He dropped his gaze, going scarlet, and muttered something genuinely grateful. Alys was about to answer him when the groom behind them exclaimed in warning, and another big brown hare zigzagged across the path, immediately under the horses’ muzzles.
The next few moments seemed to pass very slowly. Michael, riding slack-reined, was taken by surprise as his beast shied, half-reared, plunged backwards into Alys’s dapple grey. The grey, also startled, kicked out, lurched aside and pecked on something. Alys, with a better grip on her reins, was just gaining control when the dappled shoulders in front of her vanished and she found herself, with a slow and dreadful inevitability, soaring over her horse’s head.
The ground hit her with a thump. For a moment things went far away. Then she heard Michael’s voice, exclaiming in alarm.
‘Alys — Mistress Mason! Are you hurt? Steenie, get that horse. Willie, come back, man, give me a hand here!’ His face appeared close to hers, staring anxiously. ‘Are you hurt, mistress?’ he asked again. ‘Can you move? Are you — ?’
‘I fell off,’ she said foolishly. The world righted itself, and she realized she was lying sprawled on the wet grass, petticoats everywhere, hat askew, one hand trapped under her.
‘Can you move?’ repeated Michael. ‘Does aught pain you? Say you’re no hurt, mistress!’
‘It was a great jill-bawd,’ declared Steenie, appearing beyond his shoulder. ‘Sprung out the dyke under their feet, it did, no wonder they was startled.’
She contrived to sit up, and straightened her skirts.
‘I am unhurt, I think,’ she said cautiously, experimenting with hands and arms. ‘Is my horse — ?’
‘He’s right enough,’ Steenie assured her. ‘I’ve got him here, mistress. He’s took no harm, the great gowk.’ He patted the animal’s neck.
‘Our Lady be thanked!’ said Alys. ‘What my good-mother would say if I harmed one of her beasts I do not know.’
‘No, and you don’t want to hear it neither,’ said Steenie forthrightly ‘But yourself, mistress? Can she rise, Maister Michael?’
‘Should you sit here on the bank a wee while?’ Michael asked anxiously. ‘Can you rise? Do you want to rest somewhere?’ He looked about him. ‘Cauld-hope’s nearer than Belstane from here, you could come back to our place and sit for a bit.’
‘There’s a house yonder,’ said the other groom. ‘Stinking Dod’s, no half a mile away. Him that’s married on Wat Paton’s sister. They might give her a seat there, and maybe a drink of well-water or the like. Mind you, it’s maybe no suitable.’
She rose, with Michael’s assistance, and stood for a moment, feeling quite strange and unsteady. Shock, she thought. What did Mère Isabelle order for shock? She tested her limbs again. Hip and shoulder hurt where they had made contact with the ground, and would be bruised black by the morning, but everything seemed to be working.
‘I am embarrassed,’ she confessed. ‘I have not fallen off since I was a child. Are you certain the horse is safe, Steenie?’
‘Never mind the horse,’ said Michael, ‘what madam my godmother would say if I’d let you come to harm I never want to hear. And it was my fault,’ he added, though she had not tried to argue. ‘If I’d been looking where we were going I’d ha’ seen that coming.’
‘No, no,’ she said, ‘the creature startled the horses. Perhaps I would like to sit down for a little while. Could we see if there is anyone at home in that house?’
The dapple-grey horse seemed slightly puzzled by her sudden descent and all the fuss, but when Steenie put her expertly back in the saddle it moved forward willingly with an even stride. Michael’s relief was almost comical, despite his claim to be more concerned for Alys than the horse. One of the men rode ahead, and by the time they reached the house had roused out a thin flustered woman in homespun, with a baby on her hip. An older child peeped round the corner of the house at them and vanished.
‘Oh, the Bad Man fly away wi’ all bawds, the evil things. A wee seat?’ the woman was saying. ‘For certain, aye, and no trouble. Will I bring a plaid out to soften the bench a bit maybe, and keep the wet off your bonnie gown, mistress? Or would ye step inside? Only it’s a bit smoky, and there’s the grandam and all — ’
A shrill, unintelligible voice from within the dark little dwelling confirmed this.
‘And were ye here for the clerk?’ she continued, as Alys dismounted stiffly. ‘I was going to send one of the men to Cauldhope about it as soon as they all come back from Lanark at the market, only I’m here my lone — ’ Another screech from inside the house. ‘- wi’ the grandam and the bairns, and I canny — aye, that’s right, mem, you sit there and get your breath. Would ye take a drop of ale, maybe?’ There was another shrill comment. ‘Or a wee tait spirits? I’ve a drop o’ cordial put by where Dod canny find it. Just let me see the wee one safe, and I’ll — ’
‘No, no, ale or water would be good,’ Alys assured her, seating herself cautiously on the bench by the door. She would certainly have bruises by the morning, she recognized.
‘Clerk?’ said Michael. ‘What clerk’s this, Mistress Paton?’
The woman turned from tethering her child to the leg of the bench. ‘Why Sir David,’ she said. ‘Your own sub-steward. I’m right troubled about him, maister, for he’s no roused nor stirred since I put him to bed. He’ll no be easy to move like that, save if you put him in a cart or the like.’
‘Sir David?’ said Alys in disbelief. ‘What is he doing here? Is he injured, or ill?’
‘Aye, Sir David. Him that’s sub-steward to Douglas,’ she said again, and looked from Alys to Michael. ‘He came stackering in off the fields, no long after the rest went off to Lanark, and fell in a dwam in front of the cart-shed yonder. I washed the worst of the blood off him, and got him in the house and put him in our bed, but being here my lone I couldny do more about it.’
‘But what’s come to him?’ said Michael. ‘He was well enough when I left Cauldhope this morning. Blood? And what’s he about down here?’
‘He never said,’ said the woman. The piercing voice from indoors said something Alys did not catch. ‘I’d say he’d been fighting, if it wasny a clerk, or else he’s maybe taken a beating.’
Michael turned to Alys, spread his hands, and then followed their hostess into the house, ducking under the low lintel. She sat still, thinking that she should follow him, listening to him asking for a light, and then to the scrape of a flint. The grandam shrieked, and beside her the child announced something as unintelligibly as the old woman.
Alys looked at it, and drew a sharp, involuntary breath; the little face was marred by a split upper lip like the hare’s. No wonder its mother cursed the beasts, she thought, and smiled at the baby. It grinned back, showing several teeth, ducked beneath the seat and emerged with a wooden spoon, which it began to bang vigorously on the bench.
‘Mistress Mason?’ Michael was saying, and she realized he had spoken to her already. ‘Would you come and look at Sir David? I don’t like the look of him either.’
The house lived up to its occupant’s by-name, and the inside was very dark. This was hardly a surprise, she told herself, since there was no window, the peat on the hearth was smouldering rather than burning, and the light Michael had asked for was provided by a single tiny flame. As her eyes adjusted, she made out two box beds built into the wall at her left. The bundle of rags in the nearest stirred, shaded its eyes against the flame, and produced another shrill comment. She smiled, curtsied, and passed on to the further bed.
‘You see,’ said Michael. ‘He doesny answer, and his breathing’s no right. And he keeps twitching.’ The man in the reeking bed shuddered as he spoke, and she bent closer.
‘Is it truly Sir David?’ she asked, looking at the battered, swollen features in the dim light.
‘Oh, it’s him, all right, poor devil, and I’d say Mistress Paton was right, he’s been fighting, or been beaten. Likely some lassie’s brothers have caught up wi’ him,’ he added sourly. ‘But what are we to do wi’ him, and what’s best to do for him first?’