A String in the Harp

by Bond, Nancy

  “Whew,” she panted thankfully.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Coming after you.”

  “Why?” Peter made no attempt to sound welcoming.

  “I wanted to talk to you. And,” she added frankly, “I wanted to know where you go off to.”

  “That’s really my business, though, isn’t it.” He started out along the path.

  “I suppose so.” Becky followed undiscouraged.

  “What about?” asked Peter after a moment.

  “Hmmm?”

  “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  “Well, it’s kind of hard to tell you to your back. It would be much easier if we could sit down somewhere. Do you mind?”

  Peter said nothing, but in another five minutes he turned off the path and climbed over the scrub into a little hollow almost at the cliff’s edge. The two of them sat down side by side on a flat boulder out of the wind. Peter waited.

  Becky sighed. “It’s just that I thought you should know Jen went to see Dr. Rhys last week.”

  “So?”

  “About your Key.”

  Peter went very still. “She told him?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she had no right to! It’s nothing to do with her—she doesn’t want it to be.”

  “That’s just it. She doesn’t like it, it bothers her.”

  “How can it? She doesn’t believe in it.”

  Becky shook her head.

  “And Dr. Rhys told her I was crazy or making up a story.” Peter’s hand clenched around a bracken stem.

  “But that’s the strange part,” said Becky. “That’s what I really wanted to tell you—he didn’t say that at all. He said it might be true.”

  Peter looked at his sister coldly. “I know it’s true. You didn’t have to come out here to tell me. I don’t care about Dr. Rhys.”

  “Well, you should,” retorted Becky. “This is important. It isn’t like me saying I believe you, or even Jen. This is Dr. Rhys. He’s old and he’s a professor and people listen to him, Peter. He’s studied Welsh history and he knows all about your Taliesin. He was interested.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Mmm. Jen made me go, too. Dr. Rhys told us the story of Taliesin, how he washed ashore near here, and saved the King’s son—what was his name?”

  “Elphin.” Peter was listening now, his eyes wary but with a glint of excitement.

  “Taliesin rescued Elphin from the king of the north by asking a riddle that no one could answer.”

  The bracken stem broke in Peter’s fingers and he twisted it thoughtlessly. In a strange, distant voice he said,

  Guess who it is.

  Created before the flood.

  A creature strong,

  Without flesh, without bone,

  Without veins, without blood,

  Without head, and without feet.

  It will not be older, it will not be younger

  Than it was in the beginning.

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  And it is as wide

  As the face of the earth,

  And it was not born,

  And it has not been seen.

  It, on sea, it, on land,

  It sees not, it is not seen.

  “I know!” cried Becky suddenly. “The wind, Dr. Rhys said it was the wind! But how do you know the riddle?”

  Peter shook his head. “I just do. Taliesin called it and the wind came into Maelgwn’s great hall and blew out all the torches.” The distance left him abruptly. “It’s in the book, you know.”

  “If Jen really thought you were making all of this up,” said Becky slowly, “I don’t think it would bother her nearly so much. It’s not being sure that upsets her and that’s why she had to go to Dr. Rhys.”

  Peter looked skeptical, but Becky continued. “She hasn’t said a word about it since we saw him, and before that she kept trying to convince me the story wasn’t true.”

  “What did Dr. Rhys say then?”

  “That it wasn’t impossible. He was very nice you know, Peter.”

  All round were the great, endless sounds of wind and ocean. Peter stared out at the gray restlessness beyond their hollow. “What about Dad?” he said at last. “Did she tell him, too?”

  “No, he doesn’t know about any of this, not even about our going to see Dr. Rhys. Jen won’t say anything and neither will I.” She read Peter’s thoughts with disturbing ease. “Jen didn’t send me after you.”

  “At first I thought she’d help,” said Peter with a sigh.

  “She’s afraid.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Are you?”

  “Sometimes,” he admitted with sudden relief. “It gets so strong—and it isn’t always very easy.”

  “Tell me,” Becky demanded, her eyes steady on his face. “Tell me.”

  And haltingly, Peter began. Words weren’t much good for describing the Key and its singing, he discovered. It was difficult to explain what happened when the songs came; how it felt to be pulled out of his own time and plunged into another, but as he talked he relaxed. By telling Becky, he found he could put the pieces together better himself, he saw the way they fit. And Becky listened raptly, working to follow him.

  “Sometimes the song is very strong, and then it fades away. It’s been strong lately, and the other night . . .”

  “But you don’t really go anywhere.”

  Peter shook his head. “Only inside myself. But I see these things so clearly. The night of the storm when I saw the flood—well, it was pretty awful.”

  “But the storm really happened,” said Becky. “I mean, it happened to us at the same time. And we saw the coracle, too, and the men on Foel Goch, and the lights on the Bog. How could we? I didn’t hear any singing.”

  “I’m not sure,” Peter replied, frowning. “It’s almost as if the time we’re in and that other time get crossed. But Dr. Rhys said this is Taliesin’s country, and the things you’ve all seen really did happen here—that must be the connection, Becky. The Key is strongest when it shows me things that happened here, and maybe it’s so strong it affects you, too. Everybody.”

  “Do you think it really could do that?”

  Peter drew the Key out from around his neck, and they looked at it.

  “I don’t suppose it would work for me,” Becky said with a trace of envy.

  “Here.” Peter took the chain off and handed it to her. “What does it feel like to you?”

  She took it in her cupped hands and sat still as though listening. “It’s warm,” she said after a moment.

  “From being inside my shirt.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Well?”

  “It feels—it feels as if it’s about to move, as if it’s alive almost. But I don’t hear anything.” Reluctantly she handed it back. “Dr. Rhys would know about it, he could tell you what it is.”

  But Peter said impatiently, “I don’t need him to tell me, it’s telling me. I didn’t see at first, but the songs fit together in order. The first time I saw Taliesin he was my age and now he’s more Dad’s. He’s getting older—it’s his life. Do you believe that?”

  “I think I do. At least I don’t not believe it.”

  The air was cold and they were cold sitting still, though they hadn’t noticed until now. Becky got up and stamped her feet to get the blood running again.

  “Are you going back?” asked Peter, pulling his hands up his jacket sleeves. “It isn’t late.”

  “You mean Dad won’t get mad for another hour or two.” Becky grinned.

  But instead of retorting, Peter grinned, too, a bit sheepishly. “I just thought that if you wanted—well—I could show you where I found the Key. The tide’s out and you could see the wall.”

  “Really? The drowned cities? Oh, yes!”

  Peter set off south along the path. He knew it well and could go fast and Becky had to trot to keep up. To their right was the plunge of the cliffs down to a slat
e-colored sea; to the left were open wild-grown moors, seamed with stone walls and dotted with sheep and boulders. Now and again they had to climb a stile to cross one of the walls.

  At last Peter paused at the edge of the little valley he had first found in December, and Becky came up beside him. She looked down in delight. “How beautiful! Wouldn’t it be neat to have a little house like that with your own beach?”

  “And hundreds of tourists walking through your front yard in the summer,” said Peter dryly. “But over there’s the wall. See?”

  Straight out from the sand it ran, a tumble of huge granite blocks, straight out into the waves.

  “This is Cantrev y Gwaelod,” said Peter, “the Low Hundred.”

  12

  * * *

  Cardiff

  DAVID HAD NEWS for his family on Monday. He was going to Cardiff Thursday to do some business at the University there that he’d been putting off too long, and he was taking all three of them with him. He slapped the four bus tickets down on the kitchen table at tea.

  “A city!” Becky’s eyes lit up. “And a day off from school!”

  “Shops!” breathed Jen rapturously. “Real department stores.”

  “We’ll all go into shock,” declared Peter. “After months and months of Aber, we won’t know how to behave!”

  “Well,” said David with a grin, “if you think it’s too dangerous . . .”

  “Not a chance!” Becky shook her head emphatically.

  “Watch it!” exclaimed Jen. “You got your hair in the milk, idiot. It’ll be wonderful. Is Cardiff nice?”

  David laughed outright. “Do you care? From the sound of you, I’d guess it doesn’t much matter what the place is like. But Gwyn Rhys says we’ll like it. There’s a park and a castle and a terrific museum.”

  “And stores.”

  “So Mrs. Rhys says. Good ones.”

  Thursday couldn’t come fast enough. Cardiff was a real adventure, unknown and exciting; there was a feeling of holiday at Bryn Celyn all week. Even Peter was eager for the trip, though he tried to hide it when he remembered to.

  Hugh-the-Bus had the first run to Aberystwyth Thursday morning, and he greeted the Morgans cheerfully when he stopped for them in the early grayness.

  “You’re early, aren’t you? Off on a toot, is it?”

  “Cardiff,” Becky announced.

  “Oh, aye. All of you, then. That is a toot! Happen you’ll have fine weather south of yere. I was to Cardiff once my own self—what was it? Three years come October, it was.”

  “Did you like it?” Becky wanted to know.

  Hugh-the-Bus shrugged. “Glad to be home, me. Mind you, there’s many can’t get enough of it, and it is a fine city. You’ll like it, I shouldn’t wonder.” He winked encouragingly. “Saw a football match there, I did.”

  The day-excursion coach was waiting at the station when they got to Aberystwyth; it was already half full: women dressed in sober best for shopping with gloves and hats, a few weathered old men in overcoats and cloth caps, and a handful of rather scruffy students.

  It was the first time any of the Morgans had gone south out of Aberystwyth, the road was new and they all looked avidly at the unimaginative, raw, new, row houses of Penparcau and the open farm country beyond. Once around the brooding bulk of Pen Dinas with its tower, the land rolled comfortably past the bus windows in long, swelling humps: green and stitched with hedgerows and lines of wind-bent trees. Sheep and cattle filled the fields. For the first fifteen miles or so the road followed the coast and often there were sweeping views out over the blunt cliffs to the sea.

  In Aberaeron it was drizzling; a few people got off, a few got on, then the bus swung out of the harbor town, starting inland.

  “It flattens right out,” said Jen in surprise. “All the mountains are gone.”

  “There are a few in the south, but not like the ones above the Dovey,” David told them. “There are mountains in the coal country. But it certainly looks different.”

  In what seemed a very short time, they reached the sprawl of the industrial suburbs of Swansea and Cardiff: rows and rows of houses with tiny front gardens, then factories. The country vanished. Peter pointed out that they had just driven down half of Wales in about two hours.

  The bus terminal in Cardiff was overwhelming. After weeks in Borth and Aberystwyth, the sudden explosion of people, traffic, and noise was alarming.

  “I feel like a real country girl!” Jen exclaimed.

  “Well, if you’d close your mouth and stop staring—” said Peter and sidestepped neatly as her elbow shot out.

  “Hey,” said David. He was frowning at a map of the city he’d taken out of one of his pockets. “Stop slanging each other and be useful. I have to figure out where we are.”

  They clustered around the unwieldy sheet, searching for the terminal. David was notoriously bad at map-reading. Anne had always been navigator for her husband, shaking her head sadly over his attempts.

  “There!” said Becky after a moment. “You are here.” She pointed in triumph.

  “Where?”

  “There. That pie-shaped thing that says Bus Sta.”

  “Ah.” David nodded. “Okay, we want to get there—to the green part. That’s the park, and the Castle and University are right near it. Can you find them?”

  “That way,” said Peter. “See? Down that street and up St. Mary’s Street.”

  David nodded. “Mmm. I see.”

  In the end he asked an obliging bus conductor, who sent them off through the right exit with a grin, pleased that he had correctly identified them as Americans. “Not from Florida, are you? My wife’s cousins moved to Florida.”

  A watery sun shone on the streets of Cardiff. Choked with people, taxis, cars, and buses, they were beautiful. The air smelled of damp cement and diesel exhaust, and the shop windows were full of fascinating things to look at: shoes, clothes, books, candy, toys. They made very erratic progress along the sidewalk, dodging crowds and peering in shops.

  At a street corner, David caught them together. “Just don’t come all apart on me! If I lose one of you along here, I’ll probably never find you again, and I don’t want to spend the rest of the day in the Cardiff police station waiting for you to turn up!”

  “There’s so much to see!” exclaimed Becky.

  “Light’s changed,” said Peter, and they were off again.

  David gave them each money to spend, and there were practical things like clothes and shoes to buy, so it was noon before they finally reached the top of High Street and saw the walls of Cardiff Castle across the traffic. They all clutched bundles and were ravenous for lunch. David found a Golden Egg restaurant and ordered everyone an omelet and chips.

  “Indigestible no doubt,” he remarked, shaking vinegar on his chips. “I don’t know why we never thought of vinegar on French fries in the U.S.”

  “And omelets for lunch,” said Jen.

  “What do we do after this?” asked Peter, finishing his orange soda.

  “My money’s gone.” Becky looked fondly at her pile of paper bags. She’d bought a jigsaw puzzle and three Famous Five mysteries as well as a practical thick blue cardigan.

  “I’m going to steer you over to the Castle and leave you to look around, I think,” said David, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got to do my business at the University, and I don’t think you want to sit in a stuffy office somewhere. Then I’ll meet you at the museum, which is—” He spread out the map.

  “National Museum,” Peter read off. “Right there. We can find that easily.”

  “Gwyn gave me the name of a man there—hang on—here it is, Dr. John Owen. Gwyn’s written to him, and he’ll show us around and tell us about the best exhibits. They were at University together, I think. I’ll meet you on the steps at three.”

  ***

  Cardiff Castle was in much better repair than the castle in Aberystwyth. It had a moat around its walls, full of grass now instead of water, but you had to cross on
a drawbridge just the same. A man sitting inside the gate sold tickets; beyond him was a wide grassy courtyard, scattered with canvas deck chairs. A few determined figures, well-wrapped in coats and scarves, sat in the sun. David left Jen, Becky, and Peter to explore and strode off toward the University buildings.

  “What a neat place to live,” said Becky, looking around in delight. “It looks just the way a castle ought to.”

  “Right out of King Arthur,” Jen agreed.

  “Except that King Arthur never lived in a castle like this,” said Peter.

  “How do you know?” demanded Becky.

  “He was dead hundreds and hundreds of years before this was built.”

  “You knew him personally, I suppose,” said Jen dryly.

  Instead of getting cross as she expected, Peter just shook his head patiently. “The real King Arthur was a Welsh chieftain probably.”

  “How do you know?” repeated Becky.

  “Dr. Rhys’s books,” was the answer. “There’s quite a lot about King Arthur in one of them. I’ll show you when we get back to Borth, if you want.”

  “Thanks,” said Jen. “I like my illusions.”

  “Let’s not just stand here talking,” suggested Becky. “Let’s go inside.”

  “You go,” said Peter. “The old part’s out here—the walls. I want to look at it.”

  Jen gave her brother a hard look. She was faintly irritated by his unexpected fund of information. He knew too much.

  “Stay out here, then. Becky and I are going inside; we’ll meet you later.”

  Peter nodded agreeably and went wandering off across the smooth lawn toward the steep green mound in the far corner. It had a small fortress on top. He was well-content to be left to himself for a while. The Castle was familiar, he recognized the lie of it—oh, not as it looked now, peaceful and civilized—but as an earthwork fort, a network of dykes and ridges and rough timber huts. Taliesin had passed through it on his way southeast to the great Court of Caerleon. Then it was alive with cattle and dogs and chickens, inhabited by the fierce, strong people of Cymru, who had here mixed their blood with the last of the Romans, producing handsome, dark children.