Part 14 (1/2)

'Took long enough!' remarked the lieutenant. 'Did she -' He was evidently about to say, Did she give much trouble, but checked himself, seeing Dido's escort.

This here's Mr Bran, the Queen's Soothsayer,' said Dido.

'I say, sir, do you think there's any chance that Her Majesty will change her mind and let Cap'n Hughes out of jail?' the lieutenant asked. But the soothsayer shook his head.

'She will not let him out. But he will not be in prison for very long.' Then he glanced at the revolving door, which was stationary. Apparently it began to move only when it was in the correct position for people to use it. 'You have another five minutes to wait,' Bran said.

'When do the big doors open?' asked Dido. 'The ones that the whirling door's set into?'

'Not until the return of the king. On that day, and that day only, they will be opened.'

'I say, sir, isn't that a load of moons.h.i.+ne?' suggested Lieutenant Windward diffidently. 'I mean, about the king's return?'

'Moons.h.i.+ne? No indeed. All the omens predict that his return is close at hand.'

Mr Multiple, overjoyed to find someone both knowledgeable and prepared to answer questions, burst out with one that had been bothering him, 'I beg your pardon, sir but those heads! The ones on the waiting-room wall, you know are they real?'

'Certainly they are real.' Bran turned to glance through the waiting-room door at the rows of s.h.i.+ny, shrunken objects. 'There are tribes in the Forest of Broceliande who make them. It is an ancient skill. They extract the skull, insert a hot stone, then sew up the lips and the slit through which the skull was removed. The head is then hung upside down for a year, to appease the owner's spirit.'

'Wouldn't appease me,' said Dido.

'Foreign travellers buy many of them; they are one of c.u.mbria's principle exports.'

'I call that a bit much,' grunted Lieutenant Windward. 'I mean for the queen to have them in her palace -'

'She wishes to encourage native crafts,' said Bran. His face was quite devoid of expression. 'Now the door will start to revolve,' he added. 'You can tell because it begins to make that humming sound.' In a lower tone, covered by the hum of the door, he went on, 'Make all possible haste to leave Bath. And take your sick companion with you. Bath is excessively dangerous for any person suffering from a disorder of the consciousness. Or for children.'

'How did you know about Mr Holy?' Dido said.

But he had already turned and was beginning to ascend the great staircase.

The revolving door began to spin, and they hurried through it.

'I wish he could come with us,' said Dido, when they were outside.

'Him? Climb mountains with a wooden leg? Are you d.i.c.ked in the n.o.b?' said Mr Multiple.

'I say, don't the mountains look queersome, though,' said Dido. For the ring of great peaks, some of them spouting lurid smoke threaded with sparks, now stood silhouetted against the pale sunset sky, like a stony crown encircling the twilit town.

'We will start at dawn tomorrow,' decided Lieutenant Windward. 'I'll ask the hotel to provide us with a guide and provisions for the journey. Now we had best go back and study the map.'

8.

The hotel provided them with a dozen burros, for riders and baggage, and so they proceeded at donkey-pace. Two of the burros had a litter slung between them, into which the unconscious Mr Holystone was fastened. The procession was led by a guide, Marcus Dylan, who, with provisions for the journey, had also been supplied by the hotel.

'What did you do about paying?' Dido asked Lieutenant Windward, edging her burro alongside his. Captain Hughes had had much of the expedition's supply of ready cash about his person when he was imprisoned, and so they were short of funds.

'Oh, the management at the Sydney would give us anything when they saw the queen's permit! I told them that we would return in six or seven days, and that the captain would pay the whole shot at the end of our visit. I do not propose to fork out any of my own bezants while he is a prisoner. We may need what little money we have on our way to Lyonesse.'

'I dunno what we'd spend it on,' said Dido. 'I don't see too many hot-pie sellers or c.o.c.kle-stands round here.'

They were crossing the stony upland plain which surrounded Bath Regis. Much of the ground was rocky and uncultivated, studded, here and there, by sigse thorn and a species of cactus resembling a giant spiny hand. Not a human was in sight.

'It sure is a drearsome part.' Dido s.h.i.+vered. Yet, despite the cold, her spirits had lifted on leaving the town of Bath Regis. So had those of her companions. Even the waxen face of Mr Holystone had taken on a faint tinge of colour. Having left it, they realised for the first time to the full what a terribly oppressive atmosphere permeated Queen Ginevra's capital.

'We have several hundred miles to go before reaching Lyonesse,' pointed out the lieutenant. 'There must be towns or villages along the way.'

'Hope so,' grunted Multiple. 'Or it's going to be sharp sleeping at night.'

The pre-dawn air was razor-cold. As they left the plain and began to crawl at what seemed snail's pace up the vast slopes of Mount Damyake, the increasing alt.i.tude rendered breathing harder and harder. Lieutenant Windward had, however, prudently seen that the party was equipped with a large bundle of the rumirumi lilies, wrapped in damp moss, for the use of the travellers when distressed by lack of oxygen. The donkeys, fortunately, seemed unaffected by the thinness of the air. Dido was very glad of her mount; she was not certain that she would have been able to walk far on her own; moreover it was comfortably warm, like riding on a barrel of hot tar covered by a hearth-rug.

Presently, however, the sun shot up, and at once began to send down rays of such torrid heat that they made haste to don the straw hats with which Windward, on the advice of the guide, had also provided them.

'Awkward sort o' climate,' remarked Dido. 'Freezing one minute; roasting the next. Hey, Noah don't you want to lay a hat over poor Mr Holy's face? No sense in getting him sunstrook on top of all else.'

During the days of Mr Holystone's illness no one had shaved him, and his beard, of a brownish-gold colour, had grown several inches; so had his hair, which, previously, he had worn very short. He's a right good-looking fellow with a beard, Dido thought, as Noah carefully balanced a sombrero over the invalid's face.

As the sun climbed higher it illuminated the gigantic symmetrical cones, the fantastic snow-covered peaks and pinnacles, like spectral cities of ice, that surrounded them on every side. Bath Regis was now a mere dot in the distance.

When they reached the top of a lofty ridge Dido, looking back, let out a cry of wonder.

'What's to do?' inquired Mr Multiple, kicking his burro till it came level with hers.

'Look at all that flat land we been riding across, Mr Mully. See them lines on the rock?'

'I could hardly miss them,' he said. 'I reckon they are geological strata. They are far too huge for people to have had anything to do with them. Why, some of them must be more than fifty miles long!'

From side to side of the upland plain long lines were to be seen, as if some G.o.d or giant had leaned down from the heavens and with an idle fingernail sc.r.a.ped a series of huge drawings over the countryside. More and more of the pattern became visible as the party mounted higher.

And when they halted for the noon meal, Dido said, 'Well: I wasn't certain before, but now I am! Look, Mr Windward, ain't those marks down there the exact same as Mr Holystone's birthmark?'

'Holystone's birthmark? Can't say as I even knew he had one,' Mr Windward said rather sceptically. However Dido rolled back the blanket to show the sick man's forearm, and he was obliged to agree that there was a remarkable likeness.

'I often noticed that mark when he was a-peeling spuds,' said Dido.

'It must be nothing more than a coincidence,' observed Windward. 'For why should a man have a mark on his arm that's the same as one n.o.body can see unless they're on top of a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain?'

'I dunno,' said Dido. 'But I reckon it's lucky for us as we brought Mr Holy along. Looks like he belongs to these parts all right.'

Lieutenant Windward absently pulled his chronometer from his pocket to check it against the position of the sun in the sky, and uttered an exclamation.

'What's up?' said Multiple.

'It's started going again!' He set it to the correct time.

'So's mine,' said Multiple, pulling out his turnip watch. 'Well, if that don't beat c.o.c.kfighting!'