Lord Goose

The road from Harle to Bermondthwaite has little to recommend it, save a constricting sense of futility. I have walked this route some hundreds of times in my life, as my home is near the former place and the market where I sell is near the latter. Neither place is comely or worthy of mention, and so to dwell on either is to batter the reader with the cudgel of dullness. Suffice to say, had I not been born of a line reaching long back in the place, I would like as not never have set foot in there even to ask the simplest method of leaving it.

As mentioned, I market my wares in the latter locale, and on the instant I presently relate, I was returning from market with a near-empty sledge, a mere three unsold pumpkins being my companions for the journey home. It was mid-autumn and the air was chilled and sharp and seemed to knife into each of the split seams of my clothes. 

The trip from market to home, in decent weather and in healthy stride, takes me near five hours, and on this occasion I had been some three hours on the road and had barely reached the half-point, for there was a brisk wind at my face the whole time and I was forever stopping to re-bundle my coats and hat and muffler. It was at one of these haltings that I saw on the roadside a fat, white goose, long of neck and orange of foot.

I gathered  my muffler about my neck and lower face, wrapped the folds of my greatcoat about my chest and worked my fingers in my gloves. The goose stood watching me imperially, and to make jest and exercise my voice, which had been dormant since the last customer, I spoke in joking tone to the goose.

"Hail, Sir Goose," I called, stamping my feet in my boots to flow the blood. I started forward, the sledge coming behind, when I heard from nearby this rejoinder.

"Sir Goose, you call me, eh? Sir Goose? Rather, my Lord Goose. You, my good man, address Barnaby Goose, Lord of Gandersey. I expect you have heard the name?"

By faith, I had not, nor had I ever heard tell of a talking goose, but I, always a man knowledgeable of my place, never had cause to give offence to a lord or lady, and hoped never to, and so scraped a hasty bow to his Lordship and begged his pardon, and explained my ignorance of his high breeding to the fact that he was, in plain fact, a simple goose, and such to my admittedly narrow education, I had never before the inkling that his ilk could be ennobled, neither with speech nor lordships.

This set off his Lordship again, but I will spare the reader his honkings of reproach and accusations. My mind becalmed in wonder, I approached his Lordship and spoke thusly:

"My good Lord, is your demense in parts hereabout? I know not of Gandersey, and I have lived in this wood my whole years."

"Ah flesh and hair," he replied back, and I took it to refer to me as though a name, "all this swamp about is Gandersey. It was given my great-great-great-grandgoose in the time of your Charles Stuart."

I spat the earth at the name of that devil but quickly made show of coughing from my throat to disguise my blasphemy as croup. 

"And pray, Lord, what is the disposition of your house? You look, if I may, quite arrayed in splendour."

In true fact, he looked a simple goose, as I said before, but I knew from tales and common sense it is always best to flatter one's betters. 

"O, wingless," he trilled, "great is the accoutrement of my domain. Grains piled in mountains, eggs in pyramid, forests of feathers. Your own Duke of York would pale to walk my treasury."

I refrained from spitting, as I have formed no opinion regarding his Grace of York, and went on with his Lordship.

"Surely, my feathery Lord, do not all geese have such stored up against the years? There must be some pearl of great price that sets Gandersey apart?"

"Yea, splay-toe, it is as you say. In the heart of Gandersey is a diamond the like of an oroblanco. It is the delight of my beloved, the Lady Svetlana, who withers and fades, but once streaked across the sky like a white star."

This struck me to my heart, for the Lord was visibly saddened at the thought of his suffering Lady, and I bade him tell me what ailed her. A wasting illness, he confessed, that made her beak and feet dull their citron color to gray. 

"My fortunate Lord," I said, "today Providence has blessed you, for I have in my possession that most rare of earth-fruits, the pumpkin. Behold it there in the sledge: orange and globular. Were the Lady to sup upon the nectar of the pumpkin, sure would she be restored."

His Lordship's neck raised and he pointed his beak at my sledge, peering in. "Say you so?" he asked, "The medicaments of the short-beaked are unknown to me, but if it is as you say, the oroblanco shall be your reward."

I assured him it was so, and with a great honk of sky-rattling volume, he called out. No long time later appeared through the marsh two more geese carrying a litter between them, and on it a very sickly looking she-goose.

His Lordship went to her on her litter and they honked between each other in a rather endearing manner, before he honked at the two bearers, who marched to the sledge. I rushed over, took up a pumpkin - near to rotting and thus unsold - and with my knife opened it. The seeds spilled forth like guts and I carried it, flanked by the bearers, to the Lady's litter.

She honked weakly at me, and I repeated to her the fancy I had laid upon her husband. In fits and starts, she nibbled the orange flesh, and then appeared, after a time, to garner a taste for it, for she struggled up from her litter and buried her face in the opened gourd, spilling stringy pulp about her, stepping in it, and covering her beak in slime and muck.

His Lordship honked and leapt about flapping his mighty wings when he saw her face and feet, and honked loud and long again. Again, at no long time, another goose emerged, this one carrying a basket of woven reeds, inside of which was indeed a diamond the like of an oroblanco.

"Fair friend," his Lordship hooted, "this day you have saved my Lady and solidified my respect for your race. I reward you as a gentlegoose and patriot, and give you my leave and thanks." At this he extended his webbed foot, and I bent to kiss it. As I stood, he passed the diamond to me.  I bowed myself back to my sledge, praising heaven at her Ladyship's recovery and remarking her already-blooming health.

With a quicker tread than I had managed since my youth, I dragged the sledge home, clutching the diamond against my chest as the evening air filled with the joyous, raucous honks of an entourage of delighted geese.