In a small silver clearing amid the lashing darkness of the forest, a long way from the unfriendly village, the little Company halted. A wind-ruffled stream ran through the clearing, and the Players bathed their cuts and bruises thankfully in the swift, cold water; but they did not wait to change out of the tattered St Cecilia costumes before beginning on the food which the Fine Gentleman had produced from the tilt-cart where Will Squance must have put it.
The Players had not expected any supper that night, but they had not known how hungry they were until they saw the bread-and-cheese and cold bacon. They shared it out in a great hurry, and settled down on the grass, while the Fine Gentleman sat on the edge of the cart and watched them, with his arms akimbo and his battered bonnet on the back of his head.
‘Blessings on your head, my lord!’ said Benjamin, with his mouth full.
Master Pennifeather reached for the cheese, and asked, without any of his usual high-flown air, ‘Why have you put yourself out like this, for such as we, master?’
‘Fellow feeling,’ said the Fine Gentleman, blithely. ‘I do not like constables, and I like good fighting men. Also I gathered from Will that it was empty pockets that made you put on your play this afternoon without a licence, and I am – er – somewhat empty of pocket myself. Fellow feeling, yiss!’
They looked at him. They saw the gold clasp in his bonnet and the silver lace on his cloak, and the long, slender, velvet-sheathed rapier at his hip, and they did not believe him in the least.
The Fine Gentleman seemed to know that they didn’t believe him just as though they had said so, and he laughed in a joyous, crowing way.
‘Nay, but it’s the truth I’m telling you! It comes of having expensive tastes.’ And then, suddenly becoming tremendously eager, he leaned forward on his perch, making quick wide gestures with his hands. ‘But I shall be rich one day!’ he said. ‘I shall have as much gold as the Incas of Peru! And not only I – England shall have it too. When that day comes we shall build a more glorious England, and everybody will be happy!’
They thought perhaps he was mad, but if he was, it was an exciting sort of madness.
Master Pennifeather asked, ‘And how are you going to get so much gold?’
And the Fine Gentleman said, ‘Make it, of course. Three times already I have almost discovered the Elixir, and each time I have made a slight mistake and had an explosion instead; but I know exactly what I did wrong last time, and next time I shall make no mistake at all.’
Then of course they knew that he was not mad, but only one of those people who believed that if you found the right Elixir to do it with, you could turn ordinary metals into purest gold. Lots of people believed that, in those days.
‘What shall you do with your gold when you have made it, master, besides building a new Heaven and a new Earth?’ asked Jonathan. Jonathan did not believe that anyone ever would find how to turn ordinary metals into gold, or that it would be at all a good idea if they did.
All at once the Fine Gentleman’s face went quiet in the moonlight, quiet and far-off looking; and he said, ‘I shall fit out tall ships, and sail them into the West, to win for the Queen a greater Indies than those of the King of Spain.’
Something turned right over inside Hugh, and he swallowed a piece of bacon in such a hurry that he almost choked, and begged: ‘Oh please tell us about the Indies.’
So while they finished their supper, the Fine Gentleman told them, shouting above the wind. And the spell of his words lifted them up and carried them along with him, so that the wild wind and the ache of their bruises were forgotten, and the bread-and-cheese seemed a royal banquet, and the stars crowded down through the flying cloud-wrack and the lashing boughs, to listen. He told of wide green plains, and great falls of water taller than church steeples that filled all the river-gorges with spray through which the sun made rainbows; and rich land where English settlers could make another and richer England, if they got the chance. He told, too, about the cruelties of Spain: how King Philip was trying to claim all that wonderful country for himself, and selling the natives into slavery and robbing them of all their ancient treasure, but how Englishmen would one day drive the Dons out of the Indies and take them for the Queen’s Grace, because it was black shame that Gloriana of England should not have a greater Indies than Philip of Spain. . . .
At last, when the bread-and-cheese was all finished, he broke off his spell-binding, and got up from the edge of the cart; and the glory faded and the wind swooped back. It was time for the Players to be on their way.
‘Take the lane that leads off to your left, about a mile farther on,’ said the Fine Gentleman. ‘And turn left again at the cross-tracks, and by dawn you’ll be in a village that will appreciate good acting. I know this part of the forest.’
So, standing with their bonnets in their hands, they thanked him, each and everyone, for having stood their friend, and for their supper; and Master Pennifeather asked: ‘May we know your name, sir?’
The young man bowed, doffing his own bonnet. ‘Willingly. I am Captain Raleigh – Walter Raleigh – lately returned from service in Ireland, and very much at your service,’ he said. ‘And now, good night to you, and good fortune, my friends.’
They watched him swinging away down the road village-ward, sometimes lost in the black tree-shadows, sometimes clear in silver moonshine, until he disappeared altogether.
Then they turned their faces towards the next village.
‘What a queer fellow!’ said Nicky, after they had trudged a little way in silence. ‘Nice queer – but queer, all the same!’
And Master Pennifeather shook his head, and said: ‘Aye, and what will he do if he doesn’t catch up with those dreams of his, my lords?’
‘I think that in that case, maybe he will die for them instead,’ said Jonathan, very softly, so softly that the wind blew his words quite away, and only Hugh, who was nearest to him, heard what he said.
The day came, years later, when the Players liked very much to tell people that Sir Walter Raleigh had once fought in their ranks, and afterwards rescued them from the stocks. And years and years later still, when Queen Elizabeth was dead and the new King had made a shameful friendship with Spain, and the glory was gone from England, and Sir Walter Raleigh did die for his dreams, on a scaffold in Old Palace Yard, Hugh remembered, as though it were only yesterday, that wild, moonlit night when the Fine Gentleman had drawn the hearts out of their breasts with his talk of Golden Indies. And he was very, very glad of that night, ever afterwards.
10
St George Again, and a Green Doublet
Just beyond Shaftesbury, on a grey, drizzly morning, the Players found a foreign sailor. At least, it was Argos, galloping ahead, who found him first, and he was sitting in the damp ditch all among the primroses and starwort, looking as glum as a moulting blackbird, and nursing an injured foot.
Argos stood in front of him, staring very hard, and blowing his cheeks in and out in a friendly sort of way, and wagging his tail, and the foreign sailor stared back at Argos, and went on nursing his foot. Then Saffronilla and the tilt-cart came round the corner of the lane with the Players trudging alongside, and they all saw him.
‘Yon fellow would seem to be in trouble,’ said Master Pennifeather, and he went on ahead while the rest followed more slowly. (Saffronilla did not like hurrying.) They saw Master Pennifeather speak to the man, and the man show him his foot, and as the tilt-cart drew alongside, Master Pennifeather called, ‘Hi! Jonathan, here’s a job for you.’
So Saffronilla stopped and immediately fell asleep, and Jonathan crossed the road and knelt down in the ditch to look at the foreign sailor’s hurt, while the others gathered round to watch. They had known he was a sailor from the first moment they saw him, because of the seaman’s red bonnet on his curly black head and because all his clothes had a seafaring look about them, but they had not known that he was foreign until they came close enough to see his olive-brown face and his bright black eyes that made th
em think of the Italian puppet-masters they sometimes met on the road. He had a deep cut in the sole of his foot, and Jonathan said: ‘That is an ugly gash. How did you come by it, friend?’
The sailor smiled uncertainly, and shrugged, and pointed to a sharp stone with a crimson stain on it, that lay in the wet grass nearby. ‘I ’ave wore thin the soles of the shoes,’ he said in slow, careful English. ‘The stone, it come through.’
‘Dusty,’ said Jonathan, ‘go and get me the pot of salve from the cart, and a clean rag.’
Hugh darted off at once, and began rummaging in the tilt-cart. It took him rather a long time to find the salve, and even longer to find a clean rag, especially as Argos had scrambled in beside him and was trying to help; and when he came back with them, the rest of the Company were sitting in the ditch too, and Jonathan was bathing the sailor’s foot with water fetched in Nicky’s hat (it was better than Ben’s for carrying water in) from a pond nearby that had water buttercups and green pondweed growing on it.
‘I’ve brought the salve, Jonathan,’ said Hugh, ‘and here’s a bit of rag – it’s the cleanest I could find.’ And he sat down on his heels to hold the pot for him and watch what he did with it.
Jonathan finished bathing the foreign sailor’s foot, and spread salve on it, and bandaged it up with the bit of rag. ‘That feel better?’ asked Jonathan.
‘Thanka you, yes. You are – ver’ gentle,’ said the sailor politely; and he drew his legs under him and began to get up.
‘You can’t walk on that foot,’ Jonathan told him.
‘But I ’ave to reach to Bristol,’ said the sailor in a bothered voice.
‘Our ways be together as far as Glastonbury,’ said Master Pennifeather. ‘You’d best come with us and ride in the cart.’
So they took a few things out to make room for him, and the foreign sailor came with them, riding in state in the back of the tilt-cart, with his bundle beside him, and his feet swinging just clear of the road behind. He travelled with them in that way for several days, and they grew to like each other very well; and in return for the ride he helped them with the making and mending and contriving of costumes and properties, for he was clever with his fingers, as sailors generally are. He told them that his name was Paolo, and that he was from Genoa, and that he had come to England often and often, but never seen more than the seaport towns his ship called at, until this time he had determined to see something of the country. So he had got leave from the Shipmaster, and left his ship, the Santa Lucia, at Poole, meaning to rejoin her at Bristol. He told them, too, about his voyages and adventures, and about his little farm inland from Genoa, that his wife looked after when he was away at sea, and his goats and his fig tree, and the uplands where his goats grazed, where the little wild cyclamen grew among the grass. He spoke English so well that by listening carefully the Players understood almost everything he told them. He was a merry, rather gentle sort of person at most times, with a liking for singing doleful songs about drowned sailormen which made Argos howl in sympathy, as they sat round their supper at the long day’s end. But once when a countryman jostled him rudely in a market crowd, his little bright dagger was out in a flash, and Jonathan had to catch his wrist and tell him not to be a zany and that he wasn’t in Genoa now.
It was still drizzling, grey weather when they came down into the fens around Avalon; but the orchards were in blossom, pink and white like sunset clouds, and the marsh-water that lay everywhere reflected back the blossom and the great beds of brown-tufted reeds. Among the fens and the little orchard islands Glastonbury rose like a city in the clouds; and it did not seem quite real even when the Players marched right into it and up the curving narrow streets to the great Pilgrim Inn.
There was a lovely picture of St George killing the dragon, swinging over the courtyard arch; and on the front of the inn were three painted shields: the arms of England in the middle, brilliant in blue and gold and scarlet, and St George’s blood-red cross on one side, and on the other a plain white shield with nothing on it at all.
In under the shields and the swinging sign marched the Players, as dusty as any pilgrim that ever came that way. And they stayed three days, but they did not enact the True and Noble History of St George. Glastonbury belonged to St George in a rather special sort of way, but special players always came to the Pilgrim Inn to act his story every year, and so it would have been poaching if Hugh’s Players had acted it too.
On the last evening, when they had finished rehearsing, they were all gathered together in the small private garden behind the inn, for the inn-wife, who was a sensible woman and did not think that being a Strolling Player meant that you were going to steal the best pewter or dig up the flowerbulbs, had said that they were welcome to sit in her garden, it being such a lovely evening. It really was a lovely evening; grey clouds and drizzle had cleared away at last, and the sky was primrose-yellow beyond the gnarled branches of the apple trees; and the Players and the foreign sailor sat in a row on a bench before the kitchen door, with Argos dozing at their feet. It was the last evening that Paolo would be with them, because they were turning south in the morning, and he was going on to Bristol; his foot was almost well again, and he would be able to travel on it quite well.
‘Jonathan,’ said Hugh, when they had sat talking lazily for a while, ‘could you do something to my jerkin? It’s too tight.’
It certainly was, much too tight. Hugh had been growing fast since he joined the Company, and it had been none too big for him in the first place. Now the sleeves only came half-way down his arms, and if he did up the buttons, he could not breathe properly.
‘I’ll have to put a piece in down the back,’ said Jonathan. ‘’Twill look a bit odd, I’m afraid.’
‘You’d better find a Holy Well and drop pins down it and ask St George for a new jerkin,’ Nicky told him, breaking off in his efforts to copy a blackbird who was singing most wonderfully in the tallest apple tree. ‘And while you’re about it, you might ask for one for me, too. Mine was wore out before Jasper passed it on to me, and it’s very draughty.’
‘Wasn’t wore out,’ protested Jasper, sleepily. ‘An’ anyway, th’ only Holy Well I can think of hereabouts b’longs to St Bride. She wouldn’t be int’rested in jerkins.’
Nicky, who had given up trying to imitate the blackbird, said, ‘How do you know she wouldn’t?’ simply for the sake of being aggravating.
But before they could really start arguing, Paolo put in, in his careful English, ‘There are, then, many saints that have to do with ’ere?’
‘Oh yes, Saints in Avalon are as thick as bees in a lime tree,’ said Jonathan. ‘But St George is the best of the lot.’
‘Ah, the St George,’ said Paolo. ‘That is his, the red crossa shield I see above the doorway.’
‘That’s it,’ said Ben Bunsell. ‘How did you know, you being a foreigner?’
Paolo spread his hands and smiled. ‘Of Genoa also, St George is the Patron Saint.’
Everybody gazed at him in surprise. ‘But I say, he’s ours!’ said Nicky indignantly, and Ben Bunsell said:
‘Then you’ll know as much about him as we do.’
‘Ah yes! ’E killa the Dragon,’ nodded Paolo.
‘That’s right,’ they said encouragingly.
‘And ’e come from the Cappadocia,’ said Paolo.
‘Don’t you b’lieve it,’ said Jasper. ‘Came from Coventry.’
‘Coventry? That is where, please?’
‘Somewhere up north – makes knives and buckles and things,’ explained Ben. ‘If you didn’t know that, maybe you don’t know about that other shield of his over the doorway – the empty one?’
Paolo shook his head and spread his hands and smiled. ‘You will tella me, somebody?’
‘Tell him the tale, Jonathan,’ said Master Pennifeather.
Jerkins and Holy Wells were forgotten, and everybody settled themselves expectantly. They all knew the story, and they all knew (as most people did in those days, alt
hough they have forgotten since) about St George being an Englishman; but they liked to hear Jonathan tell it.
So Jonathan told:
‘Well then, St George was the son of a nobleman of Coventry. His mother died when he was but a few hours old, and that same night, while all the castle was in an uproar and full of grief, the babe was stolen out of his cradle with its carved panels and golden bells, by an enchantress called Kalyb. Maybe it was for some spite she had against his father, or maybe she wanted a man-child to rear just for the fun of the thing; or maybe, having the Long Sight, she saw what he would be when he was grown to manhood, and thought she could train him better than his father could do – she having the ancient wisdom and the ancient magic. At all events, out of his cradle she took him, and carried him away to her own castle and set her ladies to nurse him; and when he was too old for their nursing she gave him to her household knights, to be trained in all the things that a knight should know. The years went by, and the boy grew tall and strong, and mastered one by one the many lessons that he had to learn; and at last the time came when he was old enough to carry arms. Then Kalyb gave him a white horse called Bayard, whose upraised crest and arching mane were like the crest of a breaking wave; she gave him a plain white shield, and girded an empty scabbard about his waist, and she told him: “Go out into the world and find a sword for your scabbard and a device for your shield, and I want no more of you, for you are a man now, and there is no place for you here.”
‘So St George rode out into the world, and looked about him for an adventure. But no adventure befell him until he came riding one evening by the marsh ways into Avalon. There was no Glastonbury in those days, only a little band of monks who lived in huts of wattle and daub clustered together round a wooden hall, like the cells in a bumble bee’s nest; but they gave shelter to travellers, just as the great Abbeys did later on. And the brown-clad brethren welcomed the young knight with the blank shield, when he claimed their hospitality. They stabled his great horse Bayard, and took him to the guest-hut, and bade him join them at supper in the long hall. St George was glad to come to supper, for he was very hungry, and the coarse brown bread and river-trout tasted better to him than ever the dainty fare in Kalyb’s castle had done.