BELLING THE CAT
When they had finished reading, Hazel burst into hysterical sobs,
crying alternately, "Poor grandfather!" and "Will they hang her for
it?" Master Nathaniel soothed her as best he could, and, when she had
dried her eyes, she said, "Poor Marjory Beach! She must have that ham
and that buck rabbit."
"She's still alive, then?" asked Master Nathaniel eagerly. Hazel
nodded: "She is poor, and still a maid, and lives in Swan."
"And what about Peter Pease, the tinker's smart little lad? Is there
nothing for him, Miss Hazel?" cried the blacksmith with a twinkle.
Hazel stared at him in bewilderment, and Master Nathaniel cried
gleefully, "Why, it's the same name, by the Harvest of Souls! Were you,
then, the little chap who saw Pugwalker picking the berries?"
And Hazel said in slow amazement, "You were the little boy who spoke to
my grandfather ... that night? I never thought...."
"That I'd begun so humbly, eh? Yes, I was the son of a tinker, or, as
they liked to be called, of a whitesmith. And now I'm a blacksmith, and
as white is better than black I suppose I've come down in the world."
And he winked merrily.
"And you remember the circumstances alluded to by the late farmer?"
asked Master Nathaniel eagerly.
"That I do, my lord Seneschal. As well if they had happened yesterday.
I won't easily forget the farmer's face that night when I offered him
my basketful--but though the death-berries are rare enough I found them
in those days commoner to pick up than ha'pence. And I won't easily
forget Master Pugwalker's face, either, while he was plucking them.
And little did he know there was a squirrel watching him with a good
Dorimare tongue in his head!"
"Have you ever seen him since?"
The blacksmith winked.
"Come, come!" cried Master Nathaniel impatiently. "Have you seen him
since? This is no time for beating about the bush."
"Well, perhaps I have," said the blacksmith slowly, "trotting about
Swan, as brisk and as pleased with himself as a fox with a goose in his
mouth. And I've often wondered whether it wasn't my duty as law-man to
speak out ... but, after all, it was very long ago, and his life seemed
to be of better value than his death, for he was a wonderfully clever
doctor and did a powerful lot of good."
"It--it was Dr. Leer, then?" asked Hazel in a low voice; and the
blacksmith winked.
"Well, I think we should be getting back to the house," said Master
Nathaniel, "there's still some business before us." And, lowering his
voice, he added, "Not very pleasant business, I fear."
"I suppose your Honour means belling the cat?" said the blacksmith,
adding with a rueful laugh, "I can't imagine a nastier job. She's a cat
with claws."
As they walked up to the house, the labourer whispered to Hazel,
"Please, missy, does it mean that the mistress killed her husband? They
always say so in the village, but...."
"Don't, Ben; don't! I can't bear talking about it," cried Hazel with a
shudder. And when they reached the house, she ran up to her own bedroom
and locked herself in.
Ben was despatched to get a stout coil of rope, and Master Nathaniel
and the blacksmith, whom the recent excitement had made hungry, began
to forage around for something to eat.
Suddenly a voice at the door said, "And what, may I ask, are you
looking for in my larder, gentlemen?"
It was the widow. First she scrutinized Master Nathaniel--a little pale
and hollow-eyed, perhaps, but alive and kicking, for all that. Then
her eyes travelled to Peter Pease. At that moment, Ben entered with
the rope, and Master Nathaniel nudged the law-man, who, clearing his
throat, cried in the expressionless falsetto of the Law, "Clementina
Gibberty! In the name of the country of Dorimare, and to the end that
the dead, the living, and those not yet born, may rest quietly in their
graves, their bed, and the womb, I arrest you for the murder of your
late husband, Jeremiah Gibberty."
She turned deadly pale, and, for a few seconds, stood glaring at him in
deadly silence. Then she gave a scornful laugh. "What new joke of yours
is this, Peter Pease? I was accused of this before, as you know well,
and acquitted with the judge's compliments, and as good as an apology.
Law business must be very slack in Swan that you've nothing better to
do than to come and frighten a poor woman in her own house with old
spiteful tales that were silenced once and for all nearly forty years
ago. My late husband died quietly in his bed, and I only hope you may
have as peaceful an end. And you must know very little of the law,
Peter Pease, if you don't know that a person can't be tried twice for
the same crime."
Then Master Nathaniel stepped forward. "You were tried before," he said
quietly, "for poisoning your husband with the sap of osiers. This
time it will be for poisoning him with the berries of merciful death.
Tonight the dead have found their tongues."
She gave a wild shriek, which reached upstairs to Hazel's room and
caused her to spring into bed and pull the blankets over her ears, as
if it had been a thunderstorm.
Master Nathaniel signed to Ben, who, grinning from ear to ear, as is
the way of rustics when witnessing a painful and embarrassing scene,
came up to his mistress with the coil of rope. But to bind her, he
needed the aid of both the blacksmith and Master Nathaniel, for, like a
veritable wild cat, she struggled and scratched and bit.
When her arms were tightly bound, Master Nathaniel said, "And now I
will read you the words of the dead."
She was, for the time, worn out by her struggles, and her only answer
was an insolent stare, and he produced the farmer's document and read
it through to her.
"And now," he said, eyeing her curiously, "shall I tell you who gave me
the clue without which I should never have found that letter? It was a
certain old man, whom I think you know, by name Portunus."
Her face turned as pale as death, and in a low voice of horror she
cried, "Long ago I guessed who he was, and feared that he might prove
my undoing." Then her voice grew shrill with terror and her eyes
became fixed, as if seeing some hideous vision, "The Silent People!"
she screamed. "The dumb who speak! The bound who strike! I cherished
and fed old Portunus like a tame bird. But what do the dead know of
kindness?"
"If old Portunus is he whom you take him to be, I fail to see that he
has much cause for gratitude," said Master Nathaniel drily. "Well, he
has taken his revenge, on you--and your accomplice."
"My accomplice?"
"Aye, on Endymion Leer."
"Oh, Leer!" And she laughed scornfully. "It was a greater than Endymion
Leer who ordered the death of farmer Gibberty."
"Indeed?"
"Yes. One who cares not for good and evil, and sows his commands like
grain."
"Whom do you mean?"
Again she laughed scornfully. "Not one whom I would name to you. But
set your mind at rest, he cannot be summoned in a court of law."
She gave him a searching look, and said abruptly, "Who are you?"
"My name is Nathaniel Chanticleer."
"I thought as much!" she cried triumphantly. "I wasn't sure, but I
thought I'd take no risks. However, you seem to bear a charmed life."
"I suppose you are alluding to your kind thought for my
comfort--putting that nice little death-box in my room to keep me warm,
eh?"
"Yes, that's it," she answered brazenly.
Then a look of indescribable malice came into her face, and, with an
evil smile, she said, "You see, you gave yourself away--without knowing
it--at dinner."
"Indeed? And how, may I ask?"
At first she did not answer, but eyed him gloatingly as a cat might
eye a mouse. And then she said slowly, "It was that pack of lies you
told me about the doings of the lads at Moongrass. Your son isn't at
Moongrass--nor ever has been, nor ever will be."
"What do you mean?" he cried hoarsely.
"Mean?" she said with a shrill, triumphant laugh. "I mean this--on
the night of the thirty-first of October, when the Silent People are
abroad, he heard Duke Aubrey's summons, and followed it across the
hills."
"Woman ... what ... what ... speak ... or ..." and the veins in Master
Nathaniel's temples were swelling, and a fire seemed to have been
lighted in his brain.
Her laughter redoubled. "You'll never see your son again!" she jeered.
"Young Ranulph Chanticleer has gone to the land whence none returns."
Not for a moment did he doubt the truth of her words. Before his
inward eye there flashed the picture he had seen in the pattern on the
ceiling, just before losing consciousness--Ranulph weeping among the
fields of gillyflowers.
A horror of impotent tenderness swept over him. While, with the surface
of his mind, he supposed that this was IT springing out at him at last.
And parallel with the agony, and in no way mitigating it, was a sense
of relief--the relaxing of tension, when one can say, "Well, it has
come at last."
He turned a dull eye on the widow, and said, a little thickly, "The
land from which no one returns ... but I can go there, too."
"Follow him across the hills?" she cried scornfully. "No; you are not
made of that sort of stuff."
He beckoned to Peter Pease, and they went out together to the front of
the house. The cocks were crowing, and there was a feeling of dawn in
the air.
"I want my horse," he said dully. "And can you find Miss Hazel for me?"
But as he spoke she joined them--pale and wild-eyed.
"From my room I heard you coming out," she said. "Is it--is it over?"
Master Nathaniel nodded. And then, in a quiet voice emptied of all
emotion, he told her what he had just learned from the widow. She went
still paler than before, and her eyes filled with tears.
Then, turning to Peter Pease, he said, "You will immediately get out a
warrant for the apprehension of Endymion Leer and send it into Lud to
the new Mayor, Master Polydore Vigil. And you, Miss Hazel, you'd better
leave this place at once--you will have to be plaintiff in the trial.
Go to your aunt, Mistress Ivy Peppercorn, who keeps the village shop at
Mothgreen. And remember, you must say nothing whatever about the part
I've played in this business--that is essential. I am not popular at
present in Lud. And, now, would you kindly order my horse saddled and
brought round."
There was something so colourless, so dead, in his voice, that both
Hazel and the smith stood, for a few seconds, in awed and sympathetic
silence, and then Hazel went off slowly to order his horse.
"You ... you didn't mean what you said to the widow, sir, about ...
about going ... yonder?" asked Peter Pease in an awed voice.
Suddenly the fire was rekindled in Master Nathaniel's eyes, and he
cried fiercely, "Aye, yonder, and beyond yonder, if need be ... till I
find my son."
It did not take long for his horse to be saddled and led to the door.
"Good-bye, my child," he said to Hazel, taking her hand, and then he
added, with a smile, "You dragged me back last night from the Milky
Way ... and now I am going by the earthly one."
She and Peter stood watching him, riding along the valley towards
the Debatable Hills, till he and his horse were just a speck in the
distance.
"Well, well," said Peter Pease, "I warrant it'll be the first time in
the history of Dorimare that a man has loved his son well enough to
follow him yonder."