Part 11

So the heads of the city appealed to the King, and as the King was extremely anxious to see Laurine, he made no difficulty about the matter.

“Certainly, certainly,” said he; “you can release the Goblin and his nephew at once. We can always execute them if they are troublesome afterwards.”

And so Swayn and his pretended uncle were taken out of prison and set to play in the courtyard of the house where Laurine lodged, that she might judge of their talents.

“That will do beautifully,” said she. “I will dance at nine o’clock this evening.”

But she did not think of looking out of the window.

Nine o’clock came, and the crowd was assembled; and when she saw who the musicians were, she was almost too much annoyed and astonished to begin. But there sat the King with the Queen in her best robes, and all the lords of the kingdom, and she was not sure that they would not throw her into prison too were she to disappoint them. So she gave a sign to the Goblin to strike up, and, whirling her spangled veil, began to glide about like the shadows on a windy moonlit night.

[Illustration: “WHIRLING HER SPANGLED VEIL, SHE BEGAN TO GLIDE ABOUT.”]

By the time she had finished, the whole court was spellbound and she herself almost in tears from excitement, the Goblin had played so rapturously. Gold was showered upon her, flowers were thrown to her in basketfuls, and the King whipped off his crown, dug out the biggest ruby with his pocket-knife, and presented it to her himself.

“Now then!” cried the head of the police to the Goblin, “back to prison with you! And tell that fierce-looking nephew of yours to go quietly, or it will be the worse for him!”

“If you will come with me as my musician,” said Laurine, “I will beg the King on my knees to let you go. I have never danced to such playing in my life. Will you come?”

“Not without Swayn,” said the Goblin.

“But I hate the drum,” said Laurine.

“Then he need not play it,” replied he.

“And I don’t want _him_,” continued Laurine.

“It is both or neither,” said the Goblin.

“Oh, very well, then,” said she, turning away. “He can come as my servant.”

So she went to the King the very next day, and the King, seeing an excellent chance of getting rid of the prisoners without the expenses of an execution, consented.

So the Lord Mayor gave the Goblin back his fiddle, and the three set out on their travels together.

“Uncle Sackbut tells me that you object to the drum,” said Swayn to Laurine, “so I’ll leave it behind, and I shall have all the more time to attend upon you.”

Certainly he made a most valuable servant. He cleaned her little gold shoes, he robbed all the jasmine-bushes to make her girdles, and when anyone annoyed her, he looked so big and fierce that people were only too glad to get out of the way.

They travelled about for a whole year, and Laurine was beginning to be tired of such a restless life. When they came to a grim-looking town built on a rushing river, she made up her mind to dance there for the last time; for the Goblin had begged her to return with him to his house in the wood, and she had promised to do so. Swayn was to come too, for there was no doubt that it was impossible to get on without him.

“Patience,” said the Goblin to him, “and all will come right.”

“Patience is a long word,” replied Swayn.

As they approached the town gates a crowd of sour-looking men came out to meet them with fierce eyes and frowning faces.

“You need not come here, thinking to bewitch us with light ways and mountebank tricks,” they said to Laurine. “We have heard about you, and we know that you are a witch!”

“A witch! a witch!” they shouted.

“Why,” cried someone in the crowd, “she has even got a Goblin for her musician!”

Then they all began to cry “Witch! witch!” at the top of their voices, till she could hardly hear herself speak. And in a moment they had surrounded her and were dragging her away.

Oh! how the poor Goblin stamped and raved! but, unfortunately, he was too small to hurt anyone much. Swayn began knocking down everybody he could reach, but there were so many that he was soon overpowered.

“It is the witch we want! It is the witch we want!” cried the people.

The crowd turned back to the town. Some seized Laurine by the wrists, and some by her long hair, and the rest held her companions while they hurried her through the city gates, leaving them outside. Then the doors were locked, and they lost sight of her.

As Laurine was dragged along the streets, a very good idea came into her head. She was quite sure that, by hook or by crook, Swayn would try to rescue her, so she managed to pluck the flowers from her jasmine girdle, and to drop them behind her as she went, that he might see which way she had gone; and when there were no more left, she plucked off the leaves, and dropped them too. Just when the very last leaf was gone, they came to a little stone cell built by the parapet of the city wall, where it was low and overlooked the river. Into this dreadful place they thrust her, turning the key in the great lock, and calling to her that they would come in the morning to drown her in the water below. One man was left to stand outside and guard the door, and he tied the large key to his belt.

It was quite dark in the cell, for only a little light could come in at a barred window, whose sill she could just reach by standing on tiptoe. Poor Laurine wept bitterly when she thought that she was going to be drowned next morning, and she cried all the more when she remembered how unkind she had been to Swayn, and how much he loved her. She wished she had not been so cruel. How often she had thrown her gold slippers at him and told him he had not made them shine enough, when he had spent hours rubbing and polishing them! How many times she had seen him sad and heavy with the weight of her scornful words! She was afraid that, even if he got into the town, the jasmine flowers would be so much trampled that he would not guess what they were. She took off her little gold shoes and put them up on the window-sill, just inside the bars. “If he passes he will see them,” she said. The man outside was so near the wall that the depth of the sill hid them from his sight.

Swayn was only waiting till it was dark to get into the town. The river ran all round it, but he could swim well, and he had noticed a place where the wall was low and a beam stuck out which he thought he could reach with a leap. When the moon was up he left the Goblin in a thicket and plunged into the river, and, once across, he ran along under the walls till he came to the big beam. After one or two attempts he managed to spring up and clasp it with his hands, and then he swung himself up without much difficulty, and was soon standing on it, looking down into the moonlit streets of the city.

Nobody was about. The ground was much higher on the inside, so he let himself down easily, but, as he had no notion where they had taken Laurine, he did not know which way to go. He met few people in the deserted streets, and as the whole of the crowd which had captured her was sitting planning how it should drown her on the morrow, no one had any idea who he was.

He was almost in despair, when he noticed a jasmine flower lying at his feet; then he saw that there was another farther on, and yet another after that, and he knew that she had dropped them that he might trace her. He followed the track through several streets, and as he went he kept singing, that she might hear his voice if she were anywhere near.

“Laurine, Laurine, the jasmine white Shines like a star in the darkest night,”

he sang. He dared not call, for fear of disturbing the sleeping town.

At last he came to where flowers and leaves stopped, near an open space by the town wall. Close to it was a little stone cell with a barred window and a door, in front of which lay a sleeping man, with a key tied to his belt. It was easy to see that no one could get in without awakening him.

Swayn looked up to the window above the sleeper’s head, and saw the two little shoes placed together on the sill. He crept nearer, and sang again:

“Laurine, Laurine, the jasmine white Shines like a star in the darkest night”;

and in a moment he heard a voice inside the cell singing softly:

“Swayn, Swayn, nearer tread: Love lives on when the stars are dead.”

He came a little closer and sang:

“Laurine, Laurine, throw your veil: Dead men’s lips can tell no tale.”

Then the spangled veil was thrown through the window-bars, and he caught it as it fell.

Stealthily he went up to the sleeper and cut the heavy key from his belt with his knife; then, as the man stirred, he thrust the veil into his mouth to stop his cries, and, seizing him in his strong arms, flung him over the low parapet into the river swirling below. In another moment he had unlocked the door of the cell and was embracing Laurine, while she asked his forgiveness for all her unkindness and promised to marry him if they managed to get out of the city alive.

There was an old piece of tattered sacking lying in a corner of the prison, and she took off her rich dress and wrapped the horrible rag about her. They tucked away her long hair and tied a bandage over her face, so that she looked like some wretched beggar, and, when they had locked the door and pitched the key into the river, she set off down the silent streets, Swayn following a little way behind. They hid in a dark alley near the town gates, and waited till the hour should come to unlock them at dawn. The sentry on duty was not the same man who had closed them after Laurine on the preceding day, and he let the poor beggar go through with a jeer. As for Swayn, following at a little distance, he took no notice of him beyond bidding him a friendly good-morning. So the lovers were soon in the open country, pressing forward to the thicket where the Fiddling Goblin had promised to wait for his nephew’s return.

You may be sure that they spared no haste in getting away. By the time the sun was high they had reached a village, where they procured horses. All the money that Laurine had made by her dancing was kept by the Goblin tied up in a bag with his fiddle; so they lacked no means of getting forward, and they turned their heads towards the country from which they had started.

When they reached the wood they could have shouted for joy. As they came to the middle of it the Goblin stamped his heel, and all the candles of the horse-chestnut trees burst into a blaze of light, for they had been away a whole year, and it was the season of blossom again. Swayn and Laurine promised to live with their uncle Sackbut, and never to leave him any more.

They were soon married, with great pomp and solemnity, the only drawback being that the Goblin could not make up his mind whether to be best man, or give away the bride, or play the wedding music on his fiddle. But the matter was happily settled by his doing all three.

THE WITCH’S CLOAK

Peter and Janet and the miller stood on the rising ground by the farm; the sound of the wheel came to them, and the whir of grinding. Before them lay the tidal marshes that stretched to the seaport town. It was the same town through whose streets the Water-Nix followed the pedlar when she left dry land for the last time to swim out and join the water-kelpies. It looked like a blue shadow-town now, cut sharp against sky and sea, with its tall steeple reflected in the wet sand.

“I have often had it in my mind to tell you a strange story my grandmother heard about a man who lived in that place,” said the miller, pointing across the salt marsh.

“Is it true?” asked Peter.

“That’s more than I know,” replied his friend, “for I never asked my granny, and maybe if I had, she couldn’t have told me. If you like the story you can think it true, and if you don’t we’ll say it isn’t.”

“Have you ever been in that town?” the miller asked Janet.

“Never,” said she.

“Well, just where you see the steeple rising and the glint of the sun on the weathercock is the High Street. It’s a wide road, with windows looking down on it from either side; and at the end, as you go to the docks, is an old house with carved gable-ends, and in a niche of its wall is the statue of a man.”

“And is that the man the story is about?” inquired little Peter.

“The same,” said the miller. “But, to tell you about him, I must begin somewhere very far away from the place where the old statue stands.”

“How far?” asked inquisitive Peter.

“I don’t know,” answered the miller, “because nobody I’ve ever seen has been there.

“Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a Princess who had five handsome elder sisters.”

“But I thought you were going to tell about the man!” cried Peter.

“If you listen hard enough, you’ll hear the grass grow,” said the miller, “and if you listen long enough, you’ll hear about the man.”

Once upon a time, as I said before, there was a Princess who had five elder sisters, the most beautiful ladies ever seen; and their father thought a deal of them, but not much of the youngest, who was small and not nearly so pretty. But she was very nice, all the same, and the thing she loved best was to go hunting after flowers. Nobody cared what she did or where she went, and she spent all her days wandering in woods and valleys looking for her plants. There was little she did not know about them, and if she had not been a Princess, with no need to work, she might have made her fortune by writing books about them and their histories. One day as she roamed about she came to a place she had never seen before—a little valley full of great trees, with a winding stream rushing through it like a silver thread. Beside the water grew a clump of the most lovely yellow irises.

She liked the spot so much that she returned to it every day; and she would sit for hours at a time beside the iris-bed, with her elbows on her knees, dreaming about wonderful foreign plants she had never seen and the strange descriptions of them she had read in books.

Farther up the valley, beyond the trees, could be seen the roofs of a castle which stood on towering rocks. She did not know who it belonged to, so one day, as she sat by the water, she said aloud: “I wonder who lives there?”

“The witch, the witch!” sang the iris-flowers behind her. The sound went through them like a sigh.

She started and turned round, but there was no one to be seen; and again as she looked the flowers repeated: “The witch, the witch!”

Then she asked them many more questions, but nothing would they say. Perhaps it was all they knew, or perhaps what she took for words was only the rustling of the long stiff leaves one against the other. But that’s as may be. In any case, it roused her curiosity so much that she rose and went off towards the castle. She had no sooner got among the trees than by came the witch herself.

[Illustration: “‘WHO ARE YOU?’ INQUIRED THE OLD WOMAN.”]

“Who are you?” inquired the old woman.

The Princess explained, and politely asked to be forgiven for trespassing.

“Pray don’t apologize,” said the witch, “and do me the favour to give me your arm as far as my castle. I have, as you see, no staff, and I am not so young as I was.”

The Princess agreed willingly, and they walked on together. The old woman was wrapped in a trailing black cloak, and her hair hung over her eyes, like the hair of all other witches. She seemed rather a pleasant body, though her nose and chin were certainly a little too near together. When they had climbed as far as the castle gate, she invited her companion to come in and rest, and the Princess, who feared nobody, followed her. They sat down together at a window overlooking the valley; from it she could see the winding water and the clump of irises.

“It is the most fortunate thing in the world that I met you,” began the old woman, “for I am much in need of advice from somebody. My difficulty is this: I have grown very tired of being a witch, and I wish to leave my profession and become like other people. I am learning, as you have noticed, to do without my crooked staff. Last week I sold my broomstick and bought a very pretty little brown horse instead, and I have given my black cat to a friend. My appearance is still not quite what I could wish, and I really do not know what kind of clothes to get, nor how to arrange my hair. Other witches can tell me nothing, for they know as little as I do, but your advice would be the greatest help to me.”

“I shall be very pleased to do anything I can,” said the Princess.

“If you will consent to stay with me for a few days till my wardrobe is complete, I shall be more obliged than I can say,” continued the old woman. “Use my house as your own, and everything in it.”

And so it was all arranged in five minutes.

The Princess was uncommonly useful. She brushed the witch’s hair and pinned it up tidily, and made her a fine lace head-dress, which gave her a dignified air. She sent to the nearest town for silks and brocades and buckled shoes, and, instead of the crooked staff that her friend missed so much, she bought her a handsome stick with an amber head.

The witch was delighted, for she looked both refined and venerable as she stood before her glass.

“Here!” she exclaimed, taking up her old black cloak, which lay on the floor, “this must be thrown away.”

She was just going to cast it upon the fire when the Princess stopped her.

“Oh no, no!” she cried, snatching it from her, “don’t destroy it. Pray, pray give it to me!”

“What for?” exclaimed the witch. “A Princess in a witch’s cloak? A pretty idea, indeed!”

But the Princess clung to it.

“Surely you will not refuse me,” she said, “since you do not want it any more! How often have I heard you say that you could fly wherever you liked in it? Think what it would be for me if I were able to go off in it to foreign countries, and see all the wonderful plants I have heard so much about! Only give it to me and I will be your debtor for life.”

“Well, after all, why not?” said the witch. “One good turn certainly deserves another. Keep it, my dear. If you put it on, and hold out your arms like wings on either side, it will take you up into the sky, and you can sail along like a ship. When you wish to descend, just fold your arms and you will come down to earth quite gently.”

The Princess took her treasure and locked it up in her own chamber, for fear the witch should change her mind. The next day she bade her farewell, and, throwing on the cloak, spread out her arms. Up she went, easily and gently, and when she had decided where she should go, she turned her face southwards and was soon far, far away, a little speck among the clouds. The witch looked after her till she could see her no more.

She was now in the seventh heaven of joy. She went to every country she had ever heard about. She saw the sea-pinks and water-asters of lonely islands known only to screaming gulls; she stood in forests where creepers were thrown like veils over the branches and the air was heavy with the scent of fringed and spotted orchids, purple and mauve and cream-yellow. She wandered beside lakes, walled in by solemn trees that hid the sun and strewn with red and white lilies; she saw the groves of cherry-blossom that hang on the steep gorges of blue hills far away, and the giant palms and scarlet flowers of the South. At last, after many months of wandering, she flew northward and up the coast of the North Sea till she was right over the town before us.

It was midnight as she stood, wrapped in her black cloak, on the topmost point of the steeple. The folds fluttered and crackled, as you may hear a flag flutter and crackle if you stand by a flagstaff on a tower; but no one noticed it or saw her, for everyone but the watchman was in bed, and _he_ was asleep too, though he was paid to be awake. In the bright moonlight she sailed down to the empty pavement of the High Street, among the dark shadows of the gable-ends. It was winter now and the frost was iron-hard over the whole country. She went quickly through the streets, for she did not care for towns, determining that when the sun rose next day she would be well on her way back to the witch’s castle in the valley. But she was rather tired and wanted a few hours of sleep first. She left the town and flew up this very road and past the mill—so I have heard—till she came to an old deserted cottage that once stood not far from here by the wayside. (There were still a few stones of it left when I was a child, and I used to pass it on my way to school.) The nettle-stalks were all frozen round it as she pushed through the broken door, meaning to lie down and sleep in shelter till morning. She had nothing to fear from the cold, for among the cloak’s other useful qualities was the power of keeping the person inside it perfectly warm. She was exceedingly surprised to see by the moonlight that someone else was in the miserable hovel.