By These Ten Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

the shredded tunic. “He’ll not wear this again, so we’ve no need to waste salt drawing the stain. Cold water will take out most of it. Maddie, do you take this to the stream and wash it well. We’ll use it for more bandages. He’ll be needing them, I’m afraid.”
    Going out with the tunic, Maddie stumbled over something and spied the bannock spade lying at her feet. She picked it up and hefted it, remembering the feel of it in her hand. A smear marred the tip of the iron, and Maddie rubbed it. Nothing. She licked her finger and rubbed again. There was blood on her finger now.
    â€œBlack Ewan, Dad,” she called, coming over to the men, and she showed them the bannock spade. She told them what had happened while they passed the tool from hand to hand.
    â€œIt came around from the back of the house,” Black Ewan said. “Around which way?”
    â€œPast the storeroom,” she answered.
    â€œAgainst the sun,” observed Little Ian, his sharp fox’s face sharper with excitement. “The wrong direction. It’s an evil spirit.”
    â€œThat’s why the dogs aren’t picking up a scent,” said Gillies, one of Black Ewan’s farmhands. “They keep running around in circles. They can’t find anything at all.”
    â€œBut what about the blood?” asked Maddie’s father. “Spirits don’t bleed.”
    â€œIt must be the Water Horse,” suggested Little Ian, “and she drove it away with the holy metal.”
    â€œThe Water Horse here among our houses!” exclaimed the smith. “It’ll drag us all down into the loch.”
    The townspeople couldn’t do much to defend themselves against the Water Horse. Strong doors they didn’t have, nor city walls with gates. But they pulled the big, cumbersome swords and battle-axes out of the storerooms and made sure they had an edge, and Father Mac went from house to house, blessing the hearths with holy water. At noon the priest led a solemn procession around the perimeter of the town, and then the people went back to work on the harvest, feeling that they had done what they could. As they worked, they mused over the disquieting event. The Water Horse didn’t often come among human dwellings. Some evil was drawing it close.
    Maddie ran errands to the fields all afternoon. Off and on, as she hurried by her house, she stopped inside the doorway to look at the unconscious wood-carver. She wanted him to open his eyes and tell her what had happened, but he didn’t move all day.
    Walking back bone-tired in the evening, she saw her pretty cousin Bess sitting on top of the wall of her uncle’s house. Bess was the daughter of Colin the Smith, and she and Maddie were the same age, but whereas Maddie was her parents’ only child, Bess was the oldest of seven.
    The thatch on the smith’s house was old, and green weeds grew abundantly over it. The family’s two milking sheep were grazing on the roof, with a string tied to a back leg of each so they couldn’t jump away in a panic and tumble to the ground. The string was tied to Bess’s belt, leaving her hands free to spin thread.
    Bess’s distaff was a thick wooden rod a couple of feet long, covered with loosely wrapped wool fibers. She held the distaff tucked under one arm, pulling fibers from it into a long strand. The other end of the strand was attached to a short stick weighted with a stone ring, a spindle. Bess dropped this spindle, twirling it, and it twisted the fibers into a thread. Then she wound the thread around the little spindle and pulled more wool loose from the distaff, keeping the chain of fibers from one to the other even, so that the thread would not break.
    â€œDaddy says it’s a shame that the Water Horse attacked that poor carver boy,” said Bess. “Daddy says he’s just a harmless halfwit.”
    Maddie clambered up to sit beside her cousin on the low