by Pauline Fisk
‘You always were a dreamer – and a fool!’ a new voice said.
They turned around – and there was Old Sabrina! She sat propped like a broken doll against the chimney pots, her feet stuck out beneath her skirt like bits of perished rubber, her clothes tattered and soaked, her eyes as flat as stitched-on buttons, and her head twisted at a funny angle as she looked out over the flood.
The Chadman saw her – and the smile froze on his face.
‘Well may you look like that!’ she burst out. ‘You cruel deceiver, you – thick with lies and syrup-promises! Look what you have done! All these years far from my mountain! And all these years without my child! Never laughing, always grieving. Never dreaming that I might find her. And now I have, and it’s too late!’
Old Sabrina glared at the Chadman from underneath her mop of bird’s-nest hair. She could have killed him with a look. And, glaring back, he could have killed her too.
‘Look what you’ve done to me! All those years trapped in those ruins, knowing I could never get away. Never have the chance to make a fresh start. And growing older by the day and week and year! And when I do escape at last – here you are! Witch! Bitch! Daughter of Plynlimon – I knew from the first day that I’d never get away from you!’
The Chadman shook – a bag of bones rattling with rage. Old Sabrina turned her bitter face away.
‘Tell your father that I won’t forgive him,’ she said, addressing Abren. ‘Tell him it’s too much to ask. I won’t forgive what I can’t forget. And I can’t forgive what I won’t forget!’
It was like a trap, and Old Sabrina caught in it.
‘Tell Effrildis that I don’t want forgiveness!’ the Chadman said, addressing Abren too. ‘Not now, after all these years. I would have given anything for it once, but it’s too late. All I want is to be left alone!’
Abren’s mother snorted. ‘Tell your father that there is no Effrildis! Not any more. Tell him that she’s gone, and now there’s only Old Sabrina!’
As she spoke, the wind blew into her, tugging the hair back from her face so that what she had become was plain to see. The Chadman looked into her face, bleached white with pain and age and misery. He flinched, and stepped back.
‘Tell your mother that I’m not responsible for this. I never meant to harm her. If I deceived her, I only did it for love!’
Old Sabrina drew in her breath. ‘Love!’ she hissed. ‘You did it for love? Why, tell your father that TRUE LOVE NEVER LIES!’
For a moment, Abren thought that the old woman would hurl herself across the roof and start a fight. But then the storm did it for her. It came sweeping along the roof to send them crashing into each other like weapons of war. They would have destroyed each other, sliding down the roof, locked in battle, if Abren hadn’t realised what was about to happen. She got between them, grabbing her mother on one side of her and her father on the other – and clung on to them for dear life.
And they clung on to her too – desperately holding their daughter as the wind tried to drive her off the roof. And she was safe between them because they’d never, ever, let her go. Not again. And suddenly, despite themselves, despite their crazy, mixed-up feelings and the past that lay behind them and the things they couldn’t forgive – they were a family!
They were Abren’s family! Maybe not the one she’d hoped for, but hers all the same. She held them as if nothing could ever prise them apart – not the flood beneath them, nor the mountain man, nor the legend built around their lives calling for a tragic ending. Not even Gwendolina’s curse could prise them apart, for they were breaking it right now, locked together in something far deeper than an embrace.
Abren knew what they had done as soon as the wind dropped. She looked up. The rain was drying in the sky and the clouds were rolling away like BC boys who’d been stood up to. Beneath her, the waves began to still, and the swollen flood waters calmed into a vast silver sea.
Abren cried out in astonishment. All around her – from towers to rooftops and attic windows – the people of Pengwern cried out too. And Abren knew that she would never forget them. Never forget this moment, which they shared together.
She turned to share it with her parents too – with Effrildis and the king of Pengwern. But the roof was empty. She stood alone. Her mother had gone, and so had her father. The past had passed on, leaving nothing but a handful of dust settling on the chimney pots like debris from a storm.
Abren took it up, rubbing it between her fingers. Just a pinch of dust, but she felt it full of life and stories, memories and peace at last. It was all that she had left of the past. But it was enough.
The upriver trow
The morning stars melted and the sunrise edged over the rim of the sky. The swollen river shone like a sapphire in the first pale light, and Abren sat high above it, between the chimney pots. She would never know where the river ended, twisting out of sight. Her journey was over. She didn’t belong here in this new day. She had done what she was meant to do. There were no curses to keep her here any longer.
Abren rubbed the feathered edge of her blanket against her cheek, looking at its embroidery. Had Effrildis realised, she wondered, that when she’d stitched her daughter’s blanket she had charted out her life? Here it all was, the mountains and rivers, the birds and trees – even the town of Pengwern, rising like an island in the river’s horseshoe loop.
And now it all was over. Abren waited to turn to dust, just like her mother had done, and her father, the king of Pengwern. They hadn’t lived to see the sun come up over their town. But here it suddenly was – and the whole town was cheering as if seizing the perfect moment for a celebration. Maybe not with fireworks in the Quarry Park, toasting the sun with tea and coffee rather than champagne. But a better celebration than any stroke of midnight could ever be! For they were toasting new life, and the passing into legend of a moment which schoolchildren would write poems about one day.
But none of them would know what had really happened here in Pengwern, any more than the TV cameras knew, circling overhead, thinking that they’d seen it all. For what they knew was all they’d seen – a cloud of birds doing something odd on a day when nature was freakish anyway. They didn’t know that what had happened here was a miracle of hope against all odds, and freedom not to hate.
A bell rang out. A solitary bell – and surely rung by Fee! Now would be the moment when Abren turned to dust. She braced herself. This surely was it – the bell of history tolling for her, and the words it tolled were:
‘Time for home, don’t you think?’
When Abren finally realised that a voice was calling her, she looked down. There sat Sir Henry, bobbing in his coracle.
‘Anyone would think you liked it up there among the chimney pots! Come on! Can’t you hear me? I said time for home!’
He put aside his paddle and held out a pair of long, skinny arms. Abren looked at them, and knew they wouldn’t let her go. She looked into Sir Henry’s eyes, full of laughter, as ever, and suddenly she knew that not all stories ended at the perfect moment, with the whole town cheering and church bells ringing.
She slid down the roof, crash-landing in the coracle. Sir Henry caught her, set her on the seat beside him, and started paddling through the waters, steering a course for Compass House. They passed submerged pubs and shops, scarcely recognisable by their roofs and chimney pots, passed the castle and the library and the old town cross, reached the old town walls and started along them.
Here the flood waters had retreated, and they could walk along the narrow pavement – Sir Henry with his coracle slung over his back, waddling like a giant turtle, and Abren carrying the paddle. The walls were silent, with not a car about and only the first few people venturing out. They reached Compass House and the tidemark on its wall showed how far the flood had risen. Sir Henry opened the front door, and to Abren’s relief, the hall was just as fresh and bright as usual.
The same, however, couldn’t be said for the kitchen at the back, which was b
rown and slimy, and stank. The waters had gone down, but it looked bereft. Everything of value had been dragged upstairs, the curtains had been hoicked up on their poles, the stove was out and the warm, humming room – once the heart of the house – was like a silent ghost.
‘Where’s Pen? Why’s everything so quiet? Where’s Phaze II?’ Abren asked.
‘They’re in the garden.’
Sir Henry gave Abren a funny look. It was almost as if something terrible had happened and he didn’t know how to tell her. She dashed outside. The garden lay under water, right up to the top terrace. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
‘Where are they?’ she cried in a panic.
Sir Henry smiled for an answer, and gave her another funny look. He threw his coracle down on to the water and said, ‘You’d better get back in.’
Abren did as she was bidden. Her heart was thundering. They paddled out across the garden, and if something terrible had happened, Sir Henry was remarkably calm about it. He even paused to show Abren how to manoeuvre the coracle by herself, holding the paddle straight in front of her and twisting the wooden knob at the top.
It was an effort at first, and the coracle spun like a corkscrew. But then Abren got the knack and they began to move forwards in a gentle dipping motion, drawing level with a cluster of trees which had their roots deep down in the hidden lawn. Suddenly, between the trees and in the place where the boat shed should have been, riding high upon the water – Abren saw a boat.
It wasn’t one of Sir Henry’s coracles, nor one of the dumpy river cruisers washed up by the flood. It was a sailing boat. An old-fashioned wooden vessel made of painted planks, its flat hold lying in the water, its single mast rising into the morning sky.
Abren shivered at the sight of it. The boat was like another jigsaw piece falling into place. She pulled round her blanket, and there was its perfect match – there, embroidered by her mother, as if to say that her story wasn’t over yet!
Abren turned back to the boat, and a figure rose up on the deck. It was Phaze II. He half-smiled at her, and she half-smiled back, thinking that he didn’t look like a lost puppy as he had done when she’d last seen him, with all the stuffing knocked out. But neither did he look like what he had once been – a wild boy, creeping through the darkness in a ragged black coat.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he called. ‘Aren’t you coming on board?’
Abren didn’t need to be asked again! She clambered on board, with Pen to help her up as well as Phaze II. They showed her everything, from foredeck to aft, and from crew cabins to the master’s one, with its little window looking into the hold, its cupboard-berths and its little stove.
‘Where did you get this boat? Did you make it?’ Abren said.
‘I didn’t make her, I repaired her. And she’s not a boat, she’s a trow,’ Sir Henry said. ‘An upriver trow, and the very last of them, restored in memory of the days when Sabrina Fludde was the queen of rivers. Half a lifetime’s work, I hate to admit – but she’s finished at long last! I never thought I’d see the day. And I certainly never thought the river would launch her like this – single-handedly!’
He showed them what the river had done, smashing down the boat shed and sweeping away everything but his precious trow. Abren asked if she had a name. He looked her straight in the eye, and said there could be only one – and that the name which she’d had all along:
‘The Princess of Pengwern.’
Elvers
They would set off on their maiden voyage after breakfast, Sir Henry said, and prove his armchair critics wrong about sailing on a silty river which wasn’t deep enough. Pen returned to the house in the coracle, to fetch them provisions. Sir Henry found a pair of missing side-sheets on the water, and a massive paddle – which he called a sweep – without which, apparently, no river journey could be made in safety.
Before they set out, he gathered his little novice crew around him for a basic lesson in trowmanship. The Princess of Pengwern was like a tree, he said. Her hull was her root, digging down in the dark, her mast the trunk, her yard the branches, and her sails – or sheets – the leaves shaking in the breeze. Her foredeck stood at the front, or bow, and her aft deck at the back, or stern. Port was left, and starboard right.
Then he showed them how to raise and lower the anchor, loose the ropes which lowered the mast, and steer using the tiller. Talked about wind, and how to turn the square-rigged sail, and about the current, and how the sweeps would help them not to run aground.
He also showed them how to put on life-jackets, and while they were busy tying each other into knots, he released the bowline and poled the Princess of Pengwern round so that she could start her journey stern first, trailing the anchor to slow them down until they’d got used to the fast-flowing river. Then he called that the day was getting on and they should leave immediately.
Just as they were departing, however, Bentley appeared. He climbed over the side gate and ran along the terrace, waving his arms and shouting in anguish, ‘Don’t go without me, Abren! Not again!’
He had a point. Abren laughed at him and waved back, pleading with Sir Henry, who gave in at her insistence and fetched Bentley in his coracle. Abren marvelled that he’d known about them setting sail. He laughed back at her.
‘Everybody knows!’ he said. ‘Look up at the town walls. What else has anybody got to do until the flood goes down?’
Abren looked up, and the walls were crammed with silent figures waiting for the moment when the Princess of Pengwern would set off. At the sight of them all, Sir Henry grew inches taller. He was the master of a trow! He had a full complement of crew members and every needful provision. And not only that, but the weather promised fair.
They waved goodbye to Pengwern, and Sir Henry untied the last rope so that the little trow could inch out into the water. Suddenly the figures on the town walls were silent no more. The last trow on a river which had once been full of them! They clapped and cheered and waved. Abren could see even Mena waving, and Fee piped them out, wearing his Paddy McBytheway hat.
Abren smelt adventure up ahead. She looked at all the people honouring the days when the river had been a busy thoroughfare. They’d come to remember the past, but something new was happening, too. And only she knew.
Abren shivered. The little trow dipped her mast to pass beneath first the crowded English Bridge, then the dark underbelly of the railway bridge. More quickly than she could ever have imagined, Pengwern lay behind her. The mast arose again, as if the trow were waving goodbye, and Abren felt as if the whole town were waving back – not just the people on the bridges, but the trees and houses, churches and cinemas, schools and pubs and old town walls.
She turned away reluctantly, and suddenly a new world waited for her – one that she’d only ever glimpsed from the girders, and now here it was. The Princess of Pengwern moved downriver as if taking possession. And no matter that the waters beyond the town were choppy and full of hidden currents, Abren felt as if she were taking possession too. She dipped between banks on a roller-coaster of a ride, while Sir Henry yelled commands and the trow bobbed and careered in her clumsy novice hands.
She laughed and panicked, slipped and fell, despaired and wept with sheer exhilaration. It was the start of a long and exhausting day. On a straight stretch of the river, she helped turn the yard to face the wind so that the Princess of Pengwern could show them what she was capable of. It was a marvellous moment – the square sail full and the trow racing downriver.
They sailed into a gorge with the wind behind them, and out again, across open waters where the swollen waters formed a massive lake, under cliffs and around sand banks which lay unmarked on Sir Henry’s charts.
Past boatmen’s inns they sailed, where poachers once had sold ill-gotten salmon in the porch; along lonely stretches of river where the only signs of life were wild spring flowers and budding willows; past riverside houses with gardens still under flood-water; past farmland and woodland, hills and roads, villa
ges and towns.
Sometimes the river was easy, and all they had to do was follow it. But sometimes it was wild, and they had to drop the sail, lower the anchor, man the sweeps – and hope for the best!
‘You think this is tricky!’ Sir Henry yelled. ‘But this is nothing compared to what you’ll feel when you meet the fickle currents of the Severn Sea!’
Night approached and despite all efforts to the contrary, they were still afloat. Sir Henry brought the Princess of Pengwern into a quiet, tree-lined haven where he leapt on to the bank and fastened them at bow and stern. Darkness fell, the moon rose over them and the river carried on its way, silvery and magical.
Bentley sat in the bow, playing the saxophone. Sir Henry smoked a coltsfoot pipe. Phaze II disappeared, off on a walk somewhere, and it fell to Abren to stoke the stove and turn tinned meat, beans and carrots into a one-pot stew. Eventually, Pen came down to the cabin to help her. She was unusually quiet, and an awkwardness hung between them. Abren knew what was the matter, but didn’t know how to put it right. She had a story to tell. She owed it to them, and it hung between them like a shadow. Things she’d done, and things she’d found out about herself. But she couldn’t find the words to start.
She left the one-pot stew simmering, and went off on a walk too, jumping on to the bank and slipping between the trees. Back upriver she could see a house which they must have passed some time ago. It was the only one in sight and she sauntered towards it, drawn by its small squares of yellow light. The moon shone down on her, and she watched the shapes it cast upon the water, so lost in thought that she didn’t see the man until they’d almost walked into each other.
He was coming from the direction of the house, striding through the long grass and humming to himself. But Abren didn’t even hear him either, and if it hadn’t been for the familiar smell of coltsfoot she mightn’t have noticed him until it was too late.
But she caught a whiff and looked up, expecting to find Sir Henry out walking too. And there was the man, right in front of her. A long white stem stuck out of his mouth, and a wisp of smoke curled out of its clay bowl. He smiled without taking the pipe out of his mouth – an old man, as small as a child, wearing a pinstripe suit with a waistcoat, watch and chain.