“Came to see you, and to deliver a letter to Sir Malcolm.”
“In that order, eh?” His thickening beard almost concealed the quirk of his grin. “Well, you see me now, and you seem to be in fine fettle. Though you look more like a damn priest each time I see you.”
It was true. Since taking up residence at the Abbey I had worn the grey habit of the resident monks. “I am a damn priest—or I soon will be.”
He grunted, then took hold of my right wrist and held my hand up to examine my fingers. “Ink … Are you still practising wi’ your bow? I don’t see any calluses.”
I freed my hand and wiggled my fingers, looking at them almost ruefully. “No, I never seem to find the time nowadays. And besides, it’s no fun if you’re not there. I’ve lost nearly all my calluses this past year.” I glanced across the road to the bramble thickets. “Are you not going to look for that arrow?”
“Nah, we’d never find it. It was moving flat across the ground. It could have passed right through that whole thicket without hitting anything. Did you bring anything to eat?” I shook my head and he grimaced. “Damn. Neither did I. Ran out and forgot all about eating this morning, wanting an early start. Looked for this wee doe for hours before I found her, and then missed her completely from close enough to touch her. Not a good morning’s work … Ach well. Let’s go into the village and find something to eat. It’s no’ far, and I’m famished.”
We talked about trivial things as we walked the half mile into the village and made our way directly to the sign of the Boar’s Head by the side of the common, where a few of the loiterers sitting by the entrance nodded to us as we entered. The dim interior reeked of stale beer, bad food, and smoky, guttering lamps even at noon. Supposedly a hostelry, as announced by the crudely painted sign of the mightily tusked boar’s head that hung above the front door, the place was in reality what the local folk called a howff—a drinking hole that could not even claim the respectability of a tavern. It was a den where men came at night to whore and gamble, drink and blaspheme, but it was also the only place in the village that sold food for instant consumption during the day, and as such it attracted a wider variety of customers in daylight than it did by night.
There were few customers inside, and we seated ourselves in a dark corner at the end of the plank table that served as a crude counter and sipped at flagons of thin, sour ale while we waited for the slatternly wife of Big Rab, the owner, to slop two platters of the day’s meat pie in front of us. Neither of us made any remark on the food or its delivery; we had been there many times before and were familiar with the way things were done. To my surprise, though, the pie that day was the best I had ever tasted there, hot and savoury and well stuffed with chunks of onion, turnip, and meat, and topped with a well-made crust. We ate without comment, neither of us daring to wonder aloud what kind of meat was in the pie, or where it came from, although I fancied that I could detect both venison and wild hare in the well-spiced mixture. We both knew that if it were venison, it had been taken illegally, so I kept silent and merely enjoyed it while Will, the forester and keeper, ate it without expressing either curiosity or enjoyment.
I could see he was far from happy with the situation, and at the same time I was aware of Big Rab loitering anxiously in the background, glancing worriedly at us from time to time and plainly expecting Will to say something. As we drained our flagons and stood up to leave, Rab’s wife came bustling towards us, the look on her face holding sufficient guilt to condemn both her and her man. Will muttered a gruff word of thanks and threw a coin on the table. I followed him wordlessly out of the place, noting the look of relief on Big Rab’s face as he scuttled away into the rear of the establishment.
As soon as we were outside I noticed that the loiterers had all gone. “Good pie,” I said. “I wonder who cooked it.”
“I don’t want to know,” he growled. “No more than I want to know where the deer came from.”
As he spoke, someone called his name in the distance, and we both turned to see one of Sir Malcolm’s tenants, a man called James Laithey, waving to us from the butts on the common. Here, as in any town or village, anyone who owned cattle had the right to graze them on the common, but in Elderslie, a strip of ground along the longest side was set aside in the summer months for archery. It was barely wide enough for three men to stand side by side and shoot towards the far end, some two hundred paces distant, but it was sufficient for the needs of the archers who used it, none of whom owned a longbow. The normal bow of Scots huntsmen and archers was broad and flat in section, sometimes laminated with layers of horn or sinew, and made from local ash or elm or even beech, and their average length was a yard and a half. One sometimes saw a five-foot bow being used, but those were usually in the hands of visiting bowmen, travellers who roamed the countryside matching their skills against the local marksmen and usually prospering. Will’s bow was an entirely different weapon from all of those, and he was generally reluctant to demonstrate its power in competition, a delicacy that was accepted gracefully by others once they had seen its power, and Will’s accuracy, for themselves.