“Stop a minute, Ambrose!” interrupted Master Nathaniel. “I’ve got a sudden silly whim that we must should take an oath I must have read when I was a youngster in some old book … the words have suddenly come back to me. They go like this: We (and then we say our own names), Nathaniel Chanticleer and Ambrose Honeysuckle, swear by the Living and the Dead, by the Past and the Future, by Memories and Hopes, that if a Vision comes begging at our door we will take it in and warm it at our hearth, and that we will not be wiser than the foolish nor more cunning than the simple, and that we will remember that he who rides the Wind needs must go where his Steed carries him. Say it after me, Ambrose.”
“By the White Ladies of the Fields, never in my life have I heard such fustian!” grumbled Master Ambrose.
But Nat seemed to have set his heart on this absurd ceremony, and Master Ambrose felt that the least he could do was to humour him, for who could say what the future held in store and when they might meet again. So, in a protesting and excessively matter-of-fact voice, he repeated after him the words of the oath.
When, and in what book had Master Nathaniel found it? For it was the vow taken by the candidates for initiation into the first degree of the ancient Mysteries of Dorimare.
Do not forget that, in the eye of the Law, Master Nathaniel was a dead man.
XVIII
Mistress Ivy Peppercorn
The tasks assigned to the clerks in Master Nathaniel’s countinghouse did not always concern cargoes and tonnage. For instance, once for two whole days they had not opened a ledger, but had been kept busy, under their employer’s supervision, in cutting out and pinning together fantastic paper costumes to be worn at Ranulph’s birthday party. And they were quite accustomed to his shutting himself into his private office, with strict injunctions that he was not to be disturbed, while he wrote, say, a comic valentine to old Dame Polly Pyepowders, popping his head frequently round the door to demand their help in finding a rhyme. So they were not surprised that morning when told to close their books and to devote their talents to discovering, by whatever means they chose, whether there were any relations living in Lud of a west country farmer called Gibberty who had died nearly forty years ago.
Great was Master Nathaniel’s satisfaction when one of them returned from his quest with the information that the late farmer’s widowed daughter, Mistress Ivy Peppercorn, had recently bought a small grocer’s shop in Mothgreen, a village that lay a couple of miles beyond the north gate.
There was no time to be lost, so Master Nathaniel ordered his horse, put on the suit of fustian he wore for fishing, pulled his hat well down over his eyes, and set off for Mothgreen.
Once there, he had no difficulty in finding Mistress Ivy’s little shop, and she herself was sitting behind the counter.
She was a comely, apple-cheeked woman of middle age, who looked as if she would be more in her element among cows and meadows than in a stuffy little shop, redolent of the various necessities and luxuries of a village community.
She seemed of a cheerful, chatty disposition, and Master Nathaniel punctuated his various purchases with quips and cranks and friendly questions.
By the time she had weighed him out two ounces of snuff and done them up in a neat little paper poke she had told him that her maiden name had been Gibberty, and that her late husband had been a ship’s captain, and she had lived till his death in the seaport town. By the time she had provided him with a quarter of lollipops, he knew that she much preferred a country life to trade. And by the time a woolen muffler had been admired, purchased and done up in a parcel, she had informed him that she would have liked to have settled in the neighbourhood of her old home, but—there were reasons.
What these reasons were took time, tact and patience to discover. But never had Master Nathaniel’s wistful inquisitiveness, masquerading as warmhearted sympathy, stood him in better stead. And she finally admitted that she had a stepmother whom she detested, and whom, moreover, she had good reason to distrust.
At this point Master Nathaniel considered he might begin to show his hand. He gave her a meaning glance; and asked her if she would like to see justice done and rascals getting their deserts, adding, “There’s no more foolish proverb than the one which says that dead men tell no tales. To help dead men to find their tongues is one of the chief uses of the Law.”
Mistress Ivy looked a little scared. “Who may you be, sir, please?” she asked timidly.
“I’m the nephew of a farmer who once employed a labourer called Diggory Carp,” he answered promptly.
A smile of enlightenment broke over her face.
“Well, who would have thought it!” she murmured. “And what may your uncle’s name have been? I used to know all the farmers and their families round our part.”
There was a twinkle in Master Nathaniel’s candid hazel eyes: “I doubt I’ve been too sharp and cut myself!” he laughed. “You see, I’ve worked for the magistrates, and that gets one into the habit of setting traps for folk … the Law’s a wily lady. I’ve no uncle in the West, and I never knew Diggory Carp. But I’ve always taken an interest in crime and enjoyed reading the old trials. So when you said your name had been Gibberty my
