Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [265]
She did not know where to go. She asked Henderson but he spoke in tight, compressed phrases which she could hardly make out, and since it obviously gave him pain to breathe, let alone to speak, she dared not ask him again.
He needed help. But whom could she safely ask? That had been no chance attack: she knew that unshaven bulk too well. For weeks he had made his camp at Flaw Valleys, scouring the in-fields for scraps; begging in the village. He had followed them in order to kill.
Her young arm round the sagging body of Cheese-wame, aching with the switching pace of their horses, Philippa forced her tired brain to think. Downhill. If she went on downhill with the sun on her right, she would be in Scotland, if they were not there already. There should be crofts and farmhouses in the lower reaches of the hills, and later, she might strike the Slitrig Water, which led straight to Hawick. There were Scotts everywhere inside Hawick, and Branxholm itself a little outside. Then she would be all right.
The main thing was to keep going. She had no idea how badly, if at all, the tinker was hurt. She had seen Cheese-wame use his knife. But he might come after them: they could follow hoofmarks. And she had to get the big man some sort of help.
Philippa removed her arm, and fixing his hands somehow on his own horse’s pommel, hunted for and found his flask. He drank from it as they rode, and although a good deal of it went over his stained jacket, he seemed a little stronger than he had been. The bleeding where the knife had been had stopped, but she undid her saddlebag and stuffed a shift under the stiffening leather to make sure. He looked odd with a hump to his back, and he had whimpered a bit while she did it, but afterwards he rode on in silence, and she only had to hold him now and then. ‘It won’t be long,’ said Philippa cheerfully, her mother’s ring in her voice. ‘You know what Bess says. There’s nothing in this world a drop of aqua-vitæ in a sheep’s bladder won’t cure. Stop the Somervilles with a knife! It needs artillery.’ And she blew her nose hard.
*
Gabriel’s return to St Mary’s after an absence, like the return to class of some revered but exacting headmaster, was always a comfort to its officers and men. His massive competence spelt security even when, as now, he worked them like dogs.
The efficiency of St Mary’s had been questioned. Therefore, before any emissary of the Queen Dowager or her French Ambassador might descend on them, their house must be put in perfect order. The moment that Jerott Blyth left, charitably to bring the gentle Joleta to her brother, Gabriel called his men before him and set them to work.
Inevitably, in his absence and Lymond’s, the impossible standards they had both set had fallen off. With easy certainty Gabriel set about their repair, issuing formidable orders; walking and riding round all the big establishment to see them carried out; to advise and to help. He demanded that they finish it before Lymond came; and the pace was back-breaking. When darkness fell they continued, by torchlight, eating as they worked.
By midnight, everything in St Mary’s was in order. In all its domains there was no wall broken or fence unrepaired; the beasts were tended and bedded in clean straw, the stores and weapons re-inventoried, the buildings whitewashed outside and washed and painted within. The big house itself reeked of soap, and all the mild disorder of everyday living had gone.
It was done willingly, for Gabriel; but with some private resentment as well. ‘To hell with the Queen Dowager,’ said Lancelot Plummer at one point, flinging down pad and penner. ‘I didn’t join this groat-sized model army to count herring barrels and hay and elevenpenny hogs, and how many bolls of barley we’ve sold to the neighbours at ten shillings under market