“Blow up, there, you, Chris. Blow up! Whole passel’s gone cold while she’ve been nattering. Blow up, boy.”
The man in the background applied himself to the bellows. A vivid glow pulsed up from the furnace and illuminated the forge. Farm implements, bits of harness, awards won at fairs flashed up. The man stepped a little aside and, in doing so, he dislodged the piece of sacking he had thrown over his work. Mrs. Bünz cried out in German. The smith swore vividly in English. Grinning out of the shadows was an iron face, half-bird, half-monster, brilliantly painted, sardonic, disturbing and, in that light, strangely alive.
Mrs. Bünz gave a scream of ecstasy.
“The Horse!” she cried, clapping her hands like a madwoman. “The Old Hoss. The Hooded Horse. I have found it. Gott sei Dank, what joy is mine!”
The third man had covered it again. She looked at their unsmiling faces.
“Well, that was a treat,” said Mrs. Bünz in a deflated voice. She laughed uncertainly and returned quickly to her car.
Chapter II
Camilla
Up in her room at the Green Man, Camilla Campion arranged herself in the correct relaxed position for voice exercise. Her diaphragm was gently retracted and the backs of her fingers lightly touched her ribs. She took a long, careful deep breath and, as she expelled it, said in an impressive voice:
“ ‘Nine-men’s morris is filled up with mud.’ ” This she did several times, muttering to herself, “On the breath, dear child, on the breath,” in imitation of her speechcraft instructor, whom she greatly admired.
She glanced at herself in the looking-glass on the nice old dressing-table and burst out laughing. She laughed partly because her reflection looked so solemn and was also slightly distorted and partly because she suddenly felt madly happy and in love with almost everyone in the world. It was glorious to be eighteen, a student at the West London School of Drama and possibly in love, not only with the whole world, but with one young man as well. It was Heaven to have come along to Mardian and put up at the Green Man like a seasoned traveller. “I’m as free as a lark,” thought Camilla Campion.