Free This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart

willy-nilly, I put down my own independent and emancipated foot, and sent the little Fiat bucketing over the ruts of the drive, and down the turning to the Villa Forli.
    At least, if Max Gale was to be out, I could have my afternoon swim in peace.
    * * *
    I went down after tea, when the heat was slackening off, and the cliff cast a crescent of shade at the edge of the sand.
    Afterwards I dressed, picked up my towel, and began slowly to climb the path back to the villa.
    When I reached the little clearing where the pool lay, I paused to get my breath. The trickle of the falling stream was cool and lovely, and light spangled down golden through the young oak leaves. A bird sang somewhere, but only one. The woods were silent, stretching away dim-shadowed in the heat of the late afternoon. Bee orchises swarmed by the water, over a bank of daisies. A blue tit flew across the clearing, obviously in a great hurry, its beak stuffed with insects for the waiting family.
    A moment later the shriek came, a bird’s cry of terror, then the rapid, machine-gun swearing of the parent tit. Some other small birds joined the clamour. The shrieks of terror jagged through the peaceful wood. I dropped my towel on the grass, and ran towards the noise.
    The blue tits met me, the two parent birds, fluttering and shrieking, their wings almost brushing me as I ran up a twisting path, and out into the open stretch of thin grass and irises where the tragedy was taking place.
    This couldn’t have been easier to locate. The first thing I saw as I burst from the bushes was a magnificent white Persian cat, crouched picturesquely to spring, tail jerking to and fro in the scanty grass. Two yards from his nose, crying wildly, and unable to move an inch, was the baby blue tit. The parents,with anguished cries, darted repeatedly and ineffectually at the cat, which took not the slightest notice.
    I did the only possible thing. I dived on the cat in a flying tackle, took him gently by the body, and held him fast. The tits swept past me, their wings brushing my hands. The little one sat corpse-still now, not even squeaking.
    I suppose I could have been badly scratched, but the white cat had strong nerves, and excellent manners. He spat furiously, which was only to be expected, and wriggled to be free, but he neither scratched nor bit. I held him down, talking soothingly till he was quiet, then lifted him and turned away, while behind me the parent birds swooped down to chivvy their baby out of sight.
    I hurried my captive out of the clearing before he got a chance to see where the birds were making for, and away at random through the bushes. Far from objecting to this, the cat seemed now rather pleased at the attention than otherwise; having had to surrender to
force majeure
he managed – in the way of his species – to let me know that he did in fact prefer to be carried … And when, presently, I found myself toiling up a ferny bank which grew steeper, and steeper yet, he even began to purr.
    This was too much. I stopped.
    ‘I’ll tell you something,’ I said to him, ‘you weigh a ton. You can darned well walk, Butch, as from now! And I hope you know your way home from here, because I’m not letting you go back to those birds!’
    I put him down. Still purring, he stropped himselfagainst me a couple of times, then strolled ahead of me up the bank, tail high, to where at the top the bushes thinned to show bright sunlight. There he paused, glancing back and down at me, before stalking forward out of view.
    He knew his way, no doubt of that. Hoping there was a path there that would take me back clear of the tangled bushes, I clambered up in his wake, to find myself in a big clearing, full of sunshine, the hum of bees, and a blaze of flowers that pulled me up short, gaping.
    After the dappled dimness of the wood, it took some moments before one could do more than blink at the dazzle of colour. Straight ahead of me an arras of wistaria hung fully fifteen feet,