Brother Dusty-Feet by Rosemary Sutcliff

Author:Rosemary Sutcliff [Sutcliff, Rosemary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446430613
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 1979-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

8

The Mist Rises

Towards the winter’s end the Company strolled down through the Kentish orchards and into the marsh country along the coast: Saffronilla clip-clopping along the marshland roads with the jaunty little tilt-cart lurching at her hairy heels and spilling things out behind; the Players trudging alongside, and Argos, whose paw had mended beautifully, generally trotting close under Saffronilla’s nose so that they could talk to each other comfortably, which was nice for both of them.

There were not so many villages along the coast as there had been among the cherry orchards, but the people in the few villages there were, were friendly and seemed to like their plays, and they stayed in those parts until they got down to their last shilling. Then they decided to make for Rye.

One quiet grey noon the Players sat on the short coarse turf just beyond Burmarsh, in company with a shepherd and his sheep. They had turned off the road to pass the time of day with him and ask him the best way to Rye, where they meant to enact the Martyrdom of St Sebastian next day at the Mermaid Tavern. The shepherd looked as though he had stepped straight out of the Bible – shepherds very often do – with a long grey beard, and a hawk nose, and the skin round his wise old eyes puckered into a thousand fine wrinkles from screwing them up to watch his sheep in all weathers. He had been counting the flock when the Players came up, and they had waited, keeping a wary eye on Argos and the shepherd’s dog, who were walking round and round each other, while he finished.

He used strange old words for his counting; words that sounded rather like a magic charm. ‘Onetherum, twotherum, cockerum, quitherum, shitherum, shatherum, wineberry, wagtail, den,’ counted the shepherd, and turned down a finger of his right hand before he began again: ‘Onetherum, twotherum . . .’ By the time he had come to the last sheep and used up all his fingers, Argos and the sheep-dog had decided to be friends.

Then Master Pennifeather had asked him the best way to Rye, and he had told them, and somehow they had got into conversation, and the Players had brought out their bread-and-cheese and the shepherd had brought out his; and now they were all sitting on the turf, eating in a companionable sort of way, while Saffronilla, who was used to being left to herself, cropped contentedly at the grass beside the narrow marsh road.

It was a little knoll they were sitting on, the kind of knoll you find sometimes in marsh-country, that has a tump of stunted thorn trees on it, so twisted by the wind that they looked like enchanted old men who stretch long, rheumaticky fingers inland all the year round, and wear white beards of blossom in the spring. All round them the marsh reached out and away, in soft blurred greens and greys, with the silver of many

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