Read Online Something Red by Douglas Nicholas - Free Book Online

band, appeared at Hob’s left hand, striding along, sniffing appreciatively at the keen air, his head turning from sideto side as if eager to miss nothing of the barren snowfields and sterile rock ridges that lay to either hand. The long liripipe that adorned his hood twitched back and forth with his abrupt movements; Hob thought of a horse’s tail lashing at flies.
    “God save us, what a day tae be up and moving!” He grinned at Hob; he touched his forehead to Molly. He swung his staff forward with a flourish, striking it into the trail with a little skritching crunch; leaned on it as he walked forward; whisked it up and swung it forward again jauntily.
    “We’re doon fra Carlisle,” he said, beaming at first one of them and then the other. Hob, struggling to hold the ox steady as it shied from the shadow of the palmer’s darting staff, only managed to grunt politely. Aylwin, undaunted by this lack of encouragement, launched into an involved tale of the organization of the pilgrimage and the funding thereof; the selection by the guild of those to go and those to stay; the Carlisle Tanners’ Guild, their current guild quarters and their hope for a new guild lodge; Aylwin’s own enterprise as a whittawer; the distinction between tanning and tawing, the tawers or whittawers belonging nonetheless to the tanners’ guild; his training of his sons and daughters and his son-in-law in the craft, and their various aptitudes, and the processes of tawing, all in a dense North Country speech that Hob found hard to follow.
    They were coming down to the tree line, and Hob, looking at the advancing wall of trees, found himself sinking into apprehension: the fell thing that had driven them in haste up Monastery Mount had moved among the trees, and might it not have gone ahead? Might it not even now be waiting for them to enter the narrow track walled by tree trunks, shadowed by pine and fir branches? He felt his breath coming short as Aylwin chattered gaily about his art, having found in Molly, who always wanted to know everything, an attentive listener.
    “First tha mun take t’ hair fra yon hide, that’s wi’ lime, but leaveslime on, sithee, so theer’s a bran drench, that’ll take lime off again, and then tha’s just begun, Queen of Heaven help us . . . ”
    Now they were moving in among the first trees of the wood. The snow was less here, but the sunlight was dimmed, cut into shafts and bars that lay across the path. Hob looked back. Jack was just entering the forest, and behind him the open slope of the mountain already looked beyond reach, as lost to him as last summer’s bright afternoons.
    “. . . theer’s t’ scudding as takes off all t’ rest o’ t’ hair and t’ color as thy lime has left, then it’s intae yon tubs, thy well-made tub being a thing of wondrous clever fashioning, Master Hunferth’s oor cooper, a fine auld man, tha wilna find anither cooper t’ like in t’ North Country, auld Hunferth makks a tub looks like it’s grown fra t’ one tree . . . ”
    Hob heard Aylwin’s voice, but faintly; the pounding of his own heart was hammering in his ears and he found it hard to catch his breath. He peered left and right down the forest corridors. The wood stretched away, silent; it seemed to harbor no living thing that was not rooted in the earth. Hob was not reassured.
    “. . . then tha mun mix t’ alum, t’ salt, t’ flooer, t’ yolk of eggs, but hoo much tha wonders, ah theer’s mony would like tae ken, that’s anither guild secret, and noo tha hast a mort of stirring and paddling wi’ t’ poles, great long wooden things and soon wearisome, and theer’s days o’ this, stirring like a cook . . . ”
    Down and down, the evergreens giving way to leafless oak and alder, beech and yew, but the path lightening only a little, for the forest was old and the limbs that closed from either side over the path were substantial enough to block most of the blue sky from