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.
8
The Mist Rises
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.’
‘You’re a poet, friend,’ said Jonathan.
The shepherd shook his head, and took a huge bite out of his bread-and-cheese. ‘Not me,’ he said, when he had swallowed it. ‘I couldn’t make up a rhyme, not if you was to give me a golden rose-noble for it.’
And Nicky asked with his mouth full, ‘I say, was all this really under the sea once?’
‘Aye, but that was before my time; hundreds and hundreds of years before any time. The Romans came and pushed back the water from the marsh, so I’ve heard tell. They built the great wall, and they dyked it a bit, and they called it the Gift of the Sea. Ah, but the sea didn’t give it willingly, and that’s why it comes back, the ghost of a sea flowing up to the Weald where its old coastline used to be. And ’twould come back good and proper if we Marshmen once let it breach the wall – come flowing in, it would, spreading across our farms; and you’d hear the bells of the little marsh churches ringing under the water, not ringing to service no more, but just as the tide swung them, and none but the herring shoals to answer the call. That’s the first lesson we ever learn, we of the marsh: “Serve God, Honour the Queen, but first maintain the wall.” Only ’twas “King” when I learned it, for ’twas Harry the Seven in them days.’
They talked on for a bit, until all the bread-and-cheese was gone, and it was time for the Players to be going too. ‘Well, we’ll be on our way now,’ they said, stretching a
nd getting their legs under them.
But the old shepherd had begun to sniff the air like a dog scenting rabbits. ‘I’d not go on to Rye today, not if I was you,’ he said. ‘There’s a mist coming up. Better stop in Dymchurch.’
‘We’ve already played in Dymchurch,’ said Master Pennifeather. ‘We’ve played in every village hereabouts, and we’re down to our last shilling. Therefore we must depart for an – er – more richly gilded neighbourhood, without delay; and we’ll just have to take our chance of your mist, friend.’
‘’Tisn’t much gold you’ll find at the bottom of a dyke!’ said the shepherd, shaking his head. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’
‘We won’t,’ they promised.
And Ben Bunsell said, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers, I always say. And I suppose if we stick to the track we can’t go far wrong, even in a mist.’
‘I’d not be too sure of that,’ said the shepherd. ‘The marsh isn’t like other places, not when the mist rises.’
Something in his voice made them feel a little prickly down their backs, but they certainly couldn’t be choosers, with only enough money for one more meal before they put on their play in Rye; and if there really was going to be a mist, the sooner they were on their way the better. So they said goodbye to the shepherd, and set off.
At first the marsh lay clear all round them: long tongues of water reflecting back the sky, and the spires of the little marsh churches poking up from among the huddled roofs of villages here and there, and the marsh sheep grazing beside the sandy track, all very peaceful and friendly. Then quite suddenly there began to be a cold smell in the air, and a faint whiteness wreathing along the ground. The mist was coming up! It rose higher, flowing in from the saltings, with little waves in it, and little eddies, like a silent white sea; and before the Players had gone another quarter of a mile it was all about them, cold-smelling as the sea itself, blotting out the marsh in drifting swathes, so that they could see no more than a few yards of sandy track, and the coarse grass of the verge.
‘Well, it’s come all right,’ said Master Pennifeather. ‘Phew! what a witch’s brew!’
‘Good thing we’ve got a clear track,’ said Benjamin. ‘ “Fork left at the ruined barn,” he said. And we can scarcely miss that, however thick the mist is.’
So they pushed on, quite comfortably, into the drifting whiteness.
‘You know,’ said Jonathan after a while, ‘I think we’ve mislaid this barn.’
‘I bin thinkin’ that this past mile or more,’ sighed Jasper Nye. ‘Man said three miles, and we must’ve walked twice that.’
‘You can’t judge distance in a fog,’ Master Pennifeather told him. ‘Besides, people can never tell you the real distance to anywhere in their own countryside; haven’t you learned that yet?’
So they trudged on again, until presently Master Pennifeather called back over his shoulder: ‘Quite right, Johnnie, we have mislaid this barn. We shall have to cast back a bit, lads.’
It was rather difficult getting Saffronilla and the tilt-cart turned round on the narrow track, but they managed it at last, and set off back the way they had come. At least, they thought at first that it was the way they had come, but after a bit they began to have their doubts, especially when they came to a water-splash all across the track, which had not been there before. As they seemed to be on the wrong road, and were certainly travelling north when they wanted to go south, they turned off down the first track they came to that looked as though it might lead them in the right direction; but presently it began to run gently uphill, and Master Pennifeather, who was leading the way, said: ‘It looks to me as if we’re going too far towards the Weald.’
Jonathan and Hugh were just behind him, and Jonathan suggested, ‘That might be a good thing. We’d get clear of this mist, on the higher ground, and we could skirt the marsh and come down on Rye from the landward side.’
Everybody thought that was a good idea, so they pushed on again, rather wearily by now. Sometimes the mist lifted a little, and showed them a patch of sodden grass or a twisted gorse-bush, but always it came down again as thick as ever. Then the track dipped again, and got very pebbly, and suddenly through the drifting mist-wreaths they caught the glint of water, and Jonathan and Master Pennifeather were just in time to stop Saffronilla, who was half asleep as usual, from plunging straight into it. They were on the edge of a tidal pool!
‘This is ridiculous!’ said Master Pennifeather, when they had got Saffronilla safely back on to the track which forked just there, with the pool in the fork of it. ‘We were heading for the Weald.’
‘An’ we’ve got to the sea,’ Jasper pointed out helpfully.
They all stood and looked at each other, rather blankly, through the mist that seemed thicker than ever. That was when they noticed the silence; a queer, cold silence; no sea-birds crying, no bleating of young lambs, no wind soughing through the short grass of the saltings, nothing but the water making tiny stealthy sucking sounds among the reeds. It was not a nice silence, and the longer they stood still, the worse it got.
‘Look here,’ said Jonathan at last. ‘A track can’t go on for ever without getting to a village, and at least this left-hand branch seems to turn inland; let’s follow it and see what happens.’
‘S’my belief these marsh roads don’t get anywhere, not when the mist rises,’ said Jasper. ‘I don’t like it.’
Nobody else liked it either, but it was no good just standing there on the edge of that lonely pool, so they took the left-hand track and trudged on again. It was bitterly cold, and soon the February twilight began to turn the mist from white to grey, and it was hard not to wander from the path. Once they met a half-wild sheep, who stared at them as though they were the first humans ever to pass that way, before she tossed her head and flung away into the mist; and once a curlew rose crying from the bents almost at their feet; but otherwise they might have been the only creatures alive on Romney Marsh. It was a very desolate feeling. Presently the drifting mist-wreaths seemed to take on queer shapes, and the Players found that they kept on wanting to glance over their shoulders, just to make sure that there was nothing behind them. Argos kept on pricking his ears too, as though he heard things; but they could not hear anything but their own footsteps; those, and the silence. . . .
Hugh kept very close to Jonathan, very close indeed. ‘I expect we’ll find a village quite soon, don’t you, Jonathan?’ he said carelessly.
And Jonathan said, ‘Sure to, Dusty.’
For a long time (at least it seemed a long time) they struggled on; but they did not find a village. And then, when they were getting really desperate, the mist suddenly thinned out into a kind of tunnel, and there at the end of it they saw the low black huddle of a house and outbuildings, rising straight out of the marsh with no garden or hedge of any sort between it and the loneliness. Just for an instant they saw it, by the last light of day and the glimmer of the rising moon, and then the mist rolled back and blotted it out. But they thought they had caught the flicker of a firelit window.
The Players halted and looked at each other as well as they could; they all knew queer stories about people who got lost in lonely places at night, and then found a house – a strange, dark house, maybe, with firelight in its windows, and perhaps the sounds of dancing lilting out through them – which was not there at all, in the daytime. ‘The marsh isn’t like other places, not when the mist rises.’ But they were past caring about old stories.
‘Let’s risk it,’ said Jonathan. ‘I’ll go and knock, if you’ll wait here for me.’
And Master Pennifeather said: ‘As leader of this band, I shall – er – take the lead in this affair. Never shall it be said that Tobias Pennifeather should have been called Tobias Whitefeather! Besides, if two of us go, we can fish each other out of the dykes on the way.’
So it was arranged, and they set off; only it was four of them, because Hugh was not going to be parted from Jonathan, and Argos was not going to be parted fro
m Hugh. They plunged away into the mist in the direction in which they had seen the dark house, keeping a sharp look-out for ditches and pools; but the coarse grass was firm under their feet, and they had only gone a few yards when they began to catch the glimmer of the firelit window through the drifting mist-wreaths, and after that it was easy.
When they reached the black wall of the house, they scouted along it until they found the door, deep-set like the door of a fortress, with the firelit window glowing warm in the darkness right above it. And when they found the door, Master Pennifeather beat upon it with his clenched fist. The tattoo sounded very loud, in the silence of the misty marsh; and an instant later there broke out such a baying and barking inside the house that the hearts of the three Players jumped uncomfortably, and the hair rose along the back of Argos’s neck.
‘Ban dogs,’ said Jonathan wearily.
And Hugh grabbed Argos’s collar with both hands.
But beyond the strong door, a tremendous voice was raised above the din. ‘Quiet, Roland! Quiet, Oliver! Plague and pestilence, stop that noise!’ The baying stopped, and at the same moment, somebody who had been whistling ‘Jenny Pluck Pears’ broke off to proclaim in a very harsh voice, ‘St George for Merry England and the Dons to the Devil!’ and then went on whistling.
‘This would seem to be a strange household,’ said Master Pennifeather, uneasily.
But at that moment the door was jerked open, firelight and torchlight flowed out like a welcome, and a little old man, who looked rather like an aged billy-goat, appeared on the threshold, peering out at the Players under his hand. ‘Well, and what might you be wanting?’ asked the old man, not so much surly as just plain dismal.
Master Pennifeather began to explain. But Hugh hardly noticed the goaty old man at all; he was staring past him, up the great glowing hall beyond, to another man who stood with his back to a roaring fire at the far end; a huge man, tall and broad and immensely fat, with curling red hair and beard, and a face like a round crimson sun. Two huge mastiffs lay at the man’s feet, nose on paws and eyes watchful; a little white cat clung to his left shoulder, her tail waving gently behind his ear; and perched on his right shoulder was a strange big bird, rather like a hawk – but such a hawk! Its breast was the colour of a crown-imperial, its wings and mantle were deeply blue, and it was whistling ‘Jenny Pluck Pears’. Hugh began to feel as if he must be dreaming.