The sea glimmered in a rosy twilight. It was the evening of the second day of search. Far off, at the edge of the quiet ocean, the sails of little ships, like bits of black cardboard, moved very slowly along the skyline. Drawn up on the beach nearer at hand were more boats, with fishermen spreading out their nets and coiling ropes. Around them white gulls soared, faintly squealing. A solitary man stood on the cliffs above, looking down at it all. From his dress he would have been taken for a pilgrim. For he wore a long cloak of coarse cloth; had sandals on his feet; carried a staff cut from the hedges; and showed all the appearance of those who travel hard journeys afoot to visit shrines and far-off places of worship. Not even a friend, unless he looked closely under the wide hat shading the man’s face, would have known that it was Giles.
There was a worried weariness in his eyes. The five villages he had come through since daybreak had given him nothing of hope, not a trace of her whom he sought, not a hint of which direction to turn his search in. Thinking that he might draw less attention to himself and be better able to ask questions, he had changed from his ordinary clothes to those of a poor wanderer begging his way. And so he had come at length to the sea. Now he was asking himself as he gazed down upon it, could Barbara have gone beyond, over the wide waters into foreign lands? This small fishing port below was the nearest harbour to the capital. He had questioned the seamen on the sands. But they could tell him nothing. Nevertheless, without their knowledge she might have been carried away on any of the vessels sailing down the river at night. Supposing she had, what chance was left for him of overtaking her?
If only he had not been in such a hurry with his rash promises! ‘In two or three days,’ he had told the King. What a mad boast! Here was the last of the second day fading from his sight, and he had nothing to show for his work but a great weariness of body and puzzlement of mind.
Standing up there alone at the cliff’s edge he breathed the live sea-air deep into his tired body. Another day gone. In spite of the thousand questions that turned and jumbled in his mind, he could not help being thrilled by the glory of such an evening. He felt at once weakly small and humbly great. From here his eyes could sweep the world: grey sea below; darkening land behind; the sky a great violet ceiling overhead with rags of pink-edged clouds; the single spark of a lone star, steady glowing, where the sun had sunk . . . Barbara! Where was she now? What was she thinking of? Why had she gone?
Could not some wizard, some magic wish-giver, come to his aid, wave a wand to lift her out of this silent world and place her at his side, here on the cliff-top? Night putting her arms around the sea. No helping wizard. Just the earth going to bed the same as it had done for a million years, prosy, practical and prompt. Were no more wonders worked since sprites and fairies left the haunts of Man? Yet it was magic, too, this—so Geoffrey would have said—the sun sinking in the sea at dusk and rising on the land at dawn. And so it looked in truth. Gorgeous colours, violet, rose and silver-grey, moving, changing, mingling aswirl. The day of Mystery, wonder stuff and witchcraft, of elves and goblins, jinns and mermaids, fading into quiet dark like the peaceful, sleepy ending of enchanted dreams.
Was it the Twilight of Magic? Perhaps. But only today’s. Magic could never die while the sun had the power to rise again and Man had the wish to seek.
Giles pulled his rough cloak more closely about his shoulders. If tomorrow’s work should bring no more than today’s, he asked himself, what then? He would have failed. A great finder he, failing his master in his worst need!
And had he really tried his hardest? His conscience nagged at him unmercifully. That little voice of gladness had so often whispered. Could it be said that the only time he failed was when the King sent him seeking his own great love?
No, no, no! That should not be. He would not be beaten. She must be found. Soon he would run into his finder’s luck again if he only kept on. And what was he wasting time for here, standing and thinking and looking at sunsets, when there was so much need for haste? A day, a few hours only, and he would have to send word to the castle: yes or no.
He took up his staff, which had fallen to the ground. But before turning away from the brink of the cliff he gave a last glance at the sea. It was much darker now and his eyes could no longer make out the sails of the tiny craft creeping along the edge of the world. The ocean would always be linked in his mind with Agnes, the roar of surf, the Whispering Shell. Oh, if he only had it now! In the time of two days, Barbara would surely have spoken of him, or, if she had been kidnapped, then the men who held her would. For their greatest fear must be of him, the King’s Finder.
He hurried away across the turf towards the road by which he had come.
Yes, the shell would have been a great help. Yet how could he have taken it? He had promised and given it to the Princess Sophronia. It was no longer his. And no power would have made her give it up willingly. It was a strange thing, that shell. From long experience of it he had grown to look on its queer powers as something quite everyday and ordinary—like a window in your house where you went to listen for the voices of returning children or the barking of your dog. Yet it was strange—magic or science, mystery or common sense, who would ever find out? What a pity the King had cast it from him that night! And yet perhaps not. It could bring evil as well as aid. That was certain.
Well, he must do without it now and get on with his business.
The road he was seeking was a small cart-track which led up to these cliffs from the village he had last halted at. In that village he had left Midnight and the clothes he had worn when he had ridden away from the castle. He hoped, as he peered about him in the half-dark, that the keeper of the inn who had stabled his horse would also have prepared a good supper for himself. He was terribly hungry.
His foot touched something hard in the turf. It was the road. Looking ahead he could now see lights.
The pilgrim gripped his staff and set off for the village at a quick walk.