The crowd was passing in through the great west door, like a procession in a fairy tale, all in their gayest doublets and farthingales of blue and rose and saffron, and carrying little tight nosegays of herbs; merchants and craftsmen and gentlemen, all with their wives and sons and daughters; prentice lads with sprigs of bay in their bonnets, and gay girls holding up their pretty kirtles to keep them clear of the mud; here and there a great lady with jewels on her fingers, and small, fat children being towed along faster than they wanted to go, and old creeping folk from the almshouses. On they went, and the Players with them, out of the winter sunshine into the dimness of the Cathedral, where the columns soared up and up, spreading into foamy curves and traceries high overhead, and the candles made a golden blur a long way off, and the stained windows glowed daffodil and azure and vermilion through the shadows.
The Players slipped into a humble place near the door, and knelt down. There were no pews or chairs in churches in those days, only a few benches for the most important people, and for the humble folk just hard stone floor.
People turned their heads to look at the six kneeling there in a row, for they knew them for the Players from the Fountain; and some people looked surprised to see them there, and some people drew aside from them as though they were afraid they might be catching, and some people looked as though they were thinking ‘Rogues and vagabonds!’ and wondering why the official dog-whipper did not come and get rid of them. But there were others who smiled at them nicely, and they were the only ones worth bothering about, after all. And one lady, in a mantle worked all over with little flowers like a summer meadow, turned out of her way and stooped down to them saying, ‘You are the Players who have lost a dog, aren’t you? I do hope you find him.’ Then she went on towards the golden candle-glow at the east end.
It was a glorious smell of rabbits that made Argos slip through the hedge while everybody was busy getting the tilt-cart unbogged. He knew that he ought to ignore it and stay where he was, but it was such a beautiful smell. It whispered and pleaded in his twitching nose, and would not be ignored, though he did try. So he gave up trying, and slipped away like a black-and-amber shadow, through the hedge and across the meadow beyond.
The smells lay thick and low along the wet grass, crossing and re-crossing each other; all kinds of most exciting smells, and Argos dashed joyously along, following his nose. He did once hear Hugh calling him, but he was thinking so hard with his nose that he did not really notice what went into his ears. All the evening he hunted, following first one smell and then another, until the rising wind thinned them out and blew them away, and he remembered suddenly that he was being wicked.
The best thing, he thought, would be to find Hugh and the others as quickly as possible, and be very patient. So he set off towards the road where he had left them.
Then it happened! One moment he was loping along very comfortably through the thick undergrowth of a little wood, and the next, something shifted in the dead fern, there was a clash and a jangle, and two rows of rusty iron teeth were fixed in his fore-paw, bringing him down with a crash. He let out a shrill yelp of pain, but it was all so sudden that just for a moment he was more surprised than frightened. Then he found that he was held fast. He dragged at the cruel trap until the hot agony ran right up to his shoulder, but he could not get free. He began to gnaw and worry at the iron jaws, until he had broken a tooth and his mouth was bleeding almost as much as his wounded paw; but the thing remained as firm as ever. He never thought of barking for help; dogs in traps very seldom do; he just lay and bit and bit at the rusty iron, while the pain in his paw grew steadily worse.
All night he lay there, shivering in the bitter wind, and sometimes whimpering a little for Hugh to come and take him out of the dreadful thing that would not let go his paw. But the long night wore away, and nobody came; it was not very likely that anybody would, for that trap had been set way back in the autumn by a man who had afterwards forgotten about it.
Morning came, grey and bitter and windy; and once Argos thought he heard Hugh calling, a long way off, up-wind, and he sprang up, not caring for the pain of his trapped paw, and barked and barked, quivering with joyful hope. But the wind blew his barking away, and the calling voice did not come any more; and Argos lay down and despaired, and then tore frantically at the trap, and then despaired again.
Night came once more, and the wind dropped to a frosty quiet, and the stars looked down through the twigs and the frost-rhymed brambles; the still cold crept into Argos so that the only bit of him that was not chilled through and through was his wounded paw, and that seemed to be on fire. The stars grew pale, and it was another morning – the morning of Christmas Eve. But Argos did not know that; he did not know anything very clearly any more. There was a queer cold drowsiness in him, and he had given up biting at his trapped paw. He was not even thinking about Hugh now; he just lay still, his beautiful eyes filmed with pain and hopelessness.
And then he heard the piping!
Not a tune, just single notes and little pauses, and sudden falls like running water; very faint at first, but drawing nearer through the trees. The cold drowsiness left Argos, and he pricked up his ears. He remembered that piping. It meant warm sun and running on soft turf, and things to eat, and Hugh’s hands rubbing behind his ears, and the smell of the south wind. Nearer it came, lilting through the woodland ways, and Argos waited, quivering as he lay, for now help was surely coming. Then the piping stopped, and there was only the silence of the woods left; no one coming, after all. He could not believe it; he wagged his tail in little, fluttering, apologetic wags. ‘This is me! Me in a trap! You can’t be going to pass me by!’ And then, as the empty moments dragged on, he suddenly flung up his head and gave one long, despairing howl.
The piping did not come again, but light footsteps rustled through the dead fern, the bushes parted, and a slight figure in green and grey and russet rags stepped out from the shadows. Argos looked up with frantic pleading whines into the brown face with strange green eyes – green as spring itself – that bent over him.
‘These men and their traps!’ said the Piper, in a voice that was angry and sorry at the same time; and then, to Argos, ‘Bide still, little brother,’ and Argos did as the Piper told him, and stopped whining, for he knew that there was nothing now to be afraid of
The Piper’s hands were busy with the trap, doing strange and complicated things to it; and a moment later there was a jangling snap, and the iron jaws opened – and Argos was free!
He crouched shivering against the Piper’s knees, rubbing his bleeding muzzle into the kind hands, while the Piper talked to him softly, calling him by name, for he remembered him, too, and gave him crusts of bread out of the rags at his breast, and examined his wounded paw.
‘I shall not bind it up,’ said the Piper. ‘Lick it yourself, brother; it will heal better so.’ Argos ate the crusts and looked up hopefully for more, but there weren’t any. ‘Nay, brother, I am no rich traveller to carry a banquet with me!’ said the Piper, and he held Argos’s damaged head between his hands and looked deep into his eyes. ‘What am I to do with you? Where are your friends, small brother – the brown boy and the rest? Why have they left you in a trap?’
Argos wagged his tail and whimpered, explaining how wicked he had been, going off rabbiting so that his friends had not known where to look for him, but that he knew where to find them, and now, thank you very much, he must go and join them. He licked the Piper’s hands for thank you and good-bye, begging him to understand that he could not stay just now; and the Piper understood, and sighed. ‘Go then, brother, go to the brown boy.’ And Argos went.
He went straight back across country, limping along on three legs, to the place where the tilt-cart had been stuck in a rut when he first smelled rabbits. Of course it was not there now, and after he had run round in questing circles two or three times, and sat down to think about it, he realized that his friends had gone on. He remembered which way they had been travelling,
and when he came to think of it, he seemed to remember the road too. He had been this way before, and there had been a juicy ham-bone at the end of it, and a kind petticoat person who had given it to him. So he set off down the road towards Canterbury, as fast as he could go on three paws, which was not very fast, because as well as the pain in his wounded paw he felt queer and swimmy, and his legs did not seem to quite belong to him. On and on he went, feeling very queer indeed, but with his heart high within him, because he was going to find Hugh, until he saw houses ahead of him and came to the dark tunnel of the City gates. Here and there people turned to look at him as he passed – a huge black-and-tawny dog with his coat matted and his muzzle all cut and torn, limping by on three legs. A red-faced man said, ‘Get away, you mangy brute!’ and aimed a kick at him, because he was the sort of person who likes to hurt anything that is hurt already; and a nice little bunchy pink girl said, ‘Oh, your poor face!’ and tried to fling her arms round his neck. But Argos avoided the man’s kick and the little girl’s hug, and went limping on his way, until he came to the archway of the inn where he had stopped before. He was so weak that he could hardly crawl along, but when he saw the archway his tail went up tod his head went up, and he pattered in through it quite jauntily, because he had got to the right place, and any moment now there would be friends all round him, and Hugh to love him and make his paw well again; and he would never hunt rabbits any more. He pattered across the courtyard, looking round for his friends, but they were not there, and though there was something there that looked like the stage, it was all hung round with evergreens, so that it smelled quite different from the stage he knew, and he could not be sure of it. He ran whining to the half-door of the stable where they had all slept last time and sniffed along the crack, but the smell inside was the smell of a strange horse, not his own dear Saffronilla. And the black certainty dawned upon Argos that they were not there! He had come all that way to look for them, and been so sure that they would be there, waiting to take him back and love him; but they had gone on and left him behind, and he was alone, quite alone, in the black, howling world!
If he had only gone through the archway into the inner yard, he would have found the tilt-cart in its corner, and Saffronilla’s smell under the stable door; but he did not, and his poor heart almost broke. He never heard the stable-men calling to him, and when one of them tried to grab him, he dodged past and bolted out with a howl into the street again.
The street seemed a dreadful place, and he did not know where to go or what to do. He ran in and out among the crowds, sniffing and whining and looking for Hugh, lost and forlorn and very afraid. Then he came to another archway, and saw that a great many people were passing in through it, more and more people, until it seemed that all Canterbury must be going that way. Argos stood watching until the crowd thinned out and then, just as the very last of the people went by, he had an idea!
People trooping in through an archway like that always meant that Hugh and the others were acting a play somewhere near! Therefore he had only to go with the crowd and he would find Hugh! So he joined the tail of the procession, and went with it, in through the archway and across the open place beyond, to the door of a huge grey building that was not like any inn he had seen before.
Far off towards the golden candles, the organ began to play; but still people were trooping in, and the great Cathedral got more and more full, and still the people came. Then, when almost everybody who was coming had come, and the service was just that very moment starting, there was a rustling and a whispering among the folk nearest the door; and people turned round, and people pointed. The Players looked round too, and it was Argos!
Argos standing on the threshold of the great west door, with drooping ears and tail, and one paw held up, looking about him in a humble, frightened sort of way.
He saw Hugh at the same moment as Hugh saw him; and he gave a little joyous whimper, and Hugh gave a little husky cry; and next instant they were together in the open nave, Hugh with his arms round Argos’s neck, and Argos rubbing his head against his master’s breast.
‘Oh, Argos, your paw!’ whispered Hugh, but Argos didn’t care about his paw because he had found Hugh again, and nothing else mattered in all the world.
Now, dogs were not really allowed in church in those days any more than they are now, and there were official dogwhippers to keep them out. But somehow everybody seemed to remember that it was Christmas, and they looked kindly at the great dog who had come, all lost and forlorn, to the Cathedral door on Christmas Eve; and even the dog-whippers pretended not to see him. So Hugh took him back to the rest of the Company, and after Jonathan had had a quick look at his paw, they sat down side by side; and Argos heaved a long, fluttering, exhausted sigh, and went to sleep, propped up against his master. Presently the others stood up to sing, and Argos roused a little, and kissed Hugh’s chin with a warm, loving tongue; but neither of them got up, they just went on sitting bunched against each other and feeling so happy that it made them feel good as well.
They sat like that right through the Christmas Eve service, until it was over, and everyone was trooping out into the Close again; and the Players went with them, with Argos limping in their midst. It was drawing on to sunset, and all the world was flushing pink in the lovely sunset light, and the air smelled of frost and woodsmoke and Christmas Magic. The people streamed away across the frosty grass of the Close, gay and laughing as they made for their own homes and their own merry-makings, and the little company of Players turned aside under the bare trees to look properly at Argos’s paw.
‘He’s been in a trap,’ said Jonathan, examining the place, while Argos snuffled and whimpered and licked his hand.
Everybody crowded round to look, in a sympathetic way, and Ben Bunsell said, ‘Then why on earth didn’t we find him? We’ve been over every inch of the land hereabouts, I’ll swear.’
‘Easy enough to miss him,’ said Master Pennifeather. ‘We’re not natives of these parts, to know every pocket of the woodlands.’
‘I wonder how he got away,’ said Nicky.
And Jasper said, ‘Wonder how a’knew where t’look f’rus?’
Jonathan got up from seeing to Argos’s paw, and said, ‘Somebody let him out – and he followed the people coming to church.’
‘Jonathan, oughtn’t we to tie his paw up?’ suggested Hugh.
But Jonathan shook his head. ‘No. We’ll bathe it when we get back, but ’twill be better left open for him to lick at himself. What he mostly needs is something to eat.’
‘Then let us repair to that hostelry from whence we started out,’ said Master Pennifeather in his most high-flown manner, ‘there to regale our returned prodigal on the fat of rams.’
So they said, ‘Come along, old man,’ encouragingly to Argos, and set off for the Fountain, feeling as though all Canterbury belonged to them. The streets seemed gayer and more crowded than ever, and the smell of frost and woodsmoke and Christmas Magic grew stronger as the sunlight faded; the windows of the houses were beginning to glow yellow as marigolds, and here and there the sound of music lilted out from behind them.
When they got back to the inn there was a great deal of exclaiming and rejoicing, and the stable-men explained how it was that they had not been able to grab Argos when he arrived not five minutes after the Players had left for the Cathedral. The kind, fat maidservant came bustling out in her cherry-coloured linsey-woolsey petticoat, with a huge bowl of the loveliest bits and pieces for Argos; and when he was as full as ever he could be without bursting his skin, Jonathan brought warm water and bathed his paw. Argos didn’t want his paw bathed, he simply wanted to go to sleep; so he cried a lot, although Jonathan was not really hurting him, for Jonathan was one of those people who can do painful things without hurting nearly as much as most people do. He cried to show everybody how sore his paw was, so that they should know how very brave he was being in not crying even more, and because it was nice to cry with Hugh to cuddle his head and say comforting
things to him.
The moment Jonathan had done with his paw, he simply rolled over and went to sleep, and the Players left him where he was, and hurried across to the little dark harness-room behind the stage, to change for the performance. It was quite dusk by that time, and their dressing-room looked warm and welcoming in the light of one candle stuck in a bottle. Hugh was playing the Angel Gabriel, and after he had dived head-foremost into his saffron-coloured tunic, Jonathan helped him on with his wings. Whoever wore those wings had to have help with them because they fastened just between the shoulders where one could not reach the buckle upwards or downwards. They were lovely wings, made of real feathers, rather battered if you looked at them closely, but from a little distance they were superb – long and curved and powerful, blending from white at the little, short, fluffy shoulder-feathers, to deepest flaming orange – the colour you see when you look into the heart of a crown-imperial – at the long tipmost pinions. He had just got properly fastened into them, and Jasper and Benjamin and Master Pennifeather had just got into the flowing burnouses of the three shepherds and were making up their faces; Jonathan was putting on the brown robes of Joseph, and Nicky was making himself look like an old woman (for the beginning of the play was about a shepherd’s wife who put a sheep into a cradle and pretended that it was a baby), and the noise of the crowd gathering in the inn-yard was getting very loud and cheerful, when there came a pattering of paws and a whimpering just outside, and the door was pushed open a little, and Argos’s nose came through the crack.
‘Look! there’s Argos!’ said Hugh. ‘He wants to take his part.’
‘The noble animal shall have his desire,’ said Master Pennifeather.
And Jonathan said, ‘Good man, Argos!’