“What do you do exactly?” he asked, keen to keep her talking.
She leaned forward so far that Bill wondered whether a nose could be considered an offensive weapon.
“Well, my bread and butter work is munitions consultancy but...” she looked at him, as if making a judgement, “I do a sideline in firebombing and castle undermining, and I’m not bad with a sword, so a little courier work comes my way from time to time. Blowing things up, though, that’s my passion. How about you?”
The girl watched him expectantly.
“I make charcoal,” he said, dropping his gaze and sensing the Opportunity evaporating.
There was a momentary pause before she said: “Oh. Right, well someone has to make the raw materials, I suppose.”
“Look, I’ll be honest, I only came over here because I saw you were a girl,” he said, in desperation.
She nodded. “I know. And I am a girl.”
“You’re a girl who blows things up.”
“And?”
Bill sighed. “And nothing, really. You’re just not what I expected.”
The girl chuckled. “Who did you expect to find, sitting on her own in a dark corner of a pub called ‘The Hanged Man’? Little Bo Peep?”
“Can we just start again?” asked Bill, feeling the will to carry on draining away. “My name’s Bill Strike, I’m a charcoal burner from Upton Moredit and I’m travelling to Upper Bottom in Fitzmichael County. Can I buy you a drink?”
“That would have been a much more effective opening line. Remember that for next time,” she said, “and yes, I’ll have a drink, but I wouldn’t touch the beer if I were you. Let’s have some wine - they don’t make it here so it’s pretty palatable.”
Bill nodded.
“My name’s Brianna and I do odd jobs,” the girl said, holding out her hand.
“You’re not an explosives expert?” asked Bill, now completely at sea.
She shook her head. “No, I’m hired to carry out tasks that require my particular talents. As it happens, I’m on a mission right now - I was told to find William Strike.”
Bill jumped up, swayed, and made to leave.
“Oh, sit down,” said the girl, “I mean you no harm. I was hired by Mother Hemlock to find and escort you to her place in Upper Bottom. She told me to tell you that she knows about the copper object you’re carrying and that you’ve been told to seek her out. Consider me your seeker.”
Bill only realised that his mouth was wide open when he felt the drool running down his cheek.
“I’ll get the drinks,” Brianna said, guiding Bill back into his seat, “you wait here.”
Bill used the intervening moments to pull himself together. If he believed her, then this was very fortunate, and it made his chances of success much higher. She talked like a seasoned adventurer and, above all else, he wouldn’t be travelling alone. Suddenly, the prospect of the next week on the road had transformed from being a dreadful torment to be endured like a true hero into a jaunt with an attractive guide he’d get plenty of Opportunity to impress. Or not. In general, the longer Bill spent in the company of girls, the less impressed they were. He sighed as sleep overtook him and his head fell gently onto his arms as they rested on the table.
Hidden in the holly bushes beside the road north out of Flipperty-Gibbet, he watched and waited. Holly being what it is, and therefore a rather bad choice for concealment, he remained motionless until a sudden cramp forced him to explode out of the verge and tumble onto the cobbles, landing in a satisfyingly fibrous puddle. Scanning the road in both directions, he was relieved to see he’d attracted no attention, so he picked himself up, moved a few yards along and found a more friendly-looking bush to occupy for the night.
When Bill awoke, he was in bed. At first, this seemed perfectly natural but then, as painful memories from the previous night returned, he panicked, sat up, then collapsed onto the pillow again.
Okay. Problem 1, I fell asleep on a table downstairs, and I woke up in bed, he thought, before opening his eyes again and scanning the room from a horizontal vantage point. It was still dark inside, and he could see only by the light of the dying fire. And Problem 2, the bed isn’t in my room.
“You’re awake then,” said a female voice from a chair in the shadows beside the bed.
Bill raised himself gingerly onto his elbows and peered into the gloom. Yep, it was her. To his further horror, he could see that the other side of the bed had clearly been occupied.
“Did we sleep together?” he squeaked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Brianna replied. “Now, you have to get up. I was just about to wake you.”
Bill’s mind was still occupying a single track. “But what happened, you know, in the night?”
“You snored. Now get up,” she said.
Bill turned to look at the shuttered window. Faint chinks of pre-dawn light could be seen through the cracked woodwork.
“What time is it? I could do with a bit of a lie-in, to be honest. I think there was something wrong with that beer.”
He collapsed back onto the hard pillow and shut his eyes, rubbing his temples to dislodge the vice gripping his head.
“It’s just after dawn,” said Brianna to the metallic accompaniment of buckles being fastened, “and we can’t hang around here. Questions were being asked about you in the bar last night - it doesn’t look as though I’m the only one looking for you and the others don’t have your best interests at heart like I do.”
This woke Bill up. “What? I thought this journey was a secret?”
“It seems not,” Brianna said, as she strode over to the windows and carefully pulled back one of the shutters, so she could peer into the marketplace.
Bill fell out of bed and began scrambling on the floor.
“What are you doing?” demanded Brianna. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
“Where’s the jug? What have you done with it?” cried Bill, searching now under the bed.
He could hear Brianna’s footsteps, and then the coal scuttle settled onto the floor next to him. “Here. I put it by the bed last night. You’ll find your magic scroll in there also, if you care to check.”
Bill pulled his head out of the bed and, rather sheepishly, pulled the scroll out of the scuttle. It looked like the real thing. It was the real thing.
“Sorry,” he said, “I should have trusted you.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” she replied, peevishly. “You’ll learn soon enough now that you’re the big adventurer in the wide world that trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. And, judging by what that scroll says, you need to be more careful than you’ve managed so far.”
“You’ve read it?” Bill exploded.
Brianna nodded. “Of course. I said you were right not to trust me. But then, if I really had nefarious intent, I could easily have bumped you off in the night and slipped away with the precious, ahem, coal scuttle before anyone found out. So, you can trust me, in all the important respects but that doesn’t mean I’ll always do what you want. If you think that’s how people work, you’ve got a lot to learn.”
Bill settled back onto the floor, his back against the bed.
“What a nightmare,” he moaned, “I don’t think I’m cut out to be an adventurer.”
“Neither do I,” said Brianna, “but, for now, we need to get out of here before whoever’s asking about you comes looking.”
She pulled her leather coat over her shoulders, lifted the pillow on her side of the bed and slid the dagger she found there into its place at her belt, then headed for the door. Looking over her shoulder at the gradually ascending Bill, she said: “Let’s go.”
Sebastian de Grey, heir to the famously non-existent de Grey fortune, sucked his gums and spat out a gob of blood.
“You won’t get away with this,” he said, quoting from the Bafer Book of Torture Clichés. “When my father hears how you’ve treated me…”
“He’ll congratulate me for saving him the trouble of
putting you straight,” said Chortley. “If he’s got any sense, that is. Otherwise, my father will be most displeased and, as we both know, my dad’s tougher than your dad.”
De Grey looked up into Chortley Fitzmichael’s merciless gaze and decided to change tack. If his hands had been free, he’d have adopted a begging posture but, as they were uncomfortably leashed to the chair he was tied to, he settled for what he hoped was an appealing shrug. “Look, Chortley…”
“That’s Master Fitzmichael to you, scumbag.”
“Indeed, Master Fitzmichael. You told me you’d been asked by your father to deliver a message to me and, I must say, you’ve done that exceptionally effectively,” De Grey simpered, swallowing more blood and trying to make his swollen right eye focus properly.
Chortley nodded. “Well, thank you, Sebastian. I like to think I perform my duties efficiently.”
“So, may I ask what further you require from me before I might be allowed to go on my way? We nobles, you know, we don’t generally treat each other like this, we save that for the peasants.”
Pulling up another chair, Chortley sat down to face his prisoner. He was enjoying this. The derelict farmhouse he’d found had been the perfect location to bring De Grey’s unconscious body once he’d collected it from his agent. Perfect because it was rarely visited and because it was where the stupid fool had brought the girl and committed the act for which he’d refused to pay the traditional price. Chortley had enjoyed setting the scene for De Grey as he sat, sleeping off the potion, in a chair placed right in the centre of the room. Ever the perfectionist, Chortley had even sat in the chair before dragging De Grey’s body into place so he could work out the ideal setup as the errant noble came to his limited senses again.
And it had been simply delightful. It was in the depths of the night that De Grey began to revive and look about. A single candle had been placed on a chair in front of him, but he’d have made out nothing else in the surrounding blackness. The panic on his face as he fully awoke in a wash of adrenalin! His mouth had been bound, but he still managed to let out a muffled shout of terror. And then Chortley has stepped into the light, to stand beside the chair and there was a moment of relieved recognition before De Grey’s brain caught up with his eyes and the colour drained completely from his face.
After that, it had merely been a matter of teaching the idiot a lesson. Chortley had surprised himself by employing minimal physical violence, just enough to reinforce the pertinent points, without permanently rearranging De Grey’s handsome features. If he’d not been under strict instructions in that regard, however, Chortley would have certainly flattened the nose and removed a few teeth since it was his looks, as well as his noble manner, that De Grey used to such effect with the peasant girls.
He wasn’t looking quite so dashing now in the growing light, with a thick lip, a few scrapes and a black eye, but the damage wasn’t permanent. And, in truth, his task was now completed, and he should have let De Grey go but it was too good an opportunity to miss, he wanted more.
“I’d like to release you, Sebastian, but I can’t help feeling that you’re withholding something from me, and that hardly seems befitting such good friends.”
This was a punt in the dark but Chortley’s considerable gut told him there was something useful he could get out of this fool.
De Grey shook his head, spraying sweat into the chill air.
“I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never done you any harm, the De Greys and the Fitzmichaels have always been on good terms,” he said, in desperation. “After all, my father led the hunt for your mother when she disappeared, he was the last man to see her.”
De Grey looked up, seemingly uncertain whether he should have said that.
Chortley was astonished. “What? He saw my mother? Why wasn’t I told?”
Shaking and pale, De Grey looked into the icy blue eyes of Chortley Fitzmichael. “You would have been a baby at the time but, as for why your father didn’t tell you later, I can’t say, of course.”
“So, you tell me!” Chortley said, bringing his dagger to rest on the chin of his prisoner. “Tell me the whole story.”
Chapter 6
It was dark in the bedroom of Gramma Tickle and the old woman was snoring as the sun began to rise outside. Her teeth sat in a glass beside the bed, the water shimmering with each rasping out-breath. Every now and again, she’d let out a particularly delicious snore, and the window would rattle but, aside from this cacophony, the little cottage was silent. Not that noise made much of an impression on Gramma as she was deaf and not just selectively.
Which made it all the more surprising that she heard the tiny “plink” of glass being smashed downstairs. Sitting bolt upright, she called into the darkness, “Ooz-air?”
There was no reply that she could hear so she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stepped into her slippers. “If it’s those bloody kids, there’ll be hells to pay.” And there would. Gramma Tickle was tiny, barely the size of the average 12-year-old, but she was feared by every child in a five-mile radius. This wasn’t only because she could backhand a fully-grown farm worker without fear of reprisals, it was also because she was fast - quicker than any child and most adults. Kids had learned, mainly through rumour and folk memory, that those who cheeked Gramma had better have a head start and plenty of stamina.
Now, however, she moved slowly and silently as her initial annoyance gave way to a creeping sense of dread. Badger the dog lifted his head from the bed-covers and opened his mouth as if to bark but was silenced by a look of command from the old woman. Badger was a patient soul, which made them good company for each other, so he simply dropped his head again and pretended to go back to sleep.
Gramma picked up the poker from the fireplace and crept to the bedroom door before nudging it open and peering through the crack. No lights, no signs of movement. And yet, she knew she’d heard, or sensed, something. Not a woman accustomed to self-doubt or fear, Gramma was nervous, and she edged her way onto the landing and down the stairs.
In a flash, she understood what had happened and, abandoning all caution, she ran to the little sitting room at the front of the house. The window was open, and a chair had been placed beneath it to help the intruder exit. But that could wait - for now, she headed quickly to the sideboard and pulled open the drawer.
There lay the ornate, old-fashioned, copper-backed clock, surrounded by shards of glass where something hard had shattered it.
“Oh, bugger,” said Gramma.
She jumped as there was a pull at her leg, then relaxed as she saw it was Badger. The dog, once he had her attention, padded over to the chair by the window, under which sat a shoe.
“Well done, cock,” she said, “d’you reckon you can follow the trail? We can’t do nothin’ about the mirror, but we can catch everoo broke it.”
Badger nodded sagely and looked the old woman up and down.
“Ah,” said Gramma, before heading upstairs and magically reappearing, seemingly seconds later, dressed in brown smock and wellies with an offensive weapon disguised as a walking stick in her hand. She lifted a heavy coat from a hook, swung it over her shoulders and topped it off with a pink knitted woollen hat - up here in the Butterlins Mountains winter came early, and she could feel the nip coming in through the open window.
“Let’s get ‘im,” she said before climbing nimbly onto the chair and clambering through the window. Badger, meanwhile, went to the front door, flicked the latch and opened it, joining the old woman as she landed nimbly in the flower bed outside the window. “Which way, boy?”
Badger sniffed the air. He was no bloodhound (he was, in fact, a small, wiry black terrier of questionable parentage) so this was hardly in his normal range of duties which more typically involved sleeping, chasing cats and failing to catch vermin. However, the shoe stank and the man belonging to it (and it was a man, there was no doubt of that) had left a slightly more diffuse but still unmistakable trail that even he could hardly fail
to pick up. With a dramatic flourish, Badger pretended to have just detected the troublesome trail and headed off across the garden in the direction of the neighbouring wood with Gramma trotting along after him.
Only a few minutes later, Badger pulled up short as his quarry appeared to have taken an abrupt right turn and, judging by the almost overwhelming stench, was now hiding in the bushes. Gramma looked down at him, puzzled, as Badger raised his eyebrows in the direction the stink was coming from without looking that way directly. Sadly, such subtlety was wasted on the old woman and, in the end, he was forced to point his snout in the offending direction.
“Bloody hell,” said Gramma as even her human senses finally woke up to the sheer magnitude of the miasma. She stopped on the outer edge of the bush and poked her stick into it. “Get your smelly arse out here, Stinky Willy Clitheroe.”
There was a very definite absence of movement within the shrub.
“You’re only making matters worse for yourself,” said Gramma.
Badger, for his part, thought it hardly possible for local man of the road Willy Clitheroe to dig his hole any deeper, whatever he did.
Time passed. Gramma and Badger looked at each other, conducting a silent duel to determine who would go in after him. Badger won by playing stupid and so Gramma, sighing, stepped into the bush, shoving her stick in ahead of her. There was a snort, another poke, and Stinky Willy emerged on his knees, clutching a bottle of Gramma’s favourite black-brewed beer. Badger corrected himself - Willy had indeed managed to make his situation worse.
“Is that my stocky you’ve got there?” demanded Gramma.
If anything, the stench intensified as Stinky Willy Clitheroe, a man four times the size of the little old woman, shook from greasy head to smelly feet. He gingerly held out the bottle.
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