From Across the Ancient Waters (14 page)

“We’re going for a ride, Hollin,” Florilyn said.

“Will you be wanting me to saddle two horses, Miss Westbrooke?”

“I will do it, Hollin,” she replied. “You go do something else. Leave us until we’re gone.”

The groom did as instructed, though he ambled from the barn slowly. He glanced back every so often as if delaying until he could see which horses they planned to take.

But Florilyn, who had experienced the old man’s interference before, waited until he was out of sight. She then proceeded to saddle two mounts while Percy looked on.

She led the horses out to the mounting block. After handing Percy the reins of a reddish bay mare that she introduced as Red Rhud, she herself mounted the mare called Grey Tide. Percy managed to get up into the saddle alone, a feat he pretended to take in stride without displaying his profound satisfaction at the accomplishment.

They left the stable yard. Quickly Florilyn led the way down a sloping path through the gardens and trees, continuing in the direction of the sea. A few minutes later, they emerged onto the uncultivated fields and open moorland east of Mochras Head. Already Florilyn was a considerable distance ahead.

Percy gave the mare a touch of his heels. She darted skittishly forward, her four hooves prancing over the grass as if the ground was red hot. Percy jostled about but did his best not to show his concern.

Soon, however, Florilyn slowed, waited for them to catch up. She then veered southward. In a huge gradual arc, she led the way across moor and field until they had come around 180 degrees and were bound on a course almost due east in the direction of Moelfre and Yllethr.

They rode for an hour or more into the hilly forested regions, skirting north of the two peaks, making many turns and changes of direction, uphill and down, along streambeds, following a good-sized river for a while, then through meadows, here and there entering forests so thick there was scarcely room for the horses to pass single file through the branches.

Percy had not an idea where they were or in what direction they had been going. For all he knew, they could have been anywhere in Snowdonia. Had he been asked to point in what direction lay the sea, he might have turned around in a complete circle and scanned his surroundings without being able to settle on any of the 360 degrees of the compass.

He was thoroughly and completely lost.

No words were spoken between them. Though Florilyn led at a relaxed pace, she never allowed Percy to draw alongside. This was fine with Percy. Despite the apparent change in her attitude, he had no particular desire to exchange small talk with his cousin.

In time they reached what appeared to be a small green valley that sat between two ridges of hills that angled together and met a mile or two farther on in front of them. Whether it was truly a valley or a high plateau somewhere in the depths of the Cambrian Mountains would have been hard to determine. It was so protected and out of the way, it was impossible to tell anything about the surrounding terrain beyond the two ridges and the thick forest through which they had come at one end of the expanse. Wherever the place was, it was so remote that not a living creature was to be seen.

Percy had seen no sheep or cattle for an hour, though plentiful deer and rabbits were hiding among the trees.

They began to cross the flat grassland.

Suddenly with a shout, Florilyn leaned forward in the saddle and burst into a gallop. Hair streaming behind her, within seconds she was fifty yards away.

Red Rhud required no encouragement. With a tremendous burst, she shot after Grey Tide.

A cry of terror escaped Percy’s lips as he lurched back in the saddle. Frantically grabbing at the saddle edge, he held on for dear life. Tearing up clods of the soft turf with her hooves and throwing them up behind, his mount flew across the ground.

Florilyn persisted in the reckless sprint toward the far end of the grassy flat then reined in, laughing gaily as she threw her head around.

Percy rode up out of breath, white-faced and angry. His mare slowed, though still pranced with spirit. The brief gallop, far from expending the great creature’s energy, had only excited it the more. “I nearly fell!” he exclaimed.

Florilyn did not reply, only smiled. Her coy expression gave away nothing. She turned in her saddle and rode on at a slow walk.

Percy pulled alongside about to speak again then judged it best for now to say nothing. Maybe she
hadn’t
done it intentionally. It certainly wouldn’t do to anger her when he was at her mercy and so far from the manor.

Percy’s respite from the precarious gallop, however, was short-lived.

Even more rashly than before, again Florilyn shouted to her horse and burst with astonishing acceleration into another madcap gallop. “Race you to the ridge!” she shouted over her shoulder.

“I don’t think—” began Percy.

It was no use. His words gave way to a piercing wail of terrified surprise. His own steed had again bolted, exactly as Florilyn knew she would. The two mares, so different in temperament, were actually twins. A great rivalry existed between them, a fact the viscount’s daughter had decided to exploit on this day.

Looking behind her, Florilyn saw the response she had expected. She dug her heels into Grey Tide’s sides and urged the mare to the full measure of her speed. For the gentle horse Radnor said she was, with her mistress on her back, few horses in all the region of Llanfryniog could equal her for raw speed.

Clutching reins and saddle as he was wildly tossed about on Red Rhud’s back, Percy made a gallant effort to keep his seat. He might have succeeded, too, had their way continued on level ground.

But Florilyn had other designs. Unlike Percy, she was not a bit lost. She knew exactly where she was, knew the precipitous terrain that lay up the steep slope ahead. She knew, too, what must be the inevitable result with Red Rhud straining every muscle of her great flanks to overtake her twin.

Florilyn kept on, therefore, as fast as she dared, flew into the trees at the far end of the flat and up the incline that began almost immediately. Over fallen logs Grey Tide leaped without breaking stride, across a stream eight feet wide, and through another level of about fifty yards. There she swung the mare sharply left. If Percy behind her managed to keep in the saddle over the trees and stream, the steep path she followed for the next two hundred yards would surely prove too much for his novitiate equestrian skill.

She dared not look back. She would have to be able to profess innocence to her father that she did not know when she might have lost him. Therefore, she leaned forward, hugging her chest to Grey Tide’s long neck to keep in the saddle herself and scurried the rest of the way up the near vertical ascent. Reaching the crest, she straightened again in the saddle and galloped along the top of the ridge for some distance.

Soon she heard Red Rhud behind her and gaining. She suspected the cause well enough—that the burden on the red mare’s back had been reduced at some point along the way by exactly the weight of a sixteen-year-old Glaswegian.

Finally Florilyn glanced back over her shoulder. It was as she thought. Red Rhud was flying toward her riderless.

She laughed, thoroughly delighted with herself, and eased back on Grey Tide’s reins. Red Rhud came alongside. Keeping up a swift canter, Florilyn now led the two horses on a slant down the opposite side of the ridge, thinking herself well out of sight of any human eyes, and then in a westerly direction that would take them back to the manor.

Heaven-Sent Guide

T
he final steep ascent had not been necessary to achieve Florilyn’s end.

Percy had barely managed to cling to his seat as Red Rhud leaped the first fallen tree across her path. But repeating the feat when the mare went airborne a few seconds later, landing on the opposite side of the wide stream with a great jolting earthquake of a bounce, proved impossible.

Luckily the water flowed through a grassy section of wood or he might have been seriously hurt. As it was, when Percy looked up from the soft grass where he found himself after his inglorious tumble to see Red Rhud disappearing through the trees in the distance, though his back would feel it tomorrow, the chief injury he had suffered was to his pride—actually not a bad injury to sustain. As humility is its opposite, for a humble spirit to emerge within the human character usually requires that pride be dealt a series of painful blows by the hammer of circumstance, and Percy had just had one to his.

He took stock of himself, realized nothing was broken, then drew in a deep breath and climbed to his feet. He knew the general direction his mount had gone. He could still hear her hooves thudding in the distance as she made for the ridge. He had no doubt Florilyn would be waiting for him at the top with an insufferably obnoxious grin.

He set off trudging up the hill. It took Percy some fifteen or twenty minutes, after a much steeper climb than he had expected, to emerge into the clearing along one of the two ridges he had seen from the field below.

He stopped, breathing heavily, and gazed about. There was no sign of Florilyn. The entire world was still and quiet.

He turned around, looking back and forth and in every direction a second time. His initial bewilderment slowly turned to anger. The vixen had deserted him in the middle of nowhere!

Nor did he have the slightest notion in which direction lay the sea, the village, or the manor. Beyond the two ridges, which seemed more or less to join a quarter or half mile away, lay an endless series of forested hills, broken here and there in the distance by a few higher peaks. Had he known the the region better, he would have been able to identify these hills as sitting in a near straight line between Mount Snowdon in the north and Calder Idris farther south. From their relation to one another, it would have been an easy matter to tell whether he was looking north, south, east, or west. But as he was not familiar with the northern Cambrians, he had no idea. Nor, for the present as it beamed down from overhead, did the sun accurately suggest to Percy his bearings.

In every direction he looked, the outlook was identical. He was not high enough to see the sea beyond any of the ridges or ranges. He might walk for hours and only succeed in getting farther from home and more deeply into what could be dangerous mountains. He did not relish the thought of spending a night out here alone. Snow was not unheard of in June. And no doubt more wild animals came out after dark than he cared to meet.

An evil oath began to rise to his lips. But it never reached them.

A sound interrupted it, as if sent from heaven to answer the cry for help it did not occur to him to lift to the One who knew where everyone was.

“She’s g–g–gone, M–M–Mr. Drummond,” a voice said simply.

Percy spun around in terror, as if the preternatural silence had been broken by the roar of a lion rather than the gentle timbre of one of God’s angels. But the stupendous relief of finding himself not alone rushed in to banish his fear.

There stood his stuttering young friend who gave bouquets of wildflowers to strangers!

“Gwyneth!” he exclaimed. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

Percy spoke more truth than he realized.

“I have been w–w–watching you and Lady F–Florilyn as you rode,” she said, coming toward him with a smile.

“Where is she now?” asked Percy.

“She is gone, M–M–Mr. Drummond. She kept riding b–back down there.” Gwyneth pointed down the hill.

Percy followed her arm but could see nothing.

“I knew you had b–been thrown, so I w—w–waited for you. Are you hurt, M–M–Mr. Drummond?”

He answered her with a smile. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Did Florilyn see you?”

“I would not have let her see me.”

“Why not?”

“She would have said cruel things.”

“Well,” said Percy, his self-deprecating humor rising to the surface as he began to feel better about his predicament, “it would appear I am not much of a horseman.”

“Y–y–you were riding my lord’s w–w–wildest m–mare.”

“You don’t say,” said Percy with significant tone. “His
wildest
mare?”

“R–R–Red Rhud throws everyone except L–Lady Florilyn.”

Percy chuckled at the revealing information. Though calming under the mesmerizing girl’s peculiar power, he was still irritated enough to find little humor in Florilyn’s deception.

“How do you come to be so far from home?” he asked.

“It is not so very far. B–b–besides, I know every inch of these hills.”

“Are you not afraid to wander them alone?”

“No, Mr. Drummond.”

“Can you lead me back to the manor?”

“Of course. Come, Mr. Drummond,” she said, walking to his side and taking his hand. “I will show you.” She led the way down the hill, Percy followed as if he were a compliant child, laughing at the incongruity of it. She treated him as if he were a full-grown adult, yet she carried herself with the maturity and self-confidence of a fifty-year-old.

Who could not be charmed by such a one!

Before they had gone far, Gwyneth let go of Percy’s hand, paused, shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand, and looked down in the opposite direction. An expression of question crossed her usually placid countenance.

“What is it?” asked Percy.

“Nothing,” she replied thoughtfully. “I saw some men off there a few weeks ago. They weren’t from around here. I did not like them.”

“Were they so close you could see their faces so well as to know whether you liked them or not?”

“I was not close. But I could tell they were not good men.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I could tell.”

Intrigued, Percy did not press the matter. In another minute Gwyneth was scampering down the hillside with Percy beside her.

They descended the ridge and within minutes were surrounded by overspreading boughs of pine and fir. Percy saw no hint of a trail anywhere. “How do you know where to go?” he asked.

“Because I know where we are. I know the sea is this way,” she answered, pointing in front of her. “I walk everywhere here. I cannot get lost.”