Dog Boy thought of it and the blood washed up into his head. There was no one who remembered him at that age left alive, for Jamie and he and all the others had seen to that when they had struck at Douglas Castle. Palm Sunday, seven years ago. Old Tam, former serjeant-at-arms, had hirpled up to their hiding place with news of the garrison attending the kirk in town and they’d fallen on the English like a dog pack, dragging them back and capturing the castle.
After that had come a sin-slather of revenge led by the grim stone of Jamie. Dog Boy recalled Gutterbluid the falconer, pleading for his life as Jamie ordered him strangled with a bowstring. Dog Boy had stared into the hopeless, silent-screaming eyes of Berner Philippe and then nodded so that big, grinning Red Corbie could start turning the stick that slowly broke the houndsman’s neck. Put me in the drawbridge undercroft, he’d thought, exultant with the triumph of it. Near killed me there …
They had pitched those two down the well, everyone else in the underground store, pissed on the lot and fired it. The Douglas Larder folk called it and Dog Boy thought he had forgotten it – all but the glory of discovering, in the hound record books, that he had a name.
Aleysandir.
And a place, not far from Douglas Castle itself.
He went back to it, remembering his da and his prized brace of oxen, an amazement of riches that even the reeve or priest could not match. I was sold for that, he thought bitterly, recalling all the half-dredged clues of it. When I was old enough to run fast as the dugs, my ma walked me up to Douglas as the Sire had told her to do.
He could not remember his mother’s face, but it must have been pretty for Sir William the Hardy to have been captivated enough to pump a child into her belly. And his da, who had always seemed a distant giant, must have loved her to have put up with it.
And loved me in his way, Dog Boy thought, remembering the sad wistfulness on the big slab face the day he had shown how he could run. He must have loved me a bittie, even though I was not his and a constant reminder of his wife’s faithlessness. Yet he had oxen out of it, he added bitterly to himself, so perhaps that was the love in it.
There were no signs of them when he had gone to the small vill, for time and change had brought new tenants to the half-remembered fields and they had no memory of a couple who owned a brace of oxen. Fire and famine and red war had scoured the area more than once – God save me, Dog Boy thought with a sharp sudden pang, I may have ridden it myself. He offered thanks to God then, on his knees, that he had memory of no old couple slain by him or anyone he knew. The thought that he might well have killed his own parents left him trembling every time he thought of it.
Yet they had vanished, as if they had never been, and were almost certainly dead. The clogged drain of it had shifted over the years under the weight of all he had seen and done, so that such memories came back to him at the oddest and most unlooked-for times, clenching the insides of him until he felt he must scream, or weep, or fist something to ruin.
The shift and yawn and scratch alongside him wrenched him back to the present and he turned his head to her, remembered the warm and sticky of last night. Possibly, there now would be another Hob …
He fetched his clothes and dressed as she got up and patted Hob like a dog for his cleverness in blowing life back into the fire. She clattered pots and mixed water and oats; little Bet played quietly with a straw doll and, beyond the confines of the mean withy and cloak shelter, the whole camp stirred like fleas on a dog.
Dog Boy went out into the poor night, which was racing towards lighter hues of blue; it was cool now, but would be a hot day for it, he thought, unlacing himself and making sure where he had picked would offend no one. He grunted with the pleasure of it, becoming aware, slowly, of the boy’s eyes.
‘Are you my da, truly?’
That cut him off mid-flow and it took a long moment before he managed to renew it; longer moments still, of shaking and lacing, before he turned and looked at the boy. Dark and wary, thin, with a deerlike crouch that spoke of an alertness to run.
It was himself at the same age, he thought with a sudden leap of certainty. I would have looked like this when I was turned into the kennels at Douglas and all that went with it.
‘What does your ma say?’ he demanded and the boy frowned at that.
‘She says you are.’
‘Is she to be obeyed and always in the right?’
Hob considered it a while, before nodding uncertainly. Dog Boy grinned.
‘Aye, well, there is your answer. I am your da, God help you.’
There was a silence, and then Dog Boy moved back to the fire and the bent figure of Bet’s Meggy, stirring the oats and water in her cauldron; mean fare, he thought. I will bring better when I can.
‘I must go,’ he said and she stood and faced him, hipshot and with her head tilted. The smile was slight, but her eyes were serious.
‘Will you die?’
Bet’s Meggy wheeshed Hob and threatened him with the spurtle for his cheek, but he never moved, kept staring at Dog Boy.
‘I’ll come back,’ he said awkwardly, turning to Bet’s Meggy. ‘When I can. I’ll bring vittles and …’