









                        Chapter XXVII

                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?  And 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 cheapjacks 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, your 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.
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