She stood uncertainly, until the dog-man himself scrabbled against the door, as if begging to be let out. It hardly seemed possible, but maybe he preferred being in the kennels to the treatment he received at Lady Hypatia’s hands.
The frost hadn’t lifted and the cold was smothering as Abi stepped outside. When she looked back the house was already hidden by fog, which lay over it like a giant white dust sheet. Even sounds were muted. She and Hypatia’s hound could have been the last things alive.
Unnerved, Abi hurried in the direction that she thought the stables lay. The temperature wasn’t much above zero, and the man was already shivering so violently that the leash was jerking in her hand. She looked at the leather loop with revulsion. What if she just dropped it? Let him disappear and report that she’d lost him in the mist.
Except how would he escape? The wall was still there, the gate perpetually hidden without a Jardine to summon it.
Relief thawed her when they reached the cluster of outbuildings. Crossing the cobbled yard, Abi entered the long, low kennels set at an angle to the stables. It was warmer in here, and the smell of dogs was overpowering.
A figure appeared from the gloom: the Master of Hounds. He came forward to meet her with no trace of welcome.
‘Well, if it isn’t Miss Bossyboots,’ he said, sneering. He saw the dog-man. ‘Lady Hypatia’s back, then.’
Abi held out the leash, but the man made no move to take it.
‘Put it in twenty. I keep it separate on account of the noise it makes.’
Number twenty was a metal pen, one of four in a dilapidated section of the kennels that appeared otherwise unused. It had a mesh roof and a barred door that bolted on the outside. Inside, dirty straw thinly covered the concrete floor.
Abi’s hand hesitated over the collar, then she unclipped the lead and the dog-man slunk into the enclosure. He curled up on the straw and buried his head against his naked chest. The soles of his feet were cracked and filthy, and his skin was red and raw from the frosty walk.
The kennel-master came back with a couple of metal dishes, one containing water, the other a mixture of dry biscuits and a pinkish-brown jelly. Dog food. He put them both down and slid them into the pen with the tip of his boot, before dragging the door shut and shooting the bolt.
‘Have you got the leash?’ Abi handed it over, and he hung it on a nail. ‘Can’t leave it with that, who knows what it’d try, eh? Not that I’d blame it, being the dog of a bitch like Hypatia.’
He spat expressively over the pen. Its occupant was now drinking the water, not lifting the bowl with his hands, but crouched over it slurping as a real dog would. The Master of Hounds saw Abi watching.
‘You never seen Lord Crovan’s handiwork before, eh? Lord Jardine reckons the man could teach even me something about breaking in animals.’
He laughed unpleasantly and Abi couldn’t hide her disgust.
‘Oh, don’t you go looking like that, young lady. This one was Condemned, and rightly so. His mistress may be cruel, but he deserved it.’
With a final rattle of the cage door to make sure it was secure, the kennel-master threaded a padlock through the bolt and clicked it shut. He took a ring of keys from his pocket, flicked to a small aluminium one which he unpeeled and dropped into Abi’s palm. Then he sauntered off, whistling. As he disappeared round the corner, the foxhound pack started up barking and whining at the return of their king.
Abi looked at the key, reluctant even to close her fingers around it. She didn’t want to be this creature’s keeper – this man’s, she corrected herself. She would take the key back to the house and deliver it to Lady Hypatia. Let her do with it what she would.
Maybe the old woman would still be in the library. Maybe Jenner would be, too.
Abi gratefully let her mind fill back up with thoughts of the Skilless Jardine son. What he had shown her and what it meant. What had passed between them earlier. What might have happened, had they not been interrupted.
So when the hand seized her ankle, she screamed. The fingers were ice-cold and bone-thin, but strong. Much stronger then she had imagined.
‘Shhh . . .’
The sound was almost unrecognizable as a human voice. If wolves could speak, they’d sound like this after a night of howling. It made the hairs on the back of Abi’s neck prickle up. The grip on her ankle tightened, and sharp nails pierced her sock through to her skin.
The voice rasped again.
‘Help me.’
10
Euterpe
He’d told her his name was Silyen.
Euterpe couldn’t say for sure how long he’d been visiting her here at Orpen. But he’d been just a boy when he came for the first time.