CHAPTER III
The grove was a mere screen of trees; once through it, they were in an enormous landscaped park where tall blossoms on stalks grew in mathematical precision, interspersed with elms and maples set out in oversize flowerpots. There was no road, but the frog-coachman seemed to know where he was going, and they rolled along easily, coming to a stop with another trumpet flourish and the appearance of the frog-footmen at the door. Barber handed the Queen down.
Behind a row of the flowerpot trees, a factory chimney jutted into the air with a yellow and blue flag hanging limply from a mast at its peak. “Well met,” said the Queen. “His Majesty’s in residence at the palace. Come, babe.” And she started toward it.
The grass between was set with a maze of fountains, playing high with moon-rainbows through their spray. From one of them a voice suddenly chanted, basso profundo: “Rocked in the cra-a-dul of the de-ee-ee-eep!”
Bombing is notoriously bad for the nerves. Barber jumped, caromed into Queen Titania and both sat down. The water of the fountain heaved itself up into an anthropomorphous shape, like a translucent snow man and stared at him from lidless eyes.
“Blow me down, here’s a sniveling mortal!” it boomed. “And rouncing round the Queen! You bag of tripes, I’ll better your behavior!” A transparent arm shot out, the fingers clutching for Barber’s face. He ducked, threw up a hand to ward the grip, and bumped the Queen again as water splashed all over him. The rest of the aqueous monster subsided into a plain fountain, with a Neptunian bellow: “Ho-ho-ho! Did you see it jump? Haw-haw-haw!”
“Haw-haw-haw!” came an echoing burst of laughter from the other fountains, as the one that had splashed Barber burst into deep-voiced song:
“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,
Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—”
All the fountains were coming in on the second “Yo, ho, ho—” as Barber scrambled up and offered Titania his hand. She disdained it and leaped to her feet, her good nature gone.
“You clay-headed oaf, you clumsy tallow-ketch!” she blazed in a quietly deadly voice. “Were’t not that you are a mere object, a toy for a better man, I’d have you to the strappado! I’ll—”
Barber bowed. “A thousand pardons, Your Resplendency! I was only trying—”
She advanced furiously, cocking a fist. “Trying! I’ll try you, and in a star-chamber fashion!”
Barber backed, then looked around to make sure he had sea-room, for the living fountains were shouting and singing all around behind him. As he did so his eye caught a figure—a small, thin-haired man in doublet and hose, with a sandy mustache, and a six-inch diamond hanging from a chain around his neck. Titania’s eye caught him at the same time as Barber’s; she lowered her arm as the man came hurrying up.
“How now?” he said. “Why, it’s my sweet cowslip, my pretty helpmate, and with her feathers ruffled like a mourning dove! What—”
“Spare your sarcasms, my lord,” snapped the Queen. “Here’s your changeling, and good riddance. Now do I get my little Gosh?”
King Oberon looked at Barber. “This great woolsack jobberowl a changeling?”
“Aye, and I give you joy of him. Just now the lightsome ox strewed my royal dignity upon the path.”
“Ha, ha! Would I had seen it. If you dislike him so, the colt must have better points than show in his teeth.”
“Why, you starveling stick—” Titania suddenly seemed to recollect that she had come not to quarrel, but to get something she wanted by exchange. Her face underwent a lightning transformation. “In very faith, it’s not so useless a wretch; can argue, stretch a point like a philosopher. Will you not take it, give me my Gosh, and set our affairs once more to their wonted smoothness? My lord knows full well there has been another shaping.”
The King rubbed his chin. “Full well, indeed. I cast a spell for a hunting lodge and get these cursed, crank living fountains. I’m still not won to your thought that the variance between us lies at the root of these shapings. But ’tis most evident they are thereby increased in effect, like a pox with exercise, since we can receive in our affairs only what we put forth. So, since you wish it, madam, let there be peace between us.”
The fairies, who had been crowding around, went into shouts of delight over this announcement, and began the same series of antics Barber had seen them perform before. Titania’s smile, though gracious, was a trifle glassy.
“And my little Gosh?” she asked.
Oberon swallowed, then lifted his voice and shouted: “Gosh!” There was no answer. He tried again. Still no response. “Herald!” he called.
A sprite, the twin of the one who had called the Queen’s coach, save that his tabard bore a design of suns, somersaulted into position, opened his mouth and shouted: “Chandra Holkar Raghunath Tippu Vijayanagar Rao Jaswant Rashtrakuta Lallabhbhai Gosh! Come forth, you misbegotten imp, you villainous standing-tuck, you—”
“Here sir,” said a dark-skinned boy of about twelve, appearing suddenly. “Did you call, O Pearl of Wisdom?”
“Call? Aye, and for the last time. Take the brat, then, my lady, and let me call myself well shut of him.”
Chandra Holkar Raghunath Tippu Vijayanagar Rao Jaswant Rashtrakuta Lallabhbhai Gosh stood grinning unregenerately, with his feet apart and two small thumbs hooked into his sash, then turned to Titania and bowed. “Am I truly to be yours again, O Star of Beauty and Queen of Felicity?”
“Aye,” said Titania. “Come, my babe. Let’s to our chambers.”
The boy winked at Barber. Oberon’s mouth suddenly fell open. “It’s not to be done,” said he.
“And wherefore not?”
“There’s a matter—they are not fit—” As he stumbled Barber experienced for the third time, and stronger than ever, the sixth sense that told him the man was lying. But Oberon rushed on: “That is, I did prepare your apartment against your coming and it is but now all betousled and lumbered with new decoration. Since you left my bed—”
“It stayed cold not long, I’ll warrant,” said Titania, her foot beginning to tap dangerously.
Oberon’s fists clenched and the diamond danced on his chest. “Fie! Fah! By Beelzebub’s brazen—look you, who are you to talk, wench, with a changeling in your train whose beard sprouts and fists are like footballs! Call me kobbold if he’s not good for more games than ring-around-a-rosy.” Before Titania could retort, he swung suddenly on Barber. “Sirrah! How long have you known my wife? Quick and true or turn to a frog!”
“If you mean how long since I met the lady,” said Barber, his sixth sense warning him there was something phony about this outburst, “maybe an hour. If you mean—”
“Enough, let be. Your reply’s ample.”
“But not yours to me,” said Titania. “Come, Gosh, we’ll see what ’tis my lord is so desirous to conceal.” She swept regally toward the factory chimney, followed by the boy.
Oberon muttered after her. “Wish her joy of her conquest. He’s found a taste for felonious magic—oh, a perfect accomplished young cutpurse . . . Yet now what’s to do?” He looked wildly from side to side, then seized Barber’s arm. “Your name, fellow!”
“Barber.”
“Marry, a most proper one to the emergency, since here’s a great bloated business to be bled docile. Art trustworthy?” he poked his face close, then went on rapidly: “No matter, it’s a case of trust and be damned, or doomed for lack of trust. Harkee, fellow Barber: there be two entrances to my lady’s apartment, by the staircase and through our royal rooms. Do you take the nearer while we move with her ladyship by the longer route. Will find a wench there—ha, ha, ’tis a babe of parts, I see you take my meaning. Well, spirit her away; exorcise her, by any means. Come!”
Still gripping Barber’s arm, the King went across the grass after Titania in a series of bounds, dragging the other with him. They were together at the entrance to the chimney, which proved to have surprising interior dimensions and a helical staircase that went up and up. “Pox take these villain shapings,” panted Oberon, as they climbed, “that will not let us mount by the old Fairyland method of a word and aloft. Ouf!”
He came to a halt on a landing opposite a brown door, and as the other two took the circuit that carried them out of sight, yanked out a key and pressed it into Barber’s hand. “So, and nimbly,” he whispered, then bounded up the stairs after the Queen.
There seemed no lock or even latch on the door. Wondering why he had been given the key, Barber pushed. He found himself in a kind of sitting room with tapestry-covered benches along the walls wherever they were not cut by archways. Each of the latter led to another room on a different level, some up, some down. He raced from door to door, seeing nothing promising till he reached one that gave on a room in which an elaborate gold and damask four-poster bed was visible, with another door beyond. That ought to be it. Barber leaped down a step, past the bed, and tried the door. No soap.
The key? But this door was as innocent of keyholes as that on the stairway. Perhaps it was bolted on the other side. He knocked. The wood emitted a dull sound, indicative of solidity, but there was no answer. Using the metal key to make the noise louder, he knocked again. Instantly the door swung open and he found himself looking across a wide apartment at an extremely pretty girl in a thin dress, seated before a mirror and winding something starry into her hair. She had wings.
At the sound of Barber’s entry she turned a startled face in his direction. “The Queen!” he said. “Oberon says for you to clear out.”
The girl’s mouth fell open, and as it did so there was the sound of another door somewhere among the labyrinth of rooms, accompanied by Titania’s penetrating voice.
The girl leaped from her stool and dashed to a closet. In a matter of seconds she was out with an armful of silky garments and a wad of fancy shoes in one hand, scooting past Barber as he held the door for her. He pulled it to behind them.
“Lock, quickly!” she said. “You have the key?”
Barber gazed uncomprehendingly from the lockless door to the instrument he still held clutched in his hand.
“Ah, stupid!” she cried, and snatching it from his hand, passed it through the loop-shaped handle, muttering something meanwhile, and turned to examine him from top to toe. “A changeling babe, I’ll warrant,” she said finally, “else you had not been so ignorant of means. Even shapings alter not these.”
Barber felt a surge of irritation over these continual references to his babyhood. “I suppose you could call me a changeling,” he replied, a trifle coldly, “but I’m not a baby—by any means. Permit me to present myself. I am Fred Barber, of—” He took a step backward to bow as he made the formal introduction. As he did so the pit of his knee touched the edge of a chair and he went down into it, with no damage but complete loss of dignity.
An expression of surprise flashed over her face and she gave a tittering laugh. “Oh, la, Sir Changeling,” she said, “to take advantage of a poor girl so! No babe indeed, but a very Don Cupid. Well—” she put her head on one side and surveyed him brightly, like a bird—“I’ve played pat-lips with less lovely lords, so let’s on.”
“Huh?”
The girl dropped her armful of clothes, took two quick steps, and was on Barber’s lap, with both arms round his neck. “ ’Ware my wings,” she said. Her hair had a faint perfume.
“Hey!” said Barber, though not at all displeased by the sensations he was experiencing. “What have I done to deserve this?”
Her eyes widened. “Is’t possible you are so ignorant, sweet simpleton? Yet I forget—you are a stranger. Why, then, you took a single chair, not a bench nor the floor, nor offered me a place to sit, and we’re alone. In the exact custom of our realm, that is to say you wish to play loblolly—oh, shame! And I thought you meant it!” Her face flushed.
There was a knock at the inner door.
“That’s Oberon,” said Barber. “I really mean it, but—”
“Ho, Barber!” came the King’s voice, muffled by the door.
“Alack for might-have-been,” said the girl, and kissed him.
“Ha, Barber fellow! Open!” came from the door.
The girl slid to her feet, gathered her gowns and slippers with a single motion, danced over to the window and leaped lightly to the sill. Barber jumped to his feet, but before he could reach the window she was gone, her gauzy wings glittering on the downbeat in the moonlight. He returned to the door and tapped it with the key. It opened to reveal Oberon talking amicably with Titania and Gosh. “So, a good day, then my love,” said the King, “and goodhap.”
He bowed, came through and closed the door after him, then clapped Barber lustily on the back. “Well and wisely done, fellow! You have our royal favor. But, hist, take an older man’s advice—if you must make merry with our fairyland doxies, choose one without wings.”
“Why?” asked Barber, wondering how much Oberon knew about the incident in the chair, and how he could know.
“Take thought, man. Merely imagine.”
“Oh.”
“Now then, to the next matter—your garb. It’s not fit for the court. Stand here before me.”
Oberon made a series of rapid passes with his hands, reciting:
“One, two, three, four,
Doublet and hose, such as Huon bore;
Uno’, do’, tre’, quaro’,
Clothe to warm both flesh and marrow,
Ichi, ni, san, shi
Garb him then, as he should be . . .”
Fred Barber felt a soft impact; looked down, and to his utter horror found himself covered with a complete suit of tree frogs—hundreds of them, clinging in a continuous layer by their sucker-toed feet. He yelped and jumped. All the tree frogs jumped too, cascading over the floor, the furniture and the frenzied King, who was bouncing with rage.
“Ten thousand devils!” he shrieked. “Pox, murrain, plague, disaster upon this stinking puke-stocking shaping! I’ll—”
Barber recovered first, bowing amid the leaping batrachians, his diplomatic training asserting itself enough to make him remember that distraction was the first step in curing a fury like this. “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon for making so much trouble. But if I may trouble you still further, would you explain to me what this shaping is? If I am to serve Your Majesty, it seems I ought to know about it.”
Oberon’s rage came to a halt in mid-flight. He rubbed his chin. “The curse of our domain, and insult to our sovranty, lad. If with your mortal wit you can do aught to alter them, all favor’s yours to the half of the kingdom. Look you—you come from a land where natural law is immutable as the course of the planets. But in our misfortunate realm there’s nought fixed; the very rules of life change at times, altogether, without warning and in no certain period. . . . Oh, fear nothing; we’ll have the royal tailor in to—”
“And these changes are called shapings?”
“Aye; you have hit it. There’s an old prophecy gives us to hope, somewhat about a hero with a red beard, whose coming will change the laws of these laws, but I’m grown rank skeptic in the matter. There is this also, that with each shaping things grow faintly worse, by no more than a mustard seed, d’you understand? Yon fairies in the Queen’s train, when once they began playing, hopped happily all night. Now they grow tired, need a new stimulus, which accounts for my lady’s humor, who likes joy about her. And here’s my great jewel, that before the last shaping had the property of—Why, where’s the bauble?”
Oberon looked down at the starry front of his doublet. “ ’Tis gone—I know, ’twas that brown fiend, the Hindu cutpurse. I’ve been robbed! I—the King—robbed in my royal palace!” Oberon was hopping around the room like one of the tree frogs. “Devils burn him! Scorpions sting him! Lightning fry him! The sanguine little cheat, the stinking blackguard!”
Barber gave up and put his fingers in his ears. When the torrent had died down a trifle, he removed them and asked, “Why doesn’t Your Majesty tan his hide? Sounds as though he needed discipline.”
“Discipline him? Titania dotes on him in extremis, and he’s her ward. I can do nothing, though he intends murder most foul, without oversetting what little law remains in this plagued land. Ah, faugh! Never wear a crown, Barber fellow; ’tis light enough on the brow, but on mind and heart heavy.” He yawned. “To bed; get you gone, the third arch by the left if the room’s still there after this last foul shaping. An elf will attend you.”
Barber left the king unlacing his shoes and singing away to himself quite cheerfully:
“But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.”
The room was still there, but with neither glass nor curtains to the windows, and the level lines of a morning sun streaming across the floor. Apparently the nocturnal fairies went to sleep as naturally in a glare of sunlight as mortals did in darkness. Barber wondered if he could do the same. He thought maybe he could, having been up all night, and turned back the covers of the enormous silk-covered bed that nearly filled the room. As he lay down it occurred to him that there was something particularly undreamlike in falling asleep in a dream; and that going calmly to sleep was hardly in tune with any form of insanity. This gave him a fine sense of satisfaction in the actuality of the experience that was registering itself on his senses till he remembered that Oberon had described the experience itself as utterly lawless. Even the means of getting back to his own world—if this were the illusion and not that—would presumably be adventitious. Still trying to unravel the logical difficulties this involved, he drifted off.