Fate and Fortune by Shirley McKay Page B

offered. ‘For you have eaten nothing for the past twa days. You must be famished. I will heat some broth.’
    She placed the bread upon the board and moved quickly to the fire, where she ladled thick grey slurry from a bowl into a pot. She was small and lithe and nimble; not so old, perhaps, but weathered like the fisher wives. Her eyes were bright and sharp beneath her plaid.
    ‘Faerie magic,’ murmured Hew.
    ‘What was that?’ She turned to stare at him. ‘You have had a wee dunt to the heid,’ she concluded kindly.
    Hew felt exposed and naked in his borrowed shirt. Sensing his discomfort, the gude wife broke into a smile. ‘You’re nothing that I have not seen. Though you may be a gentleman, we’re a’ the same uncled.’
    ‘Madam, where am I?’ he asked her, bewildered.
    ‘Madam? Ah, what dainty manners!’ the gude wife replied. ‘I never was called that before. Tis plain you have forgot your place. Do you ken your name?’
    ‘Aye, for sure, it’s Hew Cullan,’ Hew whispered. ‘The ferry was closed for repair.’
    ‘Is that what he telt ye? The limmar!’ she tutted. ‘Yon Guthrie is a rogue and no mistake. I am Jonet Bell, an’ my man is Sandy Matheson the ferryman. That quent horse of yourn harled you here across the wattir. That’s a brave wee hobin that you have there. My man it was that found ye lying traikit on the rocks.’
    Hew struggled to make sense of this. ‘Is this Queensferrie?’ he hazarded.
    ‘North Ferrie. Aye, ye are back where ye began. Come lad, sit ye down, you’re greener than a herring gill.’
    Hew sat down unsteadily upon his makeshift bed. ‘What happened to Guthrie? Did he drown?’ If the boatman had drowned, then it was because of Dun Scottis. Hew closed his eyes. However construed, that was his fault.
    But Jonet snorted. ‘Drooned? Not he! The devil guards his ain. I heard he fetched up by Inchgarvie, clinging to his wreck, and the souldiers waded in to pull him out. The ferrymen will let him stew awhile afore they fetch him hame. Here now, there’s a cup of pottage will see you right. There’s nothing in your belly but Forth mud.’
    She ladled barley broth into a bowl. It tasted hot and wet, and little more, but Hew drank it gratefully.
    ‘Mistress, I do thank you, and give thanks to God that he lives still. For if my horse – what happened to my horse?’ He felt a sudden rush of grief, for the foolish, faithless friend that had been Dun Scottis, lying at the bottom of the Forth.
    ‘Your horse is well. He landed in less traikit than yersel; though he were fair forfochten, he came nimmill as a kitling,’ Jonet answered cryptically, from which Hew understood, your horse is well .
    ‘He is stabled at the inn at Inverkeithing,’ she went on, ‘where the innkeeper thoct, if ye did not recover, fit to buy him back, he’d earn his keep. He dealt you quite a kick forby, that has left his hoofprint on your hough.’
    ‘That I had remarked upon,’ Hew grimaced.
    ‘According to my man, yon would ha broke your leg, but for they stuffit brekis.’
    ‘I don’t suppose you have the trunk hose still?’ he ventured shyly.
    Jonet shook her head. ‘Brekis like that were no built for the wattir. And when your brave horse harled you up upon the rocks, your clothes were cut to shreds. Be thankful that they served their turn, and saved you from a deeper hurt. What was left was only fit for scraps.’
    And all the ferry lasses, realised Hew, were wearing little strips of him, as laces on their gowns and ribbons in their hair. No doubt his boots and saddle bag had found another home. He had been picked over, and properly stripped, before Jonet and her man had taken pity on him, and had brought him in. Or else, they had merely come late, to all that was left.
    But Jonet cut through these thoughts, with a kindness that made him ashamed, handing him a pair of woollen breeks. ‘These will fit. They were my son’s. And you are very like him in your look. That is his