Brother Dusty-Feet (9 page)

And next instant Jonathan was afoot and standing at Hugh’s side. ‘I stand friend for the New Brother. I speak for him.’

‘Who else?’ cried the Tom-o’-Bedlam, peering about him through his wild hair. ‘In all Brotherhoods, in all orders of Knighthood, it is decreed that there must be two to speak for the New Brother.’

For a long moment – and it seemed a very long moment to Hugh – nobody answered, because the rest of the Players were too busy grinning their heads off and nudging each other and waiting to see what would happen next. Then the Quack Doctor said ‘Me!’ and lumbered to his feet, with his hat sliding farther than ever over one ear, and came to stand at Hugh’s other side. ‘Lad’s a good lad, and did me
a good turn. Hum! Yes! I will speak for him,’ said the Quack Doctor, patting Hugh on the shoulder.

Hugh glanced up at him gratefully, wishing he had never even
thought
about the Quack Doctor being dishonest, because Jonathan had been right, and he was a staunch friend, even if his Elixir of Life was only powdered chalk – stauncher than those grinning zanies round the fire, who thought it all so very funny.

‘So,’ said the Tom-o’-Bedlam, ‘that is well.’ He leaned down suddenly to stare into Hugh’s face, his mad dark eyes blazing in the firelight. ‘Have you kept your Vigil?’ he demanded. ‘Have you kept it alone, with none but the stars and the Ancient Ones for company?’

Hugh was so afraid that his mouth went quite dry, but he stood his ground boldly, staring back into the eyes of the Tom-o’-Bedlam; and then he felt Jonathan poke him gently – like being poked by the nearest person when they were playing and it was his turn to speak next and he had missed his cue. So he said, ‘Yes, sir,’ rather breathlessly.

‘That also is well,’ said the Tom-o’-Bedlam; and swinging round on Jonathan, he demanded: ‘Where is his knightly sword? Where are his golden spurs?’

‘His golden spurs were lost in a bog on the way from Ireland,’ said Jonathan instantly. ‘And the swordsmith has cut his hand and cannot finish the blade until tomorrow.’

The Tom-o’-Bedlam seemed to be thinking this over, and stood for a little while with his burning gaze fixed on Jonathan’s face; then he shook back his wild hair and said, ‘We must do without, then.
Give me the knife that you wear in your girdle, friend.’

So Jonathan took the little bright dagger from his belt, and gave it to him; and the Tom-o’-Bedlam stooped and cut a small sod from the turf beside the fire. Everybody had stopped grinning and nudging each other, and they watched him in silence as he turned back to Hugh.

‘Hold out your hands, New Brother,’ he demanded. ‘Both of them – where are your manners?
Both
, I say!’

And when Hugh hurriedly held out both hands, he put the turf into them. ‘Now swear fealty to the Brotherhood. Swear by the white dust of the road, and the red fire at the long day’s end, and by the thing that always lies over the brow of the next hill.’

The bit of turf felt crumbly and damp in Hugh’s hands, and faintly warm from the fire; and still rather breathlessly, he swore fealty.

‘So,’ said the Tom-o’-Bedlam. ‘That is your Seisin. Seisin of the Road; Seisin of the Brotherhood.’

He drew himself up to his full splendid height, and stood looking down at the gathering round the fire. Then he dropped the dagger on the trampled turf, where it stuck point down, quivering and gleaming in the light of the flames.

And before it had stopped quivering, he turned away, flinging up his arms to the night sky with a strange wild gesture that made his ragged sleeves seem like wings; and as though he had suddenly lost interest in the whole thing, wandered off into the darkness.

As he went, they heard him singing again:

Nobody moved or spoke until the strange song had merged away into the night-time sounds of the fairground. Then Argos sighed and closed his eyes, while the hair on the back of his neck sank down again, and everybody looked at everybody else, and Hugh asked, ‘What
is
seisin?’

‘When you give or sell a piece of land to anybody,’ said Jonathan, picking up his dagger, ‘you give them a little bit of the turf from it – give it into their hands, I mean – to seal the bargain. That is seisin. It sort of
lets you in
, you see.’

Hugh looked at the bit of turf in his hands. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘What do I do with it?’

‘Put it back where it came from,’ said Jonathan. ‘It’s only while it’s being given that it matters. You don’t have to keep it afterwards.’

So Hugh put it back, fitting it carefully into the little hole, and patting it down afterwards. Then he asked: ‘Is it always like that, when people come to be one of the Dusty-Feet?’

‘No,’ said Jonathan, ‘I’m afraid not.’

And Master Pennifeather gave a shout of laughter, so that all the solemness and the splendour flew away. ‘Ye saints and sinners, no! That was just Tom-o’-Bedlam up to his crazy tricks. Do you think we should have left you to be spoken for by Zackary here if it had been real?’

But it
had
been real in a queer kind of way, Hugh
thought, and Jonathan and the Quack Doctor had known it.

‘Anyhow, you’re one of us with a vengeance, now, my hero! Now that you’ve been given Seisin of the Road,’ said the juggler, looking up at Hugh with little wise eyes as bright as the Morris-bells on his hood.

All summer the sun had shone in the blue sky, but after Stourbridge Fair the weather broke, and it rained and rained all the autumn long. The roads turned from white dust to brown mud, and the tilt-cart sprang another leak in its tilt, which Jonathan patched with brown canvas, and got one or other of its scarlet wheels caught in a rut more often every day, and had to be got out by the whole Company, because Saffronilla could not manage it by herself. The roads were much emptier now, for nobody travelled in the winter unless they had to, but stayed warm and dry in their own homes; and so they passed no more gallants on horseback, nor ladies on mules or in coaches; and only the Dusty-Feet, who had no homes to stay in, were abroad in the wild weather.

They wandered south to St Albans, where they acted the Life and Martyrdom of St Alban, on the steps of the Eleanor Cross; and south again, between dripping hedges where the hips and haws shone like gay little lanterns through the driving rain.

‘The Home Counties are best for the winter,’ said Master Pennifeather. ‘Sheltered country and plenty of towns and villages, and not too far between them.’

So they crossed the Thames again, and headed for Guildford Town. They acted their plays at Sevenoaks and Tonbridge and Tenterden, and little friendly Kentish villages between; and at last they joined the
road which is still called the Pilgrim Way, and followed it to Canterbury.

Hugh liked Canterbury, and he liked the Fountain Inn more than any of the inns at which they had stopped before. It was a rambling place, as manyroomed as a honey-comb, with lovely carved and painted garlands of vines and roses above little dark doorways. It had a painted sign swinging above the courtyard arch, to show that it was the Fountain; and a winter jessamine which the inn-keeper’s wife had grown in her private garden had flung a lovely arch of yellow stars over the wall into the courtyard, like another fountain, all of gold.

Hugh was sorry when the time came to take the road again, but Jonathan said, ‘We’ll be coming back soon. We generally play in Canterbury at Christmas Time.’

And they did.

Three days before Christmas they were once more plodding along the Pilgrim’s Way. The rain had stopped, but everything was very slushy and very green; and the people to whom they wished a Merry Christmas, in passing, all said, ‘We’re going to have a green Christmas, seemingly, not like the Christmasses when
I
was young.’ Ben Bunsell picked a chilly primrose from the ditch, and stuck it in his bonnet beside the draggled peacock’s feather. There was a small blustery wind that came and went when you least expected it, and little blurs of winter sunshine scudded about the meadows and orchards, and altogether it was rather a nice day, though certainly not very Christmassy. But the road was soft and squelchy, and when they were just within sight of Canterbury,
the tilt-cart got one of its scarlet wheels bogged again.

Everybody was so used to the tilt-cart getting bogged, that they went at once to their appointed stations, and put their shoulders to the back of the cart or hung on to Saffronilla’s head to help her pull, making encouraging noises; and after a great deal of heaving and hauling, the wheel came out of the rut, and the gallant little cart was free once more.

‘Phew!’ they said, and mopped their foreheads; and then they noticed that Argos had disappeared.

‘He was here a moment ago,’ said Hugh, who had been one of the pushers-from-behind. ‘He must have gone after a rabbit,’ and he called, ‘Argos, hi! Argos!’ but no Argos came.

‘Hop on to the hedge and look around; he can’t be far off,’ said Master Pennifeather.

So Hugh scrambled on to the low bank, and looked round, whistling hopefully. ‘I can’t see him,’ he called down to the others. ‘You go on without me, and I’ll come when I’ve found him.’

Nicky said, ‘I don’t mind staying to help you look for him. The others can make their entrance without us.’

And Master Pennifeather said, ‘So be it. You know how to find the Fountain. Give that hound of yours a good belting with my humble compliments, when you do get him, Dusty. He’s over-fond of this game.’

So Saffronilla and the tilt-cart and the rest of the Company went on down the Pilgrim’s Way, while Hugh and Nicky scrambled through the hedge into the meadow beyond.

‘There’s a spinney over there; looks the sort of place he’d make for,’ said Nicky.

So they set off for the spinney.

Hugh was not really worried at first, because Argos was rather bad about rabbits, and it was not the first time they had had to scour the country for him. But as it got later and later, and they found no sign of Argos, he got very worried indeed. They searched the spinney, and the country on both sides of the road; they worked their way along hedges and round hayricks and through meadows and orchards, calling and whistling as they went, and stopping to listen before pushing on again; but they heard no answering bark. Whenever they met a farm hand tramping home across the fields, they asked him, ‘Have you seen a dog, a black-and-brown dog, very big?’ But nobody had.

At last they stopped and looked at each other in the cold December twilight that was growing deeper every moment.

‘Look here, Dusty,’ said Nicky; ‘it’s no good going on now; we don’t know the country and we’ll never find him in the dark. The best thing we can do is to make for Canterbury; we’ll have trouble getting through the gates if we leave it much later – and we’ll come out again first thing in the morning.’

‘You go,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ll stay and have another look in the spinney. I must find him, Nicky. I must!’

‘Well, you won’t do it in the dark,’ said Nicky, taking a firm hold on Hugh’s shoulder. ‘Besides, if I go back without you I shall be in trouble, and I’m not going to do that for anybody. You’re coming with me now.’

And after arguing miserably for a bit, Hugh went
with him. It was quite dark by the time they found the road, and the wind was rising; and Hugh’s inside felt as cold and cheerless as the night, as he trudged along beside Nicky through the thick mud. They got through the City gates without much trouble, and made their way along the narrow streets towards the Cathedral. The wind was blowing the clouds away and there were stars round the head of the Bell Harry Tower; but Hugh did not notice the stars, nor the Bell Harry pinnacles: he was too weary and worried and miserable, and the lighted windows that glowed so warmly under the steep black eaves of the houses only made him think all the more of the windy darkness back there in open country, where Argos was lost and alone.

When they turned into the courtyard of the Fountain, a stable-boy told them that the rest of the Company were in the stables; not in the fine new stables where they had slept last time, because those were full up with horses belonging to the fine folks, but in the old stables through the archway yonder. So Hugh and Nicky went through the archway, past their tilt-cart in a corner, to the old stables, which were low-ceiled and tumbledown, but very warm and welcoming after the wind and darkness outside. Saffronilla was in one corner, and Jonathan was walking round on his hands in another, practising his tumbling, as he did at some time every day, no matter how tired he might be, nor how many other things he had to do; and the other three players were rehearsing by the light of a stable lantern. But the moment the boys appeared in the doorway, everybody broke off and looked at them anxiously.

‘You’ve not got him?’ said Master Pennifeather.

Hugh shook his head without a word.

‘And we’ve hunted the whole countryside,’ said Nicky, collapsing on to a costume basket and thrusting out his weary legs in front of him.

Jonathan, who had come right way up again the moment they appeared, took one look at Hugh, and said very matter-of-fact, ‘We’ll all turn out and look for him in the morning. If we divide the country up between us, we’re bound to find him.’

Jasper Nye started to say something about not being so sure, because they did not know the country well, but the others glared him into silence, and Master Pennifeather told the boys, ‘Now you go and get your supper and a warm before the fire, and then come back here; we must rehearse the pickling scene before we go go bed.’

So Hugh and Nicky went off across the dark stable-yard to the inn, where a cosy-looking old serving-maid in a gown of cherry-coloured linsey-woolsey gave them each a bowl of stew and a place in the chimney corner. ‘Aye! ye poor babes. Been out looking for the dog, have ye?’ she said. ‘I mind him from the last time he was here – a big fine dog. He’ll be all right I reckon. Now sup up your stew; ’twill put some heart into ye.’ And she bustled away to attend to other guests.