‘Go to the kitchen and see if you can find some scraps for the dugs,’ he said and Dog Boy scampered off.
‘I still have a shoe on the other foot,’ said the throaty voice behind him and Tod’s Wattie blinked a bit and shook his head. He knew he and Dog Boy and the deerhounds were at Douglas because Hal thought it safer to leave his expensive dogs away from the Scots camp at Annick, where Bruce and the others sat in wary conclave with Percy and Clifford and both armies tried hard not to break into pitched battle. Worse still was to try to travel alone on dangerous roads back to Lothian.
But, he added to himself, if Sir Hal delays longer in sending for us this hot-arsed wee besom will have me worn to a nub end.
The kitchen was a swelter. At the large table, Master Fergus the Cook and his helpers split a side of salt beef for the boiling pit, spitted geese, kneaded bread; Dog Boy saw that there was milled sawdust being mixed in with the rye, which meant grain was scarce.
A scullion elbowed his way past Dog Boy with drawn water, piped cleverly from the stone cistern somewhere above; another lugged an armful of wood for the fire, which was bigger than the smith’s furnace and hotter, too. Near it, the potboys withered, trying to stir without roasting themselves, huddled behind an old damped-down tiltyard shield. In the high summer some had been known to faint from the heat and only quick hands saved those from certain death; almost all of them had the glassy weals of old burns.
‘Well, what do you want, boy?’ demanded Fergus looking up. He was no advert for his craft, being a thin, pinch-faced man from Galloway, shaved bald on head and chin to better rid himself of vermin and stay cool.
‘I beg the blissin’ of ye sir,’ Dog Boy said, ‘Tod’s Wattie asks if you can spare some meat and cleidin for his dogs.’
‘Christ’s Bones,’ Fergus interrupted in his Gaelic-lilted English. ‘Cleidin? Scraps for dogs, yet? Ask for a cone of sugar, why not? Everything is running low and little chance of it being replenished that I can see. Glad it is that almost all the visitors are after having gone, for another day would have seen us chewing our own boots.’
The implication was that some unwanted guests remained and it was a sudden, sharp pain to Dog Boy to realise that he was now one of them. In an eyeblink and a series of words from the mouth of the Lady, he had gone from the company of the castle to being a stranger.
‘It will be for him, Master,’ added one of his helpers with a grin as he worked at carefully stacking and tallying a pyramid of honeycakes without breaking them. ‘He looks as if he would eat raw meat.’
‘Perhaps if yon hunt weeks back had actually routed out something worthwhile,’ Fergus grumbled, ‘but hunted stag meat is tough and a brace of fine coneys make better eating and easier cooking. Now the game is scattered and wary and there will be no good hunting for weeks. All we had from it was a dead body and a mystery.’
He broke off and thrust a round pot at Dog Boy, bright and reeking with bloody pats, some of the blood and grease slathered on the outside.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Bring the pot back sharp, mind.’
Dog Boy grinned, nodded – then shot out one hand and grabbed a honeycake, fleeing from the new catcalls and the barrage of feral curses that brought. He was almost at the door when he slammed into something dark and a hard object that whacked him on the temple.
Dazed, he staggered, found himself held up by a strong hand clamped painfully round his thin arm and looked up, past the hilt of the dagger which had smacked him, into a smear of smile.
It was on a fox-sharp face, the eyes cold and dark, the nose speckled with old pox-marks. There was a chin but not much of one and it made the man’s teeth stick out like a rat’s from between wet lips limned by a wisped fringe of beard and moustache.
‘A wee thief,’ he said with suet-rich satisfaction and looked triumphantly at Fergus. ‘It seems my arrival is timely.’
Fergus cleaned his hands on his apron and looked at the newcomer, whom he disliked on sight. He glanced pointedly at the blood-clamp fist that gripped Dog Boy’s arm and the man raised an eyebrow and opened it with a sudden, deliberate gesture.
Dog Boy, pot in one hand, cake in the other, wanted to rub the affected bit but could only wriggle it, looking warily from the man to Fergus, who jerked his head silently at him to go. Heedless of the blood on his hands, Dog Boy crammed the honeycake in his mouth, then darted for the kennels, holding his puny biceps.
‘You are?’ Fergus said and the man lifted his head haughtily.
‘Malise Bellejambe,’ he declared. ‘Sir Malise Bellejambe,’ he added pointedly. ‘And you will lose a kitchen full of honeycakes if you keep that attitude with wee thieves.’
‘Sir,’ Fergus declared, in a tone that made it clear he did not believe the title for a moment. ‘I remember you from before. You came with the Earl of Buchan. Now you are back. Whit why?’