Towers in the Mist Read online

  “Let him be,” said his mother. “When his belly aches he’ll turn back to his breakfast.”

  So Faithful went on and Joseph trotted at his heels. He did not follow the bridle path to Oxford, he turned to his left and plunged straight down through the woods to the valley below; for he had all the time that there was and he thought he would enjoy himself.

  And Shotover Forest on that first of May was enjoyable. Down in the valley the willows were a green mist with the birches on the higher slopes rising above them like silver spears. Further up still came the beeches, where the pale green flowers were hung out like tassels on the branches, and in the further distances the wooded heights were crimson-russet, purple in the shadows, with the wild cherry trees flinging showers of foam against them. As Faithful plunged downwards the grand distance was lost to him but under his feet was a carpet of primroses, ground ivy, violets and cowslips, with a woven shawl of dead bracken and brambles spread over it to protect it. At every step he took the scent of wet earth and flowers came puffing up into his face and went to his head to such an extent that he shouted for joy. Rabbits were scuttling everywhere, the birds were singing uproariously and a cuckoo was tirelessly repeating himself. “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” Sara had told Faithful that the souls of the gypsies, who have no abiding place in life or death, go into the bodies of the vagabond cuckoos, and he could well believe it. The cuckoo may be an evil rascal, thought Faithful, and his voice an ugly one, yet no one like him can express so well the joy of the earth in its resurrection. It was no wonder that the enemy fled when English soldiers charged them yelling, “Cuckoo!” It was a victorious cry.

  “Cuckoo!” called Faithful.

  “Cuckoo!” called little Joseph.

  “Cuckoo!” called the cuckoo, and they all three, homeless vagabonds as they were, forgot their parlous state as they shouted one against the other because the winter was dead and the spring had broken through.

  Faithful was nearly at the bottom of the hill when he discovered that Joseph had left him. Looking back he saw the little boy, clad in brown rags the color of winter bracken, scrambling up the hillside making for Sara and breakfast. His love for Faithful had weighted one side of the scales and his empty belly the other, and the latter had won, as his mother had foretold.

  Faithful felt a sudden pang. The old life of vagabondage had been hard but it had had the ease of familiarity. When Joseph should be out of sight it would have deserted him and before him there would be the birth pangs of a new life. He watched the little brown figure with the golden head until the trees seemed to bend about it, gather it in and hide it, and then he turned resolutely away, dashed through the undergrowth and landed with a run and a leap upon the path that wound through the valley.

  4.

  And at once he saw the figures of the new life coming to meet him. He stood on a rough path running through the valley towards Oxford and down it came trooping a gay crowd of young men and girls and little children, carrying green branches and bunches of flowers. They were singing and laughing and waving the branches over their heads and Faithful gazed at them with his mouth open, for it really did seem as though they were coming out to welcome him. . . . Then, with a rueful grin at his own stupidity, he saw that he was wrong, for they swerved aside to their left and disappeared in a grove of chestnut trees.

  His moment of astonishment passed and a burning interest took its place. He padded on down the path until he could see where it was that they were going.

  Under the chestnut trees was a chapel, a small gray place that seemed very old, and near it were some buildings that might once upon a time have been those of a monastery. The whole place looked delicious on this May morning, for herb gardens and flower gardens spread their colors and scents round the buildings and on the tall chestnut trees the white flowers were in bloom, each candle cluster standing erect upon his own platform of downward drooping green leaves.

  Faithful hid himself behind a wild rose bush and gaped at the flowery procession that came singing down the path from Oxford and filed singing into the chapel. He couldn’t imagine what it was they thought they were doing but whatever it was they were doing it beautifully, and in their very best clothes. The girls were garlanded with flowers and wore farthingales and kirtles of scarlet and green and blue, so that they looked like flowers themselves, and the little scampering children carrying great bunches of kingcups and bluebells were gaudy and gay as humming-birds. There were some soberly dressed figures in the crowd, College Fellows who wore the long gown and the square tufted cap of a Master of Arts, and a horde of scholars discreetly garbed in russet and dark blue and dark green; but even these had flowers stuck behind their ears and flourished green branches, and were singing fit to burst themselves.

  As they were bound for a chapel, and presumably a religious service of some kind, Faithful thought they ought to have been singing psalms, but they were not, they were singing the old songs that for centuries had been sung in welcome to the summer and farewell to the hateful, cold dark winter that oppressed the land like a curse for so many dreary weeks.

  Summer is a coming in,

  Loud sing cuckoo!

  Groweth seed and bloweth med,

  And springeth the wood anew—

  Sing cuckoo!

  The girls and the young men laughed and jostled each other merrily, and the children shouted and capered, while up in Shotover Forest the real cuckoo called joyously back to them.

  Cuckoo, cuckoo, well singest thou, cuckoo:

  Nor cease thou never now;

  Sing cuckoo, now, sing cuckoo,

  Sing cuckoo, sing cuckoo, now!

  Everyone who could squeeze himself inside the chapel by dint of kicking and shoving and hitting his neighbors over the head with branches of greenery had now kicked and shoved and hit and got there, leaving a large crowd of the less muscular seething about outside the door.

  Faithful suddenly felt that he must join them, disreputable though he was. He polished up his face on his sleeve, stuck a bunch of primroses in his doublet and tacked himself on to the merry crowd. Wriggling and pushing, and kicking very politely, he got to the open chapel door and looked in. It was lovely inside. Tall candles blazed on the altar in front of the east window, flanked by pots of flowers, and between them stood a big golden bowl. The packed congregation had flung down their flowers to strew the aisle like a carpet under their feet and the scent of bruised primroses, cowslips, violets, lady-smocks and kingcups filled the chapel like incense.

  “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” Pagan songs were now left behind outside in the sunshine and the whole congregation sang the psalm as one man, making such a row that Faithful marveled that the chapel roof was not lifted off by it. As they sang some of the congregation looked at the chapel windows, glanced out through the clear glass panes, and then looked away again. Faithful looked too and then shut his eyes with a gasp of horror, for crowded up against the panes were the ravaged faces of lepers, looking in. . . . So this must be the chapel of a leper hospital outside the city gates. . . . The contrast was terrible: the flowers and the lights and the beautiful girls and young men in their fine clothes, and outside those stricken outcasts.

  Faithful’s throat grew dry and hard and he stopped singing. The fear he had felt in the night returned, accompanied by a sick rage. Life was a fair-faced cheat, a beautiful slut who tempted a man outside the city gates to tread a flowery path under a clear sky, and changed overnight into a devil who betrayed her lover to the shapes of darkness and terror that she set about his path to mock him as he stumbled to his death. “Outside the city gates,” tolled a voice in his mind, and his eyes were dragged back unwillingly to the figures at the window. . . . Why do we live, oh God, why do we live, when the end is death?

  “God’s blessing, my friends, upon you all, and upon this fair springtime, and upon our beloved city of Oxford.”
/>   The deep but amazingly clear voice rang out through the packed chapel and reached effortlessly to the crowd outside. In a few moments it had banished Faithful’s misery so that he was once more aware of the sunshine, the young men and girls in their bright clothes, the little children and the flowers; and the figure of a man in a long black gown who had stepped out from the congregation and now stood before the altar to speak to them.

  Those who were in the chapel had sat down so that Faithful, standing up and leaning against the door-post, had an uninterrupted view of the speaker.

  At this first sight he reminded Faithful of one of those tall thin trees that grow upon hilltops and are twisted to fantastic shapes by the storms that blow upon them. He could not be called ugly, though he was certainly misshapen, as the trees are misshapen, because his figure, like theirs, had been formed by endurance and the sight of it was as invigorating as a trumpet call. Faithful thought he had never seen anyone whose past life was written upon him so clearly. . . . The man was like a map. . . . You could tell the way he had come simply by looking at him. Faithful could have taken his oath that this was a priest and scholar who had suffered persecution for his faith in the reign of the late unlamented Queen Mary; for his body had the angularity of obstinacy, the gauntness of starvation and the bowed shoulders of indefatigable scholarship. His face, seamed by his sorrows, had a keen look, as though the mind behind it were sharp in dealing with muddles and shams, but his blue eyes were gentle and dreamy. He was an elderly man and time had robbed him of all his hair except a gray circular fringe like a tonsured monk’s. He was clean shaven and but for his white ruff he looked a monk whose background should have been a crucifix upon the wall of a cell. He had the overwhelming attraction of anything that stands upon a mountain top and Faithful found himself staring at him as though this was the first man he had ever seen.

  As the man spoke his glance swept over his congregation, pausing perceptibly at each window where the lepers were gathered. They could not hear what he said but his look, and a movement of his hands, gathered them in and placed them where they longed to be, once more among the living. To Faithful there seemed something of prophecy in the gesture and his sense of proportion was given back to him. The lepers too had once known love and the sun’s light and nothing could take that prophetic knowledge from them. . . . There is life and there is death, and then there is life again.

  “Most of you know why you are here,” continued the speaker, “but some of you younger ones, perhaps, do not, so be patient with me while I tell you a story. For more than two centuries has this leper hospital of Saint Bartholomew stood without the East Gate of the city of Oxford, and in the old time that is past forty days’ indulgence or pardon of sins was granted by the bishop to all who would say their prayers at the chapel of Saint Bartholomew upon the Saint’s day, and give of their charity to the lepers. But in the times of trouble and perse­cution through which we and our city have so lately passed few men had money or thought to spare for the poor lepers and they, whose sufferings were already so great, suffered even more by reason of the hardness of the times. . . . But now, my friends, that gracious turning of the wheel of time that brings back joy and prosperity again and again to men who had thought them lost forever, has in these later days set our feet upon a fair path and blessed our city with peace; and it has seemed right to us of the University that in our happiness we should not forget the afflicted, and we have brought to life once more this old festival of Saint Bartholomew.

  “But other times, my friends, bring other thoughts, and we do not now think that pardon for sin can be bought with gold but only with sorrow; yet we do think with our forefathers that the glorious resurrection of spring is one that can be echoed in the hearts of men, and that the song of praise that we sing for joy of it should be a song of charity. . . . Therefore have we elected to celebrate this festival upon the first of May, the feast day of the spring, and among the flowers upon the altar have we placed a golden bowl for alms. . . . My friends, if you love the spring, if you look beyond the changes and chances of this life to a resurrection of immortality, remember those upon whom the burden of mortality now weighs most heavily. Lay your silver pieces with joy in this golden bowl and your sins with sorrow at the feet of God.”

  He turned to put his own silver piece in the bowl, then stood beside the altar while the congregation came pressing up to follow his example; the Fellows and scholars first, then the townspeople and the little children. When the Fellows had gone back to their seats they began to sing an anthem of five parts, and their music accompanied the soft swish of silk dresses and the patter of children’s feet as the congregation moved backwards and forwards over the strewn flowers, leaving their silver pieces in the golden bowl and their sins at the feet of God.

  And now it was time for those outside to go up to the altar and a hot wave of dismay engulfed Faithful. He had his silver piece all right, the one that the gypsy had given him for food and lodging, but he realized with horror that he was the only person in this crowd who was not well dressed and well-to-do. . . . The only one except those lepers outside. . . . He looked down at the dirty rags that kept his shoes on and he wished he was dead. Everyone was staring at him, he felt, and wondering when he had last washed himself. . . . Come to think of it he couldn’t remember himself when he had last washed; not for months any way. . . . He wished the ground would open and swallow him.

  But it refused to oblige and he made his way up the aisle stumbling over the flowers, his face dyed scarlet with shame and his shoes going flip-flap like the webbed feet of an ungainly duck. Everyone stared, and some people tittered, and it seemed to him that the few feet of open space about him widened into so many miles so that he became a little insect crawling by himself in the center of a great plain; an object of derision to all the world.

  And then something made him lift up his eyes and he found that the tall man beside the altar was looking at him with a queer concentration, as though Faithful had some special significance for him; there was amusement in his look, compassion, admiration and encouragement. Faithful suddenly ceased to be either ashamed or frightened. He fixed his eyes upon the man’s face and flapped on towards him with no more effort than is felt by the needle moving towards the magnet. When he reached the altar, and stretched up to put his silver piece in the golden bowl, the eyes of the two again met and the man bent forward to speak to him. “Wait for me outside, my son,” he whispered. Then Faithful suddenly knew who this man was. . . . The friend who would meet him at the gate of the city. . . . Feeling as brave as a lion he nodded, bent his knee before the altar, then turned and flapped back over the lady-smocks and kingcups to his place beside the door.

  The service came to an end with another psalm and the blessing and Faithful rose to his feet so as to be waiting for that man when he left the chapel. . . . But he had reckoned without the May-Day exuberance of the rest of the congregation. . . . Forced, in the very middle of a noisy celebration of the pagan feast of Flora, to sit still for a solid half hour and have their sympathies and their consciences unpleasantly stirred and probed, they suffered, upon release, from a violent reaction. They poured out of the chapel door and hurled themselves upon the crowd outside, shouting and singing. The thought of their magnificent charity inflated them, causing them to shout the louder, and the desire to escape even from the memory of those lepers at the window lent wings to their flying feet. Faithful was caught up and carried along like a leaf upon the surface of the river. He was quite accustomed to kicking and scratching his way out of crowds but today, what with an empty stomach, bruised feet and disturbed emotions, he seemed to have no strength left in him. A jolly apprentice seized hold of one of his arms, a shouting scholar seized the other, a buxom girl dealt him a slap on the back that nearly winded him and his feeble struggles and protestations were drowned in the general jubilation. It seemed to him that a great wave washed over him, drowning him in a sea of color and song. . . . H
e sank down and down, like a drowning man.

  5.

  Meanwhile Gervas Leigh, priest and returned emigré, Canon of Christ Church and one of the most noted scholars of his time, stood in the sunshine outside the chapel door and looked anxiously round him. He was surrounded by the Fellows of New College, they who had revived this particular May-Day celebration to help the hospital of Saint Bartholomew, and they inquired politely if he had lost his hat. . . . It was usual for Gervas Leigh to lose everything not actually attached to his person by a string, the habit of dissociation from material things being the first to be acquired by men of saintly character.

  “A boy,” he muttered distractedly. “I have lost a boy.”

  The Fellows of New College shrugged their shoulders and looked about them. A few of them, remembering the succulent breakfast of beer and beef awaiting them at New College, regretted that they had invited Gervas Leigh to preside at their service this morning. His fine voice and presence were undoubtedly an asset at any religious ceremony, but the time wasted in getting him together and starting him off home afterwards weighed very heavily upon the debit side. What kind of a boy, they asked politely. There had been so many boys present here this morning, a good hundred or more. Was it one of his own boys?

  No, it was not, said Canon Leigh, peering short-sightedly behind a rosebush, it was just some strange boy he had taken a fancy to and wanted to see more of: a ragged boy, a tinker’s boy, perhaps, with a pock-marked face and hair like thatch.

  Oh, that boy, said the Fellows disgustedly; for they had remarked Faithful’s unwashed presence among them and regretted it; undoubtedly he had now returned whence he came and in any case, surely, all of them being busy men with academic duties awaiting them, the finger of duty now indicated a speedy return to Oxford and breakfast rather than a useless poking about here in search of an elusive vagabond who was probably no better than he should be.