Stardust

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. There was a buzz of excitement in the inn, now crowded beyond believing. It was filled with visitors to the village from every nation in the world, or so it seemed to Dunstan who had no sense of distance beyond the woods that surrounded the village of Wall, so he regarded the tall gentleman in the black top hat at the table beside him, all the way up from London, with as much awe as he regarded the taller ebony-colored gentleman in the white one-piece robe with whom he was dining. Dunstan knew that it was rude to stare, and that, as a villager of Wall, he had every right to feel superior to all of the “furriners.” But he could smell unfamilar spices on the air, and hear men and women speaking to each other in a hundred tongues, and he gawked and gazed unashamedly.

The man in the black silk top hat noticed that Dunstan was staring at him, and motioned the lad over to him. “D’you like treacle pudden’?” he asked abruptly, by way of introduction. “Mutanabbi was called away, and there’s more pudden’ here than a man can manage on his own.”

Dunstan nodded. The treacle pudding was steaming invitingly on its plate.

“Well then,” said his new friend, “help yourself.” He passed Dunstan a clean china bowl and a spoon. Dunstan needed no further encouragement, and he began to demolish the pudding.

“Now, young ‘un,” said the tall gentleman in the black silk top hat to Dunstan, once their bowls and the pudding-plate were quite empty, “it’d seem the inn has no more rooms; also that every room in the village has already been let.” “Is that so?” said Dunstan, unsurprised. “That it is,” said the gentleman in the top hat. “And what I was wondering was, would you know of a house that might have a room?”

Dunstan shrugged. “All the rooms have gone by now,” he said. “I remember that when I was a boy of nine, my mother and my father sent me to sleep out in the rafters of the cow byre for a week, and let my room to a lady from the Orient, and her family and servants. She left me a kite, as a thank you, and I flew it from the meadow until one day it snapped its string and flew away into the sky.”

“Where do you live now?” asked the gentleman in the top hat.

“I have a cottage on the edge of my father’s land,” Dunstan replied. “It was our shepherd’s cottage, until he died, two years ago last lammas-tide, and my parents gave it to me.”

“Take me to it,” said the gentleman in the hat, and it did not occur to Dunstan to refuse him.

The spring moon was high and bright, and the night was clear. They walked down from the village to the forest beneath it, and they walked the whole way past the Thorn family farm (where the gentleman in the top hat was startled by a cow, sleeping in the meadow, which snorted as it dreamed) until they reached Dunstan’s cottage.

It had one room and a fireplace. The stranger nodded. “I like this well enough,” he said. “Come, Dunstan Thorn, I’ll rent it from you for the next three days.”

“What’ll you give me for it?”

“A golden sovereign, a silver sixpence, a copper penny, and a fresh shiny farthing,” said the man.

Now a golden sovereign for two nights was more than a fair rent, in the days when a farm-worker might hope to make fifteen pounds in a good year. Still, Dunstan hesitated. “If you’re here for the market,” he told the tall man, “then it’s miracles and wonders you’ll be trading.”

The tall man nodded. “So, it would be miracles and wonders that you would be after, is it?” He looked around Dun-stan’s one-room cottage again. It began to rain then, a gentle pattering on the thatch above them.

“Oh, very well,” said the tall gentleman, a trifle testily, “a miracle, a wonder. Tomorrow, you shall attain your Heart’s Desire. Now, here is your money,” and he took it from Dun-stan’s ear, with one easy gesture. Dunstan touched it to the iron nail on the cottage door, checking for faerie gold, then he bowed low to the gentleman, and walked off into the rain. He tied the money up in his handkerchief.

Dunstan walked to the cow byre in the pelting rain. He climbed into the hayloft and was soon asleep.

He was aware, in the night, of thunder and of lightning, although he did not wake; and then in the small hours of the morning he was woken by someone treading, awkwardly, on his feet.