All of which Dominic knew as well as she did; he’d been doing his homework even more industriously. He also knew that the first-class route up to the Freedom Road was nearer forty kilometres ahead than twenty, and joined the shelf highway in mid-course; but the turning to which she was directing them, short, second-class and quite certainly extremely steep to make the gradient in the distance, would lead them to the western end of the upper road, and straight to the lake of Strba.
That didn’t take much accounting for, of course; so much she had learned from Dana. What he was waiting to see was what she would do and where she would lead them when they got there. Because she wouldn’t know precisely where to look for her stepfather’s traces in the lake resort, unless she had information Dana didn’t possess.
The road streamed eastward along the floor of the great valley, threading the cobbled streets and spacious squares of small towns, and emerging again into the empty, verdant fields, that fantastic back-drop of peaks still unrolling steadily beside it.
Two main streams combine to form the river Vah, the White Vah the white mountain water from the High Tatras, the Black Vah from the district of Mount Royal in the Low Tatras. Their road crossed the White Vah for the last time, not many miles from its source, and they were over an imperceptible water-shed, no more than the heaving of a sigh from the valley’s great green heart, that separated the westward-flowing Vah from the eastward- flowing tributaries of the Poprad, which is itself a tributary of the Dunajec, and joins it to wander away northward into Poland beyond the Tatra range. Those tiny streams they were leaving were the last of the Danube basin. This new and even tinier one, crossed soon after they turned on to Tossa’s climbing road and headed precipitately towards the foothills, was the first innocent trickle of the vast drainage area of the Vistula. A couple of miles and a slight heave in the level of the plain determined their eternal separation.
The van climbed dizzily, on a roughly-surfaced but adequate road, left the viridian levels of the river plain, and wound its way between slopes of forest and cascades of rock rich with mountain flowers. The gradient increased steadily. The peaks had abandoned them, they were tangled in the intimacy of the foothills, and there were no longer any distances before them or behind.
They emerged at last on to a broad, well-made road that crossed them at right-angles, and went snaking away left and right along the shoulder of the range.
“Which way now?”
“Whichever you like,” offered Tossa with deceptive impartiality. “This must be the Freedom Road. Left is the highest end, and we’re quite near it here. How about going up there to Strba Lake for lunch, and then we can drive the length of the road to Tatranska Lomnice at the other end, and see if we can go up the funicular?”
It sounded a reasonable programme, and they accepted it readily. The great road climbed still, between slopes of noble pines, until it brought them out suddenly on a broad, open terrace, and the whole panorama of the plain below expanded before them, an Olympian view of earth. They parked the van in a large ground thoughtfully provided opposite the terrace, and rushed to lean over the railing, and marvel at the pigmy world from which they had climbed.
The whole flat green valley of the Vah lay like a velvet carpet beneath them, shimmering coils of cloud drifting between. Through this wispy veil they could see clearly the white ribbon of the road, and the silver ribbon of the river, threading the emerald field, and the little towns splayed like daisies in the grass of a meadow.
“But wait till we go up to the Lomnice Peak!” Tossa promised them, and the magic of joy had penetrated even Tossa’s absorption, and made her eyes shine and her voice vibrate. “This, and another leap on top of it—an enormous one, it looks in photographs. Quick, lock the van, and let’s go in to the lake.”
The snow-peaks, exquisitely shaped, bone-clean, polished granite and gneiss, reappeared as soon as they turned inward to the heart of the range, head beyond beautiful head materialising as they walked the curves of the road towards the blue gleam of the lake in its oval bowl. First there were white villas and large modern hotels, and then as the water opened before them broad and gracious, the older hotels, partly timbered, marking their age by their wooden towers and little lantern turrets, an element of fantasy that turned out later, surprisingly, to be traditional; for these towers for tourists were the lineal descendants of the timber churches and belfries of Slovakia, some as old as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
There were hotels round almost a quarter of the lake shore, but above and beyond rose the mountains, forested in their lower reaches, sharpened to steel above, etched with piercing patterns of ice, and snowfields radiant as flowers. Across the water, not far from the shore, towered the timber structure of a ski-jump, like an out-of-season shrub barren in summer and simulating death.
They walked the whole circuit of the lake, staring, exclaiming, photographing, as hordes of other holiday- makers, probably of a dozen nationalities at least, were also doing all round them. And Tossa took stock of every hotel they passed, and gave no sign of seeking or finding.
Not until they came to the Hotel Sokolie, built out to the very edge of the lake, with a terrace overhanging the clear, chill shallows, a sunken garden between its walls and the road, and its name on a wooden sign by the gate.
“This looks nice,” said Tossa, loitering. “And not too posh, either, so it won’t be frantically dear. Anybody but me hungry yet?”
She was learning how to do it. She had the tone just right, happily casual, attracted but easy, willing to go along with the general vote. She had known all along which hotel she was looking for; and that was information she could not have got from Dana.
Not one of the luxury models, just as she had said. Not even new. Half its structure was in wood, with a shingled steeple on one corner. But it had a pleasant, welcoming foyer, and a pine-panelled dining-room with a view over the terrace and the lake. And it was very easy to get the twins compliantly through the swing doors after her, and heading, on the head waiter’s prompt and agile heels, towards a table near the window, where the mountains leaned to them in silver outline against a sapphire sky, and the ice-cold mountain water mirrored that blue with a deeper, gentian tone, drowning their senses, soothing them into hungry complacence.
There wasn’t a hotel anywhere round the lake that couldn’t have provided them with an equally wonderful prospect and a comparable menu; but only this one would do for Tossa. For this was undoubtedly the hotel where Herbert Terrell had stayed for his few meagre days, before he removed to the Low Tatras, to Zbojska Dolina, and the death that was waiting for him there.
“I knew it!” said Toddy, groaning. “We’re going to get the English expert let loose on us wherever we go, I can see that. And I’ll swear we never actually said a word in the head man’s hearing, he just looked us over. How
“You’d be even more annoyed,” said Christine with certainty, “if they took you for something else, instead. Like all the English!”
