Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [137]
The gist of what Trotty Luckup had said was not hard to convey. He only wished, with the hovering desolation which all this day he had fought to ignore, that it had been Margaret whose quiet, sober mind should accept this unsavoury truth, and not young Pippa. He had the presence of mind, and just enough voice, to send her away after that.
As Jenny and the clacking herd of nurses and servants came to Philippa’s call, the child herself fled. Downstairs, loyal to the family but huddled in whispering knots under the shadow of sickness and death, the kitchen folk answered her questions. Yes, Trotty Luckup had been here, and had a good sup by the fire, and gone out at dusk … on the Culter road, she had said.
In Philippa Somerville’s mousy head that night was one thought: to catch up with that erratic old gossip, and hear more of what Tom Erskine had told her.
Trotty wouldn’t move fast. With all the ale she would have drunk, she could probably hardly walk straight. Philippa didn’t wait for her pony to be saddled; she found it rope-bridled in the big stables and cantered it out at the gates, a dogged stable boy, who knew what his job was worth, following on a hack, with a stick under one arm and a stable cresset in his free hand. Then they both set off headlong down the causeway through the dark bog.
They found Trotty where the soggy road lifted out of the marsh to cross the small rise before Midculter. She lay at the side of the ditch, and there was more fustian than flesh to her, as if a pedlar had spilled his pack in the gutter. She was dead.
It was not the first dead face Philippa had seen—this loose-jawed engraving in stark black and white, the old hooded eyes wavering in the torch-flare. ‘Nae doot,’ the boy said scathingly, ‘she’s skited inty the stank and bashed her auld pan on a rock.’
‘No doubt,’ said Philippa, her hands cold. The old woman reeked of beer. Her hands, that had gentled the birth-caul from unnumbered children, were crossed at her chest in a semblance of protection. The girl bent suddenly over the harsh autumn grass, latticed with shadow, and came up holding something: an iron bar. ‘And this was the rock.’
The boy himself was only fifteen. He stared at the weapon, saying nothing; and from the brightening of his neck-muscles in the flame, Philippa knew that he had heard, too, the sound that had caught at her heart: the far-off drumming of horse-hooves coming west. Not, she knew, an anxious pursuit from Boghall, else they would be calling. But not, surely, the murderers of Trotty Luckup, who should be far away by now? Unless they had remembered leaving that blood-sticky iron bar.…
There were a great many horses. ‘Put out the torch,’ ordered Philippa sharply, making up her mind; and they stood in the windy darkness beside the corpse in the ditch and waited for the horsemen to come.
There were about twenty men, you could guess from the jingle of harness and the clatter of hooves on the stony road, riding in a thick band, torchless, by the glimmer of the afterlight on the path. If there were any commands, the trotting feet drowned them. They came at an even pace round the far bend and rode towards where she stood with the boy in the thick dark of ditch and hedgerow; drew abreast and passed by.
Half passed. Ten paces beyond her, the vanguard of the little troop, in uncanny unison, halted dead. The rear half, which had yet to pass her, halted as suddenly. And out of the darkness in front, a voice nauseating with underplayed authority said, ‘There. Strike a light and bring them both forward.’
To struggle was useless. As she went forward with the boy, prompted by a broad hand on her spine, Philippa saw in the new torchlight that all these men wore good half-armour and helms, and she took renewed courage. Not, then, outlaws or robbers.
Outwith the torchlight their commander sat waiting, still mounted. He had not spoken again.