“Ah, Mistress Jenny. Looking more beautiful than ever!” he boomed.“You’ve brought a light of rare beauty into my dim little shop.”
Jenny rolled her eyes at him. “I see you have a surplus of tripe available today, Edward.”
He laughed, unabashed. “Ah, bear with me, Jenny. There’s few as pretty as you come in here in a day and you should know it. You’re a rare treat for these poor old eyes.”
Edward was barely thirty-five. But it’s an unfailing trait of butchers to behave as if each customer is far, far younger than they. With the more mature housewives, it was probably a good tactic, Jenny thought.
“Do you have my order?” she asked. She enjoyed the hearty, good-natured atmosphere of the butcher’s shop, but today she was in a hurry. Edward turned to his apprentice, who had been watching their exchange with a grin on his face.
“Dilbert, fetch Miss Jenny’s order,” Edward said, then added, “d-na yrruh tuoba ti.”
Jenny smiled to herself. It was another peculiarity of the butcher’s trade that they learned to talk in butcher speak, in which words were pronounced backward. This allowed butchers to have private conversations even when their shop was full of customers. Often, the remarks passed were about the customers themselves, although the customers never had the faintest idea what was being said. Edward was obviously letting Dilbert get some practice in this strange language and had just said, “And hurry about it.”
Jenny had discovered this strange phenomenon some time ago and had secretly practiced backward speak herself. Now she smiled as Dilbert moved toward the cool room.
“I epoh s’ti a ecin gel fo b-mal,” she said sweetly, and both the butcher and his apprentice let their jaws drop as she told them that she hoped it was a nice leg of lamb. Edward hurriedly searched his memory, trying to recall if he had ever said anything disparaging about Jenny in butcher speak. He thought not, but he couldn’t be sure. Sensing his concern, she smiled at him.
“You’ll never know,” she said, and he hurriedly looked away from her and went back to slicing a rump of beef into thick steaks.
Dilbert returned, carrying a leg of lamb, and placed it on the counter for Jenny’s inspection. It was a prime piece of meat, its freshness confirmed by the whiteness of the fat glistening around the edges. Jenny eyed it critically, a slight frown on her face. It would never do to let Edward know that she was too pleased with his produce. She poked the leg, feeling the slight resilience in the flesh, then slapped it with the flat of her hand, creating a resounding smack. She nodded, satisfied at the sound. If asked, she would have been at a loss to explain why she invariably tested a piece of meat by slapping it. It was merely part of a ritual that she had developed over the years.
“That’s fine, Edward. Wrap it for me, please.”
Edward nodded to Dilbert and the boy produced a length of clean muslin and proceeded to wrap it around the leg of lamb. As he did so, Edward glanced slyly at Jenny.
“Not too much for just two people, is it?” he asked.
Jenny shook her head. She had thought her dinner with Gilan was a private affair, although she should have known that it was impossible to keep a secret in this village. But Edward was right. The leg was a little large for just her and Gilan.
She estimated that it was close to three kilos in weight. But whatever was left over would go to good use.
“Whatever we don’t eat, I’ll give to the orphans in the Ward,” she told him.
Edward raised his eyebrows. “Lucky orphans,” he said. He knew Jenny’s reputation as a cook.
Jenny placed the wrapped leg in her basket.
“Thanks, Edward,” she said. “It’s a nice piece of meat. I’ll try to do it justice.”
She smiled, including Dilbert in her thanks, and left the shop.
2
THE THREE MEN HAD BEEN WATCHING THE VILLAGE, AND particularly the silversmith’s home and workshop, for the past week. Now, Tomas decided, it was time to act. He jerked his thumb toward the heavy, iron-reinforced front door of the house and spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Nuttal.
“Right. Get going.”
Nuttal was the smallest of the three of them. He was a thin man, a little reminiscent of a ferret in his features and his tendency to make sudden nervous movements. It was his small stature that had made Tomas select him for the task. Of the three of them, he was the least threatening.
Nuttal strode across the high street toward Ambrose’s house, glancing nervously from side to side as he went. Tomas let him get halfway, then nudged Mound in the ribs.
“Right. Come on!”
They walked hurriedly across the street, angling toward the side of the house. They saw Nuttal arrive at the front door and reach inside his jerkin for a small leather-wrapped pouch. Then they hurried down the narrow side passage to the small window they had noticed several days before.
Ambrose, the silversmith and jeweler for Wensley Village, was preparing for his afternoon’s work. He was a creature of habit and he had certain routines he followed every day.
In the mornings, he would work at his desk, checking bills from suppliers and accounts to customers. Then he would work on designs for his jewelry, sketching new ideas onto fine vellum with a sharpened graphite stylus.
At midday, he would set the paperwork in order on the crowded worktable that served as a desk. He would rise, leave the house—carefully making sure that both the front and rear doors were secured—and walk to the tavern in the village. There he would have his luncheon.
As with everything else, this was a matter of habit. Pickles, tasty cheese and fresh bread, washed down with a half pint of ale. Then, after a brief conversation with any other customers who might be in the taproom, he would return home, ready to begin his real work—the making and repairing of silver jewelry.
Today, as he did every day, he took care to lock the front door behind him, and made his way to the kitchen, where he went down on one knee in front of the hearth. He selected one particular paving stone. It was marked with two seemingly random scratches—many of the flagstones were scratched and these particular marks were ones that nobody else would have found significant. But when Ambrose inserted a blunt-ended knife into the gap between this stone and its neighbor, he was able to lift it easily from its position, revealing a small cavity below. He reached in and withdrew a large iron key, then he rose to his feet and went into his office. He would replace the stone when he returned the key to its hiding place.
Beside the worktable was a large and formidable-looking strongbox. It was a meter and a half high and a meter wide. Inside it, he kept his supply of raw materials—silver ingots and precious stones. At times when he was particularly busy and had a backlog of pieces to make, there could be a small fortune in silver and jewelry in the strongbox. Today was not one of those times, but there was still a considerable amount of precious metal in the box.
He was in the act of placing the key in the strongbox lock when he heard someone knocking on his front door.
He withdrew the key and hesitated for a second or two, wondering if he should replace it in its hiding place. The knocking was repeated and he came to a decision. Leaving the strongbox where it was, he slipped the key into the side pocket of the long leather work vest that he wore and made his way through the house to the front door.
Whoever was there began to knock once more—this time louder and more insistently.
“All right! I’m coming! I’m coming!”
He reached the door, but instead of simply opening it, he unlatched the cover of a small spy hole in the top of the door. This hinged inward to allow him to look out through a rectangular aperture, which was itself barred by two heavy iron rods set into the wood.
There was a small and rather grubby-looking man standing outside his door, shifting nervously from one foot to another. He held a small leather sack in his hands.
“What do you want?” Ambrose said grumpily. Tact and charm were not his long suits. The small man looked u
p and saw Ambrose glaring out at him, his eyes framed in the barred aperture. He held the leather sack up to the aperture.
“It’s my mother’s necklace. See?”
Ambrose frowned. “I don’t see anything that looks like a necklace.”
“Oh, yes.” The man hastily untied the neck of the sack and tipped its contents into the palm of his left hand. Then he held it up to the spy hole for Ambrose to inspect. “See? The clasp and one of the links are broken. I have to get it fixed.”
Ambrose squinted at the piece.
“Hold it closer,” he demanded, and Nuttal complied. It was a good piece, Ambrose saw. An excellent piece, in fact. It was made from heavy links of silver, with a silver filigree pendant, and he could see where the silver chain and the clasp were both broken. He had no idea that they had been broken when Tomas had snatched the chain from the neck of a noble lady in the southern part of the fief the previous week.
The fact that it was an expensive piece made him relax his guard a little. He was normally a cautious man. That was only to be expected, considering his trade. Thieves weren’t in the habit of bringing expensive jewelry to him, but still, the man at the door was a stranger.
“Who are you? I don’t know you,” he challenged.
The small man shrugged apologetically, as if that were somehow his fault.
“I work at the castle,” he said. “In the armory. Master Gilbert said for me to bring the necklace to you. Said you’d be able to fix it.”
That made sense. There were over a hundred people employed at the castle and Ambrose certainly didn’t know all of them. He did know Master Gilbert, however. On several occasions they’d worked together when Ambrose had added silver decoration and chasing to pieces of armor and sword hilts. He unlatched the locking bar across the inside of the door.
“You’d better come in,” he said. “I’ll take a look—”
He spun around as he heard a splintering crash of breaking wood from the rear of the house. As he did so, Nuttal put his shoulder to the unlatched door and slammed it inward, sending the gray-haired silversmith sprawling onto the hallway floor. Nuttal followed him quickly, closing the door behind him.
Ambrose managed to regain his feet, his eyes fixed on a heavy wooden club in a rack inside the front door. Nuttal shoved him back again, sending him reeling away from the weapon and into the arms of Mound, who had just emerged from the back of the house with Tomas.
Mound was a big, muscular man, and he wrapped the silversmith up in a bear hug, pinning his arms. Ambrose opened his mouth to call for assistance.
“Help!” he yelled. “I’m being—”
He got no further. Tomas stepped forward and shoved a grubby, crumpled-up ball of cloth into the craftsman’s mouth, gagging any further cries and reducing his voice to an almost inaudible mumble.
“Shut up!” Tomas ordered, although the instruction was hardly necessary. He clamped a hand over the cloth in Ambrose’s mouth to make sure the silversmith couldn’t expel it. Ambrose’s eyes swiveled above the hand to look at him. They were wide with alarm.
“Hold that in place,” Tomas ordered Mound, and the big man quickly changed his grip on Ambrose, holding him now with his left arm around his neck, while his right held the gag in place.
Tomas stepped back. He was breathing heavily with the tension of the moment. He glanced sidelong at Nuttal. The small man’s eyes were wide too, as if he were the one about to be robbed. He was a nervous rat of a man, Tomas thought. Still, it was good policy not to let his disdain show.
“Good work, Nuttal,” he said.
Nuttal bobbed his head several times. “He fell for it!” he said delightedly. “Fell for it good and proper, he did!” He held the chain up to Ambrose, dangling it before his staring, angry eyes. “Fix my chain, will you, please? My mam will be so happy,” he sneered, then cackled with laughter.
“Leave off,” Tomas told him angrily. Then he looked back at Ambrose. “Right, you, let’s take a look at this strongbox of yours.”
He saw a flash of alarm in the man’s eyes, quickly masked. He gestured to Mound and they dragged the silversmith through to the workroom. They stopped short when they saw that the strongbox door was closed fast.
“Blast it!” Tomas said. “You knocked too soon! You should have waited till he opened it.” He swung angrily on Nuttal, but the little man shrank away.
“How was I to know? I couldn’t see him. I didn’t know. I tell you—”
“Shut up!” Mound told him. Then he turned to Tomas. “Chances are he would have relocked it anyway before he answered the door.”
Tomas paused, then nodded, reluctantly agreeing that his comrade was making sense.
“Then there’ll be a key,” he said. “Where is it, you?”
This last was addressed to Ambrose, although the man could hardly reply with the balled-up linen still blocking his mouth. But once again, Tomas saw that flash of alarm in the man’s eyes. There was a key, he realized. And it must be somewhere close to hand. He looked around the workroom, then strode to the table, brushing the piles of paper off the scarred wooden surface and onto the floor.
He shot a glance at Nuttal. “Check the kitchen,” he said. “See if it’s with his other keys.”
The little man moved into the kitchen, looking to see if there were keys hanging anywhere. Usually people would hang their keys by the fireplace and hearth, but there was nothing there. Then he saw the displaced hearthstone on the floor, and the small black cavity beside it.
“Here!” he called. “Here’s where he hides it!”
He went down on his knees as the others entered, dragging the reluctant Ambrose with them. He scrabbled around in the hole in the floor but looked up, crestfallen, as he found only empty space.
“Nothing here,” he said. “It’s gone.”
Tomas grabbed the lapels of Ambrose’s leather vest and pulled him forward so their faces were only centimeters apart.
“Where is it?” he demanded, shaking the jeweler so that his head snapped back and forth. “Where have you hidden it?”
Mound reached over his shoulder and snatched the gag from Ambrose’s mouth. The silversmith drew a deep breath in, then tried to shout for help.
“Help!” he began. “I’m being—”
Tomas’s fist drove into his stomach, driving the breath from him in an explosive gasp. The silversmith doubled over, gasping for breath, groaning in pain.
“Shut up your yelling!” he ordered roughly. “Or I’ll cut your blasted tongue out. Now where’s that key?”
But Ambrose clamped his mouth shut and shook his head doggedly. Tomas slapped him several times, sending his head snapping from side to side with the force of the blows. But Ambrose remained resolutely silent.
“Maybe he’s got it on him,” Mound suggested. He sometimes felt that Tomas was too prone to giving way to his vile temper. His anger often clouded his sense of reason.
Tomas looked up at him, considered the statement and nodded briefly. He shoved the silversmith toward Mound, releasing his grip on the vest.
“Search him,” he said briefly. As he said the words, Ambrose, momentarily unsecured, tried to dart away into the forge. Mound caught his arm and dragged him back. The sudden attempt only served to convince him that he was right. The key was on Ambrose’s person.
He found it almost immediately. The large side pockets of the leather vest were the first two obvious places to search and the key was a large and heavy one. He withdrew it from the vest pocket and held it up triumphantly.
“Well, what do you think this is?” he asked, grinning. Ambrose’s frantic attempts to break free from his grip only served to confirm what he already suspected. This was the key.
Tomas snatched it from him and inserted it into the keyhole of the strongbox. Seconds later, the heavy door swung open on well-oiled hinges. Inside, silver ingots and precious gems caught the light and glittered a welcome. The three robbers sighed with satisfaction. The strongbox wasn’t as full a
s it might have been—Ambrose had made and sold a lot of jewelry in recent days—but there was still plenty there to keep them in comfort for several months.
Ambrose groaned. Silently, he cursed his own stupidity and laziness. He should have returned the key to its hiding place under the hearthstone. Now he would lose hundreds, if not thousands, of royals’ worth of silver and gemstones. And he had nobody to blame but himself.
Nuttal came forward with a large canvas sack and the robbers proceeded to scoop silver and gems from the safe, dumping it into the sack willy-nilly. Mound hesitated as he took out a wooden tray of finished pieces—necklaces, rings and brooches that Ambrose had been making to order.
“What about these?” he asked.
But Tomas shook his head.
“Too recognizable. He’ll have drawings of them somewhere around here. If we get caught with one of those pieces, we’ll see the inside of Castle Redmont jail before we can blink. Just take the ingots and the loose stones. They can’t be traced.”
Their attention was fastened on the treasure inside the strongbox—treasure that was rapidly being transferred to their sack. Ambrose took a stealthy step toward the door to the hallway. None of the three noticed. He stepped again, and this time, Tomas’s head jerked around.
“Hold it, you!” he said angrily.
Mound strode to the silversmith and grabbed his arm.
“Tie him up!” Tomas ordered. Nuttal hurriedly complied, producing a length of rope from under his jerkin. Ambrose, his arms fastened behind him, was pushed onto a wooden settle.
“Don’t know why we don’t knock him on the head and be done with him,” Mound muttered under his breath as he returned to the strongbox.
Tomas leaned toward him and spoke in an undertone, inaudible to the silversmith.“We need him to send the constable and the posse in the wrong direction, remember?” He saw comprehension flood into Mound’s face as he remembered that detail of the plan and they nodded meaningfully to each other. Then Tomas stood up from his kneeling position beside the strongbox and continued in a louder voice, “Right! We’re done here, lads. Let’s be on the road to Stiller’s Ford! With luck we should make it before dark.”