It was a picture of bucolic rusticity, the old stables of wood frame as timeless as the castle itself.
“What’s the stallion’s name?” she asked, perusing his fine lines.
“Tha be Sir Rupert.”
A cuckolded husband, mayhap?
Hebe wrinkled her nose. “I think I may wander the maze, is it difficult?”
“Not as long as thee knows where thee are going.”
She slanted a look. But it mattered not how many times she repeated the venerable stable master’s words, they still made no sense and yet all the sense in the world.
Mr Grampy Tom squinted at the sky with sherry-coloured eyes and sucked on a clay pipe. “Be here for the wake then, will thee? Rain’ll be gone by then.”
Wake?
Hebe feared to ask as she peered at the blue sky with nary a cloud to mar it. “Has someone…died?”
“Nay, lass. Thas what we call our Feast Day.”
Perhaps the one Lord Ernest had mentioned. “Well, I’m not sure. It depends on my sketches for the duke’s hunter, although I must confess, I’ve never attended a…wake before.”
“Been going for evertime. Even when the old duke were around, we’d still meet in Wychmere Woods and make merry on Saint Roch’s Day.”
“Was he from here then? Saint Roch?”
“French. But that can’t be helped now. Him was curing the Black Death in some foreign land when he caught it himself, so he hid in a forest where a dog brung him food and licked his sores.”
“Did he and the dog survive?”
“Aye. Both did. And it were hailed a fine miracle. Back then the Death took most of Lower Oddington up the way here and so it were razed to the ground to stop the spread. Us Wychmere folk prayed to Saint Roch so ourselves wouldn’t end up the same way, and when we was spared, well, the Frenchman became our saint.”
“What a remarkable tale. Seems to me the dog ought to have been sainted too.”
“There be a carving in our church of he and the pup.”
“Well, I am glad Wychmere was preserved and your Feast Day sounds enchanting.”
“Pah.” He leaned close with a wink. “’Tis an excuse for old men like I to gossip, and for the young lads to kiss the lasses in the summer sunshine. Only ever stopped for the war.”
“Napoleon denied us much.”
Mr Grampy Tom’s forehead knitted. “Not for he, no, lass. The English war of 1611. Cromwell, the dastard, forbade it. I ain’t moithered about them in Parliament, but when a man’s feast is forbidden, well, ’tisn’t right.”
About to ask which side the Rothwells had supported in that Civil War, she paused as Lord Ernest came clattering through the archway like some mythical centaur. Of course, she knew he sat a horse well, but it wasn’t just that.
For merely a nudge of thigh appeared to be his command, no sign of a crop.
And exceedingly fine thighs they were – muscular but lean.
He waved at them but leaped off to aid Thos with the skittish stallion who was railing against a hoof picking, and a shiver stirred Hebe as his lordship smoothed a bare hand over its rump, whispered to the stallion’s ear as it butted his neck in pleasure.
“Lord Ernest has a way with animals, does he not?”
“Aye.” Mr Grampy Tom rubbed his bristly jaw and sucked on his pipe again. “Thas the gift for those born in the chime hours.”
Hebe raised a brow.
