Free The Whispering Mountain by Joan Aiken Page B

doesn’t mizzle out o’ here,” said Bilk, and he retied Owen’s hands and made various other arrangements while Prigman, having folded the letters
and put them carefully in his satchel, went to untether the horses.
    â€œAll rug?” said Prigman, meeting Bilk outside.
    â€œHe won’t stir from there in a hurry,” Bilk replied grimly. Then, as another shower of stones rattled down on the roof from the hillside above, the two men hastily mounted and rode away into the dark, Bilk, as before, carrying the harp slung over his shoulder.

4
    A rabis was sitting in an oak tree, munching a piece of oat bread and waiting for the sun to rise.
    She had come out in search of medicinal ferns, which she liked to pick with the dew on them, but it was still a little too dark to tell one plant from another, and so she leaned back contentedly, cradled in a fork of the tree, and listened to the voice of Fighat Ben, the whispering mountain. Up here the whisper was clearly audible, a sort of sighing murmur, like that of a sleeper disturbed by dreams. The tree in which Arabis sat grew on the side of a quarry situated above the little town of Nant Agerddau, where the road came to an end and the sides of the gorge drew together to meet in a semicircle of rugged cliff.
    Long ago, before the town grew up, the road through the gorge led only to this quarry, where men had once mined for gold, until the day came when the last sparkle of gold had been scraped from the mountain’s veins. The sloping cliffs, now all grown over with a tangle of trees
and bushes, were pocked with little eye-shaped mine entrances. Some of these openings were screened by ferns and briars; cascades of reddish water poured from others. One of the biggest openings was halfway up the cliff, right under the gnarled roots of the oak into which Arabis had climbed. Ferns half concealed the cave and had taken root, also, in the tree’s mossy bark, sprouting on trunk and branches like a green mane; Arabis had established herself in a sort of nest, almost hidden among their feathery thickness.
    Presently she was surprised by the sound of voices uplifted in a rude chant.

    â€œThe harp that once in Tara’s pad
—Yo ho ho and a bottle of perry—
Did hang, is now upon the gad!
Hey diddle diddle and derry down derry!”

    In the dim, pre-dawn twilight Arabis could just see two men lurching clumsily up the steep slope.
    â€œWatch out, Bilk, you silly cullion! Don’t raise such a garboil, or we’ll have half the macemongers of the town on our tail.”
    â€œGarboil! I like that! You’re the one as is making the most of the whoobub. If you hadn’t swigged so much tickle-brain down there at the Boar’s Head, we’d ha” been here long since. Look at the sky! It’ll be lightmans in twenty minutes. Anyone might twig us.”
    â€œTush—hic!—who’s abroad? All snug in their libbeges. Anyways, here we be—let’s stow the bandore under this big rufftree, nobody’ll come prying here-away.”

    â€œI’m willing,” said the other man. “Poop it in plenty deep, so no one won’t lay their glaziers on it.”
    There was a grunting, rustling and shuffling in the ferns directly underneath Arabis. She longed to see what was going on, but did not dare move in case they heard her; plainly they were up to no good.
    â€œAll rug?” said one of the voices at length.
    â€œI reckon she could lay there till Doomiesday, no one would twig. Back to the bousing-ken, eh? Us could do with a dram of hot stingo.”
    â€œYou go on, then, cully, and lay on a dram for me; I’m agoing to give my napper a rinsing in yonder freshet.”
    â€œTol-lol; I’ll meet you at the bousing-ken then.”
    The two men fumbled their way down again; Arabis heard them slipping and cursing among the rocks and brambles. Though dying of curiosity she judged it prudent not to move from