The Elfin Ship (15 page)

The Professor sat hunched and sleeping at the base of a tree, and Dooly could be seen hiking halfway between the river and the remains of the raft. He seemed to be intent upon clambering up into the branches of a tree and was being fairly secretive about it. He would take a hop at one of the lower branches, flail about with his legs, then drop groundward and crouch for a moment peering around the trunk toward the river. Finally, he flailed up against a limb, caught, and yanked himself into a sitting position. Soon he was in among the uppermost branches, crouched and watching.

Jonathan, noting Dooly’s odd behavior, took a listen or two himself, and from somewhere downriver he heard just the breath of a tune and perhaps a song. He waited, straining to hear. Evidently the singer was approaching, for the tune grew by the moment. Jonathan could make out the words of the jolly song almost at the same instant that two figures strode into view along the muddy river road.

They were linkmen, of that he was sure – jelly men as the children of Twombly Town called them, and here they came carrying baskets of blackberries and great, green pippin apples. Both of the tiny linkmen were weighted down like hod carriers.

They were almost copies of the several linkmen who had come into Twombly Town selling jams and jellies some years back. But to Jonathan, most linkmen looked pretty much alike anyway. They all wore pointy hats like elves and had long slender legs and noses and perpetually grinning mouths. They almost always wore short pants and high woolly socks in season and out, and if it weren’t for their size it would be tough to tell them from elves. Elves, of course, are a head or so taller and are altogether too secretive to be strolling along the river road singing ridiculous songs. One of the linkmen hummed loudly, rather more of a shout than a hum, while the other sang in a clear falsetto:

Jonathan remarked to himself that linkmen, although superb jam makers and fruit pickers and, no doubt, altogether fine chaps, weren’t poets. But almost as soon as the first fellow’s verse ran itself out, the second took off and added a stanza or so.

He wrapped the verse up with such a wild and yodeling tra-la-la that Jonathan cringed even more than he had at the ‘eat ‘em/sweetum’ part.

Jonathan decided that the only thing to do would be to leap about and catch their attention, both to explain being marooned and to have a glance at the contents of their baskets which, illuminated by the sunshine, looked awfully good. Apples and berries aren’t normally breakfast foods, but when it’s a clear choice between fruit and cheese, cheese, although clearly one of the food marvels, is best left alone until lunch.

So just as Jonathan began a hearty wave and opened his mouth to shout, the two linkmen spied him there on the hill and began jabbering excitedly and waving their arms. They were about six feet from the base of Dooly’s tree when, with the sound of snapping branches and a lunatic shout, Dooly himself plummeted from his perch and crashed wildly to the ground. He was immediately up and sprinting toward Jonathan on the hill where the Cheeser and Professor Wurzle watched the stupefied linkmen, hoping the while that the linkmen wouldn’t think Dooly mad and run off with their baskets.

In truth, the linkmen looked momentarily puzzled. But when it became clear that Dooly was fleeing them and was not, apparently, a menace, the two simply shrugged and climbed along in his wake.

‘Hallo, hallo, hallo!’ called one of the linkmen – the one who had gotten so carried away with his singing. ‘Here we are now. A cheeseman and two cheese companions. No, three, clearly. There’s a beast among the ruins. A wonderful thing from the high valley.’

Jonathan began to introduce himself until he realized, abruptly, that an introduction appeared to be unnecessary. They had, oddly enough, called him a cheeseman. First Miles the Magician and then linkmen. It seemed that everyone knew what he and his companions were about. ‘Yes, indeed,’ Jonathan said, not so much in reply as for lack of anything else to say.

The Professor, however, was bowing and waving his cap and ay-aying it like a medicine man selling elixirs to a batch of church ladies. Dooly crouched behind the Professor, grinning. He poked old Wurzle in the back and pointed along toward the river where yet another pair of linkmen were striding, one enormously fat and the other seemingly taken with fits of dancing and leaping. They too carried baskets of goodies. The big linkman’s basket was loaded with loaves of bread, some long and white, some round and very dark. There was enough bread to feed a dozen people, probably twice that many, although Jonathan noted that the linkman was stuffing bread into his mouth with his free hand as if he were shoveling coal into an oven. He looked, Jonathan thought – a bit unfairly – like a creeping pyramid. His head angled immediately up from his shoulders without leaving room for a neck, and his cheeks were so round that the top of his head appeared to taper up into his pointed hat. Somewhere below his waist, Jonathan knew, were legs. But at such a distance they sort of blended together within the floppy pants to give him a comical, shuffling look, like a little hill having come to life for the purpose of robbing a bakery.

The first two linkmen produced great flowery oil cloths from their baskets and began flapping them out in the breeze and laying them about.

‘Excuse me,’ said the Professor. ‘I am Professor Artemis Wurzle; this is my good companion Dooly; and here, as you are apparently aware, is Jonathan Bing, the Cheeser of Twombly Town.’

The linkmen paused during the Professor’s introductions and listened respectfully. ‘We’re poets,’ the linkman in the green hat explained. ‘You might have heard us coming along the river road.’ He gave the Professor and Jonathan each a squint in turn as if to say, ‘Pretty rare stuff, eh?’ But linkmen, of course, are a very humble lot and wouldn’t think of complimenting themselves.

‘Oh, indeed,’ said Jonathan. ‘It sounded like quite an epic. Is there more of it?’

‘Not at the moment,’ said Yellow Hat. ‘But there will be. It strikes us now and then like – like – ’

‘Like a stone on the forehead,’ his companion chimed in.

‘Just so. Like a bonk on the head. That’s the beauty of poetry. It just sails in on the wind.’

‘Sounds a bit like what you’d call inspiration,’ said the Professor helpfully.

‘Oh it is that,’ Yellow Hat agreed. ‘It’s that in a nutshell. And you never know when it might strike. Watch this.’ The linkman stepped off to the side a bit and a gleam appeared in his eye. ‘Hark! Ye late rising tornadoes that doth from the sea foam spring! Do ye shout now of this and that? Do ye rage of things foul in the heart of the Goblin Wood? Do ye blow, ye foul hermitage, full-throated like some great beast afoot – ’ He was striding back and forth at this point, one hand pressed to his head and the other flailing wildly. Dooly stood amazed. The Professor nodded seriously, and Jonathan was afraid the linkman was overdoing it a bit. ‘Like some great beast afoot in –. Where the devil is he afoot?’ Yellow Hat asked his companion.

‘In the halls of stone?’

‘Of course not.’

‘in the land of the mig-weed?’

‘I won’t stand for your jokes!’ shouted Yellow Hat, and he gave his companion a look. ‘Like some great tramping beast – ‘ he went on, striding about lost in his poetry.

Jonathan was wondering aloud whether the line he searched for might not suggest itself during breakfast, having heard food recommended highly by G. Smithers of Brompton Village. The linkman in the green cap agreed and set about spreading silverware around the cloths. He seemed to think that ‘in the land of the mig-weed’ was a pretty significant contribution to the poem which was progressing up a small hill nearby, and muttered as much under his breath once or twice.

The words, ‘Some great slippery beast,’ could be heard from atop the little hill where Yellow Hat had settled down to compose. But further lines were interrupted by the arrival of the two who had been advancing along the road. The pyramidal linkman was devouring what looked to be a loaf of rye bread.

‘Squire!’ shouted Green Hat. ‘Let me take your basket, Squire!’ The Squire was apparently hard of hearing. He continued to grip the basket and to tuck into the loaf of rye. ‘There we are, Stick-a-bush!’ cried Green Hat. ‘You’ve let the Squire carry the bread, haven’t you, and it’s half gone. You know the Squire was to carry only plates and cups.’

‘He said he wouldn’t have no plates,’ replied poor Stick-a-bush. ‘He said he only wanted to peek at the bread to check it for mold. Then he snatched it up and said it was his. Said he was fairly sure the bread was poisoned and would eat of it to see. Then he wouldn’t give it back but must sample every loaf to be sure, and he ate and ate and ate all the way along the river road. That’s the truth, Mr Bufo, the honest truth.’

Mr Bufo, the green-hatted poet, tried to pry the Squire’s fingers from the handle of the basket. ‘Squire Myrkle!’ he shouted. ‘We must save the bread. There are hungry people here. Squire, let me introduce you to these fine raftsmen. That’s right, you can lay the basket there on the cloth.’ Bufo tugged on the basket, but the Squire, with a faraway look about him, seemed glued to it. ‘Right there on the cloth, Squire. This is Mr Bing, Squire, the cheesemaker, and this is Professor Wurzle, the famed explorer. And this is Mr Dooly, whose grandfather you’re familiar with.’

Jonathan was taken aback by the comment. The Professor had a shrewd look in his eye, as if he suspected this was evidence of more things abroad in the land. Dooly began to say something about his grandfather, but didn’t get much of it out before Bufo began shouting at Squire Myrkle again as the Squire began to search through the bread basket.

‘Do you see that beast?’ cried Bufo into the Squire’s ear. ‘He’s made entirely of cheese!’

The Squire dropped the basket of bread and lumbered along toward Ahab who, until then, had been lying very still. At the approach of Squire Myrkle, however, Ahab arose and stretched, alerting the Squire to the sad fact that he wasn’t, as rumor had it, made of cheese.

The Squire sat down in the middle of the tablecloth and looked as if he were going to cry. Jonathan marveled at the fact that, aside from being considerably shorter, the Squire looked the same sitting as standing. ‘Cheese!’ shouted the Squire shaking his head sadly, whereupon Ahab wandered over and sniffed at him.

‘That’s it!’ came a cry from the hill, and Yellow Hat, Bufo’s poet companion came lurching down toward them in a sort of theatrical tragic stride shouting and gesturing. ‘Do ye blow, ye creeping beast, full-throated through the land of cheese?’

‘I rather like that,’ said Bufo. ‘Yes. It has a ring.’

‘I should say it has. Thank you, Squire, for the suggestion,’ said the Yellow Hat. ‘You’re a good man.’

But compliments weren’t worth much to the Squire, who was patting Ahab absently on the head. ‘Cheese!’ he shouted. ‘A bit of cheese for the poor Squire. The poor languishing Squire cries out for cheese!’

Jonathan was overwhelmed. Being the only Cheeser present, it seemed as if the Squire’s cries were directed toward him, and there was nothing to do but break into a cask and hoist out a cheese. ‘Here you are,’ said Jonathan, handing a chunk to the Squire, who nodded very civilly. ‘Thank you, my man.’ Turning to Ahab, he continued, ‘Good fellow, that. Always a cheese at hand for the Squire. The Squire will make him rich. The Squire will eat this cheese now.’ And the Squire did, sharing a bite now and again with Ahab. The two of them quickly became good friends. Dooly finally tramped over and had a bite himself, and the three of them made such a hearty show of it that for years after, Jonathan and the Professor looked back on that as the time Dooly and Ahab ate cheese with the Squire.

The rest of the company joined in and set to with a will, saying little for a quarter of an hour as they tucked into breakfast. The wild berries were sweet and big as the Squire’s thumb and stained beards and faces purple. Loaves of bread, puffy and white, thick and dark, vanished as if by magic, and two of the remaining cheeses in the rafter’s keg followed suit. Jonathan was tempted to pry the lid from one of the kegs of raisin cheese, but he wisely decided otherwise. Those, after all, were for trade and weren’t, strictly speaking, his at all; not since Mayor Bastable had purchased them from him in the name of the people of Twombly Town that night before their departure.

Linkmen, Jonathan noted, enjoyed eating even more than did the people of the high valley, amazing as that might seem; their conversation, what little there was of it, ran to comparisons of ales and porters and pies and pastries. The famous dwarf, Ackroyd the baker, was held to be the last word in baked goods – mainly because of his honeycakes – and even the linkmen had to admit that their own bakers, although extraordinary in their way, didn’t hold a candle to Ackroyd. Only Dooly, who most likely wasn’t aware of the extent of Ackroyd’s fame, contested the assumption that the dwarf baker was the major name in cakes. Dooly said that as far as he knew, there was a land among the Wonderful Isles where loaves of cinnamon bread sprouted from trees, and where a man might toss out all the crusts in the world without worrying about wasting food. So, at least, is what Grandpa had told him.