Brother Dusty-Feet (10 page)

Hugh didn’t want his stew; he was too miserable. But Nicky made him eat it
and
wipe out the bowl with his crust of bread; and when it was inside him, somehow he did feel a bit happier, and began to think that after all Argos was not likely really to come to harm. For a little while they sat on their heels before the fire, and when they were toasted crimson they plunged out once more into the darkness
and the bitter wind, and made their way back to the old stables.

After that Hugh had no more time to be worried or miserable for a while, because of rehearsing the play they were going to act next day. It was about St Nicholas, the Christmas Saint, and in the first scene Hugh was a boy who was murdered by a wicked innkeeper and cut up and put into a cask to pickle, but St Nicholas, being told by an angel what was happening rushed up to the inn and stirred up the pieces in the cask with a wooden spoon so that they came together again and the boy was as good as new. In the later scenes he had to be a girl who would not be able to get married because her father was too poor to give her a dowry, until St Nicholas, passing the door, heard her weeping and dropped a bag of gold inside, so that she could get married, after all. Jasper Nye was the old father, and Master Pennifeather was the villainous innkeeper and Jonathan was the devil in scarlet tights who suggested that he should pickle the boy; Ben Bunsell was St Nicholas, and Nicky was the angel who told him what the innkeeper was up to.

They all worked very hard to make the performance perfect, and it was quite late when Master Pennifeather said, ‘There, that’s enough for tonight, my lords and masters. Just remember to loosen
up
as you go into the cask, Dusty, and everything will be superb – completely superb!’

‘Might as well go to bed,’ yawned Benjamin. ‘Early to bed and early to rise,
I
always say.’

‘’Tisn’t early,’ sighed Jasper, looking in a weary but admiring sort of way at his legs. ‘S’late an’ s’beastly cold.’

‘That’s the wind. It’s blowing half a gale from the east, and the sky is ablaze with stars,’ said Jonathan, who had opened the half-door of the stables and was looking out and up. ‘It’s not going to be such a green Christmas, after all.’

‘Argos will be so cold,’ said Hugh, who had had time to get worried again now that the rehearsing was over.

But Jonathan said, ‘Not he! He’s got a good thick coat, Brother Dusty-Feet.’

And Ben suggested cheerfully, ‘You know, he might quite likely bring himself along here. He’s a sensible beast, and he’s been here before.’

Everybody had something cheering to say, as they piled up the bedding-straw higher yet, and kicked off their shoes. (They didn’t take off anything else, it was too cold in the tumbledown stable, where little bitter winds whistled through the window and the thin places in the thatch.) And Jonathan came and squatted down beside Hugh in his corner, and spread a warm, rather greasy-smelling cloak over him.

‘He’ll be all right, you know,’ said Jonathan.

‘But it’s so dark and cold and – and wintry – and perhaps he’s fallen down a hole or something,’ said Hugh, miserably.

Jonathan tucked the ragged cloak in under his chin, and said, ‘Surely not. It’s Christmas, and that is a very special time for animals.’

‘You mean – because of the animals in the stable?’

‘Ye-es, partly that,’ said Jonathan, settling down into the straw.

Nicky blew out the lantern, and the darkness seemed like deep blue velvet, after the smoky yellow light. ‘Jonathan Whiteleaf will now oblige with a
story,’ said his voice a moment later, rather muffled, as though he was talking with his head under the clothes.

There was a rustling and a settling down in the darkness, and then a hopeful silence. Jonathan was the story-teller of the Company, as well as the Doctor and the Playwright and the Tumbler between scenes, and the one who did most of the mending, and his stories were always worth listening to.

Even Hugh pricked up his ears, because he loved Jonathan’s stories.

Then, ‘I’ll tell you a Christmas story, my masters,’ said Jonathan’s deep, quiet voice out of the darkness. ‘I will tell you about the fourth guest who came behind the shepherds to the Bethlehem stable, that first Christmas.’

‘Wasn’t it a shepherd boy?’ put in Nicky’s voice, muffled in the straw.

‘Be quiet an’ let him get on wi’ th’ story,’ said Jasper Nye; and Nicky gave an apologetic grunt, and held his peace.

‘People said it was a shepherd boy, after they had forgotten the truth,’ said Jonathan. ‘But I
have
heard that it was Pan, the master of all furred and feathered things, who followed the Star that night.’ And he told them this story:

One autumn, when the field-mice and the tiggyhedgehog and Brock the Badger were all making places for themselves to sleep in through the winter, Pan made a warm place for himself deep under the roots of an ancient tree. He lined it with rushes and fern, and curled himself up there to sleep through the dark, cold months until spring came again: just
as though he was a harvest mouse, instead of the lord of all fur and fin and feather.

He fell asleep, and dreamed the things that the animal-kind do dream in their long winter sleep; until one night he awoke with a start. There was a tingling in his finger-tips like the tingling in the twigs of a withy when the sap rises, and something seemed to be calling him out into the world beyond his hole. At first he thought it was the spring, and he remembered the sun’s warmth and young lambs crying and hawthorn smelling of cream and honey, and the long, hot days of summer to follow after. But the earth was still cold to his touch, and there was no whisper of seeds shooting and sap rising all around him; the mouth of his hole was narrowed with banked-up snow, and the stars that looked in at him through the gap that was left were bright with frost. It was still mid-winter, and Pan turned round again and tried to sleep.

But still something called to him, called and called from the world above, and Pan turned round once more, and looked up through the mouth of his hole; and suddenly all the brightness of the stars was gathered up into one great Star that shone straight into his eyes with a piercing golden light that made him blink. Now he knew what was calling to him; it was something to do with that Star, and he knew that he must answer the call.

So he gathered his hairy goat legs under him, and took his pipes, which had lain in the curve of his arm while he slept, and scrambled up through the opening of his hole, pushing his way through the snow that had drifted round it. All the world lay quiet, sleeping under the stars; the hills looked
strange in their covering of snow, and the wind cut like a knife; but still something was calling, as joyously as spring, and still the great Star burned and pulsed, hanging low out of the sky just over the scattered lights in the valley below, which he knew were the lights of Bethlehem. ‘Whatever it is,’ said Pan to himself, ‘it must be in Bethlehem.’ And he set out, leaping along over the snow, his great round hooves leaving a track behind him as though a huge goat had passed that way, and the golden light of the Star shining on the splendid sweep of his curved horns.

But he had not gone far when he heard a pitiful bleating and turned aside to see what it might mean; and in a hollow of the hillside he found a flock of sheep all huddled close together, outside their stonewalled fold, their eyes like green lamps in the light of the Star, and the mist of their breath hanging like smoke above them.

‘What is the matter, my children?’ asked Pan.

And the old scarred bell-weather pawed the snowy ground with a small sharp hoof, and said, ‘Master, we are afraid. First there came a great light in the sky, and then a strange thing like a man with the wings of a golden eagle, and it spoke to our shepherds, and in a little while our shepherds went away, hurrying down the path to the town, without even folding us first. And now we smell wolf, and we are more afraid than ever!’

‘There is nothing to be afraid of, my children,’ said Pan; and he folded the sheep himself, and went on down the hill.

A little farther on, dark shapes loomed up suddenly all about him, and he knew that they were
wolves. Savage and milky-toothed, their eyes gleaming red as hot coals in the light of the Star, they gathered round him, and the great grey leader came and nuzzled his head against him as a dog might have done.

‘Whither away, Grey Brother?’ asked Pan, rubbing him behind the ears.

And the pack-leader said, ‘Yee-ow! Master, we smell sheep!’

‘Turn back from your hunting,’ said Pan. ‘It is Peace tonight, my brothers.’

And an old she-wolf answered him: ‘Master, if you say that it is Peace between us and the sheep-folk, then it is Peace, and we turn back from our hunting for tonight, even though our cubs are hungry.’

Pan watched them slink away into the shadows, and then he went on again, until he came out on to the valley road that led to Bethlehem. The trees were dark on either side, and the straight, white roadway ran between, with the golden Star hanging at the end of it; and Pan went on, following the Star. On the outskirts of the town he met three shepherds hurrying back towards the hills; and one was old and grey, and one was brown and of middle years, and one was young and golden.

‘I have folded your sheep, whom you left forlorn on the hillside,’ said Pan wrathfully. ‘It is a worthless shepherd who leaves his flock in the night time!’

‘We followed the Star,’ said the golden shepherd.

‘And it led us to a stable,’ said the brown shepherd.

‘Master,’ said the grey shepherd gently, ‘a Child is born tonight – a little King; and He is greater than Pan.’

And they went on towards the hills where they had left their sheep, and Pan went on following the Star.

In the narrow streets of Bethlehem the snow was churned to brown slush by the many feet that had trodden it, and Pan’s tracks were lost among the others. The sky between the roof-tops was turning green, for it was near to dawn, and soon the stars would fade; but the one great Star burned as brightly as ever, hanging low at the end of the street. And the town slept, and there was no one to see Pan go by.

On he went, up one street and down another, following the Star, until at last it hung above the stables of a tumbledown inn.

‘This is surely the place,’ said Pan. ‘This is where the thing is that called me.’ And suddenly a great awe fell on him; but he pushed open the door and went in.

Inside was yellow lantern-light and the sweet breath of the cattle wreathing upward. Mary slept on the straw, and Joseph drowsed in the shadows, for they were very tired; but the animals of the stable were wakeful and restless, gathered about their manger to look at something that lay in it. An old red ox and a little grey donkey, a brown mare with her foal tottering on long, unsteady legs beside her, a half-starved dog and a tabby cat, and a ruby-combed cockerel who had fluttered up to perch on the edge of the manger itself. Pan could not see what lay in the manger, but all the lovely feeling of spring that had called him from his sleep seemed to flow from it as light flows from a lamp.

The stable-folk knew Pan, and they parted to let
him through, and as he passed between them, he saw, lying on the golden straw before the manger, a shepherd’s crook, a ragged cloak, and a loaf of bread – gifts that the shepherds had left behind them for the little King. Then he was standing between the ox and the foal, with a hand on the head of each, and looking down with them into the manger. There was a new Baby in the manger, sound asleep; and as Pan gazed at Him, he knew that the grey shepherd had spoken truth, and this was the little King, and He was greater than Pan.

Pan squatted down on his hairy haunches, and leaned forward to gaze and gaze. All his heart went out to the little King, so that it hurt him inside, as he had never been hurt before, and yet he had never been so happy. Suddenly the Baby awoke, and lay looking up into the brown face, with the surprised, kitten-blue eyes that most very young things have. Then He smiled a small pleased smile, and made a small pleased kicking and waving with His legs and arms, and poked Pan’s cheek with a tiny, crumpled fist.

There was a sudden sharp pain in Pan’s breast and a sudden whimpering deep inside him, and he longed to weep, but he did not know why, for he was happy – so happy, that it was like the kindling of a light in a dark place. He put out one long, brown forefinger, and touched the little King very, very gently on one cheek in return. Then he got up and turned to go; but before he went, he laid his reed pipe among the gifts that the shepherds had left. ‘He has a loaf for food, and a cloak for warmth, and the tool of a trade,’ said Pan. ‘And I will leave Him the gift of
music, that is of the Spirit.’ And he passed out from the stable into the chill of the dawn.

The dog went with him as far as the door, and licked his hand with a warm, loving tongue, to comfort him, and then padded back to the manger. And Pan went out alone.

Mary found the Pan-pipes among the gifts that the shepherds had left, when she awoke, and at first people guessed who had left it there; but as time went on, people forgot Pan, or rather they forgot that he was not just a legend, and they said, ‘It must have been a shepherd boy, who left the gift of music for the little King.’

For a while nobody said anything at all, and then Nicky asked, ‘Was that what you meant just now, about Christmas being a special time for animals?’

‘Maybe,’ said Jonathan.

And Hugh asked, ‘What happened to Pan?’

‘Who knows?’ said Jonathan. ‘Perhaps the animals do, but they wouldn’t tell us if they could.’

Next morning the Players turned out in a body before it was even light, to look for Argos, leaving word with the stable-hands to hold him if he should appear while they were away. They searched the country round for hours, calling and whistling, asking everybody they met, ‘Have you seen a dog? A black-and-brown dog – very big?’ But nobody had; and at last the time came when they must give up the search for a while, and go back to the Fountain to get ready for the afternoon’s performance, because they had promised the good folk of Canterbury that they would enact the Life of St Nicholas that afternoon, and the show must go on.