‘Every mother is the like,’ Geordie offered and there were growls of assent at that; there was a vagrant coil of the wild music of the galloglass warriors from the north and west; and Dog Boy saw Troubadour Tam’s head come up, cocked to listen to it like a dog sniffs the wind.
‘Aye, mayhap and mayhap no’,’ Parcy replied. ‘I have no experience of Geordie’s ma, nor none else but mine own, who brewed physick that would gag a hog. She would clutch my neb until I had to breathe – then pour it down my thrapple.’
Dog Boy heard them, bleared with memories, chuckle at this shared moment, but it was not for him; he could barely remember his ma at all these days and certainly not her face.
‘Did it work?’ demanded Horse Pyntle and Parcy flapped a loose hand.
‘It did what it was aimed at – once swallied, ye had better have a bush to boak in.’
‘Aye, well,’ Patrick murmured dreamily, ‘here you are – so it must have been good.’
‘Not to my way o’ considering it,’ Parcy answered. ‘Once, as a wee laddie, I swallied a penny. A whole siller penny, my da’s rent-price for our ox. So it was out with the physick – and back came the money, so sick it would not spend.’
‘Away, Parcy ye liar!’
Parcy held up his hands.
‘May the Lord bliss and keep me, the truth it is I am telling you here. The wee reeve said it was a crockard. Rang hollow, he said. Well, it was fine when I ate it, but it comes as no surprise to me that my ma’s physick ruined it. It would strip the shine from anythin’, that brew.’
‘At least they ne’er burned her as a witch,’ Sweetmilk said, ‘if her brew was so bad.’
He jerked his head up, realizing what he had said and suddenly worried that he might have stumbled into a mire. Parcy let him dangle for a long moment, and then shook his head; Sweetmilk’s obvious relief made everyone laugh.
‘Not for the want of folk trying, mark ye,’ Parcy went on. ‘Cost an Inquisitor dear.’
‘You nor your ma never saw such,’ scoffed Geordie, which was as good as a waved rag to a bull.
‘He came to our vill,’ Parcy insisted indignantly, ‘a wheen of years back, when such black crows were permitted into the Lowlands to seek out the heresies of the Temple. The folk came out shouting that my ma was a witch and should be burned. Burn her, burn her, they were yellin’, and demanded the good Brother Inquisitor put her to the test.’
He paused and the wind flared up sparks, as if it was part of the story.
‘The Inquisitor, who was interested only in the foulness of Poor Knights, was weary of a deal of the same. Scotland, he had discovered, was full of kindly, helpful folk who seemed determined to broil and roast their neighbours. “What makes you think she is a witch?” he demanded and they told him she stank of old sulphur when she farted. “Burn her. Burn the witch.”
‘“So do I,” the Inquisitor admitted. “She has a third nipple,” they told him and demanded that he burn the witch. He frowned. “I have a wart which might be mistaken for the same,” he sighed back at them.
‘“She takes the Lord’s name in vain,” they flung at him. “She must be burned. Burn the witch.” The Inquisitor, who had had enough of this, flung down his scrip of blessed relics in disgust. “I have also taken the Lord’s name in vain,” he announced. “Particularly when faced with the likes of folk such as yourselves.”’
Parcy stopped and shook his head in mock sorrow.
‘Well, he thought he had brought sense to them, for they stopped and muttered among themselves for a minute or two, then raised their heads and untied my ma. “Forget the auld wummin,” they said, looking at him with flames in their eyes. “Burn the witch.”’
There were dry chuckles, but mostly silence as folk marvelled at the tale.
‘What happened to your ma?’ demanded Yabbing Andra into the head-shaking admiration. ‘Did her neebors burn her as well as that Inqueesitor?’
‘For certes not,’ Parcy said without hesitation. ‘They let her go and concentrated on the unhappy black priest – so she went back to our house and turned them all into toads, first chance she had. That vill is now empty save for her and some hopping croakers and their gener. None will visit it, not even myself.’
‘Bigod,’ Patrick declared, ‘the Auld Carl himself never told such fibs. I am not surprised your ma made brews to make ye boak, if you kept telling her tales like that.’
‘I had a physick once,’ Yabbing Andra began and people groaned. Dog Boy got up and moved away, feeling strange, at once part of them and not part of them. Perhaps it was their talk of mothers. Perhaps it was the new livery he wore, a smart jupon that was still fresh enough to be clean, fixed with the badge of a royal houndsman.
He had taken it from the hands of Bernard the Chancellor, whom he’d been advised to see as soon as possible and had found as a dry thin stick of a priest in plain brown wool, worse dressed than the gaggle of clever clerks who served him.