Something Red (10 page)

“Quick, they’re taking the dogs to the walls, you should see them, I saw them last time, a whole pack black as Crow Babd and any one of them bigger nor Culann’s hound, him that Sétanta killed.”

“Who?” asked Hob. “Who?”

But she was pulling him toward the door that opened onto the courtyard.

F
IVE BURLY HOUSECARLS
issued forth from the kennels with ten of the half-wild dogs on braided leather leads, the biggest dogs Hob had ever seen. The mastiffs’ necks were encircled by broad leather collars with small square iron plates sewn into them. These protected the dogs’ necks from injury by beast or burglar—or by one another, in the occasional disputes over precedence that arose among them. The dogs pulled strongly toward the gates and one of the housecarls slipped a bit on an icy patch, lurching upright and yanking back on the leather to chasten the dogs he held.

Another of Osbert’s men swung the gates partly open to allow them through, and now Hob understood the double wall and the narrow alley that ran around Osbert’s Inn. They streamed through the gate into the narrow run between the inner and outer wall and the handlers slipped the leashes off, and retreated into the courtyard, closing and locking the big gates.

Later Hob would see, as groups of villagers set off for home, how the two leaves of the inner gates just filled the width of the run when opened fully. This enabled Osbert’s housecarls to seal the dogs off from the gateway when guests left or, more rarely, to admit a late traveler who pulled the bellrope by the outer gates.

The dogs pelted off into the darkness, running the complete circuit about the inn one or two times in sheer exuberance. Hob went close to the grille in one of the gates, where he could see them racing past in a long file. Nemain came up beside him. He was struck by the way they never gave tongue.

“Why are they so silent?” he asked her.

“Master Osbert and his men train them to check their voices
entirely, the while that they’re in the run, and to circle the ring all the night, some running, some resting. And any that come over the wall from without, won’t they be rending him to bits, and then
eating the bits.
” She said this with such ferocious enthusiasm that he had to turn away from the loping stream of night-black dogs and regard her for a moment. The color was high beneath her translucent skin; her mouth was set in a hard grin; she peered eagerly through the grille. Sometimes it was as though another person showed for a moment beneath her skin: someone older; someone used to command; someone harsh-handed and unforgiving.

After a time the mastiffs settled down, some throwing themselves to the ground and panting, some lifting a leg to mark the inner or outer wall. Yet all night long, at any hour, at least two of them were moving about in a restless circling of the inn. The ticking of their claws on the frozen earth echoed from the walls of the run, faint and sinister sounds in the darkness.

Tales of the inn’s eerie guardians had spread through the shire, and over the years there had been only a few thieves hardy enough to attempt to steal from Osbert atte Well’s storehouse, and these now were dead.

T
HE FIRE GRUMBLED
and crackled in its stone cave. The common room was full, and Osbert’s daughters, now abetted by several of Osbert’s men and maids, were weaving in and out between the tables, laden with platters and trenchers and leather jacks of barley beer. The air was a rich mixture of delicious aromas, and Hob found his mouth watering.

Hob and Nemain and Jack sat at one end of a table near the fire. Molly was down by the door talking to Osbert again.

Margery atte Well whisked past their table, a short graceful woman
bearing a wooden tray. On the tray a big bowl of frumenty steamed: wheat porridge in chicken broth, with egg yolks. She vanished behind a knot of pilgrims on the far side of the room. Hob’s thoughts ran on how pretty she was, and how like her sister, and how Osbert told one from the other. He was wondering vaguely if, should he come to know them both, he would be able to distinguish them, when she appeared at his side. She bent to place a wooden platter on the table, a joint of mutton smoking in the middle amid trenchers of bread with heaps of pottage: in this case peas and beans boiled with garlic and a bit of fat bacon. As she straightened she caught sight of Hob.

“Well, here’s a handsome lad,” she said, leaning a hip against the table and looking sideways at him with a kick-the-devil grin. Her leg pressed against the side of his thigh. He had an impression of heavy-lidded dark eyes, a mane of brown ringlets beneath her thin linen veil, and, where the neckline of her shift hung away from her body, the shading of a faint winter tan into paler mystery within. He caught a bit of her scent, delicate sweat mixed with the woodsmoke that permeated everyone’s garments, and for a moment he could not have spoken to save his soul. A confusion of feelings for which he lacked a name washed over him, and he sat and stared as though simple. The next moment she was gone, with a little laugh trailing after her.

“Would you ever cease a moment from your fierce courting and cut us a bit of that meat?” Nemain said in a voice dripping with honey. She wore a bland expression, but there was lemon mixed with the honey. The corners of her mouth quirked down for an instant, and then she forced herself back into a picture of blank sisterly innocence.

Hob drew his belt knife and cut her a slice of mutton, concentrating furiously on the task. He put a round of bread before her and on that the mutton.

She drew her own knife and cut a bite from the mutton, but before she ate it she regarded him for a long moment, and then to his utter surprise
said kindly, “Well, you
are
a handsome lad entirely.” She looked away and spoke toward the fire. “It’s not that I care a traneen, mind.” She turned back and addressed herself quietly to the mutton, and gave not one more glance in his direction.

A
T FIRST THE PILGRIMS
were clustered in one group, and the villagers drifted in and coalesced on the other side of the room, but soon the two groups began mingling. Questions were asked of the pilgrims about Carlisle—to the villagers this might as well be on the moon. The terrible tale of Brother Athanasius was recounted again and again, and the villagers crossed themselves, bright-eyed with mixed terror and fascination.

The most devout pilgrims ate and retired to the sleeping booths that Osbert had allotted them, but more of the pilgrims, to whom this was as much holiday as devotion, ate and drank and sought new acquaintance about the common room. The black-haired woman that Molly had helped went early to bed, but one of her sons was over at a villagers’ table, matching ale for ale and having much to say to one of the village maids.

The noise soon became so great that when Molly returned to their table and began to speak to Jack, Hob was quite unable to hear her. Osbert’s cook was an honest workman, though, and for a time Hob devoted himself to his meal, and had little attention to spare for his tablemates.

A
FTER THE MEAL
Molly sent Nemain and Hob out to the wagons to bring in the symphonia, the goatskin drum, and a
cláirseach,
one of the Irish harps. Jack moved a few smaller benches for them to sit on, by the side of the fireplace.

Jack took the drum; Hob seated himself with the symphonia on his lap. Molly raised a jack of barley beer and drank half of it off without stopping. She picked up her harp, and nodded to Jack. He placed the drum upright, braced on his left thigh; he whirled the short bone stick, with its knob at each end, in the fingers of his right hand; he struck up a sprightly rhythm. With that they began a series of lively country dances, Molly’s strong fingers flickering over the harp strings. Nemain sat down by Jack and began clapping in a complicated pattern, sometimes with Jack, sometimes in between the booming beats of the goatskin.

The trestle tables were moved back a couple of feet on all sides; this cleared a comfortable space in the center of the long room. Some of the farm lads began a circle dance around Parnell, who twirled prettily in the center, her arms held in a sweet curve above her head, her curls flying, until her father rapped on the counter for her to take another tray.

Hob was accomplished enough by now to play the symphonia without looking at his hands. Molly had drilled them well, and Hob knew his place in each piece they played. He watched Molly for her signals, as did the other two, but he was able to look around now and then, to watch the dancing, the tables with their talking, gesticulating people. Hob was unused to so many people in one place, and here there were at least two score.

More and more he followed the progress of Margery among the tables. She seemed to give off a kind of dark glow as she passed back and forth among the generally more fair and ruddy villagers.

The dance they were playing ended. Nemain, in the moment of relative quiet, leaned toward him.

“I’ve heard some of the folk of the place say that ’twas their mother they took their looks from, the lasses and Matthew, and she having dark-fairy blood.”

Hob blushed to be caught out so easily. But as they began once more to play, he found himself looking for Margery again. She seemed
more enchanting the longer he watched her. He found it hard not to stare.

A young village wife, her face flushed and her gait unsteady, sat down near the players. She held a baby on her hip, and now drew a fold of her garments aside and began to nurse.

The room grew louder as the drink flowed. Several times one or two of Osbert’s sons broke up quarrels; the two shire-reeve’s men did not even trouble themselves to notice, for everyone knew that Osbert’s Inn kept its own peace.

At one point Osbert himself came to a table that had gone from angry voices to tense silence, where two men were braced to rise, knuckles white on their knife-hilts. He leaned over and placed his two hands upon the table as though resting while he admonished the two hotheads. He spoke so quietly that Hob could not hear what he said, though the table was the next over. Osbert’s forearms were almost as big as Jack’s, and he let the would-be antagonists contemplate his arms, his heavy-bellied mass, and the sax sheathed at his back, and all the while speaking, first to one and then to the other, with the blandest of expressions. The men eased back on their benches, and Osbert straightened and signaled to Parnell to bring more ale. He nodded pleasantly to the villagers and went off to his other duties. Hob kept an eye on the table. The mood there was sullen for a bit, but as the strong drink asserted itself again, good humor gradually returned.

Close by Hob a housecarl appeared with a great wooden bowl and ladle and, wrapping his hand in a rag, swung a simmering cauldron on its iron dog away from the fire and into the room. Now he could the more easily fill the bowl from the cauldron. When he’d finished he took the bowl in both hands and hurried away; he left the cauldron projecting somewhat into the room, between Hob and the nursing mother. It simmered quietly, shedding a perfume of pea and lentil and mutton fat. Hob, cranking the symphonia vigorously, began to eye the cauldron,
and despite his recent meal began to wonder if he might induce Osbert’s servers to give him a small bowl.

The young mother’s eyelids were drooping. The baby’s mouth slipped off the nipple and the little creature began sliding off her lap, across her thigh, toward the cauldron. Hob had just time enough to realize the danger, and to begin to rise to his feet, when here came Margery from behind Hob’s bench. She deftly snatched up the baby. The mother roused with a start. Margery put the baby on its mother’s shoulder, took the woman’s shawl and wrapped it as a sling about the baby, tied a careful knot, kissed the woman on the cheek, and was away down the room.

Scarcely four breaths had elapsed. Hob resettled himself. A kind of exalted admiration filled him. Nemain, clapping, swiveled toward him, so that the reports loudened in his ear and returned him to himself. He set his fingers to the keys and tried to find his place in the gallop of the dance again, but he no longer cared whether Nemain teased him or not. He played, but he looked out over the room, watching to see Margery pass by.

A
FTER THEY HAD PLAYED
several dances, everyone sprawled at ease on the benches, breathing hard and calling for Parnell or Margery to hasten before they perished of thirst. Osbert beamed at the procession of bumpers that streamed from the pantry to the great room, and made sure Molly’s party never went dry. Molly quaffed off another pint of barley beer, and sent Hob out to the big wagon to fetch in the ring-and-stick.

Hob returned with a short ashwood pole and a weight. This was a crude ring of iron that had been weighed at ten pounds, and Molly handed it around to be hefted, announcing that she would match whatever they cared to wager that they could lift it as Jack did. Some of the young men from the village tossed it from hand to hand, teasing and daring one another, boasting. Molly had not been here in three years,
and some of these young men had been striplings at that time. The older men warned that it was less simple than it appeared, but in their new strength all the farm lads wanted to try. Forwin and Matthew were placing bets on their hero Jack and grinning behind callused hands.

As with innkeepers all along the pilgrimage routes, Osbert was beginning to take on some of the functions of a banker: translating foreign coin into local produce, holding objects against a traveler’s return, and the like. Here he marked the value of small coins the villagers wished to wager against their tally sticks, and when they lost, as was usual, he paid Molly in coin and collected in produce or labor from the local folk through the year, with a small increase for his service.

There was a short length of thong tied to the iron ring, the free end of the thong ending in a loop. Jack now laid the ash pole, an inch in diameter and three and a half feet in length, across the table. About a half inch from one end was a shallow notch cut in the wood, and about a half foot from the other end was a scorch mark.

When all had examined the iron ring to their satisfaction, Jack put his hand on the pole, on the six inches between the end and the burn mark, and Molly slipped the loop of the thong about the pole’s other end, so that it settled into the notch. The iron ring now hung down on one side of the table and Jack stood at the other side, the end of the pole in his right hand.