I slowed to a jog along the narrow river path, then a walk. Finally I reached where the tributary beck trickled beneath its elegant bridge. I had to sit on a wayside stone for breath. Only now it was no trickle. It was a tumbling spouting cascade which had dropped an octave from an innocent lightweight chuckle to a deep threatening lusty boom. Spray watered ferns high above and the ornate bridge was quivering with the sustained impact of the falling water. God help fishes. I rested longer than I meant to.
I pushed on. It wouldn't be far. The steep valley narrowed sharply at the next bridge.
Despite the full daylight, now the water noise and the steep forested rock sides made the scene claustrophobic.
It was a real hiding-place for Druids on the run. Opposite the ruined wooden shelter that Betty Springer had said people used for parties I had to rest again. I panted and gazed at the vegetation. Algernon said the glen was famous for its celandines, bluebells and wind anemones, but like all flowers they're just basically different sorts of eccentric dandelions. Two days before he'd tried to show me a monstrosity called a bladderwort that ate insects, the maniac. I edged away from some long-stemmed red flowers and pressed on upstream. They looked full of appetite. The brick uprights of the causeway showed among the trees ahead. I crossed at the last bridge to keep to the main path.
The viaduct was gloomier and darker than ever. Janie and I had never gone all the way beneath. Now, the rush of the swollen river caused the path to be flooded by a nasty swark. The three races, parted for the giant columns of the overhead road, emitted as they ran a sustained bellow which echoed and intensified between the brick pillars.
Thoughtful Victorians had cobbled the path but forgotten a handrail. People were made of sterner stuff in those days, probably. I pushed sideways along the path on to the cobbles and stepped into the flooded bit. It was only a few inches deep this high above the river but still rushed with disquieting force against my ankles.
Beyond, the glen couldn't really be called a glen any more. There was very little space from wall to wall. It was more of a dark crevasse whose walls were encrusted with polished tubers of igneous rock mortared by ferns and lichen. Trees soared upwards, practically meeting in a great knitted entombing arch two hundred feet high. The path stayed beside the hoarse river, now demented by the addition of grey-black honed rocks. I plodded on, occasionally having to take hold of a tree branch for my weight where the path was either too overgrown or vanished completely. Algernon had told me they were beech, fir, birch, alder, willow. Their names sound all garden and tea-on-the-terrace, don't they, but down in Groundle Glen they were having a hell of a time of it.
They were twisted and scrabbling for toe-holds up the soaring valley walls. One had fallen here and there, slamming down into the river or lodging across the boulders. I was struggling breathlessly over a slain skinned trunk and thinking that some lunatics do this for fun and call it rambling, when I saw it, a few yards up ahead. I yelled out for joy, clawing up through the undergrowth towards the wheel.
If everything was twinned in Bexon's trail, what else for Big Izzie but a Little Izzie? And where else but long the very glen where he'd stayed? An old sick man just can't get far, especially with a digging job to do. I'm stupid, really slow.
Judging from the state of the old path nobody had been this far along for years at least.
The river rose to a natural series of bouldered waterfalls. And that exact point was where years ago Bexon had sited his little ornamental water-wheel, a beautiful simple copy of the original Lady Isabella. Her twin. If I'd had any sense I should have guessed: two identical diaries, two sketches, two nieces, but the carriage in the picture he'd chosen to copy had only one wheel. Find the missing thing and you're there. Stupid Lovejoy. I'd stayed in the same glen and never worked it out.
A decorative wooden millhouse stood amid engulfing greenery, maybe thirty feet tall. It was painted a crumbling black and white, typical Tudor in style, to offset the faded yellow of the wheel itself. Trust old Bexon to get the colours right this time. Guessing now where the path probably went, I hauled myself towards the millhouse breathless with excitement. My chest was suddenly tightly constricted, clamouring and clanging.
Warm and getting hotter. I stubbed my foot on a stone. Steps ran - lurched - upwards.
A rusty old handrail showed in the foliage, curving along the rock wall towards the millhouse. Of course. In those days the people were families on a day out. For safety there would be no way to the actual waterwheel except maybe for a man to work it. I clambered up the steps. The handrail looked pretty precarious so I kept away and tried pushing myself along the rock face among the honeysuckle and brambles. I smelled sweet but was gradually being shredded. The steps curved narrowly up between the incised valley wall and the millhouse planking, very similar to one bend of fairground helter-skelter, with the millhouse representing the tower and the steps the slide. It was about as steep. Twenty steps and I was almost on level with the roof.
The path was rimmed by railing from there and ran level but higher, perhaps to climb steadily along the glen to emerge eventually on the main sea road, but I couldn't see beyond a few feet because of the day-dusk of the overhanging rocks and the dense vegetation. The river was three feet below me where it started its torrential dash to the boulders. A wooden lock gate had once diverted the flow from the millwheel's blades.
Now the wood was rotten. The river split on a big pile, spraying a race against the wheel in a high bow wave. The wheel showed a gear on its millhouse side, maybe half the full wheel's diameter.
Where else but in the millhouse?
The walls seemed fairly substantial. I tested by pushing the planking carefully. Stable. I guessed the wheel to be about ten feet tall. If that gearing was still in working order the turning force of a millrace in this sort of spate would be colossal. Decorative, but dangerous. I'd have to be careful. There were no windows on this side but a diminutive platform projected over the waterfalls. Entrance therefore from below. I clambered down and peered up at the mill-house.
It's surprising how big things look when you're feeling vulnerable. The millhouse seemed supernaturally tall and thin. I could have sworn the wheel, clapped so firmly to its side and spurting the rushing water aside into an aerial jet to join the rest of the torrent, was no more than ten feet in diameter. From below it had grown. I was standing level with its lowermost blades. Only the merest trickle crept out from beneath, a testimony to the builders' skills. Stray trickles are wasted power, energy just chucked away. Even in decoration craftsmanship tells. I splashed the few yards through the muddied undergrowth. A wooden platform, crumbling, about chest height.
The millhouse's downstream aspect showed four turreted windows, two and two, not large enough to enter. I hauled myself on to the planking, making two give away instantly. I tumbled through on to the fetid mud beneath the platform. I was in a hell of a state and cursing worse than usual. But if the platform was fixed and I was the first to plunge through, then nothing could have been hidden beneath, correct? I was grinning like an ape, sweating in the dank air and almost bemused by the percussions of the booming river. This close, the falls were indescribably ugly. I've heard people go over in coracles for fun. They're welcome.
The platform creaked and spat splinters as I crept over it on hands and knees to spread my weight. A hinge, smugly veiled by its grime, was a foot from my face. Part of the wooden wall was crosscut, just as you see in stable
