A String in the Harp (31 page)

The eggs were still warm. When they’d been gathered, the three girls slogged out in the rain and found the ewes and lambs huddled against the overhanging hedgerow: the lambs wet and miserable, the ewes patient and long-suffering. At least the rain couldn’t penetrate the thick oiled fleeces of the ewes. The lambs butted up under their mothers for shelter and milk.

“When they’re bigger, they’ll lift their mams’ hind legs right clear off the ground with butting,” said Rhian. She counted the beasts. “No trouble yere. I’m wondering what they’ve found on top.”

After tea there were the orphaned lambs to be fed and a cow with a sore foot to be seen to—no end of things to keep busy with. Mrs. Evans was making a vast stew that could simmer for hours on the back of the stove until the men got back, tired and hungry. And Gram, whose hands were gnarled with work and arthritis, crocheted endlessly on a blue and gold afghan. Over her head, on the mantle, the black iron clock kept track of the minutes and hours of the afternoon.

***

The hills were gray and sodden; they were a world of emptiness. Except for the small group of men, boys, and two dogs,
there was no living thing to be seen—only expanses of wet bracken and here and there a wind-crippled tree. They followed the cart track up above the farm, past the
ffridd,
a double furrow of rich, dark mud. It was a long walk to the top, but when they got there and Peter could look deeper into the hills, he found that by fixing his eyes on a distant spot he became aware of movement in the scrub. He could see it best when he didn’t look straight at it.

Mr. Evans was staring intently toward the southeast. He raised his arm and whistled and was answered almost at once by someone further over. “That’ll be John Griffith Garthgwynion.” He turned to David, who was standing with Peter and Gwilym. “The goin’ will be rough now. We shall make for that line of trees there, can you see?”

David nodded. “If we can’t keep up, Mr. Evans, we’ll turn back. Don’t worry about us; we’ll mark this hill and meet you at the farm.”

“Ah, well.” Mr. Evans was clearly relieved.

“Should we go in a line?” asked Gwilym. “You know—to scare it up?”

“No need,” said Aled. “Beast’ll be too smart to be lyin’ in the open. Especially in this rain. He’ll have gone down the river—right, Da?”

Mr. Evans rubbed his chin. “Aye, most like. But we’ll spread out the same.”

There were sheep paths through the bracken, narrow mazy things, booby-trapped with roots and rocks. It was hard going, as Mr. Evans had warned, but Gwilym and David kept moving forward, and Peter was determined not to turn back.

They came down Foel Goch without raising anything; like Aled, Peter was sure they wouldn’t, but he had another reason for believing it: his ears sang with a hunting chant. In his eyes the men on either side of him, sweeping the hill, wavered in and out of time—sometimes silent, sometimes exchanging loud, good-natured banter, dressed first as sheep farmers,
then in coarse, heavy tunics and dark cloaks. One minute the dogs were black-and-white Welsh sheepdogs, the next rangy, lop-eared hounds.

Peter didn’t even try to sort the present from the past, they were too closely interwoven here, they were merging. His heart leaped with joy when he saw against the trees ahead the slight, familiar figure of Taliesin, his copper hair dark and rough in the misty air. So he had returned from traveling in the south and was once again hunting with his friend Gwyddno Garanhir!

“Hie, Peter! You’ll break your neck if you run like that!” David was beside him. “I don’t particularly want the privilege of carrying you back up the hill!”

Peter shook the damp hair out of his eyes. “Thought I saw something,” he muttered. “One of the other men, I guess. I’ll be careful.” He met his father’s glance for a moment.

“See anything? Blast these spectacles!” Gwilym dragged them off and wiped them impatiently on the bottom of his pullover.

“Not yet.”

The Forestry Commission had planted larches further down the Einion, but here they’d planted hemlock close together so they’d grow straight. They were so dense that their lower branches were dead and their green tops tangled together. The soil beneath them was clogged with fallen needles that were barely damp. It was here the dogs were at their best, for the men had to keep almost entirely to the paths cut by the Commission. It was odd to walk through a wood that had been sown like a field of corn, in precise, spaced rows that ran off on either side of the path like endless dark tunnels.

At the edge of the trees several groups of men came together. Jones-the-Top was speaking rapidly in Welsh to a solid, dark-haired man with the end of a little cigar forgotten in the corner of his mouth. Every now and then, he grunted or shook his head. Then there was a pause, and in it the world was
perfectly still except for the mournful, disembodied cry of a bird. Gwilym stiffened beside Peter.

“Whimbrel,” he muttered under his breath, and Peter smiled for an instant.

“There’s another lot that is workin’ other bank of the river,” Aled explained. “We’ve to go right on. Clear of the trees, there are old mine workin’s. Blaeneinion thinks the beast may have gone to earth among them.”

They set off again, watching the dogs for any sign of excitement. It was the woods, not the open hillside that gave the strongest feeling of desolation, Peter found, and yet he knew the country had once all been forested. He caught glimpses of the old forests now: birch, ash, beech, oak, and rowan, their branches bare overhead, crazing the slate-colored sky. These were the ancient trees, many of them with great, twisted trunks grown with moss.

The hounds ran as a ragged pack, casting about for the scent of their quarry. Peter saw that the men following were armed with spears and knives, but Taliesin carried none; his short dagger was sheathed at his belt. It was seldom drawn except for cutting meat at table. Although the bard walked with the same light, springing stride as always, he was older now. There was gray streaking the russet of his hair, and the weathered lines in his face had deepened. But his eyes were quick and sharp and his forehead untroubled.

Gwyddno, too, had aged, but far less gracefully. He had grown stiff in his joints and heavy, no longer able to set the pace, content to follow and let his son, Elphin, lead.

Ahead, where the path bent suddenly out of sight, the dogs had found something. Bryn and Bran were barking excitedly. A little border collie that had been trotting obediently at her master’s heels whined pleadingly and was off like a shot when given the word of release. Without actually running, the men quickened pace, moving deceptively fast. Peter had to jog to keep up.

The dogs had plunged down off the path toward the river. Aled, Dai, Gwilym, and two other men pushed into the trees after them. But the Key sang with no urgency here and Peter waited. It wasn’t time. There was a shout, some crashing, another shout, and the sound of the dogs coming back to them. A few minutes later Aled came panting onto the path, the others behind him.

“Yon terrier got onto a pine marten in by yere. That’s all.”

Disappointed, the men called their dogs back to them and the party moved on. At the edge of the trees they stopped to watch for the other group. It was good to be clear of the wood and in the open air again. Pipes and cigarettes were lit, and a thermos passed that contained very strong tea laced with something that brought tears to Peter’s eyes when he swallowed. When David tasted it a moment later, he looked a little startled, then grinned at his son.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m all right,” said Peter.

“Grand!” said Gwilym. “I got a jolly good look at that pine marten back there. I haven’t seen but two others before.”

Mr. Evans joined them. “Not much to show so far.”

“Do you think we’ll find the animal?” asked David.

“Shouldn’t wonder. More likely from now on. They’ll come in to a farm for sheep, see, but not stay close.”

“Aye, he’ll have gone to earth in one of them old mine holes, I’m thinking. Dogs’ll take the scent if they find un. We’ll know.” It was the solid farmer who had been listening to Jones-the-Top earlier. “And how are your two-year-olds, Evan Evans?” he asked.

Mr. Evans nodded. “Comin’.”

“It will be a good year for lambs.”

“If we find that sheep-killer,” put in Dai.

“We’ll be finding un.

The talk turned to a discussion of Dai Pritchard, who was selling his farm at Bont Goch to an Englishman from Bristol.
Dai Pritchard had no sons and could not get help on his land.

“Aye,” said one of the other men. “Hard it is to find a sheepman yere now. And you, Mr. Evans, you are the lucky one with your three lads, then. I had three girls before I got even one for help!”

There was a mutter of laughter; the men were familiar with Hywel Davies’s family problems, as they were with the private business of all the farmers in the area. Their lives were hard and isolated, but they knew one another well, and word of mouth was still the best way of circulating news, just as it had been for thousands of years.

It came to Peter as he stood, part of the group, watching the men talk, that it didn’t matter which faces he saw there; they were the faces of the country. He and his father and even Gwilym would always be foreigners because they weren’t Welsh born and raised, but the unexpected regret he felt at knowing that was softened by the realization that it didn’t matter as much as he had once thought.

At last someone spotted the second group coming out of the trees. They had nothing to report either, and after ten minutes or so they reorganized again. One lot was to follow the track between Llyn Comach and Llyn Dwfn, the second to work south through the mine area. David, Peter, and Gwilym elected to go with the Evanses in the second group. By dusk everyone would meet at the road that came in past Nant-y-moch Reservoir; it would be easier to walk back along it to Talybont than to track across the hills as they’d come.

John Hughes Machynlleth and his two dogs joined the second party this time. “Must think we have a better chance,” observed David. Peter wished they’d start off again. He hadn’t noticed how tired his legs were until they’d stopped. The ground was much too wet to sit on, but he found standing still very uncomfortable and wondered if his father felt it, too. Gwilym was used to walking all day over rough ground and he didn’t seem bothered. Peter shifted from foot to foot.

The men called up their dogs then, and they set off along
an overgrown dirt track across the shoulder of a long, curving ridge. From the top of it more Forestry Commission plantings were visible ahead, and against the dark green wall were the remains of several derelict stone buildings grouped on the far side of a small dark pool. They were all that remained above ground of the old mine workings. The hills were full of abandoned slate quarries and lead mines. The overgrown pitheads were a hazard to unwary hikers. Centuries before, according to Dr. Rhys, the Romans had found gold in the Welsh hills, and gold was about all they got from Wales; it was a wild, inhospitable country to them.

These ruins were a desolate reminder that men were very impermanent among the ancient hills. They came and scratched away for a while, then disappeared, and the country gradually destroyed all traces of them. The roofs had gone from the huts, and the walls were falling in. An old miner’s cart stood upended, two of the boards broken out of its bed and one of its wheels missing. Gorse and heather had crept in over the once bare-trodden ground.

Peter stumbled on a root coming down the slope, glanced at his feet, and when he looked up again, the huts were gone. He heard a shout from his left, and another, then the hounds gave tongue. The pack of them were off around the
llyn,
tails up, yelping joyously. Brushing the hair from his eyes, Peter stared after them and could just make out a large dark shape bounding into the trees. There were more shouts, and the men around him were running, hot in pursuit of the hounds and their quarry, spears held at the ready. Elphin was in front; Taliesin and Gwyddno followed slowly, each for his own reasons.

“They will have her now,” said Gwyddno. “She will not cross the river.”

Taliesin nodded.

“You will not go and see the kill?”

“Not I.

Gwyddno smiled. “You have not changed, friend, for all your wandering. If I had not grown so ancient, I would be there.”

“And I would like to think you wrong, Gwyddno, and that I
have
changed. I have seen many things between here and the Great Court at Caerleon, and I have talked with many people. If after that I remained unchanged, I would feel I had done nothing with myself! But in this—no, I suppose I have not changed.”

“We hunt that beast because she has killed our stock and she threatens our children. We do not hunt her for pleasure, you know.” Gwyddno’s voice was gently chiding.

“Indeed, I do know. And for those reasons I wish your men success. But it is not necessary for me to watch the beast killed. I will not be missed down there.”

“This time
you
are wrong!” Gwyddno laughed. “They are hoping you will honor their hunt tonight by weaving the hunters into a song.”

Taliesin looked at his friend with fondness. “So I shall. But between you and me alone, one hunt is very like another. There are hunters, and there is the quarry, and there are hounds. There is a chase, a moment when all seems lost, when everything hangs in the balance. And then—triumph!”

Gwyddno put his hand on Taliesin’s shoulder. “I am glad you have come back. Even though I can read in your eyes that you do not mean to stay.”

The sound of the hunt rolled across the heather to the two men and to Peter, exciting, enticing, and yet none of the three moved for a long moment.

“No,” said Taliesin at last. “I have about done wandering, Gwyddno Garanhir. I would go home now.”

“You have a home here, you know.”

“I am grateful for it. It may well prove that I have need of your generosity.” He frowned, gazing up at the sky. “But it is in my heart to return to Llanfair, to my beginning, and there
to discover my end. I’ve come many years and many miles from the village where I was born, and I have not seen it since I left as a boy of twelve.” He smiled, remembering. “I was called Gwion then and knew very little of the world. I think perhaps I know only a little more now.”