 Section 7. The Winged Hats from Puck of Pooks Hill. A Song to Mithras Mithras, God of the Morning, our trumpets awaken the wall. Rome is above the nations, but thou art over all. Now, as the names are answered, and the guards are marched away, Mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day. Mithras, God of the Noontide, the heather swims in the heat. Our helmets scorch our foreheads. Our sandals burn our feet. Now in the ungird hour. Now ere we blink and drow. Mithras, also a soldier, keep us true to our vows. Mithras, God of the Sunset, low on the western main. Thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again. Now when the watch is ended. Now when the wine is drawn. Mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn. Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great bull lies. Look on thy children in darkness, O take our sacrifice. Many roads thou hast fashioned, all of them lead to the light. Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die a right. THE WINGED HATS The next day happened to be what they called a wild afternoon. Father and mother went out to pay calls. Miss Blake went for a ride on her bicycle, and they were left all alone till eight o'clock. When they had seen their dear parents and their dear perceptress, politely off the premises, they got a cabbage leaf full of raspberries from the gardener, and a wild tea from Ellen. They ate the raspberries to prevent their squashing, and they meant to divide the cabbage leaf with three cows down at the theatre, but they came across a dead hedgehog which they simply had to bury, and the leaf was too useful to waste. Then they went on to the forge and found old Hobdon the Hedger at home with his son, the B-boy, who is not quite right in his head, but who can pick up swarms of bees in his naked hands, and the B-boy told them the rhyme about the slow worm. If I had eyes as could see, no mortal man would trouble me. They all had tea together by the hives, and Hobdon said the loaf-cake which Ellen had given them was almost as good as what his wife used to make, and he showed them how to set a wire at the right height for hairs. They knew about rabbits already. They climbed up long-ditch into the lower end of Farwood. This is sadder and darker than the Voloteri end, because of an old malpit full of black water, where weepy, hairy moss hangs round the stumps of the willows and alders. But the birds come to perch on the dead branches, and Hobdon says that the bitter willow water is a sort of medicine for sick animals. They sat down on a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of the beach undergrowth, and were looping the wires Hobdon had given them when they saw Parnesius. How quietly you came, said Euna, moving up to make room. Where's Puck? The fawn and I have disputed whether it is better that I should tell you all my tale, or leave it untold, he replied. I only said that if he told it as it happened, you wouldn't understand it, said Puck, jumping up like a squirrel from behind the log. I don't understand all of it, said Euna, but I like hearing about the little pics. What I can't understand, said Dan, is how Maximus knew all about the pics when he was over in Gaul. He who makes himself emperor anywhere must know everything everywhere, said Parnesius. We had this much from Maximus' mouth after the games. Games? What games? said Dan. Parnesius stretched out his arm stiffly, thumb pointed to the ground. Gladiators, that sort of game, he said. There were two days' games in his honour when he landed all unexpected at Segedunum on the east end of the Wall. Yes, the day after we had met him we held two days' games. But I think the greatest risk was run, not by the poor etches on the sand, but by Maximus. In the old days the legions kept silence before their emperor. So did not we. You could hear the solid roar run west along the Wall as his chair was carried rocking through the crowds. The garrison beat round him, clamouring, clowning, asking for pay, for change of quarters, for anything that came into their wild heads. That chair was like a little boat among waves, dipping and falling, but always rising again after one had shut the eyes. Parnesius shivered. Were they angry with him? said Dan. No more angry than wolves in a cage when their trainer walks among them. If he had turned his back an instant, or for an instant had ceased to hold their eyes, there would have been another emperor made on the Wall that hour. Was it not so, fawn? So it was, so it will always be, said Puck. Late in the evening his messenger came for us, and we followed to the temple of victory, where he lodged with Rutileanus, the general of the Wall. I had hardly seen the general before, but he always gave me leave when I wished to take Heather. He was a great glutton, and kept five Asian cooks, and he came of a family that believed in oracles. We could smell his good dinner when we entered, but the tables were empty. He lay snorting on a couch. Maximus sat apart among long rolls of accounts. Then the doors were shut. These are your men, said Maximus to the general, who propped his eye-corners open with his gouty fingers, and stared at us like a fish. I shall know them again, Caesar, said Rutileanus. Very good, said Maximus. Now here you are not to move man or shield on the Wall, except as these boys shall tell you. You will do nothing except eat without their permission. They are the head and arms. You are the belly. As Caesar pleases, the old man grunted, if my pay and profits are not cut, you may make my ancestors oracle my master. Rome has been, Rome has been. Then he turned on his side to sleep. He has it, said Maximus. We will get to what I need. He unrolled full copies of the number of men and supplies on the Wall, down to the sick that very day in Hunno Hospital. Oh, but I groaned when his pen marked off detachment after detachment of our best, of our least worthless men. He took two towers of our Scythians, two of our North British auxiliaries, two Numidian cohorts, the Dacians all, and half the Belgians. It was like an eagle pecking a carcass. And now, how many catapults have you? He turned up a new list, but Pertinax laid his open hand there. No, Caesar, said he, do not tempt the gods too far, take men or engines, but not both, else we refuse. Engines, said Euna. The catapults of the Wall, huge things, forty feet high to the head, firing nets of raw stone or forged bolts. Nothing can stand against them. He left us our catapults at last, but he took a Caesar's half of our men without pity. We were a shell when he rolled up the lists. Hail, Caesar, we about to die salute you, said Pertinax, laughing. If any enemy even leans against the Wall now, it will tumble. Give me the three years, Allo spoke of, he answered, and you shall have twenty thousand men of your own choosing up here. But now it is a gamble, a game played against the gods, and the stakes are Britain, Gaul, and perhaps Rome. You play on my side? We will play, Caesar, I said, for I had never met a man like this man. Good. Tomorrow, said he, I proclaim you captains of the Wall before the troops. So we went into the moonlight, where they were cleaning the ground after the games. We saw the great Roma dair atop of the Wall, the frost on her helmet and her spear pointed towards the North Star. We saw the twinkle of night fires all along the guard towers, and the line of the black catapults growing smaller and smaller in the distance. All these things we knew till we were weary, but that night they seemed very strange to us, because the next day we knew we were to be their masters. The men took the news well, but when Maximus went away with half our strength, and we had to spread ourselves into the emptied towers, and the townspeople complained that trade would be ruined, and the autumn gales blew. It was dark days for us too. Here Pertinax was more than my right hand. Being born and bred among the great country houses in Gaul, he knew the proper words to address to all, from Roman-born centurions to those dogs of the Third, the Libyans. And he spoke to each as though that man were as high-minded as himself. Now I saw so strongly what things were needed to be done, that I forgot things are only accomplished by means of men. That was a mistake. I feared nothing from the Picts, at least for that year, but Allo warned me that the winged hats would soon come in from the sea at each end of the wall to prove to the Picts how weak we were. So I made ready in haste and none too soon. I shifted our best men to the ends of the wall and set up screened catapults by the beach. The winged hats would drive in before the snow squalls, ten or twenty boats at a time, on Segidunum or Ituna, according as the wind blew. Now a ship coming in to land men must fell her sail. If you wait till you see her men gather up the sail's foot, your catapults can jerk a net of loose stones, bolts only cut through the cloth, into the bag of it, then she turns over, and the sea makes everything clean again. A few men may come ashore, but very few. It was not hard work, except the waiting on the beach in blowing sand and snow, and that was how we dealt with the winged hats that winter. Early in the spring, when the east winds blow like skinning knives, they gathered again off the east end with many ships. Allo told me that they would never rest till they had taken a tower in open fight. Certainly they fought in the open. We dealt with them thoroughly through a long day, and when all was finished, one man dived clear of the wreckage of his ship and swam towards shore. I waited, and a wave tumbled him at my feet. As I stooped, I saw he wore such a medal as I wear. Parnesius raised his hand to his neck. Therefore, when he could speak, I addressed him a certain question which can only be answered in a certain manner. He answered with the necessary word, the word that belongs to the degree of griffons in the science of Mithras, my God. I put my shield over him till he could stand up. You see, I am not short, but he was a head taller than I. He said, What now? I said, At your pleasure, my brother, to stay or go. He looked out across the surf. There remained one ship unhurt, beyond range of our catapults. I checked the catapults, and he waved her in. She came as a hound comes to a master. When she was yet a hundred paces from the beach, he flung back his hair and swam out. They hauled him in and went away. I knew that those who worship Mithras are many, and of all races, so I did not think much more upon the matter. A month later I saw Allo with his horses, by the Temple of Pan, O' Forne, and he gave me a great necklace of gold, studded with coral. At first I thought it was a bribe from some tradesman in the town, meant for old Rutilianus. Nay, said Allo, this is a gift from Amal, that winged hat whom you saved on the beach. He says you are a man. He is a man, too. Tell him I can wear his gift, I answered. Oh, Amal is a young fool! But, speaking as sensible men, your emperor is doing such great things in Gaul that the winged hats are anxious to be his friends, or better still the friends of his servants. They think you and Pertinax could lead them to victories. Allo looked at me like a one-eyed raven. Allo, I said, you are the corn between two millstones. Be content if they grind evenly, and don't thrust your hand between them. I, said Allo, I hate Rome and the winged hats equally. But if the winged hats thought that some day you and Pertinax might join them against Maximus, they would leave you in peace while you considered. Time is what we need, you and I and Maximus. Let me carry a pleasant message back to the winged hats, something for them to make a council over. We barbarians are all alike. We sit up half the night to discuss anything, a Roman says, eh? We have no men. We must fight with words, said Pertinax. Leave it to Allo and me. So Allo carried word back to the winged hats that we would not fight them if they did not fight us. And they, I think they were a little tired of losing men in the sea, agreed to a sort of truce. I believe Allo, who being a horse-dealer loved lies, also told them we might some day rise against Maximus, as Maximus had risen against Rome. Indeed, they permitted the corn-ships, which I sent to the Picts, to pass north of that season without harm. Therefore the Picts were well fed that winter, and since they were in some sort to my children, I was glad of it. We had only two thousand men on the wall, and I wrote many times to Maximus and begged. Prayed him to send me only one cohort of my old North British troops. He could not spare them. He needed them to win more victories in Gaul. Then came news that he had defeated and slain the Emperor Gratian, and thinking he must now be secure, I wrote again for men. He answered, You will learn that I have at last settled accounts with the Pop Gratian. There was no need that he should have died, but he became confused and lost his head, which is a bad thing to befall any Emperor. Tell your father I am content to drive two mules only. For unless my old General's son thinks himself destined to destroy me, I shall rest Emperor of Gaul and Britain, and then you, my two children, will presently get all the men you need. Just now I can spare none. What did he mean by his General's son? said Dan. He meant Theodosius, Emperor of Rome, who was the son of Theodosius, the general under whom Maximus had fought in the old picked war. The two men never loved each other, and when Gratian made the younger Theodosius, Emperor of the East, at least so I've heard, Maximus carried on the war to the second generation. It was his fate and his fall. But Theodosius the Emperor is a good man, as I know. Parnesius was silent for a moment, and then continued, I wrote back to Maximus that, though we had peace on the wall, I should be happier with a few more men and some new catapults. He answered, You must live a little longer under the shadow of my victories, till I can see what young Theodosius intends. He may welcome me as a brother-emperor, or he may be preparing an army. In either case, I cannot spare men just now. But he was always saying that, cried Euna. It was true. He did not make excuses. But thanks, as he said to the news of his victories, we had no trouble on the war for a long, long time. The Picts grew fat as their own sheep among the Heather, and as many of my men as lived were well exercised in their weapons. Yes, the wall looked strong. For myself, I knew how weak we were. I knew that if even a false rumour of any defeat to Maximus broke loose among the winged hats, they might come down in earnest, and then the wall must go. For the Picts I never cared, but in those years I learned something of the strength of the winged hats. They increased their strength every day, but I could not increase my men. Maximus had emptied Britain behind us, and I felt myself to be a man with a rotten stick standing before a broken fence to turn bulls. Thus, my friends, we lived on the wall, waiting, waiting, waiting for the men that Maximus never sent. Presently he wrote that he was preparing an army against Theodosius. He wrote, and Pertinax read it over my shoulder in our quarters. Tell your father that my destiny orders me to drive three mules or be torn in pieces by them. I hope within a year to finish with Theodosius, son of Theodosius, once and for all. Then you shall have Britain to rule, and Pertinax, if he chooses, gall. Today I wish strongly you were with me to beat my auxiliaries into shape. Do not, I pray you, believe any rumour of my sickness. I have a little evil in my old body, which I shall cure by riding swiftly into Rome. Said Pertinax, it is finished with Maximus. He writes as a man without hope. I, a man without hope, can see this. What does he add at the bottom of the roll? Tell Pertinax, I have met his late uncle, the Duomvir of Divio, and that he accounted to me quite truthfully for all his mother's monies. I have sent her with a fitting escort, for she is a mother of a hero, to Nicaea, where the climate is warm. That is proof, said Pertinax. Nicaea is not far by sea from Rome. A woman there could take ship and flight to Rome in time of war. Yes, Maximus foresees his death and is fulfilling his promises one by one. But I am glad my uncle met him. You think blackly today? I asked. I think truth. The gods weary of the play we have played against them. Theodosius will destroy Maximus. It is finished. Will you write him that? I said. See what I shall write, he answered, and he took pen and wrote a letter cheerful as the light of day, tender as a woman's and full of jests. Even I, reading over his shoulder, took comfort from it, till I saw his face. And now, he said, sealing it, we be two dead men, my brother, let us go to the temple. We prayed a while to Mithras, where we had many times prayed before. After that we lived day by day among evil rumours till winter came again. It happened one morning that we rode to the east shore and found on the beach a fair haired man, half frozen, bound to some broken planks. Turning him over, we saw by his belt buckle that he was a goth of an eastern legion. Suddenly he opened his eyes and cried loudly, He is dead! The letters were with me, but the winged hats sunk the ship. So saying, he died between our hands. We asked Nott, who was dead. We knew. We raced before the driving snow to Hanno, thinking perhaps Allo might be there. We found him already at our stables, and he saw by our faces what we had heard. It was in a tent by the sea, he stammered. He was beheaded by Theodosius. He sent a letter to you, written while he waited to be slain. The winged hats met the ship and took it. The news is running through the heather like fire. Blame me not. I cannot hold back my young men any more. I would we could say as much for our men, said Pertinax, laughing, but, God's be praised, they cannot run away. What do you do? said Allo. I bring an order, a message from the winged hats that you join them with your men and march south to Plunder Britain. It grieves me, said Pertinax, but we are stationed here to stop that thing. If I carry back such an answer, they will kill me, said Allo. I always promised the winged hats that you would rise when Maximus fell. I did not think he could fall. Alas! my poor barbarian, said Pertinax, still laughing. Well, you have sold us too many good ponies to be thrown back to your friends. We will make you a prisoner, although you are an ambassador. Yes, that will be best, said Allo, holding out a halter. We bound him lightly, for he was an old man. Presently the winged hats may come to look for you, and that will give us more time. See how the habit of playing for time sticks to a man, said Pertinax, as he tied the rope. No, I said, time may help. If Maximus wrote us letters while he was a prisoner, Theodosius must have sent the ship that brought it. If he can send ships, he can send men. How will that profit us, said Pertinax? We serve Maximus, not Theodosius. Even if, by some miracle of the gods, Theodosius down south sent and saved the wall, we could not expect more than the death Maximus died. It concerns us to defend the wall, no matter what Emperor dies or makes die, I said. That is worthy of your brother the philosopher, said Pertinax. Myself I am without hope, so I do not say solemn and stupid things. Rouse the wall. We armed the wall from end to end. We told the officers that there was a rumour of Maximus' death, which might bring down the winged hats, but we were sure, even if it were true, that Theodosius, for the sake of Britain, would send us help. Therefore we must stand fast. My friends, it is above all things strange to see how men bear ill news. Often the strongest till then become the weakest, while the weakest, as it were, reach up and steal strength from the gods. So it was with us. Yet my Pertinax, by his jests and his courtesy and his labours, had put heart and training into our poor numbers during the past years, more than I should have thought possible. Even how Libyan cohort, the Thirds, stood up in their padded crerasses and did not whimper. In three days came seven chiefs and elders of the winged hats. Among them was that tall young man, Amal, whom I had met on the beach, and he smiled when he saw my necklace. We made them welcome, for they were ambassadors. We showed them Allo, alive but bound. They thought we had killed him, and I saw it would not have vexed them if we had. Allo saw it, too, and it vexed him. Then in our quarters at Hunno we came to council. They said that Rome was falling and that we must join them. They offered me all South Britain to govern after they had taken a tribute out of it. I answered, patience, this wall is not weighed off like plunder. Give me proof that my general is dead. Nay, said one elder, proof to us that he lives. And another said cunningly, what will you give us if we read you his last words? We are not merchants to bargain, cried Amal. Moreover, I owe this man my life. He shall have his proof. He threw across to me a letter, well I knew the seal, from Maximus. We took this out of the ship we sunk, he cried. I cannot read, but I know one sign, at least, which makes me believe. He showed me a dark stain on the outer roll that my heavy heart perceived was the valiant blood of Maximus. Read, said Amal, read, and then let us hear whose servants you are. Said Pertenax, very softly, after he had looked through it. I will read it all. Listen, barbarians. He read from that which I have carried next to my heart ever since. Parnesius drew from his neck a folded and spotted piece of parchment, and began in a hushed voice. To Parnesius and Pertenax the not unworthy captains of the wall, from Maximus, once emperor of Gaul and Britain, now prisoner waiting death by the sea in the camp of Theodosius. Greeting and good-bye. Enough, said young Amal. There is your proof. You must join us now. Pertenax looked long and silently at him, till that fair man blushed like a girl. Then read Pertenax. I have joyfully done much evil in my life to those who have wished me evil, but if I ever did any evil to you two I repent and ask your forgiveness. The three mules which I strove to drive have torn me in pieces as your father prophesied. The naked swords wait at the tent door to give me the death I gave to Gratian. Therefore I, your general and your emperor, send you free and honourable dismissal from my service which you entered not for money or office, but as it makes me warm to believe because you loved me. By the light of the sun, Amal broke in, this was in some sort a man. We may have been mistaken in his servants. And Pertenax read on. You gave me the time for which I asked. If I have failed to use it, do not lament. We have gambled very splendidly against the gods, but they hold weighted dice, and I must pay the forfeit. Remember, I have been, but Rome is, and Rome will be. Tell Pertenax his mother is in safety at Nicaea, and her moneys are in charge of the prefect at Antipolis. Make my remembrances to your father and to your mother, whose friendship was a great gain to me. Give also to my little pics and to the winged hats such messages as their thick heads can understand. I would have sent you three legions this very day if all had gone aright. Do not forget me. We have worked together. Farewell, farewell, farewell. Now that was my emperor's last letter. The children heard the parchment crackle as Parnesius returned it to its place. I was mistaken, said Amal. The servants of such a man will sell nothing except over the sword. I am glad of it. He held out his hand to me. But Maximus has given you your dismissal, said an elder. You are certainly free to serve, or to rule whom you please. Join. Do not follow. Join us. We thank you, said Pertenax. But Maximus tells us to give you such messages as, pardon me, but I use his words, your thick heads can understand. He pointed through the door to the foot of a catapult wound up. We understand, said an elder, the wall must be one at a price. It grieves me, said Pertenax, laughing, but so it must be one. And he gave them of our best southern wine. They drank and wiped their yellow beards in silence till they rose to go. Said Amal, stretching himself, for they were barbarians. We be a goodly company. I wonder what the ravens and the dog-fish will make of some of us before this snow melts. Think rather what Theodosius may send, I answered. And though they laughed, I saw that my chance shot troubled them. Only old Allo lingered behind a little. You see, he said, winking and blinking, I am no more than their dog. When I have shown their men the secret short ways across our bogs, they will kick me like one. Then I should not be in haste to show them those ways, said Pertenax, till I was sure that Rome could not save the wall. You think so? Woe is me, said the old man. I only wanted peace for my people, and he went out stumbling through the snow behind the tall winged hats. In this fashion, then, slowly, a day at a time, which is very bad for doubting troops, the war came upon us. At first the winged hats swept in from the sea as they had done before, and there we met them as before, with the catapults. And they sickened of it. Yet for a long time they would not trust their duck legs on land, and I think when it came to revealing the secrets of the tribe, the little Picts were afraid or ashamed to show them all the roads across the Heather. I had this from a Pict prisoner. They were as much our spies as our enemies, for the winged hats oppressed them and took their winter stalls. Ah, foolish little people. Then the winged hats began to roll us up from each end of the wall. I sent runners southward to see what the news might be in Britain, but the wolves were very bold that winter among the deserted stations where the troops had once been, and none came back. We had trouble, too, with the forage for the ponies along the wall. I kept ten, and so did Pertinax. We lived and slept in the saddle riding east or west, and we ate our worn-out ponies. The people of the town also made us some trouble till I gathered them all in one quarter behind Hanoe. We broke down the wall on either side of it to make, as it were, a citadel. Our men fought better in close order. By the end of the second month we were deep in the wall as a man is deep in a snowdrift or in a dream. I think we fought in our sleep. At least I know I have gone on the wall and come off again, remembering nothing between, though my throat was harsh with giving orders, and my sword, I could see, had been used. The winged hats fought like wolves, all in a pack. Where they had suffered most, there they charged in most hotly. This was hard for the defender, but it held them from sweeping on in Britain. In those days Pertinax and I wrote on the plaster of the Bricked Archway into Valentia, the names of the towers, and the days on which they fell one by one. We wished for some record. And the fighting? The fight was always hottest to left and right of the great statue of Romadea, near to Rutiliana's house. By the light of the sun, that fat old man, whom we had not considered at all, grew young again among the trumpets. I remember he said his sword was an oracle. Let us consult the oracle, he would say, and put the handle against his ear, and shake his head wisely. And this day is allowed Rutiliana's to live, he would say, and tucking up his cloak he would puff and pant and fight well. Oh, there were jets in plenty on the wall to take the place of food. We endured for two months and seventeen days, always being pressed from three sides into a smaller space. Several times Allot sent in word that help was at hand. We did not believe it, but it cheered our men. The end came, not with shoutings of joy, but like the rest, as in a dream. The winged hat suddenly left us in peace for one night and the next day, which is too long for spent men. We slept at first lightly, expecting to be roused, and then like logs, each where he lay. May you never need such sleep. When I waked, our towers were full of strange, armed men whom watched us snoring. I roused pertinax, and we leapt up together. What, said a young man in clean armour, do you fight against theodosius? Look! North we looked over the red snow. No winged hats were there. South we looked over the white snow, and behold, there were the eagles of two strong legions encamped. East and west we saw flame and fighting, but by Hanno all was still. Trouble no more, said the young man. Rome's arm is long. Where are the captains of the wall? We said we were those men. But you are old and grey-haired, he cried. Maximus said they were boys. Yes, that was true some years ago, said pertinax. What is our fate to be, you fine and well-fed child? I am called Ambrosius, a secretary of the emperor, he answered. Show me a certain letter which Maximus wrote from a tent at Aquileia, and perhaps I will believe. I took it from my breast, and when he had read it he saluted us, saying, Your fate is in your own hands. If you choose to serve theodosius, he will give you a legion. If it suits you to go to your homes, we will give you a triumph. I would like better a bath, wine, food, razors, soaps, oils, and scents, said pertinax, laughing. Oh, I see you are a boy, said Ambrosius, and you, turning to me. We bear no ill-will against theodosius, but in war, I began, in war it is as in love, said pertinax, whether she be good or bad, one gives one's best once to one only. That given there remains no second worth giving or taking. That is true, said Ambrosius. I was with Maximus before he died. He warned theodosius that you would never serve him, and, frankly, I say I am sorry for my emperor. He has roamed to console him, said pertinax. I ask you of your kindness to let us go to our homes and get this smell out of our nostrils. Nonetheless they gave us a triumph. It was well earned, said Puck, throwing some leaves into the still water of the malpit. The black oily circles spread dizzily as the children watched them. I want to know, oh, ever so many things, said Dan. What happened to old Allo? Did the winged hats ever come back? And what did Amal do? And what happened to the fat old general with the five cooks? said Euna. And what did your mother say? She'd say, as you're sitting too long over this old pit, so late as tears already, said old Hobdon's voice behind them. St. he whispered. He stood still, for not twenty paces away, a magnificent dog-fox sat on his haunches, and looked at the children, as though he were an old friend of theirs. Oh, must Reynolds, must Reynolds, said Hobdon under his breath. If I know it all was inside your head, I'd know something worth knowing. Must Dan and Miss Euna come along with me while I lock up my little hen-house? End of Section 7 The Winged Hats Section 8 Hall of the Draft From Puck of Pooks Hill This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Icy Jumbo Puck of Pooks Hill By Rudyard Kipling Section 8 Hall of the Draft A Picked Song Rome never looks where she treads, always her heavy hooves fall on our stomachs, our hearts, or our heads, and Rome never heats when we ball, her centuries pass on, that is all, and we gather behind them in hordes, and plot to reconquer the wall with only our tongues for our swords. We are the little folk, we, too little to love or to hate. Leave us alone and you'll see how we can drag down the great. We are the worm in the wood, we are the rot at the root, we are the germ in the blood, we are the thorn in the foot. Mistletoe killing an oak, rats gnawing cables in two, moths making holes in a cloak, how they must love what they do. Yes, and we little folk, too, we are as busy as they, working our works out of view. Watch, and you'll see it some day. No indeed, we are not strong, but we know peoples that are. Yes, and we'll guide them along to smash and destroy you in war. We shall be slaves just the same? Yes, we have always been slaves, but you, you will die of the shame, and then we shall dance on your graves. Hall of the Draft Prophets have honour all over the earth, except in the village where they were born. Where such as knew them boys from birth, nature only hold them in scorn. When prophets are naughty and young and vain, they make a wonderful grievance of it. You can see by their writings how they complain, but oh, it is wonderful good for the prophet. There's nothing Nineveh town can give, nor being swallowed by whales between, makes up for the place where a man's folk live that don't care nothing what he has been. He might have been that, or he might have been this, but they love and they hate him for what he is. Hall of the Draft A rainy afternoon drove Dan and Euna over to play pirates in the little mill. If you don't mind rats on the rafters and oats in your shoes, the mill attic, with its trap doors and inscriptions on beams about floods and sweethearts, is a splendid place. It is lighted by a foot square window, called duck window, that looks across the little linden's farm, and the spot where Jack Cade was killed. When they had climbed the attic ladder, they called it the mainmaster tree out of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, and Dach swarved it with might and vain, as the ballad says. They saw a man sitting on duck window sill. He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book. Sit ye, sit ye, puck cried from a rafter overhead. See what it is to be beautiful? Sir Harry Dore, pardon, how, says I am the very image of a head for a gargoyle. The man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the children, and his grizzled hair bristled out in a stormy fringe. He was old, forty at least, but his eyes were young, with funny little wrinkles all round them. A satchel of embroidered leather hung from his broad belt, which looked interesting. May we see? said Euna, coming forward. Surely, surely, he said, moving up on the window-seat, and returned to his work with a silver-pointed pencil. Puck sat as though the grin were fixed for ever on his broad face, while they watched the quick, certain fingers that copied it. Presently the man took a reed-pen from his satchel, and trimmed it with a little ivory knife carved in the semblance of a fish. Oh, what a beauty! cried Dan. Wear fingers! That blade is perilous sharp. I made it myself of the best low-country crossbow steel, and so too this fish. When his back fin travels to his tail, so he swallows up the blade, even as the whale swallowed up Gaffer Jonah. Yes, and that's my ink-horn. I made the four silver saints round it, pressed Barnabas' head. It opens, and then he dipped the trimmed pen, and with careful boldness began to put in the essential lines of Puck's rugged face that had been but faintly revealed by the silver-point. The children gasped, for it fairly leapt from the page. As he worked, and the rain fell on the tiles, he talked, now clearly, now muttering, now breaking off to frown or smile at his work. He told them he was born at Little Linden's farms, and his father used to beat him for drawing things instead of doing things, till an old priest called Father Roger, who drew illuminated letters in rich people's books, coaxed the parents to let him take the boy as a sort of painter's apprentice. Then he went with Father Roger to Oxford, where he cleaned plates and carried cloaks and shoes for the scholars of a college called Merton. Didn't you hate that? said Dan, after a great many other questions. I never thought on it. Half Oxford was building new colleges, or beautifying the old, and she had called to her aid the master craftsmen of all Christendy, kings in their trade and honoured of kings. I knew them. I worked for them. That was enough. No wonder he stopped and laughed. You became a great man, said Puck. They said so, Robin, even Bramante said so. Why, what did you do? Dan asked. The artist looked at him clearly. Things in stone and such, up and down England, you would not have heard of them. To come nearer home I rebuilded this little St Bartholomew's Church of Hours. It cost me more trouble and sorrow than ought I've touched in my life. But it was a sound lesson. Um, said Dan, we had lessons this morning. I'll not afflict ye, lad, said Hal, while Puck roared. Only, it is strange to think how that little church was rebuilt, re-roofed, and made glorious, thanks to some few godly Sussex ironmasters, a Bristol sailor lad, a proud ass called Halor the Draft, because, do you see, he was always drawing and drafting, and he dragged the words slowly, and a scotch pirate. Pirate, said Dan, he wriggled like a hooked fish, even that Andrew Barton you were singing of on the stair just now. He dipped again in the inkwell and held his breath over a sweeping line, as though he had forgotten everything else. Pirates don't build churches, do they? said Dan. Or do they? They help mightily, Hal laughed. But you were at your lessons this morning, Jack Scholar. Oh, pirates aren't lessons. It was only Bruce and his silly old spider, said Euna. Why did Sir Andrew Barton help you? My question, if he ever knew it, said Hal, twinkling. Robin, how are mischiefs' name am I to tell these innocence what comes of sinful pride? Oh, we know about that, said Euna Perkley. If you get too beany, that's cheeky, you get sat upon, of course. Hal considered a moment, pen in air, and Perk said some long words. Aha, that was my case too, he cried. Beany, you say, but certainly I did not conduct myself well. I was proud of, of such things as porches, a Galilee porch at Lincoln, for choice, proud of one Torrigiano's arm on my shoulder, proud of my knighthood when I made the guilt-scroll work for the sovereign, our king's ship. But Father Roger, sitting in Merton Library, he did not forget me. At the top of my pride, when I and no other should have builded the porch at Lincoln, he laid it on me with a terrible forefinger to go back to my Sussex clays and rebuild at my own charges, my own church, where we doors have been buried for six generations. Out, son of my art, he said, he, fight the devil at home, ere ye call yourself a man and a craftsman. And I quaked, and I went. How's ya on, Robin? He flourished the finished sketch before Puck. Me. Me, past per adventure, said Puck, smirking like a man at a mirror. Ah, see, the rain has took off. I hate housing in daylight. Whoop, holiday! cried Hal, leaping up. Who's for my little lindons? We can talk there. They tumbled downstairs and turned past the dripping willows by the sunny mill dam. Boddy and me, said Hal, staring at the hop garden, where the hops were just ready to blossom. What are these vines? No, not vines. And they twined the wrong way to beans. He began to draw in his ready book. Hops, new since your day, said Puck. They're an herb of Mars, and their flowers dried, flavour ale. We say, turkeys, heresy, hops and beer came into England all in one year. Heresy, I know. I've seen hops. God be praised for their beauty. What is your turkis? The children laughed. They all knew the lindons' turkeys, and as soon as they reached Linden's orchard on the hill, the flock charged at them. Out came Hal's book at once. Hoity-toity, he cried. Here's pride in purple feathers. Here's rothy contempt and the pumps of the flesh. How do you call them? Turkeys, turkeys! the children shouted, as the old gobbler raved and flamed against Hal's plum-coloured hose. Saviour magnificence, he said. I've drafted two good new things today, and he doved his cap to the bubbling bird. Then they walked through the grass to the knoll where the little Linden's stands. The old farmhouse, where the tiled to the ground, took almost the colour of a blood ruby in the afternoon light. The pigeons pecked at the mortar in the chimney-stacks. The bees that had lived under the tiles since it was built filled the hot August air with their booming, and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy-window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke. The farmer's wife came to the door, baby on arm, shaded her brows against the sun, stooped to pluck a sprig of rosemary, and turned down the orchard. The old spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to show he was in charge of the empty house. Puck clicked back the garden-gate. Do you marvel that I love it? said Hal in a whisper. What can townfolk know of the nature of housing or land? They perched themselves a row on the old hacked oak bench in Linden's garden, looking across the valley of the brook at the fern-covered dimples and hollows of the forge behind Hobton's cottage. The old man was cutting a faggot in his garden by the hives. It was quite a second after his chopper fell that the chump of the blow reached their lazy ears. Hey, yeah! said Hal. I mined when where that old gaffer stands was nether forge, Master John Collins's foundry. Many a night has his big trip-hammer shook me in my bed here. If the wind was east, I could hear Master Tom Collins' forge at Stockins, answering his brother, boom-woop, boom-woop. And midway between, Sir John Pelham's sledgehammers at Breitling would strike in like a pack of scholars, and hick-hack-hock, they'd say, hick-hack-hock, till I fell asleep. Yes, the valley was as full of forges and fineries as a mayshore of cuckoos. All gone to grass now. What did they make? said Dan. Guns for the king's ships, and for others. Serpentines and cannon mostly. When the guns were cast, Dan would come the king's officers, and take our plow oxen to haul them to the coast. Look, here's one of the first and finest craftsmen of the sea. He fluttered back a page of his book, and showed them a young man's head. Underneath was written, Sebastianus. He came down with a king's order on Master John Collins for twenty Serpentines, wicked little cannon, maybe, to furnish a venture of ships. I drafted him, thus, sitting by our fire, telling mother of the new lands he'd find, the far side of the world. And he found them, too. There's a nose to cleave through unknown seas. Cabot was his name, a Bristol lad, half a foreigner. I set a heap by him. He helped me to my church building. I thought that was Sir Andrew Barton, said Dan. I, but foundations before roofs, Hal answered, Sebastian first put me in the way of it. I had come down here not to serve God as a craftsman should, but to show my people how greater craftsmen I was. They cared not, and it served me right, one split straw for my craft or my greatness. What a moraine call had I, they said, to mel with old St Barnabas's. Ruinous the church had been since the Black Death, and ruinous she should remain. And I could hang myself in my new scaffold ropes. Gentle and simple, high and low, the haze, the fowls, the fanners at the Collins's. They were all in a tale against me. Only Sir John Pelham, up yonder to Breitling, bade me heart up and go on. Yet how could I? Did I ask Master Collins for his timber tug to haul beams? The oxen had gone to Lewis after lime. Did he promise me a set of iron cramps or ties for the roof? They never came to hand, or else they were spulty or cracked. So with everything. Nothing said, but not done, except I stood by them, and then done amiss. I thought the countryside was fair bewitched. It was, surely, said Puck, knees under chin. Did you never suspect anyone? Not till Sebastian came for his guns, and John Collins played him the same dog's tricks as he'd played me with my iron work. Week in, week out, two of the three serpentines would be flawed in the casting, and only fit, they said, to be remelted. Then John Collins would shake his head, and vow he could pass no canon for the King's service that were not perfect. Saints, how Sebastian stormed! I know, for we sat on this bench sharing our sorrows intercommon. When Sebastian had fumed away six weeks at Linden's, and gotten just six serpentines, Dirk Brenzett, master of the signet, hoy, sends me word that the block of stone he was fetching me from France for our new font, he'd hove overboard to lighten his ship, chased by Andrew Barton up to Rye Port. Ah, the pirate! said Dan. Yes, and while I'm tearing my hair over this, Ticehurst Will, my best mason, comes to me shaking, and vowing that the devil, horned, tailed, and chained, has run out on him from the church tower, and the men would work there no more. So I took him off the foundations, which we were strengthening, and went into the bell tavern for a cup of ale. Says Master John Collins. Have it your own way, lad, but if I was you, I'd take the signification of the sign, and leave old Barnabas's church alone. And they all wagged their sinful heads and agreed, less afraid of the devil than of me, as I saw later. When I brought my sweet news to Lyndon's, Sebastian was limewashing the kitchen beams for mother. He loved her like a son. Cheer up, lad, he says. God's where he was, only you and I chance to be pure, pute asses. We've been tricked, Hal, and more shame to me, of sailor, that I didn't guess it before. You must leave your belfry alone, forsooth, because the devil is adrift there, and I cannot get my serpentines, because John Collins cannot cast them aright. Meantime, Andrew Barton hawks off the port of Rye, and why? To take those very serpentines which poor Cabot must whistle for, the said serpentines I'll wager my share of the new continents, being now hid away in St Barnabas church tower, clear as the Irish coast at noonday. They'd sure never dare do it, I said, and for another thing, selling cannon to their king's enemies is black treason, hanging and fine. It is sure, large profit, men'll dare any gallows for that, I have been a trader myself, says he. We must be upsides with him for the honour of Bristol. Then he hatched a plot, sitting on the limewash bucket. We gave out to ride a Tuesday to London, and made a show of making farewells of our friends, especially of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we turned, rode by night to the water meadows, hid our horses in a willow tot at the foot of the Glebe, and stole a tiptoe uphill to Barnabas's church again, a thick mist and a moon coming through. I had no sooner locked the tower door behind us than overgoed Sebastian full length in the dark. Pest, he says, step high and feel low how I've stumbled over guns before. I groped, and one by one, the tower was pitchy dark, I counted the lither barrels of twenty serpentines laid out on pea's straw, no conceal at all. There's two demicanon my end, says Sebastian, slapping metal. They'll be for Andrew Barton's lower deck. Honest? Honest John Collins. So this is his warehouse, his arsenal, his armory. Now you see why your pokings and prying's have raised the devil in Sussex. You've hindered John's lawful trade for months, and he laughed where he lay. A clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we climbed the belfry stairs, and there Sebastian trips over a cow hide with its horns and tail. Aha! Your devil has left his doublet. Does it become me how? He draws it on, and capers in the slits of window moonlight, wonderful devilish-like. Then he sits on the stair, wrapping with his tail on a board, and his back aspect was dredder than his front, and a howlet lit in, and screeched at the horns of him. If you'd keep out the devil, shut the door, he whispered, and that's another false proverb how, for I can hear your tower door opening. I locked it, who a plague has another key then, I said. All the congregation to judge by their feet, he says, and peers into the blackness. Still, still how, hear him grunt. That's more of my serpentines, I'll be bound. One, two, three, four they bear in. Faith, Andrew, equips himself like an admiral. Twenty-four serpentines in all. As if it had been an echo, we heard John Collins's voice come up all hollow. Twenty-four serpentines and two demicanon. That's the full tally for Sir Andrew Barton. Courtesy costs naught, whispers Sebastian. Shall I drop my dagger on his head? They go over to Rye on Thursday in the wool-wains, hidden under the wool-packs. Dirk Renzet meets them at Udymore, as before, says John. Lord, what a worn, hand-smooth trade it is, says Sebastian. I lay, we are the sole two babes in the village that have not our lawful share in the venture. There was a full score folk below, talking like all Robertsbridge market. We counted them by voice. Master John Collins pikes. The guns for the French karak must lie here next month. Well, when is your young fool, me, so please you, come back from London? No, Ards, I heard Ticehurst will answer. Lay, I'm just where you were mined, Master Collins. We're all too afraid of the devil to meld with the tower now. And the long nave laughed. Ah, it is easy, Al, for you to raise the devil will, says another, Ralph Hobdon, from the forge. Ah, men, roars Sebastian, and ere I could hold him, he leaps down the stairs, wonderful devilish like howling no bounds. He had scarce time to lay out for the nearest than they ran. Saints, how they ran! We heard them pound on the door of the bell-taven, and then we ran, too. What's next, says Sebastian, looping up his cow-tail as he leapt the briars. I've broke honest John's face. Ride to Sir John Pelham's, I said. He is the only one that ever stood by me. We rode to Breitling, and past Sir John's lodges, where the keepers would have shot at us for dear stealers. And we had Sir John down into his justice's chair, and when we had told him our tale, and showed him the cow-hide which Sebastian still wore, girt about him, he laughed till the tears ran. Well, oh, well, he says, I'll see justice done before daylight. What's your complaint? Master Collins is my old friend. He's none of mine, I cried, when I think how he and his likes have bulked and dozed and cousin'd me at every turn over the church. And I choked at the thought. Ah, but ye see now, that they needed it for another use, says he smoothly. So they did my serpentines, Sebastian cries. I should be half across the western ocean by this if my guns had been ready, but they're sold to a scotch pirate by your old friend. Where's your proof? says Sir John, stroking his beard. I brook my shins over them, not an hour since, and I heard John give order where they were to be taken, says Sebastian. Words, words only, says Sir John. Master Collins is somewhat of a liar at best. He carried it so gravely that for the moment I thought he was dipped in this secret traffic too, and that there was not an honest iron master in Sussex. Name of reason, says Sebastian, and wraps with his cow tail on the table. Whose guns are they then? Yours, manifestly, says Sir John. You come with the king's order for him, and Master Collins casts them in his foundry. If he chooses to bring them up from Nether Forge and lay them out in the church tower, why they are in so much nearer to the main road, and you are saved days hauling. What a coil to make of a mere act of neighbourly kindness, lad. I fear I have requited him very scurvelly, says Sebastian, looking at his knuckles. But what of the demicanon? I could do with them well, but they are not in the king's order. Kindness, loving kindness, says Sir John. Questionless, in his zeal for the king and his love for you, John adds those two cannon as a gift. It is plain as this coming daylight, ye stockfish. So it is, says Sebastian. Oh Sir John, Sir John, why did you never use the sea? You are lost, ashore. And he looked on him with great love. I do my best in my station. Sir John strokes his beard again, and rolls forth his deep drumming justice's voice thus. But, suffer me, you two lads, on some midnight frolic into which I probe not, roistering around the taverns, surprise Master Collins at his—he thinks a moment—at his good deeds done by stealth. Ye surprise him, I say, cruelly. Truth, Sir John, if you had seen him run, says Sebastian. On this you ride breakneck to me with a tale of pirates and wool-wains and cow-hides, which, though it hath moved my mirth as a man, offendeth my reason as a magistrate. So I will ene accompany you back to the tower with, perhaps, some few of my own people, and three to four wagons, and I'll be your warrant that Master John Collins will freely give you your guns and your demicanon, Master Sebastian. He breaks into his proper voice. I warned the old Todd and his neighbours long ago that they'd come to trouble with their side-sellings and by-dealings, but we cannot have half Sussex hanged for a little gun-running, i.e. content lads. I'd commit any treason for two demicanon, said Sebastian, and rubs his hands. You have just compounded with rank treason felony for the same bribe, says Sir John, wherefore to horse and get the guns. But Master Collins meant the guns for Sir Andrew Barton all along, didn't he, said Dan. Questionless that he did, said Howe, but he lost them. We poured into the village on the red edge of dawn. Sir John hoarsed, in half armour, his pen and flying. Behind him, thirty stout, brightling knaves, five abreast, behind them four wool-wains, and behind them four trumpets to triumph over the jest, blowing. Our king went forth to Normandy. When we halted and rolled the ringing guns out of the tower, to us for all the world, like Friar Rogers' picture of the French Siege in the Queen's Missal Book. And what did we—I mean, what did our village do? said Dan. Oh, bore it nobly, nobly, cried Howe. Though they had tricked me, I was proud of us. They came out of their housing, looked at that little army as though it had been a post, and went their shut-mouthed way. Never a sign, never a word. They'd perished sooner than let brightling over crow us. Even that villain, Ticehurst Will, coming out of the bell for his morning ale, he all but ran under Sir John's horse. Where, sir-a-devil? cries Sir John, reigning back. Oh, says Will, market-day is it, and all the bullocks from Brightling here? I spared him his belting for that, the brazen knave. But John Collins was our masterpiece. He happened along street, his jaw tied up where Sebastian had crowded him, when we were trundling the first demi-canon through the lich gate. I reckon you'll find her middle in Evie, he says. If you've a mind to pay, I'll loan ye my timber-tug. She won't lie easy on Arie Woolwayne. That was the one time I ever saw Sebastian taken flatter back. He opened and shut his mouth fishy-like. No offence, says Master John. You've got her a reasonable good cheap. I thought you might not grudge me a groat if I help move her. Ah, he was a masterpiece. They say that morning's work cost our John two hundred pounds, and he never winked an eyelid, not even when he saw the guns all carted off to Lewis. Neither then nor later, said Puck, once, towards after he gave St Barnabas the new chime of bells. Oh, there was nothing the Collins's, or the Hayes, or the Fowls, or the Fannas would not do for the church then. Ask and have was their song. We had rung him in, and he was in the tower with black-nick fowl that gave us our rude screen. The old man pinches the bell-rope with one hand and scratches his neck with tether. Sooner she was pulling on clapper than my neck, he says. That was all. That was Sussex. Sealy Sussex for everlasting. And what happened after? said Euna. I went back into England, said Hull, slowly. I'd had my lesson against pride, but they tell me I left St Barnabas's a jewel, just about a jewel. Well, well, it was done for and among my own people, and, Father Roger was right, I never knew such trouble or such triumph since. That's the nature of things. A dear, dear land. He dropped his chin on his chest. There's your father at the forge. What's he talking to old Hobdon about? said Puck, opening his hand with three leaves in it. Dan looked towards the cottage. Oh, I know, it's that old oak lying across the brook. Pater always wants it grubbed. In the still valley they could hear old Hobdon's deep tones. Have it as you were mine, too, he was saying. But the vivas of her roots, they hold the bank together. If you grow her out, the bank she'll all come tearing down, and next flat the brook'll thwav up. But have it as you were mine. The mistress she sets her eat by the ferns on her trunk. Oh, I'll think it over, said the Pater. Euna laughed a little bubbling chuckle. What the devils in that belfry said how, with a lazy laugh, that should be Hobdon by his voice. Why, the oak is a regular bridge for all the rabbits between Three Acre and Our Meadow. The best place for wires on the farm, Hobdon says. He's got two there now, Euna answered. He won't ever let it be grubbed. Ah, Sussex. Silly Sussex, forever lasting, murmured how. And the next moment, their father's voice crawling across the little lindens, broke the spell, as St Barnabas' clock struck five. End of Section 8, Hall of the Draft Section 9. Dim Church, Flit, from Puck of Pooks Hill This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Icy Jumbo. Puck of Pooks Hill, by Rudyard Kipling. Section 9. Dim Church, Flit, Smuggler's Song If you wake at midnight and hear a horse's feet, don't go drawing back the blind or looking in the street. Them that ask no questions, isn't told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by. Five and twenty ponies trotting through the dark, brandy for the parson, backy for the clock, laces for a lady, lettuce for a spy, and watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by. Running round the woodlump, if you chance to find little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy wind, don't you shout to come and look, nor take them for your play, put the brishwood back again, and they'll be gone next day. If you see the stable-yard setting open wide, if you see a tied horse lying down inside, if your mother mends a coat cut about and tore, if the linings wet and warm, don't you ask no more. If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red, you be careful what you say, and mindful what is said. If they call you pretty maid, and chuck you neath the chin, don't you tell them where no one is, nor yet where no one's been. Nocks and footsteps round the house, whistles after dark, you've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark. Trustees here, and pinchers here, and see how dumb they lie. They don't fret to follow when the gentlemen go by. If you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance, you'll be given Dainty Doll all the way from France, with a cap of Valenciennes and a velvet hood, a present from the gentlemen along a being good. Five and twenty ponies trotting through the park, brandy for the parson, backy for the clerk. Then the task's no questions, isn't told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by. The Bee Boy's Song Bees, bees, hark to the bees, hide from your neighbours as much as you please, but all that has happened to us you must tell, or else we will give you no honey to sell. A maiden in her glory upon her wedding-day must tell her bees the story, or else they'll fly away, fly away, die away, dwindle down and leave you, but if you don't deceive your bees, your bees will not deceive you. Marriage, birth, or burying, news across the seas, all your glad or merry in, you must tell the bees. Tell them coming in and out, where the fanners fan, because the bees are just about as curious as a man. Don't you wait where trees are when the lightnings play, nor don't you hate where bees are, or else they'll pine away, pine away, dwindle away, anything to leave you, but if you never grieve your bees, your bees will never grieve you. DIMM CHURCH FLIT Just at dusk, a soft September rain began to fall on the hot pickers. The mothers wheeled the bouncing perambulators out of the gardens, bins were put away, and tally-books made up. The young couples strolled home, two to each umbrella, and the single men walked behind them, laughing. Dan and Euna, who had been picking after their lessons, marched off to roast potatoes at the Oast House, where old Hobdon, with blue-eyed best his lurchard dog, lived all the month through, drying the hops. They settled themselves, as usual, on the sack-strewn cot in front of the fires, and, when Hobdon drew up the shutter, stared, as usual, at the flameless bed of coals spouting its heat up the dark well of the old-fashioned roundel. Slowly he cracked off a few fresh pieces of coal, packed them with fingers that never flinched, exactly where they would do most good. Slowly he reached behind him till Dan tilted the potatoes into his iron scoop of a hand. Carefully he arranged them round the fire, and then stood for a moment, black against the glare. As he closed the shutter, the Oast House seemed dark before the day's end, and he lit the candle in the lanthorn. The children liked all these things, because they knew them so well. The B-boy, Hobdon's son, who is not quite right in his head, though he can do anything with bees, slipped in like a shadow. They only guessed it when Bess's stumped tail wagged against them. A big voice began singing outside in the drizzle. Old Mother Lady-in-Wool had nigh twelve months been dead. She heard the hops were doing well, and then popped up her head. There can't be two people made to holler like that, cried old Hobdon, wheeling round. For, says she, the boys I've picked with when I was young and fair, they're bound to be at Hoppin, and I'm— A man showed it to the doorway. Well, well, they do say Hoppin'll draw the very deadest, and now I believe them. You, Tom? Tom Shoesmith? Tom lowered his lanthorn. You're a hem of a time making your mind to it, Ralph. The stranger strode in, three full inches taller than Hobdon, a gray-whiskered, brown-faced giant with clear blue eyes. They shook hands, and the children could hear the hard palms rasp together. You ain't lost none of your grip, said Hobdon. Was it thirty or forty year back you broke my head at P's Marsh Fair? Only thirty, and no ards tween us regarding heads neither. You had it back at me with a hot pole. How did we get home that night? Swimin'? Same way the pheasant come into Gubs's pocket, by a little luck and a deal of conjuring. Old Hobdon laughed in his deep chest. I see you've not forgot your way about the woods. Do you do any of this still? The stranger pretended to look along a gun. Hobdon answered with a quick movement of the hand, as though he were pegging down a rabbit-wire. No, that's all that's left me now. Age she must, as age she can. And what's your news since all these years? Oh, I've been after Plymouth. I've been to Dover. I've been rambling boys the wide world over. The man answered cheerily. I reckon I know as much of Old England as most. He turned towards the children, and winked boldly. I lay they told you a sight of lies, then. I've been into England, for as Wilch here once. I was cheated proper over a pair of edging-gloves. Said Hobdon. There is fancy talk in everywhere. You've cleaved to your own parts pretty middling close, Ralph. Can't shift an old tree without it dying, Hobdon chuckled. And I be no more anxious to die than you look to be to help me with my hops tonight. The great man leaned against the brickwork of the roundel, and swung his arms abroad. Hire me, was all he said, and they stumped upstairs, laughing. The children heard their shovels rasp on the cloth where the yellow hops lie drying above the fires, and all the oast-house filled with the sweet sleepy smell as they were turned. Who is it? Euna whispered to the B-boy. Don't know, no more on you. If you don't know, said he, and smiled. The voices on the drying floor talked and chuckled together, and the heavy footsteps went back and forth. Presently a hop-bocket dropped through the press-hole overhead, and stiffened and fattened as they shoveled it full. Clank, went the press, and rammed the loose stuff into tight cake. Gently, they heard Hobdon cry, you'll bust a crop if you lay on soul, you'll be as careless as Gleason's bull, Tom. Come and sit by the fires, she'll do now. They came down, and as Hobdon opened the shutter to see if the potatoes were done, Tom Shoesmith said to the children, put plenty of salt on them, that'll show you the sort of man I be. Again he winked, and again the B-boy laughed, and Euna stared at Dan. I know what sort of man you be, old Hobdon grunted, groping for the potatoes round the fire. Do he? Tom went on behind his back. Some of us can't abide horseshoes, or church bells, or running water, and talk in a running water. He turned to Hobdon, who was backing out of the roundel. Do you mind the great floods at Robert's Bridge, when the miller's man was drowned in the street? Meddling well, Hobdon let himself down on the coals by the fire door. I was caught in my woman on the marsh that year. Carter to must plumb I was, getting ten shillings a week. Mine was a marsh woman. Wonderful our gate's place, Romney Marsh, said Tom Shoesmith. I've heard say the world's divided into like Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia, and Romney Marsh. The Marsh folk think so, said Hobdon. I have had a hem of trouble to get my woman to leave it. Where did she come out of? I forgot, Ralph. Dim church under the wall, Hobdon answered, a potato in his hand. Then she'd be a pet, or a witt gift, would she? Witt gift. Hobdon broke open the potato, and ate it with the curious needness of men who make most of their meals in the blowy open. She grow'd to be quite reasonable like, after living in the wheeled a while. But our first twenty year or two she was odd fashion, no bounds. And she was a wonderful hand with bees. He cut away a little piece of potato, and threw it out to the door. Ah! I've heard the witt gifts could see further through a mill stone and most, said Shoesmith, did she now? She was honest innocent of any negromancing, said Hobdon. Only she'd read signs and sinifications out of birds flying, stars falling, bees hiving and such, and she'd lie awake, listening for calls, she said. That don't prove not, said Tom. All Marsh folk has been smugglers since time everlasting. It would be in her blood to listen out her knights. Nature early, old Hobdon replied, smiling. I mined when there was smuggling a sight nearer us than the Marsh bee, but that wasn't my woman's trouble. It was a pussle and no sense talk, he dropped his voice, about Pharisees. Yes, I've heard Marshmen be left in them. Tom looked straight at the wide-eyed children beside Bess. Pharisees cried, you know. Fairies? Oh, I see! People of the hills, said the bee-boy, throwing half of his potato towards the door. There are you be, said Hobdon, pointing at him. My boy, he has her eyes and her out-gate senses. That's what she called him. And what did you think of it all? Hmm! Hmm! Hobdon rumbled. A man that uses fields and shores after dark as much as I've done. He don't go out of his road except for keepers. But setting that aside, said Tom coaxingly, I saw ye throw the good piece out outdoors just now. Do you believe or do ye? There was a great black eye to that tater, said Hobdon, indignantly. My little eye didn't see, and then it looked as if you meant it for anyone that might need it. But setting that aside, do you believe or do ye? I ain't saying nothing, because I've heard naught and I've seen naught, but if you was to say there was more things after dark in the shores than men, or fur, or feather, or fin, I don't know as I'd go far about to call you a liar. Now, turn again, Tom, what's your say? I'm like you, I say nothing, but I'll tell you a tale, and you can fit it as how you please. Passelon no sense stuff, growled Hobdon, but he filled his pipe. The Marshmen they call it dim church flit, Tom went on slowly. At you, verudit? My woman, she'd have told it me scores of times. Don't know as I didn't end by beleft in it, sometimes. Hobdon crossed over as he spoke, and sucked with his pipe at the yellow lantern flame. Tom rested one great elbow on one great knee, where he sat among the coal. Have you ever been in the Marsh? he said to Dan. Only as far as rye, once, Dan answered. Ah, that's but the edge. Back behind of her there's steeple set in beside churches, and wise women set in beside their doors, and the sea set in above the land, and ducks erding while in the dicks, he meant ditches. The Marsh is just about riddled with dicks, and sluices, and tide gates, and waterlets. You can hear them bubbling and grumbling when the tide works in them, and then you hear the sea ranging left and right-handed all up along the wall. You've seen how flat she is, the Marsh. You'd think nothing easier than to walk and on across to her. Ah, but the dicks and the waterlets they twist the roads about as revelry as which you aren't on the spindles, so you get all turned round in broad daylight. That's because they've dreamed the waters into the dicks, said Hobdon. When I caught in my woman the rushes was green. Ain't me, the rushes was green, and the bailiff of the Marshes he rolled up and down as free as the fog. Who is he, said Dan? Why, the Marsh fever and ague. He've clapped me on the shoulder once or twice till I shook proper. But now the dreaming off of the waters have done away with the fevers, so they make a joke like that the bailiff of the Marshes broke his neck in a dick. A wonderful place for bees and ducks, tis, too. And old, Tom went on, flesh and blood have been there since time everlasting beyond. Well now, speaking among ourselves, the Marshmen say that from time everlasting beyond the Pharisees favoured the Marsh above the rest of Old England. I lay the Marshmen ought to know they've been out after dark, father and son smuggling some one thing or other since ever wool grew to sheep's backs. They say there was always a middle in few Pharisees to be seen on the Marsh. Impudent as rabbits they was. They'd dance on the naked roads in the naked daytime. They'd flash their little green lights along the dicks, coming and going like honest smugglers. Yes, and times they'd lock the church doors against the parson and clarker Sundays. That'd be smugglers laying in the lace or the brandy till they could run it out of the Marsh. I've told my woman so, said Hobdon. Oh, lay, she didn't belift it then, not if she was a wheat-gift. A wonderful choice place for Pharisees, the Marsh, by all accounts, till Queen Bess's father he come in with his reformatries. Would that be a act of parliament, like Hobdon asked? Surely, can't do nothing in old England without act, warrant, and summons. He got his act allowed him, and they say Queen Bess's father he used the parish church as something shameful, just about tar the gizzards out of, I don't know how many. Some folk in England they held with them, but some they saw it different, and it ended in them taking sides and burning each other no bounds, according which side was top time being. That terrified the Pharisees, for good will among flesh and blood is meat and drink to them, and ill will is poisoned. Same as bees, said the B-boy, bees won't stay by a house where there's hatin'. True, said Tom, this reformation's terrified the Pharisees, same as the reaper going round a last sand of wheat terrifies the rabbits. They packed into the Marsh from all sides, and they says, fair or foul, we must flit out of this, for merry England's done with, and we are reckoned among the images. Did they all see it that way? said Hobdon, all but one that was called Robin, if you've heard of him. What are you laughing at? Tom turns to Dan. The Pharisees' troubles didn't touch Robin, because he'd cleaved middling close to people, like. No more he never meant to go out of old England, not he, so he was sent messaging for help among flesh and blood, but flesh and blood must always think of their own concerns, and Robin couldn't get through at them, you see. They thought it was tide echoes off the Marsh. What did you, what did the Pharisees want? Euna asked. A bolt, to be sure. Their little wings could no more across channel than so many tired butterflies. A bolt and a crew they desired to sail over to France, where yet a while folks hadn't tore down the images. They couldn't abide, cruel Canterbury bells rigging to bull writhe, for more poor men and women to be burned it, nor the king's proud messenger riding through the land, giving orders to tear down the images. They couldn't abide it, no shape, nor yet they couldn't get their bolt and crew to flit by without leave and good will from flesh and blood. And flesh and blood came and went about its own business, the while, the Marsh was swarming up, and swarming up with Pharisees from all England over, striving all means to get through at flesh and blood to tell them their sore need. I don't know as you've ever heard Pharisees are like chickens. My woman used to say that, too, said Hobdon, folding his brown arms. They be, you run too many chickens together and the ground seconds light, and you get a squat, and your chickens die. Same way, you crowd Pharisees all in one place. They don't die, but flesh and blood walking among them is apt to sick up and pine off. They don't mean it, and flesh and blood don't know it, but that's the truth, as I've heard. The Pharisees, through being all stenched up and frightened, and trying to come through with their supplications, they naturally changed the thin airs and humours in flesh and blood. It lay on the Marsh like a thunder. Men saw their churches ablaze with the wildfire in the windows after dark. They saw their cattle scattering, and no man scaring, their sheep flocking, and no man driving, their horses lathering, and no man leading. They saw the little low green lights more than ever in the dicksides. They heard the little feet pattering more than ever round the houses, and night and day, day and night, to as all as though they were being creeped up on, and hinted at by some one or other that couldn't rightly shape their trouble. Oh, I lay they sweated, man and maid, woman and child, their nature done them no service all the weeks while the Marsh was suaveing up with Pharisees. But they was flesh and blood, and Marshmen before all. They reckoned the sign sinified trouble for the Marsh, or that the sea had reared up against Dimchurch wall, and they'd be drowned in like old wind shall see, or that the plague was coming. So they looked for the meaning in the sea or in the clothes, far an eye up. They never thought to look near and knee high, where they could see nor. Now there was a poor widow at Dimchurch under the wall, which, lacking man or property, she had more time for feeling, and she come to feel that there was a trouble outside her dastep bigger and heavier than ought she'd ever carried over it. She had two sons, one born blind, and another struck dumb through falling off the wall when he was little. They was grown men, but not wage-earning, and she worked for them, keeping bees and answering questions. What sort of questions? said Dan. Like, well, asked things might be found, and what to put about a crooked baby's neck, and how to join parted sweethearts. She felt the trouble on the Marsh, same as eels feel thunder. She was a wise woman. My woman was wonderful weather-tender, too, said Hobdon. I've seen her brish sparks off like an anvil out of her air in thunderstorms, but she never laid out to answer questions. This woman was a seeker-like, and seekers they sometimes find. One night, while she lay her bed, hot and aching, there came a dream, and tapped at her a window, and said, Whither wick-gift? it said. Whither wick-gift? First, by the wings and the whistling, she thought it was pee-wits. But last she rose and dressed herself, and opened her door to the Marsh, and she felt the trouble and the groaning all about her, strong as fever and ague, and she called, What is it? Oh, what is it? Then it was all like the frogs in the dicks, peeping. Then it was all like the reeds in the dicks, clip-clapping. And then the Greek tide-wave rummeled along the wall, and she couldn't hear proper. Three times she called, and three times the tide-wave did her down. But she catched the quiet between, and she cries out, What is the trouble on the Marsh that's been lying down with my heart, and arising with my body this month gone? She felt a little land lay old on her gown-hand, and she stooped to the pull of that little land. Tom Shoesmith spread his huge fist before the fire, and smiled at it. Will the sea drone the Marsh, she says? She was a Marsh woman first and foremost. No, says the little voice. Sleep sound for all of that. Is the plague coming to the Marsh, she says? Then was all the ills she knowed. No, sleep sound for all of that, says Robin. She turned about half-mindful to go in, but the little voices grieved that shrill and sorrowful she turns back, and she cries, If it's not a trouble of flesh and blood, what can I do? The Pharisees cried out upon her from all round to fetch a boat to sail to France, and come back no more. There's a boat on the wall, she says, but I can't push it down to the sea, nor sail it when it is there. Lend us your sons, says all the Pharisees. Give them leave and good will to sail it for us, mother—oh, mother! One's dumb, and the other's blind, she says, but all the dearer to be for that, and you'll lose them in the open sea. The voices just about pierced through her, and there was children's voices too. She stood out all she could, but she couldn't rightly stand against that. So she says, If you can draw my sons for your job, I'll not hinder them. You can't ask no more of a mother. She saw them little green lights dance and cross till she was dizzy. She heard them little feet pattering by the thousand. She heard cruel canterbury bells ring into Bulverhithe, and she heard the great tide wave ringing along the wall. That was why all the Pharisees was working a dream to weak her two sons asleep. And while she bit on her fingers, she saw them two she'd bore, come out and pass her with never a word. She followed them, crying pitiful to the old boat on the wall, and that they took and runned down to the sea. When they'd stepped mast and sail, the blind son speaks up, Mother, we're waiting your leave and good will to take them over. Tom Shoesmith threw back his head, and half shut his eyes. Ame, he said, she was a fine valiant woman, the widow with gift. She stood twisting the ends of her long hair over her fingers, and she shook like a poplar, making up her mind. The Pharisees, all about, they hushed their children from crying, and they waited, dumb still. She was all their dependence. Without her leave and good will, they could not pass, for she was the mother. So she shook like a sptree, making up her mind. Last, she drives the word past her teeth, and Go, she says, go with my leave and good will. Then I saw, then they say, she had to brace back, same as she was waiting in the Toidwater, for the Pharisees just about flowed past her, down the beach to the boat. I don't know how many of them, with their wives and children and valuables, all escaping out of the cruel old England. Silver, you could hear clinking, and little bundles, hove down down to the bottom boards, and passels, the little swords and little shields wriggling, and little fingers and toes scratching on the boat side to border when the two sons pushed her off. That boat she sunk lower and lower, but all the widow could see in it was boys moving, ampered like, to get at the tackle. Up sail, they did, and away they went, deep as a rye barge away into the offshore mists, and the widow-wick gift she sat down and eased her grief till morning light. I never heard she was all alone, said Hobdon. I remember now, the one called Robin, he stayed with her, they tell. She was all too grievous to listen to his promises. Ah, she should have made her bag in the forehand. I always told my woman so, Hobdon cried. No, she loaned her sons for a pure love loan, being as she sensed the trouble on the marshes, and was simple good willing to ease it. Tom laughed softly. She'd done that. Yes, she'd done that. From Hithe to Wolverhithe, Frity Men and Petty Maid, Aileen Woman and Whaling Child, they took the advantage of the change in the thin air as just about as soon as Pharisees flitted. Folks come out fresh and shining all over the marsh like snails after wet, and that while the widow-wick gift sat grieving on the wall. She might have beleft us, she might have trusted her sons would be sent back. She fussed no bounds when their boat came in after three days. And, of course, the sons were both quite cured, said Euna. No, that would have been out of nature. She got them back as she sent them. The blind man he hadn't seen nor of anything, and the dumb man, naturally, he couldn't say or know what he'd seen. I reckon that was why the Pharisees pitched on them for the farion job. But what did you—what did Robin promise the widow? said Dan. What did he promise now? Tom pretended to think. Wasn't your woman a wet gift, Ralph? Didn't she say? She told me a parcel of no-sense stuff when he was born. Hobdon pointed at his son. There was always to be one of them that could see further into the millstone than most. Me! That's me! said the B-boy, so suddenly that they all laughed. I've got it now, said Tom, slapping his knee. So long as the wet-gift blood lasted, Robin promised they would all as be one of her stock. That no trouble had lie on, no maid had scion, no knight could frighten, no fright could arm, no arm could make sin, and no woman could make a fool. Well, ain't that just me? said the B-boy, where he sat in the silver square of the great September moon that was staring into the Oast House door. They were the exact words she told me when we first phoned he wasn't like the others. But it beats me how you know them, said Hobdon. Aha! There's more under my hat besides hair, Tom laughed and stretched himself. When I've seen these two young folk home, we'll make a night of old days, Ralph, with passing old tales, eh? And where might you live? he asked gravely to Dan. And do you think your father'd give me a drink for taking you there, Missy? They giggled so at this that they had to run out. Tom picked them both up, set one on each broad shoulder, and tramped across the ferny pasture where the cows puffed milky puffs at them in the moonlight. Oh, puck, puck! I guessed you right from when you talked about the salt. How could you ever do it? unacrided, swinging along, delighted. Do what, he said, and climbed the stile by the Pollard Oak. Pretend to be Tom Shoesmith, said Dan, and they ducked to avoid the two little ashes that grow by the bridge over the brook. Tom was almost running. Yes, that be my name, must Dan, he said, hurrying over the silent shining lawn, where a rabbit sat by the big white thorn near the croquet ground. Here you be. He strode into the old kitchen yard, and slid them down as Ellen came to ask questions. I'm helping him must spray his Oast House, he said to her. No, I'm no foreigner. I know this country for your mother was born. And yes, it's dry work, Oasting, Miss. Thank you. Ellen went to get a jug, and the children went in, magicked once more by oak, ash, and thorn. End of Section 9 Dim Church Flit