‘Hullo,’ said Hugh, and sat down beside him.
‘Hullo,’ said Jonathan. ‘Where’s the Palmer?’
‘He wouldn’t come back to supper, after all.’
Jonathan nodded. ‘And was it a good day?’
‘Y-yes,’ said Hugh. ‘Yes, it was lovely. Queer, too.’
‘Queer?’ asked Jonathan.
Hugh began to tell him about the queerness as best he could; about the wonderful piping, and the wild things that had come in answer to it, and about the Piper wanting him to go away with him. ‘Who – what do you suppose he was?’ he asked, when he had finished and Jonathan still sat gazing in front of him. ‘He wasn’t an ordinary Palmer. You don’t suppose he was one of Them, do you?’
Jonathan looked down at him, smiling a little, so that his brows and the corners of his mouth quirked up towards his ears. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Call him “the Piper” and leave it at that. It’s not polite to ask too closely the Who and What of the people one meets on the road.’
For a little while they sat in a companionable silence, and then Jonathan uncurled his legs and got up. ‘It’s time we were getting back, or the others will have eaten all the supper.’
So Hugh got up, and Argos woke with a bounce and got up too, sneezing so that all his four legs shot in different directions; and they set off towards the village. By this time rushlights had been lit in other windows to welcome the menfolk home from work in the fields; and suddenly, just for a moment, they thought it would be rather nice to have a home; a home with a candle in its window.
On the outskirts of the village they met Nicky coming to look for them.
‘We thought you’d all got lost,’ said Nicky; and then he took a good look at Hugh, as well as he could in the dimpsey, and said, ‘My eye! You look as if you’d been dragged through a gorsebush backwards! You haven’t been pixie-led, have you, youngster?’
5
Seisin
After Lillingfold the Players turned south again, and for a little while, as the blue glimpse of Oxfordshire fell farther and farther behind them, Hugh felt as though something was pulling him the other way, reproaching him for turning his back on it, for breaking faith with his dream. But he wasn’t breaking faith, not really, he thought; he still meant to go to Oxford – one day. And presently his regrets grew fainter and fainter still, until once again he almost forgot about it.
Through the rest of that summer they wandered on, by Malmesbury and Newbury to Maidenhead, where they acted a morality play on the steps of the Market Cross and Argos bit a fat Alderman who he thought was going to steal the tilt-cart. The Alderman kicked Argos, and the Players went to his rescue (Argos’s, not the Alderman’s), and there was a fight with the townsfolk, and they had to leave the town in a hurry to avoid being arrested by the Watch.
After that they headed for Cambridgeshire, and in the golden September weather all the world seemed to be heading in the same direction: merchants and drovers, other companies of players, pedlars and bear-wards, quack doctors and swarthy Egyptians, all pouring in to buy and sell, act plays or tell fortunes for pick-pockets at Stourbridge Fair. At every corner they saw more people coming up the by-lanes; and when they were not passing slow flocks of sheep and droves of cattle, they were being passed themselves by rich merchants on fine horses with strings of laden pack-mules behind them. It was like that when they were still two days from the end of their journey, and by the time they came in sight of the fairground under the walls of Cambridge, the roads were so packed that they could hardly crawl along, and the dust rose so thick that everyone was powdered white with it, and their eyes got red and sore and it was hard to breathe without coughing.
Hugh had never seen a fair before, not even St Margaret’s Fair at Bideford, because Aunt Alison had never given him a day off or a silver penny to go to it. So his first sight of the great Fair of Stourbridge left him dizzy and gasping. It was loud as a thunderstorm, glorious as a rainbow, and huge as the Four Cities of Fairyland rolled into one. But he did not get a chance to see much of it on the evening they arrived, because it was late and there was a great deal to do. They did not try to find lodgings at one of the inns of the city, because that would be much too expensive, and anyway, all the inns would be taken now, by bigger and richer companies; but after they had got the usual licence to perform, they went in search of a clear space that nobody else had found first, and when they found one, made camp on it. They tethered Saffronilla and fed and watered her, and proclaimed next day’s performances, and then Jonathan spread his mat, and put on his spangled tights and tumbled for the little crowd they had just gathered, until Jasper had collected the price of supper in his hat.
But already old friends had begun to come across each other, and Nicky, coming back with a pail of water from the nearby stream, said, ‘Zackary Hawkins is here, but his man is laid up with boils all over.’
‘Ye saints and sinners! That’s ill fortune!’ said Master Pennifeather. ‘What does friend Zackary mean to do about it?’
Nicky shrugged. ‘Oh, carry on as usual and risk it.’
And then, seeing Hugh’s bewilderment, he explained that Zackary Hawkins was a quack doctor, and that quack doctors were not allowed in the great fairs because the real doctors had managed to get a law passed forbidding them. So when they did set up their stands at a fair they always had a man whose job was to keep a look-out for the stewards and law-officers, and give warning if any came that way. Because Zackary Hawkins’s man was laid up with boils, he would have to risk being taken unawares by the stewards of the Fair, which was a nuisance.
‘Oh, well, nothing venture, nothing gain, I always say,’ said Ben Bunsell, with his mouth full. ‘Daresay we’ll be able to do a bit of watch-dogging for him, from time to time.’
When supper was over they lay down to sleep under the tilt-cart, all but Jonathan, that is. He sat up until midnight to see that nobody stole Saffronilla or the costume baskets, and then he woke Master Pennifeather to take his place, and just before dawn Master Pennifeather woke Benjamin. It would be like that all the time they stayed there, for a fair was not at all an honest place.
It was all so strange and exciting, that first night, that for a long time Hugh could not go to sleep at all. He lay listening to the night sounds of the great fairground and watching, between the spokes of the nearest wheel, the dark shape of Jonathan sitting beside the remains of the fire, until at last everything got blurred together and he was not sure which were camp-fires and which were stars. And then quite suddenly it was morning and the sun was slanting through the scarlet wheels of the tilt-cart, and the fairground was growing noisier every moment, as it awoke to the new day.
All that morning they were very busy putting up the stage and getting everything ready for the performance; and in the afternoon came the play itself, and a great crowd to watch it. And when the Players counted out the silver in Benjamin’s hat on the sharing table, they found they were quite rich – rich enough even to spend a few pence at the sideshows if they felt like it, and still have enough to pay their Fair Dues when the time came for paying them.
It was quite early in the evening when the sharingout was over, and so Jonathan, Nicky and Jasper, with Hugh holding firmly to a strap through Argos’s collar, all set out to see the fun of the fair, while Ben Bunsell and Master Pennifeather stayed with Saffronilla and the tilt-cart on the understanding that it would be their turn next evening.
Before they set out, Jonathan said: ‘Now, look here, Dusty; if you don’t stick to the rest of us as close as a limpet, you’ll get mislaid in five seconds in this crowd, and it won’t be too easy to find you again.’
So Hugh stuck very close indeed, and before long he was in such a glorious maze and muddle, what with the noise and crowds and colour, the swirl and sweep and sparkle all around him, that he felt sure it would not take him anything like five seconds to get mislaid, if he once lost sight of Jonathan. They wandered up and down the crowded, twisty lanes between the booths
, stopping to buy an orange or a handful of gilt gingerbread, or watch a dancing bear or a Cornish wrestler or a pedlar spreading out his pack of ribands and necklaces and embroidered sleeves, trying their luck at sideshows, greeting old friends and glaring at old enemies. Presently, when Nicky had won a pewter pot at the archery butts, and Argos had tried to fight a wall-eyed drover’s dog whose face he did not like, they found themselves in the part of the Fair where books were sold (for Stourbridge Fair was a great place for books).
The others would have turned back to find something more interesting, but to Hugh there was nothing more interesting in the whole fairground. It was such a long time since he had seen even one book, that he was tempted to loiter and look at them longingly, while the Players sighed – at least, Nicky and Jasper sighed – and waited for him patiently, as he always waited for Argos when Argos could not make up his mind about the best place to bury a bone. There were a few huge, beautiful books bound in blue and purple and vermilion; little clumsy books with blodgy woodcut pictures in them; thick dark books full of queer knowledge about stars and herbs, and many more. And Hugh wanted all of them, or failing that, just one – one little plain book to be his very own; but even the smallest and plainest cost more than he would possibly be able to afford, even if he saved hard all the while the Fair lasted. So at last he sighed and wandered off again with the others.
‘It would be nice to be rich,’ he said, ‘rich enough to buy books, I mean.’
‘What a queer cove you are, Dusty!’ said Nicky. ‘D’you really mean to say that if you had the money, you’d spend it on books?’
‘Yes I would!’ said Hugh defensively.
‘Every man to his own taste,’ sighed Jasper, in an even more mournful voice than usual. ‘If ’twas me, I’d buy a new pair o’ shoes, with soles to ’em.’
Everybody laughed, even Hugh, and Jonathan said, ‘I wonder which of you would have the more joy of your purchases.’
Not long after they came to an open space with a man standing on a tub in the middle of it, and an interested and admiring crowd all round. He was a large, merry-looking man, with a round red nose and little twinkling blue eyes, and a very tall hat on the back of his head; and he was holding aloft a little box in one hand, and waving the other in wide, graceful flourishes while he talked at the top of a very trumpety voice.
‘Here’s Zackary Hawkins,’ said Jonathan. ‘There’s not a quack doctor on the road to touch Zackary; he’s a joy to listen to.’
So they joined the crowd and listened for a little while.
‘I am not like those herbalists yonder, who will sell you bread-pills for your hard-earned money,’ the Quack Doctor was saying. ‘No. I have here the cure for all ills, which I discovered myself, at – ha! hum! – great personal risk, not to say inconvenience, and the secret of which is known only to me of all the teeming millions on this earth. Have you the backache? Have you no appetite? Do your arms and your legs ache, and do you feel all shiversome when you wake in the mornings? Do you suffer from colic, colds in the head or bunions? Have you spots before your eyes or a singing in your ears? Ha! Hum! – Then my Herbal Compound is the medicine for you! This box, my friends, is worth one hundred crowns! A hundred crowns is what my good friend the Archduke of Tuscany paid me for a box no larger; also the Califf Haroun El Mohamid, of the noble city of Baghdad, which is a very noble city indeed. But I am not one who loves money! No! The welfare of my fellow men means more to me than my own gain, and I have determined to sell my wonderful Elixir to you for only one crown a box! – No, for half a crown—’
Jonathan flung up one arm and waved, and the Quack Doctor saw him and waved back, but without stopping talking for an instant. ‘No, for fourpence. The paltry sum of fourpence, my friends! Step up here, my friends, and . . .’
But the Players had slipped away, and were heading for a performing pony they could see in the distance.
‘Does the stuff he is selling really cure all these things?’ asked Hugh, looking back over his shoulder at the Quack Doctor, who was still shouting about his wonderful Elixir.
‘Course not,’ said Nicky, scornfully. ‘It’s just powdered chalk.’
That seemed to Hugh very dishonest, and he said in a disappointed voice, ‘But he looked so nice.’
‘He is,’ said Jonathan, looking down at him with his queer faun’s smile. ‘Zackary’s the staunchest friend a man could have. He’s a thorough rogue, but that is quite a different matter.’
Hugh was still thinking this over, when there began to be a great falling back and commotion among the people all round him, and peering between the performing pony’s master and an apple-stall, he caught a glimpse of two or three stately gentlemen carrying rods of office and attended by several men who looked like the Watch, coming towards them down the crowded alley.
‘Steward’s officers, by cock and pie!’ exclaimed Nicky, and in the same instant Jonathan’s hand came down on Hugh’s shoulder, swinging him round to face the way he had come.
‘Nip back to Master Hawkins,’ said Jonathan’s voice in his ear. ‘You’ll get through this crowd quicker than we could, and there’s no time to spare. Tell him the Steward’s officers are coming. Leave Argos with me.’
So Hugh gave Argos’s leash to Jonathan, and plunged away into the crowd. It was only a hundred yards at most, and all the way he could see a red pennant fluttering from the roof of a booth which he remembered had been close to the Quack Doctor’s stand, and quite a lot of the way he could see the top of the Quack Doctor’s tall hat. So he could not get lost. But the crowd seemed thicker than ever, and every moment he expected to be overtaken by the Steward’s officers, and it seemed a very long time before he arrived. But he did arrive at last, breathless and buffeted, in the clearing where Zackary Hawkins was still talking at the top of his voice and handing out boxes of his Elixir from one of two large sacks beside him, and taking in the pence as fast as he could.
Diving and butting and sidling, and not stopping to apologize to people whose feet he trod on, Hugh reached the Quack Doctor, and gasped, ‘The Steward’s officers are coming. Jonathan sent me.’
Zackary Hawkins squinted down at him quite calmly, and broke off his trumpeting for one instant to say. ‘Ha! Hum! Thanks, brother.’ Then he began again, beaming at the crowd. ‘My friends, you have had the last box! The very last box of my wonderful Elixir. But stay. I have here, for the ladies among you’ – he plunged a hand into the other sack and brought out triumphantly a box that looked very like the ones he had been selling all along – ‘a little of the identical facepowder used by Helen of Troy to give lustre to her beauty when entertaining Julius Cæsar to dinner. Now, by a strange coincidence, this powder is almost exactly the same in appearance as my wonderful Elixir, so it is necessary to keep them carefully apart, since my Elixir applied outwardly, and this exquisite powder applied inwardly, would be useless; nay, worse than useless! Ladies, this is the identical face-powder used by Helen of Troy, I do assure you! A friend of mind found it in the ruins of that city.’
Meanwhile, as soon as Hugh had disappeared in the crowd, Jonathan thoughtfully leaned against the apple-stall so that it upset, spilling a shower of russet apples all across the path of the Steward’s officers as they came by. Nicky leapt to the rescue, and fell over the feet of the fattest officer, all but spilling him among the apples, and Jasper Nye, who was a good actor, even though he hadn’t much sense, got in everybody’s way, protesting almost tearfully ‘Clumsy! clumsy! Oh, sirs, I trust you are not hurt.’ While Argos wound his leash round the legs of another officer very cleverly indeed. By that time the performing pony was getting badly mixed up with the Watch, and the stall-holder was dancing with fury, the crowd were joyfully helping to gather up the fallen apples, and the Steward’s officers were being most unreasonable and unhelpful; and altogether it was quite a long time before things got sorted out again and they could continue on their dignified way.
By that time they were very cross, and would have been on
ly too pleased to find someone doing something they shouldn’t. But when they came to an open space where a red-faced man was selling face-powder with a boy to help him, there wasn’t anything they could do about it. There was no law against selling face-powder.
That evening there were cheerful gatherings round camp-fires, all over the fairground, for people had had the whole day to find old friends and now they were making merry together.
Hugh and the Players were joined by a good many people that evening, and as they crowded round the fire, there was no merrier gathering of friends in the whole of Stourbridge Fair. Zackary Hawkins was there, with his hat still on the back of his head, and his little round red nose was shining like a cherry in the firelight; there were several players from another Company, and a tinker with a long red beard and a pedlar with a long blue nose, a juggler clad in tattered red-and-yellow fool’s motley hung with bells, and quite a lot more. There was a Tom-o’-Bedlam, too. He did not know anybody, and nobody knew him; he had simply loomed up out of the dusk, a tall, wild figure, and sat down among them unbidden. Tom-o’-Bedlams were like that. Everybody accepted him quite happily, and he was given a share of their supper. It was a stew, and everybody except the Tom-o’-Bedlam had put something into it; the Players had put in fat bacon, the juggler had put in herbs and two eggs, the pedlar had put in a poached rabbit; and what with those, and all the other things, it really was a most beautiful stew with a most beautiful smell.
Nobody talked much over supper, but when the pot was empty and the company delightfully full, there began to be a great exchanging of the summer’s news and a great making of plans for next year, all round the fire. Hugh and Argos were left to themselves, and Argos slept with his nose on his paws, and Hugh sat and hugged his knees and watched the others. Their faces were golden in the firelight, and behind them the darkness was purply-blue, like pansy petals; and the light of the leaping flames set tiny sparks dancing in their eyes and made the rings in Benjamin’s ears and the bells on the juggler’s hood and the buckle on a strange player’s hat all sparkle like the jewels of the Lordly People.
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