hunting dog, after all, but it had got out onto the downs and, because sheep run, it had chased…
The Baron knew the penalty for sheep-worrying. There were laws on the Chalk, so old that no one remembered who made them, and everyone knew this one: Sheep-killing dogs were killed.
But this dog was worth five hundred gold dollars, and so—the story went—the Baron sent his servant up onto the downs to Granny’s hut on wheels. She was sitting on the step, smoking her pipe and watching the flocks.
The man rode up on his horse and didn’t bother to dismount. That was not a good thing to do if you wanted Granny Aching to be your friend. Iron-shod hooves cut the turf. She didn’t like that.
He said: ‘The Baron commands that you find a way to save his dog, Mistress Aching. In return, he will give you a hundred silver dollars.’
Granny had smiled at the horizon, puffed at her pipe for a while, and replied: ‘A man who takes arms against his lord, that man is hanged. A starving man who steals his lord’s sheep, that man is hanged. A dog that kills sheep, that dog is put to death. Those laws are on these hills and these hills are in my bones. What is a baron, that the law be brake for him?’
She went back to staring at the sheep.
‘The Baron owns this country,’ said the servant. ‘It is his law.’
The look Granny Aching gave him turned the man’s hair white. That was the story, anyway. But all stories about Granny Aching had a bit of fairy tale about them.
‘If it is, as ye say, his law, then let him break it and see how things may then be,’ she said.
A few hours later the Baron sent his bailiff, who was far more important but had known Granny Aching for longer. He said: ‘Mrs Aching, the Baron requests that you use your influence to save his dog. He will happily give you fifty gold dollars to help ease this difficult situation. I am sure you can see how this will benefit everyone concerned.’
Granny smoked her pipe and stared at the new lambs and said: ‘Ye speak for your master, your master speaks for his dog. Who speaks for the hills? Where is the Baron, that the law be brake for him?’
They said that when the Baron was told this he went very quiet. But although he was pompous, and often unreasonable, and far too haughty, he was not stupid. In the evening he walked up to the hut and sat down on the turf nearby. After a while, Granny Aching said: ‘Can I help you, my lord?’
‘Granny Aching, I plead for the life of my dog,’ said the Baron.
‘Bring ye siller? Bring ye gilt?’ said Granny Aching.
‘No silver. No gold,’ said the Baron.
‘Good. A law that is brake by siller or gilt is no worthwhile law. And so, my lord?’
‘I plead. Granny Aching.’
‘Ye try to break the law with a word?’
‘That’s right, Granny Aching.’
Granny Aching, the story went, stared at the sunset for a while and then said: ‘Then be down at the little old stone barn at dawn tomorrow and we‘ll see if an old dog can learn new tricks. There will be a reckoning. Good night to ye.’
Most of the village was hanging around the old stone barn the next morning. Granny arrived with one of the smaller farm wagons. It held a ewe with her newborn lamb. She put them in the barn.
Some of the men turned up with the dog. It was nervy and snappy, having spent the night chained up in a shed, and kept trying to bite the men who were holding it by two leather straps. It was hairy. It had fangs.
The Baron rode up with the bailiff. Granny Aching nodded at them and opened the barn door.
‘You’re putting the dog into the barn with a sheep, Mrs Aching?’ said the bailiff. ‘Do you want it to choke to death on lamb?’
This didn’t get much of a laugh. No one really liked the bailiff.
‘We shall see,’ said Granny. The men dragged the dog to the doorway, threw it inside the barn and slammed the door quickly. People rushed to the little windows.
There was the bleating of the lamb, a growl from the dog, and then a baa from the lamb’s mother. But this wasn’t the normal baa of a sheep. It had an edge to it.
Something hit the door and it bounced on its hinges. Inside, the dog yelped.
Granny Aching picked up Tiffany and held her up to a window.
The shaken dog was trying to get to its feet, but it didn‘t manage it before the ewe charged it
