“Ay, whit d’ye want?” he snarled. “Can Ah no’ get ma sleep?”
“Was it you causing trouble?” Leigh demanded.
The Northerner propped himself on his elbow and scratched his brown hair vigorously.
“Ay,” he sneered, “Ah’ve wings to fly and Ah flew over ye and shat upon ye for entertainment.”
Leigh let the hurdle drop again. They went back to the old monastery and tried to clear up and sort out the mess. Leigh decided he had to run some proper exercises for his men. They’d got soft sitting around here. In France they would never have let a couple of bolted horses and a few shrieks from an owl spook them so badly.
But nobody was dead. That was what finally convinced Leigh he was only dealing with superstition and stupidity. If the Northerner had done it, surely he’d have slit a few throats, it stood to reason?
It was past sunrise before he was in the Northerner’s respectable suit which was tight at the waist, the Northerner’s fat purse full of gold angels in the crotch and some counted out into the front pocket. Whitesock was in perfectly good health despite the night, though the saddle from one of the other horses didn’t fit him properly. The other three were no doubt out in the forest eating yew and whatever else they could find that would poison them. The men would have to find them, he didn’t want to delay any longer.
The Oxford road was only a mile away, near Cumnor Place. As he prepared to leave he beckoned John Arden to his stirrup. Jeronimo was sitting slumped on a stone bench, his crossbow discharged now, his face grey and unreadable.
“Listen, John,” he hissed at his old friend, “stay sober, stay in charge, make sure nothing else happens. If that Northerner gives trouble, knock him out but don’t kill him. This is our one chance for our pay, you understand?”
Arden was clearly already drunk. He blinked owlishly up at Leigh.
“I know that, Captain,” he slurred, “I won’t get drunk.”
Leigh shook his head and put his heels in.
Tuesday 19th September 1592, morning
Dodd had gone to sleep again after the excitement of the early morning and he only woke when the old woman heaved the hurdle off the top of the pit and threw pebbles on him.
“Whit?” he asked, annoyed.
“Where’s my granddaughter?” she demanded shrilly, “What have you done with her?”
“Eh?” he blinked as stupidly as he could, “What could I do wi’ her, missus, I’ve bin in this pit all night? D’ye see her here?”
The carlin set her toothless jaw. “Then what was all that shouting? Did that frighten her?”
“Mebbe, missus.” Even if she hadn’t known all about it, Dodd would have bet that it wouldn’t frighten young Kat. “I dinna ken.”
“Well you can stay there today, I don’t trust you.”
Dodd shrugged, spotted his feet and pulled them cautiously under the rough blanket he’d been very grateful for last night. “Suits me, missus,” he said and she stamped away. He could hear the goats protesting as she milked them and led them out to feed, muttering all the while.
Then he lay back with his head on his arms, blinked at the sheep’s wool clouds caught on the cold blue sky and smiled quietly to himself. It had been fun last night. Getting out of the pit had not been easy, but he had once raided gulls nests on the cliffs by the sea when they were starving and had learnt how to climb with his toes and wedge billets of wood between gaps in the stone. The poles of his splint had come in useful, tied together at the ends, to push the hurdle-roof off the top of the pit. Little Kat had been waiting for him in the blackness and cold before dawn, snuggled next to the snoring dog and he had taken her on his shoulders and had her tell him the way to the main Oxford road so he’d know it later. Once she was off, trotting up the road determinedly in her clogs in a way that reassured him, he’d turned back to the old monastery and set about seeing to it that Leigh didn’t beat her to Oxford city.
In the days when his feet had leathery soles and he was smaller and lighter, he could move like a shadow. He was no longer a boy but he could still put his feet down softly and he did that, slipping through the clearer parts of the undergrowth in his loose woollen breeks, the shirt and the blanket under his arm, mud smeared in stripes and splotches over his face and chest.
There were only two guards set, chatting in the darkness by their watchlight at the bend in the road, smoking his tobacco. Getting past them had been almost insultingly easy. And then he had free rein over the sleeping men in the monastery. After he had taken a knife out of the boy’s scabbard, hanging by his bed in the dorter, he carefully trimmed the wicks on the watch candles so they’d go out a few minutes later. He broke the tethers of the horses that weren’t Whitesock by scorching the rope first with a watchlight and then he broke the bolts open by levering with one of the halberds. And then he’d cracked the nags over the backside with the pole of the halberd and let out a good Tyneside yell. His throat still hurt from it. He had the shirt over his head and the blanket round his shoulders and he’d spent a happy few minutes running through the shadowy dorter shrieking about the burned monk, singing the one piece of plainchant he knew which was some nonsense his mother used to sing to get them to sleep. “Dee is eery, dee is iller, solve it sigh clum in far viller!” he’d intoned, finishing by howling and then shouting “Alarm!” and “Ghosts!” for good measure. Once the darkness was full of frightened men in their shirts running about and punching each other, he’d pulled the shirt down properly and tied the blanket round his waist under it and done a bit of running and punching himself.
As a final flourish he’d run directly across the cloister screaming and out the gate while the dimwitted Captain stood there blinking with his sword in one hand and the lantern in the other. The old Spaniard came out then with his crossbow on his shoulder and Dodd picked up speed into the darkness.
Then came the hard part. As he ran he stripped his shirt off again and picked up a branch to drag behind him and pounded through the woods as fast as he could back to the old carlin’s pit, doing his best not to shout when he bruised his foot on a stone or trampled through brambles.
At the edge of the pit he’d used the blanket to wipe the mud off his sweating body and face, dropped it and the shirt into the pit, let himself down on the wedged billets of wood and the stone he’d propped against the wall, pulled them out and used the two poles from his splint to manoeuvre the hurdle back over the top of the pit, leaving it dark. And then he’d groped about, found the shirt and blanket, pulled the shirt over him, dropped onto the bracken and wrapped the blanket round him, panting hard as he heard Leigh’s boots approaching.
He hadn’t had time to put the splints back on his leg for effect but he hoped they wouldn’t notice. It seemed they hadn’t and they’d been fooled by his imitation of the noises Carey normally made at night. He’d stay meekly in the pit now and hope like hell young Kat would get to Oxford in time. He’d done all he could, mind, he couldn’t think of anything else he could do for the moment.
After some more thought he sat up again and looked at his feet. They were a sad sight, bruised, muddy, still bleeding in a couple of places. He pulled the thorns out with his fingernails and as he didn’t have any water to wash them with, he carefully pissed on them which stung but at least left them cleaner. Then he strapped the splints on again. After that there was no sound from the old woman so he might as well go back to sleep as there was no chance she would feed him.
Yet she did. She woke him with more thrown pebbles and then let down a pail with bread, cheese, and a quart of ale which Dodd assumed would be full of valerian and wild lettuce. He was thirsty from all the running around and needed his rest, so he drank half of it. And had to admit that the old woman’s green goat cheese was excellent, maybe better than Janet’s.