Endymion Leer was put next to Ranulph, and Luke was given a large pleasant room in the attic.
Ranulph was not in the least tired by his long ride, he said. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright, and when the widow had left him alone with Luke, he gave two or three skips of glee, and cried, “I do love this place, Luke.” At six o’clock a loud bell was rung outside the house, presumably to summon the labourers to supper; and, as the widow had told them it would be in the kitchen, Ranulph and Luke, both feeling very hungry, went hurrying down.
It was an enormous kitchen, running the whole length of the house; in the olden days it had been the banqueting hall. It was solidly stone-vaulted, and the great chimney place was also of stone, and decorated in high relief with the skulls and flowers and arabesques of leaves ubiquitous in the art of Dorimare. It was flanked by giant firedogs of copper. The floor was tiled with a mosaic of brown and red and grey-blue flagstones.
Down the centre of the room ran a long narrow table laid with pewter plates and mugs, for the labourers and maid servants who came flocking in, their faces shining from recent soap and scrubbing, and stood about in groups at the lower end of the room, grinning and bashful from the presence of company. According to the good old yeoman custom they had their meals with their masters.
It was a most delicious supper—a great ham with the aromatic flavour of wood-smoke, eaten with pickled cowslips; brawn; a red-deer pie; and, in honour of the distinguished guests, a fat roast swan. The wine was from the widow’s own grapes and was flavoured with honey and blackberries.
Most of the talking was done by the widow and Endymion Leer. He was asking her if many trout had been caught that summer in the Dapple, and what were their markings. And she told him that a salmon had recently been landed weighing ten pounds.
Ranulph, who had been munching away in silence, suddenly looked up at them, with that little smile of his that people always found a trifle disconcerting.
“That isn’t real talk,” he said. “That isn’t the way you really talk to each other. That’s only pretence talk.” The widow looked very surprised and very much annoyed. But Endymion Leer laughed heartily and asked him what he meant by “real talk;” Ranulph, however, would not be drawn.
But Luke Hempen, in a dim inarticulate way, understood what he meant. The conversation between the widow and the doctor had not rung true; it was almost as if their words had a double meaning known only to themselves.
A few minutes later, a wizened old man with very bright eyes came into the room and sat down at the lower end of the table. And then Ranulph really did give everyone a fright, for he stopped eating, and for a few seconds stared at him in silence. Then he gave a piercing scream.
All eyes turned toward him in amazement. But he sat as if petrified, his eyes round and staring, pointing at the old man. “Come, come, young fellow!” cried Endymion Leer, sharply; “what’s the meaning of this?”
“What ails you, little master?” cried the widow.
But he continued pointing in silence at the old man, who was leering and smirking and ogling, in evident delight at being the centre of attention.
“He’s scared by Portunus, the weaver,” tittered the maids.
And the words “Portunus,” “old Portunus the weaver,” were bandied from mouth to mouth down the two sides of the table.
“Yes, Portunus, the weaver,” cried the widow, in a loud voice, a hint of menace in her eye. “And who, I should like to know, does not love Portunus, the weaver?”
The maids hung their heads, the men sniggered deprecatingly.
“Well?” challenged the widow.
Silence.
“And who,” she continued indignantly, “is the handiest most obliging fellow to be found within twenty miles?”
She glared down the table, and then repeated her question.
As if compelled by her eye, the company murmured “Portunus.”
“And if the cheeses won’t curdle, or the butter won’t come, or the wine in the vats won’t get a good head, who comes to the rescue?”
“Portunus,” murmured the company.
“And who is always ready to lend a helping hand to the maids—to break or bolt hemp, to dress flax, or to spin? And when their work is over to play them tunes on his fiddle?”
“Portunus,” murmured the company.
Suddenly Hazel raised her eyes from her plate and they were sparkling with defiance and anger.
“And who,” she cried shrilly, “sits by the fire when he thinks no one is watching him roasting little live frogs and eating them? Portunus.”
With each word her voice rose higher, like a soaring bird. But at the last word it was as if the bird when it had reached the ceiling suddenly fell down dead. And Luke saw her flinch under the cold indignant stare of the widow.
And he had noticed something else as well.
It was the custom in Dorimare, in the houses of the yeomanry and the peasantry, to hang a bunch of dried fennel over the door of every room; for fennel was supposed to have the power of keeping the Fairies. And when Ranulph had given his eerie scream, Luke had, as instinctively as in similar circumstances a medieval papist would have made the sign of the Cross, glanced towards the door to catch a reassuring glimpse of the familiar herb.
But there was no fennel hanging over the door of the widow Gibberty.
The men grinned, the maids tittered at Hazel’s outburst; and then there was an awkward silence.
In the meantime, Ranulph seemed to have recovered from his fright and was going on stolidly with his supper, while the widow was saying to him reassuringly, “Mark my words, little master, you’ll get to love Portunus as much as we all do. Trust Portunus for knowing where the trout rise and where all the birds’ nests are to
