Then the old man takes from under his coat a silver flask, and hands it to her—and she marvels at its workmanship, for it was finer than any she had ever seen or dreamed of. Take a draught! says he, and she takes a draught, and it is like nothing she has ever tasted in her mortal life. It is like honey but sweeter, it is like new milk but milder, it is like wine but it is stronger than any wine that was ever poured into a chalice. And as soon as she drinks it down, she feels all weariness drop away from her, and all torment of mind, and the babby is as light as air, and her feet feel as if she’s on her way to a dance, twitching at the first strain of the fiddle and ready to jig through the night. So she says to the old man, With a draught like that I could walk for half a year.’
‘Hm,’ said the red-head. ‘You notice how he only offered it after she said she was all through and done for? Why didn’t he give her a swig when he met her? Too mean, that’s what.’
‘Presently,’ the Giant said, ‘they came to a halt. Before them was a forest.’
‘I knew a forest would be in it,’ Jankin said. There is a demon in that forest, I bet you.’
‘Seal your gawpy mouth, Mush-head,’ Joe Vance said. ‘Go talk to your friend the pig.’
The Giant glanced at Joe; he saw he was heart and soul in the tale. He’s not a bad man at that, he thought, and he’s a good standby when the weapon of words must be employed; with his natural, flowing abuse, he’s working within a fertile tradition. ‘She enters the forest,’ he said. They walk a half-mile. She’s light now, her steps bouncing. Before her, she can see nothing but trees. Then when she looks again, she can see a gate set into the trees—and the gate is made of gold.’
‘A common delusion,’ said the red-head.
Then the old man says, Mistress, will you enter in? She does so. And there she beholds such splendour as there never was this side of heaven.’
‘Silk cushions with tassels is in it,’ Jankin said.
‘Indeed,’ said the Giant. He closed his eyes, and drew in his brows. So many times he had been called upon to describe splendour, and so many times he had called upon himself to do it; by now the thread of his invention was wearing thin. There were hangings on the wall,’ he began, ‘rich and dense tapestries, with every manner of flower and child and beast depicted upon them. There were mirrors between these hangings, their gilt frames studded with rubies. There were candles blazing, and the skins of lions to sit on, and there was a huge joint of meat roasting on a spit, and a mastiff—no, a brace of mastiffs—to turn it. So when she sees all this, she thinks, I should have taken that gold piece after all, because it’s obvious now that there’s plenty more where that came from.’
‘First glimpse of sense she’s shown all evening,’ Claffey said.
‘So there she stood, her babby in her arms, looking about her open-mouthed. At one end of the great room a door opened, and in came a man and a woman, tall and elegant, attired in sumptuous robes embroidered with silk. She bobbed her head then, and she was shy and tongue-tied, having no acquaintance until now with princes, which was what she took them to be. But they spoke her very fair—their voices were low and gracious, a whisper merely—and stretching out their hands to her they drew her towards them, and said they would conduct her to where the child was. So they took her into another great chamber, its hangings even richer than the first, the logs blazing, and golden birds singing in their cages, and the music of a harp sounding in her ears as sweet as the breath of angels. Surely I’ve died and gone to heaven, she said to herself—but then the woman reached forward to her, and drew her babby out of her arms, and the man put a hand on her breast and, with the utmost reverence, uncovered her dug. Here, says the woman, and led her to the cradle, which was draped in purple velvet and set on a stand carved of ivory, fetched from—’
‘Jesus!’ Claffey said. ‘I am getting weary of the catalogue of furnishings, so I am. A hand plucks back the curtain and she sees—’
‘—a yellow-skinned babby, its skin wrinkled, its eyes rheumy—’
‘Much like he must have been,’ the red-head said, indicating Vance.
‘—so ugly she had never seen a child like it, and her gorge rose, and she said—putting aside all common politeness, such was the strength of her feeling—I don’t know that I can touch it. Then the man and woman again spoke to her, and their voices were low and whispering and they seemed to hold in them the same shivering note of the harp-string and the melody of the golden birds bowing on their perch—and they said, cooing to her, There’s nothing the matter with the child, except want of nourishment.
‘And the woman shook her head, saying, If that’s the manner and appearance of a king’s son, my own fair child should be emperor of the earth and skies. But she pitied them, and she pitied the yellow baby, and so she lifted it from the cradle of velvet and ivory, and laid it to her blue-veined breast. And all the while her own child lay sleeping in the arms of the woman so richly dressed, and lay so quiet and still that it seemed he was under an enchantment.’
‘Which indeed he was,’ the red-haired woman said. Again she plucked nervously at her kerchief. ‘You could see it coming a mile off.’
‘I wish you’d be quiet, mother,’ Pybus said.
‘Yes,’ Jankin broke off from his play with the pig. ‘I want to hear, I want to hear. It is not the demon tale we thought it was.’
A man laughed. ‘They are simple, these. Come over the water just now.’
But the other shushed him, the blind man saying severely, ‘It is seldom, in these debased days, we are able to hear a tale told in the antique fashion, by a gent of such proportions.’
‘So when the yellow child was laid to her breast, he took a fierce hold, and drank greedily, and she cried out, Oh, you did not say he had teeth! Surely, blood is springing from my tit!’
‘Dear, dear,’ Vance said satirically. ‘What the female sex have to endure!’
‘Ah, my dear, he has but one tooth, one tooth only, said the queen, soothing her. He will suck me dry! the young woman cried. Feed him but one minute longer, they coaxed, and then you shall have a soft bed to lie in all night, and a goosedown quilt to cover you, and in the morning we will give you seven gold pieces, and shoes to your feet, and in no time at all you will be in Galway among your own people.
‘So, thinking of the bed, and the quilt, and the shoes, and the gold, she let the yellow child drain her. The moment it was done, it flinched away its head, like a rich man offered a dry crust. And the queen took it from her—and all at once, she felt her eyelids droop, her legs weaken—and that was the last thing she knew.’
‘Now you will hear the coda,’ said the red-head. ‘I feel I could whistle it. It is no pretty tune.’
‘Morning came at last. She woke, and put out her hand to stroke the feather bed—’
‘But felt,’ said the blind man, ‘only a mulch of leaves.’
‘It was cold, and the harp-string was mute, and only a common sparrow of the hedgerows sang in her ear. She opened her eyes, sat up, looked around her—and the hand that had smoothed the bed grasped a handful of weeds, too rank to feed a cow—’
‘And her baby?’ the freckled girl said. Her fingers parted her curtain of hair. Her voice was sharp with anxiety.
‘She is twelve years old,’ the red-head said. ‘Excuse her. She has not heard many tales.’
The Giant shook his head. ‘Then this is a sad one, for a beginner. For the young lady, who last night was in the hall of kings—now her feet are in the ditch, her mouth is dry, there is muck in her hair and her belly is empty. And she cries, My babby! Where is he? She casts around, but her rosy babby is not to be seen—and then from the hedge she hears a little bleat—’
The red-head laughed. Time to run.’
‘—and looking into the hedge what should she find but the yellow