It had come at the moment after he had run across the fields clutching the rough bag with a slab of day-old porridge and two bannocks in it. Run like a deer to where his da stood with the oxen he was so proud of owning. No-one else had such a prize.
His da had looked at him for a long time and then crouched down into his face.
Tha runs fast as a wee dug, he said sadly. Fast as any wee dug.
The day after that his ma had walked him into the castle and stood looking at Berner. Dog Boy was ashamed these days that he could not quite remember his own mas face now, but he remembered her voice and the feel of her hand on the top of his combed head.
I have brung him, she said. As Sire said I could, when he could run fast as the dugs. He is six.
Since then, there had only been those stones and the dogs.
Malk, the Berners assistant, reckoned up Dog Boys age and marked it in the Rolls along with the birthing dates of all the hounds and their pedigrees. It did not matter to Dog Boy, for he did not know, that Malk could trace a hounds lineage back through several generations and recorded Dog Boy only as a scion of bound tenants from a huddle of cruck houses twenty miles away.
It would have been a surprise to Dog Boy to know that he had a name, too Aleysandir, same as the king who fell off a Fife cliff and plunged the whole of Scotland into chaos in the year Dog Boy was born but Dog Boy did not know any of that and had been Dog Boy for so long that he knew no other name now.
Get aff me, ye dungbags!
The voice jerked Dog Boy guiltily back to the kennels; Gib was pushing dogs away and, beyond him, The Worm stretched and yawned noisily, straw sticking out from his unruly hair. Dog Boy scratched a fleabite and then half-crouched, his habitual pose at sudden noises and surprises, as the heavy door banged open, flooding in cold light and chill air.
Avaunt, whelps.
Silhouetted briefly in the pale square light of the doorway, the figure paused slightly, then stepped in, flicking his dogwhip; the hounds knew him well and circled away from him, yet kept coming back, tails down, fawning and whimpering.
Berner Philippe had to stoop to avoid the low roof, though he was not tall. He wore a battered leather jack to protect the plain, stained-wool robe, itself worn to keep the pale-grey tunic clean from the dogs. He also wore his habitual sour sneer, which bristled his trimmed black beard.
Come on, come on, stir yourselves, he growled. Theres work to be done where is Gib?
Gib stumbled forward, picking straw off himself and rubbing sleep from his eyes. He swept a bow, almost mocking, as he showed off his little command of French.
A votre service, Berner Philippe
The scowl deepened a little as Philippe looked at him. This one was becoming too familiar by half. It wouldnt do. He tongued the stump of a tooth, then forced a smile and patted the boy on the cheek.
Ah, lordling, he said lightly. Such manners, eh?
The others watched him caress Gib as he would do the dogs, chucking him under the chin, fondling behind one ear; it was as much part of the ritual of morning as waking, for Gib was the berners favourite.
There were six houndsmen under Berner Philippe. Together with the six piqueurs, the huntsmen, they considered themselves the true Disciples of Douglas, not the strutting men-at-arms, who numbered the same. If that were so, then Berner Philippe was St Peter, White Tam, the head piqueur was James, brother of Jesus, the Lady Eleanor was the Virgin Herself and The Hardy was Christ in Person.
Thus was life arranged by Law and Custom, which is to say, by God.
Take five lads and clean this cesspit, said Philippe and looked from Dog Boy to Gib and back again. Then he nodded to Gib and watched as the boy shambled off to obey. He was getting bigger too big, Gods Wounds. What had once been soft flesh was filling and hardening and, even to a nose used to stinks, Gib reeked more and more positively of dog every day.
Dog Boy stood, looking at the fetid straw as if there was a cunning picture in it, and Philippe wondered, as he had always done, why he had never taken to the lad. Too scrawny, probably. There was a new lad Philippes head swung this way and that like a questing hound on a scent. What was his name? Hew, that was it. That was the name his parents had given him, but he was on the Rolls with an easily remembered nickname a dog name, Falo, which meant yellow, and Philippe picked him out from the others by his cap of golden hair.
Disappointment. Too young still, that blond hair, which spoke of decent ancestry implanted in the mongrel Scots, fell over the boys face as he gathered armfuls of stinking straw and Philippes groin tightened a little. Worth waiting for
He caught sight of Dog Boy, edging, as always, into the shadows. Dog Boy felt more than saw the eyes fall on him and stopped, dull with despair.
You, Philippe said shortly, eyeing the thin-limbed, dark-eyed boy with the distaste he gave to all runts. Mews. Gutterbluid wants you.
Outside, the cold bit Dog Boy and he hugged himself, dragging himself to the mews across the expanse of Ward in a cold wind out of the charcoal sky. Dog Boy eyed the glowing coals where Winnie the smithwife was blowing life into the forge fire, sparks flying dangerously up to the stiffened thatch of the wagon shed and the great stretch of stables. Beyond was the palisade and ditch, the gatehouse, newly done in stone, and the wooden dovecote etched blackly against the slow, souring milk of a new dawn. Behind, the bulked towers and stone walls of the Keep humped up and lurked over him.