to the Far Blue Mountains (1976) Read online

  "I shall not marry an Indian. I shall marry an Englishman or perhaps a Welshman."

  Then we forded a stream and rode up a narrow pass between rocks, and when night came we were in a wild and mysterious land, a place of long shadows and great rocky battlements and rushing cold streams and rich green grass around hard black rocks that shone like ice in the dim light of the after-sunset. It was a primeval landscape. Suddenly, they came upon us, a dozen or more of them. Wild, uncouth creatures, some clad in skins, some in rags, wild, mad things wielding all manner of weapons.

  They came up from the rocks where they had lain in wait. Screaming wildly, they came down upon us. Lila drew her sword and wheeled her horse to meet them. I tried to yell that flight was our best chance, but she was beyond hearing. She did not scream, but yelled some wild Welsh shout, and light caught the flashing blade of her sword as she swept on toward them.

  I barely had time to draw and fire a pistol, and then she was among them.

  But what had happened? After her wild Welsh yell they had suddenly frozen, mouths wide to scream, staring at her. Then as one man, or woman, for their were women among them, they fled.

  Her sword reached one, I think, before they were gone into the rocks from which they came. Then Lila wheeled her horse, towering in her stirrups, and shouted after them, a hoarse, challenging cry.

  Her sword was bloody and she leaned from her saddle and thrust it into a hummock of earth and moss, once ... twice. Then she sheathed it.

  Awed, I led us away up the trail to where it went through a pass in the mountains, and she followed quietly.

  Later, when the road widened, we rode side by side. "What did you say that frightened them when you called out?" I asked.

  "It does not matter."

  "It was a curious thing. They stopped as if struck, then they fled as if all the terrors were upon them."

  "Indeed, they would have been. They well knew when to fly. That lot! I have heard stories of them! Poor, misbegotten, inbred creatures that live in caves and murder innocent travelers. The soldiers have come for them a dozen times, but they disappear. Nobody finds them ... at least no Englishman."

  She was silent then, and I as well. More than two hours had passed since we had seen even the slightest sign of life, and nothing at all but the wild mountains and the rushing cold streams and the rocks that lay like chunks of iron on every hand.

  "There's a cottage yon," she said, pointing ahead.

  "You have been this way before?"

  "No."

  "You are from Anglesey, Lila, and you spoke of Druids."

  "Did I now?"

  "It is said there are people on Anglesey who have the gift."

  She rode on, offering no reply. We were ascending a pass through wild, heavily forested hills. Suddenly it came to me.

  "This is the pass from Bettws-y-Coed!"

  She turned her head. "You know it? You have not been to Wales before?"

  "I have not. Is this the pass?"

  "It is." Now it was her turn to be curious. "How did you know?"

  I was not exactly sure, only somehow it had come upon me. "I was told of it once ... long ago."

  "And so you know it in the dark?" For night had fallen.

  "I was told of how it looked in the dark, and how it ... felt."

  She looked at me again, but now we were approaching a high place in the pass, and down the far slope we saw something white against the blackness, and then a dog barked.

  "The cottage," she said. "We will stop there, I think."

  "As you will. It is better than the damp hills and the rocks."

  "They are Welsh hills," she said sternly, "and Welsh rocks."

  Our horses had been growing more and more weary as we moved on, and now as they saw the faint glow of light from a window, they moved forward eagerly. At the door I dismounted while a huge dog barked viciously, his hair on end, teeth bared.

  Lila spoke sharply to him in Welsh and he cringed and moved back, but snarled still. We heard the sound of a bar being removed, then a voice spoke from a crack. "Go away! The place is closed!"

  Lila spoke sharply and the door crack widened and a girl thrust her head out.

  "Who is it that speaks thus?" she demanded, in English, then added a word in Welsh.

  "We have traveled far, and have far yet to go," I said quietly. "It is myself and a woman."

  "Are you wed, then?"

  "We are not," I said. "She is a friend to my betrothed."

  "Hah!" The door opened wider. "Then the more of a fool is your betrothed to let you out upon the Welsh hills with another woman. De'il would I be so generous!"

  Lila had stepped down from the horse and she towered above the girl in the door.

  "We would eat and sleep here," she said, "and have our horses fed."

  It was spacious enough inside, a wide room with a low ceiling and a stone-flagged floor, washed clean enough to eat from, which was not all that common.

  There was good furniture about and a fire on the hearth, and beside the hearth an old man smoking a pipe. A churn stood in a comer near a sideboard with several rows of dishes.

  The girl, seen in the light inside, was dark and pretty, with quick black eyes and lovely lips. "Come," she said, "sit and be rested. My brother will see to your horses."

  She looked again at Lila. "You look Welsh," she said.

  "I am from Angelsey," Lila replied.

  They eyed each other, taking a measure, respectful but wary.

  "He speaks of me as a friend," Lila said. "I am in service to the one who will be his bride. She is on her way to America. We go to her now."

  The girl looked at me, hands on hips. Then she said, "We've eaten, but there's a bit of bread and cheese and I'll scrape about and see what else."

  The old man looked at me thoughtfully. "You are also Welsh?"

  "English," I said.

  "Ah? I would have said you were Welsh."

  Lila turned and looked directly at me. "Who was your mother?"

  "I know little of her, only that she was gentle, very beautiful, and that my father rescued her from some pirates in the western isles, and that she had told him she was not frightened because she knew he was coming for her."

  "She knew?" Lila looked at the old man, and the girl, who had come back into the room, had stopped also, listening.

  "Aye." I loved that part of the story. "Father said she was very calm, and she told one of the men who started to lay hands upon her that he would die before the hour was gone, and he stopped, and they all stopped, frightened.

  "One of the others then asked her, sneering, 'And I?' He was a young man, and very bold in his youth and his strength. 'You will live long in evil, but my son shall kill you one day.'

  " 'Your son? Where is he? I shall kill him now and be sure what you say is a lie.'

  " 'I have no son. Nor have I husband yet, but he is coming now. It is his sword,' she looked at the first man, 'which will draw your blood.'

  " 'What are you?' that first man asked. 'A witch?'

  " 'I am of the blood of Nial,' she said.

  " 'If you be afraid," the younger man said to the other, 'I will take her. She's a handsome wench, and witch or no witch, I'll have her.'

  "And then my father was there, and my father's men. He came into the room sword in hand. The first man died, and the younger escaped with a sword cut, and my mother called after him, 'Do not forget your destiny. You will die by the sword in the flames of a burning town!' "

  "It is a fine story," the old man said, "a grand story! And you, the son, have killed this man?"

  "I am the son, but I have killed no man in the flames of a burning town, nor am I likely to. Soon I shall go where there are no towns, but only forests and meadows and mountains. I fear the prophecy will not be complete."

  "Be not sure," Lila said. Then to the old man and the girl. "Did you hear what he said? That his mother was of the blood of Nial?"

  "I heard," the girl said. "I believe it."
>
  "It was in his face when he came into the room," the old man said, "I know the look of those who have the gift." He looked at Lila. "You have it."

  "What is this gift of which you speak?"

  "It is the gift of second sight, the gift of looking beyond or back. Nial was a spaeman, one of those who foretell events. The story is ancient, and from Iceland, and the mother of Nial was the daughter of Ar the Silent, master of a great land in Norway. But Nial was a gifted man, a great talker, and a pleader for his people."

  I was tired, and it was late.

  "We must to bed," I said, "for in the morning we cross the Menai."

  The old man tapped out his pipe. "Put them in the loft," he said. "They'll sleep warm there."

  "I shall stay by the fire," I said, "for to sleep too sound would not please me."

  The old man turned his head to look. "You are followed, then?"

  "It may be. If so, we would not wish to have it known that we were seen. We are good folk," I added.

  "Sleep," he said, "and rest. We will let no harm come to the blood of Nial."

  I added sticks to the fire when he had gone to his bed, and rolled in my cloak upon the floor near the hearth. It would be a cold night, but the cottage was snug and warm.

  I took two pistols under the cloak's edge near me, and my naked blade. Its scabbard lay to one side. I hoped the night would be quiet, but I was not a trusting man, and the hilt of a sword has a good feel.

  Oft times a blade across the room beyond the reach of a hand means that death is nearer. I closed my eyes, and heard the rain fall upon the thatch, and against the walls. Drops fell down the chimney and the fire sputtered and spat.

  The wind curled around the eaves, moaning with its loneliness, and listening to wind and rain half slept.

  Where, O where was Abigail? How far out upon the sea? Did she sleep well this night? Did the ship roll? Was all well aboard?

  Outside a stone rattled, and in the darkness my hand tightened upon the sword's hilt.

  Chapter 9

  We came over the hills to Bangor in the morning, with shadows in the valley and sunlight on the sea. The mist was lifting from the trees, clinging wistfully as if reluctant to leave-like the smoke of ancient Druid fires which once burned in this place.

  We came over the hills, and I knew it well from my mother's tales of Taliesin, the great Welsh bard. The village lay upon the hills where once the Druid's upper circle had been, overlooking the Menai Strait that separated Wales from Anglesey, once called Mona, and before that other names as well.

  Bangor had been a place of ritual for the Druids, but that was long ago.

  Something stirred in me when I saw the view from there. Was it some ancient racial memory? Something buried deep in my flesh and bones?

  Lila rode behind me into the village. My eyes were alert for trouble. From here our destination was clear: from the north coast a boat to Ireland; then to lose ourselves in that war-torn island where marched the armies of Lord Mountjoy.

  Eyes turned upon us when we dismounted, for we were strangers, and Lila as tall as any man here, and as broad in the shoulders. She looked the Viking woman whose ancestors had once raided these shores, then settled here and across the water as well. They had founded Dublin. What was it the name first meant? Dark Pool, if I recalled correctly.

  Recalled? How could I recall? But so I did ... no doubt something heard, something read, something dimly remembered from another time.

  Yet I seemed to have passed this way before. Too many strange memories came to me now, too many whose origin I could not recall.

  There was a roadside inn where fishermen and sailors stopped, or travelers like ourselves. And we went there now and sat at a table and were brought without asking-fish, bread, and ale.

  The people were Welsh. Yet there might be spies among them, although I hoped my pursuers were far from us, seeking in Bristol, Falmouth, or Cornwall.

  Traveling with a woman may have helped to fool them, for that they had no reason to suspect-nor that I would go into Wales. Yet I was ever a cautious man.

  A distinguished-appearing man sat near us, with a thoughtful but stern face.

  That he was a man of the Church was obvious.

  "You travel far?"

  Smiling, I said, "It is my hope."

  "It is not many who come here," he continued. "I come for my health. It is the air of the sea, the smell of the ocean."

  "It is a place for poets," I said, "or warriors."

  "Are they not often the same?" He looked from Lila to me. "Your accent is strange," he said, "yet your companion, I'd say, is of Anglesey."

  "You'd be right," I said. "She lived here once." About myself I said nothing. He was curious, yet I liked the man. He was someone I should have liked to spend a few hours with, talking over the ale, and watching the ships, feeling the wind in my hair.

  "I am Edmund Price, of Merionethshire," he said.

  "You are a poet," I said, "spoken of in London and Cambridge."

  "So far off? I had not realized my poor talents were known."

  "The tongue of Wales is music, and you write it well."

  "Thank you. That was well said. You are a poet also?"

  I shrugged. "I am nothing. A man of the sword, perhaps. A man yet to shape his way." I looked at him with respect. "You, they say, are a man of vast learning, familiar with many languages."

  He shrugged. "The more one learns the more he understands his ignorance. I am simply an ignorant man, trying to lessen his ignorance."

  "I spoke of travel," I said, "and not lightly. I go to Raleigh's land."

  "Ah, yes ... Raleigh. Well, he has acquired a name these last few years, has he not? Men speak of these new lands. I wonder if they are new."

  "Who knows? Where man is able to go, man has been. The Irish, they say, sailed over the sea long since, and the Welsh, under Madoc."

  "The Irish at least," he replied. "Do you know the tale of Gudlief Gudlaugson, who sailed from the west of Ireland in 1029 with a northeast wind, and was driven far to the southwest, and finally found shelter upon a lonely coast and found there Bjorn Ashbraudson, who had left Ireland thirty years before? It is a known story among us, and many another like it.

  "There were Danes settled in Ireland who heard the old Irish stories, and for many a year the land now called America was called Greater Ireland, and the stories were the Irish had been to far western lands even as they had to Iceland."

  "I know nothing of these stories. I only know what I have said, that where men can go, they will go, and what is so hard about crossing a sea? It is sailing along shore that is dangerous, and men had sailed from Egypt to Crete and even to the western ocean shores of Spain in the time of Solomon, which is a farther distance than from Iceland to America."

  We talked of many things, and it was a pleasure. But the time drew on, and Lila nudged my foot under the table.

  "Now we shall go," I said.

  "Go," Edmund Price said, "and may the Good Lord go with you."

  "Thank you," I said.

  I turned toward the door, where Lila already was, and reached for my purse.

  Edmund Price lifted a hand to stop me. "Please! Allow me, Barnabas Sackett."

  And I was in the saddle and riding out of town before I realized that he had called me by my name!

  Anglesey was a lower land, a flatter and sunlit land. And we rode swiftly up the coast toward the point from which we must take to the water, and there were behind us no apparent pursuers.

  Where now was Abigail? Where was our ship? How far at sea? Whose hand was at the helm? Who lined up the fo'm'st on a distant star?

  We rode across the moors, past quiet farms and between stone walls that guarded fields to right and left. We rode at last to Trearddur Bay, and to a small house there of sticks and plaster, a cozy and warm cot, under low trees with vines all about and some flowers, and it had a view over the bay, and of the mountain that towered to the north.

  At the door we d
rew up. Lila called out, and the low door was opened by a tall man, a very tall man, for when he straightened up from the door he was taller than Lila, a man with a red beard and shoulders rolling with muscle under a flimsy shirt.

  "Ha!" He looked at Lila. "You've come home, have you? And who is the man?"

  "His future belongs to my mistress. We seek a boat, Owain."

  "A boat? To where would you sail, sister?"

  "To Ireland to find a ship for America."

  "America, is it? You'd go there?"

  "It is my destiny."

  "Well, look for cousins there. We had those who sailed with Madoc, long, long ago. And others who went looking for them later. And once I talked to a Dane who had gone there in an Irish ship. He was an old man, very old, yet he spoke of wonderful things, palm trees like those in Africa, and great stone buildings, and people who wear feathers. You go to a wild land, but it is at a good time you come, for a ship lately here lies now off Ireland, if you can catch her. She is small, but seaworthy. Her captain is from Iceland. But how to get there? I do not know how it will be done."

  "Is it far?"

  He shrugged a heavy shoulder. "If you wish to know, you must ask the wind." He looked closely at me. "Is it because of the girl that you hurry? Or are there those behind you?"

  I smiled at him. "A little of both. The girl, of course, for I love her very much, and would be with her. As for those behind me, if I am caught it goes hard with me and I do not think I will let them take me. The sea is too close, and my sword too sharp. There would be a fight, I think."

  He chuckled, deep in his heavy chest. "There speaks a man. Go within." He gestured. "Your mam will see you, Lila. Feed him. He will need his strength where he goes now, and if he sails with the Icelander, he will need it well. Go.

  I shall find a boat, and if there be strangers coming, I'll give a call in time.

  "Eat ... rest ... talk to Mam and let her listen to your voice so in the years to come she will have it to remember."

  We ducked our heads under the low door, but not so much as he had ducked when he came out.

  Inside it was cool and still. There were pots and kettles about, and a good smell of cooking, and a woman there, tall and thin with gray hair and a face unlined by the years, her eyes as old as the stones outside, but not cold.