The Whispering Mountain

by Joan Aiken

  “Fancy now!” said Dai potman, a little sad-faced red-eyed man with a glassy drop hanging permanently at the end of his nose. “Mr. Owen Hughes the museum, isn’t it? Honoured we are, indeed. And what can I do for you, Mr. Hughes? A drop of mead, will it be, to keep out the chill?”

  “Nothing to drink,” snapped Mr. Hughes. “I have an appointment with his grace the Marquess of Malyn at half past seven.”

  “Indeed to be sure now, is that so? Wait, you, then, Mr. Hughes bach, be so good, while I find out if his lordship is ready to receive you.”

  Looking much more respectful, Dai potman disappeared through an inner door, while Mr. Hughes tucked his hands under his coat-tails and turned his thoughts inwards, ignoring the people round him.

  A hush had fallen when he entered. The men who were sitting there did not look at him; they pointedly stared into their mugs, but at length one voice muttered,

  “What’s he want to come here for?”

  And another suggested,

  “Come to sell us some sleepers’ tickets, maybe!”

  There was a rumble of laughter. “Wake up, Dada!” they told one grey-bearded old man who was nodding over his pint of osey. “Have to pay to sleep these days, man!”

  At this moment Dai potman returned. Through the open door behind him a high, weary voice could be heard saying,

  “Let him kick his heels for half an hour or so, then. Tell him, fellow, that I do not choose to see him yet.” And the voice added in a lower tone, but still audibly, to someone else in the other room, “Persons of that insolent, hotheaded kidney sometimes cool off if they are left to reflect for a period.”

  “Indeed, indeed, that may well be so,” agreed another voice, rich, treacly, and rather foreign in its intonation.

  Dai closed the door behind him and said shortly to Mr. Hughes’s, “His lordship’s having his dinner now, just, and can’t be disturbed yet awhile.”

  A snigger ran round the room at Mr. Hughes’s discomfiture. Just then Mr. Morgan the landlord (father of Hwfa) came in. He was a burly, cheerful, independent man, much surprised and not altogether pleased at all the high-class custom which had suddenly favoured his inn.

  “Well now, if it isn’t Mr. Owen Hughes the museum!” he said. “And what can we offer you this wet evening, Mr. Hughes, my little one?”

  “Nothing to drink, Mr. Morgan, thank you,” old Mr. Hughes replied, somewhat put out. “I am waiting till his grace the Marquess is free to see me.”

  “Take a little something indeed you should, though! A drop of osey, now, or a drop of perwy? Licensed premises these are, fair play! Poor dealing it is, by my way of thinking, to use up space in a man’s house and bring him no custom, look you.”

  Broad grins spread over the faces in the bar. Somebody called out, “Sell him a sleeper’s ticket, Davy!”

  “Oh, very well, if that is how you feel, I will wait outside!” snapped the goaded Mr. Hughes, and he stomped off into the rain, amid roars of derision.

  “Hwchw!” said Mr. Morgan, pretending surprise. “Touchy, he is.”

  “No loss, him,” one of the customers said. “Small need to grieve over such a dried-up bit of old lemonrind. What with his worship the Marquess and all that great tribe of servants he have brought, not to speak of the Ottoman gentleman and his servant, there’s a fortune you must be making this night, Davy man.”

  “Thankful I’d be without the whole pack of them,” Mr. Morgan grumbled. “Reckon they are all like hounds on the trail of our holy harp.”

  “Hush, man!” Dai said, and made a warning gesture towards the corner where a thin, white-faced young man, who seemed utterly exhausted, was slumped across a table sleeping with his head on his arms.

  “Gwr drwg,” Mr. Morgan said. “He wouldn’t waken for the trump of doom, and who’s to wonder, forced to run like a stag in front of his lordship’s carriage all the livelong day? Black shame it is, indeed.”

  There was a general murmur of agreement.

  “Say one thing for the Ottoman gentleman, I will,” Mr. Morgan went on. “Treats his servant very civil, and all here too. ‘His lordship’s compliments,’ I say to him, ‘and will you be so kind as to let him have the coffee-room to himself after dinner for a couple of hours?’ ‘O, no inconvenience at all,’ says he, ‘’tis the time for my evening prayer, now, just, and after, I’ll take a stroll round to see the sights of your fine town, Mr. Morgan, bach.’”

  “And what sights will those be, I am wondering?” Dai said. “The stocks and the gallows and the new Habakkuk chapel?”

  “Monastery, he was asking about. ‘Can you tell me,’ he says, ‘where I can find the monks of the Order of St. Ennodawg?’ ‘All dead and gone these many years,’ I tell him, ‘and their bones and their monastery crumbled to dust down there on the island.’ ‘0, wbwb,’ says he, very sad, ‘and there was I hoping to have talk with their Reverences!’”

  ‘Hoping to have our harp out of here, more like,” growled Dai.”Vultures, the pair of them. There’s his lordship, with a whole castleful of gold treasures, they say—why should he think himself entitled to our harp, pa herwydd?”

  “Always the way with rich folk, that is,” Mr. Morgan said gloomily. “Everything he do want in the whole world, Lord Malyn has; all that’s left now is something to want, and that is the fiercest kind of wanting; no wonder he have such a desperate hunger for our harp.”

  “Get it he will, for sure,” said the old greybeard, finishing his osey and standing up. “Had his will from birth, that one, and nobody in this town able to stand up to him, I am thinking. Only one ever took courage to say no to him, and that was a woman, at Pontyprydd, and they do tell that he’s never spoken to another since, because of the hate and spite that was in him from her refusal. Not a maidservant will he have at Caer Malyn, and quick with his whiplash at any child that comes near him, but extra quick if that child is a girl. Eh well. Bad times we have now, indeed. Back home, me.”

  The street door swung to behind him.

  “Never spoke to a woman since, maybe” said a new voice, “but there was a woman once spoke to him.” Everybody started, because it was the young footman, who had half woken, raised his head from the table, and looked drowsily about him. “Dying, she was, see, and he had her carried from the lodge where the gatekeeper’s wife was tending her. Out into the snow, and came down himself to see he was obeyed. ‘Woe to you, Malyn,’ she says, lifting her weak hand. ‘Woe to the rooftree and those beneath it, woe to the platter and the food on it, woe to the stock in the barn (both live and dead), woe to the hands that wrought this deed and the mind that planned it, may they frizzle in hell for ever!’ A fine, rousing curse it was. And he not a groat the worse, from that day to this.”

  “Never mind, boy,” said Mr. Morgan. “His time will come.”

  The young footman’s head dropped back on his arms, and the talk, in lowered voices, went elsewhere.

  In half an hour’s time the Marquess signified that he was ready to receive his visitor, and Mr. Hughes was shown in, considerably wetter, shaking the rain off his shovel hat.

  He found the coffee-room almost transformed by brilliant carpets and cushions. Numerous little gold ornaments were strewn about and a table set with a handsome gold dinner service had been pushed back against the wall. A huge fire burned in the hearth, and a gold-brocaded sofa stood before it. On this reclined the Marquess, who had finished supper some time since, and was now brooding over wine and nuts and a dish of quinces and peaches—brought, like the furniture, in the baggage coach that had followed his chaise.

  He looked up, yawning, at Mr. Hughes’s entrance, as if this were an irksome interruption to an evening’s pleasure, and not the interview for which he had travelled three hundred miles from his town house, through mountains and bad weather.

  He was a tall man, not yet much past middle age. Seen close to, almost everything about him appeared pale—his fine thin lips were colourless, so was his skin. His hair looked as if it had been bleached
by weather or ill-health. His long delicate hands were whiter than the lace ruffles which fell over them. Only his eyes had colour—they were a deep, clear, burning yellow, like the eyes of a tiger, dark-rimmed, with pupils as small as peppercorns. He held a long, slender but heavy piece of gold chain, and played with it, pouring it from one hand to the other.

  Mr. Hughes met the strange eyes unflinchingly, and made a small, stiff bow.

  “Ah yes,” his lordship murmured in a high, fatigued voice, stirring with a careless hand among two or three papers which lay on a small table beside him. “You are the curator of the museum here, I believe? Mr.—Humphries?”

  “Hughes.”

  “I have your letter here, somewhere,” said the Marquess, yawning again. “I cannot imagine why you did not send me the harp as I requested. You have put me to a deal of trouble, Mr. Hughes; I have been obliged to come all the way from London on this errand, and I greatly dislike visiting Wales in the winter.”

  Mr. Hughes stood silent.

  Then, in quite another tone, astonishingly different, much deeper, harsh, and resonant, the Marquess suddenly demanded,

  “Well? Have you brought it with you now? Where is the harp?”

  “I have not brought it,” Mr. Hughes said stiffly.

  “Why not?” The Marquess was quiet again, he stared at Mr. Hughes with narrowed eyes, and his hands stirred gently among the folds of his velvet robe, the gold chain sparkling between them. “Why have you not brought it when I explicitly instructed you to do so? Pray understand: I want that harp. It will form the key-piece in my collection of gold articles.”

  “I have not brought it because—excuse me, sir—I am not yet fully convinced of your lordship’s title to it.”

  His lordship’s tigerish eyebrows flew up. He stood, overtopping the small, spare Mr. Hughes by some six inches.

  “You say that to me?” He began to pace to and fro. It was an odd characteristic of Lord Malyn that, although he always appeared fatigued, he never seemed able to keep still, but was in continual, languid, restless motion; whereas Mr. Hughes, with a sailor’s economy of effort, moved only when it was needful and then in a brisk, neat, finished manner.

  “I do, sir.” Mr. Hughes looked the Marquess firmly in the eye.

  “You are aware that I own all the land hereabouts and anything found on it?”

  “Excuse me again, sir—not the island in the river Gaff. That, I have discovered, was made over to the monks of the Order of St. Ennodawg two hundred years ago, by a grant from your ancestor the first marquess. The grant was made in perpetuity.”

  The Marquess paused in his pacing and suddenly swung round, the gold chain dangling from one hand. Mr. Hughes noticed that its clasp was fashioned in the form of a snake’s head with tiny onyx eyes.

  “Ah no—my dear Mr. Hughes,” Lord Malyn said softly. “Not in perpetuity. That is where you mistake.”

  Mr. Hughes stood his ground. “The town records have it so, your lordship.”

  “The town records err. In my possession at Caer Malyn is the original deed by which the island was made over.”

  “Would your lordship perhaps be so kind as to let me cast my eyes over the document?”

  Lord Malyn drew himself up. His yellow eyes flashed.

  “Do you doubt my word, sir?”

  “Naturally not, my lord,” Mr. Hughes said drily. “But in a legal document there may be differences of interpretation—’

  “—which you think I am not competent to judge? And, pray, what were you before you took to dusting fossils at the Pennygaff Museum?”

  “Sir, I had the honour to command for many years one of His Majesty’s sloops in the Eastern Seas—during which time I was frequently obliged to explain ships articles, treaties, cease-fire agreements, and many other legal documents.”

  “I am sure your legal knowledge is of the highest excellence,” said the Marquess with a disdainful smile. “But in this instance it will not be needed. The deed says, in the plainest manner, that the grant of the island is made, not in perpetuity, but merely ‘so long as the Order of Ennodawg shall continue’. But where is the Order now, Mr. Hughes? I think you will not dispute that the monastery is in ruins and has been so for the last fifty years? What has become of its gardens, its cattle, its furnishings? Gone, burned, stolen, decayed. Where are its monks, pray?”

  “In China,” said Mr. Hughes unexpectedly.

  “What?”

  The Marquess, for once, was quite taken aback.

  “In China?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

  “Shortly after the monastery was established, sir, half a dozen monks from the Order departed on missionary work in China. The fact is plainly stated, both in the diary of my great-great-grandfather, who was resident here at the time, acting as bailiff to the community, and also in the town records.”

  “Oh—two hundred years ago,” said the Marquess contemptuously. “And you expect me to believe that they are still alive? Stop trifling with me, I beg. This tedious dispute has lasted quite long enough and is wearying me to death. I do not like you very much Mr. Hughes, I do not like this countryside, or this inn, and I detest this miserable, poverty-stricken little town. Everything about the place is repulsive—the smell, the buildings, the people. There was a boy I saw earlier this evening who reminded me most disagreeably—however that is no concern of yours.—Kindly send up to your place for the harp, Mr. Hughes, before I become impatient.”

  “Permit me, your lordship—one moment.” Ignoring the Marquess’s gathering rage, Mr. Hughes put up a hand. “It is certainly possible that the original monks who went to China are no longer alive, but they must have recruited others to their number.”

  “What gives you cause to think so?” snapped Lord Malyn.

  “I had a letter from my son—like myself a captain in the China seas—dated no longer than ten years ago, from the port of Yngling, in which he clearly reported having met two monks of the Order of St. Ennodawg, Brother Twm and Brother Ianto.”

  The Marquess started and became even paler than usual, but then said silkily,

  “I do not suppose that you have kept this important letter, Mr. Hughes?”

  “On the contrary, sir, I have it here.” Mr. Hughes handed over several sheets of paper embossed with the heading “H.M.S. Thrush.”

  The Marquess took them in hands that trembled. Observing that his lordship’s eyes turned to the roaring fire behind him, Mr. Hughes added with a slight cough,

  “And I have also, sir, back at the museum, a sworn copy of the letter and an affidavit, signed by two deacons and the Reverend Mr. Thomas Edwards, vouching for the original’s being in my son’s handwriting. So you see, my lord, that until the death of Brother Twm and Brother Ianto is established, your lordship has no shadow of a legal claim to the Harp of Teirtu.”

  There was a longish pause.

  Then the Marquess said coldly, “You appear to have worsted me for the moment, Mr. Hughes. Accept my congratulations. However I have no doubt that your triumph will be short-lived—I see from this letter that Brother Twm and Brother Ianto were both reported to be elderly men even then. They may already be dead.—Where is your son now, by the way?”

  “He is missing, my lord. No word has been heard of him or his ship since the Poohoo Province uprising two years ago, in which many whites were slaughtered.”

  “I regret to hear it,” said the Marquess, but he did not sound regretful. “Now, before your departure, Mr. Hughes, you must take a glass of metheglin with me. No, no, I insist—I will accept no refusal. You are wet, I can see—a glass of this cordial will keep the rheums at bay.” He tinkled a small golden handbell. Immediately a door (not that by which Mr. Hughes had entered) flew open, and a man dressed from head to foot in black velvet made his appearance. “Ah, Garble,” the Marquess said carelessly, “bring a glass of your metheglin for Mr. Hughes here, be so good. And tell those two men in the kitchen, Bilk and Prigman, that I shall be wanting them to do an errand for me l
ater this evening. Do you understand me?”

  “Perfectly, my lord,” Garble said coolly. He left the room.

  “My secretary,” the Marquess explained. “A most versatile fellow. He brews this metheglin himself, from sweetbriar, cowslips, primroses, rosemary, sage, borage, bugloss, betony, agrimony, scabious, thyme, sweet marjoram, mustard, and honey. It is a most sovereign remedy against gout, chill, or phlegm.—Thank you, Garble, give the glass to Mr. Hughes.”

  Mr. Hughes sipped and choked.

  “Powerful, is it not?” the Marquess said smoothly. “You should drain it at one draught to experience the full benefit.”

  Mr. Hughes drained the glass and staggered.

  “The old gentleman is not used to strong liquors, I am thinking,” said Garble the secretary, and he caught the half-conscious Mr. Hughes and lowered him to the floor.

  “Well, do not leave him lying in here, man,” Lord Malyn said coldly. “I have no wish to listen to his snores. Get those two men to help you shift him before they leave.”

  Garble stepped to the half-open door.

  “Psst! You there!” he called in an undertone.

  Two men shouldered their way in awkwardly, with a promptness that suggested they had been listening outside, and pulled their forelocks to the Marquess. One was short, stout, and red-faced, with gaps in his teeth, sandy, greasy hair that fell across his forehead in streaks, and a bland, smiling expression. The other, who might have been planned as a contrast, was tall and pale, black-haired, with a mouth like a letter-box and eyes as inexpressive as black beans.

  “Get this tipsy fellow out of here,” Garble ordered them in the same low tone.

  “Where’ll we put him, gaffer? In the street?” the small man asked quietly.

  Garble looked for directions to the Marquess, who had sunk down in a fatigued manner on the sofa.

  “Eh? The street? Certainly not, man. If he were found lying in the street one or another of his fellow-citizens might feel pity for the cross-grained, obstinate old fool and drag him home; in the inn I daresay he can snore all night in some corner. Carry him into one of the public rooms and then be on your way.”