fletcher

The rabbit didn’t blink when David slit its throat.  It just stared at him with glassy eyes, bewildered, as his sharp knife slid through the fur, stuttered at the bone then slipped past and severed the pulsing artery.  David let go of the rabbit’s long ears to grasp at its scruff but he was in a hurry and his fingers were slick with sweat.  He fumbled both the animal and the knife, cringing as he felt more than heard the ragged ripping of steel on flesh and fat.  Gouts of blood gushed thick and red from the gaping wound, splattering both his jerkin and breeches. 

A good kill is a clean kill.

Grimacing at the thought of Eowyn’s oft-remonstrated instructions and knowing full well that he was failing miserably at following them, David moved to complete his task, if not neatly then at least efficiently.  His hands worked with methodical precision, remembering with the swiftness of practice how to find the loose part of the skin at the belly and make the first cut without tearing the stomach lining, how to pull the skin completely off the rabbit, how to sever the head with his freshly-whetted blade and snap the lower part of all four legs to remove the feet.  He looked up frequently, distracted by the lowering skies turned grey from the clouds coming in off the coast of Dover.  It was going to rain hard tonight.

Once the rabbit was well and thoroughly skinned, David cut through its groin to remove the anus, and then he slashed a ‘V’ into the flesh to remove the tail.  Taking care not to cut the intestines, he sliced at the stomach lining and scooped out the guts.  He felt the first drops of rain on his cheek and knew he was running out of time so he almost skipped the last part of the process.  At the last minute, though, Eowyn’s glowering face loomed large in his mind so he took the time to check the liver and the other internal organs for signs of white patches or spots that signaled a sickness with the animal that would have rendered it unfit as food.  Finding none, David stuffed entrails in one sack and meat in another – when did it change from rabbit to meat? – just as the heavens opened up and soaked him in a torrential downpour.

“Well,” David looked down ruefully at his bloody, sodden self and gave a philosophical shrug, “at least Eowyn will be pleased.”

~~~

Eowyn ap Cullen was definitely not pleased. 

“Argh!” was his response as he got his first look at the bedraggled boy who came stumbling into the kitchen.  “God’s bloody knees, boy!  Y’er gonna be the death o’ me!”

“But I did it, Eowyn, just like ye told me!” David waved his bags over his head in triumph.  “Set the trap over the burrow and Jessup chased it and it bolted and the draw string pulled shut – t’was exactly like ye said, and…owww!  Let go, Eowyn!”

“Oh, I’ll let ye go alright,” growled the yeoman cum manservant to Charles Fletcher’s fourth and most difficult son as he tweaked his charge’s ear even harder and led the boy out the kitchen, up the service stairs and down the hall to the bathing room.  “Let ye go as soon as we get ye cleaned up and presentable-like for yer da, ye impossible child!”

“Ow, ow, ow!  That hurts, Eowyn!” David allowed himself to be manhandled only because he knew the futility of struggling against the man’s solid hold, but he made it a point to drag his feet as best he could and still prevent his ear from smarting too much.  “And what d’ye mean, ‘my da’?  Father isn’t supposed to be back for another fortnight!”

“Shows ye what ye know, manling.  Had you listened last night at supper, ye would ken that Sir Charles is due back this eve with news from Italia.”

“Italia?  You don’t mean…?”

They’d reached the bathing rooms by this time and Eowyn took one last look at the boy before rolling his eyes in disgust then bodily throwing him – bloody clothes, sacks and all – into the prepared claw-foot tub.  The water was still warm but just barely, the kind of warm that had promised to have been scalding hot enough to sear your privates about fifteen minutes ago but had cooled down considerably while it had sat and waited for its intended recipient.  Luckily for David.  Still, he managed to put up a good fight and complain quite volubly as Eowyn plucked the bags from his grip, threw washcloth and lye at him and proceeded to strip him down and scrub his back while maintaining a running commentary on the boy’s numerous shortcomings.

“…and what yer da will say about the state yer in, I dun even want to ken,” Eowyn grumbled, finishing his painful ablutions on David’s back and proceeding to attack the boy’s hair.

“But he wasn’t supposed to back for a fortnight!  I thought I had more time!” David wailed over a mouthful of soap.  “Bugger all!”

Eowyn cuffed the boy on the side of his head.  “Watch yer mouth, boy!  Bad enough to have you running amok in the countryside like a heathen.  I ent gonna be whipped for that rough mouth of yours.  Ye better watch yerself, Master David.  Once yer in Italia, ye won’t have me watching out fer ye.”  He dunked the boy under water for a final rinse, expecting more resistance, but David had gone limp and Eowyn had to pull him up by the hair before he could drown in his own bath water.

“Italia,” David whispered to himself, the excitement of trapping and skinning his very first rabbit quickly replaced by a sick, twisting dread in his stomach.  “I don’t want to go.”

“Not like ye have much choice, boyo,” Eowyn stopped rubbing the boy down with a towel long enough to give him a rare sympathetic grimace.  “Ye know how Sir Charles is about appearances and such.  And since ye can’t go to Oxford and Cambridge – being a merchant’s son and all – it’s Bologna for ye to smarten ye up and make a man of ye.”

“I’m already a man!” David exploded angrily, leaping out of the tub and shaking his long dark hair from his face.  “I can out-ride, out-fence and out-hunt any squire in this fief!  Everyone knows it!  Jamie says I’m the one he trusts to calm Maximus when he’s in a snit and I’m the only one Robbie lets near his peregrines when they’re breeding ‘coz he says I have a way with ‘em!  And yesterday, I finally bested Tony when we sparred and he admitted it!  Father’s daft!  There’s nothing in Bologna worth learning that I can’t learn here!”

“Oho!  Bold words from the bratling!”

David’s ranting was called abruptly to a halt by the sudden appearance of all three of his aforementioned older brothers.  James, the eldest and heir, stood with a disapproving frown plastered on his stern face, arms folded across his chest in a forbidding mimicry of their father.  Anthony, the second son, leaned against the doorframe and tugged absently at his long hair, watching the proceedings with a sharp eye that missed nothing.  And Robert, the third son and closest to David in both age and temperament, walked past them both to twitch the towel from Eowyn and use it to flick at his sibling’s bare behind.

“Ow!” David yelped in what felt like too many times in too few minutes.  “Leave off, Robbie!”

“Hmmm, that doesn’t sound very manly, does it, Tony?” Robert mocked.

“Like a weaning lamb, that,” Anthony agreed.

David scowled and was about to come out with a scathing retort when James interrupted, as was his wont when chaos looked imminent, “Peace, brothers.  Squabbling won’t get the job done any quicker, and if we all want to remain in Father’s good graces this eve, I suggest we finish this.”