Prentice Hugh

by Frances Mary Peard

“But father never knew!” cried Hugh, stifling uneasy thoughts; “he never thought I should be set to fool’s work, and flouted at, and Agrippa taken away.”

He pushed on with the thought. He fancied that he remembered a house some five or six miles away, where the woman had been kind, and would have had them come in and rest. This was the place where he meant to spend the night.

But travelling in November was harder work than a month earlier. The road soon became a quagmire, lain began to fall, darkness set in, and there was no moon. He trudged on as bravely as he could, but he began to be very much frightened with the loneliness and the darkness, and the uneasy sense that, unlike the time when he passed before, he was not going the way in which he could expect the overshadowing Care in which his father had rested so confidently. Then more than once side roads branched off; he was not sure that he was keeping to that which was right, and little as he seemed to have to steal, there was the king’s gold noble which would be excellent booty for any cut-purse. The house seemed so long in coming that he began to think he must have passed it in the dark, and when at last he made it out, his heart sank to think that after all his efforts he had got no further; besides, there was not a light or sign of life about it, it looked so gloomy and forbidding that he was scarcely less terrified at it than at the lonely road. He ventured at last, however, to knock timidly at the door, but was answered by such a fierce growling that he clasped Agrippa the closer and fled.

Fled—but where to flee? Wet to the skin, hungry, miserable, before he had got six miles on his way, what could he do? Creeping back to the house to see if there were no outside shelter under which he might crawl, he at last found a small stack of fuel piled close to the mud walls, and by pulling this out a little formed a small hole where he made shift to lie, shivering, and in a miserable plight.

He slept, however, and forgot his misery until he awoke, cramped, aching all over, and hungrier than ever. He was too much afraid of the dog to venture to wait till the people were up and about, and set off again on his weary tramp, hoping he might reach some other hut where he could get food for himself and the monkey. Rain still fell, though not so heavily, and he could not understand why he got on so slowly, and found himself scarcely able to drag one leg after the other. Agrippa, too, also wet, cold, and hungry, shivered and chattered piteously.

At last he reached a hut where the man had gone to work, and the woman gave him black bread and cider. But she had an evil face, and took more from him than the food was worth, casting greedy looks at the remainder, and the children ran after him and pelted him and Agrippa with stones; so that Hugh was forced to hurry on as fast as his aching limbs could carry him, and by the time he had gone up a little hill, felt as if all the breath were out of his body, and he must drop by the road-side. He knew now that he must be ill, it seemed to him, indeed, that he was dying, and it was horrible to picture himself lying unheeded among the piles of dead leaves, the dank and rotting vegetation, the deep red mud—no one would know, and his only friend, poor Agrippa, would die of cold and hunger by his side.

It was no wonder that his thoughts went back with longing to Master Gervase’s house in Exeter, where food and shelter were never lacking.

After this he still struggled on, but in a dazed, mechanical sort of way, until he was quite sure that he had been walking all day, and that night must be near at hand. And with this conviction, and all the horror of coming darkness sweeping over him, he felt he could go no farther, and flung himself down upon the wet bank, under a thick growth of nut-bushes.

There Master Gervase found him.

When Elyas reached home close on sunset the day before, there was so much welcoming and hugging of Joan, so many messages to give, so many things to be spoken about, that he did not at first miss Hugh, especially as Wat was also absent. By-and-by when Wat returned, open-mouthed with sights at the pillory, Elyas asked for the little boy, and Prothasy poured out her grievances. The monkey made him idle, and she had said it should not stay in the house, and then he had flown into a rage with William, and had been told he should have nought but bread and water.