‘Fetch a bowl and spoon,’ she said. She indicated the thumb-sucking girl: ‘This is Bet,’ and Dog Boy smiled; of course it would be, he thought.
‘And this is Hob,’ she said to the boy. He was dark, Dog Boy thought, and rangy, though there was the promise that good food and care would slide some real muscle on him. He thought the lad was about nine, but his skill in judging age was nearly all to do with dogs, so he could have been mistaken.
‘Where have ye been?’ Bet’s Meggy demanded and Hob blinked away from Dog Boy’s face and thrust out his hand, which had a coin in it.
‘I took the Sire to the forgeman, as he asked,’ he replied. ‘He gave me a whole siller penny.’
The wonder in his voice was dreamy as Bet’s Meggy took the coin and dropped it into her cleavage; it would not find a way out of the bottom of them, Dog Boy thought admiringly and remembered that Midsummer’s Night when she had danced the Horse Dance, naked under a green shift dress fixed with madder ribbons and wearing the straw mummer’s horsehead.
Clear across the stubbled fields she had pranced, to no more than a whistle and drum, the chants of others dancing and singing behind her and the faint, sonorous prayers of the priest, determined not to let folk lose sight of God in this whiff of heathenism.
She had danced until her feet bled on the stubble, which was the point of it, blessing the fields with her virgin blood. Then, when the field had been acknowledged as watered, Dog Boy had gathered her up and carried her into the night while folk called good-natured filthy advice after them. He had washed her feet gently in the burn on that Midsummer’s Night, the pair of them wearing rue against the threat of Faerie pixie-leading them off to spend a hundred years or longer in their hidden sidhean mounds.
Despite the rue, something had touched them that night; perhaps they had truly been transformed into virgin Queen and handsome King of Summer, for they had coupled like writhing snakes and, in between, rubbed fern seed on their eyelids and sat crosslegged and naked with the rue tight in their fists, in the hope of seeing the Faerie but escaping being taken by them.
Towards dawn – too short a night, Dog Boy recalled, same as this one – she had sighed and laughed about how she would never dance the Horse Dance again now, for he had broken her yett gate for ever.
Now here she was, as if sprung from a faerie hill.
‘I heard ye married,’ he blurted and she paused, frowning at what her attempt at cutting the bread had brought; it had broken to crumbs of shrivelled beans and peas, mixed with rye and a little wheat. Dog Boy, remembering the good bread he had eaten earlier, felt ashamed.
‘I did,’ she answered, scooping the crumbs into the bowls and handing them out. Dog Boy refused the one she handed to him and she looked relieved, fed more crumbs to it and stirred them in.
‘John the Lamb,’ she answered and Dog Boy nodded. He had been a score of years older than her.
‘A good man,’ she answered defiantly, as if he had spoken aloud. Then she smiled softly. ‘Perfect, in fact – away for days at a time tending the sheep and always bringing back a peck of wool or a tait of mutton.’
Her eyes clouded.
‘Died two – no, I lie, three – years since. Cold and a hard winter and age took him.’
She scowled at Hob, who was eyeing the gruel with distaste.
‘Eat that. Learn to like it or go hungry – there is little else.’
She sighed and turned apologetically to Dog Boy.
‘He disnae care for the meat in it, which is horse.’
Dog Boy nodded; horse was the one meat they were not short of now and he wondered if the fine English who had donated it knew of the fate of their proud mounts.
‘You are chewing on the most expensive meat there is,’ Dog Boy said to Hob and explained why. The boy’s dark eyes flickered with interest, but the scowl remained.
‘The priest says it is a sin to eat the flesh of the horse,’ he persisted and Dog Boy shrugged as if it did not matter at all.
‘If it is still Father Thomas who is priesting you, then he has knowledge of it, for sure,’ he answered, staring idly at the fire. ‘He was happy to eat it when Herdmanston was sieged.’
‘Away …’
The blurt was out and Hob took the scowling censure of his mother and fell silent.
‘Besides,’ Dog Boy went on, ‘Jamie says the French eat it – he was in that land for the learning in it. He says it was the Northmen who so upset the priests, for they used to fight prize stots and sacrifice the winner in their heathen rites, eating the meat. Since wee priests hate the raiding Norsemen, horses got called all kinds of bad cess.’
‘I likes it.’
Dog Boy grinned back at the smiling little Bet and then looked at Hob, who was half scathing, half impressed.