“There are plenty of others like them,” Carey pointed out with typical aristocratic callousness.
“Ay, sir,” said Dodd, clenching his jaw with outrage. “And the more shame to the lairds for it. None o’ the Grahams or the Armstrongs or the Kerrs would do the like. Take a man that wis happy at the plough and make a soldier of him and then leave him to die or rot or starve.”
“How’s it different on the Borders?”
This showed a Courtier’s bloody ignorance, in Dodd’s opinion.
“I’ve niver bin aught but a fighter,” he told at Carey. “Raised tae it. Ay, ma mother sent me to learn ma letters wi’ the Reverend Gilpin but I could back a horse and shoot a bow long before. I killed ma first man when I wis nine, in the Rising of the Northern Earls…”
“So did I,” said Carey, softly enough that Dodd nearly didn’t hear it.
“Ay?” he said, surprised and a little impressed. “Well, if I was to take some foolish notion in ma heid and gang oot tae the Low Countries or France or the like and sell my sword, it wouldnae be sae great a change for me, I wouldnae be made different, ye ken.” He couldn’t quite catch the words to pack his anger in, the way it grated on him how the young men who had turned sturdy beggars and robbers had been betrayed, even though they’d beaten him up in the quiet Oxfordshire forest. How he knew they would mostly find it hard-bordering impossible-to return to their villages, even if they got their back pay. “There’s a difference, and it’s…Och. Ye’d ken if ye kenned.”
Carey stood up and mopped himself with the cloth, then tied it round his hips again. “Yes,” he said quietly, “It’s like hunting dogs. Once you’ve hunted with a dog, he never can really go back to being nothing but a lapdog. There’s always something of the wolf in him afterwards.”
It was a good way of putting it. “Ay,” said Dodd, standing up himself and wincing, some of his deeper cuts were bleeding into the wooden sandals. “Like a sheepdog if it goes wrong. Once it’s tasted sheep, ye must hunt wi’ it or kill it, ye canna herd sheep wi’ it again. So that’s what’s been done to the lads, they dinna ken themselves but I doubt if more than one or two of them can go back tae being day labourers or herdsmen or farmers.”
“No,” said Carey.
“Will ye pay ’em?”
“I can’t give them their backpay. If they want to come north, they might be useful and then I’ll find a way to pay them.”
Dodd knew that was the best he was going to get and he knew he trusted the Courtier more than the high and mighty Earl of Essex.
They went through to the next room which was even hotter and full of clouds of steam from idiots like Carey sprinkling water on the white hot coals in the brazier. Dodd couldn’t stand it for more than a few minutes, scraping himself with a blunt bronze blade. He did Carey’s back and Carey did his which felt odd but also pleasant, like somebody scratching your back for you after you’d been wearing a jack for a couple of days. Which thought took him on to thinking of his wife and then he had to put his towel back around his hips and think of other things before he embarrassed himself.
“We might have time for a girl,” Carey said, deadpan.
“I wis thinking o’ me wife,” Dodd said with dignity. It was the truth too so Carey’s cynical laugh was very annoying. Then they were out in the dusky garden and going into a kind of tent lit by candles. Odd. There was a glint of green water-it covered a big square pond like a fish tank.
And then the next thing was that the bloody Courtier had pushed Dodd into the fish pond with an almighty shove. The cold water made him gasp and he dog-paddled to the surface again filled with vengeance just in time to get a faceful of spray as Carey jumped in next to him. He coughed and spluttered and trod water as Carey splashed past on his back. The wooden pattens were somewhere at the bottom.
“Whit the hell did ye…”
“Didn’t want another argument,” Carey said, blowing water out of his mouth like a dolphin on a map. Dodd found a place where the water only came to his chest and there were indeed fish in the tank but not too much weed or slime. The fish immediately started nibbling at his feet and legs and he tried to kick them away. “It’s the final part of the treatment. You’ll feel a lot better for it.” The man was looking insufferably smug again.
A suspicion struck Dodd. He suddenly remembered the other purpose of stews, the one that didn’t involve women.
“Is this yer way of getting me tae take a bath?” he demanded furiously, “Again? Not a month after the last one?”
Carey sniggered and so Dodd went after him, ducked him, held him under then decided not to drown the bastard because he was too tired to deal with the consequences. So he let go and climbed out by the mosaicked steps. Carey stood coughing, shaking his head and still bloody laughing, the git.
A little later he was dry, skin glowing, feet in another clean pair of linen socks which had been very helpfully put on by one of the girls who had patted them dry and tutted sympathetically and even put a green salve of allheal on. They were drinking brandy in the stews’ parlour while Dodd waded into an excellent dinner of steak and kidney pudding with potherbs and followed by a figgy pudding with custard that filled most of the corners in his belly. However he had maintained a dour offended silence throughout and continued it as they walked back to Trinity, trying not to limp. Carey was not in the least concerned.
“See you in the morning, Sergeant,” he said in the upstairs parlour that overlooked the large courtyard that Carey called a quadrangle for some reason. There were a couple of straw pallets and some blankets by the fireplace, so it seemed some servants would be sleeping there. It was nice that Dodd had an actual bedchamber. “We’re riding out before dawn.”
“Och,” said Dodd, wishing he could have a day off too.
At least there was ale and bread and cheese waiting for him in his chamber, and a manservant came in to help him undress, a luxury he still found suspicious but was grateful for as his eyes had started shutting by themselves again. He went to sleep with his skin still feeling very peculiar and his hair damp.
Thursday 21st September 1592, dawn
Mrs. Odingsells always woke at dawn, even though the fog that filled most of her world meant she only knew when it was full light. Her window faced east and she left the shutters open so that when the weather was bad enough she could see the threatening colour of dawn a little.
She was always amazed at how tiring it was to lie down all the time. She had a girl come the village most mornings to help her dress and sit in a chair by the window but lately the trembling had got too bad and she couldn’t make her legs work. Why the Devil couldn’t she die? She prayed most nights to die and welcomed each cough and sniffle in the hope that it might be bearing the gift of a lungfever. She was not afraid of death, had hopes that her faithfulness might count for something with Almighty God, with whom she intended to have words in any case. She was not even very worried by pain.
So why was she still alive, she wondered. She had borne two children to Mr. Odingsells in the 1550s during the boy-king’s reign, only to have all three carried off by the English sweat. It was an old horror now, well-scabbed over. With no heart for another husband, she had become a gentlewoman to her distant cousin Amy Robsart when she made her very good match. And then Amy, too, was mysteriously struck down. She had stayed at Cumnor Place afterwards, thanks to the kindness of Sir Anthony Forster, and lived a quiet and prayerful life on her small jointure, running the manor for him, with occasional visits to Oxford and Abingdon, reading mainly scripture and the Church Fathers. She had a long memory and a good one: she remembered the bonfires for the Princess Elizabeth’s birth, had in fact got drunk at the feasting and danced with the young man she had liked then, who only got himself killed in France. Yes, she would have words with the Almighty.