Brother Dusty-Feet (12 page)

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!’

So Argos did take his part in the Shepherds’ Play, after all and was the most tremendous success!

It was quite dark before the time came for the play to start; and the lanterns hanging along the galleries to light people to their places glowed and sparkled on the jostling crowd, and caught the arching sprays of the inn-wife’s winter jessamine so that it shone like a fountain of golden stars. There was even more laughing and shouting and pushing than usual, because of it being Christmas Eve. Master Pennifeather gave Hugh the long golden trumpet that was always blown to announce the start of the
performance – because the Angel Gabriel was obviously the most suitable person to blow the trumpet for a Christmas play – and Hugh climbed up the ladder on to the stage, with a great feeling of importance and responsibility in his chest, for he had never been trusted with the trumpet at an actual performance before, although of course he had been taught how to blow it. The people stopped their shouting and pushing when they saw the Angel Gabriel, and he raised the long golden trumpet, flashing in the lantern-light, and blew the most glorious and tremendous fanfare – the kind of fanfare that nobody could blow unless they were very happy indeed – with only one accidental squeak from beginning to end. The lanterns in the galleries were covered with cloaks, so that the courtyard grew dark, except for the stage with its green branches, which glowed in the light of four stable lanterns, like an island of warm gold in a dark sea.

Hugh turned and climbed down from the stage; and the Shepherds’ Play began.

It was the best performance that had ever been in Canterbury. Everybody said so: the Players
and
the people who had watched them. But the people who crowded the courtyard of the Fountain that night remembered two things, afterwards, better than all besides. They remembered the Angel Gabriel standing alone on the empty lantern-lit stage, rather small, but so joyous that he looked as though he might spread his flame-tipped wings and soar straight up into the starry sky at any moment. And they remembered that when the shepherds came to see the little King, in the second part of the play, they brought their sheep-dog with them; a beautiful, proud, black-and-amber
dog, who had a hurt paw and limped across the stage on three legs and poked his muzzle into the manger, wagging his tail as though what he found there pleased him most tremendously. Only, when the shepherds went away again, he would not go with them, but curled himself up against the Angel Gabriel’s legs and went to sleep. And there he stayed right through the coming of the Three Kings, and all the rest of the play, not even waking up when the Devil in scarlet tights came to fetch the wicked King Herod at the very end.

Towards the winter’s end the Company strolled down through the Kentish orchards and into the marsh country along the coast: Saffronilla clip-clopping along the marshland roads with the jaunty little tilt-cart lurching at her hairy heels and spilling things out behind; the Players trudging alongside, and Argos, whose paw had mended beautifully, generally trotting close under Saffronilla’s nose so that they could talk to each other comfortably, which was nice for both of them.

There were not so many villages along the coast as there had been among the cherry orchards, but the people in the few villages there were, were friendly and seemed to like their plays, and they stayed in those parts until they got down to their last shilling. Then they decided to make for Rye.

One quiet grey noon the Players sat on the short coarse turf just beyond Burmarsh, in company with a shepherd and his sheep. They had turned off the road to pass the time of day with him and ask him the best way to Rye, where they meant to enact the Martyrdom of St Sebastian next day at the Mermaid Tavern. The shepherd looked as though he had stepped straight out of the Bible – shepherds very often do – with a long grey beard, and a hawk nose, and the skin round his wise old eyes puckered into a thousand fine wrinkles from screwing them up to watch his sheep in all weathers. He had been counting
the flock when the Players came up, and they had waited, keeping a wary eye on Argos and the shepherd’s dog, who were walking round and round each other, while he finished.

He used strange old words for his counting; words that sounded rather like a magic charm. ‘Onetherum, twotherum, cockerum, quitherum, shitherum, shatherum, wineberry, wagtail, den,’ counted the shepherd, and turned down a finger of his right hand before he began again: ‘Onetherum, twotherum . . .’ By the time he had come to the last sheep and used up all his fingers, Argos and the sheep-dog had decided to be friends.

Then Master Pennifeather had asked him the best way to Rye, and he had told them, and somehow they had got into conversation, and the Players had brought out their bread-and-cheese and the shepherd had brought out his; and now they were all sitting on the turf, eating in a companionable sort of way, while Saffronilla, who was used to being left to herself, cropped contentedly at the grass beside the narrow marsh road.

It was a little knoll they were sitting on, the kind of knoll you find sometimes in marsh-country, that has a tump of stunted thorn trees on it, so twisted by the wind that they looked like enchanted old men who stretch long, rheumaticky fingers inland all the year round, and wear white beards of blossom in the spring. All round them the marsh reached out and away, in soft blurred greens and greys, with the silver of many creeks and estuaries threading through it; so much silver that it looked as though the whole marsh was sodden and might slip beneath the water at any moment. Away to the left
was the great wall that kept out the sea, and the tiny bleak village of Dymchurch nestling under it as sheep huddle under a hedge for warmth when the wind blows over. There were no sounds but the lonely soughing of the wind, and the crying, calling wild-fowl, and now and then the shrill bleating of little new lambs among the flock, or the clink-clonk of the bell round the old wether’s neck.

The shepherd was talking about the marsh in the tone of voice that people keep for the things they love most, and eating his bread-and-cheese and watching his sheep the while. ‘Aye, the marsh looks ordinary enough now,’ he was saying (though nobody had said it did), ‘but when the mists roll up, ’tis another matter. Very quiet, they come, and very quick. Sometimes they comes smoking and wreathing up from the ground at your feet, seemingly, and sometimes they flows in from the saltings, like the ghost of the sea that used to cover all these parts. Many’s the time I’ve stood on the high ground beyond Appledore in the clear night, and seen the mist flow up across the marsh, silver in the moonlight, with liddle waves in it, and liddle eddies, like as if the sea’d come back to claim Romney Marsh for its own again. The marsh isn’t like other places in this world, not when the mist rises.’