As the day of the fair approached the atmosphere of anticipation mounted. People were waking earlier, counting days, counting minutes. The guards on the gate, at the sides of the wall, were restive and nervous. Figures and shadows moved in the trees at the edge of the meadow.
In the Seventh Magpie, Bridget Comfrey, who was widely regarded as the most beautiful pot-girl in living memory, was provoking friction between Tommy Forester, with whom she had been seen to step out over the previous year, and a huge man with dark eyes and a small, chittering monkey. The man spoke little English, but he smiled expressively whenever Bridget came by.
In the pub’s taproom the regulars sat in awkward proximity to the visitors, speaking so:“It’s only every nine years.”
“They say in the old days it was every year, at midsummer.”
“Ask Mister Bromios. He’ll know.”Mr. Bromios was tall, and his skin was olive; his black hair was curled tightly on his head; his eyes were green. As the girls of the village became women they took notice of Mr. Bromios, but he did not return their notice. It was said he had come to the village quite some time ago, a visitor. But he had stayed in the village; and his wine was good, so the locals agreed.
A loud argument broke out in the public lounge between Tommy Forester and the dark-eyed man, whose name appeared to be Alum Bey.
“Stop them! In the name of Heaven! Stop them!” shouted Bridget. “They’re going out the back to fight over me!” And she tossed her head, prettily, so that the light of the oil lamps caught her perfect golden curls.
Nobody moved to stop the men, although a number of people, villagers and newcomers alike, went outside to spectate.
Tommy Forester removed his shirt and raised his fists in front of him. The stranger laughed, and spat onto the grass, and then he seized Tommy’s right hand and sent him flying onto the ground, chin-first.
Tommy clambered to his feet and ran at the stranger. He landed a glancing blow on the man’s cheek, before finding himself facedown in the dirt, his face being slammed into the mud, with the wind knocked out of him. Alum Bey sat on top of him and chuckled, and said something in Arabic.
That quickly, and that easily, the fight was over.
Alum Bey climbed off Tommy Forester and he strutted over to Bridget Comfrey, bowed low to her, and grinned with gleaming teeth.
Bridget ignored him and ran to Tommy. “Why, whatever has he done to you, my sweet?” she asked, and mopped the mud from his face with her apron and called him all manner of endearments.
Alum Bey went, with the spectators, back into the public rooms of the inn, and he graciously bought Tommy Forester a bottle of Mr. Bromios’s Chablis when Tommy returned. Neither of them was quite certain who had won, who had lost.
Dunstan Thorn was not in the Seventh Magpie that evening: he was a practical lad, who had, for the last six months, been courting Daisy Hempstock, a young woman of similar practicality.
They would walk, on fair evenings, around the village, and discuss the theory of crop rotation, and the weather, and other such sensible matters; and on these walks, upon which they were invariably accompanied by Daisy’s mother and younger sister walking a healthy six paces behind, they would, from time to time, stare at each other lovingly.
At the door to the Hempstocks’ Dunstan would pause, and bow, and take his farewell.
And Daisy Hempstock would walk into her house, and remove her bonnet, and say, “I do so wish Mister Thorn would make up his mind to propose. I am sure Papa would not be averse to it.”
“Indeed, I am sure that he would not,” said Daisy’s mama on this evening, as she said on every such evening, and she removed her own bonnet and her gloves and led her daughters to the drawing room, in which a very tall gentleman with a very long black beard was sitting, sorting through his pack. Daisy, and her mama, and her sister, bobbed curtseys to the gentleman (who spoke little English, and had arrived a few days before). The temporary lodger, in his turn, stood and bowed to them, then returned to his pack of wooden oddments, sorting, arranging and polishing. It was chilly that April, with the awkward changeability of English spring.
The visitors came up the narrow road through the forest from the south; they filled the spare-rooms, they bunked out in cow byres and barns. Some of them raised colored tents, some of them arrived in their own caravans drawn by huge grey horses or by small, shaggy ponies.
In the forest there was a carpet of bluebells.
On the morning of April the 29th Dunstan Thorn drew guard duty on the gap in the wall, with Tommy Forester.
They stood on each side of the gap in the wall, and they waited.
Dunstan had done guard duty many times before, but hitherto his task had consisted of simply standing, and, on occasion, shooing away children.
Today he felt important: he held a wooden cudgel, and as each stranger to the village came up to the break in the wall, Dunstan or Tommy would say “Tomorrow, tomorrow. No one’s coming through today, good sirs.”And the strangers would retreat a little way, and stare through the break in the wall at the unassuming meadow beyond it, at the unexceptional trees that dotted the meadow, at the rather dull forest behind it. Some of them attempted to strike up conversations with Dunstan or Tommy, but the young men, proud of their status as guards, declined to converse, contenting themselves by raising their heads, tightening their lips, and generally looking important.
At lunchtime, Daisy Hempstock brought by a small pot of shepherd’s pie for them both, and Bridget Comfrey brought them each a mug of spiced ale.
And, at twilight, another two able-bodied young men of the village arrived to relieve them, carrying a lantern each, and Tommy and Dunstan walked down to the inn where Mr. Bromios gave each of them a mug of his best ale — and his best ale was very fine indeed — as their reward for doing guard duty.