Stardust Page 7

  “We’re safe, as long as we stay on the path,” said the little hairy man, and he put down his burden, sat down on the grass of the path and stared at the trees about them.

  The pale trees shook, although no wind blew, and it seemed to Tristran that they shook in anger.

  His companion had begun to shudder, his hairy fingers raking and stroking the green grass. Then he looked up at Tristran. “I don’t suppose you have such a thing as a bottle of something spirituous upon you? Or perchance a pot of hot, sweet tea?”

  “No,” said Tristran, “ ’fraid not.”

  The little man sniffed and fumbled at the lock of his huge package. “Turn round,” he said to Tristran. “No peekin’.”

  Tristran turned away.

  There was a rummaging, scuffling noise. Then the sound of a lock clicking shut, and then, “You can turn around, if you like.” The little man was holding an enamel bottle. He was tugging, vainly, at the stopper.

  “Um. Would you like me to help you with that?” Tristran hoped the little hairy man would not be offended by his request. He should not have worried; his companion thrust the bottle into his hands.

  “Here go,” he said. “You’ve got the fingers for it.”

  Tristran tugged and pulled out the stopper of the bottle.

  He could smell something intoxicating, like honey mixed with wood smoke and cloves. He passed the bottle back to the little man.

  “It’s a crime to drink something as rare and good as this out of the bottle,” said the little hairy man. He untied the little wooden cup from his belt and, trembling, poured a small amount of an amber-colored liquid into it. He sniffed it, then sipped it, then he smiled, with small, sharp teeth.

  “Aaaahhhh.That’s better.”

  He passed the cup to Tristran.

  “Sip it slowly,” he said. “It’s worth a king’s ransom, this bottle. It cost me two large blue-white diamonds, a mechanical bluebird which sang, and a dragon’s scale.”

  Tristran sipped the drink. It warmed him down to his toes and made him feel like his head was filled with tiny bubbles.

  “Good, eh?”

  Tristran nodded.

  “Too good for the likes of you and me, I’m afraid. Still. It hits the spot in times of trouble, of which this is certainly one. Let’s get out of this wood,” said the little hairy man. “Which way, though....?”

  “That way,” said Tristran, pointing to their left.

  The little man stoppered and pocketed the little bottle, shouldered his pack, and the two of them walked together down the green path through the grey wood.

  After several hours, the white trees began to thin, and then they were through the serewood and walking between two low rough-stone walls, along a high bank. When Tristran looked back the way they had come there was no sign of any wood at all; the way behind them was purple-headed, heathery hills.

  “We can stop here,” said his companion. “There’s stuff we needs to talk about. Sit down.”

  He put down his enormous bag and climbed on top of it, so he was looking down at Tristran, who sat on a rock beside the road. “There’s something here I’m not properly gettin’. Now, tell me.Where are you from?”

  “Wall,” said Tristran. “I told you.”

  “Who’s your father and mother?”

  “My father’s name is Dunstan Thorn. My mother is Daisy Thorn.”

  “Mmm. Dunstan Thorn . . . Mm. I met your father once. He put me up for the night. Not a bad chap, although he doesn’t half go on a bit while a fellow’s trying to get a little kip.” He scratched his muzzle. “Still doesn’t explain . . . there isn’t anythin’ unusual in your family, is there?”

  “My sister, Louisa, can wiggle her ears.” The little hairy man wiggled his own large, hairy ears, dismissively. “No, that’s not it,” he said. “I was thinkin’ more of a grandmother who was a famous enchantress, or an uncle who was a prominent warlock, or a brace of fairies somewhere in the family tree.”

  “None that I know of,” admitted Tristran.

  The little man changed his tack. “Where’s the village of Wall?” he asked. Tristran pointed. “Where are the Debatable Hills?” Tristran pointed once more, without hesitation. “Where’s the Catavarian Isles?”Tristran pointed to the southwest. He had not known there were Debatable Hills, or Catavarian Isles until the little man had mentioned them, but he was as certain in himself of their location as he was of the whereabouts of his own left foot or the nose on his face.

  “Hmm. Now thens. Do you know where His Vastness the Freemartin Muskish is?”

  Tristran shook his head.

  “D’you know where His Vastness the Freemartin Muskish’s Transluminary Citadel is?”

  Tristran pointed, with certainty.

  “And what of Paris? The one in France?”

  Tristran thought for a moment. “Well, if Wall’s over there, I suppose that Paris must be sort of in the same sort of direction, mustn’t it.”

  “Let’s see,” said the little hairy man, talking to himself as much as to Tristran. “You can find places in Faerie, but not in your world, save for Wall, and that’s a boundary.You can’t find people . . . but . . . tell me, lad, can you find this star you’re lookin’ for?”

  Tristran pointed, immediately. “It’s that way,” he said.

  “Hmm. That’s good. But it still doesn’t explain nuffink. You hungry?”

  “A bit. And I’m tattered and torn,” said Tristran, fingering the huge holes in his trousers, and in his coat, where the branches and the thorns had seized at him, and the leaves had cut at him as he ran. “And look at my boots . . .”

  “What’s in your bag?”

  Tristran opened his Gladstone bag. “Apples. Cheese. Half a cottage loaf. And a pot of fishpaste. My penknife. I’ve got a change of underwear, and a couple of pairs of woolen socks. I suppose I should have brought more clothes....”

  “Keep the fishpaste,” said his traveling companion, and he rapidly divided the remaining food into two equal piles.

  “You done me a good turn,” he said, munching a crisp apple, “and I doesn’t forget something like that. First we’ll get your clothes took care of, and then we’ll send you off after your star.Yus?”

  “That’s extremely kind of you,” said Tristran, nervously, slicing his cheese onto his crust of bread.

  “Right,” said the little hairy man. “Let’s find you a blanket.”

  At dawn three lords of Stormhold rode down the craggy mountain road in a coach pulled by six black horses.The horses wore bobbing black plumes, the coach was fresh painted in black, and each of the lords of Stormhold was dressed in mourning.

  In the case of Primus, this took the shape of a long, black, monkish robe; Tertius was dressed in the sober costume of a merchant in mourning, while Septimus wore a black doublet and hose, a black hat with a black feather in it, and looked for all the world like a foppish assassin from a minor Elizabethan historical play.

  The lords of Stormhold eyed each other, one cautious, one wary, one blank. They said nothing: had alliances been possible, Tertius might have sided with Primus against Septi-mus. But there were no alliances that could be made.

  The carriage clattered and shook.

  Once, it stopped, for each of the three lords to relieve himself. Then it clattered on down the hilly road. Together, the three lords of Stormhold had placed their father’s remains in the Hall of Ancestors. Their dead brothers had watched them from the doors of the hall, but had said nothing.

  Toward evening, the coachman called out, “Nottaway!” and he reined his team outside a tumbledown inn, built against what resembled the ruins of a giant’s cottage.

  The three lords of Stormhold got out of the coach and stretched their cramped legs. Faces peered at them through the bottle-glass windows of the inn.

  The innkeeper, who was a choleric gnome of poor disposition, looked out of the door. “We’ll need beds aired and a pot of mutton stew on the fire,” he called.

  “
How many beds to be aired?” asked Letitia the chambermaid, from the stairwell.

  “Three,” said the gnome. “I’ll wager they’ll have their coachman sleep with the horses.”

  “Three indeed,” whispered Tilly, the pot-girl, to Lacey, the ostler, “when anyone could see a full seven of those fine gentlemen standing in the road.”

  But when the lords of Stormhold entered there were but three of them, and they announced that their coachman would sleep in the stables.

  Dinner was mutton stew, and bread loaves so hot and fresh they exhaled steam as they were cracked open, and each of the lords took an unopened bottle of the finest Baragun-dian wine (for none of the lords would share a bottle with his fellows, nor even permit the wine to be poured from the bottle into a goblet).This scandalized the gnome, who was of the opinion—not, however, uttered in the hearing of his guests—that the wine should be permitted to breathe.

  Their coachman ate his bowl of stew, and drank two pots of ale, and went to sleep in the stables. The three brothers went to their respective rooms and barred the doors.

  Tertius had slipped a silver coin to Letitia the chambermaid when she had brought him the warming-pan for his bed, so he was not surprised at all when, shortly before midnight, there came a tap-tapping on his door.

  She wore a one-piece white chemise, and curtsied to him as he opened the door, and smiled, shyly. She held a bottle of wine in her hand.

  He locked the door behind him and led her to the bed, where, having first made her remove her chemise, and having examined her face and body by candlelight, and having kissed her on the forehead, lips, nipples, navel and toes, and having extinguished the candle, he made love to her, without speaking, in the pale moonlight.

  After some time, he grunted, and was still.

  “There, lovey, was that good, now?” asked Letitia.

  “Yes,” said Tertius, warily, as if her words guarded some trap. “It was.”

  “Would you be wanting another turn, before I leave?”

  In reply, Tertius pointed between his legs. Letitia giggled. “We can have him upstanding again in a twinkling,” she said. And she pulled out the cork from the bottle of wine she had carried in, and had placed beside the bed, and passed it to Tertius.

  He grinned at her, and gulped down some wine, then pulled her to him.

  “I bet that feels good,” she said to him. “Now, lovey, this time let me show you how I like it . . . why, whatever is the matter?” For Lord Tertius of Stormhold was writhing back and forth on the bed, his eyes wide, his breathing labored.

  “That wine?” he gasped. “Where did you get it?”

  “Your brother,” said Letty. “I met him on the stairs. He told me it was a fine restorative and stiffener, and it would provide us with a night we should never forget.”

  “And so it has,” breathed Tertius, and he twitched, once, twice, three times, and then was stiff. And very still.

  Tertius heard Letitia begin to scream, as if from a very long way away. He was conscious of four familiar presences standing with him in the shadows beside the wall.

  “She was very beautiful,” whispered Secundus, and Letitia thought she heard the curtains rustle.

  “Septimus is most crafty,” said Quintus. “That was the self-same preparation of baneberries he slipped into my dish of eels,” and Letitia thought she heard the wind howling down from the mountain crags.

  She opened the door to the household, woken by her screams, and a search ensued. Lord Septimus, however, was nowhere to be found, and one of the black stallions was gone from the stable (in which the coachman slept and snored and could not be wakened).

  Lord Primus was in a foul mood when he arose the next morning.

  He declined to have Letitia put to death, stating she was as much a victim of Septimus’s craft as Tertius had been, but ordered that she accompany Tertius’s body back to the castle of Stormhold.

  He left her one black horse to carry the body, and a pouch of silver coins. It was enough to pay a villager of Nottaway to travel with her—to ensure no wolves made off with the horse or his brother’s remains—and to pay off the coachman when finally he awoke.

  And then, alone in the coach, pulled by a team of four coal-black stallions, Lord Primus left the village of Nottaway, in significantly worse temper than he had arrived there.

  Brevis arrived at the crossroads tugging at a rope. The rope was attached to a bearded, horned, evil-eyed billy goat which Brevis was taking to market to sell.

  That morning, Brevis’s mother had placed a single radish upon the table in front of him and had said, “Brevis, son.This radish was all I was able to pull from the ground today. All our crops have failed, and all our food has gone.We’ve nothing to sell but the billy goat. So I want you to halter the goat, and take him to the market, and sell him to a farmer. And with the coins you get for the goat—and you’ll take nothing less than a florin, mark you—buy a hen, and buy corn, and turnips; and perhaps we shall not starve.”

  So Brevis had chewed his radish, which was woody, and peppery to the tongue, and spent the rest of the morning chasing the goat about its pen, sustaining a bruise to the rib and a bite to the thigh in the process, and, eventually, and with the help of a passing tinker, he had subdued the goat enough to have it haltered, and, leaving his mother to bandage the tinker’s goat-inflicted injuries, he dragged the billy goat toward the market.

  Sometimes the goat would take it into his head to charge on ahead, and Brevis would be dragged behind him, the heels of his boots grinding into the dried mud of the roadway, until the goat would decide—suddenly and without warning, for no reason Brevis was able to discern—to stop. Then Brevis would pick himself up and return to dragging the beast.

  He reached the crossroads on the edge of the wood, sweaty and hungry and bruised, pulling an uncooperative goat. There was a tall woman standing at the crossroads. A circlet of silver sat in the crimson headpiece that surrounded her dark hair, and her dress was as scarlet as her lips.

  “What do they call you, boy?” she asked, in a voice like musky brown honey.

  “They call me Brevis, ma’am,” said Brevis, observing something strange behind the woman. It was a small cart, but there was nothing harnessed between the shafts. He wondered how it had ever got there.

  “Brevis,” she purred. “Such a nice name. Would you like to sell me your goat, Brevis-boy?”

  Brevis hesitated. “My mother told me I was to take the goat to the market,” he said, “and to sell him for a hen, and some corn, and some turnips, and to bring her home the change.”

  “How much did your mother tell you to take for the goat?” asked the woman in the scarlet kirtle.

  “Nothing less than a florin,” he said.

  She smiled and held up one hand. Something glinted yellow. “Why, I will give you this golden guinea,” she said, “enough to buy a coopful of hens and a hundred bushels of turnips.” The boy’s mouth hung open.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  The boy nodded and thrust out the hand which held the billy goat’s rope halter. “Here,” was all he could say, visions of limitless wealth and turnips beyond counting tumbling through his head.

  The lady took the rope.Then she touched one finger to the

  goat’s forehead, between its yellow eyes, and let go of the rope.

  Brevis expected the billy goat to bolt for the woods or down one of the roads, but it stayed where it was, as if frozen into position. Brevis held out his hand for the golden guinea.

  The woman looked at him then, examining him from the soles of his muddy feet to his sweaty, cropped hair, and once more she smiled.

  “You know,” she said, “I think that a matched pair would be so much more impressive than just one. Don’t you?”

  Brevis did not know what she was talking about and opened his mouth to tell her so. But just then she reached out one long finger, and touched the bridge of his nose, between his eyes, and he found he could not say anything at all.
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br />   She snapped her fingers, and Brevis and the billy goat hastened to stand between the shafts of her cart; and Brevis was surprised to notice that he was walking on four legs, and he seemed to be no taller than the animal beside him.

  The witch-woman cracked her whip, and her cart jolted off down the muddy road, drawn by a matched pair of horned white billy goats.

  The little hairy man had taken Tristran’s ripped coat and trousers and waistcoat and, leaving him covered by a blanket, had walked into the village which nestled in the valley between three heather-covered hills.

  Tristran sat under the blanket, in the warm evening, and waited.

  Lights flickered in the hawthorn bush behind him. He thought they were glow-worms or fireflies, but, on closer inspection, he perceived they were tiny people, flickering and flitting from branch to branch.

  He coughed, politely. A score of tiny eyes stared down at him. Several of the little creatures vanished. Others retreated high into the hawthorn bush, while a handful, braver than the others, flitted toward him.

  They began to laugh, in high, bell-tinkling tones, pointing at Tristran, in his broken boots and blanket, and underclothes, and bowler hat. Tristran blushed red and pulled the blanket about himself.

  One of the little folk sang:

  Hankety pankety

  Boy in a blanket, he’s

  Off on a goose-chase to

  Look for a star

  Incontrovertibly

  Journeys through Fäerie

  Strip off the blanket to

  See who you are.

  And another one sang:

  Tristran Thorn

  Tristran Thorn

  Does not know why he was born

  And a foolish oath has sworn

  Trews and coat and shirt are torn

  So he sits here all forlorn

  Soon to face his true love’s scorn

  Wistran

  Bistran

  Tristran

  Thorn.