‘Where me get the shell? Me get she from the lurleygirly.” Broken, the boy’s speech, but straightforward enough. “Me see a great pile oft by Lurley Bend, and me leave a bowl of milk one lime and me take some shell, wrap up in me sark,” he gestured and he grinned; stripping off his shirt had evidently posed no problem, likely he went most ways and most days in his breech-clout, no more. “And a nex’ day me go, take some more shell, leave some more milk, and a next day me go,” and so on and so on. “ ‘Es, me pay milk, take shell. ‘Nen come pedlar-khan and give me crockery and we trade crockery for we don’t be needin’ it, us eats outen table-holes. ‘Es, us trades it for salt and matches and lamp-oil, an’—”
Eszterhazy barely followed. To Joachim-the-Groom (thus to distinguish him from Joachim-the- Smith, Joachim-the-Shrewd, Joachim-Cuckold, and a few score more) he said, “Ask how he knows it was a lurley?”
The old Tartar-man answered, in some surprise at the question. “Why, it be find to Lurley Bend, who else, me khan, would leave it shell there?”
But the boy had a word of his own. "Me do see she, all a-bare!”
The gaffer clouted his shaven pate, “For shame! Giaour!”
Perhaps the clout, perhaps the guffaw which Groom-Joachim had not felt able to constrain—well, for whatever reason, the boy had no more to say. They sipped the sour milk, pecked at the mulberries, put some bread and some nuts into their pockets, and left something beneath the cloth—at least Eszterhazy did—something which was no salt or matches or lamp-oil. And, with bows here and there, they departed.
Riding away, on the heavy horses whose feet were so accustomed to the mud, Eszterhazy asked, “Have these mussels any other use, Joachim?”
The groom scratched his beard. “Aye, Sir Doctor. Can be eaten.” “Ah. And how do you eat them?”
A shocked look was his first answer. “/? Ah, Sir Doctor, I don’t eat them!”
“Oh. So. Who does, then?” Again, a sidelong look. Another scratch at the beard. “The lurley, then.” said Joachim-the-Groom.
The map of the area, as it hung in the office of the Bailiff (half tack- room, half gun-room, another half of it somehow made shift to serve for business: if there are not three halves in one whole in most places, be sure that the Mud is not one of them) of the Estate, might not have passed inspection at the Royal and Imperial Institute of Cartography. But it sufficed to locate the cove of the little river—
“Does it have a name, Bailiff?” “Does, Sir Doctor.”
A silence.
A sigh.
“And what, then, is its name, Bailiff?
“It’s name? It’s name is Little River, Sir Doctor.”
—The cove called Lurley Bend had, so far as could be recalled, always been called that. There seemed no local legends of any golden-haired sirens sitting on rocks and luring men to their certain deaths there. There seemed, in fact, no local legends about it at all—save the one local legend, so strange and totally unfamiliar to Eszterhazy, that the appearance of the lurley meant certain death to the buckwheat crop.
“It’s certain death to the buckwhat crop,” Prince Roldrando burst out, “if you will all neglect to tend it!”
The Bailiff said nothing, but one of the older men, wagging his head, said, respectfully, but nonetheless doggedly, "Ah, me Lord Prince, tis easy for you to say, but tis a known fact that whenever there is a lurleygirly in the river, us buckwheat crop do blight and die: and then us have no kasha for the winter, lulladay!”
His lord prince pointed out, again, that the only certain fact was that the buckwheat had to be tended: but this brought nothing but a certain clarification, to wit, that if anyone were to dare to tend the buckwheat while the lurleygirly was in the river, he or she or they would be so doing incur certain death.
It was certain, to be sure, that buckwhat was the staple food-stuff for the winter thereabouts. Some wheat was saved to make bread, some potatoes were saved for the borsht, much wheat and potatoes went to pay rent or be sold for cash (or, likelier, to pay against credit): the main use for wheat and potato, however, as far the fact of good crops of either one gladdening the hearts of the farmer-folk, was that much of both went into the making of the local vodka. To have used wheat alone would have seemed a wanton extravagance; to have used potatoes only would have seemed a degree of coarseness to which they were unwilling to descend. They sought a balance, and—usually—they found it.
And if, instead of bowl after bowl of familiar buckwheat grits winterday after winterday, if, instead of this, they had needs fill their bellies with bread, with potato—why, a two-fold sadness would surely come upon them: One—no kasha; Two—no homemade vodka. None of this meant, of course, that they would do without vodka! The very thought was alien, would have brought unbelieving grunts. But sometimes the buckwheat failed for natural reasons. The results were familiar to all. One sold what one could—sometimes the wife’s gold trinkets—and the wife never oared for that—or the silver- liames of the ikons—and one wont to town to buy town-made vodka. And, once in town, once at the tavern, did one—could one—have a quiet and thoughtful sip, as one always did at home? Never a bit of it. There was always the urging to pass the pint around .... to stand someone else a round . . . before one knew il, the pint was gone .... so quickly! .…
And then, one by one: the wagon. The harness. Even the horse.
And then the first fight. And then the second fight. And—
“Ah, Sirs, she lurley ha’been seen up and down the river, yes. Tis bad, oh, bad.” It was clear that more than one, as Eszterhazy and his princely friend made their rounds, had anticipated whatever might come by dipping into the vodka already. Not only the buckwheat was suffering, the district itself had begun to suffer. The fishermen no longer set their nets, the fowlers feared to go abroad in the ferns.
“Now, Sir,” said the fellow whom the Bailiff had sent as guide, “it’s just as you follow that bit of path, there, and you come, you are bound to come, as easy as easy, to within sight . . . within sight of. ...”
“Of Lurley Bend?”
The man threw him a reproachful look. Speak not the word, lest it come to pass . . . “Within sight of it,” he said, after a nervous swallow, visible and audible. And asked, stiffly, “Will Your Honor be wanting to come back before noon-tide?—or after? What I means is—” What he meant, clearly, was that he had no intention of accompanying Eszterhazy. But was, however, willing to return for him—here. Thus far would he go, and no farther. Eszterhazy shrugged. “Tether the horse, then," he said. “I daresay I can find my way back.” And, as the man hesitated, painfully, he added, “And if I can’t, no doubt the horse knows the way.”
How eagerly the man was about to grasp at this easy way out of it! But then, then something which may have been duty, or may have been a fear of something other than the lurley—the prince, perhaps—or may have been honest concern, came over the man’s face. It was, God knows (Eszterhazy thought), an honest enough face. The man shook his head. “I shall meet Your Honor here,” he said. ‘‘At when the shadows are like so,” he drew in the soft dirt with his stick. About three hours after noon hour, Eszterhazy calculated. ‘‘Surely Your Honor will be here then?” It was less a question than a plea. And then he stayed and watched as his master’s guest walked off down the path.