Behind Rabbie, Iain spits in the dirt. His saliva is red with blood.
Harry desperately wants to make a comment about how that stray dog managed to all but bite off Rabbie’s ear, but he knows there is only one way he’ll get the rope back without further violence on Rabbie’s part. So he closes his eyes and recites, ‘I’m very sorry, Rabbie. We’ll keep better control of him next time. Thank you for bringing him back.’
He holds out his hand again for the rope. Rabbie leans down and whispers into Harry’s ear as he hands over the length of hemp. ‘Use your head, Harry. Who do you think will take over Dartington if Montagu closes on your debts? I get your Scottish dog and your hall if you keep fucking up. So do better, because I honestly don’t want to add this fleapit of yours to my lands. It doesn’t make enough money.’ Then he sits back up on his horse and gives Harry a mocking salute. ‘Nighty-night, Harry! Don’t let the bedbugs bite.’
They watch Ufford and his boys ride back out of the manor and turn onto the north road through the moor. Everyone is still hungover, half-asleep, and frozen in confusion at what they’ve just witnessed.
Iain is the first to move.
As soon as Rabbie and his men are out of sight, he collapses. He sinks down to the ground in stages, first the knees, then the hips, then the arms, like a puppet with his strings cut.
Harry wants to run to the boy, wants to gather him up, but he refuses to get played for a fool again.
Iain convulses in the dirt, shaking uncontrollably.
Harry hears Annie’s sleep-fogged voice behind him. ‘What in the name of Jesus—’ Then she sees Iain and she shoves Harry aside, her tone sharpening into one of command. ‘God’s blood! Adam, well water. Kit, Harry, carry him inside. Peter, draw a bath. Wat, fetch me a jug of vinegar and a handful of mint. Piers, get my scissors from the kitchen, we need to cut his clothes off him.’
Everyone jumps to her orders. Harry picks up Iain in his arms and carries him into the kitchen, as Peter rolls out the big wooden, cloth-lined tub Harry’s family use for bathing. They put him straight into the tub as it’s cleanest, and begin the process of separating fabric from torn flesh. Iain hisses and flinches into wakefulness after a particularly ground-in strip of wool is peeled off his knee, and he glares round at them with the eyes of a wounded and cornered animal.
Annie motions for Peter to hold off pouring water for a moment.
Harry leans in so Iain sees him, and smooths the hair out of Iain’s face. ‘Ssh, all is well, you’re safe,’ he says as soothingly as he can. ‘You’re back at Dartington. You’re with us.’
Iain shivers uncontrollably again and squeezes his eyes shut, fat tears dripping down his dirty cheeks. ‘I hate you,’ he whimpers, his voice reedy with pain.
Harry keeps brushing through his hair. ‘I know,’ he replies. He gently untangles twigs and bits of hedge from the boy’s locks, watching how their copper highlights glitter in the hearth-light.
‘Why can’t you just hate me?’ Iain sobs under his breath. ‘It would be so much easier.’
‘Save your energy,’ Harry says. ‘We can fight tomorrow. Right now we have to rinse those scrapes out with vinegar before they fester. You’ve brought half the moor home with you.’
Iain lifts a shaking hand out of the water and slowly reaches out to tap the crusted blood on Harry’s temple. He frowns.
‘Yes,’ Harry says softly. ‘We’ll clean me up too, don’t worry.’
Iain spends the next day recovering up in the solar, newly kitted out in a threadbare, hand-me-down shirt of Harry’s that’s still like a dress on him. The servants take shifts to watch over him.
Harry passes the morning on his knees in church, praying for guidance. Because he’d … he’d wanted things that no man should want from another man. Father Gilbert asks him three times if he wants to go to confession, and on the third time Harry relents and says yes.
He’s furiously ashamed, though. He doesn’t confess fully. Instead he tells Father Gilbert he’d got drunk at the harvest feast (which he’s sure qualifies as gluttony) and almost acted on lustful thoughts. He just leaves out that those thoughts were about a man, and that the only reason he didn’t act on them was the man knocking him on the head with a length of iron chain.
Father Gilbert smiles at him through the screen. ‘If only all confessions were like yours, Harry, Devon would be considerably closer to God than it already is.’
Harry makes a low noise in his throat because no, he wants to be punished for this. He needs to be punished.
Father Gilbert shakes his head. ‘Harry, you don’t make a habit of being drunk, do you?’
‘No, Father,’ Harry replies. This was the first time he’d been inebriated in years. Not since he’d won a squires’ competition at sixteen, up in Newmarket against much older competition, and everyone from Sir Simon on down had stood him drinks all night. Harry distinctly remembers throwing up on a hedgerow, then falling headfirst into said hedgerow, and waking up there the next morning feeling like Nomad had kicked him in the noggin. He hadn’t been much of a one for drunkenness since.
‘Drink makes a man do strange and stupid things that he would never consider sober. Have you had lustful thoughts towards this woman before or since?’
Man, Harry mentally corrects, cringeing inwardly. But his mouth says ‘No.’ Because it’s true, isn’t it? He furrows his brow and thinks back over all his interactions with Iain. It breaks down to wanting to strangle the boy half the time and wanting to be his friend the other half. ‘No,’ he repeats, more certain.
‘That’s what I thought. I’d like you to say two Ave
