Through his agony he was conscious of a hand laid on his shoulder: "Why, Chanticleer! Old John o' Dreams! What ails you? Has the cock's crow become too bittersweet for Chanticleer?" said a voice, half tender and half mocking, in his ear.
He turned round, and by the light of the moon saw standing behind him - Duke Aubrey.
The Duke smiled. "Well, Chanticleer," he said, "so we meet at last! Your family has been dodging me down the centuries, but some day you were bound to fall into my snares. And, though you did not know it, you have been working for some time past as one of my secret agents. How I laughed when you and Ambrose Honeysuckle pledged each other in words taken from my Mysteries! And little did you think, when you stood cursing and swearing at the door of my tapestry-room, that you had pronounced the most potent charm in Faerie," and he threw back his head and broke into peal upon peal of silvery laughter.
Suddenly his laughter stopped, and his eyes, as he looked at Master Nathaniel, became wonderfully compassionate.
"Poor Chanticleer! Poor John o' Dreams!" he said gently. "I have often wished my honey were not so bitter to the taste. Believe me, Chanticleer, I fain would find an antidote to the bitter herb of life, but none grows this side of the hills - or the other."
"And yet I have never tasted fairy fruit," said Master Nathaniel in a low broken voice.
"There are many trees in my orchard, and many and various are the fruit they bear - music and dreams and grief and, sometimes, joy. All your life, Chanticleer, you have eaten fairy fruit, and some day, it may be, you will hear the Note again - but that I cannot promise. And now I will grant your a vision - they are sometimes sweet to the taste."
He paused. And then he said, "Do you you know why it was that your horse fell down dead? It was because you had reached the brink of Fairyland. The winds of Faerie slew him. Come with me, Chanticleer."
He took Master Nathaniel's hand and dragged him to his feet, and they scrambled a few yards further up the bridle-path and stepped on to a broad plateau. Beneath them lay what, in the uncertain moonlight, looked like a stretch of desolate uplands.
Then Duke Aubrey raised his arms high above his head and cried out in a loud voice, "By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!"
At these words the uplands became bathed in a gentle light and proved to be fair and fertile - the perpetual seat of Spring; for there were vivid green patches of young corn, and pillars of pink and white smoke, which were fruit trees in blossom, and pillars of blue blossom, which was the smoke of distant hamlets, and a vast meadow of cornflowers and daisies, which was the great inland sea of Faerie. And everything - ships, spires, houses - was small and bright and delicate, yet real. It was not unlike Dorimare, or rather, the transfigured Dorimare he had once seen from the Fields of Grammary. And as he gazed he knew that in that land no winds ever howled at night, and that everything within its borders had the serenity and stability of trees, the unchanging peace of pictures.
Then, suddenly, it all vanished. Duke Aubrey had vanished too, and he was standing alone on the edge of a black abyss, while wafted on the wind came the echo of light, mocking laughter.
Was Fairyland, then, a delusion? Had Ranulph vanished into nothingness?
For a second or two he hesitated, and then - he leaped down into the abyss.
Chapter XXIX
A Message Comes to Hazel and the First Swallow to Dame Marigold
The information given by Luke Hempen had enabled the authorities in Lud finally to put a stop to the import of fairy fruit. As we have seen, the Dapple had been dragged near its source, and wicker frails had been brought up, so cunningly weighted that they could float beneath the surface of the water, and closely packed with what was unmistakably fairy fruit. After that no further cases of fruit-eating came to Mumchance's notice. But, for all that, his anxieties were by no means at an end, for the execution of Endymion Leer came near to causing a popular rising. An angry mob, armed with cudgels and led by Bawdy Bess, stormed the court of the Guildhall, cut down the body - which had been left hanging on the gibbet as an example to evildoers - and bore it off in triumph; and the longest funeral procession that had been seen for years was shortly following it to the Fields of Grammary.
The cautious Mumchance considered it would be imprudent to interfere with the obsequies.
"After all, your Worship," he said to Master Polydore, "the Law has had his blood, and if it will mean a little peace and quiet she can do without his corpse."
The next day many of the 'prentices and artizans went on strike, and several captains of merchant vessels reported that their crews showed signs of getting out of hand.
Master Polydore was terrified out of his wits, and Mumchance was inclined to take a very gloomy view of the situation: "If the town chooses to rise the Yeomanry can do nothing against them," he said dejectedly. "We ain't organized (if your Worship will pardon the expression) for trouble - no, we ain't."
Then, as if by a miracle, everything quieted down. The strikers, as meek as lambs, returned to their work, the sailors ceased to be turbulent, and Mumchance declared that it was years since the Yeomanry had had so little to do.
"There's nothing like taking strong measures at once," Master Polydore remarked complacently to Master Ambrose (whom he had taken as his mentor in the place of Endymion Leer). "Once let them feel that there is a strong man at the helm, and you can do anything with them. And, of course, they never felt that with poor old Nat."
Master Ambrose's only answer was a grunt - and a rather sardonic smile. For Master Ambrose happened to be one of the few people who knew what had really happened.
The sudden calm was due neither to a miracle, nor to the strong hand of Master Polydore. It had been brought about by two humble agents - Mistress Ivy Peppercorn and Hazel Gibberty.
One evening they had been sitting in the little parlour behind the grocer's shop over the first fire of the season.
As plaintiff and principal witness in the unpopular trial, their situation was not without danger. In fact, Mumchance had advised them to move into Lud till the storm had blown over. But, to Hazel, Lud was the place where the widow was buried, and, full as she was of western superstitions, she felt that she could not bear to sleep enclosed by the same town walls as the angry corpse. Nor would she return to the farm. Her aunt had told her of Master Nathaniel's half-joking plan to communicate with her, and Hazel insisted that even though he had gone behind the Debatable Hills it was their clear duty to remain within reach of a message.
That evening Mistress Ivy was waxing a little plaintive over her obstinacy. "I sometimes think, Hazel, your wits have been turned, living so long with that bad bold woman and I don't wonder, I'm sure, poor child; and if my poor Peppercorn hadn't come along, I don't know what would have happened to me. But there's no sense, I tell you, in waiting on here - with the hams and bacon at home not cured yet, nor the fish salted for winter, nor your fruit pickled or preserved. You're a farmer on your own now, and you shouldn't forget it. And I wish to goodness you'd get all that silly nonsense out of your head. A message from the Mayor, indeed! Though I can't get over its being him that came to see me, and me never knowing, but giving him sauce, as if he'd been nothing but a shipmate of my poor Peppercorn's! No, no, poor gentleman, we'll never hear from him! Leastways, not this side of the Debatable Hills."