CHAPTER IV
A gentle clearing of the throat awakened him. The sound went on and on, as diminutive as a mouse’s alarm clock. Barber ignored it till he found he would have to turn over anyway, then opened his eyes. A small, wizened elf with a leather bag in one hand stood by his bed. “Gweed morrow, young sir,” said this mannikin. “I’ll be the tailor royal. His Radiance bade me attend ye.”
Barber slid out of bed, his toes searching futilely for slippers that were not there. The elf whipped out a tape measure, its markings spaced unevenly as though an inch were sometimes one length, sometimes other.
“Hm,” said the tailor. “Ye’re an unco great stirk of a mortal. But I’ll fit ye; I’ll jacket ye and breek ye and cap ye.” He began pulling clothes from the bag—underwear and a shirt and a pair of trunks that bulged around the hips. All went well till Barber began trying on jackets with pinched waists and leg-of-mutton sleeves. His squarish, straight-lined torso had no median joint to speak of. The elf grunted, “Too muckle wame,” thrust the largest of the jackets back into the bag, muttered something, and took it out again.
This time the waist was all right, but Barber complained: “It’s still tight across the back of the shoulders.”
The elf helped him take the jacket off and felt of his shoulder blades. Barber was conscious that the probing fingers touched a little point of no-sensation, like an incipient boil, on each scapula. The tailor whistled. “Heuch! Ye’ll be having a rare pair o’ wings afore ye’re mickle older. I maun make ye a wingity coat.”
“What?” The weight came back to his mind with a bump, and for a moment he felt bitter at human adaptability, which had deceived him into acceptance of a situation that—contradicted itself. The elf was speaking: “—wear that ane until I get your wingity jacket made. Noo the collar.” The tailor pulled from the bag a starched ruff that was probably ten inches in diameter, though it looked thirty.
“Is that a collar or do I wear it around my middle?” demanded Barber.
The wrinkled countenance showed no appreciation of this attempt at humor. “A collar. It buttons tae your sark. It’s a coort regulation.”
“Oh, well,” said Barber. “I’ve taken off my shoes for the Son of Heaven, worn white tie and tails at noon for the President of the Third Republic, and silk knee-britches in Spain. I guess I can stand it.” The tailor put the ruff on him, standing on tiptoe to button it. “How the devil do you eat in one of these things?”
“Tip your head weel forward, and ’ware the gravy.”
A flat cloth cap with a stiff brim all round came out of the bag and went on a table beside the bed. The elfin tailor whipped out a metal mirror and held it up before Barber, who surveyed himself with satisfaction and the thought that Francis Drake must have looked like that. He turned to the tailor. “What’s your name?”
“Angus, sir.”
“How old are you, Angus?” (If he could keep talking, plunge himself deeply enough into the objective world, however irrational that objective world might at the moment seem, the real, rational world in which he was actually living must break through to the level of consciousness.)
“Twelve hundred and fifty, sir.”
Once more, stronger than ever, Barber experienced the sensation of being in the presence of a lie. He grinned: “How old are you really, Angus?”
The respectful look became a grimace of uneasiness. “Weel, your young lairdship mustna gie me awa, but I’ll be fifteen hundred and ninety-ane years auld, come—”
“That’s all right. You don’t look a day over a thousand.” The small victory gave Barber a comforting sense of superiority. “Suppose you tell me something about this country. What are we bounded by?”
“Fat’s that?”
“What’s north of here? Ditto with east, south and west.”
“That depends on which way north is, sir. Maist times, ’tis straight up. The last time ’twere doon, ’twas in the direction of the Kobold Hills.”
“And what are the Kobold Hills?”
Angus shifted his feet and tucked the mirror into his jerkin, where it disappeared without leaving a bulge. “The hills where the kobolds be,” he said.
“Who are the kobolds?” (Fairies of some sort, he remembered from youth, but the word might have a special meaning.)
“I dinna really ken, sir.” His eyes avoided; the falsehood was so obvious that the elf himself felt it. “If your clothes are satisfactory, sir, I’ll tak my leave.” Without waiting for more he whisked out of the room.
Barber called after him: “How about a razor—” but too late. A fingertip assured him of the stubble on his chin, but none of the furniture contained anything that was the least use in such an emergency, so he shrugged and went into the entry hall to look for the King.
The archway to the royal rooms showed nothing; but from another came the sound of voices, and Barber rightly guessed this must be the breakfast room. It was long and high-ceilinged, with huge, arched glassless windows—didn’t it ever rain or get cold here, he wondered?—and the astonishing bright moonlight of fairyland streaming in. He was conscious of fantastic polychrome decoration and piled glass chandeliers that must be utterly useless amid the regular procession of sunlight-moonlight. But the center of his eye was taken up by the table and its occupants.
It was twenty feet or more long, covered with a damask cloth that dripped to the floor, and from the far end Titania faced him, regal and smiling. Behind her stood Gosh and the brownie philosopher; uniformed footmen bustled about. At the other end, with his back to Barber, sat Oberon, also with two attendants. The King had just finished eating something; one of the footmen whisked a gold plate from under his nose, and four tall goblins with spindling legs and huge puffed cheeks, standing stiffly midway down the table, lifted silver trumpets and blew. Their music was like that Barber had heard from the gallery at the coronation of George VI.
Titania had seen him and indicated his direction through the music with a wave of her hand. Oberon turned. “Ho, it’s the Barber fellow!” he cried. “Ha, slugabed! Approach, approach.”
Another dish had appeared before him. He transferred part of the contents to a plate and handed it to a footman. “To Barber, with our royal compliments,” he said. Instantly one of the trumpeters blew a blast like an elaborated version of an army mess call. The footman’s nose was flattened back till it resembled a pig’s snout, and he had prick ears that pointed like the horns of a cow as he bowed before Barber.
“You’re in high favor, Sir Changeling,” he whispered quickly, handing over the plate. “Speak a word for me about the pixie Amaranthe; I’ll do as much for you one day. I am called Gryll.”
“Will if I can,” answered Barber out of the corner of his mouth and bowed toward Oberon, who was watching him. He looked around for a chair. There were none in the room except those occupied by the King and Queen, so he supposed he would have to eat standing up. The food was pale blue in color and strongly flavored with violet; Barber, who had never been able to get used to the English habit of sweets with breakfast, found it perfectly abominable. Fortunately, he was spared the worst effects of the King’s generosity, for no sooner had he taken a couple of mouthfuls than Oberon was beckoning him to the table.
“Harkee, Barber,” he said. “You’re a fine spring-aid; full of inches, thewed like an ox, and with a heart of oak, I’ll warrant. Is’t not so?”
Barber bowed and managed to get rid of the plate of blue goo. “Your Radiance is too kind.” This was like being in the service; when they wanted something from you they always began by spreading the oil good and thick.
“If you’re as kind to our wishes, you shall ride high in our favor. We have a deed to lay on you, a commission to execute—”
Whatever else he was going to say was drowned in another outburst from the goblin trumpeters. Titania had changed plates. Oberon’s face writhed, he brought his fist down on the table, but the Queen was quicker in catching the precise moment when the tooting stopped.
“My very dear lord and gossip,” her bell-like voice rang out, “you do forget your guest. A wight that casts his shadow wants nourishing.” She handed a plate to one of her footmen. “Our royal compliments to Master Barber, and may he prefer this to the last dish.” He did; it tasted like steak.
Oberon slapped his forehead with an open palm.
“Oh, apologies, Barber; we crave your grace. Now on the matter of this achievement: it’s the kobolds.”
“What about them?” asked Barber, munching away.
“We fear they’re making swords again to ruinously vex our realm. The beat of forging hammers comes from their hills, and has a droll ring to it, as though they were not working good honest bronze but—iron.”
He let the last word drop slowly; as he did so the footmen started and one of them dropped a plate.
“I still don’t see—”
“Why, halt ’em, thwart ’em, confound their knavery! You’re mortal; plainly you can handle the stuff.”
The brownie philosopher at the other end of the table was bowing like a jack-in-the-box. Titania said: “You have our permission. For two minutes only, though.”
“Gracious lord, gracious lady,” he piped. “ ’Tis clear to my arts that this changeling stands before you uncomprehending, like a bull in a buttery. What’s to do, a asks, and Your Radiance but gives him commands, when it’s a sapient babe that will see to the heart of the millstone.”
He bowed to Barber and squeaked on: “These kobolds are a race that consort not with us, loving labor like Egyptians. Yet we would not be without them, for they are natural like ourselves, and how says Protagoras: ‘All things in nature are good and have their place; and if the least attractive be removed the lack will ultimately be felt by all.’ Which I take it to be—”
“Ahem!” said Oberon loudly.
The brownie philosopher bowed three times, hurriedly. “Now the minds of these kobold-cattle are so fashioned that since they alone, of all Fairyland, have the power of touching iron, they make of fashioning that metal an inordinate vainglory, preferring it to all others—”
Titania silently held up two fingers.
“Yes, gracious lady . . . And would therefore forge swords at every opportunity. Which swords, being distributed, do set all fairyland at the most horrid strife and variance, with bloodletting and frequent resultant shapings—”
Bang! Oberon’s fist came down. “A truce to babble! Here’s the riddle: we of pure fairy blood cannot go to the Kobold Hills, which stink of the curst metal. Thus you’re our emissary.”
Barber’s ears had caught the slight accent on the word “pure.” “Because I’m of impure fairy blood, I suppose?” he questioned lightly.
“Wherefore else, good Barber?”
He laughed, but it died out against the unaltered faces around him. “Who was your mother’s mother, sir?” asked Titania’s clear contralto.
“I . . . don’t know.” He had always assumed he had two grandmothers, like everyone else. They came in pairs. But looking up family trees had always struck him as a sport that led either to the D.A.R. or the booby hatch, places he was equally anxious to avoid. Oberon pressed against his confusion.
“There are brooks also since the last shaping—plagued ungainly obstacles to us of the pure blood, who must seek round by their sources or fly high above, but not for you, mortal. Go, then, we say; be our embassy, our spy.”
“And if I do, can I get back to where I came from? After all, I have work—”
“Why, you unhatched egg, you chick-cuckoo, will you bargain against the King’s Radiance of Fairyland? Go to! I’ll—”
The brownie philosopher was wriggling in a perfect passion of desire for speech, but Titania signed him to silence and Oberon, catching sight of the motion, pulled himself up short. “Ha!” he said. “I misremember; ’tis long since we had a new changeling. Why, good Barber, the rule of our realm touching mortals is this: none is brought here but for some weighty enterprise. Which accomplished, he’s free to return.”
“And mine is to keep your kobolds from making swords?”
“Perhaps.” (That isn’t true, Barber’s developing sixth sense flashed to him.) “Ask Imponens there; he’s sib to such secrets of nature.”
“But not to this, my lord.” The brownie philosopher exhaled a long breath at being allowed to speak and fingered his beard. “No more than you or the changeling himself can I tell such reasons; and that is, I hold, the nature of life in all worlds, as I shall reveal by a most philosophical question. Tell me, Sir Babe, and you know—why were you born into the world you came from?”
“I—” began Barber, confused by this sudden change in the plane of the discussion.
“You would say, pure chance. To which I reply: No, not no more than the step by which you were brought here. For Chance is but the cipher of a power that does not wish to sign its name . . . You see, I follow your thought like a slothound; ’tis my art, of which each of us here, mortal or fairy, has one, even as in the world you came from each has some little talent. . . . Ha! Your Radiance, Your Resplendency!” He bowed rapidly toward one end of the table and then the other. “ ’Ware this changeling lad, I say. I have hunted his aptitude to its lair as he thought on’t but now. He’ll set your court by the ears, for he can tell lies from truth whenever spoken.”
Oberon leaned back in his chair and unexpectedly burst into laughter. All the footmen, butlers, and goblin trumpeters obediently imitated him, and as one of the latter laughed a series of bubbling toots into his instrument got Barber himself to laughing. Only Titania and Gosh kept their composure. He noticed that the latter was making a rapid series of passes with his hands and moving his lips. The mound of blue on Oberon’s plate vanished; the boy chewed and swallowed.
“Ho-ho, ’tis rare, rank rare,” gasped Oberon, coming out of his laughing fit by degrees. “Well, my pretty cosset, how think you now on your bargain? You have your little felon, ha-ha, but I’ve gained me a counselor that shall make you both jig a step or two. Tell me, good Barber, what is your profession?”
“I was in the diplomatic service.”
“There ’tis; those who gain a faculty by commerce with us get generally one that would be most useful whence they came. Though meseems ’twould have been nearer the eye to have the power of making your own lies believed.”
Titania smiled, only half-ruefully. “Then all’s well, my lord, if Imponens has but justly judged. It’s a sharp archer indeed that never misses the heart.”
Oberon had picked up his fork as she spoke and now his eye fell on the empty plate before him. “We’ll put it to the proof,” he said, and pointed at Gosh. “You whoreson imp! Did you beguile my breakfast but now? Mark his answer, good Barber.”
The dark little face took on an expression of bland impudence. “Oh, Gem of Glory,” he began, but Titania came to his rescue.
“My noble lord, do we not but bandy while our sovran purpose waits? Here’s this Barber, an approved ambassador, whom we are anxious to speed, yet we sit jousting in wind like a pair of sguittards . . . . Gosh! My magic wand; I left it in the apartment. Our messenger shall bear it.”
The boy strolled toward one of the doors with his nose in the air and an expression of nonchalance. As he passed the King, Oberon growled: “Beat it hence, you bepuked little mandrake!” but it was covered from Titania’s attention by Barber’s own remark: “How am I supposed to use this wand?”
“That,” said the Queen, “is something you must learn by experience; no other teacher.”
“Aye,” added Oberon, “and mark well, Barber; whatever happens, use no physical force against the kobolds.”
“Why not?”
“You’re outnumbered, one to a thousand. Yet there’s a better reason, however high your heart run; these wights are of such nature that they be held under certain bonds against passing to open violence. But if it be first used on them, they are released and can reply in overweening measure. No striking, then; sheer skill.”
“But,” cried Barber, “you want me to stop them from making swords, but I can’t use force. You won’t tell me what to do or how to use even the wand.”
“You named yourself diplomat, not we. Sure, you’re a poor stick in the profession an you have not met such tasks before. . . . Ha, here’s the wand.”
He took it from Gosh and handed it to Barber. It did not look in the least as it had when Titania used it on Sneckett the evening before, but like an ivory walking stick. The handle end came round in a crook with a carved snake’s-head terminal.
“Watch it well,” warned Titania. “This wand has an enchantment in it; if it be lost, all concerned including your sweet self will come on some misadventured piteous overthrow. Go, then, and good luck with you.”