Run With the Hare, Hunt With the Hound by Paul M. Duffy

Author:Paul M. Duffy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC014020 FICTION / Historical / Medieval
Publisher: Cennan Books of Cynren Press
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The Spectre of the Earl

We jumped out of the boat as it passed alongside the stone pillar at the mouth of the Steyne. We battled to the shore through the waist deep water and struggled up the bank, streaming wet, running straight for the castel, by the priory of All Hallows, over the pagan mounds at Hoggen Green, splashing carelessly through the filth in the gutters past the gateway of St. Mary’s de Hogges and the dense pack of new houses thrown up in the shelter of its walls. Skirting the great wattle feasting hall the great King Henri had built to receive the Gaelic kings, we came to the castel ditch. Scrabbling down its scum-covered side, we slid dangerously close to the rank waterline, running upstream against the flow of the river Salach—the ‘shit-brook’—and reached the place, clogged with straw and broken hogsheads, where a tumble of stone from the rampart had yet to be cleared, some of the blocks breaching the turgid surface of the oozing river. We skipped across and up the eroded bank to run along the thin blade of ground between the inner top of the ditch and the castel wall, barely a hand’s breadth wide, our speed keeping us level. We stopped at the place where the wooden strut of the overhanging garderobe projected from the wall. Without speech or sign, I bent and made a mesh of my fingers. Hamund, without breaking stride, stepped into my webbed hands, and I heaved upwards. He leapt and grabbed at the timberwork, his feet pushing off the excrement-stained wall until he was perched in the beams. He reached down, and I leapt to find his hand with my own. He hauled me up until I found footing, crouching between the boards above.

‘Ho—coming up’, I shouted, and we swung ourselves inwards, finding the privy hole, our heads poking up into the small wooden space—Hamund in a simultaneous movement appearing from the second hole—and we clambered out like rats. The sight, which had caused many surprised, laughing insults in the past, was now a commonplace one to the sergenz of the wall walk. But there were none there to pass remark or make jest. The yard was busy with men moving around with purpose.

We raced on regardless, pushing on to carry the news to the great hall—the name ‘Pembroke’ on our lips. But the Justiciar was already apprised, word having come in with riders from lookouts farther up the coast. The place was upended in a fury of sweeping out, opening the shutters, setting the tallow candles, building up the fire and clearing away tables to lay out benches, the finest rugs being brought out from storage, the best jugs for the best wine with studded glassware and silver plate being set with ostentation by the dais. De Lacy paced around sternly, bawling orders, upbraiding his cup-bearers, who were racing around with charged trays or changing frantically into the finest surcoats of the household thrown at them by Saer the steward.

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