Lud-in-the-Mist (20 page)

“But that night he died, and it was then that I started wondering about that jelly in the pipkin, for him, liking scum as he did, and always having a saucer of it set aside for him, it wouldn’t have been difficult to have boiled up some poison for him without any danger of other folks touching it. And Pugwalker knew all about herbs and such like, and could have told her what to use. For it was as plain as print that poor father knew he was going to die, and peonies make a good purge; and I’ve often wondered since if it was as a purge that he wanted these flowers. And that’s all I know, and perhaps it isn’t much, but it’s been enough to keep me awake many a night of my life wondering what I should have done if I’d been older. For I was only a little maid of ten at the time, with no one I could talk to, and as frightened of my stepmother as a bird of a snake. If I’d been one of the witnesses, I dare say it would have come out in court, but I was too young for that.”

“Perhaps we could get hold of Diggory Carp?”

“Diggory Carp?” she repeated in surprise. “But surely you heard what happened to him? Ah, that was a sad story! You see, after he was sent to gaol, there came three or four terrible lean years, one after the other. And food was so dear, no one, of course, had any money for buying fancy goods like baskets … and the long and the short of it was that when Diggory came out of gaol he found that his wife and children had died of starvation. And it seemed to turn his wits, and he came up to our farm, raging against my stepmother, and vowing that someday he’d get his own back on her. And that night he hanged himself from one of the trees in our orchard, and he was found there dead the next morning.”

“A sad story,” said Master Nathaniel. “Well, we must leave him out of our calculations. All you’ve told me is very interesting — very interesting indeed. But there’s still a great deal to be unraveled before we get to the rope I’m looking for. One thing I don’t understand is Diggory Carp’s story about the osiers. Was it a pure fabrication of his?”

“Poor Diggory! He wasn’t, of course, the sort of man whose word one would be very ready to take, for he did deserve his ten years — he was a born thief. But I don’t think he would have had the wits to invent all that. I expect the story he told was true enough about his daughter selling the osiers, but that it was only for basket-making that she wanted them. Guilt’s a funny thing — like a smell, and one often doesn’t quite know where it comes from. I think Diggory’s nose was not mistaken when it smelt out guilt, but it led him to the wrong clue. My father wasn’t poisoned by osiers.”

“Can you think what it was, then?”

She shook her head. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

“I wish you knew something more definite,” said Master Nathaniel a little fretfully. “The Law dearly loves something it can touch — a blood-stained knife and that sort of thing. And there’s another matter that puzzles me. Your father seems, on your showing, to have been a very indulgent sort of husband, and to have kept his jealousy to himself. What
cause
was there for the murder?”

“Ah! that I think I can explain to you,” she cried. “You see, our farm was very conveniently situated for … well, for smuggling a certain thing that we don’t mention. It stands in a sort of hollow between the marches and the west road, and smugglers like a friendly, quiet place where they can run their goods. And my poor father, though he may have sat like a dumb animal in pain when his young wife was gallivanting with her lover, all the same, if he had found out what was being stored in the granary, Pugwalker would have been kicked out of the house, and she could have whistled for him till she was black in the face. My father was easy-going enough in some ways, but there were places in him as hard as nails, and no woman, be she never so much of a fool (and, fair play to my stepmother, she was no fool), can live with a man without finding out where these places are.”

“Oh, ho! So what Diggory Carp said about the contents of that sack was true, was it?” And Master Nathaniel inwardly thanked his stars that no harm had come to Ranulph during his stay in such a dangerous place.

“Oh, it was true, and no mistake; and, child though I was at the time, I cried through half one night with rage when they told me what the hussy had said in court about my father using the stuff as manure and her begging him not to! Begging him not to, indeed! I could have told them a very different story. And it was Pugwalker that was at the back of that business, and got the granary key from her, so they could run their goods there. And shortly before my father died he got wind of it — I know that from something I overheard. The room I shared with my little brother Robin opened into theirs, and we always kept the door ajar, because Robin was a timid child, and fancied he couldn’t go to sleep unless he heard my father snoring. Well, about a week before my father died I heard him talking to her in a voice I’d never known him to use to her before. He said he’d warned her twice already that year, and that this was the last time. Up to that time he’d held his head high, he said, because his hands were clean and all his doings straight and fair, and now he warned her for the last time that unless this business was put a stop to once and for all, he’d have Pugwalker tarred and feathered, and make the neighborhood too hot for him to stay in it. And, I remember, I heard him hawking and spitting, as if he’d rid himself of something foul. And he said that the Gibbertys had always been respected, and that the farm, ever since they had owned it, had helped to make the people of Dorimare straight-limbed and clean-blooded, for it had sent fresh meat and milk to market, and good grain to the miller, and sweet grapes to the vintner, and that he would rather sell the farm than that poison and filth should be sent out of his granary, to turn honest lads into idiots gibbering at the moon. And then she started coaxing him, but she spoke too low for me to catch the words. But she must have been making him some promise, for he said gruffly, ‘Well, see that it’s done, then, for I’m a man of my word.’

“And in not much more than a week after that he was dead — poor father. And I count it a miracle that I ever grew up and am sitting here now telling you all this. And a still greater one that little Robin grew up to be a man, for he inherited the farm. But it was her own little girl that died, and Robin grew up and married, and though he died in his prime it was through a quinsy in his throat, and he always got on with our stepmother, and wouldn’t hear a word against her. And she has brought up his little girl, for her mother died when she was born. But I’ve never seen the lass, for there was never any love lost between me and my stepmother, and I never went back to the old house after I married.”

She paused, and in her eyes was that wistful, tranced look that always comes when one has been gazing at things that happened to one long ago.

“I see, I see,” said Master Nathaniel meditatively. “And Pugwalker? Did you ever see him again till you recognized him in the streets of Lud the other day?”

She shook her head. “No, he disappeared, as I told you, just before the trial. Though I don’t doubt that
she
knew his whereabouts and heard from him — met him even; for she was always going out by herself after nightfall. Well, well, I’ve told you everything I know — though perhaps I’d have better held my tongue, for little good comes of digging up the past.”

Master Nathaniel said nothing; he was evidently pondering her story.

“Well,” he said finally, “everything you have told me has been very interesting — very interesting indeed. But whether it will lead to anything definite is another matter. All the evidence is purely circumstantial. However, I’m very grateful to you for having spoken to me as freely as you’ve done. And if I find out anything further I’ll let you know. I shall be leaving Lud shortly, but I shall keep in touch with you. And, under the circumstances, perhaps it would be prudent to agree on some word or token by which you would recognize a messenger as really coming from me, for the fellow you knew as Pugwalker has not grown less cunning with advancing years — he’s full of guile, and let him once get wind of what we’re after, he’d be up to all sorts of tricks to make our plans miscarry. What shall the token be?”

Then his eyes began to twinkle: “I’ve got it!” he cried. “Just to give you a little lesson in swearing, which you say you dislike so much, we’ll make it a good round oath. You’ll know a messenger comes from me if he greets you with the words,
By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!”

And he rubbed his hands in delight, and shouted with laughter. Master Nathaniel was a born tease.

“For shame, you saucy fellow!” dimpled Mistress Ivy. “You’re as bad as my poor Peppercorn. He used always …”

But even Master Nathaniel had had his fill of reminiscences. So he cut her short with a hearty good-bye, and renewed thanks for all she had told him.

But he turned back from the door to hold up his finger and say with mock solemnity, “Remember, it’s to be
By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!”

L
ate into that night Master Nathaniel paced the floor of his pipe-room, trying to pierce through the intervening medium of the dry words of the Law and the vivider though less reliable one of Mistress Ivy’s memory, and reach that old rustic tragedy, as it had been before the vultures of Time had left nothing of it but dry bones.

He felt convinced that Mistress Ivy’s reconstruction was correct — as far as it went. The farmer had been poisoned, though not by osiers. But by what? And what had been the part played by Pugwalker, alias Endymion Leer? It was, of course, gratifying to his vanity that his instinctive identification of the two had been correct. But how tantalizing it would be if this dead man’s tale was to remain but a vague whisper, too low to be heard by the ear of the Law!

On his table was the slipper that Master Ambrose had facetiously suggested might be of use to him. He picked it up, and stared at it absently. Ambrose had said the sight of it had made Endymion Leer jump out of his skin, and that the reason was obvious. And yet those purple strawberries did not look like fairy fruit. Master Nathaniel had recently become but too familiar with the aspect of that fruit not to recognize it instantly, whatever its variety. Though he had never seen berries exactly like these, he was certain that they did not grow in Fairyland.

He walked across to his bookcase and took out a big volume bound in vellum. It was a very ancient illustrated herbal of the plants of Dorimare.

At first he turned its pages somewhat listlessly, as if he did not really expect to find anything of interest. Then suddenly he came on an illustration, underneath which was written THE BERRIES OF MERCIFUL DEATH. He gave a low whistle, and fetching the slipper laid it beside the picture. The painted berries and the embroidered ones were identical.

On the opposite page the berries were described in a style that a literary expert would have recognized as belonging to the Duke Aubrey period. The passage ran thus: —

Master Nathaniel laid down the book, and his eyes were more frightened than triumphant. There was something sinister in the silent language in which dead men told their tales — with sly malice embroidering them on old maids’ canvas work, hiding them away in ancient books, written long before they were born; and why were his ears so attuned to this dumb speech?

For him the old herbalist had been describing a murderer, subtle, sinister, mitigating dark deeds with mercy — a murderer, the touch of whose bloody hands was balm to the sick in body, and whose voice could rock haunted minds to sleep. And, as well, in the light of what he already knew, the old herbalist had told a story. A violent, cruel, reckless woman had wished to rid herself of her enemy by the first means that came to her hand — osiers, the sap of which produced an agonizing, cruel death. But her discreet though murderous lover took the osiers from her, and gave her instead the berries of merciful death.

The herbalist had proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the villain of the story was Endymion Leer.

Yes, but how should he make the dead tell their tale loud enough to reach the ear of the Law?

In any case, he must leave Lud, and that quickly.

Why should he not visit the scene of this old drama, the widow Gibberty’s farm? Perhaps he might there find witnesses who spoke a language understood by all.

T
he next morning he ordered a horse to be saddled, packed a few necessaries in a knapsack, and then he told Dame Marigold that, for the present, he could not stay in Lud. “As for you,” he said, “you had better move to Polydore’s. For the moment I’m the most unpopular man in town, and it would be just as well that they should think of you as Vigil’s sister rather than as Chanticleer’s wife.”

Dame Marigold’s face was very pale that morning and her eyes were very bright. “Nothing would induce me,” she said in a low voice, “ever again to cross the threshold of Polydore’s house. I shall never forgive him for the way he has treated you. No, I shall stay here — in
your
house. And,” she added, with a little scornful laugh, “you needn’t be anxious about me. I’ve never yet met a member of the lower classes that was a match for one of ourselves — they fall to heel as readily as a dog. I’m not a bit afraid of the mob, or anything they could do to me.”

Master Nathaniel chuckled. “By the Sun, Moon and Stars!” he cried proudly, “you’re a chip off the old block, Marigold!”

“Well, don’t stay too long away, Nat,” she said, “or else when you come back you’ll find that I’ve gone mad like everybody else, and am dancing as wildly as Mother Tibbs, and singing songs about Duke Aubrey!” and she smiled her charming crooked smile.

Then he went up to say good-bye to old Hempie.

“Well, Hempie,” he cried gaily. “Lud’s getting too hot for me. So I’m off with a knapsack on my back to seek my fortune, like the youngest son in your old stories. Will you wish me luck?”

There were tears in the old woman’s eyes as she looked at him, and then she smiled.

“Why, Master Nat,” she cried, “I don’t believe you’ve felt so light-hearted since you were a boy! But these are strange times when a Chanticleer is chased out of Lud-in-the-Mist! And wouldn’t I just like to give those Vigils and the rest of them a bit of my mind!” and her old eyes flashed. “But don’t you ever get downhearted, Master Nat, and don’t ever forget that there have always been Chanticleers in Lud-in-the-Mist, and that there always will be! But it beats me how you’re to manage with only three pairs of stockings, and no one to mend them.”

“Well, Hempie,” he laughed, “they say the Fairies are wonderfully neat-fingered, and, who knows, perhaps in my wanderings I may fall in with a fairy housewife who will darn my stockings for me,” and he brought out the forbidden word as lightly and easily as if it had been one in daily use.

About an hour after Master Nathaniel had ridden away Luke Hempen arrived at the house, wild-eyed, disheveled, and with very startling news. But it was impossible to communicate it to Master Nathaniel, as he had left without telling anyone his destination.