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 man with blond short hair and a Norman nose had come out of the doorway. He looked at Dax with amused curiosity, and squatted down, putting out a hand. At this proximity his eyes showed bloodshot and there was a beery smell. He said something that Dax could not understand—it sounded vaguely like a kind of French, but Dax had not studied medieval Norman. Still, it had a kindly sound. Dax rubbed against the hand. This man, at least, did not share the Earl's diagnosis. What was his position in the Earl's household? Not his son—he looked too unlike him. Would he be his clerk? He had a clerkly look—what is it in a face that makes it seem scholarly? And his hands were more fit for holding a pen than a mattock or a sword.
Well, give it another try.
Dax wished he could make an ingratiating sound, and found he was purring. He looked around for something he could use as a signal; mewing and tapping seemed to be misunderstood. A few yards away the cobblestones gave place to dirt, and he started towards it. It might do for a blackboard. He looked back, but the clerk had not moved.
Dax wondered how a cat might beckon, lacking a forefinger. He waited until he caught the young man's eye, and tried to beckon with his head but it had no results. He continued on to the patch of dirt and scratched a triangle, and to his relief the clerk got up and came to him. When he was standing over him, Dax scratched two words in Latin: homo sum, and looked up.
The clerk was staring with his mouth open.