CHAPTER XIII
WHAT MASTER NATHANIEL AND MASTER AMBROSE FOUND IN THE GUILDHALL
Master Nathaniel was much too restless and anxious to explore the Guildhall until the groom returned whom he had sent with the letter to Luke Hempen.
But he must have taken the order to ride night and day literally—in so short a time was he back again in Lud. Master Nathaniel was, of course, enchanted by his despatch, though he was unable to elicit from him any detailed answers to his eager questions about Ranulph. But it was everything to know that the boy was well and happy, and it was but natural that the fellow should be bashful and tongue-tied in the presence of his master.
But the groom had not, as a matter of fact, come within twenty miles of the widow Gibberty's farm.
In a road-side tavern he had fallen in with a red-haired youth, who had treated him to glass upon glass of an extremely intoxicating wine; and, in consequence, he had spent the night and a considerable portion of the following morning sound asleep on the floor of the tavern.
When he awoke, he was horrified to discover how much time he had wasted. But his mind was set at rest on the innkeeper's giving him a letter from the red-haired youth, to say that he deeply regretted having been the indirect cause of delaying a messenger sent on pressing business by the High Seneschal (in his cup the groom had boasted of the importance of his errand), and had, in consequence, ventured to possess himself of the letter, which he guaranteed to deliver at the address on the wrapper as soon, or sooner, as the messenger could have done himself.
The groom was greatly relieved. He had not been long in Master Nathaniel's service. It was after Yule-tide he had entered it.
So it was with a heart relieved from all fears for Ranulph and free to throb like a schoolboy's with the lust of adventure that Master Nathaniel met Master Ambrose on the night of the full moon at the splendid carved doors of the Guildhall.
"I say, Ambrose," he whispered, "I feel as if we were lads again, and off to rob an orchard!"
Master Ambrose snorted. He was determined, at all costs, to do his duty, but it annoyed him that his duty should be regarded in the light of a boyish escapade.
The great doors creaked back on their hinges. Shutting them as quietly as they could, they tip-toed up the spiral staircase and along the corridor described by Dame Marigold: whenever a board creaked under their heavy steps, one inwardly cursing the other for daring to be so stout and unwieldy.
All round them was darkness, except for the little trickles of light cast before them by their two lanthorns.
A house with old furniture has no need of guests to be haunted. As we have seen, Master Nathaniel was very sensitive to the silent things—stars, houses, trees; and often in his pipe-room, after the candles had been lit, he would sit staring at the bookshelves, the chairs, his father's portrait—even at his red umbrella standing up in the corner, with as great a sense of awe as if he had been a star-gazer.
But that night, the brooding invisible presences of the carved panels, the storied tapestries, affected even the hard-headed Master Ambrose. It was as if that silent population was drawing him, by an irresistible magnetism, into the zone of its influence.
If only they would speak, or begin to move about—those silent rooted things! It was like walking through a wood by moonlight.
Then Master Nathaniel stood still.
"This, I think, must roughly be the spot where Marigold found the hollow panel," he whispered, and began tapping cautiously along the wainscotting.
A few minutes later, he said in an excited whisper, "Ambrose! Ambrose! I've got it. Hark! You can hear, can't you? It's as hollow as a drum."
"Suffering Cats! I believe you're right," whispered back Master Ambrose, beginning, in spite of himself, to be a little infected with Nat's absurd excitement.
And then, yielding to pressure, the panel slid back, and by the light of their lanthorns they could see a twisting staircase.
For a few seconds they gazed at each other in silent triumph. Then Master Nathaniel chuckled, and said, "Well, here goes—down with our buckets into the well! And may we draw up something better than an old shoe or a rotten walnut!" and straightway he began to descend the stairs, Master Ambrose valiantly following him.
The stairs went twisting down, down—into the very bowels of the earth, it seemed. But at long last they found themselves in what looked like a long tunnel.
"Tally ho! Tally ho!" whispered Master Nathaniel, laughing for sheer joy of adventure, "take it at a gallop, Brosie; it may lead to an open glade ... and the deer at bay!"
And digging him in the ribs, he added, "Better sport than moth hunting, eh?" which showed the completeness of their reconciliation.
Nevertheless, it was very slowly, and feeling each step, that they groped their way along the tunnel.
After what seemed a very long time Master Nathaniel halted, and whispered over his shoulder, "Here we are. There's a door ... oh, thunder and confusion on it for ever! It's locked."
And, beside himself with irritation at this unlooked-for obstacle, he began to batter and kick at the door, like one demented.
He paused a minute for breath, and from the inside could be heard a shrill female voice demanding the pass-word.
"Pass-word?" bellowed back Master Nathaniel, "by the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West, what...."
But before he could finish his sentence, the door was opened from the other side, and they marched into a low, square room, which was lit by one lamp swinging by a chain from the ceiling—for which there seemed but little need, for a light more brilliant than that of any lamp, and yet as soft as moonlight, seemed to issue from the marvelous tapestries that hung on the walls.
They were dumb with amazement. This was as different from all the other tapestry they had ever seen as is an apple-tree in full blossom against a turquoise sky in May to the same tree in November, when only a few red leaves still cling to its branches, and the sky is leaden. Oh, those blues, and pinks, and brilliant greens! In what miraculous dyes had the silks been dipped?
As to the subjects, they were those familiar to every Dorimarite—hunting scenes, fugitives chased by the moon, shepherds and shepherdesses tending their azure sheep. But, depicted in these brilliant hues, they were like the ashes of the past, suddenly, under one's very eyes, breaking into flame. Heigh-presto! The men and women of a vanished age, noisy, gaudy, dominant, are flooding the streets, and driving the living before them like dead leaves.
And what was this lying in heaps on the floor? Pearls and sapphires, and monstrous rubies? Or windfalls of fruit, marvellous fruit, fallen from the trees depicted on the tapestry?
Then, as their eyes grew accustomed to all the brilliance, the two friends began to get their bearings; there could be no doubt as to the nature of that fruit lying on the floor. It was fairy fruit, or their names were not respectively Chanticleer and Honeysuckle.
And, to their amazement, the guardian of this strange treasure was none other than their old acquaintance Mother Tibbs.
Her clear, child-like eyes that shone like lamps out of her seared weather-beaten face, were gazing at them in a sort of mild surprise.
"If it isn't Master Hyacinth and Master Josiah!" she exclaimed, adding, with her gay, young laugh, "to think of their knowing the pass-word!"
Then she peered anxiously into their faces: "Are your stockings wearing well yonder? The last pair I washed for you didn't take the soap as they should. Marching down the Milky Way, and tripping it beyond the moon, is hard on stockings."
Clearly she took them for their own fathers.
Meanwhile, Master Ambrose was drawing in his breath, with a noise as if he were eating soup, and creasing his double chins—sure signs, to anyone who had seen him on the Bench, that he was getting ready to hector.
But Master Nathaniel gave him a little warning nudge, and said cordially to their hostess, "Why, our stockings, and boots too, are doing very nicely, thank you. So you didn't expect us to know the pass-word, eh? Well, well, perhaps we know more than you think," then, under his breath to Master Ambrose, "By my Great-aunt's Rump, Ambrose, what was the pass-word?"
Then turning again to Mother Tibbs, who was slightly swaying from her hips, as if in time to some jig, which she alone could hear, he said, "You've got some fine tapestry. I don't believe I've ever seen finer!"
She smiled, and then coming close up to him, said in a low voice, "Does your Worship know what makes it so fine? No? Why, it's the fairy fruit!" and she nodded her head mysteriously, several times.
Master Ambrose gave a sort of low growl of rage, but again Master Nathaniel shot him a warning look, and said in a voice of polite interest, "Indeed! Indeed! And where, may I ask, does the ... er ... fruit come from?"
She laughed merrily, "Why, the gentlemen bring it! All the pretty gentlemen, dressed in green, with their knots of ribands, crowding down in the sunrise from their ships with the scarlet sails to suck the golden apricocks, when all in Lud are fast asleep! And then the cock says Cockadoodledoo! Cockadoodledooooo!" and her voice trailed off, far-away and lonely, suggesting, somehow, the first glimmer of dawn on ghostly hayricks.
"And I'll tell you something, Master Nat Cock o' the Roost," she went on, smiling mysteriously, and coming close up to him, "you'll soon be dead!"
Then she stepped back, smiling and nodding encouragingly, as if to say, "There's a pretty present I've given you! Take care of it."
"And as for Mother Tibbs," she went on triumphantly, "she'll soon be a fine lady, like the wives of the Senators, dancing all night under the moon! The gentlemen have promised."
Master Ambrose gave a snort of impatience, but Master Nathaniel said with a good-humoured laugh, "So that's how you think the wives of the Senators spend their time, eh? I'm afraid they've other things to do. And as to yourself, aren't you getting too old for dancing?"
A slight shadow passed across her clear eyes. Then she tossed her head with the noble gesture of a wild creature, and cried, "No! No! As long as my heart dances my feet will too. And nobody will grow old when the Duke comes back."
But Master Ambrose could contain himself no longer. He knew only too well Nat's love of listening to long rambling talk—especially when there happened to be some serious business on hand.
"Come, come," he cried in a stern voice, "in spite of being crack-brained, my good woman, you may soon find yourself dancing to another tune. Unless you tell us in double quick time who exactly these gentlemen are, and who it was that put you on guard here, and who brings that filthy fruit, and who takes it away, we will ... why, we will cut the fiddle strings that you dance to!"
This threat was a subconscious echo of the last words he had heard spoken by Moonlove. Its effect was instantaneous.
"Cut the fiddle strings! Cut the fiddle strings!" she wailed; adding coaxingly, "No, no, pretty master, you would never do that! Would he now?" and she turned appealingly to Master Nathaniel. "It would be like taking away the poor man's strawberries. The Senator has peaches and roasted swans and peacock's hearts, and a fine coach to drive in, and a feather bed to lie late in of a morning. And the poor man has black bread and baked haws, and work ... but in the summer he has strawberries and tunes to dance to. No, no, you would never cut the fiddle strings!"
Master Nathaniel felt a lump in his throat. But Master Ambrose was inexorable: "Yes, of course I would!" he blustered; "I'd cut the strings of every fiddle in Lud. And I will, too, unless you tell us what we want to know. Come, Mother Tibbs, speak out—I'm a man of my word."
She gazed at him beseechingly, and then a look of innocent cunning crept into her candid eyes and she placed a finger on her lips, then nodded her head several times and said in a mysterious whisper, "If you'll promise not to cut the fiddle strings I'll show you the prettiest sight in the world—the sturdy dead lads in the Fields of Grammary hoisting their own coffins on their shoulders, and tripping it over the daisies. Come!" and she darted to the side of the wall, drew aside the tapestry and revealed to them another secret door. She pressed some spring, it flew open disclosing another dark tunnel.
"Follow me, pretty masters," she cried.
"There's nothing to be done," whispered Master Nathaniel, "but to humour her. She may have something of real value to show us."
Master Ambrose muttered something about a couple of lunatics and not having left his fireside to waste the night in indulging their fantasies; but all the same he followed Master Nathaniel, and the second secret door shut behind them with a sharp click.
"Phew!" said Master Nathaniel: "Phew!" puffed Master Ambrose, as they pounded laboriously along the passage behind their light-footed guide.
Then they began to ascend a flight of stairs, which seemed interminable, and finally fell forward with a lurch on to their knees, and again there was a click of something shutting behind them.
They groaned and cursed and rubbed their knees and demanded angrily to what unholy place she had been pleased to lead them.
But she clapped her hands gleefully, "Don't you know, pretty masters? Why, you're where the dead cocks roost! You've come back to your own snug cottage, Master Josiah Chanticleer. Take your lanthorn and look round you."
This Master Nathaniel proceeded to do, and slowly it dawned on him where they were.
"By the Golden Apples of the West, Ambrose!" he exclaimed, "if we're not in my own chapel!"
And, sure enough, the rays of the lanthorn revealed the shelves lined with porphyry coffins, the richly wrought marble ceiling, and the mosaic floor of the home of the dead Chanticleers.
"Toasted Cheese!" muttered Master Ambrose in amazement.
"It must have two doors, though I never knew it," said Master Nathaniel. "A secret door opening on to that hidden flight of steps. There are evidently people who know more about my chapel than I do myself," and suddenly he remembered how the other day he had found its door ajar.
Mother Tibbs laughed gleefully at their surprise, and then, placing one finger on her lips, she beckoned them to follow her; and they tip-toed after her out into the moonlit Fields of Grammary, where she signed to them to hide themselves from view behind the big trunk of a sycamore.
The dew, like lunar daisies, lay thickly on the grassy graves. The marble statues of the departed seemed to flicker into smiles under the rays of the full moon; and, not far from the sycamore, two men were digging up a newly-made grave. One of them was a brawny fellow with the gold rings in his ears worn by sailors, the other was—Endymion Leer.
Master Nathaniel shot a look of triumph at Master Ambrose, and whispered, "A cask of flower-in-amber, Brosie!"
For some time the two men dug on in silence, and then they pulled out three large coffins and laid them on the grass.
"We'd better have a peep, Sebastian," said Endymion Leer, "to see that the goods have been delivered all right. We're dealing with tricky customers."
The young man, addressed as Sebastian, grinned, and taking a clasp knife from his belt, began to prise open one of the coffins.
As he inserted the blade into the lid, our two friends behind the sycamore could not help shuddering; nor was their horror lessened by the demeanor of Mother Tibbs, for she half closed her eyes, and drew the air in sharply through her nostrils, as if in expectation of some delicious perfume.
But when the lid was finally opened and the contents of the coffin exposed to view, they proved not to be cere cloths and hideousness, but—closely packed fairy fruit.
"Toasted Cheese!" muttered Master Ambrose; "Busty Bridget!" muttered Master Nathaniel.
"Yes, that's the goods all right," said Endymion Leer, "and we'll take the other two on trust. Shut it up again, and help to hoist it on to my shoulder, and do you follow with the other two—we'll take them right away to the tapestry-room. We're having a council there at midnight, and it's getting on for that now."
Choosing a moment when the backs of the two smugglers were turned, Mother Tibbs darted out from behind the sycamore, and shot back into the chapel, evidently afraid of not being found at her post. And she was shortly followed by Endymion Leer and his companion.
At first, the sensations of Master Nathaniel and Master Ambrose were too complicated to be expressed in words, and they merely stared at each other, with round eyes. Then a slow smile broke over Master Nathaniel's face, "No Moongrass cheese for you this time, Brosie," he said. "Who was right, you or me?"
"By the Milky Way, it was you, Nat!" cried Master Ambrose, for once, in a voice of real excitement. "The rascal! The unmitigated rogue! So it's him, is it, we parents have to thank for what has happened! But he'll hang for it, he'll hang for it—though we have to change the whole constitution of Dorimare! The blackguard!"
"Into the town probably as a hearse," Master Nathaniel was saying thoughtfully, "then buried here, then down through my chapel into the secret room in the Guildhall, whence, I suppose, they distribute it by degrees. It's quite clear now how the stuff gets into Lud. All that remains to clear up is how it gets past our Yeomen on the border ... but what's taken you, Ambrose?"
For Master Ambrose was simply shaking with laughter; and he did not laugh easily.
"Do the dead bleed?" he was repeating between his guffaws; "why, Nat, it's the best joke I've heard these twenty years!"
And when he had sufficiently recovered he told Master Nathaniel about the red juice oozing out of the coffin, which he had taken for blood, and how he had frightened Endymion Leer out of his wits by asking him about it.
"When, of course, it was a bogus funeral, and what I had seen was the juice of that damned fruit!" and again he was seized with paroxysms of laughter.
But Master Nathaniel merely gave an absent smile; there was something vaguely reminiscent in that idea of the dead bleeding—something he had recently read or heard; but, for the moment, he could not remember where.
In the meantime, Master Ambrose had recovered his gravity. "Come, come," he cried briskly, "we've not a moment to lose. We must be off at once to Mumchance, rouse him and a couple of his men, and be back in a twinkling to that tapestry-room, to take them red-handed."
"You're right, Ambrose! You're right!" cried Master Nathaniel. And off they went at a sharp jog trot, out at the gate, down the hill, and into the sleeping town.
They had no difficulty in rousing Mumchance and in firing him with their own enthusiasm. As they told him in a few hurried words what they had discovered, his respect for the Senate went up in leaps and bounds—though he could scarcely credit his ears when he learned of the part played in the evening's transactions by Endymion Leer.
"To think of that! To think of that!" he kept repeating, "and me who's always been so friendly with the Doctor, too!"
As a matter of fact, Endymion Leer had for some months been the recipient of Mumchance's complaints with regard to the slackness and inefficiency of the Senate; and, in his turn, had succeeded in infecting the good Captain's mind with sinister suspicions against Master Nathaniel. And there was a twinge of conscience for disloyalty to his master, the Mayor, behind the respectful heartiness of his tones as he cried, "Very good, your Worship. It's Green and Juniper what are on duty tonight. I'll go and fetch them from the guard-room, and we should be able to settle the rascals nicely."
As the clocks in Lud-in-the-Mist were striking midnight the five of them were stepping cautiously along the corridors of the Guildhall. They had no difficulty in finding the hollow panel, and having pressed the spring, they made their way along the secret passage.
"Ambrose!" whispered Master Nathaniel flurriedly, "what was it exactly that I said that turned out to be the pass-word? What with the excitement and all I've clean forgotten it."
Master Ambrose shook his head. "I haven't the slightest idea," he whispered back. "To tell you the truth, I couldn't make out what she meant about your having used a pass-word. All I can remember your saying was 'Toasted Cheese!' or 'Busty Bridget!'—or something equally elegant."
Now they had got to the door, locked from the inside as before.
"Look here, Mumchance," said Master Nathaniel, ruefully, "we can't remember the pass-word, and they won't open without it."
Mumchance smiled indulgently, "Your Worship need not worry about the pass-word," he said. "I expect we'll be able to find another that will do as well ... eh, Green and Juniper? But perhaps first—just to be in order—your Worship would knock and command them to open."
Master Nathaniel felt absurdly disappointed. For one thing, it shocked his sense of dramatic economy that they should have to resort to violence when the same result could have been obtained by a minimum expenditure of energy. Besides, he had so looked forward to showing off his new little trick!
So it was with a rueful sigh that he gave a loud rat-a-tat-tat on the door, calling out, "Open in the name of the Law!"
These words, of course, produced no response, and Mumchance, with the help of the other four, proceeded to put into effect his own pass-word, which was to shove with all their might against the door, two of the hinges of which he had noticed looked rusty.
It began to creak, and then to crack, and finally they burst into ... an empty room. No strange fruit lay heaped on the floor; nothing hung on the walls but a few pieces of faded moth-eaten tapestry. It looked like a room that had not been entered for centuries.
When they had recovered from their first surprise, Master Nathaniel cried fiercely, "They must have got wind that we were after them, and given us the slip, taking their loads of filthy fruits with them, I'll...."
"There's been no fruit here, your Worship," said Mumchance in a voice that he was trying hard to keep respectful; "it always leaves stains, and there ain't any stains here."
And he couldn't resist adding, with a wink to Juniper and Green, "I daresay it's your Worship's having forgotten the pass-word that's done it!" And Juniper and Green grinned from ear to ear.
Master Nathaniel was too chagrined to heed this insolence; but Master Ambrose—ever the champion of dignity in distress—gave Mumchance such a look that he hung his head and humbly hoped that his Worship would forgive his little joke.