Chapter 5 #2
and Queen Alyssa. After meeting Alina and her family, he was more
inclined to believe her version of how Roger and Donald had been
banished. In truth, he was more inclined to believe her about
anything, and not only because she filled his thoughts and dreams
day and night.
“Come on, Artur.” He untied the stallion,
jumped onto his saddle, and urged the horse into an easy gallop.
“You and I could both use a good run.”
He was settling Artur back in his stall when
he heard the stable hands discussing what to do with a foal that
had been born to a first-time mother four days ago and wasn’t
getting the milk it needed from its skittish dam.
“I wish old Lloyd were here,” the newer,
younger hand named Fergus said about the stablemaster who’d left
against Roger’s wishes to tend to his ailing mother right before
The Rover had sailed for Sea Ridge. “He’d know what to
do.”
“Aye, ’cept the laird’d have yer head if you
went to Lloyd about it,” Gare, the older hand, said. “I know some
of what to do, but old Lloyd, he kept his potions to hisself and
swore he’d take them to his grave afore he let the laird have use
of them.”
Roark stepped out of Artur’s stall and over
to the brooding pen where a long-legged, flaxen-maned, chestnut
mare Roger had bought specifically as a broodmare, intending to
sell her foals to other rich lairds and their ladies as saddle
horses, stood pressed against one wall. Her ash-grey foal, its ribs
visible beneath its dull coat, lay prone in the stall.
“I may be able to help you,” he told the
frowning men.
Walking from the stable to the manor house,
considering how to phrase his request so that Roger would agree
with it, a flash of blue at the edge of the orchard caught Roark’s
eye. It was Gwyneth in a blue skirt holding hands with Munroe as he
pulled her deeper into the cover of the trees. Roark snorted and
shook his head.
Not that he cared one whit that his betrothed
was stepping off into the bushes and doing who knew what with
another man, but they were so obvious about it. It was as badly
kept a secret as the fact that Leif was sleeping with Jenny.
He went to Roger’s private chambers and
knocked on the closed door.
“Who is it?” Roger called out.
“Roark. I need to talk to you about Etain’s
foal.”
“Enter.”
Roark stepped into the room and stopped cold.
He’d interrupted a meeting with Roger, Donald, and Leif. A meeting
he hadn’t been asked to attend.
“What about the foal?” Roger asked.
“The mare will have nothing to do with him
and Gare and Fergus need help to save him. I told them I’d ask you
about letting the princess take a look at him. Seeing as how she
and her family are so well known for their stables and their
knowledge of horses.”
“Not a bad suggestion,” Roger said agreeably.
“Especially if she knows even half as much as her father, the
stablemaster, does.”
Alina had told Roark about Fenrir and the old
water scryer and the untrue rumor that Hamar, the stablemaster, was
Alina’s and Anders’s true father, which was easy enough to refute.
One look at Anders, her twin brother, was all a person needed to
tell that he was Jerrik’s son. Still, Roark knew better than to
contradict Roger. He said nothing.
“You will keep guard over her,” Roger said.
“Make sure she doesn’t try to escape.”
“I will.”
Roger flicked his hand. “Go then. A dead foal
is worth nothing to me.”
***
“Gare, Fergus, this is Alina.” Roark
introduced her to the stable hands in their Green Isles tongue.
Both men doffed their caps. “Alina, this is Gare,” he said in her
Northern tongue, introducing the older hand, a moon-faced man with
a balding pate and kindly brown eyes. “And this,” he said,
introducing the flame-haired younger hand, “is Fergus.”
Alina nodded to the men and then opened the
gate to the brooding pen, holding her hand up to all three men.
“The mare is scared enough,” she told Roark, who translated. “The
fewer people coming at her, the better.”
“You be careful, miss,” Gare warned. “She’s
right skittish and tried to bite Fergus when he brought the wee
foal to her earlier today.”
Alina waited for Roark to translate again and
then nodded her head in thanks. This would all go so much more
quickly and easily if she didn’t have to pretend ignorance of what
they were saying, but Roark was right, it was important to keep
this one advantage over her captors.
The foal was lying in the straw on its belly,
legs tucked and barely able to hold its head up. She knelt at his
head and lifted his lips. “His gums are pale and tacky to the
touch,” she said, more to herself than the men watching, who
couldn’t understand her except for Roark. “His eyes are dulled and
starting to sink into his skull.” She ran her hand over its matted
coat, stretched thin over its ribs and pelvis, and lifted its
tail.
“You’re nothing but skin and bones, poor
baby, and your tail is covered in shit and flies.” She swatted the
flies away and stood, ready to chew Gare and Fergus out for letting
the foal get this bad, but they both looked so worried, and Roark
had told her about the stablemaster leaving abruptly and how they
were both new at the job. “If we don’t get some milk into him
soon,” she told Roark, “he won’t live another day.” She met the
hands’ worried frowns. “He might not anyway.” They may not have
understood her words, but they understood her meaning by their
downturned mouths. “Does the keep have milk goats?”
“Aye,” Roark said. “The farm keeps a herd for
cheese making.”
“The foal will need three to four bucketsful
a day,” she said. “We can start with two for now. Make sure the
buckets are clean before you use them. And get me a blanket for the
foal.”
Roark told Gare and Fergus what she said word
for word, and Fergus took off running, while Gare disappeared into
what Alina assumed was the tack room. He came out and handed her a
blanket, with which she covered the foal.
“We’ll get some good milk into your belly
soon, baby,” she told the foal in a singsong voice, tucking him in
tight for now. She stood and dipped her hands into the bucket of
water it looked like the mare hadn’t touched and scrubbed at them,
and then she grabbed a handful of the cleanest straw she could find
the farthest from the foal and rubbed her hands dry with it.
“What’s going on with you, Etain?” she sang softly to the wall-eyed
mare, angling her body sideways so she wasn’t standing or staring
head on to the mare. “Did that strange, scary little creature come
out of you?” She squatted down and looked at the mare’s udder,
which was swollen and lopsided and both teats crusted over. “Does
he keep shoving that rude little nose of his into your sore udder?”
She stood slowly and stepped closer to the mare’s head, still not
looking her in the eyes. “I’d like to help you feel better,” she
crooned. “If you’ll let me.”
Alina walked around the brooding pen,
describing what she saw with a soft patter. “The water bucket is
full and clean, though untouched, as is the hay in the feeder. The
straw on the floor is fresh and clean, the stall itself is roomy
and away from the other horses and there’s no tack hanging from the
rafters to frighten you.” She turned to Roark and Gare. “Where’s
her usual stall?”
Roark translated for her and then Gare. “In
the middle of the stables, between the two plow horses.”
“How about we take you back there?” Alina
sang to the mare, letting her sniff her hands before slowly
reaching for the lead rope dangling from her neck. “How would like
to go back to your old stall, where things are familiar and your
big, calm, steady friends are around you?” She led the mare around
the foal, keeping herself between them, and followed Gare to
Etain’s old stall.
Once inside, Etain nickered to the horse to
her right, who nickered back. “There you go,” Alina crooned. “This
is much better, isn’t it? Safe and sound back where you belong. The
strange little creature can’t get to you here, pretty girl. I
promise.”
Alina turned to Roark. “Will she normally let
Gare handle her? Is she still eating and drinking?”
Roark told Gare what Alina said, and reported
back what Gare said. “He says she’s always been a little tightly
strung, though not naturally mean, and she is still eating and
drinking, though very little.”
“Tell him to apply a warm, wet compress to
her udder, and then gently wipe the crusted milk and dirt off. If
her teats are raw, he’ll need to rub some healing balm on them.
Double her grain and add alfalfa to her feed if they have it.”
“Should he try to milk her?”
“No, she needs to dry up, not produce. If he
can tend to her, I’ll tend to the foal.”
Roark told Gare what Alina said and turned to
tell Alina what Gare answered, grinning as he caught her with one
foot hanging mid-air, remembering to make herself wait for him to
translate.
“Gare can take care of the mare,” he said. He
followed Alina back to the brooding stall. “What can I do to
help?”
“I need a soft brush, a washrag and drying
linen, a bucket of warm water, and the mildest soap you have.”
Roark went into the tack room and came out
with everything but the bucket of warm water at the same time
Fergus returned with a full bucket of goat’s milk. He sent Fergus
off to the kitchens for a kettle of hot water to make the bucket of
warm water, and hunkered down beside Alina, who was arranging the
brush and soap and linens on the blankets edge.
“What else?” he asked.
Alina glanced at the bucket of milk, which
the foal was too young and too weak to drink from on his own. “I’ll
need a drinking horn,” she told Roark. “And some small linen rags
to make teats out of.”
Fergus returned with the kettle of hot water
and Alina poured it into the bucket she’d washed her hands in.
Roark sent Fergus back to the kitchens for a drinking horn as Alina
dipped the washrag in the water and wiped the crud from the foal’s
eyes and mouth, and then she rubbed some soap onto the rag and
washed his hind end.
Fergus returned with a drinking horn and
Roark cut a hole in the end of it and rasped the edges smooth.