Master Nathaniel had been elected that year to the highest office in the state—that of Mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist and High Seneschal of Dorimare.
Ex officio, he was president of the Senate and chief justice on the Bench. According to the constitution, as drawn up by the men of the revolution, he was responsible for the safety and defence of the country in case of attack by sea or land; it was for him to see that both justice and the country’s revenues were properly administered; and his time was held to be at the disposal of the most obscure citizen with a grievance.
Actually—apart from presiding on the Bench—his duties had come to consist of nothing more onerous than being a genial and dignified chairman of a comfortable and select club, for that was what in reality the Senate had now become. Nevertheless, though it was open to question whether his official duties were of the slightest use to anyone, they were numerous enough to occupy most of his time and to cause him to be unconscious of the undercurrents in his home.
Ranulph had always been a dreamy, rather delicate child, and backward for his years. Up to the age of seven, or thereabouts, he had caused his mother much anxiety by his habit, when playing in the garden, of shouting out remarks to an imaginary companion. And he was fond of talking nonsense (according to the ideas of Lud-in-the-Mist, slightly obscene nonsense) about golden cups, and snow-white ladies milking azure cows, and the sound of tinkling bridles at midnight. But children are apt, all the world over, to have nasty little minds; and this type of talk was not uncommon among the children of Lud-in-the-Mist, and, as they nearly always grew out of it, little attention was paid to it.
Then, when he was a few years older, the sudden death of a young scullery maid affected him so strongly that for two days he would not touch food, but lay with frightened eyes tossing and trembling in bed, like a newly-caught bird in a cage. When his shocked and alarmed mother (his father was at the seaport town on business at the time) tried to comfort him by reminding him that he had not been particularly fond of the scullery-maid while she was alive, he had cried out irritably, “No, no, it isn’t her … it’s the thing that has happened to her!”
But all that was when he was still quite a little boy, and, as he grew older, he had seemed to become much more normal.
But that spring his tutor had come to Dame Marigold to complain of his inattention at his studies, and sudden unreasonable outbreaks of passion. “To tell the you truth, ma’am, I think the little fellow can’t be well,” the tutor had said.
So Dame Marigold sent for the good old family doctor, who said there was nothing the matter with him but a little overheating of the blood, a thing very common in the spring; and prescribed sprigs of borage in wine: “the best cordial for lazy scholars,” and he winked and pinched Ranulph’s ear, adding that in June he might be given an infusion of damask roses to complete the cure.
But the sprigs of borage did not make Ranulph any more attentive to his lessons; while Dame Marigold had no longer need of the tutor’s hints to realise that the little boy was not himself. What alarmed her most in his condition was the violent effort that he had evidently to make in order to react in the least to his surroundings. For instance, if she offered him a second helping at dinner, he would clench his fists, and beads of perspiration would break out on his forehead, so great an effort did it require to answer Yes or No.
There had never been any real sympathy between Ranulph and his mother (she had always preferred her daughter, Prunella), and she knew that if she were to ask him what ailed him he would not tell her; so, instead, she asked Ranulph’s great ally and confidant, Master Nathaniel’s old nurse, Mistress Hempen.
Hempie, as they called her, had served the family of Chanticleer for nearly fifty years, in fact ever since the birth of Master Nathaniel. And now she was called the housekeeper, though her duties were of the lightest, and consisted mainly of keeping the storeroom keys and mending the linen.
She was a fine, hale old countrywoman, with a wonderful gift for amusing children. Not only did she know all the comic nursery stories of Dorimare (Ranulph’s favourite was about a pair of spectacles whose ambition was to ride on the nose of the Man-in-the-Moon, and who, in vain attempts to reach their goal, were always leaping off the nose of their unfortunate possessor), but she was, as well, an incomparable though sedentary playfellow, and from her armchair would direct, with seemingly unflagging interest, the manoeuvres of lead soldiers or the movements of marionettes. Indeed, her cosy room at the top of the house seemed to Ranulph to have the power of turning every object that crossed its threshold into a toy: the ostrich egg hanging from the ceiling by a crimson cord, the little painted wax effigies of his grandparents on the chimneypiece, the old spinning-wheel, even the empty bobbins, which made excellent wooden soldiers, and the pots of jam standing in rows to be labelled—they all presented infinite possibilities of being played with; while her fire seemed to purr more contentedly than other fires and to carry prettier pictures in its red, glowing heart.
Well, rather timidly (for Hempie had a rough edge to her tongue, and had never ceased to look upon her mistress as a young and foolish interloper), Dame Marigold told her that she was beginning to be a little anxious about Ranulph. Hempie shot her a sharp look over her spectacles, and, pursing her lips, drily remarked, “Well, ma’am, it’s taken you a
