Ser John put the spurs to his horse, and the gelding leaped out from beneath the old tree.
The doe screamed. One of the boggles already had her open and was dragging her guts out while another sank his four-way hinged mouth into her haunch. But the boggle with the throw-stick had a long knife. The thing made a keening noise, and wrenched his throwing spear from the dying deer.
Ser John didn’t have time to ride him down, and he didn’t fancy facing the throwing spear without armour, so he rose in his stirrups and threw his own spear – a cloth yard of steel at the end of six feet of ash. It wasn’t a clean throw but it caught the boggle in the head as it pin-wheeled through the air, and the thing shrieked.
Ser John drew his sword.
His horse put its head down as he rode straight at the doe’s carcass.
I’m avenging a dead deer, for Christ’s sake, he thought and then he was reining in, and four of them were dead. The one he’d knocked down with his hastily thrown spear was bubbling as the little things did when they were broken, their liquid innards emerging throught rents in the carapace as if under pressure.
There was one missing.
The horse shied. It all but threw him with a sidestep and a kick – he whirled his head and saw the creature, covered in ordure, emerge from within the doe’s guts, exploding up in a spray of blood and muscle tissue. But its claws went for the man.
The horse kicked it – rear left, rear right. Ser John managed to keep his seat as the terrified horse then trampled the boggle which had been kicked clear of the carcass and lay in the dust of the old road.
Ser John let the horse kick. It made both of them feel better.
Then he checked his fish.
Afternoon was tending to evening and the nun was in the kitchen with Phillippa’s mother. Phillippa went there to help – as darkness fell, the cleanliness of the manor house chimney and the kitchen chimney had taken on paramount importance, and Helewise and the nun agreed between them to delay dinner a little longer.
There were birds’ nests in the chimneys, and raccoons in the chimney pots. Phillippa thought the task was better than finding more corpses, and she pitched in with a will, climbing the roof slates in the last light with Jenny Rose and shooing the raccoons out with a broom. They didn’t want to go – they looked at her over their shoulders as if to say ‘We just want a nice bit of chicken, and can’t we all be friends?’
She caught the flicker of movement away off to the north, and held out a filthy hand to Jenny Rose. ‘Shush!’ she said.
‘Shush yourself!’ Jenny said, but then she saw Phillippa’s face and froze.
‘Hoof beats,’ they both said together.
‘Can I light the fire, dear?’ called her mother.
‘Yes, and there’s someone coming!’ she shouted back, her voice a little higher pitched than it needed to be.
The nun was out the kitchen door in a moment, standing with her hands on her hips in the last real light. She turned all the way around, very slowly. Then she looked up at the roof. ‘What do you see, Phillippa?’ she asked.
Phillippa made herself do just what the nun had done. She turned slowly, balanced on the peak of the roof.
Jenny said, ‘Oh!’ and pointed. By the stream to the west of them, there was a flicker of light – beautiful pink light, and then another.
‘Faeries!’ said Jenny.
‘Blessed Virgin Mary,’ said Phillippa, who crossed herself.
‘Faeries!’ she shouted down to the nun. ‘By the creek!’
The nun raised her arms and made a sign.
The sound of hoof beats grew closer.
The faeries moved gracefully along the streambed. Phillippa had seen faeries before, but she loved them, even though they were a sign of the dominance of the Wild and it was supposedly a sin to admire them. But combined with the sound of galloping hooves, they seemed more sinister.
The sun passed behind the ridge to the west.
Almost instantly the temperature fell, and darkness was close. Phillippa shivered in nothing but her shift and kirtle.
Steel glittered on the road, and the hoof beats were close now. The horse was tired, but the man rode well. He was very old, and had wild grey hair flowing out behind him, but his back was straight and his seat was solid. He was dressed like a peasant, yet he wore a long sword. She had spent the summer among men who went armed. He had a spear in his hand, too.
He reined up for a moment at the ruins of their gatehouse, stood in his stirrups, and then said something to his mount. The horse responded with a last effort, and the man passed out of sight only to reappear walking under the two old oaks on the drive.
The nun held up a hand. ‘The sele of the day to you, messire,’ she said in a clear voice.
The old man reined up at the edge of what had once been the yard. ‘Greetings, fair sister. I had no thought that the resettlement had come this far. Indeed, I passed this way this morning and I’d wager there was no one here.’
The nun smiled. ‘Neither there was, good knight.’
‘Ma belle, you speak most courteously. Is there a bed here for an old man with an old horse?’ He bowed to her from horseback. It was fun to watch them from the roof, unobserved. Phillippa gave them both high marks for courtesy – they spoke like the people in the songs of chivalry that she loved. And not like the stupid boys in Lorica, who were all sullen swearwords.
‘We cannot give you as fair a hostel as we could in times past, Ser John,’ her mother said, emerging into the door yard.
‘Helewise Cuthbert, as I live and breathe!’ said the old man. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s my house, I believe,’ her mother said with some of her characteristic asperity.
‘Christ on the cross,’ said Ser John. ‘Be careful. I killed three brace of boggles five miles back on the road.’ He grinned. ‘But I’m that glad to see you, lass. How’s Pippa?’
Phillippa hadn’t allowed her mother to call her Pippa in years, and while she had an idea who this man must be she couldn’t remember seeing him before.
‘Well enough, for her age. You’ll want a cup of wine,’ her mother said. ‘You’d be welcome here.’
He dismounted like a younger man, kicking his feet clear of his stirrups and leaping to the ground – an effect he spoiled slightly by putting a hand in the small of his back. ‘Is this to be a religious house?’ he asked the nun.
The young nun smiled. ‘No, ser knight. But I’m a-visiting; I’m to ride abroad to every new resettlement north of Southford.’
Ser John nodded and then caught both of her mother’s hands. ‘I thought you would be gone to Lorica,’ he said.
She reached her face up to his and kissed him. ‘I couldn’t stay there and be a poor relation when I have a home here,’ she replied.
Ser John stepped away from her mother, smiling. He looked away from her and then back, smiled again, and then bowed to the nun. ‘I’m Ser John Crayford, the Captain of Albinkirk. Yester e’en, I’d have said “ride and be of good cheer”, but I’m none too pleased with my little boggle encounter this evening. Which puts me in mind that I’d be in your debt for a rag and some olive oil.’
Phillippa was fascinated by the whole scene. Her mother was . . . odd. She’d tossed her hair like a young girl – it was down because she’d been working. And the old man was old but he had something about him, something difficult to define. Something that the boys in Lorica did not have.
‘I’ll fetch you a rag, John, but please stay. We’re all women here.’ Her mother’s voice sounded odd, too.
‘Helewise, don’t tell me I’ve stumbled on the castle of maidens. I’m not nearly young enough to enjoy it.’ The knight laughed.
Old Gwyn cackled. ‘Hardly a maiden here, old man,’ she said.
Phillippa was appalled to see the nun giggle. Nuns, in her experience, were strict, dour women who didn’t laugh. Especially not at jokes that involved sex, even in the most harmless way.