Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones

Author:Diana Wynne Jones [Jones, Diana Wynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

It was a chicken. They found themselves out of doors, in a walled space with cobbles in the ground, which seemed to be a sort of farmyard. The evening seemed to have turned much milder and warmer, and this was bringing out a strong smell of manure. There were hens all over the place, running toward a girl of about Howard’s age who was scattering corn for them. One of them had got in the way of the door in its hurry. As Howard shut the door behind him, a man came out of the doorway to the right, leading a horse. When he saw Awful and Howard, he stopped, grinned, and called something to the girl. He had such a thick accent that they could not understand a word. But the girl understood. She looked up and bit her lip in order not to laugh.

“Can I be of help to you?” she asked. She had an accent, too, and her voice wobbled with laughter.

They had a right to laugh! Howard thought indignantly. The girl had a long dress on and a silly little cap sitting on her hair. The man was actually wearing a smock, like a joke yokel. He supposed they were actors, hired for another display like the Saxon one, but he did not see why they should have a joke at his expense. “We—er—we’d like to see Hathaway, please,” he said as politely as he could. It came out a little curt.

“Come with me,” the girl said. She shot a grin at the man and dumped the corn out of her apron in a heap on the cobbles. Leaving the hens to squawk and squabble over it, she led the way to another arched doorway in the opposite wall. She made rather heavy going of it because she had clogs on.

There was a garden beyond the wall, a very well-kept garden made mostly of trees or shrubs trained and clipped around neat paths. It was not surprising it was so neat, Howard thought, as the girl led them through. There were so many people at work on it. Men with shears kept bobbing up from behind hedges to stare at them. Two girls in long skirts came running with rakes to rake a path, and they stared, too. And small boys kept popping up everywhere, giggling. Under a tree that had been trained into a sort of roof, two men were sitting writing with quill pens. One of them was Hathaway’s polite messenger. He recognized them. The dismay which came over his face was almost comic.

“I—I trust your father keeps well?” he said.

“It’s all right,” said Awful. “He isn’t here.”

“God be praised!” said the messenger. He really meant it.

Awful was biting her lip, too, as they came to the house. It ran along one side of the garden, and it was big. It puzzled Howard because, in a way, it was like Dillian’s house, made of red bricks in a thoroughly old-fashioned style. It had

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