‘Let’s find the other path,’ said Cynric abruptly, hauling his horse’s head round. ‘I want to see no ghostly gatherings in haunted hovels, thank you very much.’
He had spurred his pony back the way they had come before Bartholomew could suggest that the light probably belonged to a traveller, using one of the houses as shelter for the night. With a sigh, realising that the detour would mean they would be out in the foul weather for longer than ever, he was about to follow Cynric when something launched itself at him with a tremendous screech that hurt his ears and turned the blood in his veins to ice.
Bartholomew caught the merest glimpse of a shadowy figure coming at him from the trees before it thumped into his horse so hard that the animal reared and screamed in terror. He fought to control it, but something was clawing at the medicine bag that was looped around his shoulder, snatching at it to try to pull him from his saddle. Bartholomew kicked out blindly, hearing a grunt of pain as his leg made contact with something soft. His horse continued to prance, and Bartholomew felt his foot seized and hauled on. Immediately, he began to lose his balance. The horse bucked violently, and Bartholomew fell, landing in an undignified tangle in the wet grass.
For a moment all he could hear was the sound of his horse’s hooves thundering back toward Otley. He looked around him wildly, trying to see his attacker in the darkness. The next assault came from behind. With another deathly howl, he was knocked forward so that he fell on his face. Mud splattered into his eyes, nose and mouth, so that he could not see or breathe. He struggled furiously, trying to free himself from the suffocating weight that pressed him into a soupy puddle.
He succeeded in raising his head, and took a great gasp of air before it was forced down again. Hot breath gusted on to the back of his neck, and his ears were full of roars and grunts. He reached backward, trying to pull whatever it was off him. His fingers encountered something soggy and covered in wiry hair. Another howl split the air, and he twisted sideways, partly dislodging the thing from his back.
The air around him was rank with the stench of animal. He could smell wet fur and warm, carnivorous breath. He squirmed and kicked with all his might, clawing at the ground in his desperation to escape. There was a rumbling growl that seemed to vibrate the very ground on which he lay, ending in a series of guttural grunts. He struggled more frantically when another snarl ended with the drip of hot saliva on his cheek. Revolted, he turned his face away.
And then, suddenly, it was gone. He rolled on to his back and sat up, coughing and wiping the mud from his eyes with his sleeve. The village was deserted. The light in the house had been doused, and the squat black shapes of the huts stood immovable, like stones in the darkness. Rain pattered gently in the trees, all but drowned out by the sound of his rasping breathing and the thump of his heart.
‘Did you see it?’ came Cynric’s terrified voice at his ear. Bartholomew started backward at the sound of something so close, and tried to scramble to his feet. Cynric helped him.
‘No,’ said Bartholomew shakily. ‘Whatever it was attacked me from behind. I saw nothing other than a shadow. What was it? A wolf?’
But Cynric was not of a mind to stand chatting in the forlorn village. ‘Come on, boy,’ he said, his voice uncharacteristically unsteady as he hauled on Bartholomew’s arm. ‘It might come back at any minute. The horses have fled, so we will have to run. Can you manage?’
The notion of a second encounter with the smelly beast was enough to spur Bartholomew into action, and even his trembling legs could not prevent him from racing away from Barchester as fast as he could. Without waiting to see if Cynric followed, he took to his heels, tearing blindly past trees and scrub, through the river and across fields, and only stopping when he failed to see a ditch and went flying head over heels into someone’s lovingly tended barley. Cynric was right behind him.
‘That should be far enough,’ the Welshman panted, doubling over to rest his hands on his knees as he fought to catch his breath. ‘Did the beast bite you?’
Bartholomew shook his head, looking around him wildly in anticipation of another attack. ‘It just sat on me and drooled. Did you see it? It felt like a bull with a wolfs breath!’
‘It was the white dog,’ said Cynric, swallowing hard. ‘I saw it. It was a big white dog.’
‘It was certainly big,’ gasped Bartholomew, drawing his knees up to his chest to ease the burning stitch in his side. ‘Can you see it now? Has it followed us?’
Cynric shook his head, scanning the dark fields. ‘Maybe it does not stray far from the haunted village. Maybe it lives there, feeding on the souls of the people who died in the plague.’
‘Maybe someone set it on us,’ said Bartholomew more practically. ‘Someone who knew we would be travelling that way.’
‘Spirits have a way of knowing such things,’ muttered Cynric, crossing himself vigorously. He hesitated, continuing in a low whisper. ‘Will I die now that I have set eyes on it? Unwin did, and so did those two villagers – die suicide and the woman who died of childbirth fever.’
‘That was no ghost, Cynric,’ said Bartholomew with a shudder. ‘It slathered all over me. Spirits do not slather. Nor do they stink.’
‘They do so!’ said Cynric, with absolute conviction. ‘My mother always smelled almonds before my grandfather’s spirit appeared to her, and the next morning the floor was always wet where he had stood.’
There was little Bartholomew could think of to say in answer to that. ‘Where are we?’ he asked eventually. ‘I am completely lost.’
‘So am I,’ admitted Cynric, something Bartholomew had never before known to happen, suggesting that their encounter with the white dog had unnerved Cynric more than the physician had appreciated. ‘It does not matter anyway,’ the book-bearer added gloomily, ‘since I am soon to lie in my grave next to Unwin.’
‘You are not going to die,’ said Bartholomew firmly. He grabbed the Welshman by the arm, and looked him in the eye. ‘That was not a ghost, Cynric, it was real. You saw all those men looking out of their houses as Ned ran across the bailey waving that gold coin in the air. One of them followed us with his dog, intending to steal it. Or perhaps it was Grosnold himself, because of my clumsy questioning of him about Unwin – or even because I know that he inherited his manor from his grandfather, and that the King and the Prince of Wales have probably never set eyes on the man.’
‘But it was horrible, lad,’ said Cynric, his dark eyes wide with fear. ‘It was huge – bigger than any earthly dog I have ever seen; more like a pony, with a thick white coat to protect it from the fires of hell. When I saw it crouching over you and making all those dreadful noises, I thought it was trying to suck the soul from your body!’
‘Did you see anyone with it? I am sure it was human hands that pulled me from my saddle – the dog came later.’
Again Cynric crossed himself vigorously in the darkness. ‘No, thank the good Lord! All I saw was the beast. I fired an arrow at it, and it fled back to its lair in that ghostly village.’
‘Well, there you are, then,’ said Bartholomew reasonably. ‘A spectre would not run away from an arrow. It was a real dog and someone owns it.’
‘Then why did you run away?’ demanded Cynric. ‘It was a fiend from hell and you know it.’
With hindsight, Bartholomew was rather ashamed of the blind panic that had prompted him to rush away from the village as fast as his legs could carry him, but the fact was that an earthly hound drooling in his ears was just as frightening as a spectral one would have been.
‘We can walk back to Otley and see which of those villagers has a white dog,’ he said, deftly side-stepping Cynric’s question.