by Bond, Nancy
“Why should I?” asked Gwilym suspiciously.
“Other people around here do. Mr. Evans up at Llechwedd Melyn was telling us about it.”
“Do people in America?”
“Not like that. At least not people we know. They believe in things like witches and exorcism.”
“That’s just because they think it’s fashionable,” Jen broke in irritably. “But it’s not, it’s silly! And the other’s just superstition, not really magic at all, Becky, it’s just in your mind.”
“How do you know?” inquired Peter. “You sound like an expert.”
“Anyone with any sense would say just what I have,” snapped Jen. “Magic is for fairy tales, like Aled said.”
Gwilym looked uncomfortable. “We’ll not see anything if we stand here all morning.” He changed the subject. “We’ll just head up the estuary.”
Peter walked along beside Gwilym agreeably, his thumbs tucked in the straps of his knapsack. He appeared quite unperturbed by Jen’s irritation, which irritated her still further. His moods seemed to change as quickly as the Welsh weather; she wondered what he was up to.
“There,” said Gwilym after a bit. Becky yelped as Jen trod on her toes. “You can’t shout or you’ll scare them,” admonished Gwilym.
“Sorry,” apologized Jen. “What is it?”
“Goldeneye. They’re sea duck. Pretty common, but better than nothing.” Jen could just distinguish a clutch of small white ducks with dark heads on the far side of the river. Behind them the cottages of Aberdovey tumbled down the hillside looking like a toy village.
“And pochard,” reported Gwilym, sweeping the estuary with his glasses. “Whitish with brown heads and dark breasts.”
“What are the big ducks?” asked Becky, pointing.
“Shelduck. Red bills. There are lots of them.”
The names meant nothing to Jen. Gradually they worked their way along the inside of the sandy spit built by the river, gazing dutifully in the direction Gwilym’s binoculars pointed, trying to pick out the tiny specks he had no trouble identifying. All around stretched the hard, ripple-marked tide flats, still puddled with water from the last high tide, which reflected splinters of the morning sky. The wind smelled strongly of salt and wet sand. Jen was surprised to find she was quite happy just ambling behind Gwilym and Becky, her mind empty. Becky chattered on to Gwilym, asking questions, learning birds.
Peter was content, too. It was hard, but he was beginning to learn patience and the day was far from over. The Key lay comfortably warm against him. It, too, was waiting.
It was nine when they stopped beside the river and shared round the turkey sandwiches. Gwilym took out a small notebook and wrote down what they’d seen so far. They sat on an abandoned railroad sleeper, idly watching a boy upstream from them who was puttering about in a little round boat, too far away to be more than just part of the view. Until Gwilym said, pocketing the notebook, “Hullo. He’s got a coracle. You don’t often see them, specially this far north.”
Then, of course, he had to pass around his binoculars again and explain what a coracle was. “A traditional Welsh boat. Used to use them for fishing, made of tanned skins years and years ago. Now they use tarred canvas. Just made to show tourists now mostly. Down to Newquay I’ve seen them, but this is the first I’ve seen on the Dovey.”
The boat was almost bowl-shaped, and the boy in it, roughly dressed with a thatch of curly gold hair, was working intently on something in the water close to the riverbank.
“We can find out what it is when we get up there,” said Becky. None of them could guess what he was doing.
“If we decide to go on up the river,” said Gwilym. “We can do that or start back from here.”
“Follow the river,” said Peter promptly.
Jen was more cautious. She remembered what Hugh-the-Bus had said about Gwilym dragging them too many miles. “How far is it that way?”
“Too far to Machynlleth, but we’ll join up with the road in about six miles and catch a bus back to town if you like. Makes no difference to me whichever, though I’d like a closer look at the coracle myself.”
“Then let’s go on.” Becky agreed with Peter.
“Six miles—” began Jen dubiously.
“But flat,” coaxed Becky. Jen gave in.
However, when they reached the place they’d seen the coracle, the boy had disappeared.
“I did want to see how it worked,” said Becky, disappointed.
“Well, it’s still here,” said Peter. He’d gotten ahead of the others when Gwilym had stopped to look at a flock of knots feeding on the mud. At this information, Jen gave up trying to make anything out of the little dun-colored dots and hurried on with Becky. Peter was standing beside the coracle, which had been left upside down above the high tide line. It looked like a huge black turtle, legs and head drawn into its shell, lying there. It was the same boat they’d seen on the river, and its stiff dark skin was still wet.
“It’s leather,” Peter remarked, touching it. Jen and Becky both felt the coracle. The hide was stretched tight over a basketlike frame: the whole boat couldn’t possibly have held more than one person. Becky lifted an end a few inches off the ground experimentally.
“It’s light. I bet I could carry it. Wouldn’t it be neat to have a boat like this?”
“Put it down,” Jen said quickly. “It isn’t ours and we don’t even know who it belongs to.” The coracle made her distinctly uneasy; it was such an unlikely-looking object to find on an ordinary riverbank.
“I wonder what he was doing with it.” Becky went down to the river’s edge.
“It’s an old one, that,” said Gwilym, joining them. “Made of animal skins, like the ones I told you about.” He inspected it curiously. “It’s in awfully good shape.” It made a hollow sound like a drum when he thumped it gently with his knuckles.
“Hey, Gwilym!” called Becky. “What are those things in the water? Those stick things?” A row of saplings had been cut and carefully stuck upright in the mud of the riverbed. They were set close to each other and woven with brush, and they stretched in a shallow crescent half across the Dovey, horns pointing upstream. Only a foot of the construction showed above the water. “He was working on it.”
Gwilym frowned. “I don’t remember that being here when I was along a fortnight ago.”
“Doesn’t look new,” observed Peter. “What do you think it is?”
“Looks like a fishing weir,” hazarded Gwilym. “Works like a sieve, see. Fish swim against it and can’t get through, then you catch them. I’ve not seen one in this river before.”
“You said that about the coracle,” Peter pointed out. “Do you suppose they used to have them along here?”
“No doubt sometime, but why now? I’ll ask Dad about it. He’d be likeliest to know whose they are. Funny, him not mentioning any such.”
Jen was only too happy to leave the coracle and the weir behind and to concentrate with renewed attention on Gwilym’s birds, flattering him with her interest.
But Becky dropped behind with Peter, still curious about what they’d seen.
“Why would people use a weir instead of nets, Peter? Do you know? It doesn’t seem very practical, does it?”
“Maybe they didn’t have nets when they started using fishing weirs,” suggested Peter.
“But they do now, so why do they need them?”
“Gwilym said the coracle was old,” said Peter carefully. “Maybe the weir was, too.”
“How old do you mean?”
“Just old,” said Peter.
“I wonder if we could make a boat like that. Wouldn’t it be fun? I bet you and Dad could. Jen didn’t like it much, though, you could tell by her face.”
All the way along the river, Peter kept wondering what had become of the boy from the coracle, half afraid, half hoping they’d see him as they walked. But they didn’t. Peter hadn’t gotten much of a look at him, but enough to see he was about Gwilym’s age
and wore a tunic belted with a leather thong. He was confused; somehow his two worlds, some fourteen-hundred years apart, had touched each other, for there was no question in his mind that the boy, the coracle, the weir belonged to the Key.
But the rest of the morning was quite uneventful. By the time they reached the head of the estuary, all four of them were ravenous and a little giddy with the wind and sun and with walking. It was lovely to be tired and to sit and rest against a rough old stone wall beside the road while waiting for the bus.
“Not bad for a morning,” said Gwilym, counting up the list in his notebook. “Would have been better without the wind. It’s too strong for small birds.”
“We saw all those?” exclaimed Becky, peering over his shoulder.
“Well, one of us did,” amended Jen.
“Will you take us again?” Becky wanted to know.
Gwilym looked surprised. “I suppose so, if you’re interested.”
Jen considered him for a moment. Perhaps he wasn’t solitary from choice; it was an interesting thought.
“We could go back in the hills behind Rhian’s farm,” Becky was saying enthusiastically. “Mrs. Evans invited us back any time.”
“Best time for that’s spring,” said Gwilym. “The birds are back and starting to breed then. But there’ll be some up there now, the ones that winter here.”
The bus was as empty on its way back from Machynlleth as it had been starting out that morning.
“Terrible slow day.” Hugh-the-Bus greeted them cheerfully. “If it weren’t for you lot I might as well have stayed in!”
But he could tell them nothing about the weir. He was surprised to hear about it himself. “They’d not have been using them things along the Dovey since before my dada’s time. Our side of the river, you’re saying? No, there is no one in Borth I have heard of building one. Some joke, I am thinking.”
“A lot of work for a joke,” Peter commented.
“Whoever it was built it has a coracle, too, Dad. A proper one made of skins.”
Hugh-the-Bus scratched his head with long, knotted fingers. “That’s a good one, that is. You wouldn’t be making it up now?”
They all assured him they weren’t—they’d all seen the boat and the weir. And Hugh-the-Bus could tell them nothing about either.
***
After lunch and a period of contented collapse, Peter grew restless; he felt the need to be out in the blustery afternoon and walking again. He left Jen absorbed in working out the stitches for a crewel-embroidery pillowcase. It was one of Aunt Beth’s Christmas presents to her. She kept twisting her French knots the wrong way and scowling as she undid them.
But Becky caught her brother at the front door.
“Hey,” she said as he turned the knob. “Where are you going and can I come?”
She wasn’t in Peter’s plans and he was on the verge of saying no when David came downstairs. Peter saw he was trapped. If he refused Becky, there’d be a hassle with his father, and for once he didn’t feel equal to it. Becky was already pulling on her windbreaker. So they walked in silence down to the War Memorial.
“I don’t suppose you really wanted me along,” said Becky bluntly, “but I wanted to talk to you and I can’t inside.”
“Oh? What about?” Peter was only half listening. The Key was humming very quietly under his shirt.
“The things we’ve been seeing. That stuff this morning and the boats yesterday.”
Abruptly, his attention shifted back to her.
“You know more about them than you’ve said,” Becky stated flatly. “They’re connected some way, aren’t they?”
Peter had obviously underestimated Becky. “How do you mean?” he asked guardedly.
“Those boats, for example. They aren’t as simple as Dad claimed. I felt something funny when I looked at them. I think Jen did, too, but she wouldn’t admit it. And again today. Gwilym, too.”
“I don’t think I want to talk about this now,” Peter hedged.
Becky shrugged. “I didn’t think you would, but I want to know.”
They were sitting side by side on the granite base of the monument. Peter took a deep breath. “Do you remember when you asked Gwilym if he believed in magic?”
“Mmm.” Becky waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, she turned to look at him. “What kind of magic do you mean?”
“Not rabbits out of a hat or fairies or saying spells,” said Peter quickly. “I don’t believe in that kind. An older kind than that—things that happen that can’t really be explained. Things you just have to believe in, without knowing why.”
Becky’s eyes narrowed. “That’s like Mr. Evans—Rhian’s father. He believes in that sort—he said so in front of everybody. But the coracle was real, we all touched it. It’s easy to believe in.”
“But how did it get there? Where did it come from? Nobody knows, you heard Hugh-the-Bus say so. And do you think it would still be there if you went back now?”
“Wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” The Key was growing louder; in a minute it would take him. “But I don’t think we’ll find it again.”
Becky stared at him. “Peter—”
He shook his head fiercely. “Not now! I can’t!”
The six Irish boats were not quite a day out to sea. They beat along the Cymric coast against a gale wind. Once around the great northwest point of the Kingdom of Gwynedd, the wind grew even wilder, tearing at the square sails, hurling storms of spray over the men crouched in the boats. Even the Irish, seasoned seamen, felt uneasy, rolling uncontrolled in the heavy seas. In Taliesin’s ship they had made the cargo fast and clung wherever they could find handholds. They were much too preoccupied to notice that the captive had worked his arms free.
Night. And in the darkness, with the wind screaming like the hounds of Arawn, the Dark Lord, they failed to notice the captive had disappeared and with him one of their coracles. . . .
The wind was from the west, blowing up the Dyfi, sweeping the tiny boat over gray seas that had once been dry land, a kingdom surrounded by sea walls. Taliesin lay low, clutching the wicker frame of the craft, drenched and cold, afraid but calm. In his heart was deep sorrow for the son of Urien Rheged, still prisoner of the Irish. He knew he would not see Elphin Rheged again. There was nothing to be done but wait for the coracle to touch land wherever it would and trust he would not be broken on the rocky coast of Cymru.
In the first light of May Day, Taliesin saw his trust upheld, for he had been blown up a wide river and his boat had caught against someone’s fishing weir. The wind dropped with dawn and left him there.
Becky sat absolutely still beside Peter, staring out at the blank windy sea, trying to see whatever it was he saw out there, but the bay was empty to her eyes.
He’d forgotten she was there, until he moved and brushed against her. Then he came to with a start and met her frank, curious gaze. Neither of them spoke, but after a while Peter got up and walked away by himself, down the path toward the beach, a small, lonely figure.
7
* * *
A Harp Key
FOR THE THURSDAY after Christmas, Dr. and Mrs. Rhys had invited all the Morgans to dinner at their house in Aberystwyth. They had six tickets to a harp concert in the church next to the Castle, and David was excited at the chance to hear Howell Roberts.
“One of the best harpists in Wales! And his father before him. Your great-grandfather used to talk of seeing him when he was about Peter’s age. He came to Tredegar,” he told his family.
“I just wonder what dinner at the Rhyses’ will be like,” muttered Peter to Jen.
She hoped desperately that he would behave and not go into one of his peculiar moods. She felt she couldn’t bear another Christmas Eve, especially not in front of strangers. But she needn’t have worried. Peter was quiet but cooperative, excited himself at the idea of the harp concert, though he carefully hid it.
Scrubbed and brushed with great care on the Thursda
y evening, they followed Dr. Rhys’s directions through the maze of little streets behind the Aberystwyth railway station, up the hill to the house called Pen-y-Garth. Its name was spelled out in the wrought iron of its front gate.
Dr. Rhys answered the bell, small and serious in a dark suit and shirt with a high starched collar. “Ah, David! Yes, right on time, you are indeed. Do come in.” He took their coats and passed them on to Mrs. Rhys in the front room. She was not at all what Jen had expected from seeing him. She was large and smiling, with wild gray hair and very blue eyes.
“I’m so glad Gwyn managed to get you all here! I’ve been after him for weeks, you know, but he’s terrible at remembering things like that, I’m afraid. Wonderful on dates several hundred years ago, but quite hopeless about the present! You’ll want to sit close to the fire, I shouldn’t wonder. It’s sharpish out. No trouble finding us? Shall I call you David, shall I? Gwyn couldn’t tell me any other names, so I must ask for myself. Becky, that would be Rebecca, wouldn’t it? And your brother? Peter, and Jennifer. And I’m Marjorie. There.”
Jen and Peter exchanged rather startled glances as Mrs. Rhys swept them all into the sitting room on a flood of words, but Becky was right beside her, grinning happily.
“Now, will you have something to start? Gwyn, do ask what everyone wants to drink whilst I see to the dinner. No, Jennifer, you can’t do a thing, yet. I’ll let you know when I need you, not to worry! I’ve only to check on it now.” When Mrs. Rhys left the room, the silence was overwhelming. It wasn’t that she spoke fast, but she seemed to build up great momentum as she went. Her voice had a lilt to it that was not Welsh.
There were bowls of nuts on the coffee table, and Peter and Becky were soon sipping large glasses of orange squash, but Dr. Rhys won Jen’s heart without even knowing by offering her sherry. She didn’t like it much, but she did like the idea.
The Rhyses’ front room was very like the lounge at Bryn Celyn, a jumble of colors and patterns, but full of paintings and books, large comfortable furniture, a clutter of photographs on the mantle, and a cheerful coal fire in the grate. It was a used, personal room.