P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

He stopped when he saw that Kat was staring at him.

“Whit?” he asked, wiping milk off his beard.

“How did you fill it up so quickly?” the child asked, still wrenching away at the other goat’s udder in a way that made Dodd feel sore in the teats he didn’t have. Had nobody ever taught her?

“Tell ye what,” he said, “let me finish her off and ye can tell me what Captain Leigh is planning.”

She gave him the stool and he squatted down again, butted the nanny’s pungent flank and let her poor udder rest a little. The bowl was hardly half full and only with the thin first milk, none of the cream. He patted and rubbed her neck and waited.

“So why aren’t you getting on with it?” demanded the angry child.

His mother had taught him to milk goats this way, God rest her, and so he told the angry child what she had told him.

“Because ye’ll get more milk by kindness than ye will any ither way. They won’t give ye the milk if ye hurt ’em or mek ’em sore.”

Kat’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What do you mean?” she demanded, “They’ve got food. Nobody’s beating them.”

He teased the teats a little with his wetted fingers.

“Ay, Kat, listen, the milk’s for their kid. Ye’ve got to fool ’em you’re their kid, then they let out all their milk not just the thin stuff.” He did it again. “So what’s Captain Leigh planning?”

She was still scowling. “I tore some clean paper out of a book in the parlour when Captain Leigh went to look at your other horse that they found, the one with the white sock and I got it from John Arden that him and Jeronimo are in charge along of Harry Hunks when Leigh goes off to Oxford in the morning to find your master and the Earl of Essex too. The Queen’s not there yet.”

Dodd raised his eyebrows. Carey had been talking about the Queen being at Oxford for a month but then she was a woman. He held out his hand for the paper and took it-nice thick creamy stuff it was, with a pretty border of flowers. Some monkish thing, no doubt. He’d forgotten to ask her to find ink, but some charcoal was a better proposition, less complicated than a pen.

“You heard about Grandam keeping you in the old monk’s cellar until Captain Leigh comes back.”

“Ay.”

“He’s going to buy ribbons !” she spat, her face twisted in fury, “with my money!”

That was when the younger nanny decided to let down her milk and the drops came, so he took the teats and started milking two steady streams into the bowl.

“How far is it tae Oxford from here?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long does it take ye to walk to market there then?”

“Maybe two hours?”

“How d’ye ken…know?”

“Well when we go to market with the cheeses we start before sun up and when we get there the gates are open and the market’s started.”

Maybe six or seven miles then. He could run that in an hour and a bit, given a reasonable path and not too many hills. However he didn’t like to think of what that would do to his poor soft feet. He wasn’t about to do it if he had a better plan, which he did. And besides, he wasn’t crawling back to Carey in rags and bare feet and no sword. Not him.

“How will yer grandam be sure I’ll let her put me in the cellar?”

Kat smiled patronisingly. “She’ll put wild lettuce juice and valerian and poppy pod juice in your pottage tonight.”

“Ay?” He sighed. “Where’s the cellar then?”

The bowl was full and milk still coming so he took that straight into his mouth as well. It was deliciously creamy. Kat stared at him “Could you do that for me?”

She was a skinny little mite with a hungry face-why hadn’t he thought of that before? She looked like his littlest brother, the one he’d often taken down into the pastures to steal milk for after the Elliots killed his father and took all their herds. So he beckoned her nearer and pointed the goat’s teat at her open mouth and the jet choked her a little but she got quite a lot down. She smiled at him.

“Grandam says it’s all got to go to cheese to sell in Oxford for the rent money to the Earl of Oxford, and the bastard soldiers are likely to do even more damage before they go so she’ll likely need more money for that and to pay them off too.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, “broken men are hard on everyone. Ye’ve got a good couple of bowls there now if we dinna spill it.”

On his insistence they wiped down the goats with wisps of hay and fed and watered them, they had salt licks from their palms as well. All goats were mad for salt. Then he got Kat to show him where the monks’ cellar was.

It was in the pile of stones that said this had been a part of the monastery and the cellar was actually a stone-lined pit that they might have used for grain or even tanning. It was deep enough that he wouldn’t be able to climb out of it without a ladder or something similar, though there were gaps between some of the stones to put your toes in. You had to hope there was some kind of roof to put over it and that it wouldn’t rain in the night or you’d be floating by morning. There was dried bracken at the bottom on the least muddy bit. Dodd had seen worse prisons.

“Does she put a hurdle across?”

Kat waved at a hurdle of withies, next to the ladder. The important point was whether the grandam would chain him to anything but he couldn’t see any chain or ring down in the pit itself so he devoutly hoped she wouldn’t.

“You can’t get out, my dog will stop you,” Kat told him. She turned her back on him to give the dog a hug and play with his ears so Dodd took the chance of dropping a few things into the pit that might come in useful later.

Then they went and collected the bowls, took them into the cottage where the carlin nodded approval at the amount and set them on a stone shelf at the back that was probably looted from a church as it was marble.

“You’re a good stockman, then,” Kat’s grandam said.

“Ay, missus,” he said to her politely, touching his nonexistent cap, “Ah am.”

“Come in and have supper,” she said which caused his stomach to make an almighty comment that got all of them laughing.

It wasn’t so bad a place to live, dry and snug and it had a tiled pavement with rushes over it. The roof wasn’t high enough for him to stand upright but it was high enough for the little old woman. A modern chimney of stolen bricks was in the corner for the fire and a pot hanging over it, so the place wasn’t nearly as smoky as the turf bothies he had spent his teens in. There was hardly even enough smoke to make you cough.

Dodd squatted next to the fire where the carlin had a stone bench and Kat had her milking stool, took the wooden bowl of pottage and the wooden spoon. He took a few spoonfuls which was hard on him since it was good stuff with some bacon in it, even, beans, lentils, even carrots. He had a bit of old bread as well, so he made the most of it.

The dog was prowling about the yard to keep the foxes off the chickens. When the carlin went to tap some of her own wine from a barrel at the back of the cottage, he put his head quickly out the top half of the door and dumped most of his pottage on the ground, whistled softly through his teeth.

He had to squat down again quickly and happy snortlings told him the dog was slurping up the drugged pottage.

She came bustling back with a horn cup of her elderflower wine so he took that and it was excellent, such a pity she’d put laudanum in it too.

“Ah’ve a need for the jakes,” he said yawning deliberately.

“Dungheap’s behind the cottage.”

He knew where that was, so he caught Kat’s eye as he went to the door, cocked his head.

She was a cunning little piece. She waited until he finished, then came out with his wine cup.