Chapter 7 #3
I looked around. Most of the men seemed to be wearing a variety of linen shirts and kilts wrapped around their waists, then draped over a shoulder and pinned into place.
Everyone was barefoot, except for a couple of the men with horses, who were in breeches, boots and overcoats.
All the material looked as if it wanted to be tartan when it grew up, but for now it had settled on being a wide selection of stripes and checks in a heavyweight wool.
Nobody looked as though they could feature as a romantic lead in a TV series; they mostly looked tired and a bit hairy and smelled of hot fabric and horse sweat.
I was working on something reassuring to say, dredging through my pedagogic list of positive and affirmative statements and discarding all of them, when there was a kerfuffle over where the postern path opened into the castle grounds.
Three men, better dressed than any here, rode through on horses that were blowing hard.
‘Make way for your lord!’ One of them shouted, pushing at a young man who was leading a cow into one of the stone enclosures.
Behind these men rode a man on a horse of dappled grey, which stood out among all the bay and black animals that were thronging about.
He sat tall, wearing a cocked hat, long boots that came over his knees and a coat that looked like silk.
We stared, open-mouthed.
‘Bet that’s the earl,’ Mal said smugly. ‘You can tell because he’s clean.’
Lachlan took a deep breath. ‘We ought to go over there.’ He did not, I noted, stand up.
I watched the earl ride in. Watching something happen was a good distraction from the impossibility of finding we couldn’t leave.
The feel of that invisible, intangible thing, pushing us back, being impenetrable, made me shiver and my brain swerved around any contemplation of it.
After all, it told me, if that’s the earl, then he’s a relative – and it can’t be often that you get to see a distant ancestor going about his daily business.
I was a little disappointed to see that he had rather small eyes, beady in his aristocratic face, and a thin mouth. Certainly not the handsome, heroic figure I’d pictured him as. I couldn’t see any family resemblance at all, or maybe I just didn’t want to.
All the other men bowed as he rode by, with four further men bringing up the rear in much less fancy gear. He swept off his horse and marched off into the castle, being bowed all the way in and then followed by the now-dismounted retinue.
‘What a twonk,’ Mal observed.
‘Looks like we’re back sleeping in the cellar.’ Lachlan stood up now. ‘We’d better find a way of getting our blankets back. And some proper food. I will eat anything right now that’s never been near a turnip.’
I threw him a quick look but he was bland of expression again. No sign of the previous hopelessness remained; he’d regained the air of being in charge as smoothly as though he’d never let it go.
‘Kay was waiting for something to come out of the oven so she could steal it. She’s got her bag with her so she can hide enough for all of us.’
At that moment Kaylinn herself appeared, walking with David. She had a big messenger-type bag, which hung promisingly low over her shoulder and came accompanied by a waft of new-baked-bread smell.
‘It’s just oatcakes, I think,’ she said. ‘But I wasn’t going to wait around for the proper loaves to start coming. There’s about forty men in there cooking, and Jeannie’s bossing them all around.’
‘Good for Jeannie.’ I was still rather taken aback by my relative’s cursory treatment of his underlings.
Would it have been too much for him to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’?
Just getting off his horse and leaving it for someone else to sort out was very bad manners, and he should at least have wanted to make sure it was all right after what had evidently been a long and fast ride.
Led by Lachlan, we shuffled our way through the oblivious mass of people back down the rattly staircase to the quiet dark of the cellar.
This was clearly being used as a dumping ground for unwanted equipment as the floor was scattered with empty boxes, bundles of cloth, several baskets of eggs and one of the big white dogs, which had either wandered or fallen in and was clearly trying to work out how to get out again.
‘Shoo!’ Mal made flapping motions at the dog, which showed its teeth, snarling with its ears back and its tail flat between its legs.
‘Your gift with animals is in evidence, I see,’ Lachlan observed.
‘I can’t help it. They just seem to have it in for me.’ Mal stopped flapping. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he added defensively.
‘Well, leave this poor creature alone. I don’t think they can see us, as such, I think they sense our presence. Obviously your presence is particularly strong.’ Lachlan sat at the table again.
‘Very flattering.’ Mal made another cursory lunge towards the dog and it growled again, then slunk off into a corner.
I went to join Lachlan. The table itself and the chairs were very solid and not the carved and polished type that we’d seen in the castle.
These looked as though they had been oak trees not that long ago until someone had gone mad with a blunt axe at them.
This cellar was obviously where retired furniture came to die.
‘Pax,’ Lachlan said as I sat next to him. ‘What I said earlier…’ He was keeping his voice low and obviously didn’t want to be overheard.
‘It’s okay.’ I copied his tone.
‘I didn’t mean… I don’t want to put my worries on you, all right? Look, there’s nothing special about the way I feel, we’re all treading water out of our depths. I just got a bit overwhelmed for a minute, and you were there and…’
‘Lachlan, it’s okay,’ I repeated.
‘You don’t have to solve my problems, is what I’m saying.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. Our main problem, being stuck in the eighteenth century, was hardly going to be overcome with a bit of therapy speak and a down-to-earth attitude, was it?
‘That barrier,’ I began, even more quietly.
‘Later.’
‘But—’
‘Please, Pax.’ Lachlan’s voice was so low it was almost inaudible now. ‘Let’s talk about it later. I can’t—oh, hey, thanks, Kaylinn. These look…’ He assumed a jauntiness as the food arrived and I hoped that only I could see the shadow in his eyes.
‘They look edible,’ Mal said, laying out the oatcakes on the table. ‘And that’s a mighty step up for us.’
Lachlan shot me a look, which I returned with a bland smile. I’m not promising anything, it said. Because we need to talk about what happened back there. All of it. He dipped his head, but I thought I saw the corner of a faint smile before he seized one of the oatcakes and began eating.