worst, we’ll put him in the horse-trough, but we’ll try what the plague will do first.’
And he turned away to issue a great many orders to the rest of the Company.
Hugh crept back into the shadows, and crouched down against the farthest wall, with his arms so tight round Argos’s neck to keep him quiet, that the dog was all but throttled. There they stayed, as still as though they were shadows themselves, except that they were both shivering a little, and shadows do not shiver.
Meanwhile Jonathan was strolling across the yard towards a stout and angry man who was talking loudly to a serving-maid in the inn doorway.
‘Yiss, there’s a young boy with ’em, for sure,’ the maid was saying. ‘And a’ wears a green doublet. See’d un’ in it just now, I did.’ And then she saw Jonathan. ‘There’s one o’ the Players coming across the yard now. You’d better ask him, maister.’
The stout man swung round on Jonathan, and demanded, ‘Where be my nephew?’
‘Your nephew?’ said Jonathan, slowly. ‘Do I know your nephew?’
‘The boy – the boy in the green doublet,’ spluttered the angry farmer. ‘’Tisn’t no manner of good your telling me you ain’t got a boy in a green doublet.’
Jonathan looked at him in a puzzled fashion, and then smiled pleasantly. ‘Oh, you’ll be meaning Nicky Bodkyn,’ he said. ‘I never knew he had an uncle. Never knew he had a father or mother, for that matter. We found him sitting in the stocks at Romsey, for stealing eggs.’
The farmer looked surprised for a moment. Then he said more politely, ‘If ’tis as I suspicion, you’ve been deceived in that lad; he’s my nephew Hugh. Ran away from a good home, a’ did, ’bout a year ago, and took a valuable dog with him.’
Jonathan remembered what Hugh had told him about the good home, and he thought he should very much like to rub Uncle Jacob’s nose on the cobbles, but he went on smiling pleasantly, and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid it is not as you suspicion, master; Nicky has been with us four years or more.’
‘How do I know that?’ demanded Uncle Jacob.
Jonathan sighed and shrugged. ‘You have only my word for it, but it is perfectly true.’
But Uncle Jacob did not believe him, and he rattled his stick on the cobbles, and said, ‘Now I tell ’ee what ’tis, young man. You’m hiding something from me. I demand to see that boy of yours.’
‘All in good time,’ said Jonathan, propping himself against the hitching-post. ‘I am not your dog, that I should run to do your bidding with my tail a-wag behind me, and I’ll thank you to remember that, master.’
Then Uncle Jacob began to shout. ‘Who are you to talk like that to a respectable farmer, you ugly, long-armed, thieving vagabond.’
Jonathan flushed under his tan, and his eyes grew very bright, but he answered slowly and easily, ‘If I am a thieving vagabond, my respectable friend, look out for your wallet. As to my being ugly, I freely admit it; but how much better to be intelligent than beautiful. Do you not feel that yourself, sir? And if my arms are long, that is quite a useful thing, when the fists at the end of them are hard. Oh, but have no fear, I wouldn’t clench them against an old grey-headed man like you, because I was nicely brought up. See, I’m as gentle as a kitten . . .’ and he waggled his thumbs under Uncle Jacob’s nose in the most insulting manner.
He had to gain time somehow, and being aggravating and fantastical seemed quite a good way of doing it (and one good thing about being a Player was that you could be as fantastical as you liked, without anyone thinking it at all suspicious). But Uncle Jacob was one of those people who have only one idea at a time, and his idea just then was to have another look at the boy in the green doublet who he had glimpsed for a moment in the archway, and find out whether or not it really was Hugh. So he tried to brush past the Player; and Jonathan had to stop waggling his thumbs and think of some other way of delaying him.
‘I shouldn’t be in too great a hurry to come to close quarters with our Company, if I were you,’ he said. ‘One of our lads was taken sick after the performance, and we do not yet know what it is – but we’re afraid of the plague.’
That did make Uncle Jacob stop to think; because in those days, if people were taken ill suddenly, it quite likely might be the plague – or the sweating-sickness, which was almost as bad. Still, he was not at all sure that the Player was telling him the truth, and the boy in the green doublet had certainly been very like Hugh. So he said more politely, ‘Still, I’ll take a look inside that stable you’ve come out of – I reckon that’s where he is.’
‘Yes, all of us,’ said Jonathan. ‘Come and look, if you wish.’ (Surely they had had all the time they needed, in there!) And he turned and lounged back towards the stable door, with Uncle Jacob fretting and fuming beside him. At the door he halted again, and asked tenderly, ‘Are you sure you want to risk catching it?’
‘I don’t believe there’s anything to catch,’ said Uncle Jacob.
He did not say it very certainly, but still, Jonathan knew that if he put him off any longer, the man would begin to suspect that he was playing for time. So he raised the latch with a loud rattle, and flung the door open.
Uncle Jacob stood on the threshold and stared. Evidently the Player had spoken the truth, after all.
In the farther shadows of the big stall stood a square man with a peacock’s feather in his bonnet and a perfectly strange boy in a green doublet, both staring anxiously at a third, who lay on a pile of straw against one wall, looking very ill indeed. The man on the straw moved his head restlessly from side to side, his eyes were half closed and he breathed short and fast. A respectable-looking man in black was kneeling beside him with his back to the door.
Now, if Aunt Alison had been there she would very likely have seen through the whole plot, because she was a great deal cleverer than Uncle Jacob, as well as being a great deal nastier. But she was at home looking after the farm, and Uncle Jacob simply went on staring, and never guessed that in the hay-loft overhead, Hugh and Argos were staring too – staring down through mounds of heaped-up hay with their four eyes nearly strained out of their heads. Poor Argos was shuddering all over, with his tail between his legs, because he knew who was below; and Hugh was clutching him round the neck and trying to stop him being afraid, which was not easy because he was so desperately afraid himself.
‘You see?’ said Jonathan, in a low voice, and then turned to the respectable-looking man in black. ‘What is it, doctor?’
The doctor raised his head slowly, and got up. ‘It is the sweating-sickness,’ he said. ‘It is earlier than usual in the City this year. There are a great many cases of it about.’
‘What are we to do for him?’ asked Jonathan.
‘Keep him quiet, and keep the door open. I will send you some medicine, but—’ The doctor shook his head doubtfully, and went to pick up his hat, moving heavily as though he was tired out with overwork.
Jonathan turned to Uncle Jacob, who was still staring as though his eyes were never going to come properly back into his head again, and said, ‘If I were you, I should go away quickly, master – very quickly indeed.’
‘I will!’ said Uncle Jacob, feelingly, and backed away. ‘I’ll be going this moment. Sorry to have troubled you, I’m sure!’ And he lumbered out of the courtyard very fast indeed, with the fear of the terrible sweating-sickness showing clearly all over his broad back.
Jonathan and the doctor (who of course was Master Pennifeather) watched him go in silence, and when he was gone they shut the door very firmly.
‘That’s all right, then,’ said Master Pennifeather. ‘The only danger was that he might meet one of the inn people and tell them we had the sickness, but he hasn’t.’
Jasper got up off the straw and stretched in a languid sort of way; and Nicky sat down in his green doublet, and buried his face, which had suddenly turned scarlet, on his knees, and laughed so that his shoulders shook.
‘He deserved the fright of his life, and he’s got it,’ sa
id Benjamin happily. ‘He’ll be looking for spots on his chest for a good many nights to come.’
‘It’s all right now. You can come down, Dusty,’ said Jonathan, and held up his long arms to catch him as he scrambled down.
Argos jumped down after him, making the ‘wumph!’ sort of noise that a big dog generally makes when he jumps off something high.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Master Pennifeather, beginning to unfasten the black jerkin, ‘I congratulate you! I congratulate me! We have just given the most superb performance of our lives!’
Then his eye fell on Nicky, still spluttering and rocking, and he began to laugh too, and Ben and Jasper joined in. They laughed in the way that people only laugh a few times in all their lives, first clinging to the hay-racks and each other, then sitting on the floor with their legs stuck straight out in front of them and the tears hopping down their crimson faces; laughed at last draped across the costume baskets, snatching at their breath and crowing as though they had the whooping cough even if they hadn’t got the sweating-sickness.
Only Hugh and Jonathan did not laugh. They stood and looked at each other, while Argos whimpered and shuddered against Hugh’s legs. Jonathan was smiling in his queer winged way, but there was a grey look at the corners of his mouth.
When the others were beginning to sit up and wipe their eyes on the backs of their hands, Ben Bunsell said, ‘That was a noble lie of yours, Toby, to tell him Exeter was full of the sweating-sickness! I’d wager my boots, if they were worth the wagering, that he’ll have gone straight off to collect his horse, and he’ll not stop until he’s ten good miles on his homeward way!’
‘It is my sincere and pious hope that you are right,’ said Master Pennifeather. ‘But all the same, I think ’twould be as well if we took the road tonight, my lords, instead of waiting till the morning.’
So they did. Everything was ready packed, and in the blue spring twilight the Company made their way out of Exeter, by narrow, winding streets where the overhanging upper storeys of the houses on either side almost touched the top of the tilt as the little cart trundled by.
All the meadows were awash with dusk when they came out into open country. The first owls were hooting, and the scent of hawthorn was thick and sweet on the quiet air; and when Hugh turned to look back, the sky was fading pink above the lights that were pricking out in the old city.
Hugh and Jonathan were walking a little behind the others, as usual, and suddenly Hugh said in a small hot rush: ‘I heard what Uncle Jacob shouted at you – right through the hay-loft wall, I heard it. He – he insulted you, and it was all because of me!’
Jonathan gave his shoulder a friendly shake. ‘You’ll have had a good many worse things than that shouted at you, by the time you’ve been a Strolling Player as long as I have,’ he said. ‘Don’t be a zany, Brother Dusty-Feet. Anyhow, what does it matter, on an evening like this, with streets and houses left behind you, and the white road ahead, and the fern and the hawthorn smelling? And there’ll be a new moon presently.’
So Hugh felt better.
They found a nice place to sleep, in the corner of a spinney, with soft springing fern to lie on, and a little stream running by to sing them all through the quiet spring night and for watering Saffronilla. And Hugh lay curled up like a dormouse between Argos and Jonathan. They were all three very happy.
12
White Hart Forest
Back they went into Dorset once more, and Hugh was a little sad at first, because people who belong to the West Country always leave a bit of their heart behind them, if they go eastward. But after all, they were heading more or less towards Oxford once again, and though his old home was behind him, the dream beckoned from far ahead, as it always did when his feet were turned in that direction; and after a while he began to feel happier. And by the time they turned away from the direction of Oxford and came down into Blackmoor Vale he had got over leaving the West Country; so he went on being happy. Besides, Blackmoor Vale was lovely.
Jonathan said it used to be called White Hart Forest, because of a wonderful white hart that King Henry III had found when he was hunting in the forest there. It had been so beautiful – a snow-white hart standing at bay amongst the green leaves – that the King had called off his hounds and let it go; and the Vale had been called after it almost ever since. Very likely it was a fairy hart, Jonathan said; the Vale was one of those places where things happen that don’t happen in everyday places.
After a few days they decided to go to Sherborne. It was late July by that time, and the foxgloves and the dog-roses were almost over; but the honeysuckle still blew its golden trumpets along every hedge-top, and the lanes were deep in meadowsweet smelling like honey, and the meadows were spread with a golden carpet of buttercups in which the stately trees and sleepy cows stood knee deep. It had been a grey rainy morning as the Company took the Sherborne road, but after they had eaten their midday bread-and-cheese in the shelter of a horse-chestnut tree that let heavy cold drops through on to their heads or down their necks when they least expected it, it began to clear up, and and by evening the raindrops clinging to every leaf and petal were sparkling like diamonds, the small birds had begun to sing, and all the world was golden. The puddles in the rutted lane were golden-ruffled at the edges, and the buttercups powdering the meadows were like a fairy carpet spread for Sir Huon of Bordeaux; even the clouds that were piled up far ahead of them had golden crests, though they were grey and lavender underneath, and the great tower of the Abbey rising in the distance above the warm roofs of Sherborne was more golden than all beside.
Just outside the town the Company halted as usual, to get out the drum and sackbut, and then marched on again in triumphal style, legs straight and heads up, swaggering along to the rub-a-dub and tran-ta-ran of the drum and sackbut, as proud as a Sovereign’s escort of a peacock with three tails.
Up the winding main street they went, between tall, gabled houses with lovely oriel windows jutting out above their heads, past the great golden Abbey, where the pigeons crooned and fluttered among the pinnacles, and down another street to the Sun Inn, where they meant to stay three days.
The Sun Inn was golden too, like the Abbey, and so near to it that when you stood beside the horse-trough in the courtyard you could see the top of the tower over the inn roof. That was just as it should be, because in an odd way the inn seemed to belong to the Abbey – rather in the same way that a solid and loyal squire might belong to a tall and stately knight. It seemed to have been built out of the same stuff as the Abbey, too, and it had a gargoyle just like one of those in the abbey, above the stable arch; a nice gargoyle with a friendly, laughing face like a faun’s, which Hugh liked from the first moment he saw it, even more than the lovely long-winged angel in a niche over the house doorway.
Later that evening, after Master Pennifeather had called upon the Mayor, and they had proclaimed to the town that they were going to play the Martyrdom of St Cecilia (whose costumes had been mended long since) at four o’clock next afternoon, and had their supper in the crowded, cheerful common room of the inn, they all sat side by side along the edge of the huge stone horse-trough in the twilight, taking their ease for a little while before beginning the nightly rehearsal. Behind them in the inn there was firelight and candle-light and a babble of voices, and somebody began to sing in a loud, merry voice:
‘Would you hear a Spanish Lady,
How she wooed an Englishman?
Garments gay and rich as may be,
Decked with jewels she had on.’
But out in the courtyard it was cool and quiet, and the after-glow was the colour of evening primroses behind the blotty darkness of the gabled inn roof and the Abbey tower that seemed to stand a-tiptoe to reach up towards the first star. Suddenly a bell began to ring, high up in the lacy tower, lovely, slow, golden notes stealing out and dropping into the courtyard of the Sun Inn, so that Hugh felt that if he put up his hands he would be able to catch one – like a golden bubble.
&nb
sp; ‘That’s the curfew,’ said Master Pennifeather.
‘That’s Great Tom,’ said Jonathan; and he told Hugh how Cardinal Wolsey had given it to be the great tenor bell of Sherborne Abbey, in the days when he was the most powerful man in England, and how it took six men to ring it.
‘By Wolsey’s gift I measure time for all.
To Mirth, to Grief, to Church I serve to call.’
‘That is what is written on its side,’ said Jonathan. ‘But folks came to the Abbey a goodish long while before Wolsey’s bell called them.’
‘How long?’ asked Hugh.
Jonathan turned his face to him in the dusk, and said: ‘More than eight hundred years, Dusty. But ’twas only a little Saxon Cathedral church then; and St Aldhelm built it and was its first bishop.’
Hugh swung his heels contentedly against the side of the horse-trough, hoping for a story. ‘Tell about St Aldhelm,’ he said. ‘What did he do to be made a saint?’
‘He did a hard job of work, and did it well,’ said Jonathan. ‘It was before the Normans came, you know – long before – and in those days people didn’t get made into saints for seeing visions, as they did later, but for doing a good job of work, with perhaps a vision or two thrown in. Well, St Aldhelm was a monk. Monks didn’t stay shut away from the world within high walls then, as they were doing when King Hal broke up the Monasteries – they went out and told people about God and how to get the best out of their crops, and tried to stop them putting dung on their sore places and knocking on the head people whom they didn’t like. That was what St Aldhelm did. He was a brown man, they say, with a deep, strong singing voice, and he could sing the songs of the countryside, just as well as he could sing the offices of the Church. There wasn’t a minstrel in the South Country, they say, to equal St Aldhelm; just plain Aldhelm he was, in those days, of course – a young monk of no importance. And when he was sent out to preach to the people, he would take up his place where there were a great many people coming and going, such as a bridge or a market square, and sing the songs of the minstrel-folk until he had gathered his crowd, and perhaps for a little while afterwards, for he loved singing. He would then lay aside his harp and tell them about God.’