Lud-in-the-Mist (28 page)

This possibility filled him with an indescribable anguish.

Suddenly he remembered about Ranulph. Ranulph had gone to the country from which there is no return.

But he was going to follow him there and fetch him back
. Nothing would stop him — he would push, if necessary, through fold after fold of dreams until he reached their heart.

He bent down and touched one of the corpses. It was warm, and it moved. As he touched it he realized that he had incurred the danger of contamination from some mysterious disease.

“But it isn’t real, it isn’t real,” he muttered. “I’m inventing it all myself. And so, whatever happens, I shan’t mind,
because it isn’t real.”

It was growing dark. He knew that he was being followed by one of the stone beggars, who had turned into a four-footed animal called Portunus. In one sense the animal was a protection, in another a menace, and he knew that in summoning him he must be very careful to use the correct ritual formulary.

He had reached a square, on one side of which was a huge building with a domed roof. Light streamed from it through a great window of stained glass, on which was depicted a blue warrior fighting with a red dragon … no, it was not a stained glass window but merely the reflection on the white walls of the building from a house in complete darkness in the opposite side of the square, inhabited by creatures made of red lacquer. He knew that they were expecting him to call, because they believed that he was courting one of them.

“What else could bring him here save all this lovely spawn?” said a voice at his elbow.

He looked round — suddenly the streets were pullulating with strange semi-human fauna: tiny green men, the wax figures of his parents from Hempie’s chimneypiece, grimacing greybeards with lovely children gamboling round them dressed in beetles’ shards.

Now they were dancing, some slow old-fashioned dance … in and out, in and out. Why, they were only figures on a piece of tapestry flapping in the wind!

Once more he felt his horse beneath him. But what were these little pattering footsteps behind him? He turned uneasily in his saddle, to discover that it was nothing but a gust of wind rustling a little eddy of dead leaves.

The town and its strange fauna had vanished, and once more he was riding up the bridle-path; but now it was night.

T
hough it was a relief to have returned to the fresh air of reality, Master Nathaniel was frightened. He realized that he was alone at dead of night in the Elfin Marches. And the moon kept playing tricks on him, turning trees and boulders into goblins and wild beasts; cracking her jokes, true humorist that she was, with a solemn impassive face. But, how was this? She was a waxing moon, and almost full, while the night before — or what he supposed was the night before — she had been a half moon on the wane.

Had he left time behind him in Dorimare?

Then suddenly, like some winged monster rushing from its lair, there sprang up a mighty wind. The pines creaked and rustled and bent beneath its onslaught, the grasses whistled, the clouds flocked together and covered the face of the moon.

Several times he was nearly lifted from his saddle. He drew his cloak closely round him, and longed, with an unspeakable longing, for his warm bed in Lud; and it flashed into his mind that what he had so often imagined in that bed, to enhance his sense of well-being, was now actually occurring — he was tired, he was cold, and the wind was finding the fissures in his doublet.

Suddenly, as if some hero had slain the monster, the wind died down, the moon sailed clear of the clouds, and the pines straightened themselves and once more stood at attention, silent and motionless. In spite of this, his horse grew strangely restive, rearing and jibbing, as if something was standing before it in the path that frightened it; and in vain Master Nathaniel tried to quiet and sooth it.

Then it shuddered all over and fell heavily to the ground.

Fortunately, Master Nathaniel was thrown clear, and was not hurt, beyond the inevitable bruises entailed by the fall of a man of his weight. He struggled to his feet and hurried to his horse. It was stone dead.

For some time he sat beside it … his last link with Lud and familiar things; as yet too depressed in mind and aching in body to continue his journey on foot.

But what were those sudden strains of piercingly sweet music, and from what strange instrument did they proceed? They were too impersonal for a fiddle, too passionate for a flute, and much too sweet for any pipes or timbrels. It must be a human — or superhuman — voice, for now he was beginning to distinguish the words.

The voice stopped, and Master Nathaniel buried his face in his hands and sobbed as if his heart would break.

In this magically sweet music once more he had heard the Note. It held, this time, no menace as to things to come; but it aroused in his breast an agonizing tumult of remorse for having allowed something to escape that he would never, never recapture. It was as if he had left his beloved with harsh words, and had returned to find her dead.

Through his agony he was conscious of a hand laid on his shoulder: “Why, Chanticleer! Old John o’ Dreams! What ails you? Has the cock’s crow become too bittersweet for Chanticleer?” said a voice, half tender and half mocking, in his ear.

He turned round, and by the light of the moon saw standing behind him — Duke Aubrey.

The Duke smiled. “Well, Chanticleer,” he said, “so we meet at last! Your family has been dodging me down the centuries, but some day you were bound to fall into my snares. And, though you did not know it, you have been working for some time past as one of my secret agents. How I laughed when you and Ambrose Honeysuckle pledged each other in words taken from my Mysteries! And little did you think, when you stood cursing and swearing at the door of my tapestry-room, that you had pronounced the most potent charm in Faerie,” and he threw back his head and broke into peal upon peal of silvery laughter.

Suddenly his laughter stopped, and his eyes, as he looked at Master Nathaniel, became wonderfully compassionate.

“Poor Chanticleer! Poor John o’ Dreams!” he said gently. “I have often wished my honey were not so bitter to the taste. Believe me, Chanticleer, I fain would find an antidote to the bitter herb of life, but none grows this side of the hills — or the other.”

“And yet … I have never tasted fairy fruit,” said Master Nathaniel in a low broken voice.

“There are many trees in my orchard, and many and various are the fruit they bear — music and dreams and grief and, sometimes, joy. All your life, Chanticleer, you have eaten fairy fruit, and some day, it may be, you will hear the Note again — but that I cannot promise. And now I will grant your a vision — they are sometimes sweet to the taste.”

He paused. And then he said, “Do you you know why it was that your horse fell down dead? It was because you had reached the brink of Fairyland. The winds of Faerie slew him. Come with me, Chanticleer.”

He took Master Nathaniel’s hand and dragged him to his feet, and they scrambled a few yards further up the bridle-path and stepped on to a broad plateau. Beneath them lay what, in the uncertain moonlight, looked like a stretch of desolate uplands.

Then Duke Aubrey raised his arms high above his head and cried out in a loud voice, “By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!”

At these words the uplands became bathed in a gentle light and proved to be fair and fertile — the perpetual seat of Spring; for there were vivid green patches of young corn, and pillars of pink and white smoke, which were fruit trees in blossom, and pillars of blue blossom, which was the smoke of distant hamlets, and a vast meadow of cornflowers and daisies, which was the great inland sea of Faerie. And everything — ships, spires, houses — was small and bright and delicate, yet real. It was not unlike Dorimare, or rather, the transfigured Dorimare he had once seen from the Fields of Grammary. And as he gazed he knew that in that land no winds ever howled at night, and that everything within its borders had the serenity and stability of trees, the unchanging peace of pictures.

Then, suddenly, it all vanished. Duke Aubrey had vanished too, and he was standing alone on the edge of a black abyss, while wafted on the wind came the echo of light, mocking laughter.

Was Fairyland, then, a delusion? Had Ranulph vanished into nothingness?

For a second or two he hesitated, and then — he leaped down into the abyss.

T
he information given by Luke Hempen had enabled the authorities in Lud finally to put a stop to the import of fairy fruit. As we have seen, the Dapple had been dragged near its source, and wicker frails had been brought up, so cunningly weighted that they could float beneath the surface of the water, and closely packed with what was unmistakably fairy fruit. After that no further cases of fruit-eating came to Mumchance’s notice. But, for all that, his anxieties were by no means at an end, for the execution of Endymion Leer came near to causing a popular rising. An angry mob, armed with cudgels and led by Bawdy Bess, stormed the court of the Guildhall, cut down the body — which had been left hanging on the gibbet as an example to evildoers — and bore it off in triumph; and the longest funeral procession that had been seen for years was shortly following it to the Fields of Grammary.

The cautious Mumchance considered it would be imprudent to interfere with the obsequies.

“After all, your Worship,” he said to Master Polydore, “the Law has had his blood, and if it will mean a little peace and quiet she can do without his corpse.”

The next day many of the ‘prentices and artisans went on strike, and several captains of merchant vessels reported that their crews showed signs of getting out of hand.

Master Polydore was terrified out of his wits, and Mumchance was inclined to take a very gloomy view of the situation: “If the town chooses to rise the Yeomanry can do nothing against them,” he said dejectedly. “We ain’t organized (if your Worship will pardon the expression) for trouble — no, we ain’t.”

Then, as if by a miracle, everything quieted down. The strikers, as meek as lambs, returned to their work, the sailors ceased to be turbulent, and Mumchance declared that it was years since the Yeomanry had had so little to do.

“There’s nothing like taking strong measures
at once
,” Master Polydore remarked complacently to Master Ambrose (whom he had taken as his mentor in the place of Endymion Leer). “Once let them feel that there is a strong man at the helm, and you can do anything with them. And, of course, they never felt that with poor old Nat.”

Master Ambrose’s only answer was a grunt — and a rather sardonic smile. For Master Ambrose happened to be one of the few people who knew what had really happened.

The sudden calm was due neither to a miracle, nor to the strong hand of Master Polydore. It had been brought about by two humble agents — Mistress Ivy Peppercorn and Hazel Gibberty.

One evening they had been sitting in the little parlor behind the grocer’s shop over the first fire of the season.

As plaintiff and principal witness in the unpopular trial, their situation was not without danger. In fact, Mumchance had advised them to move into Lud till the storm had blown over. But, to Hazel, Lud was the place where the widow was buried, and, full as she was of western superstitions, she felt that she could not bear to sleep enclosed by the same town walls as the angry corpse. Nor would she return to the farm. Her aunt had told her of Master Nathaniel’s half-joking plan to communicate with her, and Hazel insisted that even though he had gone behind the Debatable Hills it was their clear duty to remain within reach of a message.

That evening Mistress Ivy was waxing a little plaintive over her obstinacy. “I sometimes think, Hazel, your wits have been turned, living so long with that bad bold woman … and I don’t wonder, I’m sure, poor child; and if my poor Peppercorn hadn’t come along, I don’t know what would have happened to
me
. But there’s no sense, I tell you, in waiting on here — with the hams and bacon at home not cured yet, nor the fish salted for winter, nor your fruit pickled or preserved. You’re a farmer on your own now, and you
shouldn’t
forget it. And I wish to goodness you’d get all that silly nonsense out of your head. A message from the Mayor, indeed! Though I can’t get over its being him that came to see me, and me never knowing, but giving him sauce, as if he’d been nothing but a shipmate of my poor Peppercorn’s! No, no, poor gentleman, we’ll never hear from
him!
Leastways, not
this
side of the Debatable Hills.”

Hazel said nothing. But her obstinate little chin looked even more obstinate than usual.

Then suddenly she looked up with startled eyes.

“Hark, auntie!” she cried. “Didn’t you hear someone knocking?”

“What a girl you are for fancying things! It’s only the wind,” said Mistress Ivy querulously.

“Why, auntie, there it is again! No, no, I’m sure it’s someone knocking. I’ll just go and see,” and she took a candle from the table; but her hand was trembling.

The knocking was audible now to Mistress Ivy as well.

“You just stay where you are, my girl!” she cried shrilly. “It’ll be one of these rough chaps from the town, and I won’t have you opening the door — no, I won’t.”

But Hazel paid no attention, and, though her face was white and her eyes very scared, she marched boldly into the shop and called, “Who’s there?” through the door.

“By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!” came the answer.

“Auntie! auntie!” she cried shrilly, “it’s from the Mayor. He has sent a messenger, and you must come.”

This brought Mistress Ivy hurrying to her side. Though she was not of an heroic character, she came of good sturdy stock, and she was not going to leave her dead brother’s child to face the dangers of the unseen alone, but her teeth were chattering with terror. Evidently the messenger was growing impatient, for he began beating a tattoo on the door and singing in a shrill sweet voice:

Hazel (not without some fumbling, for her hands were still trembling) drew the bolts, lifted the latch, and flung the door wide open. A sudden gust of wind extinguished her candle, so they could not see the face of the messenger.

He began speaking in a shrill, expressionless voice, like that of a child repeating a lesson: “I have given the password, so you know from whom I come. I am to bid you go at once to Lud-in-the-Mist, and find a sailor, by name Sebastian Thug— he will probably be drinking at the tavern of the Unicorn — also a deaf-mute, commonly known as Bawdy Bess, whom you will probably find in the same place. You will have need of no other introduction than the words,
By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West
. You are to tell them that there is to be no more rioting, and that they are to keep the people quiet, for the Duke will send his deputy. And next you will go to Master Ambrose Honeysuckle and bid him remember the oath which he and Master Nathaniel pledged each other over wild-thyme gin, swearing to ride the wind with a loose rein, and to be hospitable to visions. And tell him that Lud-in-the-Mist must throw wide its gates to receive its destiny. Can you remember this?”

“Yes,” said Hazel in a low puzzled voice.

“And now just a trifle to the messenger for his pains!” and his voice became gay and challenging. “I am an orchard thief and the citizen of a green world. Buss me, green maid!” and before Hazel had time to protest he gave her a smacking kiss on the lips and then plunged into the night, leaving the echoes of his “Ho, ho,
hoh!”
like a silvery trail in his wake.

“Well, I never did!” exclaimed Mistress Ivy in amazement, adding with a fat chuckle, “It would seem that it isn’t only
this
side of the hills that saucy young fellows are to be found. But I don’t quite know what to make of it, my girl. How are we to know he really comes from the Mayor?”

“Well, auntie, we can’t know, of course, for certain — though, for my part, I don’t think he was a Dorimarite. But he gave the password, so I think we must deliver the messages — there’s nothing in them, after all, that could do any harm.”

“That’s true,” said Mistress Ivy. “Though I’m sure I don’t want to go trudging into Lud at this time of night on a fool’s errand. But, after all, a promise is a promise — and doubly so when it’s been given to somebody as good as dead.”

So they put on their pattens and cloaks, lighted at lantern, and started off to walk into Lud, as briskly as Mistress Ivy’s age and weight would allow, so as to get there before the gates were shut. Master Ambrose, as a Senator, would give them a pass to let them through on the way back.

The Unicorn was a low little tavern down by the wharf, of a not very savory reputation. And as they peeped in at the foul noisy little den, Hazel had considerable difficulty in persuading Mistress Ivy to enter.

“And to think of the words we have to use too!” the poor woman whispered disconsolately; “they’re not at the best of times the sort of words I like to hear on a woman’s lips, but in a place like this you can’t be too careful of your speech … it’s never safe to swear at folks in liquor.”

But the effect produced by the words was the exact opposite of what she had feared. On first crossing the threshold they had been greeted by hostile glances and coarse jests, which, on one of the revelers recognizing them as two of the protagonists in the trial, threatened to turn into something more serious. Whereupon, to the terror of Mistress Ivy, Hazel had made a trumpet of her hands and shouted with all the force of her strong young lungs, “Sebastian Thug and Mistress Bess! By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!”

The words must indeed have contained a charm, for they instantly calmed the angry company. A tall young sailor, with very light eyes and a very sunburned face, sprang to his feet, and so did a bold-eyed, painted woman, and they hurried to Hazel’s side. The young man said in a respectful voice, “You must excuse our rough and ready ways when we first saw you, missy; we didn’t know you were one of us.” And then he grinned, showing some very white teeth, and said, “You see, pretty fresh things don’t often come our way, and sea-dogs are like other dogs and bark at what they’re not used to.”

Bawdy Bess’s eyes had been fixed on his lips, and his last words caused her to scowl and toss her head; but from Hazel they brought forth a little, not unfriendly, smile. Evidently, like her aunt, she was not averse to seafaring men. And, after all, sailors are apt to have a charm of their own. When on dry land, like ghosts when they walk, there is a tang about them of an alien element. And Sebastian Thug was a thorough sailor.

Then in a low voice Hazel gave the message, which Thug repeated on his fingers for the benefit of Bawdy Bess. He insisted on conducting them to Master Ambrose’s, and said he would wait outside for them and see them home.

Master Ambrose made them repeat the words several times, and questioned them closely about the messenger.

Then he took two or three paces up and down the room, muttering to himself, “Delusion! Delusion!”

Then he turned suddenly to Hazel and said sharply, “What reason have you to believe, young woman, that this fellow really came from Master Nathaniel?”

“None, sir,” answered Hazel. “But there was nothing for us to do but to act as if he did.”

“I see, I see. You, too, ride the wind — that’s the expression, isn’t it? Well, well, we are living in strange times.”

And then he sank into a brown study, evidently forgetful of their presence; so they thought it best quietly to steal away.

From that evening the rabble of Lud-in-the-Mist ceased to give any trouble.

W
hen the Yeomen stationed on the border were recalled to Lud and spread the news that they had seen Master Nathaniel riding alone towards the Elfin Marches, Dame Marigold was condoled with as a widow, and went into complete retirement, refusing even to see her oldest friends, although they had all come to regret their unjust suspicions of Master Nathaniel, and were, in consequence, filled with contrition, and eager to prove it in services to his wife.

Occasionally she made an exception for Master Ambrose; but her real support and stay was old Hempie. Nothing could shake the woman’s conviction that all was well with the Chanticleers. And the real anchor is not hope but faith — even if it be only somebody else’s faith. So the gay snug little room at the top of the house, where Master Nathaniel had played when he was a little boy, became Dame Marigold’s only haven, and there she would spend the most of her day.

Though Hempie never forgot that she was only a Vigil, nevertheless, in her own way, she was growing fond of her. Indeed, she had almost forgiven her for having spilled her cup of chocolate over her sheets, when, after her betrothal, she had come on a visit to Master Nathaniel’s parents — almost, but not quite, for to Hempie the Chanticleers’ linen was sacrosanct.

One night, at the beginning of December, when the first snow was lying on the ground, Dame Marigold, who had almost lost the power of sleep, was tossing wakefully in her bed. Her bedroom ran the whole length of the house, so one of its windows looked out on the lane, and suddenly she heard what sounded like low knocking on the front door. She sat up and listened — there it was again. Yes, someone was knocking at the door.

She sprang from bed, flung on a cloak and hurried downstairs, her heart beating violently.

With trembling fingers she drew the bolts and flung wide the door. A small, slight figure was cowering outside.

“Prunella!” she gasped. And with a sort of sob Prunella flung herself into her mother’s arms.

For some minutes they stood crying and hugging each other, too profoundly moved for questions or explanations.

But they were roused by a scolding voice from the stairs: “Dame Marigold, I’m ashamed of you, that I am, not having more sense at your age than to keep her standing there when she must be half frozen, poor child! Come up to your room this minute, Miss Prunella, and no nonsense! I’ll have your fire lighted and a warming-pan put in your bed.”

It was Hempie, candle in hand, frowning severely from under the frills of an enormous nightcap. Prunella rushed at her, half laughing, half crying, and flung her arms round her neck.

For a few seconds Hempie allowed herself to be hugged, and then, scolding hard all the time, she chivvied her up to her room. And, when Prunella was finally settled in her warm bed, with an inexorable expression she strode in carrying a cup of some steaming infusion.