Your Worship,—I'd be glad if you'd take Master Ranulph away from this farm, because the widow's up to mischief, I'm sure of that, and some of the folks about here say as what in years gone by she murdered her husband, and she and somebody else, though I don't know who, seem to have a grudge against Master Ranulph, and, if I might take the liberty, I'll just tell your Worship what I heard.It was this way—one night, I don't know how it was, but I couldn't get to sleep, and thinking that a bite, may be, of something would send me off, towards midnight I got up from my bed to go and look in the kitchen for a bit of bread. And half-way down the stairs I heard the sound of low voices, and someone said, "I fear the Chanticleers," so I stood still where I was, and listened. And I peeped down and the kitchen fire was nearly out, but there was enough left for me to see the widow, and a man wrapped up in a cloak, sitting opposite to her with his back to the stairs, so I couldn't see his face. Their talk was low and at first I could only hear words here and there, but they kept making mention of the Chanticleers, and the man said something like keeping the Chanticleers and Master Ambrose Honeysuckle apart, because Master Ambrose had had a vision of Duke Aubrey. And if I hadn't known the widow and how she was a deep one and as fly as you make them, I'd have thought they were two poor daft old gossips, whose talk had turned wild and nasty with old age. And then the man laid his hand on her knee, and his voice was low, but this time it was so clear that I could hear it all, and I think I can remember every word of it, so I'll write it down for your Worship: "I fear counter orders. You know the Chief and his ways—at any moment he might betray his agents. Willy Wisp gave young Chanticleer fruit without my knowledge. And I told you how he and that doitered old weaver of yours have been putting their heads together, and that's what has frightened me most."And then his voice became too low for me to hear, till he said, "Those who go by the Milky Way often leave footprints. So let him go by the other."And then he got up to go, and I crept back to my room. But not a wink of sleep did I get that night for thinking over what I had heard. For though it seemed gibberish, it gave me the shivers, and that's a fact. And mad folks are often as dangerous as bad ones, so I hope your Worship will excuse me writing like this, and that you'll favour me with an answer by return, and take Master Ranulph away, for I don't like the look in the widow's eye when she looks at him, that I don't.And hoping this finds your Worship well as it leaves me,—I am, Your Worship's humble obedient servant,LUKE HEMPEN.
Your Worship,—I'd be glad if you'd take Master Ranulph away from this farm, because the widow's up to mischief, I'm sure of that, and some of the folks about here say as what in years gone by she murdered her husband, and she and somebody else, though I don't know who, seem to have a grudge against Master Ranulph, and, if I might take the liberty, I'll just tell your Worship what I heard.
It was this way—one night, I don't know how it was, but I couldn't get to sleep, and thinking that a bite, may be, of something would send me off, towards midnight I got up from my bed to go and look in the kitchen for a bit of bread. And half-way down the stairs I heard the sound of low voices, and someone said, "I fear the Chanticleers," so I stood still where I was, and listened. And I peeped down and the kitchen fire was nearly out, but there was enough left for me to see the widow, and a man wrapped up in a cloak, sitting opposite to her with his back to the stairs, so I couldn't see his face. Their talk was low and at first I could only hear words here and there, but they kept making mention of the Chanticleers, and the man said something like keeping the Chanticleers and Master Ambrose Honeysuckle apart, because Master Ambrose had had a vision of Duke Aubrey. And if I hadn't known the widow and how she was a deep one and as fly as you make them, I'd have thought they were two poor daft old gossips, whose talk had turned wild and nasty with old age. And then the man laid his hand on her knee, and his voice was low, but this time it was so clear that I could hear it all, and I think I can remember every word of it, so I'll write it down for your Worship: "I fear counter orders. You know the Chief and his ways—at any moment he might betray his agents. Willy Wisp gave young Chanticleer fruit without my knowledge. And I told you how he and that doitered old weaver of yours have been putting their heads together, and that's what has frightened me most."
And then his voice became too low for me to hear, till he said, "Those who go by the Milky Way often leave footprints. So let him go by the other."
And then he got up to go, and I crept back to my room. But not a wink of sleep did I get that night for thinking over what I had heard. For though it seemed gibberish, it gave me the shivers, and that's a fact. And mad folks are often as dangerous as bad ones, so I hope your Worship will excuse me writing like this, and that you'll favour me with an answer by return, and take Master Ranulph away, for I don't like the look in the widow's eye when she looks at him, that I don't.
And hoping this finds your Worship well as it leaves me,—I am, Your Worship's humble obedient servant,
LUKE HEMPEN.
How Master Nathaniel longed to jump on to his horse and ride post-haste to the farm! But that was impossible. Instead, he immediately despatched a groom with orders to ride day and night and deliver a letter to Luke Hempen, which bade him instantly take Ranulph to the farm near Moongrass (a village that lay some fifteen miles north of Swan-on-the-Dapple) from which for years he had got his cheeses.
Then he sat down and tried to find some meaning in the mysterious conversation Luke had overheard.
Ambrose seeing a vision! An unknown Chief! Footprints on the Milky Way!
Reality was beginning to become very shadowy and menacing.
He must find out something about this widow. Had she not once appeared in the law-courts? He decided he must look her up without a moment's delay.
He had inherited from his father a fine legal library, and the bookshelves in his pipe-room were packed with volumes bound in vellum and old calf of edicts, codes, and trials. Some of them belonged to the days before printing had been introduced into Dorimare, and were written in the crabbed hand of old town-clerks.
It made the past very real, and threw a friendly, humourous light upon the dead, to come upon, when turning those yellow parchment pages, some personal touch of the old scribe's, such as a sententious or facetious insertion of his own—for instance, "The Law bides her Time, but my Dinner doesn't!" or the caricature in the margin of some forgotten judge. It was just as if one of the grotesque plaster heads on the old houses were to give you, suddenly, a sly wink.
But it was the criminal trials that, in the past, had given Master Nathaniel the keenest pleasure. The dry style of the Law was such a magnificent medium for narrative. And the little details of every-day life, the humble objects of daily use, became so startlingly vivid, when, like scarlet geraniums breaking through a thick autumn mist, they blazed out from that grey style ... so vivid, and, often, fraught with such tragic consequences.
Great was his astonishment when he discovered from the index that it was among the criminal trials that he must look for the widow Gibberty's. What was more, it was a trial for murder.
Surely Endymion Leer had told him, when he was urging him to send Ranulph to the farm, that it had been a quite trivial case, concerning an arrear of wages, or something, due to a discharged servant?
As a matter of fact, the plaintiff, a labourer of the name of Diggory Carp, had been discharged from the service of the late Farmer Gibberty. But the accusation he brought against the widow was that she had poisoned her husband with the sap of osiers.
However, when he had finished the trial, Master Nathaniel found himself in complete sympathy with the judge's pronouncement that the widow was innocent, and with his severe reprimand to the plaintiff, for having brought such a serious charge against a worthy woman on such slender grounds.
But he could not get Luke's letter out of his head, and he felt that he would not have a moment's peace till the groom returned with news from the farm.
As he sat that evening by the parlour fire, wondering for the hundredth time who the mysterious cloaked stranger could have been whose back had been seen by Luke, Dame Marigold suddenly broke the silence by saying, "What do you know about Endymion Leer, Nat?"
"What do I know of Endymion Leer?" he repeated absently. "Why, that he's a very good leach, with very poor taste in cravats, and, if possible, worse taste in jokes. And that, for some unknown reason, he has a spite against me...."
He broke off in the middle of his sentence, and muttered beneath his breath, "By the Sun, Moon and Stars! Supposing it should be...."
Luke's stranger had said he feared the Chanticleers.
A strange fellow, Leer! The Note had once sounded in his voice. Where did he come from? Who was he? Nobody knew in Lud-in-the-Mist.
And, then, there were his antiquarian tastes. They were generally regarded as a harmless, unprofitable hobby. And yet ... the past was dim and evil, a heap of rotting leaves. The past was silent and belonged to the Silent People.... But Dame Marigold was asking another question, a question that had no apparent connection with the previous one: "What was the year of the great drought?"
Master Nathaniel answered that it was exactly forty years ago, and added quizzically, "Why this sudden interest in history, Marigold?"
Again she answered by asking him a question. "And when did Endymion Leer first arrive in Dorimare?"
Master Nathaniel began to be interested. "Let me see," he said thoughtfully. "It was certainly long before we married. Yes, I remember, we called him in to a consultation when my mother had pleurisy, and that was shortly after his arrival, for he could still only speak broken Dorimarite ... it must be thirty years ago."
"I see," said Dame Marigold drily. "But I happen to know that he was already in Dorimare at the time of the drought." And she proceeded to repeat to him her conversation that morning with Miss Primrose.
"And," she added, "I've got another idea," and she told him about the panel in the Guildhall that sounded hollow and what the guardian had said about the woodpecker ways of Endymion Leer. "And if, partly for revenge for our coldness to him, and partly from a love of power," she went on, "it is he who has been behind this terrible affair, a secret passage would be very useful in smuggling, and would explain how all your precautions have been useless. And who would be more likely to know about a secret passage in the Guildhall than Endymion Leer!"
"By the Sun, Moon and Stars!" exclaimed Master Nathaniel excitedly, "I shouldn't be surprised if you were right, Marigold. You've got a head on your shoulders with something in it more useful than porridge!"
And Dame Marigold gave a little complacent smile.
Then he sprang from his chair, "I'm off to tell Ambrose!" he cried eagerly.
But would he be able to convince the slow and obstinate mind of Master Ambrose? Mere suspicions are hard to communicate. They are rather like the wines that will not travel, and have to be drunk on the spot.
At any rate, he could but try.
"Have you ever had a vision of Duke Aubrey, Ambrose?" he cried, bursting into his friend's pipe-room.
Master Ambrose frowned with annoyance. "What are you driving at, Nat?" he said, huffily.
"Answer my question. I'm not chaffing you, I'm in deadly earnest. Have you ever had a vision of Duke Aubrey?"
Master Ambrose moved uneasily in his chair. He was far from proud of that vision of his. "Well," he said, gruffly, "I suppose one might call it that. It was at the Academy—the day that wretched girl of mine ran away. And I was so upset that there was some excuse for what you call visions."
"And did you tell anyone about it?"
"Not I!" said Master Ambrose emphatically; then he caught himself up and added, "Oh! yes I believe I did though. I mentioned it to that spiteful little quack, Endymion Leer. I'm sure I wish I hadn't. Toasted Cheese! What's the matter now, Nat?"
For Master Nathaniel was actually cutting a caper of triumph and glee.
"I was right! I was right!" he cried joyfully, so elated by his own acumen that for the moment his anxiety was forgotten.
"Read that, Ambrose," and he eagerly thrust into his hands Luke Hempen's letter.
"Humph!" said Master Ambrose when he had finished it. "Well, what are you so pleased about?"
"Don't you see, Ambrose!" cried Master Nathaniel impatiently. "That mysterious fellow in the cloak must be Endymion Leer ... nobody else knows about your vision."
"Oh, yes, Nat, blunt though my wits may be I see that. But I fail to see how the knowledge helps us in any way." Then Master Nathaniel told him about Dame Marigold's theories and discoveries.
Master Ambrose hummed and hawed, and talked about women's reasoning, and rash conclusions. But perhaps he was more impressed, really, than he chose to let Master Nathaniel see. At any rate he grudgingly agreed to go with him by night to the Guildhall and investigate the hollow panel. And, from Master Ambrose, this was a great concession; for it was not the sort of escapade that suited his dignity.
"Hurrah, Ambrose!" shouted Master Nathaniel. "And I'm ready to bet a Moongrass cheese against a flask of your best flower-in-amber that we'll find that rascally quack at the bottom of it all!"
"You'd always a wonderful eye for a bargain, Nat," said Master Ambrose with a grim chuckle. "Do you remember, when we were youngsters, how you got my pedigree pup out of me for a stuffed pheasant, so moth-eaten that it had scarcely a feather to its name, and, let me see, what else? I think there was a half a packet of mouldy sugar-candy...."
"And I threw in a broken musical-box whose works used to go queer in the middle of 'To War, Bold Sons of Dorimare,' and burr and buzz like a drunk cockchafer," put in Master Nathaniel proudly. "It was quite fair—quantity for quality."
Master Nathaniel was much too restless and anxious to explore the Guildhall until the groom returned whom he had sent with the letter to Luke Hempen.
But he must have taken the order to ride night and day literally—in so short a time was he back again in Lud. Master Nathaniel was, of course, enchanted by his despatch, though he was unable to elicit from him any detailed answers to his eager questions about Ranulph. But it was everything to know that the boy was well and happy, and it was but natural that the fellow should be bashful and tongue-tied in the presence of his master.
But the groom had not, as a matter of fact, come within twenty miles of the widow Gibberty's farm.
In a road-side tavern he had fallen in with a red-haired youth, who had treated him to glass upon glass of an extremely intoxicating wine; and, in consequence, he had spent the night and a considerable portion of the following morning sound asleep on the floor of the tavern.
When he awoke, he was horrified to discover how much time he had wasted. But his mind was set at rest on the innkeeper's giving him a letter from the red-haired youth, to say that he deeply regretted having been the indirect cause of delaying a messenger sent on pressing business by the High Seneschal (in his cup the groom had boasted of the importance of his errand), and had, in consequence, ventured to possess himself of the letter, which he guaranteed to deliver at the address on the wrapper as soon, or sooner, as the messenger could have done himself.
The groom was greatly relieved. He had not been long in Master Nathaniel's service. It was after Yule-tide he had entered it.
So it was with a heart relieved from all fears for Ranulph and free to throb like a schoolboy's with the lust of adventure that Master Nathaniel met Master Ambrose on the night of the full moon at the splendid carved doors of the Guildhall.
"I say, Ambrose," he whispered, "I feel as if we were lads again, and off to rob an orchard!"
Master Ambrose snorted. He was determined, at all costs, to do his duty, but it annoyed him that his duty should be regarded in the light of a boyish escapade.
The great doors creaked back on their hinges. Shutting them as quietly as they could, they tip-toed up the spiral staircase and along the corridor described by Dame Marigold: whenever a board creaked under their heavy steps, one inwardly cursing the other for daring to be so stout and unwieldy.
All round them was darkness, except for the little trickles of light cast before them by their two lanthorns.
A house with old furniture has no need of guests to be haunted. As we have seen, Master Nathaniel was very sensitive to the silent things—stars, houses, trees; and often in his pipe-room, after the candles had been lit, he would sit staring at the bookshelves, the chairs, his father's portrait—even at his red umbrella standing up in the corner, with as great a sense of awe as if he had been a star-gazer.
But that night, the brooding invisible presences of the carved panels, the storied tapestries, affected even the hard-headed Master Ambrose. It was as if that silent population was drawing him, by an irresistible magnetism, into the zone of its influence.
If only they would speak, or begin to move about—those silent rooted things! It was like walking through a wood by moonlight.
Then Master Nathaniel stood still.
"This, I think, must roughly be the spot where Marigold found the hollow panel," he whispered, and began tapping cautiously along the wainscotting.
A few minutes later, he said in an excited whisper, "Ambrose! Ambrose! I've got it. Hark! You can hear, can't you? It's as hollow as a drum."
"Suffering Cats! I believe you're right," whispered back Master Ambrose, beginning, in spite of himself, to be a little infected with Nat's absurd excitement.
And then, yielding to pressure, the panel slid back, and by the light of their lanthorns they could see a twisting staircase.
For a few seconds they gazed at each other in silent triumph. Then Master Nathaniel chuckled, and said, "Well, here goes—down with our buckets into the well! And may we draw up something better than an old shoe or a rotten walnut!" and straightway he began to descend the stairs, Master Ambrose valiantly following him.
The stairs went twisting down, down—into the very bowels of the earth, it seemed. But at long last they found themselves in what looked like a long tunnel.
"Tally ho! Tally ho!" whispered Master Nathaniel, laughing for sheer joy of adventure, "take it at a gallop, Brosie; it may lead to an open glade ... and the deer at bay!"
And digging him in the ribs, he added, "Better sport than moth hunting, eh?" which showed the completeness of their reconciliation.
Nevertheless, it was very slowly, and feeling each step, that they groped their way along the tunnel.
After what seemed a very long time Master Nathaniel halted, and whispered over his shoulder, "Here we are. There's a door ... oh, thunder and confusion on it for ever! It's locked."
And, beside himself with irritation at this unlooked-for obstacle, he began to batter and kick at the door, like one demented.
He paused a minute for breath, and from the inside could be heard a shrill female voice demanding the pass-word.
"Pass-word?" bellowed back Master Nathaniel, "by the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West, what...."
But before he could finish his sentence, the door was opened from the other side, and they marched into a low, square room, which was lit by one lamp swinging by a chain from the ceiling—for which there seemed but little need, for a light more brilliant than that of any lamp, and yet as soft as moonlight, seemed to issue from the marvelous tapestries that hung on the walls.
They were dumb with amazement. This was as different from all the other tapestry they had ever seen as is an apple-tree in full blossom against a turquoise sky in May to the same tree in November, when only a few red leaves still cling to its branches, and the sky is leaden. Oh, those blues, and pinks, and brilliant greens! In what miraculous dyes had the silks been dipped?
As to the subjects, they were those familiar to every Dorimarite—hunting scenes, fugitives chased by the moon, shepherds and shepherdesses tending their azure sheep. But, depicted in these brilliant hues, they were like the ashes of the past, suddenly, under one's very eyes, breaking into flame. Heigh-presto! The men and women of a vanished age, noisy, gaudy, dominant, are flooding the streets, and driving the living before them like dead leaves.
And what was this lying in heaps on the floor? Pearls and sapphires, and monstrous rubies? Or windfalls of fruit, marvellous fruit, fallen from the trees depicted on the tapestry?
Then, as their eyes grew accustomed to all the brilliance, the two friends began to get their bearings; there could be no doubt as to the nature of that fruit lying on the floor. It was fairy fruit, or their names were not respectively Chanticleer and Honeysuckle.
And, to their amazement, the guardian of this strange treasure was none other than their old acquaintance Mother Tibbs.
Her clear, child-like eyes that shone like lamps out of her seared weather-beaten face, were gazing at them in a sort of mild surprise.
"If it isn't Master Hyacinth and Master Josiah!" she exclaimed, adding, with her gay, young laugh, "to think of their knowing the pass-word!"
Then she peered anxiously into their faces: "Are your stockings wearing well yonder? The last pair I washed for you didn't take the soap as they should. Marching down the Milky Way, and tripping it beyond the moon, is hard on stockings."
Clearly she took them for their own fathers.
Meanwhile, Master Ambrose was drawing in his breath, with a noise as if he were eating soup, and creasing his double chins—sure signs, to anyone who had seen him on the Bench, that he was getting ready to hector.
But Master Nathaniel gave him a little warning nudge, and said cordially to their hostess, "Why, our stockings, and boots too, are doing very nicely, thank you. So you didn't expect us to know the pass-word, eh? Well, well, perhaps we know more than you think," then, under his breath to Master Ambrose, "By my Great-aunt's Rump, Ambrose, what was the pass-word?"
Then turning again to Mother Tibbs, who was slightly swaying from her hips, as if in time to some jig, which she alone could hear, he said, "You've got some fine tapestry. I don't believe I've ever seen finer!"
She smiled, and then coming close up to him, said in a low voice, "Does your Worship know what makes it so fine? No? Why, it's the fairy fruit!" and she nodded her head mysteriously, several times.
Master Ambrose gave a sort of low growl of rage, but again Master Nathaniel shot him a warning look, and said in a voice of polite interest, "Indeed! Indeed! And where, may I ask, does the ... er ... fruit come from?"
She laughed merrily, "Why, the gentlemen bring it! All the pretty gentlemen, dressed in green, with their knots of ribands, crowding down in the sunrise from their ships with the scarlet sails to suck the golden apricocks, when all in Lud are fast asleep! And then the cock says Cockadoodledoo! Cockadoodledooooo!" and her voice trailed off, far-away and lonely, suggesting, somehow, the first glimmer of dawn on ghostly hayricks.
"And I'll tell you something, Master Nat Cock o' the Roost," she went on, smiling mysteriously, and coming close up to him, "you'll soon be dead!"
Then she stepped back, smiling and nodding encouragingly, as if to say, "There's a pretty present I've given you! Take care of it."
"And as for Mother Tibbs," she went on triumphantly, "she'll soon be a fine lady, like the wives of the Senators, dancing all night under the moon! The gentlemen have promised."
Master Ambrose gave a snort of impatience, but Master Nathaniel said with a good-humoured laugh, "So that's how you think the wives of the Senators spend their time, eh? I'm afraid they've other things to do. And as to yourself, aren't you getting too old for dancing?"
A slight shadow passed across her clear eyes. Then she tossed her head with the noble gesture of a wild creature, and cried, "No! No! As long as my heart dances my feet will too. And nobody will grow old when the Duke comes back."
But Master Ambrose could contain himself no longer. He knew only too well Nat's love of listening to long rambling talk—especially when there happened to be some serious business on hand.
"Come, come," he cried in a stern voice, "in spite of being crack-brained, my good woman, you may soon find yourself dancing to another tune. Unless you tell us in double quick time who exactly these gentlemen are, and who it was that put you on guard here, and who brings that filthy fruit, and who takes it away, we will ... why, we will cut the fiddle strings that you dance to!"
This threat was a subconscious echo of the last words he had heard spoken by Moonlove. Its effect was instantaneous.
"Cut the fiddle strings! Cut the fiddle strings!" she wailed; adding coaxingly, "No, no, pretty master, you would never do that! Would he now?" and she turned appealingly to Master Nathaniel. "It would be like taking away the poor man's strawberries. The Senator has peaches and roasted swans and peacock's hearts, and a fine coach to drive in, and a feather bed to lie late in of a morning. And the poor man has black bread and baked haws, and work ... but in the summer he has strawberries and tunes to dance to. No, no, you would never cut the fiddle strings!"
Master Nathaniel felt a lump in his throat. But Master Ambrose was inexorable: "Yes, of course I would!" he blustered; "I'd cut the strings of every fiddle in Lud. And I will, too, unless you tell us what we want to know. Come, Mother Tibbs, speak out—I'm a man of my word."
She gazed at him beseechingly, and then a look of innocent cunning crept into her candid eyes and she placed a finger on her lips, then nodded her head several times and said in a mysterious whisper, "If you'll promise not to cut the fiddle strings I'll show you the prettiest sight in the world—the sturdy dead lads in the Fields of Grammary hoisting their own coffins on their shoulders, and tripping it over the daisies. Come!" and she darted to the side of the wall, drew aside the tapestry and revealed to them another secret door. She pressed some spring, it flew open disclosing another dark tunnel.
"Follow me, pretty masters," she cried.
"There's nothing to be done," whispered Master Nathaniel, "but to humour her. She may have something of real value to show us."
Master Ambrose muttered something about a couple of lunatics and not having left his fireside to waste the night in indulging their fantasies; but all the same he followed Master Nathaniel, and the second secret door shut behind them with a sharp click.
"Phew!" said Master Nathaniel: "Phew!" puffed Master Ambrose, as they pounded laboriously along the passage behind their light-footed guide.
Then they began to ascend a flight of stairs, which seemed interminable, and finally fell forward with a lurch on to their knees, and again there was a click of something shutting behind them.
They groaned and cursed and rubbed their knees and demanded angrily to what unholy place she had been pleased to lead them.
But she clapped her hands gleefully, "Don't you know, pretty masters? Why, you're where the dead cocks roost! You've come back to your own snug cottage, Master Josiah Chanticleer. Take your lanthorn and look round you."
This Master Nathaniel proceeded to do, and slowly it dawned on him where they were.
"By the Golden Apples of the West, Ambrose!" he exclaimed, "if we're not in my own chapel!"
And, sure enough, the rays of the lanthorn revealed the shelves lined with porphyry coffins, the richly wrought marble ceiling, and the mosaic floor of the home of the dead Chanticleers.
"Toasted Cheese!" muttered Master Ambrose in amazement.
"It must have two doors, though I never knew it," said Master Nathaniel. "A secret door opening on to that hidden flight of steps. There are evidently people who know more about my chapel than I do myself," and suddenly he remembered how the other day he had found its door ajar.
Mother Tibbs laughed gleefully at their surprise, and then, placing one finger on her lips, she beckoned them to follow her; and they tip-toed after her out into the moonlit Fields of Grammary, where she signed to them to hide themselves from view behind the big trunk of a sycamore.
The dew, like lunar daisies, lay thickly on the grassy graves. The marble statues of the departed seemed to flicker into smiles under the rays of the full moon; and, not far from the sycamore, two men were digging up a newly-made grave. One of them was a brawny fellow with the gold rings in his ears worn by sailors, the other was—Endymion Leer.
Master Nathaniel shot a look of triumph at Master Ambrose, and whispered, "A cask of flower-in-amber, Brosie!"
For some time the two men dug on in silence, and then they pulled out three large coffins and laid them on the grass.
"We'd better have a peep, Sebastian," said Endymion Leer, "to see that the goods have been delivered all right. We're dealing with tricky customers."
The young man, addressed as Sebastian, grinned, and taking a clasp knife from his belt, began to prise open one of the coffins.
As he inserted the blade into the lid, our two friends behind the sycamore could not help shuddering; nor was their horror lessened by the demeanor of Mother Tibbs, for she half closed her eyes, and drew the air in sharply through her nostrils, as if in expectation of some delicious perfume.
But when the lid was finally opened and the contents of the coffin exposed to view, they proved not to be cere cloths and hideousness, but—closely packed fairy fruit.
"Toasted Cheese!" muttered Master Ambrose; "Busty Bridget!" muttered Master Nathaniel.
"Yes, that's the goods all right," said Endymion Leer, "and we'll take the other two on trust. Shut it up again, and help to hoist it on to my shoulder, and do you follow with the other two—we'll take them right away to the tapestry-room. We're having a council there at midnight, and it's getting on for that now."
Choosing a moment when the backs of the two smugglers were turned, Mother Tibbs darted out from behind the sycamore, and shot back into the chapel, evidently afraid of not being found at her post. And she was shortly followed by Endymion Leer and his companion.
At first, the sensations of Master Nathaniel and Master Ambrose were too complicated to be expressed in words, and they merely stared at each other, with round eyes. Then a slow smile broke over Master Nathaniel's face, "No Moongrass cheese for you this time, Brosie," he said. "Who was right, you or me?"
"By the Milky Way, it was you, Nat!" cried Master Ambrose, for once, in a voice of real excitement. "The rascal! The unmitigated rogue! So it's him, is it, we parents have to thank for what has happened! But he'll hang for it, he'll hang for it—though we have to change the whole constitution of Dorimare! The blackguard!"
"Into the town probably as a hearse," Master Nathaniel was saying thoughtfully, "then buried here, then down through my chapel into the secret room in the Guildhall, whence, I suppose, they distribute it by degrees. It's quite clear now how the stuff gets into Lud. All that remains to clear up is how it gets past our Yeomen on the border ... but what's taken you, Ambrose?"
For Master Ambrose was simply shaking with laughter; and he did not laugh easily.
"Do the dead bleed?" he was repeating between his guffaws; "why, Nat, it's the best joke I've heard these twenty years!"
And when he had sufficiently recovered he told Master Nathaniel about the red juice oozing out of the coffin, which he had taken for blood, and how he had frightened Endymion Leer out of his wits by asking him about it.
"When, of course, it was a bogus funeral, and what I had seen was the juice of that damned fruit!" and again he was seized with paroxysms of laughter.
But Master Nathaniel merely gave an absent smile; there was something vaguely reminiscent in that idea of the dead bleeding—something he had recently read or heard; but, for the moment, he could not remember where.
In the meantime, Master Ambrose had recovered his gravity. "Come, come," he cried briskly, "we've not a moment to lose. We must be off at once to Mumchance, rouse him and a couple of his men, and be back in a twinkling to that tapestry-room, to take them red-handed."
"You're right, Ambrose! You're right!" cried Master Nathaniel. And off they went at a sharp jog trot, out at the gate, down the hill, and into the sleeping town.
They had no difficulty in rousing Mumchance and in firing him with their own enthusiasm. As they told him in a few hurried words what they had discovered, his respect for the Senate went up in leaps and bounds—though he could scarcely credit his ears when he learned of the part played in the evening's transactions by Endymion Leer.
"To think of that! To think of that!" he kept repeating, "and me who's always been so friendly with the Doctor, too!"
As a matter of fact, Endymion Leer had for some months been the recipient of Mumchance's complaints with regard to the slackness and inefficiency of the Senate; and, in his turn, had succeeded in infecting the good Captain's mind with sinister suspicions against Master Nathaniel. And there was a twinge of conscience for disloyalty to his master, the Mayor, behind the respectful heartiness of his tones as he cried, "Very good, your Worship. It's Green and Juniper what are on duty tonight. I'll go and fetch them from the guard-room, and we should be able to settle the rascals nicely."
As the clocks in Lud-in-the-Mist were striking midnight the five of them were stepping cautiously along the corridors of the Guildhall. They had no difficulty in finding the hollow panel, and having pressed the spring, they made their way along the secret passage.
"Ambrose!" whispered Master Nathaniel flurriedly, "what was it exactly that I said that turned out to be the pass-word? What with the excitement and all I've clean forgotten it."
Master Ambrose shook his head. "I haven't the slightest idea," he whispered back. "To tell you the truth, I couldn't make out what she meant about your having used a pass-word. All I can remember your saying was 'Toasted Cheese!' or 'Busty Bridget!'—or something equally elegant."
Now they had got to the door, locked from the inside as before.
"Look here, Mumchance," said Master Nathaniel, ruefully, "we can't remember the pass-word, and they won't open without it."
Mumchance smiled indulgently, "Your Worship need not worry about the pass-word," he said. "I expect we'll be able to find another that will do as well ... eh, Green and Juniper? But perhaps first—just to be in order—your Worship would knock and command them to open."
Master Nathaniel felt absurdly disappointed. For one thing, it shocked his sense of dramatic economy that they should have to resort to violence when the same result could have been obtained by a minimum expenditure of energy. Besides, he had so looked forward to showing off his new little trick!
So it was with a rueful sigh that he gave a loud rat-a-tat-tat on the door, calling out, "Open in the name of the Law!"
These words, of course, produced no response, and Mumchance, with the help of the other four, proceeded to put into effect his own pass-word, which was to shove with all their might against the door, two of the hinges of which he had noticed looked rusty.
It began to creak, and then to crack, and finally they burst into ... an empty room. No strange fruit lay heaped on the floor; nothing hung on the walls but a few pieces of faded moth-eaten tapestry. It looked like a room that had not been entered for centuries.
When they had recovered from their first surprise, Master Nathaniel cried fiercely, "They must have got wind that we were after them, and given us the slip, taking their loads of filthy fruits with them, I'll...."
"There's been no fruit here, your Worship," said Mumchance in a voice that he was trying hard to keep respectful; "it always leaves stains, and there ain't any stains here."
And he couldn't resist adding, with a wink to Juniper and Green, "I daresay it's your Worship's having forgotten the pass-word that's done it!" And Juniper and Green grinned from ear to ear.
Master Nathaniel was too chagrined to heed this insolence; but Master Ambrose—ever the champion of dignity in distress—gave Mumchance such a look that he hung his head and humbly hoped that his Worship would forgive his little joke.
The following morning Master Nathaniel woke late, and got up on the wrong side of his bed, which, in view of the humiliation and disappointment of the previous night, was, perhaps, pardonable.
His temper was not improved by Dame Marigold's coming in while he was dressing to complain of his having smoked green shag elsewhere than in the pipe-room: "And you know how it always upsets me, Nat. I'm feeling quite squeamish this morning, the whole house reeks of it ... Nat! you know you are an old blackguard!" and she dimpled and shook her finger at him, as an emollient to the slight shrewishness of her tone.
"Well, you're wrong for once," snapped Master Nathaniel; "I haven't smoked shag even in the pipe-room for at least a week—so there! Upon my word, Marigold, your nose is a nuisance—you should keep it in a bag, like a horse!"
But though Master Nathaniel might be in a bad temper he was far from being daunted by what had happened the night before.
He shut himself into the pipe-room and wrote busily for about a quarter of an hour; then he paced up and down committing what he had written to memory. Then he set out for the daily meeting of the Senate. And so absorbed was he with the speech he had been preparing that he was impervious, in the Senators' tiring-room, to the peculiar glances cast at him by his colleagues.
Once the Senators had donned their robes of office and taken their places in the magnificent room reserved for their councils, their whole personality was wont suddenly to alter, and they would cease to be genial, easy-going merchants who had known each other all their lives and become grave, formal—even hierophantic, in manner; while abandoning the careless colloquial diction of every day, they would adopt the language of their forefathers, forged in more strenuous and poetic days than the present.
In consequence, the stern look in Master Nathaniel's eye that morning, when he rose to address his colleagues, the stern tone in which he said "Senators of Dorimare!" might have heralded nothing more serious than a suggestion that they should, that year, have geese instead of turkeys at their public dinner.
But his opening words showed that this was to be no usual speech.
"Senators of Dorimare!" he began, "I am going to ask you this morning to awake. We have been asleep for many centuries, and the Law has sung us lullabies. But many of us here have received the accolade of a very heavy affliction. Has that wakened us? I fear not. The time has come when it behooves us to look facts in the face—even if those facts bear a strange likeness to dreams and fancies.
"My friends, the ancient foes of our country are abroad. Tradition says that the Fairies" (he brought out boldly the horrid word) "fear iron; and we, the descendants of the merchant-heroes, must still have left in us some veins of that metal. The time has come to prove it. We stand to lose everything that makes life pleasant and secure—laughter, sound sleep, the merriment of fire-sides, the peacefulness of gardens. And if we cannot bequeath the certainty of these things to our children, what will boot them their inheritance? It is for us, then, as fathers as well as citizens, once and for all to uproot this menace, the roots of which are in the past, the branches of which cast their shadow on the future.
"I and another of your colleagues have discovered at last who it was that brought this recent grief and shame upon so many of us. It will be hard, I fear, to prove his guilt, for he is subtle, stealthy, and mocking, and, like his invisible allies, his chief weapon is delusion. I ask you all, then, to parry that weapon with faith and loyalty, which will make you take the word of old and trusty friends as the only touchstone of truth. And, after that—I have sometimes thought that less blame attaches to deluding others than to deluding oneself. Away, then, with flimsy legal fictions! Let us call things by their names—not grograine or tuftaffity, but fairy fruit. And if it be proved that any man has brought such merchandise into Dorimare, let him hang by his neck till he be dead."
Then Master Nathaniel sat down.
But where was the storm of applause he had expected would greet his words? Where were the tears, the eager questions, the tokens of deeply stirred feelings?
Except for Master Ambrose's defiant "Bravos!" his speech was received in profound silence. The faces all round him were grim and frigid, with compressed lips and frowning brows—except the portrait of Duke Aubrey—he, as usual, was faintly smiling.
Then Master Polydore Vigil rose to his feet, and broke the grim silence.
"Senators of Dorimare!" he began, "the eloquent words we have just listened to from his Worship the Mayor can, strangely enough, serve as a prelude—a golden prelude to my poor, leaden words. I, too, came here this morning resolved to bring your attention to legal fictions—which, sometimes, it may be, have their uses. But perhaps before I say my say, his Worship will allow the clerk to read us the oldest legal fiction in our Code. It is to be found in the first volume of the Acts of the twenty-fifth year of the Republic, Statute 5, chapter 9."
Master Polydore Vigil sat down, and a slow grim smile circulated round the hall, and then seemed to vanish and subside in the mocking eyes of Duke Aubrey's portrait.
Master Nathaniel exchanged puzzled glances with Master Ambrose; but there was nothing for it but to order the clerk to comply with the wishes of Master Polydore.
So, in a small, high, expressionless voice, which might have been the voice of the Law herself, the clerk read as follows:
"Further, we ordain that nothing but death alone shall have power to dismiss the Mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist and High Seneschal of Dorimare before the five years of his term of office shall fully have expired. But, the dead, being dumb, feeble, treacherous and given to vanities, if any Mayor at a time of menace to the safety of the Dorimarites be held by his colleagues to be any of these things, then let him be accounted dead in the eye of the Law, and let another be elected in his stead."
The clerk shut the great tome, bowed low, and withdrew to his place; and an ominous silence reigned in the hall.
Master Nathaniel sat watching the scene with an eye so cold and aloof that the Eye of the Law itself could surely not have been colder. What power had delusion or legal fictions against the mysterious impetus propelling him along the straight white road that led he knew not whither?
But Master Ambrose sprang up and demanded fiercely that the honourable Senator would oblige them by an explanation of his offensive insinuations.
Nothing loth, Master Polydore again rose to his feet, and, pointing a menacing finger at Master Nathaniel, he said: "His worship the Mayor has told us of a man stealthy, mocking, and subtle, who has brought this recent grief and shame upon us. That man is none other than his Worship the Mayor himself."
Master Ambrose again sprung to his feet, and began angrily to protest, but Master Nathaniel, ex cathedra, sternly ordered him to be silent and to sit down.
Master Polydore continued: "He has been dumb, when it was the time to speak, feeble, when it was the time to act, treacherous, as the desolate homes of his friends can testify, and given to vanities. Aye, given to vanities, for what," and he smiled ironically, "but vanity in a man is too great a love for grograines and tuftaffities and other costly silks? Therefore, I move that in the eye of the Law he be accounted dead."
A low murmur of approval surged over the hall.
"Will he deny that he is over fond of silk?"
Master Nathaniel bowed, in token that he did deny it.
Master Polydore asked if he would then be willing to have his house searched; again Master Nathaniel bowed.
There and then?
And Master Nathaniel bowed again.
So the Senate rose and twenty of the Senators, without removing their robes, filed out of the Guildhall and marched two and two towards Master Nathaniel's house.
On the way who should tag himself on to the procession but Endymion Leer. At this, Master Ambrose completely lost his temper. He would like to know why this double-dyed villain, this shameless Son of a Fairy, was putting his rancid nose into the private concerns of the Senate! But Master Nathaniel cried impatiently, "Oh, let him come, Ambrose, if he wants to. The more the merrier!"
You can picture the consternation of Dame Marigold when, a few minutes later, her brother—with a crowd of Senators pressing up behind him—bade her, with a face of grave compassion, to bring him all the keys of the house.
They proceeded to make a thorough search, ransacking every cupboard, chest and bureau. But nowhere did they find so much as an incriminating pip, so much as a stain of dubious colour.
"Well," began Master Polydore, in a voice of mingled relief and disappointment, "it seems that our search has been a...."
"Fruitless one, eh?" prompted Endymion Leer, rubbing his hands, and darting his bright eyes over the assembled faces. "Well, perhaps it has. Perhaps it has."
They were standing in the hall, quite close to the grandfather's clock, which was ticking away, as innocent and foolish-looking as a newly-born lamb.
Endymion Leer walked up to it and gazed at it quizzically, with his head on one side. Then he tapped its mahogany case—making Dame Marigold think of what the guardian at the Guildhall had said of his likeness to a woodpecker.
Then he stood back a few paces and wagged his finger at it in comic admonition ("Vulgar buffoon!" said Master Ambrose quite audibly), and then the wag turned to Master Polydore and said, "Just before we go, to make quite sure, what about having a peep inside this clock?"
Master Polydore had secretly sympathised with Master Ambrose's ejaculation, and thought that the Doctor, by jesting at such a time, was showing a deplorable lack of good breeding.
All the same, the Law does not shrink from reducing thoroughness to absurdity, so he asked Master Nathaniel if he would kindly produce the key of the clock.
He did so, and the case was opened; Dame Marigold made a grimace and held her pomander to her nose, and to the general amazement that foolish, innocent-looking grandfather's clock stood revealed as a veritable cornucopia of exotic, strangely coloured, sinister-looking fruits.
Vine-like tendrils, studded with bright, menacing berries were twined round the pendulum and the chains of the two leaden weights; and at the bottom of the case stood a gourd of an unknown colour, which had been scooped hollow and filled with what looked like crimson grapes, tawny figs, raspberries of an emerald green, and fruits even stranger than these, and of colour and shape not found in any of the species of Dorimare.
A murmur of horror and surprise arose from the assembled company. And, was it from the clock, or down the chimney, or from the ivy peeping in at the window?—from somewhere quite close came the mocking sound of "Ho, ho, hoh!"
Of course, before many hours were over the whole of Lud-in-the-Mist was laughing at the anti-climax to the Mayor's high-falutin' speech that morning in the Senate. And in the evening he was burned in effigy by the mob, and among those who danced round the bon-fire were Bawdy Bess and Mother Tibbs. Though it was doubtful whether Mother Tibbs really understood what was happening. It was an excuse for dancing, and that was enough for her.
It was reported, too, that the Yeomanry and their Captain, though not actually taking part in these demonstrations, stood looking on with indulgent smiles.
Among the respectable tradesmen in the far from unsympathetic crowd of spectators was Ebeneezor Prim the clockmaker. He had, however, not allowed his two daughters to be there; and they were sitting dully at home, keeping the supper hot for their father and the black-wigged apprentice.
But Ebeneezor came back without him, and Rosie and Lettice were too much in awe of their father to ask any questions. The evening dragged wearily on—Ebeneezor sat readingThe Good Mayor's Walk Through Lud-in-the-Mist(a didactic and unspeakably dreary poem, dating from the early days of the Republic), and from time to time he would glance severely over the top of his spectacles at his daughters, who were whispering over their tatting, and looking frequently towards the door.
But when they finally went upstairs to bed the apprentice had not yet come in, and in the privacy of their bedroom the girls admitted to each other that it was the dullest evening they had spent since his arrival, early in spring. For it was wonderful what high spirits were concealed behind that young man's prim exterior.
Why, it was sufficient to enliven even an evening spent in the society of papa to watch the comical grimaces he pulled behind that gentleman's respectable back! And it was delicious when the shrill "Ho, ho, hoh!" would suddenly escape him, and he would instantly snap down on the top of it his most sanctimonious expression. And then, he seemed to possess an inexhaustible store of riddles and funny songs, and there was really no end to the invention and variety of his practical jokes.
The Misses Prim, since their earliest childhood, had craved for a monkey or a cockatoo, such as sailor brothers or cousins brought to their friends; their father, however, had always sternly refused to have any such creature in his house. But the new apprentice had been ten times more amusing than any monkey or cockatoo that had ever come from the Cinnamon Isles.
The next morning, as he did not come for his usual early roll and glass of home-made cordial, the two girls peeped into his room, and found that his bed had not been slept in; and lying neglected on the floor was the neat black wig. Nor did he ever come back to claim it. And when they timidly asked their father what had happened to him, he sternly forbade them ever again to mention his name, adding, with a mysterious shake of the head, "For some time I have had my suspicions that he was not what he appeared."
And then he sighed regretfully, and murmured, "But never before have I had an apprentice with such wonderfully skillful fingers."
As for Master Nathaniel—while he was being burned in effigy in the market-place, he was sitting comfortably in his pipe-room, deep in an in-folio.
He had suddenly remembered that it was something in the widow Gibberty's trial that was connected in his mind with Master Ambrose's joke about the dead bleeding. And he was re-reading that trial—this time with absorption.
As he read, the colours of his mental landscape were gradually modified, as the colours of a real landscape are modified according to the position of the sun. But if a white road cuts through the landscape it still gleams white—even when the moon has taken the place of the sun. And a straight road still gleamed white across the landscape of Master Nathaniel's mind.
The following day, with all the masquerading that the Law delights in, Master Nathaniel was pronounced in the Senate to be dead. His robes of office were taken off him, and they were donned by Master Polydore Vigil, the new Mayor. As for Master Nathaniel—was wrapped in a shroud, laid on a bier and carried to his home by four of the Senators, the populace lining the streets and greeting the mock obsequies with catcalls and shouts of triumph.
But the ceremony over, when Master Ambrose, boiling with indignation at the outrage, came to visit his friend, he found a very cheerful corpse who greeted him with a smack on the back and a cry of "Never say die, Brosie! I've something here that should interest you," and he thrust into his hand an open in-folio.
"What's this?" asked the bewildered Master Ambrose.
There was a certain solemnity in Master Nathaniel's voice as he replied, "It's the Law, Ambrose—the homoeopathic antidote that our forefathers discovered to delusion. Sit down this very minute and read that trial through."
As Master Ambrose knew well, it was useless trying to talk to Nat about one thing when his mind was filled with another. Besides, his curiosity was aroused, for he had come to realize that Nat's butterfly whims were sometimes the disguise of shrewd and useful intuitions. So, through force of long habit, growling out a protest about this being no time for tomfoolery and rubbish, he settled down to read the volume at the place where Master Nathaniel had opened it, namely, at the account of the trial of the widow Gibberty for the murder of her husband.
The plaintiff, as we have seen, was a labourer, Diggory Carp by name, who had been in the employ of the late farmer. He said he had been suddenly dismissed by the defendant just after harvest, when it was not easy to find another job.
No reason was given for his dismissal, so Diggory went to the farmer himself, who, he said, had always been a kind and just master, to beg that he might be kept on. The farmer practically admitted that there was no reason for his dismissal except that the mistress had taken a dislike to him. "Women are kittle cattle, Diggory," he had said, with an apologetic laugh, "and it's best humouring them. Though it's hard on the folks they get their knife into. So I fear it will be best for every one concerned that you should leave my service, Diggory."
But he gave him a handful of florins over and above his wages, and told him he might take a sack of lentils from the granary—if he were careful that the mistress did not get wind of it.
Now, Diggory had a shrewd suspicion as to why the defendant wanted to get rid of him. Though she was little more than a girl—she was the farmer's second wife and more like his daughter's elder sister than her stepdame—she had the reputation of being as staid and sensible as a woman of forty. But Diggory knew better. He had discovered that she had a lover. One evening he had come on her in the orchard, lying in the arms of a young foreigner, called Christopher Pugwalker, a herbalist, who had first appeared in the neighbourhood just before the great drought.
"And from that time on," said Diggory, "she had got her knife into me, and everything I did was wrong. And I believe she hadn't a moment's peace till she'd got rid of me. Though, if she'd only known, I was no blab, and not one for blaming young blood and a wife half the age of her husband."
So he and his wife and his children were turned out on the world.
The first night they camped out in a field, and when they had lighted a fire Diggory opened the sack that, with the farmer's permission, he had taken from the granary, in order that his wife might make them some lentil soup for supper. But lo and behold! instead of lentils the sack contained fruit—fruit that Diggory Carp, as a west countryman, born and bred near the Elfin Marches, recognised at the first glance to be of a kind that he would not dream of touching himself or of allowing his wife and children to touch ... the sack, in fact, contained fairy fruit. So they buried it in the field, for, as Diggory said, "Though the stuff be poison for men, they do say as how it's a mighty fine manure for the crops."
For a week or so they tramped the country, living from hand to mouth. Sometimes Diggory would earn a little by doing odd jobs for the farmers, or by playing the fiddle at village weddings, for Diggory, it would seem, was a noted fiddler.
But with the coming of winter they began to feel the pinch of poverty, and his wife bethought her of the trade of basket-making she had learned in her youth; and, as they were camping at the time at the place where grew the best osiers for the purpose, she determined to see if her fingers had retained their old cunning. As the sap of these particular osiers was a deadly poison, she would not allow the children to help her to gather them.
So she set to and make wicker urns in which the farmers' wives could keep their grain in winter, and baskets of fancy shapes for lads to give to their sweethearts to hold their ribbands and fal-lals. The children peddled them about the countryside, and thus they managed to keep the pot boiling.
The following summer, shortly before harvest, Diggory's eldest girl went to try and sell some baskets in the village of Swan. There she met the defendant, whom she asked to look at her wares, relying on not being recognised as a daughter of Diggory's, through having been in service at another farm when her father was working at the Gibbertys'.
The defendant seemed pleased with the baskets, bought two or three, and got into talk with the girl about the basket-making industry, in the course of which she learned that the best osiers for the purpose were very poisonous. Finally she asked the girl to bring her a bundle of the osiers in question, as making baskets, she said, would make a pleasant variety, of an evening, from the eternal spinning; and in the course of a few days the girl brought her, as requested, a bundle of the osiers, and was well paid for them.
Not long afterwards came the news that the farmer Gibberty had died suddenly in the night, and with it was wafted the rumour of foul play. There was an old custom in that part of the country that whenever there was a death in the house all the inmates should march in procession past the corpse. It was really a sort of primitive inquest, for it was believed that in the case of foul play the corpse would bleed at the nose as the murderer passed it. This custom, said Diggory, was universally observed in that part of the country, even in cases as free from all suspicion as those of women dying in child-bed. And in all the taverns and farm-houses of the neighbourhood it was being whispered that the corpse of the farmer Gibberty, on the defendant's walking past it, had bled copiously, and when Christopher Pugwalker's turn had come to pass it, it had bled a second time.
And knowing what he did, Diggory Carp came to feel that it was his duty to lodge an accusation against the widow.
His two reasons, then, for thinking her guilty were that the corpse had bled when she passed it, and that she had bought from his daughter osiers the sap of which was poisonous. The motive for the crime he found in her having a young lover, whom she wished should stand in her dead husband's shoes. It was useless for the defendant to deny that Pugwalker was her lover—the fact had for months been the scandal of the neighbourhood, and she had finally lost all sense of shame and had actually had him to lodge in the farm for several months before her husband's death. This was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt by the witnesses summoned by Diggory.
As for the bleeding of the corpse: vulgar superstitions did not fall within the cognizance of the Law, and the widow ignored it in her defence. However, with regard to that other vulgar superstition to which the plaintiff had alluded, fairy fruit, she admitted, in passing, that very much against her wishes her late husband had sometimes used it as manure—though she had never discovered how he procured it.
As to the osiers—she allowed that she had bought a bundle from the plaintiff's daughter; but that it was for no sinister purpose she was able conclusively to prove. For she summoned various witnesses—among others the midwife from the village, who was always called in in cases of sickness—who had been present during the last hours of the farmer, and who had been present during the last hours of the farmer, and who all of them swore that his death had been a painless one. And various physicians, who were summoned as expert witnesses, all maintained that the victim of the poisonous sap of osiers always died in agony.
Then she turned the tables on the plaintiff. She proved that Diggory's dismissal had been neither sudden nor unjust; for, owing to his thieving propensities, he had often been threatened with it by her late husband, and several of the farm-servants testified to the truth of her words.
As to the handful of florins and the sack of lentils, all she could say was that it was not like the farmer to load a dishonest servant with presents. But nothing had been said about two sacks of corn, a pig, and a valuable hen and her brood, which had disappeared simultaneously with the departure of the plaintiff. Her husband, she said, had been very angry about it, and had wanted to have Diggory pursued and clapped into gaol; but she had persuaded him to be merciful. The long and the short of it was that the widow left the court without a stain on her character, and that a ten years' sentence for theft was passed on Diggory.
As for Christopher Pugwalker, he had disappeared shortly before the trial, and the widow denied all knowledge of his whereabouts.
"Well," said Master Ambrose, as he laid down the volume, "the woman was clearly as innocent as you are. And I should very much like to know what bearing the case has upon the present crisis."
Master Nathaniel drew up his chair close to his friend's and said in a low voice, as if he feared an invisible listener, "Ambrose, do you remember how you startled Leer with your question as to whether the dead could bleed?"
"I'm not likely to forget it," said Master Ambrose, with an angry laugh. "That was all explained the night before last in the Fields of Grammary."
"Yes, but supposing he had been thinking of something else—not of fairy fruit. What if Endymion Leer and Christopher Pugwalker were one and the same?"
"Well, I don't see the slightest reason for thinking so. But even if they were—what good would it do us?"
"Because I have an instinct that hidden in that old case is a good honest hempen rope, too strong for all the gossamer threads of Fairie."
"You mean that we can get the rascal hanged? By the Harvest of Souls, you're an optimist, Nat. If ever a fellow died quietly in his bed from natural causes, it was that fellow Gibberty. But, for all that, there's no reason to lie down under the outrageous practical joke that was played off on you yesterday. By my Great-aunt's Rump, I thought Polydore and the rest of them had more sense than to be taken in by such tomfoolery. But the truth of it is that that villain Leer can make them believe what he chooses."
"Exactly!" cried Master Nathaniel eagerly. "The original meaning of Fairie is supposed to be delusion. They can juggle with appearances—we have seen them at it in that tapestry-room. How are we to make any stand against an enemy with such powers behind him?"
"You don't mean that you are going to lie down under it, Nat?" cried Master Ambrose indignantly.
"Not ultimately—but for a time I must be like the mole and work in secret. And now I want you to listen to me, Ambrose, and not scold me for what you call wandering from the point and being prosy. Will you listen to me?"
"Well, yes, if you've got anything sensible to say," said Master Ambrose grudgingly.
"Here goes, then! What do you suppose the Law was invented for, Ambrose?"
"What was the Law invented for? What are you driving at, Nat? I suppose it was invented to prevent rapine, and robbery, and murder, and all that sort of thing."
"But you remember what my father said about the Law being man's substitute for fairy fruit? Fairy things are all of them supposed to be shadowy cheats—delusion. But man can't live without delusion, so he creates for himself another form of delusion—the world-in-law, subject to no other law but the will of man, where man juggles with facts to his heart's content, and says, 'If I choose I shall make a man old enough to be my father my son, and if I choose I shall turn fruit into silk and black into white, for this is the world I have made myself, and here I am master.' And he creates a monster to inhabit it—the man-in-law, who is like a mechanical toy and always behaves exactly as he is expected to behave, and is no more like you and me than are the fairies."
For the life of him, Master Ambrose could not suppress a grunt of impatience. But he was a man of his word, so he refrained from further interruption.
"Beyond the borders of the world-in-law," continued Master Nathaniel, "that is to say, the world as we choose for our convenience that it should appear, there is delusion—or reality. And the people who live there are as safe from our clutches as if they lived on another planet. No, Ambrose, you needn't purse up your lips like that ... everything I've been saying is to be found more or less in my father's writings, and nobody ever thought him fantastic—probably because they never took the trouble to read his books. I must confess I never did myself till just the other day."
As he spoke he glanced up at the portrait of the late Master Josiah, taken in the very arm-chair he, Nathaniel, was at that very moment sitting in, and following his son's every movement with a sly, legal smile. No, there had certainly been nothing fantastic about Master Josiah.
And yet ... there was something not altogether human about these bright bird-like eyes and that very pointed chin. Had Master Josiah also heard the Note ... and fled from it to the world-in-law?
Then he went on: "But what I'm going to say now is my own idea. Supposing that everything that happens on the one planet, the planet that we call Delusion, reacts on the other planet; that is to say, the world as we choose to see it, the world-in-law? No, no, Ambrose! You promised to hear me out!" (For it was clear that Master Ambrose was getting restive.) "Supposing then, that one planet reacts on the other, but that these reactions are translated, as it were, into the terms of the other? To take an example, supposing that what on one planet is a spiritual sin should turn on the other into a felony? That what in the world of delusion are hands stained with fairy fruit should, in the world-in-law, turn into hands stained with human blood? In short, that Endymion Leer should turn into Christopher Pugwalker?"
Master Ambrose's impatience had changed to real alarm. He greatly feared that Nathaniel's brain had been unhinged by his recent misfortunes. Master Nathaniel burst out laughing: "I believe you think I've gone off my head, Brosie—but I've not, I promise you. In plain language, unless we can find that this fellow Leer has been guilty of something in the eye of the Law he'll go on triumphing over us and laughing at us in his sleeve and ruining our country for our children till, finally, all the Senate, except you and me, follows his funeral procession, with weeping and wailing, to the Fields of Grammary. It's our one hope of getting even with him, Brosie. Otherwise, we might as soon hope to catch a dream and put it in a cage."
"Well, according to your ideas of the Law, Nat, it shouldn't be too difficult," said Master Ambrose drily. "You seem to consider that in what you call the world-in-law one does as one likes with facts—launch a new legal fiction, then, according to which, for your own particular convenience, Endymion Leer is for the future Christopher Pugwalker."
Master Nathaniel laughed: "I'm in hopes we can prove it without legal fiction," he said. "The widow Gibberty's trial took place thirty-six years ago, four years after the great drought, when, as Marigold has discovered, Leer was in Dorimare, though he has always given us to understand that he did not arrive till considerably later ... and the reason would be obvious if he left as Pugwalker, and returned as Leer. Also, we know that he is intimate with the widow Gibberty. Pugwalker was a herbalist; so is Leer. And then there is the fright you gave him with your question, 'Do the dead bleed?' Nothing will make me believe that that question immediately suggested to him the mock funeral and the coffin with fairy fruit ... he might think of that on second thoughts, not right away. No, no, I hope to be able to convince you, and before very long, that I am right in this matter, as I was in the other—it's our one hope, Ambrose."
"Well, Nat," said Master Ambrose, "though you talk more nonsense in half an hour than most people do in a lifetime, I've been coming to the conclusion that you're not such a fool as you look—and, after all, in Hempie's old story it was the village idiot who put salt on the dragon's tail."
Master Nathaniel laughed, quite pleased by this equivocal compliment—it was so rarely that Ambrose paid one a compliment at all.
"Well," continued Master Ambrose, "and how are you going to set about launching your legal fiction, eh?"
"Oh, I'll try and get in touch with some of the witnesses in the trial—Diggory Carp himself may turn out to be still alive. At any rate, it will give me something to do, and Lud's no place for me just now."
Master Ambrose groaned: "Has it really come to this, Nat, that you have to leave Lud, and that we can do nothing against this ... this ... this cobweb of lies and buffoonery and ... well, delusion, if you like? I can tell you, I haven't spared Polydore and the rest of them the rough side of my tongue—but it's as if that fellow Leer had cast a spell on them."
"But we'll break the spell, by the Golden Apples of the West, we'll break it, Ambrose!" cried Master Nathaniel buoyantly; "we'll dredge the shadows with the net of the Law, and Leer shall end on the gallows, or my name's not Chanticleer!"
"Well," said Master Ambrose, "seeing you've got this bee in your bonnet about Leer you might like a little souvenir of him; it's the embroidered slipper I took from that gibbering criminal old woman's parlour, and now that her affair is settled there's no more use for it." (The variety of "silk" found in the Academy had finally been decided to be part "barratine tuftaffity" and part "figured mohair," and Miss Primrose had been heavily fined and set at liberty.) "I told you how the sight of it made him jump, and though the reason is obvious enough—he thought it was fairy fruit—it seems to take so little to set your brain romancing there's no telling what you mayn't discover from it! I'll have it sent over to you tonight."
"You're very kind, Ambrose. I'm sure it will be most valuable," said Master Nathaniel ironically.
During Miss Primrose's trial the slipper had from time to time been handed round among the judges, without its helping them in the slightest in the delicate distinctions they were drawing between tuftaffity and mohair. In Master Nathaniel it had aroused a vague sense of boredom and embarrassment, for it suggested a long series of birthday presents from Prunella that had put him to the inconvenience of pumping up adequate expressions of gratitude and admiration. He had little hope of being able to extricate any useful information from that slipper—still, Ambrose must have his joke.