The washing trough split when a goat landed in it.
It was nobody’s best goat. Ysabet could tell that from the words the man chasing it used. The animal struggled out through the fallen side, knocked a bucket over and fled toward the cooper’s shed with a strip of wet wood hanging from one horn.
The man looked at the trough. He looked at Ysabet.
“Not mine,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to say it was.”
“Good.”
“Goat’s not mine either.”
They put the two halves where the escaping water would keep their feet damp. The smaller trough survived. Ysabet carried over the shallow pans from under the washing bench and set them beyond it. Larger animals might step in them, but smaller ones could drink without climbing a wooden wall.
By then smoke had come low through the lane. It did not stay. Each gust brought a gray sheet, and each lull let Ysabet see the cooper’s stacked hoops again. Somewhere beyond those hoops men were digging a break through the dry grass. The shovel strokes came in fits beneath the bell.
Mara had shut the passage into the bathhouse. Anyone wanting the street could use the yard gate, she said, and they could knock if they had a compelling reason to fill her house with voles.
There were already two inside.
“We won’t mention them,” Ysabet told Chaska when she came back.
“We should charge them.”
Chaska’s hair was tied beneath a wet cloth. She had written three short messages on scraps torn from the back of an old delivery notice. Two she had carried to people who were meant to send others onward. The third remained in her hand.
“The reed cutters can’t get a cart past the south turn,” she said. “Somebody left a wheel under a load and went to fetch help. I’ve fetched the help. Now I have to fetch the somebody.”
“Drink first.”
Chaska drank standing up. Lilt rested in the lee of the bathhouse, one broad fin folded over the other. When Chaska touched her harness the sandray lifted her head, tasted the air with a small movement of her jaw and settled back down.
“All right,” Chaska said. She took the bag instead. “Feet today.”
Ysabet brought Lilt clean water. The sandray watched her without moving until she stepped away. Then she drank.
At the laundry shelter Pip was trying to lift two things at once.
The original mouse clung to the rim of its fold. Below it, a soaked shrew had seized one of Pip’s forefeet with teeth much too small to do useful harm. Pip lifted the foot. The shrew came with it, legs paddling, and the mouse disappeared back into the warmth.
Ysabet knelt beside them.
“Very fierce,” she told the shrew.
Pip lowered its foot. The shrew kept biting. It had a dark smear along its flank which proved, when Ysabet wiped it with a corner of wet cloth, to be soot rather than blood. She tipped a hollow piece of bark beside it. The animal released Pip to rush into the hollow, where it turned at once to face the opening.
Pip put its jaw down near the bark.
The shrew snapped at it.
“That’s a room with the door shut,” Ysabet said, and moved the bark beside the shallow water dish.
Pip watched her hand. Then it pushed its narrow foot under the bark and tipped the shrew out.
She caught the bark before it rolled over the animal.
“No. Leave that one.”
The shrew ran beneath a hurdle. Pip started after it, then stopped where the path narrowed. Its forefoot lifted, feeling along empty air. It put the foot down again.
Ysabet did not know whether it had understood her or merely lost sight of its quarry. She put the bark down with an opening left clear.
A series of squeaks came from the lane.
Three marsh mice had crowded into the overturned end of a broken bucket. Their fur lay wet and flat against them. One was shivering so hard that its tail tapped the wood. Ysabet wrapped the bucket in a cloth to give them something to hold and brought them to the sheltered side of the yard.
Pip followed. Ysabet fetched the shallow basket lid she had used before the original mouse could climb out of it and lined it afresh.
There was room for the smallest beside the original mouse. Pip lowered its body, and the creature stumbled into the pouch as if into a hollow beneath a root. Another tried after it, slipped, and caught at the lining with its forefeet. Pip lifted a leg beneath its hindquarters.
Ysabet reached for the second mouse, intending to put it in the basket instead. Pip turned away so abruptly that both mice vanished into the fold.
She stopped reaching.
Its chest looked crowded. The rim stretched around three small bodies, and the loose hide behind the chamber lay drawn into long shallow creases.
The third newcomer remained in the bucket, peering over the edge.
Pip came back for it.
There was no space. The original mouse’s nose appeared, then another nose beside it. One of Pip’s little outer feet steadied the rim while its jaw hovered above the waiting animal.
Ysabet warmed a brick at the small cooking fire, wrapped it thickly so nothing could touch the hot clay, and put it beneath the basket’s lining. She set the basket close enough for Pip to examine and added a scrap of cloth that smelled of its shelter.
“Here.”
Pip tried to draw the third mouse toward itself.
The mouse bit its toe and jumped into the basket.
For a moment neither Ysabet nor Pip moved. Then the creature lowered its body alongside the basket, holding its chest against the woven rim.
“That will do,” Ysabet said.
She got up to replace the water.
Something scrabbled behind the drain.
A young marsh hedgehog had wedged itself between the wall and the stem of an old reed. When Ysabet approached it curled tighter, its short spines scraping the brick. One rear leg remained caught in the forked stem. Moving either way pulled the fork with it.
She fetched her thick glove. Pip was closer.
It advanced sideways, keeping the crowded pouch off the ground. A narrow foot touched the stem. Another braced beneath it. The hedgehog curled so tightly that its nose vanished, but its trapped leg remained stretched behind.
Ysabet held the broken reed steady in her gloved hand.
“Wait.”
Pip pulled. The hedgehog jerked. Ysabet lowered the reed, taking the tension off the little leg. Pip’s toes opened, touched the fork again, and spread it this time instead of tugging.
The foot came free.
She lifted the reed away. Pip put its jaw near the hedgehog, which offered a compact ball of spines in reply.
“Leave that one too.”
Pip nudged the ball. Its spines rattled, and it rolled an unwilling half-turn toward the wall.
Ysabet slid a broken pan in front of Pip’s feet and put the reed on the rubbish heap. The hedgehog stayed curled until she had gone to fill the water again. When she looked back, it had disappeared through the drain.
The smoke thickened after that. Mara and the neighbor moved the smaller trough farther along the lane. A man with his sleeve bound around his mouth came through to say they had cut the cart free and the fire crew needed every loose board removed from the corner. Ysabet helped drag the fallen gate flat against the wall so a loaded handcart could pass.
A spark landed in the wet carpet. It hissed, leaving a black spot no larger than a flea.
Mara poured another bucket over it and said a word that seemed excessive for the size of the damage.
Ysabet moved the basket back beneath the shelf as the gusts came closer together. Pip followed and crouched beside it, with three mice huddled inside its chest and the fourth pressed against the warm cloth in the basket.
The old shrew had returned to the bark hollow. It was eating something with many legs.
Ysabet let it be.
Toward late afternoon Chaska came back carrying a sack stretched between both hands.
“It’s alive,” she said immediately.
Ysabet cleared the bench.
The thorn hare lay on its side inside the opened sack. Half the spines along its back had been burned to short black points. Its nose was wet, its eyes open. When it drew breath the sound seemed to catch deep in its chest.
Chaska had wrapped the worst of the burn in a damp fold of cloth. She kept her hand under the hare until Ysabet slid a flat board beneath it.
“Beyond the ditch,” Chaska said. “It was still trying to run.”
Pip’s eye appeared below the shelf.
“Bring the clean water,” Ysabet said.