Ellis Peters - George Felse 05 - The Piper On The Mountain by Ellis Peters

junior, higher up the incredibly green valley pastures with two rangy dogs, whistled and waved. Mrs. Martínek came hurrying out from the kitchen to the bar, the scrubbed boards creaking to her quick steps, and shook Mirek by the hand warmly but casually, as a crony’s son from the next village rather than a rare and honoured visitor. Any friend of Mirek’s, clearly, was welcome here.
    All the doubts and suspicions that had been haunting Dominic’s mind since morning were blown away. He felt ashamed and confounded. There were, it seemed, still people in the world who had nothing to hide, and were exactly what they purported to be.
    “I leave you now,” announced Mirek, beaming at them over the pile of luggage he had assembled on the bar floor. “You will be all right with Mrs. Martínek, she has two rooms for you, and everything is prepared. You can talk to her in German, she understands it a little. And Dana—she speaks English, enough for every day. So now I shall go home. I thank you very much for such a pleasant ride, and I hope we shall meet again some day.”
    It was an honest farewell speech if ever they’d heard one. He shook hands all round, his rucksack already hoisted on his shoulder.
    “But how far have you to go?” Toddy demanded. “After all you’ve done for us, you must let us drive you home. Or at least down to the road. Oh, nonsense, you must! We know this road now, we’re home and dry, now let’s see you home.”
    But Mirek wouldn’t hear of it. He laughed the offer out of the bar window. “All this time I have no exercise, these few miles to my home I must walk. Often I walk the length of Slovakia on vacation. No, no, no, you will have your own walking to do.” He held out his hand to Christine. “I have been very happy, getting to know you all. It was for me a great pleasure.”
    When he reached Tossa, she was gazing up into his face with the most curious expression, half sullen and half guilty; and Dominic saw with astonishment that there were tears in her eyes. As they shook hands she suddenly reached up on tip-toe, and kissed Mirek’s round brick-red cheek very quickly and awkwardly.
    “Mirek,” she said impulsively, “you’ve been absolutely everything some people at home would like to think Czech people
aren’t
—so kind, and warm, and
sincere
. I can’t tell you how much I’ve appreciated it.”
    This extrovert behaviour was staggering enough in their moody, insecure and sceptical Tossa; but before they had time to wonder at it, something even more surprising had manifested itself in Mirek. Out of the collar of his open-necked shirt surged like a tide the most stupendous blush they had ever seen, engulfing muscular neck and tanned cheeks, burning in the lobes of his ears, and washing triumphantly into the roots of his blond hair. He stood looking down at Tossa from behind this crimson cloud, his pleasant features fixed in mid-smile, and his blue eyes helpless and horrified. He couldn’t even think of a joke to turn the moment aside, it was Toddy who had to prick the bubble of constraint and set him free to go.
    “You know what the English are,” said Toddy indulgently, “well-meaning but imprecise. The girl means
Slovak
people, of course!”

----
Chapter 4
THE MAN WHO KEPT THE SCORE
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    The Riavka hut took its name from the brook that came bounding down Zbojská Dolina from its source in the topmost bowl of the valley, “riavka” being a Slovak diminutive for just such an upland river. It looked very much like any other mountain hut in any other high range anywhere in Europe, a large, rambling, two-storied house, part stone, part wood, with heavily overhanging eaves, railed verandas, and firewood and logs stacked neatly beneath the overhang all along one wall. Besides being an inn for the herdsmen and the occasional rambler, it was also a farm and a timber-station, and a whole conglomeration of low wooden buildings clung to the outer log fence that bounded its