The Moor - Laurie R. King [67]
"Oh goodness yes, my dear," she piped in an incredibly high, reedy little voice with a surprising lack of rural Devon in her accent. "You must be dear Mr Holmes' wife, although I have to say you look more like a son in those clothes. Still, they're warm I'm sure on a cold day—although it's not so very cold this morning, now is it? I think I'll just finish making us a cup of tea and we can take it sitting right out here where we can look at God's good sunlight and pretend it's spring, instead of nearly winter again—goodness, how cold the winters get, my old bones just ache at the thought of another one, and it doesn't seem fair, the summers are getting so very short. Do you want to help me carry the tea things, then? That's very sweet of you, my beauty. No, no, this isn't for you, little thing." The last sentence was directed at a thin grey tabby kitten halfway through adolescence, who had been in hopeful attendance from the moment its mistress stepped back into her cottage and all the time she had worked. The old woman's high voice sounded like ceaseless birdsong—or like the tin whistle the young man had played the night before—as she made the tea, shuffling around the watchful cat to kettle and tea caddy and cupboard and back. I had the strong impression that she talked continuously whether she had an audience or not—or perhaps I should say whether or not she had a human audience.
I took the tray from her and followed her with some difficulty out the door and to the rough-hewn bench in the sun. She lifted the somnolent cats down to the ground and told me to put the tray onto the bench, as the table that normally stood in front of the seat had collapsed the week before when a visiting cow had decided to use it for a scratching post, and it was now down at the neighbour's for repair.
She poured the tea and sweetened her cup with what looked like treacle but she told me was honey, brought her by a friend on the other side of the moor in exchange for a cracked hoof she'd managed to repair.
"You do a lot of animal doctoring," I commented.
"Yes dear, I'm the local witch." I blinked, and she began to giggle, a sound so high pitched it had the sleeping dogs twitching their ears. "I'm not a witch of course, child, though surely there are many here who would tell you I am. Just an old woman who knows her herbs and has the time to spend babying hurt creatures." She closed her eyes and sat for a while, basking like a turtle in the faint warmth of the autumnal sun. I drank my tea and enjoyed that same warmth on my back.
"Now tell me, dear," she said after a while (startling me, as my mind had wandered far away to Holmes and London), "which do you wish to hear about first? My hedgehog or Samuel's dog?"
"Dog?" I sat up sharply. "What do you know about a dog?"
"Oh, it was the son of Daniel down the road who saw it, last summer."
"Why didn't I hear about this?" I demanded suspiciously. With the entire moor seemingly living in one another's pockets, why had no one thought to mention an actual sighting of the Hound?
"Daniel is very good at keeping things to himself. His Samuel was embarrassed, so he promised to say nothing, and he didn't, except to me. Perhaps you'd like to hear about the Hound first, then. Make yourself comfortable, child. It's a long story.
"As I said, it was the son of Daniel down the road that saw the Hound. A fine young lad is Samuel, in school now of course, but then he was home on his summer holiday, and a good help to his parents he is, too. It isn't easy for them to be without him, but I told Daniel that his son's mind was too good to waste, and with a little help from me he won a place at the school in Exeter.
"But you're not interested in the maunderings of an old schoolteacher, are you, dear? You want the Hound, and although I might not tell it you if night was drawing in, on a sunny morning, I shall give it you.
"Samuel is a blessing and a help to his parents, and it so happened that his mother's sister up near Bridestowe had a baby the end of July, and though it all went