Something Red

by Douglas Nicholas

  “Killed? How could this be Tibby, then?”

  “This were Tibby’s grandmam, also called Tibby. Tha were nobbut a wee lad, an’ young Tibby hersel’ were never born yet.”

  Two men were toiling here. A strong old man, gray-stubbled, hauled at a winch handle, and up came a groaning oaken bucket, so full that the water spilled in sheets down its sides as it swayed on the rope. He lifted it easily from the hook and passed it to a younger man, who carried it, staggering a little, a few paces and poured it into one of the troughs, while his elder attached another bucket and began lowering it.

  “An’ Wimund threw the ax at her?”

  “Nay, she were wi’ Old Martin and Otho—both gone now—and they all just set oot from here at inn, and t’ moon bright, and they was all deep in drink. And Wimund, that had come that close tae knives wi’ Otho over Tibby in courtyard—Master Osbert’s faither, Old Master Ernald, near threw ’em tae mastiffs, he was that put oot at sich ruction—Wimund come ten, eleven paces behind, and his wood-ax in his hand, and callin’ tae Tibby to come away and leave Otho. All of ’em staggerin’, we could see it from yon gateway. Nay, lad, put that in t’other trough.”

  Hob leaned in the doorway, happily chewing his almonds and listening to the tale. The elder housecarl had to conserve his breath till the next heavy bucket was up on the lip of the well. He was panting a little, but only a little.

  “And Otho comes roond wi’ his knife already oot and starts back at Wimund, and Tibby throws hersel’ on Otho tae keep him back, but Wimund’s cast his ax at Otho already, sithee, and didn’t it catch poor Tibby in t’ back of her neck, and she drops in road, dead as a stane.”

  “Jesus save us!” said the younger man, and passed back the empty bucket. “Two more and she’s done, Uncle.”

  “And Otho give a great cry, and he and Old Martin stand lookin’ at her, and Wimund turns and walks into t’ forest, and we seen nowt of him syne. Nor hide nor hair of him. He were outlawed; they read it oot at Mass, but none seen him syne.” He paused a moment and regarded the winch handle absently. “She were a fine-lookin’ woman, too. I fancied her mysel’.”

  The old man began to lower the bucket again, and now Hob, his mouth full of almonds and his ears full of the housecarl’s tale, suddenly felt as though a cold shadow had swept over the inn. The creaking of the ropes and the squeal of the winch, the plash of the water as it lurched back and forth in the bucket, made it difficult to hear sounds from outside the walls, yet he almost felt that he had heard that cry, that cry, that he had first heard in the wooded valley below the Thonarberg.

  He turned at once and went through the passageway to the common room of the inn, seeking Molly. After a moment he saw her across the room crowded with pilgrims, talking earnestly to Osbert. Nemain came up to him.

  “Did you hear it?” he asked, his eyes wide and staring.

  “I did not,” she said. “There is a mort of noise here within; but it troubled me naetheless, and Herself says she felt it in the floor, through the soles of her feet. We are to do the round of the walls, with Jack and Ernald and others, and some dogs.”

  They stood together and watched as Osbert bent his head to listen to Molly, nodded, pursed his mouth, put his hand around and absently fondled the hilt of a knife sheathed behind his back. Hob fidgeted; he felt that he would jump from inside his skin if they did not do something, anything. He turned to Nemain.

  “I got these from the pantler,” he said distractedly. He opened his pouch and showed her the almonds. “His name is Tilred, he’s a friend to Herself.” He hardly knew what he said. “I’ll come with you, about the walls.”

  She put her hand in and took a rough half of the nuts, transferring them to her own pouch. She squeezed his wrist affectionately. She smiled at him; but then her eyes shifted past him, at the door to the courtyard, and thence to the world outside, and her face closed down.

  A SHORT WHILE LATER, Jack went out in the gathering dusk to the courtyard and came back with the war hammer at rest on his shoulder. Ernald and Matthew, each carrying an ax, were waiting in the little passage from the pantry to the hall, trailed by a pair of tall rough-coated hounds of brindled gray. Part deerhound, their ancestor had traveled with a party down from Scotland on embassy to the English court. The Scots had paused at the inn in the elder Ernald’s time long enough for their deerhound to give a distinctive cast to later generations of Osbert’s house dogs. Yet these were mixed enough that they did not violate the prohibition against keeping Scottish deerhounds: this fell on any person of lesser estate than an earl. These hounds were kept apart from the grim mastiffs who made up Osbert’s night watch. The lean dogs, five in all, had the free run of the inn; they were whistled up when the men of the household went hunting.

  The women had shed their veils as though preparing for exertion, and went bareheaded, an unusual sight when the troupe was among others, although grandmother and granddaughter were, on the road, more casual in their dress than was common. Molly had plaited her hair into a single braid, and it hung far down her back, and so had Nemain. With the hair pulled back so severely from their faces, they seemed to Hob to be stern and powerful, even young Nemain, and somehow remote.

  The two women, Jack, and Osbert’s sons went out the postern door in the side of the gate, with Hob trailing after the party. The little group crossed the narrow run between inner and outer walls and went through the outer gate. Slowly they walked the perimeter of the inn. The early evening was crisp and still. They stayed close to the weather-silvered logs of the outer wall that ran around the sides of the inn buildings and the front wall of the courtyard. Dry dead vines crunched underfoot and caught at their ankles; the nimble Matthew went ahead, pulling the occasional tangle of low brush and vine roots aside with his ax till the women passed.

  At each corner of the compound Molly and Nemain paused, and stood side by side, eyes wide, faces strained, listening, listening. They sniffed the air, they turned about, they scanned the forest. Hob watched in fascination. An erratic wind blew this way and that; it moved the brindled fur along the hounds’ shoulders. Down the women’s backs the two braids, one red, one silver-shot gray, swayed and twitched in the currents of air, like two panther tails. The dogs looked where the two Irishwomen faced, but soon, after the way of dogs, became bored: one sat down and bit with explosive savagery at a spot on his left hind leg, chasing an itch along toward his foot; the other began investigating the base of the wall, to see if anyone of interest had left urine there recently.

  Ernald hawked and spat. “Is there nowt, then, Mistress?” he asked Molly. His tone was polite, but he seemed as bored as the hounds.

  “There is nothing,” she said, and then, still looking away into the woods, reached sideways and took Ernald’s arm firmly, “but be said by me, there was something hunting along our trail not a sennight since, and should it come here, see you and yours are within the gates.” She shook him gently. “Do not be slighting it, Ernald, great strong lad that you are and brave as a bear: it is something terrible, that no one should run to meet.”

  THE COMMON ROOM WAS awash in noise when they returned. Most of the pilgrims had been shown their sleeping quarters, had left their bundles, not without some trepidation, and were now returned, hungry and thirsty and voluble. A log fire roared in the great hearth. The fireplace was tall enough for a man to walk into and stand upright, with two cauldrons swung on iron dogs out into the flames and a small pig on a spit turned slowly by a young boy.

  The wayward smoke and grease of generations, whatever had not escaped up the chimney, had blackened the deep beams of the ceiling. Osbert’s two daughters threaded their way among the tables with jacks of ale, and by the evidence of laughter and talk and empty bumpers before them, the pilgrims were no pack of sickly drinkwaters. Some villagers and carters and a pair of the shire-reeve’s men were mingling with the pilgrims. Across the room Hob could make out Aylwin’s jovial booming tones, and even the phrase “three finest glovers in Carlisle.”r />
  More of the local countryfolk were drifting in. A rangy farmer brought a sack of wool halfway into the great room before Osbert sent him back into the courtyard. With so little to do on the farm during these long winter nights, there was a deal of heavy drinking, and many folk from the farms and the village met for the evening at Osbert’s Inn. Osbert kept a score of alewives from the farms and homes around busy supplying his buttery.

  Out in the courtyard, a housecarl took delivery of the sack, and the lanky villager went back into the inn and up to Osbert, who had retrieved his tally stick from a few score of similar sticks that hung by threads against the wall behind a counter. Osbert reached behind his back and, from a sheath thrust through his belt, drew forth his knife: a surprisingly big knife, a real sax, fully a cubit long and useful in diverse ways, some more pleasant than others. With this he made several nicks on one edge of the flat tally stick: that was for the villager’s credit for the wool. The other side showed deductions for the spirits Osbert served him. Hob wondered how the innkeeper knew which person each stick represented. As he studied the cluster of sticks hanging up, it came to him that each stick had different knots in the thread that held them to the little projections whittled in the log wall, but he could not see how Osbert remembered which sequence of knots identified this or that person.

  A large group of villagers arrived, and then another, and now the room was nearly full. Hob was making his way toward Molly to ask her what he should do next, when Nemain’s hand closed on his sleeve. Her eyes were bright; she was excited; she had gone from the stern distant priestess of an hour ago, pacing the inn’s boundaries and scanning the woods for questing evil, to the mischievous young girl of last summer.

  “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.

  FIVE 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.

  THE 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.

  AT 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.

  AFTER 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.