THE FAIR IN THE ELFIN MARCHES
About two hours after he had set out from the farm, Master Nathaniel
reached a snug little hollow at the foot of the hills, chosen for their
camp by the consignment of the Lud Yeomanry stationed, by his own
orders, at the foot of the Debatable Hills.
"Halt!" cried the sentry. And then he dropped his musket in amazement.
"Well, I'm blessed if it ain't his Worship!" he cried. Some six or
seven of his mates, who were lounging about the camp, some playing
cards, some lying on their backs and staring up at the sky, came
hurrying up at the sound of the challenge, and, speechless with
astonishment, they stared at Master Nathaniel.
"I have come to look for my son," he said. "I have been told that ...
er ... he came this way some two or three nights ago. If so, you must
have seen him."
The Yeomen shook their heads. "No, your Worship, we've seen no little
boy. In fact, all the weeks we've been here we've not seen a living
soul. And if there are any folks about they must be as swift as
swallows and as silent-footed as cats, and as hard to see--well, as the
dead themselves. No, your Worship, little Master Chanticleer has not
passed this way."
Master Nathaniel sighed wearily. "I had a feeling that you would not
have seen him," he said; adding dreamily more to himself than to them:
"Who knows? He may have gone by the Milky Way."
And then it struck him that this was probably the last normal encounter
he would ever have with ordinary human beings, and he smiled at them
wistfully.
"Well, well," he said, "you're having a pleasant holiday, I
expect ... nothing to do and plenty to eat and drink, eh? Here's a
couple of crowns for you. Send to one of the farms for a pigskin of red
wine and drink my health ... and my son's. I'm off on what may prove a
very long journey; I suppose this bridle-path will be as good a route
as any?"
They stared at him in amazement.
"Please, your Worship, if you'll excuse me mentioning it, you must
be making a mistake," said the sentry, in a shocked voice. "All the
bridle-paths about here lead to nowhere but the Elfin Marches ... and
beyond."
"It is for beyond that I am bound," answered Master Nathaniel curtly.
And digging his spurs into his horse's flanks, he dashed past the
horrified Yeomen, and up one of the bridle-paths, as if he would take
the Debatable Hills by storm.
For a few seconds they stood staring at one another, with scared,
astonished eyes. Then the sentry gave a low whistle.
"He must be powerful fond of that little chap," he said.
"If the little chap really slipped past without our seeing him, that
will be the third Chanticleer to cross the hills. First there was the
little missy at the Academy, then the young chap, then the Mayor."
"Aye, but they didn't do it on an empty stomach--leastways, we know the
Crabapple Blossoms didn't, and if the talk in Lud be true, the little
chap had had a taste too of what he oughtn't," said another. "But it's
another story to go when you're in your right mind. Doctor Leer can't
have been in the right when he said all them Magistrates were played
out, for it's the bravest thing has ever been done in Dorimare."
Master Nathaniel, for how long he could not have said, went riding up
and up the bridle-path that wound in and out among the foothills, which
gradually grew higher and higher. Not a living creature did he meet
with--not a goat, not so much as a bird. He began to feel curiously
drowsy, as if he were riding in a dream.
Suddenly his consciousness seemed to have gone out of gear, to have
missed one of the notches in time or space, for he found himself riding
along a high-road, in the midst of a crowd of peasants in holiday
attire. Nor did this surprise him--his passive uncritical mood was
impervious to surprise.
And yet ... what were these people with whom he had mingled? An
ordinary troop of holiday-making peasants? At first sight, so they
seemed. There were pretty girls, with sunny hair escaping from under
red and blue handkerchiefs, and rustic dandies cross-gartered with
gay ribands, and old women with quiet, nobly-lined faces--a village
community bound for some fair or merry-making.
But why were their eyes so fixed and strange, and why did they walk in
absolute silence?
And then the invisible cicerone of dreams, who is one's other self,
whispered in his ear, "These are they whom men call dead."
And, like everything else said by that cicerone, these words seemed to
throw a flood of light on the situation, to make it immediately normal,
even prosaic.
Then the road took a sudden turn, and before them stretched a sort of
heath, dotted with the white booths of a fair.
"That is the market of souls," whispered the invisible cicerone. "Of
course, of course," muttered Master Nathaniel, as if all his life he
had known of its existence. And, indeed, he had forgotten all about
Ranulph, and thought that to visit this fair had been the one object of
his journey.
They crossed the heath, and then they paid their gate-money to a silent
old man. And though Master Nathaniel paid with a coin of a metal and
design he had never seen before, it was with no sense of a link missing
in the chain of cause and effect that he produced it from his pocket.
Outwardly, there was nothing different in this fair from those in
Dorimare. Pewterers, shoemakers, silversmiths were displaying their
wares; there were cows and sheep and pigs, and refreshment booths and
raree-shows. But instead of the cheerful, variegated din that is part
of the fun of the every-day fair, over this one there reigned complete
silence; for the beasts were as silent as the people. Dead silence, and
blazing sun.
Master Nathaniel started off to investigate the booths. In one of them
they were flinging darts at a pasteboard target, on which were painted
various of the heavenly bodies, with the moon in the centre. Anyone
whose dart struck the moon was allowed to choose a prize from a heap of
glittering miscellaneous objects--golden feathers, shells painted with
curious designs, brilliantly-coloured pots, fans, silver sheep-bells.
"They're like Hempie's new ornaments," thought Master Nathaniel.
In another booth there was a merry-go-round of silver horses and
gilded chariots--both sadly tarnished. It was a primitive affair
that moved not by machinery, but by the ceaseless trudging of a live
pony--a patient, dingy little beast--tied to it with a rope. And the
motion generated a thin, cracked music--tunes that had been popular in
Lud-in-the-Mist when Master Nathaniel had been a little boy.
There was "Oh, you Little Charmer with your pretty Puce Bow," there was
"Old Daddy Popinjay fell down upon his Rump," there was "Why did she
cock her Pretty Blue Eye at the Lad with the Silver Buckles?"
But, except for one solitary little boy, the tarnished horses and
chariots whirled round without riders; and the pert tunes sounded so
thin and wan as to accentuate rather than destroy the silence and
atmosphere of melancholy.
In a hopeless, resigned sort of way, the little boy was sobbing. It was
as if he felt that he was doomed by some inexorable fate to whirl round
for ever and ever with the tarnished horses and chariots, the dingy,
patient pony, and the old cracked tunes.
"It is not long," said the invisible cicerone, "since that little boy
was stolen from the mortals. He still can weep."
Master Nathaniel felt a sudden tightening in his throat. Poor little
boy! Poor little lonely boy! What was it he reminded him of? Something
painful, and very near his heart.
Round and round trudged the pony, round and round went the hidden
musical-box, grinding out its thin, blurred tunes.
Why did she cock her pretty blue eye
At the lad with the silver buckles,
When the penniless lad who was handsome and spry
Got nought but a rap on his knuckles?
These vulgar songs, though faded, were not really old. Nevertheless,
to Master Nathaniel, they were the oldest songs in existence--sung by
the Morning Stars when all the world was young. For they were freighted
with his childhood, and brought the memory, or, rather, the tang, the
scent, of the solemn innocent world of children, a world sans archness,
sans humour, sans vulgarity, where they had sounded as pure and silvery
as a shepherd's pipe. Where the little charmer with her puce bow, and
the scheming hussy who had cocked her blue eye had been own sisters to
the pretty fantastic ladies of the nursery rhymes, like them walking
always to the accompaniment of tinkling bells and living on frangipane
and sillabubs of peaches and cream; and whose gestures were stylised
and actions preposterous--nonsense actions that needed no explanation.
While mothers-in-law, shrewish wives, falling in love--they were just
pretty words like brightly-coloured beads, strung together without
meaning.
As Master Nathaniel listened, he knew that other people would have
heard other tunes--whatever tunes through the milkman's whistle, or
the cracked fiddle of a street musician, or the voices of young sparks
returning from the tavern at midnight, the Morning Stars may have
happened to sing in their own particular infancy.
Oh, you little charmer with your pretty puce bow,
I'll tell mamma if you carry on so!
Round and round whirled the tarnished horses and chariots with their
one pathetic little rider; round and round trudged the pony--the little
dusty, prosaic pony.
Master Nathaniel rubbed his eyes and looked round; he felt as if after
a dive he were slowly rising to the surface of the water. The fair
seemed to be coming alive--the silence had changed into a low murmur.
And now it was swelling into the mingled din of chattering voices,
lowing cows, grunting pigs, blasts from tin trumpets, hoarse voices of
cheap-jacks praising their wares--all the noises, in short, that one
connects with an ordinary fair.
He sauntered away from the merry-go-round and mingled with the crowd.
All the stall-keepers were doing a brisk trade, but, above all, the
market gardeners--their stalls were simply thronged.
But, lo and behold! the fruit that they were selling was of the kind
he had seen in the mysterious room of the Guildhall, and concealed
inside the case of his grandfather's clock--it was fairy fruit; but the
knowledge brought no sense of moral condemnation.
Suddenly he realized that his throat was parched with thirst and that
nothing would slake it but one of these translucent globes.
The wizened old woman who was selling them cried out to him coaxingly,
"Three for a penny, sir! Or, for you, I'll make it four for a
penny--for the sake of your hazel eyes, lovey! You'll find them as
grateful as dew to the flowers--four for a penny, pretty master. Don't
say no!"
But he had the curious feeling that one sometimes has in dreams,
namely, that he himself was inventing what was happening to him, and
could make it end as he chose.
"Yes," he said to himself, "I am telling myself one of Hempie's old
stories, about a youngest son who has been warned against eating
anything offered to him by strangers, so, of course, I shall not touch
it."
So with a curt "No thank'ee, nothing doing today," he contemptuously
turned his back on the old woman and her fruit.
But whose was that shrill voice? Probably that of some cheapjack whose
patter or whose wares, to judge from the closely-packed throng hiding
him from view, had some particularly attractive quality. The voice
sounded vaguely familiar, and, his curiosity aroused, Master Nathaniel
joined the crowd of spectators.
He could discern nothing but the top of a red head, but the patter was
audible: "Now's your chance, gentlemen! Beauty doesn't keep, but rots
like apples. Apple-shies! Four points if you hit her on the breast, six
if you hit her on the mouth, and he who first gets twenty points wins
the maid. Don't fight shy of the apple-shies! Apples and beauty do not
keep--there's a worm in both. Step up, step up, gentlemen!"
Yes, he had heard that voice before. He began to shoulder his way
through the crowd. It proved curiously yielding, and he had no
difficulty in reaching the centre of attraction, a wooden platform on
which gesticulated, grimaced and pirouetted ... who but his rascally
groom Willy Wisp, dressed as a harlequin. But Willy Wisp was not the
strangest part of the spectacle. Out of the platform grew an apple
tree, and tied to it was his own daughter, Prunella, while grouped
around her in various attitudes of woe were the other Crabapple
Blossoms.
Suddenly Master Nathaniel felt convinced that this was not merely
a story he was inventing himself, but, as well, it was a dream--a
grotesque, illogical, synthesis of scraps of reality, to which he
could add what elements he chose.
"What's happening?" he asked his neighbour.
But he knew the answer--Willy Wisp was selling the girls to the highest
bidder, to labour in the fields of gillyflowers.
"But you have no right to do this!" he cried out in a loud angry
voice, "no right whatever. This is not Fairyland--it is only the
Elfin Marches. They cannot be sold until they have crossed over into
Fairyland--I say they cannot be sold."
All round him he heard awed whispers, "It is Chanticleer--Chanticleer
the dreamer, who has never tasted fruit." Then he found himself giving
a learned dissertation on the law of property, as observed in the
Elfin Marches. The crowd listened to him in respectful silence. Even
Willy Wisp was listening, and the Crabapple Blossoms gazed at him with
inexpressible gratitude.
With what seemed to him a superbly eloquent peroration he brought his
discourse to an end. Prunella stretched out her arms to him, crying,
"Father, you have saved us! You and the Law."
"You and the Law! You and the Law!" echoed the other Crabapple Blossoms.
"Chanticleer and the Law! Chanticleer and the Law!" shouted the crowd.
* * * * *
The fair had vanished. He was in a strange town, and was one of a great
crowd of people all hurrying in the same direction.
"They are looking for the bleeding corpse," whispered the invisible
cicerone, and the words filled Master Nathaniel with an unspeakable
horror.
Then the crowd vanished, leaving him alone in a street as silent as
the grave. He pressed forward, for he knew that he was looking for
something; but what it was he had forgotten. At every street corner he
came on a dead man, guarded by a stone beggar with a face like the herm
in the Gibberty's orchard. He was almost choked by the horror of it.
The terror became articulate: "Supposing one of the corpses should turn
out to be that little lonely boy on the merry-go-round!"
This possibility filled him with an indescribable anguish.
Suddenly he remembered about Ranulph. Ranulph had gone to the country
from which there is no return.
But he was going to follow him there and fetch him back. Nothing would
stop him--he would push, if necessary, through fold after fold of
dreams until he reached their heart.
He bent down and touched one of the corpses. It was warm, and it
moved. As he touched it he realized that he had incurred the danger of
contamination from some mysterious disease.
"But it isn't real, it isn't real," he muttered. "I'm inventing it all
myself. And so, whatever happens, I shan't mind, because it isn't real."
It was growing dark. He knew that he was being followed by one of
the stone beggars, who had turned into a four-footed animal called
Portunus. In one sense the animal was a protection, in another a
menace, and he knew that in summoning him he must be very careful to
use the correct ritual formulary.
He had reached a square, on one side of which was a huge building
with a domed roof. Light streamed from it through a great window of
stained glass, on which was depicted a blue warrior fighting with a
red dragon ... no, it was not a stained glass window but merely the
reflection on the white walls of the building from a house in complete
darkness in the opposite side of the square, inhabited by creatures
made of red lacquer. He knew that they were expecting him to call,
because they believed that he was courting one of them.
"What else could bring him here save all this lovely spawn?" said a
voice at his elbow.
He looked round--suddenly the streets were pullulating with strange
semi-human fauna: tiny green men, the wax figures of his parents from
Hempie's chimney-piece, grimacing greybeards with lovely children
gamboling round them dressed in beetles' shards.
Now they were dancing, some slow old-fashioned dance ... in and out, in
and out. Why, they were only figures on a piece of tapestry flapping in
the wind!
Once more he felt his horse beneath him. But what were these little
pattering footsteps behind him? He turned uneasily in his saddle, to
discover that it was nothing but a gust of wind rustling a little eddy
of dead leaves.
The town and its strange fauna had vanished, and once more he was
riding up the bridle-path; but now it was night.