Chapter 13

‘I assure you the words were not out of his mouth when old Padda shot from the top of a cold wrinkled swell, drove himself over the weedy ledge, and landed fair in our laps with a rock-cod between his teeth. I could not help smiling at Eddi’s face. “A miracle! A miracle!” he cried, and kneeled down to clean the cod.

‘“You’ve been a long time finding us, my son,” said Meon. “Now fish--fish for all our lives. We’re starving, Padda.”

‘The old fellow flung himself quivering like a salmon backward into the boil of the currents round the rocks, and Meon said, “We’re safe. I’ll send him to fetch help when this wind drops. Eat and be thankful.”

‘I never tasted anything so good as those rock-codlings we took from Padda’s mouth and half roasted over the fire. Between his plunges Padda would hunch up and purr over Meon with the tears running down his face. I never knew before that seals could weep for joy--as I have wept.

‘“Surely,” said Eddi, with his mouth full, “God has made the seal the loveliest of His creatures in the water. Look how Padda breasts the current! He stands up against it like a rock; now watch the chain of bubbles where he dives; and now--there is his wise head under that rock-ledge! Oh, a blessing be on thee, my little brother Padda!”

‘“You said he was a child of the Devil!” Meon laughed. ‘“There I sinned,” poor Eddi answered. “Call him here, and I will ask his pardon. God sent him out of the storm to humble me, a fool.”

‘“I won’t ask you to enter into fellowships and understandings with any accursed brute,” said Meon, rather unkindly. “Shall we say he was sent to our Bishop as the ravens were sent to your prophet Elijah?”

‘“Doubtless that is so,” said Eddi. “I will write it so if I live to get home.”

‘“No--no!” I said. “Let us three poor men kneel and thank God for His mercies.”

‘We kneeled, and old Padda shuffled up and thrust his head under Meon’s elbows. I laid my hand upon it and blessed him. So did Eddi.

‘“And now, my son,” I said to Meon, “shall I baptize thee?”

‘“Not yet,” said he. “Wait till we are well ashore and at home. No God in any Heaven shall say that I came to him or left him because I was wet and cold. I will send Padda to my people for a boat. Is that witchcraft, Eddi?”

‘“Why, no. Surely Padda will go and pull them to the beach by the skirts of their gowns as he pulled me in Wittering Church to ask me to sing. Only then I was afraid, and did not understand,” said Eddi.

‘“You are understanding now,” said Meon, and at a wave of his arm off went Padda to the mainland, making a wake like a war-boat till we lost him in the rain. Meon’s people could not bring a boat across for some hours; even so it was ticklish work among the rocks in that tideway. But they hoisted me aboard, too stiff to move, and Padda swam behind us, barking and turning somersaults all the way to Manhood End!’

‘Good old Padda!’ murmured Dan.

‘When we were quite rested and re-clothed, and his people had been summoned--not an hour before--Meon offered himself to be baptized.’

‘Was Padda baptized too?’ Una asked.

‘No, that was only Meon’s joke. But he sat blinking on his ox-hide in the middle of the hall. When Eddi (who thought I wasn’t looking) made a little cross in holy water on his wet muzzle, he kissed Eddi’s hand. A week before Eddi wouldn’t have touched him. That was a miracle, if you like! But seriously, I was more glad than I can tell you to get Meon. A rare and splendid soul that never looked back--never looked back!’ The Arch-bishop half closed his eyes.

‘But, sir,’ said Puck, most respectfully, ‘haven’t you left out what Meon said afterwards?’ Before the Bishop could speak he turned to the children and went on: ‘Meon called all his fishers and ploughmen and herdsmen into the hall and he said: “Listen, men! Two days ago I asked our Bishop whether it was fair for a man to desert his fathers’ Gods in a time of danger. Our Bishop said it was not fair. You needn’t shout like that, because you are all Christians now. My red war-boat’s crew will remember how near we all were to death when Padda fetched them over to the Bishop’s islet. You can tell your mates that even in that place, at that time, hanging on the wet, weedy edge of death, our Bishop, a Christian, counselled me, a heathen, to stand by my fathers’ Gods. I tell you now that a faith which takes care that every man shall keep faith, even though he may save his soul by breaking faith, is the faith for a man to believe in. So I believe in the Christian God, and in Wilfrid His Bishop, and in the Church that Wilfrid rules. You have been baptized once by the King’s orders. I shall not have you baptized again; but if I find any more old women being sent to Wotan, or any girls dancing on the sly before Balder, or any men talking about Thun or Lok or the rest, I will teach you with my own hands how to keep faith with the Christian God. Go out quietly; you’ll find a couple of beefs on the beach.” Then of course they shouted “Hurrah!” which meant “Thor help us!” and--I think you laughed, sir?’

‘I think you remember it all too well,’ said the Archbishop, smiling. ‘It was a joyful day for me. I had learned a great deal on that rock where Padda found us. Yes--yess! One should deal kindly with all the creatures of God, and gently with their masters. But one learns late.’

He rose, and his gold-embroidered sleeves rustled thickly.

The organ cracked and took deep breaths.

‘Wait a minute,’ Dan whispered. ‘She’s going to do the trumpety one. It takes all the wind you can pump. It’s in Latin, sir.’

‘There is no other tongue,’ the Archbishop answered.

‘It’s not a real hymn,’ Una explained. ‘She does it as a treat after her exercises. She isn’t a real organist, you know. She just comes down here sometimes, from the Albert Hall.’

‘Oh, what a miracle of a voice!’ said the Archbishop.

It rang out suddenly from a dark arch of lonely noises--every word spoken to the very end:

‘Dies Irae, dies illa, Solvet saeclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sibylla.’ The Archbishop caught his breath and moved forward. The music carried on by itself a while.

‘Now it’s calling all the light out of the windows,’ Una whispered to Dan.

‘I think it’s more like a horse neighing in battle,’ he whispered back. The voice continued:

‘Tuba mirum spargens sonum Per sepulchre regionum.’

Deeper and deeper the organ dived down, but far below its deepest note they heard Puck’s voice joining in the last line:

‘Coget omnes ante thronum.’

As they looked in wonder, for it sounded like the dull jar of one of the very pillars shifting, the little fellow turned and went out through the south door.

‘Now’s the sorrowful part, but it’s very beautiful.’ Una found herself speaking to the empty chair in front of her.

‘What are you doing that for?’ Dan said behind her. ‘You spoke so politely too.’

‘I don’t know... I thought--’ said Una. ‘Funny!’

‘’Tisn’t. It’s the part you like best,’ Dan grunted.

The music had turned soft--full of little sounds that chased each other on wings across the broad gentle flood of the main tune. But the voice was ten times lovelier than the music.

‘Recordare Jesu pie, Quod sum causa Tuae viae, Ne me perdas illi die!’

There was no more. They moved out into the centre aisle.

‘That you?’ the Lady called as she shut the lid. ‘I thought I heard you, and I played it on purpose.’

‘Thank you awfully,’ said Dan. ‘We hoped you would, so we waited. Come on, Una, it’s pretty nearly dinner-time.’

Song of the Red War-Boat

Shove off from the wharf-edge! Steady! Watch for a smooth! Give way! If she feels the lop already She’ll stand on her head in the bay. It’s ebb--it’s dusk--it’s blowing, The shoals are a mile of white, But (snatch her along!) we’re going To find our master tonight.

For we hold that in all disaster Of shipwreck, storm, or sword, A man must stand by his master When once he had pledged his word!

Raging seas have we rowed in, But we seldom saw them thus; Our master is angry with Odin-- Odin is angry with us! Heavy odds have we taken, But never before such odds. The Gods know they are forsaken, We must risk the wrath of the Gods!

Over the crest she flies from, Into its hollow she drops, Crouches and clears her eyes from The wind-torn breaker-tops, Ere out on the shrieking shoulder Of a hill-high surge she drives. Meet her! Meet her and hold her! Pull for your scoundrel lives!

The thunder bellow and clamour The harm that they mean to do; There goes Thor’s Own Hammer Cracking the dark in two!

Close! But the blow has missed her, Here comes the wind of the blow! Row or the squall’ll twist her Broadside on to it!---Row!

Hearken, Thor of the Thunder! We are not here for a jest-- For wager, warfare, or plunder, Or to put your power to test. This work is none of our wishing-- We would stay at home if we might-- But our master is wrecked out fishing, We go to find him tonight.

For we hold that in all disaster-- As the Gods Themselves have said-- A man must stand by his master Till one of the two is dead.

That is our way of thinking, Now you can do as you will, While we try to save her from sinking, And hold her head to it still. Bale her and keep her moving, Or she’ll break her back in the trough... Who said the weather’s improving, And the swells are taking off?

Sodden, and chafed and aching, Gone in the loins and knees-- No matter--the day is breaking, And there’s far less weight to the seas! Up mast, and finish baling-- In oars, and out with the mead-- The rest will be two-reef sailing... That was a night indeed! But we hold that in all disaster (And faith, we have found it true!) If only you stand by your master, The Gods will stand by you!

A DOCTOR OF MEDICINE

An Astrologer’s Song

To the Heavens above us Oh, look and behold The planets that love us All harnessed in gold! What chariots, what horses, Against us shall bide While the Stars in their courses Do fight on our side?

All thought, all desires, That are under the sun, Are one with their fires, As we also are one; All matter, all spirit, All fashion, all frame, Receive and inherit Their strength from the same.

(Oh, man that deniest All power save thine own, Their power in the highest Is mightily shown. Not less in the lowest That power is made clear. Oh, man, if thou knowest, What treasure is here!)

Earth quakes in her throes And we wonder for why! But the blind planet knows When her ruler is nigh; And, attuned since Creation, To perfect accord, She thrills in her station And yearns to her Lord.

The waters have risen, The springs are unbound-- The floods break their prison, And ravin around. No rampart withstands ‘em, Their fury will last, Till the Sign that commands ‘em Sinks low or swings past.

Through abysses unproven, And gulfs beyond thought, Our portion is woven, Our burden is brought. Yet They that prepare it, Whose Nature we share, Make us who must bear it Well able to bear.

Though terrors o’ertake us We’ll not be afraid, No Power can unmake us Save that which has made. Nor yet beyond reason Nor hope shall we fall-- All things have their season, And Mercy crowns all.

Then, doubt not, ye fearful-- The Eternal is King-- Up, heart, and be cheerful, And lustily sing: What chariots, what horses, Against us shall bide While the Stars in their courses Do fight on our side?

A Doctor of Medicine

They were playing hide-and-seek with bicycle lamps after tea. Dan had hung his lamp on the apple tree at the end of the hellebore bed in the walled garden, and was crouched by the gooseberry bushes ready to dash off when Una should spy him. He saw her lamp come into the garden and disappear as she hid it under her cloak. While he listened for her footsteps, somebody (they both thought it was Phillips the gardener) coughed in the corner of the herb-beds.

‘All right,’ Una shouted across the asparagus; ‘we aren’t hurting your old beds, Phippsey!’

She flashed her lantern towards the spot, and in its circle of light they saw a Guy Fawkes-looking man in a black cloak and a steeple-crowned hat, walking down the path beside Puck. They ran to meet him, and the man said something to them about rooms in their head. After a time they understood he was warning them not to catch colds.

‘You’ve a bit of a cold yourself, haven’t you?’ said Una, for he ended all his sentences with a consequential cough. Puck laughed.

‘Child,’ the man answered, ‘if it hath pleased Heaven to afflict me with an infirmity--’

‘Nay, nay,’ Puck struck In, ‘the maid spoke out of kindness. I know that half your cough is but a catch to trick the vulgar; and that’s a pity. There’s honesty enough in you, Nick, without rasping and hawking.’

‘Good people’--the man shrugged his lean shoulders--‘the vulgar crowd love not truth unadorned. Wherefore we philosophers must needs dress her to catch their eye or--ahem!---their ear.’

‘And what d’you think of that?’ said Puck solemnly to Dan.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘It sounds like lessons.’

‘Ah--well! There have been worse men than Nick Culpeper to take lessons from. Now, where can we sit that’s not indoors?’

‘In the hay-mow, next to old Middenboro,’ Dan suggested. ‘He doesn’t mind.’

‘Eh?’ Mr Culpeper was stooping over the pale hellebore blooms by the light of Una’s lamp. ‘Does Master Middenboro need my poor services, then?’

‘Save him, no!’ said Puck. ‘He is but a horse--next door to an ass, as you’ll see presently. Come!’

Their shadows jumped and slid on the fruit-tree walls. They filed out of the garden by the snoring pig-pound and the crooning hen-house, to the shed where Middenboro the old lawn-mower pony lives. His friendly eyes showed green in the light as they set their lamps down on the chickens’ drinking-trough outside, and pushed past to the hay-mow. Mr Culpeper stooped at the door.

‘Mind where you lie,’ said Dan. ‘This hay’s full of hedge-brishings.

‘In! in!’ said Puck. ‘You’ve lain in fouler places than this, Nick. Ah! Let us keep touch with the stars!’ He kicked open the top of the half-door, and pointed to the clear sky. ‘There be the planets you conjure with! What does your wisdom make of that wandering and variable star behind those apple boughs?’

The children smiled. A bicycle that they knew well was being walked down the steep lane. ‘Where?’ Mr Culpeper leaned forward quickly. ‘That? Some countryman’s lantern.’

‘Wrong, Nick,’ said Puck. ‘’Tis a singular bright star in Virgo, declining towards the house of Aquarius the water-carrier, who hath lately been afflicted by Gemini. Aren’t I right, Una?’ Mr Culpeper snorted contemptuously.

‘No. It’s the village nurse going down to the Mill about some fresh twins that came there last week. Nurse,’ Una called, as the light stopped on the flat, ‘when can I see the Morris twins? And how are they?’

‘Next Sunday, perhaps. Doing beautifully,’ the Nurse called back, and with a ping-ping-ping of the bell brushed round the corner.

‘Her uncle’s a vetinary surgeon near Banbury,’ Una explained, and if you ring her bell at night, it rings right beside her bed--not downstairs at all. Then she ‘umps up--she always keeps a pair of dry boots in the fender, you know--and goes anywhere she’s wanted. We help her bicycle through gaps sometimes. Most of her babies do beautifully. She told us so herself.’

‘I doubt not, then, that she reads in my books,’ said Mr Culpeper quietly. ‘Twins at the Mill!’ he muttered half aloud. “And again He sayeth, Return, ye children of men.”’

‘Are you a doctor or a rector?’ Una asked, and Puck with a shout turned head over heels in the hay. But Mr Culpeper was quite serious. He told them that he was a physician-astrologer--a doctor who knew all about the stars as well as all about herbs for medicine. He said that the sun, the moon, and five Planets, called Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, and Venus, governed everybody and everything in the world. They all lived in Houses--he mapped out some of them against the dark with a busy forefinger--and they moved from House to House like pieces at draughts; and they went loving and hating each other all over the skies. If you knew their likes and dislikes, he said, you could make them cure your patient and hurt your enemy, and find out the secret causes of things. He talked of these five Planets as though they belonged to him, or as though he were playing long games against them. The children burrowed in the hay up to their chins, and looked out over the half-door at the solemn, star-powdered sky till they seemed to be falling upside down into it, while Mr Culpeper talked about ‘trines’ and ‘oppositions’ and ‘conjunctions’ and ‘sympathies’ and ‘antipathies’ in a tone that just matched things.

A rat ran between Middenboro’s feet, and the old pony stamped.

‘Mid hates rats,’ said Dan, and passed him over a lock of hay. ‘I wonder why.’

‘Divine Astrology tells us,’ said Mr Culpeper. ‘The horse, being a martial beast that beareth man to battle, belongs naturally to the red planet Mars--the Lord of War. I would show you him, but he’s too near his setting. Rats and mice, doing their businesses by night, come under the dominion of our Lady the Moon. Now between Mars and Luna, the one red, t’other white, the one hot t’other cold and so forth, stands, as I have told you, a natural antipathy, or, as you say, hatred. Which antipathy their creatures do inherit. Whence, good people, you may both see and hear your cattle stamp in their stalls for the self-same causes as decree the passages of the stars across the unalterable face of Heaven! Ahem!’ Puck lay along chewing a leaf. They felt him shake with laughter, and Mr Culpeper sat up stiffly.

‘I myself’ said he, ‘have saved men’s lives, and not a few neither, by observing at the proper time--there is a time, mark you, for all things under the sun--by observing, I say, so small a beast as a rat in conjunction with so great a matter as this dread arch above us.’ He swept his hand across the sky. ‘Yet there are those,’ he went on sourly, ‘who have years without knowledge.’

‘Right,’ said Puck. ‘No fool like an old fool.’

Mr Culpeper wrapped his cloak round him and sat still while the children stared at the Great Bear on the hilltop.

‘Give him time,’ Puck whispered behind his hand. ‘He turns like a timber-tug--all of a piece.’

‘Ahem!’ Mr Culpeper said suddenly. ‘I’ll prove it to you. When I was physician to Saye’s Horse, and fought the King--or rather the man Charles Stuart--in Oxfordshire (I had my learning at Cambridge), the plague was very hot all around us. I saw it at close hands. He who says I am ignorant of the plague, for example, is altogether beside the bridge.’

‘We grant it,’ said Puck solemnly. ‘But why talk of the plague this rare night?’

‘To prove my argument. This Oxfordshire plague, good people, being generated among rivers and ditches, was of a werish, watery nature. Therefore it was curable by drenching the patient in cold water, and laying him in wet cloths; or at least, so I cured some of them. Mark this. It bears on what shall come after.’

‘Mark also, Nick,’ said Puck, that we are not your College of Physicians, but only a lad and a lass and a poor lubberkin. Therefore be plain, old Hyssop on the Wall!’

‘To be plain and in order with you, I was shot in the chest while gathering of betony from a brookside near Thame, and was took by the King’s men before their Colonel, one Blagg or Bragge, whom I warned honestly that I had spent the week past among our plague-stricken. He flung me off into a cowshed, much like this here, to die, as I supposed; but one of their priests crept in by night and dressed my wound. He was a Sussex man like myself.’

‘Who was that?’ said Puck suddenly. ‘Zack Tutshom?’

‘No, Jack Marget,’ said Mr Culpeper.

‘Jack Marget of New College? The little merry man that stammered so? Why a plague was stuttering Jack at Oxford then?’ said Puck.

‘He had come out of Sussex in hope of being made a Bishop when the King should have conquered the rebels, as he styled us Parliament men. His College had lent the King some monies too, which they never got again, no more than simple Jack got his bishopric. When we met he had had a bitter bellyful of King’s promises, and wished to return to his wife and babes. This came about beyond expectation, for, so soon as I could stand of my wound, the man Blagge made excuse that I had been among the plague, and Jack had been tending me, to thrust us both out from their camp. The King had done with Jack now that Jack’s College had lent the money, and Blagge’s physician could not abide me because I would not sit silent and see him butcher the sick. (He was a College of Physicians man!) So Blagge, I say, thrust us both out, with many vile words, for a pair of pestilent, prating, pragmatical rascals.’

‘Ha! Called you pragmatical, Nick?’ Puck started up. ‘High time Oliver came to purge the land! How did you and honest Jack fare next?’

‘We were in some sort constrained to each other’s company. I was for going to my house in Spitalfields, he would go to his parish in Sussex; but the plague was broke out and spreading through Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire, and he was so mad distracted to think that it might even then be among his folk at home that I bore him company. He had comforted me in my distress. I could not have done less; and I remembered that I had a cousin at Great Wigsell, near by Jack’s parish. Thus we footed it from Oxford, cassock and buff coat together, resolute to leave wars on the left side henceforth; and either through our mean appearances, or the plague making men less cruel, we were not hindered. To be sure, they put us in the stocks one half-day for rogues and vagabonds at a village under St Leonard’s forest, where, as I have heard, nightingales never sing; but the constable very honestly gave me back my Astrological Almanac, which I carry with me.’ Mr Culpeper tapped his thin chest. ‘I dressed a whitlow on his thumb. So we went forward.

‘Not to trouble you with impertinences, we fetched over against Jack Marget’s parish in a storm of rain about the day’s end. Here our roads divided, for I would have gone on to my cousin at Great Wigsell, but while Jack was pointing me out his steeple, we saw a man lying drunk, as he conceived, athwart the road. He said it would be one Hebden, a parishioner, and till then a man of good life; and he accused himself bitterly for an unfaithful shepherd, that had left his flock to follow princes. But I saw it was the plague, and not the beginnings of it neither. They had set out the plague-stone, and the man’s head lay on it.’

‘What’s a plague-stone?’ Dan whispered.

‘When the plague is so hot in a village that the neighbours shut the roads against ‘em, people set a hollowed stone, pot, or pan, where such as would purchase victual from outside may lay money and the paper of their wants, and depart. Those that would sell come later--what will a man not do for gain?---snatch the money forth, and leave in exchange such goods as their conscience reckons fair value. I saw a silver groat in the water, and the man’s list of what he would buy was rain-pulped in his wet hand.

‘“My wife! Oh, my wife and babes!” says Jack of a sudden, and makes uphill--I with him.

‘A woman peers out from behind a barn, crying out that the village is stricken with the plague, and that for our lives’ sake we must avoid it.