Flora laughed, and Lorrie felt herself smiling despite her worry.
‘Hard by Relling,’ Lorrie agreed. ‘We’re his kin, and we’ve a message he’ll want to hear, family matters. He would have passed through day before yesterday, riding—on a good grey gelding. A young man, just seventeen, but man-tall and strongly-built, hair the shade of ripe barley and blue eyes, and a yew bow over his shoulder.’
‘Ah!’ the woodcutter said, rubbing his back again and stretching with both hands pressed to it. ‘Yes, I do recall; not seeing him myself, you understand, but Bessa—Bessa at the Holly Bush, just up the high road and off on Willow Creek Lane—mentioned him. No mistaking, from your telling of his looks. Fair mooning over him, she was!’
‘That’s my Bram!’ Lorrie said.
‘Ah, kin of yours, this Bram, lass?’ the woodcutter teased. ‘Lucky man, to have such sisters!’
‘Kin by marriage soon, like enough,’ she said. ‘We’ll ask at the inn, then.’
The man frowned. ‘Well, I’d not do you an ill turn, so be careful,’ he said. ‘There are some rough sorts stop there.’
‘Drovers? Badgers?’ she said. Those who took stock on the road for sale did have a bad reputation—a man didn’t feel as restrained outside his own neighbourhood, in a place where he wouldn’t be back. Drovers and guards often caused more trouble than the money they brought justified.
‘Soldiers, down from the manor,’ the woodcutter said, and spat. ‘I’ll not say anything ill of the lord baron, you understand—’
Not wanting a whipping or the stocks or your ears cropped, Lorrie thought, nodding.
‘—but some of the guardsmen he’s hired these last years, they’re right cut-throat, skirt-lifting bastards, and times they’ve lifted skirts will-she, nil-she.’ He winked and put his finger alongside his nose, as if making a locally recognized gesture. ‘Outsiders. Foreigners. No offence,’ he went on.
‘None taken,’ Lorrie said mildly—everyone back home thought of anyone from more than a day’s walk as foreign and somewhat suspicious, too.
‘Maybe your kinsman was thinking of taking service with the Baron?’ the woodcutter said. ‘Manor’s only a brace of miles further on. It would do the neighbourhood good to have some better-mannered boys wearing the Baron’s livery.’
Lorrie shook her head. ‘Bram’s a farmer’s son, and badgers for caravan-masters now and then,’ she said. ‘Thanks for your time and help, gaffer.’
‘No trouble, talking to a pretty girl on a fine spring day. Summat to talk about, this next season!’
Lorrie nodded thanks and they drove on, after she made sure of the directions twice; she knew how hard it could be to give good ones, when you knew your district like your own house and couldn’t imagine someone who didn’t.
‘We’re close,’ she said to Flora. ‘I can . . . feel Rip.’ She frowned; the sense wasn’t really very directional. ‘Back in Land’s End, I could say “northward, and a bit east” but here all I can say is “close”.’
‘And where Rip is, Bram will be, and Jimmy,’ Flora said. ‘And I know where we’ll be, if we want to find out anything.’
Lorrie looked at her, and Flora gave a wry smile, seeming older than her age; she often did, to Lorrie’s way of thinking, like a woman grown. ‘Where?’
‘At the tavern. Where men drink, they talk.’ With a flick of her wrists, Flora moved the gelding to a slightly faster pace, anxious to get to the tavern.
SEVENTEEN - Plan
Jimmy fidgeted.
‘Why aren’t we in there?’ Jimmy asked.
Looking at Baron Bernarr’s mansion was boring; profoundly, deeply boring even to someone as patient and used to waiting as a thief. The big square building just sat there, amid its frowzy neglected gardens, silent save for an occasional voice or rider coming down the lane from the main road, and the eternal beat of the surf on the cliffs half a mile away. Even the vines growing up the grey granite sides seemed to have died of tedium; for they were brown and sere even though spring was well along.
An occasional glitter of steel showed at the big iron-strapped doors, as a sentry paced. That was it. Jarvis Coe shrugged. ‘Three reasons,’ he said, holding up a hand and bending down fingers. ‘First, what’s loose in there makes anyone reluctant to go in; so we’ve been finding reasons not to.’
He looked serious; Jimmy glanced over from behind the tree that sheltered him and stared at Coe in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘You mean we’re delaying and making excuses and you know it?’ he burst out.
‘Yes.’ Jarvis held up a hand. ‘It’s not procrastination. It’s magic. Sometimes you can’t tell the difference.’