the screeching and chugging of their engine.

  'That's what I kept a-hearing last night. I thought it was lions roaring and tigers caterwauling,' Dido said to Mr Holystone, who whispered that the cascade was known as the Falls of Hypha, and formed the lowest in a series of seven, all equally majestic. 'The others are Stheino, Euryte, Medusa, Minerva, Nemetone and Rhiannon – the seven witches who guard the secret land of Upper Cumbria.'

  'Ain't there no way to Upper Cumbria but by this railway?' asked Dido.

  'Not from the sea . . . Before the rail-track was cut, men thought the precipices too high to scale.'

  'Then,' said Dido sceptically, 'how did the first lot ever get there? The ones who came over after the Battle of Dyrham?'

  'They had landed farther down the coast and travelled north through the mountains and the valley of Lake Arianrod.'

  'Come in by the back way, I see.'

  'That way, too, leads in through a very narrow pass; it wants but one great rock to fall, which hangs poised on the lip of Mount Catelonde, and the way would be blocked, and Upper Cumbria would be sealed off.'

  'Only if the railway stopped running,' Dido pointed out. 'What a lot you know about it all, Mr Holy!'

  'I have always – always been interested in ancient history . . .' His weak voice died away in a great yawn, and his head nodded forward. He roused up again, however, to say to Captain Hughes, 'Sir – do not forget – that when we reach Bath Regis – which is thirteen thousand feet above sea-level – all the party must be careful to avoid undue exertion at first – the air is so thin that – the least effort causes palpitations of the heart. You will – ache all over – headaches and nosebleeds are not uncommon . ..'

  He toppled over on his side; he had been sitting on the wagon floor, propped against the wall. Dido, kneeling by him worriedly saw that he was in a kind of half-sleep, half-swoon. His fainting-fit last night had occasioned a great deal of concern. He had recovered only after a great many restoratives had been administered, and Captain Hughes had said firmly there could be no question of his returning to the coast by himself, or of his remaining in the small and primitive inn at Bewdley. He must accompany the party to Bath, where there were sure to be doctors and he could be properly cared for. Poor Mr Holystone had been too weak to protest, although he seemed wretched in his spirits, as if the whole atmosphere of Cumbria oppressed him and made him ill. In the morning he had to be carried on board the train.

  'Best leave him to sleep,' said Captain Hughes. 'Poor devil, maybe it is merely the altitude that is affecting him, and he will recover in due course.'

  Dido felt sure that it was more than that. She had not informed Captain Hughes about the messages in the cats' collars – she could just imagine the scorn with which he would dismiss such idle nonsense – but she herself felt certain that they had something to do with Mr Holystone's infirmity.

  As the train zig-zagged its way upwards, she occupied herself by looking out of the dirty window at the scenery, which was certainly very astonishing. Day wore slowly on as they climbed higher and higher, curving over mountainsides and through narrow passes, creeping along narrow rocky valleys, and yet again up and up, following the course of the river Severn, now transformed to a boulder-strewn torrent. They passed many more waterfalls, some plunging from thousand-foot crags into vapour-filled gorges, other pouncing down hillsides step by step.

  At last Dido became bored with her own company -for Noah Gusset was curled up asleep, Mr Multiple and the lieutenant were playing chess, and Plum, a silent man at all times, was knitting himself a sock, while Captain Hughes, having written up his log, was deep, as usual, in aerostatics.

  Seizing the chance when the train stopped at a wayside halt to take on more wood and water and allow a Customs official to inspect the foreigners' credentials, Dido slipped out of the first-class car on to the rock platform beside the track.

  'Hey, young 'un! Where are you off to?' demanded Lieutenant Windward, sticking his fair head out.

  'I'm a-going in the box-car for a bit,' said Dido. 'I'll be all rug; don't you fret your fur.'

  She was startled at the bitter cold of the mountain air, high up here between Elamye and Arryke; she made haste to scramble into the second-class car, where the atmosphere was as warm as a nesting-box. There were no seats at all in here, and the passengers – who were mostly sunburned peasants, bringing their goods to the city – all squatted on the floor. They wore sandals, ponchoes, goatskin trousers, and a dozen hats apiece, and the floor was littered with melon seeds, pineapple tassels and plantain rinds. However the human climate was a great deal more cordial than in the first-class accommodation; Dido was greeted cheerfully enough, and offered cherries from a basket, a bite of a delicious fruit called chirimoya, and a mugful of chicha, a drink not unlike cider. She learned, partly by sign-language, since the peasants mostly spoke Latin, that they came, not from Tenby, but from small clearings in the forest, and that they were coming to sell their hats in Bath Regis. She herself was bombarded with questions.

  'Why is the gringo captain coming to Bath? Why is he permitted to do so? Why does he leave his ship?'

  'He is coming to visit your queen,' Dido said.

  'Wants to see Her Mercy, do he? Why, in the name of Grandmother Sul?'

  'No,' said Dido, 'she wants to see him. She wants him to do summat for her.'

  'This was received with puzzlement and wonder.

  'What could the gringo captain do for Her Mercy that her couldn't do for herself? A powerful wise woman she be!'

  'Pick up the Cheesewring with her bare hands and sling it into the middle of Dozmary Pool, her could!' Dido gathered that these were local names for Mount Catelonde and Lake Arianrod. 'Make old Damyake Hill blow sparks into King Mabon's beard. She's a powerful one, she be. Could turn Severn Water back'ards through Pulteney Bridge. Ar, she'm a rare 'un, old Queen Ginny-vere.'

  'Why doesn't she have a king?' Dido asked. 'In England we have both.'

  They were all amazed at her ignorance.

  'Course there be a King! Didn't you know that? Lives in his own place, top o' Beechen Hill – in the Wen Pendragon. But he don't come out. Wounded, he were, in the wars.'

  'What wars?'

  'Long-ago wars. Old, old wars. He won't get no better till the red rain do fall. Then the great gates'U open, and he'll go home again.'

  'What red rain?'

  Nobody was certain about that. 'He'll get better in his own time, maidy. Simmingly.'

  'Maybe that's what the queen wants,' said Dido. 'Maybe she wants Cap'n Hughes to recommend a doctor from England.'

  This precipitated a great discussion among the peasants, some saying that the queen could do anything, and consequently needed no help from outsiders, other pointing out that she must have had some reason for summoning the gringo captain.

  In the middle of this, Dido was greatly startled to see the tall, thin, black-clad figure of Bran the Storyteller unfold himself from a corner whe
re he had been dozing unnoticed, and move into the middle of the car. He had his white bird on his shoulder, and greeted Dido with a friendly nod.

  'Oh!' cried Dido delighted, 'now you can finish the story about the man and the stick.'

  But the word story instantly aroused a commotion among the other passengers.

  'A story – a story! Your excellency – your venerable – your squireship – your knowingness – do'ee now, kindly, tell us a story!'

  'Very well,' said the man called Bran. 'If you will all be so good as to keep quiet, so that I can make myself heard.' Instantly a dead silence prevailed, apart from the spitting of melon seeds.

  Bran thought for a moment, cleared his throat, and began.

  'Once a man called Juan applied for a post as night-watchman at a warehouse. He had been promised the job. But when he got there, the overseer said to him, "That job has been given to someone else." "To whom?" furiously demanded Juan. "To that man who just left." Looking out of the door, Juan was amazed to see that the other man exactly resembled himself. "Stop, you imposter!" shouted Juan, chasing him along the street. "You have stolen my job." But the other man turned a corner, and Juan could not find him.

  'Then Juan fell in love with a beautiful girl. But when he asked her to marry him, she said, "I am already promised to that man on the other side of the marketplace." And he looked across, and there was his double again. "Now I shall catch you, you wretch!" he bawled, and he rushed across the square. But when he reached the other side, his rival had gone. And many times this happened; if It was the last loaf on the baker's counter, or the last place on the ferry, it was always the double who got there first.

  'Then, one day, as Juan was going down the hill towards the river, he saw his double not far ahead. "Now I shall catch him," thought Juan, and he began to run. But, as the other man walked out on the bridge, a great flood came roaring down the river-bed and washed the bridge away. And Juan wept and raged and would not be comforted. "For," he said, "now I have lost my enemy for ever." '

  'Is that the end?' asked Dido.

  'That you must decide for yourself,' said Bran.

  Dido reflected.

  'Well, I think he was a looby, to carry on so,' she said. 'If I'd have been him, I'd never – '

  But Bran was briskly going round among the peasants, collecting small copper coins in a wooden cup. Then he sang a song, accompanying himself on his harp:

  'I can hardly bear it

  Waiting for tomorrow to come

  Joy I want to share it

  Waiting for tomorrow to come

  Love I must declare it

  Waiting for tomorrow to come

  For that's the day

  When she, when she, when she, when she, when

  she

  Will come

  My way.

  Time seems to creep

  Waiting for tomorrow to come

  Clock has gone to sleep

  Waiting for tomorrow to come

  Patiently I keep . . .'

  His voice was drowned by a tremendous shuddering, creaking and clanking as the train drew to a standstill.

  'Are we taking on more wood and water?' asked Dido, as Bran stopped singing.

  'No,' he said. 'We have reached our destination. We are in Bath.'

  The peasants began leaping out of the box-car. In two minutes they were all gone. Dido skipped out after them, and found herself on an icy, windswept stone pavement, inadequately sheltered by a thatched canopy. The air was bitter.

  'Make haste, if you please, Miss Twite!' came the captain's voice. 'No time to loiter about – and much too cold. We must get poor Holystone into shelter. Come along!'

  'But Bran,' said Dido, looking round. 'Won't you please tell me – '

  Bran's tall figure, however, had vanished among the peasants in their flowing ruanas and high-piled stacks of panama hats. Reluctantly Dido followed the captain's impatiently beckoning arm and walked, shivering, through a kind of open-fronted station hall to a paved courtyard beyond. Here there were hackney carriages waiting, and a number of sedan chairs with their poles resting on the ground, and the blue-coated chair-men standing by them.

  'Sydney Hotel!' Captain Hughes ordered one of the hackney drivers in a loud authoritative voice. 'Gusset – Multiple – take Mr Holystone up carefully and lay him on the carriage seat.'

  Mr Holystone was still asleep, it seemed.

  'Sydney Hotel?' one of the chair-men said to Dido. 'Hop in, missie, and we'll have you there in the flick of a pig's tail.'

  Dido would have liked to ride in a chair – they had gone out of fashion in London and she had never seen one – but Captain Hughes called irritably,

  'Into the carriage, Miss Twite – look sharp now! We don't want to keep poor Holystone hanging about in this bitter cold!'

  'Sorry, mister,' Dido apologised to the hopeful chairman, and she clambered into the carriage. Glancing through the window next moment she nearly dropped her cloak-bag – for an instant she could have sworn that the rear chair-man was Silver Taffy. But then he moved into the shadows and disappeared. It can't have been him anyway, Dido thought; what would he be doing here? We left him behind at Bewdley.

  Dusk was falling as they clattered out of the station yard, over bumpy cobbles. Dido looked down to see if they were silver, but the light was too poor to be sure. It was freezing cold inside the carriage; and the steam from the horses' nostrils looked like dragon's breath. Dido shivered on the slippery leather seat and huddled against the comfortable warmth of Mr Midshipman Multiple. He, Noah, Dido and Plum rode in this carriage; Captain Hughes, Mr Holystone and Lieutenant Windward were in the other which had already started.

  Despite the cold, Dido would not have minded a long drive if it had been possible to see anything of the town, but there were hardly any streetlights; the only illumination came from dim gleams, here and there, behind lace-curtained windows. Bath Regis, for a capital city, seemed very quiet and glum.

  Luckily it proved no more than a ten-minute trot from the station to the Sydney Hotel, over a covered bridge with closed market-stalls on either side, and along an extremely wide street; then the travellers had reached their destination and were being solicitously helped to alight by half-a-dozen porters and footmen.

  By the time Dido entered the vestibule she heard Captain Hughes giving orders that a dressmaker be fetched immediately to fit his young companion with a court dress.

  Oh no, thought Dido in despair, not again!

  'Madame Ettarde is Her Majesty's court dressmaker and mantua-maker, sir,' the landlord was respectfully informing the captain. 'Her establishment is in Orange Grove, no more than a step from here. But it will be all shut up at this time of night. My counsel to you, sir, if the matter is urgent, would be for the young lady to call round there, first thing in the morning, with her abigail, and see what Madam has on the premises; that way, no time will be wasted.'

  Captain Hughes thought well of this advice. 'If Holystone is feeling more the thing, he can take you there tomorrow as soon as this Ettarde female opens shop,' he told Dido briskly. 'I wish to spend no more time than need be in Bath, which seems a devilish dismal place, and is cold as a coffin. If Madam can rig you out in time, perhaps we can go to see Her Majesty tomorrow afternoon.'

  Ettarde, thought Dido. Where have I heard that name before?

  She packed the name away in the corner of her mind which held unanswered questions. Such as the name Elen – where had that been mentioned, apart from on the cat's collars? And who had worn a gold ring? And what did Bran's stories mean?

  'Meanwhile,' went on the captain, 'we had best dine and then you, child, may retire to your chamber. I have instructed Mr Multiple to keep watch outside your door, as Holystone is ailing; we want no repetition of what occurred in Tenby.'

  Dinner, in the large, bare and ice-cold dining-room, was a horrible meal of hot water with bits of egg and potato floating about in it, succeeded by what Lieutenant Windward unhesitatingly identified as
boiled llama and beans, followed by hard green bananas. Dido, who, like the rest, found herself breathless, aching and limp, affected, as Mr Holystone had prophesied, by height sickness, was glad to go off to bed, exchanging a rueful grin with Midshipman Multiple, who took up his station outside her door on a cane cot. A doctor had been summoned for Mr Holystone, who had been carried to his chamber long before, but no doctor would come out at night in Bath, it seemed.

  Dido tumbled into her damp and freezing bed -which consisted of a heap of quilts on a wooden frame – and was soon asleep.

  She woke before dawn, hearing the cry of the Watch: 'Six o'clock and a fine, frosty morning!' and was thereafter kept awake by other street-cries – milk-girls, porter-boys, straw-hat-vendors, needle- and powder-sellers – by the mewing of cats and the clatter of iron-bound wheels over cobbles.

  Recalled to wide wakefulness and curiosity, Dido scrambled out of bed – she observed now that the bedclothes were simply a pile of hides with the shaggy wool attached – pulled on such clothes as she had taken off the night before, and went to the window. Drawing back lace curtains adorned with blobs of red-and-blue wool, she discovered a stone balcony outside, so she opened the window and stepped out into the blistering cold. Sucking in her breath with shock, she retreated, wrapped herself in one of the shaggy hides, and returned to study the scene before her.

  The city of Bath Regis lay in a kind of natural hollow. The biggest and most impressive buildings were grouped at the bottom, and streets of smaller dwelling-houses, elegantly laid out in circles, squares and crescents, rose in tiers up the sides of the hilly basin. Cactuses, among the buildings, and spiky trees which Dido later learned were called sigse thorn and capuli cherry, here and there indicated the location of a park or public garden. The houses were square, handsome, and clean, built of cream-coloured stone; they looked brand-new, though most of them were many hundreds of years old, being preserved in excellent condition by the dry mountain air. The Sydney Hotel stood at the end of a large oval circus, and faced down a wide street.