Ruso and the Root of All Evils

24

The pain that had nailed her head to the pillow was gone. Tilla opened her eyes, gazed at the cracks in the ceiling of the Medicus’ room and wondered if he was back yet.

There were no voices outside. No footsteps in the corridor. She managed to time her ascent of the stairs so that nobody saw her slip into her stuffy little bedroom clad in one of the Medicus’ old Army tunics. Inside, she changed into her own clothes. On the landing she bumped into the slave who had slept in her bed the previous night.

‘Have you seen the mistress and the master’s sisters?’

‘In the bath-house, miss.’ The girl leaned forward to mouth across a pile of folded linen, ‘It is safe to come out.’

It was, but now that she had the temporary freedom of the house, Tilla could not think of a single place within it where she would feel at ease. She went across to the window. Nothing was moving in the regimented garden, which was still baking in the late afternoon sun. Beyond the wall, a tall grey horse was tethered in the shade of the stable building. There was some sort of compress on its foreleg. Feeling they were fellow sufferers, she went downstairs to talk to it.

When she got there, the stable lad was busy replacing the compress. His morose expression defied the jolly tangle of curls around his temples.

She said, ‘This is a fine horse.’

‘He is, miss. Pity he’s not ours.’

She took the animal’s head to distract it from investigating the stable lad’s curls. ‘What is the matter with him?’

‘He’s not looking too happy on the nearside foreleg.’ Glancing up, he saw she was interested. ‘It’s an old injury. I’d have rested him for a day or two more, myself. You don’t want to mess about with a good animal like this.’

‘Your master has taken the mule-cart?’

The lad nodded. ‘That’s all there is now, miss. We don’t have horses here no more.’

She supposed they had been sold.

The lad tucked in the ends of the bandaging and added, ‘I wouldn’t have been cleaning the harness if I’d known he needed it.’

‘You had the harness in pieces when the master wanted the cart?’

‘I made him late.’

She said, ‘So did I. But he was very late anyway. Was he cross?’

Instead of replying the lad straightened up and slapped the horse on the shoulder. ‘Good boy.’

‘When the master is feeling better,’ she said, ‘he will thank you for taking such good care of this horse.’

The ‘Yes, miss’ was not enthusiastic.

‘He is always in a bad temper when his foot hurts. He is not usually rude to people who do not deserve it.’

The lad paused to consider this for a moment, then said, ‘Fair enough, miss.’

‘The master has many things on his mind today.’

‘Could you ask him what he wants done with the horse, miss? I don’t want to be in more trouble. Only nobody asked about it, and I didn’t like to interfere.’

Tilla must have looked baffled, because he explained without prompting that the guest who had died — ‘You heard about that, miss?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was the horse he come over on. I was going to give it a rest and take it back in a day or two.’

Tilla felt sorry for the lad, who was obviously desperate to get his hands on a high-class animal again.

‘But if the master thinks it ought to go back now, I could walk it over. I don’t want to get him in no more trouble.’

‘You think he really is in trouble?’

The stable lad reached up and pulled a section of mane straight. ‘I wouldn’t know, miss.’

‘Did you see the man who died yourself?’

The lad explained that he had heard the dog barking and realized nobody was around. He had opened the gate himself to let in the visitor and his horse and gone to fetch someone — Mistress Cassiana was the only one he could find — from the house.

‘I’ll say the man was ill when he got here if that’s what the master wants me to say, miss,’ he offered, ‘but it’s not true. Like I told the master, the horse was lame, but I didn’t notice nothing wrong with the man on top.’