Horton Halfpott by Tom Angleberger

Author:Tom Angleberger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2011-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

In Which a Simple Errand Turns Smelly and Scary . . .

M’Lady Luggertuck suddenly decided that she wanted to add leg of lamb to the smorgasbord being prepared for the ball. (She’d had a hankering for lamb lately. The loosening of her corset had done wonders for her appetite.)

Miss Neversly, who had already purchased a wagonload of food for the party, had not bought any lamb legs, so she dispatched Horton to the village to buy one from the butcher.

Old Crotty reluctantly gave him a coin to pay for the lamb leg. The coin was of such a high value that Horton did not even recognize it. It would have been very easy for him to simply take the coin and leave forever. To his family such a coin would seem like a fortune and the Luggertucks would never miss it. (Although M’Lady would eventually miss her lamb leg.)

But we know Horton too well to entertain such a notion, however appealing it may be.

He got the lamb leg all right, but something strange happened as he returned from the village with the nicely wrapped meat. Something never before seen anywhere in those parts.

Pirates were afoot, and Horton was the first to see them.

Pirates? you ask. In a landlocked county in the near-middle of England?

Horton asked himself the same question as chills ran up his spine and fear waded through his stomach.

Of course he’d never seen pirates before, but he’d read about them in Lord Emberly’s books, and the motley group clomping down the road looked just right—long knives, leathery skin, broken noses, filthy clothes, earrings, lice, scabs, nose hair. An unmistakable odor of old fish wafted toward him in the air.

“Hey, boy, you got some meat there?” one called as they drew near.

Horton nodded.

“Hand it over, then,” growled the brigand, a burly, bearded fellow carrying, of all things, an anchor.

“Oh, no, please, sir,” said Horton, desperate. “It’s not mine. I’ve got to take it up to the castle. Please, sir, I’ll get a real beating if I don’t bring it back with me.”

“Hmmm, what do you say, Cap’n Splinterlock?” said the bearded man to a tall, handsome gentleman with an enormous scar on his back. Horton couldn’t see the scar, of course, but it was there all right.

“Don’t worry, lad,” cried the captain in a booming voice more appropriate for use on board a ship during a typhoon or a mutiny. “Servants we all were once upon a time when our teeth were still in our skulls and not littering the seafloor along with Roland’s leg and Harvey’s thumbs.”

Horton noticed a peg-legged man and a thumbless man wincing at this comment.

The captain continued:

“Steal that meat off your master’s table, aye, we might do that, but we’ll not steal it from you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Horton.

Some of the pirates grumbled.

“Cap’n Splinterlock always takes the fun out of being a pirate,” whispered one.

“We’re supposed to take whatever we want! Well, I want a leg-o-lamb tonight!”

“Aye, that would taste a lot better than Cap’n’s sermons about the Pirate’s Code of Honor.

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