There had been whispered conversation between the local men drinking in the dirty ale room while we were trying to chew our way through a pottage of gristle nestled in an unnameable grey liquid. Berden spoke some Dutch, but even he could not understand the broad local dialect. The men kept glancing at us furtively, then whispering again, which caused my scalp to prickle in apprehension.
As we were sitting on our beds, deciding whether to risk the bedbugs and fleas or to sit up all night, I turned to Berden. ‘I have a bad feeling about those men,’ I said. ‘I don’t think the horses are safe.’
He grunted. ‘You may be right.’
I picked up my satchel and knapsack. ‘I think I will sleep in the stable. It cannot be any dirtier than this.’
I watched him debate with himself. He had seemed very tired when he returned to Amsterdam and one night’s decent sleep there had not restored him much. The days and nights on our journey had been exhausting.
‘No need for you to come,’ I said. ‘I doubt they will try to steal the horses if one of us is there.’
‘Very well, but be careful, Kit.’
‘I will.’ We had been given only one candle here, but Niels Penders had pressed on me a candle lantern and a supply of candles when we left the Prins Willem, assuring me that I would find the inns of the south very primitive, lacking the most basic of essentials. I was glad of it now, lighting a candle from the stump we had (reluctantly) been given here, and fixing it in the lantern. There was no fire in the room, the only fire in the whole house being a central hearth in the ale room downstairs, the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof. I left one of the candles with Berden, for the stump would not last much longer, and made my way downstairs. I had to walk through the room where some of the men were still drinking. They watched me with hostile eyes as I headed outside to the stable. I wondered why they were so hostile. After all, England was here to support the Dutch against the Spanish. They should have seen us as friends. Perhaps it was because we were better dressed than they and seemed more prosperous. Although our clothes were very workaday and plain, some of them were dressed in little better than much mended rags. Such men, I thought, will do anything for money. Even steal horses or betray their country’s friends. It was not a comfortable thought.
It was very cold in the stable. Even though we had put on the horses’ blankets, they still shivered from time to time, and so did I. For a while I sat on a dirty up-turned bucket, but I grew colder and colder, until my feet were numb. To gain some ease, I walked about until they thawed a little. The more I thought about those men, the more apprehensive I became, until I decided to saddle the horses, in case we needed to leave in a hurry. I could throw their blankets over their saddles and they could hardly be any colder than they were already. I had finished Redknoll and was just buckling Hector’s bridle when I heard a noise at the door. I stiffened, but slipped the leather through the buckle, my fingers clumsy. The noise came again, a scratching noise. It was probably rats. I relaxed and loaded my gear into my saddle bags. When they were strapped in place, I went to the door, carrying the lantern. Opening the door a crack, I looked down, expecting to see the two evil eyes of a rat. Instead, a furry shape flung itself through the door, nearly knocking the lantern out of my hand. It was Hans’s dog.
Steadying the lantern and saving the lit candle from falling out into the straw, I leaned on the door to close it again. The dog was frantic in his eagerness to leap up on me, trying to lick my face. I set the lantern down on a beam and sat down rather suddenly on the bucket, allowing the dog to express his joy at having found us. He must have followed us for miles. He coat was sodden and matted and he was desperately thin. I had nothing to give him but an end of the dry bread we had been given with the pottage and which I had been unable to break with my teeth. I gave it to him and he chewed it up at once.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘what am I to do with you? Why didn’t you stay at the inn? I’m sure they would have fed you. It would have been a good home. I don’t think I can take you back to England.’
While I was still pondering this, feeling a warmth towards the dog who had cared enough to follow me so far, I heard more noises outside the stable. Stealthy footsteps and a whisper, quickly cut off. The only weapon I carried was a Spanish dagger given to me by my father last year when I had to cross the dangerous streets of London at night. I drew it now and laid my hand on the dog’s head to calm him. He seemed to understand, for he quietened at once, though I could feel the tension in his body.
Suddenly the stable door was thrown open and I could see the shapes of three men silhouetted against the light of a half moon. They were startled at the sight of me standing there beside the lantern, with a drawn dagger in my hand, and hesitated, then they moved forward. The dog began to growl. Two of them stopped and one said something in Dutch. The third man shook his head and came closer. I saw the glint as he drew his sword. Then everything was a confusion of noise. The dog leapt at the nearest man, one of the others ran off shouting, the third stood uncertain whether to run or stay. I went for him with my dagger and slashed him across his right arm before he could draw his own dagger. The man who had been attacked by the dog was yelling with pain and kicked out, but failed to hit the dog and instead lost his balance on the slippery ground and fell. The man I had injured had his dagger out now and was coming for me.
Lights began to go on in the inn and I saw another man running toward the stable. I was about to lose heart, for I could not fight off three men, but then I saw it was Berden, with his sword in his hand. As the man with the dagger lunged at me, Berden struck his dagger from behind, sending it sailing up into the air to land somewhere out in the dark. The man gave a yell of pain and clutched his wrist with his left hand. In the poor light I could just make out blood beginning to flow down his arm from where I has slashed him. He looked round wildly, then took to his heels.
‘Just some greedy peasants,’ Berden said contemptuously, planting his foot on the chest of the man still lying on the ground, ‘hoping to steal our horses. But I heard that first one who ran off shouting that he would fetch the soldiers. There’s only one kind of soldier around here, so I think we should be off. Can you fetch my pack, Kit, while I see to this fellow and saddle the horses?’
‘They are saddled already,’ I said, sheathing my dagger. ‘I thought we might need them. I’ll get your pack.’
‘Where did this dog come from?’ The dog was still standing over the prostrate man, growing whenever he showed any signs of moving.
‘That’s the dog I told you about, Hans Viederman’s dog, that I shut in the stable back in Amsterdam. He must have escaped and followed us all the way here.’
‘It seems as well that he did.’
‘Aye,’ I said fervently. ‘I couldn’t have held that man off with nothing but my dagger.’ I picked up the sword he had dropped and threw it as far as I could into the bushes behind the stable.
When I got back with Berden’s pack, he had found a length of dirty rope in the stable and tied up the man who continued to curse, steadily and fluently, until Berden stuffed a rag in his mouth. I had seen no one in the ale house but the slatternly inn wife. I suspected that it had been her husband who had run off first and gone in search of Spanish soldiers.
‘It’s time we left,’ Berden said, strapping on his saddlebags and stuffing Redknoll’s blanket in one. He had already removed Hector’s blanket. ‘What are you going to do with the dog?’
As if he knew we were speaking of him, the dog came over and sat at my feet, looking up at me trustingly.
‘I can’t leave him here,’ I said. ‘They’ll kill him, after what he did to that fellow.’