A Spy For The Redeemer (Owen Archer Book 7) by Robb Candace

Author:Robb, Candace [Robb, Candace]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781446440735
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

PUZZLES

The old, rickety donkey cart wheezed and rumbled along the track. Magda Digby dozed in the sunlight on the seat beside Matthew the Tinker, smiling to herself each time he reached over to make sure she was not slipping off. It was always a pleasure when a patient still valued her after a particularly painful treatment, and his tooth, for all its rot, had been very stubborn about coming out. Magda snorted awake as Matthew brought the cart to a halt in front of a damaged gatehouse.

‘We have arrived at Freythorpe Hadden,’ said the tinker. ‘They had a terrible fire in the gatehouse. Outlaws set it.’

The sun shone through holes in the roof and lit up a crumbling side. Several men climbed about with hooks, tearing down blackened thatch and sooty walls.

‘Outlaws?’ Magda wondered what they had thought to gain by such destruction. The stone manor house was intact. And the stone and timber stables.

‘Mistress Wilton will be glad to hear they have begun repairs,’ said Matthew.

A man emerged from the shadowy archway of the gatehouse, shaded his eyes to look their way, then turned and ran back towards the stables near the manor house.

Magda was not eager for trouble, but it boded well for Lucie’s property that the approach of strangers had been noted. ‘The borrowed steward set a watch, begins the repairs. Perhaps he is wise.’ Magda wondered at how little Lucie had said about this. Damage to the gatehouse, she had said, and my aunt’s favourite tapestry stolen. Some silver plate, some money. The gatehouse was not so precious to her as the tapestry. But such destruction must have made cold her heart. She did not like that Lucie had not wished to talk of it.

‘I am not easy about being looked on as a dangerous intruder. But it is wise to set a watch,’ said Matthew. ‘The men might return.’

‘In a creaky donkey cart?’

Magda’s barking laugh startled the tinker into laughing also. ‘Outlaws with a herald,’ he muttered, wiping his eyes, then grabbing at his jaw as the pain returned.

‘Magda begs thy pardon. She forgot thy tooth.’

‘A good laugh is worth the pain,’ Matthew said.

He was a wise man to know that. Magda climbed out of the cart, retrieved her pouch from the back. ‘Thou hast been kind.’ She squinted up at the tinker’s swollen cheek. ‘Without the rotted tooth the swelling will ease. Remember to let the brandywine Magda gave thee sit in thy mouth before swallowing it.’

Matthew nodded. ‘God go with you, Riverwoman.’

‘Thou art not selling thy wares at Freythorpe Hadden?’

‘I do not bother folk who have had such troubles.’

‘They must live.’

‘I do not want trouble.’ His eyes were on something behind Magda.

‘Then be off,’ Magda said.

She turned round. A fair-haired man approached, striding with authority. Two others followed close. ‘Harold Galfrey?’ Magda shouted over the noise of Matthew’s cart loudly rumbling behind her.

The leading man nodded as he reached her. He squinted – against the sun, but Magda took him as a man who narrowed his eyes to hide his thoughts.

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