This was tactless. The word "brugh" was deeply offensive to Tom. No one who customarily dresses in spotless white linen and a midnight-blue coat, whose nails are exquisitely manicured, whose hair gleams like polished mahogany – in short no one of such refined tastes and delicate habits likes to be reminded that he spent the first two or three thousand years of his existence in a damp dark hole, wearing (when he took the trouble to wear any thing at all) a kilt of coarse, undyed wool and a mouldering rabbitskin cloak. [4]
"In the brugh," said Tom, lingering on the word with ironic emphasis to shew that it was a subject polite people did not mention, "the problem did not arise. Children were born and grew up in complete ignorance of their paternity. I have not the least idea who my father was. I never felt any curiosity on the matter."
By two o'clock Tom and David had reached Nottinghamshire, [5] a county which is famous for the greenwood which once spread over it. Of course at this late date the forest was no longer a hundredth part of what it once had been, but there were still a number of very ancient trees and Tom was determined to pay his respects to those he considered his particular friends and to shew his disdain of those who had not behaved well towards him. [6] So long was Tom in greeting his friends, that David began to be concerned about Mr Monkton.
"But you said he was not really ill," said Tom.
"That was not what I said at all! But whether he is or not, I have a duty to reach him as soon as I can."
"Very well! Very well! How cross you are!" said Tom. "Where are you going? The road is just over there."
"But we came from the other direction."
"No, we did not. Well, perhaps. I do not know. But both roads join up later on so it cannot matter in the least which we chuse."
Tom's road soon dwindled into a narrow and poorly marked track which led to the banks of a broad river. A small, desolate-looking town stood upon the opposite bank. The road reappeared on the other side of the town and it was odd to see how it grew broader and more confident as it left the town and travelled on to happier places.
"How peculiar!" said Tom. "Where is the bridge?"
"There does not seem to be one."
"Then how are we to get across?"
"There is a ferry," said David.
A long iron chain stretched between a stone pillar on this side of the river and another pillar on the opposite bank. Also on the other side of the river was an ancient flat-bottomed boat attached to the chain by two iron brackets. An ancient ferryman appeared and hauled the boat across the river by means of the chain. Then Tom and David led the horses on to the boat and the ancient ferryman hauled them back over.
David asked the ferryman what the town was called.
"Thoresby, sir," said the man.
Thoresby proved to be nothing more than a few streets of shabby houses with soiled, dusty windows and broken roofs. An ancient cart was abandoned in the middle of what appeared to be the principal street. There was a market cross and a marketplace of sorts – but weeds and thorns grew there in abundance, suggesting there had been no actual market for several years. There was only one gentleman's residence to be seen: a tall old-fashioned house built of grey limestone, with a great many tall gables and chimneys. This at least was a respectable-looking place though in a decidedly provincial style.
Thoresby's only inn was called The Wheel of Fortune. The sign shewed a number of people bound to a great wheel which was being turned by Fortune, represented here by a bright pink lady wearing nothing but a blindfold. In keeping with the town's dejected air the artist had chosen to omit the customary figures representing good fortune and had instead shewn all the people bound to Fortune's wheel in the process of being crushed to pieces or being hurled into the air to their deaths.
With such sights as these to encourage them, the Jew and the fairy rode through Thoresby at a smart trot. The open road was just in sight when David heard a cry of "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" and the sound of rapid footsteps. So he halted his horse and turned to see what was the matter.
A man came running up.
He was a most odd-looking creature. His eyes were small and practically colourless. His nose was the shape of a small bread roll, and his ears – which were round and pink – might have been attractive on a baby, but in no way suited him. But what was most peculiar was the way in which eyes and nose huddled together at the top of his face, having presumably quarrelled with his mouth which had set up a separate establishment for itself halfway down his chin. He was very shabbily dressed and his bare head had a thin covering of pale stubble upon it.
"You have not paid the toll, sirs!" he cried. "What toll?" asked David.
"Why! The ferry toll! The toll for crossing the river."
"Yes. Yes, we have," said David. "We paid the man who carried us across the river."
The odd-looking man smiled. "No, sir!" he said. "You paid the fee, the ferryman's penny! But the toll is quite another thing. The toll is levied upon everyone who crosses the river. It is owed to Mr Winstanley and I collect it. A man and a horse is sixpence. Two men and two horses is twelvepence."
"Do you mean to say," said David in astonishment, "that a person must pay twice to come to this miserable place?"
"There is no toll, David," said Tom airily. "This scoundrel merely wishes us to give him twelvepence."
The odd-looking man continued to smile, although the expression of his eyes had rather a malicious sparkle to it. "The gentleman may insult me if he wishes," he said. "Insults are free. But I beg leave to inform the gentleman that I am very far from being a scoundrel. I am a lawyer. Oh, yes! An attorney consulted by people as far afield as Southwell. But my chief occupation is as Mr Winstanley's land agent and man of business. My name, sir, is Pewley Witts!"
"A lawyer?" said David. "Oh, I do beg your pardon!"
"David!" cried Tom. "When did you ever see a lawyer that looked like that? Look at him! His rascally shoes are broken all to bits. There are great holes in his vagabond's coat and he has no wig! Of course he is a scoundrel!" He leant down from his tall horse. "We are leaving now, scoundrel. Goodbye!"
"These are my sloppy clothes," said Pewley Witts sullenly. "My wig and good coat are at home. I had no time to put them on when Peter Dawkins came and told me that two gentlemen had crossed by the ferry and were leaving Thoresby without paying the toll – which, by the bye, is still twelvepence, gentlemen, and I would be much obliged if you would pay it."
A devout Jew must discharge his debts promptly – however inadvertently those debts might have been incurred; a gentleman ought never to procrastinate in such matters; and, as David considered himself to be both those things, he was most anxious to pay Pewley Witts twelvepence. A fairy, on the other hand, sees things differently. Tom was determined not to pay. Tom would have endured years of torment rather than pay.
Pewley Witts watched them argue the point back and forth. Finally he shrugged. "Under the circumstances, gentlemen," he said, "I think you had better talk to Mr Winstanley."
He led them to the tall stone house they had noticed before. A high stone wall surrounded the house and there was a little stone yard which was quite bare except for two small stone lions. They were crudely made things, with round, surprized eyes, snarls full of triangular teeth, and fanciful manes that more resembled foliage than fur.
A pretty maidservant answered the door. She glanced briefly at Pewley Witts and David Montefiore, but finding nothing to interest her there, her gaze travelled on to Tom Brightwind who was staring down at the lions.
[4] 4 The brugh was for countless centuries the common habitation of the fairy race. It is the original of all the fairy palaces one reads of in folktales. Indeed the tendency of Christian writers to glamorize the brugh seems to have increased with the centuries. It has been described as a "fairy palace of gold and crystal, in the heart of the hill" (Lady Wilde, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland, Ward & Downey, London, 1887). Another chronicler of fairy history wrote of "a steep-sided grassy hill, round as a pudding-basin… A small lake on its summit had a crystal floor, which served as a skylight." (Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Kingdoms of Elfin, Chatto & Windus, London, 1977).
The truth is that the brugh was a hole or series of interconnecting holes that was dug into a barrow, very like a rabbit's warren or badger's set. To paraphrase a writer of fanciful stories for children, this was not a comfortable hole, it was not even a dry, bare sandy hole; it was a nasty, dirty, wet hole.
Fairies, who are nothing if not resilient, were able to bear with equanimity the damp, the dark and the airlessness, but stolen Christian children brought to the brugh died, as often as not, of suffocation.
[5] In the late eighteenth century a journey from London to Nottinghamshire might be expected to take two or three days. Tom and David seem to have arrived after a couple of hours: this presumably is one of the advantages of choosing as your travelling companion a powerful fairy prince.
[6] Fairies born in the last eight centuries or so – sophisticated, literate and consorting all their lives with Christians – have no more difficulty than Christians themselves in distinguishing between the animate and the inanimate. But to members of older generations (such as Tom) the distinction is quite unintelligible.
Several magical theorists and commentators have noted that fairies who retain this old belief in the souls of stones, doors, trees, fire, clouds etc., are more adept at magic than the younger generation and their magic is generally much stronger.
The following incident clearly shews how, given the right circumstances, fairies come to regard perfectly ordinary objects with a strange awe. In 1697 an attempt was made to kill the Old Man of the White Tower, one of the lesser princes of Faerie. The would-be assassin was a fairy called Broc (he had stripes of black and white fur upon his face). Broc had been greatly impressed by what he had heard of a wonderful new weapon which Christians had invented to kill each other. Consequently he forsook all magical means of killing the Old Man of the White Tower (which had some chance of success) and purchased instead a pistol and some shot (which had none). Poor Broc made his attempt, was captured and the Old Man of the White Tower locked him up in a windowless stone room deep in the earth. In the next room the Old Man imprisoned the pistol, and in a third room the shot. Broc died some time around the beginning of the twentieth century (after three centuries without a bite to eat, a drop to drink or a sight of the sun, even fairies grow weaker). The pistol and the shot, on the other hand, are still there, still considered by the Old Man as equally culpable, still deserving punishment for their wickedness. Several other fairies who wished to kill the Old Man of the White Tower have begun by devising elaborate plans to steal the pistol and the shot, which have attained a strange significance in the minds of the Old Man's enemies. It is well known to fairies that metal, stone and wood have stubborn natures; the gun and shot were set upon killing the Old Man in 1697 and it is quite inconceivable to the fairy mind that they could have wavered in the intervening centuries. To the Old Man's enemies it is quite clear that one day the gun and the shot will achieve their purpose.