Peter Dickinson - Tulku

Still the slope plunged down, with the path twisting back and forth between the trees but heading generally west along the valley. They were beginning to look for a place to camp when Mrs Jones halted and handed her reins to Theodore before darting upwards into the wood. About twenty yards from the path she dropped to her knees in a nook between two glossy green mounds of rhododendron. She stayed quite still for more than a minute, just as if absorbed in sudden prayer, but her body hid whatever she was looking at until she rose and backed slowly away, still staring, still unmistakably worshipping. What she had found was a single lily-plant, a stem about three feet high fringed along its length with insignificant down-curled leaves, and at the top five trumpets of intense pale yellow, amid the shadowy browns and greens and blues of the wood a colour as sharp as the call of a bird.

She came back to the path shaking her head slowly from side to side. There was a shiver in her voice which Theodore hadn’t heard before.

‘That’s new,’ she said. ‘That’s me name in all the books. I’ll lay my best bib and tucker no-one’s never seen that before. Ain’t it a beauty! Where did I pack my trowel, Lung?’

‘Not time for digging,’ said Lung, a little sourly. ‘Must find grass for horses, place for camp.’

He was jealous. Even Theodore could hear that he resented her passion for this flower. She must have thought so too, to judge by her laugh.

‘If you say so,’ she said. ‘Fair enough, I’ll come along of you for a bit. We must be getting down near that there lake by now, and there ought to be somewhere along there. But I warn you, if we don’t fetch up somewhere good in half an hour I’m coining back, even if it means riding half the night to catch you up again.’

‘Maybe we find more flower,’ said Lung mildly.

‘That’s right. There can’t be just the one.’

They walked on. The slope, easing now, took the path down slantwise another mile or so into an area where the pines gave way to oak and the undergrowth was much more varied and profuse. Here Mrs Jones halted again and studied the tree-tops to their left.

‘Looks a bit more light down there, don’t you think?’ she said. ‘But it ain’t worth taking the horses down, case it’s no good. Nip off, Theo, and see, would you?’

‘I go, Missy,’ said Lung, eagerly, and before Theodore could move he had dropped his reins and was darting down between the bushes, leaping like a deer to clear the lower ones. He vanished from sight, but still they could hear the crack and rattle of his progress, loud in the forest quiet.

‘Changed, hasn’t he?’ said Mrs Jones. ‘He wouldn’t of been dashing about like that a fortnight ago, would he? You’ve spotted there’s something on between us, young man?’

Theodore wasn’t ready for the question.

‘I guess so,’ he muttered.

She lifted her veil and looked at him, smiling gently. Beneath her make-up he could see the lines of exhaustion creasing her face.

‘And what do you say to that?’ she whispered. ‘No, it ain’t fair to ask. You can’t go telling me to my face what sort of woman I am, can you? But let me tell you this – I ain’t ashamed of myself. He’s a duck, ain’t he? You ever seen a young fellow so happy? You’ll be lucky if you feel like that yourself one day. I tell you, it was seeing I could still do that to a bloke as begun it in me, and now I don’t know as I’m not a bit head-over-heels myself . . . disgusting, ain’t it, in an old baggage like me?’

Theodore shook his head. It was sinful, but it was not disgusting.

‘Glad you think so, ’cause I see it’s rough luck on you. It ain’t easy living along of a pair of love-birds, and never mind your principles. But you ain’t going to go all haughty on us, are you? You’ll put up with our doings? Not that you got much choice.’

He nodded, dumbly. Certainly he had no choice, not just because he was forced into their company, but because it was impossible to resist her pleading.

‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘I’ll teach you drawing. That’ll be something, to make up like. Here comes young Galahad – he better not see me holding your hand, or he might hit you.’

As Lung came crunching up through the wood Theodore discovered that her small fingers had been gripping his wrist like a steel bracelet. He rubbed the place, feeling dazed and uncertain.

‘Number one fine place,’ panted Lung. ‘Plenty grass, plenty water.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘You two take the horses down, set up camp, while I nip back for my Lilium Jonesii . How’s that strike you, Theo? Lilium . . .’

‘Missy come along this way,’ interrupted Lung. ‘All day walk too far. I fetch this flower.’

‘So who’s being masterful?’ said Mrs Jones, only half-mockingly. ‘All right if you say so – I’m fair tucked-up, to be honest, and I’m surprised you ain’t too. You got to promise to do the job proper, like you seen me doing it. I want every hair off every root. First off you got to dig . . .’

‘I know. I dig very well,’ said Lung, seizing Mrs Jones’s wrist in his impatience and trying to drag her from the path. She shook him off, laughing.

‘All right, all right,’ she said. ‘Here’s the trowel. You cut along up the path or it’ll be too dark to see where you’re digging. Come on, Theo.’

For a moment Lung seemed reluctant to obey, but then he made up his mind and started back along the path.

‘See any hoof-prints, try and wipe them out,’ called Mrs Jones as she led Albert down between the bushes. ‘We’ll have to make a proper job of that tomorrow, if we’re going to have a bit of a rest here.’

Theodore saw that she was already picking her way with extra care, choosing patches of fallen leafage that left no trace of their passage, and making wide circuits to avoid breaking through undergrowth.

‘Do you really think they’ve followed us this far?’ said Theodore, after a while.

‘You can’t never tell with blood feuds. Besides, they ain’t the only ones we got to look out for – there’s other people use that path, and some of them might think as we was easy pickings like that first lot did. Nearly there. Hi! What’s this? Ooh, the yellow monkey! I thought as he was up to something!’

The spate of exclamations had begun with a squeak and ended in a whisper. Theodore, his eyes on the ground to choose the least betraying path, looked up to see what had caused that note of hushed excitement, almost of awe. At first all he noticed was that she was standing beside Albert on the edge of open ground; a mile beyond her a wall of dark cliff reared up, but in the middle distance was only the pale and mist-tinged luminosity of evening. He led Rollo up to her side and found that he was looking down a green coomb that reached right to the lake shore. The green was grass and looked good for grazing. A thin stream threaded through it.

Slowly his eyes were drawn away from these practicalities by the mountain opposite, the enormous wall of granite rising from the water, and above it the glittering ice-peak, pink and gold with sunset. The lake surface mingled the colours of the dark cliff and the pearly sky into a silky shimmer. The mountain was a huge presence, imposing awe and quiet.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he whispered to himself.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed ’em!’ said Mrs Jones, flinging out an arm. Theodore followed the direction of her gesture.

The flanks of the coomb were not as steep as its head, where they were standing. The trees reached the rim and stopped, leaving caves of shadow beneath their lower branches. In this shadow the lilies glowed.

‘Did you ever see anything like it?’ said Mrs Jones. ‘In your wildest dreams, even? Ooh, Where’s that fancy-dan of a poet? I could of told he was being artful!’