Thomas took it. “Thank you,” he said, then as Waldroup had shown him, he laid it across his palm. The slight curve floated on his hand.
“I see you have been training him, Sir Mason.” He retrieved the bow. “You’ll want arrows?”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “I owe him two that shattered practicing.”
The bowyer smiled. “Only two? Well, then, Squire—?”
“Coutts. Fingal Coutts.”
The bowyer nodded. His eyes took in the purse hung on Thomas’s belt, the larger one on Waldroup’s. “Squire Coutts. If you return in the morning, I shall have it, and a dozen—that is, fourteen—arrows for you as well.”
Waldroup patted him on the back. “This man knows his business. That’s a fine bow to take with you.”
The bowyer bowed his head in recognition of Waldroup’s praise. “Then you’re traveling?” he asked.
“For the winter,” Waldroup said. He opened the door.
At the threshold, Thomas abruptly turned about. “The man you made this bow for. What might his name be?”
“Balthair MacGillean. Most folk hereabout call him—”
“Baldie,” said Thomas.
The bowyer gave a look of mild surprise, but he was already out the door. Waldroup smiled ruefully to the man and said, “He, ah, visited us at the abbey. As you say, seemed distracted.” Then he closed the door after him.
Thomas was headed across the wet mess of the road toward the brewster’s. “So, a coincidence, the bow of the man who almost recognized you at the abbey,” Waldroup asked as he caught up.
“But none of this is possible,” said Thomas. “I told you what happened to me. Baldie was—”
“The one that drowned, aye, I know.”
Thomas nodded grimly.
“Drowned three years past in a river, but he’s viewing the abbey and ordering a bow?” Waldroup shook his head. “We know he’s one of these servants of the elven, but even so—”
“His family’s more than the equal of mine. They’ve land to the west of Ercildoun. He has two brothers, just as the bowyer said.”
“Who also said he doesn’t have them any longer. So perhaps, after all, he didn’t drown. Maybe he was stunned, and swam to shore farther down. Someone rescued him after you gave chase for your brother. It’s an easier explanation.” He said it with the tone of someone waiting to be convinced.
“Three are dead, two still striding in Ercildoun,” he recited again, this time with understanding of his riddle. “One of those is me.”
“You were dead as well?”
“I am to Ercildoun.” He stared into Waldroup’s eyes. “And Baldie’s joined up with the alderman. He wouldn’t have done that before.”
“All right, but say for a moment he survived.” Thomas started to object, but Waldroup held out his hand. “His family dies from some plague, he inherits all, and by the bowyer’s description, it’s left him in a bad state. The alderman’s still an alderman for all that he may oversee the elven and their teind. You said your own father knows him. Why shouldn’t Balthair MacGillean’s relationship be the same as your father’s, now that he’s head of his family? What if he doesn’t know anything about the alderman’s service to these creatures?”
Adamantly, Thomas said, “He didn’t swim to shore. He was dead in the river. I couldn’t hold onto his body and he floated away, belly-down. He was drowned when the river took him.”
Sloshing through the muck, Waldroup said, “So, what, then? He and the alderman are dead men? The servants of the elven are all of them dead men? What about the people I saw on the battlefield?”
Thomas made as if to respond but gave up.
“Elven have powers, and they’re cruel, I’ll give ye that. But can they revive the dead? I’m not ready to grant them the attributes of the Christ just now.” He fell silent as they passed three other men. All nodded at one another. Once beyond them, he added softly, “Let us therefore strive not to call attention to ourselves tonight and be gone in the morning wi’ your bow. Dead or alive, I don’t crave their scrutiny.”
The brewess introduced her alehouse as The Gorse and Hare, which explained at least the symbols on the sign over the door. They bought wooden tankards of ale from her and sat at the far end of a long central table that could accommodate twenty. She did have two curtained chambers at the very back of her establishment next to where large pots hung over a low fire, which were available for a night’s stay at a reasonable price. The humid, smoky air smelled sourly of mash. Waldroup and Thomas chatted with her while she showed them the tiny sleeping arrangements. “We done all right ’ere. Used to be the byre was attached t’the back. But we went and built a second shed for stock. Turned the first into a threshing barn. ’usband tills a field farther out, but not now a’course. He’s at mill today, down on the river.”
By late afternoon, half a dozen locals had gathered around the long table with their tankards, talking of this or that. The bowyer himself arrived and sat among them, and Waldroup bought him a tankard.
The bowyer made introductions to the others, telling them that Waldroup and Thomas were stonecutters working on the abbey but that Waldroup was a sometime knight and “Fingal” his squire. One of the men asked how long they’d been on the job, and Waldroup replied that he’d arrived after fighting too long in France, while “Fingal turned up early this summer and has been working the quarry since.” It was the truth, and if anyone in that group was looking for news of someone who’d vanished three years ago, those facts should have put them off the scent. It was clear that none of the men recognized Squire Coutts.
After a while, Waldroup leaned close to the bowyer. “I have to ask again. That fella whose bow you’re selling us—you’re certain he won’t mind? Don’t want to stir up trouble with a local laird.”
The bowyer laughed. “Balthair? I don’t even know why he wants one. I doubt ’e’s ever as much as braced a bow. It’s what I said to him, too. I swear, unless I remind him, he won’t even take notice that he ordered one. If he purchases it, it’ll just lie there and rot in the castle.”
“You said his family all died?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. Troubled clan, the MacGilleans, and God’s smited Balthair in particular. Three years back, lad was fishing with two friends—well, a friend with a half-wit brother—and those two drowned. Devastated their family, the Rimors. Never recovered the bodies, even. River took ’em and probably washed them out to sea. Baldie did all he could to save ’em, but the idiot one pulled his brother under. Some as thought that boy had the gift of prophecy, but really, he didn’t know up from down.”
Thomas made to stand, but under the table Waldroup grabbed his wrist and held him in place.
“That’s terrible,” he said, “to have your children die before you.”
“True enough. Family didn’t want to believe it. For a long time they held out that the boys would return somehow. But that sort of hope is like a purse with a hole in the bottom. Sooner or later, you got nothing left.”
Waldroup nodded. “That would seem to be a terrible fate dealt to the Rimor family, not this other fellow.”
Thomas kept his eyes downcast, not daring to look up just then for fear of them flooding with tears.
