‘But it seemed to him that the brethren were troubled about something, and when the meal was over, he turned to the old grey Abbot, and said, “Father, it seems to me that there is some trouble upon you all; if it is so, and there is anything that I can do to help you, I pray you tell me.”
‘ “We are indeed troubled,” the Abbot replied, “for we are in danger of losing our greatest treasure, our only treasure.”
‘ “And what is that? And how are you in danger of losing it?”
‘ “Come with me,” said the Abbot, “and I will show it to you.”
‘And he pushed back his stool, and led the way from the hall, with St George following at his sandalled heels. He led St George to a little hut that was full of golden taper-light, for it was the chapel of the Brotherhood, though ’twas built of wattle and daub, like any shepherd’s cot, and the earwigs fell out of the thatch now and then. A young monk who was on guard like a soldier in the doorway stood aside to let them in, and the Abbot pointed silently to a great sword that lay before the altar, with all the glimmering light of the candles on its blade. It was a very plain sword, no damascening on the long, straight blade, no gems enriching the hilt; it was of a strange Eastern design, and so big that only a very tall man could handle it properly, and St George’s heart went out to it, and he longed to test its balance and feel the grip in his hand. St George was a tall man.
‘ “That is your treasure?” he asked.
‘ “That is our treasure,” said the Abbot, and he took it up, handling it as though it were a living thing that he loved. “This is Meribah. With this sword St Peter strove to defend Our Lord, when they came to take Him in the Garden of Gethsemane; and now it is ours, our treasure, and has been these many years. But it seems that it may be ours only a little while longer, for our nearest neighbour – him they call the Raven, from the device on his shield – has sworn to take it from us, and we can do little to withstand him, for he is a powerful knight and we have no champion.”
‘St George looked again at the great sword, and he said: “I have no sword. If I had, I would be your champion.”
‘ “You shall have Meribah,” said the Abbot, his old face brightening with hope. “And if you win your fight, the sword shall be yours to take with you on your way. We would rather die than that Meribah should fall into the hands of such a man as the Raven, but we will give it gladly to a good knight who will keep the blade untarnished and use it to defend the Right,” and he put the sword into the young man’s eager hands.
‘That night St George slept with the sword Meribah against his breast, and the next morning he was sitting cross-legged in the guest-hut doorway, lovingly polishing the blade, when the young monk he had seen the night before in the chapel came scurrying to tell him that the Raven had been seen in the distance, riding that way.
‘Up sprang St George, slamming the blade home into his empty sheath, and went with a high heart to saddle Bayard. Bayard was pleased to see him, and whinnied softly when he came in, and slobbered velvety lips on his shoulder while he and the young monk were saddling and bridling him. But St George had no time to fondle him just then. “Presently, Brother Bayard,” he promised, “presently you shall have sweet crusts, but now there is work waiting for us both.” And he led the great horse out into the sunshine where the anxious monks were waiting, and swung into the saddle.
‘Down through the crab-apple and alder trees rode St George, with his blank shield high on his shoulder, and the sunlight glancing from helm and lance-point, and the anxious-eyed brethren in their brown habits following at Bayard’s hairy heels; down towards the marshland track, where a tall figure on a black horse was pricking to meet him. As they drew nearer to each other, St George could see the raven on the other’s shield, and he wished that his own was not blank and empty. “But maybe,” he thought, “if I win this fight, the Abbot will give me a device to wear on my shield, as well as the sword Meribah that he has promised me.” And his heart beat quick and hard, and he could feel his knightly honour very new and bright inside him, because this was his first fight.
‘St George and the Raven came together just where the track ran through a little flowery meadow, and St George reined his horse across the way and bade the other turn back.
‘ “This is no place for you, messire,” said St George. “Better go home.”
‘ “And who are you, to tell me so?” inquired the Raven, his voice smooth and ugly.
‘ “I am no one of importance,” said St George. “But I know why you have come, and I tell you again that you had best go home.”
‘ “Not without the thing I came for,” swore the Raven. “What use have these holy men for a sword? If they have any right to it, let them fight for it.”
‘ “Whatever use they have for it, it is theirs, and none of yours,” said St George, touching the hilt. “And I am ready to fight for it on their behalf.”
‘Then the Raven saw that the weapon at the young knight’s side was that same Meribah, and his eyes narrowed as he looked at it. He laughed scornfully. “Go and grow yourself spurs first, my young fightingcock! You have not even a device to carry on your shield! Give me my sword and go. I do not fight with babes such as you.”
‘ “Do you not?” said St George, gently. “But if you want Meribah, I fear that you must,” and he reined Bayard back, and levelled his lance.
‘Then the Raven saw that he would indeed have to fight, if he wanted the sword Meribah, and he wheeled his horse away into the far corner of the meadow, and turned with his lance levelled in his hand to face the young knight who had dared to come between him and the thing he wanted. There in the little flowery meadow they fought, while the group of monks huddled against the hedgerow watched them with desperate anxiety. Six times they rode at each other full tilt, and all the meadow grass was churned to mud, but as yet neither of them had gained the mastery. A seventh time they drew back, each to his own end of the meadow, and once again they wheeled their horses and thundered down upon each other. The round clods flew from the horses’ hooves, and the air was full of drumming hoof-beats, and the sun flashed back from their armour as they crouched low in their saddles, braced against the shock of the charge. They came together with a ringing crash that seemed to echo across the marshes. The Raven’s lance took St George in the left shoulder, and for a moment he swayed in the saddle, with the red blood flowing from his wound in a broad scarlet band down his white shield. Then a groan burst from the little band of watching monks, as he crashed down to the grass. But the Raven had been unhorsed too, and St George was the first to scramble to his feet; and as he did so, they saw that the blood from his wound had flowed across his shield also, and there on its whiteness was a great scarlet cross.
‘Both knights drew their swords and rushed upon each other, and for a little while the fight was fast and furious. But St George was growing weak from his wound, and the Raven, seeing this, laughed harshly and began to press him hard, and harder yet. Slowly, St George was forced to give ground, and give ground again; then the Raven swung up his sword for a mighty stroke that would end the battle; but St George gathered the last of his strength and sprang to meet it, with Meribah upraised. The two blades rang together, and the Raven’s sword flew into a score of flashing fragments.
‘Now the Raven was at St George’s mercy, and he knew it, and flinging the useless hilt from him, stood with folded arms, waiting for Meribah’s bright blade to fall again. But St George only leaned wearily on the cross of his sword, and looked at him in a considering sort of way. “You go home now,” said St George, breathing short and fast, “and don’t you go trying to take what doesn’t belong to you again, just because the person it does belong to is weaker than you are.”
‘The Raven bowed his head, and was bitterly ashamed of himself, because St George had spared his life. Then he trailed away to catch his horse, and the brethren, taking no more notice of him than if he had been a beetle, came crowding to St George, who was swaying on his feet,
for he had begun to feel as though the little meadow was spinning round him.
‘They helped him to mount Bayard and took him back to the guest-hut to have his wound tended, and there he stayed until he was well and strong once more.
‘When the time came for him to leave them, the Abbot gave him the sword Meribah to be his own, as he had promised; and St George rode on his way with the sword in his sheath, and the blood-red cross on his white shield that he carried ever afterwards.’
The question of jerkins had been quite forgotten for that evening, but next morning, when the Players were loading up the tilt-cart. Paolo undid his bundle, which they had never seen open before, and brought out from it a doublet of emerald-green velvet, very crumpled and rather threadbare, but strangely and wonderfully enriched with tarnished silver lace and knots of tinsel ribbon.
It was the kind of doublet that made you blink to look at it, and the Players blinked, as Paolo held it up at arm’s length. ‘I am not the St George, that you drop pins down my ’Oly Well,’ said Paolo. ‘But I give the doublet all the same, to Nicky, and to Hugh. It may be a little too large, but they will grow to it.’
The Players, who had all gathered round to gaze admiringly, said: ‘Oh, but you can’t possibly want to give that away,’ and ‘What would you do without it, yourself?’ But Hugh and Nicky only looked longingly at the green doublet in hopeful silence.
‘For me, it is too brave,’ said Paolo, shaking out the creases. ‘It was given to me by a grand Signor ’oo come the voyage long, long time ago. ’E was ver’ sick, that Signor; I am kind to ’im and ’e love me like a brother. When ’e is no more sick, ’e no more love me like a brother, but ’e do not take back the doublet. Now I give it to you.’
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ said Hugh and Nicky in one breath. ‘It’s very good of you.’
‘For me, the poor sailor, it is too grand; also it is a little tight; but for you, the so-great Players, it is justa the thing,’ Paolo assured them, and gave the precious doublet into their hands.
‘I shall wear it first because I’m the eldest,’ said Nicky. ‘You can have it tomorrow, Dusty.’ And then and there, while the others went back to loading the tilt-cart, he stripped off his ragged jerkin and put on the wonderful green doublet. It was not so very much too large, after all, and he swaggered across to join the others with as much of an air as Captain Raleigh himself. ‘How do I look?’ demanded Nicky, preening himself and trying to see his own back.
‘You look,’ said Jasper Nye, ‘like a moulting yaffle.’
Luckily Paolo did not know what moulting meant, or that a yaffle was a green woodpecker, and so his feelings were not ruffled; and as Nicky was quite sure that he looked simply splendid in the green doublet and Jasper was only jealous, his feelings were not ruffled either; and he set to work with a will to help Jonathan harness Saffronilla.
When all was ready, they said good-bye to Paolo, and thanked him again for his present, and wished him fair winds and good fortune, and set out.
The last they saw of the foreign sailor, he was standing in the archway of the inn-yard, under the great swing-sign of St George killing the dragon. He flung up his arms and called something after them. They didn’t know what, because it was in Italian, but it had a friendly sound. So they waved and called back. Then they went on down the street, and the houses hid him from sight, and soon they were among the orchards again, with their faces turned towards the south.
There was a little wind that day, scattering the apple-blossom from the trees, and Hugh, trudging along beside Jonathan as usual, kept his eye on that wonderful flame-green doublet going on before through the drifting petals, and thought pleasantly about it being his turn to wear it tomorrow.
‘Funny about St George and that green doublet,’ he said to Jonathan. ‘Nice, too.’
But he never guessed how very nearly his half of Paolo’s gift was going to bring disaster upon him!
11
Uncle Jacob
They reached Exeter in the full flush of May. Hawthorn whitened the hedges and the first cuckoos were calling; lady’s-smock a-dance in the meadows, and the squat grey towers of the Cathedral rising from a green froth of trees in new leaf.
Hugh’s pot of periwinkle, carefully nursed and shielded all through the winter, was gay with blue flowers again, and the people in the south Devon villages had flocked in to see the Players, so that there was supper and breakfast and warm stables to sleep in, day after day and night after night, and life was very good. It went on being good when they got to Exeter. The Mayor seemed really pleased when they asked him for a licence (Mayors were often not at all pleased, even when they gave the licence). And the Players encamped at the Black Lion, and decided to stay three days, which was the longest they ever stopped anywhere.
On the first day they enacted the Martyrdom of St Sebastian. On the second day they acted a new play which Jonathan had made from an old story about Sir Huon of Bordeaux, who accidentally killed one of Charlemagne’s knights, and got mixed up in a great many difficult and exciting adventures in consequence, and finished up by disappearing into Fairyland with the Emir of Babylon’s daughter. On the third day they performed the True and Noble History of St George, which Hugh liked the best of all their plays, because it was the first he had ever seen. Hugh played the King of Egypt’s daughter now, while Nicky was only the Populace, because Nicky’s voice was breaking, and so he was playing parts that didn’t need much talking, just then. Hugh had grown out of the yellow satin farthingale as well as his own jerkin, and Jonathan had let it down, with a band of ruby-coloured velvet round the hem, which everyone thought was an improvement.
All three plays were a great success, but St George was the greatest success of all. There were a lot of extra people in Exeter, because of a great Wool Fair that was being held, and most of them seemed to have come to see St George. The courtyard was packed with them. They bulged through the carved rails of the gallery and hung over the balustrade leading up to it, and craned their necks out of windows, shouting and yelling most joyously all the while the fight was raging between St George and the dragon, so that really it was a wonder they did not have the Watch on them, to see what all the noise was about.
When the performance was over, and the crowd had melted away, the Players began to repack the costume baskets, ready to take the road in the morning. And that was when Argos got bored and wandered out through the archway into the street. Hugh dropped the king’s mantle he had been folding and ran out too, to fetch him back before he got kicked by a passing horse or run over by a dray, because it was a very busy street, and Argos was not clever about traffic. He grabbed Argos from the middle of the crowded way and hauled him back into the inn archway; and then a string of pack-horses came by from the Wool Fair, with bells jingling on their harness and ornaments of blue and scarlet worsted on their ears and across their breasts, and he waited to watch them pass.
And just as the last one went by, he saw Uncle Jacob!
He had never for one moment thought of being afraid of meeting Uncle Jacob so far from his own farm as Exeter, nor had the rest of the Company, or they would never have taken Hugh over the Devon border. But the Wool Fair must have brought him, as it had brought so many others from their distant farms, and there he was, at the corner of the street, and at the same instant that Hugh saw him, he saw Hugh! It was Hugh’s turn to wear the wonderful green doublet, and it was the brilliance of it, glistening in the sunlight, that had caught Uncle Jacob’s eye. If it hadn’t been for that doublet, Uncle Jacob might never have seen him at all, for the corner of the street was quite a long way from the archway of the Black Lion; but it was too late to think of that now. Just for an instant everything seemed to go very still and queer, like a bad dream, and Hugh’s heart began to thump high in his throat, like the heart of a rabbit with a stoat after it, so that it made him feel sick.
Then, as Uncle Jacob began to shoulder through the crowd towards him, he whirled round, grabbed Argos by the col
lar, and made for the open door of the stable where his friends were, dragging the huge dog with him. He reached the door, shot through and slammed it behind him, and stood panting with his back to it, as the others looked up inquiringly.
‘Jonathan! It’s Uncle Jacob!’ he gasped. ‘He’s seen me – don’t let him get Argos!’
Nobody wasted an instant in being surprised and wondering what Uncle Jacob was doing in Exeter, because being rogues and vagabonds had taught them not to waste time in an emergency.
‘Did he see Argos?’ demanded Master Pennifeather, as they all sprang to their feet.
Hugh shook his head.
‘Then he can’t be sure of you. You’ve changed since he saw you last. Did he see you come in here – to this door, I mean?’
Hugh shook his head again. He couldn’t speak, because his mouth felt so dry.
‘Then he’ll have gone to the house-door first. Take off that doublet.’ Master Pennifeather began issuing orders like a general, while Benjamin tore Hugh out of the green doublet. ‘Jonathan, go and head him off for five minutes, and we’ll make him think Jasper’s got the plague; that should get rid of him. Nicky, get into that doublet; Jasper, the black jerkin out of the small basket – I want it quickly! – Dusty, it’s the hay-loft for you, my hero.’
Before Hugh quite knew what was happening, he had been punted over the edge of the half-floor of the hay-loft, and Argos had been heaved up beside him, and Jonathan had gone out, closing the stable door again.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Master Pennifeather, grinning up at him, and already shrugging himself into the black jerkin. ‘Get well back from the edge and keep Argos quiet, and your uncle shan’t get either of you. He shan’t, anyway, because if the worst comes to the