Foster found the swan’s flesh tough and unpleasantly fishy-tasting, but Squire Heron seemed so proud to serve the dish, and Sir Francis made so much of being served it, that
he forced himself to give the appearance of enjoying the portion allotted to him, although when he saw his chance he surreptitiously slipped most of it under the table to the waiting boarhounds. But he did yeoman work on the well-larded venison, rich goose, and highly spiced pasties of chicken, veal, and mutton, washing them down with long drafts of Rhenish wine and Heron’s fine brown ale.
The meal finally done, Squire John courteously but firmly pressed Webster and Foster for their accounts of the recent campaigns. True, he had had Sir Francis’ recountal on the previous evening, but never a Borderer born, English or Scots, who was not warrior bred, and Foster noted that even the ladies at the high table and the women at the low seemed to both understand and relish the necessarily sanguineous recitals of crashing charges and merciless pursuits.
Once the three ladies—Heron’s second wife, Emma (at least thirty years younger than her lord, Foster figured, but seemingly quite happy, nonetheless), her unmarried younger sister, Anne Taylor, and the girls’ widowed aunt, Mary Noble —had bade their goodnights and retired abovestairs, the women and common servants quickly departed to their straw-tick beds or their night duties, leaving the gentlemen and the soldiers to get down to the serious drinking.
Although their host and Sir Francis commenced to pour down quantities of brandies and raw Scots spirits, Webster continued on ale only and Foster confined himself to the pale wine. He had never really cared much for brandy and had, during the past months, made the sad discovery that the only thing the Scots uisgebeatha shared in common with the smooth Scotch whiskies of his own world was their place of origin. But he did as well by the wine as he had by the food, putting down at least three pints of it before Dan Smith rose to sing.
A great bear of a man, big as Buddy Webster, which made him huge indeed as compared to the average man of this time, Smith was the master smith of Heron Hall, and blessed with a fine, deep bass singing voice, plus a good memory and the gift to improvisation.
His first few selections were ballads dealing with incidents of the bloody warfare that had seesawed back and forth across the English-Scots border for centuries. Foster knew the antiquity of some of them, as he had heard troopers sing them many times. Then, with a twinkle in his brown eyes, the smith sang a ditty that had most of his listeners alternately grinning broadly or gasping with laughter. It was a Scots song delivered in a broad brogue and interspersed with much Gaelic as well as idioms with which Foster was not familiar, but what little he did comprehend was of a degree of bawd-iness to toast the ears of a camp whore.
When the song was done and the listeners had given over pounding the tables and gasping with laughter, the smith made a suggestion, whereupon the men-at-arms commenced to bellow for some songs from the high table. John Heron arose to oblige them and, standing at his place and tapping out his rhythm on the table with the hilt of his knife, sang the tale of a young girl who wed the richest man in the town to find only too late that he totally lacked some essential physiological appendages.
Sir Francis followed with the first vaguely familiar song Foster had heard in this time. In that clear tenor that had risen above the din of so many battles, the white haired knight sang some twenty verses:
Then Bob, he were ca’ed tae answer the Session, An’ they a cried, Mon, ye maun mek a confession. Bui braw Bob ne’er said him a word ava’, Save, The win’ blew the lassie’s plaidie awa’.”
And then all the men bawled out the chorus:
“Her plaidie’s awa’, tis awa’ wi’ the win’, Her plaidie’s awa’ an’ it cannae be foun’. Och, wha’ wi’ the auld uns say ava’ She cannae say the win’ blew her plaidie awa’.”