I’ll make the money up to Bram! she thought. I’d better get the best deal I can.
The saddler was sitting in his open-sided booth, packing his tools before shutting down for the day. He looked up as she swung down from the saddle, a man in his thirties in breeches and a sleeveless jerkin, his arms ropy with muscle and his hands big and battered, scarred by awl and knife and strong waxed thread. His eyes were green, and shrewd. ‘Can I help you, lad?’ he said.
She hesitated. It never occurred to her that wearing Bram’s clothing, with her hair tied up under a hat, she looked like a boy. For a brief moment she considered that it would prove an advantage, for a young man would be far freer to move around than a farm girl would. Thought what would her mother think? That brought a thought of her mother, and she forced herself to answer before tears came: ‘I’m looking to sell the horse,’ she said.
‘Come to town to make your fortune, eh?’ the saddler said, sizing up the animal and the bridle. ‘Well, that horse is past mark of mouth, and the bridle’s no younger. Let’s see them both.’
A few minutes later, the saddler sat back on his bench with a grimace. ‘Five silvers for the lot, bridle, pad and girth, and no more,’ he said. ‘And I’m being generous, at that.’
‘It’s fair,’ Lorrie said virtuously. Country-folk aren’t easy marks, whatever a city man might say, she added to herself.
‘I’ll give you twenty-five for the horse,’ the saddler said. ‘That’s a gift, mind you, a gift.’
Lorrie hesitated. The price was fair, but she didn’t like the look of the stock behind the shop. I don’t think he feeds them well enough, she thought.
There were men who’d buy horses cheap, work them to death and buy more; a fool’s bargain, she thought, but perhaps worth while in a city, where fodder had to be cash-bought and was expensive. What she couldn’t bear was the thought of Horace used so, wondering in bewilderment why he’d been abandoned.
‘It’s the first time in a long year that Swidin Betton’s made a gift to anyone, kin, friend or stranger,’ a voice said.
The man leaning over the fence was about the saddler’s age, with curly reddish hair and a friendly smile.
‘I’ll take him off your hands, lad,’ he said. ‘And I’ll match the price. He’s a good horse, looks to me a draught beast mostly, though, eh?’
And your horses don’t look underfed, she thought. The saddler shrugged and handed over the price for the bridle and pad; Lorrie led Horace to the stock-dealer’s pen. There were some stables off to one side, and she checked them: the straw looked to have been changed fairly recently, and the hooves of the beasts there were in good shape and kept clean, none cracked, the shoes not worn too thin.
‘He’s like an old friend,’ she said, handing over Horace’s rein. ‘I wasn’t that old myself when my father brought him home.’ She scratched Horace under his chin and the old gelding’s eyes half closed with pleasure.
‘There’s always someone looking for a gentle, hard-working creature like this one,’ the trader said. ‘He’s no colt, but he’s got years left, no doubt. Don’t you worry, he’ll find a home.’
‘He can plough the straightest furrow you ever saw,’ Lorrie said stoutly.
The trader chuckled. ‘Lad, you’ve already sold him. But I’ll remember to tell that to prospective buyers.’
Lorrie smiled and nodded, then turned away, somehow managing not to look back, even when Horace gave an enquiring neigh. She came to the edge of the animal market and sighed. Before her was one of the city’s gates and beyond, somewhere within the city, was her brother.
Lorrie wandered along the street, unsure of what to do next. She had some sense of Rip still being alive, but no sense of his proximity. Maybe she’d erred in coming here. She had found the constable’s office, but the one fellow on duty was an old gaoler, and he said he could do nothing for her. Best to come back at the end of the day when the constable would be bringing in whoever he arrested. He’d be filling cells just before supper, the man had said.
Lorrie’s mind turned to finding a place to sleep. Putting her hand in her pocket, she squeezed the purse she’d taken from under Bram’s bed now fattened with the thirty silvers she’d got for Horace and the harnessing. She’d done well in her bargaining, but this was no fortune. How long it would keep her Lorrie had no idea: city prices were higher than country, she knew that much.