Brother Dusty-Feet (2 page)

You see, until Henry VII was King of England, very few people except the clergy had any learning at all, and what books there were, were mostly in Latin, and people were not supposed to think much for themselves, in case thinking made them stop
believing in the Saints and being good. But in some countries, people were already beginning to make new discoveries, and learn what they wanted to learn, and think for themselves about the things they learned and discovered. All this was called the New Learning, and little by little it started to spread into England, and the English people began to study all sorts of exciting subjects, and to think long thoughts for themselves. Books began to be printed in English so that everyone could read them, and other people began to learn Greek so that they could read some of the most wonderful books in the world, in the language in which they were written. It was all a kind of great adventure, like a voyage of discovery.

Hugh’s father had told him all about that; and he had told him, too, about the towers and spires of Oxford rising from a golden haze on fine summer mornings, with Magdalen Tower rising above them all, so beautiful that it was like an archangel standing with folded wings to guard the way into the City; and how the first time he ever saw Magdalen Tower there was a rainbow touching its pinnacles. He had told Hugh about that so many times that whenever he thought about Oxford – which was very often indeed – he saw Magdalen Tower standing a-tiptoe to join hands with the rainbow.

So he would walk towards Oxford, and perhaps good fortune would meet him on the road, and if it did not, surely when he got there he would find someone who wanted a boy to tend their garden or help them keep their shop; and perhaps as time went on he would be able to get a little learning too. It would not be the same as going to Oriel, as his father had done, but it would be much better than nothing;
and anyway, he and Argos would be together, and Argos would be safe from Aunt Alison.

Presently, as he sat waiting, he heard the farm people come home from the Fair, and the men clattering away to their sleeping quarters above the stables, and Aunt Alison scolding somebody. Then Jenny the farm maid came upstairs to the little garret next to his, and soon after that Aunt Alison came up to bed too. Hugh sat quite still on his stool, shivering a little, but not with cold, for it was not at all a cold night, listening to Jenny moving about on the other side of his wall and Aunt Alison thumping to bed in a bad temper in the room below. Soon everything was quiet again, but still he waited. He must give them all time to be sound asleep before he risked creeping downstairs. The night seemed more silent than ever; even the fox had stopped barking; only the owls cried in the darkness. Then there began to be another sound that came and went, and came and went: a kind of drone with a whistle at the end of it. Aunt Alison was asleep and snoring.

Hugh took off his shoes and got up very quietly, collected the pot of periwinkle, and stole across to the door. The hinges were rusty and squeaked as the door moved, so that he had to open it very slowly, inch by inch, until it was wide enough for him to squeeze through, and when he let it go the latch fell with a little ill-natured clatter that seemed loud enough to wake even the farm hands over the stables. He waited for a moment, holding his breath, but it could not have been as loud as all that, because there was no sound from the next-door garret, and down below Aunt Alison went on snoring. So he slipped out into the main loft. He did not dare to
close the door behind him, lest it should make another noise, but luckily there was no wind to make it slam, and so he left it as it was.

He had to make two journeys down the ladder, because in those days shoes had no laces, and so you could not hang them round your neck, and you cannot climb down a ladder with both hands full – at least, not if you have to be quiet. So he took his shoes down first, and then went back for the pot of periwinkle, and brought that down too. He crept past Aunt Alison’s door with the back of his neck prickling, and on down the stairs. The stair-well was pitchy dark, and he was terrified all the way down that he would stumble and drop his shoes, or miscount and tread on the fourth stair from the bottom, which always creaked loudly if trodden on. Once Aunt Alison stopped snoring, and he froze like a little wild thing when it scents danger, waiting for the bedroom door to fly open and Aunt Alison to appear at the stairhead with a rushlight in her hand and her eyes glittering and her head tied up in the huge white coif she always wore at night. But the door did not open, and the snoring began again, and after a moment Hugh crept on once more, down and down until he arrived safely in the kitchen.

The fire had been banked for the night, and the shutters were closed, so the kitchen was as black-dark as the stairs had been, but Hugh found his way to the door without falling over anything, and lifted the heavy bar which Aunt Alison had put in place because Uncle Jacob was not coming back until tomorrow, and slipped out, closing the door very gently after him. He was free!

But he had forgotten about the two sheep-dogs,
who were always loose at night, and the next moment they came baying and snarling round the corner of the house as though they meant to alarm the whole parish and tear him to pieces! Hugh’s inside gave a sickening lurch, and he wanted desperately to run, but that would be no good, because they would give chase and make more noise than ever. So he stood his ground and spoke to them quietly, holding out his hands for them to smell as they came up. ‘It’s only me, Ship; it’s me, Lusty, only me.’ And the moment they heard his voice they stopped barking, and sniffed at his fists in a friendly way, wagging their tails. ‘Go to bed!’ whispered Hugh; and they padded off obediently into the darkness. But their barking had roused Aunt Alison, and the next instant her window rattled open, and Hugh knew that she was leaning out to find what the noise had been about. He crouched in the thick shadow against the house wall, not daring to breathe, and with his heart thudding away right up in his throat, so loud that he was sure she must hear it. But after what seemed a long while, she said, ‘Confound those dogs!’ and shut the window with a cross little slam.

With a sob of relief, Hugh took a firmer hold on his shoes and the periwinkle pot and darted out from the wall into the shadow of the cow-byre. Past the barn he went, and reached the black opening of the cart-shed; and then came the next danger, for if Argos barked to greet him it would set the other dogs off again, and they would be caught, Argos would be knocked on the head, and there would be no going away together and being happy.

‘Argos!’ he whispered, ‘Argos, it’s me – be quiet! Quiet, boy!’ and next instant, before Argos had time
to make a sound, Hugh was sitting on his heels with his arms round the big dog’s neck, while Argos whimpered softly and kissed his master’s face from ear to ear with his warm, loving tongue. ‘We’re going away,’ he told him, untying the wagon-rope in a frantic hurry. ‘We’re going to Oxford – just us two, and Aunt Alison won’t be able to beat you any more.’ He threw aside the wagon-rope, and got up. ‘We’re going now – come on! Quiet! – Quietly, boy!’

Argos gave a little joyful whine and a little joyful bounce, and Hugh picked up his belongings and they went out together; out from the sleeping farm-yard and across the home-meadow towards a gate that opened into the deep-rutted lane.

The grass was cold and dew-wet under Hugh’s feet and Argos’s paws, and the night was full of little wandering scents of hawthorn and wet bracken. Behind them the farm slept, and the village in the coomb slept too, and only Hugh and Argos and the stars seemed awake in all the world. It was rather a lonely feeling. Then they came to the gate, and Hugh climbed over, because that seemed easier than opening it, and Argos crawled underneath; and they sat down in the ditch together while Hugh put on his shoes. Then Hugh found he had been quite mistaken about the world being asleep; it was as wide awake as ever it could be! Out in the open meadow he had not noticed it, but here in the ditch he could not help noticing; there were little rustlings through the grass, and little scutterings among last year’s leaves, and a swish of wings along the hedgerow, and countless busy sounds of countless comings and goings, where the small folk of the wild were busy about
their own affairs. It was nice to feel that the world was awake, after all.

When Hugh had put on his shoes he climbed out of the ditch and set off down the lane, he and Argos and the pot of periwinkle.

So the three adventurers set out on their way to Oxford, walking through the night, with their hearts very high within them – Hugh because he was going to seek his fortune, Argos because he was following Hugh, and the periwinkle because a periwinkle’s heart is always high; you only have to look at its joyous little blue flowers to know that.

It was growing light as Hugh, with the periwinkle under one arm and Argos padding at his heels, came down into Bideford town and across the Long Bridge. It was market day, and presently the town would be full of farm-carts and farmers with their wives, and sheep and pigs and cattle; but now it was very quiet, and the only things that moved were the river flowing towards the estuary, and a few gulls among the topsail spars of the shipping in the Pool. The sky was streaked with flaming cloud-bars of gold and saffron that grew brighter every moment, and Hugh, looking up to them, knew that he must hurry – hurry – hurry, because any minute now his aunt would discover he had gone, and be looking for him.

You would think, from the way she talked, that Aunt Alison would be only too pleased to be rid of both Argos
and
Hugh; but Hugh had a very uncomfortable feeling that he did a lot of work that she would have to pay someone else to do, if he was not there; and besides, she would not like it to be known that he had run away, because of What People Would Say. Aunt Alison cared a great deal about What People Said. And that being so, he must hurry! He crossed the bridge and climbed the steep hill beyond, and finding a road at the top that seemed to lead more or less in the right direction, set out along it.

He had no idea of the way to Oxford, and he
would not dare to ask anyone until he was much farther from Aunt Alison; but he did know that it was somewhere to the east, and he thought if he kept on walking eastward he could not go very far wrong. And after he had walked a long way, perhaps tomorrow, he would stop at a village and go to the parsonage house and ask his road of the parson, because a parson was sure to know the way to Oxford, even if he had only been to Cambridge himself.

The sun was up now, and it felt warm and friendly on Hugh’s face as he walked, and there was a little wind smelling of rabbits for Argos to sniff at. The white, dusty road beckoned them on and on, and the hedges were thick with hawthorn; the larks sang so high overhead that Hugh could not see them, however hard he stared up into the blue, and all along the hedgerows chaffinch and wren and robin were attending to their families, The cows woke up in the fields, and presently a few people began to pass on their way to market, and said ‘Fine morning, my dear,’ to Hugh, because West-country folk never pass you without speaking; but none of them knew him, and afterwards none of them particularly remembered having passed a boy and a big dog and a pot of periwinkle, which was just as well. A long-legged cart-horse foal with bright eyes and feathery tail came galloping across one meadow to stick its head through the gate and pass the time of day with Argos; and Argos was thrilled, because he quite understood that it was a baby, although it was bigger than he was. So he kissed the foal, and the foal kissed him, and it was quite a long time before Hugh
could get him away. But he managed it at last, and they went on down the dusty road.

Hugh’s legs were beginning to grow tired, and he was dreadfully hungry, but he was happier than he had been for three long years, and he was sure that he would get to Oxford somehow, and that when he got there everything would be all right, because everything always is all right at the Foot of the Rainbow.

Of course it would have been easier if he had had some money, even a very little money. Still, he would be sure to find people on the way who would let him chop wood or carry water or weed their gardens or mind their babies in exchange for a meal for him and Argos. Quite soon hay-harvest would begin, too, when farmers were always glad of help, and perhaps he would find a farmer who would take him on for a week or two, and pay him a silver shilling. You could do a lot with a shilling, when Queen Elizabeth held court in Whitehall Palace.

Hugh was just thinking this when he turned a corner and came upon a cottage with a tethered cow and a few scratching hens, and at the side, the gayest flower-patch imaginable, where already the York-and-Lancaster roses were budding. And before the door of the cottage stood a small grey donkey wearing a pair of great plaited rush panniers, and a little old woman with a face as red as Aunt Alison’s, but in a much nicer way. She was surrounded by neatly plucked poultry, green cheeses and baskets of eggs and bunches of gay cottage flowers, which she was trying to pack into the panniers, while the small donkey
would
not stand still, but sidled about and flapped its ears in the most annoying fashion.

Hugh came to a halt when he saw this, and said, ‘May I help you, mistress?’ (And really he would have stopped even if he had known that the old woman would not give him anything to eat; but he did rather hope that she would.)

The little old woman looked him up and down, with her head on one side like a robin, and then she said, ‘You’m hungry, I reckon?’

‘Yes, mistress.’

‘Well, if you’ll hold on to Posy before her puts her gurt foot amongst the eggs, and keep her quiet while I packs the panniers for market and puts on my cloak, I’ll give you what I can.’

So Hugh put down the periwinkle and told Argos to guard it, and went and hung on to Posy’s head. Posy was a nice donkey, really, and when Hugh stroked her nose she stopped sidling about, and stood still, twiddling her long ears in a pleased sort of way; and quite soon the panniers were firmly packed, with the fowls and cheeses underneath and the eggs and flower-bunches on top.