'There is a Peter in the Bible,' I said.
'This is a different Peter,' he said dryly. 'You're in sore trouble, lad, for they be askin' questions in Oxford an' Winchester an' Bristol, too.'
'You were speaking of horses?'
'Aye.'
'Take them up the road to Cirencester ... the old Roman road. Hold them there and we'll be along.'
He reached inside his shirt and handed me a sheet of paper. 'Read it,' he said, 'and then put it in the fire, yonder.'
I read. Then I looked straight in his eyes.
'How did you find me?' I asked.
'We almost didn't,' he said grimly. 'We were looking for a lone man riding, and we'd men out at villages along every way northwest. Ah,' he said, shaking his head, 'that Peter! He should have been a general! He thinks of everything.'
'But here? In this place?'
'I was in Cricklade when you passed through, watering my horses at the river, so I followed, saw you giving a look to the inn, so I came here before you.'
'My thanks.' I looked at him. 'You've a name?'
'Call me Darby. They all do.'
We slept then, and when in the cold light of another day my eyes opened, he was gone. The innkeeper was stirring the fire.
'Your cousin is awake,' he said. 'What a woman she is! Why, she'd make two of me!'
'And stronger than any three,' I said. 'I do not envy the lad. He'd better be one who keeps his eyes from the others or she'll have him over her knee.'
He laughed. 'Little thought he'll have for others with her to take care of,' he said. 'I'll put somethin' on for you.'
An hour later, in a patch of woods and under the old beeches near the Thames, we traded horses with Darby. There were saddlebags on my horses, and a brace of pistols in case I had none.
'There be this, too,' Darby said, and from a roll of skins he took my own sword, the blade of my father, than which none were finer. 'How he got it from the gaol I shall never know!'
'Nor I,' I said, 'but I feel a new man now.'
I put out my hand. 'Someday, Darby, in America mayhap?'
'Na, I be a busy one here.' He shook his head. 'It has a sound to it, though.
America! I like it. Savages they tell me, and forests and land wherever you look.'
'And running streams, Darby. Keep it in mind, if the worst comes. If you've a thought of finding me, follow a river to the far mountains and ask for me there.'
'Barnabas Sackett, is it?'
'Aye, and by the time you get there the name will echo in the hills, Darby. The Indians will know of it, if the white men do not. It is a fair land, Darby, but a raw, rough land that will use up men until it breeds the kind it needs. Well, I will be used, and I hope to have a hand in the breeding, too.'
Westward we went, riding easy on strong, fresh horses, through Cirencester to Gloucester over Birdlip Hill, and when I dipped into the saddlebags there was a purse of gold there, a dozen coins, and some silver.
'May I have the other sword?' Lila asked.
'A sword?' I was astonished. 'It is a man's weapon.'
She looked at me coldly. 'I can use it as well as any man. I've five tall brothers, Sackett, and we fenced with swords upon many an hour. Give it to me, and if trouble comes, stand aside and watch what a woman can do!'
'Welcome!' I said cheerfully. 'I did not doubt that you could do it, but only that you wished to.'
'I do not wish. I do what becomes the moment. If it be a cookpot, I cook. If it be a needle, I'll sew, but if it be a blade that is needed, I shall cut a swath.
To mow arms and legs and heads, I think, is no harder than the cutting of thatch.'
In the Cotswolds and the valley of the Severan there were Roman ruins all about, nor was I a complete stranger to them for I'd been led their way by Leland's manuscript, and remembered much of what I'd read.
We camped one night in the ruins of a Roman villa, and drew water from a mossy fountain where Roman patricians must once have drunk. Where we lay our heads that night, Roman heads had lain, though in better fare than we. But now they were gone, and who knew their names, or cared? And who should know ours, ours who had but the green grass for carpet, and the ruined walls of a once noble house for shelter?
Lila was a quiet woman. She spoke little and complained none at all, yet she was woman-too much woman to go off to America with no man of her own. I said as much, and she looked at me and said, 'A man will come. Where I am, he will come.'
'You'll see few white men in America, or any other but Indians. Good folk some of them, but they do not think like we do.'
'I shall not marry an Indian. I shall marry an Englishman or perhaps a Welshman.'
Then we forded a stream and rode up a narrow pass between rocks, and when night came we were in a wild and mysterious land, a place of long shadows and great rocky battlements and rushing cold streams and rich green grass around hard black rocks that shone like ice in the dim light of the after-sunset. It was a primeval landscape. Suddenly, they came upon us, a dozen or more of them. Wild, uncouth creatures, some clad in skins, some in rags, wild, mad things wielding all manner of weapons.
They came up from the rocks where they had lain in wait. Screaming wildly, they came down upon us. Lila drew her sword and wheeled her horse to meet them. I tried to yell that flight was our best chance, but she was beyond hearing. She did not scream, but yelled some wild Welsh shout, and light caught the flashing blade of her sword as she swept on toward them.
I barely had time to draw and fire a pistol, and then she was among them.
But what had happened? After her wild Welsh yell they had suddenly frozen, mouths wide to scream, staring at her. Then as one man, or woman, for their were women among them, they fled.
Her sword reached one, I think, before they were gone into the rocks from which they came. Then Lila wheeled her horse, towering in her stirrups, and shouted after them, a hoarse, challenging cry.
Her sword was bloody and she leaned from her saddle and thrust it into a hummock of earth and moss, once ... twice. Then she sheathed it.
Awed, I led us away up the trail to where it went through a pass in the mountains, and she followed quietly.
Later, when the road widened, we rode side by side. 'What did you say that frightened them when you called out?' I asked.
'It does not matter.'
'It was a curious thing. They stopped as if struck, then they fled as if all the terrors were upon them.'
'Indeed, they would have been. They well knew when to fly. That lot! I have heard stories of them! Poor, misbegotten, inbred creatures that live in caves and murder innocent travelers. The soldiers have come for them a dozen times, but they disappear. Nobody finds them ... at least no Englishman.'
She was silent then, and I as well. More than two hours had passed since we had seen even the slightest sign of life, and nothing at all but the wild mountains and the rushing cold streams and the rocks that lay like chunks of iron on every hand.
'There's a cottage yon,' she said, pointing ahead.
'You have been this way before?'
'No.'
'You are from Anglesey, Lila, and you spoke of Druids.'
'Did I now?'
'It is said there are people on Anglesey who have the gift.'
She rode on, offering no reply. We were ascending a pass through wild, heavily forested hills. Suddenly it came to me.
'This is the pass from Bettws-y-Coed!'
She turned her head. 'You know it? You have not been to Wales before?'
