About midday they came to a hamlet. It had an ale-house with a bush over its door for a sign, and a church with a pepper-pot steeple, a few cottages pressed back among the trees, and a lot of tall thin pigs, and the stocks just outside the churchyard gate for putting evil-doers in. It had a rude, buttoned-up sort of look that was not welcoming.
‘This,’ said Master Pennifeather, ‘does not look promising.’
‘Best push on t’the nex’ village,’ agreed Jasper, gazing at the hamlet with a face that was nearly as rude and buttoned-up as its own.
But they couldn’t push on, because round the next corner they found a great tree lying across the road, with its poor broken roots in the forest on one side and its budding branches in the forest on the other. There were deep ditches and dense undergrowth at either side, and they couldn’t possibly get Saffronilla and the tilt-cart round or over. There was nothing for it but to turn back to the buttoned-up-looking village.
‘Oh well, what can’t be cured must be endured, I always say,’ said Ben Bunsell consolingly, ‘and the roads are most unsafe, anyway – trees falling about in that careless way.’
The ale-house was not nice, nor was the landlord. They were both dark and dirty, and they had most disagreeable expressions. The landlord said yes, they could take Saffronilla and the tilt-cart round to the stables at the side, and yes, they could have bread-and-cheese for dinner; but he sounded as though it hurt him to have to let anybody have anything they wanted.
So they took Saffronilla and the tilt-cart round to the stable-yard, and sat on the shafts of the cart and the edge of the horse-trough, to eat their bread-and-cheese.
‘This is a beastly place,’ said Nicky, glaring at the cheese, which was mouldy.
‘Ne’er the less, we shall have to stay here, friend Bodkin,’ said Master Pennifeather. ‘And we shall have to present the Martyrdom of St Cecilia here, if we’re going to sup this evening.’
Jasper Nye muttered something about wishing St Cecilia was boiled, and stared mournfully at a mangy cat that stared mournfully back at him. They had been playing St Cecilia rather a lot lately, because her costumes were uppermost, and therefore easiest unpacked in the cramped quarters of little forest hedge-taverns, and Jasper was very tired of her.
‘Are we as poor as all that?’ asked Benjamin.
And Master Pennifeather said, ‘My lords, I have the supreme honour to inform you that we shall have fivepence halfpenny in the world, after the bread-and-cheese is paid for.’
Just then, above the howling wind, they heard a sudden clatter of horses’ hooves, and a voice yelling for the landlord; a gay, laughing voice with a strong Devonshire accent that made Hugh prick up his ears and sit still with his hunch of bread-and-cheese halfway to his mouth. The voice was demanding a meal and a fresh horse; and the landlord’s voice, not nearly so surly as it had been when he spoke to the Players, was protesting that there wasn’t a fresh horse to be had, and offering the parlour and fried ham. Then the voice seemed to have gone indoors, and they heard it through the window, telling the landlord that his house wasn’t fit to keep crossbred ferrets in.
Everybody listened happily, and next moment a short, cheerful-looking manservant came into the stable-yard, leading two horses. One of the horses was walking lame, which explained why the gay Devonshire voice had wanted a fresh one.
The manservant was a friendly soul, and as there was no stable-man, Jonathan helped him with the horses, and doctored the damaged hock of the lame one, who slobbered lovingly against his shoulder while he did it. Horses always loved Jonathan, and so did dogs.
‘Anyone’ud think you was her master,’ said the manservant, and he told them how he and his master were riding down to Plymouth and the mare had gone lame, and now they would be held up in this dog-hole of an ale-house until next day, there being no fresh horse to be got before then. But for his own part, said he, he wasn’t sorry, misliking the forest in such a gale, and having no wish to have his head scat open by a falling branch, whatever his master thought about it.
When all the bread-and-cheese was done, Master Pennifeather got up and stretched, saying that he would go and ask where the nearest Justice of the Peace was to be found, so that they could get a licence to play that afternoon.
Quite soon he was back, looking rather worried, and said that the local Justice was away visiting his married daughter at Ringwood. Everybody looked at everybody else, and thought ‘No supper’.
‘Well, what d’we do now?’ asked Jasper.
But it was the friendly manservant who told them. ‘Put on your play, lads,’ he said, ‘and hope for the best.’ And he darted off towards the house, in answer to a sudden yell from his master.
‘He’s right,’ said Benjamin. ‘Nothing venture, nothing gain, I always say.’
‘Yes, we know you do,’ they said; but they agreed, all the same, and they set to work in a great hurry to unpack the costumes and set the raised grass plot before the ale-house door in order for their stage, while Master Pennifeather went off to cry the play through the village. They changed their clothes in a little dark room which the landlord had grudgingly lent them, and by the time they were ready a little crowd had begun to gather. Jonathan went out first, with the long golden trumpet, and taking his stand on the grassy stage, sounded such a fanfare that even the hurly-burly wind seemed to grow quiet to listen. The manservant was there already, and at the sound of the trumpet another figure lounged out through the ale-house doorway and joined the throng of country folk. A very gorgeous young gentleman in a doublet and hose of kingfisher blue, and a velvet cloak lined with pearl-coloured satin. He had a long curling feather as deeply green as the heart of the emerald fastened into his bonnet by a golden clasp and his eyes were the brightest and bluest that Hugh had ever seen. Hugh wondered if the Anthony Heritage whose servitor his father had been at Oxford, and who had hated learning and spent so much of his time in Bocardo, had been like that. Somehow he thought he must have been. But there was no time to think of that, or anything else, but the play just now.
The play began; but it had not got far when the village constable arrived. ‘You stop that!’ said the Constable, who had a pimply face and a glittering eye. ‘You’ve got no licence from His Honour the Justice.’
Master Pennifeather bowed with a flourish. ‘Finding that His Honour the Justice was from home,’ he said, ‘and feeling sure that he would not wish us to go supperless to bed while he disports himself at his married daughter’s, we made bold to dispense with the licence. You may tell him so with our blessing, when you see him.’
The Constable let out an enraged bellow, and poked a large and nobbly stick at them. ‘Don’t ’ee dare speak to me like that! You take off them funny clothes, you vagabonds!’
‘Vagabonds, is it?’ cried Master Pennifeather with superb defiance, while the crowd shouted joyfully. ‘Sir, have you no soul, no sensibilities, no decency, that you presume to use such language to the shining lights of the English stage?’
‘No!’ said the Constable. ‘You stop ‘opping about; you’re going to sit in the stocks, you are.’
‘It’s no good talking,’ muttered Jonathan. ‘We’ll have to fight.’
And Hugh began joyfully to kilt up St Cecilia’s skirts, while Nicky, who was also playing a girl’s part, did the same.
Fight they did, for at that moment the Constable, with the landlord and a party of foresters at his back, charged them, shouting to the rest of the villagers to join in.
It was a glorious fight! Shoulder to shoulder the little brotherhood held the grassy stage against the whole village, for by that time everybody had joined in, because, much as they had liked the play, they liked a fight even better. Hugh and Nicky, Ben and Jonathan fought with bare fists, Master Pennifeather with one property stool and Jasper Nye with the other, which they wielded like two-handed swords; Argos fought with bared milky teeth, and the young gallant and his man, who had somehow joined them, with hedge-cudgels they had thoughtfully taken awa
y from two villagers on their way through.
‘Stand by to repel borders!’ sang the young gallant, bringing his hedge-staff down with a joyful crack on the head of a burly forester.
‘St George for Merry England, and Perdition take all constables,’ replied Ben Bunsell, hitting out at another.
Jonathan was fighting in grim and bright-eyed silence and doing a good deal of damage, and Hugh kept close to him. It did not matter being rather shorter than most of the enemy, Hugh found, because the grass plot being raised, he was on higher ground than they were; and he managed beautifully, and made the Constable’s nose bleed.
They were the Spartans holding the Pass of Thermopylae against all the hordes of Persia; they were the crew of an English ship beset by Barbary Corsairs; they were the Last Stand of the Scots at Flodden. But, like the Scots and the Spartans and the English crew, they were outnumbered ten to one; and more people were arriving every moment to swell the ranks of the attackers. They fought long and valiantly, but they were pulled down at last, bruised and bleeding. Argos was half stunned and had a coat thrown over his head before he could bite anybody else (he had bitten several people quite badly), and they were all hustled off, still struggling, in the direction of the stocks.
Of course they should not have been put in the stocks until they had been brought before the Justice; they should have been put in the lock-up. But the lock-up was part of the Constable’s cottage, and if there were people in it who kicked and shouted (as the people in the lock-up generally did), it was very disturbing for the Constable, and he did not like being disturbed. Besides, it was much more fun for the village to have them in the stocks.
So the Players were forced down on to the long bench, and despite all their kicking, the foot-board was clamped down on their legs, and locked.
‘Well, we’ve made our mark on this village, anyway,’ remarked Master Pennifeather with satisfaction, looking round at the broken heads and battered faces of the enemy, who were tying the struggling Argos to the foot-board with a short piece of rope.
‘Yes, but they’ve made their mark’n us, too, an’ th’ St Cecilia costumes!’ sighed Jasper, who was always inclined to be easily down-daunted.
But Ben Bunsell dabbed gently at his nose, and pointed out, ‘Well, you was wishing St Cecilia was boiled. You can’t have it both ways. ‘Sides, think what a lovely view of your legs you’re going to have in these stocks!’
‘There, my beauties, right and tight you are, and there you’ll sit until His Honour comes home tomorrow,’ said the Constable; and he went home to his supper, taking the keys with him.
But the rest of the villagers did not go home to supper yet. They gathered round and stared. The Players stared back, with their noses in the air. The young gallant and his man had somehow disappeared, and they did not blame them. It had been very nice of them to take their side in the battle, and you couldn’t expect anyone to sit in the stocks for fun, not for the sake of perfect strangers.
‘Come on, lads,’ shouted the villagers, and began to throw things – not at all nice things.
‘Human nature is a sorry thing,’ said Master Pennifeather, wiping the remains of a rotten egg out of his left eye. (Rotten egg stings.) ‘These people enjoyed our play, accepting what we had to give them, and now that we are under – er – a temporary disadvantage, they enjoy themselves even more by throwing rotten eggs. Ingratitude, thy name is – by the way, what is the name of this village?’
‘Haven’t th’ least idea,’ said Jasper. ‘Only I know I never want t’see it again.’
Jonathan said, ‘Keep your head down, Brother Dusty. Yes, I know it doesn’t look so well, but if you keep it down you’re less likely to get hurt.’ Jonathan had sat in the stocks a great many times before, and knew about these things.
Hugh had not known that people’s faces could look so stupid and cruel, and he minded their faces and their harsh jeering voices even more than he minded the things they threw. Hugh had not sat in the stocks before.
It was really rather beastly while it lasted, but after a time the light faded and it got hard to throw straight. One by one people began to slip away and go home to their suppers in the cottages whose windows were beginning to be full of firelight; and the Players were left alone in the gathering darkness.
After that it wasn’t so bad. It was cold, of course, and the gale still surged through the trees, roaring and beating its wings above them, and humming through the bell louvres in the churchtower high overhead; but close under the churchyard wall they were sheltered, and the long grass around the stocks only shivered now and then. Darker it grew, and darker yet, and Hugh, sitting beside Jonathan in the stocks and the windy darkness, screwed round to watch the firelit windows glowing from the cottages away beyond the church. The windows were gold and orange and apricot-tawny, criss-crossed by the shapes of the lashing boughs, and somehow the warmth of them was comforting to the cold emptiness of his inside.
But presently the lights began to go out, one by one, until only a saffron warmth in the window of the ale-house was left; and then that went out too.
‘The fine gentleman would seem to keep early hours,’ said Master Pennifeather.
It was very dark after that last light had gone, and it seemed to Hugh to get suddenly colder.
‘Lean against me, and try to go to sleep,’ said Jonathan, and put an arm round him.
So Hugh snuggled up to him as well as he could, and tried to go to sleep, because he always did what Jonathan told him. But he could not manage to get the least bit sleepy; he was too cold and empty and his bruises ached too much; anyway, stocks were not comfortable for sleeping in.
After a time the moon rose, full and round and silver into a sky that showed deepest blue between the shreds of scudding silver cloud; and with the moon came the Fine Gentleman. They did not see him come, because he walked in the dark shadows at the side of the lane, and they did not hear him, because the hurly-burly wind drowned his footsteps, but suddenly he was there.
There was a large rent in the shoulder of his beautiful cloak, and by the flying moonlight they could see a dark smeary-looking bruise all along his cheek-bone, but somehow he did not look disreputable, as the Players did; he seemed to be one of those people who always look neat and tidy, like Hugh’s periwinkle.
Argos did not bark at him, as he generally did at strangers who came near in the dark, partly because he was half strangled by the rope round his neck, but also because he remembered that this particular stranger had been with him and his master in the battle. Instead, he wagged his plumy tail and whined throatily. For a moment the Players and the Fine Gentleman gazed at each other in the moonlight, and then the young man swept them a low bow, one hand on the hilt of his long rapier.
‘Good evening to you,’ said he. ‘I congratulate you, one and all! – I came to offer my condolences, and I find you sitting in a row, seemingly as comfortable as Aldermen at the Lord Mayor’s banquet!’
‘Though something emptier,’ said Master Pennifeather.
‘Ah, I was afraid of that,’ said the Fine Gentleman, fishing inside his doublet. ‘Alas, we have no time for eating just now. Gentlemen, I have the honour to bring you the key of the stocks,’ and he fitted something into the heavy lock, while the Players simply sat and goggled at him.
Master Pennifeather was the first to get his breath back. ‘Ye saints and sinners! How did you get that?’ he gasped.
‘Oh, I got it off the Constable,’ said the young man airily, raising the foot-board. Everybody stretched their cramped legs and groaned in ecstasy, while Hugh and Jonathan made haste to untie Argos. ‘It was quite simple,’ he added, putting the key back in his doublet. ‘I told him he couldn’t go round locking up bunches of Walsingham’s secret agents without getting himself into trouble and probably into the Tower, but that if he gave me the key, I’d arrange for your escape, and hush the whole thing up. He was very glad to give me the key after I’d described to him the sort of dungeons they have in t
he Tower.’
Everybody gazed at the Fine Gentleman in admiration.
‘Walsingham’s – secret – agents!’ murmured Jasper Nye, wagging his head.
‘And he believed you?’ said Jonathan.
‘Of course. You’re just the sort of people who might be, you know’ (which was quite true. All sorts of queer people up and down the country, and in foreign lands too, were spies in the pay of Mr Secretary-of-State Walsingham). ‘And now, if you’ve got your legs back into marching order, we’d best collect the cart; Will Squance should have done loading up by now, and the sooner you’re clear of this parish, the better.’
He was a very masterful young man, and they trooped after him like children after the Pied Piper, back to the ale-house. The tilt-cart, ready loaded, stood in the middle of the stable-yard, with Will Squance sitting on the shafts. He got up, grinning, when they appeared, and said, ‘You’ve got ’em safe then, Maister Walter.’
‘I’ve got them,’ said the young man. ‘Now to see them safely out of this hornets’ nest.’
Jonathan said quickly, ‘You’d best be getting indoors, master. You’ve done enough for us already, and ’twill do you no good to be found in our company; that story about our being Walsingham’s men won’t stand much looking into.’
But the young man only laughed. ‘I shan’t be found in your company. The whole village is abed and asleep by now, and there’s no fear of our waking them, in this wind.’
They got Saffronilla out of the stable and into the shafts without any trouble, the howling gale drowning the clippity-clop of her hooves and the trundling wheels as they led her and the cart out into the lane.
‘I’ll come and see you on your way,’ said the young man.
So they said good-bye to Will Squance, and set out together, back the way they had come that morning, for the road beyond the village was still blocked.
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