As for Ranulph, when he grew up he wrote the loveliest songs that had been heard since the days of Duke Aubrey—songs that crossed the sea and were sung by lonely fishermen in the far North, and by indigo mothers crooning to their babies by the doors of their huts in the Cinnamon Isles.
Dame Marigold continued to smile, and to nibble marzipan with her cronies. But she used sometimes sadly to wonder whether Master Nathaniel had ever really come back from beyond the Debatable Hills; sometimes, but not always.
And Master Nathaniel himself? Whether he ever heard the Note again I cannot say. But in time he went, either to reap the fields of gillyflowers, or to moulder in the Fields of Grammary. And below his coffin in the family chapel a brass tablet was put up with this epitaph:
NATHANIEL CHANTICLEER
PRESIDENT OF THE GUILD OF MERCHANTS
THREE TIMES MAYOR OF LUD-IN-THE-MIST
TO WHOM WAS GRANTED NO SMALL SHARE OF
THE PEACE AND PROSPERITY
HE HELPED TO BESTOW ON
HIS TOWN AND COUNTRY.
An epitaph not unlike those he used to con so wistfully in his visits to the Fields of Grammary.
And this is but another proof that the Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning! And with this final exhortation this book shall close.
Columbine
"And can the physician make sick men well,
And can the magician a fortune divine