‘Aye, I jaloused that and would not ask. But mark me, Sir Hal – soon ye will needs decide what cote ye will wear. The longer ye take, the more badly it will fit.’
Hal and Sim had stumbled back into the chares and vennels of the priory garth, where light was spilling a sour stain on the horizon as dawn fought the dark over ownership of the hills.
He could scarcely believe that he had stumbled into rebellion so easily and offered a prayer of thanks to God that there was a way out of it; all he had to do was sit at Irvine with The Bruce and the others and make sure that the lesser lords such as himself were not overlooked in the negotiations.
Then it was back home, where he would closet himself with his auld da and they’d ride out this new dawn, he thought wildly, and Roslin be damned. Yet he wondered if even Herdmanston’s thick walls would survive the harsh, cold hope of it. He said the bones of that to Sim, who shrugged, looked up, then hawked and spat his own pronouncement on matters.
‘It will rain like pish from God,’ he growled moodily, then paused, stiffening. Hal followed his gaze and they watched the boy’s mother flit from kern to cateran, hard-faced roarer to grim growler, patient as stone and as relentless as a downhill roll.
‘Have ye see ma boy? He has a wish-mark . . .’
Chapter Four
Douglas Castle
Feast of The Visitation of Our Lady with the Blessed Saint
Elizabeth, July 1297
The Dog Boy watched the slipper bounce with every jerk of the foot it was barely attached to. The leg, bagged with red hose, flexed and spasmed with every grunting thrust of the unseen force pounding between it and the twin on the side, beyond Dog Boy’s vision.
Oh Goad, Agnes was saying. Ohgoadohgoadohgoad, a litany that rose higher and more urgent with each passing second.
Dog Boy had seen the dogs made blind and frantic by this, so much so that he’d had to reach down and guide their thrusting stiffness into the right hole when they were being bred. He knew the mechanic of it, but the madness of it was only just touching him, so that he only half understood what he was feeling.
In the butter-yellow and shadowed dim, he sat and, prickled with heat and half-ashamed, half-driven, kneaded his own tight groin while he stared at the mournful brown eyes of Mykel, head on paws and unconcerned that Agnes’s knees were locked behind the pillars of Tod’s Wattie’s arms. With every thrust Wattie grunted and Agnes squealed an answer; gradually the squeals grew higher in pitch.
Veldi snuffled hopefully, but Dog Boy had nothing for them to eat, nor looked to be getting anything until Tod’s Wattie was done. So he sat in the strawed dim of the stable, right up against the back wall and almost under the huge iron-rimmed wheels of the wagon, with the ghost-coloured deerhounds waiting patiently on their leashes, heads on the huge, long-nailed paws.
He and Tod’s Wattie and the hounds had been there two months, left behind by Sir Hal and the others, and he wondered why. Yet the idea of leaving Douglas was strange and frightening enough to catch his breath in his throat.
The castle at Douglas was all he had ever known and the people in it the only ones he had met, besides the odd peddlar or pardoner, until the arrival of Hal and all the other strangers. Now he was about to go off with this stranger, this Tod’s Wattie.
The squeals grew louder and faster. Dog Boy, uncomfortably aware of his groin, traced the iron rim of the cartwheel with one grimy forefinger faster and faster, while unable to tear his gawp-mouthed gaze from her feet and the fancy slipper bobbing furiously. A window-slipper, Agnes had called it, because it had elegant cut-outs designed to show off the red hose that went with them, like the stained windows of a grand cathedral.
Agnes had been told this by the Countess of Buchan, who had given them to her when she had left, as a gift for her tirewoman help; Agnes had worn red hose and slippers ever since – until now, Dog Boy thought, for the hose garters lay like streaks of blood nearby and the slipper he watched had slipped from her bagged heel and wagged frantically on her toes. Her last shriek was almost so piercing as to be heard only by the dogs and she jerked and spasmed so furiously that the slipper flew off.
Tod’s Wattie made a curious, childlike series of whimpers and slowed the mad pulse of him, then stopped entire. The straw stopped rustling like a rainstorm and Dog Boy shut his mouth with a click and heard their breathing, harsh and ragged.
‘Aye,’ said Agnes, in a thick, dreamy voice Dog Boy had never heard from her before. ‘Ye’ve rattled me clean oot of my shoe.’
They laughed and then the straw rustled as they tidied themselves together. Tod’s Wattie lumbered out, wisped with straw sticks, and looked over to where the dogs were, seeing Dog Boy and blinking.
‘There ye are,’ he said and Dog Boy knew he was wondering how long he had been sitting. In the end, he shrugged and passed a hand through his thick hair, combed out a straw and grinned.