down, a steep path descended the slope to the right, met the track, crossed it and continued down to a ford. Water was draining down the path from the side of the combe and the crossing was extremely muddy. “Carefully now!” Father Bernard called over his shoulder, and steadied his mare as one of her hooves skidded. “The rain’s made this a proper quagmire. Mind you don’t slip.”
“Keep in step!” said Nicholas. “And take it steadily.”
Somewhere on the other side of the combe they heard a hunting horn and the voices of hounds, but, being concerned with their uncertain footing, no one paid much heed to it. The horn sounded again, nearer. And then, out of the trees on the other side of the river, came the stag.
There were two ways of hunting deer. If the purpose was simply venison, the hunt could drive the quarry into a ring of archers who would mow them down like corn. But if the huntsmen wanted sport and the pleasure of the chase and maybe a fresh pair of fine antlers to decorate a hall, then they would look for a grown stag and bring him to bay after a chase. Sir Humphrey preferred the chase. The hall in his manor house bristled with antlers and he employed not only a huntsman to care for his hounds but also a harbourer to keep track of likely stags and lead the hunt to them on request.
The harbourer had found them a fine beast this time. The animal which burst out of the woods, splashed headlong across the stream and came up to the crossways like a four-footed hurricane was in full breeding array. He had twelve points to his crown, six each side, tipped white as if with pearl. His nostrils flared red with the effort of running and his eyes were rolling. The horrified bearers were passing the top of the slippery path down to the river when he hurtled up toward them, fleeing in such panic from the hounds on his trail that he was not aware of them until the last moment.
Then he swerved, with a huge sideways leap, sprang past the nose of Father Bernard’s startled mare, which reared in alarm, and was gone, into the trees and on up the hill, and at the same moment the hounds, brown and black and patch-coated, giving tongue like wolves, poured out of the woods opposite, and hard behind them came Sir Humphrey’s huntsman and then Sir Humphrey himself and his twin sons, Reginald and Walter, on their big horses, closely followed by three riders who were presumably their guests, all hallooing nearly loud enough to drown the hounds and the horn.
Hounds and horses crashed through the ford, water spraying up around them. They scrambled for footholds on the path and tore upward. The cortege had stopped where it was as if paralysed, everyone having unanimously decided to keep still and let the uproar flow around them as it would around a line of trees. Most of the hounds veered as the stag had done, but three of them took the shortest route and went straight under the coffin and between the legs of the bearers. One collided with Richard’s ankles and another bounced off Nicholas Weaver’s shins. Both Richard and Nicholas lurched and their burden shifted.
The lurches were small and the shift in the weight was minor, but feet slipped on the perilous ground and the uneven weight of the tilting coffin made them slip still more. There were shouts of alarm. The riders, coming hard after the hounds, swerved their mounts around the head of the cortege, but one of them came too close. His horse saw the coffin, shied to avoid it and kicked out, catching Higg’s hip.
Higg, knocked sideways, held on but stumbled, and the tilt of the coffin became dangerous. Then Richard, who was one of the foremost bearers, lost his footing altogether and sat down, still holding on but pulling the front of the coffin down farther still. The tilt became a slide toward the ground, tearing the other bearers’ hands and breaking their hold. There were more cries of alarm. Margaret Weaver and Betsy called aloud on God, and people crossed themselves. Kat and Deborah screamed.
In a shaft of sunlight through the leaves, the funeral party had a fleeting glimpse of tall horses, reins with ornate dagged edges, spurred boots, richly coloured saddlecloths and tunics, bearded faces, one with a hunting horn held to its lips, velvet cloaks and exotic headgear, twisted liripipes bouncing on their owners’ shoulders, and then they were gone, leaping over the path and crashing up the hillside.
As they went, the coffin slithered right out of the bearers’ grasp, came down slowly but inexorably onto the path to the ford and then, gliding on the mud churned by the hunt, set off on its own, straight toward the river.
Father Bernard was off his horse on the instant. He threw himself after the coffin, clutching at it as he landed facedown in the mud, but its weight dragged it out of his grasp. Others scrambled frantically down through the trees to help. Deborah Archer, exclaiming with horror, got there first, tearing her dark skirts on the underbrush. She flung herself on top of the coffin as it went into the water and somehow succeeded in hooking one foot around the trunk of an alder at the brink. Held by her weight, the coffin sank where it was, and grounded in the shallow water of the ford, Deb lying on its lid and spluttering with her face in the stream and her skirts floating to each side of her.
Roger, rushing after her, waded into the water to get to the other end of the coffin and push it back toward land. Other helping hands were there. They picked Father Bernard up, lifted Deb and grabbed the coffin, dragging it ashore and hoisting it up again.
Richard, white-faced, had got to his feet and reached them in time to help with carrying his father’s casket back up the slope to the shocked procession on the path. “It’s all right. It hasn’t broken open. Deb saved it. If the water had moved it off the shallows…”
It could have done. The Allerbrook had a strong current and downstream of the ford it became quite deep. No one wanted to imagine what could have happened next.
“Father Bernard, you’re covered in mud!” Richard looked at the priest in distress. “You must brush it off. You must call at your house and put on something clean before the service. Can you find Roger here some dry things, too? He’s drenched to the knees. And Deb, oh Deb, I can’t be more grateful, but you’re wet through and shivering. Here!” He pulled off his cloak and threw it around her. “That’ll keep some warmth in. You can hardly strip your wet things off just here, so go home, Deb, run, to keep some heat in you, and put on dry things. We’ll wait for you in the churchyard. But you must get dry or you’ll take a chill. Go on—now!”
“I’m past the age for running and it’s over half a mile!” said Deb through chattering teeth as she wrung out her skirts and clutched the cloak to her. “But I’ll get home fast-like and see ’ee in the churchyard.” Holding her wet gown clear of the ground, she scurried off and Richard turned his attention to Betsy’s husband, Higg, who was flexing his right wrist and rubbing his hip, a pained expression on his seamed brown face. “What’s the matter, Higg? You’ve hurt yourself?”
“One of their damned hosses well-nigh kicked me off my feet and then my wrist went when I was tryin’ to keep a’hold of the coffin,” Higg said. “Hip don’t matter—that’s just a bruise—but it feels like my wrist’s been twisted half off. Don’t think I can go on as bearer. T’wouldn’t be safe, and we’ve had trouble enough for one day.”
“It’s time for the relief bearers, anyhow,” Richard said, and raised his voice to call the volunteers forward: Ned Crowham, the Searles, Gilbert Lowe, Sim Hannacombe and Harry Rixon. Far away in the distance the hunting horn spoke again and the baying of the hounds once more drifted through the trees.
“Bloody Sweetwaters,” said Richard through his teeth. “I hope they all fall off their damned horses and break their necks and I hope the hounds bring that stag to bay and it gores every single one of them to death!”
“It went well enough in the end,” Nicholas Weaver said to Richard later that day as they stood together, partaking of the generous food and the excellent cider that was Kat’s speciality, and yet very conscious of the space in the household, the empty niche in the air which once had been filled by George. “That accident could have been much worse!”
“I daresay,” said Richard. “But I’ll never forgive the Sweetwaters. Never!”
“Likely enough they hardly realised what had happened,” said Nicholas. “It was all so fast. By the time they’d seen us, it was too late.”