Brother Dusty-Feet (3 page)

‘My Good Man’s laid up with the rheumatics,’ said the old woman, as she gave everything a final pat, ‘and I never can manage Posy by meself; and well she knows it, the li’l madam! Now do ’ee keep her quiet till I come back; I won’t be but a li’l while,’ and she toddled off into the cottage.

Hugh went on stroking Posy’s nose, and Argos sat bolt upright, with one eye on the periwinkle to see that it did not run away, and the other on Hugh because he loved him.

The old woman was gone much longer than a little while, but she came back at last, in a faded scarlet cloak, with a large straw hat tied on over her coif.
In one hand she carried a thick wedge of dough cake with a lump of cream cheese on it, and in the other a very nice bacon bone. She gave the dough cake to Hugh, and she was just going to give the bone to Argos when Hugh said, ‘If you please, mistress, I’ll take it for now, and we’ll both have dinner a little later on.’

So she gave it to him, and then hoisted herself on to Posy’s back behind the panniers, while he went on holding Posy’s head for her (with the hand that was not full of dough cake and bacon bone). She was a very little old woman, but by the time she was settled, with her cloak tucked in round her, there was nothing of Posy to be seen but four round hooves and two long ears and a velvet muzzle.

Hugh gave Posy a final pat on her nose, and stepped back. ‘Thank you very much for the food, mistress,’ he said.

But instead of riding off, the old woman sat looking down at him from under her big straw hat. ‘Where are you going, my dearie,’ she asked, ‘you and the big dog and the pot of periwinkle?’

‘We’re going to Oxford,’ said Hugh. He had not meant to tell anyone until he was many miles farther from Aunt Alison, but somehow he was sure that he could trust the little old woman. ‘Do you know the way?’

She shook her head. ‘Not I, my dear.’ Then she rummaged under her cloak and brought out something very small and bright. ‘Here be a three-farthing bit to help you on your way. Silver’s lucky on a journey; iss surely,’ and she dropped it into Hugh’s hand.

‘Oh!’ said Hugh, ‘Oh,
thank
you, mistress! It’s – it’s very kind of you.’

‘Bless your heart; may your journey be happy,’ said the old woman.

She nodded and smiled and shook the reins, and after a time Posy decided she might as well move. Hugh turned to watch them – the little donkey, and the little old woman in the scarlet cloak, and the big panniers on either side – until they turned the corner of the road. Then he put the three-farthing bit carefully into the pocket inside the breast of his doublet, and stowed the dough cake down his front, and picking up the periwinkle, started out again, carrying the bacon bone in his free hand. Argos, who had been watching that bone hopefully since it first came out of the cottage (though he would never have dreamed of touching it before Hugh said he might), walked on the side of Hugh that the bone was, so as to keep it under his eye.

They walked on for a long time, by spinneys and meadows and open moorland, carefully avoiding villages, until the time came when Hugh knew he could not go any farther until he had rested for a while, and he was so hungry that he felt rather ill. Then quite suddenly the road came out from the shadows of a little wood, and there was a small hump-backed bridge and a streamlet and a wide, green valley beyond. The stream had alder-fringed banks that looked very comfortable for sitting on, and the water that flashed and flickered over its bed of speckled stones looked as though it would be wonderfully cool and comforting to hot, way-weary feet. So Hugh turned aside from the road, and, following the stream a little way, sat down and took the dough
cake and cheese from inside his doublet. If Argos had all the bone, Hugh thought, it was quite fair that
he
should have all the cheese. So he put the bone in front of Argos and the cheese in front of himself, and divided the dough cake carefully into two halves, putting Argos’s share with the bone.

‘There,’ he said, ‘you can have it now.’

It did not take long to eat their dinner, and when they had finished they picked out the crumbs from among the grass-blades, because they were still hungry. But Hugh kept one little bit of dough cake from his share, and threw it away into the long grass, and Argos did not go after it, because he understood that it was the Good Piece – the last scrap of every meal that must be left for the Fairy Folk. Old Hepzibah, who had kept house for Hugh and his father, had always put aside the Good Piece, and she had taught Hugh to do the same.

After that they had a long drink, and Hugh took off his shoes and hose and washed his hot tired feet in the clear cold water of the stream, and looked at Argos’s paws to see that they were not getting sore. Then he made sure his precious three-farthing bit was safe, and lay down flat on his back.

It was lovely to lie staring up through the young green of the alder leaves to the blue beyond, and waggle one’s wet toes in the sunshine. The turf was soft to lie on, and the stream sang by, and the freckled leaf-shadows fluttered over his face; from the woods across the valley the year’s first cuckoo called softly, and when presently Hugh rolled over on to his elbow he saw that the meadow was all aflitter with lady’s smock. It must have been like that before he lay down, but he had been too tired and hungry
to notice. Then he saw a V-shaped ripple travelling up-stream, which he thought must be an otter, and he lay for a long time watching for it to come again, but it didn’t, and at last he began to think it was time they took to the road once more. He would have liked to go on lying on the sun-dappled bank and waggling his toes all day, but he was a long way from Oxford, and he could not be more than twenty miles from Aunt Alison; and so he sat up and began slowly to put on his shoes and stockings. His feet seemed to have grown a good deal too big for his heavy shoes, but he got them on at last, and stood up.

‘Argos,’ he said, ‘we must be getting on, old lad.’

Argos, who was sleeping peacefully with the remains of his bone between his paws, opened one eye, and then shut it again, pretending he had not heard.

‘We must go just a little farther before dark,’ Hugh explained. ‘Truly we must.’

So Argos got up, stretched first his front legs and then his back ones, and picking up the remains of the bone, looked about him in a bothered sort of way. Then he buried it very carefully among the roots of an alder tree, while Hugh waited; and they set out again, trudging wearily down the road.

But their legs were very tired, and dough cake and cheese and bacon bone is not really a very sustaining meal when you are walking all the way to Oxford; and after they had crawled on a few more hot and dusty miles, they found a nice dry ditch and simply tumbled into it and lay down. They were so weary that not even their hunger could keep them awake, and long before the daylight faded they were
sound asleep, cuddled together for warmth and company, Hugh with his arms round Argos’s neck, and Argos with his head on Hugh’s chest, and the periwinkle carefully lodged in the crook of a tree-root farther up the bank. The dimpsey came and then the dark, and the stars peered down at them through the hazel scrub and white-flowered lady’s lace; the little creatures of the wild came and looked at them, and decided that they meant no harm, and went away again. And Argos dreamed that he was chasing dream-rabbits, and Hugh dreamed that he was walking to Oxford under the sky-wide arch of the brightest rainbow he had ever seen.

They slept late next morning, and Hugh woke to find the sun poking golden fingers down at him through the lady’s lace and hazel leaves and wild marjoram. For a little while he did not remember how he came to be there, but just lay blinking sleepily up at the brightness and thinking how pretty the nut-leaves looked with a rim of greenery golden light round each one. Then suddenly he remembered about Aunt Alison having meant to have Argos knocked on the head, and how he and Argos and the periwinkle had all run away together and were walking to Oxford. And he sat up with such a jerk that the big dog, who was still bunched up on top of him, rolled over with a crash and woke up in a floundering sort of way. For a moment it was all arms and legs and paws and waving tail, and then Hugh and Argos disentangled themselves, and sat up in the ditch and looked at each other.

‘We’ve overslept,’ said Hugh.

‘Yee-ow!’ said Argos, leaping out of the ditch and stretching first his front legs and then his back ones,
and yawning so wide that Hugh could see right down his pink throat.

Hugh made sure his three-farthing bit was safe, and collecting the pot of periwinkle, scrambled out too. Just at first he was so stiff all over and his feet hurt so much that he could hardly crawl along, but after a while the stiffness and soreness wore off a little. He was very hungry, too, but that did not wear off; it grew worse and worse as he trudged on down the road, until it became a dull gnawing pain in his inside. Still, he must be more than twenty miles from Aunt Alison, and Argos was safe, and at the next village they came to he meant to walk boldly in and find the parsonage and ask the way to Oxford. So when they came to a wayside pool he stopped to wash his face so that he should look tidy and respectable for the parson.

It was a very still, dark pool, rimmed round with brown-tufted rushes and water forget-me-nots, and when Hugh knelt down and bent over it, his own face looked up at him just as clearly as from a mirror; a thin, brown, dirty face, with a large curly mouth; not at all respectable. He washed it very hard to see if that would improve it, and then he washed his hands and had a drink (Argos had already had one), and brushed himself down as well as he could. Then he smoothed Argos’s beautiful brindled coat so that he should look his best too, and gave the periwinkle a palm-full of water. It already looked its best, and perfectly tidy and respectable; periwinkles always do. After that they went on again.

But before they came to a village they came to an inn. A rather tumble-down hedge-tavern, with a clump of crazy outbuildings beside it, and a great
bush of greenery on the end of a pole sticking out above the door for a sign. And lounging at their ease before it, with a large, black leather ale-jack between them, were a little company of men.

The moment Hugh saw those men, he began to walk slower, and slower still; and when he came opposite to them he turned into a field-gate and stood there, pretending to do something to his shoe, and stealing shy glances at them every few moments; and then he gave up pretending altogether, and simply stood and stared at the little company before the inn. He knew that it was rude to stare, but somehow he
could
not turn his back on them and go on down the empty road. It was like being cold, and suddenly coming to a bright fire: you don’t want to go on again and leave all the warmth and light behind you.

There were five of the men, and they were ragged and travel-stained and mostly rather dirty, but every one of them had little gallant touches about his tatterdemalion clothes. They had brighter eyes and clearer voices than any Hugh had known before; and altogether there was something about them that seemed to Hugh very joyous, as though they had more starshine in them than most people have.

One of them, a tall, dark, swashbuckling sort of person who seemed to be the leader, had an early rose stuck behind his ear. One was a square, merry-looking man with sparkling rings in his ears and a limp peacock’s feather in his bonnet. Another, who had a melancholy expression and seemed very proud of his legs, had scarlet stockings, and rosettes (what people called ‘provincial roses’) of tarnished tinsel ribbon on his dusty shoes; and the fourth, who
seemed only a few years older than Hugh, had gold cords looped round the crown of his battered beaver hat. But the fifth man was the most splendid of them all, and instead of rings in his ears or rosettes to his shoes, he had a little bright Spanish dagger in his belt. He was lean and brown, and lithe as a wild cat, with very long arms, and his curly dark head set deep between his shoulders. His face was long too, and thin, and rather sad despite its curling laughter lines. Somehow he made Hugh think of Rahere, the King’s Jester, whom his father had told him about: Rahere who had founded Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital in London and been the one person in England who was brave enough to tell Henry I when he ought to be ashamed of himself.

For a while the five went on talking among themselves and passing the ale-jack from hand to hand, without noticing Hugh at all; and then, chancing to swing round, the man with the rose behind his ear saw him.

‘Hi! my young cockalorum! Will you know us again if you meet us?’ called the man, grinning. ‘Best pull those eyes of yours back into your head before they pop clean out!’

The others laughed, but the Fifth Man touched his shoulder and said something in a low voice, and then called to Hugh, ‘Brother Dusty-Feet, come over here and join us.’

Hugh said no word. He took a firmer hold on the pot of periwinkle, which was growing very heavy, and crossed the road with Argos padding at his heels, and stood looking up at the man hopefully, while they stood and looked down at him – and at Argos – and at the periwinkle.

‘Well,’ said the leader, in a rich and friendly voice, ‘have you never seen actors before, that you stand in gateways and stare, with your eyes growing more like gooseberries every moment, and your mouth gaping wide enough to catch a cuckoo in it?’

‘No, sir,’ said Hugh.

So that was what they were: Strolling Players! – People who wandered up and down the country acting their plays in inn-yards and at the foot of market crosses. He had heard of such people, of course, but never seen them; and now he realized what a lot he had missed in not knowing them before; and he thought how splendid it would be if they were going his way and would let him travel with them.

‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘where are you going, please?’

‘Anywhere – everywhere,’ said the leader, with a superb flourish of his right arm. ‘We come and go like the wind. We follow the road to the Foot of the Rainbow – but so far we have not found any gold.’

When the leader spoke about the Foot of the Rainbow, Hugh knew that he simply
must
go with them, somehow, anyhow. They were the Fortune he had been so sure would meet him on the Oxford road, and he wanted to go with them more than anything in the world. ‘Please let me come with you,’ he begged in a desperate rush. ‘Oh,
please
!’ and waited for their answer, gazing up at the Fifth Man, while Argos wagged his tail beseechingly.