When he woke it was not quite dark, and a faint gray dawn came into the cell.
The jester was snoring. Somewhere Dax thought he heard a rat. His muscles tensed, and he found himself on his feet by instinct—the idea of a rat was surprisingly attractive and he was hungry again. The noise stopped. He remembered that he had been having a dream—a strange nightmare of chasing after Mallison and catching him, and tearing him ... with his claws and teeth.
A rusty bell started ringing somewhere in the castle.
The jester snorted, sat up and looked out of the narrow window. Then he lit the candle and said his prayers, kneeling on his bed. Dax stretched, and the old man cleaned his teeth with a splinter and took a draught from the ale pot. It had a sour stench, but Dax found that he no longer minded—there were so many conflicting smells around, the most interesting of which had been the rat. A new, more immediately hopeful one, was of cooking that drifted up from below. It seemed that these people ate meat for their breakfast. And they liked it early.
"Come along, Tybalt," the jester said, putting on his headdress, and went to the door. Dax slipped through quickly so as not to get his tail caught as the jester closed it. They went down the winding stairs again.
At the bottom they came upon another cat—a big red tom—who on catching sight of Dax fluffed his tail and laid back his ears, spitting. Dax had a momentary impulse to see if communication was possible with him, but the big cat yowled and fled down the hallway.
"Ah, Tybalt," the old man said. "Jesters and cats! Even their own kind spits at them!" As they got to the kitchen Dax saw the two hounds that had growled at him the night before. He was glad that they were now leashed and in the charge of a boy in a short woolen surcoat.
But when they saw Dax the boy was unable to hold them back, and they jerked their leashes from his hand and came running and barking. Dax was terrified. He bolted ahead of them along the vaulted corridor and into the Great Hall, but came face to face with another brace of hounds whose ears pricked up at the sound. Dax without any conscious thought dodged sideways and ran up the tapestry on the wall.
His sharp claws had good foothold on the tough canvas backing. But at the top he almost lost his grip, and scarcely managed to get over onto the musicians' gallery from which the tapestry hung. He crouched there, trembling, while the din below increased. He could hear men shouting at the dogs, and the jester's voice calling him. He mewed loudly for help.
After a while he heard the old man's footsteps on the wooden ladder. He was picked up and comforted, but he was so dizzy with fear that he could hardly see. The jester seemed to think he was calm, and put him on his shoulder and went down the ladder again. The hounds had been taken away. But Dax stayed where he was with his eyes shut, holding on tight.
"Well, Trice!" Dax opened his eyes and saw the lord of the manor glowering at the jester, and then at him. So Trice was the jester's name. An odd one. The Earl stood with his hands on his hips and seemed irritated rather than angry. "What's this I hear? The cat runs at my hounds and tries to scratch!"
"Oh, no, sir," Trice said. "It was the other way! They ran at him! Tybalt has never scratched!"
"Scratched or no, I wish you'd give him to one of the villagers," the Earl said. "I don't want the hounds upset, and Lady Godwina doesn't like cats. Besides, he'll ruin the tapestry."
"But, my lord, he catches the rats! And he's my ... friend."
"The dogs catch the rats," the Earl said shortly. "Give him away."
"Well, my lord, the mice...."
"The red tom gets them."
The old man put up a hand to Dax protectively. "But, noble lord, what would I do without my pet?" Dax glanced at the tired face next his and saw tears in the eyes, but he had a determined look. "If he cannot stay, I ... I must go, too!"
The Earl opened his eyes at this, but he smiled. "I see you are loyal, old Trice," he said. "I hope you are as loyal to me!"
The Earl turned away. Trice put Dax on the floor and started back towards the kitchens.
"Come, Tybalt," he said. "Or there'll be none left for us."
Dax wished he were still on the shoulder, and stayed close to the jester's feet. Things were not going well at all. It had become as much a problem of survival as of research and communication, but when they got to the kitchen and the hounds were nowhere about, he decided that perhaps the two problems were inter-related. After a meal of scraps he felt more secure. Not seeing his master he went to look for him in the Great Hall.
When he got there he saw that the Earl and his wife and retainers were eating boiled meat. He remembered that his tutor in Middle English had said the main meal in Medieval times was eaten in the morning. The four hounds were squabbling over bones that were thrown to them on the rush-covered flagstones under the trestle-board, and didn't notice him. Trice was not to be seen. After a while the boy in the woolen surcoat was told to take them out. He fastened leashes to their collars and led them through a large doorway in the far wall. Dax looked at the Earl: he had a fairly intelligent face, and he had shown forbearance towards Trice, so he thought he would make another try.
The Lady Godwina got up unsteadily from her chair and left the hall—on the way to the lady's solar, Dax guessed; and he padded across to the Earl. When he got to the foot of the high-backed chair—it looked like a detached choir-stall from a gothic church—he patted the Earl's foot.
The Earl looked down at him and frowned.
Dax patted the foot again; three times. Then he mewed three times, and repeated the patting. The Earl blinked and got up, backing away. Dax mewed three times again, and the Earl crossed himself.
"Saints preserve my soul! What have we here?"
Dax turned around three times, getting his hind legs crossed and nearly falling down. "Send for Trice at once!" the Earl shouted. "His cat Tybalt has a fit! Careful!" he said to a serving man who had come forward with outstretched hands. "Take care you are not bitten! He is unclean!"
Dax backed away and ran to the open door, and out.
There was a brilliant sun and he could see nothing at first—and when he did it was blurred, owing to the vertical shape of his contracted pupils. It was much warmer than the night before, and the leaves were brown on the trees. There was no courtyard and gateway, with drawbridge and moat beyond, as he had rather expected. Instead he was on cobblestones, surrounded at intervals by small houses, with trees between them. The village was built against the castle, somewhat in the French manner, but the houses were wretched affairs of mud-daubed reeds on wooden framing: hardly better than hovels. Only a few had more than one story. Smoke was coming up from every chimney, and the men were evidently on their way to work in the fields. They carried crude-looking farm implements and were dressed in coarse homespun with their legs padded and cross-gartered. They were a sorry lot: blank-faced and half starved.
Dax heard footsteps behind him and turned.
A young ma............