Behind the battalions of mail-clad dead marched three gigantic old men, with long white beards reaching below their girdles. Their long stiff robes were embroidered in gold and jewels with strange emblems, and behind them were led sumpter mules laden with coffers of wrought gold. And the rumour passed through the waiting crowd that these were none other than the balsam-eating priests of the sun and moon.
And bringing up the rear on a great white charger was—Master Nathaniel Chanticleer, with Ranulph riding by his side.
The accounts of what took place immediately after the entry of the fairy army read more like legends than history. It would seem that the trees broke into leaf and the masts of all the ships in the bay into blossom; that day and night the cocks crowed without ceasing; that violets and anemones sprang up through the snow in the streets, and that mothers embraced their dead sons, and maids their sweethearts drowned at sea.
But one thing seems certain, and that is that the gold-wrought coffers contained the ancient offering of fairy fruit to Dorimare. And the coffers were of such miraculous capacity that there was enough and to spare, not only for the dessert of the Senate, but for that of every household in Lud-in-the-Mist.
XXXI
The Initiate
You may, perhaps, have wondered why a man so full of human failings, and set in so unheroic a mould as Master Nathaniel Chanticleer should have been cast for so great a role. Yet the highest spiritual destinies are not always reserved for the strongest men, nor for the most virtuous ones.
But though he had been chosen as Duke Aubrey’s deputy and initiated into the Ancient Mysteries, he had not ceased to be in many ways the same Master Nathaniel as of old—whimsical, childlike, and, often, unreasonable. Nor, I fear, did he cease to be the prey of melancholy. I doubt whether initiation ever brings happiness. It may be that the final secret revealed is a very bitter one … or it may be that the final secret had not yet been revealed to Master Nathaniel.
And, strange to say, far from being set up by his new honours, he felt oddly ashamed of them—it was almost as if he was for the first time running the gauntlet of his friends’ eyes after having been afflicted by some physical disfigurement.
When things had returned again to their usual rut, Master Ambrose came to spend a quiet evening with Master Nathaniel.
They sat for some time in silence puffing at their pipes, and then Master Ambrose said, “Tell me what your theory is about Endymion Leer, Nat. He was a double-dyed villain, all right, I suppose?”
Master Nathaniel did not answer at once, and then he said thoughtfully, “I suppose so. I read the report of his defence, however, and his words seemed to me to ring true. But I think there was some evil lurking in his soul, and everything he touched was contaminated by it, even fairy fruit—even Duke Aubrey.”
“And that spiritual sin he accused himself of … what do you suppose it was?”
“I think,” said Master Nathaniel slowly, “he may have mishandled the sacred objects of the Mysteries.”
“What are these sacred objects, Nat?”
Master Nathaniel moved uneasily in his chair, and said, with an embarrassed little laugh, “Life and death, I suppose.” He hated being asked about these sorts of things.
Master Ambrose sat for a few moments pondering, and then he said, “It was curious how in all his attacks on you he defeated his own ends.”
“Yes,” cried Master Nathaniel, with much more animation than he had hitherto shown, “that was really very curious. Everything he did produced exactly the opposite effect he had intended it should. He feared the Chanticleers, and wanted to be rid of them, so he gets Ranulph off to Fairyland, whence nobody had ever before returned. And he manages to get me so discredited that I have to leave Lud, and he thinks me safely out of the way. But, in reality, he was only bringing about his own downfall. I have to leave Lud, and so I go to the farm, and there I find old Gibberty’s incriminating document. While the fact of Ranulph’s having gone off yonder sends me after him, and that is why, I suppose, I come back as Duke Aubrey’s deputy,” and again he gave an embarrassed laugh; and then added dreamily, “It is useless to try and circumvent the Duke.”
“ ‘He who rides the wind needs must go where his steed carries him,’ ” quoted Master Ambrose.
Master Nathaniel smiled, and for some minutes they puffed at their pipes in silence.
Then Master Nathaniel gave a reminiscent chuckle: “Those were queer months that we lived through, Ambrose!” he cried. “All of us, that’s to say those of us who had parts to play, seemed to be living each others’ dreams or dreaming each others’ lives, whichever way you choose to put it, and the most incongruous things began to rhyme—apples and bleeding corpses and trees and ghosts. Yes, all our dreams got entangled. Leer makes a speech about men and trees, and I find the solution of the situation under a herm, which is half a man and half a tree, and you see the juice of fairy fruit and think that it is the dead bleeding—and so on. Yes, my adventures went on getting more and more like a dream till … the climax,” and he paused abruptly.
A long silence followed, broken at last by Master Ambrose. “Well, Nat,” he said, “I think I’ve had a lesson in humility. I used to have as good an opinion of myself as most men, I think, but now I’ve learned that I’m a very ordinary sort of fellow, made of very inferior clay to you and my Moonlove—all the things that you know at first hand and I can only take on faith.”
“Suppose, Ambrose, that what we know at first hand is only this—that there is nothing
